The Leftover Club (9 page)

January 29, 1986

“You ask him.”

“It’s your idea.
You ask him.”

“I can’t ask him.”

“Then I guess he isn’t going to be asked.”

Olive and I stopped fighting to stare each other down that Wednesday afternoon
in my bedroom. What she was proposing was ridiculous. Impossible. I shook my head. “He’d never go for it. It’s just too weird.”

“It’s not weird,” she snapped. “It’s art.”

“Well, I’m not asking him. And that’s that.”

“Not asking me what?” we heard Dylan say from the doorway. Apparently our discussion carried two doors down the hall to disturb him as he did his homework.

Olive blushed bright red. This was her golden opportunity to ask him her monumental favor, if she found the courage to do so. She took a deep breath, which I ended up mirroring.

“Some artists in my class have been invited to share their work during an exhibit at the museum to showcase new talent.”

He leaned against the door frame. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

Her blush deepened. She nodded. “I do a lot of natural stuff.
Still life. Landscape. That kind of thing.”

“What does that have to do with me?”

She took another breath. “I want to draw you.”

His eyebrow arched. “Me? Why?”

The answer was obvious to us Leftovers. But Dylan seemed genuinely curious. “Because…,” she started. “You’re an athlete who concentrates on perfecting your physique. And since you’re, like, Roni’s brother, we figured it might be easier to ask you than approach someone we didn’t know.”

“We?” he asked as he glanced my way.

“I told her you wouldn’t go for it,” I clarified, just in case he was piecing it together that I might want to see more of his body. It was a body I had to wrench my eyes away from before he could see the rush of hopeless teenaged hormones the mere thought of it inspired.

His eyes narrowed. “Shows what you know. I’d love to do it,” he told Olive.

She sputtered in spite of herself as he vaulted onto my bed, crossing one denim-clad leg over the other as he ripped the band T-shirt from his torso. I panicked as he unfastened the button on his jeans.

“What are you doing?” I squeaked.

“You wanted to see the male form, right?”

With confidence of a man twice his age, he slid down that zipper until he revealed his taunt abdomen. A thin, dark line of hair pointed straight toward the
band on his red underwear that peaked out over the edge of his jeans. It reminded me in vivid detail that he was actually undressing himself on my bed. “That’s good,” I said immediately.

His eyebrow lifted. “You sure?” he asked, before adding, “Sis?”

The edge in his voice made my eyes travel up his body to meet his. Was he mad? His hard eyes remained locked with mine as Olive scrambled to open her sketch pad to a blank page. Within a heartbeat she used a charcoal pencil to draw the bold lines of his body, as if she was trying to get as much done before Dylan had the presence of mind to get dressed and call the whole thing off.

But he looked more than comfortable as he slid one hand along his tummy, hooking his forefinger in his jeans. The other arm he propped over his head, drawing attention to his thick, wavy hair and those soulful dark eyes.

They were, in fact, even more lethal than the beckoning bulge in his jeans. Those lazily hooded eyes remained locked with mine, as if issuing yet another dare.

“
Kiss me
,” I could hear an echo from the past command.

Thank God Olive was there or I might have been sorely tempted to do just that.

But then again, if Olive wasn’t there, he wouldn’t be on my bed at all. He’d spend the four hours between the last bell of school and our  moms coming home locked up in his room, blasting his heavy metal from an entirely different world. In order to escape the snare of his unrelenting gaze, I turned to my boom box and pushed “play” on the mix tape he had made for me. The salacious sounds of W.A.S.P. filled the room, which really didn’t help my conundrum. I parked myself right behind Olive and focused, intently, on her progress instead.

I would like to say that the whole experience got easier
as the minutes ticked by; that the longer he sat, half-naked, in front of us, the more mundane it became.

But the longer he lay there on my bed, the more my jumbled thoughts returned to every instance we’d ever shared between us, from a kiss on a forgotten church playground to the dance just months before, when I felt that body pressed tightly against mine.

How Olive was able to stay focused and work was beyond me. Her hand didn’t even tremble as she captured every vivid detail of the teen dream before us. Half the sophomore class, probably male
and
female, would have killed to be in our shoes at that very moment. It felt as though it was dragging on forever, but then the light of the day had faded and it was going on six o’clock. Our mothers would be home soon, and I had to get dinner started. Begrudgingly Olive put away her work for the day, gathering her belongings so she could make that long trek home. Dylan reached for his shirt and slid off my bed.

“I’ll drive you,” he offered my friend, who – though she had spent hours staring at his half-naked form without shame – blushed at the idea of being in a confined car with him. She stammered her thanks and followed him from my room, sending a stark look of terror over her shoulder at me.

I would have offered to go with her, but the same idea scared me shitless as well. I used the excuse that I needed to start dinner to stay behind. I was just adding the tomato sauce to the sautéed onion and pepper when he returned ten minutes later.

He walked into the kitchen where I worked, grabbed a can of soda from the fridge,
and then walked over to stand directly behind me to inspect my work. “Smells good,” he said in a low voice that tightened my nerves further in a knot.

“Thanks,” I murmured. I cursed the tremor in my hand as I stirred.

“Can I have a taste?” he asked softly.

I sent a panicked look over my shoulder when he leaned over my shoulder to place his hand on mine, lifting the spoon towards his mouth. I memorized every detail of his sensual, full lips as he opened his mouth and captured the bright red sauce on his tongue. I dropped the spoon, splattering tomato sauce all over his chin, my shirt and the tile floor.

“Shit! I’m sorry,” I muttered as I reached for a towel to clean up the mess.

He wiped the sauce from his chin with his hand. “You should take your top off. It’s going to stain.”

I nodded as I dumped the wadded paper towels in the trash. I started to brush past him but he grabbed my arm. “The laundry room is that way,” he gestured with his head the other direction.

“I need to change,” I explained.

“You need,” he began as he stepped closer, “to get your shirt off before that stain sets in.”

His eyes were dark and unreadable. I stammered and he interrupted me.

“After all, fair’s fair. You saw me with my shirt off.”

I crossed my arm across my breasts. “That’s different,” I mumbled.

He shrugged. “All in the family, ‘Sis.’ That is what you’ve been telling people right? All your friends? Olive? Bryan?”

I choked back any response.
I couldn’t share anything I had shared with the fellow Leftovers with him. Not in a million, billion,
trillion
years.

“Is that how you see me?” he wanted to know. My eyes fell and I realized he hadn’t yet fastened his jeans. I could still see the red underwear… and a pronounced bulge.

“Dylan, stop,” I pleaded.

“Why?” he demanded softly.

With every iota of strength I could muster, I met his gaze dead on. “Because it’s not right to tease me like this. I do see you as a brother,” I lied. “There’s nothing between us. There never has been.”

His eyes narrowed into angry slits. He lifted up his hands and let me sprint out of the kitchen to the sanctity of my bedroom. I locked the door and peeled off my
shirt, stopping short in front of the bed where he had lay just an hour before, half-naked and suggestive, like he would have any interest at all in seducing me like one of his cheerleaders.

It was another joke. And I was the butt of it.

By the time I reemerged from my room, he’d gone into hiding. I didn’t see him until the next day at school, during lunch, when Olive approached him about the next time he’d model. He cradled his newest interest, a pixie with cropped blonde hair and a gymnast’s body, under his arm.

“Yeah, I don’t think I want to do that anymore,” he said dismissively. “It just feels weird. You know, with
Roni being like my sister and all.”

Olive was dumbstruck by his about-face. Frankly, so was I.

“Good luck finding someone else, though,” he said to her, though he was looking right at me. He smiled at his newest squeeze and left us standing like idiots in the middle of the crowded cafeteria.

Olive’s face reddened from the embarrassment of his unexpected rejection. “What the fuck was that all about?” she asked.

I just shrugged. “I told you. It was a stupid idea.” I carried my full tray to the big trash bin and dumped it all in without taking one bite.

September 2
2, 2007

I shredded yet another napkin between nervous fingers as I watched the oversized oblong clock on the wall of the kitschy coffee shop. Bryan finally reached over and peeled the decimated remnants from my fingers. “Would you relax?”

“Easy for you to say.
She didn’t move to Africa to get away from you.”

“She didn’t move to Africa to get away from you, either,” he corrected. “She moved to get away from him.”

I grimaced. After Dylan dropped her art project flat, he pretty much ignored her existence completely. If she came to the house, he’d get in his car and drive anywhere else. When she tried to give him her drawing, he shrugged it away as if he wanted to forget the unpleasant episode altogether.

As did we all.

I stopped inviting her over because it was just too painful to watch. He wasn’t just freezing her out; he was ignoring me, too. He would bring girls to the house, lock himself up in his room and blast suggestive music so that I’d know just exactly what he was doing. Meanwhile Olive and I stayed in my room, quiet and restrained, thinking about what might have been.

Apparently being frozen out by Dylan could not be mitigated by the attention of the Leftovers, and finally, by April, she had given up on high school entirely. She was the epitome of a square peg. Her clothes weren’t just hand-me-
downs, they were weird and never matched. She never wore a speck of makeup or tried to fix her hair to blend with the other girls in our grade. And she had very specific ideas about the world that didn’t often fit with our more conservative classmates who couldn’t wait to make their first million.

In an environment one survived by assimilating with the masses, she defiantly stood out.

She ended up drawing a nude for that art project, and was rejected and reprimanded as a result. After that she lost all interest in participating in anything that had to do with school pride.

And I knew it was
all my fault.

So when I saw her enter that coffee shop, I knew I deserved whatever ass-chewing she had waited more than twenty years to deliver.

Instead I was taken into a big bear hug that took my breath away. I was stunned as we broke apart. “It’s so good to see you,” she smiled wide as she looked me over. “You look great, Roni.”

I
glanced her over. “You don’t look so bad yourself!” I teased.

She no longer wore her hair in a braid,
or big, clunky glasses or secondhand clothes. Her sweater was cashmere, a snug black turtleneck that she wore over a pair of hip-hugging jeans. She was no longer skinny as a rail. Her slender figure now fit her tall frame in an elegant silhouette. She had dyed her hair a burgundy red and cropped it short, to the nape of her neck. And she had replaced her bottle-thick lenses with purple, skinny-framed glasses.

She turned to
Bryan. “And don’t you look like a superstar?” she said as she reached for a hug.

“I do,” he admitted gaily as he lifted her right off the ground. We all sat and she placed her order to the waitress who brought a basket of mini muffins to our table.

“I couldn’t believe it when I got your message,” she said. “Talk about ghosts of high school past. I’m just glad I was in town so we could hang out. It’s been too long.”

I nodded. “Nineteen years,” I confirmed.

“Jesus,” she breathed. “So tell me everything. What’s new in the world of Roni and Bryan?”

I shrugged. My story wasn’t a fascinating one, and certainly didn’t stand out in any way.
“Got married. Got divorced. Raising my teenage daughter. Not much to tell.”

She laughed. “Don’t tell me you married that asshole, Dylan Fenn.”

I snorted in spite of myself. “No, it was another asshole entirely.”

“Dylan never got married,”
Bryan confided.

“Big surprise,” she sneered.

“What about you?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I never found the right girl.”

Bryan gave me a victorious side-eye smirk. “Told you.”

She swatted him with her napkin. “Stop bragging. We could always spot our own, that’s no trick.”

“Forget about us,” he said. “You’re the world traveler. What’s been up with you lo these many years?”

“Where did we leave off?” she asked.

“The monks,” Bryan and I said together.

“Right, the monks.
Well, after the monks, I decided to come back home, back to Oregon. By then I was old enough to live on my own so I took care of our house until we sold it. Did some renovating and such. Fell in love. Fell out of love. You know how it is.”

Bryan
nodded. I shook my head.

“Anyway, I ended up making my way toward San Francisco. I entertained the thought of going to Berkeley but the art scene was too tempting to ignore. I lived as a starving artist through much of the 90s, renting out rooms and staying on the move until I found Juniper Bell. She ran a local art gallery, I drew local art. It was kismet.
Within three months I moved into her family house in Nob Hill and we lived happily until she got sick in 2005.” A cloud passed over her eyes. “After she died, I’ve sort of been living out of my suitcase. Went to New York for a while, then Chicago. Aiming for Europe, eventually. I think every artist should live there at least once in their lifetime.”

“So what brings
you back here to Los Angeles?”

She shrugged. “Don’t know. I always hated it here, and that hasn’t changed much. You can’t live in New York or San Francisco and then settle for L.A.” She sighed. “I guess after twenty years I was feeling
nostalgic. I’ve been staying at my aunt’s house, helping her get everything ready to sell so she can move to Arizona. After that, I’m Paris-bound.”

I envied her. I thought I had it all just because I’d managed to juggle a career and motherhood. Olive had none of that and had managed to see the world, collecting in her jar of experiences things I had only read about.

“So I guess you wouldn’t be up for a Leftover Club takeover at the 20-year reunion,” Bryan teased.

She made a face.
“God, no. I didn’t like any of those douche bags then. I doubt they’ve gotten better with age. Present company excluded, of course.”

“Of course,”
Bryan agreed.

“So what do you
square-britches do for fun around here?” she asked with a big smile.

That night we took Olive to
Eleete, whereupon she endeavored to drink every single one of us under the table. She bought colorful shots made out of hard liquor and gelatin, which she demonstrated how to eat properly with a deft swirl of her long, agile tongue. As rusty as I was, it took me a few tries. “We need to get you laid,” she said in my ear before she pulled me out onto the dance floor.

Olive wasn’t shy or awkward anymore. Like Bryan, once she embraced all those things that made her “weird” or stand out, she flourished just like a colorful butterfly who finally realized she had wings. I followed where she led, matching her dance move for dance move and shot for shot. By the end of the night we had to take a cab home, so I offered she stay in my apartment rather than go all the way back to Orange County.

We grabbed fast food on the way back to my place and once there, she broke out a joint for us to share.

“I haven’t done this in twenty years,” I giggled before I took a hit. I held my breath, saying as I exhaled, “I’m a respectable woman now.”

“I can fix that,” she promised with a chuckle.

Within an hour we were flying high and eating everything that wasn’t nailed down. We stood in the kitchen in front of my open refrigerator, with me stripped down to my shorty pajamas and her in boy shorts and a silky camisole. Food tasted like it hadn’t in years and I couldn’t stop eating, testing, trying new things.

We grabbed bags of naughty food and headed back to my bedroom, climbing onto my big queen-sized bed to watch any stupid comedy we could find on demand. We fed each other ice cream drowned in chocolate sauce, giggling as ooey, gooey chocolate dripped down our chins. "No hands!" she exclaimed as she licked it away, and of course I had to follow suit.

It got even funnier every single time we did it, especially when we couldn't reach our own and had to depend on the other to clean it away with the swipe of a tongue.

In fact, I hadn’t laughed this hard or felt this good in a long, long time. When the giggles hit I fell back on my back and dissolved into laughter that I couldn't have stopped if I tried. It was an emotional release. A laughgasm.

I guess that was why I didn’t turn away when she brushed the hair out of my face. “Sounded like you needed that,” she said softly as the laughter subsided.

I nodded. “I did.”

Her fingers captured a lock of my hair as she lay down next to me, propping herself up on her elbow. “You probably need a lot of things, don’t you?”

I think I might have blushed. “You know how it is,” I shrugged.

She grinned as she crawled across my body to open up my nightstand. She straddled my waist as she dug around. She didn't stop until she uncovered my favorite battery operated boyfriend from his hiding place. Her fingers danced over the shaft. "Sebastian?" she asked.

I giggled and shook my head. "Julio."

"Julio," she repeated.
"Muy caliente!" We laughed as she mimicked giving it a blowjob. Finally she got serious. “Yes, I do know how it is,” she smirked as she settled next to me. “I also know how it can be. But you don’t, do you? You are still a virgin in many ways.”

I shrugged. It didn’t matter. I reached for the joint for another hit. “There’s always knitting,” I quipped.

“Fuck knitting,” she said softly, examining my dual purpose vibrator in her hand. It did everything but wash the dishes and take out the trash. “I know what you need, sweetie. It's about damned time someone gave it to you.” Her eyes darkened as she bent forward for a kiss.

My eyes fluttered closed and I went with it, losing myself to the sensation of another warm mouth on mine. I didn’t even mind much when her tongue nudged my lips apart, to boldly search my mouth in a way no one had done in almost a decade. I moaned a little and she pushed me into the bed, covering my body with her own. I felt my head spin as I gazed up into her eyes.

“No one has ever properly loved you, have they?” she asked softly as she ran a finger across my chest and in between my breasts.

I closed my eyes. I gave a sad shake of my head.

“You’ve been in your own kind of closet. Hidden away, afraid to be yourself, afraid that you’ll never be accepted.” She ran a hand over my breast, and my body responded to her touch like a dying plant strains for the sun. “I want to show you how it could be. How you could be,” she added. “It doesn’t have to mean anything more than this moment. Just one friend. Helping another friend. And if I do anything you don’t like, you just say the word and I’ll stop.”

My insides coiled in anticipation as I nodded. She kissed me again before she trailed her mouth down across my body, sucking one hard nipple into her mouth through my clothes. I grabbed the comforter in tight fists on both hands as she awakened a hunger long buried inside of me.

Despite what I always said, how this part of my life was over, never to return, I wanted to be wanted. And I wanted to be shown.

After the divorce, I knew my job was to raise my kid. I didn’t want to complicate matters by jumping into bed with anyone. That had cost me enough already. So I closed that part of myself off and resigned myself to occasional solo play when I was feeling especially antsy.

It had been near a decade since I felt someone’s mouth on my skin or hands on my body. Suddenly I needed that more than I needed anything else in the world.

When she kissed her way along my stomach, I instinctively and unconsciously opened my legs for her. She used the realistic looking vibrator to rub me over my clothes and I ground my hips against it, but it was an exercise in futility. It offered subtle pressure, but nothing direct and firm like a finger or a tongue. I needed more. My insides caught fire
in anticipation when she deftly removed my pajama bottoms. She brushed her fingers along my thighs. “You’re beautiful,” she whispered. “You always were.”

Somehow I believed it from her. I didn’t even bother to argue. Olive Young had always seen things in a different way than anyone else. Why should I be any different?

I watched her disappear between my legs, going to a place no one had ever gone before. Her breath rushed over me before her tongue lapped firmly against me. The minute she touched me, I cried out. Her mouth was warm and her tongue was commanding as it circled my clit just like she was pulling a gelled shot out of a plastic cup. My eyes rolled back in my head and my thighs clamped her ears as I drew her closer into me. She rewarded me by flicking her tongue across me until I was bucking against her face.

She knit two fingers together and eased them inside. I grasped those fingers hungrily. I wanted, needed, to be fucked. She happily complied, fingering me until I was begging for more. Finally she eased my toy up inside as she sucked my clit into her mouth. It sent me rocketing into outer space.