My Best Man by Andy Schell (unputdownable books .txt) 📗

off the joint, speaks the next sentence with puffs of popping out of her mouth. “I think something’s not quite right his head. I can tell he’s desperate to be taken seriously. He have never had any attention, his mom running the Bates and all. I think he has some kind of mental problem.”

“Obviously he’s fucked up,” I say, bolstering her analysis Amity is so funny, so cool. I can’t imagine people being angry her unless they were sitting behind her in a movie theater couldn’t see the screen because of her hair.

We finish the joint and she drinks both glasses of after I decline mine. I ask her if she’s calmed down enough to go to sleep. She says she’s not sure if she feels safe, and so I offer t sleep with her in her bed. “Would you?” she asks.

“Sure,” I tell her bravely. She refills both glasses and

them to her bedside. After we get into bed and pull the covers over us, I’m not so sure. I don’t know why, but it feels strange for the two of us to do this. The last time we were in bed together was in Denver, and I was kissing her. I’m thinking about it, and I can tell she is too. I’m really stoned, and my mind is wandering all over the place while my body lies rigidly still. I’m an island in the sheets, and my heart is pounding out indigenous rhythms of warning. I’m afraid if I move my legs they might brush against her. Every time I swallow I feel it’s being broadcast through a bullhorn. Of course that’s probably crazy, but I’m stoned and paranoid, and gay. “Harry,” she whispers, “thank you for protecting me.” “You’re welcome,” I say.

She leans over and kisses me sweetly on the lips. My eyes are open, and so are hers. She looks at me and smiles. We kiss again, our mouths closed, but our lips soft and relaxed. It’s pleasant. Not full of heated passion, and not the kind of kisses that make me want to rip off my clothes, but nice. Soft. Loving.

She pulls back and sinks into her pillow. “And thank you for kissing me,” she says, evidently wanting nothing more. Then she rolls over and puts her arm across my chest, and within a minute she’s out. Fast asleep. With a satisfied smile on her face.

“She’s out on a trip. Chicago, I think.” “What’s her name again?” “Amity Stone.”

“Amity Stone. God, that sounds familiar. I know I’ve heard that name before,” my friend, Randy, says, looking up to the ceiling to grab an invisible memory. Randy’s a knock-dead handsome Jewish-Italian guy who speaks with a Texas accent. He lives with his boyfriend in Austin. I met him in college. He was in the theater department for five minutes before transferring to a school in Texas to major in fashion merchandising. I’ve flown over to Austin on my day off, and this is the first time I’ve seen him in two years. We’re sitting at the kitchen table, eating a spread of salami, crackers,

pickles, rye bread, and cold potatoes washing it all down with a couple of cold beers.

“She’s wild. We’re always having fun. I swear, Randy, there’s nobody like her.”

“What’s different about her?”

“She just doesn’t have that internal cautionary mechanism, that off switch that most of us have. You know, the one that keeps you from being too honest or too carefree or too sexual.”

“Let’s go straight to the sexual part. What do you mean? Too sexual?”

“She goes for it. If she wants some guy, she fucks him. Period.” “Definitely a shiksa.”

“And I just know, no matter who she’s in bed with, she’s top.

“A shiksa with a dicksa.”

“And she’s straight on with me about the fact that she money and guys with big dicks. I don’t know why she’s han out with me I’m not getting any inheritance from my father, I don’t have a big dick.”

“And you’re gay,” Randy laughs, putting salami onto a

“It’s a good thing you’re just friends, because unless you get dick job and rob a bank, she’d probably drop you like a salad.”

“No shit,” I chuckle.

“Still… I know I’ve heard that name before,” he says, scanning his memory again. “Amity Stone.”

“I’m not in the running anyway,” I go on, “because she has new boyfriend. Some guy named Matt Hunter goes by Hunt. He’s this strapping redheaded boy with great teeth who comes up in his BMW 2002 and hops out like he’s hopping off a hors el The weird thing is that he’s a fraternity brother of the last guy dated some dude whose balls smell like Brie cheese.”

Randy spews out a chunk of pickle.

I continue. “He’s really friendly to me in a very sexual kind of way, which I thought was hot until Amity told me he admitted he used to go to gay bars with a couple friends who would wait out in the parking lot while he would flirt with a guy inside, lure him out to the car with a promise of sex, and then beat the stuffing out of him with his friends.”

“How sick is that?” Randy says, disgusted.

I bite a chunk of pickle. “I know. Amity told me so nonchalantly, as if to say, “Isn’t that funny, Harry?” I got pretty angry about it, and it really disturbed me that she looks at him as if he’s the finest man in the world. But then I realized, that’s how she looked at Troy, the other guy, and he didn’t last long. So I just kept my mouth shut.”

“I know who she is!” Randy says, almost choking on his beer as well as his epiphany. “She’s the girl from CCT who sued the professor.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, taking a swig of beer.

“Amity Stone. She slept with her professor at a Christian college in Fort Worth, and he ended up giving her a B in the class, so she sued him,” Randy