Sons of the 613 by Michael Rubens

Author:Michael Rubens [Rubens, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

THE MORNING AFTER

MERIT BADGE: WOODWORKING

It’s light when my own snores wake me up. It takes a few seconds for all the parts of my brain to return from wherever they went and reassemble themselves, awareness coming back to me in small units: I’m not in the tent. I’m at Lesley’s, meaning it wasn’t a dream. She’s not next to me anymore in bed. From what I hear, she’s sitting at the table, quietly reading the paper. I’m spreadeagled on my back. I’m wearing the T-shirt and cutoff sweatshorts she lent me.

I have morning wood.

Oh my God.

I’m lying here on my back with a hard-on, which I’m sure I had when she woke up. I roll on my side and go fetal to camouflage my condition, and realize that the sheet is over my lower half, which it wasn’t when I went to sleep, meaning that maybe she noticed my bonerness and tried to save me the embarrassment by covering me up, which is worse. Also bad: I have to pee, like now, and I’m hoping things will sort of calm down down there and I’ll be able to get up and run to the bathroom. For now I pretend I’m asleep and hope she doesn’t realize I’m up, in both senses of the word.

I hear the newspaper rustle. “You want some eggs?” she says. I don’t think I’m fooling her.

“Uh . . .”

“I’ll make some eggs.”

I take advantage of when she turns to the stove to scurry to the bathroom—she totally knows—and then have to do the waiting thing until my plumbing is in the correct state for peeing. I take advantage of the time to punch myself in the head a few times and bite my fist, trying to replace my embarrassment with physical pain.

I camouflage my peeing with the shower again, then realize once I’m in there that I don’t have any clothes to change into. Which is when the bathroom door opens partway—panic—and her hand pokes through the opening, holding my pants and another T-shirt. Then she leans her head in, her eyes squinted shut.

“Hey,” I say, hands cupped over my personal parts.

“I won’t peek,” she says. She holds up the T-shirt blindly. It partially unfurls, and I can see that it’s the English Beat T-shirt that she was wearing the first time we met. “I’m lending you one of my favorite shirts, so don’t get it dirty, right?”

“Okay.”

“Want me to lend you some undies?”

“Uh, no.”

“I’ve got some great pink ones with lots of lace.”

“No, thanks.”

“Okay. You’re either gonna have to recycle or go Canadian, then.”

“I’ll go Canadian.”

She suddenly opened her eyes.

“How you doing in there?”

“HEY!”

I can still hear her laughing after she closes the door. After a few moments I start to laugh too.

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