Garrett Nickelsen Tastes Like Fart

The boy smiled again and cracked open the beer can, curving his lips to one side as it dangled haphazardly from his fingers. “Hey.”

“Hey,” I echoed with considerably less enthusiasm, ripping my gaze from his half-smirk. My heart unintentionally began beating faster as the boy inched closer to the swing. I could hear him take a breath as if he were going to speak, but he bit back his words as he took another couple of steps and plopped himself onto the bench right next to me, his leg brushing against mine.

“So… I don’t think I’ve seen you around here before.”

He waited for me to respond, but instead I kept my mouth shut and sipped my soda.

“Did you just move to Scottsdale?”

Again, I stayed silent.

“You enjoying the party?” He paused for effect, and nodded to the abandoned keg of beer standing next to the pool, pointing to it with a finger from his hand holding the beer. “I hear that one keg stand from earlier was a new record.” I saw him send me another half-smile from the corner of my eye, and he took a swig from his beer. “You really need to stop talking. I mean, shit, don’t you have an off switch or something?” he joked.

It took a lot for me to not crack a smile, but he noticed my lips slightly curve upward, and he chuckled.

“My name’s Garrett.” He paused, like he was expecting me to find his name familiar. “Garrett Nickelsen,” he emphasized. From the corner of my eye, I could see him turn to look at me, a timid smile hanging loosely on his lips. “What’s yours?”

I had to give him credit for persisting, so I muttered my name.

“That’s a pretty name, if you don’t mind me saying so.” He brought up his right leg to his chest, his foot perched on the edge of the bench. He smiled again and took a sip of his beer. “You got a last name?”

I kept my eyes forward.

“Jesus, you’re sure making it hard for me here, Elise.” He chuckled hollowly and shook his head, his short bangs bouncing across his forehead. “Is it about the drink? Or your phone? No?” He took in a deep breath, despite the pungent scent of weed in the air. “I hope none of my Pepsi got on your skirt earlier.”

I shook my head, brushing a hand over the ruffled yellow fabric before taking my phone from my pocket and setting it on the table in front of us, not wanting to miss a relieving text from Heather telling me she was ready to leave.

It was almost a minute later when I felt the boy scoot closer to me, his leg right against mine, his skin warm and discomforting in the heat. It felt disgusting, so I inched away. He noticed and nodded his head, muttering an apology before taking a swig of his beer. I took a chance glance at him from the corner of my eye: his cheeks were verging on pink and sweat matted the hair at the nape of his neck. His fingers tapped away on his knee as he hummed a vague tune under his breath. He seemed… nervous.

“This conversation’s kinda one-sided, don’t you think?” he said, turning to me with another half-smirk on his lips. It turned into a full smile when he caught me staring.

“No,” I muttered, swiftly averting my eyes back to the crowded pool. I let my Diet Coke dangle from my fingers as a blush slowly crept up my neck.

“Ah, she speaks!” he mused, taking another sip of his beer.

“Yay,” I sarcastically mumbled, adversely unenthused by my response.

He laughed and smacked his knee. “Oh, c’mon. You’ve gotta give me credit for at least trying here.”

It took all I had not to give him a raised eyebrow.

Instead of asking another pestering question, Garrett just sat there, taking in our surroundings. He obnoxiously laughed when another large boy cannonballed into the deep end, splashing a small group of don’t-get-my-hair-wet-or-I’ll-kill-you girls and setting them into a frenzy. We stayed there, Garrett sipping his beer while I eyed my phone in desperation. Even as a master of All Things Awkward, the silence was easy, it was simple. To say the least, this surprised me, as when it came to boys, especially attractive boys (like Mark Brutowski in my AP physics class), I was always a nervous wreck. I contemplated on taking my phone and leaving Mr. Garrett Nickelsen on the bench to wonder why his womanizing skills didn’t work on me, when he decided to start talking again, pointing at my Diet Coke as I downed the rest of the warm soda.

“Ew. Diet Coke tastes like… like fart.” He snorted and knocked back the last of his beer.

I just scoffed and gave him a look over my shoulder. “No… you taste like fart.”

“Really now?” He chuckled and scooted closer on the warm bench, his leg making full contact with mine. “How can you be so sure what I taste like?”

“I, um, well… Uh…” I stuttered over single syllables before giving up and just shrugging my shoulders, feeling goose bumps prick at my forearms. I kept my eyes away from Garrett, sure that if I were to even glance in his direction, I would find his lips curved up in a smirk, ready to laugh in my face without a second to waste. I knew I shouldn’t have taken so much offense to his comment on my drink choice; it was just Diet Coke after all. And my comeback was nothing more than immature.

But as I kept my eyes on the pool, I could feel something brushing against my leg just below my knee. I looked down, expecting some sort of garden bug or mosquito, but no insect was perched on my skin; rather, fingertips lightly brushed against my knee. I furrowed my eyebrows and turned to face the boy sitting next to me.

Though his eyes were transfixed on his wandering fingers, their gaze was blank and his face was stony. His expression didn’t change as his fingers left my knee to clasp over the top of the empty can in my hand, like some claw from a vending machine. I let my eyes move with my drink as he leaned over my waist to perch it on the wide, metallic arm rest next to my elbow, stretching his other arm around the back of my seat. He slowly straightened back up and wiped his hand on his swim trunks before bringing it to rest on my cheek, his thumb ghosting against my flushed skin.

“What—”

He smiled, just the slightest.

“I don’t taste like fart,” he whispered.

I didn’t move as he leaned in further, and I didn’t put much thought into the fact that he started kissing me. He was very placid until I awkwardly kissed back (Heather’s advice to just go with it rang in my ears), and he fleetingly smiled before he deepened the kiss. His fingers left my cheek and brushed over my hair and down my neck, and I couldn’t help but to reach out and pinch the wrinkled fabric of his worn t-shirt between my fingers. He smelled like a mixture of boy sweat, fabric softener, and cigarette smoke, and his fingers were long and calloused. His hand on the back of the swing moved to rest against my neck and his other hand took my fingers from his shirt. He brushed his thumb over them before setting my hand on my knee, his fingers kneading my knuckles.

I heard the patio door open, and a small shadow came over my legs, Garrett’s hand now cupping my knee. “Elise, we need to—Whoa.”

At the voice, Garrett slowly pulled away, his warm breath hitched in his throat until it blew along my neck. He bowed his head as if embarrassed, his messy mop of auburn hair slightly ruffled by a warm breeze that came across the porch. I turned around to find Heather in the doorway with a baffled look on her face, her cell phone flipped open in one hand and her arm extended behind the door and back into the party, where Jude stood on the other end, his fingers intertwined with hers. The obnoxious dance music blasted from behind her like her own theme song as her lips slowly curved into a smirk, an extremely sly, bemused smirk. She poked her head back in to say something to Jude, then came from the doorway and closed the storm door behind her, folding her hands behind her back. I could see Jude peeking through the glass, his tall frame letting him see the sequence of events over Heather’s head.

“Elise, we have to leave your friend behind ‘cause, uh… curfew’s almost up. We don’t want you to be late now, do we?” she taunted, slowly swaying back and forth on her heels as she pointedly peered over my shoulder at the two beer bottles and Garrett’s empty Bud left on the table in front of me.

Garrett sighed and I could hear him mutter a single apology by my ear, his fingers brushing against my neck once more as he extracted himself from my side. More goose bumps crawled down my legs as he removed his other hand from my knee and stood up from the porch swing, straightening his worn zombie t-shirt and ruffling the hair at the nape of his neck, his other hand quickly tucked inside his pocket. I shot up from the swing as well and hastily straightened out my shirt, pulling down my skirt from where it had ridden up. I shared one final, awkward glance with the flustered boy, his cheeks aflame, before leading Heather back into the house, a permanent grin stretching her plump cheeks.

As she closed the door behind us, she gave me a wide grin and quickly giggled before she nodded her head as if silently giving her approval of the boy I was caught kissing. She ignored the deadpan look I gave her and rushed in front of me to bid her boyfriend goodbye. As a girl in a bikini opened the door behind me, I thought I heard my name being called. I glanced around, but saw no one I knew and silently shook my head, folding my arms against my chest as two tall boys with overfilled red cups recklessly brushed past me. As I sent an annoyed look their way, Heather surprised me by grabbing onto my wrist and pulling me through a thick curtain of girls in short skirts and tight tank tops right ahead of us. As they voiced their tactless complaints, I spotted Jude and gave him a pleading look over my shoulder across the room; he only smirked, shook his head, and gave me a small wave, taking a last sip of his Boone’s.

Heather dragged me all the way to her hot car, its temperature only slightly cooler in the dark. She quickly unlocked the doors and ushered me inside, starting up the car in a frenzy. She quickly turned off the loud rap music that she had left on and pulled out of the street, barely even noticing how close she came to scraping the corner of her car against the ostentatious yellow Chevy parked in front of us.

“So… Garrett Nickelsen.” She paused as she stopped at a stop sign at the corner, her fingers excitingly tapping against the steering wheel. “He a good kisser?”

“What? I… What?” I swallowed the wad of saliva that had been collecting in the back of my throat since Heather dragged me out of the party. I brushed some of the hair blowing in my face behind my ear and tossed up my hands, smacking them against my thighs. “Are you serious? And how do you even know him?”

“Sweetie,” she started, but her voice cracked and she enveloped into a fit of girlish giggles. She quickly composed herself as if nothing had happened and turned down another street, bobbing her head to an imaginary beat in her head. “Garrett’s pretty well-known, at least to some cool people like myself.” I snorted and she gave me an indignant look, stopping before a wide street. “Anyway…”

“This night did not turn out so well,” I mumbled, tapping my fingers against the outside of my door. I still couldn’t believe I had just made out with a boy. I hadn’t even kissed a boy before, unless you counted Michael Fleming in the second grade. But that was an entirely different story.

“Not good? Ha!” Heather backhanded my shoulder and pointed a finger at me. She pulled onto the nearly empty street, quickly hitting forty. “You were just caught kissing Garrett Nickelsen. Of all people, Garrett Nickelsen!” she yelled over the wind coming through the windows, widening her eyes at the boy’s name and nodding her head, once again, in approval.

“I don’t even know him!” I yelled back.

“That’s a good thing, isn’t it?” She gave me another look over her shoulder. “I mean, if you’re so embarrassed by making out with the dude, you’ve got to remember that he probably won’t know what happened to himself by tomorrow. He’s probably more wasted right now than he was when he started talking to you.”

“I guess…”

“You guess right.” Heather stopped at a light and took one look at my disgruntled expression before sighing her sympathy. “Well… what exactly did you expect?”

“Expect from what?” I asked, propping my feet onto the dash, earning a look of disapproval from Heather despite the condition her car was already in.

“A boy.”

I gripped the outside of the door as she sharply turned the corner when the light changed. “I don’t know. Am I supposed to expect something?” The Bro Code was not my expertise.

“Don’t even try to tell me that you’re not disappointed that Garrett won’t even remember your name by tomorrow morning.” She huffed and looked back to the road, slowing down to a moderate thirty-four in a residential street.

“Wait, wait, wait… Are you insinuating that I actually like him?”

“I, well—” She bit her lip and shrugged her shoulders as she easily breezed through a stop sign.

“I just met him tonight, Heather! Jeeze.” I licked my lips and gestured to the road ahead of us. “And watch where you’re going, won’t you?” I crossed my arms and stared into the rearview mirror, the street lamps momentarily blinding me. “I’d rather not die before summer ends, thanks.”

“Only takes one kiss to get your mind wandering,” she grumbled. Soon she was finally pulling onto my street, quick to slightly swerve out of the way of a tiny bunny crossing the road. My arm flexed around the door, but I released it as Heather slowed to a stop outside my house. The time on the dash read 12:05.

I let a quiet groan rumble my body as Heather turned to look at me with a small smile and a sympathetic look in her eye. “Just… just forget about the whole night. I’ll call you in the morning. We’ll have breakfast, yeah? I mean, if you’re not too severely beaten into the earth by that Frankenstein you call a mother.”

“Frankenstein was the doctor, Heather.”

“Whatever.” She waved it off, clearly unfazed by her mistake. “Is ten okay?”

“Sure,” I muttered, staring at the singular light on in the living room. I quickly exited the car, not wanting to make my parents even more disappointed in me with every minute that passed that I wasn’t inside the four brick walls I called home.

“See you then,” Heather called from the open window. I waved her off without looking back, and quickly slipped my key from my left pocket where it had stayed all night, unlocking the deadbolt as quietly as possible and peering into the dark house before tiptoeing onto the beige tile of the foyer.

I made my way past the kitchen and the living room, which were both situated next to each other and connected by a doorway. But I stopped in my tracks, my eyebrows knitted together in frustration, when I heard my name tentatively called. I backtracked to the living room and stuck my head around the doorway to find my father spread-eagled on his recliner, a nearly empty glass of white wine balanced on top of the small stack of magazines that covered a circular end table once owned by my great-grandmother.

“Yes?”

“You’re almost ten minutes late, aren’t you, Muffin?” he grumbled, struggling to sit up in his leather cocoon.

“Maybe…” I mumbled, eyeing the re-run of History Detectives on the TV screen instead of the look of disappointment my father was likely giving me.

“Leesey, why are you late, huh?” he asked, finally able to limberly jump from his chair as it loudly snapped back into place. His words were slurred from a combination of sleep deprivation and aged alcohol, and he clumsily sauntered into the kitchen, soundlessly asking me to join him as he put away his glass.

I quietly followed him to the fridge, where he deposited the bottle of wine that he had left on the island in the middle of the kitchen. I took the glass from his hand as it easily slipped from his fingers before he could break it and set it in the sink next to another wine glass with lipstick stains on the edges. I turned around and folded my arms on top of the island.

“Heather was caught up by Jude, and then the red lights wouldn’t change when we drove back home,” I quietly explained as my father closed the fridge door and leaned against it, folding his skinny arms over his stick-like frame. He nodded in understanding, and reached up a few fingers to stroke the eighteen-hour shadow he had along his chin and cheeks. Red hairs poked through his skin here and there, contrasting with his peppered brown hair.

“Okay,” he raucously drew out, nodding his head. “Well, I can at least be thankful for your finally acting like a teenager. You’re a late-bloomer, just like Cornelius.” He dryly chuckled and nodded his head again before brushing past me to the sink. He quickly picked up one of the dirty wine glasses, the one with the red marks along its edges.

“Is this mine?” he mumbled, turning his head to look at me over his shoulder as I turned around, leaning against the island.

“No—”

“Hmmph.” He turned on the faucet and filled the glass halfway with water, completely ignoring my interjection. Before he could take a swig of water from one of the many sides stained with lipstick, I rushed to his side and plucked the glass from his hand, spilling a few large droplets of water onto the floor and my borrowed skirt.

“Hey, that was—”

“Go to bed, Father.” I shooed him off and dumped the wine-tinged water into the sink, making sure to thoroughly rinse it once more before setting it back next to his own glass.

He grunted his displeasure, but nodded nonetheless. Before he passed me to go to his room and join my mother in a haze of dreams and drunken sleep, he set a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t tell your mother you broke curfew, okay?” He sniffed and aimlessly nodded once more before disappearing out of the kitchen and into the hallway outside of the living room.

I reached for the sink towel and dried my hands, tossing the terry cloth over my shoulder. Even during the school year, it’d be unusual for me to be tired at midnight. I’d be snug in my bed, reading a book or listening to a record, not contemplating on either taking a shower or collapsing onto my mattress. I shoved the chuff of my hand into my eye and yawned, my chapped lips tingling. I just shook my head and pushed myself from the counter, quick to tiptoe down the hall to return to my cold room. I didn’t even take off my bra or change my clothes. I just flopped into bed, clutched my Blankey to my chest, and quickly fell asleep from all the exhaustion the night of starting my list brought on, careful not to let my thoughts wander to a certain auburn-haired boy and his warm, alcoholic lips.