Me, You

“Last one, Lou. I swear,” John laughed.

“This isn’t even fair,” I groaned, “The shit you make me do...”

67. Kiss all of our high school exes on the mouth.

“Oh come on, it’s actually not that bad. You should be thanking me for not including your embarrassing summer flings. I mean, Jesus Christ, you’ve had more high school boyfriends than I’ve had girlfriends in my life- and who knows, you could rekindle a relationship with Halvo...” He snorted.

Eric Halvorsen. John’s other best friend since middle school and, to my dismay, our next stop.

“No, that’s not fair! That shouldn’t even count. It was freshman year!”

“Well, the goal does say ‘high school exes.’ Unfortunately, freshman year is in high school, so you have to kiss him. Simple as that.”

“John, please.” I begged. Impulsive and irrational decisions were never my thing. But, of course, it was John’s thing. So by default, I always had no choice but to tag along and do the stupid shit with him.

“Lou, I promise that when you look back on this, you’ll laugh.”

We pulled up to Halvo’s house and I choked out, “You can’t make me do this.”

“What makes kissing Halvo harder than kissing your more recent exes?!”

I fell back into the seat and crossed my arms, “Things were beginning to not be awkward between us. We were starting to be friends, John! Please, make me do something else other than this...”

“You can kiss me.” John leaned in, sticking his tongue out.

He pulled on the passenger door handle right as I leaned away from his tongue. Stumbling out, John slammed the door shut and locked the car. I pounded on the window, but no prevail. He simply shook his head and pointed to the house. The front door of Eric’s house made me want to throw up. Turning around, I flicked John off as he made kissy faces. At this point, it was either going up there and completing the goal, or walking home in the Arizona heat.

“Fuck,” Pushing back the memories of our past relationship, I walked up the front steps and rang the doorbell.

Halvo peeked out the door, “Hey, Louise! What are you doing here?”

“John’s making me do stupid shit again. So I’m going to lean into your face a little and when I pull away, look surprised, okay?”

“Um, okay?” He furrowed his eyebrows.

Leaning in, I made sure John couldn’t see our faces. I stepped back and Halvo did as he was told. Eyes wide and mouth slightly opened.

“He dared you to come kiss me, didn’t he?” Halvo smirked.

“Um, yeah.”

“John,” He chuckled, “Always trying to find a reason to beat me up.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You can’t tell me you didn’t notice how annoyed John was when we dated.”

“He was the one to set us up...”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t understand...”

“Well,” Halvo threw his hands up in surrender, “He really cares about you. But, I’m going to do something to piss him off.”

“What do you mean-” Halvo’s lips cut me off in a kiss.

When I pulled away, I mentally took note to throw up in John’s truck later. Slightly flustered and a little uncomfortable, I grumbled a goodbye and ran back to John, who finally unlocked the car.

“See, it wasn’t that bad, was it?” He smirked as I buckled myself in.

“Oh shut up, it’s your turn.”

“Alright, alright. Give me a minute, she actually lives right around the corner.” John slowed down and parked in front of a white house. Mia’s.

“I didn’t think you’d consider Mia an ex...” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I really think we’re done now. For good.” He said, confidently, “Now high school’s over, I don’t feel it anymore. Time to move on to hot college girls.”

I laughed, “Be careful. You might get this girl to fall in love with you again by doing this. And we can’t have that. I’m selfish and want to have all of your attention. This is John and Lou’s summer. Not John, Lou and Mia’s summer.”

“You’ll always be the only girl for me, Lou,” John grinned, “It’ll always be me and you.”

“Go get ‘em, tiger.” I patted his arm.

He slid out of the truck and hunched over, knocking on the door. After a few minutes, the door opened. John pulled Mia out onto the porch to give me a view. She was confused, her eyes flickering over to his truck and for one moment, me. John pulled Mia in for a kiss and bolted. With his long legs, he took long strides back to the car.

“See? That easy,” John wiped Mia’s lip gloss off of his mouth.

“Well, that’s not fair because she was the only girl you dated during the school year,” I huffed.

“Lou,” John leaned over to brush my hair out of my face, something he did out of habit, but I turned to face the window, pretending to be annoyed, “You grumpy little shit, it’s just goal on a bucket list. That we accomplished.”

I fake pouted, “You’re annoying.”

Mimicking me, he retorted, “And you’re a bad sport. How about we go to Waffle House to make you feel a little better and wash away that Halvo smooch?”

I groaned, “John.”

“I’m only teasing, Lou. I promise I won’t mention it anymore.”

“Really?”

“Maybe.”


“You have whipped cream on your nose,”

John’s eyes crossed as he tried looking at it and I laughed. Leaning over, I wiped it away with a napkin. He grinned like a fool, “Thanks.”

I scanned the bucket list as he devoured the rest of our pie, “How do you expect us to accomplish all of these goals. And what would we get from it? Other than wasting an entire summer doing dumb and slightly illegal things.”

“I wouldn’t look at it as wasting a summer. It’s more like giving ourselves something to do.” John licked his fingers, “And what’s a better reward than the sense of accomplishing an entire bucket list?”

“I don’t know...”

“Quit analyzing it so much, Lou.”

“I’m not!”

“Yes, you are.”

“Okay, maybe a little.”

He smirked and leaned back, triumphantly.

“So what now then?”

He stuck up three fingers.

3. Light a blunt together.

My eyes widened. I swore we’d have more time to put it off, maybe never getting to it. Yeah, smoking and drinking underaged were illegal. Getting high was illegal overall. But, I guess my list of reasons to not get high were incredibly contradictory and weren't going to get me out of this.

“John-”

“Don’t you dare say anything. You agreed put this down.”

“Then what are you going to say to your parents when you get home, high? What am I going to say to my mom?”

“Absolutely nothing,” John widened his eyes, warningly, “You’re not going to say a thing because you don’t want to get grounded for the rest of summer, right?” I nodded, meekly, “And you’re not going to go home high because we’ll be at 8123 until we get down from the high.”

Still, I was uneasy at the thought. But, hours later, I was watching the sunset on top of the roof parking lot, high as hell, but there was something about the Tom Petty playing on John's phone that was relaxing. Pink streaks that I couldn’t stop staring at ran across the purple sky. We were laughing about something I couldn’t remember.

“I’m so hungry,” I grumbled, leaning over John’s lap and snatching up the bag of potato chips.

“How high are you still?” He tilted my chin up. His eyes were bloodshot, but mine were probably no better.

I laughed, “Pretty fucking high.”

“Fuck, I didn’t think it’d take you this long to get down from your high. First timers, damn.” He grinned and glanced at his phone, “It’s almost ten. What time was I supposed to take you home?”

“I don’t know,” My head rested against John’s chest, his steady heartbeat beating against my ear.

We fell silent, watching the sun disappear behind the horizon.

“Do you think we’ll meet him?”

“Who? Tom Petty? No fucking way.” He laughed, changing the song to Free Fallin’.

“My dad,” I whispered.

His breath hitched for a moment and I could tell he was searching for the right words to not disappoint me, “If you want to meet him, I would fucking travel the world to find him for you.”

“Okay...” A moment passed before I added, “I love you.”

“Love you too, Lou.”

“I think I’m ready to go home, if you are.”

For a second, my heart sank when the words came out of my own mouth, wishing to be in this moment forever. The way John let my head rest on his chest. The way that it was just the right temperature to stay out and stare at the sky. But, this was only a moment that would pass, that’s all it'd ever be.

“Alright,” He stood up and held my waist to steady me as we climbed back down to his truck.

Sliding into the passenger seat, I stared out the window. I wasn’t exactly off the high yet, but just enough to understand and function. When John dropped me off, he made promises of meeting up tomorrow and completing more goals.

The house was quiet when I walked in. Mom was hunched over, asleep at the kitchen table with letters and other papers scattered before her. Leaning over, I gently shook her,

"Hey Mom,"

Her eyelids fluttered open and she looked up at me with a lazy smile, "Did you and John have fun today?"

"Yeah, we did." I nodded and looked at the table, praying she wouldn’t smell the weed, "You go on up, I'll organize this stuff so you can look at it tomorrow."

Mom yawned and nodded, lifting herself up from the table. Planting a kiss on my forehead, she whispered. "You'll always be my daughter, Louise."

With that, she left the kitchen. Her heavy footsteps echoed up the steps to her bedroom.

Slightly unsettling, she did have a point. When I was little, Mom always referred ourselves as the Collins girls, team of two. We didn’t need anyone else when we had each other.

But, I realized that wasn’t what she was referring to at all. When cleaning up the table, an opened envelope addressed to me from Albany, New York caught my eye. Not recalling ever applying to college there, I took out the letter and read.

Dear Louise Mae Collins and whoever else reads this,

My name is Liam Watkins, a former chemical engineer in Albany, New York. My name probably doesn't mean much to you. I wish it did. But the root of this problem runs far deeper than what you could ever dig up. If you've never given a second thought to my name, then your mother has raised you well enough on her own that you've never questioned the lack of a father in your life.

Louise, I'm that father. I'm your father.