“I remember that from middle school. Is Ms. Nelson still the librarian?” I asked, sitting at the table, careful not to knock it.

“Yeah. She’s hilarious when we play Scattergories.”

“Yes! We used to play that, too. And a lot of Guess Who for some reason.” I missed that. The games. The innocence. Me and Becca in middle school.

CJ wiggled his finger into a precarious slot near the bottom of the Jenga tower and artfully slid out a block.

“Very nice move,” I commended him.

“Thanks. You want to try?”

“Sure.” I stood for better leverage and selected an easy target at the top of the tower. As I shimmied the block out of its hole, my hand twitched and the top half of the tower crumbled to the table.

“Jenga!” Mom yelled, with her hands thrown into the air. We all looked at her. “What? Aren’t I supposed to yell that when it falls?”

AJ, CJ, and I looked at one another with eye-rolling glances and busted out laughing.

“I’m so glad I amuse you.” My mom smirked. “So, pizza okay for dinner?” She stood and opened the menu drawer. AJ and CJ were all over it, but I had to decline.

“I have plans,” was all I offered.

“Yes?” Mom goaded.

“I’m going to a friend’s house to watch the Basket Case movies. He’s never seen them.”

“He?” Mom caught the slip instantly.

“Yes, Mom. There are boys who like horror movies, too. It’s fascinating.”

“I’m sure it is. Does this boy have a name?”

“Leo Dietz.”

“So he has the same name as the boy you saw a movie with last week. Friday nights. Movies. If I weren’t a confused old lady, I’d say it sounds like you’re dating.”

“It’s called hooking up, Mom,” CJ corrected her.

“You are both wrong, and promise me you’ll never say those words again, CJ. Especially if it ever involves you.”

“Then what is he?” Mom tried to hide a smile.

“I don’t know. Why does it matter? We’re not running away and getting married or anything.”

“That’s called eloping,” CJ interjected.

“Have you been watching Lifetime or something?” I chided.

“He likes those movies where Tori Spelling gets stalked,” AJ pointed out.

“Shut up.” CJ punched AJ’s chest.

“You shut up,” AJ retaliated, and in an instant they were on the kitchen floor, on top of each other.

“Is that a scene reenactment?” I asked over their screaming.

Twin boy legs flailed, and a clatter of Jenga tiles rained down on top of them. “Enough!” my mom cried, and while she attempted to pry the gangly pair apart, I made my hasty exit, running upstairs to grab the Basket Case movies and calling “Good-bye!” as I escaped out the front door.

* * *

When I got to Leo’s, his parents were in the front hall getting ready to leave. I was early, and I hadn’t anticipated the dreaded meeting of the parents. I put on my most pleasant girl face, the one that says “I’m just a friend and your son will not be impregnating me this evening.”

“So nice to meet you, Alex. Wish I could say we’ve heard a lot about you, but Leo doesn’t talk to us much.” Leo’s mom was tall and polished, with his same dark, coppery hair. She wasn’t overly friendly, and I wasn’t sure if I actually liked her. Not that it mattered. Friends’ parents were always at the bottom of the list of people I needed to like. Or like me back. As long as it didn’t get in the way of said friendship, neutral territory was fine.

Leo’s dad didn’t say anything, but he shook my hand when Leo introduced me. “This is Alex,” was what Leo said. I was relieved he didn’t precede it with “my girlfriend.” They left soon after I arrived, and Leo and I did the awkward dance of what now in his front hall. I looked at the framed pictures his parents had along the wall. Gapped-tooth school pictures, family vacations on mountainsides, and military portraits of who I assumed was Leo’s brother, Jason, covered the walls.

“He looks like you,” I noted about Jason.

“Yeah. Except the halo over his head.” Leo sounded peeved.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You know, every family has one kid who’s perfect and one kid who’s a fuckup. He’s not the fuckup.”

“I don’t think every family has to be that way. Like, what about families with more than two kids?”

“They’re lucky. The perfection and fucked-up-ness get distributed more evenly. Way less pressure.”

I mulled over this theory and chalked it up to baggage I wasn’t in the mood to delve into.

“I brought the movies.” I held up the DVDs to change the subject.

Leo led me into the kitchen and opened the freezer. “What kind of pizza do you want?”

“Just cheese, if you have it.”

As Leo cooked dinner, I moved into the family room. The house was very neat and looked designed, as though all of the knick-knacks were strategically placed instead of shoved onto available shelf space like at my house. I loaded the first movie into the player and sat down on a long, velvety gray couch. I kicked off my shoes and turned myself to lie down on the luxurious fabric. Leo entered the room, saw me, and took this as a cue to rest himself beside me. Instantly I felt my body heat up. This was my favorite position to be in with Leo: too close to read expressions, too tempted to have a conversation. We kissed and fumbled and groped and grabbed, but our clothes remained intact because, as I reminded him, “There’s a pizza in the oven.”

About ten minutes in, I pulled my face away from Leo. “You taste different,” I said. “And smell different.”

He talked into my neck. “I’m trying to quit smoking. Someone told me it tastes like a turd.”

He quit smoking for me? That was a lot to put on a person. What would happen if we stopped whatever it was we were doing? Would he go back to smoking? Smoke more cigarettes just to spite me? Turn to crack?

The buzz of the oven put a pause on the couch session and my thoughts. So what if he quit smoking because of me? It was stupid to begin with, and he smelled a lot better without it. And if he started smoking again, not my problem. I didn’t need another thing to feel guilty about.

Side by side we ate pizza, drank Coke, and watched Basket Case 2. Leo laughed at all the right parts, and I caught myself watching his face to see how he reacted to each scene. He was rather lovely. Nothing made someone more attractive than knowing they liked the same movies I did. It always disgusted me when people couldn’t tolerate horror movies, or lumped them all into one dismissible genre, as though they weren’t each their own work of art. Or piece of crap. But at least watch them and decide.

When Basket Case 2 ended, I asked, “So what did you think? Brilliant, right? The third one goes total crazytown. There’s this part where Granny Ruth says, ‘Oh Cedric, I see you’ve brought your lettuce.’ It’s hysterical—” Before I could continue, Leo was on top of me. He smelled so good, like laundry and pizza and gasoline, I couldn’t help but pull his shirt over his head. Instantly my shirt was off, too. We attacked each other’s clothing with mindless abandon. Instinctively I needed to be naked next to him, to feel nothing but his warm skin against my own. When all our clothes were off, we shivered together. Not from cold but anticipation.

We hadn’t known each other very long, not in the talking-to-each-other-every-day sense. But I had watched him for years, followed his class schedules and smoke breaks, spied on him at horror movies and coffee shops. He felt familiar, safe. Leo had done nothing in his existence to make me feel bad, never touched me in a way that was all about him. I had never known a guy like that, and I had let them explore me, manipulate me, convince me that what I did with them would feel as good to me as it did to them. It never had. Leo helped me to lose myself. Not become someone different but transcend my life so none of the bad mattered. I wanted to be as close to him as I could. To feel what I had never felt with another person.

Our breathing was frenetic, like we couldn’t get where we wanted to go fast enough. His hands were gentler than I wanted, and I grabbed one and wrapped it around my breast. I let out a sigh, and Leo reciprocated with a sound of his own. “Do you have a condom?” I asked. Life had been too cruel in the last year not to get me pregnant, or diseased if I wasn’t careful. I couldn’t trust my body to do the right thing, and I didn’t want to have a conversation with Leo in the middle of this to talk past sexual partners. I didn’t want to know. I just needed it to happen.

Leo rolled off me and stumbled upstairs. I quivered on the couch, every part of my body feeling tense and needing. Footsteps pounded down the stairs, and then Leo was on top of me again, ripping open the wrapper with his teeth. Quickly we were completely intertwined. Neither of us lasted very long. We couldn’t have if we tried. Nothing I had ever done with myself compared to the grand finale with Leo. I shuddered, even after he collapsed on top of me. I willed the feeling not to end, and when it finally did I fell asleep almost instantly.

When I awoke, a knitted blanket covered my body. Leo, fully clothed, sat next to me on the couch eating Doritos and watching Basket Case 3. When he saw I was awake, he paused the movie. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I started it since you’ve seen it a million times. Actually, I tried to ask you but you wouldn’t wake up. Plus, you look really cute when you’re asleep.”

“I don’t look cute.” I sneered and tried to dress myself discreetly, but I felt Leo’s eyes on me. It reminded me of Becca, of her flashing Caleb at her window the night before she started chemo. I dropped the blanket and dressed in full view. When I finished, Leo wore a huge grin. “Unpause,” I said.