Page 67 of When We Were Reckless
“I’m great. I’ve never felt so… so…” I waved my hand in the air, trying to find the word, but it escaped me.
It reminded me of that time I’d gone to Pleasure Pier in Galveston with my family and rode the roller coaster six times in a row. Dizzy and lightheaded. Slightly nauseous. Those butterflies were swarming my stomach. “I’ve never felt so…”
“High?” he asked with a laugh.
I leaned down to where he was sitting on the grass and smacked his shoulder. “Yes! That’s the word. I’m so high. So, so high…” I was spinning and spinning like a ballerina, and then I collapsed on the ground, laughing so hard tears sprang to my eyes.
“Weed usually chills people out,” he said with a shake of his head.
“I’m chilled. Cool as a cucumber.” That got me laughing again. Cucumbers reminded me of penises, which reminded me of that penis conversation with Jesse. “Why did I wait so long to try this?” I sat up and plucked the joint out of Thor’s hand and brought it to my lips.
Closing my eyes, I took a hit and held it in my lungs the way he’d told me to do before letting it out. This time I didn’t even cough. I was practically an expert now.
I was so freaking cool. Look at me, smoking a joint with a guy named Thor.
Smoke drifted into the air, forming a hazy halo above my head. The bass from the music was thumping, and the party was raging by the pool. But over here in the grove of trees, the sounds were muffled.
Everything was moving in slow motion, all the edges fuzzy.
I leaned my back against the giant oak, the one where I’d conducted that fake wedding ceremony all those years ago. God, that was so sad. So sad and so unbearably sweet. Five-year-old me wearing a white sundress and fourteen-year-old Jesse in a backward ballcap and a daisy chain. I still had the photos from that day, tucked in the pages ofThe Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. When I was a kid, The Chronicles of Narnia were my favorite book.
Now I was sitting under my favorite tree getting high, high, high and Jesse was… what was he doing right now?
My sweet baby Jesse.
I broke into an impromptu version of “Jessie’s Girl,” changing the words to suit my needs.
“I wish that I was Jesse’s girl,” I sang. “I wanna be Jesse’s girl. And he’s watching me with those eyes. And loving me with that body… doo doo doo… Jesse’s girl. You know I feel so dirty when you start talkin’ cute.”
Joint in hand, I got to my feet and danced in the grass under the tree. I whipped my hair around and swiveled my hips. “Dance with me, Thor.”
He snatched the joint away from me and smoked it while I shimmied in front of him, my arms reaching for the sky. “How low can you go, Thor?”
Thor laughed, but he was game, so we shimmied low. My thighs had turned to Jell-O, and we both collapsed on the grass, laughing our asses off. I looked over at Thor on his back, smoking the blunt and laughing at the moon.
“Let’s do the worm.” So I showed him how, and he tried to imitate me, this tattooed mountain of a man with arms the size of the oak tree and a big hammer. It was probably the funniest thing I’d ever seen—Thor doing the worm in my backyard.
I was crying with laughter. “Is your hammer really that big?”
“Not to brag, but hell yeah. It’s not just about size, though,” he said thoughtfully.
“What’s it about?” I rolled onto my side and propped my head on my hand.
“You ever see the way a jackhammer works?”
“Is that the way you use your hammer?” A laugh burst out of me. “Like a jackhammer?”
“Yeah. I’m like one of those Energizer bunnies, you know. The ones that keep going and going...”
“So you’re saying your hammer is battery-operated?”
He choked on a laugh, smoke billowing out of his lips. “Shit. I don’t know,” he said, his voice strained, trying to keep the smoke in his lungs before he exhaled. “What were we talking about?”
“Sex. We were talking about sex.”
“Shit, yeah. Sex is… it’s a beautiful fucking thing.” He smoked the joint that was so small now it probably burned his fingers. When it was done, he tossed it in the grass and tucked his hands under his head. “I remember this one time me and Dec picked up these girls at a bar—”
I slapped my hand over his mouth to stop the words. “I don’t wanna hear about my brother’s sex life. Are you trying to make me throw up?”
