“I feel like I’m being tested,” she says.
“Come on,” I say. “She’s really, really nice.”
“Yeah, you don’t get it.”
For some reason, maybe because I’m tired and I am so looking forward to sleeping in a comfortable bed for once, I decide to push Aisha a bit. “How is you grouping all Mormons together any better than other people grouping all gay people together?”
She scowls at me and shakes her head. “Yeah,” she says. “You really, really don’t get it, do you?”
I put my hands on my hips. “I guess I don’t.”
She looks away. “Well, never mind, then,” she says. She shakes her head as she walks out of the kitchen, leaving me with a slight pang in my chest and a plate of cookies to eat on my own. I’m so hungry that I devour two in about ten seconds.
“Cookies? Awesome sauce,” Gareth says, bouncing into the kitchen. He puts an entire cookie in his mouth. Then he pulls a carton of milk from the fridge, chugs from it, puts it back, and belches.
I wince. I guess I won’t be drinking any milk while I’m here.
The guy salutes me and says, “Gareth. As in the disappointing son. Are you the new converts? Did they baptize you yet?”
For once, I’m speechless. He grabs another cookie and smiles. “I’m kidding,” he says while chewing with his mouth open. “I’m used to this by now. People come through all the time. My shrink says it’ll broaden my worldview. I personally think it’ll be the reason I need a shrink, when one of you guests tries to suffocate me in my sleep.”
“Um,” I say.
He looks up. “Don’t listen to me. I talk before I think. Gets me in trouble. So who are you? Do you know you’re the first interracial couple my folks have allowed in here? We’re talking serious fucking progress, dude, serious.”
I laugh. “Awesome,” I say, not sure of what to make of this guy.
“They’re totally rad now. Like, my dad saw a beer in my room and he didn’t have a coronary. It was awesome, dude. Insane.”
“I’m Carson,” I say.
“Gareth,” he tells me again.
“So you’re Mormon and you drink.”
“Jack Mormon,” he says.
“Um. Like Jack Daniel’s?”
He rolls his eyes at me. “Where are you from, Mars?”
“New York.”
“City?”
I nod.
“Fucking awesome! Jack Mormons, we’re like, we haven’t left the church and we like the community and stuff, but we don’t follow all the rules. Me, I don’t follow any of the rules. Rules are for dickwads.”
“They should put that on a fortune cookie,” I say, but he doesn’t seem to care.
My phone buzzes. It’s a text from Mom.
I trust your on your way. Please keep me updated on your progress.
I put my phone away.
“How long you guys been together?” he asks.
“Oh, you mean me and Aisha?”
“Eye-eee-shuh. Dope name.”
I hope to God she’s not overhearing this conversation from her guest room.
“We’re not a couple,” I say, and then, for some reason I don’t quite get, I lean in and whisper, “She’s a lesbian.”
“Right on, right on,” he says, totally unbothered by this.
“I’m trying to change that, but I’m failing.”
Gareth grins. He starts telling me stories of the various girls in and around his life, and suddenly there’s a “we should” that appears, and I’m part of some group I don’t really know, and that’s weird, but I like it. He has to get going because he has a rollicking game of Frisbee golf to play, and he asks if I want to come along.
“Um, sure,” I say.
“Great, and bring the chick,” he says.
“Maybe don’t call her a chick if you want to live.”
“Ooh.” His eyebrows arch. “I like feisty women.”
“Yeah, maybe don’t say that either.”
He grins. “Aye aye, captain.”
AISHA STILL SEEMS annoyed with me when I find her in her room, but she reluctantly agrees to come along. We get in the car with Gareth, who plays Phish too loud on the stereo and opens all the windows without asking whether it’s comfortable for us, which it isn’t. Once in a while, he yells out a question, but it gets carried away by the wind and we don’t answer. He’s totally cool with that, and I start to relax into the day.
We go to the Walter Frederick Morrison Frisbee Golf Course at Creekside Park. We wait for his friends, Mitch and Hodge, to arrive. Both show up wearing green argyle berets, which is … interesting. They fist-bump me and Aisha by way of hello, and then they open up beers, even though it says alcohol is prohibited on the course.
“Can I have one?” I ask, and Aisha gives me a dirty look.
“Never mind,” I say, which is fine because Gareth doesn’t give a shit.
Gareth throws first. He takes a running start on this concrete block that’s the tee, I guess, and he lofts a small red disc a long way, way farther than I could hurl it. It lands about twenty feet to the right of the metal basket that acts as the hole.
“Hella nice, beyotch!” the guy named Mitch says. Mitch’s most obvious characteristic, besides using decades-old catchphrases, is that his entire right arm is covered in tattoos. He throws next, and his throw is straighter to the basket, but shorter. Then Hodge, who has a soul patch and a gut visible under his tightly stretched polo shirt, flings the disc. It lands within fifteen feet of the basket.
I go next. Trying to copy how they threw, I run up to the edge of the concrete and let it sail. It surprises me how easy it is to throw a Frisbee, because I am quite sure I have never thrown one before. It streaks toward the basket and finally dies in a patch of tall grass, more than halfway to its intended target.
“Nice toss, dude,” Gareth says.
That leaves Aisha, who is clearly the most athletic of us. She also seems the least interested. She stands still and flings the disc, and it flies a decent way, falling a bit short of my throw.
I get another text from my mother.
I feel concerned that I havent heard from you.
Something came up. Can’t get back
today. Sorry. Don’t want to upset you.
Don’t worry about us. We’re fine.
We all walk out to retrieve our discs and make our second shots. “Put your back into it more,” Hodge says to Aisha. “You’re pretty good for a girl.”
Aisha’s lips stay tight and she says nothing, and I almost go over and say something encouraging, but I can just about feel the anger emanating from her, so I steer clear. Gareth’s next throw hits the chains above the basket, and everyone goes, “Right on!” so I say it too.
My phone rings. I decline the call.
Mitch and Hodge take three flips each to reach the chains, and I do it in five. Aisha throws two more times and then says, “I’m gonna sit this out.”
She doesn’t wait for us to say anything in return. She just walks back toward the car, and I feel torn. Do I go to her? Or can I, for once, have some athletic fun with some guy friends, something that has happened just about never in my life, because I never allow it to happen?
My phone rings again. I decline again, and then I turn my phone off.
I wait until Aisha is out of sight, and I say, “You have an extra beer?”
Gareth looks at Hodge, who is wearing these huge cargo shorts that look like they could fit a baby kangaroo inside. “Beer him,” Gareth says, and Hodge reaches into a pocket and pulls out a can.
“Thanks,” I say. I have never had a beer before. I pop the top and when foam comes out, I sip it up. It crackles on my tongue, and the warmth pours down my gullet.