We keep playing, and I keep sipping, and soon my beer is gone, and Hodge beers me another without me even asking, and it feels fucking great, especially as my head begins to cloud. It’s like the bad thoughts puff out of my brain through my ears, and my brain becomes calm with those bad thoughts gone. I’ve been waiting a million years to feel like this. If this is how my dad feels when he drinks, well, I still don’t get the whole I’m giving up my life and my family for this thing, but I can definitely understand why he likes it. And I don’t ever have to get that bad, because that’s just stupid and reckless.
As we move through the holes and I drink a third beer from Hodge’s bottomless pockets, the conversation moves on to girls. I don’t want them to know how completely inexperienced I am, so I stay quiet. They start talking about girls they will set me up with, next week, the week after. Which is weird because I won’t be here, but my brain is on hiatus and I keep saying, “Yeah, yeah.” They even make up a personality for me. I’m only about four throws behind as we walk to the sixth hole, and Hodge puts his arm around me and says, “Dude. You’re the king.”
And it feels … good. It all does. The guys, the conversation, the beer warming my gut and radiating out to my head and my limbs. Aisha-hugging-the-seat good, in a way. I am not alone, and even without me saying anything, they know how I feel. Hodge starts bitching about living in his parents’ basement and how he has to go out and look for work. Part of me is thinking, You live in your parents’ basement? But then I remember that back in Billings, I do too. That makes me laugh, and they all look at me, but I can’t even come close to explaining right now. I salute them with the beer and they salute me back, and I do feel a little bit like the king. I find myself thinking, Yeah. I could live here. I could just call my mom back and be like, Sorry, I live in Salt Lake City now. I’m a Jack Mormon.
I finish my third beer as we approach the ninth hole, which takes us very close to the parking lot. Aisha is sitting on a bench alone, playing with her phone. I toss the can to the ground, knowing these guys won’t mind me littering, because I don’t want her to see it. Then I wave a few times at Aisha, and part of me knows that Aisha isn’t going to like beered-up Carson. But either she doesn’t see my wave, or she’s ignoring me.
Gareth yells, “Tumble break,” and he climbs a tall, grassy hill. We all run after him. It’s hard to balance, but I don’t fall. Aisha looks up and sees us, and I wave to her to come join us. She shakes her head, and I’m a little pissed. She needs to lighten up.
“One! Two! Three!” the three guys scream at the top of their lungs, and then they fall to their sides and roll, toppling down the hill until they land in a clump at the bottom, laughing hysterically. I’m left there at the top, my knees locked. Should I do it too? Will it look stupid? What will Aisha think? And then I decide to stop thinking, and I fall to my side and start rolling.
The world tumbles. I pick up speed, rolling and rolling. I knock into Hodge’s side at the bottom, and we writhe in a pile, and I just let go and laugh and laugh.
Hodge yells out, “Shit! The beers!”
I feel the wetness just as he says it. One of the beers in his pocket burst open when he rolled down the hill. Now my shorts are wet too, and I smell like beer, but we just keep laughing.
Eventually we get up and wipe the grass and beer off of us as well as we can, and the guys run ahead. I look over at Aisha. I should probably go talk to her. Walking toward her, I feel the alcohol sloshing through my veins. It’s a dirty, wonderful secret that Aisha can’t know, so I make an agreement with myself never to tell her how much I drank.
“You have an accident?” she asks, frowning. She points at the wet spot on the front of my green cargo shorts.
“It’s stupid,” I say, lingering a bit away from her.
She smells it anyway. “Carson, were you drinking? Are you kidding me with this?”
Her voice is higher than usual, and it scares me, the emotion in it. I shake my head. “Hodge had beers in his shorts and they exploded when we rolled.” I laugh, but she doesn’t. She walks over and sniffs my face.
“Bullshit,” she says. “You drank.”
I nod slightly. “Just one.”
“Jesus,” she says. “Are you crazy?”
“In what universe is drinking a single beer crazy?”
She puts her hands on her hips and looks at me. “In the universe where your grandfather and your father are alcoholics. C’mon.”
I look away. She doesn’t get that these are the first drinks I’ve ever had. That’s not quite alcoholic territory. And just because I liked it? People like beer. Please.
“Carson.” She sits back down on the bench and pulls me to sit next to her. She grabs my head and forces me to look at her. “Seriously. You have even one more sip of alcohol and I am done with you. Not a joke. Done. Like I drive off and leave you here and you never see me again. You feel me?”
My brain focuses, suddenly sober. The world still spins a bit, but within it I am totally here. “I feel you,” I say.
We sit there in silence. Getting yelled at for drinking is like this weird new place I didn’t know I’d be in, ever. Was my dad here? My grandfather? A place where they were like, I love this drinking thing. I’ll make sure it doesn’t get the best of me.
“Will those guys be done soon?” she asks.
“I think so,” I say. “Sorry about the drinking, by the way.”
She responds with a tiny, tight-lipped nod.
“I’m sure they’ll be back any minute. I know you hated that, but hey, it’s almost over.”
“Yay,” she says. “Can we never, ever see those people again, ever?”
“Yeah, you don’t really get them, do you?”
She picks at her fingernails. “You’re right,” she says. “I don’t get them. I wanna smack that guy Gareth’s head against the concrete. I don’t want to do that with you. How come you actually wanna spend time with this person when I want to kill him?”
I bite my lower lip. I know the answer, in a way, but I also know she won’t get it. “He’s a ’sup, dude.”
She screws up her face in a mask of annoyance. “A what?”
“A ’sup, dude. I’ve never had a ’sup, dude friend. You know. Someone who you’d meet for breakfast at a diner. Someone you’d order huge breakfasts with, and guzzle down milk shakes, and order more bacon, and talk about cars or Frisbees or baseball, maybe.”
I brace myself for her laughter. It doesn’t come. Instead, she says, “You want that?”
“Well, no. Yeah. I don’t know. I want to try it, maybe.”
“Can’t someone who is not a total asshole be your ’sup, dude?”
“He’s not a total asshole.”
“He’s not not a total asshole….”
I laugh. Then she touches my shoulder, bats her eyes, and says, “ ’Sup, dude?”
I kiss her shoulder. “I can’t believe it. You’re jealous.” My skin tingles. The ego boost I get from making Aisha feel jealous of me is way more than I got from the entire Frisbee golf game.
“Not really. Maybe,” she says, pulling away slightly.
I pull the shoulder back and plant three kisses on it. “I love you, Aisha Stinson. I love that you can be jealous of me, when you’re you. That’s just … I love you, okay?”
“Okay,” she says, giving my shoulder a quick peck. “Love you too, asshole.”
THAT NIGHT’S DINNER starts out with a prayer. Aisha and I are across the table from Gareth, while Mr. and Mrs. Bailey sit at either end. We see them grabbing hands, so I tentatively take Aisha’s hand with my right and Mr. Bailey’s with my left. Aisha takes Mrs. Bailey’s other hand.