With Or Without You

9.

October 15, 2020

Karan's POV:

Teja: You still up?

Karan: Isn't this how every single booty call starts?

Teja: *eye roll emoji*

Karan: Yeah, I'm up.

Teja: Come outside. Don't let anybody hear you.

Karan: What? Why?

Teja: Just do it.

Karan: What are you? Nike? Tell me why. This feels like a prank.

Teja: No questions. Just come.

And so I went. I slid out the window, and we ran along the side of my house, heads down, until we opened the doors of the minivan. Teja whispered not to close the doors—too much noise—so with the doors open, I put it in neutral, pushed off the cement with my foot, and then let the minivan roll down the driveway. We rolled slowly past a couple houses before I turned on the engine and the headlights. We closed the doors, and then I drove through the serpentine streets of Jefferson Park's endlessness, the houses all still new-looking and plastic, like a toy village housing tens of thousands of real people.

"Are you going to tell me where we're going?"

"In short," she said, "this is going to be the best night of your life."

*****

(Present)

We're still on the road. We passed by a couple of monuments and the tour guide explained their history in vast detail but I felt so tired I barely kept up with him.

Not to mention, Advik keeps bouncing his legs up and down.

"Will you stop that?"

"I've had to pee for three hours."

"You've mentioned that."

"I can feel the pee all the way up to my rib cage," he says. "I am honestly full of pee. Bro, right now, seventy percent of my body weight is pee."

"Uh-huh," I say, barely cracking a smile. It's funny and all, but I'm tired.

"I feel like I might start crying, and that I'm going to cry pee." That gets me. I laugh a little.

The next time I glance over, a few minutes later, Advik has a hand tight around his crotch, the fabric of the gown bunched up.

"What the hell?" I ask.

"Dude, I have to go. I'm pinching off the flow." He turns around then. "Driver, how long till we stop?"

"We have to go at least a hundred forty-three more miles in order to keep it down to four stops, which means about one hour and fifty-eight-point-five minutes."

We are just north of Jacksonville, getting close to Georgia.

"I can't make it. Get me something to pee in."

The chorus erupts: NO. Absolutely not. Just hold it like a man. Hold it like a Victorian lady holds on to her maidenhead. Hold it with dignity and grace, like the president of the United States is supposed to hold the fate of the free world.

"GIVE ME SOMETHING OR I WILL PEE ON THIS SEAT. AND HURRY!"

"Oh, Christ," I say and unbuckle my seat belt. I climb the wayback, and then reach down and open the cooler. Returning to my seat, I lean forward, and hand Advik a beer.

"Thank God it's a twist off," he says, gathering a handful of his pants and then opening the bottle. He rolls down the window, and I watch out the side-view mirror as the beer floats past the bus and splashes onto the interstate. Advik manages to get the bottle underneath his pants without showing us the world's purportedly largest balls, and then we all sit and wait, too disgusted to look.

Hiya is just saying, "Can't you just hold it," when we all hear it. I have never heard the sound before, but I recognize it anyway: it is the sound of pee hitting the bottom of a beer bottle. It sounds almost like music. Revolting music with a very fast beat. I glance over and I can see the relief in Advik's eyes. He is smiling, staring into the middle distance.

"The longer you wait, the better it feels," he says. The sound soon changes from the clinking of pee-on-bottle to the blopping of pee-on-pee. And then, slowly, Advik's smile fades.

"Bro, I think I need another bottle," he says suddenly.

"Another bottle STAT," I shout.

"Another bottle coming up!" In a flash, I can see Hiya bent over the backseat, her head in the cooler, digging a bottle out of the ice. She opens it with her bare hand, cracks one of the back windows open, and pours the beer out through the crack. Then she leaps to the front, and holds the bottle out for Advik, whose eyes are darting around in panic.

"The, uh, exchange is going to be, uh, complicated," he says. There's a lot of fumbling going on beneath those pants, and I'm trying not to imagine what's happening when out from underneath a robe comes a Miller Lite bottle filled with pee (which looks astoundingly similar to Miller Lite). Advik deposits the full bottle in the cup holder, grabs the new one from Hiya, and then sighs with relief.

The rest of us, meanwhile, are left to contemplate the pee in the cup holder. The road is not particularly bumpy, but the shocks on the bus leave something to be desired, so the pee swishes back and forth at the top of the bottle.

The tour guide is staring at Advik, completely mortified.

But then he clears his throat and says, "If you get pee in my bus, I am going to cut your balls off."

I don't know whether to laugh or run for my life.

Still peeing, Advik looks over at him, smirking. "You're gonna need a hell of a big knife, bro." And then finally I hear the stream slow. He's soon finished, and then in one swift motion he throws the new bottle out the window. The full one follows.

Naina is fake-gagging—or maybe really gagging. Teja says, "God, did you wake up this morning and drink eighteen gallons of water?"

But Advik is beaming. He is holding his fists in the air, triumphant, and he is shouting, "Not a drop on the seat! I'm Advik Chawla. First clarinet, WPHS Marching Band. Keg Stand Record Holder. Pee-in the-car champion. I shook up the world! I must be the greatest!"

Thirty-five minutes later, as our third hour comes to a close, he asks in a small voice, "When are we stopping again?"

"One hour and three minutes" The driver answers.

"Okay," Advik says. "Okay. Good. Because I have to pee."

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A/N: I know this is very gross but I remember reading it in a book once and it sent me into a huge fit of laughter. Besides, despite all the tension currently residing in that bus, road trips are supposed to be fun and I don't want to take that away from them or from you guys.

Please don't be a silent reader and do vote and comment if you found this chapter to your liking. Your feedback means the world to me!

Until next time.

Lots of love,

D