The Scenic Route

Chapter 21

On the morning of graduation, Kyle wakes up before the alarm goes off. He drank too much last night, and stayed up too late talking to Kenny. He crawls across the bed and finds Stan still asleep, feverish with warmth under the blankets. Kyle puts his chin between Stan's shoulder blades and stares at the window as the slats of light between the blinds begin to brighten. He can already feel the heat of another smog-choked summer afternoon perching at the edge of the city, ready to blanket it. For the past year all he's done is bitch about how he's ready to leave L.A., but he's actually going to miss the blurry non-seasons, the haze that burns off around noon, avocado trees and bubble tea. They have bubble tea in New York, but it won't be the same, from that place near the Metro stop in Koreatown with the scummy sidewalk view of the Hollywood sign.

"Are you awake?" Stan mumbles incredulously when Kyle starts licking the back of his neck, his default method for waking Stan up on weekend mornings.

"You need a shower," Kyle says. "You taste like a taco shell."

Stan grunts. "You smell like an ash tray," he says.

"Kenny smoked like three packs of cigarettes last night. He tainted me."

"I thought he quit?" Stan turns his head on the pillow, pressing his face to Kyle's.

"He did, but sometimes he gets drunk and forgets," Kyle says. "Butters will kill him. You guys were so cute last night."

"Me and Butters?" Stan makes a face.

"Yeah, we came in and you were both asleep."

"Not cuddling, though," Stan says. He looks worried, and Kyle laughs.

"No, sadly. He was on the couch and you were on the love seat. It was companionable, though, like you guys got together and decided to give up on us."

Stan groans and rolls onto his back, offering his chest as a pillow. Kyle puts his cheek against it and deflates, sliding his knee up to check to see if Stan has morning wood. He does, and he rolls his hips up when Kyle rubs him with his knee.

"What'd you guys talk about?" Stan asks.

"Me and Kenny? Who knows. We were trashed. He kept bringing up the first time I smoked pot."

"Oh, God. You thought you were going to die."

"Yeah, and Kenny continues to find that hilarious. He said I should have been there the first time he got Butters stoned. Apparently they walked down to the beach and Butters got emotional about the sand."

"The sand? How so?"

"It was something like – the individual grains of sand – the fact that they all make up the beach – I don't know, that made him cry."

"Ha." Stan's hand slides down Kyle's back and settles on his ass, squeezing. "I can't believe he's our fucking graduation speaker."

"Maybe he'll talk about sand." Kyle was actually part of the committee that arranged to have Leopold Stotch give their graduation address. Butters is a self made man, a multi-millionaire at twenty-two, following a tearful Dateline interview and the subsequent success of his cooking show, which now airs on the Food Network instead of a website that also features him getting rammed by Kenny. Butters wears clothes when he cooks now, but the fact that anyone who's curious can find out what he looks like without them has made him a celebrity. That and the fact that he's somehow remained charmingly, inexplicably innocent. He's a really good cook, too.

Kyle slips beneath the blankets and takes Stan in his mouth, fighting the beginnings of a headache. He wants to lose himself in sex before he starts thinking about everything he'll have to do today. His parents and Ike are flying in this morning, and he's got to pick them up at the airport, and find out if Stan actually secured reliable accommodations for his own parents, call the caterers about the food for the party, make sure the camera is charged, run by the liquor store on the way back from the ceremony –