CALVIN

Twenty-eight: the hickey

"What. The fuck. Is that?"

Patrick was sitting at his desk, eating a mandarin, physics equations sprawled across his workbook.

"What?" I was stuffing my dirty clothes into my closet, kicking things under my bed. "What's what?"

"That... thing on your neck."

My hand suddenly slapped to my neck, where I remembered was a bright red splotch. "Uh... a hickey?"

"Wow." He nodded his head, looked back down at his work. "You've really been flourishing as a horny teenager lately, Elias."

"Thanks?"

"I didn't know Ana and you were at that level, yet. Nicely done. Did you reciprocate?"

I fished an old Febreeze bottle out from the bottom of my night table and gave my side of the room a few spurts. "Uh... yeah."

"Really? What'd you do?" Patrick had closed his workbook, was trying to crush his mandarin peels into a ball.

"Um... we did... I... that's confidential." Hid the bedside lotion in my closet. "I am a gentleman, Pat. I don't kiss and tell."

"Well. You just told me you got kissed. That's a little something I like to call hypocrisy." He opened his laptop. "You and Ana make a good couple. It's a bit weird, sure, only because you guys, like, never hang out? But, I stan."

"Ew. Don't say I stan."

"Well, I do! You guys really fit each other. Physically, I mean. It's like, caramel latte and hot chocolate. Thin and thinner. Malnourished and more-malnourished."

"Pat, what the fuck."

"And you got a hickey from her! Which is great, right? It means you guys are being intimate!"

Suddenly there was a knock on the open door, and Ana came in. "Hey," she said. I shook my head slightly at Patrick, kicked my shoes aside, leaned against the wall and said, "Hey."

"Oh..." she took a step closer to me, "you have a... oh, haha, okay."

Fuck. Why hadn't I put makeup on the bruise?

"It's not... it's..." dry mouth, "wanna go outside?"

"I thought we were gonna... hang here? But - "

"We can - "

"Sorry." She shook her head in shame. "I didn't mean to be weird about the hickey. It's fine. I'm totally fine with it. I was just surprised at first. You don't need to tell me who it was, or anything. I've been... uh..." she scratched the back of her neck, "... I've been hooking up with people, too."

Could it get any hotter, in the room?

"Oh, this wasn't a hook-up," I said, painfully aware of Patrick's many facial expressions from his desk, "it was sort of like... like, it wasn't romantic or sexual or anything. It - "

"Oh?"

"Basically we were playing Never Have I Ever, and..." I suddenly realized it would be weird if I explained the whole gist of it, "...well, he gave me a hickey as a joke. That's it. I'm sorry."

"No, I'm sorry."

"No, I'm pretty sure I'm the one who should be sorry."

"We get it," said Pat, "you're both sorry."

"So, who gave you it, then?"

I paused, my mouth hung open. My brain racked itself of any boy whose name I could use in place of Calvin's. "Marc... Riedy?" Wait, no, Marc was Neal's friend. "I mean... " Shit, I can't change it now. "Yeah, Marc. Marc Riedy." Behind Ana, Patrick mouthed What the fuck?