“Yeah, we gotta eat quick, though. Katie and them are comin’ over tonight,” said Joey. “We still need to pick up the alcohol.”
Carmine might’ve been crying, but we gave him a pass.
“Katie and them” was this group of girls from wealthy Westfield who, for some reason unbeknownst to me, enjoyed hanging out with us meathead slobs. Tank’s mom was spending the weekend with her boyfriend Roger in the Poconos, so we had them over Tank’s house for a soiree—homemade limoncello not included.
It was one of those late August nights where your t-shirt and boxer shorts stuck to your skin like they were magnetized. I didn’t mind. I loved when the sun wouldn’t set until eight at night and the lightning bugs came out early, offering their illuminating services before it was completely dark, as if they hadn’t received the memo—an Essex County pastoral.
I had had my braces removed a week earlier and felt like a new man—I started smiling again. Paxton had asked me if I wanted to join them in the City, but I turned him down. I had felt liberated not having to tiptoe around every conversation with Jessie or Julie (pick one) or Jenna Tisch. It was exhausting having to keep up with trends and fads and constantly having to go to the Short Hills Mall to shop.
I just wanted to wear white t-shirts and jeans and put enough “glue” in my hair to catch lightning bugs.
Carina had introduced us to this group of girls at a party in Westfield when she was still seeing André. No one liked him anymore because he got drunk and drove across one of the girls’ lawns at like four in the morning—he had an eighth-grade girl from Roselle Park with him in the car.
Carmine told me that Diana was flirting with me at the party in Westfield, but I had gotten too drunk and distracted by a collection of antique globes to notice; Diana was seventeen, and by the summer before freshman year, I had been told over and over and over again that girls abandon you for the entire year. Not just girls at your school, but all girls in general, like the entire gender—as if they could smell the freshman on you. So I suppose my radar had been down as I ran my finger across a spinning Tropic of Cancer in the Westfield home library.
Tank had his hand spread on the table, a steak knife clutched in the other, barely missing the web-lining between his fingers as he jabbed the point into the wood with robotic speed and precision.
“Look at the kid go!” shouted Joey as he handed out beers to the girls, his new Saint/Sinner ambigram tattoo glistening with A&D ointment on his inner bicep.
“So Vic, this is Diana…” said Carina, making it painfully obvious to Diana that we had been discussing her shortly before her arrival. “I think you two should do a shot together.” Carina poured out two overflowing shots of chilled raspberry vodka. The three of us clinked glasses and right before we downed the clear liquor, Diana gave me a wink.
“Diana’s half Puerto Rican,” Carina said, getting another row of shots lined up.
“The other half’s Italian,” she assured.
“Were you born there? In Puerto Rico, I mean.”
“No, I was born in Newark.”
“Do you ever go back?”
“Yeah, I was there last year.”
The raspberry vodka didn’t do my stomach any favors—it was already hard at work breaking down a reheated meatball parm sub from Mia Famiglia’s—so I took our conversation to the elbowed pleather couches that lined the living room to avoid the next wave of shots. Diana put her hand on my knee and pulled herself in close. I knew she was waiting for me to ask her something, but I couldn’t get my mind off her connection to Puerto Rico. She broke the silence.
“Hey, so how come Carmine and Joey and them call you Vito, but Carina calls you Victor?”
The thunk thunk thunk thunk sound of the knife jabbing into the tabletop, incited by the cheers of my paisanos, distracted me from the half-islander (or technically full, if she was Sicilian) whose hand was moving closer to the part of my jeans that made it look like I had a perpetual boner.
I had heard her question, and although my communication skills with women were far from perfect, I did know that talking about your mother to a possible hookup was ill-advised.
“It’s just a nickname,” I said.
“Would you want to come out with me for a cigarette?”
“I don’t smoke…”
“Oh.”
“But I’ll keep you company.”
I wasn’t clueless.
We sat on the rock wall that lined the driveway and she smacked the upside-down pack of Carolina Filters into the palm of her hand. Her teeth were small and crooked, but they were natural, unlike the color of her skin and hair. She had a shimmering stud in her nose, jet-black hair, and a fake tan that looked nothing like Suzanne Somers’. She was perfect Jersey gorgeous. My mother dyed her hair, had been doing it for years, but I didn’t tell Diana that—fighting back against any reflex to bring up my mom.
Her cigarette lit up the driveway as if mimicking the lightning bugs that floated around the front lawn. Thirty minutes ago, I hardly remembered that Diana existed; now I felt the debilitating pressure of needing her to like me. I considered going back inside and taking a few more vodka shots with Carina to let loose and just see what happened. I saw it with lots of the guys; they’d get drunk and the alcohol acted like a paladin’s armor, growing stronger and thicker with each shot of Jägermeister, shielding them from the humiliation of rejection. “Oh my God, I got wasted last night. I barely remember anything” meant that your credibility couldn’t become the locus of criticism. “Dude, Sonny was all over Serena last night, and she just wasn’t having it.”
“Nah, man, he was
