Chapter 9

“Mess around?” My throat’s full of sand, but the words crawl out.

“Just sometimes. You know what I mean. I mean, right? You’ve messed around with guys before?”

I nod. Is this titillation or terror? Why can’t I tell? Shouldn’t those emotions feel completely different instead of pretty much the exact same?

“This one time,” George goes on, “we got pretty drunk. It was just us two, like it was almost morning. Everybody else had gone home, his brother was passed out. We were kinda messing around, Forrester goes, ‘I’d kill for a blow job.’”

Surely this is the most fascinating strip of paved road in all of America; I can’t imagine putting my eyes on anything else. Yeah? I think I’m going to say. I even try, but it’s too big a word to get around the lump in my throat