Night Kites by M. E. Kerr

that I had to tell Jack. Listen to him first. Then tell him something had started up between Nicki and me—by accident. Tell him it was no big deal, just this little sideline shit going down. This accident.
    He could blow. He could tell me to go screw myself, and that the whole thing sucked, but we’d get past it. That would be the end of it then.
    When Jack didn’t come back with the drinks, I went into the kitchen. Jack was sitting in one of the newly painted chairs at the kitchen table, holding his head with his hands.
    “I’m really wiped out!” he said.
    “You’re also sitting in fresh paint. I tipped the chairs forward, hoping no one’d sit down.”
    “My God, I just paid sixty dollars for these jeans and a hundred and sixty for the jacket!”
    “Then get them off, fast. Let them dry. You can’t do anything about them until they dry.”
    “This isn’t my night, Erick.”
    He got his Guess? jeans and jacket off, and I got him a beer, got myself a Dr Pepper.
    We went back into the living room and sat on the couch while Jack said, “I read her all wrong, that’s all. All I was thinking about was sex, and all she was thinking about was them. That’s what she calls everybody: them. That New York weekend was a lousy idea!”
    “It was her idea!”
    “She just wanted to see Bruce Springsteen.”
    “She didn’t ask me to get tickets for you and her. She wanted us all to go.”
    “She thought that was the only way she could get to see him…. I never should have dragged her home to meet my folks. She calls that family-around-the-table crap!”
    “The hell with what she calls it! She should have said she didn’t want to go home and meet your folks!”
    “She did say it! I wouldn’t listen! I never let her talk…. I practically forced her to try out for pom-pom. I did force her!”
    “Don’t be so down on yourself. This girl isn’t worth it!”
    “What the hell do you know?” Jack said. “I’m in love with Nicki!”
    I thought he was going to break down and cry.
    I scooted down closer to him and put my hand on his wrist.
    I said, “Jack, listen. You’re my best friend.”
    “I know. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
    That stopped me for a second. I wanted to think how to put it.
    “You should have seen her face,” Jack said.
    I could see her face. I could see the cigarette in her mouth, the smoke curling up, that one eyebrow cocked, the green of her eyes.
    Jack said, “She looked straight at me and said, ‘It’s all over, Jack’.”
    He was shaking. He had trouble getting words out. He said, “I just meet someone I really love and she tells me it’s all over.”
    “Jack,” I said, but he wouldn’t let me go on.
    He said, “I never … ever … felt this way about anyone!”
    I put my arm around him.
    That was the scene Dad walked in on: Jack in his shorts on the couch saying he’d never ever felt that way about anyone, me with my arm around him.
    Dad barked, “What the hell is going on!”
    I began, “Jacks had some—”
    I was going to say “some bad news,” but Dad didn’t let me finish.
    “Beer!” Dad finished it. Dad’s eyes were blazing.
    “Erick’s not drinking, though, Mr. Rudd.” Jack thought Dad was mad about that. The bottle of Molson’s ale was right in front of me.
    Dad had murder in his eyes. He began marching, that was the only way to describe it. He marched across the room to the stairway. Then he marched up the stairs.
    “Now he’s pissed off at me,” Jack said, “for drinking his Molson’s.”
    It’d never occur to Jack what Dad was really angry at.
    Upstairs a door slammed so hard it shook the house.
    Even old, deaf Oscar jumped.
    That ended our conversation.

Chapter Twelve
    “H ONEY?” MOM WAS AT my bedroom door. “You’d better get up right now, if you’re going to go to church with us.”
    “I’m not.”
    I was lying on my side, under the covers. I could hear Mom come all the way into the room.
    “Remember last night I