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David:

David blinked. He really fucking hated that name. Claire truly was the only person who was allowed to call him Nerd Boy. Like Carter had tried once, and David made it clear he wasn’t happy about it.

Carter could’ve kept it up if he wanted to. He’d been bigger than David at the time, but that’s not the kind of guy Carter was. He was the exact opposite of Todd. Using his powers of popularity and the potential threat of him beating the shit out of anyone who crossed him for good after he’d gotten those powers in high school.

David turned toward Jessica. He might be adding one more person to the approved list for that hated nickname. Because Jessica stared at him in wonder, and he liked that feeling.

“Hi, Jessica,” he said, hitting her with a smile he’d used plenty of times before in the bars back at college.

Though it was weird. That smile had worked plenty, for all that he was pretty sure part of it was the body that went along with the smile. Only he felt his confidence wavering this time.

This was Jessica, after all. A classical beauty. The girl next door. Prom queen. Head cheerleader. Subject of so many fantasies over the years.

He’d chatted with her plenty in school, but he always figured she was humoring him. Only now she stared at him, and it was clear there was no humor there.

No, there was something way more intense.

“Thank you so much,” she said, and then she really surprised him by throwing her arms around him.

David blinked, glancing around. His eyes came to rest on Carter and Claire who watched everything from the other side of the pool. Carter gave him a thumbs up. Meanwhile Claire stood there with her arms crossed and a neutral expression. Maybe she’d been serious earlier about rocking his world if things didn’t work out with Jessica.

Maybe she hadn’t thought his chances were as good as she let on when she was giving him a pep talk earlier.

Only it was looking like that ship had sailed.

David hesitated for only a moment, then wrapped his arms around Jessica. That felt good. Really good.
“It’s okay,” he said. “He’s not going to bother you anymore.”

“He’s not going to bother me anymore, is he?” she asked, looking up at David with a twinkle in her eye.
It was a twinkle he well remembered from back in school. There’d been a couple of times when they’d been in class together and the gods had smiled upon him and put them close together.

Not that he particularly believed in any gods, let alone the one all the kids at school were always being annoying about, trying to get him to go to their youth groups under the guise of having a good time but he knew they were going to turn the screws with the Jesus stuff eventually.

Still. Not believing in any gods hadn’t been enough to stop him from thanking them on the couple of occasions he’d sat near Jessica. He was all about being grateful, just in case. A sort of Pascal’s horny wager.

The point was he remembered that twinkle. He usually saw it when they were chatting about a book he was reading. He’d been surprised to realize she was a big reader, for all that she didn’t exactly advertise it.

“Well at least he’s not going to bother you for the next little while,” David said with a shrug. “I can’t guarantee anything after you leave the party tonight. That dude seemed obsessed with you. Have you thought about getting a restraining order?”

Jessica laughed. Meanwhile David looked around. He well remembered the last time he got into it with Todd, after all, and he wasn’t looking to repeat that experience by giving the asshole an opportunity to sucker punch him again.

He’d been walking to the cafeteria, looking forward to school pizza day. It was weird. That had been his favorite thing in the world back then, but he’d tried it again at a couple of college events and it was the most disgusting thing ever.

He’d been walking down the hallway, minding his own business, and suddenly something slammed into his back.

He’d been so stunned he couldn’t react. The wind was knocked out of him as he was thrown to the ground, and all he could do was cry. That’s when Roger and Terry grabbed his arms, flipped him over, and he found himself looking up at Todd glaring down at him with his hand bunched in a fist.

“So the little baby wants to cry?” Todd had said, a cruel sneer on his face.

David still remembered every detail of that moment all these years later. It made him wish he’d gone a little farther in teaching him a lesson tonight.

He glanced through the crowd, wondering if Todd was still around. If maybe he could go ahead and get that round two. Todd would find he was a harder to take on this time around.

Only it looked like the guy had made himself scarce. Probably a good thing. For him.

“It’s not worth it,” Jessica said. “The blowback I’d get from people because he wasn’t allowed to come to this sort of shit would be more of a headache than just dealing with him every once in a while.”

“You say so,” David said.

“I do say so,” she said, looking at him with a fierceness that surprised him. “Besides. I know how to handle that asshole. It’s hardly the first time I’ve had to deal with him, and I doubt it’ll be the last. I do appreciate you stepping in and giving me an assist, though.”

“Glad to help,” David said, smiling at her.

She stared at him. That intensity was still there. Which made things a little awkward because it caused other parts of his body to take notice, and she was still pressed against him where she could easily notice that part of his body taking notice.

David looked down at the same time she did. Clearly they’d both recognized the conundrum stirring down there.

That old part of him, the less confident part he’d left behind when he went off to college, came back with a vengeance. He was sure he was moments away from Jessica freaking the fuck out because she felt him pressing against her stomach.

Then she cocked her head to the side and smiled. Okay. Smiling was good. That was the reaction he was used to getting since striking out from the ancestral home.

“Is that a phone in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?” she asked, arching an eyebrow as she licked her lips and stared up at him.

The invitation was clear. It also brought to mind a memory of a dance back in high school when a girl had brushed up against him and felt something similar. It’d been what they both thought it was, but he’d pulled out his phone and hit her with a sheepish smile.

He still wasn’t entirely sure that girl had believed him. Now, though, he didn’t want to leave any doubt in Jessica’s mind what was going on here.

“Definitely not a phone,” he said.

“Interesting,” she said, looking down, and then up to him. She arched an eyebrow. “Want to get a drink?”

“I’d love a drink,” David said.

Jessica pulled away from him, but she still held his hand. She gave it a squeeze as she pulled him off towards the keg, and he dutifully followed.

“I was surprised when I saw you back at these parties,” Jessica said as they walked, hitting him with a sidelong glance.

“Why were you surprised?”

Their conversation was interrupted as they had to dodge around a very drunk Brandon Taylor who went stumbling back as his girlfriend from high school, Kelly Dean, smacked him. From the way she yelled at him it sounded like she’d caught him staring at another woman.

He seemed to recall they weren’t happy unless there was some sort of drama going on. He’d never been sure how much of that was that Brandon didn’t think he could do any better, and how much of it was that he was just really into Kelly and she straddled that line of crazy to hot just enough to keep him satisfied.

Either way he dodged out of the way without thinking about it. Then he ducked as Kelly threw her beer. It flew over him and landed on someone on the other side, but he didn’t get a good look at the unfortunate target.

Then they were through, though he realized he was walking and Jessica wasn’t. He stopped and turned to stare at her.

“What?” he asked.

“Where’d you get moves like that?” she asked, and now she seemed even more intrigued than before.

David took a deep breath. “It’s really nothing. I just took some martial arts classes when I was trying to get in shape in college, is all.”

“Some martial arts classes?” she asked, reaching out and feeling a bicep. “So what. Did you live in the gym?”

David almost opened his mouth and promptly put his foot in it. His first thought was to say he’d found the gym and martial arts clubs were a great place to meet women.

Only as he looked at Jessica and calculated his chances of getting with her tonight he realized it might drastically reduce those chances if he started talking about picking up other women at the gym.

“I mean it was either that or play video games,” he said with a shrug. Then he grinned. “Actually, I ended up playing a lot of video games, too, but I spent a lot of time working out.”

“You son of a bitch! I saw you checking out her ass!” Kelly shouted.

Jessica looked at them and rolled her eyes. “Those two are impossible. Always going at it.”

“Yeah, and you never know what kind of going at it you’ll get,” David said, remembering times back in school when those two had set in the bleachers alternating between arguing and making out like a couple of teenagers.

Which is what they were at the time, so he figured they got a pass on that. Mostly because no teacher seemed willing to get in the middle of it.

“Anyway, back to before we were interrupted. I was surprised because I thought I’d never see you again once you left town,” Jessica said.

“I didn’t think that about you,” David said, grinning at her.

“Oh yeah? You thought I’d see you again?”

“Well sure,” he said. “There are reunions, aren’t there?”

“I’m not so sure about that,” she said, frowning. “Now that everyone is on social media it seems like reunions aren’t really necessary.”

“Not to mention everybody seems to be mostly back home,” David said, looking around at all the failures to launch. “Can’t have a reunion if you see everyone daily.”

“Don’t remind me,” she said.

David realized that might not be the nicest thing to say. After all, she was still here coming to these same old parties. Hell, he was back here coming to the same old parties.

He had a good excuse for coming back, though.

“I really had no choice,” he said, letting out a sigh. “Once my dad got sick I had to come back and help my mom.”

“Really? She always seemed like the kind of woman who could take care of shit,” Jessica said.

David’s mom was, in fact, beyond the kind of woman who could take care of shit. She was the kind of woman who marched into the church they’d attended as kids and demanded how much of a check she needed to cut them when somebody complained that David, going through a brief religious phase that was fueled more by a girl he had a crush on going to that youth group than any piety, was going to the youth group even though his parents weren’t attending church regularly or contributing to the collection plate.

She was the kind of woman who stormed into the school in a rage back when Todd and his asshole friends had held him down and beat the shit out of him. That had resulted in Todd not playing football his freshman year after she kicked up enough of a stink.

Hell, the asshole had been in fear for his life, staring at David’s mom with wide eyes as he realized that maybe he’d just opened up a can of whoopass he wasn’t ready to deal with.

Oddly enough he hadn’t bothered David all that much after that incident.

“Yeah, she can put up with a lot,” he said with a shrug. “But dealing with your spouse being in trouble… Well, it’s a lot. I figured I should help her for a little while. Besides. It means I get to come back here and see you, right?”

“I suppose you’re right,” she said, the faintest hint of a smile playing across her face. “But still. I figured you would’ve been out of here and never came back. I never had you pegged as a failure to launch.”

David missed a step.

“I like to think of it as launching successfully and coming back for a landing before I head out again eventually. Not a failure to launch.”

“That’s a good way of looking at it,” she said, looking him up and down. “You always did seem like you were too big for this town.”

“I don’t know about that,” David said, stopping in front of the keg. “I think a lot of people feel like they don’t fit in in places like this. Though there are people who thrive.”

He turned and scanned through the crowd again while Jessica got a couple of cups. This time he did find Todd. The asshole was over by the pool house holding court. Roger and Terry stood by him and slightly back. Todd was talking to a girl David didn’t recognize, which probably meant she’d graduated by the time he got to the high school.

Or maybe she was younger. It was hard to tell.

Age range was another one of those things that seemed to compress once everybody got out of school. He saw people who’d been freshman when he was graduating, and they were running around drinking and having a good time the same as everyone else even though he was pretty sure the math worked out to some of them still being underage.

It was also hard to tell age because there was hard living to be done in small towns if you knew where to look. The lady Todd was talking to looked a little older. She had that small town look that said smoking and drinking had taken its toll.

“Here we are,” Jessica said, coming up with two cups. She held one out to him and smiled. “Is this your drink?”

“Is it the cheapest stuff available?” David asked, grinning. “It’s not like we had a lot of money at school.”

“What a pity,” she said. “But at least you were off having that college experience, right?”

“I suppose,” David said. “It was something. It opened my eyes to a lot of things.”

“I bet it did,” she said, looking him up and down. “I heard all kinds of stories through the grapevine about what you were up to out there.”

“Oh really?” David asked, taking a sip. “I didn’t realize any stories of my exploits were getting back here. I hope they were all good?”

He figured Carter had something to do with that. He was the only one who knew those stories, and he seemed to enjoy living vicariously through David while also going to school while living at home.

“They were certainly interesting,” she said. “Didn’t sound at all like the Nerd Boy I knew. I almost didn’t believe them, but then I heard you were back in town, and you showed up to one of Carter’s parties looking like this.”

She gave him another up and down that left no doubt what she was talking about. He grinned right back at her.

“So was that story about you running a raid against the science building at State so some of your friends could distill their own alcohol in a basement true?” she asked.

David put a hand over his heart. “I can’t believe you would accuse me of an act of piracy like that.”

“Is that piracy, or just outright theft?” she asked.

“I like to think of it as piracy,” David said, grinning. “It really romanticizes the whole thing.”

“Fine, then,” she said. “So were you really responsible for that act of piracy?”

“I will neither confirm nor deny,” David said, still grinning at her as he took another drink. “And I may or may not have worn and eyepatch while I was committing this act of piracy that I will neither confirm nor deny.”

Jessica giggled again, and then she gave him another one of those intense looks.

“Come on,” she said, looking around. “Let’s go someplace a little more quiet. Where I don’t have to yell to be heard.”

David shivered. He might’ve been oblivious to women once upon a time, but he would’ve been able to pick up the meaning there even when he was at his most oblivious.

It looked like this night was about to get a whole hell of a lot more interesting. And that Carter had been right. Damn it.

That meant David owed him ten bucks. But it was going to be the best bet he ever lost if things kept going this well!

He glanced up to the skies, fully intending to thank the stars. And then he frowned. Because there was still that star moving up there, only it was way brighter and still moving erratically.

He remembered an astronomy class where the professor mentioned that if they ever saw a star that kept getting brighter without changing position in the sky it meant bad news for anyone that star was aimed at.

Then Jessica put her hand on his arm and he forgot all about that stuff. He figured it’s not like it was going to be important to the next half hour or so of his life, after all.

We know, dear reader, how very wrong he was, but for the moment we’ll leave him in happy obliviousness.

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