Charlie…9

Chapter 9.

Sable is pretty cool and she hangs around while Dad and our lawyer get things straighten out a bit more with the principal and the school and there’s still enough of the hub-bub going on with the LGBT crowd and their family and supporters and the Church types and the cops after idiot jumped and whacked the principal with his paper weight in a fit of right winged churchy moronity.

Dad’s on the phone with Mom and stuff and stuff every once and awhile and it’s fairly late when we get out of the whole thing and get to the parking lot.

Sable and I are holding hands on the way there. I’m not really sure how that happened but hey I’m not really going to look the gift horse in the mouth y’know. Dad’s getting in the car and stops.

“Sable the food and stuff was a godsend but the wife wanted to know if you’d like to come over to the house for some supper?”

She actually looked a bit surprised by the offer and looked at me and I smile and nod. She smiles a little and her hair hides just a bit of her face and makes her really pretty. I mean shy girl pretty. “I’d like that if I wasn’t intruding.”

“No, it’s an invitation and you’d not be intruding we’re pretty open when it comes to company and you and my son are…”

She smiles. “Charlie’s a really good friend and a hell of a nice guy too…I think I see where he gets it from.”

My dad blushed a bit. I mean Sable is really great looking like ….well…Jenna Jameson can go hide in the corner compared to Sable.

I get into her jeep with her and we follow dad back to the house and we head out back because I can smell the grill going and Sables texting someone and then puts her phone away and the scent of meat and stuff is just making me hungry.

Mom/Stepmom’s actually on the grill and the deck looks pretty good now with it decorated the way that she wants and there’s a bunch of these nice deck chairs with padded backs and seat and there’s just a regular style table set out against the back of the house with plates and all the fixings.

I do like the food; it’s nice and simple with burgers that are really good and fixed up to just plain ones done with really good meat and stuff. There’s a green salad and some potato salad and pacific potato salad. Its potato salad with things called capers in it and lots of diced celery and tuna very gently mixed into it. Mom buys the expensive raw tuna and she will grill it before adding it in. I actually like it. I’m not a huge fan of mayonnaise.

I get my favorite burgers and that’s dads hot and green which is salsa verde and Anaheim chiles and some garlic in it and lots of slices of pepperjack cheese melted over it. They are on of the perfect after surfing foods even leftover just nuke em and the hot spicy burger just warms you up after you’ve been in the water for awhile.

I snag two and put them in foil and hide them in the fridge for tomorrow. I get us two of dad’s big homemade root beers in mugs with ice and sit with her. Sables a girl after my own heart with a burger fully loaded. Okay she’s got a lot more veggies on hers than mine but she’s a native Cali girl so I expect she eats a lot of that weird stuff out here.

My family likes good old styled east coast stuff and Italian of course but we lived in West Texas for a bit where dad was working and got to like the Mexican stuff. Not Tex-Mex, that a chain store invention and kind of garbage.

Libby’s got a salad despite Dad’s attempts for her to eat something real and she’s staring at Sable and I for awhile. Mom leans over to her and says. “Libby, it’s not polite to stare.”

“I don’t care what’s she doing here?”

“Who?”

“Her:(…” She points at Sable with her fork.

“She’s our guest I invited her why?”

“She’s a whore…”

“Liberty June Daniels! You never call somebody that, you apologize this instant!”

“No! I won’t! Its bad enough Char’s acting like the biggest freak in the world now she’s got to bring the fucking porn star home! What about me! I have to live here to y’know, people are going to say shit, and well they’ll say shit even more now!”

“That’s it young lady go to your room! And give me your phone!”

“Nooo!!” Libby gets up and takes off bawling and being hysterical into the house with mom, hot on her heels.”

Sable pushed her plate onto me and got up and bolted the same time and the lap full of food gave her enough of a head start I’m still calling after her as she squeals her tires pulling away from our curb. “Sable…wait!”

I called after her but she took right off. I pace in the street and the driveway madder than I’ve ever been. Guy mad too… but still with some of the girl crap making me upset enough that I’m crying as I’m pacing.

I can’t go in the house right now. There’s yelling and screaming between Mom and Libby and honestly I’m that made where I’d use the whole fact I’m a fucking GG to beat the living tar out of the little witch.

Jeff comes out and he looks at me with this I’m taking off and this is your fault look and him, him I don’t have to take his shit from and I yell at him “What!, you got something to say to me asshole! Say it!”

He sneers at me he actually fucking sneers at me and he get’s in his car and he guns it past me almost hitting me and yeah he knew exactly what he was doing and flipped me off as he tore out of there.

It just get’s to the point where I go to my room through the garage stairs and the fighting’s stopped and I hear Libby bawling and mom’s pissed and breathing hard in the garage as she’s locking Libby’s cell phone and her laptop in the trunk of her car. From the way that Libby’s bawling you’d think Mom cut off a limb.

She looks at me as I’m climbing the stairs. “Charlie I’m sorry, she had no right to be saying that about your friend and she was way out of line.”

“Yeah she was Mom, it was a bad enough day without her bullshit. I’m getting used to Libby treating me like crap but she’s turning into one of them mom. Sable did stuff yeah but she did a lot of it when she was younger, she’s not like that anymore and wants to get past that stuff. It’s not like the asses at school cut her any slack either. Any now this…?”

I don’t say anymore but just go to my room all pissed off all over again. And I strip down and change into some basketball trunks and a hoody and I hit my heavy bag and crank the tunes and beat on it until I’m sweat soaked and panting and I close my eyes and lean on the bag holding onto the chains up top and trying to get my mind right.

Music actually helps. Serenity starts playing by Godsmack, there is something soothing and soul thumping about this song that I like, I even let go of the big whole and eyes closed I dance to the exotic metal mix beat and the hypnotic guitar and lyrics and sing along with the song.

This song so works when you’re ragingly upset, guy, girl, on the way between both…it just works.

It takes me down enough that I go to my weights and my bowflex and work out as I listen to it again and then some Metallica and some AC/DC getting the music to give me the tempo and let me burn off all the energy that I got out of my anger. I gotta do these things, guys gotta do these things git it out of their systems. There that point if you don’t you do store it all up and it goes into that place in you sideways or something so when you do pop you really blow and not in a good way. You know the feeling, when you don’t get it out as a guy right? That little headache that just sits at your temples and that tightness all through you neck and shoulders and your jaw sometimes too.

I’ve had to learn, to sort of teach myself how to deal with how to be angry as a guy and stuff. The thing is really I felt that even when I was living as a full time girl. My friends would be freaked and crying and upset and I wanted to go and do something anything and I just felt so alien in the whole girl support system.

Dad’s been a big help since knowing what’s been going on. He’s taught me a lot.

We do deal but we do it differently. It’s a primal deal, having to do something in ancient times. A guy’d be upset over stuff that he’s need to go fit. Getting medicine, food, firewood, fight even and we still have those instincts. And we have our own ways of dealing, we do.

Girls listen, empathize.

Guys we’re hardwired to fix it.

I hit the shower and decompress a little more and a little more until it feels like I can be a reasonable human being around people again and I head downstairs and it’s past nine and quiet with Dad outside and he’s been having a few beers and his guitar’s out and he nods to me and passes me a beer.

I take it and he sit’s back down and just kind of jams I drink half the beer and go and get my board and my bag and once I kill that beer I look at dad before reaching for another and the food that was left of mine from our late supper and I listen to him playing while eating cold BBQ burgers, drinking a beer and lose myself in just cleaning and waxing my board.

It’s awhile before he stops and he sets his guitar aside and gets another beer and walks inside. No, he’s not a drunk, Dad’ll have a few on a night like this and other than that one or two every once in awhile. Given the day I just treated him to at school and the drama here…

He comes out and passes me a piece of paper. And a twenty. “What’s this?”

“Her address I remembered I had it from when we were all interviewed by the police and they had asked her for hers.”

That means that dad had recorded all the stuff with the cops too. Hard lessons learned in other places we’ve lived. Sometimes peace officers have different notions of how to apply the law to people like me.

“Uhm thanks but it’s kind of late.”

“No, it’s not.”

“Huh?”

“Charlie, you really like this girl?”

“Yeah, a lot.”

“Then it’s not too late. Three AM that’d be too late, it’s not even eleven yet. Trust me, this you showing up. It’s romantic.”

“I so don’t get girls Dad.”

“Charlie…we’re not supposed to get them, we’re supposed to care about them. That’s the biggest thing.”

“What’s the second and third then?” I’m actually kind of half joking as I’m getting up but he just gives me that Dad only wise old man look and takes a drink of his beer once he pulls his guitar onto his lap.

“Safety and to laugh Charlie, Love her, care about her make her feel secure like it’s real and she can depend on it and you and then make her laugh…it’s pretty simple yet took me meeting your step mom to really get it.”

“So what do we get out of it?”

He gave me that look again. “We get them Charlie…”

I leave and I’m still mulling all of that over even after quickly getting some warmer clothes on and stuff and heading out on my skateboard. Honestly I don’t thing Jeff and Dad talk like we do.

I stop at of all places a doughnut place and get two large hot chocolates in doubled up cups and a six pack of fresh hot glazed jelly filled. Yeah enough sugar for ten of us but y’know I once kinda of sort of thought I was a girl. I remember the I’m upset cravings…sort of. I think I was going along with it more than having it.

Anyway…

I find her house and it must be like twelve or just after it and she’s not too far away but far away enough from my house that it took me awhile to get there.

There’s some lights on at her trailer. Well it’s a mini home but still not what I was thinking of on the way over and it takes me awhile to find her bedroom window. She’s in just this long soft looking fleece? maybe long pink tee-shirt and her hair’s up into a pony tail and she’s actually doing homework…this late at night…I suppose…how long was she crying?

I toss a few twigs at her window and when that doesn’t work I take out my phone and zip through the net on it until I find this song, from this old John Cusack movie mom and dad watch all the time called “Say Anything” and I don’t have a ghetto blaster but I key up that tune “Your Eyes.” by that guy Peter Gabriel…I know that Mom just melts against dad when they watch that movie and it’s one of their songs.

I’m kind of getting why.

It’s so like a movie too…I’m holding my cell phone up and I’m lit up by the light of my touch pad while the songs playing as loud as my speakers are able to play which is actually loud in the middle of the night…and she comes to her window looking down at me in the middle of her back yard and I see her hair go to her mouth and she stands there and she’s crying and I’ve never seen that look in a girls eyes about me before.

I’ve never seen a smile like that.

There’s this great line from that movie from the redhead to John’s character. “Be a guy? Don’t be a guy, the world’s full of guys…be a man.”

I’m so kinda feeling that, getting that…getting Dad.