My cousin was angry at me when he
walked in. The profanity gave it away. Soaked to the bone was a tip,
and the malicious gleam in his eyes certainly tipped the scales
towards open hostility, but no one swears like my cousin. It's
legitimately impressive. On more than one occasion he's sent grown
men to the dictionary to learn what nature of obscenity he just
called them.
"You seem upset."
This, it developed, was a mild
understatement.
Beginning with my hobbies and
parentage, he lapsed poetic for several minutes as he removed his
dripping rain jacket and pegged it. Removal of his hat was scored to
disparaging observations regarding my personal hygiene. Boots and
sexual proclivities went together like hand and glove, though to be
literal, those went with a critique of my appearance now. Proceeding
from cigarette to cigarette, my attention wandered as he went on
until his conclusion, something about goats and enemas. This wasn't
one of his better ones.
"Yes, absolutely." Smoke left
my mouth, entered my nose, and was breathed out again. Showing off always
irritated him, especially given his opinion of tobacco in
general. "And thank you for the kind words regarding my
flexibility. Too long now have-"
"Oh, shut up!" he snapped.
"Why in God's name did you tell Teresa to ask me out?"
Not a single non-sarcastic answer to
that question came to mind.
"To be certain she doesn't come
down with lock-jaw. Too long a period of silence and bam! Tetanus."
"Oh, stop being a bitch."
This from a man who'd just shared such flattery with me. "Besides,
it's a bacterium. Silence has nothing to do with it."
"Well if we're being scientific,
she's also probably vaccinated against it. It's something you can ask
her on your date if the conversations begins to drag." A
worrisome idea occurred suddenly, so worrisome it had to be asked
immediately without waiting for a normal exhale first. Smoke and
words tumbled from my lips like an old testament prophecy. "You
did say yes, right?"
"Of course!" he snapped,
throwing himself into a chair before me and glowering in my
direction. "Teresa is the most beautiful woman on earth. God, if
she asks you to carry her car a dozen miles on your back because she
didn't want to change a flat, you say yes. It may have taken an
second to remember how to speak after she sprang it on me, but god
yes. Not pouncing on to start humping her leg was-"
"An impressive display of taste.
We ladies do like the little things. Now why exactly are you so
angry?"
He shot me a pensive look and bit back
several immediate responses. This implied we were beyond family
sparring and onto the heart of the matter. Tyson, that's his name if
you didn't know already, has a wonderfully complex worldview and
deeply complicated though incredibly consistent motivations. It's one
of the reasons we get along so well. He likes talking about why he
does things, and it provides me with no end of interesting thought
material. Were we not related and therefore he in my dating pool, it
might be enough to change my team, but freak coincidence had
protected me from that even as it gave me a continuously evolving
riddle of logic and characterization.
"It's that she asked me. Since
Teresa is the perfect woman- Would you mind blowing that out a window
or something?"
"The logical connection between
those two escapes me." This admission came with both sarcasm and
cigarette smoke, my two natural excretions.
"Do you want an answer or to made
snide remarks?"
That was a difficult question. Why did
he have to limit it to just one? A number of additional smart
responses occurred to me, but wrestling with myself revealed the
answer was more important. We moved a box fan and opened some
windows, and Tyson went back to talking while eddies of white smoke
ran outside.
"It's that she asked me, and not
the other way around," he finally admitted.
"Oddly enough, that's why she did
it. Though tell me, would you have?"
He ignored my question. "Why is
that why she did it?"
"She's never asked anyone out
before."
He started raising objections but
couldn't get a word in edgewise. "Yes, she's been out a lot, but
she never asked any of those
boys out." There was special emphasis on that part. It had been
important when we'd talked. "We were talking about when her
brother asked me out, and we discovered neither of us has ever done
the asking. She then admitted the idea of it actually scared her
quite a bit. It's scarier for girls, but Teresa thinks that's a load
of hogwash. She says it shouldn't be. It is. Anyway, she decided that
she was going to do it. Knowing you've been basically in love with
her since you could walk, and therefore Teresa's risk of rejection
was low, someone put your name forward. That's why you'd better have
said yes. Ruining your own hopes and dreams with your perfect girl is
fine, but you had better not make my taste in these matters look
shady."
"You
did that for me?"
"Yes."
He was
silent for a long time.
"Really?"
he suddenly asked again.
Snorting
smoke is a great dramatic gesture. It's one of my favorite things to
do. It carries scorn so well.
"Sorry,"
he grumbled. It wasn't very gracious, but it was the best he was
going to give.
"So
why exactly did it bother you?"
He
rolled his eyes and made indefinite gestures before admitting, "It
should be the other way around. Me asking her, you know."
"No,
it shouldn't, but yes, it usually is." The complex agreement
felt forced to me because in spite of everything, in spite of how
much it shouldn't matter, it absolutely did, even in my own head.
"Do
you think she'll think- Does that make me seem- But because she was
the one-" He started the question a few times and probably would
have gotten to finishing it eventually.
"It
may. But that just means you have to be extra brave next. Where are
you two going?"
He
looked at me blankly then shrugged in bafflement. "Doesn't she
have to decide? That's part of the being the asker."
He got another look of scorn. "You
don't know?"
"She didn't say!" he retorted
defensively. "Besides, it was right before she had to go to
work. She told me to call her when she gets off, but we didn't have
time to discuss the details."
"She might have a plan, but you
should have a back-up plan, just in case."
"What should we do?" he
asked, pleadingly.
Honestly, it was a legitimate question.
She asked him and probably hadn't made a plan either. It should have
been her job but going off how nervous she had been when we'd talked,
she was probably still getting over the idea of asking a boy out and
him saying yes. Tyson was completely in the right. There was no way
he would get an admission of that out of me.
"Dinner. Twilight."
"No!" he gasped, horrified.
"Your dream girl loves them."
It filled my heart with evil glee to say that.
"You're kidding. She doesn't
actually-"
"She loves
them. Swear to god." That was absolutely true.
"But-
Twilight?" he whined plaintively.
Maybe
it was the sweet smell of the smoke, or perhaps the faint taste of
Tyson's agony as he confronted the idea of two hours of sparkling
vampires. Either way it was delightful. But he was still so nervous
there was no way he'd ignore my advice. He had vampires in his
future. That would appropriately punish him for his rudeness earlier,
especially when it wasn't one of his funnier rants. One had to have
standards.
"Twilight.
Bitch." Victory.
