Let's Waste Time

Chapter Three

I was still working on my computer when someone knocked on my door at six. Technically I was supposed to end the day at five-thirty, but I had a customer on the phone for forty-five minutes who just couldn’t figure out how to get their internet service to work. I stood up and went to answer the door with the wireless headset still attached to my head. I opened it to find 81 on the front porch with a six-pack of Bud Light and a pizza box.

“Yes, Mrs. Keller,” I said as I waved him into the house and motioned for him to be quiet. “It’s that little blue button on the top.” He sat the pizza and beer down on the coffee table as I hurried back to my desk.

81 got some plates from my kitchen as I continued with the phone call. The man who installed her internet offered to help her get it set up, but she swore she could do it herself. Turns out she didn’t know anything about the internet at all. I watched 81 set my pink plastic plates down on the table beside the pizza box. I pretended to shoot myself. He smiled, and it made me feel kind of good about our movie date that was hopefully not a date.

But then I swiveled back around to face my computer and told Mrs. Keller that there must be something wrong with her connection. I transferred her to troubleshooting and quickly logged out before another call could come in. I was probably going to get in trouble for that, but I was hungry, and my apartment smelled like pizza.

“Jesus H Christ!” I shouted as I ripped my headphones off and stood up to stretch.

“Long day?” 81 asked from the couch.

“You have no idea. The only good thing is that I get paid double-overtime.” I shut my computer down and headed over to the couch where he was already helping himself to the pizza. I was wearing sweatpants and a tank top, and he was wearing sweatpants and a Captain America shirt. I plopped down on the couch beside him and reached for the remote to turn on the first movie in the trilogy.

“So what’s your name anyway?” he asked as I put a slice of pizza on a hot pink plate.

“Marley, you?” I replied.

“Chris.”

“Nice to meet you, Chris.” I reached out to shake his hand.

“You too, Marley.” We were silent for a moment, just enjoying our pizza and beer.

“So do you have a girlfriend?” I asked him.

“She lives in Oakland.”

“I just wanted to make sure this wasn’t like a date or anything.” He shook his head lightly.

“I don’t really know a lot of people here yet. Besides my team anyway. But they’re not really into Lord of the Rings.”

“Your team? What do you play?”

“Baseball. Pitcher.”

“Oh cool. Are you any good?” He shrugged and chewed his pizza as he watched the movie start.

“I don’t know anymore. I played in high school. f****d off too much in college until I dropped out. When I moved here, I decided to try out again. It’s been going pretty good.”

“That’s cool.”

“So how old are you?” he asked. I took a big gulp of beer.

“How old do you think I am?” I asked, picking a mushroom off of my slice. There was no pepperoni on it. I thought that was kind of weird.

“You don’t look a day over twelve,” he told me. I laughed. “I’m just kidding. You look too young to be drinking that beer, though.”

“I am too young to be drinking the beer, but I graduated from the kid’s menu.” He smiled again.

“I figured. You’re living on your own. You’re obviously older than twelve, but you don’t have any alcohol in your apartment that I could see. So you’re obviously under twenty-one.”

“I’ll be twenty-one in two months. What about you?”

“Twenty-one as of two months ago,” he told me. I nodded.

“You don’t look a day over twenty-one and two months,” I replied. He laughed.

After a while, Chris leaned back and stuck his big feet on the coffee table. It seemed kind of comfortable and a possibly subconscious thing that he didn’t realize he was doing. Like maybe it was the result of a habit and comfort and not that he just did it to be a d**k. My theory was proved a second later when he suddenly jerked his feet and went, “s**t, I’m sorry.”

I just said, “It’s cool, dude,” and stuck my feet up beside his. “So you’re from Oakland?” I asked him after he got comfortable again.

“Yeah, born and raised. What about you?”

“I grew up in Napa.”

“Oh, that’s cool. Did your parents own a winery?” I snorted through my nose.

“No. God no.”

“Just wondering. I’ve never been out there.”

“Not much to see, to be honest. So tell me about your girlfriend.”

“Her name is Heidi. She stayed back home, and I came here for school. But I liked it enough to stay after I flunked out. What about you? Are you in school?”

“No. No, no, no, no. I barely survived high school. I’m amazed I even graduated. College really wasn’t an option.”

“What about your boyfriend? Why is he in SoCal?” I took another sip of my beer and put it down on the coffee table. I was trying to take my time to figure out how to answer that question.

“Um—well, he’s a pilot. He comes around whenever he can. He was supposed to come see me last night, but his flight got canceled.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah.”

We were silent for a while after that. We didn’t talk again until we got to my favorite part of the first movie. When the hobbits are being chased by the black riders. I leaned forward to watch because the Ringwraiths were my favorite. I took another sip of my beer and put it back down.

“So um—let’s just pretend like I’m not a girl—not that I’m not a girl, and you need to pretend I’m not a girl. Assuming you like girls—” I started. But he gave me a really startled look, and his eyebrows rose.

“Um—I honestly don’t know how to respond to that,” he said. I laughed and shook my head. I felt stupid.

“No, I just—I don’t want you to treat me like—I don’t know—like we can’t be friends. Like, let’s just be bros, okay? I don’t want you to treat me any different because I have a lack of dudeness. All my friends are dudes, and they’re just like my bros.”

“Your lack of dudeness, alright. I still don’t know what you’re trying to say, though.”

“I don’t want there to be this weird ‘She’s a girl, so I have to act differently around her,’ kind of thing between us. I just want to be yourself, and we can be buddies or whatever.”

“I can work with that. A little lack of dudeness never bothered me.” I snorted again.

“Alright. I’m glad.”

“What about your ‘bros?’ What kind of stuff are they into?”

“I only have three friends. Like at all. Todd, Doug, and Albert. They mostly just like to play D&D and stuff at the comic shop that Albert works at. That’s really—all they do.”

“You play D&D?”

“I know the gist, but I don’t play it anymore because I got kicked off their team. I always do the wrong thing and then die.” He laughed.

“I’m not that good at it either.”

“What about you?” I asked. “Tell me about your friends.” He shrugged.

“Just the guys on my team right now. I work with a couple of them too. So it’s refreshing to hang out with someone who doesn’t live and breathe baseball. They mostly just like to drink beer and play ball. Everyone else is in Oakland.”

“When did you move out here?”

“Few months ago.”

“Ooooh.” I finished off my beer and sat back against the cushions.

When the first movie ended, we had drunk the entire six-pack of beer, and there was only one piece of pizza left. I was biting my nails and bouncing my feet on the coffee table. I swung my knees back and forth, and I got the feeling I was annoying him. He never said anything, though.

“Goddamn, I forgot how long these movies are,” he finally said as the end credits started to roll.

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know if I can finish them all tonight. I have to work in the morning. Lord of the Rings is kind of an all-day deal,” I explained. He nodded in agreement.

“Same time Wednesday? I’ll bring the second one.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“Alright, I’m going to head out then.”

“Kay. See you later.” He took the pizza box and empty beer bottles and left. I was thankful for that because it meant I only had to wash two plates.