“So you ****** up,”
he spoke up. He shrugged as if it were no big
deal, but really it was; it was a huge deal.
“No big deal,”
his face betrayed his tone.

“Uhm? No- really it is, it’s a huge deal,”
I protested.

“Okay, bud, take a breath…”
He threw me a sheepish smile
That I pathetically fumbled.

“‘Take a breath’?”
I echoed with a scoff.
“‘Take a breath’?!”
I grabbed a hand full of my hair with each arm and squatted on the concrete.
“First you said ‘the worst she can say is: no’;
and now you tell me to ‘take a breath’?”
I tucked my head between my knees
and stared at the white paint
that had begun to fade off the parking lot.

“Well, yeah. I, you know,”
he chuckled.
I was certain he was doing that stupid thing,
where he scratched the back of his neck,
even if I couldn’t see it.

“No,”
I groaned,
“You don’t know.”

“Okay, this is embarrassing… Get the hell up,” he crouched down and yanked us both up by my wrists.

“Is everything you say a lie?”
I took a long and dramatic drag on the word “lie”,
pulling my arms away from his grasp.

“So she called you a b#tchless, d#ckless, f#ggot who would die such a big ****** that your wiener would invert at even the
slightest touch of a woman,
no big deal,”
he repeated once more.
All he got in response was another groan.
He leaned against his Toyota before trying to remedy the situation,
“I mean, you know, who hasn’t been called a-”

“I really don’t need to hear you to say it again.”

He chuckled and scratched the back of his head. “Right, sorry. Probably not helping, huh?”

“Yeah, no.”

For some reason,
this kid just did not know when to
shut up.
“Well, I, you know there are plenty of other fish in the sea, right?”

“Yeah, but no angel fish wants to go out with a sea urchin!”
I gestured to myself before pressing my stomach against his car.
We’d been at school far too long after the bell.
I was sure some of the teachers suspected we were doing crack,
or something.

“I,”
he started, looking to me at his side.
He stepped off his car and
opened the passenger side door for me.
“Then, I guess you just gotta find
another sea urchin.”