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Lyla’s drawn a penis on his hand, inevitably. At least, he’s pretty sure it’s meant to be a penis. It looks more like a sort of happy worm.
“Is this how you see a penis?” Sean asks, laughing. “Damn, you should try and actually see one for real.”
“Are you offering, Diaz?” Lyla asks, tucking her marker away.
It takes him a moment too long to find a response to that. “Uh.”
“We’ve got a penis right here,” Lyla says, gesturing to his lap. “You get it out, and I’ll make sure my next drawing is totally anatomically correct.”
“Uh,” Sean says, again. “You’re not... are you hitting on me?”
Lyla bursts out laughing. Ouch. “You wish. This is purely for the sake of the art world.”
“And to embarrass me?” Sean asks.
“That’s a bonus.” She winks at him. “So am I getting a look or not?”
This joke... feels like it’s being carried on a little too long. “Are you serious?”
She shrugs. “You’ve got me curious. I want to see how badly I screwed it up.”
“Look it up online. I’m pretty sure there are one or two penises on there.”
“Less fun. You could at least send me a dick pic.”
Sean looks flatly at her. “Like I’m trusting you with a photo of my dick.”
Lyla presses her hand to her heart, mock-wounded. “What? I’m totally trustworthy.”
“Right. So you wouldn’t send it to Jenn.”
“Hadn’t even crossed my mind,” Lyla says. “But, now that you’ve suggested it, yes, I would one hundred percent send it to Jenn.”
Sean just keeps looking at her.
“I wouldn’t,” Lyla says. “Come on.”
“I’m not taking a photo.”
“Like you don’t have a ton already.”
“I don’t just sit around photographing my dick!” Sean protests. “Is that what you think guys do all day?”
Lyla shrugs again. “Okay, well, I guess you’ll just have to show it to me.”
-
Sean has had Lyla in his bedroom a ton of times. It’s never felt weird before. Well, except when Dad makes bad jokes about them needing their privacy.
He checks and double-checks that the door is locked. There is absolutely no way he’s letting Daniel barge in on this.
“Don’t laugh,” he says.
“I’m going to laugh,” Lyla says. “This is a funny situation.”
“Okay, fine,” Sean says. “Don’t... say it looks weird or anything.”
“It’s the first one I’m seeing. I won’t know if it looks weird. I mean, unless it’s green or something.”
“Shit,” Sean says. “Yeah. Should’ve mentioned the green thing.”
Lyla lounges back on his bed, propped up on her elbows. “Okay. Strip for me, Diaz.”
Is this real life? It doesn’t feel like it can be real life. Is he absolutely certain this isn’t a dream?
“Maybe I could just... just take the pants off and leave the hoodie on?” he suggests.
“Honestly,” Lyla says, “I think that’d feel weirder.”
“Yeah, I kind of get what you mean.” He strips off his hoodie and the T-shirt underneath, and then hesitates, his hands at his fly. “If we don’t want things to feel weird, we could just forget about this.”
Lyla rolls her eyes. “I’m not holding a gun on you, Sean. You absolutely do not have to show me your dick.”
It feels like a challenge.
This is such a bad idea.
Sean takes a deep breath. Shoves down his pants and underwear in one motion, steps out of them (with some kicking when they catch on his foot). And then he’s standing there in just his socks and hat, which he’s planning to keep on so he can tell himself he’s not technically nude.
He’s never been this exposed in front of anyone but family before. His mind is screaming at him to cover himself with his hands.
“Huh,” Lyla says.
That’s not a reaction he knows how to read. “What do you... think?”
Holy shit, did he really just ask that? What is he doing?
“Hey,” Lyla says, pushing herself off the bed, “you told me not to say it looks weird.”
“Lyla.”
Lyla walks toward him, stooping for a better view. Sean takes a few quick steps back.
Lyla pauses. “Oh, my God, did you think I was going to touch it?”
“I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going on!”
“I’m not going to touch your dick, Sean,” Lyla says. “I promise. Even if you don’t know what you’re missing.”
“You don’t know what I’m missing,” Sean says. “You can’t know if you’d be good if you’ve never touched one.”
If he’s lucky, she won’t take that as a challenge.
“What makes you so sure I haven’t?” Lyla asks, folding her arms.
“Okay, we’re doing this ’cause you’ve never seen one,” Sean says. “If you’ve touched one, you’ve definitely seen one before and you owe me my dignity back.”
Lyla grins. “Fine. Yes. I am not experienced in this area.” A pause. “We both know I’d be good, though.”
He can believe it. He’s also absolutely not going to think about that right now. “Is that enough? Can I put my clothes on?”
“You’re forgetting the point of this exercise,” Lyla says. “I’m supposed to be learning how to draw a penis. Nobody doodles a flaccid penis.”
Oh, shit. “Lyla, this is definitely getting into weird territory.”
“We’re already past Weird City and way into the weird countryside,” Lyla says. “You’re the one who criticised my beautiful artwork.”
Sean spreads his hands helplessly. “I didn’t think we’d end up here!”
Lyla snorts. “We’ve known each other how long? You could probably have guessed.”
In his defence, this is new. There aren’t many boundaries left in their friendship, but ‘get your dick out’ is definitely breaching a new one.
“So what gets you going?” Lyla asks. “You want to see my tits?”
Sean’s pretty sure you could press a sheet of paper against his face and it’d just go up in flames. “Uh. No, thanks. That’s fine.”
“I’ll put a bag over my head. You can pretend I’m Jenn.”
How does this conversation just keep getting more horrifying? “Please don’t do that. How are you going to see... what’s up... through a bag, anyway?”
“Eye holes,” Lyla says. “Sexy, sexy eye holes.”
“Don’t be Jenn,” Sean says.
“Fine, we’ll do something else. I bet you’ve got a fox mask somewhere around here.”
“I’m going to do something else,” Sean says, stooping to gather up his clothes, “and that something is putting my pants back on.”
Lyla pouts. “You’re no fun.”
He can live with that. ‘Being nude in front of my best friend’ is enough of a new experience for today. They can save ‘my best friend trying to give me a boner’ for later.
“Sean!” There’s a thud on the door and the doorknob moves, and thank fuck he locked it earlier. “Hey, let me in! I made zombie blood!”
Sean struggles back into his clothes as quickly as possible, Lyla shaking with silent laughter. “In a minute, Daniel!”
“What are you doing in there?” Daniel demands. “Why’d you lock the door?”
Sean gets his hoodie on and heads over to open the door. He’s pretty sure he’s still blushing. He hopes Daniel doesn’t pick up on that.
“Oh!” Daniel says. “Hey, Lyla. You didn’t tell me Lyla was here!”
“She’s leaving,” Sean says, firmly. He needs some time alone to process what just happened.
“Hell no,” Lyla says. “I want to see Daniel’s zombie blood.”
Daniel hops on the spot. “Yes! Look; it’s corn syrup, and food colouring, and—”
“And it’s going to get over everything in my room,” Sean says. “You want to take this to the bathroom, guys?”
Lyla winks at him as Daniel drags her out of the door. Sean presses a hand to his forehead for a moment, closes his eyes.
Did he seriously just do that?
He’s not afraid that it’ll fuck up their friendship. By this point, he’s got a feeling their friendship is pretty much unfuckupable. They could probably actually have sex and just fall straight back into hanging out and mocking each other. (But that’s weird, he probably shouldn’t be thinking about that.)
He drops into his computer chair.
It’s just... well, it’s embarrassing. And now he’s going to have to go to a party with Lyla – and try to get in with Jenn, Christ – while trying to pretend Lyla hasn’t just seen his dick. As if she didn’t have enough blackmail material on him already.
God, this evening couldn’t have been any fucking weirder.
He stares absently out of the window, listening to Lyla and Daniel’s laughter from the bathroom. Birds flit from tree to fence; leaves rustle. A cop car drives past the house.