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“Hey, man, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”
Charlie and Mac are hanging out on the roof of Charlie’s house and throwing pebbles at people as they walk by on the scorching sidewalk below. Or, they were, before Mac pulled out a glass bowl and a lighter. Now Mac is lying on his back, eyes closed, with his hands laced behind his head and his legs crossed over one another, and Charlie is sitting up with his legs dangling over the side of the roof, watching the sun set. Sometimes, Charlie likes to stare straight into the sun to see how long he can go before he has to close his eyes, look away. His current record is thirty-six seconds, but he has a good feeling about this afternoon.
Charlie hears Mac shift around a bit behind him when he speaks, but he’s not sure if he’s going to sit up and look at him or what. Twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine - . Charlie Blinks. Damn.
“Sure man, what’s up?” Mac asks, and Charlie is pretty sure he’s still lying on his back behind him, but he doesn’t check before he continues to stare at the sun.
“Promise me you won’t get all weird and mad when I ask you this,” Charlie begins, and he has to slam his eyes shut again, after only sixteen seconds, because goddamn the sun is bright today.
“What the hell are you going on about, Charlie?” Mac says impatiently. He’s been a lot meaner to Charlie since they started high school, but whatever. Mac refuses to make him any promises. Charlie continues anyway.
“Okay, dude, I’m just gonna come out and ask it. What is the deal between you and Dennis?” Charlie can feel Mac tense up where their legs are lightly touching, but otherwise he stays completely still.
“I don’t get your question, bro,” Mac says in his I’m-forcing-myself-to-stay-calm-right-now voice. Charlie continues.
“I mean, you guys just spend a whole lot of time together is all,” he says, even though it’s not really all.
“So?” Mac says. “You and I spend a whole lot of time together , too. All three of us do, actually. What, are you trying to tell me you don’t like Dennis anymore?”
“No, dude, of course not! I mean, not exactly. It’s just - ”
“What exactly is your point, then, Dirt Grub?” Mac spits, and that does it for Charlie. He can’t keep looking at the sun anymore. Blinking through the tears, he turns to face Mac head on, whose eyes are angry little slits now. So, that’s how it is, then.
“My point, Ronnie the Rat , is that you and Dennis act like - I don’t know - like you’re in love with each other or something, and it just weirds me out, dude.”
This makes Mac sit up, straight as an arrow, his eyes beady and dark with anger. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean, Dirt Grub?” he says, and okay, now Charlie is getting a little pissed off, too.
“Do ya really want me to say it?” Charlie asks, swinging his legs back over the side of the roof to better face Mac’s challenging glare.
“Oh, by all means, enlighten me, Dirt Grub,” Mac says with a sneer.
“Okay fine, I’ll say it, Ronald ,” Charlie says, feeling as angry at himself for taking the bait as he is at Mac for laying it down.
“Go ahead!”
“ Fine ! I know you like to watch Dennis jerk off when we all watch porn together.”
The silence that follows, for all its weight, is thankfully and blissfully short. The eruption from Mac that follows the silence, unfortunately, is not.
“What the fuck, Charlie! How do you - shut the fuck up , I’ve never! You goddamn lying piece of shit , how could you even - ?” Unfinished sentence fragments splinter off in every direction, jagged and loud, as Mac springs to his feet. Charlie wonders briefly with a thrill of fear if Mac is going to charge at him. But Mac isn’t even looking at Charlie. He’s just pacing and spitting and fuming and panicking . Charlie moves away from the edge of the roof just in case.
A question pierces through the noise that Charlie had anticipated, but could never formulate an acceptable response to. The question that kept Charlie from ever bringing it up before now.
“How would you even know?”
Charlie knows he’s not the smartest boy in their grade. Or their class, for that matter. And if Mac and Dennis are to be believed, he’s not even the smartest one in the gang. But he’s always known from the start that if he brought it up to Mac that he’d caught him and Dennis peaking at each other’s junk on Porn Night, there would be follow up questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer without incriminating himself.
But he just hates feeling excluded, and Mac and Dennis always seem to have something going on between them that’s just for the two of them, and Charlie hates it. Then Charlie hates himself for caring so much about it. And then Charlie falls into a spiral of jealousy and self-loathing until he decides that it’s just not worth dwelling on it anymore. So he pushes it down.
“Whatever dude, ignore me. I’m just really high right now, so just forget I said anything.”
He’s pretty good at pushing the Bad Things down. He can just go collect beer bottles from Mac’s trash can and smash them till he feels better later. He looks back into the sun. One, two, three…
After a long, tense silence, Mac says, “You shouldn’t stare at the sun like that. It’s bad for your eyes.”
Charlie wants to point out that they both have a habit of staring at things that are bad for them. But he remains silent. He pushes it down.