One Could Do Worse by Nicole Monaghan

My parents would have been pissed if they knew I was there but I’d wanted this girl for four years.

It was the only parentless graduation party in the neighborhood, the basement of the nefarious Frank Marino. My dad would call Frank’s dad a greasy poltergeist and then snort his prick snort, muttering something about the screaming dego family being hard of hearing.

I showed up at Frank’s already topsy-turvy from drinking a six pack to work up my nerve. I hated the Marinos, but I hated my parents more for looking down their snotnoses at them.

Frank called me Einstein more often since word of my academic scholarship got out. I called him Tuxedo since the senior prom because he changed out of his and into jeans and a tank top in the hotel lobby. I pushed through the losers by association to Frank and demanded, “Tuxedo, where’s Celeste?” He answered, “With her boyfriend, Einstein,” which I knew was a lie. Half his mouth went up and he added, “You want a piece of that too?”

I spotted her on the edge of a circle of girls, walked over, and told her to come outside with me. Addressing her by name for the first time felt like a porno scene on my tongue. As we walked, I told her my parents had names for everyone and that I was scared shitless of the pressures that were about to suffocate me, that I wanted to ask her out since freshman year, that my family would say she was fast and going nowhere fast. She grabbed my hand like we’d been a couple forever and said she needed Doritos.

We ended up at Finkel’s Deli where my mom called the owners unusually generous Jews. Celeste said my Adam’s Apple was hot and my scholarship was hot. The crinkle of the Doritos bag in her hands was a firework. I always imagined I’d finally kiss her up against a wall in a remote corner, pinning her from all the pent-up desire, but instead it was gentle in front of the blinking light of the unusually generous delicatessen.

Nicole Monaghan is founder and editor of Nailpolish Stories, A Tiny And Colorful Literary Journal. She is editor of Stripped, A Collection Of Anonymous Flash due out from PS Books in 2012. Her work has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Used Furniture Review, Foundling Review, Storyglossia, and Literary Mama, among many other venues. Visit her at www.writenic.wordpress.com.