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Stan had always thought it would happen in that quiet town. He thought maybe even that it would end there too, like a new years celebration or a snowbank. Instead, it happened in a place called Oklahoma.
Oklahoma was the place of the team building activity center. When they landed, the land was very dark, inky.
They were vacationing there, in a way, with the business internship group.
Their majors were one or two words off of each other, bizarrely. Well, probably not all that bizarrely, because they had chosen them together, like the school. On an evening they chose them, quietly and slow, like as slow as a whisper could possibly be, and as soft as possible too.
A little whisper that said: let’s just be business majors.
Soft like the soft, twisted plastic bag of soft candy they ate from on that flight over. The whole group was together, so the crossword answer might have been insistent, but instead they looked out the window in turns and did it with two colors of pen, one of which was purple like a secret between two people who had, one could say metaphorically, shared a childhood bedroom in shifts.
You probably wouldn’t say that, though, because there were plenty of nights they spent alone, and there were two rooms, and the trading off never happened, because they would be together.
There was supposed to be a big drinking event when they all got there. They were staying in somebody’s house, eight people for four hundred dollars a night. They weren’t really sure where any kind of party would be happening, though, so it would be at a bar, or the house. It had four bedrooms, a pull out sofa, linens in the closet, a chatty alexa and the pool outside. To Stan it sounded sexy, but he wasn’t going to mention that.
Maybe it was because it was an overnight trip, like one might have in high school, the chance to pack in and roll around all together under the covers of a field trip to D.C. or somewhere like that.
It was under the cover of the loud noise in the bar off of the main drag that they packed in. Raj and Steven had been arguing while they picked up their luggage, and Kyle and Nathan had gotten carsick. They went to the bar fast, basically, because everyone was in a bad mood and it was dark already.
Kyle was eating a personal pan pizza and seemed a little drunk. In four days it would be Thanksgiving.
Stan was focusing on the feeling of his leg on the leg of his chair, brushing up against it. He was having a beer, because of that one time, in freshman year, with the hospital and Kyle holding his ankles through the sheets and saying something like: “please, please.” He hadn't needed to say that, Stan thought.
Because of that night, the plan was no more than three beers and nothing hard. Nothing except the wooden stool he was snaking his ankles around, trying not to stare too much at Kyle or the pizza. On the bar TV’s, commentators made points about the college kids like them. Ben was to Stan's left, telling him about his hometown and the bars just like this one, in the midwest.
Stan thought about telling Ben about Skeeter’s, but he wasn’t sure how to describe it because he had only been there once, actually. At home, they were just kids and that bar was for sad people, grown ups. That bar was a lot like this one, actually. But, in college, nothing was really all that illicit, it was more about getting wasted.
Like the fact that they had planned to party but everyone was mostly eating and sitting around morosely.
“Dude,” Stan interrupts Ben in favor of bothering Kyle. It’s a bad habit, he knows, the whole not listening thing, the interrupting thing.
“What?” Kyle snaps at him.
“Are you mad?”
“No. Why would I be mad, Stan? Help me eat this pizza, I really wish you hadn’t had that whole Philly cheesesteak at the airport.”
“So you are mad?”
“No.”
Stan takes a piece of the pizza. It’s the kind cut in lots of little pieces, not fourths.
“This place is kind of…” Stan fails to finish the sentence.
“It's like Skeeter’s or something,” Kyle says, mouth full.
“Do you think we can use the pool tonight?” Stan asks.
“Tonight?” Kyle winces.
“It's hot here.”
In the pool, their swim trunks floating up around their thighs, it’s cold. They awkwardly swim close, parts of their arms knocking.
That night, Kyle's skin is cold too in bed- the sectional sofa, heads close.
Maybe it’s because they’re on a trip or something, or that the living room feels dark, cavernous, unfamiliar. They’re alone in there. Stan feels like he absolutely can’t take it anymore, all the silence. He puts his hand awkwardly onto Kyle’s arm.
Kyle jumps slightly and says nothing.
Stan doesn’t say anything either. The light coming in is doing so from above, a high, thin rectangle of a window showing the Oklahoma sky, Stan guesses.
They kiss softly at first, like a split second of a tender cry. The making out comes second, and Stan can’t stop. He has to force himself to stop. He wants to pull back in, so he does, twice.
It’s hot compared to how the pool had been, how the thin blanket feels over the both of them, another one rumpled to the floor somewhere, someone’s feet on top of the other’s socked pair. It’s like that, a little. In Oklahoma, they have their first kiss.