Dennis: Part 4

My friend group morphed around this time. Instead of Zach, Nicki, Chris, and me, it became Zach, Nicki, Dennis, and me. This period of time was when Zach and Nicki’s relationship was most stable too. So we hung out all the time as two couples.

I complained to Nicki that Dennis wouldn’t have sex with me. I told her it was some code of honor thing. She’d known him longer than me. She laughed and said, “That sounds like Dennis. His fucking code of honor. I feel like he got that from anime. I swear he thinks he’s some kind of samurai or something.”

“It’s cute though, right?”

“Oh definitely. Not like Zach. He was trying to grope me from the first time we met.”

I knew that she’d met him when he was dating someone else, but I didn’t say anything about it. Zach was a decent guy in a lot of ways. But when it came to monogamy, he really wasn’t.

Let me talk about some of the best memories I have with Dennis.

There was a playground near his house. We used to go there and swing or he’d sit on the jungle gym while I did the monkey bars. It was usually pretty empty, so it was a nice place to just go and talk.

We had one wild Halloween night. Or about as wild as things get in rural New Hampshire.

First, we’d been invited to this Halloween party. It was thrown by this girl I’d gone to high school with. Nicki was younger and had been homeschooled, but she was always very social on MySpace and other early 2000s internet gathering places, so she knew almost everyone in my graduating class.

We all dressed up to go to the party in out little clique. Dennis didn’t want to dress up. I don’t remember if it was a part of his code of honor or if he just wasn’t feeling it, but Zach did his makeup to look like a member of ICP and he talked Dennis into doing the same. Nicki went as sexy Freddy Kruegar. I dressed as a clown. I had a rainbow wig and a red nose and I bought this cute knee-length polka-dot skirt and then I put it over colorful striped tights.

The party was okay. I wouldn’t say it was fun. There wasn’t very much dancing. A lot of people were smoking weed, and I probably haven’t told you this, but I hate the smell of weed. It makes me gag. I’ve never been a pot smoker, simply because the smell is absolutely disgusting.

Dennis and Zach went off to talk to some guys about something. Nicki and I were hanging out in the living room, talking to some girls I sort of knew. One was a girl who had dropped out of school when she got pregnant. She had some genetic disorder that made her hair very very thin and she had a bunch of bald patches. I’d tell you what disorder it was if I knew. Her brothers had the same thing.

“I’m surprised you came, Jen.”

“Why wouldn’t I? You invited me.”

She had this smirk, but I could tell she was trying very hard not to smirk.

“Because Joe is coming.”

I tensed. I almost got upset. And then, I didn’t. Dennis loved me and I was safe with him.

“That’s fine,” I said. “I won’t talk to him, but he’s allowed to go to parties. Not like there’s a lot to choose from around here.”

“Hmm…I guess so. You want a beer?”

“No, I’m okay.”

Nicki went to the bathroom and when she came back, she pulled me aside. “Just so you know, Joe isn’t coming.”

“I don’t care if he does or doesn’t.”

“That’s good. But that’s what Zach and Dennis were doing.”

“What?”

“Telling Joe to leave. He isn’t coming because he was already here.”

“And he left?”

“Yeah, Zach said he’d fuck him up and then Dennis pulled him aside and gave some weird speech about honor. That’s what Megan was saying.”

“Wow.”

We left that party and parked downtown. There wasn’t anything downtown. But since it was Halloween, this rinky dink restaurant had gotten a local band to play live music. We went there and danced a lot and ended up merging with this other group. I don’t remember much about this other group, except that they asked if we wanted to walk around with them, and we did and they had alcohol. I only had a few sips, which Dennis didn’t like, so that’s why I didn’t keep going. Zach got fairly sloshed and then he made a bunch of racist joke, but since he was the only black guy for, probably about 30 miles, before you got to the next big city, nobody told him to stop. Everybody looked at him weird and he laughed really loud and said, “I love the look on white people’s faces when the black guy starts saying everything they’re thinking.” And the guy who was the leader of the other group said something like, “Nobody is thinking that, man.”

We drove around after we left downtown. And yes, we did wait until the effects of the 3 or 4 sips I’d had were fully worn off, since I was the driver.

We were driving with no plan, just hanging out. It started snowing, like, heavy. I always got very nervous driving in snow. Dennis didn’t have a license, but he knew how to drive. He said, “Pull over. We’re closest to my place. I’ll get us there.”

The four of us ended up sleeping at his house. His room was in the basement of the townhouse. It was two big rooms, but he only kept his stuff in the second room. This got pretty awkward sometimes, because his bedroom had no door. His cousin would come downstairs to do laundry or grab some canned goods and she could definitely hear whatever was going on in the next room over.

Well, Dennis and I slept in the bed and Nicki and Zach slept on the floor. We all talked for a long time before we fell asleep.

I remember feeling really loved that night and like I really found my people, like I really belonged.