Landscaping (part II)

=====“They went to the bathroom,” Aaron replied.
=====“Oh, okay.”
=====“You want some Jake?” Aaron asked me, extending a bottle of champagne towards me. He must’ve gotten it from one of the early-teenage kids that walked around selling alcohol (the same way we got the wine earlier) while I was spacing out.
=====“Yeah, sure.” I held out my plastic cup and Aaron poured a sizeable amount in, the foam overflowing and trickling down the side of the cup onto the grass and my hand a little. I jettisoned the drink into my mouth, downing it in one gulp, and felt the liquid heat surge down my esophagus.
=====Aaron kept talking to the girls as I stared at my empty cup, debating whether to have some more. Their words buzzed around the background of my thoughts, relegated to white noise without the filter of my conscious mind to make sense of them. I looked up to ask Aaron for another glass, and all three of them were staring at me with a look of anticipation.
=====“What?” I asked, thoroughly confused.
=====“You should take her offer,” Aaron said to me with a smile.
=====“What offer?”
=====“I asked you if you wanted a French kiss,” Alyssa said in an incredibly matter-of-fact manner.
=====My mind went of like one of those Chinese fireworks, filling with the explosions of billions of neurons firing like crazy.
=====“How could you turn down a French kiss from a real French girl?” Aaron asked.
=====My hands were tearing out grass by the handful now.
=====“Umm…”
=====“We can do it better than any American,” Marin said, her smile a mirror of Aaron’s.
=====“Well?” Alyssa asked with an undertone of impatience this time.
=====“Uh…” My throat contorted, trying to resist allowing any answer to pass through. “Sorry…I…no thanks.”
=====“What?” Alyssa leaned in slightly, not having heard my response.
=====“No thanks…” I managed to eke out, my eyes falling to the grass.
=====Alyssa and Marin looked confused by my response, but not quite as much as Aaron.
=====“Come on man,” He said. “As I said, how could you pass that up?”
=====“Why not?” Alyssa asked me, her eyes locking in on mine as I looked back up at her.
=====“I don’t know…” My grass pulling reached a crescendo, my hands trying to keep up with the frenetic pulsations of my heart. “I’m just shy…”
=====“Shy?” Marin asked.
=====“Why not?” Alyssa repeated, still confused.
=====“It’s nothing personal. I’m just...” My voice trailed off.
=====“He’s just shy,” Aaron interjected, mercifully ending that line of questioning. He paused a second, then turned to Alyssa. “I’d be glad to though, if the offer’s still on the table…”
=====“Sure,” She replied. They leaned in towards each other and made out for a few seconds before pulling away from each other. Marin gave Aaron a questioning look. He grinned, and then leaned in towards her as they repeated the process. My eyes remained fixed on my hands as they continued their gradual destruction of the area of the lawn directly surrounding me.