The Henry Sessions Read Free

myself.”
    “Sounds like fun to me,” she said. “You can do what you want, watch what you want.”
    “It sounds fun, but it really sucks. I’m not even sixteen yet and I’m already living by myself.”
    “Are you lonely?” she asked in a small voice.
    I pondered my options. Lying was my first instinct but I had already opened up to Elsie, I might as well tell her the truth. If nothing else, it might make me look like a sensitive soul. “Yeah. I really am,” I said. I nudged her thigh with my foot. “You and Jason are so lucky. Don’t you ever forget that. ”
    Her hazel eyes watched me. “I won’t.” She slid down onto her pillow. “Henry, can I ask you something?”
    “Shoot.”
    “Is that why you’re always here? Are we, like, your adopted family or something?”
    “Yeah, something like that.” I glanced at her. “Why, do you want me to leave?”
    “No,” she said. “You can have my family. You and Jason are basically twins anyway. Twin dickheads.”
    I squeezed her socked foot. “Don’t talk like that.”
    “Why? You and Jason do.”
    “Because we’re disgusting and gross.”
    “Yeah you are. Your feet smell.”
    “They do not!” I laughed the comment off. I was at about that age when deodorant and a daily shower had become a necessity.
    She scrunched up her nose and giggled. “They really do.”
    I got up, grabbed my shoes, and headed to the door. “I’ll go stink up Jason’s room then,” I said with a grin before tiptoeing out. “Goodnight, brat.”

 

 
 
    3

 
 
    Elsie started going to Monterey High School when Jason and I were juniors. I don’t know if it was his dad’s influence or what but Jason watched over her like a hawk at first.   He recruited me to stalk her, to make sure that nobody was messing with her. Elsie was a sweet kid and some of the older kids liked picking on the freshmen, so Jason and I had to have words with a few people. We were football players and people actually listened to us like we had real authority.
    Elsie, for her part, had her friends and was a genuinely likeable person. Coupled with her good looks—she’d learned how to style her hair a little better by then—she quickly became one of the popular girls at school. I’d see guys trying to talk to her all the time and I’d get this urge to throw my arm around her shoulder to chase them off. I thought at the time that it was just overprotectiveness. Now that I’m older, I can now tell you those were the first flames of jealousy burning in my chest, but when you’re young and have never loved a girl, you don’t know those things. Unfortunately, not knowing what the hell I was feeling, I ended up doing some pretty stupid things.
    Take, for example, in senior year when this guy took Elsie to the homecoming dance. Elsie was only a sophomore at the time but John was a senior and a known ladies-man, so Jason and I were already on high alert. John was on the football team too, albeit a second-stringer, so we all chipped in for a limo and rode together. I really pushed for it so Jason and I could keep an eye out on the guy and his wandering hands.
    Everything was going fine at the dance. I took my girlfriend Nina, who was smoking hot in her tight green dress that really looked good with her red hair. We were dancing and Nina was whispering really raunchy things in my ear when I saw John lead Elsie onto the dance floor.
    They started off innocently, with her hands around his neck and his around her waist, but there’s a lot of truth in John’s reputation and he started to get fresh with her. She kept trying to pull his hands away from her ass but he was relentless, until she just gave up and let him touch her all over that dance floor. I’ll never forget that blissful look on her face, when she closed her eyes and let him kiss her neck.
    It made me so fucking furious.
    I pulled away from Nina and ran over to John, grabbing the back of his shirt and throwing him across the room. I turned to