06⎜The Sweet Tea

           “Bye, roomie!” called my dear roommate, Seth, in almost a mocking way as I was somewhat-forcefully whisked out of the comfort of my own room by two escorts who couldn’t have been politer and had accents.

           “Bye, Seth,” I bid, my arm being grabbed as I was pulled towards the door. I didn’t bother taking anything from the room, because I already had my wallet and phone on me, and had been assured prior to the occasion that everything else would be provided. Because of the particular place that we were going, I thought it best to wear plaid shorts and a Polo shirt. Judging by one of the coercing parties and his attire, I was completely accurate in my fashion assumption.

           I was removed from my dorm room, the female attendant babbling her blonde head off as the three of us walked. She was saying something about the sky and sun and I didn’t really pay any mind, for I just liked hearing her talk. The human tank on my other side was relatively quiet, interjecting every so often to protest or comment on what his girlfriend was saying.

           When we reached the parking lot behind my dorm building, there was a large silver pick-up truck that wasn’t the clichéd run-down-paint-chipping-rusting-everywhere type of truck. No, this was one was practically sparkling in the California morning sun, not even a speck of dirt visible on its exterior. I had never really been into cars (I had an SUV back home that was probably to blame for at least 5% of global warming), but I knew when to appreciate a nice one. This truck was more than nice. As Kay Rodgers would say, it was just wonderful.

           “Well, Eric, this is my baby,” Houston told me as I stared awestruck at the vehicle before me.

           “Hey!” Kay said in an objecting tone that didn’t suit her well. “I thought I was your baby!”

           “Personally, I prefer the truck,” he smirked, decreasing his likelihood of getting laid in the future a considerable amount.

           “You know, Houston, you can be a real asshole sometimes,” Kay told him, crossing her arms across her chest so that her orange blouse crinkled in the center, ever so slightly. I quickly glanced down at her feet, wondering why she had elected to wear a pair of overly expensive flip-flops, when we were going to a place with dirt. Our destination also made me question her choice of a knee-length patterned skirt, but she was Kay Rodgers, so fashion was something non-negotiable in her world—no matter where she was headed.

           Ignoring Kay for a moment, Houston just shook his head as he admired his ride. “Her name’s Elle, ‘cause in the alphabet, ‘L’ comes after ‘K,’ and that’s the same thing with in my life, because my truck always comes after my girl,” he said to me, making sure that Kay heard it loud and clear so that he could snag up a few stray lay-ability points in his arsenal.

           Not shockingly at all, Kay then gushed at his words, ramming into him and wrapping her arms securely around his neck. “See, and then sometimes you can be such a gentleman, Houston Walker!” she cried, kissing him on the cheek before letting go.

           “I’m always a gentleman,” Houston claimed with a shake of his head.

           “I can name at least five people who will disagree, but I’m still blushin’ at what you said, so I won’t,” Kay muttered, not being able to contain the giant smile that appeared on her face. “I love you so dang much, Houston Walker!” She continued to grin as she trotted over to the passenger’s seat, allowing me to speculate that I would be sitting in the back, alone.

           “I love you too, baby!” Houston called after her as a distinct slam of a truck door was heard and witnessed. “That girl is crazy!”

           “Uh, it’s a great car,” I observed, not wanting to give my opinion on his girlfriend—it was a territory I knew to not venture into.

           “Yeah, she’s a stunner,” he nodded along, agreeing with my judgment. “I brought her up ‘ere this past summer, and drove all the way from South Carolina, just so we could spent the year together.”

           “That must’ve taken a while,” I remarked, not being even able to imagine driving in a car for that long.

           “Yeah, ‘bout three days or so. But it was worth it. She’s now here now, right?” he laughed, patting a metal side of the referenced party fondly. “We should prob’ly get goin’. C’mon!” And without any further instruction or dialogue, we both hopped into the truck on the same side.

           When I got in, I was more than surprised to see that another individual would be sharing the backseat with me. The individual also didn’t quite look ready for our endpoint in her classic ensemble of distressed denim shorts, flip-flops, and a V-neck that happened to be black, today. She had an earphone in, and was clutching a bottle of clear liquid that appeared to be water. Kay was situated in the front with a drink of her own, but it was brown, not clear like her friend’s. Houston sat beside her—behind the steering wheel—and gripped her hand at the center consol. It appeared as though we were all set to go, and judging by the way that Houston revved his engine, we were.

           “Eric, you know Ari. Ari, you know Eric. Don’t maul each other to death back there,” Kay made a brief introduction, though I knew fully well who the girl to my right was.

           “Why on earth, any planet in this galaxy, or any other galaxies would you jump straight to the conclusion that we would ‘maul each other to death’?” Ari questioned. “I happen to have nothing against Eric. Really, Kay?”

           Kay just giggled, sipping on her beverage through a reusable bright pink straw of a plastic substance. “I just really felt like usin’ the word ‘maul,’” she said, with a light smile, her face turned back towards us.

           “Hey, Kay,” I began, staring at the beer-resembling liquid she was nursing, “what are you drinking?”

           “Sweet tea,” the girl answered, placing the thin pink tube back through her lips and sipping, a blissful expression capturing her face as if were the best thing she had ever tasted. Whatever it was, its name definitely sounded like it was made for Kay Rodgers.

           “What’s that?” I inquired further. Ari just snorted, the edges of her mouth lifting up ever so slightly.

           “It’s like,” Kay paused, searching for an appropriate comparison, “iced tea, I guess. Wanna try it?”

           “Is it any good?”

           “It’s just wonderful!” she advocated for the drink, but considering that everything happened to be “just wonderful,” another opinion was needed before I was sold. “I drink it all the time!”

           “It’s good, Eric,” Houston assured me. “It’s like the southern version of iced tea, and everyone down South lives on the stuff!”

           Ari remained quiet, not saying a word for the drink, or against it. She just shook her head marginally, but I wasn’t sure if it was because she liked it, or she didn’t. Kay handed me the container, and I figured that if it tasted like iced tea, it couldn’t be that bad. How wrong I was. After taking a small mouthful and allowing the flavor to leak into my taste buds, I wanted to spit it out and erase the past ten seconds so that the sweet tea never actually entered my mouth. There was this overpowering sense of sweetness that I didn’t like, and it was just so bad in so many indescribable ways. Iced tea I could handle, sweet tea, on the other hand, was a whole other story. It was just so nauseating on such a high level.

           “The look on your face!” Ari laughed as I realized that my entire face was unattractively scrunched together like a pug’s.

           “Congratulations,” Houston joined in the laughter, “you just tried sweet tea for the very first time.”

           “It’s gross,” I said, sticking out my tongue, and needing something to rid the aftertaste of. Because she seemed to know just what I was thinking, Ari then handed me her bottle of what looked to be pure water. I didn’t even hesitate, and took it, gulping down the entire thing (evidently, it was water). I could still taste the sweet tea.

           “It’s not ‘gross’!” Kay pouted. “It’s just an acquired taste!”

           “Gettin’ non-southerners to drink sweet tea is worse than the hazin’ we have at the fraternity,” Houston shook his, still laughing at my misfortune.

           “The first time Kay made me try it, I thought I was going to barf,” Ari recalled as a piece of information clicked inside of me. Ari wasn’t from the South. She didn’t have an accent, and even though not everyone from the South had an accent, there was something about her that just didn’t seem like the Southern type. Which got me wondering how she and Kay were such good friends if they hadn’t lived in the same place and drank sweet tea together in the midday afternoons.

           “Hey, Ari,” I said, turning to my fellow nonnative-sweet-tea-drinker, “where are you from?”

           “A place,” she replied cryptically.

           “California,” Houston gave me the direct answer I had been searching for. And it all made sense. Kinda. Well, not really. Nothing about Ari really made a ton of sense in my mind, for she was a mystery—just like she wanted to be. I knew her name was Ari, she was a minimalist from a clothing perspective, liked music, was quiet, had a friend named Kay Rodgers, went to Stanford, and now, that she was from California. When I thought about it, I didn’t know her at all, really.

           “And I bet the next thing that you’re going to ask is how a South Carolinian like myself met such a strange West Coaster like Ari, here,” Kay said, guessing the exact thing that I was wondering about the two’s relationship, though I wouldn’t have ever verbally asked it. “Well, I’ll tell ya—”

           “Oh! Not this story again!” Houston groaned in the midst of his sole job, that being to drive.

           “Shut up, Walker,” Kay said, even more sass that had probably been intended added to her tone with the use of his last name only. “As I was saying…” she trailed off for a moment, thinking back to what she had been saying. “Actually, I think that I’m just going to start over—”

           Again, she was interrupted, but not by her testy boyfriend, this particular time. “We met at summer camp when we were twelve. My dad wanted me out of the house, so he shipped me off to a nature camp in the Middle of Nowhere, Tennessee,” Ari sped up the storytelling a considerable amount.

           “It was in Georgia, geez!” Kay shook her head humorlessly.

           “Same thing,” Ari brushed off the mistake as if it were nothing.

           “Tell that a Georgian and they’ll prob’ly punch you straight in the face,” Houston snorted.

           “Maybe not in the face. Gut is more like it,” Kay altered her boyfriend’s words.

           “Well, anyways, we went to nature camp—” Ari started up once again, though it was her turn to be faced with an interjection.

           “It was most certainly not ‘nature’ camp,” Kay scoffed firmly.

           “There were trees, dirt, non-manmade bodies of water, bugs, and nature. If that’s not nature, I don’t know what is,” Ari responded to her friend.

           “Then you clearly don’t know what nature is,” Kay said. “So, yeah, we met in camp. We hated each other at first, had to share a bunk bed for the summer, were in the same tent on a campin’ trip, and then somehow became best friends.”

           “And then she tricked me into trying sweet tea, and I seriously questioned the legitimacy of our friendship,” Ari concluded the tale, causing the entire car to burst into laughter.

           Not long after, we arrived at our destination, and all got out of the car. Houston was the only one who grabbed something from the back of the truck, and did so while the rest of us just waited, taking in the scene before us. There was a large building in front of us, and a seemingly-endless row of golf carts next to it, which made sense, since we were at a golf course and all. The parking lot was vast, and contained cars that appeared as though they were driven straight from the dealership. Taking into consideration my past (and only) two experiences of attending golf clubs, this definitely fit the profile for one.

           Houston finished retrieving his clubs, and then slung the large cylindrical bag over his shoulder, a smile on his face as he addressed us, “Let’s go, y’all!” And so we did.

           The four of us marched up to the front building and a guy who was probably being paid minimum wage and barely spoke English opened a door for us, uttering a brief and heavily accented, “Welcome,” to us as we passed. We all thanked him, and then continued on our way. After entering the structure, my eyes met exactly what was expected. There was a front desk, a lush seating area with a traditional sense about it, soft music playing the background, marble flooring, and golfing paraphernalia framed all over the walls, ranging from signatures to shirts. Well, it was definitely a golf club—that was for sure.

           We approached the receptionist’s desk, seeming like a greater crowd than we truly were. Ari and I stayed back a few paces, allowing Houston to talk to the employee who looked to be sweltering in his attire of a navy sports jacket and completely buttoned up shirt. But then again, the air conditioning was blasting and I became noticeably cooler when entering the building, so maybe he was fine. Regardless, Houston conducted a quick business-like deal with the man, telling him about his reservations and such.

           In a matter of seconds, the man was walking away from the counter and to Houston, shaking his hand as his fully-covered-in-chinos legs led us to the door we had just come through. He told us that cart twelve was ours, and that the other bag of clubs was already there with the caddy. Apparently, majority of the guys from Houston’s frat had either already started golfing earlier to skip out on the heat, were skipping, or coming later. There was only one other guy who had come just a few minutes before us, so he was waiting by the golf cart for a familiar face so that he didn’t have to go alone.

           We followed the man to the long line of golf carts until we came across one towards the end with the number “12” printed on the side. Standing by it were two guys, one I recognized, the other, not so much. The one I had met once before was wearing a pair of almost white khaki shorts and a black Polo shirt, while the other was dressed completely in white with the golf club’s insignia on his upper right chest and hat—the caddy, I deducted without much skill.

           “Ari!” the guy with black hair and height shouted upon noticing all of us.

           “Hey, Scott,” greeted the girl standing beside me with a small hint of a smile.

           “If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ask, Mr. Walker,” the receptionist-dude said, walking away with not even a bead of sweat visible on his face. Houston just nodded, not that the guy saw, anyways.

           “Uh, I’m Henry,” the kid in the white introduced himself nervously. He had stuffed his hands into his pockets, readjusting his hat so that his light brown curls flopped down even more than they had already.

           “Henry’s a sophomore,” Scott informed us.

           “In college?” Kay questioned, not even sensing that there was anything to be funny about what she had asked.

           “Uh, no, in high school. Get with the program, Kay-Rodg!” Scott said, her apparent nickname being said with a soft “G” at the end, like in giraffe or like a “J,” as in jelly or jumping.

           “You look older,” Kay thoughtfully told our dear caddy.

           “Um, thanks,” the kid said, his cheeks painted red from either the heat or the fact that a very pretty Southern college girl was actually acknowledging his existence.

           “Do you live in California?” Kay went to ask, again not detecting anything wrong with what she had asked. He worked at a golf course in California. For him to live any place other than California was borderline crazy, thus proving Kay’s inquiry to be less than on the intelligent side. Not her brightest moment.

           “Don’t answer that,” Scott told the kid, “she’s having a series of dumb blonde moments. It’s best to just ignore her until she just shuts up or starts making out with Houston.”

           “Be quiet!” Kay grumbled, shooting Scott a cold glare. “Ya know, right now Henry and Eric are my favorite boys out of all of y’all.”

           “What did I do?” Houston demanded. Kay just pouted, not saying anything as she took a long sip of her endless supply of sweet tea.

           As names went, sweet tea was only somewhat misleading. Yes, the tea was sweet, but not in a good way. It was sweet in a way that induced vomit and caused your stomach to practically scold your esophagus for allowing such a vile thing to drop down. It should’ve been called absolutely-horrendously-sweet tea, for it was marginally more honest than just pure sweet tea. Sweet tea made me think that a gallon of sugar had been mixed with cotton candy, crushed lollypops, five quarts of ice-cream, and maybe, like, one or two tea leaves—not iced tea with more sugar and nastiness.

           “What’cha drinking Kay-Rodg?” Scott asked, eyeing her vessel of disgustingness with curiosity. “Is it beer?”

           “Yeah, Scott, it’s beer,” she said flatly, her lips pursed into a tight line. Four out of the five of us (Henry not included) knew that she wasn’t drinking something with alcohol in it, but no one bothered to speak up.

           “Can I have some?” he inquired. Ari cracked a small smile that I now knew was a malicious one, and Houston kept his lips locked and shut. I remained impassive.

           “Sure,” Kay shrugged it off easily, handing him the translucent container. Scott easily took it, not bothering to question the sincerity of what she had said. Because germs were apparently nonexistent, he put the straw right up to his mouth and sucked for a few seconds, probably assuming that it actually was beer. And then the straw came out of his mouth, in addition to the sweet tea. He spit it out on the mix of gravel and dirt beneath him, a sudden coughing attack overpowering him.

           “You—it—I—ugh!” he sputtered, sticking out his tongue as if it would help lessen the taste. “What did I do to deserve such cruel and unusual punishment to drink that?”

           “You called me dumb,” Kay said with a triumphant smirk. “Oh, and it wasn’t a punishment—just sweet tea.” Sweet tea, indeed.

A/N: I think that this is probably the most controversial chapter that I've ever written, due to the responses I've gotten. I'M NOT TRYING TO OFFEND ANYONE WHO LIKES SWEET TEA. Kay.

-Sophie