After a minute that felt like a hundred, Ryan stopped fighting Dominic’s hold and just relaxed into it and Dominic kept saying calming comforting things, “That’s good, let it go. I’ve got you.” He motioned toward a door. “Let’s go sit someplace, okay?”
Ryan nodded and I hurried over to the door to open it for them. It was the band room. One of the few carpeted rooms in the school. The only other one I knew of was the library. The band room is stepped on one side and flat on the other. Chairs and music stands line the steps and the flat side is open with a single music stand for the teacher. Dominic kept an arm around Ryan’s shoulders as he led him to the flat open spot and I grabbed chairs.
Dominic let go of Ryan so he could sit, but it was like the act of letting him go brought Ryan’s tears flooding back. He covered his face with his hands and slumped over as he sobbed. Dominic wrapped his arms around him and held him tight, reassuring him.
As much as I wanted to be supportive, Ryan’s issues were hugely female related and the last thing I wanted to do was make him feel even more violated. So I arranged the chairs in a very small half circle and sat down.
After a minute Ryan found some composure and pulled away from Dominic.
“You okay?” Dominic asked.
“Yeah,” Ryan’s voice was rough. He sniffed and cleared his throat and turned to look at me. “Sorry. This is really not how I intended this to go.”
“It’s okay. I’m sorry I made you cry.”
“Yeah,” he sniffed slouching into the chair next to me. “You’re such a bitch.” His tone was flat, sarcastic.
Dominic went to get tissues from the teachers desk in the corner. Ryan helped himself to several when he returned.
“Do you hate me?” Ryan asked. “For what I did to you?”
I had to think about it. “You mean, for making me your side chick and dumping me when I wanted to do more than make out at your place, or for helping me learn and pass calculus?”
Ryan frowned.
“No. I don’t hate you.”
“How? Not that I was hoping you did. I just — you weren’t the first, most of them hate my guts. Like really hate my guts.”
As much as I wanted to ask why he was thinking in this direction, I wasn’t sure it would be helpful so I answered him instead. “I don’t like the way it makes me feel, and I have better things to do. Don’t take this wrong but, you’re fucked up, Ryan. And I don’t have to let you being fucked up, fuck me up too.”
“And how do you do that? How do you just not feel things?”
“Ry,” Dominic leaned in. “You can’t compare the two.”
“You really can’t. And I don’t not feel things. I feel the crap out of ‘em actually. I feel everything I can about it, until there’s nothing left to feel.” I shrugged.
“I’m not sure it’s that easy,” Dominic said. “I think you might be wired different.”
I shrugged. “I’ve never tried it with big things, major things. But I know that if you keep it all in, and don’t feel, your emotions plant themselves and grow, so the longer you wait to deal with stuff, the harder it is to deal with.”
“Well then, I’m fucked,” Dominic huffed a laugh.
“Me too,” Ryan nodded.
“No you’re not. You don’t just call the game because the other team gets a few points ahead,” I reasoned. “You take back the ball and you fight your way to end zone and you do it again and again and as many times as you need to, and you win.”
They were both just staring at me with mixed bag of expressions somewhere between ‘what now?’ and ‘you lost me.’
“Look, I don’t know sports, but you know what I mean. Neither of you are quitters, so stop acting like it.”
We just sat for a minute, quiet, and then Dominic said, “Hey, Ryan, I know you and I don’t really get into these kinds of things,” he made a sort of back and forth motion with his hands. “But I’m here for you. No judgements.”
Ryan nodded. “I need to find another girlfriend.”
Dominic and I shared a look of confusion.
“Or maybe you could just be single for a while,” I offered.
Ryan shook his head and let out a quick breath he’d been holding. “Fuck. If I tell you guys something, can you promise it stays between us?”
“Yeah,” I nodded.
“Of course, man.”
“No, I mean like promise promise. Like, pain of death promise.” Ryan sat up in his seat, looking serious.
Dominic’s brow furrowed. “Uh… yeah.”
They both looked to me.
I was tripping over a mental list of supernatural, or maybe extraterrestrial creatures Ryan might be about to reveal himself to be, because I read a lot and it’s the only thing I could think of that made sense. I was a little bit nervous, but when an adventure like being friends with the local alien, angel, vampire, werewolf, whatever, calls — you answer. “Okay. You wanna like, make a blood oath? We can all stab our fingers or whatever?” I held my finger up.
Dominic laughed. “You don’t think that’s a little over the top?”
“Pain of death,” I reminded.
“I’m gay,” said Ryan.
Chapter 22
I waited for the juicy part of the revelation. It didn’t happen. It was just a long expanse of silence. “Oh… And?” I prompted.
“And maybe that’s not a big deal to you but it is to some people. It’s a huge deal to my parents. If they found out, my life is basically over.”
“Over—?” I started but Dominic cut me off and the question I couldn’t quite get out went unanswered
“Wait, wait,” Dominic put his hand out, waving it back and forth. “So all these girls you talk about, that’s just what, deflecting? Masquerading?”
“Something like that. Look, maybe I’m actually bi, but it’s like 80-20, maybe less. Sort of depends on the person. But whatever, it doesn’t matter. We’ve always known how my parents feel about stuff like this. Anything less than 100% straight is not an option. So I try to make my focus the 20.” Ryan shook his head and took a breath, steadying himself. “Look. Alec has never come out to my parents. The only reason Luke and I know is because he doesn’t hide it online. Luke thought Alec was a coward for not telling our parents who he really was.”
“These are your brothers?” I asked. I was pretty sure, but I wanted to double check.
“Yeah. Alec is the oldest, and Luke is my twin. A while back, Luke decided he was going to tell my parents that he was gay.”
“Wait,” Dominic raised his hand. “That Alec is gay, or that he, Luke, is gay?”
“Luke.”
“Wait, so all three of you?”
“Basically,” Ryan nodded.
“I wonder what the odds are of that?” Dominic mused. “Anyway, sorry to divert there. Continue.”
“Luke thought he could make my parents see reason. He was so wrong and it got real bad, real fast. Bad enough that I called the cops. Cops get there and my dad tells them Luke attacked our mom, and they were just trying to defend themselves. Fucker knew just what to say. After the cops left, they started talking about sending Luke away to rehab, and by rehab they meant conversion therapy. He couldn’t take it back, couldn’t make them see that he was the same Luke he’d always been, so he cashed out what he could and left. My parents reported him as a runaway, then canceled all his cards, reported them stolen. But he’d already bought a ticket to California. Then when my parents found out that Alec had taken him in and said he could stay, they cut Alec off too. They thought that might make Alec see things their way. When it didn’t they decided that Alec’s time in California had made him lose sight of what’s important.”
“Dude, that’s not right,” Dominic leaned in, resting his elbows on his knees.
“What exactly do your parent’s think is important?” I was honestly curious, but didn’t think it likely to get an answer.
“Power, position, money.”
“Whatever happe
ned to family being the most important,” I asked, rhetorically.
“My mom says that,” Dominic nodded, “but she means what other people think.” He shrugged. “I get not being able to come out to your parents. I think it’s horrible and wrong, but you’ve got to take care of you, and I support that. But how does any of this find its way around to you needing a girlfriend?”
“Luke’s my twin, my identical twin so as soon as he was gone they started going at me, asking if I was a degenerate like my brother. I knew what I was, how I felt. I also knew that if I admitted to even an inkling there’d be hell to pay, so I lied. Told them what they wanted to hear. I figure I can do the same as Alec and keep it to myself until I’m out on my own. But there’s a lot of pressure to prove myself. Enter a long string of girls and girlfriends. It’s like the more of a womanizer I am, the happier my parents are. Alexa knows how my parents feel, and when she found out that I wasn’t just straight up straight, she used that against me. She never cared about me, she just liked that I had money and nice things. And I did too, so I just…played along, I guess.”
“So you need a beard,” I offered.
“No. I need a girlfriend.”
“Yeah, that’s... a beard is a homosexual dude’s girlfriend or wife so people won’t think he’s gay.”
“Oh,” Ryan shifted in his seat. “I’m not really up on my gay lingo since I’m mostly trying to avoid it at all costs.”
Dominic had pulled his phone out and googled the term. “I can’t believe there’s actually a word for that.” He turned his phone to us, showing us Google’s results.
“Yeah, I just told you the definition.”
“Yeah, okay,” Dominic’s voice pitched. “I’m not trying to mansplain, I’m just looking it up, learning more. I respect you.”
I rolled my eyes at him and turned my attention to Ryan. “Why me?”
Ryan shrugged. “I guess, I thought, maybe, you’d understand?” His face contorted like he was expecting some serious backlash and he kept glancing back and forth between me and Dominic.
I glanced at Dominic, his focus was on his phone. “What’s with the face?” I asked.
He glanced at Dominic again. “I just don’t want to make you — either of you — mad.”
Dominic’s head popped up from his phone. “Oh—what?”
I was confused too.
“Aren’t you guys…” Ryan waved a his hands in uneven ripples back and forth between us. The gesture felt a little bit too apropos for the relationship between Dominic and I. “Don’t you have like a… I saw you guys kiss.” He turned to Dominic. “You told me there was a girl,” he turned to me. “But I know how he feels about younger girls so—” he looked ahead at the floor. “I was gonna ask if — but then—” his voice faded and he sighed.
“She’s not the girl,” Dominic said. “Our kiss was just a party foul.”
Oof.
How did I get here? Is life some kind of grand design or is it all random? Was all this happening for a reason? Was it karma? Who did I wrong so horribly to be caught up in this level of whatever this was? I had definitive plans since forever to never be anyone’s high school girlfriend. Even a fake one. The answer was no. The answer was no way! It’s not that I didn’t understand his plight, from my perspective, his parents were basically monsters, but there had to be a better way. I didn’t want to just blurt it out though, he was dealing with a lot of heavy crap right now. I needed to let him down as compassionately as possible. “Uhm…” I could tell he could tell I was going to say no. His expression was so low, so broken, he looked like he knew I was about to tell him this was the worst plan ever. I took a breath, gathered everything I wanted to say, took hold of Ryan’s hand, and looked him in the eyes, big and blue and beaten. The world felt small, like it was only us, and I thought about so many moments like this I’d heard about, read about. Weren’t moments like this meant to be romantic? Because this was 100% not that. The mood in the room was thick and kind of awkward like peanut butter on carrots, or a kitschy teen dramedy from the 1990’s.
“Uhm—” Dominic interjected.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
“Really?” Ryan looked doubtful, and with good reason. I’m sure my expression looked as confused as I felt about what I’d just said.
“Yes. Absolutely. But not exactly. We need to take this slow otherwise it’s going to look as fake as it is.”
All at once I was hoisted off the ground, swept up in strong arms. A wet cheek pressed against mine whispering, “Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
“Whoa, whoa, what the hell? Whoa!” Dominic barked out the last whoa. “Can you put her down please?” Ryan complied. “The hell is wrong with you two?” Dominic scowled at us.
And suddenly I sort of understood why I’d said yes. It was so complicated, and twisted, and weird. But it looked just like Dominic, and his warm brown eyes staring at me with deep intent. I’d said yes, for this — for his reaction. Good, bad, it didn’t matter, I just wanted him to feel something for me. Me, me. Ugh! What the dysfunction was happening to me right now? The realization brought instant self loathing. But Dominic emoting in my direction, maybe even because of me, combined with the very serious, stern, and completely engaged look he was giving me right now, was too enticing. Like, we’re talking tummy tingles for days.
I was becoming such a sicko. And Obviously I was failing — spectacularly — at the whole letting go thing. “What?” I tried to look innocent.
“After what he did to you?” He turned his scowl on Ryan. “After what you did to her?”
“Obviously things are a little different this time,” I said.
Dominic shook his head. “It was bad enough when I thought you guys might be rekindling your bullshit relationship, but this is just actual bullshit, Ryan. I’m not going to let you just use her like that and take advantage of her naïvety. Not again.”
Ryan hung his head and sunk into the chair he’d been sitting in before.
“My what now?” My hand was on my hip.
“Look,” Dominic’s tone became soft, he took me by the arm and pulled me over by the whiteboard. “The first time you’re with somebody, it’s not something you forget.” His tone was so soothing and comforting it was almost hard to follow what he was saying. “In a way there’s like a forever bond that’s formed, and sometimes people mistake this connection for love. But that’s never going to happen with Ryan.”
“Oh, what the hell, Ryan?” I broke away from Dominic and marched over to him. “Two things are going to happen right now.” I poke a finger at his chest. “You’re going to tell me what you told everybody else, and you’re going to tell Dominic what actually happened between us.”
His words spilled out of him. “We made out. Kissing, mostly, half a hand job, sort of. It never really went much beyond that.”
Yikes. If I’d known he was going to say it like that… Couldn’t he have just stopped after ‘we made out’? Ryan saying, ‘half a hand job’ was permanently searing itself into my lay awake and reminisce about things you can’t change playlist. Then there was the fact that he told Dominic the truth first, so it seemed a safe assumption that the lie he’d told others was going to be pretty bad. I should have expected as much, this is exactly the kind of thing that happens when I let my pessimistic nature slip.
“Half? What does that even mean?” Dominic asked.
My hands shot up flat, gesturing a cease and desist faster than I could find words. Which was good because the first thing out of my mouth was just sound. “Heeyah— yo nah. We’re not answering that,” I narrowed my eyes at Ryan. “Just— the other part. Answer the other part,” I stammered.
“I told them we had sex and that you were a virgin.”
Dominic let out a sighing, groaning, grumbling noise. “Deflowering virgins is kind of his shtick.”
“That’s not cool Ryan. Why do guys think that’s cool?” I asked.
Ryan didn’t answer. I
looked to Dominic.
“Don’t look at me,” he said. “I don’t now. It’s never made sense to me. There’s a reason I’m into older girls,” he added.
I looked back to Ryan. “I don’t know. I’m actually not into virgin girls, it freaks me out. Pretty much just finding out a girl’s a virgin ends it for me. Being someone’s first is a lot of pressure and unfortunately it’s happened and that girl still hates my guts.”
“It wasn’t Jayla Anand was it?”
Ryan cringed. “You’re friends, aren’t you?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
“I didn’t ghost her on purpose,” Ryan’s bottom lip quivered. “I just didn’t know what to do and I made the mistake of confiding in Alexa because I thought we were friends and that’s kind of how that whole nightmare began. Not that I didn’t deserve it.”
“Hey,” Dominic barked. “No one deserves to be treated like that, Ryan.”
“I know,” Ryan curled into himself, his head in his hands.
I put my hands on Ryan’s knees. “He means, the way Alexa treated you, Ryan.”
Ryan nodded from behind his hands.
“Ryan, buddy,” Dominic’s soothing voice had returned. “Of course I meant that bitch Alexa. You gotta know if she wasn’t already locked up, I’d kick her ass for what she did to you.”
“No, but I did deserve it.” Ryan ran his hands down his face. “For what I’ve done. It wasn’t just Jayla. Any girl who expressed even the slightest bit of interest, any girl who’d let me,” he lifted his hand toward me.
“Okay,” I snatched his hand from the air. “Can you not cheapen it like that, please? You’re making what we had seem tawdry, and it wasn’t. It was romantic and sweet.”
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