The State of Us

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “It’s okay,” he said.

  “I don’t want her to be disappointed in me.” Saying it out loud, the thing I knew but had never put into words, was like tearing off a Band-Aid, painful but also a relief. “I don’t think my mother would throw me out or disown me, but I’m scared she’d think of me as a failure. And no matter what else I did with my life from that point on, this one thing about me would always be the reason I wasn’t the son she wanted me to be.”

  Dre was looking at me with pity, and I couldn’t bear it, so I dove back into the stream of pedestrians, assuming he would follow. While there was a certain amount of liberation in admitting my fear, doing so also gave it a front-row seat in my mind. Before, it had been a hypothetical abstract I didn’t need to concern myself with. Now, I couldn’t stop thinking about how my mother had grimaced when she’d talked about Dre. Now, I couldn’t stop thinking of her wearing that same expression when she talked about me. Now, it was an inevitability.

  But I didn’t have to deal with it today.

  Dre caught up to me as we neared Faneuil Hall. It was packed with tourists taking pictures under the autumn trees, and I wished I could have snapped my fingers and made them all disappear. I led us into the market, down the brick street, and past the crowded retail shops that served only to remind me that time marched on whether we wanted it to or not.

  “For what it’s worth,” Dre said. “I don’t see how anyone could ever be disappointed in you.”

  “It’s like I said. You don’t know my mother.” I stopped in front of a store and said, “We’re here.”

  Dre looked confused at first until his eyes caught the sign in the window. “You brought me to a comic book shop?!”

  “I thought you might like it.”

  The smile that bloomed on Dre’s face was toothy and brilliant and brightened my whole day. It was the best smile I’d ever seen and was worth the pain and frustration it had taken to get there.

  Dre

  DEAN WASN’T WHO I thought he was, and maybe the problem was that I’d already decided who I thought he was before I’d given him the chance to tell me. So, pretty much, maybe the problem was me. I would’ve given the finger to anyone who’d tried to tell me they knew who I was, especially since I was still working it out for myself. I felt like an asshole, and I kind of deserved it. I had never been worried what my parents would think when I came out. It was such a non-event for me that it barely registered as anything more than another day. But Dean was marinating in that fear, even if he didn’t want to admit it. He wanted to believe his mom was a good person, but he was also scared she wouldn’t accept him. That kind of doubt could tear a person apart.

  Despite his buttoned-up and polished exterior, Dean was kind of a mess. It made me think back to all the things I’d said to him about being uptight or emotionally closed off or whatever, and I felt like a jerk. I’d had no idea what he’d been going through because I hadn’t taken the time to ask.

  And it might seem shallow compared to the other stuff we talked about, but Dean had also blown my mind with his revelation that he’s had crushes on guys. On guys like me. In the span of an hour, the possibility Dean could be into me the way I was into him had gone from dim and distant to a pretty solid maybe, and I had no clue how to react. The part of me that Mel was worried about wanted to spill my feelings right on the floor of Newbury Comics and rub Dean’s face in them, but I didn’t because everything was still so raw. He’d built a bridge by bringing me to the closest thing to a church for me, and I was pretty sure shoving my feelings in his face would’ve caused his head to swell and explode in a cloud of confetti.

  But the problem that was really messing me up was wondering if we’d even be good together. I know, I know, I was getting way ahead of myself, but it’s like in tenth grade when I was totally in love with Wesley Anders. I wrote a million awful poems about him and forced Mel to read every single one. Finally, she was like, “What would you even do if he liked you back? You’re a flamboyant extrovert, he’s a bully. You practically have a different outfit for every hour of the day, he’s been wearing the same pair of corduroy pants since school started. You like comic books, he likes beating up people who like comic books.”

  I’d fallen hard for Wesley because we’d had English together and he’d been nice to me once, probably because he wanted to copy my homework, but it never would’ve worked. Dean could be another Wesley situation. It might not matter how Dean felt about me if all we did was fight.

  But he’d brought me to a comic book store, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to shop. I grabbed Monstress for me because Mel had been bugging me to read it, and I forced Dean to buy the first volume of Saga, though I warned him his mom probably wouldn’t be cool if she found it. I was in heaven. After, I let Dean drag me to the USS Constitution because I could tell he wanted to go even though he was playing like it was no big deal if we didn’t. Then we grabbed a late lunch at a deli and walked the Freedom Trail. We’d sort of silently agreed not to bring up our parents or the election or any of the shit we’d talked about before for a while, and it was the most fun I’d had in a long time.

  “How many witches do you think are buried here?” I asked.

  It was getting close to the time I had to start back to the station so that I didn’t miss my train. The day had begun as a total disaster, but now I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to run through the city with Dean until dawn and then do it all over again.

  “I don’t think witches are real.”

  “Sure they are.”

  Dean stopped by a headstone. The name and dates carved into it had been worn away so that I couldn’t read them. “Wait, do you mean women accused of witchcraft or actual witches?”

  “Sure.”

  “I assume any woman executed as a witch would not have been allowed a Christian burial, and I’m pretty certain magic isn’t real.”

  “Whatever,” I said. “Cemeteries are weird anyway. They’re landfills for bodies, but people come to visit them. Would you visit the pizza box you tossed out last week?”

  Dean frowned, almost looking embarrassed. “It’s not quite the same thing.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “No, it’s not.” Dean looked at the grave marker with a kind of awe. “These were people, and cemeteries give us a place to be with and remember the people whose souls have passed on.”

  I waved my hands in the air. “Wait, so magic is bullshit, but souls are real?”

  Dean shrugged.

  “I expected more from a debate champion.”

  “When it comes to religion, I’m willing to embrace the contradiction.”

  “Even though a lot of churches are kind of intolerant?”

  “Not all,” Dean said.

  We took up walking through the cemetery again, pausing to check out some of the headstones. “My parents keep trying to get me to go to Mass with them, but I’m not into it. Too much hypocrisy.”

  Dean tapped the center of my chest with the tip of his finger. “I think finding religion here is more important than finding it in a church, though I also understand that it isn’t for everyone.”

  “But I’m definitely going to hell if I don’t believe in God?”

  Dean laughed. “I’m pretty sure that you’re going whether you believe or not.” He playfully shoved me with his shoulder.

  As much fun as I was having, there was a question on my mind I wanted to ask—no, that I needed to ask—and I’d put it off long enough. If I didn’t work up the nerve to do it now, I never would.

  “I gotta ask you something,” I said.

  Dean’s laughter faded, and his expression grew more guarded. “I’m listening.”

  “When you were telling me about your mom maybe being disappointed, you said it’d been easy not to think about it until now.”

  “Yes.”

  “So, what’s different? Why could you avoid it before but not anymore?”

  “You.” Dean said it so matter-of-factly
that I thought I’d imagined it at first. I thought I’d heard what I wanted to hear instead of the actual words he’d said. But, no. He’d said I was the reason, and he’d blown my mind for like the third time in a day.

  “Me?”

  Dean leaned against an old, thick tree with most of its leaves still hanging on, though they were all yellow and red and orange. He folded his arms across his chest. He looked so calm, and I didn’t know how he could be calm when my heart was beating so fast I thought it was going to explode.

  “You know how there are times when you’re reading a book and there are some things you like and things you don’t and some things that are extremely frustrating, but you’re kind of ambivalent about it and you’re considering setting it aside?”

  I nodded, mostly because I had no clue where Dean was going, but I also didn’t want him to stop talking.

  “And then you reach a point where something happens and everything clicks into place. You’re hooked. You want to stay up all night reading because you can’t put it down, and it ends up becoming one of your favorite books of all time?”

  Even as I was hearing the words Dean was saying, I didn’t believe them. I resisted the urge to pinch myself to make absolutely sure this wasn’t a dream or that I wasn’t hallucinating. Maybe someone had slipped LSD into my latte and it’d just taken a few hours to kick in.

  I caught a tremble running through Dean. He wasn’t calm at all. Once I knew what to look for, I could see the tremor in his hands and the way he kept biting the inside of his cheek. Hell, that tree was probably the only thing holding him up.

  “What’re you saying, Dean?”

  He looked away at first, but then changed his mind and caught my eye. “We still have a lot of story left, Dre, but you’re quickly becoming one of my favorite books.”

  “So this is what having a stroke feels like?”

  Dean laughed with confusion. “What?”

  I probably should’ve taken a second to gather my thoughts and put them into some kind of order so that I didn’t come off sounding like, well, like me, but time was the one thing we didn’t have a lot of.

  “Are you saying you like me?” I asked. “As in you like me like you liked Neville Longbottom? If you do, I need to hear you say it, because I have this impossible crush on you that I’d resigned myself to you never returning and I need to make sure I understand that what you’re saying is what I think you’re saying so I don’t do something foolish like tell you how I feel.”

  Dean smiled. He smiled. Not a pity smile or a timid “I don’t know what else to do” smile, but a big, toothy, confident smile. And if I’d been living in a tragedy, this would’ve been the moment a random meteor fell out of the sky and smashed into my head and killed me. But my life wasn’t a tragedy. Possibly a comedy, but still beautiful. Just like Dean’s smile.

  “I don’t know,” he said. I couldn’t control the disappointment that hit my face, and he immediately added, “I think, yes, I’m attracted to you, but this is so different from any crush I’ve ever had.”

  “Because I’m a real person and not a character in a book?”

  “That, and because no connection I’ve had has ever felt this strong. Or this confusing. We wind up fighting as often as anything else, and—”

  “I’m frustrating?”

  “So frustrating!” Dean said. “But I like that. I like that you challenge me. I like that you make me think about who I am and who I want to be.”

  “I’m sorry for all the assumptions I made about you.”

  “Thank you for saying that,” Dean said.

  I walked toward Dean and stood beside him at the tree. “For the record, I’m not confused.” I brushed my hand with his and linked our pinkie fingers together.

  Dean’s hand stiffened as he looked around and only relaxed when he was sure no one was watching us. “We’ve made this complicated.”

  “Probably.”

  “What do we do about our parents?” he asked. “I’m still going to be working on my mother’s campaign and supporting her and hoping she wins.”

  At that moment, I didn’t care. It was a problem for a day less perfect than this. “We’re not our parents,” I said. “We’re not their surrogates. Let’s just agree not to talk about that shit, okay? We can talk about our parents, but as the adults who annoy us and ground us, and not as presidential candidates.”

  “Do you think that’s possible?”

  “I think we can try.”

  Dean’s finger tightened around mine. “I can’t come out.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I’m serious, Dre.” Dean paused like he was giving me an opening to butt in, but I didn’t have anything to say. “I have a lot to consider—you’ve given me a lot to think about. At some point, I am going to have to tell my mother, but not until after the election. I don’t want to be a distraction and I don’t want to be the reason she loses.”

  “I can live with that.”

  “Are you sure?” Dean asked. “I would understand if you couldn’t.”

  “Look, I’m not about forcing you or anyone to come out until they’re ready.”

  “Thank you.”

  I couldn’t believe I was standing there with Dean, holding his hand, talking about us. There was an us! I’d almost ditched him when he’d taken off on me earlier, and I would have missed this if I had! It was so much to wrap my brain around.

  “So,” I said. “You and me?”

  “Seems that way.”

  “What about the distance?”

  Dean shrugged. “We worked this out.”

  “And no matter who wins the election, we’re gonna end up living in different states.”

  “We’re both graduating at the end of the year, so that would have been an obstacle regardless.”

  This was happening. This was really happening! I pulled away from the tree so that I was standing in front of him. I needed to look Dean in the eye again to make sure that this was really real. Dean linked the rest of his fingers through mine, and pulled me a little closer, and then my phone buzzed.

  Cock-blocked by my own damn phone. I got it out of my pocket and swore.

  “What?”

  “Train.”

  Dean looked at his watch and his eyes went wide. “Dre! We’re going to be late!”

  “We’ve got time.” I was not going to leave things like this. He was going to kiss me, I knew he was, and I didn’t know the next time I’d see him again.

  But Dean grabbed our bags, and he pulled my sleeve, and the moment was gone.

  We practically ran all the way back to the train station. Even though it’d gotten colder as the sun had set, I was sweating and breathing heavy because I was so out of shape, which I hadn’t wanted Dean to see. But we got to the station on time. Barely. They’d already started letting people onto the train.

  “When am I gonna see you again?”

  “We will figure it out,” Dean said. “You had better go.”

  This wasn’t fair. I wished we hadn’t wasted so much time arguing when I’d gotten there. “Wait! We need a picture.” I pulled out my phone and threw my arm around Dean’s waist.

  I caught Dean looking for people who might be watching, but no one was paying attention to us. We were invisible. Besides, I didn’t care. I leaned in as close to Dean as I could, breathing in the spring-fresh scent of his hoodie and the citrusy smell of his hair, and I snapped the pictures.

  “I’ll send them to you.”

  “Good,” Dean said. “Now go!”

  I turned to leave, and Dean grabbed my hand. “Wait.” He pulled me toward him and around a corner and he kissed me like I was the only person in the universe. He kissed me like I was going off to war and he would never see me again. He kissed me like he meant it, and I kissed him back.

  And then he was pushing me toward the gate, and I was running to the train and I barely made it before the train doors closed and we left the station, but for the whole ride home and the rest o
f the night I couldn’t stop smiling because I’d kissed Dean Arnault and he’d liked it.

  Dean

  FOR THE FIRST time in years, I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. After I was diagnosed with ADD, in addition to medication, I began cognitive behavioral therapy to develop coping mechanisms that would help me manage my condition. One thing I learned was that I functioned better with a plan, so before bed each night I wrote out a plan for the following day. I might change or update it as the day went on, but I still had it as my touchstone if I fell off track. Eventually, I started using the plans for long-term goals too. I had a college plan and a senior class president plan. I had a plan for how I was going to spend my day in Boston. I had plans for everything.

  Except, I never could have planned for Dre.

  No one could have planned for a person like Dre. He waltzed in and blew up my life, leaving me standing in the rubble of everything I’d known, and I had never been happier. Or more terrified. Dre was forcing me to confront things about myself and my family that I wasn’t ready to deal with. I didn’t know if I would ever be ready to deal with them, but I could feel the inevitability of the moment quickly approaching. Keeping my newfound relationship with Dre a secret was difficult, but I didn’t want to distract my mother or the public from the election. Once my mom won and became president, I promised myself I would tell her and my dad the truth about everything.

  That was the best plan I could come up with.

  “Dean? Could you answer the door?” It was the Saturday before the second debate, and my mother had decided to take a night off from her preparations to throw a casual dinner party. I didn’t know who my parents had invited—close friends or influential donors. Normally, I was only expected to make an appearance, shake some hands, show off what a smart son I was, and then vanish, but this time my mother had asked me to stay.

  I opened the door and was greeted by a couple my parents’ age. The Maguires, friends of my parents from church. Him in a casual suit, her in a beautiful blue dress with an empire waist. “Mr. and Mrs. Maguire, nice to see you.” I shook their hands and stood aside to let them in.