The State of Us

by Shaun David Hutchinson

  “No, Dre! I don’t want anyone else to know.”

  I bit my bottom lip and looked away from Dean. I hadn’t meant to look so guilty, but it was an instinctual reaction. And he saw it.

  “Does Mel know? Did you already tell her? Dre?”

  “She guessed, and I couldn’t lie because she knows when I’m lying!”

  “Damn it, Dre! It’s probably her! You said she doesn’t like me. You said she thought I owed it to the community to come out. What if she’s doing this to force me?”

  Mel was capable of a lot of shady shit, but there was no universe where I believed she would’ve outed my relationship with Dean, no matter how pissed at me she was or how much she hated Dean. “No,” I said. “Mel wouldn’t do that.”

  Tears welled in Dean’s eyes. “Someone did!”

  “Not Mel. We’ll figure out who did it, but it wasn’t Mel.”

  Dean was shaking his head and the tears were falling down his cheeks. “We won’t do anything.” He scrubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “I can’t, Dre. I can’t do this.”

  I refused to believe what I was hearing. The words coming out of his mouth weren’t real. Dean was just scared. He didn’t mean any of it. “This is gonna be fine, Dean, I promise. We’ll work it out.” I tried to take his hand, but he yanked it away. “Dean?”

  “We can’t see each other anymore, Andre. I’m sorry. This is the way it has to be.”

  It wasn’t what Dean was saying that finally broke me, it was the way he was saying it. Like I wasn’t the boy he’d been kissing hours earlier, like I was nobody. “Dean . . .”

  “My mother has worked too hard to get here for me to risk ruining her chance.”

  “What about us? What about ruining us?”

  Dean looked right at me, his eyes cold and dry. “There is no us. I’m sorry.” He unlocked the car doors and then turned to look straight ahead.

  Everything collapsed. My life, the world, the whole fucking universe. I don’t remember much about stumbling out of the car or getting into the hotel or into my room.

  I don’t know how long I sobbed into my pillow, but when I finally looked up, my nose was stuffed and my head hurt and I felt sick to my stomach. It was a dream, a nightmare. Dean hadn’t broken up with me. He hadn’t broken my heart. This was all a mistake. He was upset, but I knew if we could talk it out, I could change his mind.

  I got out my phone and opened Promethean, but when I tapped on PrezMamasBoy, the app returned .

  Dean

  MY FATHER HAD prepared linguini with asparagus, mushrooms, and a layer of crispy Parmesan for dinner, to which my mother had invited Nora and her fiancé. It was my favorite meal that my father prepared, but that night it tasted like ash.

  It had been two days since I had broken off my relationship with Dre and deleted my Promethean account, and I hadn’t received any further communications from Pyrogue or anyone else. I hadn’t seen anything on the news either that indicated Pyrogue had leaked what they knew to the press, though I refused to let down my guard.

  Breaking up with Dre had been for the best, even if he hadn’t been able to see it. The obstacles in our way were simply insurmountable. We lived too far from one another, our parents were ideological opposites, and the very act of our being together could have threatened to put a man in the White House who would, as Mindy had succinctly put it, burn the country down. I’d read numerous dire predictions about what kind of country a Jackson McMann presidency could turn the United States into, and I didn’t want to live in any of them. So, yes, it was better this way.

  And, yet, my favorite meal still tasted like ash.

  “How are your college applications coming along, Dean?” asked Patrick. Where Nora was a fierce type-A with a wry sense of humor and the ability to get anything done, her fiancé was a soft-spoken computer analyst who worked for an insurance company.

  “Nearly done. I finished Yale, UPenn, and Stanford this week. I like having options.”

  My mother sat at the head of the table, our stately matriarch. The debate prep for her rematch with McMann and Rosario had been consuming the majority of what little free time she had, but she managed to mask her exhaustion well. “Dean toured Harvard not so long ago.”

  “Do you have any idea what you might study?” Patrick asked.

  “He’s a born politician,” Nora said.

  “That he is,” added my mother. “Just this week he’s been invaluable. He’s got a real way with people.”

  “And you should see him debate.”

  I nodded along, slowly chewing asparagus. It’s not as if anyone actually needed me to speak to be part of the conversation. My mother and Nora were doing just fine on my behalf.

  “Before I forget, Dean,” my mother said. “I need you to try on your tux after dinner.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “But why?”

  My mother and father shared a smile. “I thought you might like to join us at the ball Friday evening.”

  The ball was a fundraiser for the most important contributors to my mother’s campaign. There had been no reason to assume she would want me mingling with the CEOs and conservative celebrities that had donated money to help get her elected.

  “Really?” I asked. “You want me there?”

  My mother nodded. “I thought you could invite Mindy.”

  “Though you don’t have to,” my father quickly added.

  “Of course not. If there’s another young woman you’d liked to bring who has an appropriate dress and knows how to behave, you are more than welcome to bring her.”

  Nora cleared her throat. “If your tux needs alterations, just let me know and I’ll make sure it gets done.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “And I don’t mind taking Mindy.” Which was true. I didn’t have to worry that she was going to develop feelings for me that I didn’t reciprocate, and if the press thought there was more between Mindy and me than there actually was, at least it was a rumor that wouldn’t damage my mother’s chances of winning the election.

  “You’ve been working so hard, and I want you to know how much I appreciate it,” my mother said. “You’re a good boy, Dean.”

  I should have been overjoyed that my mother wanted me at the fundraiser. I should have been honored that she thought I was responsible enough to spend time around her wealthy and famous adult friends. My mother’s approval meant more to me than I wanted to admit. At least, it used to. I didn’t know what it meant to me anymore.

  And my dinner still tasted like ash.

  “I’ve actually been thinking about studying education,” I said. “So that I could teach.”

  I don’t know who had been speaking or what they had been talking about, but the conversation around the table died.

  “What was that, Dean?” Patrick asked.

  At that moment, I could have apologized and told them it was nothing. I could have excused myself from the dinner table and gone to the bathroom to collect myself. I could have even said I’d been joking. Maybe I should have done any one of those things. But I didn’t.

  “I’ve been thinking I might become a teacher. Political science, maybe. Or philosophy.”

  Patrick was the only person at the dinner table who didn’t seem a little shocked by my admission. “Would you teach college?”

  “High school, I think.”

  “Good for you,” Patrick said, and he seemed to genuinely mean it.

  “An undergraduate degree in political science will still get you into law school,” my mother said.

  “And if I don’t want to go to law school? If I want to get master’s and doctorate degrees in philosophy?”

  “I don’t see how—”

  “I’m not you, Mom.”

  My dad coughed. “Who’s ready for dessert? I made tiramisu.”

  “No,” my mother said. “If you were me, you’d be enlisting right after high school so that you could pay for college. You’d be fighting for any opportunity
to provide a better life for you and your family. You’d appreciate all of the advantages you have that I did not. No, you are most certainly not me.”

  “Your mother and I only want what’s best for you, Dean.”

  “What about what I want?”

  Nora turned to Patrick and motioned that they should give my parents and me space, but my mother said, “No, stay. This conversation is over.”

  “I’m not saying I will definitely become a teacher,” I said. “But I would like to know that I have the option.” I wanted to know that I could be someone other than who my mother wanted me to be and that she’d still love and support me. I needed to know.

  “I have no idea what’s gotten into you, Dean, but this is neither the time nor the place for this.” She dabbed at her mouth with her napkin and set it on the table. “Now, you are excused from dinner, and I certainly hope you will be better behaved Friday evening.”

  I scooted my chair back and stood. “Yes, ma’am.” I looked at the others. “Sorry for the disruption.”

  My mother never would have been able to accept me with Dre. She wouldn’t even consider the idea that I might want to do something different with my life than what she expected me to do. No matter what she said about only wanting me to be happy, she didn’t believe I could be happy unless I was following the path she set out for me. And it was a path that would never include Dre or anyone like him.

  I trudged up the stairs and went right to bed, not even caring that I’d missed dessert. It would have tasted like ash anyway.

  Dre

  I’D ONLY BEEN out of school for a few weeks, but I already felt like I didn’t belong anymore. Sitting through classes, it was all I could do to keep my eyes from rolling back in my head. It was more than boredom, though. It was the feeling that I’d already graduated. I’d been out in the world and I’d seen what a shit show it was, and even though I was the one who’d decided to return to school, I felt like I’d outgrown it.

  My parents had been too busy with the election to spend much time wondering why I wanted to go back to school, but I’d told them I was done with the election. No more school visits, no more volunteering, no more happy family photos from the campaign trail. I wanted to go back to my normal life and pretend the rest of it didn’t exist.

  I wasn’t coping with the breakup well. If it was even a breakup. I’m not sure if Dean was actually my boyfriend. I might’ve just been a detour for Dean. An experiment that he’d finished and thrown away. No matter how many times I opened Promethean, Dean’s username was still not found. He had clearly deleted it, and he wasn’t coming back.

  “When’d you go goth?”

  I was sitting alone in the art room, where I sometimes ate lunch and sketched, when Mel walked in, dropped her lunch bag on the table, and sat across from me.

  “When did you even start back to school?”

  “Yesterday.”

  Mel had dyed a strip of her hair aquamarine, and it looked good on her. But I was also still mad, so I kept the compliment to myself.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because we’re not friends anymore, remember?”

  “Of course we are,” she said. “It’s not like this is the first time we’ve had a fight.” Mel unpacked her lunch—a sandwich and some chips.

  “Whatever.” I honestly couldn’t deal with Mel right then, even if she was doing her best to patch things up between us. “Did you tell anyone about me and Dean?”

  Mel threw me one of her Did you really just ask me that stupid question? looks. “Who would I tell? And even if I had someone to tell, you know I wouldn’t, no matter how pissed I was at you. Didn’t we already go over this?” She paused for a moment and then said, “Did someone out your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not my boyfriend,” I said. “He broke up with me.” And then I lost it. Tears welled in my eyes, and I didn’t want to be there anymore. I didn’t want to be anywhere. But if I ran out of the room, someone might see me and people would talk, and I was so fucking over people talking about me.

  And then Mel was beside me, hugging me, and I let the tears run.

  “Do you want me to kill him for you? I’m always down for killing boys who break your heart.”

  I laughed. It was the first time I’d laughed or smiled since Dean had dropped me off. “Maybe another day.”

  Mel handed me a napkin and let me clean myself up before asking me what happened.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We went to his house and we did a lot of stuff.”

  Mel’s eyebrows rose. “Stuff?”

  “Above-the-waist stuff.”

  “Okay.”

  “But then after, he said he’d gotten a message on Promethean from someone who said they knew about our relationship, which shouldn’t have been possible, and that he couldn’t risk it and then he broke up with me. He wouldn’t even discuss it. Just, one second there was an us and the next there wasn’t.”

  Mel held my hand, managing to look both angry and sympathetic. “And that’s why you thought I did it?”

  “You’re the only person who knew.”

  “I still think you’re an asshole for asking,” she said. “I would never. Never. Even if you hadn’t been involved.”

  “I know.”

  “You better, and I’ll pretend you only asked because you were suffering from temporary amnesia caused by traumatic breakup stress.”

  “Sorry.”

  As quickly as Dean had ended our relationship, Mel and I had mended ours. The best friendships don’t need grand gestures or lots of weeping and begging for forgiveness because the best friendships are never really broken, only a little bent for a time.

  “If I’m not the dastardly villain, who else would’ve done it?”

  I shook my head. I’d been asking myself the same thing, but Dean hadn’t shown me the messages, so I had absolutely nothing to go on.

  “And you’re sure no one else knew?”

  “I didn’t tell anyone, and I know Dean didn’t.”

  Mel sighed. “You probably don’t wanna hear this—”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “But maybe this is for the best. If Dean was so quick to give up on you guys, maybe he wasn’t as invested as you thought he was.”

  What Mel was saying made sense, but she was right that I didn’t want to hear it. Besides, Dean might’ve been able to lie about his feelings, but he couldn’t have faked what I felt when he touched me or when he kissed me. That was real.

  “What about Jackson McMann?”

  “What about him?” I asked.

  Mel had her phone out and was searching for something. “I read a couple of days ago about him saying he had this huge bomb to drop, but no one paid it much attention because he also said he had a plan to create a fleet of surveillance drones that would use facial recognition technology and predictive AI over major cities to lower crime. Here!” She handed me her phone.

  I scanned the article and found what Mel was talking about. It was just a line suggesting that McMann had information he was going to reveal that would shock the nation.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “He’s pulled this kind of stunt before.”

  “But he’s got the most to gain,” Mel said. “Tell me Arnault’s voters wouldn’t freak out if they found out about you and Dean. Hell, your dad’s supporters wouldn’t be too happy about it either.”

  Mel might’ve been right, but I didn’t care. “We’re not together anymore, so it doesn’t matter.”

  “But if someone really does have proof you guys were together, they could still go public with it. Don’t you think you should warn Dean?”

  “Warn him about what? This isn’t enough to prove anything.” I handed Mel back her phone and shook my head. “Besides, Dean made his choice. I wanted to face this together. He didn’t.”

  “So that’s it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “That’s it.”

  Dean

  MINDY FLICKED AN olive
that hit me in the nose. I’d expected her to wear something that looked like a prom dress, but instead she was wearing an elegant emerald-green off-the-shoulder gown, and she looked beautiful. We were the youngest people at the event by far, and most of the guests didn’t seem to want to have much to do with us.

  “What is your problem?” she asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “You haven’t said anything all night. Normally, I’d be okay with that, but I’m so bored and I need you to entertain me before I go out there and start ruining marriages for fun.”

  My mother had warned me before we had picked up Mindy that I needed to make certain she didn’t get into any trouble. Aside from that, my mother hadn’t said much else. It was like my little scene at dinner had never happened. Under other circumstances, I would have been embarrassed by my outburst and would have welcomed my mother’s situational amnesia, but I didn’t want her to forget because I couldn’t forget.

  I waved Mindy off. “Do whatever you want.”

  “Problems with Mommy Dearest? Things were a little frosty between you two earlier.”

  “Aside from the fact that my mother only seems to care about me so long as I do exactly what she wants me to do? No, everything’s perfect.”

  Though the fundraiser was being attended by the rich and famous, I felt like I was at a wedding. Tables were arranged around a dance floor, and a string quartet played covers of popular songs that I imagined Nora had selected. The food was forgettable, but there was plenty of alcohol, so no one else seemed to mind. My mother had given a rousing speech, and I’d applauded when, where, and as enthusiastically as I was expected to, but I hadn’t heard a word she’d said.

  “Oh.” Mindy scooted a little closer to me. I’d purposely found an empty table so that I could brood without interruption. “But you’ve always known that about her, right?”

  “I thought . . . I don’t know. I thought she would support me no matter what.”

  “Is this about Dre? Did you tell her?”

  “It’s not about—” I stopped as I fully processed what Mindy had said. “How do you know about that?”