Night Rides

by Travis Brightfield

  Griffin read insatiably, just to find snippets of text to message to Charlie. And Charlie, in turn, replied with clips and screenshots of films with hand-drawn annotations scrawled over them.

  This one reminds me of their beach, one message read. Griffin didn’t need to ask who he was referring to. The beach in Dip, home to budding adolescent love, occupied his mind as well.

  When they drove at night – now graduated further to the main streets and roads of their town – they theorized about romance and love, or at least their distant, foreign concepts as presented in the narratives they consumed.

  It was much easier that way – to speak in parable and puppets. To muse on the bubbling desire embodied in a sequence of ocean waves cut between the furtive glances of two strangers. To wonder about an author’s intentions when she described a friendship as ‘loving, tender, and everlasting’. To read words aloud to one another pretending they spoke of characters and not each other.

  Their language was a dance of meanings and intents. Every line, every shot, every ruminating thought was both a notch towards their project and a flirtatious taunt – daring the other to be the first to lift the thinning veil. For every step forward, a mirrored step back. And in that way, they danced happily together.

  But it wasn’t long before the music stopped, and one misstep sent them toppling to the ground.

  Griffin only wished it hadn’t come so soon.

  9

  “Why doesn’t your mom want you driving, anyway?”

  Charlie didn’t look up from the laptop he was working on in the passenger seat. They’d been driving together for a couple of months now, and Charlie had recently told Griffin that he was as good a driver as anyone he knew (excluding highways, which they hadn’t broached) – so Charlie had taken to bringing his laptop and watching clips or editing their project presentation as Griffin drove around.

  Charlie hadn’t noticed Griffin tense up at the question.

  “She’s just overprotective,” he answered flatly. That piqued Charlie’s interest. He closed the laptop.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” he asked softly. It was a request, not a demand.

  “Nothing,” Griffin replied – more flatly, if that was even possible.

  Charlie just said okay, and opened the laptop again. Griffin could see in his periphery that Charlie was just staring at it, no longer working. A few moments later, he closed it again.

  “You don’t have to tell me, of course,” he said. “But I just want you to know that you can. You can tell me anything, Griffin.”

  The car slowed a half-tick, in the way it might if your foot was slowly lifting off the accelerator absentmindedly.

  “Hey, want to pull-over for a minute?” Charlie asked. A request again. Soft, and kind, and empathetic.

  Griffin nodded and pulled off to the shoulder. They were out about a mile from Griffin’s house on a back road that cut through a dense thicket of trees. There were no street lights, so when he shut the engine off the world around them disappeared into darkness.

  They both sat silently in the dark for a minute. When Griffin turned towards Charlie, he was glad to find that his eyes had adjusted just enough to make his face out in the dim haze of moonlight.

  Charlie’s eyes were focused, attentive. But his shoulders were slack, and his mouth a slight, sympathetic half-smile. It was exactly the kind of warm, open posture that promised safety and invited honesty.

  Griffin exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding in.

  “I have a brother,” Griffin said. “Leon, he studies computer engineering at State.” He knew it was important that he started with that. He has a brother. Present tense. Any other opener was unnecessarily dramatic. He didn’t want to leave Charlie in suspense.

  “He was in a really bad car accident a few years ago,” Griffin continued. “He was hurt, bad. He can’t walk anymore.”

  Charlie cooed tenderly.

  “It was his fault. He was distracted.”

  Charlie nodded like he recognized the weight that carried.

  “Was anyone else hurt?” Charlie asked.

  “Not as bad. There was another car, but they all recovered eventually.”

  “Does it bother you? Driving?”

  Griffin thought about that for a moment. He had inherited a certain level of stress at the idea of driving from his mother, who still blamed herself for Leon’s injuries. For the course of his life, forever altered. It was the reason why he hadn’t really sought out an opportunity to learn until Charlie offered. And then something else had started competing with that stress: nervous excitement.

  Griffin shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so. You’re a natural,” Charlie said, his half-smile expanding into a broad grin.

  “Besides,” he continued, “the outcome could have been a lot worse than studying computer engineering at State.”

  Griffin smiled, “Tell that to my mom.”

  “She’s scared for you. I can understand that,” Charlie said. He shifted in his seat and turned to look out the windshield. Griffin did the same. Their eyes had adjusted enough to make out shapes and shadows in the dark wooded road ahead of them.

  “But the truth is,” he started again, “a lot of people can’t walk. For a lot of different reasons. Their lives aren’t better or worse for it – just different.”

  The trees swayed slightly in an unseen night breeze. In the dark, it looked like the night was buzzing. Like some dark static was creeping in on the picture in front of them.

  “I think…” Griffin began, but trailed off. Charlie turned back to face Griffin, but Griffin kept staring ahead. He didn’t think he could handle Charlie’s full gaze at the moment.

  Griffin swallowed and tried again. “I think my mom still hasn’t gotten over the life she imagined for my brother. Leon didn’t die. But her idea of him did.”

  They were both silent. Griffin listened for Charlie’s breathing, which filled the car – and the silence – with warmth and life. He listened, too, for the distant chirping of crickets in the treeline beyond the car. The dark static that surrounded them was full of life as well.

  “I worry about doing that to her again,” Griffin said.

  “With driving?” Charlie asked.

  Griffin shook his head. Charlie shifted in his seat,

  “With... coming out,” Griffin said hesitantly.

  He heard a slow, controlled inhale from Charlie.

  “I’m gay,” Griffin said. He let it fill the tight space of the car.

  After a moment, he continued. “And I really, really like you, Charlie.”

  Griffin turned to face him. It was easier now that he’d gotten the words out.

  Charlie was staring at him with those same open, empathetic eyes from before. The half-smile was back on his face. He was leaning back up against the corner where his seat met the passenger door. He reached out with a hand and touched Griffin’s shoulder lightly.

  “Thank you for telling me,” Charlie said. It came out weakly.

  Griffin’s heart dropped into his stomach. “Do you… have anything you want to tell me?”

  Charlie squeezed his shoulder. “You’re a good friend, and this doesn’t change anything between us.”

  “Oh, God.” Griffin pulled away from Charlie’s hand. “Oh, shit.”

  This wasn’t the reply that Griffin had been expecting.

  His head was buzzing now, as if that dark static at the tree line had invaded his skull.

  He stammered out an apology and pulled on the driver-side door handle, practically spilling out of the car as he unhooked himself from his seatbelt.

  He heard Charlie say something, but the sound hung untranslated in his brain. He started walking down the street in the dark.

  He heard a car door open behind him, and the sound of two feet landing on grass. He broke out into a run.

  He heard his name a few times. The quickening pace of two feet on grass trailing behind him, and then pausi
ng before doubling back. He heard a car door slam.

  Griffin was still running down the dim, dark road when the world burst into light ahead of him. Headlights, from behind him. He didn’t slow down.

  “Griffin!” Charlie shouted from the car. He pulled up alongside Griffin, who pretended not to hear.

  “I think you’re overreacting. You have nothing to feel weird about.”

  Griffin stopped in his tracks. Charlie, not expecting that, rolled past him before stopping and backing up to Griffin’s position.

  Griffin leaned down to look through the car window. “Are you gay, Charlie?”

  Charlie opened his mouth, then shut it again. He chewed on his bottom lip for a moment. “I don’t know.”

  “Okay, well, do you like me?” Griffin’s voice was frustrated. Something in him felt betrayed, like he’d been handed a bad translation book as a prank. But this was quickly becoming an interrogation, and he knew that wasn’t right either.

  Charlie’s mouth hung open as he shrugged his shoulders in consternation. “I don’t know.”

  Griffin stared at the ground.

  “Is that okay? That I don’t know?” Charlie asked.

  Griffin moved dirt around with the toe of a shoe.

  “I know I like being friends with you. And partners,” Charlie said softly.

  Griffin looked up. “Even if I have a big, dumb, stupid crush on you?”

  Charlie smiled. “Even if.”

  Charlie reached across from the driver’s seat and pushed the passenger door open towards Griffin. He looked at the open door for a moment, then closed it gently. “I’m gonna walk home.”

  “It’s pitch-dark, and we’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “That’s not true, my house isn’t that far.” Griffin resumed looking at the ground.

  “I’m not letting you walk home alone in the dark from here,” Charlie said, opening the passenger door again a few inches. “At least let me drop you off closer. We… don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

  Griffin looked out at the street ahead of them, illuminated by the headlights of Charlie’s car. Somehow it looked more menacing in the light. You could see all the jagged shadows of the trees, where before there was only the comforting uniformity of black.

  He pulled the door open and slid into the passenger seat without saying anything. He buckled his seat belt and stared straight ahead out the windshield.

  Charlie’s mouth opened and then closed again. He turned to face the road ahead and shifted the car into drive.

  It was a short, silent ride.

  When they were a few blocks away from Griffin’s house he asked to get out, and Charlie obliged.

  “Text me when you get home,” Charlie said.

  Griffin didn’t respond. He shut the door behind him and started walking down the street towards home. Charlie stayed in that spot on the street, watching Griffin disappear around the corner onto the next block.

  He shut his headlights off and slowly rolled up to the corner where Griffin had turned. He waited, watching Griffin under the dim light of the moon and the yellowing lamplights until he made it to the end of the street, turning onto the final block where his house was.

  Charlie sat at that corner a while longer, staring down the dark, empty street. He gripped the steering wheel tightly, listening to the car’s quiet, soothing hum.

  When he imagined enough time had passed for Griffin to make it home, he turned down the street – lights still off – and made a pass by his house. There was a light on in his bedroom – the one that always turned off just before Griffin tiptoed his way out of the front door.

  Charlie looked at his phone. No messages.

  At the end of the street, he clicked his headlights back on and took the long way back home.

  10

  Griffin lay on his bed looking up at the ceiling. He could still hear the crickets from the woods buzzing in his head. He could still feel that dark static clouding his mind.

  He wished he could rewind time to an hour ago. He wished he had just kept up the subtle dance.

  He knew Charlie meant well when he said that the confession wouldn’t change anything between them. But there was no unscrambling that egg. There was no more room for subtext anymore. There could be no innocent, plausibly-deniable flirting. Griffin could no longer speak freely in that unspoken way, because he’d made the mistake of opening his mouth and letting the words come out.

  And Charlie had feigned ignorance, as if Griffin had been having a one-way conversation these past few weeks.

  Or Charlie just wasn’t ready – Griffin could understand that. And I don’t know was better than outright no.

  At least, that’s what Griffin told himself. In truth, it felt like the difference between being punched or kicked.

  There was no way he could face Charlie like this. No way he could get in that car again, that tight space that closed them in together with the whole world on the other side of the metal and glass. No way he could get up in front of their English class and deliver a presentation on everything they’d learned about romance.

  Griffin only needed one slide to tell that story. Two words: It sucks.

  At least he didn’t have to worry about getting caught sneaking out anymore. His driving days were over. He wouldn’t be getting behind the wheel for a long time.

  It used to be that when he’d get stressed, Griffin would turn to his favorite books for comfort. When he’d get sick at the suffocating feeling of an unrequited crush – Charlie wasn’t his first, just the deepest and most real – he’d turn to Dip.

  That was ruined now. He’d shared every one of his favorite books with Charlie. He couldn’t open them anymore.

  He focused on the sound of those crickets. He was certain he couldn’t really hear them – just the echoes etched into his mind, like whispers you could feel on the back of your neck.

  There was a knock at his door.

  He bolted upright on the edge of his bed. Charlie, he thought.

  The door handle turned, and his heart picked up its pace.

  His mom popped her head in.

  He deflated and cursed at himself for getting his hopes up.

  “Everything okay in here?” she asked.

  Griffin didn’t respond. She opened the door and stepped in.

  “I heard you come in,” she said. She sat down next to him on the bed.

  Griffin wasn’t sure what to say, so he said nothing.

  “Why didn’t your friend drop you off?”

  His stomach sank.

  But her voice was gentle, not accusatory. She put a hand on his back, rubbing in a soothing circular motion.

  “I know you've been going out at night. I’m not that old, and not that deaf,” She said with a slight humor to her voice.

  “Did something happen tonight?”