Four
The ringing of my cell phone jarred me out of a heavy sleep. It was Patrick.
“Hey, Trav. What’s up?” He sounded chipper.
“Not me,” I said, groggily. “What’s going on?” I asked with a yawn.
“The other day I said I would take you to school since your car was acting up. Remember?”
“School?” I asked, still in a total haze.
“Yeah, you know, that place we’ve been going 180 days a year for the past twelve years. Excluding sick days, of course.”
I was starting to remember that it was Monday morning and a regular school day. After the trip over the long weekend and Ryan coming over the night before it was like I totally disconnected from normalcy.
“Oh, right,” I said, trying not to sound like I was just waking up from a coma. “Are you on your way?”
“If your front porch is on the way, then yes,” he said.
“Shit. Okay, I’ll be down in, like, two minutes.”
“Wow, you must have had some trip,” he speculated.
“You don’t even know.”
“Sorry,” I said, finally running out the door. My shoes weren’t tied, my shirt was still unbuttoned, my belt was in one hand and my backpack was in the other. Patrick looked at me suspiciously.
“What?” I asked, walking down the porch steps.
“Who are you? You can’t be the Travis I know because that Travis has never overslept or not been on time for anything, ever, as long as I’ve known him.”
“I forgot what day it was,” I said, getting into his car.
“Do you know what year it is? What planet we’re on?”
“I was up later than usual,” I said as he started driving.
“Oh, a hot date, perhaps?”
“No, not really a date. A guy I met came over and worked on my car and then we hung out the rest of the night.”
“The rest of the night, huh?” Patrick said, wryly. “And just how long was he checking your dipstick?”
“Shut up. It wasn’t like that at all.”
“Ah. So do you have the hots for this guy?”
“The hots? What is this, 1985?” I asked, sarcastically.
“So, you don’t know what year it is,” Patrick said.
“He’s just a really nice guy. A really nice, attractive guy with pretty eyes that I met on the bus ride home.” I said.
“Is he into boys?” Patrick asked.
“By some magnificent stroke of incredible luck, yes, he actually is! We started talking about Arpeggio High last night and I kind of hinted around about liking how it has positive gay characters. And I kept hinting until it was pretty clear that I’m gay. So then after a couple minutes I guess he got up the nerve to tell me he thinks he’s bi. I couldn’t believe it! Have you ever had one of those moments when you had to stop and wonder if you were actually dreaming because something so great just happened? I mean, what are the chances?”
“Thinks he’s bi? Is he a newbie?” Patrick asked.
“Oh, yeah. We’re talking total closet case newbie. He said he really has no idea how to get a guy.”
Patrick laughed. “How to get a guy? You use a phone app just like everything else. Even I know that.”
I finished tying my shoes and was now buttoning my shirt.
“For some reason he doesn’t strike me as someone that would be tech savvy with phone apps,” I said. “He seems to have a very simple life. He goes to school and he fixes cars. That’s about it, from what he says.”
“Scintillating,” Patrick said, sarcastically.
“Well, I’m not saying he’s boring. He’s just not materialistic, I think. Anyway, what’s wrong with that? Maybe I have too much crap. Half the stuff I own barely gets used.”
“Well, if that’s how you feel, maybe I should take your iPad off your hands. Trust me, you’ll feel better,” Patrick said.
“Anyway.”
“So when will you be seeing Mister Goodwrench again?”
“I’m not sure. We exchanged numbers and everything but I’m not gonna call him right away. But I have every intention of seeing him again,” I said with a big grin.
“Nice,” Patrick said, pulling into the student parking lot.
“Did you call him yet?” It was the first question that Kate asked. She hadn’t even walked in the door.
“Will you stop asking me that? I’m not calling him today,” I said for the tenth time.
Kate followed me into my house and we went to the kitchen where Patrick was leaning against the counter.
“Don’t let him get away,” Kate said.
“Oh, my god, will you stop already?” It was starting to get on my nerves because, truthfully, I really did want to call Ryan. But I didn’t want to seem overeager. It was only Tuesday, after all.
“Yeah, Kate,” Patrick said. “If Travis wants to let a perfectly good guy get away, that’s his choice, isn’t it, Travis?” he asked, turning toward me.
“You’re such a big help,” I said with a sigh. “So, what are we playing?”
“Spades,” Patrick suggested.
“Gin Rummy,” Kate said.
“Too long and involved,” I said. “How about Blackjack?”
“Fine with me,” Patrick said, sitting backwards on a kitchen chair. Kate sat across from him and I sat in the middle and played dealer.
After a few hands as I was shuffling the cards Kate grabbed them out of my hands.
“We should play for something,” she said.
“Like?” Patrick asked.
Kate dealt the cards, leaving Patrick out of the hand. “If Travis wins,” she said, “I won’t mention another word about this Ryan guy tonight.” I didn’t like where this was going.
“I know there’s a ‘but’ coming so get on with it,” I said.
“But if the house wins, you have to call him and ask him out on a date.” She grinned. “In front of us and on speakerphone.” Her eyes lit up at her fun little plan.
“Ugh. You always do this to me,” I whined.
“This is the first time I’ve ever done this to you,” she said, innocently.
“You know what I mean. You always try to make me do things I don’t want to do. Remember last winter when you made me go ice skating? And I told you a hundred times I didn’t want to go, but I somehow let you talk me into it. How many weeks was my arm in a cast?”
“First of all, I’m hardly to blame for your lack of coordination. Most people try to slow down when they see a wall coming. And second of all, it got you out of gym, didn’t it?”
“That’s not the point,” I said. “It’s like you get some kind of sick joy out of giving me anxiety.”
“Look, you’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t take some risks,” she said.
“She’s right, Travis,” Patrick chimed in. “You’re obviously interested in this guy. What is the big deal in calling him and asking him out? So what if it’s only Tuesday? Maybe he’s sitting home waiting for you to call him.”
“He has my number. He can call me if he wants to,” I pointed out.
“You said yourself that he has no experience with guys and he’s still in the closet. If you’re this nervous to call him, think about how he must feel.”
Patrick always had to be the annoying voice of reason.
“Fine. I’ll do this just to shut you both up,” I said, looking at the cards in front of me. I had a jack and a two. “Hit me,” I groaned.
“Okay,” Kate said. She threw down a king in front of me. It was already over. I lost.
“Best two out of three?” I asked, full well knowing it wasn’t going to work.
Kate and Patrick both shook their heads. I knew when I was beat. I pulled up Ryan’s name in my contacts and pressed the call button and then the speaker button.
One ring.
Two rings.
Three rings.
I started to feel relieved, assuming that if he hadn’t answered by then that he probably wouldn’t
. And I never agreed to leave a voicemail.
During the fourth ring I heard someone say, “Hello?”
Damn it.
“Hi, Ryan?” I could feel the butterflies in my stomach hatching in droves.
“Travis,” I heard him say. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Um, not too much here.” When I am nervous my voice tends to get shaky so I tried my hardest to sound calm. “Listen, I was wondering if maybe you wanted to, um, we could, like, go out and grab dinner or something, sometime.” I hoped what I just said made sense. Patrick and Kate were watching me trip over my words and I felt what little confidence I had start to slip away.
“You mean like, out? Like a – a date?” Ryan asked, sounding uncertain.
“Yeah, a date,” I affirmed.
After what seemed like an eternal silence he finally said, “You know, I never went on a, you know, date with a dude before. It might be weird.”
Now I was moving from nervousness right into embarrassment.
“Okay, well, then maybe we could hang out again some other time,” I said, feeling deflated.
“Well, hang on there,” Ryan said, “I didn’t say I didn’t want to go on a, you know, date. It would just be a little different for me.”
All hope wasn’t lost! I felt a tiny bit relieved.
“So, then, you do want to go?” I asked.
“I guess I gotta start sometime, right?” He chuckled.
“I guess you do,” I agreed, with that small bit of confidence reemerging. “How about Thursday night?”
“Thursday it is,” he said.
“Alright. So, how about if we get something to eat and then come back to my house after? We can watch Arpeggio.” It was a lucky coincidence that our date would be the same day of the week Arpeggio High was on.
“Okay, that sounds good, Travis. I’ll see you Thursday, then.”
“Yeah, see you Thursday,” I repeated. I pressed the ‘end call’ button on my phone.
“Don’t,” I said to Kate and Patrick, knowing they would be quick to point out how right they were about how calling Ryan was a good idea. They did it anyway.
Lucky Page 4