Lucky

by Evan T. Apollo

Eight

  Dad left early Sunday to go back to Chicago, this time driving his car out instead of flying. Suddenly it all started to feel real. This wasn’t going to be his home anymore. Now he would be living in Illinois and his trips to New Jersey would be short visits.

  I spent much of the day in front of the television watching movies, only taking short breaks to pee or find something new to eat. During one of the apparently 900 Harry Potter films, I heard my phone chime with a new text message. I saw it was from Ryan, and almost dropped my phone into my bag of extra butter flavor popcorn.

  It said, “Hey. Sorry I’ve been MIA the past few days. Needed time to think.”

  I replied, “I understand. How are you?”

  He said, “I’m fine. Can we meet up and talk for a few?”

  Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. This had ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ written all over it.

  We agreed to meet at the park near his house a half hour later. While I really didn’t know what Ryan had wanted to talk about, I was sure this would be the end for us. In a weird way, I already had assumed this was where things were going, so maybe we were better off getting the conversation out of the way.

  I grabbed Ryan’s jacket and drove to the park.

  It was cold and the park was empty except for Ryan, who was already there and sitting on a bench facing the swings. As I made my way over to where he was, I was feeling surprisingly calm.

  “Hey,” he said, looking up at me from under an old baseball cap.

  “What’s up?” I asked. “Here’s your jacket,” I said, handing it to him.

  “Thanks,” he said, and then stood up. “I don’t know exactly how to start this conversation,” he said. As much as I’d prepared myself to endure what was coming, my heart still sank.

  It was hard to look him in the eye. “Go ahead,” I said. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  “I just,” he started and then paused. “Look, I’m probably going to come off as a total asshole, and I’m sorry because I really do like you,” he said, keeping his voice low, “but I’m really nervous going out with a guy. I am so not ready for people to know that I’m, you know, bi, or whatever.”

  “No one has to know,” I said.

  “What if people see us?” he asked, sitting on a swing.

  “Well, Ryan, guys hang out all the time. It doesn’t make them gay. It just makes them friends. I hang out with Patrick all the time. We’re not dating, and no one assumes we are.” I had a feeling my arguments were futile. I sat in the swing to his right. “It feels like the more time goes by, the less okay you are with this.”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking about it so much in the beginning. But after hanging out a few times, I started thinking about it more seriously. Like, what does it mean to be dating a guy? Dating leads to relationships. And then you brought up marriage and all that. I don’t know if I’m ready for any of this. Aren’t you scared about being in, like, a for real relationship with a guy?”

  “Are you kidding? I’ve never wanted anything else,” I answered honestly.

  Dusk had fallen, but I could still see the gloomy look on his face clear as day. “Well, maybe I’ll feel that way one day,” he said. “But I don’t think now is the right time.”

  This is it, I thought.

  “Are you saying that because you don’t want to be in a relationship? Or because you don’t want to be in a relationship with a guy?” I asked.

  He drew in a breath as if he was about to answer, but said nothing.

  “Look, I’m not out to the world,” I explained. “A couple of my friends know about me and that’s it. But that doesn’t mean I want to go through life alone.”

  “It’s more complicated than that,” he said. “You have to lie to people. You have to pretend your boyfriend is just a friend, nobody special. You have to dodge people asking you why you’ve never dated a girl. You can’t just go around riding on buses and reading gay things. They’ll know.”

  Oh, boy. Maybe this was worse than I thought. “So what if someone on the bus knows that I’m gay? I don’t know them. They don’t know me. Who cares?”

  “What if that someone hates gay people?” he asked.

  “Then they’ll move. Are you really that afraid?” He didn’t answer. “And what if it’s someone nice and good looking who you happen to make a connection with that wouldn’t have happened if they had no idea you might be gay?” I was sure this would get a response. I was wrong.

  We sat in silence for a long time, neither of us knowing what to say next. How could breaking up with someone you’ve barely dated be so difficult? That was what we were doing, right? Breaking up? This was obviously not going to work.

  “I need to go,” I said, finally, almost tripping as I got off the swing.

  “I’m sorry, Travis. I didn’t expect this all to be so hard.”

  I knew I had driven home because I was in my car when I got to me house, but my thoughts were so far away I didn’t even remember the drive back.

  As prepared as I thought I was for this break up, or whatever it was, I couldn’t help feeling like I was losing someone really special. Ryan was so incredibly different than the other guys I had dated. I hadn’t met him on a pervy internet site or dating app. He wasn’t cocky or arrogant. He wasn’t self-obsessed and he didn’t turn our date into a show and tell for all his talents, accomplishments, and money. He was a regular guy, who lived a simple life. That is, until I came along and shook things up.

  I opened the refrigerator and picked up a nearly full bottle of wine dad had opened some time over the weekend. I held it in my hand for a moment, weighing the options. I wanted to down the whole thing and forget about all the people and all the problems bothering me. The rational part of my brain reminded me that tomorrow was a school day and that I would be in bad shape if I got shit-faced before going to bed.

  I put the bottle back onto the shelf on the door of the fridge, closed it, and headed upstairs to bed. Being awake was only making me feel worse.

  It wasn’t until I was on my way to study hall the next day that I finally ran into Kate.

  “I saw Ryan last night,” I said, following her toward the east end of the building, even though we had passed 118, which was where I should have been going.

  “Yeah? How’d it go?” she asked lightly.

  “Awful. He never wants to see me again,” I said plainly.

  Kate stopped in her tracks and looked at me. “He said that?”

  “I’m paraphrasing,” I said. People were rushing past us with less than a minute to get to their assigned classes.

  “What happened?” she asked, now sounding sympathetic.

  “Well, we went to the park and talked. He’s kind of spooked about the gay thing and thinks it’s a bad time to get into a relationship.” It was weird how easily I boiled our entire conversation down to a couple of sentences. It felt so much more complicated than it sounded coming out of my mouth.

  “That really sucks,” she said. Duh. “At least he told you now instead of leading you on. Guys can be assholes like that. I ought to know.” She began walking again, almost at her class.

  “Yeah,” I agreed.

  “I really am sorry that it didn’t work out. We’ll talk after school. I’ll call you,” she said, disappearing into her classroom. I turned around and slowly walked toward my study hall, not caring that I would be late.

  Why was this so hard for me? Was he really that special, or was I just delusional? We didn’t do anything earth shattering. We had a couple of meals (some good, some not so much) and watched television. What the hell was so special about that?

  But it was special.

  “Travis. Travis. Hey, Travis!”

  I looked to see that it was Rich who was whisper-yelling to me.

  “Are you okay, dude? You seem kind of out of it,” he said.

  Yeah, I’m just great, Rich. My whole life is just one big happy freaking party. You see, first of all, I’m a big homo,
and second, I’ve been dating this super cute boy. He has an amazing ass. You should see it. Well, it turned into an epic failure because he’s scared of liking boys, and I didn’t even get to first base. Your thoughts?

  “I’m okay. Just didn’t get enough sleep, I guess.” It was true enough as I’d woken up halfway through the night and ended up replaying the events of my evening on a relentless loop.

  “Oh, that sucks,” he said. You don’t know how much, I thought. “Hey, so for Spanish, are we supposed to just read unit five? Or are we supposed to do the end of unit quiz, too?”

  “Um, I’m pretty sure she just said to read it,” I said.

  “Cool. By the way, did you know that the Spanish word for dick is pinga?”

  It wouldn’t be a conversation with Rich without him coming out with something totally ridiculous.

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll try to work it into my next Spanish essay.”

  “Dude, that would be effin hilarious,” Rich said, slapping my arm. “Hey, I gotta take a leak. See you later.”

  Since I was exhausted, I put my head down for the remainder of study hall and when the bell rang I discovered I’d been drooling on my arm. Classy.

  The rest of the week was relatively monotonous. My acute disappointment for Ryan was starting to subside into unpleasant memories. I mostly was keeping to myself and spending my time studying for several upcoming tests I’d be taking before winter break.

  I opted not to spend too much time with Kate and Patrick during this period, as I felt I needed to be alone to get my head in order. I did eventually tell Patrick of the conversation Ryan and I had at the park, much in the same condensed, glossing over the painful details way I did with Kate.

  Saturday afternoon I went to grab a couple slices of pizza for lunch and ran into Rich at the pizza restaurant and we wound up eating lunch together.

  “So, what new and exciting things are happening in your life?” he asked, as we both sat with our pizza slices.

  “Not a whole lot,” I said, which was obviously untrue if you’ve been keeping track at all.

  “You’ve been sort of quiet lately at school,” he said. “More than usual.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I guess my change in demeanor had been more noticeable than I realized. I was never loud and outgoing at school; that was much more a part of Rich’s skillset. He fell somewhere between the athletes and class clowns. Somehow, I kind of managed to avoid being pigeonholed in any particular group at school. I wasn’t geeky enough to be a geek. I wasn’t nerdy enough to be a nerd. I wasn’t athletic enough to run with the jocks. I was sort of a free agent, and I liked it that way.

  “Then there must be something going on,” he continued. He obviously noticed I’d been acting differently this past week, but I couldn’t very well tell him any part of the Ryan saga without outing myself and so everything to do with Ryan was off limits. I did, however, have one item of concern that I could freely discuss, so I went with that.

  “Things have been a little weird at home recently,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  “My dad is pretty much going to be living in Chicago now for work and he’s letting me stay here to finish high school,” I said.

  “Isn’t that a good thing?” he asked.

  “The being alone part doesn’t bother me as much cause I’m kind of used to it,” I explained. “It’s what comes after.”

  “What comes after?”

  “I go to college. He probably sells the house. I won’t have a home here anymore.”

  “Oh, yeah, that does kind of suck. Wait, so you’re living alone? Where’s your mom?”

  I briefly filled him in on the divorce and mom moving to New York.

  “So, you’re seriously living by yourself? Man, I would kill for that,” he said.

  “You’d be surprised how empty an empty house feels,” I told him, taking a sip of the fountain beverage from my paper cup.

  “Then you need to start having some parties,” he said, sounding excited. “We should plan something epic, dude.” He thrust his palms up at the ceiling, the international raise-the-roof sign.

  “No one does that anymore,” I said, and he put his hands down.

  “You’re no fun,” he said.

  “Anyway,” I continued, “I can’t screw up while my dad is away because then he won’t trust me to be by myself, and since he’s not coming back here, I would probably have to go there.”

  “And you don’t want to,” he added.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, at least have some company over. You know, a little female interaction never hurt,” he said.

  I was really getting tired of having to deflect comments like those. I flashed back on the conversation I had in the park with Ryan, where he pointed out the hassle of having to lie to people to stay in the closet. Maybe he was right. It was starting to get old. But at this point, it was as much as I could handle. I wasn’t offended, after all. Rich didn’t know I wasn’t into girls. In general, the straight teenage male brain was only equipped to think about three things: cars, games, and girls. In his head it was a perfectly logical suggestion. With so much practice, I’d become a master at redirecting these queries to get the attention off of me realistically dating a female.

  “Actually, I was thinking of starting a prostitution ring out of my house,” I said.

  His eyes got wide. “That would be awesome! You could wear one of those giant purple hats with the big feather.”

  “I ordered one from Pimps R Us yesterday,” I said.

  “And there’s gonna be discounts for your friends, right?” he asked, pointing at himself.

  “Of course,” I said. “You’ll get a VIP card and everything.” This conversation was starting to get ridiculous, but the sad truth was that it was actually the most fun I had all week.

  “VIP?” he asked. “That means I get something extra,” he proclaimed.

  “You sure do,” I said, making a fist and twisting it upwards in the air. He scrunched up his face at this.

  “Never mind.”

  After finishing lunch, we went our separate ways. I really had enjoyed running into Rich. It was odd, hanging out with him outside of school. As friendly as we were, I never saw him outside of school or a school event. I found it difficult to make the transition as I got older from friends at school to having an actual person you got close to and did stuff with on your own time. It was easy in elementary school. You could just walk up to any random kid and say, “Let’s be friends. Wanna play in the sandbox?” That approach wouldn’t go over very well in high school.