She knew something had happened to cause that shift, and she was going to keep pretending to be my friend until she teased it out of me.
Well, let her pretend, then.
“Alright, come on,” I said, sliding off the bleachers.
She trailed along behind me, then shot a glance across the field.
Julie gave a princess wave and a big, broad smile to her brother.
I smirked a little too, and gave him a stiff wave.
Kyle looked over at us. His eyebrows came together, and his mouth came open a bit.
The the soccer ball flew out fo nowhere and smacked him on the head.
“Oh, shit!” Julie cried. “Kiki, you okay?!”
Another dude on the team said, “Kiki?! What—is that what you call him?”
I shot a glance at Kyle who’d crumpled to the ground.
Then time seemed to slow down:
I saw his teammate’s face change as he connected the dots between those Drake lyrics, Kiki, do you love me, and Kyle. I could see him branding a new nickname on Kyle’s ass. Therefore, the whole team was about to brand that nickname on Kyle’s ass.
(Kyle’s ass. His perfect ass with that dimple in the side.)
(That dimple I kissed.)
Focus.
From the way Julie cupped her hands over her mouth, it was clear that Kyle wouldn’t be too pleased with that name.
His teammate turned like he was about to trumpet Kiki, do you love me to the team.
I could see it happening.
I could see Kyle tormented for months by this annoyance.
And I was already in a pissed off mood, and I didn’t quite understand why.
There was no time to think or calculate or strategize.
Just like Saturday night in the hallway, there was only time to act.
So I lunged onto the filed; crossed that white line like it was nothing, and tackled the guy to the ground.
“Dude, what the fuck?!” he cried.
I scrambled off him, brushing the grass off of my pants. There was no way these acid-green stains were coming out of this red fabric…
But captain dude-bro was already storming me, nostrils flaring with humiliation. Then he stopped in his tracks when he saw who I was.
My heart sank. Guys always stepped in their tracks when they saw who I was, because of the rumors.
They served me well most of the time; helped me avoid pointless fights.
But sometimes, I wanted a pointless fight.
This was one of those times.
So I straightened my sleeve, stepped forward, and threw a punch across the guy’s face.
6
Kyle
“Phil! What the fuck are you doing?!” I cried from the ground.
My neck throbbed—the ball must’ve hit at the wrong angle and pulled a muscle or something.
Coach bellowed in the distance, tearing across the field.
I couldn’t get up fast enough to intervene, but all I saw was Phil throw a punch at Arthur.
It connected with his jaw.
I cringed with empathy, but I couldn’t help but feel a secret, delicious sense of satisfaction that someone finally punched that kid in the face.
He was the token asshole on the team that everyone hated, but we let him hang out with us anyway. Despite how many racist jokes he cracked, how many times he called the guys faggots, he was just… there.
Arthur was our Cartman.
Still, though, it was nice to see him punched in the face.
And the look of pure, absolute fury on Phil’s face. It was so…
So…
It made me feel something in the realm of pride.
Coach appears on the left. “What the hell is going on here?”
Phil looked at him casually, like Coach was nothing more than an annoying gnat. That aloof look was back in place.
I frowned, and then had to wonder to myself why I liked it better when Phil looked furious.
“Baron! Explain yourself!” Coach bellowed.
Phil tugged his sleeves back in place and eyed a wrinkle that had appeared near the elbow. He said to it, “Arthur Kipburn called me a slur, sir.”
“A slur?!” Coach bellowed.
“That’s bullshit!” Arthur bellowed from the ground, clutching the side of his pretty-boy face. “I didn’t say anything to that faggot!”
“That’s it! Get off my field, Kipburn!” Coach bellowed.
“But—”
“Intolerance is not tolerated at Shady Grove!”
Arthur rose to his feet, stumbling a little.
I felt a pang of empathy, wondering if he rolled his ankle on the way down or something. He took two steps toward the bench, muttering to himself, then turned to Phil and spat, “You’re such a fucking disappointment shit stain, Phil Baron. Everyone knows your secret.”
“Sue me,” Phil deadpanned.
“Kipburn! Bench! Now!” Coach shouted.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m going,” Arthur said, still pressing his hand to the side of his face. Then Arthur cupped his hand around his mouth and said, “Everyone knows Phil’s Dad’s in the fucking hillbilly mafia!”
Everyone on the field erupted in laughter, including myself—not because it was funny. Not because any part of it was true. But because the accusation was so ridiculous.
But when my eyes slid over to Phil, I noticed he wasn’t laughing.
No; he watched the field expressionless, as if he was in the midst of plotting all of our deaths.
Then my gaze dropped to his hand and eyed his clenched fist.
Shit. Shit.
I stopped laughing.
He locked eyes with me, his aloof mask back on.
I searched for that vulnerability—that moment we shared on Saturday when he straddled me.
But there was nothing.
His eyes looked dead.
Then without another word, he turned and walked away, my sister following in his wake.
I narrowed my eyes.
Later that night, I paced around our luxury kitchen. Slate-colored, modern cabinets towered around me, and the walls boasted more art from a foreign country. Mom had decked out the kitchen with things from an East Africa tribe, I think. Yoruba? I think she mentioned it was Yoruba… Anyway. It meant that there were statues attached to the walls that looked like things a creepy little kid would make. Faces and vases and carvings and little chests. But sitting in the center of the island was my favorite thing in the whole house—the Chiwara. It was a bronze sculpture of a stylized antelope. A fruit bowl filled with bright red apples sat at its base; offerings for the fertility god.
For some reason, I started humming Make Damn Sure by Taking Back Sunday.
You’ve got this new head filled up with smoke…
Smoke. Was he talking about weed, or head in the clouds, or what?
High. High on… something.
I thought of inhaling Phil’s scent when we were in my bed on Saturday. How he smelled like… like… like something wise. Wise and sharp, something that could cut you if you mishandled it. Or perhaps that’s just the part of him that had been imprinted in my head from my experiences with him…
I couldn’t pinpoint his scent, but being unable to figure out what it was started to bother me. Plus, it was more interesting than the paper I was supposed to be writing…
Then it came to me:
Diamonds. If diamonds had a scent, that’s the scent that came out of Phil’s pores.
And as soon as I labeled it like that, it was like the scent swirled into my nostrils, all fresh and clean and clear and cutting—
“Hello, Kyle.”
I whirled around.
There in the entryway to the kitchen, stood Phil.
He leaned against the wall and fixed me with a half-smile.
Something twisted in my gut. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant. “What are you doing here?”
I meant it to come out as an accusation, but my voice had taken on a curious soft
ness to the edges.
“I hope I’m not intruding on anything,” he said with a gesture.
I closed my laptop and set my pencil down.
It rolled toward the Chiwara.
“Not at all. You can come over any time you want,” I said. “It’s always been that way.”
He flashed me that half-smile again and took the stool closest to the door.
The one furthest from me.
“I can’t tell if you’re kidding.”
“Of course I’m not kidding,” I said. “You’re always welcome here.”
He looked down at his hands.
I noticed his fingernails were short—very short. Some even had a little crescent of rust-color on the tips—
He caught me staring and put his hands on his lap, under the lip of the island.
“Why are you here, Phil?” I asked.
“He cuts straight to the point. I like it,” he said. Then his expression darkened. “You know why I’m here.”
“To talk about Saturday?”
“We can talk about Saturday if you want,” he said. Then he looked around, as if he might see my parents pop out from the walls.
“They’re in Fiji. Or Bali. Or Guam. Fuck, I don’t know,” I said, running my hand through my hair.
I expected Phil to grab my wrist and stop my hand, but I didn’t know where that expectation came from.
“So you’re home alone?” he asked. “Do we have privacy?”
“I don’t want to hook up again, if that’s what you’re getting at,” I said.
“That isn’t my goal for tonight—”
“Goals! Always… fucking goals with you, Phil!” I cried.
He went quiet.
“Don’t you ever… do anything with your heart? Do you weigh your chances on what you have to gain with every single thing?! Is anything with you genuine—anything at all?!”
“When I punched that fuckhead on your team today, that was spontaneous,” he deadpanned.
But I caught a flutter of movement under the lip of the island.
He was picking his nail.
My eyes returned to his, dark and glittering with secrets. Then I asked, “What was that all about?”
He looked down and his dark eyelashes flicked around. “I didn’t like… I could see him… never mind. It’s not important.”
“If it made you lose your cool, if it made you drop all of this bullshit for once—” I gestured to all of him—“It must’ve been significant. Just be honest with me for once, Phil. You have nothing to gain here.”
“Oh, but I do,” he said.
I cocked my head back and laughed. “Oh, and what’s that? My heart?”
“Yes.”
My mouth dropped open. “Wait, what?”
He tilted his head and laid his eyes on me, looking bored out of his mind. “I’ve decided that yes, I want to be with you.”
“What?! Phil, are you drunk?”
“I’ve never been more sober in my life,” he said quietly.
I cast my eyes upward. “Julie’s home—”
“Julie’s at her friend’s house tonight. We discussed it.”
“Wait! But… but I thought you and Julie—?!”
“No,” Phil said, propping his head on his hand and fixing me with an intense stare. “I never wanted Julie. Not really. Kyle, let me explain… a little bit about how I work.”
“You sound like the most pretentious ass in the world right now, you know that?”
A humorless smile crossed his face. “Probably. Thank you for calling me out on it.” He paused, blinked a few times, then continued. “I went after Julie at first because I thought I wanted her. But like, I didn’t even consciously know why I wanted to get close to her. I told myself it was because it would piss you off; you made her off-limits and everything. All throughout growing up, you made it clear that I couldn’t have her. So then, when everything happened…”
“With the barn,” I said.
It wasn’t a question.
Phil nodded. “When that happened and we… dealt with it in different ways, I wanted to be close to you again. I missed our friendship.”
“We were still friends, asshat. We’ve been friends this whole time.”
“It’s been different and you know it.”
A long silence stretched between us.
I reached over and grabbed my pencil from the base of the Chiwara. The antelope watched me with its blank brass eye.
“People change,” I said. “They grow up. They grow out of—”
“Grow out of what, Kyle?”
I gritted my teeth and looked down. I didn’t have the guts to say the words I wanted to say; needed to say.
“You’ve been pretending,” Phil said. “I didn’t know what it meant on Saturday when we hooked up. The meaning behind your eyes. But I’ve thought about it for the past few days, and I think I’ve figured it out.”
“Not everything has to have meaning,” I said, resting my elbow on my computer. I knew the writing assignment about the meaning of hell was waiting for me inside…
“Everything has meaning,” Phil said. “Tell me you didn’t feel something on Saturday. Look me in the eye and tell me it didn’t have meaning, Kyle.”
I looked up at him, and was surprised—and delighted—to find that he’d dropped the aloof expression. He looked real.
He was being genuine with me.
For once.
He bit his lip, and it was so fucking adorable—I had to hold myself back from kissing him. But that would have been avoiding the subject.
“It had meaning,” I finally said. “I feel like… like you saw me. Naked.”
The corner of Phil’s lip quirked, and I knew he felt the temptation to take the bait. To make light of all of this and tell me that yes, we were naked.
But that would have been circling around the surface of what we were talking about. He respected our connection too much to want to float back to the surface.
Because now? We shared a bond so deep, so ingrained in each other’s lives, that we were swimming in it. Making our way through this dark, inky water, circling one another like sharks.
Phil smiled and blinked.
I loved the way his dark eyelashes fluttered down like that. There was something so… so pretty about him. And fierce. And dangerous.
But also vulnerable. I could look at my best friend—or former best friend—or whatever—and see the boy inside. The one I’d befriended that night on the empty playground. The innocent kid that, at the time, I thought just had parents that were a little weird…
And the more he tried to pretend to be aloof, above it all, the less I could see that boy I’d first connected with all those years ago.
“You’ve changed. Why did you change?” I asked.
“I haven’t changed, and you haven’t either,” he said. “We’ve both just gotten better at pretending.”
“What does that even mean?” I asked.
The smile ran away from his face. “Everyone wants us to pretend we’re something we’re not. And we’ve gotten good at it, haven’t we?”
I quirked an eyebrow at him.
He sighed. “I didn’t expect you to get it.”
Rage flared within me. “What, like you’re so above it all, Phil? No one gets you and all that?”
“Well, no one ever has gotten me,” he said, softly, still picking at his cuticle under the lip of the island. “And the only one that’s ever come close has been… well, it’s been you.”
A silence stretched between us again.
I looked at my friend.
He looked at me, and again, his eyes were full of that vulnerable, longing, eternal sadness.
From the way he looked at me now, I could tell he wasn’t pretending anymore. He was that boy on the playground all those years ago.
And just like that, I relaxed. Something left my body and I bit my lip. I looked down at his hands. “So. You want to be together? For real?”
&
nbsp; He held my gaze and gave me a quick nod. “I want to be your boyfriend, Kyle. If that’s something you want.”
“I do,” I said, resting my head on my hand.
“But?”
“But I still don’t trust you. How do I know this isn’t some part of your grand master plan or something?”
He shrugged. “There is no grand master plan.”
“Bullshit. You’ve always got something turning away in your head.”
“True. But half the time, I don’t even know what it is. All I know is that all roads lead to you. The only difference between any of them is the amount of time it takes to get there.”
My heart pounded in my chest, longing for him. I could practically feel my inner child reaching out, longing to touch his fingertips…
I crossed my arms. “We’d have to keep it secret.”
He nodded. “I’m aware.”
“It’s something that would be only between us. No gossip, no rumors.”
“Obviously,” he drawled, resting his head on his fist. “Stuff like this is supposed to be secret anyway; it’s no one’s business but ours.”
“All right,” I said with a nod. “We’ve got to be more careful than Saturday, then.”
“Your sister knows,” he said.
“What?!”
I looked up at the ceiling as if I could see her ear poking through the drywall or something.
Phil chuckled. “She told me on the soccer field. She knows that I’ve got… feelings… for you.”
“You say feelings like it’s a dirty word.”
Phil grimaced. “It is. Feelings fuck you over. You know that.”
I leaned toward him. “If we’re going to be together, I need you to cut that out.”
“Cut what out?”
“All that bullshit about feelings meaning nothing. Trying to care as little as possible. I’m tired of this culture we’re in where that dating game dance equates to some fucked up competition about who can care less.”
Phil gave me a serious look. “This isn’t a game. Not with you, anyway.”
“And how do you expect me to believe that? You don’t exactly have the best track record.”
“Fine,” he said, sliding off the stool.
“Fine what?” I said.
“You still don’t trust me,” Phil said. “And there can’t be love without trust.”
Kyle From High School Page 6