by Marie Sexton
He’d never felt anything so piercing and perfect as when Cody’s lips had touched his. And the rest of it—letting Cody tease him into an orgasm—had been the most amazing thing he’d ever experienced. It couldn’t be right, but nothing about it felt wrong.
Nate thought of all the words he’d heard people use. All the cruel slurs tossed around.
Homo.
Queer.
Faggot.
Pansy.
I can’t be one of those things!
But on the tail end of that thought came the memory of Cody’s acceptance of being called those names. Cody hadn’t bothered to deny what he felt.
What they both felt.
“I’m not like him,” Nate said out loud. The croon of the Bee Gees from his eight-track player did nothing to ease his mind.
The TV was on in the living room when he got home, and he rushed upstairs to his bedroom, not wanting his dad to see him with his eyes red and swollen and his cheeks wet. He washed his hands until he could no longer smell Christine’s very feminine musk on them, then sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands, trying to tell himself he wasn’t going to keep crying like a five-year-old, but he couldn’t stop the tears welling up in his eyes.
Who could he talk to?
Cody.
No. Not Cody. Anybody but Cody.
Who else?
Maybe somebody from Texas? One of his friends?
Yeah, right. He hadn’t even heard from any of them since moving to Wyoming. Even if he was allowed to make long-distance calls, he couldn’t imagine calling one of them up now. Hey, Mike. How’s tennis going? Sure is windy here in Warren. By the way, you ever look at another guy and have the irresistible urge to see him naked, or maybe to jack him off? No? Okay. Just checking.
He hadn’t ever felt this way back in Texas. Maybe this was all simply a symptom of having moved to Warren, Wyoming, where there wasn’t a damn thing to do except get high or get laid. Maybe if he found a way to go back home, all of these horrifying feelings he had for Cody would go away. Surely there was a girl back in Texas with big hair and a familiar southern drawl who could make his heart race and his loins tingle.
His dad’s heavy treads thumped up the stairs, stopping outside Nate’s room. He knocked lightly on the door. “Nate? You in there?”
“Yeah.” Nate wiped his face as his dad cracked the door and poked his face through the gap.
“I didn’t expect you home so soon.” His brow wrinkled. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. I’m just tired.”
“Okay.” He didn’t look convinced, but it seemed he wasn’t inclined to press the issue. “I’m headed to bed myself.”
“Good night, Dad.”
Nate waited, listening to his dad bustle around in the room next door. He watched the clock on his nightstand, counting the minutes until at last the house lay silent. He gave it an extra thirty minutes after that, just to be sure his dad was asleep.
Finally, he crept out of his bedroom and tiptoed down the stairs to the kitchen. He might get in trouble when the phone bill came and his dad saw the long-distance call, but there was only one person left on his list of people he might talk to.
The dial tone seemed ridiculously loud in his ear. Luckily, the cord was long enough to reach all the way to their pantry. He closed the door behind him, sinking down to sit on the floor, surrounded by shelves of cereal and Hamburger Helper. It was pitch-dark, but the keys on the handset were lit, and he dialed the number that he’d thought of as his own for nearly eighteen years.
It began to ring as the call went through. It was an hour later in Texas, which meant nearly midnight. He figured his mom might still be awake. Even if he woke her up, she’d probably be happy to hear from him. He wasn’t quite sure yet what he was going to say, but he knew the gist of it: he wanted to go home. He hated Wyoming, and he intended to beg his mother to let him move back to Texas, where it was warm and the wind rarely blew semis over on the interstate and where he didn’t have embarrassingly erotic dreams about other boys.
“Hello?”
It was a man’s voice. Nate froze, his mind reeling. Had he dialed the wrong number?
“Hello?” the man said again, sounding annoyed this time.
Should he hang up? Dial again?
“Hi,” he made himself say. “Maybe I have the wrong number. I’m trying to reach Susan Bradford.”
The man made a noise—something similar to a growl. “Her name’s Susan Jennings now.”
“Oh. Right.” Although it felt like a knife in his heart, hearing his mom called by her maiden name. Worse than that, this meant he did have the right number. It was almost midnight, and his mom had a man in the house.
A man who was most definitely not his dad.
“Is she there?”
“Hang on.”
Nate waited, his heart pounding, his stomach twisting painfully. “Babe?” he heard the man say. “It’s for you.”
“Who is it?” Definitely his mother’s voice.
“Hell if I know.”
There was the usual jumble of clunking as the handset changed hands, and then his mom said, “Hello?”
Nate swallowed, suddenly unsure. “Mom?”
“Nate? What’s wrong, honey? Is everything okay?”
Was it? He had no idea how to answer that question.
“Are you hurt or something?” she asked. “Where’s your father?”
“He’s in bed.” And now, Nate’s mind was scrambling for purchase. “I wanted to talk to you. I needed—”
“Nathan, you’re only supposed to call on Wednesdays. You know that.”
She didn’t sound angry, though. Just . . .
Sad?
Guilty?
“Who was that?” he asked, unsure if he wanted to hear the answer.
“Who was who?”
Such a stupid question. Such a ridiculous pretense, to pretend she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Who was that guy who answered the phone?”
“Oh. Well, just a friend—”
“He called you ‘babe.’”
“Oh.” Her voice suddenly sounded very small. “Oh, honey. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”
“Is he living there?”
She didn’t answer, but the silence told him everything.
“For how long?”
“Since . . . Well, since—”
“Since we left?” Because suddenly, it was all clear. He’d heard his aunt and uncle whispering about an affair. He’d seen the way his parents couldn’t look at each other anymore. And all along, he’d assumed it was his father. All that time, moving to Wyoming, being dragged to this shithole of a town, he’d blamed his dad. And all along, his mom had been at home with another man already warming her bed.
Nate hung up. He sat there in the dark, clutching the phone to his chest, just long enough to be sure the line was dead. He put it to his ear, checking for the dial tone, which would soon become incessant beeping of a phone left off the hook too long. Then he stuck the phone between the Froot Loops and Honeycomb cereal and shut the pantry door. If his mom called back, she’d get a busy signal.
And eventually, she’d give up on calling, just like she’d given up on her family.
Nate awoke the next day with his eyes scratchy from the tears he’d shed into his pillow the night before. He felt like he’d lost his mom all over again. Even worse, his dreams had been full of Christine laughing at him, and Brian and Brad tapping out lines of cocaine on a mirror, telling him it was his turn, and Cody yelling at him, telling Nate he should be ashamed of himself for taking advantage of Christine. And through it all, Nate tried again and again to tell Cody that his mom already had a new boyfriend, but Cody never seemed to hear him.
He found his dad in the kitchen, making French toast. The phone was back on the wall. His dad looked at him strangely but didn’t ask.
After breakfast, his dad left
to go grocery shopping, and Nate dug the Warren phone book out of the junk drawer in the kitchen. It was tiny. He’d laughed when he’d first seen it. The phone book in Austin had been two separate books—one for white pages, one for yellow—and both had been enormous. Here, the white and yellow together were only as thick as one of the single-subject spiral notebooks he used in school.
He looked for “Lawrence” first.
None.
He scratched his head, puzzled, then remembered what Cody had said. “People were always asking me why my last name was different from my mom’s. Used to piss me off.” Nate slumped, feeling defeated. How in the world could he get Cody’s phone number?
Logan.
He looked up Robertson. There were three listings. He called the first and asked for Logan.
“Wrong Robertson,” the man on the other end said. “You’re looking for my brother’s son.” He rattled off a phone number, and Nate hurried to grab a pencil and scribble it down. It helped that every single number in Warren had the same prefix.
He called the second number and asked for Logan.
“That’s me.”
He should have recognized the voice. “Hey. Um, it’s Nate Bradford.”
There was a stony silence, and then Logan said, “Okay. What the hell do you want?”
“I need to talk to Cody.”
“Yeah, you said that once before, but it doesn’t seem like it went all that well.”
“I know, but—”
“If you want to talk to Cody, why the hell are you calling me?”
Nate put his head in his hand. “Because I don’t know his number.”
“Are you kidding me?”
“He never gave it to me.”
He could practically hear Logan scowling at him. “Did you ever ask?”
Nate sighed. It annoyed him how Logan could make him feel so small, even over the phone. “Look, can you help me or not?”
“Why should I?”
Nate traced his finger over the wood grains of the tabletop, debating ways he might convince Logan. He had a feeling Logan wouldn’t forgive him until Cody did, but maybe he’d meet him halfway. “Can you at least tell me his mom’s last name?”
A second went by. Then another, and another. Finally, Logan said, “Prudhomme.” It sounded like he hated himself for letting it slip.
Nate was already flipping through the pages, running his finger down the lines of names, the black ink smearing beneath his fingertip. “Powell. Powers. Probst. Prudhomme! Cyndi? Is that it?” It had to be. “Thanks, Logan. Really.”
“You’re welcome.” Although his voice said otherwise. “And Nate?”
“Yeah?”
“Fuck with his head again, and I’ll skin you alive. Got it?”
Nate swallowed, wondering if he was making the biggest mistake of his life. “Got it.”
His heart pounded as he dialed the number. It rang once, twice, three times. Somebody picked it up midway through the fourth ring.
“Hello?”
Cody’s voice. Nate tried to swallow, but his mouth was too dry.
“Hello?” Cody said again, sounding annoyed. It was oddly reminiscent of Nate’s call home the night before, and suddenly Nate’s hands were shaking, his throat too tight to speak. What the hell was he doing? What exactly did he think he could say to Cody now? I’m sorry. I screwed up. I’m confused. I want to see you. I’ve lost my mom. I’m lonely as hell, and you’re the only friend I have.
He couldn’t say any of it, though. His grip on the phone was tight, his heart in his throat, the pressure in his chest almost more than he could bear.
“I’m hanging up,” Cody said. “Speak now or forever hold your peace, man.”
Nate sat there, silent and confused, until the line went dead.
Logan was already at work when Cody arrived Saturday afternoon. The back of the kitchen was steamy as a sauna.
Well, steamy as Cody imagined saunas to be, at any rate. He’d never actually been in one.
The brisk walk from home had kept him warm, despite the ice-cold wind and his insufficient jackets. All but his hands, at least. They were frozen stiff, and he rubbed them together, not wanting to plunge them into the hot water quite yet.
Maybe he’d ask Logan for a ride to Rock Springs. He had a feeling Logan would do it. He might not even laugh at him. Granted, he probably wouldn’t buy Cody a Big Mac and hassle him about his Wyoming twang as they both dipped their french fries into their chocolate shakes, but a ride would be enough, even if it made Cody’s heart hurt, thinking about it.
“How was your morning?” Logan asked, his arms elbow-deep in dishwater, his eyes uncharacteristically bright and expectant as he waited for Cody’s answer. “Anything interesting happen?”
“Not really.” It seemed like an odd question, even from Logan. “You wanna switch and let me wash?”
“Hell, yes.”
Logan had to stoop to reach the sink, and Cody couldn’t reach half the shelves to put stuff away. With them both there, it didn’t make much sense to do it any other way. The water was already pretty foul though, so Cody flipped the lever under the sink to let it drain.
“So, nothing happened this morning?” Logan asked, watching Cody carefully.
Cody wrinkled his brow, trying to figure out what Logan was getting at. “The phone woke me up at ten, but nobody was there. We’re out of milk, so I ate my cereal dry, and my mom was still asleep when I left. She’s working evenings now, so she gets up after I’m gone for the day and doesn’t get home until I’m asleep.” He shrugged. “That’s the sum total of my morning so far.” He watched the last bit of water twirl down the drain. “How’d the game go?”
“We won.”
“Good.”
“I threw for one hundred ninety-eight yards, and had three touchdowns.” He wasn’t bragging. It was said in the same matter-of-fact tone he used for just about everything. “Coach says there might be scouts from the University of Wyoming at the homecoming game next week.”
If scouts were coming to Warren, it could only be to see Logan. Cody heard enough talk at school to know Logan was the star of the team. “You think they’ll offer you a scholarship?”
“My parents think so, but what do they know?” Logan was rinsing the dishes he’d already washed, sorting them into neat rows on the drying rack. “That reminds me though—I wanted to ask you something.”
Cody flipped the lever back in place to plug the drain and turned on the water, testing the temperature as it began to fill the enormous sink. “Okay.”
“You want to go to homecoming with me?”
Cody blinked, sure he’d misheard. “What?”
Logan laughed awkwardly, looking uncomfortable for the first time ever. “I didn’t mean it like that. Not, you know, together.”
Thank goodness. As nice as Logan was, the thought of dating him was horrifying. “Aren’t you going with Jamie Simpson?”
Logan scowled, tossing a handful of clean forks into the utensil bin with a bit more force than the occasion demanded. “She’s going with Tom Phillips.”
“Tom Phillips?” Cody added a generous squirt of Dawn to the sink, thinking. “Didn’t he graduate three years ago?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t uncommon in Warren for teenage girls to date guys in their twenties. High school girls bringing guys in their thirties to prom wasn’t unheard of.
“So?” Logan prodded. “What do you say?”
“You want me to go to a high school dance with you?”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“You make it sound weird. But it’s no big deal, you know. Lots of people go stag. And Frank’s giving us both the night off.”
Cody would have preferred to work. He felt like he was in a race against Mother Nature to see whether or not he’d manage to buy a coat before the snow started to fly. He waited while Logan took the clean silverware to the front to be wrapped in napk
ins by the hostesses.
“So, what’ll we do there?” he asked, once Logan was back. “Stand against the wall looking like idiots while everybody else makes out?”
Logan laughed. “Have you ever even been to a school dance?”
“Whatta you think?”
“First of all, they won’t let anybody make out at the dance. There are chaperones to make sure nothing kinky goes down.”
“Yeah, ’cause that’ll stop everybody from having sex.”
“It’ll stop ’em from having sex there in the gym, at any rate.” He shoved a stack of bowls onto the shelf in the corner. “But not many people actually dance with their dates. I mean, like I said, half the school goes stag anyway. The girls mostly dance together in one big pack, and the guys hang out and bullshit. I mean, it’ll be the usual cliques, you know? The cowboys in one corner; the Mormons in another; the Grove pricks hanging out in the parking lot, getting high; and all the burnouts sneaking out the back door for a smoke.”
“So why do you want to go at all?”
Logan turned toward him, leaning his thigh against the long metal sink. “Because we’re seniors, man. This is it! Our last homecoming. Our last prom! This is the kind of shit we’ll be reminiscing about when we’re forty, rotting away in the nursing home.”
Cody laughed, finally plunging his hands into the blissfully warm water. “I think you have to be a lot older than forty to get into one of those places.”
“Whatever. You gonna come make a damn memory with me, or are you gonna sit on your stinking couch watching Spenser: For Hire?”
Cody sighed as he grabbed a sponge off the sideboard. He wasn’t used to having anybody ask him to do anything. He certainly wasn’t used to being coerced into school dances. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“Why’re you so determined to be my friend when you know the rest of the town hates me?”
Logan shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe ’cause you’re not an asshole, and there’s nobody else to talk to while I’m at work, and Jamie Simpson won’t give me the time of day. Is that enough of a reason for you?”
Cody smiled, despite himself. “I guess.” He felt around in the water, searching for the silverware at the bottom as he debated. He’d taken a chance once before, with Nate. Even now he couldn’t quite say if it had been worth it or not. “Do you think . . .” He stopped, considering his words while scrubbing a fork that was already plenty clean.