by Seth King
“Two gay friends. They rented out part of a hotel, and they’re doing a tribute to The Monster, too. Gay weddings just do not compare to any other ones.”
I smile. “I thought you taught me not to trade in stereotypes.”
“Oh, the gays do weddings like nobody’s business,” he says softly, but I can tell he’s smiling, too. “It’s not a stereotype, it’s the truth.”
“Well, who’s your date?”
“We don’t have plus ones. That’s how expensive the ceremony was. It’s still pretty heavy, though, after Atlanta and everything.”
“Oh, geez, I bet. Sneak away and come see me?”
“You really want me to?”
“More than I need air.”
He pauses. “Okay. We’ll see.”
We text more and more as afternoon fades into evening, and I apologize multiple times for abandoning him during such a difficult time for the gay community. His friend is already out of the hospital and is fine, though, so I’m happy for him on that front. But still I can’t get over my guilt. I feel like a pile of turds for doing this to him, but a way to make it up to him comes to me right after dinner, as I stare at my mom’s bookshelf. I spend the evening making a surprise for him in my bathroom. Then I just have to figure out a way to get him to come over…
After making several sexual promises, I finally convince him to slip away from the wedding early, and soon the dog is barking and I am hearing footsteps and he is standing in my bedroom, smiling, my guy, my Ty, my dream.
His hair has been dyed stark white, and it’s combed back like an old movie star’s. His dress jacket and bowtie are white, too, and the combination makes his eyes look bluer than they ever have. I just look up at him and sigh. What Monet did with watercolors, what Beethoven did with music, what Hemingway did with words, what Adele does with her damned vocal cords – that’s what Ty Stanton does with the light in his eyes. It’s a silent reverie nobody can create but him. Even describing him would be like trying to bottle the scent of an old hardback book – you can’t. It’s just too magical.
I feel a strange impulse to just get up and rush to him, so I do. Jumping up, I lean forward and press my lips against his. I feel more of that giddy, kissy feeling with him in one second than I have with any girl in my entire life. And that’s what makes me realize I’m really in love with him, regardless of everything – that feeling, those drums I hear in my ears. Everything about this is a rush.
“Sorry,” he says. “I had to get here quickly, and I’m probably all sweaty now.”
I bend down and sniff his armpits.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” he laughs.
“Honestly, your armpit smell turns me on. I realized that a few days ago. The more I’m around you, the more things I find to like about you.”
“That’s weird but…flattering, I guess. And what is this new shirt? And how are you so tan?”
“I spruced up a bit,” I blush. “By the way, I have a surprise for you.”
I take his hand and lead him into my bathroom, then turn on the light. He walks up to the mirror, which I’ve decorated with Post-Its of every color, all folded in half from the bottom up.
“What’s this?”
“Just pull them off and read them,” I say quietly. He reaches over and grabs a yellow one.
“You are special,” he reads as he unfolds it. Then he takes a purple and unfolds it, too. “You are worthy.” He turns to me. “Henry, what is this?”
“When you said that thing about Facebook, and Atlanta, it just broke my heart…nobody should ever feel like that, so I felt like you should hear all the things I think about you. I won’t be silent anymore. Keep going.”
He turns and pulls down more notes – You are normal, You are not a freak, You are loved, You are no different from anyone else, You make my life better, You deserve the world, You are magic, You are not tainted, You are better than the people who are afraid of you. When he reads the last note, You are perfect for what you are, he turns to me with tears in his eyes.
“Never forget these things,” I say. “Please. You are dream fuel to me.”
I watch and wait. I’m somewhat nervous about his reaction – what if it was too much? What if he doesn’t want hearts and flowers and harps from me? What if he just wants something more low-key?
“Thank you for being here through my pain,” he finally says, and I just sigh.
“Oh, Ty.”
“Seriously. And you forgot to add one Post-It.”
“What’s that?”
“You are hopelessly in love with Henry Morgan.”
“Ty, you are?”
He wipes his eye and glances down. “Just kiss me.”
“You can stop crying now,” I tell him a few minutes later, handing him another tissue.
“I’m just so happy to see you,” he says, wiping his nose. “I stopped caring about everything else but you, so for the past few days I had nothing.”
“Aw. God, I’m sorry.”
After the Post-Its we sank to the floor and now we’re just hanging out on my bathroom rug, doing nothing together. It strikes me soon that this, this, is true romance: not the big fancy dates or the grand declarations or the pour-your-heart-out love letters. Just the quiet, comfortable moments that roll in and tell you you’re truly building a life with someone, writing a joint story that can even be played out on the bathroom floor on a random night.
“What happened?” he asks. “Why did you go cold on me for a second like that?”
I can’t possibly put my little breakdown over the The Monster into words, so I don’t try. “I don’t know,” I say. “Let’s just start over, and get back to the beginning. I’m Henry Morgan, founding captain of the Savannah Christian Prep Lacrosse team, three-time state champs.”
He shakes my hand, giggling. “Okay. And I’m Ty Stanton, president of the Savannah Art Academy’s board to enforce school-wide celebration of Pride month. Now kiss me.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
When it becomes that this is headed to Sexy Town, he sits up. “Wait. I told them I was coming to the after party. Do you want to come?”
“After party?”
“Yeah. All the wedding guests are going out after the reception.”
I’m still nervous, but seeing his blue eyes again is making me a little stronger. “You’re sure?” I ask.
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because of…you know…recent events…”
“Oh, that’s what you’re worried about? Trust me, somebody would be fucking crazy to mess with us after all this. There would be SWAT Teams in two seconds.”
But that’s the thing, I think to myself – the people out there are crazy.
“Okay,” I say soon, since I’m not too afraid to let it keep me from being with him. When I’m next to him, nothing else can really bother me. He makes my soul soft. And when you are this deeply in love, what isn’t there to party about? This is what everyone wants. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Kissing and touching and giggling, we stumble to Chuck’s Bar, the smaller of Savannah’s two main gay bars. He has a few friends there, and for the first time I hug them and let them call me “girl.” They probably need the support right now, anyway.
A good Rihanna song comes on – a song I actually know the lyrics to – and soon I can’t believe I ever questioned any of this. Because you cannot question your feelings for another human. I cannot question the physical reaction that flashes through my body whenever I see him; I cannot question the way I feel like I’m falling into a black hole whenever he touches me or sits down next to me. And tonight is proving that, whether he is male or female.
We make out for a while, then he hits the dance floor. I watch him on the floor, a beautiful techno blur. I wonder if he knows the strobe lights are jealous of the colors in his soul; I wonder if he is aware the DJ is envious of the songs his eyes make when he smiles. Seriously: every time I see him it is like the first time all over agai
n – all we have to do is lock eyes, and then that wild roaring thrill explodes throughout my body again. I am dizzyingly in love with him, and the best thing is that he makes me dizzier every day. There is always a new surprise, always a new shade of blue in his eyes. And nobody gets to decide whether or not this is right, because I feel the rightness of it in every moment of the dreamy days and miraculous nights we spend together.
I push my way out to him and kiss him on the lips, right in a middle of sweaty club-goers. We accept a shot of Fireball from a passing shot boy, and that’s when my memory gets fuzzy. After that I remember glimpses of songs, vague visions of lights and dancing and trips to the bathroom to kiss.
“Hey, call an Uber, will you?” someone asks at some point. After paying our ginormous tabs we pack into a car, and the ride sobers me up a little, if that’s possible. The driver drops us in front of Bonaventure Cemetery, but with four people it’s not scary this late, it just feels wacky and fun – not to mention that the lights are partly on. We start down the path, but I can already guess where we’re going. Back to the beginning. Back to Gracie. And grace, in general.
In front of her monument, he grabs me by the collar, and I just breathe onto his skin. We just stare at each other for a few moments as his friends take pictures and read gravestones.
What is love? I wonder. How do people find it? How do they let it go? Is this something we have to sink into, or can we just stumble into it in one miraculous instant? Can you find it inside any gender, or are we restricted to one? Did I love him the second we locked eyes on that bus? Is that what’s been making me so confused? Did I know this all along?
I just smile at him. In the moonlight, everything looks different. Softer, more beautiful. Things glow. But Ty Stanton does not need the light of the moon to prove he is better. He would be breathtaking in a new moon and at high noon, too. He is moonproof.
“Hey,” he says. “Your gay lessons are officially over. Look at you – your hair is better, your clothes are perfect, even your skin is better. You’re so different already.”
“How’d I do, overall?”
“I’d give you an A plus, but then again I might be biased.”
I laugh and rub his chin.
“But the most important thing, the most important lesson you’ve learned about being gay,” he says, “is to just be kind and love everyone and spread goodwill around. Gays are on the bottom of society around here, so we’re in no position to judge. We have to accept everyone as they are, and take them as they come to us, and that’s how you’ve become. You are so tolerant it hurts.”
“That’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me, Ty.”
“So what now?” he asks.
“I just…”
“You just what?”
I just stare at him again, processing my wonderful thoughts. Before our fight, I’d felt this moment creeping up on me in little beautiful moments – the point where I would overflow for him and just unleash my feelings. I liked him too much, I liked the way he walked and laughed and touched my shoulder when he passed me in a hallway, and I couldn’t contain it anymore.
“You live in my heaven,” I say. I think of how dull my life was before him, and how alive and sublime it feels now, like a kite in the sky on a Sunday evening. And here in a cemetery, this kid feels like the afterlife. “My heaven is anywhere you are. Anywhere we are, together. And I think if I met you ten years from now, it would still be you. It would be you all over again. Just with less angst this time…”
“Oh, Henry.” He pulls me even closer, and I smell his sweet breath. And love spreads through me then, populates me like oak roots. How was it that only a few months ago I was afraid of even his touch? “Let me live there all the time, then.”
“You mean…be together? I want to.” I take a breath, hoping my mouth doesn’t smell like alcohol. I want this moment to ring with all the honesty inside myself. “You know I used to think I was shocked by you, and by what happened, but looking back, I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.”
“Why?”
“Because sometimes I think we were meant for this. My life only clicked into place when you came into it. Maybe I was always waiting for you. Maybe my whole life, I was waiting for you to happen. For twenty-something years I could’ve been waiting for you to walk onto that bus.”
“Twenty-something?” he asks quietly, and it sounds like he’s trying not to cry. “Don’t you know how old you are, silly?”
“Maybe I did three vodkas ago. Not anymore.”
“Well you’re beautiful, regardless of your age.”
My eyes travel down his body to his shoes, then the ground, then Little Gracie’s monument…
“Hey! Look what’s still here!”
I bound down and reach through the iron bars of the gate. Under a clump of moss and leaves and amongst all the old toys is the ruined pack of cards from that day, soggy and mildewed but unopened. As I run my fingers over the paper I think of the person I was when I last touched this, and the person I am becoming now, and the distance between the two…
And I am proud of that distance.
Ty takes a breath. “Speaking of that, look.” He pulls up his sleeve and shows me something I’ve never noticed, a new tattoo near his wrist of a tiny playing card.
“Whoa. That’s new? Because of…me?”
He nods, smiling. “I got it when I was unsure if we would work out.”
“Why?”
He glances off into the night. “To remember who we were at that very moment in time. Just in case those people changed forever.”
I pull him closer and kiss him, lost in his touch.
“Can we be together now?” he asks. “For real, this time?”
“Like…publicly?”
He just stares at me.
“I don’t know. That’s so complicated…”
He looks away and grimaces.
“What do you think about me?” I ask. “You’re so…opaque.”
He sighs and looks up at a street light over the path. “How do I say this…”
“Just try.”
“Okay. Every time I see you it’s like…the first time. I would honestly live my life a hundred times again if it meant getting to relive the past few months. You make my heart…not so much sing as riot.”
“You changed my life, Ty,” I respond. “All I know is I can’t go back to how things were. My life was on snooze before you. I can’t, and I won’t.”
“I love you, Ty.”
I pause. “…You do?”
“I do. I did. I have. I probably always will.”
“Why?”
He looks down at me. “I don’t know how to answer that…I grew up going to church sometimes, and did God ever say why he loved humans? Did he ever give them reasons why he loved them? No, he just loved them. Unconditionally.” He closes his eyes for a moment and takes a breath. “But still. You are kind and gentle and accepting, and you’ve never once judged anyone or anything at all. I probably loved you the first time I met you, even when I thought you were straight and knew you would probably never love me back. But even without the promise of that, I still loved you anyway. Unconditionally. What love could be more real than that?”
I just breathe.
“And I’m so scared,” he says. “Losing you would just…end me, and yet you came to me so easily. What if you change your mind and go away again just as casually? What if you go back to Caroline?”
I shake my head and grip him tighter. “That won’t happen. You’re in my skin now.”
Anisha’s friend plays Ribs by Lorde from her iPhone as they laugh and shout. “You’re the only friend I need,” Lorde wails in her heartbroken voice. “Sharing bed like little kids.” As Lorde provides the soundtrack, I pull Ty to me and kiss him until my vision blurs. So many of us get it all wrong – so many of us love all the wrong people at all the wrong times, while some of us love the right people at the wrong times. Some of us just run from love altogether. Lo
rd knows I’ve fled some good people who only wanted to treat me well, and walked away from some situations that could’ve made me truly happy. But I am somewhat okay with my journey now, because all of the running and the mistakes and all of the love sent into the wrong places – all of it led me to him. He is just so right, and I feel it in the smallest of my bones.
Soon Anisha decides it’s time to go, and Ty asks her to get an Uber to drop us off at my house. By the time we stumble through my door, we are undressing each other. I fuck him wildly against the headboard, against my ottoman, against my bathroom wall, on my bedroom floor. We cannot get enough of each other and I love it. I love him. I want the rest of my life to contain him in it, no matter where the rest of the dominoes may fall…
And fall, they will.
16
The next morning is rough. It’s a hangover for the record books, but after I vomit in the shower I start to feel a tad bit better. We are groggily trying to make coffee when I unplug my phone and clutch my head. “Oh, fuck.”
“What?”
“Last night. Did I post any Snapchat stories of us?”
“I don’t remember. Who cares?”
I open the app, and the dread slams into me like a stomach flu – I posted photo after photo of us posing together, sometimes even videos of us dancing while sneaking a kiss back and forth. Bile rises into my throat.
“What is it?” he asks.
“Nothing,” I say, but I can’t hide the anxiety on my face. I can’t believe I’ve been so reckless, especially after the past week or so. I delete the posts as quickly as I can, but I can already see they’ve been viewed by dozens of people.
“I think we look cute,” Ty says, looking on his own phone. “And hey, stop deleting them! I looked hot in that one on the steps. Why is this bad? Are you really still this scared?”
“It’s not bad, that’s not the point. It’s just-”
“What?”
My temper flies away from me. “Yes, I like you a lot, but nobody knows about this yet! How is it fair to tell them in a Snapchat story?”
He rolls his eyes. “Whatever, you’re being a total queen right now. Nobody cares. Calm down.”