by L B Winter
“I already said everything I wanted to say,” Jamie countered, and he turned toward the wall. What had happened over Christmas break to suddenly make him backslide? He had been doing better before—way better. Like, actually accepting himself better. This was so unexpected, and more than that, seemed so out of character, that I just couldn’t let it go. There had to be more to this than met the eye; there must be some reason, some piece of the puzzle I was missing.
“Jamie,” I said, walking incrementally closer, like he was a wild horse I didn’t want to spook. “You have to know how totally bizarre it is to ask me to borrow my computer to write me an email while I’m sitting in the next room. Like, that is next-level passive aggressive bizarre bullshit right there.” I took another step closer. “You didn’t feel this way before break, Jamie. We talked about it, and you were in a better place. What happened?”
He glanced up at me before looking down again. “My parents sent me a lot of stuff to read on Christmas. It was the first time they’d reached out to me since everything happened with Ellen. They were really hurt, you know. I just—I owe it to them—”
Oh, his parents. At least there was a reason, then. At least he wasn’t just a literal psycho who changed completely from day to day. “What did they send you, Jamie?” I asked, genuine curiosity in my voice.
The change in my tone must have disarmed him, because he finally looked up and met my eyes, just as mildly. “Just, like, I don’t know. Some stuff their pastor put together. Some other stuff from Freedom. Information about—well. Conversion therapy and why it doesn’t work sometimes. And like, other stuff about divorce.” He shrugged and looked up for a moment, sadness in his eyes. “Basically all the things that are wrong with me.” His voice cracked a little, and I could see the tears starting to gather in his eyes as he looked away.
“Pretty different from the email my dad sent, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he said, and he wiped his nose. “Very different.”
It just sucked so much that he had to deal with this stuff. I came over, still just as slowly, and sat down beside him. “I’m sorry, Jamie,” I said.
He sighed. “What for?”
“Sometimes I think I just expect too much from you. I mean,” I added hastily, “don’t take that the wrong way. I just mean, I have had so many things happen so easily for me. Like, even when it’s been hard, I think for you it was harder, and it’s still harder, and I don’t always notice that. Like, I act like you should be in the exact place where I am, when I’m honestly still figuring out where I am.” Before I even knew what I was saying, I added, “I’m sorry that I keep making you feel bad. That’s the last thing I ever want to do.”
He looked up at me again and was silent for a few long moments before finally saying, “Thanks, Paul.” He looked again at his hands. “Honestly, you weren’t the one making me feel bad. You make me feel like I’m actually okay.” He sighed, laughing a little as he glanced up at me. “I must seem so fucked up.”
“No more than me,” I answered with a sad smile.
“How did you tell your parents that you were really gay? And that, like, you think it’s fine?”
I shrugged. “Honestly, I just did it how I do everything else. I just told the truth.”
He sighed. “You make it sound way easier than it is.”
“It wasn’t easy,” I said softly. “Dad literally told me not to come home. Like, those were his exact words. But he came around, eventually. I mean, you read his email. I didn’t tell him any of that stuff. All I did was be myself, and he got there on his own.”
“What if my parents never come around?”
I took a deep breath, holding it for a second before letting it go. “Talk to Steven,” I said softly. “He knows more about that than I do.”
We held each other’s gaze for a moment, just sharing this mutual sadness that felt more honest than anything between us had been in years.
“Okay,” he finally said. “I will.” He looked away again, and in his lap, he closed the Bible and put it back in his bag on the floor.
Was that all? But I suppose I shouldn’t keep asking him for more than he could give. “Good night,” I said, and I bumped his knee with mine.
I started to stand up, but he reached out and grabbed my hand. I sank back onto the couch, heart suddenly pounding painfully hard in my chest.
“Paul,” he said quietly. He held my gaze for a long moment, and I was just wondering if he would kiss me again, and if I would stop him if he did, when the spell was broken. He dropped his eyes, and he dropped my hand. But what he said was, “Want to play a video game?”
I smiled in surprise. “I thought you didn’t know how to play.”
He shrugged. “I’ve seen you play a lot. I could learn.”
Grinning bigger, I said, “Yeah, we can play, but—” I shook my head, chuckling a little to myself as I reached for the controllers.
“What?”
“I know you’re competitive,” I answered, smiling at him over my shoulder.
“So?”
“So, you’re not gonna like this.”
“Why? Is it not a competitive game?” he asked.
“No, it is. It’s just, I am gonna kick your ass into next week.”
Jamie laughed and bumped me hard with his shoulder. “Shut up and set up the game,” he said. “I’m a quick learner.”
So I did, and he really wasn’t a quick learner at all.
“How do you get the hang of this?” he said in the first game. “There are so many buttons.”
“There aren’t more buttons than you have fingers.”
He stopped for a second to count them. Then, “Yes, there are! This has, like, seven buttons on top, and this other thing on the side that I didn’t even know was there.”
I cracked up. “Jamie, I showed you all the buttons before we started.”
“Can you draw me up a diagram or something? Stop laughing, I’m serious!” But then he started laughing, too.
“Do you want to do something else?” I said.
“No, no, I want to learn. Put on another one.”
So I did, and we repeated the same ritual again and again. I showed him the controls, I explained the rules, and I trounced him. Every single game, I crushed him, but he still kept asking for more. And I didn’t want to leave him, so I stayed.
“Did you play a lot of video games when you were a kid?” he asked after I’d just finished a racing game literally laps ahead of him.
“I don’t know,” I said. “What’s a lot?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I never played any.”
“It wasn’t my favorite thing to do,” I said. “I was one of those kids who basically lived outside growing up, but if it was raining and Tay was over, we’d usually play for a while.”
“You’ve been friends for a long time, haven’t you?”
“Since we were nine,” I answered. “That’s the year his parents moved to New Tower and he started going to my church.”
“I wish I’d had a friend that long,” he answered. “I didn’t really meet many people, growing up homeschooled.”
“Yeah,” I said, “you’d have to be more intentional about it, I guess.”
“Not just that,” Jamie answered. “When you’re homeschooled, people see you as such a weirdo.”
I laid down my controller as he finished up his last lap and mercifully finished last in our video race. Remembering the Adler family from our church, and their three girls who all wore matching plaid dresses and gave Taylor and me dirty looks when we organized the informal “youth group Olympics” instead of reading Bibles like we were supposed to, I said, “Yeah, that’s true. The people at our church who were homeschooled were pretty different.”
Jamie barked a laugh. “See? I was trying to say I’m not that different.”
I shook my head, embarrassed that I’d even said that. I must have been pretty tired. “Well, I don’t think you’re the same as the kids I knew. They
were—” I paused. This was the wrong answer, wasn’t it? “Maybe it’s just that the rest of us all had so much in common. You know, it was just—easier to be friends with kids from school.”
“Exactly,” he said. “I could make an intentional effort, but what good was that if nobody else did?”
That was a good point. I started to feel a little guilty that I hadn’t gone out of my way to help Jessy Adler get involved with what the rest of us were doing. “Did you meet anybody through running cross country?”
“Sort of,” he said, and he stretched out his legs across the couch. I shifted a little so I wouldn’t be in his way, but he shook his head and said, “No, you can stay there. I mean, if you don’t mind.”
I didn’t mind.
“I met people, but I think they all thought of me as the weirdo, too.”
“Were you faster than everybody else?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I was pretty fast. I always run as fast as I can, but—”
“Don’t be modest,” I said, shaking my head in mock disgust. “I’ve run with you, so I know. You’re really fast. They were probably just intimated by you. Or jealous.”
He still protested. “No, there were fast guys on the team, too.”
“Really? And what, are they all Olympians now?”
He laughed. “No, no. Come on, Paul. I’m not that fast.”
“I’m not that slow, but you were much faster than me.”
He shrugged noncommittally.
“What?” I started laughing. “Do you think I’m slow?”
“You could get better, is all I’m saying.”
I hit him with a pillow, and he laughed and grabbed it from me, then shoved it behind his head. Then he leaned back into the pillows, arms stretched behind his head, and crossed his ankles on the end of the couch. He closed his eyes and smiled up at the dark, mottled ceiling. “Thanks,” he said with a smirk. “Now I’m comfortable.”
“Huh,” I said.
“What?” he answered, still with his eyes closed.
“Maybe you really are a weirdo.”
Jamie laughed and threw the pillow back at me. I laughed, too, catching it and lobbing it back at him again. He instantly put it behind his head, and it occurred to me that I’d kept him up much later than he was used to. He was probably exhausted. And as for that pillow, it was probably the one he used all night. After all, we hadn’t had extras lying around; this had been the only one. God, what was I thinking? I made a mental note to get him better bedding, if this was going to be his room—and I really wanted it to be.
“I’m just joking, man,” I said after we stopped laughing. I thought he knew, but something made me want to make sure. “You know I don’t think that about you.”
“I know,” he said. “At Freedom, that was the greatest thing. Like, I could tell you thought I was cool.”
“Everybody did, Jamie,” I said.
“What? No,” he said dismissively, “I don’t think—”
“Seriously,” I answered. “You were the cool kid at therapy.”
“Was I really?” he said. He stared off into space for a second. “Huh. I wish I’d noticed.”
I cracked up, and he smiled, too. But mentioning Freedom always made us both a little bit at a loss for words. I was still feeling like I might offend him if I said any little thing wrong, and I knew he didn’t want to dredge up the past in all its teenage angst.
“Maybe there I was cool,” Jamie conceded, “but you’re cool everywhere.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“Like when we were in New Tower for Thanksgiving, and all your friends from high school wanted to hang out with you. And here, you have Trent and Lynn and Steven, and Taylor, and the guys from church. Plus just people around the dorm, and from basketball and stuff. Everybody likes you.”
“I have never thought everybody likes me. My friends like me, but that’s normal. Everybody’s friends like them,” I said, though I did have a lot of friends, I suppose. That’s just always how I’d been; I liked to make friends everywhere I went. Wasn’t that normal?
“I wish I had as many people who liked me,” he said, “that’s all I’m saying. That probably would have helped some when everything…happened.” He sighed. “Though I guess I had the friend I needed then, didn’t I?” He looked at me and smiled, and my heart did a literal backflip. “Maybe I shouldn’t be so greedy. Maybe that’s just me being a people-pleaser again,” he added, and I remembered talking to him about it, years ago, a lifetime ago, and feeling sure that anybody who wouldn’t like him must be crazy.
“You do have as many people who like you,” I said, “I mean, at least, everybody you just named who likes me. They all like you.” And so do I, obviously.
“Yeah, but people gather around you,” he said, gesturing with his hands. “Like, you’re the sun and they revolve around you.”
“I like hanging out with them, too,” I protested. “It’s mutual.”
“I know,” he said, “that isn’t what I meant.” Yawning, he added, “It’s hard to describe. You’ve got a gravitational pull.”
I still didn’t really get what he meant, but I so loved the idea of him thinking about me, and coming up with this way of describing me—a way that didn’t feel unflattering, frankly—that I said, “Thanks.”
He yawned again and said, “You’re welcome.”
“I should let you get to sleep,” I said, standing up and reluctantly breaking the connection between us. I realized for the first time when the cool air hit my skin that his legs had been pressed against my back. I’d unconsciously leaned closer, and he’d let me, and there had been this energy that I didn’t know to miss until it was gone.
“You should sleep, too,” he said. “Gotta be sharp for class tomorrow.” He tapped his finger to his forehead and yawned a third time.
“Yeah, okay,” I said. I stood there and looked at him for a moment longer—his long, tanned legs crossed at the ankle, his running shorts that he always wore before bed so he could go for a run first thing in the morning. His flat stomach. His broad chest. The muscles of his arms standing out as they flexed behind his head.
He finally opened his eyes again, and he saw me staring. But when I smiled, he smiled back. “Goodnight,” I said. I went to my room, laptop under my arm, hardly believing how much that conversation had swung from where it had started. I wished Jamie could just let himself be; when he wasn’t overthinking everything in the world, he was such a great person. I fell asleep repeating his words to myself in my mind, over and over again—‘You’ve got a gravitational pull.’ It wasn’t me; I wasn’t the magnetic one, I was sure. It was all him, pulling me back again, over and over, no matter how close to “over him” I thought I was.
CHAPTER 16
That’s Daniel
__________
In the morning, I was pretty beat—getting less than five hours of sleep will do that to you—and Jamie was so pleasant when he left for work that morning that, even exhausted, I went to my first class with a smile on my face. It was Spanish class, my first time taking a college language course, and I was pretty alarmed when the professor kicked off the lesson speaking in Spanish.
I leaned over to the girl next to me and whispered, “Do you think she’s going to say anything in English?”
She looked at me appraisingly for a moment before whispering back, “No, so you’d better be quiet and pay attention.”
I leaned back to my seat and tried to take her advice, though I thought she was pretty rude in how she gave it. I didn’t talk to her again until nearly the end of class, when the professor recommended we find people in the class to be our study partners for the remainder of the semester. Then, to help us locate convenient partners, she had us do an exercise where we walked around the room, introduced ourselves to everybody, and asked where each other lived.
“Hola, me llamo Paul,” I said to her.
She immediately said, “Necesitas un nombre español.”
Oh, that’s right, I thought. It has to be Spanish. The name I’d chosen in high school had been based on a personal hero of mine, but somehow it felt silly to say it now. Still, “Me llamo…Jesus,” I said.
Something about that broke through her guarded walls, because she actually laughed, and just then she reminded me of Lynn—great laugh, long hair, soft eyes. Definitely not laid back, though. Almost as soon as it had begun, her laughter was over, and she was looking at me appraisingly again. Maybe it was just her looks that were like Lynn’s.
“Y tu nombre?” I said after an awkward pause.
“Maria,” she answered. Then, rolling her eyes a little like she’d just suffered some kind of mental defeat to me, though I had no idea what it was, she added in a whisper, “Tessa. Tessa Martin.”
“Paul Garrison,” I said, and extended my hand to shake hers. “I live in Village Heights.”
“Vivo en Village Heights,” she said.
“Oh, sorry,” I answered. “Or, I mean—lo siento. Vivo en Village Heights.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I meant that I live there, too.”
“Oh. Okay,” I said. “I guess we should be study partners then, huh?”
“I don’t know,” she answered, “because I get the idea you aren’t the best at Spanish.” Her words weren’t kind, but she was smiling. I wondered if she thought she was flirting with me. Girls were so strange; I never in my life understood them. Lynn was the first one I’d ever considered a real friend.
“I’m only a little bit rusty,” I said. “Anyway, if you’re that much better than me, you can consider it your good deed of the day.”
“Of the semester,” she answered, but she wasn’t too reluctant as she wrote down her cell number and dorm address for me.
We made plans to meet up to study later that week, and I left class wondering if maybe I should have asked around to find more people in our building to study with us. Tessa seemed like a lot to put up with, but then again, girls usually did.
The rest of my classes that week weren’t too bad. I had a business marketing course, an ethics course, and a general writing class. I’d always liked writing, so that was one of my favorites, and as a bonus, Taylor had to take it, too, and we’d somehow managed to get in the same class.