“Hmm.”
“What?” Jack asked, now crawling slowly up the length of Gabriel’s body, gently forcing him to lie back.
“Nothing, I’m...When you asked if I thought about other men, were you trying to say that you want—”
“Honey, I don’t ever want to share you with anyone,” Jack murmured, looking down at Gabriel as he braced himself over him. “Although in all honesty, I could get behind seeing several people go to town on you,” he added, flashing his teeth.
“Several?” Gabriel asked, slightly horrified.
“Babe, it’s what you deserve,” Jack said. He touched a finger to Gabriel’s throat. “Here a mouth.” He touched a nipple, and Gabriel’s lips parted. “There a mouth.” Jack slid a hand down Gabriel’s side, over his hip, and ran a finger across the curve of his crotch. “Everywhere a mouth, mouth,” he said with a smile.
“I’d rather just have yours,” Gabriel said.
“Hmm?” Jack answered, still smiling as he bent his head to press a kiss to Gabriel’s chest.
“But I don’t want you to be bored.”
“Bored?” Jack asked in disbelief, looking up. “With you?”
“I’m willing to try things,” Gabriel said. He offered a small laugh. “I’m willing to try almost anything. I think we’ve established that.”
“Gabe, I—”
“With you,” Gabriel said. “I’m willing to try anything with you. I don’t want anyone else’s mouth or anything else, and I hope you never want anyone’s but mine.”
Jack’s gaze dropped to Gabriel’s lips. “Never. You know I love your mouth,” he said. He grabbed the edge of the blanket, pulling it over himself so they were cocooned inside, bodies pressed together. He shifted so their crotches were nestled together, smiling.
“Are we doing that aggressive dry-humping thing, now?” Gabriel asked.
“You up for it?” Jack returned.
“I think you can tell I am.”
Jack ducked his head and ran his tongue along Gabriel’s collar bone, eliciting a shiver from the older man. “I won’t be too aggressive,” he murmured against Gabriel’s skin. “Are you cold?”
“Only my feet.”
Jack levered himself up and reached back, tugging and tossing the blanket until their legs were completely covered. “Better?”
“Mmhmm.”
Jack looked at him. “You wanna go back inside?”
Gabriel shook his head. “Not particularly.”
Jack grinned. “Don’t worry, love muffin,” he said, and Gabriel laughed beneath him. “I promise I’ll take care of the cleanup. Laundry and you,” he added, and Gabriel’s laugh turned into a groan when Jack bent to suck at the hollow of his throat.
Chapter Sixteen
“Good lord,” Jack breathed when he saw Alex walking onto the stage. “Please don’t let him pass out.”
Gabriel was as surprised as Jack to see the boy approaching the microphone stand, but he reached over and patted Jack’s thigh, saying, “He’ll be fine.”
“Hello, everyone, and…thanks for coming to see our show,” Alex said, with only a slight tremor in his voice. He cleared his throat and glanced down at the papers in his hands. “I’m a little, uh…nervous, so I’m gonna read my speech so I don’t forget anything and hopefully I don’t black out.” The audience laughed, and there were applause and a few shouts of encouragement. Alex smiled shyly and straightened his papers, clearing his throat again.
“The last year and a half has been the hardest of my life,” he said, and Jack took hold of Gabriel’s hand. “I’m still a kid, so I don’t have all the answers to life, but I know that we don’t always get a say in who comes or goes from our lives. This is true for everyone, but as kids we can feel especially powerless. Everyone here is either a kid or used to be a kid and can remember what it felt like. We don’t get to choose most of the people in our lives, including teachers. We all have teachers we don’t get along with very well and other teachers that we love and it’s different for everyone.
“At this school, we’ve been lucky enough to have one teacher that’s everyone’s favorite. I know that a lot of people here are former students, so former or present, I’m sure that one person has already come to your mind. He’s taught us what we need to know to graduate, but he’s also taught us how to be kind, how to listen, how to speak up and use our voices. He’s taught us that we all have value and deserve respect.
“Now, he might be moving on from this school, and if that’s what he decides, I know you’ll all join me in wishing him all the best. This place won’t be the same without him. We wouldn’t be the same without him. But we will support him the way he’s always supported all of us.
“You’ll notice that our production tonight is not what’s listed in your program. If you want to cut us off, you’re going to have to drag us from the stage. As for the unapproved play, I take full responsibility and accept any consequences that come. Mr. Shafer was unaware of our duplicity. Funnily enough, we never would’ve been allowed to do this play if Mr. Santiago hadn’t been taken out of Drama last month.”
“Oh my God, what did you do,” Gabriel muttered under his breath.
Alex looked up and found his stare. “This is for you, Mr. S,” he said. “I just want you to know that we see you.”
Gabriel let out a shaky breath as Alex turned to walk backstage. There was applause as people looked around, searching for—and spotting—Gabriel. He scanned the sea of familiar faces. He met Natalie’s eyes and she signed I love you. He mouthed the words in return, but he was distracted, barely aware of how tightly he was holding Jack’s hand.
What did you do? he thought again, but the answer became clear almost as soon as the curtain opened.
Eliza was onstage, alone. She was wearing a dress and knee socks and had her hair in pigtails, and she was walking slowly with a plastic lunchbox in her hand. She was singing quietly, the words barely distinguishable, and the audience watched in silence, straining to hear her.
She made her way toward the back of the stage and sat down, cross-legged. She opened the lunchbox on the floor beside herself and started removing items—an apple, a sandwich, a granola bar; Gabriel could barely identify these items from such a distance, but he didn’t need to see them. He’d written them into the script.
She glanced offstage and stopped singing, and for a moment there was nothing but silence.
That silence was broken by three students walking onto the stage, talking and laughing. Jordan and Bucky were in shorts and t-shirts, Becca was in a dress, and they had lunchboxes in their hands and backpacks slung on their backs, but their mannerisms spoke louder than their ensembles.
They were children, all of them.
The three of them stopped in the middle of the stage, seeming unaware of Eliza as they joked and laughed. Eliza was slowly unwrapping her sandwich, pretending not to watch the other kids.
Gabriel’s heart was slamming in his chest. Even though he’d written the play in the hopes of performing it, and even though he’d given Alex permission to do with it as he pleased, Gabriel suddenly felt as though someone was reading his diary to the world.
The audience wasn’t looking at Gabriel anymore. Nevertheless, Alex’s words were ringing in his ears: we see you, and Gabriel felt utterly exposed. He felt Jack leaning toward him, but he couldn’t take his eyes from the stage.
“Are you okay?” Jack murmured in his ear.
Gabriel started to nod and stopped himself. “I don’t know,” he admitted on a breath.
Jack pulled his hand from Gabriel’s so he could put his arm around his shoulders, and then promptly retook Gabriel’s hand with his other, holding it pressed to his stomach. Gabriel settled against Jack’s warmth and strength absently, watching the stage.
“You dropped your book,” Eliza said.
The other three were walking toward the end of the stage, the two boys shoving playfully at each other as they continued to laugh and joke.
“Wait, you—” Eliza put down her sandwich and clambered to her feet, hurrying to the middle of the stage to snatch up the discarded book. “You dropped this,” she called, walking after them. They paused for a moment as she approached them from behind, but they gave no indication of having heard her. Eliza stopped behind Jordan and looked down at the book in her hands. After a moment, she reached out and slipped the book into the boy’s backpack. “There you go,” she said quietly, and Gabriel felt a sudden stab of pain.
He hadn’t written that line; it was a simple thing, three little words, and yet it broke his heart. There was no bitterness in Eliza’s voice, and she smiled to herself as she turned to head back toward her lunch. The other three continued offstage, their voices fading. Once she was alone, Eliza started humming quietly as she sat cross-legged on the floor.
Gabriel let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Okay, he thought. Okay. It was strange, hearing words that he’d written as a teenager filling the gym, but as the show went on, it grew less and less about him and more about the kids—especially Eliza, who was brilliant in her portrayal of an invisible child who wanted only to make the world a better place.
The play showed the progression of the children growing up—glimpses of classrooms and birthday parties and school dances. There was almost no set decoration, and Gabriel knew that was mostly due to a lack of time to prepare, but the minimalism was actually potent. Everything rested solely on the shoulders of the kids, and they didn’t disappoint.
In every scene, Eliza was there, forgotten, unseen, unheard. The other students delivered the lines that Gabriel had written, including one particularly funny scene in which Bucky asked Becca to prom; this scene drew laughter from the audience, but Gabriel could muster only a bare smile. Eliza was in the background, silently watching. He knew her moment would come, but he had no idea how the moment would be shaped.
Gabriel had not written a song for the final scene. He’d never been sure if he wanted it to be an original or something recognizable, and since the play had never been produced—before now—the decision had never been necessary.
The play was no longer about him; it was entirely about Eliza. She picked up the pencil that fell to the floor. She tied another student’s shoe when they were waiting in line for pictures. She caught a ball before it could hit Bucky in the back of the head. She sat beside Becca while she cried, even though Becca didn’t seem to know she was there.
Interspersed with these glimpses into her school life, there were scenes of her alone. There was a dresser with a mirror mounted on the back, which was as close as the Drama Club could come to a bedroom, apparently—and it was effective. Eliza stood in front of the mirror as she aged—changing from dresses and knee socks to jeans and dark t-shirts, to baggy sweaters that seemed to swallow her. The pigtails made way for a ponytail and then the wigs were gone and she was left with her own short hair.
She sang to herself in the mirror while she mimed the acts of fixing her hair or getting ready for school. She would occasionally twirl herself in a circle, laughing. But as soon as someone offstage would call her to dinner, her smile would vanish and the singing would stop.
She sang to herself at school, constantly, until another student would happen by; and then she would stop.
Looking back at this play as an adult, Gabriel could see how simplistic it was, and how ridiculous it should seem. Because of Eliza and the others, however, it wasn’t ridiculous. The words he’d written, the scenes he’d imagined, meant nothing compared to the performances. Around him, the audience was spellbound and emotional, and he couldn’t take credit for that.
When the curtain opened on the final scene, Eliza was in the middle of the stage. The entirety of the Drama Club was on the stage with her, but they were in groups to either side; even Alex was there. Eliza was alone in the center. She looked out at the audience, and Gabriel could feel the tension in the crowd around him.
The students were wearing graduation gowns and caps. They were talking amongst themselves, laughing, hugging. Eliza looked around at all of them, took a breath, and walked offstage. There were murmurs from the audience as people looked at each other.
Eliza wasn’t gone long, and when she returned to the center of the stage with a chair and a guitar, the crowd fell silent. She seated herself with the guitar in her lap and looked out at the audience.
She strummed a few chords, and the students onstage looked around, their conversations faltering. Gabriel knew he was crying and he didn’t care. He didn’t know what she was going to sing; in that moment, the song didn’t even matter. It was the act of singing it that was important.
Alex had one last trick up his sleeve, though. When Eliza started singing, Gabriel heard—and felt—Jack draw a sharp breath. Gabriel leaned into him instinctively, although it took him a few moments to recognize the Damn Yankees’ song; Eliza was singing it as an acoustic ballad, and her voice cut through the room like a knife.
Gabriel knew that no one felt that blade as sharply as Jack. I can’t ever hear it without crying, he’d said, and when Gabriel turned his head to look at him, he saw the tears shining in Jack’s eyes.
Now we’re both crying, he thought, but it was—for him, at least—cathartic. Jack looked at him, and Gabriel managed a smile. After a moment, Jack leaned toward him and kissed his lips, softly. Alex did this, for me, for you, and for Eliza.
On the stage, the students were slowly gathering around Eliza as she sang, and a couple of them sat on the floor to watch her.
“Yesterday’s just a memory,” Eliza sang. “I was running for the door. Next thing I remember, I was running back for more.”
Gabriel heard the words in his head: I didn’t know what to say when you called me baby, and he lifted Jack’s hand to his mouth, brushing his lips over the other man’s knuckles.
***
“Are you okay?” Jack asked.
“Mmhm,” Gabriel answered, but he slipped his hand into Jack’s back pocket. He seemed unaware of the action—he was focused on the two men approaching them—and Jack responded to the unspoken request for comfort, without understanding its source, by pressing closer to Gabriel’s side.
“Mr. S.”
“Daniel Martin,” Gabriel answered with a smile, extending his free hand to shake. “How’ve you been? It’s been, what...ten years?”
Daniel laughed, giving his head a little shake. “Where’d the time go, right?” he asked. “I want to introduce you to someone. Mr. Santiago—”
“Gabe,” the teacher interrupted.
Daniel grimaced. “That’s a tough thing to wrap my head around.”
Gabriel chuckled. “Believe me, I get that a lot.”
Grinning, Daniel said, “This is my husband, Cliff.”
Gabriel shook Cliff’s hand, saying, “Very nice to meet you.”
“You, too,” Cliff answered. “I’ve heard a lot about you. To be honest, for a while I wondered if he hadn’t made you up.”
“He’s exaggerating,” Daniel said. “I didn’t talk about you that much.”
Cliff smiled at his husband before saying, to Gabriel, “All good things.”
“That’s nice of you to say, anyway,” Gabriel said with a smile. He cleared his throat. “This is my…boyfriend, Jack.”
Jack shook Daniel’s hand, and then Cliff’s, before returning his hand to the small of Gabriel’s back. “Nice to meet you both,” Jack said. “It’s been fascinating, meeting so many former students of Gabe’s, seeing what an impact he’s had on so many lives.” The light pressure of his hand on Gabriel’s back was comforting, reassuring.
Gabriel watched Daniel give Jack a quick once-over, and he steeled himself for what might be coming. He wanted to apologize; he felt that he needed to apologize, but he was determined to let Daniel have control of the conversation.
Daniel met Gabriel’s eyes and smiled. “Ten years,” he repeated. “Yeah, I was twenty, home from college for Christmas break, actually,” he said,
glancing around the festive gym. “That’s the last time I talked to you. You asked me all about my classes, my life, how I was doing…”
“You said you were doing well,” Gabriel said quietly.
“I was,” Daniel exclaimed, and his expression was earnest. “I was, that’s why I was so happy to get a chance to tell you that I was finally, you know…feeling good about myself and the world…I wanted you to know that I was doing something with my life.” He chewed the inside of his cheek for a few seconds, regarding Gabriel, searching for the words he wanted to say. “Do you remember when I first came out to you?” he finally asked.
“Of course,” Gabriel said softly. The apology rose to his lips and he held it back.
“I didn’t know a single gay person. Only what I’d seen on TV, you know.” Daniel looked around for a moment, lost in thought. “I was fifteen and scared shitless. For all I knew, I was the only person like me who’d ever lived in this town. I was terrified to tell my parents, especially my dad. Afraid the guidance counselor would tell them if I told her. Embarrassed to tell my friends.” He turned his attention back to Gabriel. “So where could I go? Who could I tell, this secret that was eating me from the inside out? You were safe, Mr. S. Looking back, I realize you understood more than you could say.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said, unwilling to continue to bite back the apology that he knew he owed the man before him.
Daniel shook his head, frowning. “Mr—” He stopped himself. “Gabe,” he said instead, putting a hand on Gabriel’s arm. “I’m thirty years old. I got married last year,” he added, nodding toward his husband. “I think you’re misunderstanding my…What I’m saying is thank you. I realize now how hard it must’ve been for you, listening to stories like mine, and you never made any of us kids feel like a burden or nuisance. You made us feel like someone saw us. All of us. And now…” He gestured vaguely behind himself toward the stage, grimacing. “Seeing this play, knowing you wrote it when you were just a kid yourself…” He shook his head again and held Gabriel’s gaze. “You know what it felt like, and you made sure we didn’t feel it. You gave me the courage to tell my parents and the courage to get out of this town because you told me there was a whole world out there, people who would love me and accept me and be honored to know me.”
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