“Yeah,” I agreed.
I sniffed and swiped at my eyes again. “Adam gave me this bracelet once. He had it made in a kiosk in the mall. It was one of those rubber bracelets like people wear that are stamped with WWJD. Only this one was stamped with WWND.”
“What would Nate do?”
“Yeah. I used to wear it all the time. It was a reminder to be true to myself. To live my life honestly. To love who I am.”
“But you don’t wear it anymore.”
I smiled a little. “I did for a long time. It took a while, but I finally got the message. The closet is bullshit, Luke. Even with all that crap people are going to say about how you’re a sinner or a perversion, you’re gonna find that it’s still better just being you.” I pushed a lock of blond hair out of his eyes. “God made you just the way you are. Don’t ever forget that.”
A sweet smile spread across his lips. “I love you, Nate.” There it was again.
I squinched my eyes up. “Luke—”
“You don’t have to love me back right now. You don’t have to say anything. I just wanted you to know.”
I ruffled his hair with my hand. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I could name a few things.”
“Yeah, I bet you could.” I wrapped my arms around him.
He slid his arms around my waist. “I’ll make you forget. I promise.”
I was counting on that.
For the first time in five weeks, no protestors showed up for T-shirt Tuesday. Word was that the day before a female algebra teacher at the other high school had taped to her file cabinet a photo of herself kissing her partner at a friend’s wedding, thus potentially damning the souls of her 125 or so freshmen students. They had to be saved, I supposed.
Chapter 43
I did not think trick-or-treating with Luke’s little brother was a good idea.
“Oh, come on,” Luke pleaded on the phone. “He’s ten years old. What does he know? We’ll just be hangers-on anyway. Guard dogs for him and his friends so they don’t get lost or picked off by some Jason with a thing for little boys in creepy costumes carrying pillowcases full of candy.”
I growled. “I’m not dressing up.”
He laughed. He’d won and he knew it. The outcome had been inevitable. Luke just didn’t take no for an answer. He was like a little puppy—eager and persistent and totally oblivious to any dangers lurking around him. How could I say no?
“Come over about seven.”
Come over? Uh-uh. “I’ll just meet you somewhere.”
Mom stepped into the open doorway and leaned against the facing.
“No. Please. Come on. You’ve got to meet my parents sometime. Besides, I already told them a buddy from school was coming over. Now you have to come.”
I started to argue, but there was no point. “All right. No costumes.”
He laughed again and hung up. I thumbed the End button and set my phone on my desk.
“Are you going somewhere with Danial tonight?” Mom asked.
“Nah. He doesn’t do Halloween.” I didn’t offer any more information and the silence just hung there for a moment.
“Soooo ... are you going somewhere with Juliet?”
“She’s going to a Halloween party with some of the kids. I didn’t want to go.” I hadn’t told Mom yet about Adam. Maybe I was hoping I’d wake up and this would all be a really fucked-up dream. But I hadn’t, and it wasn’t.
“So, who were you talking to?”
All right, Mom. Game over. “I’m going trick-or-treating with Luke and his little brother.” She just looked at me, her face squinching up. I scratched the back of my head. “I mean, we’re taking his little brother and some of his friends. He’s ten.”
“Who’s Luke?”
I leaned back in my chair and covered my face with my hands, then let them slide down. “He’s a guy I’ve been seeing.”
“What?” Her face blanched. “But you and Adam—” Her mouth clamped shut as the full force of what I’d said hit her. She sat on my bed and waited for me to explain. Instead, I broke down.
I had not wanted to start this again, and for sure not in front of Mom, but the tears came anyway. She pulled me over to the bed next to her and put her arms around me like she did when I was a little boy. “He’s found somebody else,” I said in between sobs I just couldn’t hold back anymore. I’d thought I was done with this on Market Street. In fact, each time I broke down, I thought that was it. But I was like a pressure cooker. Each time the pressure built up beyond a psi I could tolerate, it had to be released in a noisy, messy burst. Then things quieted down for a while, but the pressure built up again, and it was only a matter of time before it had to be released. The only thing that would stop the cycle was to turn off the flame. I didn’t know how to do that.
She patted me on the back and tried to soothe me with a string of Oh, babys. It wasn’t working. If the pressure wasn’t released, I’d self-destruct. I’d be done when I was done.
I feared sometimes I’d never be done.
“Maybe it’s for the best, honey,” Mom said when I calmed down some. “You two got close awfully fast. Too fast.”
This was not what I wanted to hear. I pulled away and dried my face with the neck of my T-shirt. It was a typical parentlike platitude. I knew what was coming before she even said it.
“I love Adam,” she said, undeterred by my sudden coolness. “You know I do. But, Nathan, you’re young. You’re going to meet a lot of guys, and maybe even some girls—”
“Girls?” I made a disgusted noise in the back of my throat and shook my head. That again. Jeez. Why was gay so hard for straight people to get?
“I don’t want to hear this, Mom.” I could see she was determined to reduce my feelings for Adam to a schoolboy crush. It was much more than that and she knew it. She had to know it. I was feeling stupid enough for thinking that our love was something epic, the kind of love people wrote songs and novels about. I didn’t need her to treat me like my feelings weren’t real.
Mom was still trying to patch my broken heart, but I’d quit listening. I didn’t want to be fixed up. I didn’t want to get over it. What I wanted was to hit rewind and go back to a happy place with Adam. A place where he still loved me. A place where there was no Luke and no Justin. Then I felt guilty. Luke didn’t deserve that. Justin did. But not Luke.
It was still too early to go to Luke’s, so I drove over to Adam’s house. I parked across the street and a few houses down, just in case his parents looked out the window. He wasn’t there. I didn’t know why I was. Except maybe being there connected me to him in some small way.
A jack-o’-lantern glowed on the front porch. Some early trick-or-treaters made their way to the door and knocked. I sat up in my seat. What was I hoping to see? Adam? Handing out candy to little monsters and ghouls?
I wished that Danial were there with his little stick of brain fuzz. I could’ve used a hit right then. I felt drained, numb. I really just wanted to go home and crawl into bed and wait for this nightmare to be over. I damn sure didn’t want to go trick-or-treating. I wasn’t thrilled about spending the evening with Luke either. I examined that thought for a moment, turning it this way and that. On the one hand, there was something about Luke. He was adorable, naïve and blunt and, Danial was right, completely fan girly around me. I smiled in spite of my broken heart. He was so easy to like. He’d be so easy to love.
Someone opened the door. Ben, I think, my not future father-in-law. It only took seconds for him to hand out the candy, and then the kids were bounding down the sidewalk again and the door closed.
I didn’t want to love Luke, at least not in the same way I loved Adam. It wasn’t Luke. It was me. That sounded like some pathetic break-up line, but in truth, I’d have rather wallowed in my misery than have fun with him. As much as I liked him, he wasn’t The One. He could never be The One. The One was doing God knows what sixteen hundred miles away in New York. I’d googled the distance. In fact, like some cra
zed stalker, I’d googled and Google Earthed everything about his new life. I knew what his apartment building looked like (kinda dingy and worn down) and the name of the deli on the corner (Bert’s). I even knew a few things about his slutty new roommates (like the fact that Alec had a thing for bad wigs when he performed with his band, Bad to the Bone, and Jeremy tweeted incessantly about stupid shit like whether he should have cream cheese or butter on his bagel and how nasty it is to have to pull a string out of your cat’s butt).
Mom thought I was too young to know what love was, that I was too young to be committed to one person. She was wrong.
I ran my thumb across the keys on my phone. The screen lit up. No texts, no voice mails, no missed calls. My inboxes were as empty as I felt. I desperately wanted to hear his voice. I didn’t give myself a chance to think about it; I speed-dialed his number and held my breath while the phone rang. After four rings, the call rolled over to voice mail. “It’s Adam. You know what to do.” I wished I did.
I considered hanging up, but my number would show up on his missed-calls list. No point in pretending I didn’t call. But I didn’t want him thinking I was sitting around like some pitiful jilted lover just waiting for him to turn his countenance my way and make my heart flutter for a moment. Although I would have almost settled for that.
I gave my vocal chords a quick pep talk before I opened my mouth—Sound happy, or at least okay. “Hey, Adam. It’s Nate. I just wanted to wish you a happy Halloween.” I paused for a moment. There was so much more I wanted to say. I wanted to beg him to come home. Beg him to love just me. Beg him to be the Adam who’d told me we were two parts of a whole.
Before I could commit one way or the other, he called me back. I switched over to the incoming call. I could barely separate out Adam’s voice from all the noise in the background. It sounded like another party, or maybe he was at a bar already. I glanced at the time. Six forty (Seven forty New York time). Not wasting any time living it up, are you, Adam? Apparently he couldn’t hear me either. He kept repeating, “Hold on. Don’t hang up,” until finally the background noise muffled.
“Where are you?” I asked. Even I could hear the edge in my voice.
He didn’t answer immediately.
“Nate, is something wrong? Are you okay?”
Is something wrong? Is something wrong? What wasn’t wrong with this? “No, nothing’s wrong.”
And then there was someone else’s voice—“Hey, baby. What are you doing out here?”—so clear and breathy that I knew the voice’s face had to be close to Adam’s. “Are you waiting for me?”
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. “I have to go,” I said abruptly. “I have a ... I have a date.”
“With Luke?”
He knew about Luke? Good. Maybe he was a little jealous too. I didn’t want to ask, but I couldn’t help myself. “Is that Justin?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he asked, “Why did you call?”
“I don’t know. I guess I just wanted to say happy Halloween.”
“Thanks. You too.”
And then that awful silence again. I bit back a fresh onslaught of tears and hung up.
Luke swung the door open before I could knock. His smile was huge as he took me in standing in a narrow path between mounds of leaves piled up on the porch, cobwebs hanging low around my head and shoulders. He looked like he was fighting the urge to pounce on me like an eager puppy. He stepped out onto the porch in his bare feet and pulled the door slightly to.
A black-and-white cat pressed up against my leg. Luke laughed and reached down to pick it up. “This is Justin,” he said, holding it up for me to pet.
“Justin?”
“Yeah. I named him after Justin Timberlake. That’s on the DL, though, so keep that to yourself.”
Justin was a dumbass name for a cat, I thought. Even dumber-asser for a New York boyfriend. I gritted my teeth and petted the cat.
“You’re just a buddy from school, okay?” he said in a low voice. “No touching, no, you know, looking at me. Stuff like that.”
I almost laughed out loud. Oh, Luke. “Got it,” I said.
He pulled the door closed a little more and stepped even closer to me. I shoved my hands in my pockets in a show of restraint, but after a quick glance around, Luke leaned over dumbass-name-Justin-cat and kissed me on the lips. Hello. Porch lights!
But as always, Luke seemed totally oblivious. He reminded me of a little kid who put a blanket over his head during hide-and-seek and thought no one could see him, despite the fact that four-fifths of his body was completely exposed. I feared that exposed part was going to get him into trouble one day. He just didn’t get it. But that was part of his charm.
“Come on in,” he said stepping back and opening the door wide. He set Justin (grrr) down on the porch as I stepped past him. My phone vibrated in my pocket. As much as I wanted to take the call, I didn’t.
The Chessers seemed like okay people. Not too warm, not too cold. Luke introduced me as a friend, but I hardly seemed to register on their radar screens as they continued whatever the suburban walking dead did with their time. God. What was wrong with me? I was getting more cynical by the day.
Little brother—Matthew, aka Road Kill—was another life-form entirely. I wondered for a moment if the boys were adopted. I met Matthew in the bathroom, where he was gluing more gore junk to his cheeks and throat and then soaking them with fake blood. He looked so much like Luke, except for the wire-framed glasses and the gore. I took in his shredded duds. “Nice costume.”
“Thanks,” he said, glancing up at me in the mirror.
I sat on the toilet while Luke helped him bloody up the back of his head. And then his dad was looming in the doorway. “So, Nate, what instrument do you play in the band?”
Before I could tell him I wasn’t in the band, Luke piped in. “Trombone.”
I resisted the urge to show surprise or look at Luke.
“A brass player,” his dad said. “Good. Trombone is a nice manly instrument. I’ve been trying to get Luke to switch over to brass. Clarinet is a girl’s instrument.”
I shot a quick look at Luke in the mirror and caught him rolling his eyes at his dad’s comment. I tried to see hurt, but all I saw was boredom. Luke had clearly heard all this before and wasn’t affected by it. Yay, Luke.
“I think his first-year band director was just trying to fill out the band, and Luke looked like an easy mark,” his dad continued. “Luke said he asked to play one of the bigger brass instruments like baritone, but the director refused.”
I doubted very much that Luke had done any such thing. Another quick glance at him in the mirror confirmed that.
“If I’d been on the school board then, he sure wouldn’t be playing a wussy clarinet now.”
“I like clarinet,” Luke said.
It was clear that his dad most definitely did not like his son playing clarinet any more than my dad had liked me trading music for football. But at least his dad was here. Mine had long since become too busy to make our every-other-weekend father/son bonding crap. Not that I’d missed the incessant insults and jabs to be something I wasn’t. Still, the rejection, the understanding that his love was conditional, had hurt. Still hurt. It wasn’t supposed to be that way.
I followed Luke up to his room.
“Trombone?”
He laughed as he dug around in his closet for something. “Yeah. Hope you don’t mind. Band kids hang out with band kids. Mostly just because we spend so much time together. It’s easier if he believes you’re with the band, you know.”
“You don’t think he’ll notice I’m MIA at games and stuff?”
“Are you kidding? There’re over two hundred kids in the band and fourteen trombone players.” He found what he was looking for. “Here they are!”
“Pink capes?” I said when he shook them out. “You really are gay, aren’t you?” I laughed and held one up to myself. “Normally I don’t do costumes. But I would so wear this.”
He grinned and pulled on a hoodie. “I thought you might. Here. Tuck it under your jacket until we get outside.”
“Why do you have pink capes in your closet?”
“Hero day at school. A bunch of us band kids wear them. It’s fun.”
I was liking band more and more.
Two of Matthew’s friends were waiting in the front yard when we left the house—Road Kill #2 and Road Kill #3. It quickly became obvious that they didn’t need or want our babysitting services, which was totally cool with me. Luke and I trailed along behind them, hanging out at the curb as the boys cut across lawns in their shortest-distance-between-two-front-doors dash for candy.
A little ways down the street we came to a section where the preceding and forthcoming street lights failed to overlap and illuminate. The sky was cloudy, so no moonlight filled in the gap. Luke took advantage of the darkness by slipping his hand in mine. He moved in close to me so anyone with cat vision would still find it difficult to see that our fingers were intertwined.
“God, I want to kiss you,” he said, looking up at me in the darkness. He made a quick assessment of the street activity. Ghouls and princesses and caped crusaders roamed the street, but none were in our little patch of darkness. Emboldened, Luke let go of my hand and slid his arm under my hoodie and around my waist. It was unusually cold for Halloween, and his fingers felt icy when he pressed them into my back. I shivered, a response he immediately misinterpreted.
“I know, I know. Me too,” he said, slipping his fingers under my shirt. I almost gasped, but I didn’t want to send him over the brink so I forced myself to stay still.
“Let’s just keep our eyes open. If either one of us pulls away, then the other will know there’s someone coming. Okay?”
I almost laughed out loud at his subterfuge. Instead I just said, “Okay.”
And then we were kissing. Eyes wide open. Kinda weird.
I had to admit, Luke could kiss. Being the expert on kissing now, I’d coached him well. I’d learned from the best. I stuffed that thought down and closed my eyes for just a second, letting myself experience his lips and the play of his tongue against mine. His fingers were warming up, along with everything else.
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