They quickly found a pair of empty seats on the top level.
Alek opened his leather backpack and showed Ethan everything he’d brought along for the trip. “This is not just our six-month anniversary—it’s also Señor Huevo’s first trip into the Big Apple!”
Ethan popped the lid to the tea box open and addressed the egg. “Now, Señor Huevo, I want you to look both ways before crossing the street and stay close to us at all times, okay?”
Alek opened the backpack and slid Señor Huevo’s tea box into the interior pocket.
Ethan peered inside. “You brought bicycle helmets?” Ethan unzipped and took off his blue puffy jacket.
“Yup. We’re Citi Biking it today.” Alek tossed Ethan the helmet he’d “borrowed” from his brother’s closet.
“But it’s the middle of winter!”
“Yes, Ethan, it’s the middle of winter. But it’s sunny, and I’ve been wanting to Citi Bike around the city with my boyfriend, so that’s what we’re going to do.”
“Anything you want.” Ethan pulled Alek into a train-seat embrace. “I want you to have the best six-month anniversary ever.”
“Don’t you think it’s funny that we use that day in the cafeteria as our start date?” Alek turned over, leaning back into Ethan’s wiry frame.
“No, I do not,” Ethan responded.
“I mean, we could use the first time we went into the city, or the first time we kissed.” The train slowly accelerated, the images of highways and houses blurring faster and faster in the windows across the aisle.
“But that time in the cafeteria was the first time we ever really spoke, and I saw what a cool guy you were. Of course that’s the date we should be using.”
The limping conductor slowly lumbered up the aisle. Ethan handed him his phone, displaying the tickets he’d insisted on purchasing for the both of them. The conductor examined the phone suspiciously, as if this was the first time he’d encountered the ticket-purchasing app that had been out for years. He absentmindedly ran his hand along his white, patchy beard, nodding curtly (and begrudgingly) before hole-punching and tearing two white seat checks that he slipped underneath the tabs in front of their seats.
“I’ve always wondered how these work.” Alek made sure that the grumpy conductor had left their train car before removing his seat check to examine it. Both sides were identical, white with a grid of boxes, some containing multiple letters that were clearly abbreviations for cities, others with only single letters. The rest of the boxes were numbered from one to twenty-three. “I mean, how hard do you think it would be to get a bunch of these printed up and decipher the hole-punching/tearing system so we can ride the train gratis?”
“When did you become such a degenerate?” Ethan asked, feigning offense.
“I learned from the best,” Alek shot back.
“My dad and I figured out some of the notations during all the trips we’ve made into the city together.” Ethan removed his own seat check. “Like, a rip down the middle usually means a split fare. And if they don’t do anything or give you a blank one, it usually means you’re getting off quickly. But each conductor mixes it up to prevent miscreants like you from hacking the system.”
“I didn’t say I was going to do it. I just said that’s how I would do it if I were going to.”
“And why would you even consider such a thing?”
“As nice as it is to do a legit day in New York, I understand why people don’t come in more. It’s freakin’ expensive!”
Ethan laughed. “I know, right? My dad is going to kill me when he sees his credit card bill.”
“I mean—let’s see.” Alek started mentally tabulating. “If we didn’t get the kid rate, the round-trip tickets alone would be sixty-four dollars.”
“And the Intrepid was another fifty-six,” Ethan added.
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, that’s also the youth rate. And the simulator was extra. And ice-skating’s another ninety bucks.”
“We’re going ice-skating?” Alek exclaimed.
“Damn, that was supposed to be a surprise.” Ethan slid his trapper hat over his eyes and crumpled into the corner of the seat.
“I can still pretend I don’t know if you want,” Alek offered, snuggling into his boyfriend. Their hands found each other and their fingers familiarly folded intertwined.
“I would very much appreciate that.” Ethan lifted his hat so that his eyes peeked out.
“Ice-skating! My God! How unexpected!” Alek rehearsed, hands on face in mock surprise.
Ethan shook his head. “Thank God you’re not in Drama Club.”
“It’s a good thing that I can’t pretend. That way, you’ll always know I’m telling you the truth.”
“So we’ve already spent, like, two hundred bucks!” Ethan exclaimed. “And that’s before food.”
Alek and Ethan sat on the top level of the double-decker, the white ripped-and-hole-punched seat checks inserted into the tabs in front of their chairs proof that they were lawful, ticket-carrying passengers.
“It’s nice, isn’t it, sitting in an actual seat?” Ethan had rolled his jacket into a makeshift pillow placed behind his head.
“I guess.”
The white-gray train car with blue seats was a little less than a third full. A middle-aged man wearing a business suit spoke animatedly to his mother on his cell phone two rows behind. A small swarm of girls had taken over the front of the car, gossiping and texting and chewing bubble gum in tandem.
“You prefer the way we used to do it, illegally hiding in the bathroom with that very romantic smell of piss and shit?” Ethan asked.
“I prefer being close to you.”
Ethan put his arm around Alek, and they snuggled into each other. “How’s that?”
“Worth the price of admission.” Alek wiggled out of his winter coat and wrapped his arm around Ethan’s waist. He must’ve dozed off, because the next thing he remembered was the train pulling into Penn Station.
* * *
“This was an actual battleship?” Ethan stared up at the Intrepid, docked in the Hudson River at 46th Street, the skyline of New Jersey like a postcard in the background. The massive ship tapered into the most elegant of lines at its base.
“Yup. In World War II. Then it was decommissioned and made into a museum.” Alek walked up and took his spot in the line of people waiting for admission. “I remember the first time we drove by this, a few years ago—we’d come in to see a show, and on the way out we got lost and ended up driving north on the West Side Highway, and suddenly, I saw this battleship in the river! I just thought, ‘Could New York be any cooler?’ And now I finally get to go inside!”
“Without waiting in this line!” Ethan dragged Alek toward the front. “Since there’s no need to join these brave souls facing the winter elements when you have purchased your tickets online.”
“You are so lucky that you have a smartphone. Since, you know, my walkie-talkie is basically useless.” Alek offered his flip phone as evidence.
“At least your folks got you a phone. Maybe when you turn sixteen, they’ll even let you get a Facebook account!”
Alek groaned.
They journeyed up to the front, hand in hand, where a guard scanned Ethan’s phone, then made the boys walk through a metal detector before letting them into the actual structure.
“I’ve been coming into New York for years now, you know.” Ethan had forgotten to unloop a chain from his baggy jeans, accidentally setting off the metal detector. The guard made him walk through again. “And I think I know so much about it, but still, there are thousands—no, probably hundreds of thousands—of things I still don’t. Like this one city is really a million cities laid on top of one another, and even if you spend your entire life here, you can only get to know a handful of them.”
They walked past the small aircrafts housed inside the hangar deck of the battleship, up to the flight deck. Next to the aircrafts, helicopters awaited the museu
m guests, lined up neatly on the port side. It was colder up here as the wind whipped off the Hudson, but it was warm enough in the sun.
“Aren’t people the same way?” Alek looked south, at all the piers extending into the Hudson like piano keys. He made out two men, holding hands, sitting on a bench next to a dog park. “You meet someone, and you see one version of them, then you get to know them better, and you get to know more of them. And the person they really are is the compilation of all those identities, stacked on top and around and into one another, just like this city is really a million cities coexisting in the same space.”
“But what if you decide, when you get to know all the versions, that you don’t like the person as much as you did when you first met them?”
“Then I guess you break up.”
Ethan looked away. “That’s so dark.”
“But it’s true. I mean, I don’t mean to be unsentimental, but the truth is, most people don’t end up with their high school sweethearts, you know?” Alek leaned into Ethan as he spoke.
“That’s so cold that you just made December feel warm, man.” Ethan shuddered.
“But it’s true, Ethan. Just like it’s true that I can’t imagine what would break us apart.”
A mischievous flicker entered Ethan’s eyes. “Me neither. But I can imagine what would turn our world upside down.”
“Is it time?”
“It’s time.”
Hand in hand, they half walked, half ran down the stairs, back inside the ship, to the G-Force Encounter simulator.
They got inside the booth, listening to the instructions as they were being strapped in. “This is around a thousand percent better than any video game,” Alek whispered. The simulation began, and soon, Alek and Ethan were rotating 360 degrees, holding on for what felt like dear life and screaming with joy and fear as they twisted and turned in every possible direction.
* * *
Ethan slipped on his bright yellow gloves. They had black tips on the thumbs and index fingers for smartphone usage.
“The ice-skating rink is at Rockefeller Plaza.” Ethan punched his code into the Citi Bike dock. He adjusted a seat on the bicycle that had just been released for him. “We can take 46th Street over.”
“We could, if we were tourists who wanted to stay in line for forever.” Alek was already sitting on his Citi Bike, strapping his backpack into the front basket. “We might not be real New Yorkers yet. But we’re not tourists coming in for the first time, either.”
“Truth. It’s like you know more about New York than I do these days.”
“So we don’t go ice-skating at the touristy places. We go ice-skating at the Sky Rink in Chelsea Piers, with the real New Yorkers.”
Alek kicked off, riding his bike down the West Side Highway. Ethan followed.
* * *
Ankles throbbing from their time on the ice, Alek and Ethan hobbled out of Chelsea Piers.
“So now hot chocolate at the City Bakery.” Alek referenced the itinerary his parents had insisted on. “A quick hop to the Picture Collection, then back home, right?”
“Sure…” Ethan trailed off.
“Sure, or what?”
“Or we can go to Lesley’s apartment.” Ethan’s eyes twinkled as he jingled a set of keys.
“Seriously? I’ve never been in, like, an actual New York apartment before! Won’t she mind us just dropping in on her?”
“She’s out of town for the holidays. And my dad’s back in South Windsor. And we’ve still got a few hours before you turn into a pumpkin. So…”
Alek let all the information settle. Although the idea of being alone with Ethan had filled him with anxiety since Thanksgiving, being inside an actual New York apartment won out.
“Lead the way!”
9
The building was a prewar monolith standing at the very bottom of Fifth Avenue, guarding the entrance to Washington Square Park like a sentinel.
“Pleasure to see you, Mr. Novick.” The doorman nodded them up, as if Ethan actually lived there and wasn’t just the son of the guy who was dating its actual owner.
The apartment itself was a four-bedroom with hardwood floors and arched doorways between rooms, wrapping around the top floor of the building, offering panoramic views of New York that made Alek understand why that function had been added to smartphone cameras.
These are the kind of views of New York most people will never see, Alek thought to himself as he scanned the skyline from the south to the east. In spite of the weather, and the cold, he had to force himself to leave the wraparound terrace and go back inside. “Ethan?”
“I’m in the guest room.”
Snow fell slowly outside the apartment window, a flurry that felt like an afterthought, completing the perfect picturesqueness. This was the first time Alek and Ethan had been alone together inside an apartment in the city. This was the first time they’d been alone in two weeks. Alek sat next to Ethan on the bed in one of the guest rooms, so sparsely furnished it could’ve been the sleeping quarters of a devout religious order.
Ethan leaned over and gently kissed Alek.
The pattern, both predictable and awful, commenced. Things would start getting intimate, as they were right now. At first, it was bliss. Achingly rapturous, curious and fun. But then, when enough clothes had come off, Alek would anticipate the question. He could see it in the distance, like a billboard proclaiming doom far in the horizon, looming in the future, growing larger every second. And then he’d pull away, leaving them both unsatisfied.
Like now. On their six-month anniversary.
The demon of anxiety knock-knock-knocked until the bubble that usually protected them from the world finally burst.
“That’s—I think that’s…” Alek pulled away from Ethan abruptly. “I think that’s enough.”
“Okay.” Ethan’s voice betrayed no feeling as he rolled over onto his back.
“Are you angry?”
Ethan didn’t respond.
Alek tried again. “I said, are you angry?”
“Of course not.”
Ethan jumped off the full-size bed. With snow still falling slowly outside, the only thing that would make the apartment look more like idyllic would be a fire roaring in the marble fireplace.
“You sound angry for someone who says they’re not angry.”
“Alek, seriously, it ain’t no thing.”
“But it is a thing. It is!”
“Only because you’re making it one!” Ethan snapped.
“I told you you were angry.” Alek sat up, wrapping the sheet around himself.
“I’m only angry because you insisted I am!” Ethan grabbed his faded T-shirt from the floor and yanked it on. “Here’s the sitch, Alek. This is a real damned-if-I-do-damned-if-I-don’t. I want to do it. With you. My boyfriend. And I can’t change how I feel or what I want.” Ethan climbed back into bed. “And I want you. I always have. Every time I see you, whether you’re freaking out over a grade or ice-skating or just doing your stupid homework, I want you. But you, my boyfriend, don’t want me.”
“It’s not that. I just…” Alek shifted in his sheet. Why did being shirtless feel so natural when they were making out but so uncomfortable now?
Ethan spoke softly. “See! This is exactly what I mean. When I go hermit, you press. You push. You make me talk. But when I talk, you clam up, like there’s some kind of big dark secret you’re not telling me.”
“I guess it’s my fault, really.” Alek stared at the flat paint of the bedroom wall.
“Why do you say that?”
“Let’s see, you invite me to NYC and into this apartment on our six-month anniversary. I knew no one else would be here. I mean, what did I think was going to happen? Movies and popcorn?”
Ethan nudged his way a little closer to Alek on the bed. “That’s really messed up. Can you imagine if you were a chick saying that? It’s around one step away from ‘I was asking for it.’”
“You know that’s
not what I mean.”
“So what do you mean?”
“I don’t know, Ethan. Back off, okay?” Alek shifted uncomfortably, trying to wrap himself up against the cold breeze cheating in through the ancient windows.
“What’s going on, Alek? It’s like every time we get here, you put up some wall and you lock me out, and that hurts more than anything.”
“Okay.” Alek looked away, at the paisley-green comforter cover, at the ceiling, anywhere but at Ethan. “There is one thing.”
“I knew it!” Ethan exclaimed, smiling for the first time since they’d stopped kissing. He made a swoosh sound. “Two points for Novick!”
“But if I tell you.”
“… when you tell me…”
“… if I tell you, you have to promise not to laugh.”
Ethan assumed the most somber expression he could. “When someone says that, you know, it’s impossible not to crack up.”
“Do you want to know or not?”
“I do! I do! And I promise”—Ethan raised a few fingers in his approximation of the Boy Scouts sign—“not to chuckle. Not to giggle. Not even to smile.”
“All right.” Alek cleared his throat. He swallowed. “The thing is I’m not sure—I don’t exactly—know—what it is.”
“What what is?” Ethan asked neutrally, guarding against any potential amusement.
“Okay…” Alek tried again. “I took Health class, so, like, I know what it is when a guy and a girl, you know, well…” His voice cracked, the awkwardness he was feeling wrapping itself around his vocal cords like a strangling vine. “But I’m not a hundred percent sure I know exactly what it is when…”
“When what…?” Ethan encouraged him.
“When two guys, you know…”
“Uh-huh?”
“You know, when two guys actually…”
“Uh-huh…”
“… do it.” Alek said, too embarrassed to make any more words, hating his ignorance, hating how stupid it made him feel, hating everyone who knew and kept it from him, perpetuating the conspiracy, hating his parents especially for never having talked to him about it, and hating even more how awkward it would’ve been if they had tried.
Hold My Hand Page 8