“Thanks for coming tonight.” Alek sat down on Ethan’s bed, hoping Ethan would sit next to him.
“Thanks for letting me.”
“Can we—I don’t know—can we talk—about what happened? That night.”
Ethan considered. “I’m not sure. I don’t know if I want to. I don’t know if it will help.”
“I think it will help me.”
“Why?
“Because I can’t imagine doing something like that. I’m not trying to make you feel bad or be all judgy. But when you grow up on comic books, the way I did, you can imagine just about anything: being bitten by a radioactive spider and getting superpowers, or being exposed to some freaky gamma rays and getting superpowers, or being born with a mutant gene that gives you superpowers—”
“Is the point here that you can imagine lots of ways to get superpowers?”
“The point is that for everything I can imagine, cheating’s not one of them. So I think helping me understand what you were thinking, or how it happened, will help me.”
“Okay.” Ethan took a deep breath. “Something started happening to me, a few months ago.”
“What kind of thing?”
“Our relationship was going so well, you know.”
“Except for that alpaca debacle around homecoming,” Alek reminded him.
“That was horrible,” Ethan agreed. “How did you manage to lose—”
“I said I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.”
“Okay, okay.” Ethan got back on track. “But we were so in a groove, you know, so synced up. It just seemed too good. Like, better than anything I’d ever had. And I started becoming obsessed with making sure that I didn’t mess it up.”
“Why’d you think you were going to mess it up?”
“Because that’s what I do, Alek. I mess things up. Or I stop myself from caring about them so that I don’t care if they get messed up or not. How do you think I’ve managed to fail three classes in my high school career? You don’t get it, because you’re not like that. But I am. And I became obsessed with it—every time it looked like we might get into a fight about something, or whatever—I thought, Is this the thing that’s finally going to break us up?”
“I wish I’d known.”
“I wish I’d told you. But I’m not sure I was even aware of it. But this is what weeks of soul-searching can teach you. And time with a shrink.”
“You’re seeing a therapist?” Alek didn’t know why this moved him so much.
“When I said I’d do anything to make this work, Alek, I meant it.” Ethan shifted. “So that night, when I was with Remi and he came on to me, it just felt like—finally—the thing I’d been obsessed about was finally presenting itself to me. The ultimate self-fulfilling prophecy, giving me the chance that I needed to destroy the thing that I care about most. I know now that I’ll never do that again. When I cheated on you, on us, I destroyed the most important thing in the world to me. And if we don’t get back together, at least I’ll have learned that. It’s painful as fuck, but hey—it’s something that I can take from the worst decision I ever made in my life.”
“One more thing, Ethan, okay?”
“Okay.”
Alek took a deep breath, trying to speak with as little judgment or hurt in his voice as possible when discussing the most painful event of his life. “Why didn’t you tell me, when it happened?”
Ethan looked away. “I know this is going to sound so stupid and that it’s not going to make any sense.”
“That’s okay.”
“I didn’t want to hurt you. To disappoint you. I knew I messed up, obvi. But I thought if I didn’t tell you, I could just bury it and it would go away and we’d have never to deal with it. That we could stay in our Garden of Eden.”
“That’s not how it works, you know.”
“Of course I know that, like, in my head I know. But it felt so much easier to keep it inside rather than actually have to deal with the hurt on your face. That’s what I was scared of the most, and then when it happened, that’s the thing I can’t get out of my mind. The way you looked when you found out. That’s what I’m going to have to carry around for the rest of my life.”
“You’re so dramatic,” Alek teased.
“Yeah, well, you disappoint the person you care about most in the world and see how you feel. But I guess you’re incapable of that, right? I mean, that’s what makes you, you. You’re too honest to hurt someone.”
“I don’t know if that’s true.”
“I do.”
“I mean, I’m not sure that being honest means you don’t hurt the people you care about. When I look at that time, after I found out, I was ‘honest’ with you that whole time, at least to the best of my abilities, about what I was feeling, what I was going through. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t hurting you also.”
“But I had that coming, Alek! I cheated on you. On us!”
“But honesty without kindness is suspiciously similar to cruelty.” Alek shifted. “Speaking of which … Arno, who you met today?”
“Yeah?
“I kissed him.”
“I know.” Ethan kept his voice neutral.
“How could you possibly know?”
“You think I couldn’t see it, dude? The two of you hovering around each other with a magnetic field of attraction? Anyone with eyes could see it.”
“It was after you and I broke up.”
“I figured.”
Alek threw his hands up in the air. “How did you know that, too?”
“Because you’d never cheat on me, Alek. Or on anyone. You’re not wired that way.”
Alek tried to think of something to say—something funny or witty or defusing. But nothing came to him. So he said nothing.
“So what?” Ethan sat down on the chair at his desk, the tension in his shoulders and neck betraying the nonchalance he was projecting. “Do you think you and Arno are going to start, like, dating?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How come?”
“The thing is, Ethan, when I kissed him, I realized something very important.”
“And what was that?” Ethan tried, and failed, to keep the hurt out of his voice.
“It wasn’t like kissing you.”
“It wasn’t?” Ethan’s eyes twinkled, the way they did when he was suggesting something that he knew he shouldn’t do but could probably get away with.
“Nothing is.”
Alek leaned in and slid his hand into Ethan’s.
Kissing Ethan.
Kissing Ethan rocked.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Mayson Maxwell Badders, whom I’ve never met, who messaged me on Facebook and told me to write a sequel to One Man Guy with the following plot: “Personally i hope to see alek and ethan break up and get back together.”
Kyle Khandarian, who continues to inspire me with his activism.
Barry Kleinbort, who gave me a great piece of dramaturgical advice about how to approach this book.
Topher Payne, who is a great guy to call and ask questions about story.
Dr. Jessica Casey, who took me on a ride in her Tesla.
Ivy Aukin, who reminded me of the importance of food in this story.
Sarah Braunstein, who read a draft of this book (as she did with One Man Guy), and told me what was good and what was not and how to make the latter into the former and really what kinder thing could any writer friend do for a friend?
Joy Peskin, my editor, who is so good at her job, it makes me want to be better at mine.
All the readers of OMG. Your feedback, responses, posts, messages, reviews, and tweets gave me the courage and faith to write this book, and more importantly, they gave me hope for the world.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Barakiva is the artistic director of the Hangar Theatre in Ithaca, New York. He is a graduate of Vassar College and the Juilliard School, an avid cook and board game player, and a soccer player with the New York Ramblers. H
e writes and lives in Manhattan with his husband.
Visit him online at michaelbarakiva.com, or sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2019 by Michael Barakiva
Farrar Straus Giroux Books for Young Readers
A imprint of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
fiercereads.com
All rights reserved.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is printed in the hardcover edition as follows:
Names: Barakiva, Michael, author.
Title: Hold my hand / Michael Barakiva.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2019. | Sequel to: One man guy. | Summary: As his relationship with boyfriend Ethan is tested, high school sophomore Alek takes a stand to make his orthodox Armernian church more progressive.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019007464 | ISBN 9780374304867 (hardcover)
Subjects: | CYAC: Gays—Fiction. | Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. | Love—Fiction. | Armenian Church—Fiction. | Armenian Americans—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.B229538 Ho 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019007464
Our eBooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945 ext. 5442 or by email at [email protected].
First hardcover edition, 2019
eBook edition, May 2019
eISBN 978-0-374-30487-4
Hold My Hand Page 22