Josh shrugged. “I’ve figured out working while in school. So has Mateo, and he plays baseball on top of this.”
“Yeah. It’s dumb. I know. But my parents are sort of hard to argue with.”
A soft look crossed his face, and I stuck my thumb in my mouth to chew on the nail. I hated pity so much. Particularly when my parents were doing something good and worthwhile. Pity felt like my constant companion over the past two years.
I grabbed a cocktail napkin and put my nail in it before wadding the thing up and shoving it in my pocket. I pulled out my hand sanitizer and focused on cleaning while I asked as casually as I could, “Mateo didn’t come in after his game?”
“No,” Josh said, shaking his head and tucking his tips into the pocket of his waiter’s apron. “He’s not on until tomorrow. But Aiden texted. Varsity won.”
Josh’s blush and the way his freckles popped gave away the ease with which he said Aiden’s name. He didn’t used to get flustered mentioning Aiden, but maybe he was embarrassed now because I definitely knew what was up.
“Is it hard having to hide who you love?” I blurted. “I mean . . . not that . . .”
He waved off my stammering. “I know what you meant. And I guess it isn’t any harder than watching my family try to hide who I am.”
“So they know, and they don’t approve?”
“Yeah.” He pressed a hand down his shirt to smooth it out, even though it didn’t have any wrinkles. “I told my mom when I was pretty young. At first she said it was a phase, but then when she realized it wasn’t going away, she started on the Catholic guilt and said all this stuff about what God wants for me. She even considered one of those conversion places, but my siblings didn’t want me to leave. When nothing else worked, my parents decided to ignore it.”
“Your siblings know too?”
“Not exactly, but they’re young. I don’t know how to tell them, how to let them know that if they . . . if they want something different for themselves that doesn’t fit into Catholicism, it’s okay. I walk on a lot of eggshells at home, but I do my best.”
“Does that bother you? Always having your parents act like you’re not gay?”
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s better than them actively despising my choice and trying to convert me, I guess.”
“It’s not a choice,” I said, remembering every lecture my parents had ever given me on the matter. You don’t choose who you love, Chloe, any more than you choose your hair color.
Josh smiled. “I think they assume the choice comes when I act on my feelings instead of trying to make them go away.”
“So they know about Aiden?”
He shook his head. “No. My mom might suspect, but I doubt it. Look at him. Nothing about him even hints at him wanting to be with someone like me.”
The way he said someone like me broke my heart a little. As if maybe he wasn’t even worthy of anyone’s love, let alone Aiden’s. I couldn’t imagine growing up in a strict Catholic family in the middle of Iowa and being gay. I wished my parents were around so I could invite him and Aiden for dinner and they could see what parental acceptance looked like. But instead, it was me and Nan and Pops and Fox News. Not exactly a recipe for “embracing the gay.”
I shoved my hair behind my ear and looked him in the eye. “I don’t know, Josh. I think you’re pretty great. I’ve always thought that. Aiden is lucky to be with you.”
“Thanks, Chloe. I think you’re pretty great too.”
Silence sat between us and Josh eyed the tables of college students, who appeared ready to camp out for the rest of the night.
“I’m going to have to go tell them we’re closing soon,” he sighed. “I hate having to get into it with the college.”
“The college.” It was how most of us in town referred to people associated with Grinnell College. As if they all universally were to be tolerated, though most of “the college” was suspect and “too liberal” to be trusted. My parents were outliers, but I always felt a hint of suspicion lobbed at us when I was younger. One of the perks of living with Nan and Pops was being wrapped in a blanket of town acceptance in a way I never had been before with my parents.
Josh’s whole tone was a little ironic considering “the college” would be way more accepting of him and Aiden than the majority of our town. “You want me to go tell them to move it along?” I offered.
He shook his head again. “No. I got it. You really should work here, you know. You’d be great. And it’d probably make Mateo happy too.”
“Really?” I couldn’t help perking up like a needy puppy, but then Josh just shrugged.
“I mean, I guess. I don’t know for sure. It’s hard to tell things with Mateo. That guy is more closed off than Aiden, and that’s saying something. . . .”
“How come he’s your friend then?”
His eyebrows went up. “Aiden?”
“No. Mateo.”
He pressed his apron flat. “I don’t know. He seemed like he needed someone and I have a thing for strays.”
Then he crossed to tell the college students they were closing. A chorus of groans and shouts about whose turn it was to buy followed Josh back to the bar.
“I should let you finish up here.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You want me to tell Mateo you stopped by?”
“No. I already probably look like a stalker. I’ll just see him tomorrow.”
Josh squeezed my shoulder. “You don’t look like a stalker. You look like you care. Keep showing up. He could use someone who cares.”
I wondered if Josh knew whatever it was Mateo was hiding. Then I wondered if Mateo was hiding anything at all. Maybe he was one of these what-you-see-is-what-you-get types. Maybe the reason he didn’t share a bunch of stuff about himself was that he was pretty basic and didn’t have much to share.
“Stop thinking so hard, Chloe,” Josh said, walking me to the front entrance. Cars outside slid past, full of high school guys who didn’t have anything better to do at night than scoop the loop. Nan said they were all roosters vying for attention from disinterested hens.
“I’m not thinking that hard,” I said.
Josh laughed. “Sure, you’re not. Look. If you keep trying to dissect Mateo, you’ll work yourself into a problem that doesn’t exist. Be yourself with him. It’s enough. And one good thing about Gestapo is it’ll give you another chance to hang out with each other.”
“Oh.” My dumb cheeks heated again. “Did he tell you about the last game?”
Josh pulled the door open. “Yeah. He mentioned you gave him your letter, but that it was sort of an accident and he didn’t mean to get it. Don’t worry, I won’t tell Chloe. Or Cam.”
The mention of Cam’s name brought the image of Eve slipping into the passenger seat of his VW back into my mind. Did Josh know what was going on with that?
“Do you like Cam?” I blurted.
He lifted a shoulder. “He’s my boyfriend’s brother.”
Not exactly an answer. “Does he know about you?”
Josh looked down. “I’m not sure. I haven’t asked Aiden.”
It seemed weird that they wouldn’t have talked about that, but then I had no idea even how much time they got to spend together. If all they got were furtive kisses outside the baseball locker room. Josh worked and had five siblings, and Aiden played baseball and did whatever he needed to be ready for the Naval Academy, and I didn’t think the two of them could pull off a lot of alone time at either of their houses.
“I think Cam—” I started, but he held up a hand and shook his head.
“I know absolutely nothing about Cam and I don’t really want to.”
“Nothing?”
Josh looked back at the table of college students, arguing about the breakdown of the check, and sighed. “Aiden doesn’t talk about him and whenever I even say his name, I get hostile one-word answers. They are nothing alike. I mean, could you imagine Aiden passing out safety condoms?”
“Definitely
not.”
“For whatever reason, there is no love lost between those two. I feel weird even talking about him with you. Like I’m betraying Aiden.”
Josh evidently didn’t like gossip either. I should have been happy he’d admitted anything about Cam, but my dumb mouth couldn’t help blurting, “Do you think Cam pressured Aiden to play again after the practice round? It seemed like he did.”
“Maybe. I mean, it was fun the first time. And Aiden got those Rice Krispies Treats, but this game . . . not really his thing.”
“So whatever Cam mumbled that night was . . . ?”
Josh blushed. “Okay. I wasn’t going to say this, but I don’t want you to keep poking or say anything to Cam. Aiden didn’t spell it out to me completely, but it’s possible I forgot to clear the history from their computer one day and Cam stumbled onto some websites I’d been checking out.”
His cheeks burned even redder, and mine probably matched them. Even thinking about Josh surfing the twins’ computer for the no doubt copious amounts of gay porn available on the internet made me want to bolt out the door. I mumbled, “Oh. Okay then, yeah, that might explain it. So . . . um, I guess I’ll see you.”
“See you Friday, Chloe.” And the embarrassment I’d been feeling switched to dread. Friday. The next time we were going to play Gestapo.
“Yeah. See you,” I choked out.
I was half a block away with my head down when I bumped into Melissa McGrill. She looked tired, but not wrecked. All in all, she seemed okay. Part of me wanted to hug her, but I knew that would end up being awkward.
“Hey,” I said.
“Were you just at Beau’s?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Still think it’s better than Pag’s?”
“Totally. Who cares about breadsticks. The crust is better at Beau’s.”
“You’re wrong, but I know there’s no arguing. That place . . .” She let out a soft laugh. A truck honked and three guys screamed out the window, but whatever they said was lost in the breeze.
I shifted between feet, wondering what to say, but Melissa surprised me and spoke again. “Remember when we were in first grade and you got yelled at by the hostess? Your mom freaked out at her and made the manager write her up.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and wanted to die. I couldn’t believe she remembered that. When I was little, I used to rub up against the edges of tables and the sides of furniture because it felt good. I called it “tickling myself ” and Mom told me it was natural for girls to want their private parts—vulvas!—to feel good. She never stopped me or told me there was anything wrong with it. But people sometimes gave me weird looks when I did it in public, and then the hostess at Beau’s told me I needed to “stop masturbating because it’s making the other customers uncomfortable,” and my mom lost it on her. It was the first time I realized how different my parents were from most people in town. How different I was too.
“Yeah,” I choked out. “Thanks for bringing up that exercise in humiliation.”
Melissa smiled. “Oh, Chloe, it was forever ago and it wasn’t a big deal. Your mom was pretty fierce. I remember wishing she were my mom.”
“Nuh-uh. You totally had the superior mom with stuff like that. Your mom would have quietly told me that we do these things in private, not in public, instead of letting everyone in the restaurant know I’d found my clitoris as a six-year-old.”
Melissa laughed, then said, “No. My mom would’ve told you to stop doing it.”
I thought about that and then shrugged. “Maybe.”
“No, she would have. She would’ve been embarrassed. Your mom has never been embarrassed about you. Even when you were humping tables.”
We both snorted laughter then, because what else could I do? I was kind of pervy as a kid, or at least pretty interested in my vulva, until my mom basically ruined it all.
“Are you heading there now? Beau’s? Because they’re closing soon, you know. They aren’t open as late as Pag’s.”
She glanced at the restaurant behind me. “Yeah, I know. I’m just picking up. I’m running kind of late because I got a phone call. . . .”
It was an opening, though an opening for what, I didn’t know. Was I supposed to ask who she was talking to? We weren’t friends like that anymore, I didn’t think. We were people who shared memories. But I wasn’t completely sure who she was friends with. Freshman and sophomore year, she’d played soccer and mostly hung out with teammates. But this year she’d given it up, and I rarely saw her with anyone who went to our school. What would my life be like if I started hanging out with the girl who miscarried in gym class? The impact on my social status was a dumb thing to worry about, and I knew my mom would be disappointed in me, but she hadn’t had to deal with watching her best friend turn away from her for someone else, someone who didn’t bite her nails and blurt and live with her grandparents because her mom couldn’t handle it in Grinnell.
So instead of taking Melissa’s opening, I said, “Well, I’ll let you go. It was good seeing you.” Then I took off before she even had a chance to say good-bye.
* * *
Thursday night, Chloe Donnelly invited herself over for dinner and to “help” with my Friday night wardrobe. I thought her arty Chicago attire would put off Nan and Pops, but she showed up in jeans and a long-sleeved shirt with no rings on her left hand.
Then she talked to Pops about decentralizing the federal government and told Nan her meat loaf was the best she’d ever eaten, asking for the recipe and describing the Ina Garten variation she’d tried that was also delicious but took too long to make. I blinked in surprise. What seventeen-year-old knew about this stuff? She acted like she obsessively watched the Food Network and listened to conservative talk radio.
Chloe Donnelly crossed and uncrossed her legs so many times during the meal I decided there was no way she could have her labia pierced. I stopped myself from asking for confirmation—thank God—but I felt better chalking it all up to the Grinnell rumor mill.
After dinner she helped with the dishes. Nan beamed as if this new Chloe was exactly the kind of Chloe she’d been hoping for all along. I was stacking up reasons to resent Chloe Donnelly—not the least of which was her using Aiden and Josh’s relationship to her advantage in the game—but then she told Nan, “I’m lucky to have a friend like your granddaughter. She’s been so sweet since I moved here. It’s been hard and lonely with my parents adjusting to their new positions, and I’m so grateful to Chloe.”
Nan said, “Oh. That’s so nice to hear. We’re doing our best by her while her parents are gone for so long.”
Chloe Donnelly nodded. “I can tell. She talks about you all the time and how much you mean to her.”
She seemed to be spreading it on awfully thick, but then she said, “Would it bother you if she slept over at my house tomorrow night? My parents will be out late at this Des Moines GOP fundraiser my dad is helping with, and I hate being alone.”
Apparently, GOP fundraiser was the golden ticket into dismantling Nan’s hard-and-fast no-sleepovers policy. And I knew it was a total lie after Chloe Donnelly had told me about her parents’ liberal politics, but she’d said it with so much conviction I wanted to give her an Oscar. Nan hmmed for a minute, glancing at Pops, and then they crumbled. I didn’t even know if I wanted to stay at Chloe Donnelly’s house after the game, but that she’d turned it into a viable option with my grandparents was amazing. When I’d first moved in, I’d begged for months to have sleepovers with Eve, then later with Eve and Holly, but they’d never agreed, and I always felt like it made me look even weirder, more of an outsider.
When we got to my bedroom/guest room, I sat on the bed while Chloe Donnelly went right to the closet, pushing aside Nan’s ironed tablecloths to look through my clothes. She pulled out things that were ridiculously fancy and totally unworkable for a Friday night game of Gestapo.
She held a deep-purple dress up to her that made her eyes go even brighter, and made me want to
drown in my hair curtain, humiliated by how plain I was. She tossed the dress at me, saying, “You should wear that tomorrow.”
“It’s my confirmation dress. I’m not wearing this to hide in trees.”
“Other Chloe”—back to Other, even though I’d been Chloe throughout dinner—“you aren’t going to hide in the trees this time. You’re going to play offense, like you did during the practice game. I’ll bet your legs look totally pink in that dress.”
Maybe this girl liked me, liked me. What with all the touching and the leg talk. But then that was dumb. I flushed, then braced myself for the question that had been burning in my gut all week, and blurted, “How did you get Mateo’s letter?”
She lifted a shoulder, then went back to riffling through the closet. “I asked him for it, same as I did in the practice game.”
“Nuh-uh.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t even hard. He saw me and gave it to me, like he didn’t even care. I think he was more interested in finding you.”
“Really?”
She lifted her shoulder again. Everything Chloe Donnelly did looked like she’d practiced it. Was I supposed to practice gestures? Maybe working on things like that would make me confident like Chloe Donnelly. “Yeah. At least I think he was. I mean, he wasn’t bothered about giving me his letter. Just sort of . . . distracted and anxious to leave.”
So Mateo was easygoing and unconcerned about the game. I’d read his initial hesitation and questioning looks at me all wrong. He did only see it as a game and didn’t really care about losing his letter. It explained a lot, but it also made me realize he didn’t know anything about how Chloe Donnelly had gotten Aiden’s letter.
“What about the platinum favor?” I asked. “He didn’t care about that, either?”
She waggled her eyebrows. “Maybe he doesn’t want to say no to you.”
The idea was a flare gun of excitement to my stomach. “You think?”
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