by Daryl Banner
So I repeat myself: “Do you want to be my boyfriend or not?”
“Yes,” he answers. “I do. I … I do.”
“Good.” I grab the power cord by the desk, pop it into the side of my laptop, and punch a button to revive it. Tomas is still staring at me, stupefied, when the screen loads up and the next episode begins.
Chapter 19
Dmitri
I can tell something is off the whole time we hang out at the Throng & Song. Sam and Tomas stand by each other so rigidly, I feel like I’m witnessing the burning embers of a fight they had before they showed up. I might be presuming too much, but it certainly doesn’t look like they’re having a good time.
But I guess neither am I. Eric acts especially demonstrative in front of Dessie, going on and on about this new violinist named Kirk who he thinks is totally the one. Never mind this Bailey guy who he doesn’t invite over anymore, I guess. Beyond his need to fluff up his feathers in front of everyone, he’s also being a royal dick to me, making fun of me in front of Brant’s art major girl, who totally caused a scene, insulted Dessie, and went to the bathroom to sulk (or escape out a window).
We are just having a remarkable time tonight.
It leaves me feeling oddly thankful that Riley couldn’t come due to some familial thing she had to go home for. If she witnessed this train wreck tonight, I’m sure she’d have serious doubts about pursuing me in any romantic sense.
The only sense of normalcy I find is afterwards when I step out for a breath of fresh air. Apparently Sam had the same idea because I find her in the parking lot staring up at a light post where a storm of moths and bugs are flitting about.
“Hey,” I call out to her. It’s so quiet, it doesn’t take much of my voice to carry the whole length of the lot.
Her arms are folded when she turns to face me. “Hey,” she returns.
She sounds particularly lackluster. Instead of acknowledging it, I draw up to her side and fold my arms just like her, the chameleon I am. “So that’s your Tomas guy,” I blurt with a totally forced casual nod.
Seriously? That’s the first thing you ask her?
“You met him before, remember?” she points out. “Dessie’s play.”
“I’d hardly call that meeting him. More like, he stepped out of the theater to catch us making out like horny teenagers.”
Sam doesn’t acknowledge what I said, nor shows a trace of reaction on her face. I wonder if I need to be more sensitive, considering how on-edge everyone seems to be tonight.
So I choose a different approach. “He seems … sweet.”
“The sweetest,” says Sam with a light shrug, then she returns her sharp green gaze to the bugs above. Does she wear green contacts now, or is the light playing tricks on her irises?
I feel a lot of resistance from her suddenly, like I’m not welcome to talk to her. Did my little joke ruin everything, or is it just that everyone is off tonight? No one seems to be in a decent mood except for Brant, who obviously is counting on getting some later. Maybe I should avoid going back to the apartment after this.
“We tell each other stuff, right?” she asks suddenly.
I feel my blood go cold. She better not be pregnant with Tomas’s kid. I’m not armed to receive a blow like that, not tonight. The sound of her voice does not inspire comfort in me.
“Yeah,” I force myself to say, my throat constricted. “Of course. You can tell me anything, Sam.”
“And you can tell me anything,” she says back.
I nod, waiting for her to talk to me. When she doesn’t, I realize I’m missing something. Am I supposed to read between the lines here? I have no idea where her train of thought is leading. “So what’s up?”
She bites her lip, watching the bugs. One of them drops suddenly near her face and she flinches, then turns to face me. After opening her mouth and seeming to sift through five different things she wants to say, she finally settles on: “I … think … my boyfriend might be gay.”
I lift an eyebrow. “Seriously? How?”
“He hasn’t tried to, like, do anything with me. At all. I mean, other than kiss. And cuddle.” Her lips pinch suddenly. “Is this weird to talk about? Talking with you about another guy? Is it weird?”
“No, no,” I say at once. “It’s not. We’re friends.”
“We’re friends,” she echoes uncertainly.
“So, um … maybe he’s just taking it slow?” I offer, forcing myself to be totally casual and at ease talking about this. I want to be a good friend to her. I want to be the ears and the shoulders she needs and deserves. “Just because he doesn’t go after you doesn’t mean he’s gay. I mean, he could be. But he might also be the kind of guy who values stuff other than sex. Those do exist, you know.”
“You mean a guy like you?”
I chuckle. “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I value sex. A lot. It’s important to me. But, you know, some guys are more sensitive. Less sexual. They like intimacy and they get it by cuddling and kissing.”
“Or he’s a no-premarital-sex type.”
“I had one of those,” I say with a knowing smirk. “Senior year of high school. No premarital sex at all.”
“Guy or girl?” she asks.
I’m about to answer automatically when her question slaps my face. Her eyes have changed. Her expression, too. She seems to anticipate my answer with the worry (or is it excitement?) of someone who’s waited for quite a lot of time to ask this particular question.
I never meant to hide it from her. My sexuality is never a secret I intend to keep; it’s just a part of me that I don’t always get the chance to reveal in some organic way in conversation, and with Sam and I, the subject of whether I dick around with guys has never come up.
“Girl,” I finally answer.
Sam nods, then suddenly becomes intensely interested in picking at her cuticles.
I want to ask how she found out, whether she was told, had her suspicions for a while, or is just now fishing for the first time on a total whim. Somehow, none of those questions come out, and instead I just say, “The first person I ever got naked with was a guy. Sleepover, stuff got weird fast. But my first kiss—and first everything else—was a girl.”
“I think my first kiss was a girl, too,” Sam volunteers suddenly.
I cock my head. “Really?”
“Sixth grade party I was forced to go to. Someone’s birthday,” she recalls, her eyes going away to retrieve the memory. “I forget her name. It was a totally lame, parentally supervised ordeal. I was roped into a game of spin-the-bottle, and when another girl’s spin landed directly on me, everyone thought it’d be the funniest thing if we actually kissed. And so we did. She tasted like a pink jellybean.”
I wrinkle my face, stifling a laugh. “The hell does that taste like? Bubblegum? Strawberry?”
“No. It tastes like a pink jellybean,” she sasses back, the hint of a smile curving her lips. I’m so relieved to see that smile. “I really wished one of the boys’ spins would land on me, but they never did. And by the time it was my turn for the bottle, the parents caught us and put an end to our debauchery.”
“What a shame.” I take a step closer to her. “So you’re not weirded out at all? By … me?”
She shakes her head at once, knowing what I mean. “No. I think I might’ve known, but I wasn’t sure. It’s really not my business to ask, I guess. You’re the same Dmitri no matter who you like, really.”
Those words alone are more comfort to me than I think Sam will ever know. My insides burst with elation at hearing them.
“And,” she goes on, “I’m pretty sure I’d have a girlfriend by now if I had stayed a sister of Rho Kappa Lambda.”
“Rho Kappa what?”
“A sorority I joined my freshman year. My ‘sister’ Amy got a little attached. I sort of broke her heart, I think.” Sam makes a funny face at me. “I’m an awful person, Dmitri. I think she was in love.”
“I wouldn’t blame her,” I say so fast, I ca
n’t stop the words from coming out. Sam’s eyes seem to flicker with surprise, which causes me to spill a bunch more words to bury the ones I just let out. “I didn’t know you joined a sorority. You don’t seem to be the—hey, no offense—the join-a-sorority kind of girl.”
Sam presses her lips together, thinking, then she shrugs and says, “I guess it’s because I was never spanked as a kid. I wouldn’t know what to do with those big wooden paddles.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s more of a fraternity thing,” I tease back, determined to keep the conversation steered away from my words.
“I think girls do it, too.” Sam crosses her arms and looks back at the Throng before she says, “I heard you’re seeing a writer. Is she nice?”
Well, I did bring up her musician friend Tomas; it’s only calling it even that she asks me about Riley. “Yeah, she’s pretty nice. We write in completely different styles, but we get along. I mean, I’m more of the death and doom-and-gloom and provocative type of writer. She is a bit more … uh, Hallmark card?”
“Ouch.”
“I didn’t mean that in a bad way.” I frown, thinking on it. “Or … maybe I did. But I wouldn’t say that to her. Er, not in those words, at least. She just writes a lot sweeter than I’m used to. I need more conflict in my writing.”
“I like dissonance in music. Conflict in writing is, um … sort of like dissonance in music. I guess.”
“I think you should be up on that stage in there,” I say suddenly.
Sam freezes up, her eyebrows pulling together. “M-Me? No. I’d just choke right up. I don’t have Dessie’s stage presence.”
“You don’t need it. All you need’s a piano.”
“I’d still shit myself, I’m pretty sure.”
“You have recitals at the Music building. You’re used to it.”
“No, I’m not. I get so nervous before them. You don’t see me. I get so, so nervous. Like, I’m pretty sure even my ears sweat.”
I chuckle at that and lean against the lamppost. It brings me a lot closer to her somehow, which wasn’t quite intended, but I don’t make a move to pull away. I notice she doesn’t either.
“I want to hear you play,” I tell her. “It’s something we … sorta never did. And I regret that.”
“There’s a recital I might have a piece in at the end of the spring semester. It’s quite a bit of a ways off, but my professor told me that submissions for it are in November, so I may secure a spot early.”
“That’s nice. But I want to hear you sooner,” I press her. “Like, what about this weekend? You doing anything? Let’s hang out.”
“I’m …” A wave of discomfort rushes over her face. “Well, Tomas …”
“Oh, right. That ‘thing’ Tomas said you guys are doing.”
“It’s not really anything. Tomas was just wanting some time for us to, like, spend together or something. Not that we don’t already spend every waking minute together,” she mumbles under her breath. I’m not sure I was meant to hear that last part. “He was just trying to weasel me out of Dessie’s attempt at roping me into another project. He knows how involved I get. I sort of fall into my own world, and he doesn’t like it when I do that.”
“But that’s what we artists do,” I argue, my brow furrowing. “He’s a musician too, isn’t he? He ought to understand that.”
“Well, stories need conflict. Riley ought to understand that, right?”
I shut my mouth and, fighting to hide my impressed smile, I give Sam a nod. Touché. “Maybe Tomas is just taking his time with you. Maybe it’s … sometimes best not to rush things. He’s not gay. He’s just waiting for the right time to woo you. The perfect time.”
Sam’s demeanor hardens, and quite suddenly she’s eyeing me with significance. I suppose my words carry more weight than they seem, and she feels every bit of that weight.
The door to the Throng opens, spilling out noise for a second before it shuts again. The tall, gangly shape of Tomas stands there. “Sam?” he calls out, his voice nasally and his face searching.
Sam gives the lamppost a little kick, which casts vibrations up to my shoulder, still leaning on it. “See you later, Dmitri.” Then she heads toward her Tomas, who is ever so quick to put an arm around her and lead her right back into the Throng.
After a while, I get in my car, deciding I’ll just make it an early night and head home, but I can’t seem to start the engine. I close my eyes and lean back in the seat, thinking about a hundred unfinished stories swimming around in my head. All the possible endings taunt me, but the worst story that’s still desperate for an ending is my own. I don’t know if it’s the writer in me, but I find myself suddenly needing to know whether Riley is just a character passing through, or if she’s the real deal and I should let go of one chapter and start the next with her.
Didn’t I decide to do that already? Wasn’t that my plan?
Why the hell am I dragging my feet?
In my angsty confusion and self-doubt, I turn on my car just to allow Nirvana to sing my grungy soul to a better place while I roll down my windows. A chilly breeze pulls through, the first signs of the coming winter.
The next instant, there’s a tap on the roof of my car. I stir, my eyes flapping open, and Eric’s standing there.
“Hey, bitch,” he says.
I smirk up at him. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk.”
“I don’t.” I reach for the volume knob and crank it higher. Nirvana wails and the guitars scream.
Eric reaches in through the opened window and, with his body over my lap, twists the knob all the way down. He pulls out of the window, comes around the vehicle, and yanks open the passenger side door.
“I said I don’t—”
“Yeah, yeah,” Eric cuts me off. “I heard you. And I’m going to state my piece anyway, because the last time we had an honest chat in this car, you were telling me that I treated you like another fuck I toss to the side, and that I’d fuck anything with a dick.”
I sigh through his words. “I didn’t mean—”
“So allow me to correct the record, shall we?” Eric clears his throat demonstratively. “First off, I don’t fuck or get fucked. No butt stuff. You know that. I might suck. And I might make out with a boy like a fish and wrestle a bed until the sheets are twisted into a Möbius strip, but I don’t fuck. That’s because I’m orally fixated. I love things in my mouth. I love putting my mouth on stuff. I have an obsession with lips. Yours are gorgeous, by the way.”
I roll my eyes and look away, annoyed.
“Second off, despite what you might think, every single guy I meet is important to me.”
“Important,” I mumble with half-lidded eyes.
“Yeah, actually.” Eric cocks his head, determined for me to hear him out. “They may seem more like casual acquaintances to you, but they’re not. I want something to … stick with any one of them. I want a guy to date me, to dine me, to tell me they like me. But the reason most of them never come back around is because I’m not like other gay guys. I’m weird. I don’t do butt stuff. I’m a little strange in the bedroom. You don’t even know the half of it, D.”
I smirk. “Don’t you start calling me that, now.”
“It’s kinda cute. D. Riley started something nice. Anyway, listen. All I want is for you to try and appreciate my particular circumstances. I’m not a slut. I’m just very … persistent in finding someone who matches my brand of weird, okay? And I have to go through a lot of guys. Like, a lot, apparently. And right now, Bailey is too chicken shit to even try anything sexual, which … is why I hung out with him several times. He needs someone to talk to. He needs a big bro. A big gay bro. But it’s also because he’s young. He’s scared and nervous and hasn’t even kissed a boy before because of his evil family—his words, not mine—and this is his first time away from home, and blah, blah, blah, I’ll spare you. But can you please just stop looking at me like a big dirty slut? Because I’m not. I’m really, rea
lly not.”
“Okay,” I mumble at the steering wheel. “Alright. Fine. I get it.”
“Alright?”
I let out a deep sigh all over the wheel. I have to take a breath and appreciate Eric’s efforts at righting this wrong that’s sat like a big ugly bird between us. I’ve hated it. “Yeah. I guess I’m just … projecting my own frustrations onto you. I don’t know.”
“Sexually frustrated ought to be our middle names.”
“Dmitri Sexually Frustrated Katz.”
“Eric Chaplin Sexually Frus—No, I already got enough names.” The pair of us laugh at that. Then, with a flippant smile, Eric twists the volume back up, drowning our world back up in Kurt Cobain. “We really ought to just talk more,” he says through the loud music. “After all, I do know where you live.”
Chapter 20
Sam
It wasn’t my choice to bring Tomas home with me. And my mom certainly wasn’t prepared to house a guy for the winter break and have an extra mouth to feed, no matter how many times Tomas insisted on paying for himself. But here I am, sitting in my cramped childhood bedroom with a tall redhead standing in front of my shelves staring at all my high school pictures and not recognizing me in any of them. “Is this you?” he asks quietly, poking at a picture. “Or this one?” He never guesses right, always pointing at the prettier girls.
Story of my life.
Also, I have no idea why it’s his instinct to speak so quietly in my tiny, messy house, like he’s afraid of waking some nonexistent baby. The first day, my mom is ecstatic to meet him and claims to have heard all about him, despite how very little I’ve said. My mom didn’t even ask what kind of guy he was; she trusted me implicitly that Tomas would be a safe visitor for the holidays.
She probably doesn’t even care if we have sex, even though I insisted to her that we haven’t yet, and that we wouldn’t be. “Okay, sweetie,” she said, like she believed about zero percent of my claims.
My mom is so desperate for me to have anyone in my life, she is letting a total stranger sleep under her roof—more specifically: in her daughter’s bed—and seems to reveal no misgivings whatsoever. Tomas had even brought a sleeping bag, insisting he can sleep on the floor or in the already-crowded living room if it’s a problem, but my mom—yes, my humiliating mom—pointed out how big my bed is.