I Will Be Okay

by Bill Elenbark

  “Did it hurt?”

  Stick is on my left so the cast is between us, poor planning if I planned to hold his hand like I want to—like anyone would want to. On a date. With Stick. The previews are playing and I’m on a date with Stick. More perfect than perfect.

  “It wasn’t too bad,” I say. “You want to sign it?”

  “Sure. Am I the first?” He smiles as the preview for an X-Men film thunders across the screen.

  I nod.

  “Cool,” he says.

  I’m wearing a blue polo with flecks of yellow, which matches his shirt, almost like we coordinated so it definitely looks strange and Janice was making cracks for half the ride about how we were dressed and how we were acting, maybe we shouldn’t have tried going out in public so soon. Stick covered by saying we were meeting girls—Staci and some random friend they were setting me up with—and Janice bought it, the set up at least. It explained my awkward silence in the backseat.

  “I like your shirt,” Stick says, and I’m mad that I didn’t think of it first, to say it to him, the way the slim folds of his collar blend into his neck, painted on like it’s skin.

  “Thanks. I like your … hair.”

  I do, it’s slicker and smoother than usual, but I’m not smooth at all and he notices.

  “Don’t be gay,” he says and leans back against his seat, and for a second I’m scared that I’ve ruined the whole experiment with a single dumb comment about how good his hair looks, like his skin and his face and that smile, oh, that smile. He taps me on the arm above the cast.

  “Dick,” I say, loud enough to compete with the previews, and he punches me lightly. His knee settles against my leg. More perfect than perfect.

  “How was work?” I ask.

  “Oh god, the worst.”

  “What happened?”

  “This big guy spilled coffee on himself then he tried to blame it on me. He said I left the cup too close to the edge and when he tried to stand, his stupid gut pushed it onto his coat and that was somehow all my fault.”

  “No way.”

  “Yeah, no, we almost came to blows.”

  “Wow.”

  Stick’s got a lot of fight stories in his family—like way more fight stories than me, and all mine involve Nico because he’s Satan’s Little Helper, but for Stick, he means real fights, fistfights, where blood gets spilled and furniture gets broken and a trip to the ER is just a Tuesday night. One time several brothers were battling in the basement and David drove Marcus through a wall, like straight through the sheetrock with a hole the size of Marcus’s body. The two of them spent the rest of the week repairing and repainting, Marcus with a broken collarbone. They don’t stop with yelling like my family does.

  “Did you get into trouble?”

  “I don’t know. He wanted the restaurant to pay for his dry cleaning and I was like, no way buddy, maybe start a diet and replace that tent you call a jacket and forget about the coffee stain.”

  I laugh, he always makes me laugh, and the date doesn’t seem so strange anymore, it’s just us. Laughing.

  “But my manager’s cool,” Stick says. “He better not shove me in the back doing dishes tomorrow.”

  “You have to work tomorrow?” I say.

  “Yeah but not until eleven. I can stay out late.”

  “Good,” I say, and it feels okay to say it, we haven’t discussed what we’re doing later but I assumed we’d hang out in my basement. Alone.

  “Are we umm …” Stick hesitates, glancing away from me. “What are we doing after the movie?”

  “We could head to my house,” I say, under the sound of a preview for a dystopian teen movie. Stick’s focused on the screen so I wipe a finger-comb through my hair. “Everyone will be in bed by the time we get back.”

  “Cool,” he says, reaching out to touch my cast, the hard plaster over the wrap now softened, allowing for movement. I’m getting used to it, the weight of it, and he slips his fingers over my free fingers and squeezes gently.

  We watch the rest of previews in silence, but this is more than I expected, even in our empty row near the back, holding hands like this. The Menlo Park Mall theatre was transformed a couple years ago into movie restaurants with plush reclining seats and a full menu of food and there’s enough of a buffer that no one else is near, this far from the screen.

  “This is nice,” I say, almost to myself, and I feel him tense up or clutch tighter but I wonder if someday soon, when I get the cast removed, we could actually hold hands in public like this, maybe even in school. I didn’t really want to come out in school, but I’d be cool with it if I did it with Stick.

  “Dr. Pepper?”

  Our waiter-usher interrupts with our drinks and Stick jerks his hand away, quick enough that he might not have noticed if it wasn’t so obvious that he jerked his hand away.

  “Oh, umm, that’s his,” I say, stuttering.

  The server sets down the drink and sets down my Coke then disappears up the aisle away from us. I don’t know what he saw and I don’t know if he cares but I don’t care what he thinks, or anyone really. I slip my cast over the armrest again but Stick slumps away in his seat, eyes on the screen, the previews ending and the lights dimming and his sudden refusal to make contact with me.

  I can’t pay attention to the movie, distracted by every movement beside me—is he moving closer, no he isn’t, he’s pissed at me and my cast is in the way and why the fuck did that waiter have to show up at our seats? And he keeps coming back, interrupting with the appetizer we were supposed to share but it’s just sitting there, untouched.

  It’s obvious now that Stick is freaked – the way he doesn’t want to touch me, but then he shifts a little closer at every break in the action or maybe it’s me imagining. The waiter drops off the bill when the movie’s almost over, but I haven’t been following—it’s just a bunch of explosions and too much exposition and I couldn’t even follow the action at the ending. My cast is beginning to itch, and the food tasted like shit and Stick hiding from me in the dark, not speaking. I let my knee drift into his space, inch by inch before the credits roll up the screen. He shifts away.

  “That sucked,” Stick says in the lobby, off to the side in the corner by the bar.

  I look around before responding but no one is near us. “The date?”

  “Really?” He shakes his head and his hair hasn’t moved so it still looks perfect.

  “The movie?”

  “Yes, the movie.” Stick swipes left to right, blinking hard in the lobby lights. “The rest was nice.”

  I breathe again.

  Janice calls to tell Stick she’s pulling up outside and I dig into my shorts for the pack of mints I brought even though I forgot to use them—I forgot pretty much everything I planned to do because this night has been crazy, it was wonderful and great then it was frightening and strange and I’m on a date with Stick and it should just be great. But I keep getting stuck in my head.

  “Did you like the movie?” Stick says when he hangs up.

  “Yeah, I mean, I don’t know,” I say, shifting in my stance. “It was alright.”

  “Really? What about that whole middle part where they set the trap for the dude working for the government, what was the point of all that?”

  “Oh,” I say. “That was pretty lame.” I have no clue what he’s talking about.

  “Of course, I’m criticizing a comic book movie so maybe it’s me that’s crazy.”

  “Yeah,” I say, I don’t know what else to say, a crowd from another theater pushes through the doors.

  “You calling me crazy?” Stick says and he holds it there, in that space where his smile spills from the edges of his mouth. I need to stop thinking—force my mind to stop thinking—freaking out about everything because he’s still my best friend and he’s staring at me with those deep blue eyes and that perfect smile. I will be okay.

  “Yes. You are legit crazy.” His face brightens under the red lights of the exit sign. He loves when I
call his bluff. “You should really seek help.”

  “Are you flirting with me, Matt Tirado?” he whispers.

  “Nope,” I say, tapping him in the gut with my cast.

  “Why not?” He pulls back so I lean closer, up to his ear.

  “I already got you.”

  “Oh is that right?” he says, his voice low but not quite a whisper, eyes darting left and right over my head, making sure no one can hear us. “After a single date?”

  “Date’s not over yet,” I say with a quick flirty smile. He laughs and touches my arm at the elbow, sending shivers up my body.

  “Good point, my friend, good point.”

  “Friend?” I say and I let it linger. I didn’t think I could do this, I didn’t think I could flirt like this. But I am. And I’m not bursting into flames.

  “Of course,” he says and he shows me his phone, the text from Janice that says she’s arrived. “And more.”

  More perfect than perfect.

  ELEVEN

  THE TRASH IS WRAPPED up in bags inside green plastic containers, the ones with the holes ripped into the base, and I grab on with one-and-a-half hands to wheel them around to the front. I assumed everyone was sleeping but as soon as she heard the front door open, Mom called down the stairs for me to put out the garbage so I dropped the cans at the curb and hurried back through the backyard into the kitchen, searching for mints because I lost them somewhere and I don’t remember where and my breath needs to be as fresh as possible, everything is possible, Stick is in the basement, waiting for me, and my nerves are scraping at the sides of my brain.

  I open and close and lock the basement behind me, as silent as I can. Stick is on the couch down the stairs with a devilish grin on his face. THIS IS THE GREATEST MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE PLANET.

  “Uh so hey,” he says.

  “Uh so hey to you,” I say. He’s on one side of the couch and the television is off. He looks as nervous as I am.

  “What’s going on?” I say.

  “Nothing.” He reaches around his back, looks past me up the stairs to make sure no one is coming, and sets a liquor bottle on the table in front of him.

  “Where’d you get that?”

  “Your dad’s stash.”

  “Noooooo, what if he finds out?”

  “He won’t find out. You know how many bottles he has back there?”

  “True,” I say, stepping closer to the couch, a mismatched green and gray cushion on one side with the original blue on the other. Nico snuck a stray dog into our old house a couple years back and it ripped all the stuffing out of one side.

  “You want a shot?” Stick asks.

  I don’t think my liver has recovered from the shots last Saturday and I don’t know how people drink so much of that stuff. But we made out after we got drunk, so …

  “You have cups?”

  “Why, you afraid of my germs?”

  “No,” I say and Stick smiles, lifting up the bottle and shooting down a massive gulp. It looks like whisky, my dad’s first choice of liquor, he drinks it so much I can tell by the smell.

  “Shit that’s strong,” Stick says between coughs. I step past him to take a seat, not too close because I don’t want to scare him, but I want to be close to him. I take the bottle and take a sip.

  “Oh god.”

  It’s disgusting, worse than the shots from last weekend, just pure foul venom. Stick takes the bottle back for another pull and I know what he’s thinking—I could use the liquid courage as much as him, but the taste is fucking terrible.

  “You want to play Xbox?” he asks.

  “Sure.” We’ve got an old-fashioned fat-back television down here, this massive machine that the movers didn’t want to pick up even before they heard we wanted it down the basement, but it’s got a pretty big screen and it’s decent enough for video games.

  “Which game?”

  “Crap, I don’t even know what I have left, Sammy’s brother took back a bunch.” I scan the shelf beneath the television stand where the Xbox sits. “Resident Evil?”

  Stick laughs. “How romantic.”

  I feel my cheeks blush at once, but he’s smiling as he takes another drink of the whisky.

  “Naruto?” I offer.

  “Sure,” Stick says. “That’s vaguely in the realm of romance.”

  I laugh, the way he always makes me laugh, and find the game at the top of the stack, where it always is. The walls in the basement are lined with gray panels and most of the upper sconces are missing so it’s pretty dark except for the television. I sink back into the sofa as the disc loads.

  Naruto’s video game is not the same as the show—it’s got the same characters and the same concept—predestined kid grows into his special powers to become a master ninja and protect his village from various enemies, but it’s really just a fighting game, Mortal Kombat-style, and Stick and I have mastered enough attack combinations that we have to keep switching characters to make it even, too many special moves ingrained in our brains.

  “Oh, that bitch,” Stick says when I pick one of the female characters that he always loses to, but I’m out of practice after all the baseball practice and I’m not sure I can grip the controller with the cast on one wrist.

  “Umm…” I hold up the arm and flex my fingers around the handle.

  “You’ll be fine,” Stick says, sucking another sip of the whisky. “Let’s go.”

  The cast is heavy, and I’m afraid to test the wrist so I can’t quite thwart his attacks and I get my ass kicked but I don’t really care, I just want to kiss him. We play video games all the time.

  “Dude, you suck,” Stick says and I point to the cast—like hello, this isn’t very fair—but he shakes his head and starts another round. “So what happened, really? You never told me.”

  “Ugh.”

  “Mateo Tirado.”

  He never calls me that, but I like when he calls me that. His eyes are red and mine are blurry and Naruto’s music plays low in the room.

  “I tried to slide, you know, without sliding on my ankle and—” He’s laughing already and I don’t want to finish, I just want to kiss him, but he’s not making fun of me. He never does. “So I did this sort of unplanned barrel roll and slammed into the dude at second base and I busted my wrist and they called me out anyway.”

  “Oh my god,” Stick says, bent over clutching his chest from all the laughter. I reach for another drink, I don’t care about the taste.

  “Oh my god, that’s so great.”

  “Nope,” I say, wincing.

  “What did your dad say?”

  “That I’m a goddamn spaz.”

  “Of course,” Stick says.

  I set down the bottle and I’m waiting, I keep waiting, I figured Stick would make the first move once we got to the basement, he’s the more adventurous of the two of us usually, like at Six Flags this spring we were on a class trip and the rain shut down all the rides so when the sun came out, Stick convinced the operator to let us on Nitro even though the tracks were wet. The cars bounced off the rails the entire ride and I’m pretty sure we could have died. But he’s acting all casual now like we’re just friends hanging out and maybe that’s okay, because this needs to be normal and he needs to be okay with this but I really want to kiss him. Stick turns to me and I don’t want to wait.

  “I like your shirt,” I say.

  “I told you not to be gay,” he says with a quick slick smile and I can’t resist, I inch forward on the mismatched cushions. He glances behind him, up the stairs.

  “Don’t worry, I made sure it was locked,” I say.

  “Okay,” Stick says and grabs one last drink from the bottle, setting it on the table beside us. And before he turns I’ve already lunged across the space between us, eyes open to guide my lips to his lips, swift and intense and holy shit, THIS IS HAPPENING! I shift closer, my still eyes open—am I supposed to close them?—then I’m on top of him, fully on top of him, and we’re k
issing.

  Stick pulls back and his eyes are rolling up in his head like he can’t control them, then he pushes me back, against my back, my legs scrunched up to my knees until they almost don’t bend anymore. He leans into me, on top of my chest, pinning my arms against the cushions as he reaches under my shirt, touching.

  I try to catch my breath but I start shaking, I can’t stop shaking. I can’t actually breathe and I can’t stop shaking. This is amazing.

  “Here,” Stick says, reaching out for my polo, pulling it up to my chest and I do the rest, yanking the shirt over my head and out one arm but it gets stuck on the cast so I can’t remove it without him helping but he’s too busy touching and then we’re laughing, this brief burst of laughter like “holy shit, what is happening?”—and then we’re kissing again, rubbing and touching on our backs and bare skin, his lips on my lips, my shirt on my wrist.

  He retreats for a second to unbutton his shirt and I take the lead again, pushing forward into him. I close my eyes and it’s better this time. So much better.

  I let my right hand explore, above his waist but along his back and his side, pausing at the stomach, this little bulge above his hips, and his hands drift down along my chest—past the stomach to my waist, my cast in the way but we’re not waiting, it’s just happening. I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS HAPPENING.

  “Oh my god!”

  My mom’s voice is unmistakable in any situation, especially in this situation, three steps from the bottom of the stairs.

  Stick jumps up first, attempting to button his shirt and zipping up his jeans.

  “What in the hell is going on down here?”

  Stick looks at me, eyes darting all over my face, but I don’t move, startled and shaken and frozen in place.