“You should move your blanket.”
“What?”
“It’s getting wet.”
There’s a man standing over me wearing a tank top and short shorts, stretching his legs where the family making sandcastles had been. They must have gone home.
“Right,” I say. The sun is down but bright on the horizon and I can’t really see his face. The girls are gone, too, pretty much the whole line of people closest to the water have vanished. The sand is turning to mud at my feet.
“You okay, buddy?” the guy says, bending down to flex his legs, calves bulging as he stretches. “You’re about to get sucked into the ocean.”
“Yeah. Umm. Yeah.” I don’t know why he’s speaking to me.
“You don’t sound very convincing.” He pulls one foot straight up at the knee, his body toned and tanned, remnants of a beard on his cheeks.
“Sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” He continues to stretch for his run. “What are you listening to?”
“The World Is?” I shake my head. “You probably never heard of them.”
“Can’t say I have.” He smiles. “What are they like?”
“I don’t know, it’s tough to describe. My mom calls it suicide music.”
He laughs and the water splashes onto my blanket, soaking the edges. I climb to my feet and shake off the sand, and he helps me move it back from the ocean. “Thanks,” I say and I’m pretty sure he’s gay, but I’m not sure what to do with that information.
“No problem. And is it safe to assume you’re not considering it?”
He forms a slight smile, like he isn’t sure if he should be joking. My gaydar isn’t that great, but it’s just that I’m in Asbury so the odds are great, but he’s kind of old, not super old I just don’t find older men attractive, like actual men, and he’s in his twenties probably, older than Kepler at least and definitely not a teen. Not Stick.
“Are you?”
“What?”
He leans down and a nipple slips out of his tank top.
“You’re not contemplating suicide, are you?”
“No,” I say, super quick, and my face turns red. I must look like a freak alone on the beach on a Saturday night.
“Okay, that’s good,” he says, standing up and looking behind him, at the ocean. The sky is lower now with the sun at the horizon. “Because I’m sure if you were, you would tell a random stranger you met on the beach, right?”
He’s smiling at me but I can’t see his eyes and his teeth are straight and white.
“That was a joke,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Wow. I’m way off my game today,” he says. “Most people find me funny.”
“I’m sorry.” My feet are wet and sticky and The World Is plays low in my headphones. I don’t know why I mentioned ‘suicide,’ other than my stupidity. I slump my shoulders to hide my naked chest.
“You apologize a lot, you know.”
“I’m sorry.”
He laughs. “Okay, I get it, I get it—you’re the funny one.
I shouldn’t have tried to compete.”
He pulls his elbow behind his back and waits for me to speak but I’m thirty-eight seconds behind the conversation and I keep forgetting to breathe. I pull my legs closer, against my chest.
“Well I’m going to go for a run but if you’re still here when I get back, I’ll bother you some more, alright?”
“I’m not gay,” I say, blurting it out like a total freak and I don’t know why, it’s not true for one and by the look on his face he wasn’t even thinking of that and even if he was, I didn’t need to say it.
“Ohhhkay,” he says, elongating the vowel and stepping back two steps like he just realized I’m crazy. Legit crazy. “That’s okay, man. Wait—did you think I was coming onto you?”
“I’m sorry,” I say. One more time. I jump up off the towel, shoving the wet blanket into my backpack.
“Hey, relax, man, no worries,” the man says. “I mean, you are cute but you’re just a baby.”
He laughs, in a super gay way, like he was hiding it before and now he knows he doesn’t need to, it’s so obvious, I’m so freaking obvious, and I shouldn’t be allowed to speak. I don’t know how to do this—I mean I know I’m gay but only ever with Stick and our last kiss in the basement was our last kiss forever so I’m going to have to be like this, like him, but I don’t know how to laugh like that and I’m not buff like that and there’s no way I could walk up to a stranger on the beach and speak.
“It’s okay if you’re not ready,” he says, leaning forward to tap me on the shoulder. “I wasn’t ready when I was your age either. You’ll get there.”
He waits for a response that I can’t possibly give then he takes off in a full-out sprint along the sand by the water. I grab my sandals and rush for the boardwalk, cranking the volume on my headphones louder and louder until I can’t hear myself think.
I won’t be okay. I won’t ever be okay. Every freaking thing.
SEVENTEEN
I’M OKAY. OR BETTER. Or not as out of my mind / losing my mind / pulled into the depths of depression that crushed me last weekend. It’s over. I’m over it. That’s what I keep telling myself.
And Stick and me are okay. He apologized for Staci, or at least her presence at Jarrett’s party, and he sounded sincere, about as sincere as you can sound via text. He said it was all Sammy’s idea and he didn’t expect me to be there which I guess is better than the alternative or maybe I’ve just accepted it. All of it. But he’s been texting about the concert and we’re one week away from seeing the greatest band that ever existed and I’ll be with Stick and he won’t be with Staci and then we’ll be back to school and maybe things will return to normal, something close to normal, like they were at the start of the summer. That’s what I keep telling myself.
Today is Nana’s 65th birthday, a good excuse for a celebration, and she had a laugh when she saw my cast, pointing to her left arm, the injured one. She hasn’t been able to cook since the stroke so everyone’s excited that she’s making her world famous rice and my stomach’s already rumbling, some thirty-eight hours before dinner will be served.
“Smells good, Mom,” my dad says, lingering in the kitchen over the stove.
“Thank you,” Nana says, stirring the rice with her good hand, circling her spoon around the edges of the pot.
“See I told you you’d be back making your rice,” Dad says and snakes his head around the corner to where I’m standing, a tall glass of liquor in his hand. I’m alone at the dining room table, watching Papa out the window, the tent taking up most of the space on the patio by the pool. My family really does love a tent.
“Did you call Mr. Burton?”
Disembodied head half into my space, like he can’t fully commit to an interaction with me. I nod.
“What did he say?”
“I didn’t talk to him.”
He looks at me confused and the vein starts to bulge, this early already. Dad said we had to beat the traffic to the shore so he made us get up hours earlier than any human needs to be awake on a Saturday. He steps around the wall into the room.
“You just said you did. I don’t have the time for this shit today, Matt.”
“I didn’t talk to him, just to his secretary.”
“And then?”
“Then what?”
The table is solid black oak and long enough to seat a dozen people, not quite as big as the one in Stick’s dining room and not big enough for Thanksgiving, where the guests number in the thirties most of the time, but it’s large enough that he’s stuck on the other side with his bulging vein.
“Then you better quit with that goddamned attitude right fucking now,” Dad says. “What did the uh—I don’t know, the lady, what did she say?”
“Nothing,” I say, and he looks like he’s about to leap over the table and smack me right in the face, even though he’s never hit me, I think the only times I got spa
nked it was my mother, not him. “She said he’d get back to me, but I never heard back.”
I avoided the house last night, I didn’t want Dad to ask about Mr. Burton, and I honestly forgot, I really did, it was already five when I remembered to call, and the secretary said he’d left for the day. Stick was working, he’s always working it seems, so I ended up at Sammy’s and we watched Netflix in his bedroom. He said Krystle stopped returning his texts.
“And did you tell her you were calling about a job? Did you mention my name?”
“Yeah.”
“They’ll put you on the production floor once your wrist heals, some night shifts and Saturdays. He said you could help out around the office until your cast is off.”
He waits for me to say something, maybe even thank him, like I would ever thank him, so I scratch at my cast and stare out the window as Titi walks through the fence with trays of food and my screaming nieces. Dad stomps away with his drink.
Hey guys, trying to figure out the plans for next weekend.
Cara kicks off a group chat with Stick and someone else and my pulse races immediately. Because Stick.
What’s up? I say. Like an idiot. Stick hates group chats, and I know he won’t be happy he’s included but someone needed to speak.
So Kepler has a friend in Asbury who’s having a party the night of the concert and he said we could go over after if you guys wanted.
Cool, I say, super lame, and I guess Kepler is the unknown number. I wonder if my gaydar was accurate and if “Kepler has a friend” is code for something else.
Cool bro cool, Cara says and I laugh even though she’s making fun of me. What time does the concert start?
“Hey kid,” Titi says, ducking in from the kitchen after dropping off the food. “How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“So Isa got super jealous that we saw that movie. I had to see it again with her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.” We watched this Melissa McCarthy comedy, and it wasn’t that great but we couldn’t stop laughing. Titi made cracks the whole time, and I was dying by the end, I love our Matty and Titi days. “It wasn’t as good the second time.”
Papa puts the vacuum in the shed and Auntie Luz and Uncle Willie arrive through the gate, weighed down by more trays. We have enough food at these parties to supply half the state so there’s leftovers for days. It’s not as good the second time.
“You okay?” Titi says, a little lower. I think she knows my secret, and I’m sure Mom complained that I’ve been hiding in my room all week. She bought me another novel so I’ve tried to be civil but I’m only a few pages into Naruto: Innocent Heart, Demonic Blood and it’s not that great. I guess I should have “grown out” of my obsession with Naruto by now, but I’ve been into it since I was a kid, when I first noticed the manga in the bookstore and I thought Naruto looked cute, this spiky-haired boy who talked like a girl and could defeat the crap out of any ninja who tried to do harm to his village.
“You going swimming today?” Titi says. “It’s so hot out.”
“Maybe.” I did bring my board shorts but I don’t really have the energy and I see Dad outside with his drink, stomach hanging over his trunks.
“You should go in,” Titi says, “I brought my bathing suit.” She pulls down her tank to show the straps of the suit underneath and I smile, we used to swim here all the time.
“He won’t go in,” Mom says, butting in from the sink in the kitchen. “He’s too busy sulking to do anything fun.”
“Uh hello?” I say, holding up the cast in case she forgot I can’t get it wet.
“I told you we could wrap it up in a garbage bag like when you shower. You could float on one of the inflatable chairs.”
I roll my eyes, I’m perfectly fine in the air conditioning. But I’m about to grab my book from the car. It’s better than talking to my family.
“Alana,” Nana says from the stove, struggling to get out the words. Titi heads into the kitchen.
Hello? Anyone? Hora del concierto? Oh, I’m sorry, Matt’s Puerto Rican but he doesn’t speak Spanish for some reason.
LOL nope, I say. God I’m so lame. Stick and Kepler haven’t joined in and she might be flirting with me. Uncle Willie comes up the stairs in long slow strides with his pile of trays.
Hey guys! I think the concert’s at ate. The unknown number chimes in with poor spelling as Willie greets Mom and Titi.
I meant EIGHT. FUCK, my head’s in a million places right now.
“Mr. Mateo.”
Willie steps into the dining room and I jump out of my seat, I know he won’t abide by a simple wave.
“Hey Willie,” I say after the hug. Auntie Luz is Nana’s sister and Willie is her husband, so I guess he’s my granduncle—or is it great uncle? Sometimes he scares me.
DUDE YOU DON’T NEED TO SHOUT! Cara texts.
Lolol, Kepler says. Stick is going to HATE this.
Auntie Luz comes up the stairs next, even slower than Willie, and Titi Alana’s boyfriend trails behind with several more trays of food. Everyone is excited that Nana is making her rice again and Willie pulls out a chair across from me.
“Don’t mind me, boy,” Willie says, in that deep halting timbre. “I just need to rest for a second.”
Anyway. My friend’s throwing a Labor Day blowout that night and it’s going to be amazing. Any fan of The World Is is welcome to join.
It’s definitely Kepler and I can almost hear him speak through the text, his voice a little higher than most people, or the same as the gay guys on TV. Willie reaches for the jug of wine and searches for a cup.
I’m pretty sure liking that band is a reason NOT to invite someone to a party but whatever, Cara says.
“What are you doing with that phone?” Willie says.
He’s my grandparents’ generation but he’s not as old as them I don’t think.
“Just texting,” I say.
Meet at the Wonder Bar at 7:30? Kepler says. Doors open at 7.
I hear a loud pop as Papa fires up the grill and a flame shoots out the tent. Nico and Isa are splashing in the pool and the water looks perfect, I just don’t want to have to float near the edge with a garbage bag around my wrist.
That sounds awesome, Stick says. It’s Stick! We’ll text when we get there.
“I might have to smack a child one of these days,” Willie says, starting on his drink. “All they ever are is on those damn phones.”
He doesn’t speak Spanish around me like Auntie Luz but his voice is deep and echoing. I don’t know if he’s ever sat down and talked to me before. It’s frightening.
“I’m sorry,” I say and turn over the phone to hide the screen.
“Looks like you got something on your mind, boy,” Willie says.
“I’m fine. Just making plans with friends,” I say, glancing out the window again. Dad jumps into the pool to the delighted squeal of Nico and Isa.
“Yeah. Sure you are.” Willie grunts. There’s laughter in the kitchen as Nana hits Titi’s boyfriend with her wooden spoon to stop him from sampling the rice.
“Only three types of trouble in the world, young man. Money, jobs, and women.” He takes a full gulp of the plastic cup and refills the wine. “I know you ain’t got money, so that ain’t your problem—unless—your parents don’t starve you, do they?”
He looks up and I shake my head as he shakes the wine around his cup.
“And you’re too young to have job problems, real job problems, like when you’re the only Dominican in the plant and the foreman goes out of his way to pile on the shit, because what are you going to do? They’ll fire your ass if you talk back.” He pauses and holds it there and Mom and Titi are screaming in the kitchen behind him. “So you just shovel the shit deeper and deeper because your daughter’s got to eat and the white devil holds the keys, but that shit burns in you son, it doesn’t just sit, and you never forget.”
Titi’s boyfriend comes over to give Willie a hug and I wonde
r if this is my chance to escape, like a Shinobi through the window straight down to the pavement because I love Willie, I really do, but I need to see if Stick is still texting.
“But I know you don’t have job trouble,” Willie says when we’re alone again. “And there ain’t no school in the summer, so it must be a woman.”
I glance at the phone when it buzzes again.
“Yeah, it’s a woman.” Willie rolls the wine around his cup again. “So, let me give you some advice, son. It ain’t worth it. No woman is worth it.”
I turn to the kitchen and he grunts again.
“You can tell my wife, I don’t care. She knows.”
He takes a deep sip and takes forever to swallow and I’m dying to get back to the texts—to see if Stick is as excited about next weekend as I am.
“Not that I don’t love her. If I didn’t love her, I wouldn’t be with her all these years. I don’t play with fools like that.” He takes another drink and the laughter rumbles from the kitchen. “But it ain’t worth worrying about. You ain’t gonna figure out what any woman is thinking so don’t even try. You understand?”
I nod. Half a nod. I don’t have a clue.
“Useless,” Willie says and gulps down the rest of his wine. “Listen. What I’m saying is whatever you want to do, do it. If she’s right for you, she’ll follow. She’ll follow. Don’t spend your life trying to figure out what she wants. Only leads to trouble. And I got no time to fuck for trouble, understand.”
His eyes are hidden underneath his skin so it’s almost like he’s watching you twice, and maybe that’s why I’m afraid of him. But I think I get it, and I like that he’s talking to me like an adult. Nico keeps screaming outside like he’s completely lost his mind and Mom’s laughter from the kitchen is making me lose mine.
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