by Dirk Hunter
Kai and I still hadn’t spoken, which I thought was for the best. I wanted to be able to look at him without the sight of his cock being the first thing to leap into my mind. Sometimes I worried that it wasn’t him I missed, but rather the sex. For a few weeks there, we didn’t really do anything outside of that. School was awkward, we barely talked, we were just naked all the time. I hoped that wasn’t the case. So in order to be certain, I was going to have to wait until I could look at him without my stomach twisting into knots and my mouth running dry.
Adam got really good at avoiding me. After the first few days of trying to talk to him, only to get the cold shoulder, I guess he must have started taking roundabout ways to class, ’cause I never saw him in the halls. Except for once on Thursday, when he promptly turned right around and went back the way he’d come before getting within forty feet of me. I don’t know what he did for lunch, ’cause I stopped seeing him in the lunchroom. I know some kids ate in the orchestra room or the band room, but Adam didn’t play an instrument. Maybe the jocks did something similar with the locker room or the gym. I thought about asking James P. Hogan — for whatever reason, I no longer got quite so tongue-tied around him — but I figured it would seem too weird. Wherever Adam was, I could never find him. I was beginning to doubt I’d ever get him to even talk to me, much less forgive me. What I needed was to somehow get him alone, for only five minutes. I felt confident that, when he was not surrounded by hundreds of our peers, he might actually give me a chance to explain myself. Finally, the next Friday, I got my chance.
I had forgotten my textbook in Spanish class, so I headed over to the language hallway to pick it up during lunch. The hallway was empty; kids were either at lunch or in classes. When I left the Spanish classroom, I saw Adam walking down the hall, just a few feet away. He hadn’t noticed me step out the door. This was the perfect opportunity to talk to him; no one was around and I was practically close enough to touch him. I ran to catch up.
“Adam, wait,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Please, can we talk?”
“What the fuck could you possibly want to say,” he replied through clenched teeth. “Leave me alone and go back to your stupid boyfriend.”
Okay, so, not the best start, but at least he was talking to me. “It’s not what you think. Kai is straight.”
Adam’s face twisted with anger. “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he demanded, shoving me up against the locker, fists bunched up in my shirt. Unshed tears were gathering in his eyes. “Is it? You can’t land the Jewish faggot of your dreams so you’ll settle for me?”
The pressure Adam was exerting on my chest was kind of painful, but I didn’t care. I was just happy he was actually talking to me again, and it felt good to have him touching me, even like this. Besides, I kinda think maybe I deserved it. I grabbed his wrists so he wouldn’t let go.
“No, it’s not like that. I swear.”
“Oh yeah? Well, what is it like?”
Well, here we go. I thought. I still had no idea how to explain myself, but I finally had him listening so I’d better dive right in. But before I could even begin, an all too familiar voice broke in.
“Now, now, boys. I’m getting pretty tired of finding you two like this.” Mr. Cortez stood there, arms folded, looking stern.
Adam immediately let go of me and pulled his arms out of my grip with barely any effort. He took off down the hall, and with him went all my hopes of reconciliation. Every last scrap of self-control I had snapped.
All the frustration and anger that had been slowly building for over a week burst forth.
“God damn it, you fucking idiot! Do you have any idea what you just did? That was the first time I have gotten him to talk to me in fucking weeks, but you just had to butt in and ‘rescue’ me, ’cause that is apparently the only thing that validates your worthless existence.”
Mr. Cortez took a step backward under the force of my anger. At that moment I realized exactly what I’d done, and how stupid it was.
“I mean… no, fuck it, that’s exactly what I mean. Don’t worry, I’ll just show myself to Mr. Hayes’s office.”
CHAPTER TEN
DINNER THAT night was a strange affair. I had kind of figured that after getting a phone call from the principal explaining exactly what I had done and that I was suspended for the next week, there might be some degree of, I don’t know, punishment perhaps? At the very least, some scolding, maybe a withheld dessert. The kind of things parents are supposed to do, you know? Instead, dinner was painfully, awkwardly normal. Cheery even.
Neither of my parents made any mention of my suspension. They only talked about work, like usual. Meanwhile, I was practically jumping at every loud sound, expecting the fire and brimstone parents are supposed to rain down in this situation. It only got worse the longer it took to come.
But dinner ended and still no yelling or recrimination. I leaped to do the dishes, hoping to lessen the punishment that obviously had to be coming. Only it never came. My parents turned on the TV in the living room like it was a completely normal Friday. Finally I slunk back to my room. I wasn’t in there for more than a minute when Dad knocked on the door. Here it comes, I thought, the yelling, scolding, grounding. I didn’t look up when Dad opened the door. I kept my eyes firmly fixed on the floor, looking out of the corner of my eye at Dad’s feet standing in the doorway.
“You ready to talk about it?”
He didn’t sound angry at all. I was incredulous. “What?” I asked, looking up. Dad was leaning against the doorframe, arms crossed.
“Everything that’s been going on. Ready to talk about it yet?”
“That’s it?” I asked. Dad raised an eyebrow. “I mean, no yelling, no punishment? I was suspended. Aren’t you mad?”
Dad shrugged.
“We’re a little disappointed, your mother and I. Well, more me. Your mother finds this whole thing kind of funny, especially making you squirm all throughout dinner.” My jaw was resting on the floor, I was certain. Dad laughed at the look on my face. “Listen, Dylan, you’re a good kid. We know that. We also know that you haven’t been yourself lately. I’m going to take a wild guess and say it had something to do with Mr. Mysterious from a few weeks ago, not to mention the complete lack of Kai eating us out of house and home lately and this constant moping in your room.” Wow. I was a little stunned at how observant my parents were. Here I was thinking I had been acting completely normal, and they could see right through me the entire time. “So, no. I’m not mad. Besides, what would I do, ground you to your room? You already never leave this place. Kind of sad, really.”
I laughed. “Thanks. You really know how to cheer a guy up.”
“Glad I could help. You want to come sit with your mother and me? There’s a Hitchcock marathon on tonight.”
“Nah, I think I’m just gonna go to bed.”
“Alright, son. Sleep tight.” He started to pull the door shut, but paused with it open a crack. “And seriously, Dylan, if you ever need to talk, we’re right here. We may be old, but we can probably understand what you’re going through a little better than you think.”
“Thanks, Dad. I will.”
WHEN MEL finally burst through my cocoon of self-pity, I had barely left my room for four days. She practically beat down my door, dragged me from the protective warmth of my blankets, literally kicking and screaming, with one hand grabbing my wrist, the other with a fistful of hair, and forced me to take my first shower all week, ignoring my protestations the entire way. She shoved me in the bathtub, still completely clothed, and turned on the water, drenching me.
“I assume you can do the rest?”
I sputtered under the cold water, still trying to come to terms with what was happening. Seconds ago I had been so warm and cozy! But Mel didn’t wait for an answer. She left, slammed the bathroom door behind her. So I peeled off my soaked pajama bottoms, turned up the temperature of the water, and did as I was told.
It actually felt really good to ge
t clean. There’s a certain trajectory to ignoring all aspects of your personal hygiene. First, you feel all gross.
Sweaty, greasy, dirty, all of it. But by the end of day two, that passes, and this slimy swamp monster, as you have suddenly found yourself, becomes the new normal. Before long, you begin to resent the very idea of getting clean, and shedding this second skin you’ve so carefully developed, because it might mean you have to go back to being who you were, and you’re in no way ready to do that.
But as the swamp monster crumbled away, and I felt more and more like a person again, everything seemed a little better. Sure, my life had suddenly fallen into shambles. Adam would probably never talk to me again, and I don’t know when I’ll be able to face Kai, if ever. But now that I was clean, I felt like I could face the world again.
Well, almost.
When I got back to my room, towel wrapped around my waist, I found that Mel had made herself busy. She’d cleaned up the days’ worth of dishes I’d left piled on my floor, changed the sheets on my bed, opened the shades on my windows. She had even laid out clean clothes on my bed for me to get dressed.
“I knew my best friend was hiding somewhere under all that grease and body odor,” Mel quipped as I walked in. She was sitting at my desk, idly paging through one of my books. She turned her back to me, giving me some privacy to change.
“How did you get in?” I asked as I pulled on my clothes.
“Your mom texted me. Said it was about time someone pulled you out of your funk.” She gestured at my suddenly tidied room “What, did you think I did all this for you? I mean, I like you, but come on.”
“Oh.” I hadn’t even realized my mom was home, though that might have had something to do with my adamant refusal to let them near me for the past few days. “Okay, I’m dressed.” I dropped back down onto my bed, but refrained from crawling under the covers. To be honest, I was a little afraid of what Mel might try next, if she thought I was about to undo all her hard work dragging me out in the first place.
Mel closed the book and turned the chair to face me. “Good. Now talk.”
I avoided her eyes. “About what?” I asked with exaggerated innocence.
“Fine. Be that way. I’ll just have to make a few guesses about what has been going on lately.” Yeah, right. Like she could possibly…. “First, you and Malachi have been getting sexy, to some degree or other, until about three weeks ago when I’m going to say it was you who called it off. Possibly because Adam found out and got jealous. How am I doing so far?” Okay, what was it about me that everyone could apparently see completely through? Do I have any secrets at all? Am I actually an open book for anyone to read at their leisure?
“I take it from the look on your face I was pretty close. So let’s see, you stopped talking to me because you’re an idiot, you’ve been trying to get Adam to talk to you at school ’cause, again, you’re an idiot, and went ahead and got yourself suspended. Like an idiot.”
“How did you know?”
Mel muttered “idiot” under her breath. “Dylan, I pay attention. I know you only got into drama club because you went through an ‘am I gay enough’ phase and decided you needed to do a musical, and Malachi followed you like the little lost puppy he is. But theater is what I actually want to do with my life. I pay attention to people, how they behave, why they behave that way. So when you and Kai started acting like you had this giant secret no one could ever find out while simultaneously being very careful not to accidentally touch in public, ever, it wasn’t much of a mental workout to figure out what was going on. And then there was the sudden transformation of Adam, from bully to buddy, not to mention the covert looks he kept casting your way when he thought you weren’t looking. Plus there was the time —”
“Okay, okay! I get it!”
“Good. Now that we’ve established that you can’t hide anything from me, ever, why don’t you actually tell me what’s been going on? At the very least you’ll feel better.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Yeah, ’cause keeping it in has been working so well.”
I sighed. She was right, of course. “Okay, fine. So, um, remember that day I got punched in the face?” She nodded. “Well, that’s when Adam and I started to be… well, friends, I guess. Which made Kai all kinds of jealous….”
I recounted the entire story, right up to my brief interaction with Adam before I got suspended. Mel listened quietly to the whole story, occasionally asking a question or two. I told her everything. Well, maybe I glossed over a little bit of the sexy-time details, but that didn’t seem entirely appropriate. When I finally finished, over an hour later, she sat there silently for a minute, absorbing.
“So, what are you going to do?” she finally asked.
“What can I do? I mean, I can’t talk to him. It’s still too weird. I know he’s my best friend, but that’s exactly why I have to….”
“Malachi’s fine where he is. He knows you need space. I meant about Adam.”
“Oh.” I bit my lip, thinking. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t even talk to me.” “Did you apologize?”
“Of course I… wait, no. I just said that he didn’t understand.”
Suddenly I got really angry. “And why should I apologize? It’s not like I did anything wrong! Kai and I had been fooling around for weeks before Adam snuck into my bedroom. What’s more, Adam has spent his whole life trying to make mine miserable. Am I supposed to just magically forgive him for all of that, be whatever it is he wants me to be? Fuck that. All we did was fool around one night. What did he want, to be my boyfriend? No, he wanted me to be his secret fling, to use at his leisure. So why should I apologize? It’s not like I promised anything anyway.” My excuses were starting to sound hollow even to my ears.
Mel was giving me a very flat look. “Okay. I’m going to ignore, like, half of the idiocy you just spouted. So I’ll skip right to the point. You don’t apologize to people because they are right and you aren’t. You apologize to people because you hurt them. Whether you meant to or not. Regardless of whether you think you did anything wrong. That’s called respecting other people’s feelings, AKA not being a douchebag. No wonder you couldn’t get Adam to talk to you. What did you think, that you’d only have to say ‘it didn’t count ’cause he’s, like, ninety percent straight’ and Adam would heave a sigh of relief and you two could skip off into the sunset?”
“That kind of is what I said.”
“Did it work?” Mel asked. I shook my head. “Look,” she continued, “I’m not saying you have to apologize to Adam. Honestly, you sort of had a point. He has been your bully forever. But if that’s your tactic, that you don’t care because he used to be mean, you really should think twice about moping around your room all day. One might think you actually do care. A lot. A casual observer might, for example, come to the conclusion that you’re lying to yourself, because you don’t want to swallow your pride, admit you fucked up, pun intended, and take some responsibility for your actions.”
“Okay, fine. Let’s say I do that. Then what?”
“What do you mean?”
“What I mean is, what happens next? Do I go back to being a dirty little secret? I mean, what even am I to Adam? It’s not like he’ll come out for me. He won’t even be friends with me. You’ve seen how he acts around Will Davis, even since we’ve started hanging out. Wouldn’t I have just been better off sticking with Kai? At least with him I know where I stand.”
“Listen, you need to get Malachi out of your mind. One day he’ll find happiness in some bisexual polyamorous relationship, but until then he’s just going to chase all the sexual satisfaction he can find. Is that really what you want to get involved in?” It wasn’t. I want the sappy, “run off into the sunset” kind of romance, and she knew that perfectly well. “I know it’s not what I want. Why do you think I’ve resisted his numerous advances? You’re right. Maybe Adam won’t come out for you. Maybe all you’ll ever be is his shameful secret. The real questio
n is, are you willing to take that risk?”
“I don’t know.” I looked over at Mel, realized I was scared. “What if he doesn’t actually like me? What if I’m only convenient — the only gay guy he knows?”
Mel shrugged. “You know him better than I. But really, only he can answer that question. Now would you look at the time! I really must be going.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked, “Just like that?”
She paused at the door to my room. “Listen, some of us weren’t suspended for heartbreak histrionics, and so have school in the morning. Think about what I said, okay? In the meantime, maybe leave your room a bit.”
THE NEXT day, I took Mel’s advice. I made it out of my room, at least as far as the kitchen, and I thought about what she said. She was definitely right about Kai, but I really already knew that. It’s just that throughout my life he’s always been a point of such certainty. With Adam, there was nothing but uncertainty. It made sense that I kept coming back to feeling like I needed to choose between the two, between the guy I’d always wanted and the guy I never expected.
And hey, maybe the answer is neither of them. Maybe a third guy will waltz along who is both something I always wanted and never expected. Voilà, problem solved.
The doorbell rang as if in answer to my thoughts. When I opened the door, I found standing on my front step none other than James P. Hogan, wearing his letterman jacket and the sweatpants he always had on after he finished football practice or a workout, the ones that always gave tantalizing hints of what lay beneath that bulge at the crotch.