Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1) (6 page)

Putting his hand on my face, he traced the contours of my cheek, his eyes holding mine, and after a while he spoke. “It’s worth it. I’ve never met anyone who makes me feel the way you do. I would rather have this”—he gestured quickly between us—“as a secret than not have it at all.” I nodded, telling him I wanted it too. Then, at the same time, we both leaned forward slowly, and I closed my eyes, feeling the tender touch of his kiss. It was sealing our promise to each other, the promise that we would try.

I
HAD
thought the rest of the week would be nearly impossible to endure, but it wasn’t. The knowledge that I wasn’t alone, that Jamie was right there beside me, made things much easier. The week I had spent trying to hide from the one person who knew me better than I knew myself had been exhausting. Jamie and I did, however, spend the week being extraordinarily careful about our interactions, sometimes ridiculously so. When I reached over during woodshop on Tuesday for the sandpaper and our hands touched, I jerked back like his skin was made of hot coal. He looked at me curiously, but then went on with his project.

I found myself distracted by the way his hands moved over the wood. The pads of his fingertips glided gracefully over the grainy surface, seeking out imperfections and finding none. I had a fleeting image of his fingers inspecting the contours of my body just as thoroughly, and then forced my mind to focus on something else. It wouldn’t have been good to sport wood, even if it was woodshop.

For the next several days, we continued to avoid physical contact and worked to keep our conversations and expressions neutral. To be honest, it was tiring to think about every step, every movement all day long and wonder how others would interpret it. By Friday, I was ecstatic to be out of school and away from the prying eyes that seemed to follow Jamie and me everywhere we went. I sounded paranoid because I was paranoid; our whole lives could change in an instant if anyone found out. I didn’t know how I was going to live like that every day until the school year ended. Once that last day was behind us, we could hide over the summer, in each other’s arms, until classes started in the fall. We were both juniors; we had one more year until we would be free.

I came in through the back door on Friday afternoon, and Carolyn smiled at me. I smiled back, still feeling guilty about the previous Friday. The lies I had told her about why I left gym had caused me to not only clean the gutters for Richard but scrub the oven for Carolyn. My sweet foster mother had given me an odd look as I knelt in front of the ancient stove with the oven cleaner and a rag, but she’d long since gotten used to my eccentricities. When I was first placed with them, I used to clean at random during all hours of the day and night. The therapist the state had hired to evaluate me before I came to the Schreibers’ said it was an involuntary reaction to stress. All I knew was that it took my mind off things and made my foster parents happy, which was what mattered to me.

That weekend was going to be both heaven and hell for me. Jamie and his parents had gone on a church retreat, so I wasn’t going to see him until school on Monday. I hoped that would give me enough time without his ever-pervasive presence to work out what was going on in my head. I was going to try to work out a plan on how to react around him in front of other people without losing my train of thought. Not only did I need to work things out in my own head, but I also wanted to talk to him about both my fears and my feelings. The problem, the hell part of the equation, lay in his absence. I was going to miss him terribly.

Honestly, I was going to miss his soft breath just behind my ear as he tried to gain control of himself after a meaningful kiss. I was going to miss his quirky grins at the most insignificant things and the way he tapped his fingers in a senseless rhythm on his knee while waiting for me to respond to a question. There were thousands of little things about Jamie that contributed to the incredibly amazing person that he was. I was going to miss each and every one.

Friday night I passed the time by doing every single piece of homework I’d been assigned, finally falling exhausted into bed around two in the morning. I stayed in bed for a long time the next morning, holding on to the dream of him, the essence of him, for as long as I could. By Saturday night, I was anxious. Even the tremendous amount of yard work I’d volunteered to help Richard with could not exhaust me enough to make me relax. My body was tired, but my mind raced. With everything that had happened in the last week, I felt anxious without him.

Unable to concentrate on anything specific, I lay on my bed. Jamie’s face swam before my eyes, and I just wanted to touch him and hear his voice. Any doubt about my feelings for Jamie had disappeared that day as I struggled to keep myself from going to his house and sitting in the tree house just to feel close to him. My biggest fear was that he would come to the realization that the risk of us together wasn’t worth it. He was surrounded by people who hated and feared people like us.
What if they convince him that what we’re doing is wrong? What if he comes back and doesn’t want to be with me anymore? Or worse, what if he comes back and hates me just like the rest of them?

By Sunday afternoon I had started to make Carolyn edgy. She gave me ten dollars and told me to go to the arcade down on Fifth Street. When the phone rang on Sunday evening, Carolyn gave me a strange look as I nearly vaulted over a low table in order to pick up the receiver—so much for subtlety. I couldn’t stand not knowing what was going through his head. It seemed what little confidence I had gained in the last few weeks had dissipated in his absence.

“Hello?” I asked breathlessly before the phone was even all the way up to my ear. Deep down, I had known it would be Jamie. I briefly wondered if he felt the same uneasiness I did when we weren’t together.

“Hey, Bri, we just got in,” he said jovially, like there was no one else he would rather talk to in that moment than me. My chest filled with a warmth I had never felt, and the anxious knot in my stomach started to loosen. I imagined him reclining on one of his kitchen chairs, his face lit up with one of his brilliant smiles.

“How was your outing?” I asked with mild interest. If he was calling me as soon as he got home, sounding like he’d really missed me, then obviously they hadn’t changed his mind about wanting to be with me, as I had feared almost constantly throughout the last forty-eight hours.

“It was okay.”

I could almost hear the shrug I was sure came with that statement. Knowing Jamie as I did, that meant they had talked about some tough subjects for him, but he was just playing it casual.

“I was wondering if you could come by before school tomorrow,” he whispered.

“Sure, is everything okay?” I asked, my heart suddenly in my throat.
Maybe he isn’t playing casual; maybe he wants out.

“I missed you; I just want to see you,” he explained, still whispering. Pure, unadulterated joy filled me at his admission. “I’ll meet you in the tree house.”

“I’d love to spend some time alone with you before school tomorrow,” I told him honestly. Before hanging up, we talked for a few more minutes, at normal volume, about mundane things like homework and a new song he’d heard on the radio. I almost floated up the stairs when it was time to go to bed. In just a few more hours, I was finally going to be in his arms again.

T
HE
next morning, I rushed through my routine and, before running full speed out the back door, called to Carolyn that I had a project due that I needed to finish. I wasn’t sure she’d bought it, but right then, it didn’t matter. When I got to the Mayfields’, I opened the back gate quietly and sprinted for the tree house ladder, feeling like some kind of spy. Not wanting Jamie’s parents to catch me, to have to explain why I was in their tree house, I bolted up the ladder and was unsurprised to find it empty. Jamie always took more time to get ready for school than I did.

Glancing around the small space, I noticed a worn quilt lying in the corner that I didn’t remember having been there during our rainy-day revelations. Just as I was about to go investigate, I heard Jamie climbing the ladder to the tree house. Moving back from the entrance, I saw his head pop up through the trapdoor, and I smiled. He smiled back and pulled himself up, careful not to rip his good jeans on one of the exposed nails jutting from the floorboards. Even though that was the style, his mother would have been furious if he had ripped perfectly good jeans.

“Hi,” he said, almost shyly, like he was as scared as I was about our secret meeting. There was no reason to be scared, of course. Jamie and I were generally described as inseparable, but the guilt I felt, like we weren’t supposed to be doing this, weighed on me. The purpose of the meeting, affection and attraction, and possibly its location were what made it scandalous.

“Hi” was my witty response as he straightened up in the small space, his face now inches from mine. We stood awkwardly, just looking at each other. Every few seconds, I would shift my weight slightly from one foot to the other, waiting for something to happen. Finally, when I realized nothing was going to happen, I asked him about the blanket to distract us from the almost uneasy silence that was permeating the tree house.

“Oh,” he said and moved past me to pick it up. “I brought it out here last night so we could spread it on the floor when we’re up here and not get dirty.” Something in me lifted at the thought of spending hours in this place, alone and free, with him. It didn’t matter if we were talking, or kissing, or even playing a board game as long as we were spending time together. He opened up the blanket and spread it out, taking up nearly half the floor space. In the back of my mind, I started to make a list of other things we could bring up here.

“That was a great idea, Jamie.” We had about twenty minutes before we had to leave for school, so I took off my ratty gym shoes that at one time had been white and sat on the blanket facing him as he sat, not bothering with his shoes. We were both sitting with our legs crossed in front of us. When he looked at me, I noticed he had a piece of white fuzz from the blanket in his hair. Reaching forward, I pulled it out, and he caught my hand, holding it gently.

“Is it wrong to tell you that I missed you this weekend?” he asked quietly, first looking down at the blanket, then up at me. I shook my head and, using his grip on my hand, pulled him closer to me. My heart leapt with his admission and with his nearness. I could feel his breath on my face, and I wanted nothing more than to stay in this moment, this perfect moment of anticipation.

“No, I… well, I like that you missed me,” I admitted, and then with my lips almost at the pulse point below his ear, continued, “because I wanted so badly to see you.” He turned his head slightly, and his lips sought mine hungrily. As I felt them find their mark, I wound my fingers into his silky hair, accidentally pulling it when I shifted my weight slightly, causing him to moan desperately into my mouth.

I hadn’t realized he was pushing me back onto the blanket until he was on top of me. All rational thought left me in that moment. Picturing the images I had seen on Richard’s computer screen, I pressed my hips up into his, my blossoming erection pushing against the crotch of his jeans, and I whimpered slightly as his lips moved to my neck.

“Jamie,” I groaned breathlessly as I felt his hips move lightly against mine. He barely pulled up my T-shirt and slid one of his hands beneath to leisurely rub the small of my back, while the other remained on my neck. With both hands in his hair, I wrapped one of my legs up over his, pulling him harder against me. It felt so good to be in his arms, to feel his need for me. The need that was almost as strong as my need for him. My heart was racing as I reached down and pulled his shirt up. Immediately, he pulled back just enough to break the kiss.

“Brian, we can’t. As much as I want to keep going, we have to go to school,” he panted into my neck, his body still pressed hard against mine. I nodded, on the verge of asking him if we could just skip. Unfortunately, with everything else we were trying to work out, being caught playing hooky would not be a good idea. Thinking about what we had to talk about brought to mind a question I had been meaning to ask.

“Jamie, what are we?” My voice trembled a little in my nervousness. I didn’t know why the answer to that question was so important to me, but it was. I had to know that he was in it for the long haul, that our relationship wasn’t just some kind of phase or experiment. He pulled back to look at me, and his eyes searched mine.

“Brian, you were my best friend. Now, you are so much more to me. I know we aren’t ready to be too serious yet, that everything is just so new, but I want this to work between us. Once we’re ready, then we would be, what, boyfriends?” He smiled as he said it, and I felt like I was dancing inside. It was everything I could have wanted. I pulled him down to me and kissed him again. It was a slow, sweet kiss full of my love, acceptance, and promise.

“We should get to school,” I told him with a sigh. It was one of the last things I wanted to do, but it was a necessity. He gave me one final small kiss, just barely pressing his lips against mine before he stood up, held his hand out to me, and hoisted me up next to him. He held on to my hand a little longer than necessary before scooping up my shoes and handing them to me.

“Will you stay over Saturday night?” he asked hopefully, like I would ever want to be anywhere else.

A
S
WE
always did, Jamie and I sat next to each other at the lunch table with about half a dozen assorted friends. Derrick Kennedy and John Kurtz were across from us, talking about some video game they were going to get after school. Kurtz’s girlfriend Tara was steadfastly ignoring him in some kind of girlish pout because she wasn’t invited on their boys’ night out. She was flipping through some flashy teen magazine with the latest heartthrob of the week splashed across the front. She sat next to me in math, and the guy on the cover distracted me all through class with his full pouty lips and big green eyes. I had only stopped looking at the cover when Jamie caught my eye and smirked.