Enlightened (7 page)

“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 that 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 that 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 of 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.” Turning his head slightly, 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. Barely pulling up my T-shirt, one of his hands leisurely rubbed 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 fucking 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. Pulling back to look at me, his eyes searched mine.

“Brian, you were my best friend. Now, you are so much more to me. I know that 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 that 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 standing up and holding his hand out to me. Hoisting 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 had caught my eye and smirked.

“Hey Mayfield, you want to head over to Northridge Mall with us after school for a while?” Kennedy asked Jamie. After glancing up at them once, I pretended to study my mystery meat sandwich. Kennedy wasn’t talking to me. It was generally understood by me and by them that I was just Jamie’s little tagalong geek friend. I wasn’t one of the popular kids; I was just the throwaway foster kid, though that had never mattered to Jamie. In fact, he’d told me that was one of the things that made me special, the fact that I never took anything for granted.

“Can Brian come?” Jamie asked casually. They knew as well as I did that his answer would depend on theirs. If they said no, so would he. Kennedy looked at me for a minute, and I saw the effort it took him not to sigh before he agreed.

“Sure, we’ll meet you out front after last bell. My mom let me take the car, so we can go straight from here,” he said. Jamie and I threw our garbage in the bin and tossed our trays up on the belt for the lunch ladies to get.

“Do you want to go to the mall after school?” Jamie asked me as we headed to our lockers to get our books for our next class.

“You already told them we’d go, why are you asking me now?” I asked, a little frustrated at being an afterthought. I reached my locker with him lagging several steps behind and tossed the books for our next two classes into my bag along with folders and notebooks. Just for good measure, so that I wouldn’t have to look up at him, I made sure I had pens and pencils as well.

“Because if you want to do something else, I’ll tell them to fuck off,” he replied, lowering his voice as a couple of girls passed. “Come on, a couple more weeks until we’re done this year, and then we’ll be seniors, and then we’ll be gone. Once we’re in college, we can start over and be who we want to be. It will be a new beginning for us. We just have to get the fuck out of here first.” I was a little stunned at his tone. Jamie never swore like that. So, rather than argue, I just agreed to meet him in front of the school after the last bell.

The rest of the school day passed surprisingly quickly. We were gearing up for final exams and final projects, so the teachers were pretty relentless during classes. More work and constant talk of making sure we pass to get to senior year made our minds focus more and wander less. By the end of the day, the mall seemed like a pretty good diversion.

“Ready to go?” he asked with that soft, sweet smile, the one that made my heart race.

“Yeah, are we just leaving our books in Derrick’s car?” I asked. Not really having any friends other than Jamie, sometimes I felt left out:
like a shadow standing next to him, a flat, two-dimensional representation of a boy not really good enough to—

“Hey, whatever you’re thinking, just stop,” Jamie said sternly, and I looked up from my shoes. “We don’t have to stay with those guys the whole time. I just want to hang out with you. Okay?”

Wishing that we could have just been alone, I nodded and glanced up the hall to see a couple of younger girls walking past. Jamie was one of the popular kids, and he didn’t understand what it was like to be forced on people who didn’t want you around. My entire life had been like that, until Jamie. Jamie wanted me, but he’d also been friends with guys like John and Derrick since kindergarten. I couldn’t just isolate him from his other friends because they didn’t think I was good enough for him. Besides, it was the chance to spend time with Jamie someplace that wasn’t at school or with our parents. That was enough for me to put one foot in front of the other and follow him to his friend’s car.

The half-hour ride up to Northridge Mall was pretty uneventful. Derrick and John were in the front seat, talking about which girls at our high school put out and about girls they might see from North Central, a high school near the mall. For the most part Jamie and I ignored them, not joining in their conversation with more than a “yeah” or a “no way” when appropriate. I was starting to wonder why I had agreed to this straight boy bonding trip when we finally pulled off of the highway and turned toward the mall.

The first half an hour was spent wandering around the video game shop, but since I had neither a game console nor a computer, I wasn’t really interested. When we moved on to a music store, I followed Jamie from display to display, watching him get increasingly bored because I knew for a fact that he bought most of his music online. We wandered over and looked through a few band T-shirts. As I held up a particularly lurid green one under the pretense of asking Jamie’s opinion, I leaned in closer to him.

“Let’s go to the bookstore,” I said quietly, and he nodded, grabbing the T-shirt and putting it back on the rack. Derrick and John, while great on the football field, had probably never been inside of a bookstore. They’d much rather hang out with Brad Mosely and Ryan Carter chugging beers while sitting in the back of Mosely’s pickup truck or beating each other’s brains in on the fifty yard line than actually read.

“Hey, D!” Jamie called, and Derrick turned away from the pretty store employee, looking annoyed by the interruption.

“We’re gonna head over to the bookstore. Meet you in the food court in an hour?” Jamie asked, and Derrick waved him off with a nod.

We were free.

Nearly sprinting to the front of the store, we escaped the blaring music and turned right, heading in the direction of the large bookstore near the elevators. Once out of the deafening music, we walked slower. It was nice to simply be together, taking in the storefronts and other shoppers. Since it was a Thursday afternoon, the mall was pretty empty.

Jamie leaned down as we passed the pink-frilled door of a lingerie shop and whispered, “Maybe we should go in there and see if we can find you something sexy, silk, maybe? They have stuff for guys too.” My face flamed at the thought of wearing sexy underwear for him, and then again at Carolyn finding them, and I shook my head. He laughed, and when I realized that he was just teasing me, I laughed along with him.

“Only if I get to blow you in the changing room,” I countered, and he immediately stopped laughing and walking, just staring at me. To my credit, I kept a straight face as he gawked at me. I could tell that he’d never, ever thought he’d hear his shy little friend even joke about something like that, especially as hard as I had blushed when I had told him about the porn I’d found on the computer.

“I thought you wanted to go to the bookstore?” I asked him casually when he didn’t show any signs of remembering why we were walking at the mall. His feet started moving again, and I hid a smirk as I waited for him to catch up, and walked next to him. He didn’t say anything until we were a few stores down, hip hop blaring from the sports clothing store as we passed.

“Would you really?” he asked quietly.

“Do you mean in general, or in a dressing room?” I clarified quickly.

“In general,” he hedged as we passed a large jewelry store.

“It’s something I would like to try with you,” I told him honestly. “It’s something I’ve thought about.” I looked around to make sure that no one was within earshot. “It’s something I’ve fantasized about… a lot.” I hadn’t meant to say that last part, but it was true.

“I have, too,” he whispered as we walked into the huge two-story bookstore at the end of the corridor. Out of habit, I went over to the clearance section and started checking out the paperbacks. I looked over my shoulder and saw that Jamie had gone farther down the aisle into science fiction. Picking through the haphazardly stacked piles of books, I found one by an author that I liked and went to find two chairs next to each other so that when Jamie found something we could sit together.

I dropped into the worn leather chair and started to read the back of the novel. It promised to be every bit as good as the last book I’d read by the author, full of intrigue and the triumph over adversity. I knew that not everyone triumphed, but it was nice to read about, even if it was just fiction. The music being piped through the in-store speakers was soothing, and when Jamie finally joined me, I’d already finished the first chapter.

He had a bag with him, which meant he’d already paid for his books. When I asked him about them, he just shrugged, dropped into his chair, and took one out of the bag. It was the new hardback novel by John Marshall, the same author I was reading.

“I didn’t know you were a fan of Marshall’s work,” Jamie said as he noticed the book in my hands. “It’s funny, there are books all over your room, and I’ve never taken the time to find out what they were.”

“I didn’t know you were a fan either. You… well, you don’t have any books in your room,” I said, a little sheepishly because I had always assumed that just meant that Jamie wasn’t a reader.

“That’s because I keep my books in my dad’s study. He has tons of bookshelves in there.”