Fearless (6 page)

The park across the street was really just a small patch of grass, a sad collection of trees and one very neglected basketball court. I was sure it was not a place I’d want to be after dark. Sully seemed to agree. When this really scary homeless dude got too close, muttering about aliens rewiring our brains, Sully moved even closer to Liam and growled. It wasn’t a ferocious, “I’m going to eat you” growl. It was more of a polite, “this is my human so kindly back off” sort of growl. Sully only relaxed when the lost, fractured man was quite a ways off.

Liam passed me the Frisbee. “Go on, give it a throw. Sully needs to run.”

He had this sunny look on his face that made him seem, well, normal. I couldn’t even see the scary stoner any more. He just looked like a regular guy to me.

I gave up. There was just no way to fit Liam into any of my convenient little boxes. So I ignored the fretting voice in my head that told me this would all end in misery and let myself enjoy the feeling of having a friend again.

I spun and tossed the Frisbee in a gentle arc—which was not enough of a challenge for the expert fetcher that was Sully. The dog easily snatched the disk out of the air and then brought it back, soaking up the praise and love Liam freely offered.

I mean, really, it’s impossible to not like a guy who makes silly kissy faces at his dog. Go on and try it. You’ll see.

We had a lot of fun tossing the Frisbee around. Liam and I made a game of trying to get it to each other without it being intercepted by Sully. Even when I tripped over my feet, I didn’t feel bad, because Liam didn’t make fun of me. Though he did laugh when Sully pounced on me to try and wrestle the disk away from my hands.

I was kind of winded when we sat down for a break, but Liam looked wiped out. His pale skin had a sheen of sweat on it. He still had that happy glow, though, laying out on the grass and sucking in lungfuls of air.

“You’re in even worse shape than me,” I told him.

Liam flipped me off. “I could take you easy.”

I rolled my eyes at him to let him know what I thought of that threat. “Your parents seem really cool.”

“They’re the best,” Liam said with such sincerity I found I was waiting for him to turn it into a joke. But he didn’t.

“I can’t believe they let you smoke pot.” I just couldn’t stop myself from bringing it up.

Liam gave me a lopsided smile. “My parents don’t freak out about things that aren’t really important. Do you know that marijuana is actually a lot less toxic than regular cigarettes? All the crap they put in the tobacco cigs makes them poisonous. Weed is much better, by comparison.”

It sounded like a rationalization to me—but a good rationalization. “You really don’t give a flying fuck what anyone thinks of you, do you?”

Liam laughed. “Wow, you have a mouth on you. You seem like this uptight, stuck-up dude, but underneath that you’re just a regular guy, huh?”

“You thought I was stuck-up?”

“No, but other people do.”

I wasn’t sure what bothered me more, the idea that people had that perception of me or that people thought of me at all. The thought that people were talking about me behind my back put me on edge. I had thought I was doing well at being invisible.

“I’m not stuck-up.” Liam shrugged, which annoyed me. “I’m not.”

“You like to make assumptions about people, though. You looked down on me because you thought I was a stoner.”

“Well, but you do smoke pot.”

“Yeah, but it doesn’t, like, define who I am.”

I felt guilty, which I resented. “Sorry.”

“Hey, I don’t give a flying fuck what people think of me, remember?”

I gave him a wry smile. “People really think I’m stuck-up?”

“Well, you don’t talk to anyone. You keep to yourself. It’s like you think you’re too good for everyone around you.”

“That’s bullshit.” It also sounded way too much like what the coach had said to me.

“Sure it is, but that doesn’t make any difference. That’s how people see you. Like you totally ignored Lucas complimenting you yesterday.”

I stared at him. “Lucas did what now?”

“He said you made the other guys in the pool look like they weren’t even moving.”

“He didn’t say that.”

“Dude, he totally did.”

I thought back over the class, trying to figure out how I could have missed something so rare and precious as a compliment. “I think you must have misheard. The only time Lucas and his crew paid any attention to me was when they laughed at me.”

“Jesus, dude, they weren’t laughing at you. They were laughing at Lucas’ joke.”

“But….”

I’d been drying off and trying to get the water out of my ears, so maybe…. I felt a cold lump in my stomach as realization hit me. Now it all made sense. They’d tried to be friendly, I’d thought they were mocking me, so I ignored them because that’s what the experts say to do with people who pick on you. And what I’d actually done was be an ass to the first guys who had been even a little nice to me.

See what I mean about me being a total loser?

“I told you, people are always fucking with me,” I finally said. It sounded like a whiny excuse to my ears, but I didn’t have any other defense.

“Yeah, well, we’re in high school. That’s what people do. But just some people. Some can be pretty cool, if you give them a chance.”

Giving people a chance had led to far too many disasters, so I wasn’t inclined to agree. “I gave
you
a chance.”

“Only because I let you see my dick.”

I gaped at him, horrified that he would think that. Then I saw that sarcastic twinkle in his eyes and I breathed easier. My relief allowed me to even muster up an offended glare.

“Jerk.”

“So, how do I measure up?”

“
Excuse me?
”

“Well, you’re the resident expert, so how do I measure up?”

His teasing grin didn’t keep me from blushing to the roots of my hair. “I, uh, I don’t know.”

“Did you need another look?”

I laughed, completely flustered. He seemed to like having the advantage. “Uh, that’s…. No, it’s fine.”

“Come on, we’re buddies now. You shouldn’t hold out on me. A guy needs to know when he gets with a girl if she’s gonna laugh at his junk.”

“That’s such a lame word,” I replied. “How did we go from calling them the ‘family jewels’ to calling them ‘junk’? I mean, I thought guys prided themselves on their stuff.”

Liam considered that. “Interesting point, but you didn’t answer my question.”

“Oh my God, you were serious?”

“Of course! You’re, like, the best person to ask. You can’t ask a girl, obviously. And straight dudes would freak out. But a gay dude has wisdom in these things, am I right? You probably know what everyone’s packing.”

“You’re a freak.”

“Takes one to know one.”

I tried to think of some clever response, something to tease him with to take back the advantage, but everything that went through my head sounded offensive. I was enjoying the strange friendship growing between us too much to want to risk it.

I gave him a sidelong look, mystified by his easy-going grin and relaxed posture. I wished I had even a tenth of his courage.

“It’s almost five,” was all I could come up with to say.

Liam made a face. “Damn, then I guess I have to meet my fate.” He got up off the grass and brushed himself off. Then he gave me another smirk that was, I confess, adorable. “You know, you
can
tell me to go fuck myself if I embarrass you. I’m not made of glass.”

“Unless I call you a stoner,” I said, the words slipping out before I could stop them.

But even as I was stammering an apology, I heard Liam laughing. I guess I had crossed some invisible line beyond which it was okay to say stuff like that. We were, it seemed, friends. I had no idea why or how, but I was glad. I liked Liam, more than was good for me.

In spite of Liam’s dire warnings, dinner was amazing. I guess because my mom works all the time so she rarely has time to cook, a home-cooked meal was a delicacy to me. When I complimented Anna on her cooking, Liam glared at me and called me a traitor.

Afterwards, I did the dishes because that’s what always follows dinner at my house. Anna objected, but I told her I didn’t mind and I guess she was tired enough that she didn’t argue. She also had to get ready for work, so she was grateful for the break.

“You’re making me look bad,” Liam complained, even as he grabbed a towel to help out.

I just smiled at him and shrugged.

It turned out, they only had the one car, so she had to take the bus to the mall where she worked. That left me and Liam alone with Sully. He cleared a space on the coffee table for us to study on, since his room was apparently a disaster.

Thankfully, the subject of penises did not come up again. I still had no idea how to answer if it did. Certainly, I couldn’t tell him the truth. I mean the part about how I wouldn’t mind taking a look at his package again. Because while I wasn’t really attracted to him, I’m gay and now thanks to Liam I was starting to realize that liking to see dudes naked didn’t make me a deviant. It might even be kind of normal.

That was something very
close
to being awesome.

In fact, I enjoyed hanging with Liam so much that I stayed longer than I should have. It was nearly nine when I got home, and one look at my mom’s face told me I was in for it.

My mom is not a big woman. Since my growth spurt, I was a lot taller than her. She’s very thin and has a narrow frame, so physically, she wasn’t very threatening. However, when she glared at me through her thick-rimmed glasses, I feared for my life.

“I’m sorry I didn’t call,” I told her.

“I was worried sick, kiddo.”

“Sorry, I didn’t think I’d be home so late.”

That did nothing to mollify her. “I was getting ready to call the cops.”

“Sorry,” I said again.

“Where were you?”

“I was at a friend’s house, studying.”

That made her relax a little. She didn’t know everything about what happened in my life, because there were details that would just upset her and she couldn’t do anything about, but she knew that I was short on friends.

“Does this friend not own a phone?”

Her stern look had lost the fear-driven anger of before, but it didn’t leave any doubt that I was still in trouble.

“He does and I should have used it.”

My mom nodded and let it drop—she would save this infraction as something to guilt me with later on, I was sure. I slipped past her and went to my room, dropping my backpack with a thud. As bad as I felt for worrying her, I just couldn’t stop smiling.

It had been a really good day.

Chapter 6

L
IAM CONTINUED HIS CAMPAIGN OF
taunting the next morning. In fact, he was
so
obvious about showing off his floppy bits while we changed that Tam, the guy on the other side of him, told us to get a room. I threw Liam a murderous look, which only made him grin more brightly.

Apparently, he had no shame. It was annoying—and kind of cute, too. Now that I was seeing past his juvenile delinquent appearance, I was finding this playful, funny guy with the cutest smile in the world.

Not that that last fact is important in any way. I wasn’t stupid enough to start crushing on him. I mean, even my patheticness has its limits.

“Next week is going to be diving and then we’re done with the pool,” Coach Lancaster told us as we gathered outside. “Then we’re onto flag football, so you’ll need to bring in jocks and cups.”

I felt like he had just stabbed me in the gut. If there was anything I was worse at than basketball, it was any variety of football. I can’t catch, I can’t throw and I can’t block anyone bigger than a fourth-grader.

Why couldn’t we just swim for the whole semester? The pool was heated, and the weather in Southern California usually stayed pretty warm until late December at least.

“You look like you’re gonna puke.”

I gave Liam a miserable look. “I might.”

“That bad?”

“You have no idea.”

Well, I’d known it was only a matter of time before P.E. went back to being the worst part of my day. There was just no way around it, I decided. Two weeks of being in the pool had been a blessing I just had to be grateful for. And there was always the chance I would be hit by a meteor between now and then. I shuffled over to the bleachers and sat, glaring at the coach.

Liam nudged me in the ribs and gave me a sympathetic look. “I don’t like football either.”

“Maybe I
should
join the swim team.”

“Huh?”

“Lancaster asked me to go out for the team.”

“Dude! That’s huge! You should totally do it.”

“I’m not really a joiner.”

“Dude, remember what we talked about? You and what people think about you?”

He had a point, though I didn’t like it much. I didn’t
want
people thinking I was stuck-up or that I went around feeling I was better than them. That was somehow even worse than people just writing me off as the school weirdo. I could handle being strange. I didn’t want to be seen as arrogant.

“I just can’t see it going well,” I told him. “I’ll fuck up somehow and then I’ll be even worse off.”

“You can’t live your life always expecting the worst.”

“Who died and made you Dr. Phil?”

He laughed. “Good one.”

I warmed at the praise. “Thanks.”

I considered the idea. It terrified me, to be honest. It would destroy any hope of remaining invisible. I didn’t need or want people to notice me. I knew where that led. The only way it could even possibly not go sour would be if I was actually good. The chances of that were about the same as the chances of Zach asking me to Prom.

“Go for it,” Liam urged.

“Maybe.”

“I’ll kick your ass if you don’t.”

I snorted out laughter to let him know I wasn’t impressed by the threat. “I’m not brave like you, dude.”

“So? Fake it.”

“Fake it?”

“Just think of what you would do if you weren’t afraid and do that.”

I frowned. It sounded both brilliant in its simplicity and absurd in its insanity. “I don’t know….”