More Happy Than Not (17 page)

I look up and the sky isn't bleeding. I hear cars honking and drunk people shouting. Birds are still flying and stars are coming out of hiding, like me. Kids my age are having their first kisses right now or even taking it a step further. Everything, life, is continuing. “You don't care?”

“I care about you but I don't care about that. I mean, I do care but I don't care in that way you think I care.” Thomas scratches his head and whistles. “You know what I mean, right? I don't care that you're gay.”

“Can we maybe use a different word? I'm still wrapping my head around this.”

He gives me a thumbs-up. “Dude, this is your business. If a code word makes you feel more comfortable, I'm in.”

“I don't have anything in mind.”

“How about dude-liker? It sounds pretty matter-of-fact.”

“Yeah,” I say. It sucks how a word that's supposed to mean happiness can somehow feel warped.

“It's your call, dude-liker. So no one knows?”

“Just us,” I say. “Not even Gen. I'm going to figure out how to handle that when I understand what's going on with me. Maybe it happens like this for all dude-likers, where one day you're a girl-liker and the next day you're not. I guess maybe I could be a girl-slash-dude-liker, but I don't know.”

Thomas readjusts himself, coming a little toward me or maybe just leaned my way for a second. “So what do you think changed everything?”

You did,
I want to say but don't. It's quiet. This silence makes me uncomfortable, like I'll never be comfortable again. If I play my cards wrong, I'll not only lose my privacy, but maybe rob myself of my happiness, too. “I've been thinking about my happy ending even more than usual, probably because you're trying to engineer yours right now. I don't think I'll ever be happy until I figure out who I am and it comes down to me not being a hundred percent happy with the life I have.”

“Do you mind being a dude-liker?”

“I don't know yet. Obviously I'm scared for my throat being a dude-liker around here, but I'm not exactly rushing to tell everyone tomorrow. I also don't think I'll be campaigning anytime soon with other dude-liker-friendly organizations. I mean, if they can create a future where I can get married to another dude without it seeming like a big deal, then good on them. I'll remember to send a fruit basket or something.”

Thomas laughs and I know this is it, this is when he confesses that he's been pranking me and dropping signs he likes guys too just to get me to say it. “F-fruit b-b-basket. Pun intended?”

“You're an asshole and I hate you.”

He's rocking back and forth and when his laugh finally winds down—though I wouldn't have minded watching him for a few more seconds—he says, “So what's next? Are you on the hunt for a guy in your happy ending?”

“I have zero clue.”

Thomas inches toward me, for sure this time, and folds his hands in his lap. “Well, this all kind of reminds me of that blackout a few years ago. Remember? I was outside when it happened and it was so dark out I could barely see my own hand, let alone what was up the street. But I kept going forward, step by step, until I reached a familiar corner. Sometimes you just have to push ahead to find what you're looking for.”

“Do you still have the fortune cookie you ripped that off of?”

“Nah, had to get rid of the evidence.”

I smile, and like earlier, it feels legit, because it always is with him. But there's still a sinking feeling in my chest. I don't know what else I can say to him that'll make him feel comfortable enough to do what I just did. Since he doesn't ever lie, I wonder what he would say if I just directly asked him if he likes dudes too. If he says no, I would know that he is capable of lying. But if he says yes, I don't know how I would feel by dragging it out of him like that.

“Maybe you look distressed or maybe I'm a mind reader, but I want you to know that nothing is different, Stretch. Sure, you do things differently and that's okay. Nothing is changing,” Thomas says, and he wraps his arm around my shoulder as if this were ordinary. This is the guy who makes me happy.

“Thanks for being telepathic,” I say. I pat his knee. “So I guess this means I'm no longer allowed to call ‘No Homo' anymore, right?”

“It doesn't matter.” Thomas laughs and I want every night to be like this, where we can just laugh against each other without it being weird.

But for tonight, this is enough. From the shapes cast by the green paper lantern, you would never know that there were two boys sitting closely to one another trying to find themselves. You would only see shadows hugging, indiscriminate.

4

REMEMBER THAT TIME

I
nstead of manning up, I've been standing outside in the pouring rain for the past twenty minutes under Genevieve's window. A cab with an ad for the Leteo Institute drives through a puddle and soaks my jeans. I really, really wish Genevieve could just forget me.

And I really, really wish I had another pair of pants right now.

I finally go upstairs and leave my sneakers outside the door. I almost slide across her hallway in my wet socks but she holds my hand and keeps me steady. I almost come up with a bullshit excuse about how we should stay out in the living room so I don't get her bed wet, when I actually have other reasons not to go in there, but she leads and I follow.

“The flea market is totally closed today,” Genevieve says. She helps me out of my hoodie and pinches my nipple through my white shirt. It tickles but I barely laugh. “Bright side of having a terrible father is he's never around.” We sit on her bed. She kisses me and I know I should push her off but I don't. “I love you,” she says, and before there's an awkward silence where I don't say it back, she adds, “Remember that time your soaking-wet jeans ruined my bed?”

The game has lost its spark, and maybe it's because of my low spirits, but it's also very likely because it's kind of, sort of, definitely ridiculous to ask me to remember something that is happening right now.

I'm being unfair.

I sit up, cross my legs, hold her hands, and play along. “Remember that time we bought water guns last summer and I chased you around Fort Wille Park? And you kept calling time out and sprayed me whenever I stopped?”

She sits up and tangles her legs in mine. “Remember when we kept riding the subway back and forth last February because it was too cold to go outside?”

“Which was stupid because it was even colder when we finally got off at one in the morning,” I say, recalling how the cold was killing us, me especially since I had wrapped my jacket around her. “Remember that time we were writing each other messages in a crossword puzzle during study hall and it got taken away? I lost the evidence on how you misspelled
tornado
with an
e
.”

Genevieve punches me. “Remember that time we texted each other using only song titles?”

“And how about that time it started raining when we were rowing the boat in Central Park and I started panicking?”

Genevieve laughs. While playing this game might be even worse than being intimate with her, it's both the right and wrong time to stroll down memory lane. “Remember that time we time-traveled together on my birthday and you told me you love me?” She climbs into my lap and feels up my arms.

We look into each other's eyes and when she leans in to kiss me, I let her because this will be the last kiss we share whether she knows it or not. Then she rests her chin on my shoulder and I hold her, hard.

“Remember that time I was a better boyfriend who gave you happy memories like these?” I feel her try to pull back, so she can meet my eyes again and tell me that I'm a good boyfriend, but I continue holding her because I can't look her in the face and do this. “I'm not the guy we're remembering anymore.”

She stops resisting. She holds me tighter too, her nails digging into my arms. “Are you
. . .
? You are. Aren't you?”

She's gotta be asking me if I'm breaking up with her, but I consider the chance that she's asking me if I'm a dude-liker.

I know this: the part of me that was playing straight for so long wants to lie and tell her that I can transform back into the person she needs me to be, except that's not who I am anymore or who I ever should've been. So I just nod and say, “Yeah.” I'm about to apologize and try to explain why, but she breaks free from my hug and sits at the edge of her bed with her back to me.

Genevieve was the girl who brought me home after my dad killed himself and let me cry in a way I never would've in front of my friends. She tutored me in chemistry when I was failing, even though I was always too absorbed by her to actually pay attention. When her father started bringing home younger girls for the first time since her mother died, I distracted her with weekend outings, like a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge and people watching in Fort Wille Park. And now she's the girl who won't let me hug her.

“It's because of him,” she says.

I bullshit her: “I don't know what you're talking about.”

She's crying and doesn't let me see her face, like usual, and she throws me my hoodie. “You can go.”

So I do.

5

ANOTHER FIGHT

H
ow to Play Skelzies: Some people draw their Skelzies boards with chalk, but we properly outlined ours with yellow paint
against the black asphalt ground years ago. There are thirteen numbered squares—Box #13 in the center—and you have to flick a cap across the board in numerical order. First person to hit all thirteen wins.

Making the caps has always been the coolest part. Whenever we go through gallons of milk or water in our homes, we keep the caps (or sometimes steal them right out of store fridges) and pour an even amount of candle wax inside so they have some weight and don't blow away whenever the wind surprises us. My mom likes skim milk so my cap is blue with yellow wax from one of her Santeria candles.

I'm playing with Baby Freddy (green cap, red wax), Brendan (red cap, orange wax), and Skinny-Dave (blue cap, blue wax).

Thomas should be joining us soon.

Baby Freddy is on his knees and elbows, measuring the distance between the starting line and Box #13; if you get in the box on your first move, you automatically win. He flicks the
cap and it falls short. Brendan flicks his cap next and it's like a comet both in appearance and its glide. He lands in Box #1, then Box #2, and misses Box #3.

“Yo, A. I was trading in some games yesterday and guess what I found? Legend of Iris!”

I laugh. We bought it when we were twelve because there was a rumor that the developer—some beautiful girl in her late twenties—hid a picture of her ass in the game as some sort of erotic Easter egg. We played for hours, using cheat codes to speed the game along, but no dice. “The Great Ass Hunt of Sixth Grade. Good times.”

“Yeah.”

Here's the thing: I remember genuinely being a girl-liker when I was younger. I asked girls out on dates, was offered a blow job at fourteen if I pretended to be this girl's boyfriend to get her ex jealous—which I did, but pussied out when she unbuttoned my pants—and I only focused on the girls when watching straight porn. In January I was freaking out about what to get Genevieve for Valentine's Day, only for her to tell me a couple weeks later she doesn't believe in celebrating it. Major relief, but also super real.