More Happy Than Not (18 page)

I play my turn after Skinny-Dave goes and it's a direct hit with Baby Freddy's cap, sending it out of the board. I go again and miss Box #1.

By the time Thomas shows up, Brendan and I are on our way to Box #7. After my turn, we fist-bump and I hand him the cap I made for him (green top, yellow wax).

“Can I jump in, guys?”

“No way you'll catch up,” Brendan says.

“Is that a challenge?”

“Sure. Maybe you'll beat Skinny-Dave, at least.”

Thomas lines his cap to the left of the starting line, flicks, and lands right in Box #13.

Brendan kicks his cap. “That's motherfucking bullshit.”

“We don't have to count it,” Thomas offers.

“New game,” Brendan calls out as he retrieves his cap. He makes Thomas go first and I feel like Thomas might've missed Box #13 on purpose this time around.

I go next and get as far as Box #4 before missing.

Thomas asks, “How'd Genevieve take the news yesterday?”

Brendan is about to flick his cap when he looks up. “What news?”

“I sort of broke up with Genevieve.”

Brendan stands. “You're shitting me.”

“What? No. Things are still crazy at home and—”

Brendan picks up his cap and hurls it. “Why the fuck does this kid know before us? What makes him so fucking special?”

“Stop playing like you've been around to help me figure my shit out.”

Before I can do anything to stop it, before I can actually register that this is happening, my sort of best friend, Brendan, charges toward my best friend, Thomas. Brendan snuffs him in the chin and lays into him. “Get—out—of—my friend's head!” Before Brendan can land a sixth punch, I tackle him to the ground and pin him down, my arm against his throat.

“Leave him alone!” I'm breathing hard. I press down on his throat harder when he tries flipping me back with his legs, an old wrestling trick he used to be great at. I bet he's regretting teaching me how to fight. I get off and check on Thomas while Brendan catches his breath. Thomas isn't bleeding, but I can tell he's doing his best not to cry.

“You're okay, you're good,” I tell him.

I help him up and he wraps his arm around my shoulders. Baby Freddy and Skinny-Dave kneel by Brendan and they all watch us walk off.

“I'm sorry,” Thomas tells me. “I didn't know you hadn't said anything—”

“Stop. It's not your fault. He's a fucking asshole.”

He rubs his face and his eyes squint; a tear escapes. “You didn't have to take my side, Stretch.”

I kind of, sort of, definitely always will.

6

SIDE B

D
efending Thomas yesterday was instinctive, but not easy. If someone were to write my biography, there would be many stories about Brendan and Baby Freddy and Me-Crazy and the rest of the crew. They're my history. But I slept okay last night knowing I chose the person who agrees with the happy ending I'm building toward, not the ones who would punch in a face to demolish it.

I brought beer over to Thomas's house earlier today. Perk of being a cashier at Good Food's is how I get away with checking people's IDs but no one has to check mine when I cash out. I sit up against his bedroom wall, chugging back the rest of my third Corona as Thomas twists his fourth PBR open. I get another too, not just to catch up, but because I need a drink when I catch Thomas icing his bruised eye with the freezing can.

“I'm sorry for the thousandth time. I don't know what got into him.”

“He thinks I'm stealing you away from them,” Thomas says, like it's okay he got snuffed because my friends are jealous of all the Aaron Time he gets. “Do you ever think you'll tell them? Side A?”

“Maybe one day I'll move away and send a postcard saying, ‘Hey, I like guys. Don't worry, I never liked any of you because you all suck.'”

Thomas looks left and right, then over his shoulder, and peeks out his window. “Sorry, just making sure Brendan's not hiding around here to punch me before I ask this next question.” We both laugh. “You think you'll ever tell Genevieve?”

“I don't know. I haven't even heard from her the past couple of days. I have words I can say, I guess, but I'm scared she'll take it as a blow, like she turned me this way or something.”

“I'd pay to be there for that conversation.”

“It won't be for another few eons, so hang tight.”

“Who's your celebrity crush?”

“What?”

“I'm trying to help you get more comfortable with everything.”

“Okay, then. Emma Watson,” I answer. He raises a large, skeptical eyebrow. “Look, she was awesome as Lexa the Enchantress in the Scorpius Hawthorne movies, and if she wanted to marry me, I would magically be straight again. But on the dude side of things, I'm going to have to go with Andrew Garfield. Slinging around with Spider-Man would be badass. How about you?”

“Natalie Portman really won me over in
Garden State
. I even loved her in
Star Wars: Episode One
. . .
She was the only good thing about that trilogy,” Thomas says.

Not exactly what I was hoping to hear, but I've got three and a half drinks in me on an empty stomach, so I'm feeling ballsy. “Who would your guy crush be?”

“Like if I had to go gay for someone?”

“Yeah.”

“Hmm.” Thomas lays back and rests his head on his pillow, kicking his knees up. He chugs his PBR like a funnel, until it's empty. “I gotta go with my dude Ryan Gosling. He has swag and I couldn't help but want to
be
him after watching
Drive
.”

“I would ride shotgun with him,” I agree.

“PBR me.”

I toss a can to him like an overhead basketball pass and we cheer when he catches it. He opens it and beer sprays all over him. I'm drunk-laughing on the floor, which is the same as regular laughing, except it's obnoxiously louder and only happens when you're drunk. Thomas is drunk-laughing too while he changes into a new shirt. He's got to know always watching him change is killer on me, a turn-on with no payoff. He puts on a yellow sleeveless shirt.

“Get up. I'm going to teach you how to fight.”

“No thanks, Stretch.”

“Unless you're bench-pressing girls all the time, you're wasting your muscles.”

“I've seen wrestling.”

“Wrestling's fake. Come on, get up.” He puts down his PBR and joins me in the middle of the room. “Awesome. Next time Brendan or anyone comes at you, you're going to lay them out.”

How to Street Fight: You are your own weapon, but if you happen to have some brass knuckles or a baseball bat in a particularly nasty fight, more power to you.

“Okay, for starters, we're going to—” I cut myself off and trap him in a headlock. “Never wait for someone else to swing first.” I let him go and he wobbles. Before he can protest, I swing and stop an inch from his face. “The nose is a good spot to aim for because even if you miss, you have a good chance at clocking them in the jaw or eye. But if you're dead set on breaking the nose, a head-butt is the way to go.” I grab his shoulders, lean my forehead against his, and stare into his somewhat intoxicated eyes as I fake a head-butt into his nose over and over.

“That's a lot of violence to absorb in one minute,” Thomas says. “I think I'm good for the night.”

“You'll be good when—” I swing at him again, but this time he catches my wrist with one hand and grabs my leg with the other, pinning me to the floor.

Thomas smiles. “I told you I'm good for now.” He pats my shoulder and sits across from me on the floor.

“We'll go for Round Two later on. I'm just happy you'll be able to put those muscles to use. Maybe I should work out more too, at least for the look.”

“I'll be your friend, muscles or not,” Thomas says.

“I'm going to tattoo that promise on you as a reminder,” I say.

“I'm never getting a tattoo. What if I decide I want to take up underwear modeling? I can't have YOLO running across my heart,” Thomas jokes, or at least I hope he's joking.

I get up and grab a marker from his desk. I sit down next to him and palm his shoulder. “You're getting a tattoo right now. What do you want?”

“No way,” he says, laughing. I know he wants one.

“Come on. If you don't end up as an underwear model, what tattoo would you want?”

“I'm scared of needles.”

“This is a marker.”

“Fine.”

“How about one of your little fortune cookie quotes?”

“Surprise me.”

I hold his wrist, steady his arm, and begin drawing a stick figure holding a movie slate; it'll one day be very meta, if meta is still a thing. My scar is pressed against his forearm, and if I had as much hope in life back then as I do now, it would've never existed in the first place. This all feels so right and I like my chances with telling him Side B. “Thomas?”

“Stretch?”

“Were you shocked? When I told you Side A?”

“A little. You're just so different from any other friend I've ever had, and it's also why I wanted to be your friend in the first
place,” Thomas says. It's funny that he says this while I shade in his stick figure's eyebrows, one of my favorite things about him. “But when you told me, I didn't care. I was honored you trusted me.”

“Of course. You're my favorite person,” I say without a doubt. Thomas isn't just someone I want in my life—I need him to stay happy, to keep the death out of my life, to make being who I am easier. “It sounds stupid, but I think you're my happiness.” I rub his shoulder. When he turns to me, I trace his eyebrows from one to the other, and I lean in and kiss him.

Thomas pushes me off and gets up. “Dude, I'm sorry. I'm straight, you know.”

Hearing those words, that lie, feels like every wrong thing in the world: heart attacks, gunshots, starvation, fathers who leave you on your own. I blink to fight back the tears. “I thought
. . .
I thought that you
. . .
Sorry, fuck. I've just had too many drinks.” I feel like a fucking idiot. “Fuck. Sorry. Fuck.” I look up at him and he's covering his mouth. “Say something.”

“I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do.”

“You can forget about it. What I did and what I said. I can't lose my favorite
. . .
I can't lost my best friend.”

“Yeah. I can forget, Stretch.”

“I'm going to go home. Sleep off everything.”

“It's raining.” He says it so matter-of-fact that his words loop through my head again as if they should've been obvious:
I'm straight, you know. I'm straight, you know. I'm straight, you know
. . .
“Do you want an umbrella?”

“It's just rain.”

He tells me something, but I can't hear him over the echoes. He reaches out for my shoulder and pulls back. “I'll talk to you later.”

I feel his eyes on me as I let myself out of his window, almost knocking his Buzz Lightyear toy off the ledge. I reach the bottom and turn around to see if he's been following me. But he's not there, not even looking out his window.

I'm alone.

Garbage tumbling by creates hurtling shadows underneath streetlamps. I stop at an almost even distance between my house and his, feeling like I belong nowhere now. I collapse onto the curb and just sit there under the expectation Thomas will come for me. And the reality is killer.