Openly Straight (22 page)

Hours later, when the sun began to rise and my eyes were still wide open, I succumbed to the excruciating truth that some things were going to have to get majorly sorted out if I ever wanted to sleep peacefully again.

“I
want to save the children. I want to celebrate with all the people of the earth. I want to put candles in their hearts.”

Toby was standing in the middle of our once-again-disastrous dorm room, swaying, holding a pencil for a microphone and wearing a huge pair of yellow-framed sunglasses that engulfed his face. Albie sat at his desk, his head in his hands, trying to study. I couldn’t take my eyes off Toby, who gave new meaning to the phrase
train wreck
.

It was Sunday night after Thanksgiving, I’d just gotten back from Colorado, and Toby was being some weird yellow-framed-sunglasses-wearing version of Michael Jackson. He was holding court in front of a make-believe audience, imploring them to give peace a chance.

“What the fuck is happening?” I asked no one in particular, as Toby began singing a song that neither rhymed nor made sense.

“His mom streamed that Michael Jackson movie on Netflix over Thanksgiving,” Albie said in a monotone. “Now he thinks he’s a pop star and a humanitarian. I’ll admit it’s one of his more annoying phases.”

“And you get a car. And you get a car,” Toby was saying, pantomiming handing out small cars to an audience that perhaps only he could see.

Albie went to his refrigerator and took out a Coke. He popped the top and sat down on his bed. “It’s been happening off and on since he got back. I don’t know how to make it stop.”

“How does Oprah Winfrey fit into this?” I asked, watching as Toby seemed to be in deep conversation with one of his audience members. He was showing the person how to steer a car, it appeared.

“I don’t know,” Albie said, sighing. “Racism?”

“Philanthropy!” Toby yelled, back in his own voice. “I am the great philanthropist with many faces.”

Albie and I looked at each other. There was nothing to say, nothing to do but shrug.

“And how was your Thanksgiving?” I asked Albie. I found that as much as I was still bothered by our messy room, I was bothered less than I was at the beginning of the semester. Progress?

Toby sat down on the floor, dropping his character completely. He took a huge swig of Coke. “Thank you for finally asking. God. It was AMAZING. Mom and Jenny disappeared all morning and David — that’s my stepdad — took me to a shooting range. He taught me how to shoot a gun! It was so awesome. He is by far my favorite of the dads. He’s number three. It was, like, when you aim
the gun, you could be like in a movie, and that’s what I did. I pretended I was like James Bond.”

Toby pantomimed lifting a gun and shooting. He still was wearing the oversize glasses. He was an amazing guy, really. Totally himself. Totally unapologetic about having all these different sides of his personality that didn’t quite mesh. He didn’t care what people saw, and at that moment, the envy was so powerful, I wanted to punch him in the face.

“How was yours?” Albie asked me.

“We had fun,” I said. “Ben liked Colorado, I think.”

What I didn’t say was that Ben had gotten superweird on the flight back to school. Something had happened between our conversation in my room the previous night and my parents’ driving us to the airport this morning. Ben was very polite to them, but really distant with me. On the plane, he told me he should probably get some homework done. Which was fine, because I had to as well. But it felt wrong that we weren’t talking at all.

“Did you ski?”

“Yup.”

“He meet Claire Olivia?”

“Yup,” I said.

“You seem extremely talkative about this,” Albie said.

“Did he have a thing for Claire Olivia?” Toby asked. “Did they make out in front of you? Was it like, ‘Bromance partner, meet ex-girlfriend’?”

I ignored him and turned to Albie. “Yours?” I asked.

Albie shrugged. “Watched TV a lot,” he said. “Are you staying in here again?”

It had been a while since I’d slept in my assigned dorm room, but given the fact that Ben had barely mumbled “good-bye” when the shuttle dropped us off at campus, it seemed like yeah, I’d probably be sleeping here.

I was so confused.

“Yep,” I said.

“Lovers’, oh, I mean, brothers’ quarrel?” Toby said.

I stood, walked over to where he was sitting, took the huge yellow glasses off his face, dropped them on the floor, and stomped on them.

Toby looked down at them, and I wondered if he might cry. Instead, he turned philosophical.

“It was bound to happen,” he said.

I dreamt that Bryce was back. That he was back and moved in with Ben, and that it had happened while I was in my other room with Albie and Toby. Ben seemed relieved that I wasn’t there, and he pretended like I’d never even slept there. Bryce asked him what he did for Thanksgiving, and Ben said he’d had a great time in New Hampshire. I spoke up then, because that was a flat-out lie. But when I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out. My voice was totally gone. I tried to pound on the ground to get their attention, but the sounds were muted, like the ground devoured them, and I broke into a sweat. I wanted to say:
Listen to me! Listen to me!
But I had no volume. And then Toby started walking across a high wire with a pair of huge yellow glasses for shoes, and I woke up, because some things are not worthy of dream time.

Monday was hugely, surreally weird. I saw Ben walking across the quad toward the dorms while I was heading to my calc class, and I felt this huge wave of relief, like a settling in my soul, the return of an old, dear friend from battle or something. I smiled, and I wanted to reach out and hug him, and turn around and head back to East and skip math and hang out with him and just talk again. Because really, there was no reason not to talk; we hadn’t had a fight or anything. Maybe it was all in my head that anything was off.

And as we approached I told my feet to slow down but they didn’t, and my face contorted and I said, “Hey,” but didn’t stop or smile, and Ben’s face also did some sort of flicker of something and he said, “Hello,” but he too didn’t stop.

Or maybe it wasn’t in my head.

I walked on to math class, feeling like I was trying to pull myself into a boat from a freezing river, but the current was strong, and I couldn’t get my balance to hoist myself up. I didn’t hear a word all math class, and not in history class after either.

Ben wasn’t in his usual carrel in the library — back row, next to the wall — and I looked for him in the cafeteria at dinner. Again, not there. After dinner, I went back to my room to study, but it was impossible. My heart was pounding, and I began to think about how Bryce had gotten depressed and wandered off campus. What if Ben was depressed now? He certainly wasn’t himself since we’d gotten back. If something happened to Ben, I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself, so I hurried over to his room.

“Hey,” he said when he opened the door. He was wearing a red flannel robe over navy blue sweatpants. Such a Ben outfit.

“Hey,” I replied.

We just stood there, as if frozen.

“Can I come in?”

“Oh, yeah,” he said, stepping aside. “Come on in.”

I sat down on Bryce’s bed, which had sort of been mine, but now I wasn’t sure. It didn’t feel right, not the same way it had before we’d gone to Colorado.

“How you doing?” I asked.

“Busy,” he said. “Clarkson decided two days after Thanksgiving break would be a good due date for a lab report. The effect of concentration on the rate of a reaction. Snore.”

“Sounds scintillating,” I said. “How was your day?”

“Good, good,” he said. “I mean. Not good. Okay, I guess. You?”

“Fine,” I said.

We sat there, straining for words.

“Why are things so weird?” I said.

He exhaled. “I really don’t know. I don’t feel weird, exactly.”

“Yeah, me neither!” I said. “I mean, I’m totally fine. I miss hanging out with you.”

“Well, you don’t have to miss it. Maybe we can hang out but also, like, I don’t know.”

“Right,” I said, too quickly. “Wait. Like what?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just not, you know. Maybe you should sleep in your room now and we’ll just hang out during the day.”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s probably a good idea. That was pretty weird and all. Our
agape
got all
eros
-y.”

He laughed. “Right. I guess when the girls are away …”

“I guess.”

We were quiet again, and Ben finally stood, so I stood too. I wondered if this was his way of saying he wanted me to leave. My heart felt unglued, like it might drop into my stomach if I took another step toward the door and Ben said, “See ya.” But I didn’t know how to make him not say it.

“I better get back to the lab report,” he said. “We’ll talk tomorrow?”

“Sure. Definitely.”

We didn’t make eye contact as I left the room. And when he closed the door, I stood in the hallway, totally hollowed out. Fractured. Stranded.

In
the middle of the night, my eyes flashed open. There was evidence in Ben’s room. In an ornate wooden box with a red handle. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, spot it, open it, and he’d know everything. He’d never talk to me again. Never.

My heart pounding, I sat up in a hurry. The dark room spun, though I could barely see a foot in front of me. Albie’s light snores were the only sound. I focused on my digital clock: 3:49.

I realized I had been dreaming. There was no evidence. It was a dream. But it was like I was naked, terribly naked, this horrendous, vulnerable way I felt. A combination of lust and panic made breathing hard, and the tingles. Someone had set every nerve ending in my body on fire.

The bathroom seemed like a reasonable place to go to release at least some of the pressure. I padded slowly down the hallway, wondering if anyone else was awake.

And when I was about six steps past Ben’s door, an amazing thing happened: The door opened. There he was, in his flannel robe, sweatpants, no shirt. He opened the door and the desk lamp was on
and our eyes met and nothing had to be said. But Ben said something anyway.

“Those footsteps. I know those footsteps,” he whispered. I stopped and went inside.

He closed the door and it was so quick, I couldn’t tell you who instigated what. Our foreheads together and then our noses and then our lips entwined and opened slightly, a tip of a tongue probing and I wasn’t sure which way, whose was what. He tasted like orange sports drink and vodka and a slight hint of garlic, like Ben. My fingers caressed under his flannel robe, and then it was on the floor and we were on his bed. And Ben, sweet Ben, underneath me, his strong arms around me and then side by side, exploring each other with our lips and fingers.

No words. And thoughts went away for those moments too, and we did what had been in my mind for months.

After, words weren’t as hard to come by. It was like something had opened up in Ben, and he could say things that were hard for him to say before.

“I missed you,” he said. “I just missed you.”

“Me too. Are you drunk?”

“A little. Maybe we’re bi?”

“Maybe.”

“My uncle was bi.”

“Oh!”

“Yeah, and I mean, I know that like with Cindy, I definitely, you know, I like that. With her. But with you too, it’s like. That was pretty okay.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“The same? With you? Like you and Claire Olivia?” He sounded breathless, manic, which wasn’t something I was used to hearing from Ben.

“Sort of,” I said. “I liked this a ton more.”

“Oh,” he said, and he was quiet. I felt at peace too. Finally, a step in the right direction. Something approaching true, a pathway fully visible to where I wanted to be. With Ben.

“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe you’re not even bi?”

“I dunno,” I said. “Maybe not.”

And we fell asleep, my chest curled into Ben’s back, and this time, I was able to close my eyes and drift off. I was finally, totally, home.