The Book of David (22 page)

“Not so fast, mister.”

I'd untied my bow tie and opened my top button after we left the school gym hours ago, but Jon did the rest. He started by pulling the bow tie off really slowly, and just that movement made me try to grab him and kiss him, but he pushed me back with an evil smirk. Then he slid my jacket off and tossed it over the chair by my desk. When he did that, I noticed it fell over something red that was already there.

“Oh . . .”

“What?” Jon asked.

“Tyler left his hoodie.”

Jon leaned in and kissed me lightly on the lips. “Shut up about him, would ya?” He grinned and went to work on my shirt.

One by one he undid each of the buttons. He grabbed both of my wrists in turn and unhooked my cuff links. Then, slowly, he slid the shirt off my shoulders. His hands were cool and steady against my chest, and as he ran them over my shoulders and the white cotton fabric dropped away down my arms, I got goose bumps all over.

Once we were both down to our underwear, Jon pushed me backward onto the bed, and we made out for a long time. I finally rolled off of him and turned out the lights. When I turned around, he was already under the covers, and when I slid in next to him, he threw his legs over mine and rolled on top of me. I wrapped my arms around him and slid my hands down, down, down, feeling the curve of his back. I kept expecting to hit the waistband of his underwear, but I didn't. He was completely naked, and before long, we both were.

I'm blushing just remembering everything that happened afterward. We didn't have full-on sex. I've never done that before with a guy, and I'm sort of nervous about it. I'm especially not gonna try that in my own bedroom, just a few feet through the floor from where my parents are sleeping downstairs. We did plenty though—even some things I've never tried before. Stuff I didn't think I'd ever be able to do.

My brain quiets down somehow when it's just Jon and me in the dark. It's funny how when you feel this way about somebody, you get lost in their touch.

And what is “this way?” How do I feel about Jon? I almost wrote, “It's funny how when you
love
somebody . . .”

Do I love Jon? I don't know, but I've never felt this way about anybody before. I can't imagine not knowing him. I can't remember what my life was like before we met.

He just woke up and rolled over next to me. He threw his arm around my waist and asked, “What are you doing?” all sleepy with his hair messed up.

“Just writing,” I said.

“Whatcha writing down?”

“The stuff I don't want to forget.”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like lying here in bed next to you.”

Jon just left to go home. Mom and Dad are at church, and it was hard for me to let him out of bed. The good thing is that since we have school off tomorrow for Veterans Day, Monica and Amy planned a double date for us tonight, so I'll get to see him again. I'm actually spending the night at his place tonight. Right now I have to jump in the shower so I can go meet Roger Jackson to do this interview for the
Gazette
.

When I got back from the interview, Mom and Dad were back from church with Tracy and had made us a big Sunday-afternoon lunch. Her lasagna is my favorite. Dad wanted to know about the interview, and Mom and Tracy wanted to hear about homecoming last night. By the time lunch was over, I felt
like I'd been interviewed for hours. Mom was showing Tracy the pictures she took on her phone of us in our tuxes last night. Tracy was talking about how handsome Jon is and how funny Tyler's tuxedo was.

“Oh—Tyler stopped by,” Mom said. “He said he left his sweatshirt in your room.”

I nodded and swallowed a bite of lasagna. “Cool. Did you get it for him?”

“He got it,” she said. “I was up to my elbows in noodles when he came by, so I just sent him up to your room. He found it.”

Suddenly I wasn't hungry anymore. I realized that I'd run out of the house to the interview and I couldn't remember what I had done with this journal. What if he'd read what was in here?

I finished eating and asked to be excused from the table, then practically ran up the stairs. This journal was right on the nightstand where I'd left it, under a bottle of water I'd been drinking before I left. My tux jacket that had been tossed on top of Tyler's hoodie last night was hanging on the back of the chair now.

I'm sure he just ran in here and grabbed it.

All that pasta made me sleepy. Jon and I were up really late last night, and then I woke up early this morning. I'm gonna take a nap and then head over to Jon's house so we can go pick up Monica and Amy together. So glad we don't have school tomorrow.

I am sitting in the chair by Jon's window. He calls it a “lounger,” but there's some guy's name that goes with it. Eaves? Aimes? It's something like “Eaves lounger,” but I don't think that's right. Anyway, it makes me smile when he says the name of this chair because he's very particular about it. Always says the name and then “lounger.”

Jeez. I'm writing about this chair instead of what happened. Not because I don't want to write about what happened—I do. It's just I'm not exactly sure how. I mean, there's the simple way:

I just had sex with Jon.

But that doesn't explain it. I can write that sentence, and I stare at it, and I think about what my dad would think if he read that sentence, or my mom, or really anybody I know, actually. They'd totally freak out.

But I didn't just “have sex” with Jon. It was more than that. I mean, I've had sex plenty of times—with two girls. This was different from that. Something more happened between me and Jon tonight—more than what I've felt between me and the girls I've had sex with. I don't know how to explain it. We shared something so one of a kind that I can't completely wrap my head around it.

When we got back from our double date with the girls, Jon's parents were already in bed. Their room is on the other end of
the house, so we didn't have to worry about waking them up. When we got back to Jon's room, we got onto his gigantic bed and started watching this show about an alien invasion that he's gotten me into. We didn't watch for long.

We were both propped up on pillows on his bed, and I had my arms around him. I kept leaning down and kissing his ear. Finally he pushed pause on the DVR and rolled over, pinning me down, and we started making out. Before long we were naked, and one thing just led to another. I'd thought about this moment a lot over the past few weeks, and every time I did I got crazy nervous about it. I mean, I know how sex between guys works, but it's one thing to know to do something in your head, and it's another thing to actually
do
that thing. I know
how
to throw a pass that Tracker can catch in the end zone. Actually
doing
that every time I need to is a different story.

Somehow, in the moment, I didn't feel nervous. When Jon whispered what he wanted in my ear, I looked into his eyes and whispered, “I've never done it before. Have you?”

He nodded. “Couple times.”

I'd used a condom before when I had sex with girls. That much I knew. Jon walked me through everything else. He smiled a lot and even laughed. He made the newness of it fun and exciting. With girls before, it was all about me knowing what I was doing, even when I didn't. It always felt like I had
to wear them down and get them to agree. With Jon, we were a team. We were in this together—we shared this moment that rocked my concept of what it meant to be a guy—the power and the passion and the tenderness. I wanted him in a way I'd never wanted anyone else.

After we were done, we just lay there, catching our breath.

“Holy crap.” I sighed.

Jon smiled. “Fun, huh?”

“I don't think ‘fun' really covers it.”

We stayed there, a sweaty tangle in the sheets, staring at the glow of the lights from the bridge floating into his window. We talked about graduating next spring and college. We talked about plans for getting to California and what it would look like if we went together. Jon told me he was applying to film school at UCLA, and his dad had just told him he could apply to USC, too.

We started kissing again and ended up having round two. That's something that's way different with Jon. For the girls I've been with, once was plenty. Sometimes I think Jon and I could go at it for weeks.

Afterward we took a shower and then crawled into bed together. I wrapped my arms around him and held him until I heard his breathing level out, but I wasn't tired. I wanted to try to write all this down tonight. Sometimes I feel like I have these
moments that threaten to disappear unless I get them down in this journal. I never want to forget tonight. Jon and I forged an alliance together. I can't tell anyone yet, but I know I'm headed out of this town. I'm going toward the Pacific, and I don't know what the future looks like exactly, but I know I want Jon to be there.

I wish I could tell everybody I know about what it feels like to just be myself. I wish I could explain in words how good it feels to be honest with another person about who I am.
This is who I am.
This is what it feels like to be loved. It drives away every fear. It makes everything seem possible.

I wish I were dead.

I wish that the whole fucking house would fall down on top of me and snap my skull off my spine. I want to be crushed between the ceiling and the floor. Better yet, I wish I had never even existed.

But I do exist.

And so do the tears that are falling onto the words I am writing. I don't remember when I've cried so much. Or hated so much. And all I can think to do is write it down. It's like the scratch of this pen against this journal is the only thing that's keeping me tethered to the planet.

The tears started this morning in Jon's driveway.

I woke up to Jon's phone blowing up on his nightstand. It kept buzzing and ringing and jumping around until finally it bounced off the nightstand and onto the floor.

I was still really sleepy, so I didn't really know what was happening. I just knew that it was bugging me. “Dude. Make that stop.”

He pulled me in to him and kissed me on the back of the neck. “It's not as important as gettin' this.” He rolled me over and kissed me softly on the lips. I kissed him back with more force.

It was our last secret kiss.

It was the last moment before we knew what the whole world already did.

Jon rolled over and grabbed his phone and held it up in front of his face.

“Shit.” He jumped out of bed and had his laptop open on his desk faster than I'd ever seen anyone move.

I was still wiping sleep out of my eyes. “What?” I asked.

“Shit. Shit. Shit. SHIT!” His voice cracked as he yelled, and I jumped out of bed and wrapped an arm around his shoulder, bending down to peer at the screen. I thought maybe his grandma died.

It was worse.

On the screen was a video posted online. There were two
people in the shot, a little off center. One of them was unbuttoning the other's shirt, then pushing it down his arms. It was two guys.

It was us.

I jerked my arm away from Jon's shoulders like I'd been shot. “Did you take a
video
of us after homecoming? Delete that shit before somebody sees!”

“Are you crazy?” Jon jumped up and looked at me like I'd slapped him. “No, I didn't take a video of us. And it's too fucking late! Everybody has already seen this.”

“What the hell are you talking about? How? How did this happen?”

He pointed at the screen. There were 3,207 views. There were 289 comments. The numbers were going up. I clicked forward on the video. We were down on the bed now, full-on kissing. That was me. On my bed. In my room. Jon was on top of me, kissing me. We were both in our boxers. I rolled toward the camera, and you could clearly see my face as Jon wrapped his arms around me from below and pulled me down on top of him again.

I jumped back from the computer. “Who posted this?” I yelled.

Jon pointed at the screen name at the top of the video: crutchFREE27.

“Tyler,” I whispered, frozen as the whole thing washed over me—finding him in my room when I got back from picking up
the tuxes, sitting at the computer. His red Razorback hoodie left draped over the chair that night. Mom sent him up to my room to get it when I was gone. I started feeling dizzy and grabbed the back of the chair by Jon's desk.

There was a knock on the door. “Is everything okay?” Jon's mom called his name. “Jon? Jon?”

I was gripping the back of the chair so hard, my knuckles were white. He laid his hand on top of mine. I stared at it, not understanding what was happening. I looked into his eyes—so blue and shining behind the tears. And then he smiled.

“Please,” he whispered. “I can't do this without you. I love you.”

The image of my dad and mom watching this video flashed through my head, then Roger Jackson and the interview in the
Gazette
, then the news vans that had been parked at every single game I'd had since I gave a verbal to USC. All of a sudden, I gagged.

I tore my hand off the chair and ran to the door of Jon's bathroom. I barely made it in time. As I was on my knees in front of the toilet, Jon opened the door for his mom.

“Honey, what's wrong?”

“It's happening all over again.” He sobbed. Jon pointed at the computer. “Tyler. He posted . . .
that
.”

He grabbed a bottle of water and a towel. He knelt down behind me in the bathroom. “It's going to be okay,” he said.

All I could say was “No.”

I pushed him away as I stood up, running into the bedroom in my boxers. I grabbed my clothes and got dressed as fast as I could. I could hardly breathe as I sat on the bed and pulled on my shoes. I could hear Jon talking to his mom, his mom pointing at the computer and then calling to me, but I couldn't make out what they were saying. I grabbed my backpack and crammed my stuff into it.