Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (28 page)

“Wow,” I say. I grab the duct tape and look at all the dirt and tiny rocks stuck on it now, lint that I’ve walked over, lint that’s stuck to me and I never noticed it the whole time it was tagging along.

“Why not write stories then?” he asks me, leaning back. The truck’s overhead light makes him glow a little, which reminds me of Dylan, which reminds me of Dylan and him fighting in the Y.

The cut on his face by his ear has stopped bleeding, but the swelling all around it hasn’t gone down. I reach out toward it but don’t touch. “Does that hurt?”

He shakes his head. “You’re avoiding the question.”

“I know, but I think I should get you some ice.”

“Only wimps need ice. Answer my question.”

“Okay, He-Man. I like words out loud better,” I say. “Sometimes stories seem pretentious and I’m not so good at getting to the music under the words when I just have a paper and a pen, or on the computer, you know . . . It’s different somehow.”

He shifts closer. “I’m listening.”

“The thing is, a songwriter is part of history. They are part of this tradition of singing other people’s stories, and their own stories, too, obviously. Like, if you look at old songs, they are tools for understanding history of people. Not just the presidents and the hoity-toity academics and stuff, but the regular people.”

He nods and shuts off the overhead light. An owl hoots outside somewhere. A dog barks its response. The lights in Eddie Caron’s house flicker like the furnace has come on.

“And every time you sing a song, you change it a little, you leave your mark. Pete Seeger, this famous folk guy, he said that.” I shift on the seat. “That sounded pretentious before, didn’t it? Saying songs are ‘tools for understanding.’ That’s so pretentious.”

I shake my head because sometimes I am stupid.

“You worry too much about being pretentious,” Tom says. “You are the least pretentious person I know.”

“Really?”

“Really. Pretentious people do not wear Snoopy shoes.”

I admire them. “Do you think they’re stupid? They aren’t exactly the height of fashion.”

He smiles and tugs at one of my laces, untying it. “I think they’re you.”

“Dylan hated them. So I never wore them. I’ve had them forever.”

“They’re cute.” He closes his eyes for a second the way people do when their head hurts.

“You sure you don’t want some ice?” I ask.

“Nah, I have to go home soon.”

“Your dad going to kill you?”

He opens his eyes again and smiles like it doesn’t matter. “Probably.”

His eyes are so intense and deep and dangerous that I have to look away. Across the street, Eddie’s body is silhouetted in the light of his living room window. He’s moved the drapes and is staring out into the night, staring at Tom’s truck. “Eddie’s watching us.”

Tom shrugs.

I swallow. “No one’s ever asked me before, never asked me why I sing songs.”

He arches an eyebrow. “Not even Dylan?”

I shake my head.

“Not even Emily?”

“It’d be like asking her why she takes so many pictures. It’s just obvious I guess.”

“Why
does
she take so many pictures?” Tom asks. He picks up my hand and clips a duct tape bracelet over my fingers. It glides across my skin and settles on my arm. Tom moves it with his finger, slowly circling it around.

It is hard to keep my voice normal. “She’s afraid of losing people. She’s afraid she’ll forget things about them.”

My words come out slow and heavy maybe because my heart is fighting with two strange things. It’s tingling because Tom’s touching me and it’s aching sadness for Emmie and her sweetness.

Tom leans closer. “Some things you never forget though.”

“I know.” My voice becomes a whisper with a mind of its own.

“Some people either. Right, Commie?”

I don’t get a chance to answer because my voice has succumbed to flip flops of Heaven because Tom’s lips are pressing against mine. My voice is too close to the action to do anything but rejoice.

When we stop kissing I ask him, “Did you always know he was gay?”

Tom shrugs. “Not always.”

He turns his head away.

“He used to like me,” Tom says. “That’s how I figured it out. Then he pretended like he didn’t. That’s when the whole pact thing happened.”

I swallow hard. I take his hand in mine and ask him because I have to know. I hate to know now. “Did you ever like him back? That way?”

He turns back to me and squeezes my hand. “No.”

Then everything inside me melts because he kisses me and my stomach molds into his and my hands press into his chest and his hair.

“I don’t think I’m rebounding,” I say when we stop.

“Good.”

After Tom walks me to the door, I don’t go inside. Instead, I turn around to wave at him driving away. It feels like he’s going away forever, like I’ll never see him again. Eddie Caron’s standing at the end of his driveway.

Tom’s truck’s headlights flash him into light. He scowls. His eyes glint yellow from the light’s reflection.

“Hey, Eddie!” I yell.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even lift up his hand to wave.

“Goodnight, Eddie!” I try again.

He still doesn’t move. I shiver and open up the door, stepping into the warm light of my house and my mother’s million trillion questions about Tom and if I’m moving too fast and if I’m happy.

“I want you to be happy, baby, just be careful. You don’t want to jump into a new relationship too soon,” she says, leaning against the kitchen counter.

“You don’t like Tom?” I bristle.

“I like Tom very much. He’s always been a special boy. Do you remember how he used to write you love notes in kindergarten?”

“No.” I try to remember. I don’t. “I thought that was Dylan.”

“It was Tom.” She smiles and opens up her arms for a hug. I step into them and all is good in the world, again, for both of us.

I call Em on her cell phone, which I know she keeps beside her bed for late-night friendship needs.

“I’m completely in lust with Tom,” I whisper so my mom won’t hear.

“I know.”

“It’s too soon,” I say and slip my feet out of my bed. I pad over to the window, move the curtain to look down on the street where Dylan told me he was gay, to look down at the night sky.

“It’s pretty soon,” Em whispers back. She yawns.

“I woke you up.”

“It’s okay.”

“He and Dylan got in a fight at the Y tonight.”

“Oh my God.”

“It was freaky,” I said. “Like some sort of weird Neanderthal-caveman thing.”

“They were fighting over you?”

I grab onto the curtain of the window a little tighter, and look toward Eddie’s house. “Yes. No. I don’t know. It was weird. I really like Tom though.”

A large shadow walks down Eddie Caron’s driveway and then stands on the road, outside my house staring up at it. I can only make out the shadows of him. I don’t move.

Em starts whispering again, “Sometimes things aren’t logical. Sometimes things don’t follow timetables, you know? If you like Tom, you like him. If he’s a rebound, he’s a rebound. At least you’re not being a Mallory and wallowing in self-pity and playing the whole ‘poor me I’ve got a gay ex-boyfriend’ thing.”

“Yeah.” I lift my hand to wave to Eddie, because that’s who it has to be out there.

He doesn’t wave back. Maybe he can’t see me. Instead, he lifts his head toward the sky. A plane’s lights blink far above us. Its cabin is probably full of sleeping passengers ready to land in new places, start new adventures, maybe even new lives.

“Do you think he’s a rebound?” I ask Em.

“No.”

“Why not?” I ask her as Eddie turns and walks back to his house, a slow shuffle toward home in the night.

“Because I think you guys are meant to be. You’ve been lusting after each other since middle school, you’ve just been suppressing it.”

I let that thought drift into me and lean my head against the cold window. “I just saw Eddie Caron outside, staring up at my house.”

“Oh my God. That’s freaky,” Em forgets to whisper and it takes a second before I hear her mom’s voice yell for her to get off the phone.

“Crap,” Em says. “Gotta go. Sorry. Bye.”

I hold my phone and watch Eddie enter his house. He goes through the door, doesn’t turn a light on, and just steps inside. He must know his way through his house in the dark. Above us in the sky, the plane is gone. It’s moved on.