Adam (28 page)

Adam knew the trans thing was crazy. And hovering around him was always the understanding that
this cannot last
, but being with Gillian just made him feel so good all the time, that nothing else, nothing outside of being with her in the precious bubble of the present, really mattered at all.

He could tell that June was feeling something similar. Since the night of Bound when June had ravaged Casey with on-this-earth-unparalleled abandon, she and Casey appeared to be kind of . . . dating. The “dating” consisted of Casey being in a weird, edgy mood all the time but sometimes sleeping in June's room, and June walking around the apartment with a perpetual terrified smile that reminded Adam of a photo of his mom on Space Mountain.

Adam and Ethan agreed that this dynamic was far more disturbing than anything that had come before.

“How do you think they have sex?” Ethan had asked Adam. “I mean, not to traumatize you or anything—”

“Uh, a little late for that.”

“But seriously, is it just, like, June worshipping Casey's body? Like, I have this image of Casey just lying naked on her back while June slowly trails her fingertips up and down over—”

“Aaah! Stop!”

“It's not like I
want
to imagine it! I can't
not!
It's compulsive! I mean it's happening right there in the next room . . . whatever ‘it' is . . . OK, I'll stop.”

Ethan was out of his funk, which had lingered following the failed Film Forum date. He still spent every night tinkering away on the Rachel movie, but he'd stopped talking about her out loud as much.

“I think I might, like, actually try Internet dating,” he said to Adam. “There are some cute girls on there . . .”

“What? You don't have to Internet date! You're, like, every girl's dream,” Adam said. And then there was a weird silence when they realized how awkward that sounded coming from Adam, and they both started laughing.

“I'm shy!” Ethan said. “And, besides, not every guy just randomly runs into his fantasy girl at a party.”

The way he said that made Adam blush with pride. That was the way the story of
his
life went. The magical, charmed kind of life. Ethan made him feel that way a lot.

The day after Bound and the First Sex with Gillian, Adam had to tell Ethan he'd lost his shirt. At first he was nervous, but Ethan hadn't seemed mad at all. He just gave Adam a perplexed look.

“Um, may I ask how?”

“Well, there was sort of this . . . ‘play party'? Like kind of a sex party? And Gillian wanted to go, so—”

Ethan started laughing. “You know what, man? It's totally cool. I don't even need to know what happened.”

“Really?”

“Just tell me—you and Gillian . . . ?”

Adam looked down and grinned.

“I knew it! First time? . . . Ever?”

Adam nodded.

“Well, the bad news is you
might
be obsessed with her for the rest of your life. But the good news is—what the fuck am I talking about, I think you're aware of what the good news is.”

And then they both started laughing.

“The first time I had sex with Rachel, I was so freaked out to be actually doing it, all my limbs went numb and I could barely feel anything.”

“I kind of had no idea what I was doing,” said Adam. He tried to find a way to tell Ethan about it, without the details he couldn't share. “It's like . . . uncharted territory down there. There's all these, like, weird folds, and . . .”

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” said Ethan. “It's like, ‘Wait, have I just been rubbing the wrong part for the past ten minutes?'”

Adam had a horrified look on his face, and Ethan laughed even harder.

“Our stuff is so much more simple . . .” said Adam. “Although the first time I ever, like . . . came, I totally freaked out and thought it meant I had AIDS or something.”

Ethan doubled over again.

“I was eleven and didn't realize stuff would come out, you know?”

“I hear you,” said Ethan, trying to catch his breath. “Seriously though, man”—and he looked Adam in the eyes—“I'm happy for you.”

People said those words a lot but usually because they were supposed to, and there would be a tinge of jealousy or competition or even a subtle reappraisal of oneself that trumped any happy feeling for the other person. This moment with Ethan was one of the rare instances when Adam knew the person truly, genuinely meant it.

“The bad news is you
might
be obsessed with her for the rest of your life.”
And the truth was Adam couldn't imagine feeling any other way. Life before Gillian was a cold, colorless wasteland through which he had pursued the meaningless business of being alive for god knows what reason. Really, what
was
the point of life if you didn't have this in it? He wasn't being dramatic. It was a legitimate question. And the notion that some other girl—some stranger, some Kelsey Winslow–like farce—could replace Gillian's role was absurd. There was no replacing Gillian; the thing itself was Gillian. It was what Ethan had said:
“The person whose world you always want to live in.”

Gillian had given Adam a mix CD, and every night he wasn't with her, he had a routine of listening through all twenty-one tracks in bed, in the sleeping bag, with his headphones on. The CD case cover said “Adam's New York Adventure” in typewriter print, and Gillian had cut out a construction paper New York City skyline and pasted it over a blue paper background. Little fake jewels were glued to the sky for stars.

Adam had never thought much about music before. The gang at EBP all listened to rap—T.I.,
50
Cent, Eminem, Jay-Z, Nas. Adam thought some of it was cool, but he never cared enough to actually buy anything. Brad and Colin were always quoting Jay-Z, talking about being a nigga with ninety-nine problems like they
really
related to it. It was basically not acceptable to listen to anything other than rap though, and while Casey always had some girl band blasting out of her room, it never occurred to Adam to like what she was playing, only to yell at her to close her fucking door. Listening to Gillian's mix, however, made Adam want to run up to every person he saw and say, “Hold up, wait, did you know about this thing called
music?
”

Every track on the CD held a distinct secret message about him and Gillian. The mix began with the Lovin' Spoonful's “Summer in the City,” and the song was jumpy and exciting and about how insanely hot it had been that fateful day of the Gay Marriage Rally. And when the guy sang about meeting on the rooftop, it was just so perfect because
they
had been on Carlisle's rooftop and it made Adam grin like a fool into the dark. Track 3 was Avril Lavigne's “How Does It Feel,” and Adam imagined him and Gillian holding hands, walking through the
Bodies
exhibit, the muscles and skeleton men trailing them with their beady glass eyes. Track 7 was fast and catchy but slowed down in the middle, and when the band, Matt Pond PA, sang about the type of son one should want, it was referring to Adam's old life: his mom, his dad, Brad, EBP, and how they didn't understand him or want him for who he was the way Gillian did. Track 12 was Tegan and Sara—Gillian had said she was “in love” with Tegan—and the song was called “So Jealous” and was about Adam being jealous of this Tegan, but also jealous of anyone who had ever been with Gillian, or ever would be, and his stomach would clench at the thought. But then the track would switch, and it was Arcade Fire singing “Rebellion” about lies, lies, and the song was huge and magnificent, and Adam's emotions would soar and sweep because it was about how everything is a lie and everything is the truth, and sometimes there's no way to tell the difference because the world is a glorious, grand, fucked-up place and we're all in it together. Then track 18 was the Flaming Lips with “Do You Realize?” about floating in space, and it was him and Gillian fucking, the way it felt when everything disappeared except their tongues in each other's mouths and their bodies moving with the exact same rhythm. Track 21 was the last track, and in the empty space before the music began, Adam would feel the loneliness creeping up because soon the mix would be over and the deadly silence would follow, and he would be aware of his body in his bed in his room again. But then the music would start, and it was the Cars singing “Who's gonna drive you home,” and it was so beautiful, but Adam would well with despair because they were singing about how the summer would end, and he was going to have to leave New York City—and as those last three minutes of the mix played, Adam would see himself flying alone at the back of an empty airplane through the icy, dark sky.

BRAD WAS ARRIVING
late that afternoon.

Adam had told him to take the AirTrain to the Howard Beach A to Broadway Junction to the L to get to Bushwick, but he was almost positive Brad would get lost and show up hours late. He kind of liked the idea of Brad getting lost, truth be told.

Since it was the middle of the day and Casey, Ethan, and June were all at work, Gillian had come over to the apartment to hang out before Brad arrived. The two of them spent their time almost exclusively at Gillian's, though Gillian kept asking Adam when she was going to meet his sister. Adam had no interest in taking that particular risk, but Brad was a different story. Brad meeting Gillian—his hot, cool, older girlfriend—was imperative. Gillian meeting Brad, his dork teenage friend from Piedmont, was significantly less appealing. Adam had been vague about how old Brad was, just that he was younger than Adam and also still lived at home with his parents—not because of trans stuff like Adam, but just because Brad was a loser.

“So he's a bio guy?” Gillian had said.

“Yeah, cisgendered,” Adam answered. “He actually doesn't know I'm trans.”

He told her they'd met a couple years ago playing tennis at the club their parents both belonged to. Another truth-lie, since he and Brad did play tennis at The Claremont together all the time.

Adam and Gillian were curled on the futon watching
A Few Good Men
, which they'd discovered was a shared favorite. Gillian leaned against Adam's chest. She was wearing one of her really low-cut V-necks where he could see half her tits sticking out, especially from this angle. Since the beginning of the movie, his dick had been in a state of semi-hardness, wrapped against his stomach in the ACE bandage. As they watched, they talked back at the screen, laughing at Jack Nicholson being dramatic and loving it when anyone went into a fast, wordy “Aaron Sorkin rant,” as Gillian called it.

Onscreen Tom Cruise and Demi Moore were in the middle of a frenzied work session surrounded by stacks of files and Chinese food.

“Why are work montages in movies always with Chinese food?” said Gillian.

“I think maybe it has to do with gesticulating with chopsticks?” said Adam.

“Yeah, like when you're struck with a genius idea, it's more effective to pause mid-chopstick in the air, rather than like with a forkful of hanging pasta.”

Adam laughed.

“Also Jews love working, and Jews love Chinese food, so . . .” said Gillian.

“You and your Jews!”

“You're my Jew.”

Kevin Bacon was now pacing the courtroom. He turned and faced the jury, told them how Lieutenant Kaffee was going to try to pull off a little magic act, try to dazzle you with official-sounding terms like Code Red.

“The only reason this movie works is because the order has the cool-sounding name ‘Code Red,'” said Adam. “Like, what if instead of ‘Code Red,' the order was called . . . ‘the Helena 567 Blue Breakfront,' and they had to repeat that all the time? ‘Did you order the Helena 567 Blue Breakfront?' ‘You're goddamn right I ordered the Helena 567 Blue Breakfront!'”

Gillian hunched over laughing. He loved when he made her laugh like that. Like she just couldn't take it and would stay doubled over, trying to collect herself. She sat back up.

“That was amazing.” She moved back under Adam's arm.

“That was retarded,” said Adam. Gillian didn't care when he said “retarded.” Sometimes she said it too.

Gillian just smiled at the movie. “Adam Freedman. I bet you get into any college you want.”

Adam chose not to correct her or mention his 2.6 grade point average and abysmal score on the SATs. He shrugged.

“Of course, you're only applying to places in New York,” said Gillian. She turned to him with a fake-stern look.

“Of course,” said Adam.

They didn't talk about it seriously, but the ongoing “joke” was that Adam would return to Piedmont at the end of the summer, get his shit together, apply to college in New York, and come back.

I will
, he thought.
I'll finish my fucking last year of high school, and I'll apply to every fucking college in New York so one of them has to take me, and I'll come back for you—I will.

Tom Cruise stared blankly at his chalkboard covered in Post-it notes.

Gillian moved her hand in between Adam's legs. She knew she was allowed to put her hand between his thighs but never on the crotch and never,
ever
inside his pants. All this had been communicated silently through the moving of hands by other hands or shifting of bodies out of the way. Once she had asked, “Have you ever let anyone touch you?” And Adam had said, “No.” It never came up again.

The warmth and pressure of Gillian's hand against his thigh felt so good, and Adam's dick got harder. He looked down at her tits and her flat, smooth stomach exposed where her shirt had pushed up. His whole body was buzzing with pleasure. As if she could tell, Gillian leaned over and pressed her face against his, her lips on his cheek.

“I love the way you smell,” she said. “It's, like, narcotic.”