Boy Meets Boy (10 page)

I don't encounter Kyle until our planned meeting in the chem lab after school. When I told Noah I would be meeting him thirty minutes later than usual, he didn't even ask me why. I feel guilty, both because of the truth I didn't volunteer and because I know that if I had been in his place, I would've asked.

Kyle and I sit at one of the chem tables; the words of our conversation will fall from the air into empty glass beakers, awaiting invisible measure. Behind Kyle, the equation-strewn board hangs like cryptic wallpaper. Neither Kyle nor I take chemistry. I figured this would be neutral ground.

I study his face--the close-cropped black hair, the scatter-freckles, the shadow-hint stubble.

He looks different than when I last really knew him. His features have lost some fierceness.

His angles are not so sure of themselves.

"I'm sorry for springing that on you in the video store," he begins, his voice steady and low.

"That's not how I'd planned it to be."

"How did you plan it to be?" I ask, not to be snarky but because I am genuinely curious.

"I planned it to be a million different things," he replies. "And in the end, I couldn't figure which one it should be."

"But now you've told me." Part of me is still expecting him to take it all back, for this to be his one last cruel trick on my mind.

He nods.

"And what do you want from me?" I ask.

"I don't know." He looks me right in the eye for a moment, then looks behind me, to the periodic table of the elements. "I know I don't have any right to do this. I was really. . . I don't know what the word is for what I was to you. I didn't break up with you the right way.

Something inside me flipped out and I. . . I couldn't stand you. It wasn't your fault. But I couldn't stand you. I needed to. . . I needed to obliterate you. Not you personally. But the thought of you. Your presence."

"Why?"

"It was just a feeling--it was an
instinct.
I had to do it. It wasn't right. It didn't feel right."

"But you didn't have to lash out at me," I say, my voice rising until I bring it back down.

"You could have just told me. Said 'it doesn't feel right.'"

"No"--he's looking at me again now--"you don't understand. You would've talked me out of it. I would've backed down."

"Maybe you would've backed down because you didn't really want to do it."

"You see--you would've used that logic on me. And I didn't want to use your logic."

"So instead you
obliterate
me?"

He's playing with one of the beakers now, looking at it in his hand. "I know--I'm sorry."

I decide to continue the narrative. "So you dump me. You bad-mouth me. Then a couple of weeks later you're in the halls playing tonsil hockey with Mary Anne McAllister, telling everyone that I'd tricked you into liking guys. Now what? It didn't work with Mary Anne or Cyndi or Joanne or whoever else, and you've decided to come back to my side again?"

"It's not like that."

"Then what is it like?" I can see he's confused, I can see he's trying to tell me something. But all of my own hurt is coming out now--and it's
angry
hurt. "Please tell me what it's like.

Because as you've been walking past me all these months -- as everyone has been asking me,

'Whatever happened with Kyle?' and I've been trying to piece together your side of the story from all the second hand accounts I've heard--all this time, I have been wondering more than anything else
what you think it's like"

He starts to shiver then. And I remember it so clearly how he used to shiver when he was upset, when he was overwhelmed. There was nothing he or I could do to make it stop. When he told me his brother had learned he had diabetes, when his father yelled at him on a Sunday visit for quitting basketball, when we got to the ending of
Boys Don't Cry
--these were the only times I got to hold him with all my strength, as his body shook out what his mind couldn't handle. After the first time, when he'd tried to laugh the whole thing off, we hadn't talked about it. We just rode it out, until I wasn't there anymore.

I want to touch him right now. Not hold him, just touch him. But I'm paralyzed. My own reaction to being overwhelmed.

"I'm sorry," he mutters.

"Don't be. I'm sorry I snapped at you."

"No." He looks at me again; the shivering subsides. "I know you hate me. You have every right to hate me. You don't have to speak to me again."

He gets up to leave, and my paralysis is broken. I put my hand on his arm and gesture to him to sit down.

"Listen to me, Kyle," I say. He sits back down and angles his face toward mine. "I mean this entirely. And I'll only say it once. I do not hate you, and have never hated you. I was angry at you and depressed by you and confused about you. But hate never came into it.

"Thank you," he whispers.

I continue quietly. "If you want me to forgive you, I guess have. If you want to know that I don't hate you, you know that now. Is that all?"

A slight shiver again.

"No," he says.

"What, then?" I ask gently.

"I need your help, Paul. I have no right to ask you for it, but I can't think of anyone else to talk to."

I am already involved. I've put myself in this position, and the truth is that I don't really mind.

"What is it, Kyle?"

"I'm so confused."

"Why?"

"I still like girls."

"So?"

"And I also like guys."

I touch his knee. "It doesn't sound like you're confused, then."

"But I wanted to be one or the other. With you, I wanted just to like you. Then, after you, I wanted to just like the girls. But every time I'm with one, I think the other's possible."

"So you're bisexual."

Kyle's face flushes.
"I
hate that word," he tells me, slumping back in his chair. "It makes it sound like I'm divided."

"When really you're doubled?"

"Right-O."

I smile. It's been a long time since I've heard a
Right-O.

I know some people think liking both guys and girls is a cop-out. Some of Infinite Darlene's biggest rivals save their deepest scorn for the people they call "dabblers." But I think they're totally full of garbage. I don't see why, if I'm wired to like guys, someone else can't be wired to like both girls and guys.

"We could call you an ambisexual. A duosexual, A--"

"Do I really have to find a word for it?" Kyle interrupts. "Can't it just be what it is?"

"Of course," I say, even though in the bigger world I'm not so the world loves stupid labels. I wish we got to choose our own.

We pause for a moment. I wonder if that's all -- if he just needed to say the truth and have it heard. But then Kyle looks at me with unsure eyes and says, "You see, I don't know who I'm supposed to be."

"Nobody does," I assure him.

He nods. I see there is something else he wants to say. But he keeps it inside, and it fades somewhere behind his expression.

"Do you think we can be friends?" he asks.

It's so funny--if he had asked that during the break-up, that old "we'll be friends" fallback, I would have laughed out loud or torn out all his hair. But now, here, it actually works. It means exactly what it says.

"Yes," I answer. Then he surprises me. He leans out of his chair and envelops me in a hug.

This time he holds me with all his strength, even though I don't shiver. I don't know what to do at all.

I know he wants me to feel like comfort. And deep in my heart, I know I am afraid that he'll feel like comfort, too.

Pinba

I tell Joni everything.

Then she tells Chuck.

A few days pass between the events of these two sentences. But the effect is the same.

I find out from Infinite Darlene. This alone means trouble, since Infinite Darlene tries to put as many degrees of separation as possible between herself and Chuck.

"Oh, honey," she says, "they were talking about it in the locker room."

"Talking about what?" I ask.

And she tells me: They were talking about me and Kyle, and me and Noah.

Then it gets worse.

"I'm only telling you for your own good," Infinite Darlene murmurs under her breath. "Rip is in on it."

Rip is our resident oddsmaker. His parents own islands, so his allowance allows him to bet on just about anything: How many times will the principal's secretary use the word
the
in the morning announcements? How many kids will pass by classroom 303 between sixth and seventh periods? What color will Trilby Pope wear the most in the month of April? Rip is ready to make the odds and stand by them.

He loves betting on how long couples will last.

"What are my odds?" I ask.

Infinite Darlene pouts a little at me. "Darlin', you don't want to know that, do you?"

"I'm serious."

Infinite Darlene sighs. "It's six to one that you end up with Noah, five to one that you end up back with Kyle, and two to one that you botch both chances and end up alone in the next twenty days."

"Which did you bet on?"

Infinite Darlene flutters her eyelashes at me. "A girl never tells," she chirps. Then she spirits herself away.

I wonder what, the odds are that Noah has heard the gossip. Two to one? Even?

I haven't noticed any change in his heart, any sudden suspicion or wariness. And I've been seeing him a lot the past week. We've been
dating.
On Wednesday we sneaked into the city after school, to go to a museum free night and look at all the people there. The art students stood like intellectual twigs in worn-through sweaters, while the too-beautiful Europeans dipped and glided around them, conversing in languages both floral and spicy. On Thursday we hung out with Tony. It felt like ages since I'd last seen him. Noah and Tony seemed to get along pretty okay, although Noah's presence did complicate the homework routine.

We've also been kissing like crazy. Hours pass and we don't notice. We have all the time in the world because it feels like, for once, the world is giving us the time we need.

Luckily, I haven't had to disappear from everyone else's lives in order to be a part of Noah's.

We don't want to be that kind of couple (see: Joni and Chuck). I've also had time to check in with Kyle, for shorter amounts of time. It's hard to resist the pull of someone who needs you.

We've kept all of our exchanges limited to conversation--but the fact that we're having conversations at all means something. Neither of us knows what.

I find myself relieved that both Noah and Kyle are going away for the weekend--Noah to hang with his old-town friends, Kyle to visit an ailing aunt.

Joni makes the mistake of approaching me on Friday afternoon, after I've talked to Infinite Darlene. Chuck is at her side. The fact that she doesn't realize I know she blabbed is more amazing than the fact that I didn't know in the first place.

"We're going to pick up Tony," she says. "Wanna come?"

These are perhaps the only words in the world that could get me into a car with her at this point. She appeals to the part of me that yearns for instant time travel--a trip to the not-so-long-ago, when Tony, Joni, and I were a band of three.

Of course, this time Chuck comes along. He doesn't offer me the front seat. He takes it as if it's rightfully his.

Joni doesn't seem to notice.

So I sit in the backseat amidst the empty Fresh Samantha bottles (hers) and smashed Pepsi cans (his). I wonder when Joni stopped recycling in a prompt manner, and start to regret my voluntary passengerdom. The anger I feel towards Joni for sharing my thoughts with Chuck begins to reach the boiling point again. I vow to talk to her at the first moment I can catch her without him.

That moment never comes. They don't even take bathroom breaks from each other.

My testiness is a little offset once Tony jumps into the backseat with me; now I have someone to share glances with. The first glance--me wide-eyed, Tony's eyebrow raised--comes when Chuck hijacks the radio and blasts some Testosterone Rock, the kind of music best suited for "professional" wrestling compilations. The second glance--me squinting in disbelief, Tony looking to heaven--is prompted when Chuck starts to sing along and chastises us for not joining in. As if I know the lyrics to a song called "Sh ' All Mouth."

Joni doesn't sing along, either, but she makes a lame attempt at drumming on the steering wheel. At one point, she accidentally hits the horn, which cracks Chuck up.

"Nice toots," he chuckles.

Third glance--me and Tony each pleading,
Get us out of this car now.

We head to the local diner, the kind of place where you need a mob connection in order to get your song on the jukebox. The waitresses are perfectly lacquered, the waiters freshly slicked.

The menu is the size of a wood plank and takes as long to read as the morning paper.

Breakfast is always served, most of the time as dinner.

As we sit down in a booth, I see Joni's eyes briefly flash worry. It's the first non--Chuck-related reaction she's had since I got into her car. Or at least that's what I think at first. Soon I realize that all her reactions are Chuck-related in some way.

I turn and follow her gaze. I see Ted sitting three tables away with Jasmine Gupta. His back is to me, but when Jasmine sees me looking, she winks.

Kyle could take lessons from Jasmine--she'll fall for anybody, guy or girl. The hitch is that the person has to be on the rebound from a serious break-up. Something about this fragile-yet-vindictive state entrances her.

The old Joni comes back to us for a brief moment.

"I see Ted's finally gone the predictable route," she snarks. (In all his other break-ups with Joni, he had chosen not to flee in Jasmine's direction.)

"He's scum," Chuck mutters, perhaps because he thinks it's his duty to do so.

"No, he's not," I say pleasantly.

"What's everybody getting to eat?" Tony interjects. One of the weaknesses of being mellow is an inability to deal with non-mellow moments.

"I bet Joni'll get the grilled swiss," Chuck says with a smile.