First Flight (3 page)

“Oh yeah? Okay, then. See you in thirty.”

“Yeah. Bye.” Jesse grabbed his jacket, then went thumping down the stairs to find his parents. His mother was in the living room, listening to a basketball game and reading something.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, pulling his jacket on as he leaned over the back of the couch. “I’m gonna go hang out with Kevin for a while.”

“Okay. Drive carefully,” Leanna said, then stretched up and kissed him on the cheek.

“I will. Where’s Chris?” He kissed her back and straightened up.

“He and your dad are cleaning up the grill so we can have steaks tomorrow night,” she said. “Are you taking him with you?”

“Uh, no. This is, um, you know. Kind of a solo thing for me.”

“Ah.” She tilted her head back and looked at him. “Is everything okay? And what do you want me to tell Chris, when he asks?”

“Yeah! Yeah, everything’s fine.”
Mostly, anyhow
. “Just tell him I went over to a friend’s house. Since it’s my thing, I’ve gotta be the one to tell him. And I will, I swear, just not tonight.” Jesse kissed the top of her head and turned around, as if he could outrun his cowardice. “I gotta get going. See you later.”

“Okay, then,” Leanna said, but she didn’t push it. “You’re a grown-up. Just be careful.”

“Yeah. Love you.”

“Love you, too.”

Chapter Four

A
COUPLE
of weeks later, Jesse was idly browsing one of his favorite music sites before bed, when his phone rang. He pressed the accept key, cutting off the ringtone he’d set for Kevin.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“Hey. I was thinking that maybe we could go out tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow night? Sorry, Chris and I are gonna—”

“Chris? You and
Chris?

“Yeah, Chris and I are—”

“You’re what? Screwing?”

“No! God, will you let me finish my sentence?”

“Fine. Finish.”

“Chris and I are going out to dinner—”

“I knew it!”

“With my
parents
. My mom and dad, remember them? Leanna and Desmond?”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you’re
not
screwing Chris.”

“Kev, I’ve
told
you—”

“Yeah, but just because you
tell
me doesn’t mean anything! You could be lying to me!”

“Sure, I
could
, but I’m not. Kevin, you’re the only—”

“I’m the only one you’re cheating on?”

“No. You’re the only—”

Behind Jesse, Chris blinked, then closed his eyes as he tried to figure out why he was awake.

“I’m
not
the only one you’re cheating on?”

“
Kevin
. Kevin,
listen
to me. Chris doesn’t even
know
.”

Oh, that was why: Jesse was talking. He turned over, away from Jesse, wondering what he didn’t know. There were so many things it could be, after all. He tried to go back to sleep, but Jesse shifted in his chair and sighed again.

“He doesn’t know you’re my boyfriend? Or he doesn’t know you’re cheating on him?”

Jesse took a moment to rub his face, trying to wrap his mind around the raging paranoia in every word of Kevin’s questions. Something snapped then, something that had been growing more and more brittle over the last two months. “Look, I can’t keep doing this. I’m
tired
of it, okay? I’m tired of you asking me about Chris every time we talk. I’m tired of you not listening to me, and I’m tired of you
not—”

“You’re tired of lying? Cheating? Maybe we should fucking break up.”

“Yeah, we should,” Jesse snarled, anger drowning hurt.

Kevin asked about
him?
Why should he? How strange.
Chris gave up on sleep but stayed on his side, facing Jesse’s bed.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you? You’d love to be free to screw whoever you want.”

“I’m done.
We
are
done. Delete me from your phone and from everything. Unfriend me, block me, whatever, I don’t give a flying fuck, okay? Because I plan on doing exactly the same thing to you. I don’t want to see you again.” And that was it. His thumb slid over, pressed down, breaking the last tenuous thread between the two of them.

Chris jumped a little at the crash as Jesse slapped something—his phone, probably—onto the desk. There was a new strange sound in the darkness afterward, like Jesse couldn’t breathe. It was a bad sound, one that Chris wanted to make stop, but he had no idea how he might. He could at least try, though. Pretending to wake up, he turned over onto his back. “Um, Jesse?”

“Fuck,” Jesse said, his voice thick. “Sorry, Chris, I didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”
Chris.
He couldn’t believe he’d ever introduced Chris to Kevin, then he wondered how much Chris had heard.

The odd sound of Jesse’s voice did nothing to convince him. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sure. I just dropped my phone.” Jesse turned toward the computer and began clicking on things, his voice returning to normal. “Like I said, I didn’t mean to wake you up.” Facebook first, then everything else.

“You are angry?”

“No, just a klutz.” Jesse hoped Chris wouldn’t realize that he was faking his cheerful tone as he opened a half-dozen tabs. “Seriously, it’s cool. Get some sleep or you’ll be cranky in the morning.” Under the jostling shards of his pain, disbelief, and hot anger was a slowly uncoiling knot of cool relief.

“All right.” Chris knew Jesse was not being truthful, but he wasn’t sure if he should say so. Instead, he just turned over, watching Jesse’s back as he did whatever it was he was doing.

“
O
KAY
, Jesse,” Ellen said as Chris came into the breakroom, “it’s been two weeks. Time for you to go dancing with us.”

“Well….” Jesse waved his sandwich. “I don’t know.”

“Come on,” she said, flashing a grin at Chris. “Chris is going. Aren’t you, Chris?”

“I like dancing,” Chris said, as he retrieved his lunch from his locker. There was something familiar about dancing but what exactly eluded him. “When are you going?”

“Tomorrow night. Edie and Lucas are all thrilled about their anniversary, so they want to start the night where they met, at Club Le Monde.” Ellen leaned across the table and poked at the back of Jesse’s hand. “You don’t even have to dance, if you don’t want to. Come on, come with us! You know you want to.”

“Are you going, Chris?” Jesse took a bite of his sandwich.

“I’d like to,” Chris said, finding his fork at the bottom of his lunchbox.

“Then I’ll go, too,” Jesse said. He carefully took another bite of his sandwich and watched closely as Chris set about digging into the chunk of leftover meatloaf he’d brought. Doing so allowed him to ignore both the fact that he liked to watch Chris dance and that he did
not
like the idea of letting Chris go off to the club by himself.

“Good!” Ellen bounced in her chair and stretched over, this time to pat Jesse’s shoulder. “A breakup isn’t the end of the world, you know?”

C
HRIS
followed Jesse through the crowd, puzzled by the way he was acting. Everything about him seemed off, somehow. While Chris hadn’t intended to follow Jesse through the door with the little man-picture on it, the people behind him had other ideas. They swept him right into the chilly echoing space, right up against two warm bodies ignoring everything except one another, their mouths touching. Right up against—

“Jesse? What are you doing?”

Jesse turned his head, fast enough to send pins-and-needles down the side of his neck. “Um. Hi, Chris.”

The guy against the wall glared at Chris. “What the hell? This your boyfriend? I don’t do threesomes.”

Boyfriend?
“No,” Chris said.

“Fuck, never mind. Sorry.” Jesse pushed himself away, grabbed Chris’s wrist, and shoved his way back out into the hallway. “C’mon.” He dragged Chris through the club and out into the parking lot.

“Jesse….” Chris tried to pick a question out of the dozen or so that were bouncing around his head. His little voice was of no help. It was pleased by this development, but that was all the information it offered.

“I’m sorry, okay?” He crossed his arms and stared at the ground. “I—screw it. You can go back inside if you want. I’m just gonna go home, okay? Ellen’s the driver tonight, so you don’t have to worry about getting home.”

“Jesse, tell me why. He said
boyfriend
. You are a man; you have a
girl
friend, right?” Chris had seen it, over and over again, in movies and TV shows and wherever they went in town. Men and women, together. Boyfriend and girlfriend. Then he realized that he’d never seen Jesse with any women, aside from his mother and the women he was friends with. Well, not every man had a girlfriend.
He
didn’t, after all.

“He thought you might be my boyfriend. And no, I don’t have a girlfriend,” Jesse said, looking up but not at Chris. He took a breath. “Because I’m gay. Means I like guys instead. And I should have told you sooner, but I wasn’t thinking and… anyhow, I’m sorry, and I should just go. Are you gonna stay with Ellen and everybody?”

“You like guys instead,” Chris said slowly. Instead of what, he wasn’t sure, so he did what he always did. “Instead of… what? Eggs?”

“Eggs?” Jesse stared at him for a few seconds, then shook his head and made an amused sound. “You’ve got eggs on the brain, you know that? No. Instead of, instead of women. I’m not interested in kissing women, or getting married to a woman, or going on dates with women. But guys, yeah.”

“That’s because eggs are best,” he said, nodding at Jesse. “Oh. Why are you going home?”

“You always say that.” Jesse shrugged and waved at the building behind Chris. “Because I didn’t really want to come out here anyhow, but I thought maybe I’d change my mind once I got here, and that guy probably wouldn’t be too thrilled to see me again. Are you gonna stay?”

“It’s true.” Chris put his hands in his pockets and walked toward Jesse’s car. “No, I will go. I like to dance, but I want to think, now.”

“Yeah, me too. We’ll take the long way home, okay?”

“Okay.”

Chris thought, as Jesse turned the car in the opposite direction of home.
Jesse wanted a man.
It was a fascinating idea, and he turned it over and over, like a spoon in sunlight.

The farther they drove, the more he thought, the more certain he became: Christopher Valentine Swanson would become Jesse Noel Swanson’s boyfriend. It was
right
, like the way eggs were right or the way going to bed when the sun went down was right.

Jesse’s thoughts ran along a different line, ranging over what he’d seen in Kevin in the first place and not quite acknowledging that he’d agreed to meet the guy at the club because he’d reminded him of someone, someone he wasn’t entirely sure he should be thinking of like that.

Chapter Five

The first day:

“
G’
MORNING
,” Jesse said, shuffling into the kitchen.

“Good morning,” Chris said, “I made you breakfast.”

Jesse blinked. Toast, coffee, cereal, and…. “Eggs,” he said. They were hard-boiled. Not his favorite breakfast item, but reasonable given Chris’s current culinary skills.

“Yes. Cooked.”

“Yeah.” Jesse sat down and picked up a piece of toast. “Thanks. This is, uh, nice.”

“You are welcome. I made your lunch,” Chris said, holding up the plastic bag in which he’d placed it.

“My lunch?” Jesse frowned over his coffee cup. “Okay, thanks.”

“Yes.”

The second day:

J
ESSE
frowned at the little piece of paper on the bottom of his locker. Someone must have slipped it through the vents, which was odd. His co-workers usually used sticky notes. Unfolding it revealed familiar handwriting.

jesse -

hope u have a good day!

—
k

He threw it away and went on with his day.

The third day:

C
HRIS
opened his eyes as the morning’s first light edged around the blinds in Jesse’s room. He could hear Leanna and Desmond moving around, Jesse’s breathing, and a single bird somewhere in the yard. He slipped out from under his blanket and straightened his bedding, then padded out to start his routine.

As Chris washed his face, he thought about breakfast. Coffee was a given, as were eggs; perhaps cinnamon toast? For lunch he would make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Today would be different. Today, he would put the first gift beside Jesse’s cup.

The fourth day:

S
OMEONE
had left a business card under his wiper. Grumbling, Jesse pulled it free and looked at it, intending to call and complain—except that it wasn’t for a business.

jesse
—

just a note to say hi!

—
k

“Give it up, seriously,” Jesse said, rolling his eyes and stuffing the card into his pocket.

The fifth day:

J
ESSE
sat down at the table, eyes half-open, seeing nothing more than eggs (of course) and toast and coffee (thank God,
coffee
) and a bottle cap and a glass of orange juice—

Bottle cap? He picked it up. Just a Bud Light bottle cap, bent and a little scratched, a little shiny. Come to think of it, there had been one of those annoying knockouts beside his breakfast the other morning, looking like a quarter. He’d taken it upstairs and had almost put it in his pocket before he realized that it wasn’t money.

The sixth day:

R
EBA
M
C
E
NTIRE
’
S
voice was interrupted by a bright, “Hi!”