More Happy Than Not (14 page)

“I thought you don't like letting friends come over.”

“I'm changing my mind in five, four, three, two
. . .
” I hold off on the last second because Thomas isn't calling my bluff. “Come on, don't make me look like an ass.”

Thomas steps inside.

I watch his eyes as he takes in the apartment. I'm immediately self-conscious about the apartment smelling like wet laundry like Me-Crazy once said it did. I can't tell anymore. The first time Baby Freddy came over, he immediately searched for the bedroom—not a big challenge—to see if he could catch a glimpse of the bed we all slept in. The concept was just so weird to someone who had his own bedroom. Brendan never judged, thankfully. And Thomas isn't judging now either. He moves past Eric's video games and over to my collection of comics before turning back to me. “I want your Batcave.”

“Shut up, you have your own room.”

“I'll trade you.”

“If you don't mind rooming with Eric, it's a done deal.”

We shake on it.

Thomas picks up the Sun Warden comic, and we sit down on my bed, reading it together. It's crazy rewarding seeing someone laugh at jokes I doubted anyone else would find funny. He's also really impressed with this panel where Sun Warden launches a series of fireballs into the ruby eye of a cyclops, who's dual-wielding mountainous swords. I worked so damn hard on getting that right. He reaches the last panel where Sun Warden must decide on saving his girlfriend or best friend and then looks up. “Spoiler?”

“I don't know what he's going to do.” I shrug. “I stopped there.”

Thomas thinks for a moment, looking back down at the panel. “Maybe SW could somehow split himself in two, like he taps into a new power because of his exposure to the celestial kingdom. He could save Amelia and Caldwell in one go and then split himself more times. You know, to destroy the dragon with everyone blasting their sun-shots at once
. . .
”

Thomas continues the story for what seems like another ten minutes, and I pull out a notebook and draw a rough sketch of the diamond-tailed basilisk he wants me to include. When he talks about giving the basilisk the ability to shape-shift into an old man with Alzheimer's who can't recall his villainy, I cut him off and ask him to remind me about that idea for Issue #2.

I'm still writing when he goes to the bathroom to piss, but when he comes back, he's different. I'm mortified that he saw something embarrassing, like my mom's bras, or maybe our hamper just fucking smells. Whatever it is, he isn't going to say anything. He would never do anything to make me uncomfortable, but he doesn't realize I can't sit here and ignore it so I just ask him what changed.

“What happened?”

“The bathtub,” Thomas says. “It got me thinking
. . .
” He doesn't have to go on. The image of someone's dad killing himself will do this to a person, to anyone. “I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.”

“Who found him, Stretch?”

“My mom,” I say. “I don't know why he did it, Thomas. My mom says he was never completely right in the head, like he had a bad temper and stuff, but I feel like he must've had some other life we didn't know about that drove him to do what he did
. . .
” I stare at my lap, desperately trying to remember everything good about my dad instead of getting pissed and sad again. “We didn't even go to his funeral because how do you look at someone who wanted to get away from you?”

Thomas sits down beside me and wraps his arm around my shoulders. We don't say anything, at least not for a couple minutes, and he tells me about how he still wonders about his own dad. He recognizes that it's different—my father committing suicide, his abandoning him but probably alive—but it's still a loss; it changed everything. He doesn't really have a lot of great memories of his dad, except for this one time when
his father took him fishing, but Thomas can't help but think about experiences they could've shared, like driving lessons, hockey games, and sex talks.

“You think we'll be screwed without our dads?” I ask.

“I think we'll be screwed trying to figure out
why
they ditched us without explanation, but I have hope for us,” Thomas says. “Well, I'll have hope for you after I teach you how to ride a bike
and
swim. You're going to keep me busy, Stretch.”

I smile in spite of myself. His arm is still around me. None of my friends would ever comfort me this way. It's kind of, sort of, definitely different. I'm hardly heartless like Thomas joked. He knows it too.

14

4
a.m.
THOUGHTS

G
enevieve comes home tomorrow.

Finally.

She's taking a taxi from the airport and she'll be expecting me to be outside her building when she gets there. And of course I'll be there. I haven't seen my girlfriend in three weeks and I miss her a lot. I think it's the anxiety of seeing her that's keeping me awake long after everyone is asleep, even Eric whose double shifts are finally laying him out an hour after he gets home.

I sit up and stare outside the window. It's dead out there.

I have something I want to talk about but it's not the kind of talk I can just have with anyone. It has be the right someone, but that right someone is the reason I need to talk in the first place. I draw instead because putting thought to page helps, it really does.

I draw quick sketches of different things my friends like: Fat-Dave likes wrestling games where he can imagine he's someone fit; Baby Freddy loves baseball more than football, which his father wants him playing instead; Brendan loved being someone's son instead of someone's grandson; Deon loves fighting; Skinny-Dave just needs a blunt and a staircase to pee in and he's good; Genevieve is at her happiest when she's in front of a canvas, even on the days she can't finish; and finally, Thomas likes boys.

Just as no one ever had to tell me that Skinny-Dave loves blazing, or how Brendan is falling down the black hole of drug dealing because his parents are in jail, I don't need anyone—even Thomas himself—to tell me he's gay. I think he might even like me, which makes zero sense because surely he could do better than a kid with a chipped tooth who's straight and taken.

The thing is, I'm scared for Thomas. Maybe my friends won't care if he ever does decide to tell us, but what if they do? What if they can't accept he's just as naturally interested in other guys like how Me-Crazy and Deon are prone to fighting? What if they try to beat something out of him that won't go away?

I tear out the page from my sketchbook.

I take one last look at my drawing of Thomas kissing a tall guy before I crumple it up.

PART TWO:
A DIFFERENT HAPPINESS

1

HIS HAPPY BIRTHDAY

W
e're in the elevator riding up to Genevieve's apartment, her luggage under my arms. She's pressed up against me and says, “You got to come next year. The instructor taught me so much on shadowing you could use for your comics and also
. . .
” Her confidence in our future should put me at ease, and it's a reminder that I'm doing everything right. We could get stuck in this elevator right now and I won't freak out, even if she wants to keep rambling on about art camps and colleges and neighborhoods we'll move to and other grown-up shit.

She goes inside her apartment to double-check that her father's not home before inviting me in. She catches me up on who were her friends out there, how much she hated pissing in the woods one day during a long hike, and then tells me, “I have a surprise.” I follow her into her bedroom and she pulls out a ten-by-ten painting from her suitcase.

She finished something.

It's a dark-haired girl with silver binoculars gazing up at the attic window of a house. Instead of finding worn and forgotten furniture, she finds a starry universe boxed into the corners of the attic and a glowing constellation of a boy reaching out to her.

“Holy shit, I love this.”

I'm sitting down to admire every last detail when she takes it away from me.

She sets the painting down and straddles my lap. She takes off my shirt, plays with my growing patch of chest hair, and skims my jawline with the tip of her finger.

“Missing you was my breakthrough, I think. We can't ever be apart for that long again.” She rests her forehead against mine.

“I missed you too,” I say, and even though I look her in the eyes, it doesn't feel all that right anymore. I mean, I did miss her—kind of. Not as much I should've, but she was always on my mind—kind of always on my mind.

I flip her over onto the bed. I pull out a condom from my jeans as we strip down. I don't slip it on yet because I haven't quite taken off yet—I'm psyching myself out too much. She grabs me and I close my eyes because if I see her disappointed I'll somersault out the window. The memory of Thomas taking his shirt off, running into the sprinklers, and doing push-ups overcomes me, and as much as I try to push it out of my mind to focus on my beautiful girlfriend, suddenly all systems are a go.

Thomas is not Genevieve,
and Genevieve is not Thomas so this terrible ping-pong in my head over them is bullshit. They both play very different roles in my life. I know this; I swear I do. Genevieve is the girl I love and the one I will always miss more whenever there's distance between us. Thomas is just my best friend, the one I trust a lot, but he won't ever get any secrets out of me that I can't tell Genevieve. So what if Genevieve won't race up bleachers with me or care to count trains go by? So what if sometimes I randomly smell Thomas's cologne on a stranger and instantly relive our hangouts?

If I were faced with Sun Warden's decision—whether or not
to save his girlfriend or best friend from a dragon—I'm sorry to
change my mind, but Thomas would fall away without me moving a muscle. And I would make that choice without a doubt because the bottom line is that Genevieve is my girlfriend and I'm her boyfriend, and Thomas and I are just friends and that's that.

All this doesn't mean
I can't celebrate Thomas's existence on the exact day my girlfriend returns after a three-week leave.

He matters too much to be dicked over by friends two years in a row.

Thomas has strict instructions not to come up here on the roof until I go down to get him. I'm the only one who got him a gift, naturally. Well, Baby Freddy stole three bottles of raspberry Smirnoff from his mother's liquor cabinet. (That kid might be a flakey punk bitch every now and again, but he definitely respects any opportunity to get twisted.) I'm hoping Thomas doesn't think my gift is ridiculous or silly like Genevieve did when I told her what it was.

I impulsively bought a few cheap lanterns from a discount store on the way over here, but only two glow his favorite shade of green. We're blasting Brendan's Get Krunk playlist from his stereo dock, and Skinny-Dave is already grinding with our neighbor Crystal, while her friend hovers by the dollar store cakes I bought. I really wanted to get him an ice-cream cake from his old job and make it special, shaped like a director's slate or something, but it costs too much money, which sucks.

“Bangin' party,” Brendan says after setting the stereo down. “Didn't know you had it in you after your beach party bombed.”

“I was twelve and Orchard Beach sucks. Let it go.” I look over. Genevieve is on her second drink. She's been chatting with Me-Crazy for ten minutes; that's an unhealthy amount of time to spend with him alone. “Can you go save Genevieve from Psycho over there?” I walk off and he calls me back.

“Where are you going?”

“I'm getting Thomas.” I haven't seen him all day, only spoke with him at midnight last night to wish him a happy birthday, and again a couple of hours ago to let him know we'd be setting up soon. I miraculously shepherded everyone up to the roof without managing to get into a fight with the Joey Rosa kids.

“I hope you throw me an awesome party like this,” Brendan says, and it reminds me of that time in fifth grade when he and Baby Freddy competed over who would be my best friend on the school bus. Some friendships can never be as simple as sharing.

I climb down the fire escape and knock on Thomas's window before sitting on the windowsill. He's at his desk, shirtless, and reading something in his journal before looking up with a smile. “Happy birthday, yo. You writing down your words of wisdom for the day?”

Thomas nods. “Nah, I did that earlier. I was reading what I wrote at the end of my birthday last year. I was an angsty little guy.”

“Rightfully so. But you got it good upstairs. We probably shouldn't have invited Me-Crazy to a rooftop where he'll be drinking, but we'll cross that bridge later.”

“Like when he throws one of us off?”

“I think we're all safe except Skinny-Dave. He really likes throwing him around.”

“I owe you a hundred fist bumps for putting this together for me. I can't wait to read my journal tomorrow after I drunk-write my entry tonight.” He gets up and walks over to his closet. I look at the posters around his room so I can stop staring at his back. He catches me up about all the great phone calls he got today from his family, and the birthday card from his mother with two hundred and fifty dollars inside.

“Not sure this party will beat a card with that much money.”

“BOO!” someone says behind me.

I jump and almost hit my head on the raised window. It takes me a second to register that it's Genevieve. We have been taking a few minutes to come up. Not surprised she's checking on us. Gen looks into the room, and Thomas is standing there, covering his bare chest with a striped tank top, and she looks back at me. “Is party central happening down here now? Let's go up and drink! Wooooo!”

I'm not Genevieve's biggest fan when she's hitting the bottle because she turns into this party girl she always regrets being the next morning. She shifts my head toward her and kisses me intensely, her tongue tasting like raspberry vodka and cranberry juice as she shoves it down my throat. You would think she's expecting Thomas to leave so we can use his bed. She squeezes my hand and leads me back up to the roof. Thomas follows a few steps behind. Some of my friends cheer for Thomas while others keep drinking or spitting game to the other four girls. Thomas points at one of the glowing lanterns, says it's cool, picks it up, and it immediately dies.

Well, that happened.

I offer to get him and Genevieve a drink (well, another drink for her) and leave them chatting.

Fat-Dave walks over to me with a red Solo cup filled to the brim. It spills over his hand. “Cheers to your girl's nice tits!”

“Cheers,” I say without a drink. I fill up three cups—20 percent liquor, 80 percent juice for Gen's sake. Then I carry them—two in my hand, one in my mouth—back to Thomas and Genevieve. I hand them off right as Thomas asks Genevieve, “Are you a witch?” and I'm kind of confused on the crazy turns this conversation must've taken. “What the
. . .
?”

“He thinks I'm a witch because
. . .
” Genevieve races over to her abandoned tote bag on the floor, spilling half her drink along the way, which is for the best. She comes back with a deck of odd-looking cards, wrapped around with a blue ribbon. “
. . .
of these. Tarot cards. I made these during the retreat. I used strips of bark instead of paper to give them an otherworldly look.”

“That was a real witchlike thing to say,” I comment.

“Burn, witch, burn,” Thomas says with a smile. “Stretch says you used to be really into horoscopes. I'm more of a fortune cookie kind of guy.”

“Fortune cookies can be cracked open by anyone,” she counters.

“It's about taking a chance,” Thomas defends. “It's much easier to follow than all the conflicting horoscopes forecasted everywhere.”

She holds in a burp before arguing. “That's why horoscopes are better. If your fortune promises you wealth by the end of the day and you go home poor, then you were lied to. But if your reading from a psychic's website is wrong, maybe the one in the newspaper is right.”

This conversation is beyond dumb. Someone shoot me. Now. Twice.

“So why'd you stop?”

Genevieve spins her cup around and stares into the mini-whirlpool before downing it all in one gulp. “Because I was tired of my many expectations not being met.”

“Well, I'll have to trade you a fortune cookie for a psychic reading one day,” Thomas says.

I swear Gen's face flushes. He's playing the game close to his chest. I normally wouldn't care except it's with my girlfriend.

“You should go get some cake before everyone eats it all,” I say. We're skipping right to the eating because this is hardly the “Let's sing ‘Happy Birthday'!” crowd.

“Cake? Excuse me,” Thomas says, patting Genevieve on her shoulder before racing to the corner.

We follow him and all moan when Me-Crazy dips his finger into the icing and steals a bite. Others grab plates and some just dig in with a fork. Once Me-Crazy grabs a handful of cake, the cake is his and his only. (Sorry, Thomas.) I sit down on the ground, and Genevieve relaxes right into my lap, eating cake and drinking it down with another cup of booze. Part of me would love to volunteer someone else to hold her hair back later tonight, but the part of me who loves her is ready for the job.

Thomas joins us with a pathetic slice of cake. “So I still haven't asked you how New Orleans was, Genevieve.”

“That's okay. I still haven't wished you a happy birthday.”

I mouth, “She's drunk” to him and he shrugs it off.

“New Orleans was great. I'm hoping to drag Aaron with me next summer. I think I fell in love when I was down there
. . .
” She puts down her drink and takes my hand, gripping it hard like we're about to arm-wrestle. “In love with the city, I mean, since I have the boy I love here.”

“I see that,” Thomas says. “Stretch doesn't shut up about you.”

Genevieve leans back and kisses me hard again, her tongue completely out of sync with mine. Then she picks her cup and fork right back up, stands, and taps the fork against the plastic like it's going to chime and steal everyone's attention. “Who wants to play a game?”

“Spin the bottle!” Fat-Dave shouts.

Hell no. Seriously, the dudes-to-chick ratio is like the dude-to-chick ratio at a boxing match.

“Flip cup!” Brendan shouts. There's no fucking table up here to play on.

“Kings!” Deon says. Great, a drinking card game without cards.

“Seven Minutes in Heaven!” Crystal suggests, laughing so hard and obnoxiously that she could tumble over the ledge and I wouldn't move a muscle.