Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (20 page)

No one says anything. The light blanks out, but the others stay on so no one notices.

“I’m sick of writing letters,” I sit up straight. I put down my papers. “How about a concert?”

“A concert.”

“Yeah, like a benefit concert,” I say. “A benefit for the disappeared. We could have local groups play.”

“That’s cool,” Julie says. “And the next night we could do like a poetry reading or something. And the next night something else.”

“Yeah, a whole week of stuff,” Brian, the quiet boy in the back says.

We all tuck our hair behind our ears, except Kara. She’s shaved hers off. We all get started. We all know it might not do anything, nobody might pay attention.

“But we’ve got to try,” I mutter. “We’ve got to try.”

“Don’t you think,” Dylan says, “that maybe we should start working on discrimination at home, instead of overseas?”

No one says anything.

He stomps all the way into the room, swings the door shut behind him. Emily’s breath whizzes out between her teeth. My hands shake. I swallow. I remember to breathe in, breathe out, breathe in.

Beautiful Dylan boy looks at all of us, one at a time. He is on fire, his gold glow is fire glow and it rages around us unstoppable. “Do you know how many people called me a fag today?”

No one answers.

He hits the wall with his fist and we all jump. We’re a pretty pacifist group, Amnesty International. We aren’t used to violence in our actual presence and Dylan is a strong guy.

“Thirty-seven!” he shouts at us. “Thirty-seven people called me a fag. I thought these people were my friends. I can list them! Belle, you want me to list them? Dakota Murphy, Jake Star, Mimi Cote, Eddie Caron, Colin Troost . . .”

All his gold anger ebbs away as we watch him crumple. Julie stands and opens up her arms. Dylan steps into them and she hugs him. He leans into her body. That should be my body, supporting him, keeping him up. Soon, one by one, all the members of Amnesty International walk over to Dylan and Julie and hug them. Arms wrap around backs. Shoulders and bellies press together. Heads bow.

I sit on the top of the desk and watch them. Emily comes over and grabs my hand. Without saying anything, she pulls me over to the group and we reach out our arms and try to encircle them, but we can’t, we can’t. The bodies are too many. The need is too big.

“Postum was created by Charles Post. He went to this town in Michigan for a health cure and decided that coffee and caffeine were the root of all evils. So, he created Postum and the Postum Cereal Company. He started Postum and then he created Grape Nuts,” I tell Emily in the car on the way home. We have not talked about the meeting. We have not talked about Dylan.

“Fascinating,” Emily pops some gum in her mouth, presses hard on the gas. “We’re stopping at Shawn’s house.”

“What?” I slam my feet up on her dashboard and admire my Snoopy shoes, which feature a lovely image of Snoopy on the top. Snoopy is smiling and holding balloons. I got them back in eighth grade when my uncle went to Spain. They are canvas and comfortable and they have a hole in the toe, which makes them look a little ratty to discerning shoe connoisseurs, but I don’t care. They are my favorite shoes in the world but Dylan has always hated them. I have decided to start wearing them again. “Why are we stopping at Shawn’s?”

“He asked.”

“I have homework,” I say. Emily wiggles her eyebrows at me, because she knows I don’t have much. We have almost all the same classes. Sighing, I ask, “Is soccer practice done?”

“Yep.”

We drive in silence for a second and she says, “Do you think he’s cute?”

“Yeah,” I make my feet dance in front of me, a happy little dance. I think about my little duct tape guitar safely stashed in my person. “I think Shawn is cute.”

But it’s not really Shawn I’m thinking about.

She sighs and smiles, sighs and smiles and I imagine little red-crayon hearts floating above her head. “I think he’s really cute.”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Did you know that Charles Post gave his business to his daughter when she turned twenty-seven? She was one of the first businesswomen in America. How cool is that?”

She turns off the stereo, parks in a driveway outside a little ranch house that I assume must belong to Shawn’s parents. It’s nestled in some blueberry fields. The wind whips a piece of a blueberry bush across the driveway. “You know, I can try not to like him or talk about it. Is it bugging you that I like somebody, cause I know you’re a little vulnerable right now.”

“I’m not vulnerable,” I slam my Snoopy shoes down off the dashboard. The broken-up blueberry bush blows against the house like tumbleweed. I make my voice sound Russian. “I am strong, strong woman, hear me roar.”

My door zips open and Tom is smiling there. He calls to Shawn across the driveway. “See? I told you she was a pinko.”

Snoopy hides behind his doghouse, but I take Tom’s hand and leave the car. One foot. Another. I go on.

In Shawn’s house, we all chomp on frozen burritos, microwaved of course, and settle into old couches in Shawn’s basement. Shawn’s basement is half-remodeled. There’s walls and flooring, but the ceiling is pipes and electrical wires. There’s a big TV facing the couches and in another corner is a mess of work-out equipment.

Em and Shawn snuggle close to each other on this incredibly ugly plaid couch, so close that their thighs touch and I can imagine how Em’s leg feels, warm and super charged.

Me?

Tom and I are on the other couch, not too close, not too far. I can see the new quote he’s written on the duct tape strip on his shoe: I like getting hit in the head by the ball.

So he did put on a soccer quote. I smile.

We’ve done all the college talk about where everyone’s applied and we’ve got some overlaps. Everyone but Em’s applying to Bates, which is a pretty good school, all top-twenty liberal arts college and all that. She pouts and sticks her tongue out and then says, “I’m just an individual, that’s all.”

“You can say that again,” Shawn teases. She hits him.

“Want to go get a Coke?” he says.

She leaps up. “Yep.”

“You guys?” Shawn nods at us.

“No thanks,” I say. Coke has caffeine. I miss caffeine.

Tom shakes his head and when they’re gone he turns his body to face me. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Anna told me someone called you a fag hag in the hall today.”

I shrug. “No big. You don’t need to protect me, you know.”

His hands, his calf muscles pushing against the upholstery. Some big. I turn away. I will not think about him that way. It’s too soon.

He leans down, unzips his backpack, and pulls out some duct tape. He rips off two chunks and gives me one. It’s sticky and gray and shiny. I hold it far away from me. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

He’s already twisting his up, making arms, legs, a little man, maybe? “Play with it. Make something. It calms me down when I’m spazzing.”

“I am not spazzing.”

I try to twist the tape. It sticks to my fingers. I’m hopeless. I look up into Tom’s tree-bark eyes. I breathe in the scent of him, spicy and clean, against the faint wet smell of the basement.

I say, whisper light, “Do you need that? To calm down?”

He nods, looks me straight on, and says, “When I’m with you, I do.”

My lips press together and my heart wiggles in my chest, which it should not be doing because I am in mourning over my past relationship. And if my heart is already wiggling that must mean that my past relationship is not what I thought it was. I shake my head.

“Really?” I manage to say and then regret it.

“Really.” His eyes are so brown.

We stare at each other. Upstairs Em and Shawn thump around. We keep staring. A slow smile creeps across Tom’s face and he reaches across the couch and takes my hand in his. It feels like every single nerve ending in my body is about to explode. I loved Dylan, I know I loved Dylan, but it never felt crazy like this, like fire and cold and lyrics floating across my skin. I gulp and Tom runs his thumb across my hand.

“Do you ever think about what might have happened if Mimi hadn’t asked me out in eighth grade?” he asks, his voice all husky and low.

I gulp. I look away at the stairs. Shawn and Em are nowhere to be found. I can’t help it. It’s like he’s a magnet. I look back at Tom and my voice answers for me, “Sometimes.”

“Me too,” he says.

“But
I
ended up with the
gay
guy,” I say trying to pass it off lightly, like it’s a happy thing. “While Mimi ended up with the soccer stud.”

“Yep,” Tom squeezes my hand and looks at me hard, like he’s trying to see inside me. I squirm and sit up straighter but don’t pull away my hand.

Then I do what I do when I’m uncomfortable. I babble.

“Do you ever think that our lives are like folk songs? You know. Or maybe Bruce Springsteen songs. I know he’s rock, but he’s such a good writer he seems like folk, especially his ancient stuff. You know, like we’re all trying to get out of the Valley, like in that Gorka song, or we’re born to run like that Springsteen song. But it’s like I’m stuck in the wrong song. I want to be in a Dar Williams song where I see the beauty of the rain, which is a song of hers, or a Christine Lavin song because she’s so crazy and funny and quirky and happy, but it’s like I’m stuck in this song of longing and want, you know and have you ever even heard of Dar Williams or Bruce—”

Tom does it then. He just leans in really smooth and I guess he’s been getting closer the whole time I’ve talked because all of a sudden his other hand is on the side of my face. His lips press against my lips, soft and good but really, really there and it’s a good thing I’m sitting down because if I wasn’t sitting down I would absolutely, positively fall down because I am stereotypically weak in the knees.

Yikes.

I am kissing someone other than Dylan. Something sparkles behind my eyelids. I open my eyes back up and see Tom’s long eyelashes, the darkness of his skin.

I pull away and jump up, turn around, sit back down, put my face in my hands, shake my head.

“Belle?” Tom’s voice echoes against my ears. “I’m sorry. I thought you—”

“No!” I say, awkward, my heart thumping, my neurons firing. “No, it’s okay. It was just—I wasn’t expecting it or anything.”