Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (25 page)

“What?” His hands leave the steering wheel. “I like Marvin Gaye.”

He winces.

“It’s okay,” I say. “Gay is the theme of my life.”

“You’re not?” he blurts out.

“Hardly.”

“I didn’t think so,” he says and I know he’s remembering the couch incident, just the same way I’m remembering it. I try to push that memory down the heating vent but then he smiles at me. My heart flitters like dragonflies and I decide that the window view of barren Maine trees is worth contemplating.

“How about you?”

He coughs. “God, no.”

“Did you always know that Dylan was?” I ask him.

He takes a minute. We drive past Eastbrook Building Supplies and Friend, where they sell motorcycles and ATVs. He pulls in a deep breath and says, “Not always. I figured it out in eighth grade.”

“What?” I sit up straighter. My heart leaps away from my lungs.

“Remember that deal I told you about?”

“Yeah.”

Mrs. Foster, the city councilor who is afraid Wal-Mart might come, drives by in her Subaru and honks at us. Tom honks back. We both smile. That’s what you do in Eastbrook unless you want people talking about you.

Tom gets back to the point. “Well, right before the pact, we went to the Sea Coast Fun Park and he tried to kiss me. I mean, I’m pretty sure he did but he didn’t make it.”

That means Dylan always knew.

“Jesus,” my heart pounds. “All the way back in eighth grade?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you freak?”

He nods. That muscle in his cheek spasms and against my will my finger reaches up and touches it. I feel a little twitch beneath my fingertip. I take my finger away, pat him on the shoulder, and he keeps talking. “I was scared shitless. After that, Dylan made a very big deal about liking girls, like he was proving it to both of us, you know. And then Mimi asked me out and so . . .”

I nod and twist my hand in my lap. “And so . . .”

His little duct tape man stays stuck on the dashboard even as we pound into a pothole. I stare and stare at him, thinking how great it would be to be stuck and cemented, to know where you are, where you’re supposed to be, a duct tape man with a little soccer ball.

“You doing okay?” Tom asks after a minute.

“Yeah.” I inhale and take the time to look at him. His chin juts out straight and strong like superheroes in those old black-and-white movies, like cowboys. His skin glows the color of good tree bark. I gulp.

Inside my body, tree limbs stretch out, scraping at my skin. That’s all there is in there. No leaves. No fruit. Maybe it’s not even tree limbs, but the branches of blueberry bushes, barren and aching. But when I look at Tom, it feels like things are sprouting, like they’re getting ready to grow and fill me.

“You scared me when you fainted the other day,” he smiles. “I’m sorry . . . passed out.”

My hands clasp each other. “Sorry.”

“No big.” His cheeks redden. “You’re okay now, right?”

I nod. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

His free hand picks up the roll of duct tape and tosses it onto the floor. “I was worried about you.”

“About a pinko commie hippie freak?” I tease and then bite the inside of my lip. I want to pluck the little duct tape man off the dash and put him in my pocketbook with my guitar.

He breathes in through his nose and when he breathes out it’s just one word. “Yeah.”

I smile. I move my hair behind my ear and then wonder if that’s a flirty thing to do, touching your hair? Em would know.

“What do you think about the Eddie Caron thing?” he asks as we turn onto Bangor Road. Janelle passes us and honks. A million hands reach out her windows and give us the finger. Tom laughs and waves his middle digit back.

“What Eddie Caron thing?”

He puts his hand back on the steering wheel. His knuckles pale. “You don’t know?”

I shake my head. A branch scrapes up against my lung and I cough.

His Adam’s apple moves down in his throat then comes back up. “He said he’s going to beat the crap out of Dylan.”

“He what?” My ears explode. I turn off Marvin Gaye singing about getting it on. “Why?”

Tom’s eyes stop watching the back of Janelle’s car and kind into me. “You know why, Belle.”

“Because he’s gay?” My voice gives out, midsentence, but Tom understands.

Tom nods and his voice comes out steady, “He’s pissed ’cause Dylan and Bob are going to the dance.”

My hands shake so I clamp them together on my lap. “Together?”

“Yeah.”

I take this in. We climb up a hill. My chest feels like it’s my legs not Tom’s truck doing all the work.

“Should I pass them?” Tom nods toward Janelle’s car.

It’s a big hill. It’s a no passing zone. “Yeah.”

I open my window and cold wind bursts in, whipping my hair. Tom yells, “Yee-haw” as we roar by. The truck’s transmission whines. I wave my finger in the air and close the window.

“You gave them the finger,” Tom says, laughing.

“Didn’t you want me to?”

“Yeah, but I never imagined you giving anyone the finger.”

“There’s a lot about me you probably would never have imagined.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t bet.”

There’s no mistaking what he means. I turn red again. I cough. Something inside me blooms. Tom grabs my hand and says all mellow, “Everything’ll be okay.”

“With Dylan?”

He shrugs. “Yeah. With Dylan. But mostly with you. Everything will be good. I promise.”

Part of me wants to ask him how he knows, but a bigger part of me, the part that wins out, just wants to believe him. That part holds his hand tighter and doesn’t worry about anything, just focuses on the warmth of it, how much bigger his fingers are than mine, twice the size. His hand feels nothing like Dylan’s hand, which was small like mine, but it feels good, Tom’s hand. It feels really good like branches swaddled with leaves and little duct tape men knowing where to be.

At the German restaurant, I find Bob and corner him by a giant replica of some Bavarian hussy with monster boobs and equally oversized beer steins.

“Have you heard about Eddie Caron?” I ask him.

“Yeah.”

He wipes his thick glasses, which have fogged up because the air in here is humid like at the Y pool.

I glare at him. “Does Dylan know?”

He shrugs. “We’re not worried about it Belle, we’ll take him.”

“You’ll
take
him?” I echo.

My mouth drops open and thick-glasses, no-muscles Bob says, “I got to go find a seat. I don’t want to get stuck with Herr Reitz.”

“You’ve never been in a fight you’re whole entire life,” I hoarse shout after him.

He whirls around. “Every day in my life is a fight, Belle.”

He lets that sink in and then says, “And Damien Derr stuck my head in a toilet once.”

“That doesn’t count,” I say. “That was second grade.”

Tom walks up beside me, puts his arm around my shoulder, and steers me to a table. “It counts. Believe me. It counts.”

“Eddie Caron is huge,” I say, my fingers trembling. “He’ll kill them.”

Tom nods and sits down across from me. His foot stretches out under the table and hooks under my ankle. “It’ll be okay.”

My foot tingles and then rests next to his. It feels good and warm and safe. Will Dylan ever be warm and safe? Will Bob? I put my napkin in my lap. Tom tucks his into his shirt collar, but I glare at him. He laughs and snaps it out like a waiter and then puts it in his lap, too.

“Just teasing,” he says.

Herr Reitz stands up at the end of the table. He’s changed into some bright pink lederhosen. He claps his hands.

“No songs!” Crash shouts. “Not in public!”

Herr Reitz puts on a fake sad face. “How about God Bless America?”

We all groan.

He smiles and claps his hands again. “Okay. Everyone! Let the festivities begin!”

A waitress with neither beer steins nor enormous breasts plops a big plate of bratwurst and sauerkraut in front of me, waiting for me to pick up my fork and cut into it, break it into pieces, devour it, until there’s nothing left but crumbs. It will wait a long, long time.

Eddie Caron is bratwurst fingers, squinty mean eyes, and YMCA muscles. He is not a guy you want to tangle with. I mean, we used to be bus friends when we were little, which was great and he was always, always, always protecting me from the big-kid bullies. He’d fight anybody, anybody, all the time.

All dinner, I think about Eddie Caron’s bratwurst fingers connected to his hammer hands and tree-trunk muscles. I imagine those hands that used to build me dirt castles hitting Dylan, lean, golden Dylan. Dylan with the clear skin. Blonde hair mats with blood. Golden skin turns green and black and broken.

I can’t even swallow my cider.

“Eat up, Fraulien,” Herr Reitz yells at me from down the table. A glob of sauerkraut sticks in his beard, hanging there, a pale worm clinging in a mass of brown. I shudder.

Herr Reitz raises his non-alcoholic Feuerzangenbowle. All the guys look at it with envy eyes. “Belle, eat! You’ll get too skinny!”

I stab the bratwurst with my fork and he smiles.

“Yummy bratwurst!” Crash kids, making his soar near my mouth the way a mom does when she’s trying to get a little kid to eat peas or something. “Open up. Here comes the airplane. Let’s open the hanger.”

I crack up. There’s nothing else to do.