Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (27 page)

“You never should have given up soccer,” she says to me and I know what she means. I never should have given up a lot of things. I think about Gabriel at home, waiting for me to play her. I think about Tom, standing right next to me, holding my hand. I think about Dylan’s friendship.

I can have all those things. I can.

“Thanks, Janine,” I say to her and her eyes register some sort of knowledge that has passed between us.

“Anytime, Belle dear, anytime.”

When I come out of the locker room, sounds of angry male voices thunder at me from the fitness room down the hall. I’m not the sort of person who likes fights, especially between weight-lifting steroid heads, so I pivot back toward the locker room and almost go back in. That’s when I hear it. My name.

“Crap,” I mutter and run into the fitness room, yanking open the door. Janine, who has pumps on and a skirt, is right behind me.

We both stop, stunned, when we get inside.

Tom and Dylan square off over by the squat machine. Tom’s hands spread apart like he’s trying to talk down a mad dog. Dylan’s sputters and his fists wait in the air.

I stagger backwards and Janine catches me, leans me against the wall, and strides toward them, stomping over one of those white towels people use to wipe down the equipment. Tom and Dylan don’t even notice her.

“I swear I’ll freaking kill you,” Dylan growls. He’s hunched and circling Tom like he’s ready to lash out.

“Jesus, Dylan. Calm down.” Tom glares at him, with hate in his eyes.

“Me calm down? Why don’t you fucking calm down?”

“Shut the hell up, Dylan.”

“You shut up.”

If there wasn’t the threat of violence involved I would laugh because their dialogue is that stupid. I have no idea what they’re angry about. I have never seen either of them in a fight. Oh, that’s not true. Tom slugged Brandon Bartlett in fourth grade because Brandon pulled my hair. That was sort of gallant of him.

But I don’t want them to fight, not Tom and Dylan, not here, not now, not ever.

“Guys!” I yell, but they don’t even know I’m here. They just keep glaring, clenching fists, circling. The anger fills up the entire fitness room and people are paying attention, stopping their sets, slowing down on the cardio machines.

Dylan stands up straight and his lips are lines that do not hold in his anger. “You moved right in, didn’t you? What? We were broken up a day?”

“Shut up,” Tom takes a step toward him.

“Yeah, the only way you could ever get her was if she was rebounding. Big stud Tom Tanner. You were just waiting, weren’t you?”

For a moment neither of them move. For a moment neither of them say anything. Somebody behind me clangs a weight on the floor.

“You and Bob were making out in the parking lot Sunday so don’t give me crap about moving too fast.” Tom nods over toward the free weights and there’s Bob hanging by the wall looking stunned and angry. A ten-pound weight dangles from his hand. He had absolutely no muscle tone. Not that that’s important. No, what’s important is that the two guys in my life are snarling at each other like wild dogs and I swear I don’t recognize either of them.

Janine walks closer.

“Boys,” her voice is a warning they don’t hear.

“What about the pact?” Dylan asks, standing up straighter. “You promised.”

“Fuck that.” Tom shakes his head, straightens up too, his hands come down. “Fuck the pact. You screwed it up first.”

Dylan rushes him, throwing a right hook. Tom tries to dodge but the ab machine’s in his way and Dylan’s fist smashes into the side of Tom’s face. I jerk back like I’m the one who has been hit and try to rush forward but other people are gathering around them, rushing off the cardio machines, now that it’s a real full-blown fight. There’s the guy from the radiology department at the lab who just moved to town moving in front of me. There’s my fifth-grade science teacher, Mr. Key, holding his hands out in some sort of pleading peace gesture. They’re all telling Dylan and Tom to settle down. But it just seems to make them both angrier.

“How did I break it first?” Dylan yells. I can hear a fist hit something, but I can’t see over the people and I can’t get past the radiology guy, who is holding me back.

“Stop it, boys,” yells Mr. Key.

“By what? By being gay?” Dylan says. Then he makes an oophing noise that means Tom’s hit him back. Everything inside my body shakes, like the earth’s given way, like even my organs, my muscles, my bones have lost all stability.

Several people pull in their breath.

“I don’t give a shit about you being gay,” Tom says.

“Then what?”

Janine smashes by me and says, “I’m going to go get Tom’s dad. He’s in the gym. Don’t let them hurt each other.”

Like that’s possible. Still, I nod and manage to get past radiology man just as Tom says, “No, when you and Mimi hooked up sophomore year.”

I stagger and almost fall. My world spins. Mimi? Mr. Key grabs my arm and whispers my name but I shake him off and go to stand behind Tom. Dylan cheated on me. With Mimi. When we were sophomores? Was this before or after we were going out?

Tom looks like he wants to spit at Dylan and according to my reflection in the big mirror on the way, I look that way too.

Dylan’s eyes glance past Tom and at me. His anger crumples. His fists turn back into hands with fingers. He is not golden, but yellow. Tom shakes his head, “You always had to have it all, Dylan, but you can’t. You can’t have it all. No one can.”

Dylan looks up to the sky. His Adam’s apple moves along his throat like he’s gulping for air and my heart aches for him, despite everything. He murmurs to the ceiling, “I don’t want it all.”

I step in front of Tom and grab Dylan by the shoulders, forcing him to look at me. Tears rest in the corners of his eyes and my voice comes out soft, “Then what is it you want, Dylan?”

His lip trembles. His eyes look past mine, at Tom, at the crowd and he says in an almost whisper, “To be myself.”

“Oh, sweetie,” I say and hug him close. Over his shoulder Bob’s ears turn red, so I let Dylan go just as Tom storms away, out of the gym and into the hall. I turn and watch him go. My arms feel empty though. My arms still feel like they need to hug someone, maybe Tom, maybe Dylan.

Dylan wipes at his eyes and Bob drops his weight on the floor. Behind me Mr. Key says, “Okay, everybody. Nothing more to see.”

Tom and Dylan and I, though, we aren’t done yet. Tom’s not anyway. All his dad’s cop-authority training must have rubbed off on him somehow because he stomps back in, charging like a bull or something and he reaches out a hand, grabs Dylan’s upper arm and says like he means it, “But you can’t hurt other people. You can’t push them aside in your quest to be you.”

Dylan nods and something solids his eyes. “You either.”

Tom lets go and spreads out his own arms like they are wings. He agrees. “Me either.”

Tom’s dad comes in a second later. And even though he’s wearing basketball shorts and a sleeveless shirt instead of his uniform, he takes Dylan aside and starts lecturing him in that calm, stable way he has. He is, I am sure, telling him to be careful. He glares at Tom, points at him, and says in a total dad way, “I’ll talk to you at home.”

Tom and I go out to the hall and down a corner where no one can see us. I lean against the wall and Tom stands in front of me. My whole body shakes against the cold concrete blocks that somebody’s painted blue and white in an attempt to make the Y look nicer, I guess.

“Belle?” His voice is a question mixed with a want.

It is all I can do not to cry. The whole Dylan and Mimi thing is too much, after everything else. I wonder if everyone knew, or just Tom and why Tom never told me. Because of some stupid pact?

A gulp lodges in my throat and I push it back and say, “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“You would have hated me. You would’ve thought I was just trying to break you guys up because I was jealous.”

I shake my head. My voice is angry. “You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, I do. Belle . . .”

I press my lips tight and don’t bend. Tom’s eyes flash in anger. “You didn’t have to hug him in there.”

“He was hurt.” I glare at him and then realize he’s hurt too. There’s a cut on his forehead, near his temple that’s bleeding and the whole area is swelling.

“You’re hurt.” I reach up my hand and let it rest on Tom’s head, like I could magically take away the pain, just make the injury go away. My eyes stare into his and I can see the anger fade out, fade away like a plane moving past the horizon of the sky. “I don’t like him that way. I’m not sure how I ever liked him that way, but I don’t like him that way now.”

“And what about me?” His voice is mellow and harsh, rough and bumpy like a tree trunk, but whole somehow too, strong, holding up the weight of an entire tree.

I don’t move my hand away as I say, “I like you, Tom. I really like you, but it’s so quick and I’m so scared. That sounds wimpy. I know that sounds wimpy.”

I shake my head and drop my hand, start to turn away. “I was so wrong about Dylan. I don’t want to be wrong like that again.”

He leans toward me, puts his hands on either sides of my shoulders, and stares at me with serious tree-bark eyes. “I swear, I’ll never hurt you.”

I shake my head, breaking. “You can’t know that.”

He cups my hand in his chin. “Yes, yes I can.”

We sit in his truck, parked outside my house. Every once in a while my mom walks in front of the living room window and peeks out at us, thinking she’s all discreet.

“My mom’s watching,” I laugh.

Tom looks at me, chews on his lip a bit, and then starts fiddling with his duct tape, twisting it fast and furious. “I never understood why you started playing guitar in grade school. Was it to make Dylan like you?”

“No.” I watch his fingers instead of his face, try to figure out what he’s making. “It’s because I like stories.”

His fingers stop for a second. “Stories?”

“Yeah, stories. I like songs that are stories and I like to tell them, I guess,” I pull up my shoe and start trying to unwedge a pebble that’s stuck in the tread.

Tom rips off a piece of duct tape, grabs my shoe, and sticks the tape on the bottom. He smiles at me, slow and long. “Watch.”

With one quick movement, he rips the tape off. Stuck to it is the pebble.