Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (6 page)

“What will I do when I see him?” I ask Emily.

She shakes her long, long hair. She gives me worried eyes.

She says, “I don’t know.”

I remember when Eddie Caron caught his girlfriend, Hannah Trudeau, in his truck the first week of junior year. Eddie had been totally in love with Hannah, always holding her tiny, little hand when they walked down the hall, even carrying her books and her lunch tray, completely spoiling her. I’d tease Dylan about how much better Eddie treated Hannah than Dylan treated me.

Dylan had raised his eyebrows and said, “You want me to carry your lunch tray? That’s so fifth grade.”

I shrugged.

“You don’t even get a lunch tray,” he said and then he tickled me and then I tickled him back and that was that. But, I always thought it was sweet of Eddie to take care of Hannah like that, to always open doors and give her flowers. My mom called him an old-fashioned boy. Dylan called him a cretin.

But all that ended when Eddie rushed out to his truck after school that day and saw Hannah with her tongue down Ashleigh Martel’s throat. Both their shirts were off. He yanked her out and her skinny, little body fell onto the parking lot. Everyone started running over to see what was happening because she and Ashleigh were screaming and only wearing bras, which got all the guys interested and then Eddie Caron was just hauling into her, slapping her and kicking her. She looked so little and Eddie is so big. He’s always been big, ever since kindergarten when I used to share my Oreos with him and he’d give me a piece of his beef jerky.

Never in my whole life could I have imagined Eddie Caron beating up a girl. But he was. He just whaled on Hannah.

I screamed for him to stop. I screamed and handed my gig bag to Em who would keep it safe. I jumped on Eddie Caron’s back and tried to make him stop but I couldn’t because he was too strong. I just clung onto his back like a stupid first grader, shouting at him to leave Hannah alone. I didn’t feel anything, not scared, not worried. I was a blank slate, a white piece of paper, an unstrummed guitar, background music.

Tom and Shawn Card hauled him off, yanked him by the arms and bullied him next to the truck, trapping him, cornering him like you do with a wild dog that smells meat and is scared and tastes blood in his mouth. I slid off his back, watching, wondering what to do. Em snapped a picture and I whirled around at her, angry. “Em. No pictures!”

She bit her lip, tucked her camera to her hip. “But it’s so good.”

She shot me an apology look and started snapping away again. We looked at the pictures later. Ashleigh tugging at her bra strap, stomach flab flapping over the sides of her jeans. Hannah tear stained, red faced, aching against Ashleigh’s side. Eddie, my old protector boy, his calm face twisted with wild-dog rage. Tom and Shawn with their arm muscles popping out, restraining him.

Hannah scurried off with Ashleigh but they only made it a couple of feet, clutching their shirts before they just sort of stopped and stared, and someone, Jacob Paquette, I think, yelled, “Dyke!”

Em took a picture of him, too. His mouth wide open and his teeth pointed out his hate.

And Hannah started sobbing. Her tears mixed with blood pooled on the gravel. Ashleigh, though, she had balls. She just turned around, gave everybody the finger, and shouted, “Leave us the hell alone!”

Dylan and Emily came over to me then. Dylan hugged me and said, “You okay?’

“Yeah,” I said, but I was shaking and Dylan knew it. Dylan knew I was shaking. So he just hugged me tighter. Then he let go and said, “Everybody’s got a right to love.”

I shook my head and said like an idiot, “But she was cheating on Eddie.”

Now, I know she was too scared to tell. Is that how Dylan felt? Was he too scared to tell? And what changed? Why now? Why be brave now?

Brave. That’s what Tom said I was that day.

He came up to me after Eddie calmed down and stomped off. Dylan and Emily were getting in her car, but I was lagging behind, mostly because I was annoyed at Em for taking pictures, and for Dylan sitting on the sidelines, instead of helping me stop the fight. Dylan’s best friend, with the unfortunate old-man name of Bob, yelled to him, waved his sax at him. Dylan hopped out of the car and trotted over, telling him what happened, I guess.

I stared at the two of them talking, so different. Bob so broad and Dylan so sleek. Bob with his too-thick glasses and his too-short hair and Dylan looking like he just stepped out of an underwear ad, only minus the tan.

Tom stood in front of me all of a sudden, blocked my view, and said, “Commie. You were really brave.”

It startled me. Mostly because I didn’t expect Tom to talk to me without teasing me, which is all he’d done since Dylan and I started dating, but also because he told me I was brave. Dylan never said that to me. Dylan never told me I was brave.

I shrugged like it was no big deal, like I wasn’t shaking and he reached out and touched my elbow. His fingers heated my skin. He nodded at me and said, “No. Really, you were. Everyone else was just standing there watching.”

“You weren’t.”

He smirked. “Not in the DNA.”

I must have given him a look because his smirk turned into a full smile, he picked at a patch of duct tape on his sleeve and he said, “The whole cop dad thing.”

Tom’s dad is the Eastbrook Police Chief, which everyone knows, but I never think about it since I don’t have police run-ins every day.

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

That’s when Dylan came back and smiled at Tom but Tom didn’t smile back. He just shook his head at Dylan, then winked at me and walked away.

“What was all that about?” Dylan asked while we scrunched into Emily’s car.

“Nothing,” I said.

“He so likes you,” Emily said in this stupid singsong voice.

Dylan’s head jerked up and he reached for me from the back seat, leaning forward, wrapping his arms around me, he said, “You’re mine, Belle. You’re all mine.”

Tom knew, didn’t he? Somehow he knew.

What is it with boys?

What is it with me that I can’t ever tell if they’re gay or not?

“Your gaydar is broken,” Emily announces.

We hunch forward, whispering over the cafeteria table. I have not seen Dylan all day and I think he’s avoiding me, because I mean, it’s not
that
big a school. Usually at lunch we sit with a lot of people, but Em and I have asked our friends to give us a little alone time and because all our friends are decent and can tell something is up, they respect it and leave us alone.

I roll my eyes to make my next sentence dramatic. “My gaydar doesn’t exist.”

“Maybe it’s under warranty,” she laughs, pulls a drag of Coke into her mouth when she’s done chuckling.

“Expired fifteen years ago,” I say and moan.

I have spent two long high school years dating and being in love with a gay boy, my best friend, Dylan. My eyes keep glancing over at the boys at the soccer table. Tom Tanner’s there, laughing, fiddling with some duct tape, drinking soda. He’s got this smile that cracks his face, a superstar smile and when he laughs he throws his head back and his smile gets even bigger.

When we were in eighth grade, I had the biggest crush on him. I was a flyer on the cheerleading team then, and every time my bases put me up into a torch, I would stare at him on the soccer field and will him to look at me. Sometimes he did. Sometimes he didn’t, but I always wanted him to. Then Mimi Cote asked him out and they’d always be making out at the dances. I quit cheering after that. I couldn’t stand being near Mimi anymore.

I make my eyes go back to Em. She bites the edge of her lip and prepares to ask the question everyone wants to know. She sputters at first but finally gets it out. “Didn’t you have any idea . . . I mean . . . When you did it?”

I glare at her.

“No.”

Her hands fly through the air. “I mean . . . he must have given you some sort of indication.”

“NO!” I yell and some nearby freshman stop eating their pizza and bagels and stare at us. We smile and wave like beauty pageant contestants. I lower my voice and say, “No, everything was in proper working order.”

She shakes her head. “That’s what I thought. I mean you could tell he had a hard-on and everything whenever you guys danced.”

I shrug and lean back to sit up straight and say in a normal voice, “Probably friction.”

“He
was
in show choir,” she says.

“I know.”

“And he does use more hair products than you do,” she adds, chomping on a French fry.