Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend (7 page)

“Tom said that too.”

“Tom?”

“Back when Dylan and I first started going out.”

“Those are stereotypes though,” she says, grabbing another fry. “I mean he’s also really hunky, doesn’t speak all high and stuff, has a studly boy walk, eats cheeseburgers all the time, and he watches football. You need to eat.”

“Yeah.” My food is untouched. I haven’t been able to eat since Dylan’s announcement on Saturday, two days ago. All I do is drink Postum. “Stereotypes are stupid.”

I leave Emily alone at the table and go through the lunch line to grab some hot water. It’s meant for tea. I don’t drink tea unless Dylan makes it for me. It’s too mealy, too watery, too nothing, but he makes it workable somehow. I can’t drink coffee because caffeine gives me seizures, and even in decaffeinated coffee there’s enough caffeine to push me over the edge and start me shaking on the floor or babbling about dogs. That’s what I do when I have a seizure, according to eyewitnesses like Dylan and Emily and my mom. I walk aimlessly saying things such as, “The dogs? Where are the dogs? They’re barking. The dogs are barking. We have to get the babies.”

It isn’t the most fun, coherent stuff and I always come off looking like a mental case, I’m sure.

So, I drink Postum.

I flip the hot water on.

Someone comes into the line behind me and makes a little, male, a-hem noise.

Behind my shoulder, Tom Tanner smiles at me. I smile back because my mother raised me to be polite and then his eyes go wide.

“The water . . .” he says, reaches over my shoulder and flips it off, just before the boiling liquid overflows my insulated cup and attacks my fingers.

The water waits right at the top. I’m afraid to move.

He nudges himself next to me, wraps his fingers around mine. They shoot warmth all the way into my shoulders somehow. I try not to giggle and he says, “We dump it on three. One quick motion. One. Two. Three.”

A flick and it’s over. He smiles at me. A dimple on his left cheek creases in.

“Thanks,” I mumble, embarrassed. My fingers are hot and quivering beneath his.

He moves his away and shakes his head. “You’re out of it today, Commie.”

I brush some hair out of my face with my stupid, trembling fingers and start over again, turning away so that I don’t have to look at him. “Yeah. I know. I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“Out partying?”

“Yeah, that’s me. Sunday night party girl.”

I flick off the hot water, way before I have to. It’s barely half-full.

“Studying for German?” he asks.

“German?” I close my eyes and groan. He laughs.

“You forgot about the test?”

I nod.

“You, Belle Philbrick, forgot about a test?”

“Don’t rub it in,” I tell him as he fills up a cup with yummy coffee, caffeinated. Jerk.

He shakes his head. “That’s got to be a first.”

My empty stomach makes room for my heart, which is sinking lower and lower in my body. Tom must notice because he puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Belle, everything will be okay.”

“Yeah. Right,” I mumble like a bratty fourth grader.

“With the test. With Dylan. With everything,” he says. His hand weighs against my skin. “I promise.”

Then he drops his hand and turns away, leaving me with half a cup of water, another fear gnawing away at me, and a monster headache and a question. How did he know?

“No guitar today?” he calls over his shoulder.

I shake my head, confused. He’s asking about my guitar. I always bring Gabriel to school. Didn’t he already ask me about this? Didn’t he already ask about Gabriel? Maybe he’s just trying to keep talking. I have no idea why, though.

“I forgot her,” I lie.

He nods and keeps walking.

How did he know about Dylan? How did he know?

I stomp after him. He sits with the soccer guys, Andrew, Ben, Brandon, Shawn. He’s making some sort of miniature alligator out of duct tape while the other guys watch.

“Cute.” I put my water down on the table and stare him down.

The other guys start chuckling and Shawn goes, “Uh-oh, Tommy’s in trouble.”

Tom doesn’t move.

“How did you know?” I ask him.

He looks away. He looks at the soccer guys. Andrew gulps down his Coke.

“Know what?” Tom says.

“About Dylan. About me and Dylan,” I demand. My heart threatens to pound out of my chest. I wonder if Tom can see it beating. I wonder if he’ll catch it.

He raises his hands up. “Belle, um, now’s not a good time.”

“Just tell me, Tom.”

“Yeah, Tom,” Andrew says all snarky. “Tell her.”

Andrew grabs Tom’s duct tape alligator and makes like he’s biting Tom with it. Tom bats him away.

I wait.

“Belle . . .” Tom swallows hard. His Adam’s apple moves down his throat. He extracts himself from the bench.

I glare at him. Andrew uses the alligator to bite his own throat. All the guys laugh except Tom who stares back at me as hard as I stare at him. Finally, he grabs my shoulder and walks me to the Coke machine. Ian Falvey, a freshman, is there, trying to get a dollar bill to go through, but it keeps getting rejected. Tom hands him some quarters and says, “Scram.”

The kid puts the quarters in, grabs his Coke, and throws a “Thanks” over his tiny shoulders.

Tom leans against the machine. He watches me fume with my hands on my hips.

“Belle,” he sighs out my name. He shakes his head. “You’re mad at the wrong person.”

“I’m not mad at you,” I pull in a deep breath trying to calm down. “Just tell me what you know.”

Tom tilts his head toward the ceiling. He moves it back down to meet my gaze. Nothing comes out of his mouth.

“Tom, just tell me.” I’m ready to throttle him. To pull the words out of his mouth with my hands. I try to be civil and say, “Please.”

But instead of sounding civil, my voice sounds weak. It sounds like breaking, like a fairy flower figurine that’s been knocked over by a dog’s tail, like a teddy bear that’s lost a leg during a rambunctious slumber party and because Mimi Cote likes to play keep away, like a heart of a girl who doesn’t know what’s what anymore, like breaking, breaking, breaking into pieces and trying not to.

“Please.” I beg him.

“I shouldn’t be the one who tells you this. Dylan should tell you this.” He grabs me by the shoulders to steady me, and then moves me behind him so I’m between the Coke machine and the wall. He’s hiding me, I think. He’s hiding me, because he doesn’t want the world to see me, the stupid girl, the Harvest Queen with the gay-boy king. For a moment, I wonder, maybe Dylan is in love with Tom and that’s how he knows. For some reason this crushes my heart against my spine even more than the thought of Dylan just being gay. What if Tom is gay too? They used to be best friends. They hate each other. Maybe that’s it . . . Maybe every guy I’ve ever lusted after is gay. My face scrunches up. I refuse to cry. I stare at Tom right in the eyes, an alpha-dog stare.

He licks his lips. He swallows. “I saw Dylan kissing Bob. I know something’s going on, okay?”

My mouth falls open. The Coke machine rumbles next to me. I lean against it. Not Tom. Of course, not Tom. Bob. Bob. Kissing Bob.

“Belle?” his voice says. It comes from far away, down a long, long tunnel that I don’t want to go into, but what else can I do? Dylan is gay. He kissed Bob. There is no going back, the entire fairy tale life I thought I had has already been revised, the song I thought I was singing has moved into a different key and there’s nothing I can do, nobody I can get angry at. It’s just gone. It never was.

“Belle?”

“When?” I make my lips move. “When?”

“Yesterday, at the mall. In the parking lot.”

Yesterday, they were kissing while I was listening to Barbra Streisand, or telling Em. Yesterday, they were kissing while I was wondering how my life could have fallen apart, staring at his picture, trying to keep my heart beating, my lungs taking in air. Yesterday.

I close my eyes. The world wiggles beneath my feet. I open my eyes and try to focus on Tom’s face. It’s so far away, so funny looking. I blink away my tears. I rub at my chest, trying to erase all my anger. Instead, I crumple.

“Oh,” I say. “Oh.”

Tom wraps his arms around me and someone nearby whistles.

Tom wraps his arms around me and I let him. I crumple. There is nothing else to do.

Tom pulls me into his arms, then he settles me on the floor.

“You okay?” he asks.

“Did I shake?” My voice is frantic. I couldn’t have had a seizure. I’ve had no caffeine, no aspartame, nothing. All around me, people stare, but I don’t feel fuzzy brained like when I have one. Oh God. “Did I shake?”

Tom’s confused. “What do you mean? Shake?”

“N-nothing,” I stutter. I swallow; try to calm down. “What happened?”

He brushes some hair out of my face. “You fainted. You were out for like three seconds.”

I struggle back up, but Tom’s not letting go of me. He thinks I’ll fall again, I bet. “I do not faint.”

My cheeks turn bright red.

He smiles, and there’s a swagger in his voice as he says, “What would you call it then?”

I think. My hands raise up in the air. “Passing out?”

He laughs some more and the soccer guys all come over, which makes me blush worse. My cheeks feel like they are on fire. They start teasing him. “What did ya say to her Tom? Finally ask her out?”

Blah. Blah. Blah. I tune them out, but I watch Tom. He smiles but his eyes are pained. He smiles but his hands shake a little like they do when he has to give an oral report in German.

“It’s my fault,” I laugh. I try to save him. “I got dizzy. Tom was doing his knight-in-shining-armor routine.”

I bat my eyelashes, but it makes me feel a little woozy and I sway. Both Tom and Shawn grab me and Shawn yells, “Whoa!”

By now, the whole cafeteria’s looking and Emily’s run over with her hands over her mouth. She knows I’m horrified that I’ll have a seizure in school. She knows it’s unlikely to happen in school. It wasn’t a seizure, though.

“Did you forget to eat? Girls always forget to eat,” Andrew says. He’s still holding the little alligator.