Noggin (17 page)

“We were, but she said she didn’t want to intrude on our impromptu reunion.”

“She is
so
sweet, Kyle,” Cate said. “I think it’s a great idea.”

“I was thinking about asking my parents to move in with me, but it turns out they’re already there,” I said. “Because I’m trapped in teenageland.”

“Not forever,” Cate said.

“Yeah, man. You don’t get to cheat your way around that one. We all had to be stuck there.”

“Come back,” I said. “It was so much easier with you two.”

I’d meant the whole thing as a joke, but of course it hadn’t gone as I intended, and we all got quiet for a while. As much as I didn’t like to be reminded about not having my own body, it seemed like other people didn’t like being reminded of all the things that were also out of their control.

“Sorry, guys. I was just kidding around.”

“Travis Coates,” Cate said. “You weren’t funny in your first life, so why think you can be funny in your second?”

When we finished eating and got up to leave, Cate told us to wait up while she went to the restroom. We stood around outside the door, and I could tell Kyle was pissed at me all over again. I was consistently being an ass to him. I’m not sure why he would even keep trying at that point.

“Weird night, huh?” He broke our silence and kicked at a rock on the sidewalk.

“Yeah. Nice, though.”

“Yeah. Travis, I need you to promise me you won’t bother her anymore.”

“What?”

“Cate. She’s being really nice and cool about everything. Especially considering the way you’ve been acting.”

“The way I’ve been acting? What the hell does that mean?”

“Your little karaoke stalker shit. And even tonight. You knew she wanted space and needed more time, and you just walk right up to her like that.”

“Gimme a break, man. You have no idea.”

“See, Travis. That’s the thing. You come back and you expect everyone to be just the way they were when you left. But it’s not that easy, okay? You can’t just force us all to be how you liked us.”

I didn’t have time to respond because Cate walked outside. I think she could tell things were getting pretty tense because she made a big display out of talking about how full she was to lighten things up. I loved her so much for it. Well, for everything, really.

After we dropped her off at her car, Kyle and I didn’t say a word to each other. I wasn’t just thinking about our conversation, though. I was also bummed that I hadn’t gotten any alone time with Cate. Maybe that was for the best, but it sure isn’t what I wanted. We pulled up to my house, and before I went to get out, I looked over at him and I promise you I tried to stop myself, but I just couldn’t. Sometimes you have to say what’s on your mind or the whole thing will implode in on itself.

“Kyle, it’s not that I want you to be the way I liked you. I just want you to remember
why
I liked you is all.”

“And why’s that?”

“Because you were never full of shit about anything.”

“Good night, Travis.”

I shut the door and leaned into the open window of his truck. He had both hands on the steering wheel and stared straight ahead, refusing to look my way.

“What?” he said.

“Sorry. Just, listen. If I can be the head kid, then you can be his best friend who happens to be gay. None of it matters, Kyle. Screw what people think. Just let it go. It’s that easy.”

Over the next week Cate and I talked on the phone about four times. And she was actually the first one to call. It was the day after the concert, and she wanted to thank me for “being so cool” and not “acting weird or anything” with her around Kyle. I told her I wanted to be friends just as much as she did and that I’d do whatever it takes to make sure she wasn’t uncomfortable or scared to be around me.

I called her the next afternoon, and we caught up a bit more. She mentioned Turner a couple times, and I somehow managed not to throw up into the phone. I guess she was testing the waters a bit, making sure I still didn’t have the wrong idea or anything. But both times she said his name, it felt like she’d walked into the room and samurai-style ripped my gut open. It was brutal, but not so brutal that I couldn’t get over it just to hear her voice.

The third phone call was a bit weird at first. She was upset about something, I could tell. I asked her what was wrong, but all she would tell me is that she’d just had a bad day. That made me happy, which is sort of sick, I know, but still. It made me happy to think that after a bad day she’d want to talk to me and not anyone else, especially Turner. Maybe old feelings were coming back to her again. Maybe I was growing on her more quickly than she’d predicted. I was just me, after all. I was just Travis 2.0—all the same files in a brand-new, fully functioning operating system.

It was our fourth phone call, though, that confirmed for sure that I shouldn’t give up on us so easy. At first she just griped about something that happened at work. Someone had been rude to her—one of the lawyers—and she was thinking about trying to find a job someplace else. Then she started talking about her art. It surprised me, for sure, since she’d seemed so determined to avoid that topic after the concert. But now she was asking me if I remembered these different paintings she’d done in high school and that mural she’d designed for the English hall.

“Of course I remember the mural,” I said.
“The Canterbury Tales.”

“Yeah. You helped.”

“I painted about five square inches of the blue background before Mrs. Campbell refused to ever let me touch a work of art again.”

“You weren’t that bad,” she said.

“Cate. For real. She told me she’d give me an A if I’d run errands for her, keep everyone supplied with clean brushes, and never make her grade a piece of my art again.”

“Hilarious.”

“I thought it was pretty fair. I was only there to watch you anyway.”

“Travis, come on.”

“It’s true. You were so good at everything. You remember that stained-glass window you made for the library? It’s still there.”

“Really? Wow. I haven’t thought about that in so long.”

“I go in there sometimes just to see it, you know. I like seeing something you left behind.”

“That’s sweet.”

“Do you still have it?”

“What?”

“The painting you made me. The theater?”

“Yeah. It’s here. I told you I’d keep it.”

“Thanks. I just missed you so much, Cate.”

“I know, Travis. I missed you more than I can even begin to explain.”

“So can I see you soon? I know that’s not what we talked about, but we were okay the other night. It was okay, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah. It was okay. I think Kyle helped a lot.”

“He did. Sure he did. But I just want to see you. We can get coffee or something. It doesn’t have to be anything
serious. Just coffee. Two old friends having coffee and catching up.”

“I want to say yes, Travis. This is so weird. All of it.”

“Look, tell Turner about it. I know you don’t like secrets, and I know how you are. You probably beat yourself up inside every time we talk. But he needs to know I’m not going away, right? I think that’s only fair for both of us, if he knows that.”

“Okay. Yes. You’re right. I’ll talk to him and then maybe we can meet up sometime next week.”

“Yes. Okay. Good. This is progress, Cate.”

“Progress,” she said. “
Friendly
progress.”

•  •  •

The next day I was sitting in my room watching a rerun of
The Bob Newhart Show
when I heard a car pull up in the driveway. Then I saw Kyle through my window, so I ran downstairs to beat him to the door. I opened it, taking a deep breath and not entirely sure he hadn’t come over to give me the punch in the face I probably deserved. Then he sort of just fell onto me, his arms wrapping around my entire body, squeezing tight. He was crying. I couldn’t have moved if I wanted to, even with Jeremy Pratt’s strength.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, finally letting me go.

“Here, come in. Sit down. It’s . . . it’s fine.”

I followed and watched him take a seat on the couch. I sat on the big puffy arm of my dad’s recliner and let
him gain his composure. He was leaning forward with his elbows on each knee.

“I’m an asshole, Kyle. And
I’m
sorry. I don’t blame you for a second.”

“You should. It’s my fault. You come back and you try to help me, try to be my friend, and I just treat you like shit. It’s not right. It’s not.”

“I overdid it. I should’ve minded my business.”

“You were right, though. That’s why I got so damn mad at you.”

I was right? Wow. I’d been so worried about him showing up and crying that I hadn’t considered this being the reason. It took me a few seconds to register what he’d said.

“Oh. Okay. Does Valerie know this yet?”

“Yeah.”

With that he started crying again but silently, just letting tears fall freely, not even wiping them away.

“It just . . . it bummed me out to think that you weren’t happy, you know?” I sat down in the chair and leaned forward.

“Ten years,” he said. “Ten years of praying every night for something to go away, knowing it doesn’t work like that. Ten stupid years.”

“God, Kyle. I had no idea.”

“It’s like . . . maybe
everyone
thinks about it sometimes. Maybe we all think we’re gay at one point or another? That’s how I rationalized it for so long. I convinced myself that I was just thinking the same way every guy
thinks . . . just choosing to wash away thoughts that I shouldn’t be having.”

“Look, if I ever made you feel bad about—”

“No. That’s just it. No one ever made me feel bad about anything. And my folks, they’re the best people I know. It’s just . . . it’s like I wanted so badly for it to be a phase and I convinced myself that if I made it one, then it was one. It was just something to linger there forever and never get its way.”

“I guess I thought if you were ready to tell me back then, you know, that maybe you were getting ready to tell everyone.”

“That’s the worst part,” he said. “After I told you . . . after you went away, I just sort of got more and more paranoid about it. I mean, you’re the only one who ever knew, so I had this weird chance to just keep it a secret forever. But once I’d said it to you, once I’d said it out loud, I was so scared that people would be able to tell. Like, they’d see it in the way I talked or in my hand gestures or whatever. It’s ridiculous. It’s like this—I felt like if I could be as different from all the stereotypes about gay guys as possible, then it would just go away. I couldn’t be gay . . . I like sports. I hate shopping. I think Broadway musicals are bullshit.”

We both laughed, and I could see that with each new thing he said, with each little confession, Kyle sat up straighter and began to look less sad and defeated. It was like watching an actor slowly separating himself from
his most famous character, like he was shedding an artificial skin.

“Can I tell you something?” he said.

“Of course.”

“You remember Jake Brassett?”

“Yeah. Soccer guy.”

“He liked sports too.”

“Okay . . .”

“And making out with me in his grandma’s basement senior year.”

“Wow.”

“Sorry. Too much?”

“Hell no. I’m fascinated. Anyone else?”

“Not really. A couple of guys you wouldn’t know, from college. I got really tired of the secrets, so I just kept it from myself, too. I started dating girls when I was a sophomore.”

“Yeah . . . how does that work exactly? Do you just picture a dude when you’re with them?”

“Not really. It’s more like I just shut off my brain and go for it. That, and pretend that I want to wait for marriage.”

“You’re kidding, right? No sex at all, Kyle?”

“Nope.”

“This is so much worse than I thought.”

He told me he’d dated three girls in college, all fairly pretty and sweet, all patient or religious enough to wait for sex. He said that was the worst part—when he would be with one of them long enough to realize they were
seeing him as this great, respectful guy who cared more about love and companionship than anything else. He said it was the most painful thing in the world to repeatedly break these girls’ hearts just because he was too scared to stop trying, to stop hoping that one of them would change the way he felt.

“And I loved them, I think. At least a little. But that’s why I had to end it, I guess. I couldn’t keep lying to them and knowing that if we stayed together, then they’d be missing out on their chance to be with a guy who really could love them all the way.”

He said he was done. He said Valerie would be the last girl he dated, the last person he’d lie to about being gay, or anything at all. Secrets, he said, will boil under your skin until it feels like every time you speak, every time you look in the mirror, every time you hug someone or kiss someone or tell someone you love them, it feels like you’re going to die.

“One last thing, Travis,” he said to me before he had to leave.

“What’s that, buddy?”

“It’s you, man. I’m in love with you.”

“Oh . . . I . . .”

“I’m just screwing with you. Don’t be an egomaniac.”

“Shit. That’s not funny.”

Kyle told me he was planning on coming clean to his parents that weekend. He said his mom would probably cry a little but would eventually realize the perks of
having a gay son. He said she always hated his girlfriends anyway. And his dad would give him a hug and awkwardly tell him to “be safe” or something like that. Kyle said he felt guilty for how easy he knew it would be to tell them and for how hard he knew it was for so many others.

I didn’t mention Cate. I wanted him to say everything he needed to say, and I wasn’t quite sure how he’d react to the situation. I sure didn’t want him to know what my real plan was, that I had no intention of being her friend and every intention of making her fall in love with me all over again. He’d say I was ridiculous and immature and selfish. Maybe he was right, but I was also in love. So logic and maturity weren’t all that important to me.