Openly Straight (23 page)

When
I woke up, Ben was gone.

The clock said 8:13. That meant I had gotten maybe three hours of sleep in Ben’s bed, and that meant he had gotten even less. My eyes felt heavy but at least my head felt lighter. I knew he was probably at his chemistry class, turning in his lab report and trying to stay awake while Clarkson babbled on and on about the periodic table.

I pulled his sheets over my head. His scent was still there, and I inhaled. Ben. My boyfriend. I finally had a boyfriend. I thought back to the way the muscles of his back felt as I touched him. Warm and smooth. The kind of feeling I could get addicted to, and I was pretty sure I didn’t care who knew it.

The air felt frosty when I finally pulled his covers off. And then I realized: December 1. I would never, ever forget that date. I looked out the window, and the sky was an odd purple gray that made me want to spend the day hibernating. Waiting for Ben to return. Ben. My Ben.

I took a shower and went to breakfast. Steve and Zack were sitting together, and when they saw me, they called me over to their table.

“Hey,” they said, and I put my tray down across from them. I had gotten an omelet with Swiss cheese and tomato and mushrooms. They were eating pancakes.

I dug into my breakfast without much more than a grunt hello. My brain was elsewhere by far, orbiting around something that I knew these guys wouldn’t understand.

“Whassup?” Steve said. He was wearing a Red Sox jersey inside out, which I guess was their new thing. I’d noticed some of the guys doing that recently. Like maybe Steve did it the first time by mistake, and suddenly because he had done it, everyone was following.

“Nada mucho,”
I said.

“You have a good Thanksgiving?” asked Steve.

“Took Ben back to Colorado,” I said, sipping orange juice.

“Awesome,” Zack said. “You gotta take us next time. Would love to ski out there.”

“Sure.” I knew that would never in a million years happen.

“You remember that chick Amber, the one you ralphed on?” Steve said.

I laughed. “Kinda sorta.”

“Saw her over break. Had a party and some of the kids from Joey Warren drove up,” Steve said. I knew he lived in Newton, which was somewhere east of us. “She’s still talking about you. Thinks you’re cute or something. You wanna hook up with her?”

“Do I wanna hook up with the girl I threw up on?”

Zack laughed. “Colorado’s got a way with words.”

“Yeah,” said Steve.

“Nah, I’m about a thousand percent not interested.” I forked a piece of my rubbery omelet up and put it in my mouth.

Steve and Zack looked at each other. “She’s pretty hot, you know,” Zack said.

“Not my type.”

They looked at each other again.

“Oh-kay …” Steve said, the same way he’d said it to Bryce before the softball game.

I couldn’t have cared less. These guys had about nothing I wanted in a friend. I’d known that for a while now. No personality, not particularly nice, not terribly smart. I looked up at Steve, who was staring at me with what might have been pity in his eyes. This Schroedster just wasn’t like the old model, I guessed, and I finally didn’t give a shit if anyone knew.

“Hey, Steve,” I said. “Your shirt’s on inside out. You look like a dork.”

And with that, I stood and picked up my tray, brimming with a type of pride I hadn’t felt since I’d lived in Colorado.

After English, I went to the library. Ben was there, in his usual carrel, and I snuck up behind him and put my hands over his eyes. He tensed up. I pulled my hands away, and when he turned around, I smiled and whispered, “Surprise!”

He surreptitiously looked both ways. He was wearing his glasses and reading his philosophy textbook. He looked so handsome in his
blue cashmere sweater, with those thick, hipster glasses over his owl eyes.

“Hey, what’s up?” he said. He stared at me like he was waiting for me to tell him what I was there for, why I’d bothered him in the library.

I opened my mouth to say something funny about how he was acting, but nothing really occurred to me. It wasn’t funny. This was the second time, it seemed to me, that he’d gone from hot to cold on me. It sucked.

He saw the hurt in my eyes. I could see it registered in the corner of his eyebrow, which buckled. He took a deep breath, then sighed.

“I just need some time,” he whispered. “Some space. Figure this out. Okay?”

I shrugged. “Fine,” I said, and I turned and walked away. I heard him say, “Rafe,” under his breath, like I was making a big deal out of nothing. I wasn’t going to listen to this shit. No way. How come every time I got physical with a guy, they got all weird? Why was it that the simple act of messing around with me automatically led to this, every time, this moment where the guy needed to figure it out, or get away? I would never do that to someone. Never in a million years. I stormed out of the library and sprinted across the quad, the freezing wind biting at my forehead.

I didn’t stop running all the way up the stairs to the fourth floor. I hurried down the hall, hoping I’d have the room to myself so that I could scream, or whatever I’d have to do to stop feeling this way.

No such luck. There was Albie, in his usual position at the desk. It was like,
Are you ever NOT in the room?

“Hey,” he said, not looking up as I walked in and slammed the door.

I didn’t answer. All I did was throw my book bag on my bed, drop my coat on the floor, storm over, and reach under his bed for a beer.

“You mind?” I said as I pulled one out.

“Help yourself.”

I popped the top and chugged. And chugged. And chugged. I just wanted beer in my bloodstream. Something, anything, to knock this pain out of me. I finished the beer, burped, and reached down and felt for another, which I grabbed and took to my bed. I collapsed on my stomach.

“I said, ‘Help yourself,’ not ‘Get insanely drunk,’” Albie said.

I wanted to say
fuck you
so bad. But I didn’t want to have a fight with Albie.

“Sorry,” I said.

“Apologize to your liver.”

I looked up at him. He had turned his chair away from his desk and was facing me. I wasn’t much up for conversation.

“I thought you slept here last night?” he said.

“I started here,” I said, rubbing my head and then taking another sip of beer. It tasted awful, like warm, carbonated piss.

“Ah,” he said, as if that made sense, as if people often split their nights between two beds. I looked over at Albie, unassuming, nerdy Albie. Who was funny. Who was my friend. Who didn’t judge. And I felt the overwhelming urge to tell him what was going on.

He went to the refrigerator and took out a Coke. “Scanner pong?” he said.

I nodded. I didn’t care whether the scanner was on or not, and
Albie knew enough to turn the scanner on but not ask me what my word was.

“I’m in love,” I said.

He nodded.

“Like, seriously in love. And it hurts.”

“Claire Olivia,” he said.

“No.”

“Someone else?”

I nodded. I tried to think about how to explain this all to Albie.

“So Ben is or isn’t in love back?” he asked.

I looked out the window. Snow was beginning to fall in big clumps, the kind of snow that was too wet to do anything but evaporate when it hit the ground. Thirty-three-degrees snow.

“Hard to tell,” I said. “You knew?”

“You took him home with you for break. You sleep in the same room. Who gives a shit?”

“Does Toby know?”

He shrugged. “It’s not something we really talk about. Gee, what is it about me that attracts all the gays? I’m like Lady Gaga or something.”

“That’s it. That’s exactly who you’re like. We’re drawn to your persona and your frequent outfit changes. Albie Gaga.”

He nodded. “How about, for your word, we use
gay
?”

I scrunched up my face like, what? And then I realized he meant scanner pong, and that made me laugh.

“And yours is
apocalypse
,” I said, and we drank to that.

Ben’s
“figuring it out” period lasted the full week, during which time I got comfortable back in my own room, generally avoided the object of my
eros
/
agape
, and spent most of my time with Albie and Toby. Albie, to his credit, didn’t tell Toby anything, and I decided that it might be a good idea not to tell him at all. You never knew with Toby when he’d say something unexpected, and I didn’t want my secret to be that something. I had enough problems.

Albie, Toby, and I were walking across the quad to lunch on Saturday afternoon when we saw Steve and Zack walking the other way. I felt that familiar rumble in my belly, wondering if they were going to say something, and wondering what I’d say back. Ever since that day I’d had breakfast with them, I’d been pretty much cut out of that world of popular jocks. I didn’t care, really. I was happier talking to people who actually had brains. And Toby.

So Steve and Zack approached, and I held Steve’s eye contact. We stared at each other as we passed, and then he looked away, like he was dismissing me, like he was too good to be wasting his time on
me. I was like,
Good
. If that’s how he felt, I was fine with it, so long as he left me and my friends alone.

After lunch, Toby told us he had something to show us. He led us halfway across the quad, and then we turned left. There was a small path between two pine trees, and he led us onto it, knocking away branches and holding them so they wouldn’t snap in our faces.

Finally we reached a clearing, maybe fifteen feet of damp grass and dirt, and clumps of icy snow not yet melted after a snowstorm earlier that week, surrounded by woods. Behind us, I could see a glimpse of frozen Dug Pond.

“This is where we come,” he said.

Albie and I looked at each other. “We?”

“Me and, you know.”

Albie’s eyes got wide. “I really don’t think I want to know about this,” he said.

I surprised myself. “I do,” I said. I guess I was tired of having to withhold the truth from Toby. Other than Ben, he and Albie were easily my best friends at Natick.

Toby looked a little surprised, like he’d just assumed we wouldn’t want to hear the details.

“You do?”

“Yeah.”

He looked around to make sure we were alone. We definitely were. No one else came back here to my knowledge. Also it was cold. Like twenty degrees. Only three idiots would be in the woods in the winter, it seemed to me.

“Robinson,” he said.

“Gorilla Butt,” I said, nodding. “I know.”

“You know?”

“Yup.”

Toby crossed his arms and then deflated into a fake pout. “You’re stealing my scene, bitch. Scene stealer.”

“Sorry,” I said. “So you and Gorilla Butt. Wow.”

He flipped me off. “He hates that,” Toby said. “But, yeah. It’s hairy.”

“Oh, look, almost anything else in the universe,” Albie said, heading back to campus and leaving us in the clearing.

“He’s such a prude,” Toby said, rolling his eyes. “I kind of figured you would be too.”

I shivered. My gloved hands were cold even though I’d stuck them in my jacket pockets, and the tip of my nose felt icy. But inside I felt a warmth that felt good. I realized it was because of Toby. Letting me in on a secret. That felt good. And it occurred to me that there was more of that warm feeling if I wanted it. It was really up to me.

“Not so much,” I said. I took a deep breath. “I’m gay, Toby.”

He pushed me, and my feet slipped against the wet leaves. I barely avoided falling on my butt. “Leave the room.”

“I’d love to, if by
room
you mean the woods. It’s freezing.”

He crossed his skinny arms in front of him. “But you said you weren’t.”

I sighed. “I said a lot of things. I guess I lied. Sorry.”

He pursed his lips at me. “Bad boy.”

“Tell me about it. I have all sorts of shit to tell you. Up for trading war stories?”

He laughed. “Hells yeah.”

He plopped right down on his butt, as if the ground weren’t freezing and wet. I started to say something snarky, but then I realized if I didn’t also sit, I’d be standing and looking down at him. He didn’t seem to think getting a frozen ass was such a major big deal, so I sat down too.

Cold. Like icicles climbing up my spine cold.

“Me and Ben,” I said, my teeth nearly chattering.

His eyes lit up. “Are you cereal?”

“Totally. Totally cereal.”

“That’s great!” he said.

I grimaced. “Well, not so great, actually.”

“He hits you?”

I did a double take. With Toby, it was hard to tell when he was serious.

“No. He’s scared.”

“Ah. The scared thing.”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’ve been there. You just have to, like, wait it out. And sometimes they’re fine, and sometimes they run off and you never see them again.”

My stomach turned. The idea that I’d never see Ben again hurt like a stabbing. Like a stabbing and then a twisting of the knife. I touched my belly through my down jacket.

“Well, it’s even worse than that,” I said.

He waited for me to tell him, and I tried to think of all the reasons not to tell my whole story, and other than the fact I didn’t come off well in it, I couldn’t really think of any. It was better to let it all go.

So I told him. Toby listened with his mouth open.

“That’s … wow,” he said. “You need to tell him.”

“I guess,” I said. “I just don’t want anything more to come between us. I mean, he’s already freaked out. I can’t drop this on him. Can I?”

He didn’t have an answer for that.

We talked more, and Toby told me all about Robinson, who was deep in the closet and scared to death that people would find out. Robinson kept saying he couldn’t wait for college — maybe the University of Michigan? — where he could start over and be himself, and avoid assholes who wouldn’t respect him.

I pictured Robinson. He was about as nonstereotypical a gay person as you could get. His face was strong but covered in that acne. His body strong but covered in fur. There had always been a part of me that thought guys like that were the luckiest because they could pass as straight. But now I realized just the opposite was true; being able to pass for something you’re not is a kind of curse. Especially if you try it.

“My butt may never thaw,” I said, attempting to stand. I needed to use my arms, because my legs felt brittle, frozen through. But I also felt thankful that I was friends with Toby, who was a truly cool person, other than the parts of him that were entirely uncool. Which actually made him cooler, in my book.

“Another gay friend. Yay!” Toby said, singsongy. “Are you going to tell people?”

I cringed at the thought. Another coming out? Why was it all so hard?

“Eventually,” I said. “Yeah.”