More Happy Than Not

I smile, and like earlier, it feels legit, because it always is with him. But there’s still a sinking feeling in my chest. I don’t know what else I can say to him that’ll make him feel comfortable enough to do what I just did. Since he doesn’t ever lie, I wonder what he would say if I just directly asked him if he likes dudes too. If he says no, I would know that he is capable of lying. But if he says yes, I don’t know how I would feel by dragging it out of him like that.

“Maybe you look distressed or maybe I’m a mind reader, but I want you to know that nothing is different, Stretch. Sure, you do things differently and that’s okay. Nothing is changing,” Thomas says, and he wraps his arm around my shoulder as if this were ordinary. This is the guy who makes me happy.

“Thanks for being telepathic,” I say. I pat his knee. “So I guess this means I’m no longer allowed to call ‘No Homo’ anymore, right?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Thomas laughs and I want every night to be like this, where we can just laugh against each other without it being weird.

But for tonight, this is enough. From the shapes cast by the green paper lantern, you would never know that there were two boys sitting closely to one another trying to find themselves. You would only see shadows hugging, indiscriminate.

4

REMEMBER THAT TIME

Instead of manning up, I’ve been standing outside in the pouring rain for the past twenty minutes under Genevieve’s window. A cab with an ad for the Leteo Institute drives through a puddle and soaks my jeans. I really, really wish Genevieve could just forget me.

And I really, really wish I had another pair of pants right now.

I finally go upstairs and leave my sneakers outside the door. I almost slide across her hallway in my wet socks but she holds my hand and keeps me steady. I almost come up with a bullshit excuse about how we should stay out in the living room so I don’t get her bed wet, when I actually have other reasons not to go in there, but she leads and I follow.

“The flea market is totally closed today,” Genevieve says. She helps me out of my hoodie and pinches my nipple through my white shirt. It tickles but I barely laugh. “Bright side of having a terrible father is he’s never around.” We sit on her bed. She kisses me and I know I should push her off but I don’t. “I love you,” she says, and before there’s an awkward silence where I don’t say it back, she adds, “Remember that time your soaking-wet jeans ruined my bed?”

The game has lost its spark, and maybe it’s because of my low spirits, but it’s also very likely because it’s kind of, sort of, definitely ridiculous to ask me to remember something that is happening right now.

I’m being unfair.

I sit up, cross my legs, hold her hands, and play along. “Remember that time we bought water guns last summer and I chased you around Fort Wille Park? And you kept calling time out and sprayed me whenever I stopped?”

She sits up and tangles her legs in mine. “Remember when we kept riding the subway back and forth last February because it was too cold to go outside?”

“Which was stupid because it was even colder when we finally got off at one in the morning,” I say, recalling how the cold was killing us, me especially since I had wrapped my jacket around he

r. “Remember that time we were writing each other messages in a crossword puzzle during study hall and it got taken away? I lost the evidence on how you misspelled tornado with an e.”

Genevieve punches me. “Remember that time we texted each other using only song titles?”

“And how about that time it started raining when we were rowing the boat in Central Park and I started panicking?”

Genevieve laughs. While playing this game might be even worse than being intimate with her, it’s both the right and wrong time to stroll down memory lane. “Remember that time we time-traveled together on my birthday and you told me you love me?” She climbs into my lap and feels up my arms.

We look into each other’s eyes and when she leans in to kiss me, I let her because this will be the last kiss we share whether she knows it or not. Then she rests her chin on my shoulder and I hold her, hard.

“Remember that time I was a better boyfriend who gave you happy memories like these?” I feel her try to pull back, so she can meet my eyes again and tell me that I’m a good boyfriend, but I continue holding her because I can’t look her in the face and do this. “I’m not the guy we’re remembering anymore.”

She stops resisting. She holds me tighter too, her nails digging into my arms. “Are you . . . ? You are. Aren’t you?”

She’s gotta be asking me if I’m breaking up with her, but I consider the chance that she’s asking me if I’m a dude-liker.

I know this: the part of me that was playing straight for so long wants to lie and tell her that I can transform back into the person she needs me to be, except that’s not who I am anymore or who I ever should’ve been. So I just nod and say, “Yeah.” I’m about to apologize and try to explain why, but she breaks free from my hug and sits at the edge of her bed with her back to me.

Genevieve was the girl who brought me home after my dad killed himself and let me cry in a way I never would’ve in front of my friends. She tutored me in chemistry when I was failing, even though I was always too absorbed by her to actually pay attention. When her father started bringing home younger girls for the first time since her mother died, I distracted her with weekend outings, like a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge and people watching in Fort Wille Park. And now she’s the girl who won’t let me hug her.

“It’s because of him,” she says.

I bullshit her: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She’s crying and doesn’t let me see her face, like usual, and she throws me my hoodie. “You can go.”

So I do.