13
STEFAN
Monday fills my lungs with swirls of white dust in my buddy Parker’s bathroom, blinding and suffocating me.
At least the tile’s gonna look pretty as fuck.
“I think we’re done for the day,” calls out Parker from behind his dust mask. “Seriously. Can’t feel my eyeballs.”
“Agreed, man.” I step out onto the plastic sheeting we have running from the master bathroom to the garage to save his other floors from getting dirty.
“Need a break anyway,” Parker complains, sighing out half of the words. “Back is killing me.”
“Wuss,” I tease him.
In a handful of minutes, we’re sitting in his garage. The door’s lifted up to show the sunlight and the street where neighborhood kids are chasing each other with squishy balls and giant foam bats.
“Dude, if this bathroom isn’t perfect as shit,” warns Parker, “I’m going to hear about it from Lindsey every time she goes in there to take a shower. As it is, she’s annoyed she had to use the guest bathroom all last week.”
“It’ll pay off,” I assure him. “Lindsey’s a trooper. And she’s going to have herself a killer shower—with three separate jets—to massage away her long, stressful days at the dance studio.”
“What about my long-ass days at the warehouse?” cries Parker teasingly.
I shift in my chair and stare at him. “Lindsey’s got a couple of buns in the oven. And during these next seven months, she’ll need it twenty times more than you will, you big crybaby.”
Parker chuckles and shakes his head. “Shit. Did you ever see us living these lives? Me with the star from the dance department and expecting twins. You with your …” He eyes me. “Well, doing whatever it is you’re doing now.”
I sigh. “I’m still figuring things out, Parker.”
“Oh, I know. I didn’t mean to imply you’re a lazy fucker who’s just bumming around or anything.” Parker gives me a cheeky grin.
I catch myself smiling, thinking about my recent unexpected life development. “Did I tell you I’m staying at Ryan’s right now?”
A look of confusion clouds his face. “You mean Caulfield?”
“Yep. Just temporarily,” I clarify. “I needed some space from my parents. And frankly, I think they needed some space from me. Ryan had a spare room, so …”
“Oooh, spare room, alright. Got it.” Parker chuckles to himself and kicks his beer back.
I turn to him, my brow furrowing. “The hell do you mean?”
He eyes me quizzically for a moment, the humor gone, then he rests his beer on the arm of his chair. “Nah, nothing.”
“Nothing? Like hell it’s ‘nothing’. What’d you mean by that?”
“Dude, calm down.” He chuckles again, though this time it sounds strained and nervous. “Just … It was necessary to have that clarification. That he’s got a … a spare room. And you’re staying with him … in that capacity. It just clarified a couple things is all.”
My heart is thumping hard. He struck a nerve, and I’m not even sure what it is yet. I’m all reaction, no thought. “Why does that need ‘clarifying’, Parker? The hell are you implying?”
Parker’s eyes flicker with anxiety, like he regrets very much saying a damned thing at all. And he should. I’m ready to beat him down with the rest of the guys who, all through high school, had anything taunting or derogatory or cruel to say about Ryan.
“It’s just …” Parker clears his throat, then finishes his totally unexpected sentence: “It’s just that I thought maybe you and Ryan were a thing.”
Everything inside me turns as hard as the concrete floor I just scraped and sanded in his bathroom all afternoon.
I must be staring at him with murder in my eyes because he starts sputtering out more words at a hundred syllables a second. “I mean, really, I don’t care, Stefan. I never cared. Even back when we were all on the same team. I just minded my own, and I—”
“Back then?” I cut him off. “You … You seriously thought we were a thing back then?”
He stares at me like I’m the biggest idiot in the world. “Dude. Everyone thought it.”
I can’t seem to close my mouth. My throat’s gone all dry.
“No fuckin’ way,” I spit back at him, glassy-eyed. “You’re just dicking with me. No one was thinking that. It was just you because you’re a dumbass.”
Parker lets out another tight-throated dry chuckle. “Wish I could say that, but … I’ve had whole conversations. It definitely wasn’t just me. I mean, you two were fucking glued to each other. And I don’t mean like … just best friends or buddies. Even your ex-girlfriends talked about you guys. Like, it was a thing. We all thought it. We all came to terms with it. We all were okay with it.”
“Okay with it?” I spit at him incredulously. “There wasn’t a thing to be ‘okay’ with. Nothing happened between us.”
“Alright! Okay! No big deal.”
I have about a hundred and one furious thoughts charging through my brain, all of them questioning what my teammates were thinking all those years. They thought we were both gay? They thought we were a couple?
“It doesn’t make sense,” I hear myself saying. “If you guys all thought that, why didn’t any of you bring it up? We had girlfriends over the years. None of them even—”
Then I’m struck by something an ex of mine from sophomore year actually did say to me, something that I let roll right off my back and didn’t think much of at the time. Jess. She had curly blonde hair and was rich—annoyingly rich—and when I dumped her two weeks before the homecoming dance, she spat these words at me: “Maybe you could’ve given me more notice than just two weeks so I can find myself a real date for the dance. Enjoy going with your butt buddy Ryan. Hope you’re happy together.”
It never meant anything more than just a last jab at me before we never spoke to each other again. Now, the words come back to me as sharp as glass, cutting me now—a decade later—where they never cut me then.
Is that all that was said to me? Is there more that I’m not yet remembering? Did everyone think that about us the whole time?
“Look, I didn’t mean … to start a whole thing,” Parker tells me, his voice softer. “I … I honestly thought it was no big deal.”
“So you’ve thought this about me?” I’m obsessed now. I need to know everything. I need his point of view. “All these years?”
“Dude. You never married or even had a serious girlfriend.”
“So?”
“So it makes people think. I’ve always … wondered.”
I shake my head and stare off, growing increasingly numb to the whole thing. I can’t even process what all of this means. I feel like someone just pulled the rug out from under me, and then I discovered there’s not even any floor beneath it. I’m freefalling without a parachute.
“Seriously,” Parker goes on. “It’s no big deal. I don’t care at all either way. Gay, not gay. A thing, not a thing. It didn’t bother me then, doesn’t bother me now.”
I’m chewing on my lip and trying not to scowl. I realize, perhaps a bit too late, that I shouldn’t be all pissed and angry. Acting mad about this whole thing is a rather odd and hypocritical reaction to be having, considering how many jackasses I’ve beaten up my whole childhood who ever bullied—or even tried to bully—my best buddy Ryan, whom I care deeply about.
And what’s the big deal, anyway? I always figured that Ryan was gay. Did I really give everyone so much credit to assume that it’s okay for a straight guy and a gay guy to be best friends without people jumping to conclusions?
I’m the one who’s been naïve. Of course they’d assume.
“Anyway, Lindsey’s about to get back soon,” notes Parker as he rises from his chair, “so I’d probably better clean up the plastic for the day and get it all, uh, rolled up.”
“I can help,” I tell him, standing up and heading inside to start the clean-up.
Everything is all put up, and I’m back in my truck in twenty minutes. But I don’t leave just yet. I’m staring at the wheel with thoughts tumbling around my brain like clothes in a dryer.
Like a baseball uniform in a dryer.
Tumbling. Tumbling. Tumbling.
I finally crank the truck into drive and pull away from his house, then meander my way under the speed limit as I give my thoughts some time to sift down into something I can grasp.
Something like: it really doesn’t matter if everyone thought I was gay.
Something like: who gives a shit if Ryan and I were perceived as some gay power couple back then.
Something like: if I were to be in a gay relationship, wouldn’t he be the best damned thing to happen to me?
That last thought makes me laugh. As usual, humor coming to my rescue when I’m all fucked-up otherwise. The laughter fades quickly, though, and I’m left with a ringing uncertainty in front of my eyes that makes me almost run a red light. I have to slam on my brakes before tossing myself into an intersection like a lamb amidst a charging stampede of wolves.
Waiting for the light to change, I take a deep breath. A really, really deep breath. In the brief clearing of my thoughts, I can still see myself chasing after boys who just called Ryan my girlfriend, boys who abandoned the bikes they were escaping on because I had already long outrun them—and the feeling when my knuckles met their faces.
I think about the time I straddled Ryan in that boy’s bathroom and the boner I felt beneath me—his boner, throbbing, needing. I think about the hours I spent at home lying on my bed and staring at the ceiling as I reflected on it. Ryan, the boy who’s always chased me, who’s always cared about me, who’s always there.
Maybe people thinking that Ryan and I are an item isn’t the worst thing in the world. Not the worst thing by far.