27
RYAN
“Everything’s totally fine,” I tell myself Monday morning in the office, sitting alone at my desk with a can of Diet Coke staring at me that I’ve opened, yet haven’t taken a single sip of.
I’m so pathetic.
The first thing I did after Stefan left Friday was go to his room and stare at his things like a creep. I felt gutted and numb, just like the socks that rested on his bed next to a pair of red gym shorts that had no business being there.
Once again, I was being forced to deal with the pain of Stefan ripping himself out of my life all over again.
It’s no wonder I’m an emotional cripple.
Nothing lasts forever, not in Ryan Caulfield’s little life.
The day Stefan Baker and I had our huge blow-up in the school cafeteria in front of all our friends, I skipped the rest of my classes and hid under the bleachers. Some sick part of me thought that Stefan would actually try to come find me here, knowing that we used to hang out under them sometimes when we skipped home period.
He never came.
A skunk did instead.
Yeah, even with my emotional state, I screamed and ran away, despite it totally not lifting its tail or threatening to dress me in its unconventional brand of cologne.
When my dad picked me up from school that day, he knew for sure that something was wrong, but had the sense not to pry. At home later, I had the pleasure of hearing the murmur of my parents in the dining room chatting about me.
I remember wishing that my sister wasn’t off at college becoming a geologist. I wanted to talk to her, but she rarely even answered her phone anymore, so busy with work and having her nose buried in books all day as she was.
I was truly on my own—perhaps for the first time ever.
A funny thought I had that same night: Why didn’t I make more friends than just Stefan Baker?
Talk about putting all your eggs in one social basket.
Weeks went by where I was a completely different person. I took my lunch to the bathroom for many days, unable to sit with my (former?) baseball buddies and unwilling to make new friends at some other table. I went from class to class as fast as I possibly could, dreading the possibility of running into anyone I knew. I was certain that everyone on the baseball team hated me suddenly and that none of them would take my side.
Just like that, Stefan Baker had gone from being my confidant and best buddy to being the daily source of my fear and anguish.
It was a stormy “flash flood” sort of day in October that my life would find a new direction. I was walking—or, rather, rushing hurriedly and anxiously—to my next class when I turned a corner and my face lodged itself between a huge pair of breasts.
I sputtered and backed away, then stared up at the face of a woman, whose shocked expression comically mirrored my own.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
To my surprise, she laughed, then said, “Well, if that isn’t a peculiar way to greet someone, I don’t know what is.”
“I wasn’t watching where I was going. I’m … I’m sorry. I’ll go.” I went around her and took off, red-faced and mortified.
It was later during my home period that the note came. “Caulfield,” Mr. Hank, my teacher, called out. He lifted a pink slip that had just been set on his desk. “Summoned to the office.”
I was confused, clutching my backpack to my chest. “Why? I didn’t do anything.”
“You’re not in trouble, silly,” sang Mr. Hank in his twangy, country accent. “You’re just bein’ called to the office. Hurry up, don’t keep them waitin’.”
I remember the cold feeling of sweat in my pits as I took the slip with me down the long hall to the front of the school. The lady at the desk took my slip, gave me a tightlipped smile, then kindly directed me three doors down and to the left. I went where I was instructed and found myself at a partly opened door.
On its front was a placard that read: Becky Lemont, Counselor.
“Come on in, Mr. Caulfield,” she called out at me from her desk, having spotted me through the crack in the door.
I stepped inside. My eyes fell on the lady whose bosom I had gotten far too intimate with earlier that day in the hallway. “Hi,” I greeted her tentatively.
She picked up a folded sheet of paper from her cluttered desk and extended it toward me. “You dropped this.”
“I did?” I took it from her and looked it over. It was a handout from my math class two weeks ago that I didn’t need. It must have fallen out of my textbook I was holding against my chest when I ran into her. “I don’t really need this,” I confessed to her.
“Well, it’s yours anyhow. Do what you want with it.” She gave me a little smile. Her glasses looked like they belonged to a perky secretary from some 70s movie, pointy at the sides and cherry red, and her hair was twisted up into a peculiar, tight bun. That Becky Lemont was a total character who I knew from that moment on I would never forget.
I blinked. “Is this the only reason you called me into your office?”
“Well, that, and you looked like you could use someone to talk to. It’s your home period, isn’t it? You aren’t missing anything.”
I stood there staring at her like she was a crazy person. She sort of was, at first.
“Sit,” she commanded, giving a nod at the chair in front of her desk. “I’m bored. Paperwork suuuucks,” she groaned, emphasizing and stretching out the word “sucks” like it made her totally cool and “on my level” to say that.
Oddly, it did the trick. I broke a tiny smile and helped myself to the chair, then proceeded to sit there and hug my backpack (and newly reclaimed math class handout) to my chest.
I didn’t make good conversation that first day. She asked me a couple more times if there was anything on my mind (I insisted there wasn’t), inquired about a few of my classes and interests (I avoided mentioning baseball at all for some reason), then started talking to me about cats. Black cats. Gray cats. Orange cats. Cream-pawed cats with chocolate-tipped ears. Cats with no fur. Cats with no tails. Cats, cats, cats, and cats.
“Ooh, there’s the bell,” sang Ms. Lemont when it rang. “How about you come by again your next home period tomorrow? You’re a fun kid, even if you hate holding conversation like a normal human being. We’ll work on that.”
She saw the sadness in my eyes, yet never once dove to dig it out of me that first meeting. Somehow, that was more comforting than anything, the freedom to just … not deal with it all.
“Thanks,” I said to her.
“Isn’t it funny?” she called out to my back, her voice stopping me at the door. “How a little insignificant sheet of paper brought us together? Bet you thought you’d go your whole high school career without speaking to a counselor. Most do.” She shrugged, then shot me a wink. “Guess you’re one of the lucky ones.”
Lucky. If only I knew exactly how lucky I was to run into her that day in the hallway. Or, more accurately, run into her boobs.
I never realized I’d just met the woman who would change my life. And she did. It became a routine after that day that I’d go to her office every home period when I didn’t have homework—and even sometimes when I did. I didn’t once mention baseball or Stefan Baker to her. Instead, we talked about music, funny goings-on at the school, and whether oatmeal and raisin cookies were inherently evil. This went on for weeks.
“I mean, you’re deceived into thinking that you’ve got a tasty chocolate chip cookie pinched between your fingers,” she griped one day, “but then you take a bite and realize the cookie is a liar.”
I laughed too hard at that. “No one likes a liar!”
She smiled, then pushed a Tupperware container of cookies across the desk toward me. “Chocolate chip. I promise. Someone’s sweet mom made them for me and I just don’t have the stomach.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” I insisted.
“No, really. I’m on a look-prettier-than-my-sister-at-her-own-wedding diet. I need to fit into a certain dress in twenty-six days. These cookies are my enemy. You’re doing me a favor.”
“If you say so.” I helped myself to a cookie from the container. It was remarkably soft, and the chocolate chips were like bursts of happiness on my tongue. “An actual chocolate chip cookie.”
Suddenly, for the first time in forever, the loud, angry words of Stefan struck me anew while I chewed that cookie. A rush of discomfort snaked through my stomach, and in an instant, I was in the same pain I was the day I turned my back on my best friend.
And then words came. “I’m … I’m also … not a fan of things pretending to be something they’re not,” I remember muttering, staring at the other half of my cookie I hadn’t eaten yet.
“Oh yeah?” Counselor Becky rested her arms on the desk and lifted her eyebrows. “Who’s pretending?”
I flicked my eyes up at her. “Who?”
“Who’s pretending they’re something that they’re not?”
“I … I was talking about the cookie,” I said, giving it a wiggle between my fingers.
She chuckled once, then shook her head. “Let’s stop kidding ourselves. We’re not talking or thinking about cookies.”
I opened my mouth to protest, then knew in an instant she was right. All of this deflecting and denying and ignoring my real feelings for the past few weeks had built up a desperate need to truly spill all my frustrations and sadness out.
Maybe that was her plan all along. Becky Lemont, the denial genius. A counselor who counseled by … not really counseling.
She let the pressure build like a pot of water boiling over.
And there I was, about to boil over.
I clenched the remaining half of my cookie so firmly that my fingertips began to sink into it, and then tears welled up in my eyes, and then I spilled.
Everything.
I told her a tale about Stefan Baker and my deep adoration for him that had recently burned up in a furious fire. I told her about my disappointment in myself and in letting down the team. I told her how I had to find something else to do with my life. I knew that baseball wasn’t it, no matter how much I wanted it to be.
Then I realized I only wanted it so badly because it was what Stefan did. And whatever Stefan did, I wanted to do as well. I had to be around him all the time. I wanted to be around him, even if we were taking ballet classes together. I would put on the leotard if Stefan did. I’d even wear pink ones. I didn’t care what happened with my life as long as my best buddy was next to me doing it and laughing with me along the way.
“You care about him a lot,” she noted.
The words made my heart flutter uncomfortably. My mom and dad had said it over and over again, how silly and enthusiastic I was about “that Baker kid”. Even Stefan’s parents made jokes about how inseparable we were. Yet when my school counselor Becky Lemont said the words, they sounded heavier, deeper, far more meaningful than any of the other times I’d heard them.
“It hurts.” I remember moaning the words, the poor cookie slowly being crushed to death in the pincer of my fingertips. “It hurts so much.”
“Have you thought about talking to him again?” she gently suggested. “Perhaps telling him how much he means to you?”
“I can’t do it.” Immediately I scoffed at her idea, despite the tears sitting in my eyes, refusing to take the journey down my reddened cheeks. “I just can’t. Being around him … I get so dumb.”
“You’ve been his friend your whole high school career. Maybe this … bit of time away from him … gives you clarity. Now you can figure out what you truly want to accomplish with your life. You can make decisions based on what you truly want.”
Though her answer made perfect sense, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that I was wrong, that I should not have given up my best friend, that I should go back to him and rejoin the baseball team (if coach would let me) and be his number one guy again.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever see him again or kiss and make up eventually,” she clarified. “You totally should. But maybe try to see this time apart as a blessing rather than something to be in despair over. Every friendship needs an amount of space. That’s why there’s all of that cookie between those chocolate chips. Too much of anything isn’t good and makes for an upset belly. I mean, have you ever scarfed down a whole bag of chocolate chips before? Wouldn’t recommend it. Four whole years of eating my feelings in a college dormitory taught me that lesson the hard way.”
She said a lot of things, but the only words that seemed to stick were some of her first: kiss and make up. She was totally innocent in saying them—being funny, even—yet my mind went in a totally different direction. A literal direction.
A heart-fluttering direction. Kiss and make up.
I imagined myself near Stefan, feeling the warmth of his body as he sat next to me on the bench in the dugout, or as I lay next to him on his bed whenever I slept over, or when we’d squeeze into the same armchair for whatever dumb reason—silly and stupid as we were so often—and watched TV.
My heart skipped and raced and stumbled at the counselor’s innocent words. Suddenly I was picturing my mouth drawing very close to Stefan’s. It did things to me, thinking about that.
Yes, I had thought about it before, but not in this capacity. Not this intensely.
Not this honestly.
I only jokingly thought about how Stefan and I were like a gay couple, even though we dated girls and never kissed each other.
But what if we did kiss? What if, one night when I crashed at his big house, I actually put my lips against his? I could imagine it right then, all those moments when Stefan and I were so close to each other that I could feel his breath on my face as he slept.
Right there in Becky Lemont’s office, I crossed my legs tightly and suppressed the erection I just gave myself.
“Yes,” she said, drawing my attention back to her. “I did just make a corny analogy to your current situation using chocolate chip cookies. If you’d like to leave my office and never see me again, I would completely understand it. Ugh, I know I’m going to be dreaming in cookies for the rest of this month until that dreaded wedding is over with. I’m happy for my sister, don’t get me wrong. But damn her half to Hell and back for getting the skinny genes.”
The cookie broke apart right then, falling into my lap in tiny crumbs. Then I looked up at her, awed by the galloping of blood and chemicals through my body, and I said, “I think I like Stefan.”
“Well, yes. Of course. We established that.”
“I think I … like-like him.”
Strangely, I felt entirely safe revealing that to her. It wasn’t even a speck of a concern of mine that she might react badly, or recite scripture like my Great Aunt Marsha did three Christmases ago in reaction to a certain pop celebrity coming out on TV, or tell me that it’s just a passing phase of “best friend adoration” that everyone has and that I’ll grow out of.
Instead, she tilted her head, her eyes touched by the little smile she now wore. “Is that why your heart hurts so much?”
I was still picturing myself kissing Stefan.
And wondering what his lips felt like.
Wondering even what all of his girlfriends felt when they were trapped in his embrace, kissing him during a school dance, or in the halls between classes, or after a game.
Wondering what Stefan would feel or think.
All the pieces were falling into place. And the more they did, the more I saw.
The more I saw.
Then the tears, waiting patiently as ever in the corners of my eyes, finally began to crawl down my face.
They must have been waiting for that particular moment when the realization would strike me that I was in love with my best friend—the gay sort of love. It was the moment my whole life changed. It was the moment I realized who I was and what had been plaguing me for all of the years since I met Stefan.
I think I’m in love with you, Stefan.
I didn’t even realize it then, but my short yet perfect relationship with Becky Lemont would inspire my choice of what to pursue in college. I would eventually come to discover, after all of my times of healing in that school counselor’s office, what I was meant to do with my life. I wanted to help young people just like she helped me. And hopefully they wouldn’t have to crash into my big bosom I don’t have in the hallway to get that help.
“I have to get him back,” I realized then—and now.
Now. Here. At my desk staring at that Diet Coke I still haven’t touched. It fizzes threateningly.
The fumes of its sweet aroma tickle my nostrils and tempt me.
Something else tempts me more.
“I lost you once,” I tell the soda can, as if it just grew Stefan’s face complete with his signature lopsided smirk. “I won’t lose you again. Even if you royally piss me off.”
Determined, I pick up my phone to call him.
“You won’t lose who?”
I jump and look up. Dana is at the door looking radiant and beautiful as ever. Her mile-long lashes bat as she stares at me, her eyebrows pulled up expectantly.
I smile at her. “Nothing. I was just …” I shrug and laugh it off. “I was just talking to myself.”
She leans against my door and smiles, hugging a folder to her chest. “I wanted to thank you again for indulging me and my little friend Amber Friday night. We had fun. I should have mentioned this, but she’s a huge baseball fan and I was in the mood to brag. It was purely selfish, and now that I’ve had my way, I owe you big.”
I chuckle at that. “It was no big deal, really. Stefan had a good time, too.”
“I’m surprised you’re here today at all,” she says, “what with his little brother and everything.”
I freeze and look up at her. “What do you mean?”
“Rudy Baker. Isn’t that his little brother? I saw a memo on the computer about it. He collapsed during a workout Sunday night. He’s in the hospital.”
All of the air is sucked right out of my lungs. I swipe my car keys off the desk without a word and head out the door, whipping right past Dana’s shocked expression and her cloying perfume.