Sweet Sixteen?

“THEO.”

I wake to Chris gazing down at me, figure it’s a dream, and close my eyes again to hold on to it a little longer, but then he’s calling my name kind of frantically and I decide this must be really happening, because his grip on my shoulders cuts into the muscle and his panic vibrates in the sound of his voice.

“Theo, man, wake up.”

My head is thick and mossy, my limbs like lead weights and mostly unresponsive. My eyes are gritty and my vision a little fuzzy. I glance around and see that I’m still on the beach. My hair and back are damp with clumps of sand stuck to me. There’s a wet chill in the air and a fog on the water that clues me in that it’s the middle of the night. Sean’s gone, and it looks like he cleaned up after us, because there are no empty cans or cardboard box to tell of our adventures.

“Where’s Sean?” I ask.

“Who?” Chris asks.

“Lieutenant Sean Knox.”

“Are you drunk?” Chris asks me. “Did he buy you beer?”

I rise to a sitting position, and my head pounds like the deep bass of a lowrider. I cradle it in my hands while Chris calls who I’m assuming is my mom. “Yeah, I’ve got him,” he says. “He fell asleep at the pier. I’ll bring him home.” Chris glances down at me as I mime a pleading gesture that he not tell her I was drinking and may still currently be drunk. I don’t want her to see how far I’ve fallen since this morning when I was her sweet, innocent baby boy. Chris shakes his head like he’s disappointed in me, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m drunk or because I can’t hold my alcohol.

“You mind if I take him to my house tonight?” Chris asks my mom. “He’s had a pretty rough day.”

I wonder how much she knows about my day. What did my sister or Chris tell her? Hopefully they didn’t show her the picture. No, they wouldn’t. Tabs and I might not see eye to eye on everything, but we have a mutual understanding to not involve my mom in one another’s drama. I’m thankful Chris is covering for me. And speaking to me. And cares enough to come find my drunk ass and bring me home.

Chris ends the call and drops down to sit next to me, rests his forearms on his knees, and runs his fingers through his thick, golden hair like I’ve seen him do before when he’s stressed. He doesn’t say anything, and I don’t offer anything up. I appreciate the few minutes wherein I try to collect my thoughts and make the ground stop tilting.

“You hungry?” he says at last.

“Yeah.” Food might be a good way to sop up the alcohol.

“Harley’s?”

I nod and slowly rise to follow him to the Volvo, brushing the sand off my ass before collapsing inside it. It’s immediately calming because it’s warm and familiar and smells like him. There’s probably an indentation of my buttcheeks on the seat. Chris turns down the music so it won’t aggravate my headache but leaves it on low, so it’s not just this balloon of silence between us.

“What time is it?” I think to ask as we roll through the mostly deserted streets. I must have passed out around ten or eleven. I wonder how long Chris has been looking for me.

“About 2:00 a.m.”

“Wow, that late?” I glance over at him, wondering if his stony expression means he’s pissed at me. Probably. There are so many threads as to why, the task of unraveling it seems overwhelming. “Thanks for finding me. I’m sure my mom was worried.”

“We were all worried,” Chris says stiffly.

“Sorry.” All I do any more is apologize. Chris seems to be cleaning up all my messes lately.

He sighs. “You should probably know, I kicked Dave’s ass.”

So Chris knows what’s been going on between us. He’s seen it now, up close and personal. I swallow, or at least attempt to. My throat is swollen and feels like it’s full of sand. Chris kicked Dave’s ass. I find that I don’t have many thoughts about it either way, except to hope he didn’t kick it too hard.

“When?” I ask him.

“After school. I went over to his house and asked him about the picture. He got smart with me. It was almost too easy.”

“He was probably expecting it.” What a dumbass. “You didn’t break anything, did you?”

“No,” Chris says like he regrets it.

“Did it make you feel better?”

“Not really, but it had to be done.”

Chris says it with such certainty, as though it were somewhere ordained that an ass beating was in order. I glance down at my phone and see Dave has texted me pictures of Chris’s handiwork captioned with Your boyfriend paid me a visit. From the looks of it, Chris went easy on him. There are a few text apologies from Dave as well to the tune of I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing. I don’t check his voicemails, but they’re probably the same flavor. I really don’t give a shit about Dave’s feelings. Screw that asshole.

“That should have never happened,” Chris says, like he’s been holding his breath the whole time.

I wonder what he means by “that”—Dave’s cock in my mouth, the scene being captured on camera, or that it spread like a virus throughout the school, so I ask him. “Which part?”

“None of it.”

“I’m gay, Chris.” It seems obvious, but some things need to be said.

Chris shakes his head. “Not that. You should have never gotten involved with Asshole Dave. He’s been a jerk to you from the beginning. Why would you choose him, of all people?”

I’ve been asking myself the same question, but I know the answer already. I needed someone to keep my mind off Chris.

“He was there and he was interested.” It’s not until I say it out loud that I realize how lame it sounds. How needy. There was more to Dave than a warm body, though, which is why this whole thing is so messed up and only adds to my overall confusion. I thought Dave and I were friends, at least. A real friend would never do that to me.

Chris glances over at me, his lips tight against his teeth like a dog baring its fangs. “I wanted to kill him, T. I’ve never been so mad before in my life.”

I don’t want Chris hating himself on account of my dumb ass or getting in trouble for it. “I’m sorry I brought that out in you.”

“It’s not that. I don’t want you to apologize. You’re the victim here.” He sounds like he’s trying very hard to speak gently to me. Even now, Chris cares about my feelings enough to rein in his anger at the situation.

And he’s right, mostly. No one deserves to have their most vulnerable, intimate moment blasted to the entire student body—if it’s not a crime, then it should be. But I was also wrong in using Dave as a stand-in. I hurt him too, not as publicly, but I did hurt him.

“I’m a big boy, Boss. It’s probably time for me to start handling my own shit.”

“Did you know he took that picture?”

I shake my head, hoping Chris knows me well enough to know I’d never allow it.

“What a dickhead. Why’d he send it around?”

“Maybe he was mad I broke up with him.”

“You were together?”

“Eh.” I shrug. Together seems too strong a sentiment, especially now. “We messed around.”

“Why’d you break up with him?”

I consider a few excuses that all ring false. “It didn’t feel right. In any case, I think it’s just me and my grilled cheeses from now on.”

Chris grins at that, and I’m glad I can eke out a smile from him still. We pull into Harley’s, and once inside, I order a Hungryman platter, which has just about every breakfast food you could imagine. Chris watches me eat, then helps me out when I start to lose steam and offers to pay before I can ask him to cover it because I spent my last dollar on booze. We don’t talk much on the ride home, but it’s a comfortable silence. It seems some of the big questions are out of the way, which is a relief.

“What did the guys have to say about it?” I ask Chris, cringing at what his response might be.

“Nothing,” he says. “And they won’t either.”

I’m guessing some threats have been made. Chris is watching my back yet again. Not much has changed since sixth grade. Kind of makes me feel like a loser to the nth degree.

It’s super late when we get back to Chris’s house. I don’t worry about waking up his parents. They’re in the Cayman Islands for a few days, where they have a vacation home. Chris stayed back for Tabs’s party tomorrow. Rather, today.

Upstairs, I ask Chris if I can use his shower, but it’s not until I’m out that I realize I don’t have any clean clothes. I really don’t want to put on my soggy, grimy boxer briefs, so I wrap the towel around my waist and go out to Chris’s bedroom, where he’s reclined on his bed staring up at the ceiling.

“Hey, man, can I borrow some clothes?”

Chris looks at me then, head to toe and back again, and I swear there’s something hot and illicit in the way he sizes me up. A desire that is definitely more than friends. But then he snaps out of it and hustles off his bed to grab some clothes out of his drawers, pushes the stack at me, and won’t make eye contact. It’s a lot like that morning after Sebastian. Like this big, dirty secret he doesn’t want to talk about or even acknowledge.

Something for me to tackle another day.

I dress inside the bathroom, and when I come out, Chris has gotten me a glass of water and a Tylenol. He points to his bed and tells me he’ll sleep on the futon. I thank him again for finding my drunk ass and not telling my mom.

“Just don’t let it happen again,” he says.

As I’m drifting off to sleep, Chris reaches up and finds my ear, flicks it, and whispers, “Happy birthday, Theo.”

And despite all the bullshit of the day, I figure I’ll be all right, because in spite of being outed in the most publicly humiliating way, I still have Chris in my corner, and that’s really all I need.