“No, but she’s going to find out.” Aidan’s gone noticeably pale in the last few minutes. Maybe he doesn’t need any rum. Or perhaps he needs extra.
“Okay…” I say slowly.
“Covey—” He says my name in that same exasperated voice he always did as kids. The one that says I’m not paying enough attention. “She’s going to find out about us. That we’re”—he looks around the room, then whispers—“dating.” He uses air quotes as he says the last bit.
Oh.Oh. “And that’s a problem?” I say it as a question, because honestly, I’m not clear on where things are going right now. I feel like I walked into this discussion at the halfway point, and I’m not sure how to catch up. Is there a synopsis somewhere? PerhapsCliffsNotes?
“Not a problem.” He stops and considers. Maybe I’m not the only one who’s confused. “I… I hadn’t considered it. I thought it would only be your family we were lying to.”
Okay, now I’m catching up. “You don’t want your family to know?” It’s mostly his mom around here. Aidan’s parents split up when we were teenagers, though his dad was rarely around even before that. He worked as a long-haul trucker for years, spending weekdays on the road and weekends at home. After the split, he stuck around Burlington until Aidan graduated from high school, then moved out to Chicago. As far as I know, he doesn’t visit often. That could’ve changed. I guess that’s another thing I should ask about. A good boyfriend would know that kind of information.
Scratch that. A good friend should know that kind of thing, regardless of a romantic relationship.
“I’m pretty honest with her about my life. Not intimate details, but I don’t hide anything.” I can practically hear theanymoreat the end of that sentence. Aidan came out as bisexual to his parents when we were in eighth grade. He told me a year earlier—after I told him I was gay—but was scared to tell his parents. I thought they’d be fine, but he worried himself sick over it. Literally.
“I think it’ll be hard to keep our moms from talking.” I bite my lip to try to come up with a good solution. “Maybe we could pull your mom aside and tell her it’s fake?” I doubt that’ll work. I know Aidan’s mom well enough to know she’ll frown on lying. But the way Aidan looks right now, like he’s about to pass out on our kitchen tile, I can’t let that happen. This whole scheme is to create fewer problems, not more.
“No, she’ll rat you out.”
“You don’t need to do this if it’s going to make you uncomfortable.” Is it too late to put an ad in the newspaper?Wanted: one fake boyfriend for the holidays. Must be willing to accommodate a demanding dance schedule.Now that I’ve been in a fake relationship with Aidan, it’s hard to imagine being in one with someone else. Is that weird? Yeah, that’s probably weird. “I’ll be fine. It’ll suck for a little while, but everyone will eventually get over it.”
What I can’t get over is hurting Aidan. That would be too far. Ultimately, I hope that we’ll be best friends again when this is over. That only happens if the amicable breakup is, well, amicable.
“No.” He shakes his head so hard I’m afraid he’ll get dizzy. “I volunteered and I’m standing by that commitment.”
“Aidan—” He puts his hand over my mouth to cut me off.
“I panicked for a minute, but it’s not a big deal.” His hand’s still over my mouth, so I do the mature thing and lick it. “Covey!” He snatches his hand away and looks at it, like I might’ve left some slime behind, then wipes it on my shirt. “You’re like one of my kindergarteners.”
Kindergarten—he’s a kindergarten teacher. I’m about to ask him some other questions on my get-to-know-Aidan list when my mom walks in, hand on her hips, shaking her head.
“What’s going on here?” She looks between the two of us, and I have flashbacks to the hundreds of times across our childhood that she asked the same question. Aidan and I look at each other, then at my mom.
“I licked him.” I shrug as the words tumble out of my mouth.
My mom’s eyes go wide and dart between the two of us. “Well… dinner.” She turns and walks out of the kitchen so fast I swear there’s a trail of smoke behind her.
“Covey. Seriously. You know what that sounds like, right?”
Um… oh. “Shit. Well, maybe that will help sell our story.”
“I don’t want your family thinking that you’re giving me blow jobs in the kitchen.”
“Hi, Dad,” I say as my father walks in, stops, turns, and leaves.
If this was a cartoon, steam would be coming out of Aidan’s ears. As it is, his face is so red I’m not sure there’s enough blood left for the rest of his body. “Cider?” I pour a generous helping of rum into his mug before handing it over. “Come on. Dinner.” I grab his free hand and lead him to the dining room. My family all pretend to be busy fussing over the plates and silverware, but it’s clear the real focus is on the two of us.
Before long, everyone’s forgotten about our kitchen theatrics in favor of focusing on their food. Even Aidan seems to relax a little bit as he eats and chats with my family. Like me, they seem to fall back into a routine with him easily, talking like only a few days had passed since the last time he sat at this table with us. I wish I could remember when it was. At one time, he probably ate here at least once a week. Then, suddenly, there was a last time.
How manylast timeshad there been in our relationship? The last time we hung out in the treehouse, the last time we went skating on the pond, the last time we had a sleepover in my bedroom.
I hope this marks the beginning of something new, replacing those last times with new first times and next times.
“So, how long have you two been dating?”
I nearly choke on a bit of mashed potatoes, which takes some work.
“Not long,” Aidan says, smacking me on the back.
