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His skill as a ballplayer.
His random fits of compassion.
Like right now. Letting me sleep in his bed with him. Letting me be this close to him.
“Are you one?” his voice kept echoing. It was as if the echoes of those words still lived in the corners of the room.
“One what?” My echoes must have still lived in the room, too.
“A fag.”
I kept watching Stefan sleep, his muscular chest in that white shirt rising and falling with his every breath. I felt, for the first time in my short little life, like I truly belonged somewhere. Stefan was the bro I never had, but he was also something else. I couldn’t put a name on it.
Not yet. Not then. Maybe not ever.
I lifted my hand up and brought it to my chest.
It grazed his shoulder.
He didn’t budge. He kept sleeping, kept breathing, kept lying there without moving a muscle.
“I don’t care, by the way,” came the echo of his soft voice from my memory that day.
“About what?”
“If you are one.”
“One what?”
And then I let my hand rest on his shoulder. It was actually, truly, fully on his shoulder. Still, Stefan Baker didn’t budge. And so then, slowly, ever slowly, I let my face settle there, too.
My new pillow: Stefan Baker’s muscular shoulder.
And he didn’t move or shrug me off of him. He let me cuddle his side. I never felt happier than I did that night of the party when, long after all the other boys had left, I got to sleep pressed against Stefan Baker’s side. I felt perfect. I felt whole.
The sleep timer expired. His TV shut off.
And there we were, nestled, sleeping in the dark together.
“One what?”
I shut my eyes and smiled.
07
STEFAN
I stare at the mug on the table. It was steaming when I first sat down with it. Now it’s cold.
“Got any plans today?”
The question comes from my mom, who’s totally out of sight curled up on the couch in the living room with her nose buried in a laptop. She’s probably spreeing on Amazon, if I had to guess.
I clear my throat. “Was thinking I might take up a job with Parker. You remember him from way back in the day. He’s in the middle of renovating a master bath for his wife. Big tiled shower, new sink, walk-in closet … the works.”
“Oh, that sweet boy from the football team. He’s married?”
After our time in Little League, Parker didn’t impress the high school baseball coach, but somehow made the cut for the football team. We stayed friends. “Yeah, Mom. You knew about that.”
“Such a sweet boy.”
The soft, nearly nonexistent sigh that comes from the family desktop computer behind me is my only reminder that my dad is here. Also, it’s his subtle way of expressing his disappointment in me. I might literally have forgotten he was even there if it wasn’t for the tiny sigh.
Which, by the way, I ignore. “So I’ll probably head off in a few, see if he needs a hand. You need anything from the store while I’m out? You or Rudy?”
“Oh, I think we’re just fine, sweetie, thank you. Ed?” she calls out. “Are you good on your beer? Do we need anything?”
I barely shift my head, inclining an ear in the general vicinity of my father, whose only response is a short grunt.
“You sure?” prompts my mom, who was always able to speak my dad’s grunts fluently. “How about toilet paper? Oh, you could pick up some bandages, Stefan. Rudy had a hard hit last week and used them all up, remember?”
“Sure thing.”
“Maybe pick some up for … yourself, too,” she adds delicately.
I bring a hand up to my forehead instinctively, my fingers grazing the now-scabbed-over mystery wound I earned last night. Other than a bruise on my cheek, all of my wounds are hidden under my clothes, so I was able to downgrade last night’s violent “incident” as more of a bar scuffle than a fight.
But as I keep drumming my fingers along the side of my mug, I realize that the truth is my mind is still a bit lost in nostalgia land after my visit with Ryan. So many old feelings have been dug up that I’m finding harder and harder to bury. I can’t seem to take a single damned sip from my mug because I keep thinking about the coffee Ryan served me at his house.
And the way his eyes kept drifting down to my chest.
Yeah, that wasn’t lost on me. Why else did I go and taunt him like I did, peeling away my towel and making him lose his shit?
I chuckle just thinking about it, my eyes glued to the mug in front of me while my fingers continue to drum away.
“Something funny?”
The chuckle dies a quick, merciful death in my throat. The question, cold and detached, came from my father.
