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These are teenage thoughts. Ryan knows that. And with Avery, a little of the old childhood wonder peeks through the clouds. Why experience a place like this as a clear-eyed adolescent when you can engage with it as a dream-eyed kid, seeing castles in every cloud, chocolate in every hiding place? Ryan plays along, and it’s a relief to be playing for once. By the fifth hole they’re not even golfing anymore; they’re just describing all the things they don’t really see. Avery erects the Taj Mahal on hole five, and Ryan presents the world’s first antigravity mini-golf on hole six. At hole seven, they start walking hand in hand, surveyors of what’s become a theme park of their own design. Instead of solemnly holding hands, mourning pose, they swing them back and forth, stretch their bodies away from each other and then pull back together. The sun isn’t shining, but they think it is.
It is not as simple as Ryan looking at Avery and feeling they’ve known each other forever. In fact, it doesn’t feel like that at all. Ryan feels like he is just getting to know Avery, and that getting to know Avery isn’t going to be like gettingto know anyone else he’s ever gotten to know. Not if they can be like this.
There’s a wishing well in the middle of the ninth hole. This is not imaginary—it is sitting there, largely intact from its glory days. Avery reaches into his pocket and pulls out a penny.
“No,” Ryan finds himself saying. “Don’t.”
Avery shoots him a quizzical look. “Don’t?”
“I’ve thrown pennies in that well all my life. Not a single wish has ever come true.”
As a kid he wished for money or fame or toys or friends. More recent wishes have been for so many other things, all of them synonymous with love or escape.
He worries he’s ruined it now, by suddenly being serious.
“Here,” Avery says, offering his only penny. “Maybe you didn’t do it right.”
Avery takes the copper coin and moves it to Ryan’s lips. Ryan holds there, not really knowing what’s happening. Then Avery leans in and kisses him, kisses him so that they are both kissing the penny. When he pulls back, the penny falls, and Avery catches it in his palm.
“Now make a wish,” he says.
And Ryan thinks,I want to be happy.
“Got it?” Avery asks.
Ryan nods, and Avery tosses the penny into the well. They both listen, but neither hears it land. Then Avery returns to him, comes closer again, and now they are kissingwith nothing between them. Lips closed, then lips open. Hands empty, then hands entwined.
A minute or two of this, then Avery pulls back and says, “We’re only half done!”
They walk, fingers still woven together, to the tenth hole.
“It’s a cloud,” Ryan says. “The whole thing is a cloud.”
—
Avery is thinking,This might be one of the best days of my life. How fitting it is that they’re golfing through clouds, because that’s certainly where their heads must be. Avery likes that. His head feels free in the clouds.
“You’re cirrusly good at this,” he compliments Ryan, squeezing his hand.
“You’re pretty cumulonimble yourself,” Ryan replies, squeezing back. The fact that he stumbles while saying it makes it even more endearing.
The flow of the day feels so natural…so it’s jarring when Ryan abruptly turns, looking to his right.
“What?” Avery asks. But even as he asks, he can hear people coming and looks to see four guys their age striding over. He tries to tell himself it’s no big deal.
Then Ryan says, “Shit.”
As the four of them get closer, Avery has some idea of where this is going. It’s the sneering looks, the swagger, the almost aimless spite in their laughter. It’s a particular brand of asshole, easily found in straight cis teenage boys traveling in packs.
“What’s up, Ryan?” one of them taunts. “Who’s your boyfriend?”
Ryan lets go of Avery’s hand.
“What do you want, Skylar?” he says.
“We saw a car out front. What are you boys up to?”
Avery notices now that Skylar and one of the other guys are holding golf clubs. Skylar sees him looking and smiles. Then he spots a bottle on the ground and swings the club, knocking the bottle in Ryan and Avery’s direction. Ryan doesn’t flinch, but Avery does. All the clouds have left them now. They’re too visible.
