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When they get back to the house, Ryan has to practically carry Avery inside, he’s so sleepy. He’s yawned about eighty times, and his eyelids are closing curtains. After apprising his parents of Ryan’s new plan (they seem neither put off nor pleased by the fact that they won’t spend tomorrow with him), Avery goes to the living room with the total intention of staying up with him…but eighty more yawns later, Ryan releases him to his own bed, saying again how much he enjoyed the show, and how much he’s looking forward to seeing it tomorrow.
—
Once Avery hasgone to bed, Ryan unfolds everything he folded so finely this morning, and re-creates everything he dismantled. He tugs himself to sleep, then startles to the predawn alarm. He makes the room a living room again, then steps quietly through the door. He is grateful that he hasn’t woken anyone up. He is grateful to be able to leave without saying a word.
It’s not that he doesn’t feel the urge to stay. As he drives away in the ease of a Saturday-morning highway, he longs to go back, to have breakfast with Avery and his family. But this way, he tells himself, he won’t wear out this welcome, and can swing back this evening without any endless hoursstretching out to make them realize how much he’s asking of them.
He does not text his parents to tell them he’ll be back in town; he’s hoping his mother won’t decide to do any shopping this morning, although that was always going to be a risk. By the time he gets to the grocery, he is fully caffeinated, and talks to his coworkers as if he slept in his own bed last night. Once it’s an acceptable hour, he texts Alicia to tell her he’s around, and she drops by during his lunch break. They sit in her car with ready-made sandwiches, and he talks about what it was like to be there, to be introduced and accepted as Avery’s boyfriend and see him having such a good time onstage. Alicia asks if Ryan’s talked to his parents at all, and he shakes his head.
“You know you’re going to have to, right?” she says.
“After the weekend,” he tells her.
“Okay. After the weekend. I want to see you in school on Monday. I am not allowing you to run away, no matter how nice Avery’s parents are. Frankly, I’m nicer.”
Ryan swears he’ll be in school on Monday. He hasn’t even let himself think any further than that. Once his shift is over, he wishes he could stop off at his house for more clothes and a shower, but that’s not really an option. (There have been more texts from his mom, asking when he’s going to be home. He hasn’t answered yet.) He cleans himself up in the employee restroom as best he can, throws his work vest in the communal hamper, and heads back to Avery’s town. There’s a little more traffic now—mostly trucks on longhauls, but also some people going Saturday-night places. The plan is for him to meet Avery’s mom at the high school. (Avery’s dad took the matinee.) Ryan arrives in Marigold early, so grabs a bite at Chipotle. While he’s there, he sees a few tables of kids his age. Some of them could be going to the play. Others, he’s sure, wouldn’t be caught dead going back into the school building on a weekend, for whatever reason. Some of them might be friends with Avery. Some of them might have given Avery a hard time. Ryan realizes he knows a lot about the people in the play, and not a whole lot about anyone outside of it. Nobody in the Chipotle seems to have noticed him at all. Because he’s sitting alone, it’s like he doesn’t exist.
It was way too awkward to even think of asking Avery for his mom’s phone number, so Ryan scans the parking lot for her, and then does the same when he gets to the lobby. Finally, he finds her talking to two kids who must be friends of Avery’s. They are clearly a couple; not just because they’re holding hands, but because they seem to check with each other before answering anything Avery’s mom asks.
Avery’s mom smiles when Ryan comes into view.
“There he is!” she says. “I’m so glad you made it—I realized way too late that I don’t have your number, and I think Avery’s phone is locked away somewhere right now. Do you know Aurora and Dusty?”
The couple turns as one and says hi as one to Ryan. He realizes this has to be the pair of friends Avery told him about, who always do everything as a couple. Aurora hasshampoo-commercial hair and a friendly smile. Dusty seems strangely familiar to Ryan, with a broad forehead and broad shoulders. As they shake hands in greeting, Ryan figures he’s generic enough in his type that he probably just reminds him of someone who goes to his own school.
“We’re so excited to finally see Avery onstage!” Aurora bubbles. “He’s always been so good at acting!”
What doesthatmean?Ryan wonders. He sees the question flash across Avery’s mom’s face, too.
“Isn’t that right?” Aurora asks Dusty. But Dusty has been busy looking at Ryan.
“Totally,” Dusty says, turning back to his girlfriend. But not before Ryan notices the attention that’s been coming his way. Almost like Dusty recognizes him from somewhere.
He doesn’t have much more time to think about it, because Aurora and Dusty say they need to go get their seats—not as part of a larger group, just the two of them. That leaves Ryan with Avery’s mom, who asks him about the drive, about work, about everything except the part she’s probably most curious about: the unanswered texts from hismom.
“Thank you for leaving the family room in such pristine condition,” she says as they walk to their seats. “I just wanted you to know I appreciate that.”
“It was my pleasure,” Ryan replies, immediately finding his own words to be pretty dumb. His pleasure? Really?
But he seems to be the only one who finds it a weird response. Avery’s mom says, “It’s wonderful that you couldbe here this weekend. I know it hasn’t given you and Avery a whole lot of time together, but I’m sure he appreciates it. And hopefully you’ll come back another weekend when there isn’t quite so much theater to attend.”
“Definitely,” Ryan says as Avery’s mom leads him into a row. “Thank you.”
He notices there is no opening here for him to ask to stay beyond tomorrow, to be taken in as anything besides a guest. But that certainly matches his expectations. He thinks it’s remarkable to have an invitation to come back, given so easily.
Some announcement must be made in the lobby, because soon everyone is flowing toward their seats. Ryan looks around and sees it isn’t nearly as full as it was last night—but he figures that’s to be expected, with opening night the big draw. He spots Aurora and Dusty a few rows ahead, across the aisle. As if summoned, Dusty turns his head and they make eye contact for a second, until Aurora says something and Dusty is summoned back to her. Canned curtain music begins, and the lights in the auditorium dim. The curtain rises to show the ground floor of the LeFevre residence. Ryan looks back at Dusty one more time, and that’s when the recognition kicks in.
After Ryan first realized he was gay, he thought this realization would enable him to realize who else was gay, too—but in Kindling, this theory didn’t particularly hold. After his lightning flash of a relationship with Isaiah, he decided he probably needed to extend his search radius in order tofind someone more on his own wavelength. So at sixteen he joined Tinder and said he was eighteen (choosing Tinder because it seemed to be about dating, not sex). It was depressing how few fish this net caught. His settings were only for other eighteen-year-olds, figuring a few of them might also be in high school. He set his radius for five miles. Nothing. Ten miles. Nothing. Twenty-five miles. A few photos. Fifty miles. A few more. A hundred miles—with a few minor cities involved, suddenly there were a few dozen kids his age (or thereabouts). He became expert at cross-referencing with other social media, to make sure it wasn’t an adult in disguise. And one of the very first people he matched and messaged with was undeniably Dusty, going by his initials, DB.
Things didn’t get very far. DB wasn’t out to anyone, and Ryan had just been through that with Isaiah. Still, DB was normal, at a time when Ryan really needed some other normal gay kids in his life. They messaged about crushes on Troye Sivan and Timothée Chalamet, and came up with a conspiracy theory that Troye and Timothée were actually the same person. Ryan shared how tough it was sharing his identity with his parents, and DB sympathized, implying that the reaction he’d get from his own parents would be similar. DB’s full-face pic wasn’t on Tinder, but he’d sent it to Ryan early on, an offering of trust. Ryan didn’t feel a romantic spark, but figured they’d get together at some point to commiserate in person. Then one day he checked the app and DB was gone, completely gone.
And now, here he is.
—
If Ryan isdistracted in the audience, Avery is also distracted on the stage. He doesn’t feel good about the fact that if given a chance to kill Dennis Travers, he just might take it.Don’t Forget Your Shoes!is only one plot point away from being a murder mystery, so why not open a trapdoor on the stage for Dennis to fall through and make the transition official?
He is not the only one feeling this way. As they wait in the wings, Liz Macy reports that Mr. Horslen seems to be ready to stuff Dennis in a locker and call it a day. Dennis overcaffeinated before and after yesterday’s evening performance, leaving him largely sleepless for the matinee and then bolstered by another manic jolt (a Pamplona worth of Red Bulls) prior to the performance at hand. As a result, he seems to have wandered into the farce by way ofLong Day’s Journey into Night,and no one can mitigate his unhinged affectations. In a light scene where Lucius is meant to occupy Baby Winston with a game of horsey, Dennis managed to bringThe Godfatherto mind. Penny, playing Baby Winston, had enough and pounced on him harder than required (garnering her the nickname Sweeney Toddler, which will stick for years).
