Jon From High School

by Jeremy Jenkins

  “What was your handle?” the girl asked.

  “Just my name,” I said. “Vi—”

  “Victor Petoskey,” Jon answered for her.

  I was pleasantly surprised to hear the way my name came out of his mouth. It was the way someone whispers a bible verse; the way they talk about something sacred.

  Was I still sacred to him?

  The girl looked at Jon.

  “I went to high school with him,” he explained.

  “You never told me that!” she said. “Dammit, Jon!”

  I wanted to make her go away. I wanted to talk to Jon alone; catch up.

  I wanted to find out what happened ten years ago; why he suddenly stopped talking to me.

  But the bond of friendship or… or whatever between us had atrophied. It wasn’t appropriate to try to get him alone, to ask him out to coffee, or whatever. But what was acceptable, was asking him:

  “So what have you been up to these days, Jon? It’s been forever.”

  And it had. It had been forever, but I hadn’t stopped thinking about him.

  He hadn’t left my mind throughout my relationship with Martin, he stuck through my brain, bouncing around all through college when I’d had all those flings, and he lingered in my thoughts all throughout my first adult relationship.

  I was a different person than I was then. But there were still tethers tying my soul to his.

  There were still threads stretching between us; I could feel them now.

  “It has been forever,” he replied. “I hope you’ve been well.”

  But the look behind his eyes was pure panic.

  I understood.

  He was still closeted.

  And he was still living in fear of being outed.

  “Yeah, I’ve been well,” I said lamely. “Still in band, as you can see.”

  God, I was such an idiot.

  But being around Jon Preston made everyone an idiot, I think. I couldn’t keep my eyes from tracing his broad shoulders, his thick, manly arms. Man, I bet he’d worked out every single day since high school; adding all this marvel superhero muscle to his frame.

  I tore my eyes away from him and back to the girl.

  Her face glowed in the light from her phone as she presumably followed me on all the social media.

  I wanted to pull the threads between me and Jon tighter, but I knew there was no way to do that without outing him or making his girlfriend suspicious.

  And I kept my promises. Even after ten years, I would keep his promise.

  Anyway, I didn’t have to think about it too much longer, because they thanked me and then made their way through the crowd.

  I felt like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer.

  A few days later, I was at a local cafe, taking a break from producing for the day and reading The Great Gatsby.

  I made it a habit to read paperback books. There was something about it that recharged my creative brain in a way reading something on a Kindle never could. And I’d been on a classical book kick lately—I hadn’t read this thing since High School.

  It was still one of my favorites.

  My phone lit up nearby.

  I frowned at it. Why did I ever leave this thing on the table to distract me? It completely killed my focus to talk about the business side of music production when I was trying to recharge—

  It was an Instagram message from… from…

  From him.

  I closed my book with a snap and opened the message.

  When I got to our chat, I could still see the last conversation we’d had ten years ago.

  When he asked me if we could talk. Now was a new message on the screen, showing right up under my response. In the DM world, no time had passed at all.

  It was great seeing you at the show yesterday.

  Then the three dots.

  Jon is typing!

  I bit my lip and watched his next text bloom on the screen:

  We should catch up.

  Happiness jingled in my stomach. Jon Preston wanted to meet up!

  But then I had to remember: there was no need to get excited. He didn’t want anything with me—plus, he had that girlfriend with him. And I didn’t need to covet him like that anymore. The social dynamics had flipped. Now, I was the one that was famous. And who was he? He hadn’t made the NBA or anything—I’d checked periodically over the past few years, whenever a wayward thought about him wandered through my mind.

  He was probably some insurance salesman or something, chained to a life of mediocrity.

  He’d chosen that life. He’d chosen the path of least resistance.

  Jon Preston turned out to be everything everyone expected him to be.

  But then… I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing something.

  I looked back down at our text. At his suggestion.

  How dare he. How dare he reach out to me, after all these years of nothing.

  I let the anger pass, then thought about what to do.

  I pushed and pulled with myself. There was nothing to gain here—he was going to waste my time, just like last time we’d known each other. With “straight” guys, you never got straight answers. And the hole he’d left in my heart would stay that way.

  I knew that, going in. I knew that when I typed my response.

  Yet, a few hours later, I found myself getting into his truck anyway.

  We’d exchanged a few texts back and forth, and somehow, some way, the ghosts of the past convinced me to dig for answers.

  His massive black truck pulled into the hotel parking lot, gleaming in the sun like an obsidian jewel.

  I knew it was meant to impress everyone who looked at it, but all I saw was masculine inferiority on wheels.

  I smiled when it rolled to a stop in front of me, thinking back to the time when he got in my car: the gayest car of all time, my first-gen Prius.

  Jon rolled down the window.

  I had a few clever greetings prepared, but when I saw all of the emotions that crossed his face, all of them leaked out of my brain and onto the pavement.

  There was…. there was definitely still something here.

  Something I wasn’t seeing.

  Wordlessly, I stepped up into his cab.

  He let out a small breath and a slow smile bloomed on his face.

  I could feel his smile mirrored on my lips.

  Nothing had changed. Yet, everything had changed at the same time.

  I could feel that same old connection between us, tying us together across time and space.

  I still knew him. I still really knew him.

  But what I had to know was if I was still the only one that did.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  His voice was low and slow, filled with more maturity than I remembered. “You, too.”

  “You look the same. But… but…”

  “Older?” I said.

  “More… refined,” he finished.

  “I could say the same about you.”

  He chuckled, then relaxed his shoulders. “I’m glad you think so.”

  This was weird. This was different.

  This was a different Jon that I’d known. He seemed… calmer. More sure of himself.

  He pointed his truck down the road and drove through the city. The buildings passed by slowly, watching us with hundreds of eyes.

  “I was surprised when I saw you,” he said, merging off the highway.

  “Same,” I said. “But not surprised you had someone with you.”

  He didn’t say anything.

  Yep, still firmly trapped in the closet.

  “Are you seeing anyone?” he asked.

  His voice sounded normal, but I noticed the tension in his jaw. I saw his shoulders move a bit.

  “That’s not relevant,” I said. “I thought this talk was about catching up and catching a game.”

  “It was a normal question,” he reasoned. “The first thing old friends do when they meet up is ask about relatio
nships.”

  “Do they?” I asked. Honestly, I didn’t know.

  I didn’t have any old friends. Touring tended to uproot you and pull you away from everything you’d bonded with.

  “Sorry if that question was prying. I’m just curious, is all.”

  Hah. Curious.

  I didn’t know if he did that on purpose, or he was trying to come across as a clueless jock. Or maybe…

  Maybe he was tripping over his words because he was worried.

  His knuckles flexed as he gripped the steering wheel.

  Oh my god, Jon Preston was nervous to talk to me!

  We had a normal, surface-level conversation the rest of the drive to the bar. But in the back of my mind, I marveled at how the power dynamics had shifted.

  Jon was admiring me, someone who’d been a complete nobody last time we had… our friendship. And now, the roles had completely reversed!

  I couldn’t handle a deep conversation right now. I was too busy trying to regain balance in the back of my mind.

  Though, under our awkward get-to-know-you-again questions floating around the cab of his truck, I couldn’t deny that there was still that vibrant energy at work under the surface.

  Maybe that’s what people called chemistry.

  I’d never felt anything like this before or after Jon. Feeling it hit me in the face again shattered through all of my reasons I’d used to get over him. They were thin as paper against the open flame.

  Finally, he pulled the truck into a tight parking spot outside of a shitty dive bar.

  “This is the place?” I asked. It had a dilapidated sign out front, looked pretty seedy, and was close to a set of railroad tracks.

  “Trust me,” he said, donning a pair of Oakleys.

  The wings of passion in my stomach took off. There was something so… so beautifully ugly about that look. That look of a bully; the look of someone that would disrespect you and make you feel like garbage.

  Maybe I was fucked up. Maybe I had daddy issues.

  But hell, I had a type. And that type had one face:

  Jon’s.

  We walked into the dark, nearly empty bar, and took the two seats at the end. A long mirror stretched behind a jewel-like collection of liquor, doubling its size.

  I watched Jon in the reflection.

  “What are you having, Jon?” the greasy bartender asked.

  So he was a regular? Did that mean he was an alcoholic now?

  Simultaneously I was filled with a just-as-I-thought feeling and a crushing disappointment. It was known that seeing your high school bully failing at life produced a delicious sense of Schadenfreude, but Jon was more than just my high school tormentor.

  He was my bully, yes. But in that last year at Shady Grove? He was my crush. He was my experiment, my toy. Though I only told myself those things so that it would hurt less when he inevitably switched back to a raging douchebag.

  The truth was, Jon Preston had been my everything, once upon a time.

  He ordered an IPA from the barkeep and I requested a sour.

  Jon gave me side-eye, but I ignored it.

  I wasn’t going to let him impose his toxic masculinity on me. I was going to get whatever drink I damn well pleased to drink. And at the moment, it happened to be a fruity sour.

  Jon turned his gaze up to the screen, where a basketball game was playing.

  “Do you still play?” I asked.

  He turned his tawny eyes to mine. “No.”

  “But you played in college. It was all you ever wanted,” I said, trying to keep the anger out of my voice. Honestly, I was surprised it was still there after all these years. Yet, I’d found a vein of pain while mining through my memories, and I couldn’t stop until I dug all of it up.

  “I did play in college, yeah. I went to Dartmouth—”

  “I heard. You don’t have to try so hard with me,” I said.

  He fingered his golden glass. “What happened to you?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, grabbing my own.

  “I never heard from you again. I thought…”

  “You’re the one that stopped talking to me,” I pointed out. “Plus, in high school, you treated me like garbage.”

  He ran his hand through his hair.

  Still blond, still perfectly styled. Damn, he could have been a model if he wanted to. Even still at twenty-eight, he had that movie-star look to him.

  “I’m sorry about that. I could say anything to you, but everything would be an excuse. The truth is, there’s no excuse for what I did. I wanted you to know I’ve thought about you… about the way I treated you, almost every day since then.”

  “So why are you coming to me now?” I asked, my voice rising in volume. “You’ve had plenty of time to make things right. And you choose to ‘come clean’ or whatever when my career’s taking off?!”

  Jon was silent and stared down at his beer. “I know the timing is shitty. But better late than never, right?”

  He gave me a weak smile that I did not return.

  I took another sip of my sour and set it on the bar with a clunk. “Was it worth it?”

  “Was what worth it?”

  “Trading it.”

  He sighed and looked down.

  He couldn’t look me in the eye. He was too chicken.

  Suddenly, I felt powerful. Here I was, facing one of my demons of the past, and coming on his face all over again.

  “I want to say yes, it was worth it. I thought that’s what I wanted at the time. This life. This normal, boring life. All my friends think I’m a bro, but I can’t… I dunno, talk to them about anything.”

  “Your friends?” I thought of the other three douches he hung out with back in high school.

  Kyle. Terry. Phil.

  He nodded. “We come here all the time.”

  “Why am I not surprised? You all move to a city—Chicago of all places—so you can do your investment banking or whatever the fuck it is you do, to keep bullying other people.”

  “I’m not an investment banker,” he said, a tinge of annoyance in his voice. “I’m in real estate.”

  “Equally douchey!” I cried.

  I knew I was getting on my high horse here, and I wasn’t making much sense, and he probably didn’t deserve all this venom I’d saved up in my words, but I couldn’t stop spewing it.

  All I knew was that I wanted to make him feel bad.

  Really bad.

  I wanted him to feel like a loser. Just like how he made me feel back in the day.

  And I thought I was a better person than that.

  But I wasn’t.

  Worst of all, I wasn’t surprised.

  “How is being in real estate douchey?”

  “Because!” I cried, taking another swig. “It just is! Don’t you see how… how… how stereotypical you are?”

  The corners of my mouth began to lift without my permission.

  No, I wasn’t having a good time. I couldn’t have a good time; I was yelling.

  But damn, it felt good to yell.

  “And you’re not stereotypical?!” Jon said. “You’re the same loser emo kid from back in high school, only with a different haircut!”

  “I’m doing better in life than you are,” I snarled, the grin curling on my lips.

  No, no, no!

  Fire swirled in his eyes as he swirled his golden drink. “I’m tired of having to face that!”

  “Oh, so my success makes you feel threatened? What a tragedy!”

  He stared at his beer for a long time. I could tell he had something lingering on the tip of his tongue, and he was wrestling with himself about whether he wanted to say it.

  Then, finally, he said in a low tone:

  “I write sins, not tragedies.”

  10

  Jon

  He chuckled at that, and some of the tension eased.

  I knew I was going to get my ass handed to me when we reconnected. I deserved it.

  But I’d rather get a ve
rbal ass-whooping than have to go through another day of my life living a lie. I needed to set things straight.

  I needed to tell him the truth.

  “Are you still… are you still in contact with Martin?”

  He scrunched up his face. “Martin from high school?”

  I thought of the evil look on his face when he locked me in the closet. How he threatened me with that photograph of me making out with Victor.

  How that picture was still floating out there somewhere, waiting to be found.

  Victor searched my face. Then seemed to lose some of his fire from earlier. “…no. No I don’t talk to him anymore.”

  A sigh of relief escaped my lips.

  “Why?”

  “Huh?”

  “Why did you bring him up, of all people?”

  I took a long sip of my IPA. “You ever want to know the reason—the real reason—I stopped talking to you in high school?”

  He let out a bark of laughter and his drink danced with the motion. “You stopped talking to me all the time. Hot, cold. Hot, cold. …hot. And then nothing.”

  “I know. I was a total douchebag,” I admitted.

  There were still nights I didn’t sleep, filled with regret. At first, I thought it was because I was afraid that picture would get out. But after all of my self-involved tendencies—okay, not all, but a lot of them—fell away, I found that I was fixated more on Victor.

  Wondering how he was doing. What he was doing.

  Who he was doing it with.

  I wanted to throw basketball after basketball into his life to get his attention.

  But I couldn’t. My hands were still turning the knob on that closet door fruitlessly.

  “I’ve been afraid,” I admitted.

  I thought Victor would yell at me. Make fun of me. Make me feel as small as I made him feel. Hell, I sure would have deserved it.

  Instead, he looked at me with… with empathy. Just like all those years ago, he was ready to offer me a bandaid.

  “Afraid of what?” he asked softly.

  “I honestly don’t know why you’re even talking to me, after all that happened,” I said. “But I’m glad you are. I’m still—” I gave the bar a quick once-around. “—I’m still in the closet. Mostly.”

  “Yeah, I saw that you have a girlfriend now,” he said.

  I chuckled. “Katie isn’t my girlfriend. Just a friend.”