by Jason June
Mr. Bogosian eyed Reese’s movements. “Excellent work, Reese.”
A deep gurgle emanated from Max’s stomach.
“Max,” I asked, placing a tender hand on his shoulder. “Are you feeling oka—”
BLEEEEEEEEEEEEECK!
Max threw up everywhere. I clattered back from the table just in time to avoid getting hit by the thick, chunky wave of orange vomit.
“Ohmigawd,” I whispered. The average person throws up about .2 gallons of puke whenever they upchuck. I’d looked it up after I went a bit overboard on rum and Diet Dr Pepper at Lu’s place once. But Max heaved gallons. Plural.
“Holy shit,” Julian said. He sounded completely in awe. “That has to set a world record.”
“M-Max?” I tried putting my hand on his shoulder again, but he leaped up before I could comfort him. He grabbed his now-puke-splattered What Would Dolly Do? tote and ran from the workroom.
“Max? Max, wait,” Mr. Bogosian called. But the door slammed shut, the sound echoing down the hall as we all sat in stunned silence.
Mr. Bogosian looked tote-ally bewildered. Everyone did. “Somebody should make sure he makes it to the nurse’s office.”
I whipped my hand in the air. “I’ll do it.” But I wasn’t the only one to volunteer. Damon had his hand up too.
“Thanks, gentlemen.” He stared wide-eyed as Max’s puke started dripping on the floor. “I’m not even sure if janitorial has mops big enough for this.”
As I followed Damon toward the door, Reese said, “As we say in the theater, the show must go on. We shouldn’t derail the whole class just because Max loves attention.”
“Jerk,” I called back just as the door slammed shut behind me. It might not have been the most mature thing, but it still felt really fracking good to say. Max loves attention? Who in their right mind would want a spew spotlight?
“You’re not wrong,” Damon said. “Reese can cut kind of deep when he’s upset. He and Max both have a hard time holding it in when they’re heartbroken. Max more literally, I guess.”
“Heartbroken? Reese?” I doubted that any kind of emotion could creep through Reese’s icy demeanor. It still baffled me that Albert and Reese could be friends, even with the Digimals connection.
Damon motioned back toward the workroom. “I didn’t think they’d be able to last in the same class very long. Did you notice how sad Max looked every time Mr. Bogosian said Reese’s name?”
“Wait a minute.” My mind ran through a whole list of Max interactions: those fortifying breaths before entering the workroom, calling Reese difficult, everyone in the QSA and Damon checking to make sure that Max was okay. Everything clicked in one massive lightbulb moment. “Did Max and Reese date?” I couldn’t believe it. I mean, Reese was just so . . . rude and snobby and bitchy. He didn’t seem like sweet, social Max’s kind of guy at all.
Damon looked completely bewildered. “He hasn’t told you?”
I shook my head. “He just made a veiled reference to Reese being difficult. That was it.”
“Typical Max. He likes to avoid his problems at all costs. He shut his mom out our entire freshman year after she divorced his dad.” Damon sighed, but not in that way like he was frustrated or stressed. He sighed like he was hurt.
“Still no word to you or Cami?”
“Nope,” Damon said. “And he missed our first game of the year. He always shows up with blue-and-white pom-poms and a number-twenty-three jersey. The guys love it. He and Cami made them a couple years ago to cheer me on when I got put on the freshman team sophomore year. I love football, but I totally sucked, and the stupid-ass comments I was getting about being the Black guy bad at sports were getting to me.”
“Those people are assholes,” I said. I thought the city with its greater diversity would be a more aware place, but classmates making gross jokes about stereotypes wasn’t just limited to the country.
“Yeah,” Damon continued, “but I kept at it because Cami told me to stay true to myself and do what I want. She and Max put their fashion skills to use, made some outfits, and became my cheerleaders. But I guess Max is too upset to feel like cheering for anything. Especially with all the Twitter GIF shit that went down.”
“GIF shit?” Dread settled in my gut. Social media could be the best, but it could also eat you alive.
Damon nodded. “A breakup was bad enough, but then . . .” He pulled out his phone and showed me a tweet from some account called Splitsville. Its bio read: Home of your messiest breakups and craziest exes. The pinned tweet featured Max sobbing uncontrollably over a basket of fries. His jaw dropped open, chewed-up potato and ketchup falling out of his mouth over and over and over. Text spelled out what Max was saying: “You’re leaving me? WHYYYYY?” And sitting right across from him was Reese, looking totally oblivious to the devastation he’d caused in Max’s heart.
“This is bad,” I said. “Really bad.”
“I mean, everyone loves Max, so as soon as this made rounds, people were instantly on his side,” Damon explained. “But that just made it worse for him. He hates looking weak in front of people. So when his friends reached out to make sure he was okay, he shut us out, like he thought if he never addressed the GIF or the breakup then it didn’t happen. Except, he’s really embraced you, I guess. You know what, I shouldn’t go check on him. I’ll probably just make it worse, somehow, but . . .” Damon stared down the hallway like he thought if he looked hard enough he could see Max through the walls. “Just let him know I’m thinking about him, all right?”
“Yeah, you got it,” I said, my mind spinning while Damon moped back to the workroom.
This was a real Best Friend Fiasco (a horrible new meaning of BFF). Lu and Max were the closest people to me, and both of them were imploding while I was on the cusp of making my gay dreams a reality. Maybe there’s some kind of cosmic love equation to keep everything balanced. In order for me to add any romance to my life, others had to subtract it from theirs. First Lu and Chip, now Max and Reese with Damon and Cami as collateral damage.
I never thought I’d say this, but sometimes math really sucked.
13.
Have Someone’s Back While Someone Else Has Your Backside
Max was nowhere to be found at Capitol Hill High. He wasn’t in the nurse’s office, he didn’t show up at lunch, and I had to head the QSA meeting alone while the group finalized ideas for dance decorations. I decided to check his house when I walked home. We realized after the drag brunch that we lived just a couple blocks from each other, which would always make the I was just in the neighborhood excuse for stopping by actually true. Sure enough, Max was lying on his four-poster bed, hidden behind drapes of purple taffeta.
“Who let you in?” His voice sounded weak from crying.
“Jules. She told me you threatened to dye her hair back to brown if she let me up.” Max’s stepmom made neon hair look natural. It was hard to imagine her without a bright blue pixie cut, but it was also hard to imagine Reese and Max dating.
“Are you all right?” I motioned toward Max sprawled out on his violet sheets. “Is this about the dance drama you mentioned? Is it something to do with Reese?”
Max’s breath hitched. “I was trying to get through senior year without ever having to talk about him again.”
“Damon told me about your breakup. He showed me the GIF.”
“Who does Damon think he is?” Max said with a scoff. “If he thought I was ignoring him before, I’m going to go Elsa-level frozen on him now. Why does he insist on making my senior year about my heartbreak?”
Max grabbed a picture frame on his bedside table. It held a photo of him and a girl with dark brown skin in identical cheerleading outfits sandwiching Damon between them in a massive hug. That must be Cami. They were all laughing their heads off as Damon was clearly trying to squirm away from the love fest. Max’s eyes softened for a second when he took in the photo, but then his expression hardened and he put the frame back, facedown.
“I
really think they’re just trying to help,” I said. Damon had looked just as pained about the shakeup of their friendship as Lu and Max looked about the breakup of their relationships.
“Well, I’ve asked them to help by letting me pretend my relationship never happened. But Damon keeps saying I’ll get over it faster if I talk about it, and it’s like Cami thinks that since their mom is a therapist she’s now licensed in marriage and family counseling too. I’ll get over this if I forget I ever had a boyfriend! I made my entire junior year about being in love, and what did that get me? A broken heart and the world’s most humiliating GIF. I am not going to let my last year of high school get hijacked by Ree—” He stopped, his eyes welling again. “I can’t even say his name.” Max threw a pillow over his face to muffle his sobs. “Gawd, I’m so pathetic.”
I pulled back the curtains and sat next to Max. “No, you’re not.”
“But I am, Jay, I am! I’m going to say this once, and then you’re never going to hear it from me again: I’m miserable without him. I can’t stop looking at his Insta.” He flung his pillow aside and pulled out his phone. Pictures filled the screen of Reese with a guy at the Space Needle, at Pike Place Market, at the Great Wheel on the pier. “Look at Reese’s new boyfriend, Spencer. He posted these last night. I mean, it hasn’t even been a month since we broke up! Then I saw him this morning, and with all that pent-up energy thinking about him and Spencer together, I just fucking lost it. Spew tsunami, everywhere. If he had any doubts about dumping me before, I think going full-blown Exorcist wiped them out.”
“Why did you guys break up in the first place?” I asked.
Max sniffed and rolled his eyes. “He got an agent over the summer and said he had to get really serious about his craft. Aka, he had to dump me because a relationship was getting in the way of his career.” He wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Do you know what the worst part is?”
I shook my head as Max and his sweater basset hound turned to me with tear- and puke-stained eyes.
“He’s actually good. He’s a fantastic actor.”
I hoped Reese could put those acting skills to good use someday and pretend to be a nice person.
“I was surprised you guys used to date,” I said. “Reese is just so . . . He’s such a . . .”
“A royal asshat?” Max finished. “Yeah, I know. But he wasn’t always this way.” Max got a distant look in his eyes, like he was remembering a time before hysterical-crying, openmouthed fry-chewing GIFs existed. “He was so charming and nice and, ugh, talented. We started dating sophomore year when we worked on the spring musical together. He complimented the way I tailored his jacket, and I told him he was a great Kenickie in Grease. I totally fell for those ridiculously mesmerizing blue eyes.” He jangled the gold bracelets he always wore. “He even gave me these. One for him and one for me, to symbolize us always being next to each other.”
The guy Max described sounded totally different from the Reese I knew. He actually seemed sweet. Loving. But then Max’s faraway look turned from nostalgic to I want to punch something.
“What a crock of shit,” he said. “I thought I’d be able to get over him. Ever since he got that agent, he’s become a complete self-centered ass. Plus, he didn’t join the QSA this year, which I thought was because he was having a hard time seeing me. I know it sounds awful, but it made me feel kind of good that he might actually regret breaking up with me. I’ve kept wearing these bracelets so he knows I would take him back. But then he goes and gets a boyfriend just weeks after we break up, and Stella, who’s in drama, said Reese auditioned for all the lead roles in the fall play. Apparently he was fantastic at every single one of them. That only proves one thing.”
“What?”
“He’s with Spencer, but he still nailed all his auditions. Reese didn’t need to be single to focus on his career. He just needed to be away from me.”
Max buried his face in his pillow again. He sobbed so hard that the mattress shook. I had no idea what to do when people cried. Lu avoided tears at all costs so I didn’t have much practice in the right way to console someone.
“Is . . . is there anything I can do?” I asked. “I mean, just because you’re my Gay Guide doesn’t mean I can’t help you out too.”
“Let’s just keep moving forward with the Gay Agenda. Living vicariously through you is nice, actually. It makes me stop thinking about him.” Max’s phone beeped, and he peeked at it from under his pillow. “Gawd, look. Reese just posted a picture about going shopping for a homecoming costume with Spencer. We did that together last year. He loves homecoming. Wait. That’s it!”
Max snapped up so quickly I had to bounce back so his head wouldn’t smash into mine. “That’s what you could do!” he said. “You’re the costume master! Go with me to the dance and let’s beat Reese at the contest. He would hate losing the homecoming royalty title to us! Plus”—he looked at me with his sad, puffy red eyes—“I couldn’t face going to the dance alone while Reese is all over his new boy. I could really use the moral support.”
Something tugged at the corner of my mind. If I decided I didn’t want to go to the hoedown, this might be the way to make Lu understand. She once told me she’d never sign up for any music classes like band or choir because they held concerts outside of school. It meant that kids would invite their moms and dads and she’d be alone since Aunt Carol couldn’t take time away from Tough as Nails. Closing it down for the night meant potentially losing a customer and money they couldn’t afford to lose (an entirely moot point now). To Lu, standing around after a concert while everyone was surrounded by people who loved them gave her the worst feeling in the world: being alone. She wouldn’t want me to put Max through that.
Not to mention Lu was a total hot commodity; if she put her mind to it, she could find a new date to the hoedown in no time. I could come up with an outfit she could still use with her new date, while Max and I went and won homecoming royalty. That way, Max could rub it in Reese’s face when we were crowned, I’d gain some popularity at my new school (plus the opportunity to dance with Albert, or maybe Tony if things went well at the Lambda Chi party), and Lu could still get the hoedown prize money.
It was a win-win-win.
The more I thought about going to homecoming with Max, the more I realized it was what I wanted to do most. But I still didn’t want to hurt Lu’s feelings and kick her while she was down. I spent the next couple days trying to come up with the right wording to lessen the blow.
LET LU DOWN EASY LIST
•Lu, I know I said I’d go to the hoedown, but I’ve got a new friend who really needs my help . . .
•Look, Lu, you won’t make out with me on the dance floor, but maybe Albert will . . .
•I’m trying to make a name for myself here at my new school, and you don’t spell Jay with L-U . . .
How exactly do you let your best friend know that you don’t have their back? Even if I was helping out Max, I was still choosing my new life over my old one, and that couldn’t be easy to hear. It seemed totally understandable to me, but when I put my reasons for choosing homecoming and my life in Seattle down on paper, I sounded more heartless than I meant to.
Luckily, Lu wasn’t free to talk until our virtual Saturday sleepover that weekend. I’d still have some time to find the perfect wording. But the Let Lu Down Easy List took up so much of my brain that I couldn’t concentrate at all in Fashion Design. Max was back to his chipper self, leaving me feeling like I might unleash a spew tsunami of my own thinking about Lu’s disappointment. I was so out of it that Mr. Bogosian had to physically shake my shoulder to get my attention so I’d grab my tote in progress.
Damon and his two BFFFs (Best Football Friends Forever), Julian and Navin Mehta, were talking at the back counter with their backs to me, blocking my tote.
“We have got to kill it against Bellingham tomorrow,” Navin said. “They wiped the floor with us last year.”
Julian held up his bandaged hand. The top of his thum
b peeked out of the wrappings, pink and swollen. It was still healing from his sewing machine accident the week before. “I don’t think Coach is going to let me play with this thumb.”
“Guys?” They were too deep in conversation to hear me, but I could just make out a corner of neon green in between Damon and Julian. I bent down and tried to nonchalantly grab my bag through them, but it was farther away than I expected.
“Everything’s going to be fine,” Damon said. “You got this. We got this.”
I stretched forward, just centimeters away from snagging my material. How these guys didn’t notice I was between them was beyond me. Their football focus was unshakable.
Damon wrapped up his pep talk. “We’re going to win!” he yelled.
Then he slapped me on the ass.
“Hello!” I shouted.
I couldn’t stop myself. It was a totally involuntary surprise-butt-slap exclamation.
I froze. Julian and Navin froze. Damon froze. And Damon’s hand was still on my butt. His grip was solid and firm, and, I know he said he wasn’t the greatest at the game, but if his grasp on a football was anything like the grasp he had on my left butt cheek, he couldn’t be all that bad. My ass stung from the slap, but I actually kind of liked it. It was more tingly than painful. The sensation sent my crotch into overdrive, and I realized I might be a guy who’s into spanking.
Then Julian cracked up, snapping me back to reality.
I jolted upright. “S-sorry about the interruption.”
“Jay!” Damon looked mortified. A couple beads of sweat formed on his forehead, glistening against his brown skin. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I totally didn’t mean to—” He pointed at my butt. “I thought you were Julian. We slap each other’s—” He pointed at Julian’s butt. “It’s a thing football players do. Sometimes.” Damon flashed me an embarrassed grin.
“Don’t, um, w-worry about my butt. I mean, it. Don’t worry about it.” I couldn’t talk right. I was too aware of the tingle that still lingered on my ass. When I was confronted with a nonstraight person who wanted to touch my butt, I definitely wanted a repeat of this tingle. “I ju-just needed my tote.”
