Lucky

by Evan T. Apollo

Fifteen

  In the days that followed since the recording of Daniel’s confession, things at school slowly started returning to normal. It seemed that the information in our little video project spread quite rapidly, just as Daniel’s original fictional account had. Apologies from those who made me feel like an outcast would have been appreciated, but I knew that would be wishful thinking. They did, however, actually stop treating me as an outcast, so that would have to be good enough.

  Ryan and I had planned a date the night before Christmas Eve and it would be the last time we’d see each other until after I returned from visiting mom and Robert in New York. Things were definitely looking good for us.

  Ryan arrived at 7:00 pm and was dressed quite handsomely in jeans and a brown button down shirt that had blue embroidery like one might find on a vintage style western shirt. He looked fresh and clean-shaven, with his short brown hair neatly styled. And just for the record, he smelled amazing.

  “Look at you, all dashing,” I said, then gave him a kiss hello. The feel of his lips against mine still took my breath away.

  “Hey, yourself,” he said with a bright smile. He was holding a square, wrapped gift as well as a small gift bag.

  “Oh, good! Presents!” I said excitedly. “I’ll be right back,” I told him, running into the dining room to retrieve my Christmas gifts for Ryan.

  “I was going to ask if you wanted to exchange now or after dinner,” he said, “but it looks like you’re ready now.” He laughed at my childlike excitement.

  We had previously discussed a money limit on the gifts we would buy each other and twenty dollars was the amount agreed upon. He had asked me for a CD, but I wanted to get him something in addition to it. I did have to go a little bit over the limit, but it was something I really wanted him to try.

  “Here,” I said, swapping the two neatly wrapped gifts in my hand for the one he had brought for me. “Merry Christmas,” I said.

  “Merry Christmas,” he repeated.

  “You go first,” I said.

  He opened the CD first, already knowing what it was because he had told me what to get.

  “Thank you. I’ve been looking forward to this,” he said. “You didn’t have to get me anything else though,” he said, referring to the unopened second gift.

  “I know,” I said, “but I think you’ll like it. Maybe we both will.”

  “Hmm. Well, open yours first,” he said. “Open the one that’s wrapped.”

  “Alright,” I said. I could already tell by the shape and pliability that it was a paperback book. I tore the wrapping paper off and looked at the cover.

  “Cooking For Dummies?” I couldn’t help but laugh a little at this.

  “Well, I thought you could use the help,” he said. “But don’t worry, I’m planning on giving you hands-on cooking lessons.”

  “I like the sound of that,” I said. I took a brief moment to think about him getting ‘hands-on’ before finally saying, “Okay, open your other one.”

  He removed the wrapping paper from the small box to find a container of deeply therapeutic skin lotion, designed to heal severely dry and cracked skin.

  “Wow, I could totally use this,” he said, seeming genuinely satisfied with my choice. “My hands get so messed up from work.”

  “Yeah, I couldn’t help but notice that,” I said. “I’m looking forward to feeling the results, hint, hint.”

  Ryan smiled. “Oh, you will,” he said slyly. “Okay, before you take your other gift out of the bag, I just want to say something.”

  “Okay. What?” I asked.

  “I know you said you weren’t ready to have another pet, and I totally respect that. So, for now, I got you this. Go ahead and look.”

  I reached into the bag, and under the tissue paper, I found a small, stuffed tabby cat toy.

  “I want you to hold onto that for now, and if and when you’re ready, I’ll personally take you to the shelter to adopt another cat.”

  For a moment I didn’t know what to say. It was incredibly thoughtful and I was actually a little surprised he came up with that idea. It was true; I wasn’t yet ready to have another cat in my life after Lucky passed away only a couple of months ago. This token was a heartfelt gesture and I absolutely adored him for it.

  “Wow. This is so incredibly sweet,” I said. “Thank you.”

  I gave him a long hug. It felt so good having his arms wrapped around me. For a moment, I thought we could just skip dinner and hold each other like that for the rest of the night, but we eventually came to our senses when our stomachs started to rumble and finally broke our embrace.

  “So,” Ryan finally said, breaking the long silence.

  “So,” I repeated. “Where do you want to go to dinner?” I asked, rubbing his shoulder and arm.

  “I was thinking about Luigi’s. What do you think?”

  Luigi’s was a small Italian restaurant that was pretty close to my house and would be quick and easy, which suited me just fine as I wanted to spend as much one on one time with Ryan as possible.

  “Great,” I said.

  We were gone for barely more than an hour and when we returned to my house we both plopped down on the living room couch with our full bellies. I was in a particularly good mood as things had been going so well recently. I had finally made peace with the nagging worry that Ryan was going to bail on me if having a relationship with a guy got too intense for him. There was no guarantee, of course, that I wouldn’t be faced with that problem in the future, but it seemed like if he was still by my side after all that had transpired over the past week, he probably wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

  We sat on the couch in silence for a bit. I didn’t even reach for the remote to turn the television on. I rested my head on his shoulder.

  “This is nice,” I said, closing my eyes.

  “Yeah, it is,” Ryan agreed, putting his arm around me.

  Eventually, I sank down and was laying on his stomach, looking up at him in silence. My head was softly rising and falling with the inhales and exhales that filled and emptied from Ryan’s lungs. It was like the scenes in all the romance movies where a couple is falling in love and the two are enamored by simply being in each other’s’ presence. It’s the type of scene I never expected to play out in real life and certainly not my own life. And yet, here I was, bewildered and smitten and in a place I would never have expected to land after a barrage of such insane events.

  “I think I’m starting to get it,” Ryan said randomly.

  “What are you starting to get?” I asked.

  It was a long moment before he spoke again.

  “Relationships. Being a couple. Getting married.” He was speaking softly and evenly, not looking me in the eye, but forward into empty space. “Actually wanting to share your life with another person.”

  “They’re not exactly new concepts,” I pointed out and he looked down at me.

  “They are for me,” he said. “Don’t forget, I spent the past five years dating girls. In all that time I never felt like that was right for me. After a while, I just figured maybe I’m not the type, you know? Now it’s like, maybe I just never met the right person. The real possibility of falling in love never entered my mind before now.”

  Hold up. Did he just say something about falling in love? As in falling in love with me? No – he said it was a possibility. But still, he meant as a possibility with me. I know I had fallen hard for Ryan but could I really say I was in love? Sure, we had been through a lot together in a short time, but had we really been together long enough to be in love? Plus, I’ve never even been in love. How am I supposed to know what it feels like? Maybe not knowing what it feels like is a sign that I’m not in love. Maybe I was overthinking everything like usual. Somewhere in the back of my head the ghosts of Kate and Patrick were telling me to shut up and relax.

  “Does this make any sense at all?” Ryan finally asked, summing up his previous declaration before my brain wandered off on him.r />
  “I think it makes perfect sense,” I said.

  Ryan seemed content with my affirmation and I closed my eyes. His hands were softly rubbing my chest and stomach, giving me a happy feeling that I hoped wasn’t too obvious.

  We were holding hands on my front porch, staring out at the dark, empty street, both of us delaying his inevitable departure.

  “Well,” he finally said, “I really hope you have a great Christmas. Tell Kate and Patrick and Rich Merry Christmas for me, too.”

  “I will,” I said.

  “I have to admit,” he said, putting an arm around me, either to keep me warm in the cold winter air, or to find some warmth for himself, “your friends are really great. I mean, I’ve never had a friend that I was out to. Now I have three.”

  “Yeah, I really do have some great friends,” I agreed. “Rich is kind of a newcomer, though,” I explained, and briefly told Ryan of the day Rich and I bonded on the very same porch on which we were both standing.

  “Speaking of Rich,” Ryan said, with a devious smile suddenly enveloping his face, “remember that photo he sent to Daniel?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “I still have it,” he said, sounding mischievous. “And it’s... impressive. You need to see it.”

  Now a moral dilemma stood before me: do I respect my newly evolved friendship with Rich, or do I go behind his back (or, more accurately, in front of his front) to sneak a peek at his most personal, private attribute? Then I asked myself, what would Rich do in this situation?

  “Pull that shit up right now!” I demanded.

  After dinner on Christmas day, after everyone had gone, mom and I finally had some time alone in the kitchen while we washed the pots and dishes. She hadn’t mentioned another word about me being gay since she stayed with me during my recovery, but it seemed she was now ready to go there – in a roundabout way. Classic mom.

  “So, how is that friend of yours? Brian?”

  I was confused at first until I realized who she meant.

  “Ryan,” I corrected. “He’s fine.” I felt like this was moving into awkward territory. Which it was.

  “Is he your boyfriend?” mom asked in a surprisingly straightforward and relaxed tone.

  “Well, yeah, I guess he is,” I said. It was interesting actually referring to a guy as my boyfriend, something I had never done before. The fact that it was a conversation with my mother made it seem even more surreal, yet it felt surprisingly comfortable.

  “He’s very handsome,” she said, handing me a pot she just finished scrubbing.

  We looked at each other and I laughed.

  Mom smiled. “Well, he is!” she said.

  “I know, mom. He is,” I said, toweling off the pot in my hand.

  “If you have any questions or need anything, you know you can come to me, right?” mom asked. This was something she pointed out to me quite often, though it seemed to be a little different in this context. Her son was growing up and starting to have adult relationships.

  “I know, mom.”

  “You can also talk to Robert, you know, if there’s any guy stuff you might feel weird talking to your old mom about,” she said.

  “Okay, mom. I promise.” Robert will be my go-to source. Right after the internet and every other information resource on Earth.

  The morning after Christmas day I woke up to Robert knocking on the door and then letting himself in.

  “Hey, buddy. Rise and shine!”

  “Oh, no. Not again,” I mumbled to myself. I immediately decided that on my next visit I would bring and install my own lock.

  I looked up to see he had at least found himself a pair of pants this time, instead of running around the house in his underwear as he did during my Thanksgiving visit.

  “What is it, Robert?” I asked.

  “So, your mom and I were talking this morning and she thought it might be good if we had a little man to man conversation.”

  I stared at him blankly for a moment.

  “You’re kidding me, right?” I asked.

  “She just wants you to be prepared.”

  When mom said I could talk to Robert, I didn’t know she was going to dispatch him to come have the sex talk with me. I was almost 18 and I couldn’t imagine Robert telling me anything that I didn’t already know.

  “Look, I appreciate your, um, enthusiasm here. My dad had the sex talk with me, like, a million years ago,” I lied, for the sake of keeping this conversation from going any further. “I really don’t think there’s anything new you can tell me.”

  “Well, heck, I know that. That’s why I thought it’d be better to show you.”

  Robert yanked a cucumber from one pocket and a wrapped condom from another, and I pulled my blanket up over my head.

  About the author

  I am a newly published author with Lucky being my first novel. Writing fiction for teens and young adults has been a lifelong goal that I'm proud to say has finally come to fruition. Lucky is a labor of love that has taken eleven long years to complete, as I've simultaneously been working other jobs and attending college.

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