by Lisa Henry
Devon: Do u want me to come over?
Devon: I’m coming over to snuggle the fuck out of u, Nick.
Devon: If u don’t answer me, I’ll know u want me to come over.
Devon: Nick? R u seriously pissed at me?
Devon: Seriously?
Devon: Meatlovers or Hawaiian?
Nick: Meatlovers.
Jai wakes up to the sounds of someone rattling around in the kitchen upstairs. He yawns and stretches and scratches his belly. He waits until he can no longer ignore his bladder, then rolls out of bed and heads for the bathroom. When he’s finished in the bathroom, he steps into the hallway to find Caden dancing from foot to foot desperately.
“I really need to peeeeee!” he exclaims, diving under Jai’s arm to get through the door.
When Jai enters the kitchen, Noah is sitting naked on the floor, wearing a plastic colander on his head. Janice is making pancakes, Ronny is fighting with the coffee machine, and Kat is sitting at the table, reading something on her phone.
“You know what?” Janice asks. “Screw this. We should go to Denny’s instead. Your dad always used to take us to Denny’s at least once a week. Remember that, kids?”
“Uh-huh,” Jai says. “Until he went on his health kick.”
“And we all know how that ended,” Janice mutters, furiously stirring the pancake batter.
Kat stares at Jai, openmouthed, and he stares back.
“What?” Janice asks, sticking her finger in the batter to taste it. “I’m just saying he might as well have worn an ass-groove into the couch and stuffed his face with potato chips every day for all the difference it made.”
It’s a fair point, Jai guesses.
“Jeez, Mom,” Kat says.
“What?” Janice asks again.
Ronny snorts, and then whoops when the coffee machine hisses and spits and coffee starts to burble out of it. “Oh yeah!”
Caden bounces into the kitchen. “Are we having pancakes?”
“Yep,” Janice says. “As soon as I can find the goddamn pan.”
“It’s in the drainer,” Kat tells her.
“Jai?” Ronny holds up a coffee mug.
“Thanks, yeah.”
“Did Nick stay over?” Janice asks.
Jai frowns. “No.”
“Don’t get all defensive. I was just wondering how many I’m making breakfast for.”
“I wasn’t being defensive!”
“You are now,” Janice points out, and wrestles the pan onto the stovetop.
Jai opens his mouth to retaliate, then shuts it again. It’s his mom. He can’t win this thing.
Ronny hands him his mug of coffee.
“Nick probably needs to be up early to go to daycare,” Kat suggests, an evil grin twitching around the corners of her mouth.
“This shit again?” Jai asks, bristling. “Seriously?”
“Oh, it never gets old,” Kat tells him. “And neither does Nick!”
Ronny high-fives her.
Jai takes his coffee and stalks into the living room.
“Jai?” Kat calls after him. “I was only kidding, asshole!”
Jai ignores her and slumps onto the sofa. Fuck it. He’ll drink his coffee, and then he’s going to grab a shower and get dressed and go to McDonald’s for breakfast, and he’s going to eat something disgusting and full of grease and plastic cheese.
“Jai,” Ronny says, sitting down in the easy chair opposite the sofa. “You know we’re only playing, right? You don’t usually bite so easily.”
“Yeah, I don’t really want to talk about this, okay?”
“Sure, man.” Ronny gives him a shrewd look. “That because it’s hitting too close to home or something?”
“He’s eighteen,” Jai mutters.
“Yeah, but he’s a young eighteen,” Ronny says.
“You’re gonna start on me too?”
“No. I’m just saying Nick’s a kid who’s got a lot of growing up to do. It’s not a bad thing, but it’s true.” Ronny shakes his head and smiles. “Like, these kids. They spend an hour a day in your class, and they somehow think they’re invisible. Like you don’t notice a damn thing about them. Who they’re dating, and what drama they’re going through this week, and when their friends shit on them, or they shit on their friends. They really think that teachers have no idea what’s going on in their lives. But we notice.”
Jai remembers when he was in school, thinking that the teachers somehow didn’t exist beyond the vacuum of the classroom. That they weren’t people with their own lives in the outside world. He wonders what any of them had been thinking when they looked at him: an angry, defiant, ultimately naive kid who’d been desperate to get out of town, so sure that all the answers to his indistinct dreams were just over the horizon. Jai’s older now, tempered by experience. He hopes he’s a little wiser too.
He quirks his mouth in a wry smile and meets Ronny’s gaze. “And what’d you notice about Nick?”
“Oh, where do I even start?” Ronny snorts. “Smart, but scatterbrained. Can’t concentrate on a task to save his life. Mostly happy. Loyal to his friends. And looking for his place still. A typical eighteen-year-old kid.”
Jai nods.
“Obsessed with Tolkien. And some really weird anime.” Ronny’s smile grows. “Geeky, very geeky, but self-aware enough to get away with it. Smarter than he lets on, because he’s not confident enough to draw that kind of target on his back when he’s already out as a gay kid in a small town. Ridiculously codependent with Devon.”
Jai takes a sip of his coffee. “Yeah, I already know that one.”
“I mean, seriously, this one day Devon was sick, and by the look on Nick’s face, you would have thought someone had drowned his puppy in front of him. But also, Nick’s genuinely a decent kid. And that’s kind of a rare thing. Teenagers can be assholes to each other.” Ronny shrugs. “But yeah, he’s got a lot of growing up to do still.”
Jai grunts.
“Your mom is right. You really are defensive about him, you know?” Ronny raises his eyebrows. “He’s a good kid is what I’m saying. Hey, if you can put up with the stream of consciousness and pop culture references he cobbles together and considers a language, good for you. You could do a lot worse. And so could he.”
Jai thinks about that for a moment. “It’s just a short-term thing, though, until he goes to college and meets someone else.”
“You sure he’s gonna meet someone else?”
“Isn’t that what college is all about?”
“As a trained educator, I feel I should stress that college is about higher learning, but you’re right.” Ronny laughs. “It’s about getting away from home and hooking up with a bunch of different people.”
Jai smiles and ignores the twist in his gut when he thinks of Nick doing exactly that.
Ronny shrugs. “Nick’s more shy than he comes across though. He doesn’t put himself out there, you know? Maybe that’s from being the little gay kid in a small town, but he hasn’t got as much self-confidence as he tries to project. He’s a loud, annoying little shit when he’s playing Devon’s sidekick, but on his own, he’s . . .” He shrugs again. “I think he’s gonna have a hard time in college by himself.”
“I assumed he and Devon would be attached at the hip until death,” Jai says.
“Different colleges. Gonna be rough on both of them.”
Jai wonders if that’s really true. Nick hasn’t talked much about college, beyond not knowing if it’s what he wants to do, and he certainly hasn’t talked about going to college without Devon. So maybe it’s not as big a deal as Ronny seems to think it is. Of course, the fact he hasn’t talked about it could mean the exact opposite: that he’s scared. Jai feels an unpleasant jolt in his stomach. It makes a lot of sense. Nick is scared of his future. It’s not like he spelled it out that night in Devon’s room, but he was drunk enough to come damn close. Jai wonders why Nick doesn’t just admit it straight-out. Maybe he thinks Jai wouldn’t get it. Maybe he thinks Jai wou
ld think less of him. Or maybe he thinks they’re just not in the sort of relationship where they can talk about things like that.
How the hell would either of them know, unless they try?
Nick: Would it be weird if I invited u on a date?
Jai: It would certainly be different.
Nick: Except I don’t have any money and nor do u.
Jai: Yes, that is a problem.
Nick: I don’t think my dad would let me break into my college savings just so I could take you someplace there is lobster.
Jai: Probably not.
Nick: Do u even like lobster?
Jai: It’s ok.
Nick: What if I bought a tin of lobster meat from the store and then we mixed it in ramen or something?
Jai: That sounds disgusting.
Nick: Just the ramen, then?
Jai: I like ramen.
Nick: My dad is making hot dogs on the grill tonight.
Nick: It’s this thing where he fries them.
Nick: It sounds gross, but it’s actually really nice.
Nick: What do u think?
Jai: What do I think of fried hot dogs?
Nick: Fuck. I was supposed to invite u over in the middle of all that. Wanna come to my place tonight for a swim and then some hot dogs?
Jai: Okay. Should I bring wine or beer for your parents?
Nick: Um . . .
Jai: Do they know I’m 25 and can legally buy alcohol?
Nick: Maybe just bring some soda?
Chris Stahlnecker nods at Jai when he arrives at Nick’s house. There’s no handshake. There’s also no acknowledgment that the first time he met Jai, Jai was halfway to violating his naked teenage son in his pool, so Jai’s going to count the no-handshake thing as a win.
“Hey, Jai!” Nick bounces down the stairs. “Um, you remember my dad, right?”
Until the day he dies.
Chris’s eye twitches.
“Oh, um, yeah, so we’re gonna just get in the pool or whatever,” Nick says, flushing.
Chris lands them both with a withering glare.
“Just, um, for a swim,” Nick clarifies, rubbing the back of his neck. “Come on, Jai.”
The water is cool. Jai and Nick sit on the pool step for a moment, and then Jai slides into the deeper water. He can’t shake the feeling that Chris Stahlnecker is standing just behind the kitchen windows, glaring out at him.
The afternoon softens slowly into evening.
The noises of the neighborhood settle over Jai like music he remembers from childhood summers that seem so long ago now. He hears a dog barking a few houses down. In the other direction, little kids are shrieking with laughter to the rhythmic squeak and thump of a trampoline. Cars on the street. Doors opening and closing. A phone ringing. The faint strains of someone’s stereo drifting over the back fence. A mom yells for her kids to get inside and wash their hands, and she sounds like she could be a million miles away.
Jai lazes in the water while Nick shoots him quick, shy smiles.
He can smell someone cooking dinner nearby.
A few yards away, someone starts up a lawn mower.
The sounds and smells of a dying day, of a dying summer. Jai lets them lap at him as gently as the water.
Hard to imagine that to someone else, this suburban small-town life could be as foreign and magical as a Vietnamese temple, or a Bavarian castle, or the wide, empty expanse of the Nullarbor.
It’s peaceful.
Until Nick flicks water in his face and laughs.
“What?” Jai asks, a grin tugging at his mouth.
“Nothin’.” Nick slicks his wet hair back, and it immediately stands up again like the crest of a parrot. “I just wanted to mess with you.”
“Consider me messed with.”
Nick’s smile is somehow softer than those Jai is used to seeing from him. “Thanks for coming over. I wasn’t sure you would, because, you know, my parents.”
Jai reaches out and tangles his wet fingers with Nick’s. “We’re boyfriends, right? This is what boyfriends do?”
“I guess.” Nick wrinkles his nose. “I haven’t had a boyfriend before.”
“Me neither.”
“Really? Oh please, as if I believe that!”
“Really.”
“Oh.” Nick flushes and is silent for a moment. He looks down, and water drips off the end of his nose. When he looks up again, he’s smiling. “That’s very cool.”
Jai gazes at him. His boyfriend. His first boyfriend. And yeah, it is very cool. He’s never sought out relationships before, and never felt the need. He’s never thought he was missing out on anything. But now that he’s accidentally stumbled into a relationship, he likes it. Nick shows parts of himself that he wouldn’t if they’d only known each other for a few days, or a single night, those short-lived but intense encounters that are all Jai has to compare this to. Every moment with Nick, however prosaic, is another moment of discovery. Every conversation, however mundane, is also part revelation.
He remembers getting lost once in the Czech Republic. Stepping off a train in the wrong town, with no idea where he was or where to find his way to where he was supposed to be. He’d never even heard of Loket before he’d stumbled across it. Everything had been unplanned for, unexpected. Everything had been an adventure. Every discovery a treasure.
Nick Stahlnecker is Loket.
When it gets dark, Chris comes outside and cooks hot dogs on the grill. Marnie brings out a bowl of salad and a potato casserole.
Jai would rather not get out of the pool, actually, but he gives Nick a smile that shows a lot more confidence than he actually feels, wraps himself in a towel, and sits down at the picnic table on the back patio for what he expects will be an interrogation.
It’s actually not as bad as he thinks.
It’s not great, but it’s not the Spanish Inquisition.
Chris manages to give him a lecture about how he should be saving for the future, and putting the money he earns into investments rather than “throwing it all away.” And Marnie worries that his mother must worry. Does she worry? Oh, but she must. And Jai really doesn’t know how to respond to that. Does Janice worry about him? Probably, sure, the same way she still worries about Kat. The same way that they worry about her. Like family. Not like . . . like whatever the hell it is when Marnie reaches over and pets Nick on the head, and he tries to duck away, face burning, and can’t meet Jai’s gaze for a long time afterward.
“Sorry about them,” Nick mutters later, when he and Jai are loading the dishwasher in the kitchen.
“It wasn’t so bad,” Jai says.
Nick scowls and scrapes down a plate over the sink. “Um, yeah, it was. But thanks.”
He scrubs furiously at the plate.
“Hey.” Jai puts a hand on his shoulder, and he’s not entirely surprised when Nick sets the plate down and turns into his embrace. He rubs his hands down Nick’s spine.
“They treat me like a kid,” Nick says in a quiet voice. “Which, well, okay, because what other option have I ever given them? But now it’s like we’re all stuck in this holding pattern and nobody knows what to do.”
Jai doesn’t fully understand that. His family shattered the day his dad died. Everything was different after that. Everything changed, especially Jai’s relationship with his mom. She wasn’t indestructible, and he couldn’t see her that way anymore. Not when he’d picked her up off the floor so many times. Not when she’d done the same to him when it was his turn to break. They hadn’t had a holding pattern. They’d had a fucking midair collision. Flaming wreckage and bodies everywhere, but they got through it. They worked it out together.
“It’s okay. You’ll figure this out, you know?”
Nick nods and sniffles. “Fuck, I’m an idiot.”
“Nah.” Jai pats him on the back. He’s aware of someone standing in the hallway outside the kitchen door, but by the time he looks up, whoever it was is gone. “You’re just a scruffy nerf herder.”
“Pretty sure that’s not a compliment!” But Nick laughs anyway, and turns back to the sink.
Jai loads the plates into the dishwasher as Nick hands them to him.
When Jai finally makes it home, there’s a package waiting for him on the kitchen table.
It’s his new backpack.
Nick: So my parents don’t totally hate u.
Jai: Probably the best I could hope for.
Nick: Probably! :D
Jai: It was worth it for the hot dogs.
Nick: They’re good, right?
Jai: Really good.
Nick: Are u working tomorrow?
Jai: Noon until 8.
Nick: Cool. Can we hang after?
Jai: I’d love that.
Nick. :D
Nick has always hated the end of summer. He hates the way the days yellow at the edges like the pages of an old book. He hates the way the heat stops soaking into his bones and lies on the surface of his skin instead, the first hint that the season is turning. In the past, Nick has always marked the end of summer, and mourned it, by the subtle changes in the world around him, but this year he won’t even have that. By the time the air cools and the days shorten, he’ll be at college. This year the end of summer won’t just mean a loss of freedom, it will mean the loss of his childhood.
Nick ekes out every last minute with a growing sense of desperation.
He hangs out at Pizza Perfecto, or in the pool, or in Jai’s basement. When he’s not there, he bounces between his house and Devon’s, bike tires spinning on the dusty road between them like they have every summer since he was a kid, eating up the miles, eating up the moments.
He’s not sure why he’s still riding his bike. His dad folded and gave him back the car. Maybe Nick just wants to feel like a kid for as long as he can.
He tries to tell himself it’s been a good summer, and that he’s ready for whatever comes next.
At least he’s not going to be a virgin at college, right? So, yeah, the entire college situation still makes him feel sick to his stomach when he thinks about it—so he doesn’t think about it. He also doesn’t think about how he’s going to miss Jai when he’s at college and Jai is in Argentina.
