Boyfriends With Girlfriends

by Alex Sanchez

  Lance’s thoughts were swimming. This conversation was going even worse than he’d ever imagined.

  “Fine! You win. You’re bi. So if you think it’s easier to be with a girl, then why did you ask me out?”

  “Because . . .” Sergio softened his tone. “Like I said, man, I want to see if it can work with a guy . . . and because . . .” He gave a lopsided smile. “ . . . I like you.”

  Hearing that, Lance calmed down a little. He’d never expected Sergio to tell him he liked him on a first date.

  “Look,” Sergio continued. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings. I just get tired of people not accepting me for who I am.”

  It impressed Lance to hear him apologize so readily. Maybe he should apologize also. “I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to judge you. I just don’t understand how somebody can switch between guys and girls.”

  “It’s not ‘switching,’” Sergio said. “It’s just accepting different sides of myself.”

  Lance thought about that. “Well, maybe you’re right: A relationship with a girl would be easier. But that’s not an option for me. Maybe that’s why I don’t want to believe in bi people. It feels sort of unfair that you have that choice and I don’t.”

  “Wow,” Sergio said. He liked how Lance had been able to turn his views around so quickly. He might be inexperienced, but he wasn’t immature. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Neither had I,” Lance admitted. Their date so far hadn’t played out like the Broadway musical he’d hoped it would. And yet it felt like he was connecting with Sergio in a way he never had with Darrell or any other boy.

  “So, do you still want to see a movie?” Lance asked as they left the food court.

  “Yeah,” Sergio said. “Do you?”

  “Yeah,” Lance replied.

  At the multiplex, they settled on a buddy bromance that looked funny from the poster. Sergio bought their tickets, feeling a little guilty that he might have been too hard on Lance. But he still wondered: Could a relationship with him work? Maybe they should just be friends.

  Halfway through the film, Lance slowly took hold of his hand. So much for just being friends, Sergio thought.

  It felt good to hold Lance’s hand. Among his hookups, Sergio couldn’t remember ever just holding hands with a guy. This was new, different. It reminded him of Zelda before things nosedived.

  “How did you like it?” Sergio asked when the final credits rolled on-screen.

  “Um, I liked it,” Lance said, though in truth he’d barely paid attention. Holding Sergio’s hand had distracted him too much. “How about you?”

  “It was great,” Sergio said, stalling for time as the lights came on. Holding hands had produced a noteworthy effect that kind of embarrassed him to stand up. Being only friends definitely wasn’t going to work.

  “What would you like to do now?” Sergio asked when they finally walked outside to the parking lot. Part of him hoped for a little action—maybe they could go park somewhere—while another part of him could hear Kimiko telling him: “Go slow.”

  “I should probably head home,” Lance said, glancing at his watch. “I’ve got church tomorrow. I’m in the choir with Allie.”

  “Oh,” Sergio said, let down but also relieved.

  On the walk to the car, Lance began to hum some show tune. “Um, sorry.” He realized he was doing it. “I’ve always got musicals going through my head.”

  “That’s cool,” Sergio said. “I like your voice.” He kept the stereo off during the drive so he could hear him sing. He’d never had a guy sing for him before. And Lance had never gone out with a guy who wanted him to sing.

  When they arrived in front of Lance’s, Sergio shut the engine off, wondering and hoping: Would Lance at least want to kiss?

  Across the car, Lance became quiet, noticing how sexy Sergio’s Adam’s apple looked in the moonlight. Since they’d held hands, it seemed natural that they would kiss, but he felt a little nervous about his lack of experience. Darrell had never really been into kissing, and Allie’s pecks didn’t count.

  He quickly glanced out the window to check if anyone was watching. Nope; they were alone, just the two of them. His pulse quickened as he returned his gaze to Sergio. “Um, do you like to kiss?”

  “Yeah.” Sergio loved to kiss. He’d missed it since he’d broken up with Zelda.

  He unbuckled his shoulder strap, while Lance fumbled with his own. And then they were leaning into each other. Sergio tilted his head a little, his breath warming Lance’s cheek, and Lance closed his eyes, accidentally bumping Sergio’s nose. Then their mouths gently landed on each other’s, and their lips connected. Sergio’s tongue slipped easily into Lance’s mouth, tapping his tongue, tasting fresh and clean. And Lance tapped him back—his first time ever to French-kiss.

  “You kiss great,” Sergio whispered, when at last they pulled away.

  “Thanks.” Lance opened his eyes, smiling proudly. “You’re a great kisser too.”

  “Thanks,” Sergio echoed.

  Lance drew toward him, wanting more, and once again accidentally bumped Sergio’s nose. “Um, sorry.”

  “I know it’s big,” Sergio said. “When I have enough money, I want to get it done.”

  “No,” Lance replied. “I like it.”

  “Really?” Nobody had ever told Sergio that before.

  “Yeah,” Lance assured him. “I’m the one who needs my ears flattened.”

  “Nah, man! I think they’re cute.”

  “That’s good,” Lance said. Then they were kissing again, going at it more passionately than before. Sergio no longer worried about Lance being a virgin—he definitely didn’t kiss like one.

  His hands moved across Lance’s chest, wanting to touch and feel and go as far as Lance would let him.

  To Lance, it no longer troubled him that Sergio was bi or how many people he’d slept with. All that mattered was the thrill of running his fingers through Sergio’s hair, breathing in the scent of his skin, losing himself in Sergio’s jaw line. . . .

  But as the blood pulsed through his arteries, things started to feel too intense, too fast. He wanted to get to know Sergio more first; he wanted this to be special; he wanted them to take their time. He needed to stop.

  “I had a great time,” he told Sergio, forcing himself to pull away.

  “Me too,” Sergio said, catching his breath while wishing they could keep going. “You really do kiss great.”

  “Well, you’re the first guy I, um, ever kissed like that,” Lance admitted. “With tongue and everything. The first person ever. Darrell was never very into kissing.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Sergio said, his doubts returning: Lance was even more of a virgin than he’d imagined. “Wow.”

  “So, um, good night, I guess,” Lance said, reluctantly reaching for the door handle.

  “Good night,” Sergio murmured sadly, not wanting their time to end.

  He watched Lance cross the yard, kind of hoping he’d turn around and come back. At the top of the front steps, Lance turned and waved good-bye. Sergio waved back, waiting until Lance went inside before he drove away.

  After saying good night to his parents, Lance hurried upstairs, excited to phone Allie about his date with Sergio—and eager to find out about her evening with Chip.

  “Whoa, these girls are kissing!” Chip had exclaimed earlier that evening when he climbed into Allie’s VW and noticed the Girl Panic manga.

  “It’s a girls’ love manga,” Allie explained as she drove them to dinner.

  “I didn’t know they made stuff like this.” He flipped through the pages, looking for more make-out pictures. It was the first time he’d paid any attention to her manga. “Where did you get it?”

  “At the convention, from Kimiko. Remember the Japanese-American girl who wrote my name in kanji?”

  “Oh, yeah.” Not finding any more exciting drawings, he put the manga aside. “So, is she bi?”

  “No.” Allie recalled her conversati
on with Kimiko. “She’s only into girls.”

  “Oh,” Chip said, in a tone Allie couldn’t identify.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Just wondering.”

  While she told him about the anime convention, he reached over and stroked her hair.

  “Where’s the flower you usually have?” he asked, noticing the empty dashboard vase.

  “I gave it to her,” Allie said. Then, on impulse, she asked him, “Have you ever had a sex dream about a guy?”

  “Huh?” His forehead furrowed and his tone became strained. “No! Where did that question come from?”

  “Just curious,” she said. After continuing along the road for several minutes, she asked, “Have you ever wondered what it might be like to make out with a guy?”

  “No!” Chip reiterated even more testily. “What’s up with these questions?”

  Allie bit into her bottom lip for a moment before answering. “One time I had a sex dream about a girl.”

  “You did?” His eyes widened a little and his voice relaxed. “Wow. When? Like what did you do in it?”

  “We kissed,” she said. “It was a long time ago, in middle school.” The memory of it still made her skin tingle. “And we—you know—touched each other. . . . I mostly just remember how intense it was.”

  “I bet!” Chip nodded eagerly.

  His enthusiasm surprised and confused her. Why was he so intrigued by her dream but so horror-struck at the thought of having sex with another guy?

  “I never told anybody at school about the dream except Lance,” she explained. “So don’t mention it to anyone, okay?”

  “Sure,” Chip said, still imagining her and another girl kissing.

  At the local diner, they met up with their friends Jenny and Jack. They’d become a couple two months ago and ever since Jenny had stuck to Jack like Velcro, calling him her “better three-quarters.”

  Now, as they ate dinner and talked, Allie tried to remember: Had she ever felt that moony over Chip? She loved him in the sense that she cared about him, but she didn’t feel the gushiness that Jenny did with Jack, at least not anymore. Why didn’t she? What had changed?

  After dinner they went to watch an action flick that the guys wanted to see. Jenny cuddled up beside Jack, kissing him at the end of practically every other scene. Meanwhile, Allie’s mind wandered back to the anime convention . . . to Kimiko’s poem about the two women . . . and to Lance—she hoped he was having a good time with Sergio. . . .

  When the movie was over, the couples said good night and Allie watched Jenny ride away on the back of Jack’s motorcycle. Then she and Chip returned to his bungalow and took their usual places in front of the TV.

  She knew she needed to say something before they settled into making out—but she still wasn’t sure what to say. Although both Lance and Kimiko had urged her to be honest, it would feel cruel to tell Chip she didn’t feel in love with him anymore. She nervously twirled a curl of hair between her fingertips.

  “I think maybe we should take a break,” she announced.

  Chip blinked, obviously caught by surprise. “A break from what?”

  “From . . .” Allie’s voice quavered, “ . . . from spending so much time together.”

  He blinked again, studying her. “I thought you liked to spend time together.”

  “I do,” she said, resting her hand on his arm. “I just think maybe it would be good for us to take a break.”

  “What did I do wrong?” he asked.

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s about me, not you.”

  “Okay, then—so what’s going on with you?” His brow wrinkled up as he struggled to understand. “It feels like you’re not telling me something. Does it have to do with that girl dream?”

  “Maybe.” She shifted her feet on the carpet. “I don’t know. I just feel like I need to sort some things out. Stuff I mentioned before . . . about our future?”

  He glanced away and thought for a moment, then looked back at her. “For how long do you want to take a break?”

  “I’m not sure,” she said honestly.

  “All right,” he said, leaning back. “Then I guess I’ll wait.”

  His response didn’t exactly make sense to Allie. “Wait? For what?”

  “I’ll wait for you,” he replied, taking hold of her hand, “ . . . for as long as it takes.”

  She hadn’t foreseen that. She’d figured he might feel hurt or pouty but not this.

  “I love you,” he said, leaning forward to kiss her.

  “I love you too,” she answered, although she felt more confusion than love.

  When she got into her car to drive home, she checked

  her cell for missed calls hoping to find one from Lance. But there weren’t any and she didn’t want to interrupt his date with Sergio.

  Once she got home to her room, she tried to take her mind off Chip by diving into the Girl Panic manga from Kimiko.

  The story took place at an all-girls’ high school and opened with Katsuko, a tomboy, falling in love with Ayumi, a girlie girl whose beauty “stole Katsuko’s breath away.”

  Ayumi reciprocated the crushy feelings, leading to much angst, wacky chaos, and dialog that cracked Allie up—like when Ayumi said, “If you really love me, buy me doughnuts.”

  And Katsuko replied, “Okay, but don’t blame me if you get fat.”

  At the climax, a jealous classmate convinced the girls that they’d each betrayed the other. But in the end, Katsuko and Ayumi reconciled with the full-on lip-lock that had grabbed Chip’s attention. And when Allie closed the last page, she felt a warm glow inside. No wonder the story was Kimiko’s favorite.

  Noticing that it was almost midnight, Allie decided to go to bed and catch up with Lance in the morning. But first she sent Kimiko a text that said, Thanx, loved Girl Panic. But don’t blame me if I get fat.

  When she’d gotten home from the manga convention that afternoon, Kimiko had pressed the daisy Allie had given her into her poetry notebook.

  After dinner, her creative writing classmate, Serena, had come over so they could read their latest poems and give each other feedback. When Serena returned home, Kimiko felt inspired by her encouragement to keep working on her poem. For the rest of the evening, she typed and retyped words, shifted stanzas, moved sentences . . . .

  One minute she loved what she’d written. The next moment she hated it. Writing was always like that for her. The words never lived up to the feelings she wanted to express. From the very first word she put on paper, it seemed as though the poem was already ruined.

  Tonight was no different. Her eyes were blurry from fatigue as she read over what she’d written:

  THE WORLD’S SIX TRILLIONTH LOVE POEM

  POEMS ABOUT LOVE AREN’T REALLY;

  THEY’RE ABOUT WANTING THE WRONG

  PERSON, THE ONE WHO

  DOESN’T LOVE YOU BACK. THEY’RE ABOUT

  LUST, JEALOUSY, ENVY, LOSS. ABOUT

  FALSE PROMISES, SHATTERED DREAMS,

  BROKEN HEARTS. ABOUT

  TEARS, LAUGHTER, REJECTION, DEATH,

  EVERYTHING EXCEPT

  LOVE.

  POEM UPON POEM, SONNET

  AFTER SONNET. ALL WITH THE SAME

  REFRAIN:

  “HAVE HOPE! YOU MUST! KEEP LOVE

  ALIVE!”

  SO WE KEEP READING THEM, WRITING

  THEM, AND THINKING:

  MAYBE THIS ONE

  WILL BE DIFFERENT.

  Kimiko let out a breath, still dissatisfied. Despite Serena’s encouragement, she still wasn’t happy with it. But she didn’t know what else to change. She knew from experience that she could work on it till dawn and she still wouldn’t be content. Might as well just give up and hit DELETE

  “That means it’s time to put it aside,” Ms. Swann, her creative writing teacher always told the class.

  Exhausted, Kimiko hit SAVE and closed the file. She was changing into her pajamas when her cell rang.

&nb
sp; “He’s a virgin,” Sergio announced as soon as she answered. “He’s never even French-kissed—until tonight.”

  “Wow,” Kimiko said, taking off her cap and sliding into bed. “He must really like you.”

  “Huh?” Sergio asked, stopping at a traffic light.

  “If you’re the first person he’s ever Frenched,” Kimiko explained, “he must think you’re really special.”

  “Well, that’s pressure!” Sergio said, gripping the steering wheel more tightly. “What if I don’t live up to what he’s expecting?”

  “Well, you can’t control what he expects. All you can do is be yourself.”

  “Yes, Oprah,” Sergio said, continuing down the road. “At least we hashed out the bi thing. I think he finally got it. I feel like his teacher, which I kind of like. And I told him about Zelda and about hooking up. Man, I was a blabbermouth.”

  “It’s good you put it all out there.”

  “Yeah. I’m amazed he didn’t freak out.”

  “That’s a good sign.”

  “It’s hard to believe he’s a virgin. Damn, he’s a great kisser. Frickin’ gifted! How is it nobody’s snatched him up?”

  “So does that mean there will be a second date?” Kimiko asked, just as her cell phone beeped. “Hold on! I got a text.”

  “Let me guess,” Sergio said as she came back on. “Is it from your date this afternoon?”

  “Shush, dude!”

  “So what does she say?”

  “That she liked the Girl Panic manga I gave her.”

  Sergio burst into a laugh. “You gave her a girl-girl love story?”

  “Well, she’d never read one before. I was just being friendly.”

  “And she liked it, huh? She is so bi.”

  “She’s just being polite. Let me text her back.” She wrote to Allie: Glad u liked it. Hope 2 c u again soon!

  She continued to talk with Sergio until he arrived home. When he got to his room, he went online to check messages and found an IM from Lance: Thanx 4 a great time.

  Should I reply? Sergio wondered; although he’d enjoyed the time with Lance, this was starting to feel a little too gooey.