by AJ Matthews
“Who?” I mean, there were a whole cast of characters standing around gawking he could’ve been referring to. Pick your age, weight or size.
“Baseball.” That’s his answer. Damnit, I know who he’s talking about. I’d seen the prick. I’d graduated with the prick. Hell, I’d played ball with the prick. One drunken night, just before graduation, I’d played with his prick and balls. Back when I wore my hair jock short and pretended to be straight. He still pretends. Or I don’t know. He sure seemed to enjoy our playtime that night. Even though we never spoke again, and he’s here with a girl. Star on the field for State now, he needs to prove his prowess. The ones like him are never the kind to let the high school glory days go.
“Gabe?” I ask. “Gabe Cera?” He nods. “And all his buddies?” My freaking ex-teammates thought they owned the springtime, and even though we’ve been away for a year, think they own the summer too. Stupid lunk-head jocks. Too many roids cloud their overly testosterone-filled minds. I’d once been one of them. Though, I’d never been one of them.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes. It does. It matters. You matter.” What is wrong with you, Leif? You matter? I don’t even know his name, but he needs to know he does. The man is a person just like the rest of us and doesn’t deserve the crap the world throws at him every day.
“He wanted to show off for his girl. I didn’t mean to look, but he’s strong, nice arms. They saw me looking.”
Shit. I could see this playing out. “Did they call you names?” Standing there in his striped golf shorts, yellow polo and Keds, looking like his mother still buys his clothes, looking lost to the world, he shakes his head yes.
“When I turned away, someone swiped my legs.”
“And you fell backwards?” Yes again. “Did you land on the ground?”
Silence.
Then he speaks, “No. I landed on one of his friends. He shoved me off, then I fell.”
“They laughed, didn’t they?”
More silence.
He doesn’t need to answer. His non-answer confirms enough. “Can I ask you a question?” Not waiting for his answer or non-answer I push on. “First, what’s your name?”
“Ridley. McAllister.” Like my cousin, his answer sounds automated and I wonder if he’s always lived lacking inflection or if it’s because he’s nervous.
“Okay Ridley McAllister, are you…” Well shit. It sounded like a perfectly legitimate question in my head. I don’t want to offend the guy but he’s gorgeous and I don’t know enough about autistics to know if I’m picking up the right signals. “Are you, that is, you wouldn’t be…gay?”
I want him to look me in the eyes. But he won’t. Instead of doing what I want, he begins pacing back and forth with his arms straight at his sides, opening and closing his hands into fists.
I’m losing him again.
“Ridley. Stop.” To my great surprise, he does. Stops mid-step, back to me. “Turn around.”
He does. Slowly.
“John won’t be happy.”
“Who’s John?” My mind fills with some other guy touching him, celebrating with him when he’s happy, comforting when he’s sad. Getting to be on the receiving end of one of those smiles which just about brought me to my knees. Whoa! What is wrong with me? I helped the guy out of a bad situation. I have no right to feel this protectiveness, possessiveness toward him. Closing my eyes for a couple seconds, I try to regroup. Clearly there’d been an attraction since I first laid eyes on the man, but this is a hell of a reaction for a first meeting.
Ridley lets me off the hook, though. “Therapist,” he says. “He helps me.”
Therapist.
Okay, I could work with therapist. “Why won’t he be happy?”
“Because when Mr. Trucker, he’s my boss, calls my mom. He’s supposed to call her if I have an episode. She’ll call John. He’ll be disappointed. We have to reset the DWI chart now.”
DWI? “Driving while intoxicated?” I ask. He cocks his head, staring at me like I’ve just said the stupidest thing he’s ever heard.
“Days without incident.”
“Well that makes more sense, doesn’t it?” I’m not really asking him, more speaking to myself out loud. Ridley nods just the same. “But you didn’t answer my first question.”
More opening and closing his hands.
“Mom says it’s just my autism. Autistics can’t be gay.” Whoa. Mom sounds like a judgmental, in denial, bitch and I call bullshit.
“When did she say that?”
“When I told her a boy from therapy was pretty.”
Yes. Judgmental. In denial. Bitch.
“What do you think?”
Nothing.
“Would it help you to know I am too?” I ask while rubbing at the back of my neck. This whole conversation has taken a turn I had no intension of turning down. Great, who else can I blurt it out too? My family won’t be able to show their faces in public I keep this up.
He averts his eyes, smirking instead of smiling full on, but highly effective nonetheless. “I know.”
“How do you know?”
“You grabbed my hand, not my arm.”
Ah, yes. I hadn’t realized I’d done that until just now.
Time for a subject change. “How about this,” I say, moving my hand from my neck to run my fingers through my shaggy hair. I get it now. We all have ticks. He might open and close his hands, but how many times have I run my fingers through my hair when nervous? “What if I meet you at work? We can hang out, even get lunch together so you don’t have to worry about Gabe Cera or his friends starting crap. Besides, I could use a friend around here.”
“Okay.”
“Sure? You don’t mind being seen with a purple-haired freak?” He laughs, deep and beautiful. I like the sound of it maybe too much.
“I think the purple’s sexy.” And there, I get the full on smile back. So I return it with one of my own. “Leif,” he says, and pauses a long effective pause. Ridley knows my name? How does he know my name? We didn’t go to school together. I think I’d remember not just someone who looks like him, but him period.
Finally he finishes his thought, “Mom homeschooled me, but I used to watch you play ball.”
Well one question answered.
“So are we friends now?” he continues.
“Do you want to be?”
“Yes.”
Yes. He wants to be my friend. We could work with friends. But god, his gorgeousness knows no bounds. And that smile. What about the laws? Could a non-autistic date an autistic? Would I go to jail or some shit?
This is where my mind wanders when we hear, “There you are.”
Mr. Trucker, the boss, startles us both with his too gruff for dealing with an autistic kid who’s prone to freaking out voice. I jump. Ridley does too. And then I notice his arms go straight, rigid at his sides. His hands opening and closing. Open. Close. Open. Close.
He mesmerizes me and I can’t help think the guy could probably hypnotize me into clucking like a chicken if he keeps it up.
“Your mother is here, Mr. McAllister,” Mr. Trucker continues. “You,” he turns on me. “Are you harassing this boy?”
What? “No. I’m helping the man. He needed—”
“Then that’ll be all. I have him from here.”
“He’s my friend,” Ridley chimes in. “He can walk with me.” I see the panic forming behind his hazel eyes which refuse to look directly at Mr. Trucker. And I could be mistaken, but it doesn’t seem he’s ever stood up for himself or talked back to an authority figure before.
Who wouldn’t be proud to inspire someone’s independence?
“Please, sir.” Pricks like him love words like sir. “He trusts me,” I say. Not saying the obvious, he doesn’t trust you. It really seems like Mr. Up-his-own-ass is going to send me off. Take some kind of glory for saving Ridley for himself. There should never be glory for helping another person. Brightside, sometimes even men like Mr. Trucker
surprise me. Which this time he does, nodding his head in a nonverbal agreement.
“Come on, then.” The boss man ushers us away from the abandon automaton and underutilized restrooms. Ridley’s hands still open and close at his sides, but as we fall in step next to each other, they slow considerably.
Chapter Two
The carnival had been constructed along the boardwalk in a pitchfork design. The boardwalk we walk down, one of the two outer prongs jutting up to a dead end chain link fence, leaving the innermost prong to hold the front and back entrances to the carnival, along with the employee only trailers and offices.
Mrs. McAllister stands out front of the main office to the front entrance, hugging her arms tightly around her waist.
She’s lean, has Ridley’s sandy blonde hair and looks far too young from a distance to be the mother of an over-eighteen-year-old. “Rid. Rid, you okay?” She asks, and sounds like she’s worried, but addressing a child at the same time. What is with these people? It’s no wonder doesn’t look his mother in the eye.
Although, he introduces me.
“This is Leif. He’s my friend.” Mrs. McAllister turns from her son to me to him again, eyes widening as if she hadn’t heard him correctly. Is it really so odd for the beautiful man-boy to have a friend?
Well since my presence throws her enough to negate any form of proper meeting your son’s friend for the first time manners, I step closer, holding out my hand. “Nice to meet you,” I offer, this time noticing the fine worry wrinkles around her eyes and across her brow.
Definitely younger than the average mom, but she’s clearly lived through a lot, probably because of Ridley. After hesitating only briefly, she shakes my hand.
“Nice to meet you, Leaf.”
“Leif.” Ridley corrects before I have the chance. “Not Leaf, mom.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” I return in my I’m speaking to a parent voice. Then turning to Rid, as his mother called him, “You’re going to wait for me, yeah? We’ll hang. Have lunch tomorrow?” And God help me if I don’t almost swoon on the spot when that great, beautiful smile graces me again.
Staying around this guy can only mean trouble for me. I mean, swooning? I’ve never even thought of the word in conjunction with me and a hot guy before. Even as that realization sets in, my feet refuse to move. My feet, for their part, know I don’t want to be the first to walk away.
I watch him walk away, amazed at how cruel the universe could be giving that backside—which I know I shouldn’t be looking at, but a backside like his surely inspired the renaissance movement. Pair that with his face, that body—with the mind and soul of an autistic boy, well, man now.
There’s no denying that I’ve missed the company of a man, or the touch of a man, the scrape of morning stubble against my cheek when we’re lip locked before either of us leaves the bed to start our day. And maybe that’s the reason behind my reaction to Ridley. I have to shake that image out of my head, crossing and uncrossing my arms over my chest because I seriously don’t know what to do with them.
Me and the douche canoe Trucker watch mom and son leave us behind, his glare fixed uncomfortably on Mrs. McAllister’s ass. When they’ve cleared our sight he turns to me. “If there’s nothing else, you should be going.”
It’s as clear as I’m standing here that he doesn’t give two shits about Ridley. Trucker has the hots for Mama McAllister.
Not cool man. Not cool.
Trucker certainly knows how to ruin a moment. And I was definitely having a moment.
And dammit if Gabe Cera isn’t staring right at me when I break away from Ridley’s boss. Standing alone, with people moving around him. If this were a movie, they’d be fuzzy white noise while he stayed in crisp focus shooting me one of those dissecting, you shouldn’t have come back to town and I’m going to figure out how to take you down, stares. He’d aimed such a look on many a poor sucker in high school.
No responsibilities for a couple of months, the sun sits high and warm in the clear, blue sky making this a beautiful day, and I just met a seriously hot guy. Whatever, Gabe Cera can suck my dick…again.
I refuse to be the first one to turn away, and then out for nothing, I take it one step further and blow him a kiss with a wink. He turns away from me fuming. Three months Leif. Three months and you’re back at school. On that thought, I slip out the exit and walk the boardwalk, the breeze picking up from the ocean only a hundred feet away to stay just short of annoying the way it blows my bangs in my face, until I reach where my car sits parked between the beach and street. Two minutes left on the meter. Tomorrow I’ll find free parking.
“Hey Sweetheart.” My mom catches me bent head-first in the refrigerator searching for I don’t know what, just searching for something to take my mind off Ridley and our encounter yesterday. That and I’ve mostly been avoiding my family since getting home.
My parents have been so cool about everything. My sisters too. But they knew me as the jock who loved baseball and dated girls. I’d sat them down, spilled my guts and left the next day for college. Made excuse after excuse not to come home. Even over Christmas I told them I was going skiing with friends, because my friends only knew me as Leif, the guy who happens to date other guys. Not a disappointment or an embarrassment or any of the other things they’ve probably been thinking, but in the end, love me too much to say it out loud.
“I’ve missed you,” she says. Great. Mom guilt. There’s no way to counteract the effects of mom guilt, especially on a guy who spent the better part of a year avoiding her. I straighten, tagging the jug of orange juice as I do, taking a huge swig, leaning with my back to the cool refrigerated air, arm resting on the open door. “We haven’t talked, kiddo. And by the way you’re avoiding me, I think we have a lot to talk about.”
Anybody up for waterboarding? Maybe pulling teeth sans anesthesia? I thought if I waited her out by not leaving the safety of the refrigerator, she’d turn to walk into the dining room and I could slip off without either of us having to deal with this uncomfortable crap. Yeah, I should have known that wouldn’t work. Not with my mom. She stays planted in front of me, eyebrow cocked, until I relent.
And I sigh, slumping my shoulders. “Fine. Okay, let’s talk.”
She pulls me over into her thin arms, shutting the refrigerator door and hugs me good and hard. “You gave up baseball, died your hair purple and pierced your face,” She starts on me through the hug. I tense, ready to pull back, to bolt. But mom leans her forehead against my ear. “I think the purple and piercings look great. Not so glad you gave up ball. You loved ball. But you’re an adult, it’s your decision.”
Shocked, I ask, “You like the purple?”
“Come on.” Mom brakes from the hug to tug me to the kitchen table. “Sit.” I sit, sliding the juice jug far enough up the table to keep from spilling with flailing arms, in case the rest of this talk doesn’t go my way. She sits down right next to me and turns her whole body in the chair, taking my slightly trembling hand in her warm ones. “You’ve been avoiding us.”
My mouth gapes.
“What? Did you think I didn’t know?” She asks, with a soft chuckle to her voice. Something I hadn’t realized until right now, how much I’d missed. “You thought I didn’t know,” she murmurs to herself. “Just like you thought I didn’t know about you being gay.”
Now my mouth doesn’t just gape, because I’m too busy choking and coughing on my saliva. “What?”
“Honey. I saw how you acted around Amanda.”
“Yeah, normal.”
“I could see it in your eyes. Your heart just wasn’t in it. I also saw how you looked at that douche Gabe Cera when you thought no one was looking.”
My choking cough turns to an out and out laugh. “Mom, you called him a douche.”
“He is a douche.”
“Well yeah, he is. I’ve just never heard you call anyone that before.”
“Thing is, I saw how he looked at you when
he thought no one was looking. Something happened between the two of you, you don’t have to tell me about it if you’re uncomfortable. But I know it did. I also know he is not remotely ready to face who he is yet.”
“Ain’t that the truth?”
“Your dad and I just want you to know we are incredibly proud of you. For your achievements but also because you’ve been a blessing to have as a son. I know all this has to be hard for you, but that’s why you need to lean on your family. It’s what we’re here for. To lean on. I want you to live your life how it makes you happy. I want you to bring a boyfriend around the same as you brought Amanda. We love you, you lunk-head.”
“I missed you too, Mom.”
So far my mother called me a lunk-head and used the word douche. I don’t know this woman. It’s becoming clear she’s definitely one I want to.
“So did you meet anyone special? You’ve been gone almost a year.”
“Do you really want to hear this?”
“Yes. I want to be in my son’s life. If it’s important to you, it’s important to me. So spill.”
Okay. Here goes nothing. “I dated a guy at school for about five months. We broke up because I figured out he was kind of a jerk. Been single since then.”
“You being safe?”
“Mom!” This, right here, is the kind of stuff my mother should not be asking about. I tell her yes and I’ll have to sit through watching the wheels in her head moving behind her eyes, as she tries to discern without asking, whether her son was topping or bottoming, or maybe a little of both. Jokes on her, neither so far. But that still doesn’t mean she needs to know.
“Nothing I wouldn’t ask any of my children no matter who they’d been dating.” She defends herself.
Fair enough.
“Yes Mom. Not that you need to know, but I haven’t taken it…there yet.”
I thought she’d squirm. Look uncomfortable. I think I was trying for it, to shock her. To prove she doesn’t really want to know this stuff about her gay son. Nope. My mom continues to sit smiling at me. Excited I’m finally opening up to her.
