Till it Stops Beating

by Hannah R. Goodman

  He grins at me and then says, “I’m not really surprised, about Peter. Were you?”

  “Yeah...”

  “How’d he tell you?”

  How do I tell this story? “It’s long story.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  I try to stop feeling shaky. “Let’s sit in the living room. I’m gonna make some chamomile tea.” To calm the f- down!

  I make the tea for both of us, and we sit on the couch.

  “So, what happened?”

  “We were hanging out at his house and he made this dinner, but I guess I wasn’t feeling well because I threw up all over the table after the first bite.” I omit that I was in a deep depression because of the deadness that was my life. Spending hours editing the literary magazine and banging out weepy poems about…him.

  “Then Peter gets me cleaned up… and my clothes are covered in throw-up so he took them off and put me in the shower.”

  “Now why didn’t that ever happen when I was around?”

  “I’m sure it would have if you ever cooked me dinner.”

  “Very funny. Continue.” Justin leans back into the couch and smiles the sexiest smile ever. “So, you’re naked and Peter is washing your naked body. So far I really like this story.”

  “Afterwards he put me in this robe and brought me to his room.”

  “Sounds romantic.”

  “It would have been if…”

  “Peter wasn’t gay.”

  “Right. But we aren’t there yet. I’m on his bed and so is he. He’s rubbing my feet.”

  “Are you positive Peter is gay?”

  “When I tell you the next part, you’ll see. So, something comes over me.” I check Justin’s expression. He’s dying to hear this. “I lean forward, and I guess my boob falls out, and I see that it’s kind of there and I lean into Peter and put my boob in his hand.”

  Justin is leaning forward with his eyes wide now and I’m kind of sideways on the couch.

  “God, that is hot.” We both laugh. “What happened?”

  “Nothing. Not a squeeze. It was like he was holding my elbow or something.”

  The visual in Justin’s mind...

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Shit,” he shakes his head. “He’s definitely gay. Then what?”

  “I look over at the Tom Cruise poster on his wall.” I shake my head. “That’s when it hits me. And I say it, ‘You’re gay.’”

  “And that was it.”

  “Sort of …Peter had this whole secret relationship with this guy on the football team and the guy turned psycho and threatened to kick the shit out of him if he told anyone.”

  “Peter? Secret relationship?”

  “I know! It gets better. He actually wrote this anonymous letter to the school paper editor, which was me. Susan and I spent all this time trying to figure out who anonymous was, but it was actually Peter, and it turned into this huge thing at school. The three of us actually wrote this article about bullying and homophobia. It won this national anti-bullying award. Then we went to Washington…” For a moment, I am transcended to that time period, as depressed as I was, that was a cool moment.

  “Was that all before he came out to you?”

  “It was all at the same time. It was crazy.” I sigh and lean back into the couch so that now we are shoulder to shoulder.

  We sit and say nothing. I can hear the peepers outside. The breeze comes through the open window in front of us. My heart pounds and pounds. And then…

  He takes my hand and runs his fingers over mine and involuntarily my knee pushes into his.

  “Do you remember what I said to you last year?”

  Movie moment.

  “I would wait for us.”

  God, I love his eyes, so soft like a gray kitten with fur so new it looks blue and his mouth so perfect too.

  “I had a kind of shitty few years. When I saw you, I had just started to smoke and drink a lot...again. It was minor—it didn’t last long—but it kind of sent me backwards a little, and I didn’t call you or try to contact you until later, when my shit was together again.”

  I squeeze his hand. It all makes sense.

  “You know I haven’t really had a girlfriend…nothing that lasted. I mean, it didn’t help that most of my interaction with girls was when we had these dances, and you know what…if you lock a bunch of girls up at a boarding school and then let them out only once in a while to see boys, they can be kind of slutty.” He runs his free hand over his hair. I am jealous of that other hand. “Not to mention that none of those girls could match up to you.”

  That’s all it takes for me to put my hand on his face and kiss him. He pulls away and traces my lips with his finger and then kisses me back. His tongue slides over my lips like his fingers did. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since I saw you at the restaurant when you first got to California. But I wanted to wait. With you grandmother and everything it seemed, I don’t know. Not the right time.”

  I nod. “It’s the right time now.” Now we kiss the way I imagined we would. A kind of kiss that signified how much time had passed and how much we’ve changed and grown.

  . . . . .

  I open my eyes. Sunlight blinds me. I roll over. Justin. His eyes peacefully closed and the lashes sweeping against his skin. The tiny patch of hair on his chest and the curve of the muscles on his arms. I reach over and touch him. Yep. This is real.

  After we kissed on the couch and talked for a while, Justin brought me upstairs (with Peter and Larry gone, I took my room back) to “tuck me in” because Tony made him promise to come home by 1 am.

  When we got to my room I didn’t flip the overhead light on. Just the lamp on the side of my bed. In the semi-darkness I turned to Justin and said innocently, “I have to put on my PJ’s.”

  He broke into a grin. “Can I help?”

  I turned back around, shy and nervous and lifted my shirt over my head. When I reached around to unhook my bra, my hand touched his. “Let me help,” he whispered.

  I don’t want to move to leave the bed, but my breath is horribly tainted by the morning. It would be nice to smell good when he wakes up. I roll to the other side to get up but feel a grip on my arm.

  “No.” He rubs my arm. “No leaving.”

  “But I want to brush my teeth.”

  “No.”

  “But I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “No.”

  “Justin!”

  He opens his eyes. Hello ocean on a rainy day…hello perfect man for me…

  He bats them at me. I laugh. “You think that will do it?”

  “Yup!”

  I turn to get up again, and this time he rolls on top of me and pins me down.

  I look down and see his boxers have SpongeBob on them. Did I not notice this last night. I burst out laughing.

  “You thought they were hot last night.”

  “It was dark.”

  “It was. But not too dark for me to remember the color of your panties.”

  “Don’t cheat!” I snatch the covers down, so he can’t peak.

  “Pink and white polka dots.”

  “Wrong!”

  “Let me check.” He slides down, but I stop him.

  “I’m sorry but as much as I like you, I am not fooling around until I brush my teeth and hoping you will do the same.”

  He rolls off me and puts his arms behind his head. “I’m glad I tucked you in last night.”
r />   I pull on my t-shirt and grin at him. “Me, too.”

  We walk to the bathroom leaning into each other and he tickles me, and I swat at him. We share my toothbrush, grinning and bumping each other.

  I wipe my mouth on the towel and turn to Justin and he pulls me to him and we kiss. We kind of kiss and fumble our way back to the bedroom and tumble onto the bed. Last night we made out and touched each other, but nothing really serious.

  But now it’s all feeling very, very possible that things may happen, and I really feel like it’s Disclaimer Time.

  I stop kissing him. “Wait.” Although he isn’t doing anything.

  “Huh?” He mumbles into my neck.

  “I’m a virgin.” It’s a declarative, with the hint of an inquiry.

  He stops kissing me and absolutely nothing can be heard for a full thirty seconds. Then he laughs.

  I push him off me and sit all the way up. “It’s funny?”

  “No?”

  I punch his arm. “Stop! I’m being serious. I’m just, you know, letting you know in case you didn’t. Know.”

  “I kind of figured by the way you talked about Zak and Sean that you haven’t—Oh, I see. You think—” he gestures to the rumbled sheets.

  The blushing is so apparent, I can see it on my arms, for god’s sake. “No, I mean…”

  “Of course, yes I want you and I want to. But, I mean, it’s our first date technically and I—” He makes his face in this mock choir boy (Jewish choir boy) kind of expression. “I am not that kind of boy.”

  I burst out laughing. Then I say, “Are you?”

  “What?”

  “Are you a virgin?”

  He scratches his head. “Here’s the thing. Uh, did you ever, have you ever…did you and Sean? Wait, not an image I want to picture. But did you ever almost do it or kind of do it?”

  “Isn’t that like being sort of pregnant or something? I don’t think there’s like a gray area.”

  “One time, I half way did it. You know, like just the tip.”

  Which just kind of hangs in the air, the word tip. Visual and everything. I shake my head. “Oh! I think I know what you mean. But, no. That’s never happened to me.”

  Now the conversation completely stops, and nothing moves and then we both burst out laughing.

  “Your question was, have I had sex before? And the answer, Maddie, is…no. Not totally and fully and completely, so that’s a no.” His face is red now. “And I don’t have condoms, and as neurotic as you think you are, I’m probably twice. Not interested in being a baby daddy right now. Gotta finish high school, you know?”

  Different topic. I take it. “What do you mean?”

  “I have to go back and finish school. I didn’t go in as a junior. Prep schools make you repeat the previous year if you start after freshmen year.”

  His school is in Massachusetts’s near Emerson and not far from Connecticut. I grab a pillow and lean back into the headboard.

  Justin scoots next to me. “By the way, with all this going on, I haven’t even asked what’s up with you. What are you doing in September?” He moves the hair off my shoulders and touches my skin.

  Ugh. Thought I could completely tuck away the last nine months of my life before California.

  I can’t look at him, so I stare at my hands that clutch the pillow. “I had a kind of melt down at the beginning of the school year and the long and short is that I am not going to college—Emerson—until January.” Justin shifts but says nothing, and I still don’t look at him. “Now I don’t know what to do. I was going to try and get a part time job here. I was going to take a writing class at Berkley but now everything seems so uncertain, and I guess that whole ‘life happens when you’re making plans’ thing is true.”

  He takes my hand and then pulls me close. Then he says out loud what I was thinking: “Emerson is not far from where I’ll be.” He kisses my fingertips, and we hold each other for a while and for the first time in I don’t know how long, I stop worrying.

  . . . . .

  My phone buzzes just as I open my eyes and yawn. We must have fallen back asleep. I turn and reach for the phone. Peter.

  “Seriously, can’t you just walk up here?” I say when I answer.

  Justin is awake now, too. Lying on his side and looking adorable. Blue eyes sleepy. Hair rumpled.

  He leans in and says into the phone, “Yeah, we aren’t naked or anything.”

  I punch his arm.

  “Ow!” He rolls away for a second but then rolls back to me.

  “I’m not downstairs,” Peter says.

  “Still at the hotel?” Justin sticks his tongue in my ear. I push him away but smile.

  “Where are you?”

  “At the airport.”

  “Airport?” Justin rolls back and his face falls to serious.

  “Where’s Larry?”

  “Don’t know.” He sighs heavily. “My guess is that he left sometime around midnight.”

  Oh, no.

  “You know what, it was fine. He was weird. He was definitely hiding something, Maddie. I should have known with that whole gay test bullshit.”

  I watch Justin sit up and stretch. It’s way too beautifully distracting. “What happened?”

  “We just got into this weird fight where he started saying that I had a problem with him being a Christian or something. I mean all I said to him was how can you be a Christian, when Christians tend to have problems with gays? He went off and ‘they hate the sin not the sinner’ and I just said whoa so being gay is a sin? He said some bullshit about ‘No, only if you act on it’ and I told him ‘we’ve been acting on it’ and he said some more bullshit about ‘I know, but if we ask Jesus for forgiveness’ and then I thought, oh, shit no way am not going back into the closet. Especially for Jesus.” We laugh at that one.

  “But how did you wind up at the airport?”

  “We were sitting in the car in front of the condo when this all happened, didn’t even make it to the hotel…me and break ups in cars…and I said ‘You should just go, you should just drive back home, and he said the most messed up thing: ‘You’re right. This is all devil’s work.’ I just said, ‘Have a nice life’ and went inside. Man, I really can pick them. I couldn’t sleep, so I called my mom, and she got me the ticket and here I am at a layover in Ohio.”

  Justin puts his hand on top of mine.

  “I was going to stay, but I think you and Justin have this perfect opportunity to be together. And from watching you do the third wheel thing that is clearly not fun. So, I’m going home. Maybe I’ll go for that internship my dad talked to me about.”

  No Bubbie. No Peter. Just us.

  “Maddie?”

  “No, I’m here. I’m going to miss you.”

  “Oh, and I should tell you something else.”

  “What?”

  “There was no little brother who died of leukemia. He’s an only child.”

  Of course, there was no brother. Isn’t that an oxymoron—Christian liar?

  Justin’s thumb strokes the top of my hand. I close my eyes. “I’ll really miss you, Peter.”

  “Me too. Tell Helen I’m thinking of her.”

  “I will.” I squeeze Justin’s hand and say goodbye.

  Chapter Eleven

  A Cabin in The Woods

  “You have some sauce—” Justin leans over and dabs my face with his napkin. “You’re good.” Then he takes a huge bite of his pizza.

  I laugh. “Come here.” Now I lean over and wipe his face.
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br />   “Enough kissy face, you two lovebirds.” Tony walks over in his white apron and wipes his hands before putting them on Justin’s shoulders. “You two should go take a few days and get out of here.”

  “You’re actually giving me some time off?”

  Tony squeezes Justin and he yelps. “Only if it’s to be with the lovely Maddie who is nothing but a good influence on you.” He winks at me then slaps Justin on the back, which causes him to almost choke. Then he lays a key down on the table. “Here’s the key to the cabin up in Tahoe. I’ll let you take the truck. Then he leans down and says into Justin’s ear, “Pack a raincoat or two, capiche?”

  Justin turns beet red and I laugh. A raincoat.

  “Okay, kiddos. Time to make the pizza. Let me know when you are leaving, and listen, don’t come back till Friday. Capiche?”

  “Capiche!” we both say.

  Almost a whole week alone…Hope it rains.

  . . . . .

  “That’s sweet of Tony. And I’m sorry to hear about Peter. That’s too bad. Larry seemed like a nice guy.” Bubbie sounds good.

  “We want to stop and visit you guys on the way back on Friday. Will that work?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “You really need to stay there two weeks?”

  “I do, honey. I really do.”

  “Will Joyce stay with you?”

  “No, she’s going next Monday.”

  Silence.

  “I just feel like I don’t really understand what’s going on.”

  “I know. You just have to trust me.”

  I think for a minute. “Did you talk to Mom again?”

  “She told me her plan to come down and drag me back to chemo. Not a surprise.” She laughs.

  I don’t laugh. “We’re just scared, you know.”

  She stops laughing. “I know, and I appreciate all the love and concern. And I’m not stopping your mother from coming down. She said that she would give me two weeks. So, I expect her when I return home.”