“Maybe later,” Arshad tells her, and then she walks away.
Once I’m sure she’s gone, I smell the tea. “What’s in it?”
“Just tea.” He laughs. “Herbal tea from Vietnam. It doesn’t even have caffeine.”
I sip it. Burns my tongue. That’s why I never order tea—always too hot or not enough. Never drinkable. Why am I wasting my time thinking about this? Because I don’t want to bring up Art. Why the hell did I think I could bring up my kinky sex stuff with a dad I don’t know when I doubt I could have even mentioned this to my mom?
“Zee…” he starts, after my long silence. “The advantage of almost killing yourself with drug addiction is you can never again fool yourself into self-righteous judgment of anyone else.”
I have to replay what he said to even understand it. Then, when I finally get it, it actually makes me want to talk about my Art addiction even less. People always judge, Arshad! I’m judging myself right now! But I have shown up and I suppose I need to pretend I have something to talk about, so I say, “Yeah, well, I’ve been living in a shitty motel for five days because I can’t stay with Michael because he’s a creep and he won’t give me the money my mom left.”
“That’s a very difficult strain he has put you under.”
Fuck. “Quit it with your therapist talk. Just not in the mood.” But that overloads his brain. He has to do his eye-closing thing. I feel like an asshole. “Never mind, sorry, talk however you talk.”
“No, I see how I speak can be off-putting.…”
“It’s fine, Arshad! I’m being a bitch.”
“You’re not.…”
“Yes, I am! Let me admit I’m a bitch. I don’t know why I told you the Michael thing. Maybe I just wanted to bitch to someone.” He laughs. It’s nice to have my dad laugh at my joke. Fuck him, though.
Then he says, “Would it be okay if I contacted Michael? I imagine I could convince him that he has misread you and the situation and that it’s best to quickly give you what is yours.”
Man, he spoke well, but, “No, no, I don’t want you talking to Michael. He doesn’t like you and he’ll say racist crap and you don’t deserve that.”
“Zee, I can handle whatever Michael has to say.”
I think for a second. “Maybe but let me first see if I can solve this without getting you involved.”
“If that’s what you think is best.”
“Yeah … I do.”
“Okay.”
I’m starting to feel comfortable with him, which makes me uncomfortable. “I need to go,” I say, even though I don’t. I was never going to talk to Arshad about Art anyway. Art. Jesus. I can’t decide what I want more: him to be naked in bed when I get home or him to be gone.
Arshad says, “Hold on,” reaches into his pocket, and pulls out another stack of hundreds. “Will you take this money just in case of an emergency?”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Then consider it a loan you can pay back, in this life or the next.” He does a tiny grin. For the first time, I see what my mom might have seen.
I almost ask him if he’s a drug dealer, but I can’t be that much of a bitch. So I eye the cash. Don’t be stubborn, Zee. “Yeah, all right.” I take the money and stand.
He stands as well, holds out his hand. “Thank you for meeting me, Zee.”
“You just gave me a bunch of money. I owe you, Arshad.”
“You will never owe me a thing.”
“Yeah, when you say stuff like that, these warning lights go off in my head that you’re going to turn out to be the asshole I want you to be.”
And, fuck, there’s this look in his eyes. But I can’t deal with any revelations by him tonight, so I say, “Later,” and I’m gone.
* * *
When I get to my car, I expect fifty texts from Art.
There are none.
Instead, there’s this:
CAM
I’m waiting for you outside your house.
I’ll wait all night for you
art
Jayden takes us to this multifloor more-club-than-restaurant restaurant called Maroon, which has maroon walls, maroon velvet chairs, maroon velvet couches, and maroon floors. The ceilings are more of a fire-engine red, but that just reminds you everything else is maroon, so maybe that’s the point.
The host is as pretty as Jayden, wearing skintight black pants, a black shirt, and a black bow tie. He leads us past the main stairs to an electric-candle-lit circular staircase that leads to a small room with backless couches and small tables between them. The host leaves the tiniest menus I’ve ever seen and then disappears through a door that a second ago was a wall.
“This is amazing,” I say, because it is but also because my senses are on overload and I can’t think clearly enough to say anything else.
“You like when I show you things?” Jayden says, and oh-my-god, he’s seducing me again.
“Maybe,” I say, and this is the first time I feel like I’m playing back.
“If I was sensitive, I’d be stressing over why you haven’t told me how I look tonight. But I’m not sensitive at all, so you don’t need to tell me.” And when he says that, Jayden means he is probably the most sensitive person in this dimension.
“You look…” Does he want me to say handsome? Beautiful? Ugh, this is hard. I’m hard. I’m so crass! Embrace it! So I say, “… exciting to every part of me.” Ooh, there’s the old me.
“That wasn’t bad. I might have even liked it.”
“Five points for me.” Time for my movie-star smile.
“Yes, five points for you. Now you’re only behind by nine hundred and ninety-five.”
* * *
The waiter arrives. He doesn’t have a shirt on. If I had that many muscles, I might not wear a shirt either. Jayden says, “We’ll share the cheese plate. And I’ll have a pear cider martini. My man’s driving, so he can’t drink with me tonight.” Jayden flashes a fake ID before the waiter asks. It works. The waiter leaves, and Jayden says, “I assume I assumed correctly that you don’t have a fake ID?”
“You did.”
“In New York, you barely need it. But here, with these Midwest puritans, I quickly determined it best to show it like you’ve been showing it for ten years.”
God, Jayden is effortlessly exquisite. He’s seventeen with a twenty-seven-year-old’s soul. He’s what I always thought I was only to now realize I have a lot of work to do.
“So, my gorgeous virgin, since you were straight until yesterday. What did you tell yourself when you somehow never liked a girl ‘quite like that’?”
Oooh, this feels dangerous. So I say, “I did like a girl … once.”
“Beyoncé and Lady Gaga don’t count.”
“Her name is, was, is Zee.” I immediately regret saying her name.
“Oh, mmmmh, I’m feeling jealous and I never feel jealous…” This is doubtful. He goes on, “… but I also feel oddly turned on. Was she like your girlfriend?”
* * *
No, she is more. And as soon as I think this, I ache to be with Zee in our motel bed, cuddling and watching a dumb movie, and not in this fancy, fabulous club with beautiful Jayden.
* * *
But I say, “No … we…”
“Oh, please don’t tell me you kissed her. PLEASE don’t tell me you had sex with her. I’ll never be able to erase that from my memory.”
I’m with Jayden to forget about Zee, and all he’s doing is making me miss her more.
“Now you have to tell me or I won’t be able to think about anything else.”
I sit up straight, and in the most mature, confident voice I can find within me, I say, “You’re the first boy I’ve been on a date with.… I’d rather talk about you.” I know as soon as this leaves my mouth that no matter how many points I was behind in our little game before this, I am in the lead now.
“Dammit,” he says as the waiter delivers his drink.
I wait.
Jayden takes a sip, does that vixen thing with his eyes as he whispers over the edge of his glass, “I fell in love just now even though I promised myself I wouldn’t.”
* * *
Later, when the bill comes, I grab it because I do.
He says, “But I’m supposed to pay. Our bet, remember?”
“You lost on purpose.” I wink.
“Yes, of course I did, but you’re just hoping paying the bill and acting all manly will get you laid.”
* * *
The moment I park outside his house, Jayden says, “Oh, my, you actually took me home.”
“I, uh…”
“Let’s go somewhere.” And he accentuates the go by rounding his lips and holding the vowel while at the same time grabbing my upper-upper-upper inner thigh. Subtlety is not his strength. Maybe that’s the advantage of being gay. It’s two boys, and most boys always want sex. So what’s the point of playing hard to get if no one would believe it? Except, as we’ve established, I’m not most boys and I am truly hard to get.
So I just sit there and stare at him and, oh-my-god, I’m brooding, aren’t I? I totally am.
Then he says, “I want you to kiss me so badly right now I feel sick to my stomach.”
I laugh.
“That wasn’t meant to be funny!”
“Okay … one kiss.”
“No, now I don’t want to,” he lies.
So I say, “Jayden, shhh,” and lean across the center console and—
* * *
Wait!
Oh-thank-god you stopped. We shouldn’t kiss him!
But … maybe we should.
What about Zee?!
She’s kissing Cam.
Yes, but—
Shhh.
* * *
Using both my hands, I cradle his face in my palms, and pull him gently into me. I keep my eyes open because I know he’s going to keep his eyes open, at least until I hypnotize him with my magic, which will be three-two-one, yes, there, he closes his eyes and melts under my hold.
No tongue, because this kiss is meant to linger, not excite, and I keep it short because I know this will leave him thinking about me for days. God, I should probably teach a master’s class at Harvard on how to kiss someone.
When I pull back, he can’t hide his wonderment. “Okay, I’ll marry you.”
I laugh, because that’s what I would have said. Then I say, “Let me walk you to your door.”
I get out, help him out of the car, and walk him to the bottom step of his porch. He’s alternating between joy at having found me and panic that I’m leaving. “Come inside.… We don’t have to do anything. Just hold each other … naked.”
“You’re funny … but I have to go.” I kiss him on the cheek and float away.
* * *
When I turn on the car and see the time, I’m sure Zee will beat me back to the motel and instantaneously know where I was and who I was with.
ZEE
Cam’s waiting for me outside Michael’s house.
Shit.
All I want to do is go back to the motel and get in bed with Art, but if I do that, Cam will know I never went home. This double-life crap sucks. On the way to Michael’s, I almost text Art that I’m going to be even later than I thought, but I don’t want him to think I’m doing what I am actually doing.
Need to:
Resolve Cam fast.
Be back at motel before Art suspects anything.
art
On my drive back to Riverbend, I don’t text Zee—she would know just by my typed words!—but I don’t respond to Jayden’s eighteen thousand texts either because Cinderella Art must not-so-magically transform from Gay Art to Straight Art by the time I arrive at the motel room.
I drop my dad’s car off at the house and then run—twice in one day!—back to the motel, getting into the room just after eleven and Zee’s …
Not there.
ZEE
He’s asleep, looking like the innocent, rosy-cheeked kid I first met years ago. Is that what I fell for? Not the stubbled sports hero he is now?
“Cam…” I say as I knock on his car window. He stirs awake and tries to open the door, but I shut it on him. “Roll down the window.”
“I wan-ted to see youuu,” he says, exhaustion slurring his words.
“I know. But I … can’t. I need you to go home.”
He’s too tired to fight. He nods, turns his head. But then … he turns back. “Kiss me,” he says.
No.
“One kiss and I’ll go. If you don’t kiss me, I’m staying here all night.”
He thinks this is romantic.
“One kiss, Zee.”
No.
“Then I’ll go.”
So I can get back to Art, I kiss Cam for what I promise myself will be the last time.
art
Zee is probably kissing Cam right now, or more—oh-my-god, please not more—but that is maybe, probably, still better than her discovering I was kissing—but not more!—a boy.
After I’ve showered and gotten into bed, Zee’s still not home. AAAH! So I text Jayden that I had a wonderful time and that I’m off to sleep. But he texts me new pictures of himself. He looks gorgeous in each. And I get an erection before I can even tell my penis not to. I never masturbate. You’re thinking, Don’t lie, every teenage boy masturbates. You forget that I am Art Adams, one of a kind in all time and space. But I start masturbating to the photos because won’t Zee be suspicious if I have a hard-on? Maybe, I don’t know! Maybe I just masturbate because it feels really good to touch myself and look at Jayden’s photographs. But then he texts me another photo with the message:
JAYDEN
I’ll even let you call me Zee
I knew I shouldn’t have told him her name! And seeing her name on my phone makes me think of her, which makes me think of her on top of me, so I close my eyes and, ugh, orgasm to the memory of a girl an hour after I kissed my first boy.
ZEE
I don’t get back to the motel room until close to midnight. Art is there, asleep, curled tightly into a ball. Almost at once, I feel Art’s one-of-a-kind energy spin off his sleeping body and into mine, awakening my brain, my chest, my groin. I decide, with certain finality, that we should never, ever be apart.
So I lean over him, down close to his ear, ready to whisper something I know will make him excited to see me …
… but then I notice his phone edging out from under the pillow. Weird. Yeah. I should ignore it. But. I can’t. So I reach over him, gently sliding the phone out and lifting it up. I shouldn’t look. What could I find? But I shouldn’t look anyway. But I can’t not look now. I know his password because he’s told me everything—so why am I looking? Is it because of what’s happened the past twenty-four hours? Do I blame him for the weird stuff we did together?
All this is bullshit, but whatever, it’s “too late,” as Art would say, the phone is on, open to a text conversation. There are pictures. A boy. Not Art. Jayden. I hate that name. He’s beautiful. More feminine than I could be after ten thousand makeovers.
“What are you doing?” A voice. Art’s. He’s awake. I lower the phone. Drop it onto the bed.
“Nothing.”
“Were you going through my phone?” He’s angry, still half-asleep, but sitting up, searching. Finds his phone.
“Who’s Jayden?”
“Oh-my-god, Zee, you were going through my phone.…” He’s crushed because he crushes easy. But it’s different this time.
I’m pissed. I’m jealous. Jealous of how fucking gorgeous Jayden is. “WHO’S Jayden, ART?”
“You were with Cam!” He doesn’t even deny it! (Neither do I.) And he’s standing, searching for things. He’s getting dressed. Packing his bag. Where does he think he’s going?
“Was I just your beard or whatever?” I don’t even mean that. I don’t think. But everything’s wrong. He’s leaving and I’m not stopping him. “I’m not driving you anywhere.”
“
I need to go.”
“It’s midnight. You’re not walking out of a shitty motel by yourself at midnight.”
“You can’t tell me what to do.”
He stops at the door. He doesn’t want to go. I should be nicer, make him stay, but I have to know, “Who’s Jayden?”
Art can’t look at me. Only down at the floor.
“Are you gay, Art?”
He looks up, tears starting. “I love you,” he says, but fuck you, I’m over your tears.
“No, you’re gay. I knew it. And if you’re gay, you can’t love me. Which means you’re the biggest fucking fraud I’ve ever met.” That landed as hard as I wanted it to. He wobbles and then he’s gone.
art
Pulling my suitcase behind me, I make the trip from motel to home for the second time tonight. I’m feeling so melancholy! I don’t even know what that word really means, but I’m sure I’m feeling the most melancholy anyone has ever felt.
On the walk, my future world-renowned-artist self tries to convince me that I must experience these depths of total and complete self-loathing and misery so that I can have the material I’ll need to become a future world-renowned artist. This sounds fair until I ask my future self if I’m gay and he falls annoyingly silent.
* * *
When I get home, it’s just past one a.m. After getting some water for myself, I peek in to check on my dad. On cue, he farts in his sleep. My dad may be a fiftysomething, wifeless, unemployed insurance salesman who now sleeps on a gas-filled couch, but at least he knows who he is.
I lean into Abigail’s room—yes, I am that desperate for human interaction—but she’s not there. Since she and Cam are finished, I don’t know where she could be at this hour, but wherever it is, I’m sure she’s being very mature and responsible. And when I say that, I mean there’s a better-than-average chance that all of Riverbend will be engulfed in flames by sunrise.
* * *
When I wake up Friday morning (you know, the first morning after the girl I love dumped me for maybe, possibly, being gay), I hear the strangest sound: My dad is upstairs. He has escaped the den! Freed himself from its tentacles of zombification!
The Handsome Girl & Her Beautiful Boy Page 19
