“Oh, cool. What do you mean, ‘pretty gay’?”
“I don’t know. I mean, there are gay guys in it, and a gay guy wrote it. But it more just, like . . . feels gay.”
“What does that mean?”
“You know. It’s just got a gay vibe.”
“Aha.”
Kyle put the book down and leaned in closer to Jason. He reached out a hand and fixed Jason’s bangs. Jason flinched for a second, scared that someone might see them. But then he thought about the morning, all that nakedness and intimacy, and he thought about what it meant to feel gay, and he let Kyle touch him, there in public.
“You should read it.”
Jason closed his eyes, reveling in Kyle’s touch. “Maybe I will.”
“And we should go.”
“Like, leave?” Jason asked, surprised. “We just got here.”
“No, idiot.” Kyle laughed. “To San Francisco. Someday. It sounds amazing.”
“O.K.,” Jason murmured. He would have agreed to anything just then, if it meant feeling more of the peace and contentedness he felt at that moment. “I like you,” Jason said, eyes open now, looking directly into Kyle’s. “I like you.” Then, rather brazenly for him, he kissed Kyle, not a quick peck, but a long and lingering one. Making out on a beach, in the middle of the day! How about that.
When Jason eventually pulled away, Kyle smiled and said, “I like you too. A lot. But I kinda wish we didn’t have to, y’know, drive all the way to Dennis just to hang out.”
“We hung out this morning, at my house . . .” Jason said.
“Yeah, when your whole family was safely not home.”
“What, you wanna hook up while they’re home?”
Kyle sighed. “No, obviously not. I just . . . I wish you would tell them.”
This conversation again. Jason rolled over, onto his back, the sky a pure and jewel-tone blue. “I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because . . . I just can’t. We don’t talk about stuff like that.”
“Like what? Like dating?”
“Yeah, like dating. Like sex.”
Kyle laughed, maybe a little annoyed. “Well, you don’t have to tell them that we have sex.”
“But they’ll know . . .” Jason trailed off, hoping they could be done with this particular conversation for the day, for the summer even.
Kyle sat up and then there was his face, looming above Jason with a weird, serious expression. “Maybe I should tell Alexa.”
Jason reared back, sat up too. “What?”
Kyle shrugged. “Maybe I should tell Alexa. Wouldn’t that make it easier? Like ripping off a Band-Aid, only you don’t even have to do the ripping. I’ll do it for you.”
“Kyle, no, please don’t. That would be really shitty. Please don’t do that.”
“She’s my friend too! She’s one of my best friends. I can’t tell my best friend about the great guy I’m dating?” He was trying to soften the moment with affection there at the end, but it wasn’t going to work on Jason, not then.
“Please, Kyle. I’m serious. Do not tell my sister anything.”
Kyle frowned, looked off at the water. “I wish you weren’t so ashamed of me.”
“What? Oh, come on. Don’t be dramatic. I’m not ashamed of you.”
“You sure act like it sometimes.”
Jason put a hand on Kyle’s shoulder, gave it a squeeze. “I’m not. I promise. And I will tell them. When it’s the right time. I will.”
Kyle leaned into Jason’s touch and Jason felt him relax, the tension gone. “O.K.,” Kyle said quietly. Impulsively, Jason scooted forward and wrapped both arms around him, his hands on Kyle’s bare chest—as much physical contact as they’d ever had in public. He rested his chin on Kyle’s shoulder.
“I will. I promise. I will.” And Kyle seemed to relent.
The rest of the day was easy and relaxed, Kyle reading and Jason watching him, sometimes dozing off, the sounds of seagulls cawing and kids laughing in the surf creating a soothing kind of lullaby.
The coming out thing was not the only issue that Kyle pressed that summer. He was always pushing to go to Provincetown, but something about that place, about its supposedly unbridled gayness, scared Jason. He had refused all of Kyle’s pleas that they drive out and spend one of his days off there, but then, at the end of August, the Friday of Labor Day weekend, Kyle announced that it was his birthday (Jason wasn’t sure he was telling the truth) and that he was demanding that they go. So, after making sure his sister and his parents and everyone he knew would be nowhere near Provincetown that day, Jason agreed. Kyle yelped and jumped and gave Jason a kiss, saying, “You’re going to loooove it. You’ll be a total queen by the end of the day.”
Kyle picked Jason up early, but not so early that Alexa wasn’t at work and his parents weren’t playing a game of doubles at the club. Jason fretted over outfits, not wanting to stand out either way—to be too gay or too straight. He settled on a pair of shortish shorts, rolling the legs up once to get them the right length, and a tank top. Feeling a little brave, maybe because it was the end of summer and there was a sense of fuck it and finality in the air, Jason got a pair of scissors from the kitchen and cut the sleeve holes open a bit more, not so low that it would qualify as a “skank tank,” but low enough that, sure, he felt a little sexy.
He was turning in the mirror and just about to get second thoughts when he heard Kyle’s run-down car putter up, then its sad little cat’s moan of a horn. Jason braced himself and bounded out the door to meet Kyle.
“You look cute,” Kyle said when he saw Jason. “You dressed the part! All you’re missing is a little snapback hat.”
Jason blushed, immediately regretting this daring (for him) outfit choice. “Whatever. And I don’t own any hats.”
Kyle, used to this routine from Jason, the push and pull of Jason coming into himself, said, “You look great,” and put the car into drive, zooming them off toward the very end of Cape Cod.
The drive out was lovely, windy and green, full of excitement and romantic charge. Kyle was babbling on about some drag show in P-Town he’d talked his way into with a bad fake ID last summer. It was always so strange for Jason to imagine Kyle having a similar summer, working at Grey’s and traveling around the Cape on days off, the year before they’d met, but Jason couldn’t really focus on any of that. Not because he wasn’t interested in what Kyle was saying, but because something that felt so much bigger and more urgent was pressing on his mind.
Kyle eventually realized he was rambling, or noticed that Jason was staring at him in a new and different way, and he turned to him, giving him an unsure little smile. “What? What is it?”
Jason smiled back, feeling hot in the face, his knees knocking like the first time he and Kyle had kissed, almost two months ago now, not that long, but also an eternity.
“What?” Kyle asked, his smile broadening. Maybe he knew what was coming.
Jason blinked. Just say it. “I love you,” he said, and then, rather involuntarily, let out a huffy little laugh, like he was surprised he’d just said it. Which, really, he was.
Kyle raised his eyebrows, turned back toward the road. They drove in silence for a second or two before Kyle turned back to Jason. He reached out, affectionately ran a hand through Jason’s hair, a little thing he liked to do. “Well,” he finally said. “I guess I love you too.”
A wave of relief passed over Jason, a sudden comfort. “You guess? I mean, you already said it in a voice mail, if you remember . . . Which, from the sound of it, you might not.”
Kyle grimaced. “No, I know. But I didn’t know know then. But now I do.”
“You do what?”
“I do love you. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Jason said, giving Kyle a peck on the cheek and leaning back in his seat, a m
illion little fireworks going off under his skin. They drove on, the sun dazzling above them, as if it was saying “Congratulations.”
But by the time they got to Provincetown, clouds had rolled in, threatening rain, and the streets Kyle insisted were normally “packed with gays” weren’t really any busier than any other tourist town on the Cape. And it was a lot of straight people, from the looks of it.
“How fabulous,” Jason said at one point, immediately realizing it was the wrong thing to say, more haughty sarcasm at a moment that was supposed to be fun, was supposed to be big.
Kyle was disappointed, dejected, and, despite the excitement of the conversation in the car, he quickly slipped into one of his petulant bad moods. They ate lunch in a sulky quiet. Jason made a joke, something like “We can come back for your next birthday, in two weeks,” but Kyle wasn’t really having it.
“Maybe we should just go,” he said dejectedly.
Jason was fine with that, fine to head back toward home and find a place to be alone together. But he didn’t want Kyle to be disappointed. “We can stay,” he said, grabbing for Kyle’s hand.
Kyle shook his head. “No, it’s fine. This was stupid. We should have checked the weather.”
They probably should have, and Jason was actually a little surprised that Kyle hadn’t. But it was too late now. Still, he wanted Kyle to have fun. The problem was, he’d never been to Provincetown before, so he had little in the way of suggestions. “Is there, like, a drag thing we could go to?” he asked lamely.
Kyle shot him a withering look, but it quickly dissolved into a little smile. “You’re sweet. But no. It’s the middle of the day, dummy.”
“I thought there were drag shows twenty-four/seven in P-Town!”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Nothing’s twenty-four/seven in Massa-chusetts. Come on. It’s O.K. We can go. I know you wanna go anyway.”
As they made their way to the car, Jason felt bad that Kyle’s big day hadn’t gone as planned. But, he had to admit to himself, he was also deeply relieved to have gotten through the day without any real catastrophe. Then, just as Jason was thinking they’d made it, a voice behind them called out, “Kyle?” They both turned around—what could Jason do, really, just stand facing the other way while Kyle talked to whomever this was?—and there, to Jason’s plunging horror, was Nate Carlsson from Grey’s, one of the older workers there, a manager or something, in his mid-twenties.
“Heyyy,” Kyle said, shooting a look to Jason, either scared to see Nate or scared that Jason was going to freak out.
“Crappy day, huh?” Nate said. It had started to drizzle, and people were scurrying toward their cars or houses.
“Yeah,” Kyle said, nodding. “Yup.”
Nate looked at Jason, and there was a slight flare of recognition in his eyes, a subtle change in his expression. “You’re Lexa Elsing’s brother, right? Jared?” Jason was dumbstruck, speechless. He’d just been spotted, with a known gay guy, alone together in Provincetown. They might as well have been caught in bed.
“Uh, Jason” was all Jason managed, feeling naked and exposed in his stupid tank top and shorts. Kyle let out a strange little laugh, and Nate smiled, nodded again, slowly, with a dawning comprehension. “Cool, cool,” he said. “Well, I’ll let you two . . . get back to it. See you at work tomorrow, Kyle?” Kyle, stifling another laugh, said, “Yup, yeah, see you then. Bye, Nate!”
When they got to the car, Jason didn’t say anything for a minute, wanting Kyle to focus on getting the hell out of there before anyone else saw them. When he was sure they were safely enough away, he turned to Kyle.
“Why the fuck were you laughing?”
Kyle shot him a glance, annoyed, maybe a little alarmed. “It was so awkward! What did you want me to do?”
Jason’s face was hot, and he had a panicky tangle in his stomach. “Do you not understand that it is a big fucking deal that he saw us?”
Kyle didn’t answer for a moment, eyes trained on the road as the rain splattered down on the windshield, the barely functional wipers whining. “I guess I don’t understand that,” he finally said, coolly.
They drove in silence almost all the way to the beach parking lot where Kyle usually dropped Jason off, so Jason could walk the rest of the way home alone. But before he got out of the car, Jason had to make sure that Kyle treated this as seriously as it was.
“Will he say anything? Nate? Is he friends with my sister?”
They reached the beach, and Kyle pulled into the little lot. He put the car in park and sighed. “I don’t know, Jason. Why does it matter? Who really cares? The summer’s almost over. It’s not going to be so easy to sneak around once you’re back in Boston and I’m . . . wherever I am.”
Jason wasn’t sure why it mattered, but it did. It was important that he and Kyle remain a secret. Not because he was so scared to tell his family that he was gay, but maybe because announcing it to the world, that he and Kyle were a thing, that they were, officially as of a few hours ago, in love, would invite so much shit into this perfect, contained, protected thing that they had. The rest of the world would find a way to ruin it, Jason was convinced. To pick it apart and sabotage it and pull them away from each other. And the thought of that . . . Jason couldn’t think about that. He couldn’t think about the end of the summer either, so close now. And he realized he was furious at Kyle for not understanding that, for thinking this was all some kind of joke.
So he said something terrible, there in the empty beach lot, the rain pounding on the roof of Kyle’s shitty car. “Maybe it isn’t supposed to last past the summer,” he said quietly.
Kyle turned to him, looking like he’d been slapped. “What?” he asked, his voice small, any trace of flippancy or humor drained out of it.
“I don’t know, Kyle. Aren’t you supposed to be going to New York or something? And I have to get back to Boston. Maybe this is a sign.”
Kyle balked, angry tears welling up in his eyes. “We literally just said ‘I love you’ to each other, like, two hours ago.”
Jason sat silent, feeling dark and stubborn. “Maybe I didn’t mean it. Maybe I just said it because it’s what you wanted to hear. We’re too young to love each other. We don’t know what we’re talking about. We barely even know each other.”
Kyle let out a caustic laugh. “You’re such a fucking coward, Jason.”
This stung because, of course, it was true. He was. He was being cowardly and pathetic. But he couldn’t stop now; every mean thing Jason could possibly say was swarming in his head. “At least I’m not some loser who lies to everybody about a life he’s never gonna have.”
Kyle flinched, tears now streaking down his cheeks. “All right,” he said, starting the car again. “I’m done. Get out. You have to walk the rest of the way home, don’t you? So your mommy doesn’t see you with me?” Jason said nothing as he opened the car door and slammed it, walking across the lot toward home as Kyle maneuvered around him and sped off, tires kicking up gravel and then splashing down the road.
That was the last time he saw Kyle. For the rest of Jason’s life, that would be it. Two days of silence, and then, on Sunday night, the eve of the last day of summer, Alexa was on the phone, frantic, shrieking, saying Kyle’s name in between sobs.
And then what? Jason falling back, into the void of his life before, his life to come. His sister’s radioactive, repellent grief. She so clearly needed him to be there, to be present like he had been, but Jason found it impossible. He was already gone. The summer had ended and the cold had come early and he was sinking into it, far out from the shore, the glimmer of the sun dimming, everything watery and dark. It was so easy to just float away.
But not easy enough. Suddenly, Jason was pulled back to the hospital. Someone was saying his name. He turned around to see who it was and saw Morgan, eyeing him worriedly.
“Jason? Jason?”
&nb
sp; He blinked, the lights of the waiting room seeming newly harsh and glaring. “Yeah?” he said, trying to sound alert.
“Do you mind sitting with your sister? I have to pee.” He looked past Morgan and saw Alexa, not crying anymore but still curled up in her chair. He nodded at Morgan. “Yeah, of course. Of course.”
Jason made his way to his sister. Kicked her chair lightly. “Hey.” She looked up at him, looking almost surprised to see him there.
“Hey.”
“Do you need anything?”
“No. I’m fine. I should—” She pushed herself up from the chair. “I should go talk to someone. I should ask Mary Oakes if she knows anything. She might. If they know about Kate . . .”
Jason nodded. “Yeah. She might.”
Alexa straightened herself up, wiped her eyes, strode toward the nurses’ station.
Jason thought about the red taillights of Kyle’s car, disappearing around the bend in the road, the steady hiss of the rain as he walked the fifteen minutes home. When was the last time Jason had gone sailing? Had it been early that morning, the day of Nate Carlsson, the day of the fight? Or had he, despite everything else changing, still gone the next day? He couldn’t remember anymore.
Alexa turned back to look at her brother. “What are you going to do?” she asked, probably already knowing the answer.
Jason said the only thing he knew how to say these days.
“I don’t know.”
Chapter Eleven
Alexa
IT WAS A regular enough night at Grey’s, the night she found out, tinged as it was with end-of-summer sadness. Alexa had told her manager Nate that she would be back on weekends in the fall until Grey’s closed for the season, after Columbus Day. But she and Nate both knew that probably wasn’t going to happen all that often. The Cape was far, and she’d be busy with school. (“And friends!” Nate said, Alexa realizing she’d forgotten all about her paltry social life back in Boston.)
But Alexa insisted to Nate, and to herself, that this was not it. That she’d be back, that the spell was not going to lift on Monday morning. It was the only way she could make herself enjoy this last weekend.
All We Can Do Is Wait Page 14
