“What?” said Elliot.
“So, you like music?”
Here Elliot was in a music shop and wearing his Pink Floyd T-shirt, even though it fit all wrong now. Elliot wondered if Jase was simple. But he was on a mission to be allowed free run of the place, so . . . “Love it,” Elliot said cheerfully.
“Cool,” said Jase. “If you’re at a loose end later, maybe you’d like to come see my band practice. I’m the drummer.”
The beatific prospect of not having to go home at all opened up to Elliot like clouds to reveal the sun or ice-cream to reveal jelly. “Yes,” Elliot breathed with conviction. “I would like that very much.”
“Cool,” Jase said again, and then gave Elliot another considering look, this one a bit more worried. “How old are you, exactly?”
“Sixteen,” said Elliot. “Practically.”
From the vaguely startled look on Jase’s face, it was clear he’d thought Elliot was older. Elliot wondered why it mattered. Maybe the band practiced in a bar, but unless Elliot ordered a drink he should be fine.
Then it occurred to Elliot why it mattered.
“Oh, well. Sixteen. That’s old enough,” said Jase at last, relaxing. “’Cause this would be a date.”
He looked at Elliot, this time with his eyebrows raised, more challenge than consideration.
“I know, I just got that a couple of minutes ago,” said Elliot. “I’m not sure why I didn’t get it before. You were being pretty obvious about it. Also slightly clichéd. But I haven’t been hit on a lot.”
Jase looked extremely startled while Elliot was talking, which often happened while Elliot was talking and was usually a bad sign, but at the last thing he smiled. Elliot was entirely unclear on what he had done right or what he’d done wrong.
“No?” said Jase, still smiling.
“Only once before by a guy,” said Elliot. “My friend Luke’s cousin. And honestly I hated him and wanted him to fall into a pit of spikes.”
“So you’ve never . . .,” said Jase, and did not seem displeased about that at all. “But you are . . . ?”
“You need to learn to finish your sentences for more effective communication,” Elliot advised.
“You still wanna go on a date with me?” asked Jase.
“I don’t know. I’m thinking about it,” Elliot said impatiently.
Jase was back to looking startled. “Well . . . let me know.”
The thought of going home was like the idea of voluntarily stepping into an abyss. Elliot felt a sick swoop of horror at the thought of condemning himself to that when he had another option.
But he could hang out in darkened parking lots on his own, he supposed. He didn’t have to go anywhere with this guy.
Jason had asked if he’d never, and asked if he was, and even if he hadn’t finished his sentences Elliot had understood. Jason was cute, and Elliot was flattered to be asked, and . . . Elliot had always known he liked both, had strongly suspected that his teacher talking about him confusing hero worship with something else was idiocy. Elliot was rarely confused about anything.
Only he’d been really young when he met Serene, and he’d loved her at once, known at once that if he had her he would never want anyone else. He’d thought about guys occasionally, but in the same fleeting way he’d thought about other girls. He’d figured that he never had to work it out.
Except he didn’t have Serene. She didn’t want him. And somebody else did.
“I’ve thought about it,” said Elliot. “Yeah, I’ll go on a date with you.”
Jase grinned. “Cool.”
Jason really needed to expand his vocabulary, Elliot thought. But that was okay. They could work on that.
Elliot hung around in the shop all day and came to Jase’s band practice that night. They really did practice in the upper room of a bar. The group accepted him without surprise, and Elliot was pleased to see that Jase was actually pretty good, though Marty the lead singer was absolutely atrocious. Elliot spent most of the practice talking to Alice, who did the lights and showed him how to as well.
He told her he was really behind on his technology, and she laughed at him, but nicely, as if she thought he was fun and was ready to accept him. They all seemed ready to do that, and it was absolute blissful relief just to have people who would look at him when they spoke to him, who would listen when he replied.
He drank ginger ale at first, but they stopped practicing and went downstairs where the bar was turning into an overflowing room of people drinking and dancing. Alice bought Elliot a drink and Elliot drank it: he’d had mead plenty of times before at Luke’s house, so he was perfectly able to handle it. He danced with her: with the whole group. The room was packed enough that it seemed like dancing with a hundred strangers.
“Whoa, you can dance,” said a voice in his ear. Elliot looked around and down at a touch that felt deliberate, and saw Jase’s barbed-wire-encircled fingers curled in the loop of his jeans. Then he looked up into Jase’s smiling face. “Enjoying yourself?”
Elliot smiled back, and Jase leaned in.
Even though he had loved Serene with all his heart for years, Elliot had thought occasionally: I might want to . . . and will I ever . . . ?
Jase kissed him. The question was answered. He would, and he had. Elliot kissed him back, felt the scrape of Jase’s stubble against his face and against his fingers as he touched Jase’s jaw, slid an arm around his neck, drew their bodies tighter together.
Jase asked him to come home with him at the end of the night, but Elliot said no. He thought maybe that he wouldn’t be asked back, but the next day at the music shop Jase was there and made sure to get Elliot’s number. Elliot had bought a phone that morning, in case he asked. He saw the band practice over and over, went out drinking and to a concert, and on his sixteenth birthday he let Alice put eyeliner on him and went out dancing again.
Jase asked Elliot to come home with him that night, and Elliot did.
It was so different to his house, Jase’s rented flat that he shared with Alice and Marty. The bathroom was filthy, the blinds broken and skewed like teeth in a prizefighter’s face, and Elliot did not wake up alone but woke up warm and had the other two laughing at them for sleeping in late.
“So, pretty different from girls, huh?” Jase asked as they made toast.
“Sure,” said Elliot, and winked. “You work out a lot less than Serene.”
Jase looked slightly vexed, but Alice laughed out loud and Marty said, “You finally caught a live one,” and Jase relented and laughed too.
It was nice in the flat. It was nice to go to concerts. He’d never had someone his age—well, within five years was close enough—to talk about music with. He’d hardly had anyone to experience this world with, and this world looked better with someone else.
Elliot started to think, again, about not going back.
Elliot also could not talk to Joe about music anymore. The few times he came to the music shop when Jase wasn’t there, Joe was strange and curt when before he had been gruff and kind. When Elliot ran out of patience—which took thirteen minutes—and demanded to know what his problem was, Joe said: “You can’t ask me to approve of that sort of carry-on.”
“What?” Elliot demanded. “So Jase isn’t welcome here anymore?”
Joe looked away. “Jase is my blood.”
Elliot wanted to shout at him, but he knew better than anybody that you could not fight people into caring about you or being fair to you. This was the punishment he got for trusting Joe, for thinking that because someone would throw a kind word to a kid that they were kind, that they could be counted on. He took the punishment. He bit down on what he wanted to say, and he walked out.
The closest he got to the shop, ever again, was when he walked Jase there. He told Jase what his uncle had said the next morning, and Jase nodded, hands in his pockets, looking exhausted suddenly.
“Uncle Joe’s never been keen on that kind of thing.”
“And it doesn’t bother you
?” Elliot demanded.
“It does,” said Jase, looking more tired than ever. “But I’m used to it. I know you’re not. You don’t have to . . . you don’t need to make anything public, if you’re not comfortable.”
Elliot stared at him, speechless.
“Anyway, I’d better get in to work,” said Jase, nodding as if that was settled, and he started down the road, tread heavy and shoulders hunched. It took Elliot a moment to realize he walked as if carrying a burden.
There was a low stone wall running along the pavement. Elliot jumped up on it and ran along the wall, catching up and grabbing a very surprised Jase by the collar of his jacket. Elliot leaned down and kissed him in front of all the tired commuters going to work and disappointed parents bringing their kids to summer school. Elliot held onto Jase’s collar and kissed him all he wanted, until he felt Jase smile.
“There’s something you should know about me, if we’re going to do this,” Elliot told him. “I always do exactly what I want, and I never care what anybody else thinks about it.”
Jase seemed dumbfounded and was breathing hard, but he was still smiling. “Yeah?”
“Yes,” said Elliot. “And I want to see you later.”
“See you later, then,” said Jase.
Elliot found himself alone at dinner one night, and knew that his father was on a business trip. His dad didn’t leave notes or tell him about them: that would be too much acknowledgement of Elliot’s presence. The first time it had happened when Elliot was old enough to be left alone without a babysitter, Elliot had been frantic and thought his father had been in an accident. He’d called the hospitals.
That had been years ago. Now he knew what his father’s absence meant. This time he called Jase.
“Hey,” he said when Jase picked up. “I’m home all alone. Come keep me company.”
He thought it would be nice to have a place to themselves.
It was wonderful, to be able to request company and know the request would be granted. Even back at the Border, Elliot either had company or he didn’t. Elliot leaned back in his window seat, glass cold against his shoulders, and watched affectionately as Jase prowled around his room.
Jason whistled and plucked Elliot’s one picture from the mirror. “Hello, someone is crazy hot.”
Elliot beamed. “I know, right? That’s Serene. We used to go out. She actually dated me. I don’t mean to brag, but we were physically intimate.”
It was funny: it would have been agony telling someone that a month ago, and it still hurt, but he was able to say it, and to feel mostly pride and remember being happy.
“Uh, okay,” said Jase. “Before you realized you didn’t like girls.”
“What? I like girls,” said Elliot. “I mean,” he added, because he didn’t want to hurt Jase’s feelings, “I like girls as well.”
“Sure.” Jase rolled his eyes, and Elliot stared at him with mingled outrage and surprise. He wasn’t sure why Jase felt qualified to comment on a basic reality about Elliot. “Don’t worry about it. You’re young yet,” said Jase and gave him a wink.
“I can’t say that being twenty seems to have conferred enormous wisdom upon you.”
“God, Elliot, settle down.” Jase sounded absent-minded but fond, which was worth a lot to Elliot: maybe Elliot was going a bit far. He knew he had a tendency to do that. “Anyway,” said Jase. “I was not referring to the bird. I was talking about the guy, obviously. Woof.”
“What, Luke?” Elliot grabbed his own hair by handfuls in despair. “That is a ridiculous picture of him! That is why I kept that one!”
“So you’re saying . . . he usually looks better? Jesus.”
“This conversation is a living nightmare,” Elliot announced.
Jase did not seem overly disturbed by this announcement. It was possible he was getting used to Elliot’s grand proclamations. He continued studying the photo. “So this is Luke. You’ve talked about him often enough. I can’t believe you never mentioned he looked like that.”
“It’s not a national emergency,” said Elliot.
“Uh, have you seen him?” said Jase. “It kind of is.”
“And I do not talk about him often. I have mentioned him once or twice. Rarely. Hardly ever. Who is Luke?” said Elliot. “Have you noticed this is a terrible conversation? Because I’ve noticed this is a terrible conversation.”
“Does his cousin look like him?” Jase pursued, and off Elliot’s reluctant nod said: “And you turned him down?”
“He’s a vicious moron,” said Elliot.
“Who cares when someone looks like that?”
“I do,” said Elliot.
Jase made a dismissive sound, but looked pleased too: it reflected well on Jase himself if Elliot was choosy, Elliot supposed. They had chosen each other. Elliot attempted to catch Jase’s eye, but Jase was still looking at the photograph.
“I guess he’s straight? Luke, I mean.”
Elliot tasted something bitter in his mouth. “No,” he said at last, feeling prickly all over. “No, he’s not straight.”
“Ohhhh. Well. Does he, ah, ‘like girls as well’?” Jase repeated what Elliot had said in a voice with just an edge of a sing-song lilt, a savor of mockery that Elliot could not quite pin down and be mad about.
“No,” said Elliot shortly.
“Sounds like quite a guy. He coming to visit?”
“No,” Elliot snapped. “Why, you want to dump me for him?”
It felt like Jase would. Of course, Elliot had never met anyone who wouldn’t, who didn’t instantly and instinctively value Luke higher. That included Serene. Jase wasn’t going to be any different.
Jase laughed, light and pleased, and came over and tipped Elliot’s chin up, kissed him with a kiss light as his laugh. “Nah. But I thought Marty might like him. I mean, who wouldn’t?”
Elliot let that last bit go in favor of laughing at the rest. “Marty has a lip ring, and Luke would have a heart attack. This is someone who finds jeans scandalous and distressing. He has a crush on this guy back at school called Dale. They both want to play sports and fight stuff all day every day.”
“Oh, right, boring and mainstream,” said Jase. Elliot was pleased enough by Jase’s dismissive tone to let the fact that “mainstream” was a pretentious label for human beings go. “Shame.”
“Luke’s not boring,” said Elliot. “Dale kind of is. But he’s a nice person or something, I guess.”
“He sure doesn’t look boring, I’ll give you that.”
“I’ve had enough of talking about Luke,” Elliot announced. He got up and whisked the photo out of Jase’s hand, tucking it back into the mirror frame. “I get it, you think he’s hot. But you’re wrong.”
Jase tilted his head quizzically. “He’s not hot?”
Elliot moved toward him, close so Jase reached out and grabbed his wrist. Then Elliot hooked an ankle behind Jase’s foot and sent him flying backward onto the bed. He kept his own balance, and smirked down at Jase.
“I’m your boyfriend,” he said. “Only I am hot.”
“That was hot,” said Jase, wide-eyed and leaning against Elliot’s pillows.
“Just a little trick I picked up in the, ah, military academy,” Elliot told him smugly, put a knee down on the bed and then crawled over Jase.
Jase tried to lift up to kiss him, but Elliot held his shoulders down against the mattress easily and shook his head. Jase raised a hand, Elliot thought to touch. He grabbed the back of Elliot’s shirt and tried to flip him over. Elliot pulled his hand off, though Jase tried to hang on, and held both of Jase’s wrists over his head with one hand.
“I really didn’t think you’d be like this,” Jase said, a little breathless and a little critical. “You seemed so sweet that first day. I thought you would be shy and kind of hesitant and in need of guidance.”
“My best friends are war leaders,” Elliot pointed out. “Good luck with your thing.”
“War leaders?”
??
?Uh, classic military academy humor!” said Elliot hastily. “Besides,” he added, and cast a look down Jase’s body and back up to his face, his dilated pupils. Elliot’s grasp on his wrists tightened. “You may not have been expecting this, but . . .” Elliot leaned down and brushed his mouth against the edge of Jase’s, smiled, leaned a crucial fraction away when Jase tried to chase his mouth, and spoke softly. “You like it.”
Jase’s whole body had come to attention: he kept surging up and straining against Elliot’s hold, trying to get closer. Elliot smiled, leaned down, and kissed him, catching the small desperate breath Jase let out against his smile.
“C’mon!” Jase exclaimed, his voice on a high hoarse edge.
“What,” Elliot asked, stroking the inside of Jase’s wrist with his thumb. “You don’t like it? Oh dear.”
“Yes, I like it!” Jase said. “Goddamn it, come here.”
Elliot laughed, delighted, and let Jase go. He gave him a long hot kiss with his fingers tangled in Jase’s hair.
Later that night, with Jase sleeping in his bed, Elliot went and sat on the window seat, looked out at the streetlights dyeing patches of night orange, and thought again about staying. The moon caught his mirror and made it into a well of light, the photo a small dark square drowning in the silver shine.
He wouldn’t see them again, and he wouldn’t see mermaids, but Alice said he was getting really good with computers and he was starting to believe he and Jase could make this work. Jase might say ridiculous things sometimes, but Elliot thought it was because he was insecure. Elliot could understand that. He did it often enough himself.
He thought of Jase, thinking that Elliot would be different. He couldn’t quite figure out how to say: You met me when I was sad, but I’m not a sad person, and I don’t want you to like that sad person who wasn’t me better than you like me. Maybe if he stayed, he could figure it out.
He climbed back into bed, kissed the dragon tattoo on Jase’s shoulderblade, and said: “Wake up.”