Seven
The following day was Friday and I cornered Kate at lunch and told her about the entire catastrophe that occurred the previous night.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I swear there are some things in this world that can only happen to you.”
“Yeah, that makes me feel a lot better,” I said sarcastically.
“Look, Trav, I don’t want to be a dick or anything, but maybe this guy just isn’t ready for the whole gay experience. Maybe he’s scared.”
I sighed. “I totally get that. And if it was someone else, I probably would just say ‘screw it’ and move along. But there’s just something about him. He’s different, somehow.”
“He hasn’t been ruined by the bad side of gay culture,” Kate said.
I thought on this. “Maybe that’s part of it,” I said. “But, it’s like, there’s just this connection.”
“I know what you mean,” she said, stuffing French fries in her mouth at record speed. “I’ve had that connection before with guys.”
“Please,” I said. “You’ve had more connections than AT&T.”
She looked at me with her mouth wide open. Thankfully, she’d already swallowed the fries.
“Are you calling me a slut?”
“Yes, but I did it in a clever way so you can’t be mad.” She made a sour face. “Anyway, I just don’t know what to do next. Do I text him? Call him? Wait it out to see if he calls me? I don’t want to do the wrong thing here.”
Normally this is where Kate would make a crack about how I obsess and worry about everything too much, but she was either feeling sorry for me and gave me a break or I finally had a valid reason to be concerned. She seemed to be scanning her brain for some usable advice while pulling her dirty blonde locks into a pony tail and securing them with some purple frilly hair thing.
“I think you should maybe text him tonight. Not like you want a date or anything, just to say hi. Just see how he acts toward you,” she suggested.
“I guess I can do that,” I said.
“Can I suggest one other thing?” she asked.
“What?”
“Don’t keep apologizing for everything. Shit happens. He knows you feel bad about it. Why rehash it?”
She had a point. I felt like I was constantly apologizing to people for things, even when they were beyond my control. Ryan was no exception. As far as I was concerned, last night was unfortunate, but it’s over now and we never have to talk about it again. Patrick, whom I still had been avoiding (because I wasn’t finished being mad at him yet) would probably be proud of my newly found enlightenment.
I would not be me if I didn’t overthink every detail of everything and this situation was no different. The official plan was for me to send Ryan a text at 7:50 pm. My first instinct was to say, “Hey, what are you up to?” I decided against this as I didn’t want him to suspect that I would ask him to hang out, which was not my intention at all. I just wanted to start a conversation with him to help put the disaster of the previous night behind us. I decided instead to say, “Hey, how’s it going?” I came to this decision by 3:30, so I had a long wait before go-time.
I was in my kitchen studying for my upcoming world history test when a knock at the back door startled me. I immediately knew who the shape behind the curtain was.
“Hey,” Patrick said when I opened the door. “Can I come in?” he asked and didn’t wait for a reply as he entered.
“What’s up?” I asked flatly.
“You did an awesome job of avoiding me the past couple days. I couldn’t get within 15 feet of you.” He opened my refrigerator and grabbed a can of Coke.
“Help yourself,” I said sarcastically.
Patrick flipped one of the kitchen table chairs around and sat backwards, as if he was an extra from an 80s sitcom.
“Look,” he said, “I know I pissed you off.”
“And?” I asked.
“And you have every right to be mad at me.”
“And?”
He let out a sigh. “And I’m here eating shit, apologizing to you. I’m sorry. I was a jerk.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, half smiling.
“But I have one more thing to say about it,” he added.
“Yeah?” I was now sitting across from him and fiddling with my pen.
“We’ve been friends since before we even knew what friends were. When I see you get so upset, it worries me. And I guess I don’t know the right things to say or do to calm you down and that bothers me. So, I feel like I’m letting you down by not being able to help you. And maybe there’s someone else that can.”
This time I decided not to take offense. “I know,” I said. “I know I freak out sometimes and you must think I’m just losing my mind. And maybe you feel like you’re not helping me, but you are. Just listening helps.”
“I just wish I could have better advice or some kind of answers for you. Instead, I just sit there like an idiot,” he said.
I thought for a moment. It wasn’t often Patrick seemed to be so vulnerable or at all unsure of himself and I wanted to say something reassuring.
“If you didn’t let me down two years ago when I told you that I’m gay, I don’t think you ever could,” I said, finally. He smirked a little at this.
“Man, talk about nervous. You were literally shaking that night,” he said.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen,” I said, thinking back on that time in my room when I finally came out to him. It was right around this time of year. “I mean, I never knew you to have anything against gay people, but you never had one thrust in your face.”
“Well, if you had thrust something in my face, things might not have gone as well,” he said and we both laughed.
“I know I never told you this,” I said, quietly, “But I had agonized for a long time about telling you. Probably a whole year. In fact, I had pretty much talked myself into believing that it would be the end of our friendship. Like, I mentally prepared myself for you to freak out and never talk to me again.”
“Really?” Patrick asked. “You really think I would do that?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But I wasn’t thinking rationally. I was panicking.”
“If you were that scared, why did you want to tell me so badly? I mean, if you thought it meant losing a friend.”
“It’s hard to explain.” I got up and started wandering around the kitchen. “It’s almost like having a volcano inside you. You’re walking around with this huge secret and you feel like you’re going to explode. The funny thing was, you barely seemed surprised.”
“Look, there’s something I should tell you. I mean, since we’re coming clean and all,” Patrick said. I felt my eyebrows perk up slightly. “The reason I didn’t seem so surprised is because I wasn’t. I pretty much already knew.”
I stared at Patrick, surprised by this new revelation. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Hey, I know what it looks like when a guy is checking out a girl,” he said.
“So?”
“So, I can tell when you’re looking at guys like that. You always say how I notice the weird details about things. Chalk it up to that.”
“Are you kidding me? You knew? Why didn’t you say anything?” I sat down again.
“I didn’t think it was my job to out you to yourself,” Patrick said, and I laughed.
Patrick stayed awhile longer, and I thought it was in both of our best interests not to give him the latest Ryan update just yet. When he left, I resumed studying.
To my surprise, dad walked in around 6:15 with a bag of Chinese food.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I said back.
“Have some. I got plenty,” he said, dropping the bag on the counter.
I had just made a sandwich, but wrapped it up and stuck it in the fridge in favor of egg foo young.
“You went to bed early last night,” he said, as I got two plates from the cabinet.
“Yeah, I was beat,” I said. “
Sorry I didn’t listen to your message.” I was mainly sorry because if I had bothered to listen to it, it would likely have prevented the grand finale of last night’s fiasco.
“How’s everything around here? What’s going on?” he asked.
“Just the usual,” I said. “By the way, Connie left a note saying she’s going away for two weeks in January, and that she has a friend who can fill in for her if we want. She said to let her know.”
“I think we can get by for a couple weeks without her,” he said.
Connie was the woman that he hired to clean the house on a weekly basis shortly after mom moved to New York. She had her own key to the house and usually came on Wednesdays. I rarely saw her because she would be gone by the time I got home from school, unless I was off for some reason or another. She would take care of the basics: vacuuming, dusting, washing the windows, wiping down the counters and tables. I tried to keep the house somewhat tidy because I never wanted her to feel like I left a mess for her to clean up. She had two kids younger than me and sometimes while going through my things I would leave her old games or toys that I no longer wanted. Sometimes she would leave us cookies or a cake. It was a nice arrangement.
“How have you been handling being here alone?” dad asked.
“Fine. It’s not like it’s that much different than when you’re here,” I pointed out.
“While we’re on that subject, there’s something we need to discuss,” he said. His discussions were never good news.
“What?” I asked.
“It looks like I’m mostly going to be working out of Chicago indefinitely. I’ll be here from time to time, but I’ll mostly be there.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. “We’re not moving there, are we?” That was the absolute last thing I wanted to hear.
“No,” he said quickly. “Not you, anyway. I’ve decided to let you stay here until you graduate high school. After that, well, you’ll be going away to college.”
I thought on this for a minute. “So, what you’re saying is, I’m pretty much going to be living here by myself?”
“As long as you can handle it,” he said. “You’ve always been very independent and responsible. It looks like things here are in order. I know you’re keeping up with your grades because I contacted your school.”
I didn’t say anything. I really wasn’t sure how I felt about this. It seemed like I should have been more upset than I was. It’s not as if my father was a huge part of my life and he was now running out on me. I was used to him not being there. I was used to being alone. I was used to doing everything for myself. Most teenagers would kill to have a house to themselves.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” I said flatly.
“I know you can handle it,” he said.
“What about this house?” I asked.
“What about it?”
“When I’m done with high school, are you going to sell it?”
“It all depends on what happens over the next few months,” he said. “If Chicago is a permanent arrangement, there’s no sense in hanging onto an empty house.”
The information in my head was piling up too much to think clearly. This was my home and had been since my childhood. I knew I would be away at college a lot of the time, but where would my real home be then? In Chicago? In New York with mom? What about my friends? What if one day Ryan really is my boyfriend and he’s still here and I’m not? What would happen to all my stuff? What about Lucky, who I had recently buried in the backyard?
“So, we’re good with this, right?” my father finally asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess so.”
It was almost 7:00 and while this new problem was on the horizon, I decided I could only fully obsess over one issue at a time and I turned my attention back to Ryan. In less than an hour I would text him and perhaps find out if I still had any kind of future with him. If things still had a chance of working out with us, I would have to back off a little. No more discussions of committed relationships. No more making first moves. I would have to wait until he was ready. But what if he was never ready? How much time would I spend trying to get blood from a stone?
When the clock hit 7:50, I hit the send button on the text. I put my phone down and decided to catch up on Facebook while awaiting his reply.
I read through everyone’s Facebook posts of the day on my news feed. I checked my email. I wasted a considerable amount of time looking at a considerable amount of websites dedicated to the art of wasting time. I kept clicking and clicking, trying to distract myself from facing the reality that Ryan had not responded to my text message.
I finally picked up the phone and looked at the message I had sent. Why are you not answering me? Maybe the text didn’t go through, which did happen from time to time. I didn’t want to send him another message because if the first one did go through, it would seem like I was too eager to get his attention (which, of course, I was, but I didn’t want him to know that).
Around 8:30 I heard the chime of a new message. I darted across the room at the speed of light, but my excitement quickly collapsed when I saw it was from Kate. She wanted to know if I wanted to go out for ice cream or something. I replied that I was planning on staying in for the night.
It was almost 9:00 and I was obsessively glancing at my phone about once every ten seconds, worrying more and more that Ryan was never going to speak to me again. Why did I have to try to cook dinner? We could have just gone out to eat or gotten pizza or something, but I got this stupid idea and wound up making an ass out of myself. Then, to make things worse, I tried holding his hand and he clearly was not into it. I should have taken the cue from the earlier conversation about marriage, which he seemed completely disinterested in (which I also shouldn’t have brought up in the first place). Shouldn’t that have tipped me off that it might not be a good time to pull any romantic moves? Ryan clearly needed time to get used to the idea of having a relationship with a guy. What if he was never going to be ready? What if all of this was just a temporary moment of confusion that would pass, and he would go on to live the life of a straight man?
I had to cut myself off because I was going to drive myself completely nuts. I picked up my phone and shut it down completely. This was the only way I could begin to stop tormenting myself over the situation. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my mind off of it and replayed everything that had happened up until now in my head while lying in bed. Now and then my brain drifted over to the new problem of dad moving to Chicago and selling our house. I dwelled on these topics until I was so exhausted that I finally passed out.
When I reluctantly switched my phone on Saturday morning, there were no messages waiting for me. This was not a good sign.
I meandered through the morning hours, trying to keep my mind off my problems. I wasn’t really dwelling on them as much as I had the night before because I was worn out from thinking about them so intensely. I felt like I needed to go out and do something distracting, so I convinced Patrick to go to the mall with me.
We bounced from store to store, with no real plan or destination. I only told Patrick the bare minimum of what had happened until we got burgers for lunch and sat in the food court. At that point I finally recounted everything that happened, beginning with the ill-fated home cooked meal. Patrick listened to my entire story before making any comments.
“So how do you feel about everything now?” he asked.
“I feel like I scared him away,” I said. “How do you think you would feel?” I asked.
“If I were you?”
“If you were Ryan,” I said. “What would you think of all this?”
He thought for a moment. “It’s kind of hard for me to speculate,” he said. “I really don’t know what he’s going through. But, I think if I was a dude that had lived a relatively heterosexual life until just recently, and had just started seeing a guy that was comparatively well-adjusted and comfortable being gay…
well, I think I’d probably feel overwhelmed.”
“I knew it,” I said. “I really should have just tried to keep everything casual.”
“Maybe it’s a matter of bad timing,” Patrick suggested. “You know what you want out of a relationship and if that’s what you’re going after, it’s not a bad thing. You’re in the outfield, holding your mitt up, waiting to catch some balls. But this Ryan guy hasn’t even gotten out of the batting cage.”
“Really?” I asked. “You know I don’t do sports references.”
“Did you at least get the point I was making?” he said.
“Yeah, I got it. And, really, you’re not telling me anything I haven’t already suspected.”
“And how about that balls reference?” he asked. “Pretty clever,” he said, congratulating himself on his own sexual innuendo.
I shook my head.
“Tough crowd.”
When I returned home, dad said Aunt Grace had invited us to dinner. It was another good distraction to keep me from thinking too much about the Ryan situation. I still hadn’t heard from him, but I was becoming more okay with it. As much as I felt like we had an instant chemistry, maybe what Patrick said was right; Ryan and I were mentally in different places. Even I couldn’t believe how taken I was with him in such a short period of time. If it had happened to someone else, I would have thought they were insane. But guys like Ryan didn’t come along every day. He was handsome, sweet, funny, and genuine. His life wasn’t cluttered with drama and unnecessary distractions, something of which I was a little envious.