Chapter 11 DIEGO #2
She leaned into me, bumping my arm with her shoulder. “Seriously, where’d he go?”
“To get me a cocktail. We didn’t have enough hands.”
She eyed the pickled bounty on the table. “Did you just buy one of everything between wherever you parked and here?”
“We Ubered. How’s your mom?”
She caught me up on her family business.
Her folks were way less wild than mine, accepting, loving, but very…
let’s say upfront. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Toni tell someone she didn’t want to go to their birthday party.
It was fifth grade, and I hadn’t even known you could do that if you were invited. Not to someone’s face, anyhow.
Life goals, right there. Imagine my shock that someone so cool would be my friend.
When Taran returned, he had two cocktails instead of one, and a big smile on his face.
He wore sunglasses, so the blue of his eyes was hidden, but the crinkles at the corners were just visible.
And god, his arms and shoulders so looked amazing in that tight Steelers t-shirt that I couldn’t even make fun of him for being so… typical.
“Well, he may still be hot, but he also still looks like a fuckin’ meathead,” Toni said under her breath.
I shot her a dirty look but totally ruined it with my proud little smirk, probably. He did look like a meathead, like a young professional Pittsburgh gym bro meathead, specifically. Not because he was big and muscley—he wasn’t, really, though he was strong as fuck. It was just a vibe.
“I didn’t know if you wanted the cucumber lemonade one or the cucumber martini one.” He held up both, then set them on the table. “Hey, Toni.”
“Kovacs.” Her dark eyebrows went up like a challenge.
“I want both now,” I assured him, taking the martini one first so the sweet one didn’t blow out my tastebuds. “Thank you, daddy.”
Toni made a gagging sound.
Taran laughed out loud and reached for his pickle pilsner. “How was the trip?”
She shrugged. “Fine. Uneventful. Pretty in parts. How was your, uh, life?”
He was still smiling. “Getting better.”
“Okay, nice answer,” she allowed, eyes crinkling just a little.
I rolled mine but could feel myself glowing. Let her see how he was, how he really was, with me. And not just with me, but in front of fucking Picklesburgh. If that didn’t set her at ease, nothing would.
“She stole a pierogi,” I told Taran.
“They’re communal pierogies. Speaking of which, I saw Jalapeno Hannah and the boys over there.”
“Oh my god, where?!”
“Heading onto the bridge.” He pointed toward the Warhol.
“Dammit, I need a selfie with her.” I pouted.
“It must be hot as fuck in those costumes,” Toni said. “Speaking of, I heard Pride was scorching this year.”
I nodded. “I didn’t even go to the one downtown this year. We were melting.”
“You didn’t do Pride?” She threw a look at Taran. As if there was some kind of festival attendance requirement to get your Certified Queer ID card.
God, I wanted a cigarette. Ugh. Quitting was misery.
“We went to Lawrenceville’s. And… was it Millvale?” Taran said, apparently unbothered.
“And the drag brunch at The Firebrand.” I turned to look at Toni, though, because I wasn’t feeding into this bullshit.
She was excited about that though. “Oh shit. Was Dee in it?”
“No, he doesn’t do the shows anymore. He got in a knockdown-dragout with Henry, and they still haven’t made up.” And the subject neatly changed tracks right into the local scene and who was doing what, where, and with whom.
As the three of us gossiped, even had a few laughs, the crowd continued to swell around us.
The stage was down on the riverbank, so as the crew set up for whoever the next band was, people started filling up the standing tables around us: families with kids toting metallic pickle balloons, groups of teenagers marauding for someone to get them a beer, couples in shorts and tank tops toting water bottles and backpacks.
Someone started tuning a guitar on stage as someone else set up a drum kit, and the chatter and noise around us got louder and louder as we ate, drank, and talked shit.
For a second, it was pretty great. Too crowded, annoyingly hot, but overall festival vibes, and my two current favorite humans were being—well, if not friendly, then cordial.
And then Toni asked, “So, you ever talk to your exes, Taran?”
His brow furrowed at the weird question. “Which one? I mean, some of them.”
“I always think it’s interesting if people speak to their exes or not. Shows maturity,” she said with a shrug and a too-casual sip of her lemonade.
“He talks to me,” I said, giving her a pointed look.
“Yeah, but you guys weren’t really dating.”
I wasn’t sure why, but it felt like a punch to the gut. Like she meant to hurt me, or him, or one of us with that.
She went on, “So the politics of the relationship were simpler.”
“We were also seventeen,” Taran said with a lopsided smile. “Politics didn’t really come into it.”
“All relationships have politics,” she said.
“Yeah, I think Machiavelli said that, right?” He chuckled.
“I don’t mean they’re political in the American-election sense. I mean they’re political in the sense that there’s power and resources involved,” Toni replied, deadpan.
Taran shot me a look, and I opened my mouth to say something, but I was still reeling from the whiplash subject change followed by the gut punch. I failed spectacularly to smooth things over, and so he tried with, “Right. Who gets what, when, and how.”
“Yeah.” She tilted her chin upward. “And some people like to hoard resources.”
“Are you speaking in allegory?” Taran asked, still looking vaguely amused. “Because we’re at a festival about pickle-flavored beer right now, so my head’s in a different place entirely.”
I barked out a sharp laugh, louder than I meant it to be, but at least the crowd-noises sorta covered it up. “Time and place,” I added, hoping he could see the apology in my eyes. She hadn’t promised she’d play nice, but she’d said she’d try, at least. Where was this going?
“No.” Toni shook her head and leveled her gaze at him over her lemonade. “I’m being incredibly literal. The problem with the whole situationship you had last time was that you had all the power. You hoarded all the resources.”
“What the fuck?” I turned on her, then glanced at Taran.
He took a deep breath, stretching the shoulders of that perfect fit t-shirt dangerously. And then he nodded.
“Toni. What the fuck?” I repeated more vehemently.
“I’m not trying to be a dick,” she said almost plaintively, turning to me. “But it’s true. And now you have the whole boyfriend thing in your hands, so it’s at least kind of even.”
Taran lifted his sunglasses, putting them in his hair.
He hardly ever wore contacts except when he knew he was going to want his shades; he looked strange, younger somehow, without those thick black rims. But his eyes were so, so bright blue, like pictures of the Caribbean Sea.
Quietly, so quietly I didn’t actually hear, just saw, he said, “What?”
“Diego won’t be your boyfriend,” she clarified.
My face went hot; my neck broke out in a sweat that had nothing to do with the weather. “Toni…” But I couldn’t even articulate what I felt. It was all just chemical reactions in my body—and it was all bad.
“Because… of politics?” Taran asked, just a little bit louder.
Toni shrugged and looked at me.
“No!” I yelled. Then, flushing even harder, I rushed to say, “Fuck, no. What the hell, Toni?”
Did I mention I really wanted a cigarette? Fuck, I really did.
“I mean, that’s why I gave you the advice,” she said.
I took a step backward, again feeling like I’d been physically punched.
Taran was nodding, though, watching her face like he was trying to translate the goddamn Rosetta Stone. His brow furrowed, his jaw worked.
“That’s not—no,” I told him. Again, I wasn’t sure why, but a pit opened up in my belly, like a sink-hole I could never escape. “No, it was—that’s not what you said.”
“What’d I say?” Not a hint of sarcasm or irony in her, either.
“You said…” I tried to remember her exact words. “That I should protect myself, because you weren’t there to do it.”
“Yeah. And?” She frowned, as if I’d just said something that proved her point.
“I get it,” Taran said, his voice disappearing in the crowd noise again.
“No,” I insisted.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“It is not.”
“Yes, it is,” Toni said, her nose scrunching up. “Don’t apologize.”
“Are you fucking—?”
“I need a beer. Toni?” Taran said suddenly.
“I’m good.”
“You need anything?” he asked me.
I shook my head, unable even to speak.
“I’ll be back.”
I watched him disappear into the still thickening crowd. And then I spun on her again, face flaming. “What the fuck?”
“It’s nothing he didn’t know,” she said with a shrug.
“He didn’t know I asked your advice!” And that was so, so shitty. Like, it stung me, to have him know; how could it not sting him?
“Of course he did. He probably asked his friends for advice, too.”
“He doesn’t have friends.” Then I bit my tongue. “Fuck. Fuck, Toni. You said you’d be nice.”
“I am!” She looked genuinely offended. “I didn’t say that, but I am being nice!”
“What, by basically telling him I’m withholding a fucking title from him because you told me to? He is my boyfriend, Toni! He eats with me, he hangs out with me, he sleeps in my bed, he fucks me!”
Someone one table over burst out laughing. I was about to apologize, but Toni said, “But he wants that title. That’s your power.”
“Are you fucking insane?”
“Didn’t Drake teach you anything?” She shook her head. “You gotta guard your power, D.”
“It’s not a fucking competition,” I insisted. “This is why you can’t hang onto a girlfriend.”
“Okay, let’s not make it about me.”
But I wasn’t done. “I know it irritates the fuck out of you that I get carried away. But you can’t—”
“No. I think it’s great. But I also think it fucks you, and as your friend—”
“You should’ve had this conversation with me, not with him.”