Chapter 9 #2
“I think the nicest things are people and how they make us happy,” Avery continued.
“What do you think?” She nodded like the eager little student she was.
“But I bet you could make some nice things too. Do you still have the crayons and the googly eyes Daddy got you last week? Because I have some spare poster boards at home that I could give you, and you could make decorations.”
Oh, he was good. A part of me wanted to kiss him again. Another part of me—smaller and pettier—hated that he made talking a five-year-old down from a meltdown look so fucking easy.
Gracie leaned into me but looked up at Avery seriously and nodded. Her thumb crept toward her mouth, the way it did when she was overtired, and Avery caught the action.
He smiled again. “Or maybe you need a nap first? Sometimes when I have feelings that are too big, I have a nap or some quiet time, and after that they don’t feel so big after all.”
I could relate. I was having some pretty big feelings about Avery Smith myself right now, and who couldn’t use a nap? I hitched Gracie up onto my hip and said, “Did you maybe stay up late at Grandma’s, sweet pea?”
She nodded again. “They have Disney now. I watched Lilo and Stitch four times!”
Okay, the meltdown made a lot more sense now. Gracie was one of those kids who needed her sleep or she got scratchy and irritable and tended to fall apart. And honestly, I could understand the temptation to let her stay up late and spoil her a little.
“Okay, sweet pea, I think you need a nap, okay? And after, you can have some lunch and then, if Mr. Smith says it’s okay, we can get you some poster board.”
“That sounds like a great idea,” Avery said, like he hadn’t been the one to suggest it in the first place.
Gracie nodded against my shoulder, and I breathed a sigh of relief that she’d calmed down some. Even though I knew it wasn’t on me that she was overtired, I still felt helpless whenever she got like this. Like, how did people ever have more than one kid?
The screen door creaked and Danny came out. He joined us in the front yard, stepping neatly over the missing board. “Hey,” he said when he saw Avery. “Thanks for taking care of Wilder yesterday.”
“It was no problem,” Avery said.
Gracie lifted her head from my shoulder and gave Danny a wobbly smile. “Uncle Danny, Grandma took me shopping and then we watched movies and now I’m tired.”
“Let’s get you to bed, princess,” I said. I nodded to Avery, then carried Gracie carefully inside. By the time I washed the tears off her face and got her a drink of water she was yawning again, so I tucked her into bed with Mr. Peanut Butter. She was asleep before I’d left the room.
When I went back out front, Danny said, “Hey, I was just telling Avery he should come for dinner tonight. Miller brought over a heap of steaks and shit, so we’re gonna grill.”
“Oh,” I said, glancing at Avery. “Yeah, that would be cool.”
My total lack of enthusiasm must have shown because Danny gave me an odd look.
He patted Avery on the shoulder. “So just come over later. Bring whatever you’re drinking. We have beers too, but they’re shit beers.”
“Okay,” Avery said, his smile dimming a little when his gaze met mine. “I’ll see you then.”
He turned and walked back over to his place.
“That was weird,” Danny said as we inspected the mess I’d made of the stairs yesterday. “You were kind of off.”
I opened my mouth to tell him—Danny and I had no secrets—but shut it again when Miller wandered out onto the porch.
He sat down on the sagging old couch and stretched out.
You never would have thought a guy like Miller would be at home in a house like ours.
He wore suits Monday to Friday, but on weekends he was as barefoot and feral as the rest of us.
“You’ll have to tell me what to do here,” Danny said, dragging my toolbox closer.
“It’s just nailing the new riser in place,” I said. “It’s shit easy.”
“Says the guy with a nail through his hand,” Danny pointed out. That was somewhat justified. More than somewhat justified. “But why are you being weird about Avery?”
“I kissed him yesterday,” I said, my face hot.
Danny dropped a screwdriver—I had no fucking idea why he’d even picked it up in the first place—and it cartwheeled down the steps and into the yard. “You kissed Avery?”
“I told him he was pretty and I kissed him,” I said. “Probably the Percocet. You’re gonna need the nail gun.”
“What?”
“Nail gun,” I said, nodding at it.
“Shut the fuck up about the nail gun, man.” His eyes were as wide as an owl’s. “You told Avery he was pretty, and then you kissed him?”
“On Percocet,” I clarified. “So now it’s weird, because I’m straight.”
Danny wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think Percocet does that.”
I nudged the nail gun toward him. “I just mean my defenses were low, is all.”
“Your defenses against what, exactly?” Miller asked, a faint smile playing around his mouth.
Danny nodded. “Straight guys don’t need defenses against kissing other guys, Wilder. They just don’t do it because they don’t want to.”
“I’m not gay,” I said, shaking my head. “Just because I can point out some guys are objectively attractive doesn’t mean that I’m personally attracted to them. It’s called being secure in my own sexuality.”
“That argument made a whole lot more sense before you kissed Avery,” Danny pointed out.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ve known you forever, and you’re gay. Miller’s gay. Chase is gay. Cash is…” I thought for a second. “Cash is whatever Cash is. I’m twenty-two years old and living in a house so queer it should be at the end of a rainbow. How the fuck could I be gay and not know it?”
“Real talk?” Danny asked. He looked at me with his head on a tilt.
“I think that you’re bi, except that was never gonna fly in the house you grew up in, so you just kind of didn’t let yourself know it was a possibility.
You still got laid, so you weren’t really missing out on anything, right?
And I think you never really had to think about it before now, so you just didn’t. ”
“But I’m straight,” I repeated on autopilot. “All straight guys are at least a little curious about trying stuff with another guy. Doesn’t mean I’m bi.”
“Maybe that’s true,” Miller said, ignoring the look Danny gave him.
“Nobody here is trying to pin you down to an exact point on the Kinsey scale. But people grow and change in all sorts of ways. You said you’re twenty-two like that means something.
You’re a baby.” He laughed. “Both of you are still babies. At twenty-two I didn’t know shit about myself.
” He shrugged. “If you want to be a straight guy who kisses other guys, go for it. If it turns out you’re bi or gay, go for that too.
Go for anything you want. You only get one life. ”
“What Miller said,” Danny said, right before he shot me one of his trademark grins. “But for the record, I’m team ‘Wilder didn’t know he was bi until he kissed the hot teacher.’”
“There isn’t a team,” I muttered.
“I’m gonna get T-shirts made,” Danny said and flipped me the bird.
“Fuck off,” I grumbled, “and hurry up and fix this step.”
Danny laughed and picked up the nail gun. I sat on the old couch next to Miller so I could supervise—or laugh if Danny fucked it up. Either would work.
Team Wilder didn’t know he was bi. Like that was a thing.
Surely I’d know, right?
Danny lined up the board and while he was focused on not nailing himself to the porch, Miller nudged me with his elbow. “So, how was it?” he asked quietly.
“How was what?”
“The kiss. You said you kissed Avery, but you never said if you liked it. Seems like that’s kind of important.”
“It was good. And I’m pretty sure he kissed me back,” I said.
“Ah,” said Miller, giving me a soft smile. He didn’t need to say anything else.
Trust a lawyer to pinpoint the one thing I’d been trying to ignore—namely that, yeah, I had enjoyed it. And I wanted to do it again.
Maybe Danny was right and I wasn’t as straight as I’d thought. I waited for alarm bells to start ringing or for panic to kick in, but instead the possibility that I might be bi settled over me with a kind of rightness, and I wondered how I’d missed it before now.
I liked guys. I thought they were hot, both objectively and subjectively, and I specifically thought Avery Smith was cute as fuck. I wanted to kiss him again, and I wanted to remember it this time.
I thought back to when I’d been a teenager, standing up to my parents when they said Danny was a bad influence.
For a hot second, I’d thought it was because he was from the wrong side of town, but it didn’t take long for me to realize it was because he was gay.
Holding on strong to my friendship with Danny had been my main form of rebellion back then—and it hadn’t been an intentional rebellion.
I’d done it because it had been the right thing to do, whatever my parents said.
I used to get so angry that they just didn’t get it.
More than a couple of times that anger had burned so hot I’d ended up in tears of frustration.
I felt a pang in my gut now as I wondered who I’d really been defending back then and why it had hurt so much when my parents had disapproved of Danny. Had a part of me known that I’d been trying to defend myself too?
The ghost of those frustrated tears stung my eyes, and I sucked in a deep breath.
Well, shit. It all made a lot of sense, and I felt a bit dumb for never putting it together before now. But feeling dumb was a small price to pay for the sense of rightness I felt at finally figuring it out.
Maybe Danny should get two of those T-shirts made.