40. Prom, YayNeigh?
PROM, YAY OR NEIGH?
Because Connor knew Jonathan would take longer to get ready for Saturday night, he’d volunteered to take the last shower, which meant that everyone else was waiting in the kitchen when he came thundering downstairs.
He hadn’t had a chance to see dressed and gorgeousified Jonathan in private first, and that was clearly a newbie mistake.
Jonathan wore a Western-cut shirt in a brilliant red that spoke to Connor of glossy cars he couldn’t afford and Christmas displays at stores where teachers didn’t usually shop.
Black stitched outlines of poppy flowers decorated the yoke so that the red fabric naturally colored in the petals.
The shade contrasted spectacularly with Jonathan’s hair in dark layers around his ears and cheeks.
Scarlet.
Connor’s brain finally caught up with his eyes and supplied the word for the shirt color.
Jonathan also wore dark, tight jeans that flared over a half-decent pair of black boots someone had found.
The buttons down the front of his shirt were gleaming onyx to match the pin Connor had given him for his birthday.
And the pin was thrust through Jonathan’s collar. The silver strands wrapped the stone and called Connor to touch them and then touch Jonathan’s lips and his dark-winged eyebrows, touch every piece of him.
He was supposed to speak, but it felt like his own collar had tightened around his neck. He tugged at it, even though his fingers told him he hadn’t accidentally buttoned it all the way to the top. Midnight blue with a white yoke and blue stitching, pressed to stiffness, that was his dress shirt.
He was going to get stiffer than his shirt if he kept looking at Jonathan, if Jonathan kept looking at him.
“Don’t you two look like the flag, red, white and blue!” His mother did a terribly mom-like bop over by the counter.
Off to the side, his father looked at his sister. “Two cars? Or three? How late you planning to stay out?”
They were covering for his inability to be a normal guy saying normal words to his boyfriend.
He eased closer to Jonathan, slowly, like his boyfriend was a colt that might stumble away because there was a bit of that nervous tight look back around his eyes and mouth.
Connor let his thumb and one finger pinch the fabric on Jonathan’s cuff, just that tiny touch.
He needed to say something but the only word close at hand was scarlet, and that wasn’t the type of word someone blurted out in a kitchen.
He swallowed. “You look nice. Really, really nice.”
“Nice is almost never my goal, Connor.” Jonathan’s voice trembled.
He leaned as close as he could get to Jonathan’s ear without touching him and recognized the light smell of Jonathan’s citrus-scented smoothing oil.
“Then you’ll be glad to know I was lying,” he whispered. “You don’t look nice at all.” He inhaled, and strands of Jonathan’s hair wafted close to his lips. “You look like a fucking race car. I want to drive you.”
Jonathan made a choking noise and blinked several times, very rapidly, and then Connor realized his entire family was still in the kitchen, silently trying not to watch while totally absorbed.
He stumbled back and bumped into the edge of the breakfast table.
Jonathan stepped back too, more gracefully, no bumps involved.
Neither of them looked at each other.
“Yeah, so we’re going.” Jess rolled her eyes.
“Wait!” Jonathan sounded panicked. “I brought something. It’s not a big deal, but maybe if you—”
He fumbled inside a gift bag on the counter and came out with a handful of the popular enameled metal pins that every café and gift store in Eugene stocked. Instead of being funny corgis, soothing potted plants, or sentient coffee mugs, these were variations of the rainbow flag.
His mother and Jess converged rapidly and started choosing.
“This one!” His mother held up a pin that said “Be Kind” with each letter part of the rainbow, and a heart dotting the lower-case letter i. “But I love the book one, too.”
Predictably, Jonathan had included a pin that looked like a stack of books in all colors of the rainbow.
His sister took a chubby tabby cat holding a pride flag in its mouth and immediately fastened it to the left side of her collar.
His dad put his hands in his pockets, but he was looking at the pins in Jonathan’s hand. “I don’t know.”
“David,” his mother said.
“I’m gonna wear one. Trying to choose.”
“You can rush into this. It’s perfectly acceptable to go faster.”
“Don’t know if anyone will even know what a cassette tape is except you and me, so guess I’ll take the one with both flags.” He held out his hand and Connor watched Jonathan drop the heart-shaped pin, half of it the American flag and the other half the pride flag, into his father’s palm.
Connor squeezed the bridge of his nose, but that didn’t help the shit happening yet again in his chest and face.
The last two weeks had been some of the lowest, worst, scariest, wrongest days of his life, and also some of the best, and the result was this mess he couldn’t sort inside his ribs.
But all that crap had led to this moment, his family supporting the public date they were about to head out to, where he’d probably see his entire hometown before the night ended.
It was a lot. A lot. He suspected he wasn’t handling it well.
Seemed like they knew he couldn’t speak, so they took themselves off faster than they usually did, leaving him and Jonathan alone in the kitchen. His sister had the final words, as always. “I’m leaving you in charge, Jonathan! Don’t be toooooo late.”
Jonathan waved them out and then he was there, his arms around Connor from behind and crossed tightly in front of Connor’s chest, his face nestled in the spot between Connor’s shoulders.
He was wrapped up tight enough to breathe again, if that made sense, which it didn’t. Sometimes the truth didn’t.
“I have pins for you, too. If you want.”
“Okay.” Speaking any words was a good start.
He let go of Connor and picked up a small black purse on the counter. Connor recognized it as one of Jonathan’s cross-body bags.
“Here.” He pulled out a pair of matching pins, vee shapes that spread out from the point into wider triangles of rainbow stripes. “They’re collar tips, if that’s okay?”
He nodded.
“I’ll pin them here.” Jonathan eased close enough that Connor dropped his hands to Jonathan’s hips. The bones were there, and the strength, all of it wrapped in denim that he wished was softer so he could feel more of Jonathan’s movements.
Connor looked down at the top of his boyfriend’s head, watched the lush strands fall forward as he bent to remove the pin back, watched the way the overhead kitchen fixture picked out highlights in the shiniest hair in the world.
They stood close enough that it was hard to see the lower part of Jonathan’s face, but Connor assumed he’d tightened his lips in order to focus on the job.
He wanted to kiss the groove between Jonathan’s eyebrows when he removed the pin back, a piece of metal so small that Connor wondered if his own fingers could manage it given how much he struggled with safety pins.
Jonathan positioned the rainbow part of the pin at the tip of one of Connor’s collars, pushed, and then flipped it to attach the backing.
During the entire process, Connor felt wrapped in Jonathan’s fresh-washed scent, the familiar bright zing that was Jonathan, a reminder of him that clung to Connor’s pillows and the towels hung in Connor’s bathroom.
“This feels vaguely like prom.” Jonathan smoothed one side of Connor’s collar back into place.
“I wouldn’t know.” A dull ache that he should have grown past made him look across the kitchen at the clock while Jonathan fiddled with the second pin. It was getting close to seven and they had a drive. If they were going to do this.
“You didn’t go?” He flipped the second side of Connor’s collar now, almost finished.
“Had a weekend tournament in Corvallis with my travel team.” He flexed his fingers on Jonathan’s waist and fought against pulling him across the space between them. Jonathan was fiddling with the pin, and Connor wouldn’t interrupt his easily annoyed little cat.
“I could have skipped playing. Mom and Dad wanted me to, and I’d already committed to the university months before, but I didn’t want to lead someone on. I guess I didn’t want to make anyone feel bad about themselves, like why wasn’t Connor into me, that sort of thing.”
He could have kissed a date. Girls had always been nice to him, and it would have been easy to close his eyes and kiss someone, even if he’d known it wouldn’t have been right.
But all he’d really wanted was to wear a tux and boutonniere, and he would have felt sleazy asking someone only as an excuse to dress up.
Jonathan stood on tiptoe and brushed his lips to the spot on Connor’s neck below his ear. “You’re so kind,” he whispered.
“Did you go to yours?” It was so long ago, it didn’t matter what they’d each done, but being back at home had made Connor hungry for details of Jonathan’s life before Eugene.
Jonathan pulled away, letting his hands trail down Connor’s shoulders arms to reach his wrists before he answered.
“It was Pasadena in 2016, so it was not unheard of for snippy gay boys to go with their carefully curated posse. Even though I did the home school for athletes, I went to the one at the big public high school.”
“Did you have fun?” He heard the yearning in his voice. Home made him stupidly nostalgic.
He deserved the way Jonathan rolled his eyes.
“We were four queer eighteen-year-old virgins wearing personally expressive formal wear, what do you think? Brave enough to attend, but I recall patrolling the edge of the dance floor was our main activity until the lock-in ended and we could go to In-N-Out Burger.”
“Oh.” Now the main question he had was going to sound shallow. “What is personally expressive formal wear, and do you have photos?”