Chapter 5 February 2003
Two months before Kent’s eighteenth birthday, we spent the day at our lake.
It was too cold for us to swim, but that didn’t stop us from building ourselves a campfire and cuddling up close to each other.
We’d laid out a blanket for us to sit on, and another to wrap around us.
Kent was leaning against the tree reading a book, and I had my head in his lap, fading in and out of sleep.
His fingers were in my hair, and he’d occasionally scratch the back of my scalp.
I loved the way his fingers felt there, like it was where they belonged.
I rolled onto my back and smiled up at him. “Hey, Half-pint.”
He chuckled, his fingers still combing through my hair. “Hey, Gray. You nodded off.”
I shook my head. “I was just thinking. On Saturday, I think we should go see that Walk to Remember movie.”
He groaned. “Mandy Moore is trash.”
“You’re trash,” I teased. “Seriously. It’ll be fun.
I can come pick you up in my truck, and we can go watch it together.
Maybe we could get a burger together after, or something.
” I’d been building myself up to finally have the talk with him.
The one where we finally say our feelings out loud.
Kent had always been mine, and I had always been his, but I needed to finally say it out loud, because we weren’t ever going to get anywhere if neither of us acknowledged the big gay elephant in the room.
Kent folded the corner of the page he was reading and closed his book.
He set it to the side and stared down at me, still playing with my hair.
His fingers were tugging harder than they had been, not painfully, but it wasn’t necessarily comfortable.
A question formed on his lips but no words came out.
He just sat there staring down at me with his mouth hanging open.
I reached up, touching his chin with my finger and pushing it closed.
“You’ll catch flies that way.”
He forced another smile, but I could tell there was something brewing inside of him. Wanting to get the words out, but too scared to actually say them.
“What’s wrong?”
He shook his head. “Nothing’s wrong. I just … Kate asked me to go see a movie this weekend.”
While I didn’t like the way she’d inserted herself into our plans for Saturday, I knew Kent well enough to know if it came to it, he’d tell her no if I asked him to.
“But it’s Saturday. Saturday is our day.”
“I know, I just …” He averted his gaze, looking out across the water, now reflecting pinks and oranges like a portrait of Texas at dusk. “I like her.” His eyes darted down at me quickly before turning back toward the water.
“I’m not sure what the issue is. We like Kate, don’t we? Did that change and I just didn’t get the memo?”
Kent sighed, and then he pulled his hand away from my head and twitched his leg, motioning for me to move. I sat up and spun around on my butt, crossing my legs and tucking them together at the ankles. Kent’s eyes were still focusing on the water, and I followed his line of sight.
When I looked out at those sparkling swirls of pinks and blues and all that orange, Kent Fox at my side—right where he was meant to be—I felt Him there with us. Like our feelings for each other were so big and beautiful that God couldn’t tear himself away from the show.
Kent was shaking. His hands. His legs. Tiny tremors that might have gone unnoticed by the untrained eye, but I’d been familiarizing myself with his body since the day we met.
I knew his body better than I knew my own.
How it reacted to stress. The way it responded to pleasure.
His big, brown, puppy-dog eyes and the way they seemed to almost double in size every time we touched.
I couldn’t hold them back any longer. The words were rising up in me, demanding release. I’d spent years holding them in, and for what? Kent loved me. He might not have ever said it, but I saw it. I saw him. I always saw him.
“Kent, I—”
Our voices crashed into each other, both of us stuttering and sputtering to get out points across, the same way my truck did when it idled in winter.
“I’m taking Kate on a date Saturday.”
I laughed. I hadn’t meant to, but his words sounded so ridiculous, I couldn’t help it. As if Kent would ever go on a date with a girl. And Kate of all people? I knew he had to be pulling my leg. It had to be some corny joke that was missing its punchline.
“Good one,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Seriously, though. Tell Kate she can hang out with us next weekend. It’s almost your birthday and we haven’t even started planning the party. I was thinking, after the movie, we could—"
“Grayson,” he said, his voice sounding distant. Detached. It was like I was talking to a stranger.
The look on his face spoke volumes, and before he had a chance to voice those words out loud, before he could break me in front of him, I shook my head.
“You can’t be serious. Saturday is our day.
You can’t—you’re not …” My mouth was hanging open, and every word that left me was jittery and jagged.
“It’s our day, Kent.” He sighed, reaching out to take my hand, but I pulled away from him and jolted to my feet, backstepping away from him.
“It’s not a big deal. We can just go—”
“No, we can’t,” I interrupted, jumping up and walking a few steps away.
“Because every day it’s school and church, school and church, school and freaking church.
Monday, church. Tuesday, bible study. Wednesday, prayer meeting.
Friday, worship. Sunday, church. Our whole life is the freaking church, Half-pint, and now you’re giving her what little time we get to share. ”
“I don’t know what the hell your problem is right now, but you don’t have to yell at me. It’s just a fucking date, dude.”
Whirling around on my heels, I marched toward him. My face must have been a terrifying sight, because he winced as I approached. He stood up and took a step back, bumping into the old oak tree behind him. Bending down, I picked up a handful of dirt and threw it in his face.
“What the fuck, Gray?”
“Watch your dang mouth! I don’t know how many times I have to tell you. God help me, if you end up in Hell and I’m stuck in Heaven without you, I’ll rip those gates wide open, drag you to this lake, and hold your head underwater until the bubbles stop.”
He chuckled, but nothing about this was funny. I bent over, meaning to grab another handful of dirt, but he grabbed my wrist and jerked me back up. He took a step forward. I scowled and took a step back, jerking my arm away and shoving my hand into my pocket.
“First of all, if I’m dead, I don’t think I’ll be making any bubbles.
And second, I’m pretty sure prison-breaking a damned soul from the flames of Hell is a sin.
” He was smiling. He was basically pre-confessing to cheating on me, and the jerk was smiling at me like I amused him.
Like the simple act of breaking my heart was nothing serious.
I threw my hands in the air. “Then we can burn together. Congratulations, you’ve just damned my eternal soul, on top of breaking—” I bit my tongue. It was the only way to keep the words in.
He raised an eyebrow at me, that stupid, uninvited smile of his unfaltering. He took a step forward and wrapped his arms around me. “We’ll burn beautifully.”
I scowled at him and shook my head. “On second thought, how about you take Kate with you into those flames. I’m sure you’ll both have a fan-freaking-tastic time down there. You can kiss with your tongues and everything.”
“What’s gotten into you? You’re all over the place, Gray.”
“And you’re a jerk, but it doesn’t stop me wanting to spend Saturday with you.
But screw it, Kent. You take Kate, and I’ll just sit my ass at home and wait for you to call and fill me in on the gory details.
Is that alright with you? Get matching tattoos.
Spend weekends in Aspen skiing the slopes.
Take a stupid picture together with Abe and put it on your Christmas card that you won’t bother sending to me because you’ll be too far up Kate’s butt to remember.
So, yeah. Go ahead and take her out this weekend, and then why don’t you both just go straight to Hell?
How’s that for your Christmas card?” He took a step toward me, then another.
He kept walking until there was only an inch or two separating us.
When he started to speak, I knew only destruction rested in that vicious little mouth of his, and I had no desire to be destroyed.
I took another step forward and shoved my palms into his chest, sending him toppling to the ground.
I’d never seen a look of absolute betrayal until that moment.
Not until Kent stared up at me with shock and horror in his eyes.
“You just pushed me.” It felt more like a question than a statement. Like he couldn’t believe what I’d just done.
“And you’re an asshole. Since we’re just stating the facts.” I reached into my pocket and fished out my keys before hurling them on the ground beside him. “Drive your damn self home. I can’t even look at you right now.”
He called out to me as I walked past the tree line, but tears were hot in my eyes and I couldn’t let him see me like that.
Kent had a girlfriend. A girl. It felt like I’d just caught him cheating on me.
Like I’d walked in on her going down on him.
My stomach churned, and when I was out of sight, I had to sit down behind a tree to catch my breath.
It didn’t make sense. Not a single bit of sense.
Kent was mine. He was mine, and I was his, and he was freaking ruining it.