Chapter 7 Sam #2
“Um.” I rack my brain. “The one with Robin Williams, right? And he owns the gay nightclub? I saw it in theaters with Adriana—she thought it was hysterical.” And it had been, but mostly I’d watched in a kind of awestruck terror that I was actually seeing something like that. In a movie. In a theater. “Why?”
“Is Miami actually like that?” The swing rattles as he turns it one way and then the other, ashing the cigarette into the sand beneath. “You know, like…safe for queers?”
I glance skyward, observe the barely visible stars from the gauzy clouds that obscure them. “It depends on the neighborhood, I guess. Some are better than others, but…I mean, you know—as a whole, yeah. They call it fairyland for a reason.”
“Oh.” Ash exhales smoke. “That’s…good.”
He’s telling me something, I think, not in so many words.
It sort of stops my heart, my breathing, for a second.
I have to turn away because, oh. Oh. Oh.
And hell, there’s the answer I was wondering not fifteen minutes ago when he was sprawled across my lap, my face in his hands and his heart thudding against my chest and everything below the belt gone hot and taut and ready.
Like I was actually going to do something to him in that bush.
What does it mean, wanting this boy the way that I do? Just lust? Just something to get out of my system and discard? Does it call into question my own sexuality, which I’ve always asserted as straight, regardless of the things I’ve done before? Or does it go deeper than that?
Wish I could ask Gabriel. We could talk about anything—we did talk about anything. He knew it all. And he would demonstrate, with gentle ardor, the answers to anything I asked. If only I could call him right now.
And say…what? I’ve fallen for another guy, maybe. So am I gay? Or bisexual? Is that a real thing? The truth is, I know that he doesn’t want to hear that from me. I don’t think he wants to hear anything at all from me ever.
“I can get a ride with someone else.” Ash again, his voice sort of small and forlorn. “If it makes you uncomfortable. I don’t care.”
I spin back around. “Ay, no! Of course not. You think I’m abandoning you now?”
He shrugs one shoulder. The swing spins from one side to the other. “If the alternative is you beating the shit out of me, yeah.”
I reach out and wrap a hand around his swing’s chain, halting its dizzying revolutions. “Ash, no. I don’t care that you’re gay. And I’m absolutely not gonna leave you in a bumfuck hick town that might kill you just for that.”
“Yeah?” He tilts his head at me and it shifts his hair across his face. “But you’re not.”
“I’m not leaving you,” I assert. “No.”
“Okay.” It gets a small smile out of him. “Thanks.”
“Come on, man. I don’t know about you, but I was robbed of my nice dinner and I’m still starving. Let’s grab something to eat and go to bed. Okay?”
He tosses his cigarette in the sand. I do the same.
It takes us twenty minutes to backtrack to the motel.
There’s no sign of the cops anywhere, so we take our chances with the local McDonalds.
They even give me a little baggy of ice upon request so I can put it on my throbbing face, and if they think our appearance suspicious after the earlier shit show, they don’t make their concerns known. We’re in and out entirely unmolested.
We eat our burgers in quick silence upon the double bed after a failed attempt to pry the window open so the room won’t smell of cheap burgers all night, so we crack the door instead.
It’s not much improvement; the air’s so sticky and uncomfortable, heavy on the skin and thick on the tongue.
I’m in desperate need for a shower but I simply don’t have the energy.
“Morning problem,” I declare, throwing myself upon the bed.
“I’m gonna take one.” Ash balls up his trash. “I need to wash my shirt again, too.”
Shit. I already forgot he was bleeding again. “I’ll look at it when you get out. You can borrow a shirt.” I wonder why he doesn’t buy some new ones when he’s got the cash—for a cheap three-pack of tees and boxers, at least.
When he re-emerges twenty minutes later, I take another look at the graze on his side.
It looks better than it did yesterday—the bruising has yellowed some, and it’s not as swollen and angry, either.
It’s mostly scabbed up, save for what he jostled during our evening adventure.
I give it the same treatment as I did before: lots of goo, lots of gauze, because that seemed to work well enough before.
Actually, I’m starting to enjoy this. Taking care of him.
“You’ll live,” I say. “Probably.”
Ash hitches the towel around his slender waist as he stands, running his fingers through his damp hair. “I found a tick on me in the shower,” he mumbles in dismay.
“Told you. Let me look.” I motion for him to sit again and he hesitates.
“Ash, come on. Picking out one of those suckers when they’re fully engorged blows.
Ask me how I know.” He acquiesces then, settling between my legs on the edge of the bed.
Suppose I could’ve gone all criss-cross applesauce and made it less awkward but—whatever. Kinda like him here. Close.
I section his damp hair deftly, looking for bugs. He’s got real fine hair, but it’s still pretty thick. Inspecting every inch of his scalp is an undertaking, but not one I mind at all.
And I don’t think Ash does, either. He’s sort of going boneless and gooey beneath my hands, head lolling and shoulders relaxing before he straightens again. “Sorry,” he murmurs. “That feels good.”
I smile. “I hope so.”
“You’re good at it. Whatever you’re doing.”
“Yeah, well. I have two older sisters, so…” I flick a lock of his hair over his shoulder. “Basically I was their bitch at all their sleepovers. They’d all be braiding each other’s hair and whatever, and I’d get tagged in to help. I got good at it pretty fast.”
“That must’ve been a pain.”
“No. I liked the attention,” I admit. “You know, when you’re little…” I run my fingers through his hair, mostly because I can, not because I need to, and a small shudder goes through him. “You just want to be included in everything, y’know? So I loved it.”
He laughs softly. “Figures.”
What I notice, for the first time, as I comb his hair out between my fingers—and I don’t know how I missed it before—is the butterfly tattoo inked behind his right ear. A small thing, sort of amateurish, but I like the look of it all the same.
“What’s this?” I ask him.
“Huh?” I touch the tattoo. “Oh.” He reaches behind his ear before dropping his hand back in his lap. “My roommate does stick and pokes. I let him experiment on me a few years ago.”
Goosebumps have erupted over his flesh. It draws my attention to all the scars—like the ones on the back of his arms I saw earlier today, the crescent-shaped ones, scything the back of his shoulders and neck, too.
Little curving rows of four, scattered all over, some overlapping but largely running parallel.
I don’t have a solitary clue what could’ve caused them. They’re unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. My fingertips brush along them and he goes almost imperceptibly rigid. I get the hint, taking my hands off him. “You’re good,” I say. “No ticks.”
Ash stands abruptly. “Um—”
“Already set some stuff aside for you.” I try to catch his eye, smiling a little. “Good thing my mom overpacked for me.”
He grabs the shirt and shorts off the bed and retreats into the bathroom once more.
Nice one, Rivero. You blew it.
I drag myself into the shower because I feel guilty sharing a bed with Ash and not being clean (no ticks—they must be racist too), and by the time I’m ready for bed, the light’s off and he’s curled up in the bed like he’s already asleep.
I move very quietly so as not to disturb him, surreptitiously peeling back the blanket to join him.
It’s sorta lonely when he’s asleep.
That’s the worst part of anything, being alone with your thoughts and feelings, having to sort them out on your own.
Perhaps the most terrifying prospect of being single after a good couple of years not being single, which I guess isn’t a great reason to be in a relationship.
But if I examine all the reasons why I enjoyed my relationship with Adriana, there would be scant few that had anything to do with her. Which isn’t fair, I know.
When it came down to it, we didn’t have much in common.
Didn’t like the same music, didn’t like the same things.
We fought a lot about the stupidest shit—going out, for instance: where to go, why and how and who with.
We looked good together—everyone said so—and I liked having sex with her.
We had great physical chemistry and that’s as far as it ever went.
Stupid to think, in hindsight, that our relationship would stand any amount of distance. Stupid is, however, definitely one of the top five words I would use to describe myself. I suppose it tracks.
And funny, because the contrast between my relationship with her and the whole two seconds I’ve known Ash is…
stark. Not that I should be thinking about him like that, but I am—he’s gone into that category by virtue of my attraction to him.
He’s fun to talk to. Easy. He’s clearly very smart.
We like a lot of the same things, and even the things we disagree on, we can still talk about.
Even our arguments are enjoyable banter.
I want to know more. I want to know everything.
“Ash,” I say very softly, with very little expectation, “are you awake?”
I’m surprised when he replies, “What’s up?”
“Can I ask you something?”
“Depends.” His back’s already up, I can tell. Guarded as hell.
“It’s just…you know, being gay—” He actually snorts, but I forge bravely ahead nonetheless. “How did you know? That you were.”
“I think it was the whole liking dick thing?”
“Ash.”
“Oh, I dunno.” The shitty mattress dips when he rolls towards me. “I guess I kinda always did? Girls were never really on the radar.”
“Never?”
“Not really? I remember this one time when me and a couple of friends were like…eleven or twelve? One of them found their dad’s nudie mags. Passed them around while we were hanging out after school one day. We looked at them all, cover to cover, but none of it did anything for me.”
I stare up at the ceiling. “Did you all circle jerk or something?”
“What? No.”
“I was just asking.”
“Did you do shit like that?”
“No, of course not,” I lie. “That’d be pretty fuckin’ gay.”
He laughs. “Okay, Sam.”
“We aren’t talking about me, anyway,” I say hastily. “Do you have a boyfriend or anything like that?”
“No.”
“So the friend in Miami isn’t…?”
A long pause. “No,” he says. “Just…a really good friend. I haven’t really had any boyfriends.”
“And no girlfriends.”
“Some girls I hooked up with in high school. Nothing serious.”
“And that didn’t do anything for you? I mean…did you—”
“The job got done,” he says stiffly. “But I wasn’t into it. Why are you asking me this stuff, anyway?”
“Because I’m curious. I wanna know things about you.”
“There’s really not that much to know. I’m not that interesting, Sam. Really.”
“Agree to disagree.”
He doesn’t say anything else after that.
The conversation is seemingly over, punctuated as he shifts away from me again, far as the bed will allow.
He’s too far away and it sucks. I want him to be close again.
Like in the park, when he was in my lap.
Like before, when he was between my legs in just a towel.
And I mean, he’s gay, so what does it matter, really?
What should I care? I should just let myself have this thing now that I know, and I’ve acknowledged that I want it.
Want him. A distraction, something. From everything.
From the fact that I got dumped literally…
yesterday? In a relationship that I guess was DOA, anyway.
Home isn’t til tomorrow and tomorrow’s far away, still, to me. It seems.
Home could be further away than tomorrow, actually, if I play my cards right.
Suppose it’s possible he doesn’t want me, though. A sobering thought, one I’m not used to. It’s not that I feel like I’m particularly attractive—it’s just that I’m told I am, a lot, and the results I get indicate this as fact.
Sobering thought. Unfun one. But, okay. Chill out, back off. Maybe this is all going too fast. I haven’t known him very long, after all. I haven’t done the gay thing in a while, not since Gabriel. I don’t know how to judge a man’s attraction to me.
I roll onto my side, taking more than my fair share of the blanket. Ash yanks it back. “Hey, sorry,” I say.
“It’s fine.” He sounds muffled. “Goodnight, Sam.”
“Night, Ash.”