Parker #2
I look out the window at the starless sky and think that God must not have been at home today. “Okay,” I say, because it couldn’t hurt. I feel uncomfortable. Mom doesn’t like church people very much. And now, I’d only be praying that she hasn’t seen that picture.
“Perhaps we should introduce you formally,” Mr. Broussard says. “Parker, this is our neighbor, Ellie Hopkins. Ellie, this is Parker Bishop.”
“It’s so Christian of you to take in a stranger like that,” she says.
“He ain’t a stranger,” Mr. Broussard says. “He’s my son’s boyfriend, so he’s already practically family.”
She looks so taken aback I’m surprised she doesn’t snatch back her casserole dish. “I thought you were going into the Marines,” she says to Lance, as if gay people don’t join up. “Aren’t you a little young to be making attachments like that, before you’re really sure who you are?”
“Ellie,” Mrs. Broussard says, “Parker is a sweet boy. We like him very much. You know, I just checked the fridge and I don’t think there’s even the slightest bit of room for something this big.
” She hands back the casserole dish. “You should get that over to one of the shelters before it gets cold. Robert, could you get the door for our guest?”
“I’ll pray for you,” Mrs. Hopkins says as she backs out of the living room.
This has all been too much. “Can I go and just have a few minutes on my own?”
“Of course, sweetheart,” Lance’s mom says.
“Lance, honey, since Parker’s definitely going to spend the night here, why don’t you take my car and go pick up some things that he’ll need?
Toothbrush, razor, that sort of thing.” She levels a finger at him.
“And you’ll drive slow, and you will not rescue anybody else on the way home. I’ve had my fill of that for one day.”
He looks startled. “Oh. Yes. Of course,” he says. He glances back at his parents. “Anything else you want me to grab while I’m out?”
Lance’s room is the last door on the left.
I take a deep breath and close it and sit on his bed and take in his room: the battered computer desk wedged in the corner opposite the bed I’m sitting on now, the chest of drawers and the nightstand.
It’s all so clean, and somehow it feels like the kindest place I’ve ever been in.
Even if my aunt weren’t on her way, I don’t know what I’ve done to be given a room like this, and I keep waiting for somebody to work out that I haven’t earned it.
I plug in my phone and start scrolling through the article. There are comments about the photo, and I click the link.
Nusblox19: Classic woke media: They take a tragedy that kills dozens of people and they find two underage queers and make them the face of it. Disgusting.
Piratetownie: I go to HS with these people and they are ALWAYS making out and the teachers do NOTHING bc they’re too afraid 2B called homophobes.
I gasp at that and try to reconstruct a time—any time—when someone could have walked away with that impression.
I literally can’t think of one. But I keep reaching for one anyway, and not finding it is worse—like a stranger built a version of me out of nothing and I’m the one who has to prove he isn’t real.
Mitchnellus: I wonder which one the btm is. JK. It’s the ugly one. Someone’s getting it up the ass tonight.
I scroll through the rest, but it’s more of the same.
There are a few well-wishers scattered in, but the hateful ones are never about Lance.
They’re always about me. I put my phone down and curl up on his bed and try not to think about anything at all.
It doesn’t work. The comments keep surfacing, and Mrs. Hopkins’s voice with them, and every time I push one down another one comes up in its place.
Someone knocks on the door, which is such a rare treat that I almost don’t know what to say. “Yes?”
Lance comes in carrying some shopping bags. “Hey. You okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lie.
“Ellie Hopkins is…don’t let her upset you.”
“Your family defended me. They didn’t need to.”
“Well, they did.” He shrugs.
“Am I ugly?” I ask him.
He looks surprised at that. “No! Of course not! Why would you say that?” He sits on the floor, leaving the bags where they are.
“Just…a long day. I’m tired and that picture made me look…weak and vulnerable. And I thought, maybe that’s what people see when they see me.”
He puts his hand on my knee. “That’s not what I see.” He looks around his room. “This room’s twice the size of that closet you sleep in, and I’ve never once had to worry my parents would treat me different if they knew. You could have told me. I wish you had.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want to see you hurt. We’ve been friends for such a long time…” He shrugs.
“Lance, I’m really sorry. You were outed too, and I didn’t even pause to think how it would affect you. I didn’t mean to be so self-absorbed.”
He laughs. “It’s okay, I think you have permission to be a little self-absorbed right now. And I’m not sure how I’ll like going back to high school with that. Man, that’s gonna suck. But, my family’s cool, and fuck these jerks. I don’t care what any of them think of me. Only you.”
I don’t know what to say. It’s so sweet, but carries so much pressure. His dad just called me his boyfriend. How did that happen? When?
“Anyway, I got you some things,” he says, taking out his shopping bag.
“You didn’t have to.” I cough and then apologize.
Lance shakes the bag, and I look at the haul that just landed on his bedspread. I hold up a green toothbrush, tapping the cartoon character on the handle. “And what inspired this choice?” I try to laugh, but it sounds painful, so I stop.
“I remember you liked Kermit,” Lance says, looking awkward.
“When I was seven!” I say, but I’m smiling anyway. “But thank you. I’ll think of you every time I put it in my…” I look up and I’m pretty sure I just turned crimson. “Oh.”
“That’s a bonus I didn’t anticipate, but I don’t hate it.” He grins at me.
I look down so I can dodge my own embarrassment. “And a razor, thank you.”
“I didn’t get you any shaving cream because you can use mine.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
He shifts so his back is against the bed. I sit cross-legged on the mattress, looking down at him. Neither of us says anything for a minute. Bree is laughing at something down the hall. The TV murmurs in the living room.
“Lance?”
“Yeah?”
“What are we doing?”
He tips his head back to look at me. “What do you mean?”
“I mean—the whole country thinks we’re together. Your dad introduced me as your boyfriend. And I don’t even know what this is. Are we—is this—” I pull at a thread on his comforter. “I’ve never done this before. Any of it.”
“Me neither,” he says. “Not with a guy. Not with anyone I actually—” He stops. “I don’t know what the rules are.”
“There are rules?”
He laughs, and the tension cracks just enough. “Probably. I think we’re supposed to define the relationship, or DTR, or whatever. I saw it on TikTok.”
“Great. So we’re getting our relationship advice from TikTok.”
“I mean, where else would we get it?” He turns around properly so he’s facing me.
“Look. I know this is the worst possible timing. You’re going through—everything.
And now there’s a picture of us on the national news, and people are saying things, and it got public before it even got private. That’s not fair to you.”
“It’s not fair to you either.”
“I don’t care about fair. I care about you.” He says it so simply that it sounds like a fact, like gravity. “I just don’t want to add to the pile of things you’re carrying right now. So if you need this to be—nothing, or—slow, or—whatever you need it to be, I’m okay with that.”
I look at him sitting on his own bedroom floor because he took the floor without even thinking about it. I think about the Kermit toothbrush. I think about “you can use mine.”
“I don’t want it to be nothing,” I say.
His whole face changes. “Okay.”
“But I don’t know what I’m doing.”
He reaches up and squeezes my hand. “We’ll figure it out.”
“Actually, can you do something for me?” he asks.
“Sure.”
He stands up and goes to the top drawer of his computer desk.
“I’m going to get it framed,” he says. “Can you sign it first? Just in case you’re ever a famous artist and I can say I knew you?
” He hands me the drawing I gave him a few weeks ago—Lance in a full suit of armor with no helmet, sword raised, fire and chaos behind him.
I did it in the back of my math notebook and tore it out for him because he laughed when he caught me at it.
Jesus, I had no idea how literal that was going to turn out to be. I sign my name to the bottom and he puts it back reverently, careful not to crease the paper.
He sits back down next to me and puts another bag on the bed. “There’s one more thing. I thought you could…”
I slowly open the bag.
“It’s a sketchbook!” I don’t think I could hide how touched I am even if I wanted to. “You even know what pencils I use.”
“I had to go to Sinclair’s Art Store to find them. And the colored pencils are expensive, so I just got the basic set. You’ve always been drawing, ever since the day I met you, so I thought maybe if you wanted to sketch something, it would make you feel—”
I hug him, and this time, he touches my hair, running his fingers through it. He hums softly. It’s not wrong to let myself have this, is it? Just for a moment.
And that’s when I understand what I’ve been doing for the last ten minutes, which is not thinking about them at all.
Elliott is somewhere tonight with nobody who knows how to touch him.
And I’m here, warm, in a boy’s arms, and some part of me that I am never going to say out loud is in no hurry for the morning.