12. Calvin
CHAPTER TWELVE
calvin
I try to tell myself it’s not a big deal that I’m here, but of course it’s a big deal. It’s a huge deal. I should have told him no. I should have resisted, but I couldn’t.
I want to be here.
There’s no denying it.
I want so many things. Things I never let myself have before. My mom thinks I’m at a party—celebrating the win. My parents are happy I’m finally getting back to who I used to be—at least, that’s what they think.
They’re actually happy, thinking I’m getting shitfaced in some field right now and staying the night there. If they had any idea I’m at my coach’s house—with his little brother, making popcorn . . .
God, they’d disown me. Maybe worse. One thing’s for sure, I wouldn’t have my family ever again. And some may say who cares. But they’re all I have. All I’ve ever known. Isn’t that worth putting up this front?
“Yes, she got extra butter,” Jonah says, his eyes lit up with excitement. His face full of beauty and happiness. He’s so damn pretty all the time, but when he’s happy—just being himself like this—goddamn. He tilts his head to the side. “You okay?”
I try to stop thinking about my family right now. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like anything is going to happen anyway. We’re friends. They—especially my mother—want me to have friends.
So that’s all I’m doing.
“Yeah. I fucking love extra butter,” I say, taking the bowl of now perfectly popped popcorn from him and walking toward the couch.
“Me too,” I hear him say. I sit down on the couch and watch him shuffling around the kitchen, grabbing sodas and candy before joining me. Sitting right next to me. “So, Fortnite? Or do you actually want to watch a movie?”
I shrug, taking a handful of popcorn and stuffing my face, offering him the bowl and letting him do the same. The buttery deliciousness fills all my senses. “Whatever.”
He picks up the remote and goes to Netflix, searching around while we munch on popcorn and sit far too close on the couch. I shouldn’t be this close to him. I don’t move.
“Schitt’s Creek!” he says excitedly. “Hell yes. Have you seen it?”
I shake my head. I don’t watch a lot of television. I don’t have one in my room, and if I do watch the one in the living room, it’s usually whatever my parents want to watch. “Nope. Don’t know what that is.”
He starts flipping through the episodes. “Well, it’s all really good, but I like it the most when Patrick is introduced.” He settles on an episode. “This is where they meet.”
“Who?” I ask, putting more popcorn in my mouth and opening up the soda he brought me.
“Patrick and David. Epic love story. Wait until you hear Patrick sing to David.”
My lips tug up in a smile at how dreamy he sounds right now. The guy is full-on swooning. Over what I’m assuming is two dudes. I should shut this down immediately. Tell him I’m not into that shit.
That I don’t want to watch it. But I sit there and listen when he pauses the show to give me a quick rundown of the first two seasons. “We can totally start from the beginning, if you want.”
“No, that’s okay,” I find myself saying.
I can’t lie and say I’m not intrigued by the couple—David and Patrick.
Will they kiss? I remember my mom watching shows when I was growing up—any time there was a gay couple, she’d make a big deal about how they just had to add that in.
Shoving that lifestyle down our throats.
As if there weren’t plenty of heterosexual couples doing the exact same thing, which she had no problem with.
He starts the show again, and we pig out while I find myself laughing right along with Jonah—though we try our best to keep it down. Don’t need to wake anyone up.
“Was your family at the game?” he asks as the credits roll on the episode, and my entire body goes tense at just the mention of my family. He must notice because he clicks on the next episode to start it and cringes. “Sorry. We don’t have to talk about them. I was just curious.”
The episode starts, and we let the silence hang between us until I finally open my mouth, forcing words out. “They were. They go to every game.”
“That’s nice,” he says and sounds like he means it. But I hear the questions there. Wanting to know more about them.
“They aren’t nice,” I say, still watching the screen, my whole body kind of numb. “They aren’t like your family. Micah and Jenna. The girls.”
“Not many are like them,” he tries to joke, but there’s truth there. I can hear the pain in his voice. His father kicked him out because he’s gay.
Gay.
That word he’s so comfortable saying. The word I can barely even think in my own head. Jonah is gay.
“My dad played football. My grandpa—he lives with us—he played too. As did my older brother. Football and oil. That’s life for the Dukes.”
He nods, and I turn my head to look at him. “So it must make them pretty happy that you play too.”
I swallow around the lump in my throat—not making it go away in the slightest. “Nothing makes them happy. Everything pisses them off, and I’m sure they had plenty to say about tonight’s game.”
“We played the hell out of that game,” he says with pride and smiles at me.
I want to smile back, but I just shake my head. “They’ll have notes. Like I said, everything pisses them off.”
“You?” He asks it quietly, unsure if he should ask, I bet.
“Especially me,” I say with total honesty I’m not used to showing. “Something about me has always pissed them off.”
“Yeah, I get that. There was always something about me that my dad hated my whole life,” he says grimly.
But he must notice how rigid my body goes next to him because his posture matches mine, and he scrambles to sit up a little straighter and look at me with wide eyes.
“Not that you’re like me or anything,” he says frantically.
That should make me freak out. He connected dots. I’m not fooling him at all. He knows about me. But he’s letting me off the hook. Maybe I don’t want that though.
At least, not right now in this moment.
Every part of me is so damn tired of being on full-alert.
Of acting right, according to my parents.
I turn my head to face him, taking in his gorgeous face with those high cheekbones and that cut jaw.
His eyes sparkle with wonder and maybe some regret about his words, but I see a flicker of hope there.
Hope for what? I’m not really sure. Maybe he can see how badly I want to kiss him.
My eyes drop to his plump red lips, and I wonder if he can read my mind. About how badly I want to taste them. Him. What would it feel like?
I’ve kissed a few girls and one guy—but I can’t really count that. I fucked that up royally, and it’s been fucking me right back since it happened.
Since I made a reckless choice.
No one else is here right now though. Well, except his family. But they wouldn’t say anything if they saw us sitting this close, would they? Jenna sure seemed excited about us hanging out—it felt like maybe she was hinting at something—but maybe she’s just excited about Jonah having a friend.
I know my mom would be. But if my mom saw the way I’m looking at Jonah now—the way I can’t stop looking at him—she wouldn’t be happy about that. She’d tell my father, who . . .
I shudder, thinking about what he would do, then reluctantly pull back and settle my head into the padding of the couch, my eyes focused on the show. I feel his disappointment coming off him as he settles in next to me, but he doesn’t call me out on it.
He doesn’t ask about what happened or why I’m such a fucking coward.
He just goes right back to the show, laughing and pointing things out to me.
We watch until it’s David’s birthday and Patrick apparently thought it was a date when he asked him to dinner.
What would that be like? To ask a guy out on a date?
To go on an actual date with another guy . . .
I watch as they sit in their car, and Jonah goes kind of quiet, his eyes locked on the screen as David leans in and kisses Patrick for the first time.
My heart flutters in my chest, and my whole body goes on full-alert.
Not because I’m turned-on or anything, like the few times I’ve watched porn on my phone, which rarely happens because afterword, I feel paranoid and jumpy for days. Like someone might find out what I did.
This is different. And yet it’s the same too. Two men together—it’s something magical. Something almost like a fairytale I thought I’d made up when I was younger and didn’t really have crushes on girls but dared to dream about maybe falling in love with a boy someday.
I turn my head to look at Jonah, who slowly turns his to look at me too, a soft smile on his beautiful face. “Jonah?”
“Yeah?” his voice is a soft whisper.
“I am like you.” I say it so quietly, so slowly, because it takes so much out of me to say the words. Even though I’m not saying anything really. But I watch his throat flex as he swallows, his breathing picking up as he looks at my lips.
Does he want to kiss me?
I think he does.
But he doesn’t move in to do that. He just smiles a little more at me and nods his head subtly. We look at each other, frozen in time, and God, I want to kiss him. I want to take the opportunity to do something I want to do for once.
Well—since the last time I selfishly did something stupid. And this would be stupid. Kissing the coach’s little brother my senior year, when I’m so close to being out of this hellhole.
I don’t think he’d tell anyone. But I do think if I kiss him, I may never stop kissing him, and someone is bound to find out.
Still, I find myself leaning into him, breathing him in. He smells like the locker room soap and popcorn, his lips a little shiny with butter. He starts to lean in too but slowly—letting me take the lead.
Letting me claim what I want.
But just before our lips touch, just as my nose is brushing his, I hear soft little footsteps and “Uncle Jonah?” before pulling back at the same time Jonah does to look at his youngest niece in the hallway, rubbing her eyes.
He looks at me, the disappointment shining there, but then he’s smiling bright as he jumps off the couch to intercept her. “Hey, kiddo. You’re supposed to be asleep.”
“I’m not tired,” she says, yawning.
He picks her up, letting her little head rest on his shoulder before turning to look at me. “I’ll be right back.”
I nod, letting my heart rate slow a little, breathing deeply as he walks away. I sit and wait for him, thinking about the kiss that almost happened.
There’s no denying that’s exactly what was going to happen. I wasn’t just letting it happen either. I was pursuing it. I wanted it.
Craved it.
But maybe Ruby interrupting us was exactly what needed to happen.
I can be friends with Jonah. But he deserves better than a guy who can’t even say the word gay out loud. Who has to hint around about who he is, and it still makes him sick to his stomach not even admitting anything out loud.
I’m fucked up, and he’s beautiful and free.
I can’t do this to him.
This is my problem. Not his.