Ten #3
Here’s the thing about the old people in this town.
Many of them—at least the regulars at our shop—know that I’m gay.
Some of them disapprove, but others—like Mrs. Makinen—try to prove how supportive they are by making comments like this.
Because what teenager doesn’t want to talk to septuagenarians about who they find attractive?
“Enzo,” Mrs. Makinen chides, somehow managing to slur my four-letter name, “tell him he looks handsome in his suit.”
I hear a snort from behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I notice the rest of my quintet watching us.
“Maybe we should get you out to your ride,” Garrett tells her.
I’m probably imagining it, but I think I notice a flush of red creeping into his cheeks.
“Not until Enzo tells you how handsome you look in your suit,” Mrs. Makinen whines. “Enzo, you’re being rude.”
Garrett looks at me helplessly, clearly trying to invent a logical argument to convince Mrs. Makinen to leave.
For a brief moment, I consider just running away.
Maybe if I pulled the fire alarm on my way out, the ensuing chaos would be enough to make everyone forget about this embarrassing sideshow.
“Garrett,” I eventually say, realizing there’s a much quicker way to end this, “you look handsome in your suit.”
“Thanks, Enzo.”
I hear a sound like a dying cat behind me. I glance over my shoulder, and Katrina has her head between her knees, her entire body shaking with laughter.
Mrs. Makinen beams at me. “That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?”
As the Casino Night ends, I intentionally hang back, taking an extra-long time to clean my oboe—while enduring my quintet’s relentless teasing—so that Garrett and I end up walking home separately.
At the house, when I reach the landing between our rooms, his door is open, the warm light from his bedside lamp spilling into the darkened hallway. I walk over and stand in his doorway. He sits on the edge of his bed, taking off his shoes. They’re soft brown leather. Expensive. He looks up.
“Seems like your date was kind of trashed.” I carefully planned this sentence on the way home. Make a joke about Mrs. Makinen and pretend the suit part didn’t happen.
He grins. “You have no idea. Mrs. Koski had to shuttle her and her friends home. I mean, I’ve gone hard before … but damn.”
“Wait until Caribbean Getaway Night. So many fruity drinks with rum.”
He looks down at himself. “I’ll make sure to wear something less enticing.”
I laugh, and then there’s an awkward pause during which I try to avoid looking at the offending sexy suit. I tilt my head toward his camera and photos. “You into photography?”
He throws his shoes into a corner. “Yeah, I guess.”
I step over to the photos, pretending to see them for the first time. I point to the selfie of him and the eclectic group of people in front of the fountain. “Are these your friends back home?”
He moves to stand next to me. His arm brushes mine. He’s rolled up his shirtsleeves, uncovering the lower half of his forearms. His skin is warm.
“The speech and debate crew. I took this at state finals last year.” His voice brightens at the memory.
“We’d finished our rounds and had the afternoon to just bum around the city.
Lisbeth”—he points at the girl with the bleached pixie cut and combat boots—“ended up in the fountain right after this was taken. Tripped backward over some lady feeding the pigeons.”
“She seems cool.”
He smiles. “Way cooler than me, that’s for sure.
“And Corey”—his finger moves to the round-faced, hip-popping boy—“is the most amazing drama queen. He can tell a story like nobody’s business, and no one ever knows if it’s true or not.” He frowns. “Irontown doesn’t have speech and debate.”
I feel guilty about this fact, even though it’s not my fault. Lately, it’s been easy to forget that Garrett hates this town and doesn’t want to be here.
“The rest of these,” I say, changing the subject, “are incredible. So many things I would never have thought to take a picture of.”
“That’s the point, I guess.” He moves back to his bed and plops down while I hover near the photo wall.
“This one time, when I was twelve, my parents took me to Paris. I brought my camera and took all these photos of the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre. I was so proud of them. And then on our last day, we stopped in this cheap souvenir shop and I found dozens of photos of those places, all of them basically the same, all of them just slightly better than anything I could do. That’s when I realized I was missing the point, you know?
That I should be finding things I notice, not things everyone else does.
Pretty obvious, I guess, now that I say it. ”
“It’s not obvious,” I say quietly. Then, “There’s a place you should see. If you want to, anyway. It’s not the Arc de Triomphe or anything, but I think it’s cool.”
I’m tired of pretending I don’t want to spend time with him, tired of us merely coexisting in the same spaces. And I want him to feel something other than disappointment about Irontown.
He rests his hands on the edge of the mattress, eyes trained on me. “I’d like that.”
I move across the room, stopping in the doorway on my way out. “We’ll go tomorrow. Bring your camera.”