SULLIVAN #3
“I heard you have a girlfriend.”
“Yeah. Chelsea. Where’d you hear that?”
“Deandre. We’re pretty tight.”
“I like Deandre,” I say unnecessarily.
“The twins are with me,” he says. “They’re staying the summer at my parents’.”
“Are they here?”
“Not here. It’s just you and me in this place.”
“Mm. This is what you wanted to talk about?”
“I just wanted to talk,” he says.
“Okay. Why?”
“I feel like I owe you an apology.”
I make a face. “No, dude. You don’t. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Do you regret it?” he blurts, almost too loud for the room, louder than anything he’s said so far.
“No,” I tell him without equivocating. “I don’t. Do you?”
“No.”
I nod. “Okay. So, we’re cool.”
“I guess my point is if neither of us regret it, then why did we ignore each other all year?”
I didn’t spend a lot of time wondering why Knight wasn’t approaching me for a repeat of what happened in the woods.
Maybe i thought about it an odd night or two, but the truth is, I had too many other things on my mind, and he’s got his life all figured out.
It seemed pointless to try being friends with him.
“Because we don’t have anything in common? ” I venture.
“You don’t think?” For some reason, he gestures at the room when he asks.
“Just because we have the same hometown doesn’t mean we have to be best friends. There’s plenty of people here I never want to talk to.”
“Does that include me now?”
I scowl at him, then I come out and ask the main question I have for him. “What’s your angle, Knight? What’s this about?”
“I’m just saying we don’t have to act like we’re strangers. We don’t have to be strangers. I know I said we could be friends, and maybe that’s not something I followed through with, but—”
“Why would we be friends?” I ask. “For what purpose? Is there something you feel like you can tell me and not Deandre or the twins?”
“Well, yeah,” he says, surprising me.
“What?”
“That I’m gay.”
“Oh.” Right. I guess he and I are still sharing that secret.
He lets out a breath. “I don’t say that out loud all that often.”
“How’s it feel?” I ask because what else am I supposed to say?
“Fine. Good. Bad. I don’t know.”
“No one else knows?”
He shakes his head, looking down at his folded hands. “No one can.”
“So, what happened that night at The Front?”
“Um. You did.”
Silence has a lot of sound. Sometimes it’s a soft, warm rumble, and other times it’s a roar. This one is so loud, I want to cover my ears. Or maybe I only want to unhear what he just said.
He lets out a self-deprecating laugh that breaks up the cacophony. “You broke me.”
I want to say something along the lines of how he seems to have put himself back together just fine, but I also know that sometimes what’s inside doesn’t match the outside, so I don’t say anything.
“You never told anyone about it,” he says rather than asks.
I shake my head, not looking at him.
“I mean, I guess to some people it wouldn’t be that big of a deal, and I totally respect whatever decision you made about it, but it was a big deal for me, and I feel like I could have done more in terms of…I don’t know…after.”
“Like what?” I ask, not because I think he should have or wish he had, but I’m curious what he thinks he could have done, and I get the sense he’s got more than a few things to get off his chest.
“Like fucking talked to you?”
“I didn’t need you to talk to me.”
“Maybe I did,” he says, which makes me feel like an asshole. Cold and shut down. Maybe I am.
“Sorry,” I mutter.
“Look, you don’t have to like me. I don’t expect you to.
You said we’ve got nothing in common…I mean…
maybe we don’t, but you don’t really know me, and I don’t really know much about you, either, but saying I never wanted to know you would be disingenuous, and I guess I wonder if you’d want to hang out sometime. ”
“We’re hanging out right now,” I note.
“But you don’t want to.”
“I never said that.”
He looks at the half stuffed backpack and the closed oboe case. “Just the vibe I’m getting, I guess.”
“That’s me,” I tell him. “Not you.”
It’s obvious Knight is a genuinely good person, and one who’s been in hiding for most of his life even while living very publicly.
Solely based on his manners, I’d bet he’s got good parents who love him a lot and pay him a ton of attention.
I’d also bet his sexuality is the primary struggle of his life but that everything else is going fairly well.
So, like I said—nothing in common.
“Do you want to hang out?” he asks.
“Now? Or like in a few days?”
“I have food. Drinks. Cards.”
Those things don’t sound bad. Cards are generally non-threatening. And I do like to drink. I gesture at my things. “I have noise I could make.”
“I need to mop, though.”
“Did you want me to help?”
He shakes his head. “Make some noise, and I’ll take care of the floors.”
“It’s gonna be dark soon.”
Knight lifts his gaze to the light fixture above our heads. “I brought lightbulbs, too.”
“This place has power?”
“Power, water. It looks like shit, but it works.”
“Huh. In that case, I’m gonna take a piss.”