Two Boys Kissing Read online

  Harry coughs. Craig takes it. He doesn’t even flinch.

  Neil sits next to Peter as Peter plays video games. Peter plays video games, but is mostly aware of sitting next to Neil.

  Peter doesn’t know what to say, so he leans. Only a few inches, but now their shoulders are touching. Now they are in some simple way together.

  Avery is happy to meet Ryan’s friends, but also a little at sea. It’s not that Ryan doesn’t introduce them, but once he does, it’s like he’s checked out of the conversation. His mind is still back in the mini-golf place. He is still stewing in his own helpless anger.

  Ryan’s best friend, Alicia, senses something is off. Avery wants to tell her, It wasn’t me. I swear it wasn’t me. But she must sense this, too, because she is extra welcoming to Avery, trying to tell him funny Ryan-growing-up stories to make him feel less isolated. In fact, of the four friends that are sitting around the table in the coffeehouse, only one of them—Dez—seems to be studying Avery a little too hard, trying to figure out what’s under Avery’s shirt.

  Finally, Ryan tells them what happened—not every detail, but the general gist of it. Avery is relieved, figuring that this will allow Ryan to release it, get over it. Certainly, everyone’s sympathetic, muttering an almost endless list of synonyms for the word asshole to describe Skylar and the other guys.

  But it’s not enough for Ryan to turn it into a story. At the end he says, “I really should have done something. Smashed up his car. Called the police to report them trespassing. Something. I mean, I guess it’s not too late.”

  “What do you mean, ‘it’s not too late’?” Alicia asks, in a way that Avery doesn’t feel he can.

  “I mean, it’s not like I don’t know where he lives.”

  Alicia nods. But then she says, “Ryan, I get that you’re mad. But I think you need to take it down a notch.”

  “Easy for you to say. You weren’t there. Right?” With this, he looks at Avery.

  Avery doesn’t know exactly what he’s being asked. The question appears to be whether or not Alicia was there, and they all know the answer to that. Ryan wants something more from him.

  “I think you guys are much better company,” Avery says, winning points from everyone but Ryan.

  We see how unsatisfied Ryan is with this. With Avery. With Alicia. With all of them for not sharing his rage. We know this feeling well. There were times we were subsumed within our rage—it didn’t feel like something we created, but something that was outside of us, all around us, closing in. After so many years of denying our rage, denying our anger, it was powerful to acknowledge it, to allow it to fuel us, to harness the rage into outrage, taking the thing that felt outside of us and then shooting it back out from the inside.

  Part of the use of anger is this acknowledgment, this harnessing. But the other part—the part that was sometimes hardest for us, especially in our pain—is the matter of aim. That is, sometimes the power of anger is so intense that you will shoot it everywhere. Even when, in truth, you should only ever shoot your anger at the people you are truly angry at, the people who truly deserve your rage. Ryan, so fixated on his hatred of Skylar, doesn’t even realize that he’s letting the hatred spill over, scattershot.

  Alicia asks Avery about his pink hair and how long he’s had it, then asks more questions about life in Marigold. Really, what she wants is for Avery to go to the restroom or outside to make a phone call, so she can get Ryan alone and tell him to remember what this day was supposed to be about, to remember how excited he was when he asked her to gather people to meet this boy who’d fallen into his life. But Avery doesn’t leave the table, and Ryan goes unwarned by his best friend.

  “What are you going to do now?” she asks when the conversation has run its course.

  “I’m not sure,” Ryan says. But she can see it, clearly. His mind is still stamped with the word revenge.

  Neil knows what Peter is doing, leaning his shoulder in like that. He knows what Peter is saying. He doesn’t move away. But he still doesn’t tell Peter what happened, and still doesn’t understand why.

  Cooper leaves McDonald’s. Walks back into the world. Waits for night to fall.

  Craig looks around the crowd for his family and doesn’t see them.

  Harry tries to focus on the texts and emails coming in, all the posts. He barely has the strength to hold his phone, but he types as many answers as he can, trying to lose himself in words, trying to pass the time in words.

  Harry’s father watches his son and feels something enormous inside of him. His own father would have never understood what he was seeing, what he was feeling. His own father would have had more than a few things to say about this. But his own father was not, in many ways, worthy of his grandson, just as Harry’s father is feeling, in many ways, unworthy of his son. What he feels is more than pride. Here, he thinks, is the meaning of everything. Right here in front of him. His child.

  Tom, standing right next to Mr. Ramirez, wishes we were there to see it.

  We are right here, we tell him.

  We are right

  here.

  “Is there anything you want to do?” Ryan asks when they get to Avery’s car.

  I want a do-over, Avery thinks. I want the last two hours back.

  Craig sees the look on Tariq’s face before he sees his own phone in Tariq’s hand. For the past few hours, Craig’s let Harry be the texter, let Harry be the person saying thank you to the inexplicable thousands who’ve been tuning in. But Tariq’s expression lets him know this isn’t about that. This is something else.

  Tariq hands over the phone. It’s a message from his brother Kevin.

  Went for a drive. Good luck.

  That’s all. That’s it.

  His family isn’t coming.

  His family. Isn’t. Coming.

  At some point in the night his father must have decided. It had to have been his father.

  They’ve left. They won’t be back until it’s over.

  Craig feels like his skin has been ripped off from the inside. He feels that all of these people watching, all of these people can see what’s happened, can see everything that’s never going to happen. No reunion. No cheering section. Nothing.

  The tears fall even before he thinks about them. Of all the things his body is doing, this is the one that makes the most sense. When you are sad, it makes sense for the body to want your eyes to clear quickly.

  Harry still doesn’t know what’s happening, although he has a feeling he knows. Craig gestures to Tariq to share the message with Harry, and Harry’s fears are confirmed. Now Smita and Mrs. Ramirez are also coming over, seeing something’s wrong.

  The crowd cheers louder, calls out the boys’ names. Hundreds of voices calling out the name that Craig’s parents gave him. It all sounds meaningless to him.

  Something comes over Tariq. He can’t stop himself from doing it. He tells Rachel to watch the computers, watch the feed, and he bolts through the crowd. This is the first time he’s been away from Craig and Harry, this is the first time he’s taken a break, and he doesn’t know where the energy is coming from, but once he’s through the press of people, he’s sprinting like a gold medalist through his town. His breathing is heavy and all his old wounds feel like they’re on the verge of opening, but he powers through that, pushes himself until he’s on Craig’s street, in Craig’s driveway, running up Craig’s front walk. Then he’s pounding at the door—really pounding—yelling at them to come out, shouting that he knows they’re in there, pleading with them to be there, to come with him, to not be this stupid, to not make this mistake. “He needs you,” he tells them. “He needs you,” he says over and over again, until his hand grows too tired of pounding and his lungs grow too tired of yelling.

  The house creaks and settles, as if to tell Tariq of its own abandonment. The sun blinks under a cloud. There’s not a word of response, because there’s no one around to craft one.

  Tariq does not cry. He does not bother the house
any further. He wanted to be the one to make the wrong thing right, as so many of us do. That he’s failed is almost beside the point. In the rush of everything when it’s over, he will probably forget to tell Craig that he tried this, that he did this.

  We tell him it was a nice try. As he walks back to the school, we try to walk beside him. We want him to feel he has company.

  Craig realizes how much he was waiting for them, now that he’s not waiting for them anymore.

  He is also surprised to find their absence is not going to make him drown.

  Harry is trying to be there for Craig. Trying so hard. Just when it feels like there can’t be anything new to say in the kiss, he tries to say this. And Craig hears it. Craig starts tracing something on his back. At first Harry thinks it’s a P, or a lowercase e. But it doubles on itself—a heart.

  Harry responds with an exclamation point.

  “You are not alone,” he says, his mouth still on Craig’s.

  “What?” Craig asks.

  “You are not alone,” Harry says again.

  And this time Craig hears it.

  Neil leaves Peter’s side, walks over to Peter’s computer. The two boys are still on there, kissing. Neil leans in, tries to get a sense of their thoughts. He makes it full screen, but that only makes them blurrier.

  “We should go there,” he finds himself saying. “Do you think your mom will give us a ride?”

  “I just want to drive past,” Ryan says. “To see if they’re still there.”

  Avery wants to refuse. But instead he silently complies as Ryan tells him to turn left, to turn right.

  There it is again. The abandoned mini golf.

  The truck is gone.

  Avery can’t tell if Ryan is disappointed or relieved. Maybe both.

  “I think I know where they might be,” he says. He tells Avery to pull out and make a left.

  Avery makes it through two green lights. When a red light stops them at the third intersection and Ryan says to take another left, Avery decides he’s neither going to give in or give up. Instead he’s going to give Ryan one last chance.

  Ryan’s confused when Avery shifts to the right lane and makes a right turn. Even more so when Avery pulls over into the parking lot of a law office.

  “What are you doing?” he asks Avery.

  And Avery says, “You’re ruining it. You have to stop now before you ruin it completely.”

  Cooper pulls his car onto the highway. He is leaving his town for good. He doesn’t give it a second thought. He doesn’t feel anyone there deserves a goodbye.

  Only two hours to go.

  More camera crews, more protestors. More heat, more noise.

  For all the booster shots of caffeine, Craig wants sleep as badly as he wants to sit down. He tries to keep his mind from slipping into the bad questions, but at this point, he’s somewhat defenseless against them. All of his unspoken, even unacknowledged, reasons for doing this are falling away. Didn’t he think it would bring his family together around him? Didn’t he think they’d be proud? And wasn’t Smita right—didn’t he think this would get Harry back, make them a couple again? And what about what happened to Tariq—did he really think this would somehow correct that, would prevent such things from ever happening again? If anything, isn’t he making it worse, giving a reason for the camera crews to sell the other side’s hate into the airwaves?

  Why are you doing this? he asks himself, and with all the other answers falling away, he’s not sure what’s left. We could tell him, but he has to figure it out for himself. We know that. It’s impossible for us to arm him against despair. He must arm himself.

  Harry is so hot. He’s been making the W sign for water, has been drinking what feels to be so much of it. (It’s really just half a bottle.) And now he has to pee so badly. But all these people are watching. All of these people are here. He can’t imagine taking a pee break in front of them. This is the ultimate pee shy. He tries to hold it in. It’s painful.

  The police are blocking off the street now. The whole force is out, but there aren’t really that many of them. There’s no way to screen everyone coming in. Any fool could bring a gun. Anyone who wanted to stop the kiss could.

  Most of the people who are coming at this point are like the two who step out of Peter’s mom’s car. While there’s no shortage of protestors, most of the people who are migrating here are doing so because they feel some connection to the kiss. In their actions, Craig and Harry are saying the thing that they want to say. So they find themselves hopping on buses, getting into cars. They find themselves at the Millburn train station, where a helpful old woman tells them how to walk on over to the high school, and not to confuse it with the middle school, which is much closer. Now that there are less than two hours left, there’s an excitement buzzing through the yard when Peter and Neil get there. They’re astonished to see all the people, to see the wall of friends that is protecting Craig and Harry from the protestors, from any threat that may come. In the throng, Craig and Harry are just two bodies curving into an A. They are the steady center of a wider celebration, the first and tightest ripple.

  Peter and Neil pause at the outskirts to get the lay of the land. Or at least that’s why Peter pauses, to get a sense of where everyone else is and to see if he knows anyone there. Neil pauses to look at Peter—to really look at him and ask himself what he wants. He knows he loves Peter, and also knows he’s not sure what that means. There is no one else in the world that he wants to kiss or screw or talk to or share his life with. So why, he wonders, does a part of it still feel empty? Why, after a year, isn’t it complete?

  He’s on the verge of it—we can tell. He is on the verge of finding that very hard truth—that it will never be complete, or feel complete. This is usually something you only have to learn once—that just like there is no such thing as forever, there is no such thing as total. When you’re in the thrall of your first love, this discovery feels like the breaking of all momentum, the undermining of all promise. For the past year, Neil has assumed that love was like a liquid pouring into a vessel, and that the longer you loved, the more full the vessel became, until it was entirely full. The truth is that over time, the vessel expands as well. You grow. Your life widens. And you can’t expect your partner’s love alone to fill you. There will always be space for other things. And that space isn’t empty as much as it’s filled by another element. Even though the liquid is easier to see, you have to learn to appreciate the air.

  We didn’t learn this all at once. Some of us didn’t learn it at all, or learned it and then forgot it as things became really bad. But for all of us, there was a moment like this—the record skips, and you have the chance to either switch away from the song or to let it play through, a little more flawed than before.

  “Look at all these people,” Peter says to Neil. “Look at this!”

  Neil looks at him and sees a big nerdy goofball. He looks at him and sees someone whose mom would drive him here and will pick them up later. He looks at him and sees maybe not his future, but definitely his present.

  When Neil tells Peter what happened at his house this morning, as he will in about forty seconds, Peter will at first be confused and hurt that Neil didn’t tell him right away. Neil will see this, but won’t apologize. Within another five minutes, Peter won’t really care, because he’ll want to know everything that happened, will want to be there with Neil, even after the fact, to give support. He’ll hug Neil into him, and Neil will hug him right back, and more love will flow into each of the vessels, and each of the vessels will expand a little bit more.

  “Ruining it?” Ryan says. When he starts the first word, he genuinely doesn’t understand what Avery means, but by the time he hits the question mark, he does. So before Avery can answer he says, “Oh. Yeah.”

  “I want to get the day back,” Avery says.

  And Ryan, defensive, replies, “I wasn’t the one who took it away.”

  As soon as he says this, we know Ryan has
to make a decision, and that it’s an important one. Because if he makes the wrong decision here, the odds are good that he will keep making it. Those of us who died angry can recognize the pattern. It is unfair that Ryan needs to make this choice—he is absolutely correct that the day was taken away from him. But now it’s in his power to get it back. Only he’ll need to get past his anger in order to do so.

  Avery doesn’t know the stakes are this high. All he knows is that if Ryan’s going to stay like this, Avery’s not going to stay in Kindling much longer. He knows this is a shame, but also knows it’s true.

  “Please,” he says. To Ryan. To the universe.

  Ryan knocks the back of his head into the passenger seat’s headrest. Then he turns and looks Avery in the eye.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Truly, I’m sorry. I’m such a dick.”

  “It’s okay. We haven’t passed the point of no return.”

  Ryan shakes his head. “Yeah, but I almost put us there, didn’t I?” His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he takes it out. When he sees the screen, he laughs. He shows it to Avery—a text from Alicia.

  You’re fucking this up, boy. Don’t be a dick.

  “Guess she liked you,” Ryan says.

  “I liked her,” Avery says. “All of them.”

  “Even Dez?”

  “Eighty percent.”

  Ryan nods. “Sounds about right. And where did I stand, two minutes ago?”

  “Forty percent? Thirty-seven?”

  “So what should we do? I want to get back up into the nineties.”

  What do you want to do?

  I don’t know—what do you want to do?

  This time, Avery answers.

  “Let’s go get your aunt’s boat,” he says. “I want to head back to the water.”