The Box - 5. Chapter 5

July 4, 1999

We kicked back and just relaxed, enjoying the sun and the view. It is somewhat ironic that people like me who have a house in Malibu would feel compelled to come here to a different beach. But this place was different, and sometimes different can be good.

“What are we doing for dinner?” Wade asked, appropriately. He was always hungry.

“The staff is going to cook some local delicacies for us,” I said. “I am sure they will make you something to tide you over.”

“Cool,” Matt said, and led them off to bother the staff.

“So who's this Aaron guy?” Robbie asked.

“Well, if my memory is correct, he's your uncle,” JP said, dropping that bomb on him.

“My uncle? I didn't have an uncle named Aaron,” he said.

“There weren't that many families in Claremont that had six boys and lived in a shotgun house on the east side,” JP said rationally. “I could be wrong. That was a long time ago. I'm sure we'll find out his last name.”

“I'll bet it's not Hayes,” Robbie said obstinately.

“And I will bet you that it is,” I said, trusting my instincts and JP's logic. “So how about a wager?”

“Alright, what are we betting?” Robbie asked.

“If I am right, you go to Paris with us and do not complain once about the possibility of arrest,” I said. “No more whining.”

“I am not whining. This is a serious issue,” he said. Brad, JP, and I all stared at him, enough to shut him up. “Fine, you insensitive bastards. What do I get if I'm right?”

“I will throw one of my spectacular Hollywood parties for you next month,” I told him. I had a gift for entertaining, at least in that milieu.

“Deal,” he said with a smile, and we shook hands.

“Then let us see if we can find out which one of us is going to win the bet,” I said, and picked up the diary again. It was like a drug, I needed it, had to read it, even if it was upsetting.

June 23, 1941

I could say this was the worst day of my life, but it wasn't. It's just one of many, one almost as bad as the one before, since I got back from the lake. For years, I'd seen Aaron and done stuff with him damn near every day. Or at least every other day. He hadn't called me since last Monday, and I'd left a couple of messages for him that he didn't return.

I decided to get out last night and go to Danny's, but that was even more depressing. Kim was there with Andrew Branson, some idiot that plays on the baseball team with me. So there was all this gossip about us breaking up, and speculation on why. I was wondering that too. I thought we had a pretty special relationship going on. I guess not. I couldn't even stand to look at them, and everyone assumed that I was hurt and sad, that I was the one dumped.

The truth of the matter was that I was hurt and I was sad and I was the one dumped, but none of that was enough to make me this miserable. Aaron was the cause of that. He was at Danny's too, with some of his friends on the football team. They all knew me and were used to me hanging around, so they were friendly, but Aaron would barely say anything beyond “hey.”

I'd let that marinate in my brain, and finally got so pissed off I walked up to him, leaned in to his ear like I was telling him a secret, and said “you're the biggest fucking asshole in the world,” then left. That made me feel better for a little bit, until it dawned on me that I'd kind of thrown down the gauntlet with him, bringing my anger and pain out there, which probably only made things worse. Before, we could have pretended like nothing ever happened and just moved on. Now there was an issue there, a reason for things to be weird, so it would require more than just shrugging this all off.

I drove home thinking about that, and how sad I was at losing him. And how good it had felt to fuck him. I'd gotten home to the typical tense environment and dodged them all, heading straight up to my room. Then, in the midst of my misery, there had been a knock on my door. It was Billy. “I can't sleep,” he said.

“What's wrong little guy?” I asked, patting the bed next to me. He hopped up and gave me a smile. He was really a neat little kid. I always felt like I should spend more time with him, but it was kind of weird having a little brother who's over ten years younger than you.

“Everyone is mad,” he said.

“You want to sleep in here with me?” I asked. He nodded and climbed into bed. It was earlier than I'd wanted to go to sleep, but I was tired anyway, so I climbed in too and let him snuggle up to me. For the first time in a week, I slept really well.

Morning brought a whole new set of issues. First of all, everyone was panicked when they couldn't find Billy in his room. That meant that my mother went tearing through the house until she found him, still snuggled up with me. “There you are!” she'd said. I could tell she was about to give me a bunch of shit, but I pointed to him and she shut up.

“You want some breakfast?” I asked him, waking him up. He was up and off like a rocket, while I followed after I had a chance to comb my hair and pull my clothes on. I got down to the kitchen, where we ate breakfast, and found my parents and grandfather there.

“So Billy slept with you last night?” she asked, more like an accusation.

“Yep,” I said calmly. “He came to me because he couldn't sleep. Want to know why? Because everyone is mad at everyone here,” I spat at them. They looked at each other. “You might want to get your shit together before you really mess him up.”

“You watch your mouth!” my mother said.

“Kiss my ass,” I said. Her eyes flew open, then my father started yelling at me.

“You don't speak to your mother like that! You're grounded for one week! You can drive to work, and home, and that's it,” my dad said.

“That's fine. You're messing up Billy's life, and you take it out on me,” I said. “And I don't have a social life anyway, thanks to you,” I said to my mother.

“What's that supposed to mean?” My father had yelled. He had a temper, but it faded quickly enough.

“We have bigger worries than that,” my grandfather said. He held up the headlines of the paper: GERMANY INVADES SOVIET UNION.

“Are you sure that's right?” my mom asked. “Germany and the Russians, I thought they had a treaty?”

“Well Hitler just broke it. Blasted through the borders and put the Russians on the run,” he said. We all stood there, mid-argument, trying to fathom the meaning. To me, up until then, this war was an isolated thing. It was like there were three spheres of influence in Europe: Britain, Germany, and Russia. It had just been Britain and Germany fighting again, just like they'd done 25 years ago. But now, with Russia involved, the only major power not engaged was the US.

“This means war for us,” I said.

“Nonsense. Roosevelt is committed to peace,” my father said.

“He's not the only one calling the shots,” my mother said. “Besides, last week he ordered that the Germans and Italians close their embassies and leave the country, then froze all their assets in this country. Those are belligerent acts.”

I grabbed my lunch and headed for the door. “Remember to come straight home,” my father said.

“Great. In two years I'll be fighting in a war, and I have to spend my time now being grounded,” I said, being a smart-ass. Before he could yell at me, I left. And now I'm back home, sitting here all by myself in my room, writing in my diary. Fucking pathetic.

June 26, 1941

What is that saying, that it's darkest before dawn? I'm hoping that's true, because my life has gotten slightly better over the past few days. I went to work and came home, and only talked to Billy. I tried to avoid dinner, but that wasn’t practical. I thought about doing a hunger strike, but when you're 16, that doesn't work. So my revenge for my unfair punishment was my total silence. I point blank refused to talk or respond to my parents. I think the big moment for me was yesterday, when my father threatened to ground me for another week and I just shrugged. What they didn't understand was that with my social life the way it was, I didn't have anywhere to go or anyone to see anyway. So grounding was actually convenient, as it gave me an excuse for not being around, and it gave me a certain heroic status, since I'd gotten grounded for telling my mom to kiss my ass. And everyone knew my mom, and knew how brave that really was.

The cool part of this was that Billy would come in and I'd read him a story or just play with some of his toys with him. He was a cool little kid. Last night, JP had been over and they were playing, so Billy drug him in as well. What a little weirdo. So painfully polite, so quiet. Still, he was pretty cute, and once he loosened up a little bit, he was a lot of fun. I was even starting to like him.

Yesterday had been the weirdest of the days. My parents must have worked things out, because they were all friendly and happy for the first time in a long time. They had that glow, like they'd fucked, which was just gross. Then my father had come up to my room after dinner and told me that my grounding was over as of today, and proceeded to have a talk about sex. That was really uncomfortable for both of us, as he tried to think of a tactful way to tell me that to procreate I had to stick my dick in a girl's pussy. But the upside was that he gave me a pack of condoms, so if I got another girlfriend, I'd be ready. The next time I might not be so honorable. I might just go for it. Being a nice guy hadn't done me any good with Kim. She was probably on her back with her legs spread for Andrew.

But all of that was just the bullshit. The main event was Aaron, and I still hadn't heard from him, or seen him. At the cabin, there was a stream, and as it rushed by, occasionally it would pull a twig away from shore and just whisk it downstream. The twig was like this thing that was adrift in the water, frantically looking for a place to land, for someone to grab onto it. I was that twig.

June 27, 1941

I read my entry for last night and I have to say, I thought that part about the twig was pretty fucking profound. Did I say it was getting lighter and not darker? Was I ever wrong.

I got off work early, came home and washed my car. Damn, it is nice. I love that machine. Then I took a shower, got all spiffed up, and went down to eat dinner with my family. I kept looking at my mother, trying to figure out if she was a dyke or not. This whole thing was so fucked up. I got out of there as fast as I could and headed to Danny's.

The first person I ran into was Aaron, and he actually said “hey” to me first. I kind of got excited until he totally ignored me after that. I guess he was just trying to make it look like we were still buddies. What a fucking moron. You don't go from best friends to barely speaking and not have everyone notice.

I found some of my other friends, mostly baseball players and guys on the track team, to hang out with. It was weird. I'd never hung out with them a lot, I'd always hung with Aaron, so now it was like I was an interloper or something. I was about to bail on the whole scene, when Kim spotted me. I figured she'd ignore me like last time, or go make out with Andrew in front of me. Instead, she charged toward me like she was a fucking rhino.

She walked right up in front of me, with all the guys looking on, and slapped me so hard I thought she was going to spin my head around. Fuck, that hurt. “You asshole! You promised you wouldn't tell anyone,” she yelled.

“I didn't tell anyone,” I said. All my friends were stunned at how crazed she was. As soon as she left they'd laugh their asses off. But this stupid bitch, if they didn't know something happened before, they'd know it now. They were all wondering what I had or hadn't told everyone.

“If you didn't tell anyone, why is it all over school that I sucked your dick,” she said in a growling whisper. She thought she was being all coy now, but Gary Barnes was just behind me and that guy had ears like you wouldn't believe. He could hear anything. The stupid bitch had just admitted she was a cocksucker and it would be all over town in less than a day.

“I don't know. Maybe they were talking about Andrew, not me,” I shot back.

She recognized a chance to really slam me, so she just looked at me and gave me an evil smile. “Maybe they were,” she said. And the clear implication was that she was with him, and he was much better than me. It was like a gut punch, and I instinctively fought back.

“Well why don't you blow all of these guys too?” I asked, too loudly. We stood there, fire in our eyes, until she turned around and ran off. Before she left, I saw tears in her eyes, and I felt guilty, really guilty.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Gary asked me.

“How should I know?” I asked rhetorically. I needed to get out of there, I'd had enough, so I just nodded to them and walked off. I got to my car and sat in it, trying to think of what had caused this. I didn't tell anyone about us. It was just me and my mom. Did she say something? Would my mom do that, gossiping to her friends? I thought about that and decided she wouldn't. When it came to family, to stuff like that, she wouldn't say a fucking word. Then I saw Aaron with his friends, and it all became clear. I'd told him, told him at the cabin, and he'd spread it around, making it seem like she was a slut.

I got out of the car and started walking towards him. He saw me when I was about halfway to him and looked confused. I wasn't, I knew exactly how I felt and I knew exactly what was going to happen. I was going to get my ass kicked, probably really bad, but I was gonna get some damn good hits in first. I walked right up to him and slammed my fist into his face. He grabbed his eye and I punched him in the stomach. He was really pissed, but I still managed to get in one more good punch, in his jaw, before he recovered his wits. He lunged forward, picked me up and threw me over a table.

The table was full of food and milkshakes, so as I flew through it, dairy products and cheeseburgers smeared all over me, amidst the screams of those at the table. I got to the end of the table and crashed into a chair, then fell onto the floor. My head hit the tile and I felt really dizzy, but I tried to pull myself together before he could throw me again, or punch the shit out of me. But there were people around me, people yelling at me. Some guy pulled me up and then held me back, worried that I'd go re-start the fight. I looked over and saw Aaron, being held back by about three of his friends. He was snarling at me, the ends of his nose flaring out and his eyes on fire with anger. The yelling people around me were just so much white noise, my eyes, my focus was on Aaron.

Danny himself came out, raising hell. I gave him five bucks to cover the food I ruined, and that calmed people down a little bit. He took the money and told me to get the fuck out of there, so I shook myself free from the guy holding me and walked out to my car. “Fucking asshole,” I yelled at Aaron as I did. What a fucking disaster. Now everyone knew that Kim was a slut, they knew that Aaron and I were fighting, and they knew Kim liked blowing Andrew better than me.

June 28, 1941

If I could find a fucking gun, I'd shoot myself. I swear to God I would. I was so sick of all this bullshit. I felt so trapped, and so cornered. If yesterday was the main event, today was the come-to-Jesus day. In this case, Jesus was my mom.

She woke me up early, at 9am, and just laid into me. “I heard you got into a fight at Danny's. What is wrong with you? You know better than that. I got three phone calls this morning from mothers of your friends, all of them asking how you were. They don't care how you are, they just want to rub it in my face that you're a juvenile delinquent.”

“I got in a fight,” I said, telling her what she already knew. My back was really sore from landing on the table, and my head was throbbing from hitting the tile floor.

“With whom?” she demanded.

“Why don't you ask your friends?” I countered.

“I'm asking you,” she said, glaring at me. I said nothing. “Answer me!” I still said nothing. “Fine. That's fine. I'll find out on my own. You're grounded for a week.”

“Fine with me,” I said. “No one I want to see anyway.” She scowled at me and flew out of my room to go call around and find out whom I'd been fighting with. I went back to sleep, expecting her to come back and yell at me some more, but she didn't. In fact, no one bothered me until noon, when Billy came in.

“Want to go swimming with us?” he asked. JP was standing behind him. Maybe I could drown myself.

“Why not?” I said. Billy tore off to get his bathing suit on. JP was already wearing his.

He looked at me, his big green eyes taking in everything, then he pulled a model car out from behind his back. “Can you fix this for me?” he asked me shyly. He had to really work to ask me that, as shy as he was. “Sure buddy,” I said, and patted the bed next to me. He jumped up happily and smiled at me. “Can't Jim fix this for you?”

“I didn't ask him,” he said. And for some reason, that made me feel pretty special. One of the tires had come loose, and when I went to put it on the wheel, it popped off and fell on the floor. I bent over to get it, and when I sat up, I felt his hand on my back.

“Does that hurt?” he asked. I looked over my shoulder, at the mirror behind me, and saw a big bruise on my lower back.

“Not too bad,” I said. He just rubbed my back gently with his hand, and it was really cool. He had this soft, gentle touch, and when I looked into his eyes, I could see how much he liked me, how much he cared about me. I tousled his hair, then fixed his car.

“Thanks!” he said, and ran off to find Billy. I put on my bathing suit and a T-shirt and went downstairs to get some food. My mother was there in the kitchen. She is always in the fucking kitchen. It was as if to get any sustenance, she was making sure I had to go through her first.

“Why were you fighting with Aaron?” she demanded. I ignored her and grabbed an apple. “You're not going to tell me?” she asked. I took a bite of the apple and sat on the counter, knowing that would piss her off too. “I am not your enemy!” she said emphatically. I was feeling pretty proud of myself, at being all quiet and stuff.

Until she started crying. Not a loud, howling sob like she made when she was dramatic, but a soft, sad noise. She put her head in her hands. “I've tried to be a good mother, I really have.” My mom, the Rock of Gibraltar, was crumbling, and it freaked me out. I jumped off the counter and went over and put my arm around her. “I am human Steven. I make mistakes.” She had cut right to the meat of our problem, her tryst with that woman.

“What am I supposed to think?” I asked her. “Are you a dyke?”

“No. I was curious, lonely, angry, and confused,” she said, still crying. “And vulnerable.”

“Did you like it?” I asked her, really curious.

She wanted to tell me ‘no’, but she couldn't. “Not as well as I like sex with your father. I always wondered what it would be like, and thought about it once in a while. When I got a chance to find out, I took it.” She cried a little bit more. “I don't understand it, I can't make sense of it, so how can I expect you to understand?”

“Actually, I do understand. Now you know what I was fighting about.” The words flew out of my mouth before I could stop them. She looked at me, and all I could see in her eyes was love and sympathy. I collapsed into her arms and we both cried and cried like wimps. I told her all about Kim and Aaron, and she listened, and I wasn't alone anymore.

Billy and JP came down and looked at us, crying together, like we were freaks. I broke the ice by taking them out to the pool and swimming with them. I don't know why they liked to swim with me. I splashed them so much they swallowed about a gallon of water. I went inside, took a shower to wash off the chlorine, put on a pair of boxers, and crashed on my bed. At least I was cool with my mom again. With her on my side, I can survive almost anything. There was a knock at my door and she came in. It was like she knew I was thinking about her.

“Steven, I want you to think about something,” she said, sitting next to me. “What you and Aaron did, that can really be confusing. You are a lot more emotionally mature than Aaron, so this is probably a lot easier for you to deal with. He may need some time.”

I didn't buy the part about emotional maturity. I felt like a Neanderthal. “Doesn't matter. Our friendship is destroyed.”

“Well, you may not want to punch him again when you see him, but I'll bet you two can get beyond this. Do you want my advice?” she asked. That was the first time she ever asked me before giving me advice.

“Sure,” I said, with that tone of voice that said I'd listen but there were no guarantees I'd do what she suggested.

“I think you should be civil to him when you see him, and just leave him alone. When he's ready to deal with this, with you, he'll come find you,” she said.

“You think so?” I asked. There was hope?

“I've watched him grow up. He's like that. He's off in his cave trying to figure out what happened. When he does, he'll come out and handle it.”

“I hope you're right, Mom,” I told her.

July 5, 1941

It's the 4th of July weekend, time for the big festival. Yesterday was a Friday, and everyone had the day off to go enjoy the big event. It was like a big party in the middle of town, and usually it was a lot of fun. I hadn't seen Aaron since our big fight, but I knew he'd be there. My mom was probably right about leaving him alone, but there was one thing I needed to do. If he was ever going to approach me, I had to make it easy.

I spent some time with my parents, talking to their friends. There was a big tent for Crampton Construction, my grandparents' company, so we mostly hung out there. I did my obligatory time, snagged a beer or two, and then managed to escape from the parental bonds. I was walking around, heading to the carnival area to try and find some of my friends, when I spotted Aaron about 20 feet away with a couple of his football buddies.

His back was to me, but when I started walking up to him, one of his friends motioned to him, and he turned around and looked right at me. I'd pretty much expected to see rage in his eyes, but I didn't. He actually looked kind of sad, and there was the remnant of the black eye I'd given him. I'd hurt him, and I felt like shit. I hurried to make the first move, so he didn't feel like he had to posture in front of his friends and start a bunch of shit. I just motioned my head towards the side, asking him if I could talk to him with just my body language. He did the same thing, nodding to me.

“What?” he asked me, when we were out of earshot. It wasn't a pleasant question, but it wasn't as militant as it could have been.

“I just wanted to tell you that I'm sorry for hitting you,” I said. He looked at me, and I looked back, and I could see his emotions reeling. Just that one apology had been a game changer. But my mother was right, I needed to let him come to me. I'd done enough. So I just nodded and turned to leave.

“Hey,” he said, stopping me. “I'm sorry too.” I just smiled and nodded, then walked off. I was feeling pretty good about that, at making a start at repairing things enough so we could be friends again. He walked back to his friends and talked to them, and I saw them, out of the corner of my eye, just looking at me and nodding.

After that, things got really weird. We ended up in this group of about 10 guys, and while Aaron and I were both with the group, we were kind of like on opposite fringes, keeping our distance. I dealt with that. I wanted to go over and hang with him, joke with him like I used to, but that wasn't the plan, and it wouldn't work. So I just stole glances at him, and every time I did, he was looking at me. It freaked me out, because part of me felt weirded out about it, because it was a little creepy, while the other part of me totally thrived on his attention.

“It's fucking hot,” one of the guys said. He was right. It was sweltering. One of those hotter than hell, muggy, Ohio summer days. In our group, there was only one guy who could solve that problem, only one guy who had a pool: me.

“Be right back,” I said. I tracked down my mom and asked her if we could go swimming. I could tell that she wasn't all that thrilled about having a huge group of guys trashing her pool. “I'm going to invite Aaron,” I told her. It was true, but it was a bit of emotional blackmail.

“Alright. Just don't ruin anything,” she said. “And ask Alice to make some food.” Alice was our cook.

I walked up to the group as they were trying to decide what to do next. “You guys wanna go swimming? My mom says it's fine.”

“I'm in,” one of the guys said, and everyone else agreed. We only lived a few blocks from the festival, so we started walking there. I noticed Aaron kind of hanging back, like he was trying to decide if he wanted to go or not. I dropped back and started walking next to him.

“You're invited too,” I told him.

“You sure?” he asked me, trying to smile a little bit.

“I'm positive,” I said, and gave him a smile. We walked along, side by side, not saying anything. Alice wasn't all that thrilled to see 10 sweaty white boys demanding food, but she handled it well enough. Being in the pool with a bunch of rowdy guys was a blast. It was loud, but it was a blast. I was really having a good time, splashing this one guy, when I felt two hands on my head, pushing me down and dunking me. I pivoted around and looked at the bathing suit and it was Aaron.

All of a sudden he let go and started to back off, like he'd crossed some line. As I was pushing up out of the water I wondered whether it was because he didn't want to touch me, or he was worried that I'd be pissed. I came up and splashed him, then jumped right on him. It was so cool, because he just laughed and threw me off of him and into the pool. I think that finally broke the ice between us, because when I'd look over at him and catch him looking at me, he was just grinning happily. I was on cloud nine, thinking that maybe we could work our way back to being friends.

I went into the house to grab some more food and thought about it. I wanted to be his friend, so it was really important not to push the other issue. I decided to just play it cool, to just be buddies. Our party that started at about four o'clock in the afternoon was still going on at around 10pm when the fireworks went off. A couple of the guys left, thinking they were gonna get laid, but the rest of us just floated around in the pool watching the cool show.

“You guys wanna go to Danny's?” Charlie Brock asked. He was on the football team with Aaron. And that kind of broke the party up, which was a real bummer. They all started getting ready to leave, and getting ready to walk back to get their cars. Aaron looked lost.

“You going to Danny's?” I asked.

“I don't think so,” he said.

“You, uh, you wanna hang out for a while?” I asked him.

“I probably should just go home,” he said, and I couldn't read him, I couldn't tell if he really wanted to or not.

“It would be cool if you stayed, but if you don't want to, I'll give you a ride home,” I told him.

“I guess that would be OK,” he'd said nervously.

“OK to stick around or OK to get a ride home?” I asked, smiling.

“How about both?” he asked, smiling back. He slapped a mosquito, or a bug or something.

“Cool. Wanna go inside?” I asked. He nodded. He headed over to the pool house to change while I headed inside.

“Come on up when you're done,” I told him. I rushed up to my room to change. It would be queer to be half naked when he got up here. After I was done, I sat on my bed wondering if he'd actually come up here, or if he'd just get weirded out and leave. That kind of made me panic a little bit, because then we'd have this big issue between us again. I didn't have to worry. A few minutes later he came strolling into my room and closed the door behind him. I guess that was normal, we always did that, but it seemed different somehow.

He sat next to me and I looked at him, seeing the black eye I'd given him. “I'm sorry about that,” I said, gesturing at his eye.

“You already apologized,” he said.

“Yeah, but I still feel bad about it,” I said.

“I don't know that feeling bad about things we already done is gonna do us any good,” he said philosophically.

“Are you still pissed at me?” I asked. He got nervous. “I mean, I see your point, it's a good one, just forgetting and moving on. Just as long as we're cool.”

“Are we cool?” he asked, in a really strange way. I wanted to just blow it all off and go on, but I could tell by the way he was acting, and by the way I felt, it wasn't going to work.

“Not really,” I said, looking down. “But I want to be.” He sighed, all bummed out that he'd have to have that talk if we were going to be friends. Did he want to be friends bad enough?

“I'm pissed at myself for what I did, and I'm pissed at you for doing it to me,” he said softly, looking down.

“I'm pissed at you for blowing me off. We've been friends since we were little kids. We've always been there for each other. And you just cut me off,” I said bitterly, looking down.

“Well it's hard to be friends with someone who's trying to turn you queer,” he said angrily.

“Me? Trying to turn you queer? I didn't do anything you didn't do. I thought we were just playing around,” I said.

“You didn't get fucked,” he said, and looked really bitter now.

He looked at me, and I looked at him. He was pissed off, I was sad. “I would have,” I told him. “I would have let you.”

“You want me to fuck you? You really are queer,” he said.

“I've never done it before, it looked fun, and I'd be willing to try it. That doesn't make me any more queer than you are,” I said. I was being really logical, and that was kind of weird.

“You remember last year, when I dated Tracy Borden?” he asked me. She'd been friends with him for years, and she was one nice looking girl. They'd dated, but it didn't work out.

“Yeah,” I said.

“We were friends, then I fucked her, and then it got all weird and now we're not friends no more,” he said.

“You fucked her?” I asked. He hadn't told me that.

“Yeah,” he said. “And every time we were together it was like there was this big thing between us. It was like are we gonna fuck, or gonna talk, or what.”

“So I'm like that?” I asked him. He nodded sadly. “So we either can't be friends, or we have to fuck?” I asked him, smiling, making it a joke.

“Yeah,” he said.

“Well I'd rather fuck than lose you as a friend,” I said honestly, looking him right in the eye. All I saw when I looked at him was confusion. He broke the tension by doing this snorting and laughing thing that he does.

“I should probably get home,” he said. I was devastated, but I tried to be brave.

“Come on, I'll take you,” I said.

“You don't have to,” he said.

“Yeah, I do,” I told him, and grabbed my keys. We didn't say anything until we got to his house.

“Thanks for the ride,” he said.

“So are we cool?” I asked.

He shook his head sadly. “No.”

“Think we could be, again?” I asked. I hoped I didn't sound as desperate as I felt.

“I don't know,” he said, and got out of the car. I drove off, wondering if it was better this way, or if it was better hating him. And I told him I'd let him fuck me. If he ever does, that's gonna fucking hurt. I think it will hurt worse if he doesn't.

1999

We all just sat there, looking blankly. I felt so bad for my father, for what he'd had to go through. How horrible was it to love someone who didn't love you back. I almost let myself think about Jeff, when the Concierge announced lunch was ready and pulled me back to sanity.