First Flight by Connor Wright Page B

of them went down in a tangle of limbs and insults.
    “Oh my God,” Tanner said, shaking his head. “They do not pay me enough for this.”
    “Those boys have filthy mouths,” Mrs. Fitzpatrick said.
    “I’m going home,” Chris said and left.

Chapter Nine
     
    “ C HRIS ? I’m sorry.”
    Chris looked up from the book he’d been paging through. “Sorry? Why?” He frowned; Jesse’s hair was disheveled and his lower lip was swollen, a scab making a dark line down the center. A small smear of blood remained on his chin.
    “’Cause Kevin hit you.” He sat down beside Chris. “Sorry I let him get me pissed off. Tanner and Betsy spent an hour yelling at me, and said I’m off for the rest of the week. Like a kid, sent to his room, you know?”
    “You did not make Kevin hit me,” Chris said, puzzled by the idea. “So I will be going to work alone?”
    “I’m pretty sure he was messing with you because he’s pissed that you spend more time with me than he ever did.” Jesse sighed and crossed his arms, slumping against the cushions. “Part of which is all his own fault, because he’s less out than I am. Let me tell you, having a boyfriend who freaks out because someone might know? Not fun. At all. And I’m allowed to walk to the store with you or drop you off, but I’m not supposed to go in and work ’til next Monday.”
    “Oh. Out where?” Chris gave up on the book and put it on the coffee table, then turned a bit so that he could see Jesse. “I do not know what it is like to have a boyfriend. I will come home for lunch with you.”
    “Out, you know— Oh, right, you wouldn’t. He doesn’t like other people knowing that he likes guys. Not everybody is okay with it, which is stupid, but that’s the way it is.” Jesse put his feet up beside the book and looked at his shoes, frowning as he noticed a round bloodstain on his left toe. “I suppose you don’t. Uh, I never asked you.” He looked at Chris, then went back to watching his shoes. “You’re not, like, completely—I mean, me being gay, liking guys, that doesn’t bother you, does it?”
    “I do not like Kevin,” Chris said, rubbing the sore spot on his face. “But Kevin does not like me. Does that make us not guy-likers?”
    Jesse made a strange face, but then he smiled a little and shook his head. “It means you don’t like one another,” he said. Reviewing Chris’s words again, he blinked. “You just said that you, uh, like guys?”
    “I like you.” Chris’s voice was matter-of-fact. “But I also like Betsy and Ellen and Lucas and Mr. Bunting and your mother and father. So I like people?”
    “I like them too, in a general kind of way. What I meant was if, Chris? If a guy wanted to, I dunno, kiss you? Would that be something you’d say no thank you to?” Jesse tilted his head back and watched a chunk of rainbow from the crystal snowflake that hung in the window slide across the ceiling. The conversation was one he’d been dreading and dying to have all at once, but he still had no idea what would happen at the end of it.
    “Maybe,” Chris said, thinking about it. “I don’t think I would like to be kissed by Albert.”
    “Uh, yeah, I don’t think anyone wants to kiss Albert, except maybe his mother,” Jesse said with a laugh. “But then, Albert is also a stuffed and mounted moose head, so it’s not likely that he’d try to kiss you.”
    “True.” Chris smiled at him.
    “So, anyway,” Jesse said, still looking at the ceiling and missing the expression, “you didn’t tell me. It’s okay with you that I’m gay?”
    Chris tilted his head. “Am I supposed to be unhappy about it?”
    “No! Well, I don’t know, I mean, you get to make up your own mind, that’s all. If it’s cool with you, that’s great. If it’s not, well, I don’t know what we’d do, but we’d figure something out.” Jesse folded his hands behind his head.
    “Oh. I suppose I am cool with it. I don’t see why I should not be.”