over again, that he was walking down my front steps and down the driveway and I was never going to see him again.
But that doesn’t make sense. I’m only going to be here for a week, we’re flying home next Sunday and I’ll see him that night, he’s already said he’d come over and we’re going to order pizza…
But I couldn’t shake the feeling.
We came around a curve in the road and the headlights shone on the stop sign and the trees on the other side of Thirteenth Lake Road.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. Think about something happy, forget this sad stuff, you don’t want to start bawling your stupid head off in front of everyone. Something happy. Like—how it was about a year ago that Marc first kissed me.
Just the thought made me smile.
Our first kiss had happened last summer, right after we got back from the Sanibel Island trip.
By then I’d long given up on anything developing between the two of us. No matter how much I wished and hoped and prayed for it to happen, no matter how badly I wanted Marc to be gay—it just wasn’t in the cards. He was a straight boy, and that was the end of that. Other guys I talked with on the gay teen message boards kept warning me to forget about him—but that was easy for them to say. How could I forget about him when I saw him every day, spent every possible second of every day with him? Every night when I got in my bed and under the covers, the last thing I did before drifting off to sleep was replay the day. What did he mean when he said this? What did he mean when he said that? Reliving moments when our bodies brushed against each other, or when our arms bumped together, the way his muscles felt, how firm yet strangely soft his skin was. Glimpses of his body when he’d yawn and his shirt would ride up, or changing in the locker room for gym class, or the way his butt moved in his tight jeans as he walked away from me in the hall at school.
Yeah, the kids from other parts of the country I’d met online were probably right—we were never going to be together, and I was coming to terms with that—but I could dream about him all I wanted to, couldn’t I? I could imagine what it would feel like to have his arms around me and his lips pressed up against mine all I wanted to, but that wasn’t going to make it happen. No matter how much alike we were, no matter how much we made each other laugh, even though we finished each other’s sentences and then would laugh till we cried and our sides hurt, it just wasn’t meant to be. It broke my heart to see him going steady with girls, even though we never ever talked about girls when we were alone. I hated every one of his girlfriends, smiling and being friendly and polite while I really wanted to stab them all in the heart, shove them in front of a moving car, anything to get rid of them.
And I hated myself for feeling that way. I just couldn’t stand anyone who would take him away from me.
And, last summer, I’d finally accepted it, once and for all.
Marc had gotten a job as a lifeguard at the town pool. He didn’t want to work at the pool, he’d explained to me after he got the job. His dad was making him work for the summer “to teach him the meaning of hard work and the value of a dollar.” I resisted the urge to point out that his rotten father hadn’t worked since they’d moved to Farmington—Marc knew it as well as I did, after all, and what good would it do to point out that his dad was a big loser?
It was going to be the worst, most boring summer of my life.
The one good thing was he’d broken up with his latest girlfriend—that empty-headed cheerleader Tori Crawford—on the last day of school, so she was out of the picture. I’d tried really hard to like Tori, but she made it impossible. She was one of those girls whose whole life revolved around their boyfriend, and she always spoke in some kind of baby talk to him that was supposed to be cute but was really just annoying. I
But that doesn’t make sense. I’m only going to be here for a week, we’re flying home next Sunday and I’ll see him that night, he’s already said he’d come over and we’re going to order pizza…
But I couldn’t shake the feeling.
We came around a curve in the road and the headlights shone on the stop sign and the trees on the other side of Thirteenth Lake Road.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back. Think about something happy, forget this sad stuff, you don’t want to start bawling your stupid head off in front of everyone. Something happy. Like—how it was about a year ago that Marc first kissed me.
Just the thought made me smile.
Our first kiss had happened last summer, right after we got back from the Sanibel Island trip.
By then I’d long given up on anything developing between the two of us. No matter how much I wished and hoped and prayed for it to happen, no matter how badly I wanted Marc to be gay—it just wasn’t in the cards. He was a straight boy, and that was the end of that. Other guys I talked with on the gay teen message boards kept warning me to forget about him—but that was easy for them to say. How could I forget about him when I saw him every day, spent every possible second of every day with him? Every night when I got in my bed and under the covers, the last thing I did before drifting off to sleep was replay the day. What did he mean when he said this? What did he mean when he said that? Reliving moments when our bodies brushed against each other, or when our arms bumped together, the way his muscles felt, how firm yet strangely soft his skin was. Glimpses of his body when he’d yawn and his shirt would ride up, or changing in the locker room for gym class, or the way his butt moved in his tight jeans as he walked away from me in the hall at school.
Yeah, the kids from other parts of the country I’d met online were probably right—we were never going to be together, and I was coming to terms with that—but I could dream about him all I wanted to, couldn’t I? I could imagine what it would feel like to have his arms around me and his lips pressed up against mine all I wanted to, but that wasn’t going to make it happen. No matter how much alike we were, no matter how much we made each other laugh, even though we finished each other’s sentences and then would laugh till we cried and our sides hurt, it just wasn’t meant to be. It broke my heart to see him going steady with girls, even though we never ever talked about girls when we were alone. I hated every one of his girlfriends, smiling and being friendly and polite while I really wanted to stab them all in the heart, shove them in front of a moving car, anything to get rid of them.
And I hated myself for feeling that way. I just couldn’t stand anyone who would take him away from me.
And, last summer, I’d finally accepted it, once and for all.
Marc had gotten a job as a lifeguard at the town pool. He didn’t want to work at the pool, he’d explained to me after he got the job. His dad was making him work for the summer “to teach him the meaning of hard work and the value of a dollar.” I resisted the urge to point out that his rotten father hadn’t worked since they’d moved to Farmington—Marc knew it as well as I did, after all, and what good would it do to point out that his dad was a big loser?
It was going to be the worst, most boring summer of my life.
The one good thing was he’d broken up with his latest girlfriend—that empty-headed cheerleader Tori Crawford—on the last day of school, so she was out of the picture. I’d tried really hard to like Tori, but she made it impossible. She was one of those girls whose whole life revolved around their boyfriend, and she always spoke in some kind of baby talk to him that was supposed to be cute but was really just annoying. I
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