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“It’s okay.” He squeezes my hand. “Seriously.”
I drape my arm over my eyes.
And I tell him everything.
I tell him about Father Mike. I tell him about Put on the Brakes!, my three awkward months trying to date Bec, my parents and the sad looks they shoot me when they think I won’t notice. I even tell him about the Ryan Dervitz kiss and the Dairy Queen freakout. When I lift my arm off my eyes I see him watching me like I’m some TV show about one-legged orphans with Olympic dreams, and it kind of makes me want to smack him but it feels so good to tell him that I keep going and going until the cut on his lip opens up again, and I remember what happened outside.
He grabs three tissues from the box on the desk. One for his lip, two for me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“Just forget it.”
“What I said—”
“Forget it, Brandon. All that shit in your head—”
“I’m used to it.”
“And I’m such an idiot, I kept shoving boys at you.”
“Only two.”
He glances over his shoulder, as if someone’s watching at the window.
“So…” He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “Do they really tell you all that?”
“All what?”
“Like, you have a ‘special calling’ to be celibate?”
“Pretty much.”
“’Cause if you believe that you should totally talk to my dad’s friend Mitch, he’s this Unitarian minister or whatever and he’s on his third husband so maybe he can help you—”
“I don’t believe it. Not anymore.” I sigh and stick my hands in my hair. There’s no way I can explain this logically. “It’s just hard to turn it off.”
“Why?”
I pick at the hem of my shorts. “There’s still this little part of you that’s like ‘what if they’re right?’ What if there is a hell and you’re like gambling with eternity just because you want a boyfriend, so you get terrified and think it’s not worth it, I’ll suck it up and be alone forever, but then on the other hand what if it turns out there is no God or he’s up there shaking his head because people keep twisting the Bible around, and you wasted your life being alone and miserable for nothing, and then—” I’m babbling like a freak. “Stuff like that. You know.”
Abel lifts the tissue off his lip and runs his thumb over the splotch of blood. “That Father Mike guy never…like, tried anything with you, did he?”
“No! No. Never. He just has really specific ideas about God.”
“You believe in God?”
“I’m…confused.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I left my church.”
“So? You can believe in God without church. I do.”
I blink at him. I would not be more surprised if David Darras pulled up in a white limo with two dozen blue roses and begged me to elope with him. I’ve consistently shut up about religion around Abel; he talks so much crap about it I just assumed he was like Bec. “You do?”
“I believe in something, yeah. I just think the world’s too complicated and amazing not to.” He’s folding the tissue into a lopsided rose. “I mean, I don’t believe in a big bearded badass on a cloud throne, but I can buy a loving creative higher power that wants everyone to be happy. Something that roots for us. Like, the anti-Xaarg.”
I shake my head. “I have no idea how to think that way.”
“Why not?” He lobs the tissue rose at me. “I mean, if no one knows for sure what God’s like, then why don’t you just believe the people who think he’s all rainbows and sunshine and loves you no matter what?”
“Because it’s too easy.”
His eyebrows steeple.
“Suffering’s supposed to be valuable.” Abel opens his mouth but I cut him off. “I’m just saying. That’s what they teach you. They tell you when you suffer you share in the passion of Jesus and so God doesn’t save us from suffering because…” I glance up at him and let out a long sigh. “Forget it.”
Abel leans forward, elbows on knees. Probably trying to gauge the depth of my mental disturbance, so he’ll know how far to sit from me.
“I totally want to hug you,” he says.
“You do?”
“We wouldn’t piss off Worst-Case-Scenario-Angry-God if we hugged, right?”
“Nope.” I gulp. “Probably—”
His arms are around me before I can finish. He still smells like popcorn and cotton candy and he feels so warm it’s like diving under an electric blanket after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. I try to melt into the hug, the way Cadmus and Sim are always melting into hugs in Cadsim fics, but my nose is ru
“God…” I murmur.
“I know. I’m a great hugger.”
I pull back, hold him by the shoulders. “Abel.”
“Brandon.”
I take a deep breath. “I am so fucking ready to be normal.”
“Fun normal or boring normal?”
“Fun normal.”
“Congratulations. How can I help?”
I just look at him. My lips vibrate from spitting out the f-word. He freezes in the Empathy Position, head cocked and one hand resting on my knee, like an action figure of a perfect boyfriend. I know exactly what I want. To be able to hug him over and over again, to sling my arm around his waist in public, to feel his warm reassuring hand around mine on a regular basis, without any real sex stuff ever getting in the way. I know that’s about as realistic as Cadsim fic.
And then a second later, I know how to make it happen.
I sit back down at the desk, in front of the laptop screen with its orderly selection of Brandon/Abel makeout fantasies. Plastic Sim and Plastic Cadmus lie flat on their backs in a scatter of ci
“Uh, Brandon…?”
“Hm.”
“What are you thinking?”
I tap the wedding cake manip. I blurt it before I lose nerve.
“You want to have some fun,” I say, “with the Church of Abandon?”
A complicated smile flits across his face. I get a nervous thrill, like when Cadmus got Sim to jump into the Red River with him to escape the Henchmen. C’mon, Tin Man, he’d shouted above the wind, the two of them clutching arms on the cliff like a romance-novel cover. You haven’t lived till you’ve done something really stupid!
Not the best philosophy, bud, says Father Mike.
Shut up, I tell him simply, and turn back to Abel.
“What’d you have in mind?” he says.
CastieCon #3
San Antonio, Texas
Chapter Thirteen
Abel and I sit side by side on the concrete edge of our campground pool, dipping our feet in. He is shirtless. Leaning back on both arms, he holds his pale soft stomach taut, trying to forge a six-pack. He grins at the fake hickey on my neck, courtesy of some blue and purple eyeshadow we bought on the road in an Alabama dollar store. I held still while Abel brushed it on, his breath tickling my cheek and smelling of ci
The San Antonio sun breathes biblical heat on us. My Castaway Planet shirt roasts on my back and the cool clear water sparkles temptation as I swirl my toes through it. I want to jump in, all the way in, but there’s something we need to do first.
“You sure about this?” Abel murmurs.
I nod. “Totally.”
“You don’t want to take your shirt off? They’d flip.”