Страница 44 из 52
I shrug, blushing. “I don’t know. It’s like, how do you argue with Leviticus?”
“I do. So do tons of people, right? Aren’t there gay theology people? Those churches with rainbow flags and shit?”
“Yeahhh, but…” I rub at a water splotch with my thumb. “He’d just tell me they were wrong.”
“Which would be his opinion.”
“Right, but—”
“And why is his opinion more valid than yours?”
He’s hiding a trap in a stupid question. I roll my eyes. Pass.
“I’ll tell you why.” He points at me with his fork. “Because you’ve been co
“Oh, okay.” I kick at the table leg. “I guess I’m stupid, then.”
“No! Not at all. That’s just what organized religion does, Bran. I’ve seen it before.”
Mom serving stew at Our Daily Bread. Candlelit “O Holy Night” at Christmas Eve Mass. “That’s not all it is.”
“Well, that seems to be the key feature.”
“You just know about the bad parts. You’ve never seen the good stuff.”
“Oh, well, pardon me, Mr. Sudden Random Piety.” He’s shredding a napkin. Angry eyebrows. “You tell me one good thing about it, then. Tell me what’s so awesome, huh? The guilt and shame? The weird OCD rituals? The no-condom rule? The priests who—”
“Stop! That’s cheap.”
“Facts are cheap?”
“People do great things because of religion, too.”
“Uh-huh. Like Bec can’t do charity work because she’s an atheist?”
“I’m not saying—”
“In fact, it means more because they’re not just doing it to get to heaven. Next!”
“Well,” I squirm. “The sacraments, I guess…and like, the sense of community.”
“Aha. Okay. Sure.” He taps his chin and squints. “Whispering your sins in a little closet…eating a flat tasteless cookie once a week—”
“All right.” It’s stuff I think myself, but when he says it I hate him for it.
“—The sublime joys of singing hymns with folks who think you’re earmarked for eternal doom. Now it makes sense.”
“You’re just being shitty now.”
“I’m trying to understand—”
“Well, you never will!” I shoot back. People glance over. “You never will, because you didn’t grow up in it.”
“Yeah, thank fuck for that.” He mashes the napkin shreds into a ball. “My parents weren’t sadists.”
My mind tangles up with sweet memories. Mom adjusting my pipe-cleaner whiskers on the tiger costume she stayed up all night sewing. Dad narrating backyard batting practice: Number 44, Brandon Page, steps up to the plate in the bottom of the ninth…
“Don’t talk about my parents,” I say, evenly.
Abel blushes.
“I’m sorry. I am.” He picks at the spotless tablecloth. “I’m sorry, Brandon, I just—I’ve been burned by this. Like, seriously.”
“I know.”
“We’ll talk later. I’ll play nice.”
“Kay.”
“I want to have a good di
I nod.
“Sure. We can.”
***
We can’t.
The lasagna tastes like a tire and he stabs at his lobster tortellini the whole time and the conversation starts and stalls. On the cab ride back to the campground, you can feel a fight brewing thick in the air, like that time Dad spilled Mom’s embarrassing aerobics-class story at her high school reunion and the whole ride home was a tense tick-down to her explosion.
Bec’s curled up on the vinyl couch, watching TV with her phone at her ear.
“Heyyyy, kids,” she sings. “How was it?”
“Perfect.” Abel keeps his back to her, grabs a carton of milk from the fridge and takes a few glugs. I force a smile. It’s dark; she can’t tell.
“I’m watching an old X-Files with Dave.” She points to her phone. “Wa
“Nah, I’m tired.” Abel slams the fridge. He sears me with a look. “Let’s go to bed, Brandon.”
Bec grins. “I’m turning this up, then.” She cranks the volume.
Abel shuts the bedroom door behind us. He strips off his tie.
“What are you doing?”
“What’s it look like?”
“Shouldn’t we like—talk more?”
“I don’t dwell on bad things. I just make them better.” He tips his chin at me. “C’mere.”
I look at the floor. He steps close. His hand hooks the back of my neck and he pulls my mouth to his before I can even take a breath. After a second he senses I’m suffocating; his lips soften and migrate to more i
It’s cruel to you both. Keeping this going.
He drops cute desperate kisses on my nose, my eyelids, my cheeks.
Pull away now. You know you’re going to.
“Abel.”
“What?”
I toy with a button on his polo shirt. “I just…Maybe we should—”
“She can’t hear us. She’s in Daveland.”
“No, like—” I duck the kiss he’s about to plant on my neck. “Maybe we should hold off. Just for a while.”
A light snaps off inside him. I watch hurt morph into disgust on his face, like he’s just caught me sacrificing kittens in the bathroom.
“Damn,” he says.
“Not forever! You know? I just think maybe we did this too fast.”
He shakes his head and shoves my hands away. “You said you were fine with it, Brandon. I asked you like, every step of the way, and—”
“I know. I know.”
“How could you let this ruin things?”
“It’s not a choice. It’s in me. I can’t just make it go away.”
He wraps his white tie around and around his hand. “So—what? We’re just friends now?”
“No…no.”
“Should I like, get written permission to touch you, or—”
“Stop. Abel.”
“What? I want to know! What happens now?”
“I don’t know!” My arms make this desperate wriggly gesture that’s completely offensive, like I’m trying to slough off something gross. “Can we just—hold off on the physical stuff? For now? And then I can work through things, and maybe later…”
“I can’t believe this,” he says softly. “I can’t believe you’re breaking up with me.”
“I’m not.”
“Well, clearly you don’t want me to touch you anymore, so that’s kind of what happens, darling. By default.”
He huddles on the edge of the bed with his back to me. I try to find something smart to say, some bull’s-eye quip that’ll turn this whole conversation around.
I hear a little sniffle.
Oh. Crap.
“Abel—”
“It’s okay. It’s fine. You can’t help this, I know. It’s just the way you are.” He’s speaking slowly and carefully, like he’s reading off cue cards. “I mean, it’s my fault, really. I’ve been through this before. I’m so stupid, I just jump in with both feet every time…”
I kneel in front of him. “I like that about you.”
“I wanted it to be true. I liked you for so long.” He scrubs tears away with his fist and tries to smile, which makes me feel worse. “You just didn’t seem interested and it was all Fake Zander and whatever, and I was with that dumbass Kade and then—”
“It was true.” I correct myself: “It is.”
I touch his arm. He reaches out for me, but he pulls me close too hard and fast and I feel all my muscles go stiff.
He lets go of me. Stands up.
His face erases all emotion, like Sim’s face when he’s in the charging dock. Then it hardens.
He pulls his big black bag out from under the bed and tosses it on the comforter.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m leaving, Bran.” He says it with a simple ease that hurts much worse than bitterness.
“How—?”
“There are these magic things called buses.”
I close my eyes. This isn’t happening.
“I can’t do this again,” he shrugs. “Sorry. I can’t get all moony and ID-bracelet-y over you, and then get a call from you at two in the morning after some college retreat made you have a backwards epiphany and now you think you’re in love with some cute little Polly Pocket who can’t wait to pop out your cute Catholic babies. And don’t try to tell me that’s not extremely likely, because guys like you are a fucking minefield, and I was dumb to pretend I didn’t know it.”