Don't Read in the Closet volume one (65 page)

“Okay. Just... just let me know when you get in. I’ll be up.” I
tried to sound so mature but it sucked.

The reality hadn’t hit me until I saw her mountain of bags
packed, zipped, and ready to go all in a matter of minutes. I helped her carry
them to her car. I didn’t ask what happened at the meeting. Figured I probably
didn’t want to know what was said. It had to be pretty awful for her to be taking
off like she was. We got her car loaded, piled with remnants of her life with
my dad and I, a life that was ending after nearly twenty years, and I waved as
she pulled away. It was so surreal. I didn’t realize I hadn’t moved until I
felt a hand on my shoulder.

“C’mon. Let’s go inside.” Brooklyn’s voice was gentle. I followed
him mindlessly until we were back out of the sun and in the relative cool of my
downstairs TV room. He pulled me into a hug, and unlike my mom, who was smaller
than me, I felt enveloped by his big strong arms, comfortable, safe even.
“It’ll be okay eventually. It just sucks a lot right now,” he whispered into my
hair.

The hug lasted for another minute or so before we did the awkward
bro back pat and separated to sit on the couch.
Lost
was still playing, and I stared, unseeing, at the screen for a
few minutes. Eventually, Brooklyn nudged me with his knee.

“You’ll be okay. Really.”

I thought about it for a second before I nodded.

“I know.”

* * * *

It was hot. One of those nights where it never cools off, even
when it’s almost morning. The heat from the day had been rising out of the
baked ground for hours, turning the stockroom into an unbearable sauna.
Brooklyn and I had been taking turns going and standing in the refrigerators to
cool off. I guessed that since they had nice freezers and fridges for the
perishables they didn’t much care if the boxes of pasta and crates of Gatorade
melted. It sure as hell felt like we were going to.

Finally, Jesus took pity on us and had us come up to the front of
the store and stack items onto the shelves. Brooklyn got the lucky job of
loading ice cream into the freezer, but even shelving in the regular aisles was
better than being stuck back in the oven of the stock room.

About two hours into our shift, after the store closed, Jesus
announced that he was starving and he was going to drive to Sonic for burgers.
The closest Sonic was at least twenty minutes down the highway, but he bribed
us with offers of takeout to keep quiet about his long break. There weren’t
going to be any customers anyway and I knew we could handle shelf stocking on
our own. I asked for a milk shake and tater tots but Brooklyn got a deluxe
burger and all the sides. I grinned at him and poked his hard stomach.

“You better keep playing soccer next year. I’ve never seen anyone
who loves to eat as much as you do.”

He chuckled. “I will if they take me. I’m going to try out for
the JV team.” Then he poked me back, hard, and jumped out of the way. I punched
at him, but ended up swiping air. Jesus rolled his eyes and headed for the
glass door. He opened it and then locked it behind him. Brooklyn managed to
pinch me and slip out of my reach again. He laughed and I lunged at him again.
Jesus knocked on the glass.

“Don’t be assholes. I’ll be back in an hour.” He called through
the window.

We nodded. I put on my most angelic face. As soon as his car
pulled away though, it was on. The weird part was that it was so much like how
we used to be but nothing like it at the same time. We pinched and poked and
even punched at each other just like always, but we were laughing our asses off
the whole time and running up and down the aisles of the deserted store. I
managed to get Brooklyn good, pinching him hard on the side before taking off down
the snack aisle, bags of chips and bottles of soda blurring past me as I tried
to run and laugh at the same time without wiping out. Too bad Brooklyn’s
midfielder legs could take me in a heartbeat. Within a third of the aisle, he
had me pinned against the Fritos and was poking at my clavicle as hard as he
could. I could barely catch my breath from laughing, and I choked a little. He
stopped and looked at me.

“Okay?”

I panted a little and nodded. “Yeah, okay.”

I tried not to notice that Brooklyn hadn’t moved. At all. He was
still right on me, pushing me back against the crinkly bags of chips, hand
poised over my chest. His fingers touched me, and I swear to God I could feel
them, warm and a little tingly, through my shirt. Was he leaning closer? I licked
my lips and watched him.

We were silent, the piped in muzak in the background was all of a
sudden excruciatingly loud. I looked at Brooklyn, couldn’t
stop
looking at Brooklyn. His eyes were dark and kinda slanty,
hooded like he was thinking of kissing me. Was he going to kiss me?

I’m sure he could feel my heart pound in my chest where his
fingers were still touching it.

Kerthunk, kerthunk,
kerthunk….

More silence.

Thunk… Thunk….

He leaned closer, his lips were right against my cheek, I could
feel his breath go down the side of my neck and I cleared my throat trying to
hide a deep shiver that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with
being suddenly more turned on than I’d ever been before.

There was no one in the store. No one coming….

The phone
rang,
shrill in the quiet only
broken by instrumental Matchbox 20 playing in the background, back to being
barely loud enough to hear. Brooklyn sighed and pushed back from the shelf. He
gave me a small smile that left me reeling.

What the hell just
happened?

“Uh, I better get back to the ice cream before it melts.” His
voice sounded hoarse and uncertain.

Didn’t he already put it all away? I let him walk away, quickly
escaping our weird moment and all that it may or may not have implied. It’s not
like I knew what to say anyway.

The rest of the night was kind of weird. Less awkward than I’d
have thought it would be after that miss kiss, and yeah, after a little bit of
thinking I knew that’s what it had been. It wasn’t a
mistake,
he sure as hell wasn’t inspecting the Fritos behind my head. We’d almost kissed
and I had no idea what to do about it.

No idea.

I had even less idea what to do about the fact that maybe, just
maybe, Brooklyn Thorn wanted to kiss me... and I really,
really
wanted to kiss him back. He tossed my bike in the back of
his truck like he always did, and we rode home in the predawn heat, tired and
still a bit electrified. I could feel it between us, different than it had
been—not uncomfortable exactly, but not the same ease that had grown in the
past weeks. I tried to ignore it. It seemed to be what Brooklyn was the most
comfortable doing.

Maybe that kiss just wasn’t meant to be. Yet. Or ever.

* * * *

“Shit! I thought that pole went across like that. Here, try it
from your side.”

Brooklyn’s face was frustrated to say the least. He was holding a
pole from his tent, which we were setting up on top of my trampoline. It was a
nice night, coolish outside but still stuffy in our houses. He’d suggested
camping on my trampoline, which kinda surprised me, but of course I’d agreed.

My house had been bleak since my mom had left. It was nice to
have someone around other than my father, who I didn’t know how to talk to. He
wasn’t really there all that often anyway, especially since I was usually only
home when he was at work. That way was fine with me. We’d never been close.

So, yeah, both the idea of
company,
and
of course because it was Brooklyn, had me jumping at the prospect of having him
over. He showed up with his tent, a camp light, a ton of comics, and enough
junk food to have us spinning for hours on a sugar high. I added some homemade
macaroni and cheese, strawberry lemonade (spiked with some of my dad’s rum),
and marshmallows for us to roast over our little outdoor fire grill. We’d set
everything else up, but were struggling to put his tent together. I’d have
scrapped the tent part all together but getting eaten alive by bugs wasn’t my
idea of a good time.

“Oooh, wait. I remember how it goes now. Here, give me your
pole.”

Brooklyn held his hand out expectantly. I couldn’t help it. I
started laughing. It was dumb and I knew it, but the giggles, once they started
couldn’t be stopped until I was rolling around on the surface of the trampoline
saying ‘pole’ every time I could take a breath. Brooklyn shook his head at me,
but he laughed too. “What are you? Twelve?”

“Must be.” I handed the tent pole to him and lay there on my
back, looking at the deepening purples and blues of twilight with a chuckle
bubbling out every few seconds until I calmed all the way down. “It’s a nice
night.”

“Yeah it is. Thanks for having me over, by the way. I’m glad you thought
this was a good idea.”

“It was a good idea.” I leaned over and snagged the bag of
marshmallows, ripped it open, and popped one in my mouth.

“Hey! You can’t eat those until we get this thing set up.”

“Maybe some of my lemonade will help.” I’d already told him that
it was a bit stronger than the usual stuff.

He chuckled. “I’m thinking we’d definitely better save the
lemonade for later. Here, hold the
pole
and I’ll finish sliding the fabric over it. Then we’ll be good to go.”

I snickered.

The tent was set up and we were lying on our stomachs with half
our bodies in the tent and our arms hanging over the edge of the trampoline
roasting marshmallows on the grill that we’d rolled right up close so we could
be lazy and not get down. It was probably good we didn’t have to do too much
hopping up and down anyway, since we’d already drunk about half of the
lemonade. I’d poured a bit more rum into it than I originally thought. Either
that or both of us were pathetic lightweights.

Brooklyn rolled onto his back, flaming marshmallow held up over
his face.

“Hey,” I laughed. “You’d better be careful with that thing or
it’ll end up falling on you.” He blew it out and popped it in his mouth. “No,
no, no... that’s not how you do it. You have to take the crunchy part off and
eat that then roast the next layer, like this.” I demonstrated, pulling off the
charred layer of sugar and licking it off my fingers. Brooklyn watched me
intently with a slightly wavering gaze.

“Dal? Can I ask you something?” He’d been calling me Dal for a
few weeks. I kinda liked it.

“Sure. ‘Sup?” I tried not to slur. He sounded serious all of a
sudden.

“Are you gay?”

Oh, shit
. Suddenly I
was completely sober. My stomach clenched and I squeezed my eyes shut trying to
stop the wild spin my head had just started to do. I didn’t want to lie but I
didn’t want him to hate me either, not when we’d gotten so close. I cared what
Brooklyn thought of me more than anyone else. I didn’t know when it had
happened but there it was.

“Hey, I just want to know. Don’t freak out.”

I turned over and looked at him. The truth, then. Damn it. “Yeah,
I am.” And there it was. He was the first person I’d ever told.

Brooklyn reached over and took the marshmallow stick from my
hand. Then he slowly laced his fingers through mine, watching our hands
intently the whole time.

“Uh, Brook, what are you doing?”

“This…” He pulled on the hand he was holding until I toppled over,
halfway sprawling on his chest. Then he used his other hand to thread into my
hair, cupping the back of my head and pulling gently. “I wanted to kiss you so
bad the other night in the store.” His nose rubbed against mine.

My heart, my poor little heart, couldn’t take much more. It was
trying to beat its way out of my chest. “Me too.”

His hand rubbed its way through the hair along my neck, until he
was tipping my chin up so my lips could meet his. And then right there, in a
tent on the trampoline I’d had since I was ten years old, Brooklyn Thorn kissed
me. He was tender and sweet, hands touching my face, tongue barely tasting my
bottom lip. It felt wonderful and perfect, not too much, left me wanting so
much more. He sighed.

“What?” I asked quietly, all of a sudden worried.

“Nothing. It’s just... it’s exactly how I thought it would be.”

“Okay?” I needed more information before I started panicking.

He let go of the hand he’d been holding the whole time and
wrapped his arm around me. “Not okay. Amazing.”

I was still kind of freaking out. “Brook, you just kissed me. You
said you
wanted
to kiss me. Are you
gay too? What’s happening here?”

Brooklyn gathered me closer and scooted us further into the tent
and onto our pillows. He nuzzled another small kiss on my lips.

“I don’t know. I’m not completely straight. I’ve known that for
years.”

“
Years
?”

“Yeah.” He smiled. “Sixth grade at least—when I looked over at
this boy who I used to hate and realized that he had the prettiest lips I’d
ever seen and more than anything I wanted to kiss him.”

I choked. How was I supposed to react to that? Me? I was reeling.
“Sixth grade?” It was the only thing I could think of to say.

Brooklyn nodded. “It scared the hell out of me. I mean, you’ve
gotta understand that.”

“I do. This isn’t the best place to be gay.”

Brooklyn shuddered. “And my Dad. He’d skin me alive if he knew.”

“Mine probably would too.”

We both sighed, heavy with the knowledge of what it was like to
hide.

But it had been necessary. Still was. With that in mind, I
covered the grill up and zipped up the tent. We had Brooklyn’s camping lantern
turned on low, so there was a glow in the tent, barely bright enough to see by.
It was warm and intimate and the light looked gorgeous against Brooklyn’s skin,
shining off the halo of tiny hairs on his arms too fine to see in the day, and
burnishing his golden brown curls until he looked like Apollo or some other
bronzed god reclining in his bower. He arched his back and pulled his tank top
off. I gulped.