Read Marie Sexton - Coda 02 - A to Z Online
Authors: Marie Sexton
He wraps his arms around me, nuzzles my neck a little. “I suppose I can manage one day without you.” His hands are slidin’ down my back, under the waistband of my sweats. There’s only a thin blanket between us, and he grinds against me a little. It’s only been a couple of hours, but I can tell he’s ready to go again, already.
“I don’t mind,” he whispers. He pulls me tighter against him and grinds against me some more, then gives me a wicked smile. “But you’ll have to make it up to me later.”
“I promise,” I say, smilin’ down at him. But then Matt yells from the livin’ room, “Cut it out, you two! Ang, we have to go,
now
!”
Zach laughs and lets me go. I get dressed, kiss him one last time before I leave. Then we get in Jared’s car with me in the back seat and head for Denver.
“Plus,” Matt says over his shoulder to me, “he wants to be able to turn the channel when the Broncos are getting their asses handed to them by the Colts.”
We leave the car at a park-n-ride and take a bus to the stadium, which Jared assures me is way better than tryin’ to park downtown. I’m surprised when we get there. I’ve seen Invesco Field before but never up this close. Somehow it’s bigger than I ever realized. I’m also surprised how it’s like one big party, all ’round the stadium.
Matt and Jared are talkin’ ’bout Peyton Manning and pass rushin’ and special teams and a buncha shit that’s total fuckin’ Greek to me. Doesn’t matter. Not really listenin’ to ’em anyway. I’m too busy just lookin’ at all the people. It’s like a fuckin’ circus of blue and orange. Feels like the whole place is charged, and you can’t help but feel a little bit excited.
I find my excitement wanin’, though, when we get inside and start to climb. And climb and climb and climb. There’s an escalator, but there’s a huge line of people waitin’ to get on it, and Matt and Jared don’t even look at it. They just walk right by, and ’course I follow ’em. Up and up and up.
“Where the hell we sittin’?” I finally ask.
“Fifth level,” Jared tells me, “middle of the north end zone. That’s where they get the coaches’ film, you know. They’re actually great seats.”
“Plus,” Matt says to me, under his breath, “they’re cheap.” Jared just laughs. “That too.”
We finally get to our seats and flag down a beer vendor. The best part of the whole thing is before the game. The team comes out, then some chick with a killer voice sings the national anthem. Then the jets fly over. They fly in from the south, so we see ’em comin’: straight at us and over our heads, so close you can practically feel the wind comin’ off ’em, and so loud the whole stadium shakes. The crowd goes wild, and it’s almost enough to give me goose bumps.
The game finally starts. I’m not really a football fan, and sometimes I have a hard time understandin’ what’s goin’ on. Couple times I wish I could ask somebody what the hell just happened. Nobody to talk to, though. Somehow we ended up with Jared in the middle, me and Matt on either side of him. Jared’s so engrossed in the game, I know better than to try to talk to him. Sure as hell not gonna talk to the nutty lady on the other side of me either. She’s got blue and orange paint all over her face, and she hasn’t stopped screamin’ for the whole game. I gotta admit she scares the shit outta me. Wish Matt was sittin’ next to me. He’s a big fan, too, but his team’s not playin’, and I know he’d at least help me understand what the hell’s goin’ on.
Halftime finally comes. “The donkeys are losing!” Matt says triumphantly to Jared, givin’ him that half-assed smile he uses instead of a real one. “Looks like you’re buying.”
Jared groans but hands his binoculars to Matt and then leaves to buy beer. Once he’s gone, I look over and find Matt’s usin’ the binoculars to scope out somethin’ down on the field.
“What you lookin’ at?” I ask him.
“The cheerleaders,” he says, without takin’ his eyes off the field. “What else?” Sure enough, when I actually look, I see they’re dancin’ ’round in the end zone below us.
“You’re lookin’ at
chicks
?” He blushes a little but doesn’t answer. I know he told me he was straight before Jared. Still, guess I sorta thought all this time that once he decided to be with Jared, he started actually bein’ queer like the rest of us. Never occurred to me women might still be his first choice. “You look at guys too?” I ask.
He leans back in his seat and shakes his head. “No.” “What about Jared?” I ask.
“What about him?”
“You look at him, right?”
He shrugs. “That’s different.”
“Different how?”
“Just is.” He starts scratchin’ at the label on his beer bottle like he always does when he starts to get uncomfortable. “Because I’m with him. And because of the way I feel about him.”
“Jared’s hot. You know that, right? I mean, he’s got that whole surfer boy thing goin’ on. Nice body from all that bike ridin’. Great smile. All those freckles.” I can see as I’m talkin’ he’s gettin’ more and more uncomfortable. And more than that, I think he’s gettin’ mad too. I never actually seen Matt lose his cool before. Know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help but push his buttons a little more now that I found them. “He have freckles like that all over? I mean he’s got a pretty nice ass. If he has those freckles down his back, too, I can only imagine—”
“What the hell?!?” Matt snaps, interruptin’ me. He’s not yellin’, but his face is red, and he’s definitely flustered. “Stop talking about him like that!”
I have to laugh. “’Course I have. So what?”
“So—stay the hell away from him!”
“I’m just lookin’.”
“Well,
stop
looking!”
“You worried I’m gonna steal him away from you?”
He turns back to the field, hunches down in his seat and doesn’t say anything. I’m fightin’ hard to keep from laughin’. Jared comes back then. He looks back and forth between the two of us— me, grinnin’ at him, and Matt, who practically has steam comin’ out of his ears—and says, “What’s going on?”
Jared looks kind of amused at that, but he hands us each a beer and starts to sit down in his seat in between us. Matt jumps to his feet like a fuckin’ jack-in-the-box and says, “No!”
I can tell Matt regrets his outburst a little, but he might as well say somethin’ now. “You sit over here,” he says to Jared, pointin’ to his seat. “I want to sit next to Angelo.”
Jared looks a little confused, and who can blame him? Matt’s obviously pissed at me, but now he wants to sit next to me? But Jared doesn’t argue, and they switch seats.
Matt scowls at me as he sits down. He’s makin’ a point of not talkin’ to me, and I don’t push it. I just sit there, drinkin’ my beer and waitin’.
I don’t have to wait long. Pretty soon, I can see him watchin’ Jared. He’s lookin’ at him kind of sideways, out of the corner of his eyes. Jared’s watchin’ the field, where the players are comin’ back out and doesn’t notice. But I see it. I see when Matt starts to get that amazed look on his face again, like he always does when he suddenly remembers how much he loves him. Finally he leans over to Jared, grabs a handful of his hair and whispers somethin’ in his ear. Jared smiles and blushes up to his hairline, which, to tell you the truth, is pretty damn cute to see, and then Matt lets go of him and leans back in his seat next to me.
He sighs and glances warily over at me. “You’re an asshole,” he says, but his tone’s at least halfway jokin’. I can tell he’s gettin’ back to normal.
“I know,” I say. I leave him alone for a couple of minutes. Wait for him to relax a little more, then say, “You know I was just fuckin’ with you, right?”
He sighs, and then says in resignation, “I know.”
“You totally took my bait.”
He rolls his eyes. “I know.”
“You know you outweigh me by like three hundred pounds and could probably beat the shit out of me if I ever tried anything, right?”
I laugh at that. “So, we’re cool?” ’Cause as much as I may like seein’ him all flustered, the truth is, I don’t really want him mad at me.
“Yeah,” he says, as he turns back to the game. “We’re cool.” He’s quiet for a minute, drinkin’ his beer, and then he nudges me with his elbow. “Hey, Angelo, by the way?”
“
Jared
does?” I ask in disbelief.
“Yep.”
“Of what?”
He grins wickedly over at me. “I’m not telling.”
I have to laugh. “But it’s hot, right?”
He winks at me and says, “You have
no
idea!”
the game Matt drives home. Jared lets me have the front seat. He drank more than Matt or me at the game. He lays down as much as he can manage in the back seat and goes to sleep before we’re even outta Denver.
Lizzy’s been invitin’ us over for dinner at least once a week since we moved to Coda. I hated it at first. Sittin’ there with Jared’s picture-perfect fuckin’ family. Lizzy always knowin’ what’s best. Jared’s mom and Matt’s mom constantly tryin’ to talk to me. First few times, I refused to go. But then I saw how much Zach hated goin’ without me. He tries not to let me see it, but the truth is, he sucks at hidin’ his feelin’s. So now I go.
Last few times, though, it hasn’t been so bad. Startin’ to get used to Lizzy and the moms. Startin’ to figure out how to be part of it all. Most important I’m startin’ to see that Jared’s family isn’t quite so perfect after all. Can’t explain it, but that simple fact makes all the difference in the world to me. Sometimes they bicker. Sometimes they hurt each other’s feelin’s. One time Matt’s mom made some half-assed comment ’bout how she still wished she could have grandkids of her own. Don’t think she realized how much that was gonna hurt Jared, hearin’ that. Like she’s blamin’ him for it. He left the table, and Jared’s mom snapped at her. Matt’s mom started to cry, and Lizzy jumped in. Pretty soon seemed like me and Zach were the only ones there not pissed at someone.
Just like that.
No matter what they always forgive each other.
“Good.” He winks over at me. “I’ll have more fun if you’re there.” Pretty sure he’s just sayin’ that to make me come, but I don’t say anything.
He looks surprised at my question. Guess it is kinda outta the blue. But he says, “I guess so. I didn’t always. Especially when she was still married to my dad. But we do a lot better now.”
“He doesn’t like Jared?”
“He doesn’t like the fact that Jared and I are together.” “So if he got over that, you’d forgive him?”
I just shrug, turn away from him. We’re out of Denver now, headed up into the mountains, and I stare out the window at the trees flyin’ past.
“Are you thinking about contacting your mom?”
I don’t answer. I don’t have to know. He knows me too well.
’Course he doesn’t take my bait. Just keeps talkin’ like I didn’t say anything. “Some wounds take longer to heal than others, Angelo. You don’t have to forgive her right away. But she is your mom.” I don’t answer him, and suddenly he punches me in the arm, just to get my attention. Wants to make sure I’m actually listenin’. S’posed to be a friendly nudge, but I’ll probably end up with a bruise from it. He waits until I look over and meet his eyes. Then he says, “It can’t hurt to give her another chance, can it?”
I thought about what Angelo had said at Folk Fest, that Matt was the straightest queer he had ever met. I never would have used those words, but I knew exactly what he meant. “That explains a lot.”