The Battle for Jericho (22 page)

He had this exercise routine, which was the way he had built up his body. I went up to his room one evening to get him down for a video game session. When I knocked and said, “Hutch, it’s me,” he responded with an out-of-breath “Come on in.”

He was stripped down to a pair of white boxers, doing pushups on the floor. I stopped in the doorway, my mind caught by the way the muscles in his back and arms rippled with every motion. He went right on with his routine, his mouth working as he silently counted out his reps. After what seemed like several minutes, he suddenly paused in the middle of a rep and looked up at me.

“What?” he said.

“Huh?”

He laughed. “Dude. You’re staring.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s just… uh, I always wondered how you got your body so cut. I try working out, but you can see it doesn’t do anything for me.”

Hutch pushed himself up, getting to his feet. “I guess it’s all in the way you do it. My dad—” He caught himself, his mouth twisting as if a bug had flown in there. He still got angry and sad every time he thought of his parents. “I was never able to get any free weights at home, so I got some books from the library and found some routines I could do that didn’t need weights. They work pretty well for me.”

I let my eyes do a quick roam over the tight muscles in his chest. “Yeah, I see that.”

“You want me to show you?”

“Please.”

He took me through his routine of sit-ups, push-ups, squats, and toe-raises. I was already wearing sweats, so I didn’t strip down the way he had. And aside from him using his hands to position my arms or my legs properly for a particular exercise, there was no physical contact between us. Just being close to him, however, was exciting in itself.

When Hutch wasn’t around me, I’d find myself thinking about him at odd moments, especially in that lazy, quiet time when I lay in bed at night, warm beneath my blankets, waiting for sleep to fall. I wanted to hold him again, not to comfort but to share in the smooth, strong wonder of his body. Those thoughts freaked me out, as they had before. I prayed a lot in that week, sometimes in gratitude that Hutch was safe here with my family. Most often, though, the prayer was for my mind and body to be wiped clean for all time (or until I died, whichever came first) of all feelings for Hutch except pure, platonic friendship. I prayed for a reset that would focus my attention exclusively on girls.

I prayed really,
really
hard for that to happen. It was the kind of prayer where I threw myself down before God in the humblest act of supplication, which is a neat phrase my pastor used in his sermons, pounding my chest and wringing tears from my eyes in desperation as I begged to be relieved forever of my impure desires. I prayed so long and hard on Wednesday night that it gave me a headache.

And here’s what I learned Thursday afternoon: You don’t always get what you pray for.

T
HURSDAY
after school, Hutch went off to hang out with some friend of his from the MLGBT Teen Society. I walked home with Mac. I managed to joke and laugh with him enough that he never suspected how I was actually feeling. Once I was inside the house, I turned off the act. I wasn’t interested in snacks, video games, or television shows. Making it as far as the living room sofa, I slumped on the cushions like a zombie without even taking off my jacket. I let my backpack slide to the floor.

I didn’t move again for forty-five minutes.

Then the doorbell rang. It was Hutch, I knew. He’d said he wouldn’t be out very long. I got up, shrugged out of my jacket, and dropped it on the floor. I opened the door and let Hutch in.

He must have realized my sorry mood right away. “Hey. What’s wrong, Jerry?”

I waved my hand just a little, as though brushing aside his concern. “I think I’m turning into a girl, man,” I said, managing a weak smile. “I was just sitting here feeling all… weepy.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s just the devil in me, I guess.”

That got a tiny, sad smile out of him. He closed the door and put down his backpack. “Is there something you want to talk about?”

I shrugged. “I miss Lissandra.”

“Oh.” His sigh was full of sympathy. “I noticed you two weren’t making out every five minutes at school like you usually do. You have a fight?”

“I think we broke up. Kinda.”

I must have looked really miserable, because Hutch made that sigh again and held out his arms. “Come here,” he said.

I walked into his arms, and he hugged me. The weepiness hit me again, and I fought back tears. My noisy sniffles filled the space where I had buried my face against Hutch’s shoulder, and I expected him to push me away before I got him all snotty. He actually held onto me even tighter, one of his hands rubbing my back in a soothing way.

Honestly, I was really hurting then, and confused, and afraid. Sex was the farthest thing from my mind. All I wanted was to be held, to know that someone understood what I was going through, and Hutch was giving me that. But in just a matter of seconds, it seemed that I became hyperaware of the way Hutch’s body pressed against mine. Even as I wiped tears from my eyes, I felt my body respond.

Hutch felt it too. He froze. And then he said, “Jerry?”

“Sorry, man.” I was ashamed, and I half turned my head away from him. I backed up a little, creating a space between us. He looked into my eyes as if trying to see what was going on inside my brain. I looked at him as that crazy charge I’d been getting lately around him went through me, and I thought,
Get away from him. Go outside, run. Run anywhere. Just get away from him.
But I found myself reaching out for him instead, taking him by the shoulder.

I studied his face. His eyes were clear and perfect. His mustache was really just light brown fuzz, and I could see more of that fuzz on his jaw now. Hutch was going to have to start shaving soon, and that brought an envious thump to my chest because my face was baby-smooth. His hair was getting longer too. Mom and Dad hadn’t said anything so far about giving Hutch an allowance, and I didn’t think it would be wise of me to bring up the subject. Maybe I’d give him part of my allowance to get his hair cut. I thought all those things because they were safer than the desires that were rapidly taking control of my body. I wanted to slide my hand into Hutch’s hair. I wanted to touch the faded bruise around his left eye. I wanted to feel his body against mine once more. Suddenly, I found myself wondering how a guy could have a face that was so… fantastic.

And then I was kissing him. I took him by the shoulders, pulled him to me, and I started kissing him. With my eyes closed, my other senses seemed to get stronger. The taste of cinnamon was sharp on his lips. His breath was very warm, caressing my cheek like a finger. Both our heartbeats drummed in the air around my head, the only sound I could hear, the only sound that mattered. I kissed him hard, and he let me. He stood there in my arms, accepting, and I knew somehow that he would let me do anything I wanted. Protest buzzed in the back of my mind, but it was lost beneath the steadily rising wave of desire that crashed over me. I could feel his muscles against me, so much firmer than my own, and there could be no pretending. There was no doubt that this was a guy I was crushing in my arms, a guy I was kissing so eagerly. What I was doing should have felt wrong, but the reality was that nothing had ever felt more right.

I kissed him until I couldn’t breathe anymore, until it felt as if I was going to choke. “Hutch….” I gasped out his name because I wanted to hear it. I wanted to hear it because it was suddenly the most wonderful sound in the world. I grabbed onto him even tighter, my fingers stroking through his hair.

Then we were in my room, and I had no idea how we’d gotten there. I was kissing Hutch again, guiding him across the room in a weird, slow dance until I backed him up against the bed. We broke the kiss long enough for us to sit down together on the bed. I slid my arms around him, kissing him on the face, gently pushing him down on the bed. He lay back, his head on my pillow, and he watched excitedly as I crawled in and lay my body over his.

If you ever lay a girl down, boy, you’d better sure as hell have your marriage license hanging on the wall over that bed, and you’d better be ready to bring up a baby.
I was twelve when Dad gave me that warning. It came back to me now out of the blue. Well, I didn’t have to worry about that last one, because Hutch damn sure couldn’t get pregnant. There was still the matter of my eternal soul, however. If homosexuality was a sin, the way I was going at Hutch now made me a major offender. My hormones decided that I should worry about hell later.

I’ve never been a kiss-and-tell sort of guy when it comes to really intimate stuff. Some of the things Hutch and I did on my bed that afternoon will stay forever between the two of us. I will say that, while we didn’t go all the way, we went a lot further than I’d ever gone with a girl. The weirdest thing is that, although Hutch and I were both boys, there was as much wonder and mystery in being with Hutch as there was the first time I made out with Lissandra. I was completely wild in the way I wanted him. I didn’t hold anything back until we reached a point where I knew that if I crossed that final line, there would be no stopping. Hutch looked up at me then, and I could see the fear in his eyes at where we were going. But I could also see that he trusted me, and that lit a swell of emotion in my chest which made me want to latch onto him and never let go.

I did let go, however, sitting up on the edge of the bed, breathing heavily and pulling my clothes back in place. Hutch sat up on the bed behind me.

“Why’d you stop?” he whispered.

“My dad will be home any minute. I think maybe you should go on upstairs before he gets here.”

“But, Jerry, I—”

I got up and left the room before he could finish that thought.

H
UTCH
was pretty good at playing things cool. Maybe it was from all that time having to live undercover with his parents. When we were together around other people after that intense session in my bed, you’d never know anything unusual had happened between us by looking at Hutch. He was never uneasy or nervous, and he never showed any sign of guilt or embarrassment. I, on the other hand, was uneasy, nervous, boiling over with guilt, and ashamed to the point where I wanted to dig a hole in the ground and bury my head in it.

When we sat at the table with Mom and Dad that evening over a dinner of baked chicken and mashed potatoes (one of my favorite meals), I couldn’t look any of them in the eye. And my stomach was feeling so temperamental I couldn’t eat a thing.

I felt Mom’s eyes on me. “Jericho? Why aren’t you eating?”

“I guess I’m still full from lunch.”

“No, I don’t think that’s it.” Her chair creaked just a bit as she leaned forward for a closer look at my averted face. “You look… not sick but… out of sorts, as if you took a knock to the head.”

“He always looks like that,” Dad added helpfully.

My dad, professor of bad jokes.

“Maybe you should lie down,” Mom suggested.

“Maybe you’re right.” I got up from the table.

“I’ll get the dishes tonight, Mrs. J,” Hutch said, casual as ever. He wasn’t as formal with my parents now. He called them “Mrs. J” and “Doc J,” and you could hear the appreciation in his voice every time he called them that. There was maybe even a little affection in his voice, as well. He didn’t look at me or show the slightest concern as I left the dining room. I knew he was doing that to maintain his cool around Mom and Dad.

It still hurt.

I
T
WAS
hard (sometimes even below the belt) seeing Hutch in school the next day, hanging out with some of his other friends. They made him laugh. His parents had broken him and tossed him out, so his laughter was a wonderful thing to me. I wished I was the one who made him laugh. There was a lot of stuff I wished I could do with him. I wanted to lean back against my locker and let him press up against me. I wanted to stick my hands in his back pockets, the way I used to do with Lissandra, and hold on while I told him how pretty his eyes were. Aside from an occasional “Get a room,” or “Y’all are so nasty,” nobody batted an eye when I did things like that in the hall with my sort-of-ex girlfriend. If I did that with Hutch, we wouldn’t make it to our next class alive. I couldn’t even look at him in school for too long because when I did, the desire came into my eyes and people noticed.

“Hey, Jiles, whatcha looking at him like that for?” Ham Goldberg said, easing up to me at my locker and following my gaze down the hall to Hutch. He was on the football team, about as solid as a tank. Everyone thought it was funny that Jewish parents would name their kid Ham. When I was around him, I always thought of rye bread. “The guy do something to you? You gonna kick his ass?” Ham was usually pretty sharp, but it seemed his brain just couldn’t accept that one guy was looking at another guy with longing in his eyes.

Thank God for that. I turned away from Hutch, faking a smile. “You know, Hammy, suddenly I gotta have a hot Cuban sandwich. You think they got anything like that in the cafeteria today?”

I was a degenerate for what I’d done with Hutch in my bed. I was a pervert for wanting to do it again. I was a sinner because I had an ache in my heart for him. Hell was going to swallow me up any day now.

As if that weren’t bad enough, there was also the hell of running across Lissandra. She passed me in the halls with her girlfriends, pointedly looking anywhere but at me. I knew she was waiting for me to come to her and set things right between us. And I wanted to do that, very badly. I missed her. I wanted her. But I also wanted this other thing that no decent, Christian guy should ever want. I thought I knew myself, but I didn’t. Not anymore.

“L
AW
offices of Stabler and Benson.”

“Hello. Uh. I need to speak to Dylan Cussler.”

“I can’t hear you. Can you speak up?”