Swimming to Chicago Read online

  He lowered his head, his eyes. “Oh…fuck.”

  “That’s right, Alex. I’m legal now. Eighteen with no future.”

  “This is a guilt trip.”

  “No. It’s not. Although you deserve one.”

  He looked her in the eyes. “I do. I do.”

  She pulled herself up to her knees, the back of her heels holding the majority of her weight. “Make it up to me.”

  “I already told you, we’re too good of friends. We can’t sleep together.”

  Jillian replied, with a laugh and a quick shake of her head, flicking her honey-colored ponytail, “Yeah, like that would ever happen.”

  Alex folded his arms across his chest, barely covering the name of a famous comic book company. “What price do I have to pay?”

  Jillian flicked her ashes. “Tell me why you weren’t here last night. How come you’ve missed work all week?”

  “I was right. You’re working for my mother now.”

  “Why are you being so cryptic?”

  “Why are you using big words?”

  “I’m trying to make up for the fact I was held back in the fourth grade. I’m wiser than my peers, Alex.”

  “So you’re a year older than everyone. Who gives a shit?”

  “I’ll be almost nineteen when I graduate next year.”

  “You’ll still be neurotic and uptight, so I don’t see what you’re worried about.”

  She pointed at him. “You’re changing the subject…again.”

  He glanced at Jillian’s third grade picture sitting in a gold frame on a lamp table. Jillian breathed deep, noticing how beautiful and smooth Alex’s skin looked in the candlelight. “You said it was a habit of mine. A bad one.”

  She wasn’t about to let him off the hook so easily. “Not one I like.”

  His hand went back into the chip bowl. “So, now there are conditions on our friendship?”

  “Stop being a tease and tell me what’s going on with you. You owe me that much.”

  Alex seemed spellbound by the flickering wick of a candle. “What’s that smell?”

  “The candles. They’re scented.”

  He sniffed again. “What flavor?”

  “Cotton candy. I bought ’em at one of those dollar stores.”

  “It smells like a carnival in here.”

  “I use them to mask the stench of bullshit permeating the air.”

  He reached for the plastic bag of marshmallows, opened it with his teeth. “There you go again. More big words.”

  “I’m trying not to swear so much.”

  He offered her a pink marshmallow. “I’m trying to avoid the subject.”

  She took the marshmallow from him and tossed it at his head. “You do it so well.”

  “I’ve just had a lot on my mind lately.”

  “Care to share?”

  Alex opened a bottle of Wild Cherry Pepsi. “Not really.”

  “Should I be offended?”

  “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Well, whatever’s going on, I hope it’s worth it.”

  He took a moment and said, “I’m sorry about last night.”

  More ashes hit the bottom of the seashell ashtray. “It’s no big deal. I enjoyed spending my birthday alone.”

  He looked at the candle again, as if he were finding solace in the blue and orange flame. “I would love to talk to you about this—”

  She tried to burn a hole in him with her eyes. “Then why don’t you?”

  “I will, Jilli. When I’m ready.”

  “If you were a girl, I’d swear you were pregnant.”

  He looked at his best friend. She pulled back a little, slightly startled by the desperation in his eyes. “I need some time.”

  She felt sadness well up in her throat. “Away from me?”

  Alex sighed. “Jilli, I’m not your boyfriend. Sooner or later—”

  “If you’re about to tell me you and I will eventually grow old and drift apart, I don’t want to hear it.”

  “Fine.”

  “I invited you over to spend some time with you. You know I’m not very domestic, thanks to my freak maternal accident of a mother, so you can see…I’ve gone through a lot of trouble here.”

  “I apologize.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  “I appreciate that. I only wish I knew what you were apologizing for.”

  “I’ve been a complete jerk to you.”

  She exhaled again and a thin cloud of smoke circled around them. “You’re forgiven.”

  Alex smiled and his dimples glowed. “So quickly?”

  Jillian stubbed out her cigarette. “You’re my only friend in the entire world. I can’t afford to hold grudges.”

  “I will make this up to you.”

  “Yes, you will. You’ll start by letting me win a few games of backgammon.” She took a breath before correcting herself. “Nardi.”

  July/Hulis

  Alex

  Tommy and Alex were alone. A week had passed, and it was now July. Outside, fireworks exploded, ripping across the summer night sky like misfired hopes. Inside Alex’s bedroom, they were in bed, face-to-face and bare-chested. Emily Haines’s voice bled from a stereo in a dark corner of the room. Her words seem to crawl down the white walls and somersault across the wooden floors. A slice of sweat poured down the middle of Tommy’s bare chest and Alex traced its path with his fingertip, humming the melody tickling his ears. “It’s hot,” Tommy breathed.

  “It’s an old house,” Alex offered. “My dad put central air and heat in last winter. The thing’s never worked right.”

  Tommy leaned forward and his lips brushed against Alex’s as if they were exchanging a secret. Alex closed his eyes, falling into a deep sense of rapture. “I wish it could be like this all the time,” he dreamed aloud.

  “Well, it can’t be,” Tommy said, his words cutting through their shared reverie in the dark.

  Alex’s body tightened. A sharp pang punched him in the lungs. “What do you mean?”

  “We have to be real about this.”

  Alex swallowed, overwhelmed by the sweet smell of Tommy’s body. “Why?”

  “School starts next month.”

  “And?” Alex prompted, searching for something in Tommy’s eyes.

  “Summer will be over soon.”

  Alex tried to shrug off the impending sense of doom he felt creeping underneath the door of his bedroom. “Is that what we are, Tommy? Are we a season?”

  Tommy rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “You avoided me for almost a week.”

  “I was kinda freaked out, you know.”

  “I know.”

  “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  Tommy’s smile seemed awkward. “No one’s forcing you.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t like it.”

  Tommy breathed in deep, pressed his back against the bedroom wall. “What are you saying?”

  “I never knew about you.”

  “What’s there to know?”

  “I thought you were just like everybody else. I never knew—”

  “What?” Tommy’s frustration muted Alex for a moment.

  “How beautiful you were.”

  They fell silent for a moment, hypnotized by the whistling booms flooding their world in the distance. Tommy closed his eyes, as if lulled by the sounds and heavy heat of summer. Alex watched him, studying his features. He reached up and touched one of Tommy’s dark blond curls. Tommy sighed and his stomach muscles tensed. “Everything feels different now,” Tommy revealed, his eyes still shut.

  “Because of what we’ve done?” Alex felt fear rising in his throat. “No one has to know.”

  Tommy’s eyes opened and the liquid anger in them scorched Alex’s skin. “They can’t know. Not ever. I’m trying to get a football scholarship, Alex. It’s my way out of here.”

  “I won’t say anything.”

  �
��Well, if you do, I’ll deny it.”

  Alex curled his toes as he felt heat and anger infiltrate his veins. He looked out of the bedroom window, where strobes of red, white, and blue lit up the town of Harmonville like a throbbing flashbulb. “What are you so scared of?”

  “The same thing you are,” Tommy shot back. “You didn’t talk to me for a week.”

  “I didn’t know you were angry.” Alex reached for Tommy’s hand. He held it in his own.

  Tommy wove his fingers through Alex’s. “I thought you were going to tell someone.”

  “Like who?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe Jillian. Or my dad.”

  “Why would I tell your dad?”

  “Just don’t, Alex.”

  Their hands separated and Alex pulled away, rolled over on to his back. He stared up at the ceiling, secretly hoping a firework would land on the roof of the house and burn the thing to the ground.

  Jillian

  The answer was right in front of her. Jillian stood, peering through the fence and wondering if she’d known the truth all along.

  There’d been signs before, moments she’d overlooked or ignored.

  Maybe on purpose.

  But, now, it was as clear as day. She saw it with her own eyes.

  Jillian slid her fingers through the chain links and pressed the cool metal against her palms. Alex had no idea she was there and watching. And she was so close to him. He was oblivious to everything, except for the dark-haired man on the diving board above them.

  Jillian had cut through the park at the last moment, hoping to stumble across the old man selling snow cones. He pushed his freezer of crushed ice around the duck pond day after God-awful day. The portable cart squeaked and wobbled because of a rusted, crooked wheel. Jillian wondered why the half-blind bastard never fixed the damn thing. What did she care? As long as he kept selling those incredible paper cones of blue raspberry ice, nothing else mattered.

  Except for the fact Alex was gay.

  She spotted him at once, recognizing her best friend from yards away. She moved closer to the fence, intrigued. She kept her eyes on him, on his expressions. His body tensed and relaxed in the sun.

  The neighborhood swimming pool was not very crowded, despite the scorching heat. A chubby female lifeguard sat high on a white wooden perch beneath a banana yellow umbrella. Jillian wondered if the sunburned girl was half-asleep, if her eyes were closed behind her oversized sunglasses, if she realized how unflattering her too-tight red swimsuit was.

  In a white T-shirt and plaid shorts, Alex sat at the edge of the swimming pool like a patient lover waiting for his soul mate to return. His feet were in the water and the chlorinated liquid kept kissing his kneecaps. His eyes were lifted up, toward the sky. He licked his lips with anticipation, as if waiting to devour someone alive.

  The stranger on the diving board shifted his body, prepared to jump. He was tall and strong. His wavy dark hair was wet and slicked back. His red and white Hawaiian print swim trunks clung to his body, fitting snug around his crotch.

  Jillian noticed Alex’s eyes. She followed his stare to the bare skin of the diver. She recognized the shine of lust in his eyes, the flash of desire. At once, Jillian let go of the chain links and stepped back away from the fence as if she’d been burned.

  She knew Alex’s secret. It had nothing to do with her.

  She thought about scrounging in her purse for the dollar-fifty admission to get inside the pool. She wanted to sit next to her best friend, kick her sandals off and slip her feet into the water next to his. She wanted to hold his hand or wrap her arm around his shoulders and whisper in his ear, “You have excellent taste. He’s beautiful.”

  Instead, she turned and walked away.

  Jillian moved deeper into the park. She fought the urge to cry, mostly because it felt like such a ridiculous thing to do. She walked until she found the playground. Except for an Asian woman sitting on a bench reading a romance novel, Jillian was alone.

  She kicked off her sandals and held them in her hand. She went to the swings and slid her hips inside an empty seat. Slowly, she pumped her feet back and forth until she reached the highest point possible, swinging high above the pit of sand beneath her. She clung to the chained ropes. They squeaked as she moved her legs faster and harder. Each time she lifted up to the sky, she imagined she was touching the clouds with her toes, walking across the expanse of summer blue. She was dancing away from Harmonville and into a world of neon lights and skyscrapers. There, she lived in floor-length black dresses and diamonds, sipping occasionally from an always-present cocktail glass and charming a roomful of strangers with just the sound of her laughter.

  Alex

  On impulse, Alex followed the dark-haired stranger into the cavelike locker room. The place smelled of mold and chlorine. The cinder-block walls were damp with humidity, sweating from the inside out.

  Alex turned the corner just in time to witness the stranger dip beneath the hot spray of a showerhead. Alex allowed his eyes to trail over the tan skin of the man who was at least twice his age. He was probably someone’s father, some important executive of some important company there for a midday workout.

  Alex stood as close as possible to the row of lockers, hoping his presence would remain unnoticed.

  For a moment, he imagined what would happen if he stepped into the open stall with the beautiful man. Would they kiss? Would he let Alex touch him?

  What if he’s straight? He probably is. Wait. He doesn’t have a wedding ring on.

  With his back to Alex, the man slid his thumbs between his skin and the waistband of his red and white Aloha shorts and slowly began to lower them. The white flesh of his bare ass caused Alex to stop breathing for a moment. When he exhaled, his front pocket vibrated and his favorite Metric song blared out, revealing his voyeuristic perch.

  The stranger turned over his bare shoulder and found Alex’s eyes in the locker room. He lowered his gaze then, washing over Alex from head to toe, resting his stare for a moment on the front of Alex’s plaid shorts, the obvious hard-on. He grinned a little and said, “Maybe you should get that,” with an index finger pointed at the front of Alex’s shorts.

  Alex felt his face fume with humiliation. He slipped his hand into his pocket, pulled out his cell phone, and answered it. “Hello?”

  His mother was on the other line, asking him questions in Armenian. He couldn’t focus on her words.

  “Slow down,” he said with more firmness than he wanted to. “I don’t understand you. Speak English, please.”

  Immediately, he knew he’d hurt her feelings. He could hear the tears rising in her voice, in her broken English. She tried to swallow them away, shove them out of her words, but it was no use.

  Alex looked at the stranger and held his stare as the last glimmer of longing slid from his expression. “I’m on my way home,” he promised his mother and ended the call.

  The stranger was done with his shower and was toweling himself dry. Alex moved to leave, but the man’s voice stopped him. “How old are you?” he asked, with a grin.

  “Eighteen,” Alex lied. He tried to hide the hope from revealing itself in his voice. He didn’t want the stranger to know how lonely he was, how much he wanted to be with someone—not just to fool around with, like how it was with Tommy—but a real relationship. Nothing too serious, though.

  The man again gave him the once-over, drinking him in and deciding, with a few shakes of his head, it wasn’t going to happen. “You’re just a kid,” he said. “Come back in a couple of years. Then…we’ll talk.”

  Alex nodded and tucked his cell phone back into his pocket. He turned away from the stranger and headed toward the exit.

  Jillian

  “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Jillian asked two days later.

  “I did just tell you,” Alex responded, walking ahead of her.

  Jillian almost had to run to catch up with him. “Why are you making me chase you?”

  “I�
��m not,” he huffed.

  “Well, can we slow down, then? It’s nine hundred degrees out here.”

  They were directly in the middle of their journey, two blocks away from Jillian’s house and two blocks left to go before they reached Alex’s. He crossed the quiet, narrow street and Jillian scrambled to keep up, nearly sliding across the hot asphalt in her pink and white daisy sandals. “I wanna get home,” Alex explained.

  Jillian half sprinted across the Killingers’ front lawn as Alex hurried down the sidewalk next to her. “You’re afraid to look at me, Alex Bainbridge.”

  “What if I am?”

  “For God’s sake, I’m your best friend. I don’t care if you like men.”

  Alex whipped around and faced her. “Can you try not to shout it to the neighborhood?”

  Jillian stared at him, and her own hurt feelings were reflected back at her. The tinge of rage in his eyes stung the center of her heart. “Why are you so angry?” she asked.

  He folded his arms across his chest and clenched his fists. “I’m not.”

  She nodded, wiped at the corners of her eyes. She looked at the back of her hand. It was smeared with cheap eyeliner. “Yes, you are. And I have no idea why.”

  Alex turned away, looking down the street. Tears filled his eyes, surprising them both. “Look, it was really hard to tell you.”

  “I know that.”

  His voice cracked as he struggled to control his emotions. “This whole thing’s been messing with my head for weeks now. Maybe even longer and I didn’t realize it.”

  “But I’m your best friend,” she reminded him. “And I love you…no matter what.”

  Jillian reached out and touched his face. He tried to pull away at first, but gave in and welcomed her palm against his cheek. “I love you, too,” he offered back.

  Jillian bit her bottom lip to contain her excitement. “Am I the first person you told?”

  “Jillian, you’re the only person I’ve told.”

  “This is un-fucking-believable. It makes me love you even more. I’m serious.”