First Kiss

“There, there,” he cooed, dismissing the argument. “Do you want me to stay with you for Thanksgiving?”
“I’m sure your father would love that,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“He probably would,” he sniffed. “It would allow him to indulge the fantasy that he didn’t have a gay son at all.”
“What about your mom?,” I said, slapping his knee. “Wouldn’t she miss you?”
“I think most of the time she wishes I wasn’t there either,” he responded, and the room filled up with one of those silences we were always running into when the humor slipped away to show the sad truth underneath.
“All I’m saying is I’m here if you need me,” he said at last, breaking the silence.
“I appreciate that,” I said “but I’ll be fine. And besides, it’ll give me and my dad some time to spend together. I feel like we hardly see each other any more, with me gone during the day and him always driving at night.”
“What’s that like,” he said, “actually wanting to spend time with your parent?” I laughed but didn’t answer as he began to stroke my damp hair. “Does he know about us?”
“What do you mean?,” I asked, not quite sure what he was implying.
“This,” he said. “Me coming over and cooking dinner and you parading around in a towel?”
“Is that what I’m doing,” I asked, “parading?”
“I don’t know what you’re doing,” he said, suddenly sounding agitated. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I mean, what is this?”
And he shook his knees, forcing me to lift my head, then got up to go to the window. He pushed back the curtain and looked down on the dark street, giving me nothing but the sullen curve of his back.
“Are you serious?,” I said, suddenly afraid that he might be. But Evan’s thoughts were somewhere out there in the dark, beyond the room, beyond me.
“You should hear him on the phone, talking to my aunt. ‘Well, Evan’s got himself a girlfriend now, so who knows what’s going to happen next. Hardy-har-har!’ I’ve never heard him so happy, like he’s dodged a bullet or something.”
I didn’t know what to say. I had to change the subject, to keep the silence from swallowing us.
“Did you hear about Billy Albrecht?,” I asked, grasping at straws.
“Got a concussion in his last game,” he sighed. “I heard. Only his was a manly concussion, I’m sure; tackled by a hundred men on the field of battle. Not diving into a fire hydrant like a little faggot. Probably got a better scar, too.”
“No scar from what I hear.” The words dribbled out of my mouth. I instantly wanted to take them back, but it was too late.
“Of course not,” he replied, his voice barely above a whisper now. “Real men don’t get Harry Potter scars.”
Suddenly he grabbed hold of the curtain and pulled with all his might, tearing the rod out of the wall as he turned to glare at me. His face was red with anger and he wore a look of rage that was almost comic in its intensity.
He meant to march towards me and throw me back on the bed; to ravish me savagely the way he’d seen men do to women in the movies countless times. And I would’ve let him do it, too. I would’ve done anything to let him know that, in my eyes, he was perfect in every way.
But the curtains caught around his ankles as he crossed, tripping him up, so that instead of overpowering me, he wound up landing hard on his knees on the ground between my legs. Recovering his animal instinct after a moment to absorb the shock, he reached up and grabbed my bare shoulders with his hands, jerking me forward so that our noses almost touched.
And then he kissed me. It was the strangest thing, to be kissed by a man you love when there was no desire in the kiss. It felt as though we were moving apart even as our lips were pressed together; like we were saying goodbye to something beautiful that we both knew would eventually have to leave.
It was sad and it