Page 70 of Hot Mess Express
I can’t even begin to pretend I follow her. “The fuck?”
“I knew you like guys since I met you. Don’t you remember? At the auction? When that one man put a bid on you, and then you didn’t care and said anyone could put in a bid, and then it was all men and women until I won?” She shrugs. “I just figured.”
I’m so lost. My head and stomach are spinning even worse. “It was just a fundraiser. I don’t understand how … how that even …?”
“And the club we always go to.” She lets out another dainty sigh into the night. “The Saloon is a gay nightclub.”
I snap my eyes back to her. “It is?”
Suddenly she lets out a laugh that fills the whole damnedfield and scares half the crickets into silence. “You gotta be the most clueless boy I’ve ever known, Anthony! I think it’s why I like you. We’re, like, totally brother and sister. How we sometimes don’t see the obvious thing. It’s theSassySaloon,” she says with a nudge at my side. “Sassy. The logo is a red smiley with its tongue sticking out. We made jokes on what it’s licking the first night we went.”
I turn around, then find my back against the fence, staring off at the road, blank-faced. “But … h-how couldyouknow I like guys if … ifIwasn’t even sure if I—?”
“I didn’t know. Not for sure. Small-town guys can be weird. They hide it. Or don’t know. Or don’t announce it. Or let everyone assume one way or the other, never confirming it. I became more sure when we went on our date at that Nadine’s place, but then I also wondered if maybe you swang both ways …”
“Swang ain’t a word.”
“Didn’t it feel nice? Kissing the guy? Who was it, by the way?”
I move from the fence and wander into the road. I don’t know if I can have this conversation yet. My heart hasn’t stopped racing. I feel like my mind is spinning out of control.
“Was it the guy from the jukebox?”
I spin on her. “Are you a psychic? Can you read my mind?”
“He was awful charming.” She hops over the ditch, stumbles, then brings a hand to her face, looking dreamy-eyed. “I wonder if his friend’s single. Could we do a double-date thing sometime?”
“Are you serious? Juni, no, we’re not—”
“Double Date Barbie! It’d be so fun! Don’t care which guy I get. I just want one to play with for a while. Or longer, if it works out.”
“Let’s just go back to the apartment before I’m sick again.”
“Hmm, okay.” She heads to the car. I follow. And as we drive back, I find myself staring as much at the side of her face as I am my own in the side mirror, unable to figure out either of us. Then ABBA’sDancing Queencomes on the radio at full blast without warning, and I’m reminded of one of the first times we went to that Sassy Saloon place and how my first thought was how free and unique everyone seemed. Did I seriously not put two-and-two together and realize she’d been taking me to a gay nightclub this whole time? With gay guys dancing all over me? Flirting with me? I just assumed the world outside of Spruce was louder and it’s no big surprise when a gay guy hits on you at any bar or club. Am I really that thick? About everything? Who I am? What I’m doing in life? Who I’m doing it with? That it apparently comes as a surprise to me that a place called “The Sassy Saloon” is a gay nightclub?
“It’s really not that big a deal,” says Juni as she fixes us a pair of Sandwich Surprises back at the apartment. It’s our thing. I’m not allowed to ask what’s in it. I just have to wait on this barstool at the counter to find out. “I think I’m a little gay, too. There was a girl I used to sleep over with when I was thirteen, maybe fourteen, nearly every weekend, and I liked how she smelled. I kept getting into tickle fights with her just because I wanted to smell her.”
“That’s … weird.”
“It was probably just the fabric detergent her mom used.” She sighs. “As for you … well … maybe it’s the way your guy sounds like when he talks to you that makes your heart go silly.”
“I hate how he talks to me. Like I’m a child.”
“Or it could be what he wears.”
“He dresses like a … a …” I can’t quite insult him fast enough, finding him too handsome every time we encounter each other.
“Or you just like how he looks.”
I press my face into my hands. “I don’t wanna talk about thisno more. I wanna forget tonight ever happened.”
“That’s what the Saloon’s for. Forgetting everything. Oh, and these,” she says, spinning around and placing a plated sandwich in front of me. I drop my hands to get a look at it, then glance at her questioningly. “It has Reese’s Pieces in it,” she explains in a whisper, then fetches her own Sandwich Surprise and sits on the barstool next to me to eat.
I stare at the sandwich and wonder if it’s the way he looks. Or what he wears. Or how he smells. Or how his lips felt against mine.
How his breath swirled like ocean breeze in my ears.
How safe I felt with his arms around my body when he held me against him—and how he begged me not to run away tonight, wanting to talk it out. What if I had agreed? What if I was with him at Trey and Cody’s now, totally alone, just me and him in a room?
