Page 91 of For Your Heart
So I log in and ignore the fact that I’m breaking all sorts of rules and laws as I pull up Damon’s account and make a mental note of his address before shutting it all down and rushing out. I feel sick all over again.
“I’m back,” I tell Jordan when I start the car. “And I have his address. I’m driving there now.”
“Good. Drive safely.”
I do. It doesn’t take me long to get there and I park in guest parking. Without giving myself time to think about this, I push my way through the front doors and run up the stairs to the eighth floor. I pause in front of his door, though.
“Jordan?” I ask, voice strained. “Tell me to knock.”
“Sage, you got this. Knock on that door and tell him exactly how you feel. I’ll stay here long enough to make sure you do. Then you can call me and tell me what happened later. Okay, Sage? But no matter what, don’t forget to call and let us know you’re okay.”
“Thank you Jordan, I will.”
Twenty-Nine
DAMON
We knewwe were gay at a young age. Before that word had meaning. When boys naturally began to pick on girls they liked, we picked on boys we liked. When girls got cooties, they really had cooties for us. We just didn’t like them at all.
They were fine in the broadest sense of the world. It’s not like we had an issue with them as a whole. Or even one in particular. Except Maci. She had a crush on us from the beginning and no amount of us telling her we didn’t want to play with her could convince her to go away. Seriously. It’s been five years now. Five. Sure, it wasadorablewhen we were six, but come on. We’re not six anymore. She should really take a hint.
I think the first real sign that something was different with us was when the adults started commenting on how cute it was that Maci followed us everywhere.
“Mark my words, she’s going to marry one of them one day.”
“Think of the stories they’d tell their grandkids. How they met as babies and fell in love.”
Of course, Maci couldn’t tell us apart. No one could. No one but Simon and our parents. That didn’t matter to Maci. If pressed, she’d say that she likes Declan. Not that she was sure which one of us was Declan.
Then, around the time we were eight, everything inside us really turned up the cooties factor in that area. We sure as hell weren’t going to have wives. No wife at all. Ever. Then what would we have if not a wife?
The question wasn’t overly important. But when it would come up later in class or in play, we determined that, yeah, we wanted kids, but we didn’t want a wife. No girls, thanks.
“Just us and Simon,” I’d say.
“You need a wife. Who will have your babies?”
We didn’t have an answer for that, butouranswer never changed. No wife. We were the kids that would simply grow up without girls.
We learned what it meant to be gay in the same way every other kid does—from adults and our peers. While it was said mostly with derision or as if it were a bad word, we quickly realized that’s exactly what we were.
This is why we don’t like girls. We like boys instead.
It would turn out to be the only thing we ever kept to ourselves for any real length of time. Not because we weren’t sure, or because we were worried about what others would think. But because we were still learning what the term meant. If we needed to use it. Can’t we just be boys that like boys? Do we have to call ourselves gay? Does that really matter?
Apparently, it does.
This discovery was pushed to the side when Simon stopped showing up to school. We were instantly concerned when we tried to call him after the second day and the number was disconnected. It took us several days to convince our mother that we needed to go check on Simon. The teacher was worried enough that she asked us if we knew where Simon was!
Our gayness was pushed aside when we found Simon how we did.
But it’s been a year now. Simon isn’t the happy, smiling boy he once was. He still smiles and laughs sometimes, but there’s always sadness in his eyes. Sometimes he still looks out the window as if he’s waiting for his mom to pick him up from a sleepover.
He never talks about either of his parents. We’re not sure if he should, but if he doesn’t want to, what kind of friends would we be to make him? So we don’t push. We do what we always do—hold him tightly between us and make sure he knows how much we love him.
That’s where he is now while Declan and I mentally argue how we’re going to tell our best friend that we like boys and not girls. It’s not that it needs to be said. Yeah, it needs to be said. Right now, Simon might be preoccupied with his family hurt. But eventually, he’s going to notice. We don’t want that moment to come where he feels like he needs to ask us.
Already we’ve heard comments. Those that aren’t about Maci are about how we tease the boys. As we get older, I can only imagine how they’re going to talk about us.
