Friday came faster than I had expected. I stood outside in the student parking lot, waiting for Ayden. I took a deep breath and glanced down at my watch, four o’clock… he was late. I glanced around, there weren’t many cars left in the parking lot and the only people here were the staff and the students who belonged to clubs or sports. I leaned against the stop sign behind me and dug my foot into the loose dirt under my feet. The late summer sun, burned the back of my neck as I threw my messenger bag over my right shoulder. I looked up as I heard a car approaching, sure enough it was Ayden’s red mustang. He pulled up in front of me and leaned over to open the passenger side door. I shyly walked to the car and got in. “Hey Ror.” He said, flashing me a smile, exposing his pearly white teeth.
“Hey.” I answered trying hard not to blush. Ayden is two years older than me, tall, with a swimmer’s body—thin, with perfectly toned muscles. His naturally bronze-toned skin had a glow to it from the sweat, since it was hotter today than it had been. He pulled out of the parking lot and started driving down Main Street.
“Does Allie know you’re with me or are we still on the down low?” he asked, pulling his black baseball cap over his dark wavy hair.
I started fidgeting with the strap of my messenger bag. I felt awkward letting Allie know that Ayden and I were …well, going out. “No…” I said nervously biting at my bottom lip. “She knows I’m with you, but she doesn’t know about us.”
He shook his head a little. “I wish you would tell her and stop hiding your relationship with me,” he said. By the tone of his voice, I could tell he was hurt that I hadn’t told Allie since she was my best friend and one of his friends also.
I let out a heavy sigh. “I’m sorry… I’ll tell her. Okay? I promise,” I said as he pulled into the driveway of his house. He didn’t say anything, just got out of the car and walked over to the front door. I got out and followed him, leaving my bag in the car. “Ayden,” I pleaded, as I went after him.
Inside the house, he was standing behind the couch looking down at the floor, his cap covering his eyes so I couldn’t see his facial expression. “Ayden?” I whispered softly as I walked over to him and wrapped my arms around his waist. “Don’t be mad at me, please? I just haven’t told her.” It made me feel bad that it upset him so much because I hadn’t gone public with our relationship.
“Sometimes I feel like you don’t want to be in a relationship with me,” he said somewhat coldly as he pushed my hands away from him and turned around. “Because the way you’ve been acting it’s like you’re ashamed of me.”
I looked at him confused, I didn’t know why he was so upset or why it even mattered so much that others knew about us. “Of course I want to be with you.” I moved closer to him and held my hand out to touch him but again he moved away. “I’m new to this whole relationship thing Ayden, you’re the first boyfriend I’ve ever had; you can’t expect me to ease into it like it’s nothing and just be all open about it. After all, I’m not fully out you know?”
He turned to look at me and I could tell he was softening. “You’re right,” he said as he placed his hands firmly on my hips and pulled me close to him. “I can’t expect you to be open about having a relationship, especially since this is the first one you’ve ever been in,” he said as he adjusted his cap so that he was wearing it backwards. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I said as I leaned my head into his chest. He smelled so good. A mixture of chlorine and lavender, he probably had just taken a shower after swimming at the public pool. He cupped my chin and made me look into his dark green eyes—I could have stared into his eyes all day and just gotten lost in them. Before I knew it, he pulled me closer until I was just a few inches away from him. I felt my heart racing in my chest as his arms encircled my waist and before I could do or say anything I felt his lips against mine, soft and sweet with a faint taste of peppermint. I melted against him as he held me tight; I felt my eyes start to water. Why the hell was I crying? Here I was with the sexiest, sweetest guy and I was about to ruin the moment by crying. When he finally pulled away, I quickly wiped away the tears clinging to my eyelashes. I felt light-headed as he looked at me and smiled sweetly. When I was with him I felt like a completely different person, like no matter how bad things got, he could make them better when he held me.
I pressed my cheek against the side of his neck, closing my eyes as I felt his arms tighten around my waist. For the first time since that horrible day in August I felt safe — loved. I took in a deep breath as my mind started to wander….
The bad stuff started when I lost my dad. It was at a crucial time in my life, one in which I felt like I needed him the most. I was fifteen; it was the summer before my sophomore year. My father and I were inseparable. I had the perfect father-son relationship with my dad, the kind that some kids wish they had with their dads. I was able to tell my father anything and he would listen — he understood me. I had known for a while that my parents’ marriage was falling apart. He’d leave for work and hour earlier than usual and come home extremely late, just to avoid my mom. My mom accused him of having an affair—which he denied. I knew my father was better than that. As the summer dragged on, I witnessed my parents’ change. My dad wasn’t the same person he was before; he was more closed off, distant and depressed. My mom, who I never had a very good relationship with—especially after coming out to her — became even more distant from me. Maybe because I reminded her of my father, she began to despise me.
My father’s older sister Janna always told me that I looked more and more like my father every time she saw me. And in a way, I was beginning to see it too. The same platinum blonde hair which for the last year I had continually dyed black, the same tall, slender frame and the big ocean blue-grey eyes.
As September neared, I was more than relieved; school would be starting in just a few short weeks and I could finally get out of the house, and away from my parents’ constant bickering.
It was an afternoon in latter August. My mother and I went down to the local grocery store, the only one in Easton, to do our shopping for our two-week supply of groceries. Normally she did this on her own and I just unloaded the car when she got home. But this time my father insisted on me tagging along with her. He handed me a twenty-dollar bill and told me to buy something for me. We returned to our house about an hour and half later to find my father sitting in his favorite chair in front of the TV, the remote resting on the arm of the chair beneath his right hand—a .9-mm hand gun in his other.
The sight sent chills throughout my body and I couldn’t move—I was paralyzed. I could feel my knees shaking as I stood in the doorway of the living room staring disbelievingly at my dead father. I could feel my stomach churn and I suddenly felt sick. My mother walked in with her hands full of groceries and glanced over at him, shaking her head. “I knew we should have gotten rid of that gun.” She placed the bags on the kitchen counter, her face and voice completely devoid of any emotion. “It was only a matter of time before he did something stupid like this.” She looked up at me and smiled.
I was stunned and horrified. I couldn’t believe my mother could be so cold-hearted and callous — the man she had been married to and with whom she had a child—me—just killed himself and she couldn’t care less. Once I finally was able to move, I robotically walked over to my father and picked up the phone that was on the coffee table in front of him, and trying to keep my shaking hands under control, I dialed 9-1-1.
The bad thing about living in a small town was how fast word traveled. I couldn’t go anywhere without someone coming up to me and telling me how sorry they were for my loss. Easton was one of those very church-going-community-involved-small towns. There were people who were genuinely sorry to hear about my loss and then there were the ones who just said it because they felt it was appropriate. Because I’d grown up with these sanctimonious church-goers, I knew in the back of their minds they were thinking “His father is going to hell for doing such an act. It’s against God’s will.”
It was at that time in my life that I lost my faith. I stopped going to church. I didn’t feel there was any point anymore. Almost everyone who attended the Little Church on a Hill knew what my father had done. Everyone looked at me as if I wasn’t human, even more so once word got out that I was gay. I asked myself, if there was a God, why did he make my life so difficult? To test me? To see if I was able to handle being under pressure? Why?
My mother continued going to church, she said she needed a place to go that would not judge her. Whether she knew they constantly judged me, I am not sure. After my father died, her drinking became excessive. Sometimes, she’d go out and be gone for days at a time. Sometimes she’d leave me money, sometimes she didn’t. We rarely had food in our house since dad’s death, so I had to depend on friends and myself for food. Allie, Chris and Janie would come over when my mom would leave and bring with them loads of junk food and video rentals and we’d all just veg. Without my friends, there was no way I’d have been able to make it through that time of my life
When school started, I got a lot of sympathy from my teachers and the principle. Ms. Junta, my English teacher who was also our neighbor, offered me tutoring if ever I needed it. Ms. Junta was older than my mom, maybe in her late fifties; she had this out of control mass of curly red hair and gentle green eyes. I spent a lot of that following summer at her house. I would help her clean and rearrange furniture or just hang out. She’d make dinner and have me stay over while my mother was off bar-hopping, looking for some random guy to screw. I practically lived at Ms. Junta’s place. That was until my mother got pissed off at me one day for coming home at almost midnight so she forbade me to leave the house for the rest of the summer.
Ayden looked into my eyes and smiled softly. “Are you alright?” he asked softly caressing my cheek. “You look like you’re somewhere else.”
“No I’m fine,” I answered, placing my hand on top of his and pressing my lips against his palm. “I was just thinking.” I’d only been with him a few days but already I felt something for him—something stronger than friendship. I was beginning to love him. Maybe not full-blown heart wrenching love, but the kind you feel for someone who just has the power to make you feel safe with just a simple touch.
He took my hands in his and pulled me closer; bringing my arms to wrap around the back of his neck. “I should probably get you home,” he whispered as he placed his hands on my hips.
I glanced at my watch, it was getting late and I was in no mood to listen to my mother bitch. “Not that I want to, but yeah, I guess I’d better.”
When I got home, I walked back to my room and sat on my bed. My head was spinning and I felt like I was floating. I don’t think anyone or anything could have ruined that moment. Not even my mother. I pressed my fingers against my lips and closed my eyes; he actually kissed me. I fell back and stared at the ceiling. I wanted to call Allie, to tell her how great I felt right then. How amazing it had been, being held in Ayden’s arms. I guess you could have said my fear was that if I told Allie, it would get out that I was in a relationship with Ayden. That was not something I was prepared to deal with — at least, not at that time.
