Been Here All Along (13 page)

“I guess I've always kind of suspected. But I never wanted to deal with it. It wasn't denial or internalized homophobia. Kind of just being scared to figure out who I was and place a label on it. Also the fact that I didn't want to waste time on this crap in high school.”

I can't help but laugh, because that's Gideon in a nutshell.

“So what changed?”

He swallows a few times, his Adam's apple bobbing. He's nervous. Something's making him nervous, and I think it's me.

“Did I do something?” I ask.

He glances over at me, squinting. “Kind of but not really. I just noticed one day, not that long ago, how jealous I was of you and Ruby. And it all kind of hit me. Like really hit me. Hard, in the gut, over and over again.”

“You were jealous?”

“So jealous,” he says, shaking his head. “I still am.”

“Because you like me?” I ask. I think that's what he's saying, but it's hard to believe.

“I mean, um, yeah. Amaretto must be some kind of truth serum.”

“You
like
like me?”

“Well, yeah. I'm sorry. I don't want to weird you out. We don't have to talk about this anymore.”

“This just seems kind of sudden. You're gay, and you like me. I'm taking it all in.” What I don't add is the fact that I like him. I know I should say it out loud, but I'm not there yet. I wish I were the kind of person who could say things like that spontaneously. Maybe if I had a few minutes to plan it out. I never imagined this happening tonight. Or ever really.

I never expected Gideon to be gay.

I also know that if I tell him I like him, I might try to kiss him, and I really don't want to be the kind of guy who cheats on his girlfriend with his best friend.

No matter how cute Gideon is.

“It's not really all that sudden to me. And I'm pretty drunk,” he says, and then he smiles goofily. “I pulled my shit together to talk to you, but damn, everything is a little spinny.”

“Do you want to go back inside?”

“Honestly? No. I feel like this night can only go downhill from here.”

“I'll walk home with you,” I say.

“You sure?”

I nod. Of course I'll walk him. I'd probably walk with him anywhere.

I promise myself I'll start saying these things out loud to him. As soon as my hands stop shaking.

We start walking in the direction of our houses, slowly. Gideon stumbles a few times and I take his arm. It feels like there's an empty desert between us, and I don't know what might be waiting to bite my foot with one wrong step. Or maybe that's the beer talking. I don't know. I've never actually been this drunk before, and I don't even really think I'm that drunk.

Our hands brush together a couple of times and, oh man, I want to hold his hand so bad but I don't know how he'd react. Except that he admitted he liked me. I finally work up the courage to grab for it on the last block. I need him to know that we're good, and that was the best way to show him.

We get to his house first and I walk him to the back door, where we stand on his deck for a minute.

“I guess this is it,” he says.

But it isn't. Not really. I don't know how to tell him that until I remember the slip of paper in my pocket. I fish it out and hand it to him. This is a good way to say everything I want to say.

“‘Kiss the person you want to kiss the most in this room,'” he reads.

I'm still holding his hand. I don't know that I've ever actually held his hand for this long. Friendship is kind of a stupid, arbitrary thing when you think about it. You should be able to hold your friend's hand whenever you want. How is holding hands more intimate than giving a hug? Who makes those decisions?

“So who was it?” he asks, looking up at the moon.

I examine his profile. “Who do you think?”

We hold eye contact for way too long, and he opens and closes his mouth a few times.

I can't stop glancing at his lips. I need to leave before I do something I'll regret.

“I have to go,” I tell him.

Before he can answer, I fly off the deck and hop over the fence without looking back.

Gideon

It's probably a good thing he left, because I really wanted to kiss him.

 

fourteen

Kyle

I wake up before dawn on Saturday morning, and my head feels like it's made out of rocks. No, something worse than rocks. I don't even have the brain capacity to figure out what it feels like it's made of, so I'll just leave it at rocks for now.

But, oh man, I have to pee. I have to pee so bad I can't think about anything else. I get out of bed and have to stand still for a second before stumbling toward the door and opening it, squinting out into the dim hallway before remembering which direction the bathroom is in.

I slide back into bed as soon as possible, and when I wake up again, it's three hours later and something's bothering me.

I squeeze my eyes shut tight against the thoughts assaulting my tired brain.

Gideon.

Gideon and I had a moment.

A much bigger moment than the one we had on his birthday.

He told me he liked me. Did I tell him I like him too? I can't remember—it's all kind of a blur.

But I really wanted to kiss him. More than I've ever wanted to kiss anyone in my entire life.

I groan and pull the covers over my head, even though I know I'm not going to be able to fall back to sleep again. Not when the full reality of what happened last night has hit me head on.

The worst part is that I'm actually happy about it. I'm happy that I had a moment with Gideon.

This isn't right.

I'm better than this.

I glance over at my phone. That might hold some of the answers I need this morning, but I'm not sure I'm ready to deal with the reality of it. It could also hold bad news.

I decide to take a shower, trying to scrub off all this lingering guilt. Of course that doesn't work, and basically I'm just left with skin that feels like it's been rubbed raw. Kind of like my outsides match my insides today.

When I get down to the kitchen, I find a note taped to the fridge saying that my mom took my sisters shopping.

I try to eat some cornflakes, but they turn into paste in my mouth. I drink a lot of water and avert my gaze from Gideon's house next door. I can't even look at it without feeling like a complete dickhead.

I need to man up. I need to talk to Ruby.

I pull up in front of her house without so much as a text to warn her I was coming. I sit there for a minute, trying to figure out what exactly I'm going to say to her. I probably should have checked my phone before I left the house. Ruby's not the kind of girl who appreciates people dropping by out of nowhere.

While I'm working up the courage to get out of the car, Ruby slips through her front door and ambles to the car.

I guess this is really going to happen.

“Well, if it isn't my boyfriend,” she says, slumping into the passenger seat.

“How did you know I was here?”

“Just happened to look out the window.” She yawns and rubs her eyes. “I'm not exactly surprised to see you here.”

“I did something.”

“Yeah, you came to my house before noon on a Saturday.”

“I did something bad.”

I take a deep breath, and she looks over at me expectantly. When I don't continue she says, “Lemme guess. You kissed Gideon.” She laughs a little.

“No, but I wanted to,” I say. I take a deep breath. “I'm so sorry. I wish I had words to explain how sorry I am.”

“Why are you apologizing? You didn't actually do anything.” She seems confused with the whole conversation and really just not getting what I'm trying to say.

“Listen, Ruby,” I start. It must be my tone of voice, because things seem to click into place for her.

“Holy crap, you're going to break up with me for Gideon!”

“Yeah, I think I have to.”

“I thought you actually liked me,” she says.

“I did. I do. It was a spur-of-the-moment feeling. Mostly because of that stupid dare,” I explain.

“What was the dare?” she asks. “Why were you so weird about it?”

“It said to kiss the person in the room that you want to kiss the most. And my beer-addled logic wouldn't let me lie and just kiss you. I didn't expect Gideon to come out, like, five seconds after I thought about kissing him. It was all a lot to take in.”

“How long have you liked him?” she asks.

“I don't know. It's just kind of been lurking in the back of my head recently, but I didn't even know he was gay.”

“This just sucks, Kyle.”

“I'm so sorry, Ruby.”

“What am I supposed to say to that? What am I supposed to do about this?”

“I don't know, I'm just trying to be honest with you.”

“So, what, you want me to thank you for coming over here and being honest or something?”

“All I know is that I don't want to cheat on you, so I came here to tell you what's up.”

“You're really going to break up with me for Gideon.”

I nod. It's like she's so shocked she doesn't believe me. But I can see it starting to dawn on her face that this is real.

She takes a deep breath, and I steel myself for whatever comes next. “Fine. But I'm going to tell everyone I broke up with you. They'll believe it and it will keep my image intact.”

“I had no idea you cared that much about your image.”

She pulls down the sun visor to look at herself in the mirror, but her hair isn't done and she's not wearing any makeup, so she just slams the visor shut and turns back to me.

“I've been talking to Josh Barton a lot recently.”

“Um, good for you.”

“Just so you don't think you're the only person with someone on deck.”

I can see in her face and hear in her voice that she's trying to cover up that I hurt her by talking about all this other crap. But I've gotten to know her really well, and she can't fool me. She's just lucky I'm too nice a guy to call her out. Doesn't mean I have to be nice about Josh Barton.

“Didn't he get left back, like, three times?” I ask. Not that I'm in any place to judge someone else's academic standing, but I need to fight back a little bit.

“Only once in high school,” she says. “And then, like, kindergarten or something that doesn't really matter. He might not be the smartest guy, but I know for sure he's not going to break up with me for Gideon Berko.”

“Okay, sure. Yeah, whatever,” I say, running my hands around the steering wheel.

“Just one other thing,” she says. “When did you stop liking me?”

It's so weird that she can go from angry, image-driven Ruby one second to just a normal person with insecurities the next.

“I didn't stop liking you. I just started to like Gideon more. You can't control that kind of stuff, you know?”

She looks like she might cry now. I really don't want her to cry.

“Well, it's been real, Kyle Kaminsky. Thanks for everything.”

With that, she gets out of the car and runs up her front steps, letting the door slam behind her so hard that it shakes the front of the house.

She doesn't look back.

Five minutes later I pull into my driveway, happy to see that I beat my mom and my sisters home. I run inside and throw away the note I left, exchanging it for one that says I'm at Gideon's. Normally I would text my mom, but I'm still not ready to face whatever might be on my phone from last night. Including what I'd imagine are some pretty incriminating pictures of me getting a makeover from Buster before everything else happened.

Before I even look at it, I need to talk to Gideon.

Ruby

I stomp up my front steps and slam the door behind me, making the family portraits on the wall rattle. I slam it again and one of the frames actually falls down.

I still don't feel better.

I lost my boyfriend to Gideon Berko. I am the lowest of the low on the totem pole. He's not even on the totem pole, and yet he stole Kyle away from me without even trying. He didn't even have to kiss Kyle to make Kyle realize how much he preferred Gideon over me.

Regret flares up like lightning. I should have taken Gideon down when I had the chance.

I hope he truly appreciates and comprehends the favor I did him by never showing anyone those lists he made. But he's so full of himself he hasn't even brought them up again. He never even asked me about them. Like, how much of an ego do you have to have to not worry about someone having such personal information?

But I guess now that he's out and going to start dating Kyle, he doesn't see the damage I could do with that list.

I could sit back and watch his world burn.

I totally could. I could make life miserable for Gideon Berko.

It's the only comfort I have at this point.

Gideon

I hear Kyle's footsteps on the deck, and my first instinct is to hide. I sink down into the couch cushions. The back door is locked, so when he jiggles the handle, Ezra goes to let him in. Kyle asks if I'm home, and Ezra tells him I'm in the family room.

There's literally nowhere to hide, so I scrunch myself deeper in the sofa and pretend I didn't hear anything.

“Was that the pizza?” I ask, showing off what an excellent actor I am.

“No, I'm not pizza,” Kyle says, shoving his hands into his pockets.

“Hey,” I say, trying to stand up casually and failing. I get all tangled up in the afghan and almost fall over the coffee table. “I am perfectly fine and totally normal.”

“You're blushing.”

“Yes. Yes I am.” I try to regain my footing, but either I'm still very hungover or just the mere sight of Kyle has thrown me completely off balance.