Enlightened (11 page)

“You and Brad must be very close,” I commented, not sure if I was supposed to even be part of this conversation. She seemed to tolerate me because I was Jamie’s best friend, but I got the feeling that she was jealous of our closeness. He said that once, she’d even said that maybe I should be his girlfriend. That sent him into a little bit of a panic until I assured him that I didn’t think she meant it quite that way.

“He’s my twin brother, technically my big brother by two and a half minutes. He means the world to me, and it just makes me so mad that he’s hurting.”

The constant interaction between Emma and Jamie continued throughout the day, until I sat conspicuously alone in study hall.

I checked around to make sure I hadn’t missed him when I had come in, but he wasn’t there. Neither was Emma.
Had they gotten sick? Was Jamie hurt and was she helping him?
Jamie never ditched, and hard as it was for me to admit, Emma wasn’t that kind of girl. No one else in the class seemed to have noticed their absence. Even Karen was just leafing through some teenage magazine, passing the time until the period was over. I left the dingy paperback I had been reading on my chair as I walked up to the teacher’s desk.

“Mrs. Barachek, I had to stay late in my last class and didn’t get a chance to use the rest room on my way here. May I please have the pass?” I asked in an angelic voice. Mrs. Barachek, the matronly lady who also ran the lunch line, knew I was a good student. The faint smell of cabbage accompanied the pass that she handed to me without a word. I left the classroom and turned right, toward the bathroom, just in case she was watching.

Looking up and down each hallway, I started to panic when I couldn’t find him.
Had he been beaten up? Where the hell was he?
Frantically, I ran down the south hallway and skidded to a stop when I heard his voice. He was talking, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying, and then everything went quiet. I sprinted down the hall and quietly opened the band room double doors at the end. If he was talking to a teacher, I didn’t want to get either of us into trouble. I just needed to know that he was okay.

The sight of Jamie kissing Emma as she sat on the teacher’s desk and he stood in front of her nearly brought me to my knees. My eyes caught every detail, from her hands on the outsides of his thighs to his fingers in her hair. It seemed like time stood still for just an instant before they realized that I was there. My chest ached, and I heard a faint ringing in my ears as finally, mercifully, they broke apart. Jamie’s eyes met mine, and he looked like someone who had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. The door banged on the wall with the force of my anger, and the panic that replaced the guilt in Jamie’s face went unnoticed by Emma, who was still smiling dreamily. Her eyes were closed and her mouth slightly open, just waiting for her prince to continue the kiss. Backing out of the room, I heard Jamie call out after me, but I didn’t stop. I turned and ran. It was something I had started to become very good at, because I had learned all of my life to avoid conflict.

T
HANKFUL
that Carolyn wasn’t home when I got there, I kept running until I reached my bedroom. Then, with as much force as I could muster, I slammed my bedroom door. Before I could even reach my bed, the tears had started. I hadn’t cried in a long time. When you’re in the state home for boys, crying only makes you look weak. Weak kids are easier to pick off.

Lying down with my face buried in the pillow, I let it all out. I let out the frustration of not being able to openly love whomever I wanted, of the pretenses and the lies, of the hiding and the shame, and finally of it not being me that Jamie was kissing in that fucking room.

I must have fallen asleep, because sometime later, as the light was dimming in my room, I heard a distant pounding. Not caring at all what the source of the noise was, I rolled back over and slept. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t have any dreams. It seemed that my body and my mind were too exhausted to come up with anything to reveal to me or even torture me with through a dream. For the uninterrupted rest, I was grateful.

When my alarm went off the next morning, I had absolutely no intention of getting out of bed. It was Friday, and the last day of the school year. Turning it off, I rolled over and stared out of the window. After about half an hour, Carolyn came up to my room to check on me.

“You’re going to be late, darlin’,” she said from the doorway, only halfheartedly. Since I hadn’t been out of my room since I’d gotten home from school the day before, I’m sure she had figured out that something was wrong. I remembered at some point during the evening hearing my bedroom door open and close. Obviously, she had come to call me for dinner, but since I had been sleeping, she had decided to let me rest.

“Carolyn, I haven’t missed a day of school all year, and I’m really not feeling all that well. I’d really like to stay home,” I said, rolling back over to face her. She came into the room and sat down on my bed. Her touch was gentle and caring as she put her hand on my forehead.

“Boy, you are burnin’ up,” she said with a small wink. “I’m going to have to call the school and let them know that you won’t be in. Do you have anything you need to do today at school, any tests or papers due?”

“No, ma’am, nothing, and I cleaned out my locker the other day. There’s just some books in it. I can stop by on Monday and pick them up.” She nodded and brushed my curls out of my eyes.

“Then you just stay up here and rest. I’ll bring some sandwiches up later.” She stood up and walked to the door.

“Thank you, Carolyn,” I told her. The gratitude in my voice was unmistakable. The last place I wanted to be was at school. Even though I knew it was part of the grand scheme of things, I didn’t want to face Jamie and Emma. I just wanted to lie in bed and imagine a world where Jamie and I could be together.

As promised, around noon Carolyn brought up a couple of sandwiches for me, and I devoured them. Having missed supper the night before, I was ravenous when she set them in front of me. Two creamy peanut butter and apple jelly sandwiches and a huge glass of milk improved my outlook on the day. Grabbing a paperback book from my shelf, I spent the rest of the afternoon reading on my bed. By the time I had finished the first quarter of the book, I was dozing lightly in the mid-afternoon sun.

When I woke, Jamie was sitting on the end of my bed.

Sitting up, I quickly set the book on my bedside table and then adjusted my blankets, not looking at him. It was an effort to contain the hurt and the sense of loss that I felt because he was in the room with me. The whole incident had become fairly abstract overnight, but with him sitting there, the realization and the memory came forcefully home. When I finally met his eyes, I noticed that they were shadowed and a little bloodshot.

“You know why I have to do this,” he said, and the twinge of condescension in his voice made the bile rise in my throat. Of course I fucking knew why he had to do it, why he needed to make out with little Suzy Geek in the band room: because I had a cock. That didn’t make it any fucking easier, and that was exactly what I told him.

“Maybe you’ll just decide that it’s easier to be with her,” I commented, tracing the geometric pattern on my sheets with my index finger. “She’s the right gender, has the right family, goes to the right church, and apparently has the right lips.”

“You’re right; it would be easier to be with her. There’s one major flaw in that plan however,” he said, pausing for just a second as he grabbed my hand. My heart nearly stopped as I waited for him to tell me the argument that would cause it to start beating again. “She’s not the one that I’m in love with.” My eyes met his as I realized the full impact of his admission.
He was in love with me.
Jamie had just told me that he loved me. For a long moment, I looked into his face, too shocked to speak, not even daring to breathe. But I found my voice.

“What?”

“I love you, Brian. The look on your face when you saw me with her, that horrible shocked, devastated look… it broke my heart. I almost told her then that it was over, but it wouldn’t have done either of us any good. She was already starting to get suspicious. That would have just sealed it for her.”

I wanted to tell him it didn’t matter, that we couldn’t be together anyway. We’d always have to hide, and he’d always have to lie and live in fear with me. I wanted to tell him that maybe it wasn’t worth it, that we couldn’t possibly hold this together. But I couldn’t, because it would have been a lie.

“I love you too, Jamie.” I had for what felt like my whole life, because really, my life hadn’t started until I came to the Schreibers. Although we had grown up together and shared the love of friends, it had grown into something more, something so much stronger. I leaned forward, wishing nothing more than to seal the momentous occasion with a kiss, but it occurred to me that I hadn’t brushed my teeth since the day before. Just before our lips met, I clamped my hand over my mouth and jumped off the bed. Brushing my teeth and hair quickly in the bathroom across the hall, I returned within minutes to find Jamie absolutely cracking up on my bed.

“I thought you were going to be sick for a minute,” he laughed, trying to catch his breath. “Then I hear the water and the sounds of you brushing your teeth. So much for the perfect moment.” As I sat on the bed next to him, he leaned forward and captured my lips with his own. We weren’t wound around each other like we normally were when we kissed for the physical pleasure of it. The feeling of his hand wrapped around mine, that simple innocent gesture, was so perfect. Soft, tender kisses chased one another as we moved closer to each other, reveling in our closeness.

It wasn’t about sex.

It was about love.

Chapter 7

“
B
RIAN
, I’m not sure this is such a good idea,” Jamie whispered as we climbed the stairs, walking right past my bedroom to Richard’s study. I could feel his hand sweating in mine as I held it. It was one of the few times that we were able to get away with that kind of affection because Richard and Carolyn weren’t home. Carolyn was likely out socializing like a good doctor’s wife, and Richard was at work. We wouldn’t have much time alone, but it would be enough.

“This was your idea, Jamie,” I told him, laughing quietly as I pushed open the door and walked over to the computer. Peeking quickly out of the window for cars pulling into the drive, I pulled him closer, down onto the arm of the office chair, and wrapped one arm around his hip.

“I know it was, but this is dangerous.” Looking down, he put a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “If anyone walks in….”

“We’ll look quickly so you can see what I was talking about, and then we can go study. Besides, it’s Wednesday, which means that Carolyn is at her book club. It ends at four, but they always stay talking afterward. We have at least forty-five minutes or so,” I told him, checking the clock and doing the math in my head. He was right, we were taking an awful risk, but I wanted to turn him on and make him happy. There wasn’t much at all that I could offer him in our fledgling relationship but fear and uncertainty. We should have a little fun too.

“Fine, show me,” he responded with a sigh, but I could see that he wasn’t as exasperated as he was trying to project. In fact, his breathing had picked up slightly in anticipation, and his fingers had tightened a bit on my shoulder. I turned to the computer and hit the power button, waiting for it to load. Jamie didn’t look at me; he just kept watching the screen, almost as if something were going to come out of it and bite him. After a few minutes, I clicked past the login, which had no password, and brought up an Internet browser. Using the same reasoning that I had before, I typed in the phrase “gay men” and hit enter. As it had before, the results list showed over fifty-five million entries. One of the first entries was titled “Racing Hearts Studios: a subsidiary of Hartley Entertainment.”

I clicked the link and heard Jamie suck in a breath.

The initial screen was enticing, with mostly naked boys frozen in silent laughter or an impassioned kiss. The buttons at the bottom of the site, the ones that made me promise I was eighteen, gave me a very simple choice: enter or leave. Of course, the choice wasn’t that simple. Now that I saw the warning, which I must have missed on the last site, I wasn’t sure this was a good idea anymore. Praying that what we were about to do wasn’t illegal, I glanced nervously at Jamie, who nodded in encouragement, and I clicked the enter button. When the new screen came up and I saw what it was, I immediately clicked minimize and looked out the window to make sure no one could see. The entire middle of the screen was dominated by a video player showing guys having sex. From the second that we’d seen, they were having oral sex, and even through my embarrassment, I was starting to get hard.

Taking one final look back over my shoulder at the door, I clicked the minimized window to bring it back up. The video had ended, but there were dozens of images all over the screen. Even the background image had a guy smiling with his jeans around his knees and his erection in his hand. Taking my hand off of the mouse, I just stared, forgetting even to check the window and the door again for my foster parents, unable to believe what we were looking at.