First Time for Everything (39 page)

“My third time,” I admitted, not adding I wasn’t becoming a fan.

He nodded. “Yeah, it’s kinda lame during the week, but the weekends are fun. You from around here?” I nodded and he smiled. “So a beach boy? That’s hot.” I wanted to tell him I wasn’t a beach boy, but if he thought I was and that was good, I decided to shut up and take the compliment. “Are you single?” he asked me.

I paused. “If I wasn’t, why would I be talking to you?”

His eyebrows went up in surprise. “Hey, we’re just talking. You can talk to people, you know, and it not be a thing.”

By now I was not ignoring my spider sense. “Are you single?”

He raised his hand and waved it in the universal sign of
kind of
. “I am seeing this guy, but it’s complicated. But we’re not exclusive,” he added, like that made it better. “So how is someone so cute still sin—”

He had been moving toward me, and I put a hand up to stop him. “Look, I am not interested in being with someone who is with someone else. Thank you for the compliment, but how about we just sit here and let our friends talk and leave it at that.”

Caleb stared at me for a long time and then rolled his eyes. “Never mind, I can see why you’re single.” He got up and looked back at me. “Look, dude, we’re gay. Things work differently here. If you’re Bella looking for your Edward, trust me, that’s not how gay guys are. You keep looking down at everyone, and they’ll just think you’re a stuck-up bitch.” He finished his drink and put the glass down. “And they wouldn’t be wrong.”

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to cry or throw his glass at the back of his head.

When I walked back to Brandon and Tommy, they both looked at me with questioning eyes. Before they could even ask, I said, “His breath smelled like kitty litter.” They both laughed, and I pretended to also but inside I was waiting for something to change.

That night when I got home, I lay in bed and skimmed the app store on my phone to see if there was some kind of application for meeting other gay guys around me. I downloaded one, uploaded my picture and made a profile, hoping I’d have better luck in cyberspace. Within twenty minutes my picture was uploaded and visible. Within twenty-five minutes I started getting messages.

Just not the ones I wanted.

Hey cutie wanna f*ck?

Hey you T or B?

Looking to make some cash?

Yeah looking for a daddy?

I deleted the profile and then took the app off my phone before it became infected with the grossness. I sat there feeling more alone than ever. Was I the problem? Was Caleb right? Was I just being naive and this was how it worked in the gay world? Was what I was looking for really just something I saw in a movie, and the reality was I needed to change my expectations?

There was no answer that didn’t make me incredibly sad.

The guys knew something was off, but since we were guys, no one brought it up directly. Instead we walked around the issue, no one wanting to dive in and actually ask what was wrong. That weekend they wanted to go again, and by this time I was resigned that I was going just for them. There was nothing there I wanted anymore.

There’s nothing like going to a place like a club when you don’t want to be there. Suddenly all the lights and music are just things that bug you. Suddenly it was too loud, I could smell the smoke from the fog machines on the dance floor, and the strobes were giving me a headache. Still, I tried to smile, look like I was having a good time, and help the guys find girls to talk to. That meant finding new reasons for why I wasn’t interested in the guys talking to me.

Which is where Goldilocks came from.

“So wait,” Dominic asked at our table. “The guy was too short?”

I nodded. “I want someone my height or taller. Looking down at someone is a turn-off.” It was complete bullshit, but they laughed at it nonetheless.

“And the other guy?”

“Gingers have no soul,” I quipped, drawing some joy from my friends at the very least.

“There’s picky and there’s…,” Ethan began, then paused, looking for the right words.

“…Goldilocks?” Tag tossed out.

And the name stuck.

We went again the next night, and it became easier as I slipped into the role of a demanding connoisseur of men. It was easier to act like I was a stuck-up bitch than to accept the fact I might just be a freak in the gay community and destined to a life of being alone. Very, very alone.

It was two weeks before summer was up, and we had all changed.

The guys realized they weren’t hideous monsters who girls would never talk to. They had chatted up more than a few of them, enough to know what they needed was confidence and a little bravery to get in there and engage them. While I realized why people ended up owning so many cats.

I was bitter, jaded, and more than that, disillusioned with the entire concept of romance. I was sixteen going on sixty, and I hated it. Worse than that, I was starting to hate myself. Up to now I had no problems with my sexuality. I mean, seriously, no problem whatsoever. My parents were cool, my friends were awesome. It was the other gay guys I had met who made me feel horrible about it. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted sex just as bad as anyone else did. I just wanted it to be with someone who meant something to me.

It didn’t sound so hard on paper.

So anyways, two weeks before summer was over, it was a Thursday, and we were sitting at what had become our regular table, discussing the comic books that came out yesterday. There was nothing going on at the club, nothing special planned. It was just another day in a long string of days. I say that because it is important to note, there was no warning whatsoever. It just happened.

The Cutest Boy in the World walked into the club.

Now, I don’t say that easily, and I don’t say that because I was desperate. I say it because when he walked in, even the guys paused and watched him walk in.

“Damn, that is sick hair,” Ethan commented, and he was right.

The boy was a little over six feet tall and had a shaggy mane of blond hair that made him look like he was supposed to be on a billboard for surfing.com or something. Where Ethan’s hair was always just there, this guy’s hair looked like it was glowing under the club lights. But that wasn’t where his hotness stopped. It was where it started. His face was cute in a way that looked both youthful and masculine all at once. He was smiling, and from the way it lit up his face, it looked like it was his default state. He was wearing a faded blue T-shirt with a long-sleeved green one underneath and a pair of jeans that looked a couple of inches away from falling off his hips but didn’t look baggy, just relaxed.

Everything about him screamed chill, and I was instantly drawn in.

I heard Brandon say, “Okay, I am secure enough in my sexuality to say that guy is damn good-looking,” but I was still staring at the boy.

“Go talk to him,” Tommy said, nudging me.

And the spell was broken.

“Why?” I asked, turning away. “Anyone that good-looking has to be stuck up as hell. I mean, he looks like a damn model.”

Brandon gave me a piercing stare, but I ignored it as Dominic said, “What does it hurt to go talk to him? If he’s a dick, then walk away. What do you have to lose?”

I didn’t answer, but the answer to his question was everything.

My faith had taken too many hits in a row for me to be able to handle someone that good-looking turning out to be just another douche. I’d rather sit over here and dream that he was perfect rather than walk over there and make it a reality. What did I have to lose? The last shred of a broken heart that hadn’t even been able to like someone for real. It was just too much for me to handle.

“Doesn’t matter,” I answered him quickly. “All guys like that are shallow as fuck.”

Which was when Brandon grabbed my arm and pulled me away from the table.

“What the hell?” I asked, once he had dragged me into the same corner Zach had taken me to. “Freak out much?”

“Sit down,” Brandon said, sounding as pissed as I had ever seen him.

I sat confused. “What is your malfunction?”

He began pacing in front of me, trying to organize his thoughts. “Look, Jordan, you know I love you, right?” I nodded slowly, not sure where this was going. “And if I could be gay for you, I would, but I can’t. I’m just not wired that way. So I am sorry you haven’t found the right guy yet, but you have to snap out of it.”

“Out of what?” I asked, hoping I could shake him off.

“Oh, knock it off,” he snapped at me. “We can all laugh at Goldilocks, but the truth is you met a bunch of assholes, but that doesn’t change the fact you keep looking.”

Was I that transparent? Was everything I was going through that obvious to everyone? I felt even worse as I wondered how much they had been talking about me behind my back.

“Okay, look, you’re not going to listen to me, so let me try something I do know you’ll listen to. Logic. You’ve talked to, like, what? Four guys total? Out of how many? Millions? So what’s your sample size? Like, less than a millionth of a percent. You can’t make any kind of determination based on that, and you know it. It’s like giving up killing Onyxia because you didn’t get her mount to drop the first time. You know how rare that is, so if you’re not willing to grind it out, then why bother?”

For those of you that don’t speak fluent nerd, allow me to explain. Onyxia is a dragon in World of Warcraft, and she can drop a dragon that you can mount and fly around on. The percentile chance of her dropping said mount is about 0.002 percent. Which means if you want that dragon, you need to kill her. A lot. As in a lot, a lot. It was an obscure reference but one he knew I would understand, since I am still hunting that stupid dragon.

In more ways than one.

“You’re a great guy. You’re good-looking, funny, smart, and you know who you are. What you’re looking for is stupid rare, and if you’re going to give up after four tries, then you were never in it for real. It’s not you, it’s just hard. If it wasn’t hard, then everyone would be in freaking love. You want a good guy? A real guy who is worth you? Then you have to grind it out, dumbass, not give up after a couple of tries.”

I felt my eyes begin to water as I realized what he was saying was right.

“Now stop crying, get up, and go talk to that incredibly hot guy before I realize I was wrong and might be gay after all.”

We both laughed, and I stood up and hugged him. “Thank you.”

He hugged me back. “We’re going to be friends forever, dude, so I need to set you straight now, because I ain’t going through this in college.”

He patted me on the back and then stepped back. “Now go get him, Goldilocks.”

I took a deep breath and looked over to where the boy was sitting by himself.

Steeling myself, I walked over to him. When I got close, he looked at me with the bluest eyes I had ever seen in person and smiled.

It was the moment I realized what Brandon was saying.

I wasn’t too young or too naïve, and I wasn’t too confused.

I was just right and needed to find the guy who would see that, no matter how long it took.

J
OHN
G
OODE
is a member of the class of ’88 from Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, specializing in incantations and spoken spells. At the age of fourteen, he proudly represented District 13 in the 65th Panem games, where he was disqualified for crying uncontrollably before the competition began. After that he moved to Forks, Washington, where against all odds he dated the hot, incredibly approachable werewolf instead of the stuck-up jerk of a vampire, but was crushed when he found out the werewolf was actually gayer than he was. After that he turned down the mandatory operation everyone must receive at sixteen to become pretty, citing that everyone pretty was just too stupid to live, before moving away for greener pastures. After falling down an oddly large rabbit hole, he became huge when his love for cakes combined with his inability to resist the commands of sparsely worded notes, and was finally kicked out when he began playing solitaire with the Red Queen’s 4th armored division. By eighteen he had found the land in the back of his wardrobe, but decided that thinly veiled religious allegories were not the neighbors he desired. When last seen, he had become obsessed with growing a pair of wings after discovering Fang’s blog and hasn’t been seen since.

Or he is this guy who lives in this place and writes stuff he hopes you read.

http://www.harmonyinkpress.com

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