If You Really Love Me (7 page)

Saul catches me by the arm before I take two steps. “We don’t need any snacks,” he says. “Come here.”

He pulls me down on the sofa beside him. Then he looks at me and smiles. “Where’s your family?”

“It’s just me and my mom,” I reply. “She’s out on a date.”

“Awesome.” He reaches over and takes my hand. “Did you lose your father?”

“No, he lost us. He walked out on Mom before I was born. I’ve never met him. I don’t even know what he looks like. Mom only knew him a couple of months, so there’s no pictures of him or anything.”

“What a dirtbag,” Saul just about snarls. “And I thought my old man was a first-class
shmendrik
.”

I want to ask what a shmendrik is, but I don’t. “What’s your family like?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing special. There’s my mom and dad and me. I’ve got a brother who’s twenty-four. He’s married and lives in New York. My grandmother lived with us for a few years after my grandfather died. She and her daughter, my mom, are like oil and vinegar, so she moved back to Boston a couple of months ago. I hated to see her go, but the house is a little less crazy without her.” His gaze gets serious as he looks at me. “When is your mom coming back?”

“I can’t really say for sure. She just met this guy last night, but she seems to like him a lot. She gets kinda clingy when she likes a guy that much, so she may not be back for a while.”

Saul doesn’t hesitate. His eyes lock on mine, and he leans slowly over, bringing his face to mine. I can feel the whisper of his breath on my chin. He lifts his left hand and wraps it around the back of my neck. It feels rough and strong, and it makes me shudder. His face comes closer. He closes his eyes. I close mine, and I hold my breath, and I shudder some more.

And then his lips touch mine.

I can’t describe how great that feels. Someone should come up with a new, special word for the moment of your first kiss, with a boy you really like.

W
E
’
VE
BEEN
kissing and touching on the sofa forever. I’m so hard it hurts. Saul throws his big arms around my neck and lies back on the sofa, pulling me on top of him. When I’m lying between his legs, I can feel that he’s hard too. He groans and kisses me again and again, urgently, as if his life depends on how many times he can press his lips to my face.

His hands are busy too. He slips them down between our bellies, and he begins to unbutton my jeans.

I grab his arm fast. “Wait….” I want him to take off my clothes, even though his body is a hundred times better than mine. I want to feel his naked body against mine. But Mom could come back any time now. She’ll have a fit if she catches me having sex in the apartment. Mom having a fit is never a good thing for me.

“It’s okay,” Saul says, pulling his hands away without waiting for me to explain why I stopped him. “We don’t have to rush into anything.” He pushes the hair away from my face with his fingers and reaches down to grab my waist. “God, for a tall guy, you’re so little. I can almost wrap my hands completely around your waist.”

“Sorry,” I mutter.
What did you expect? You think a guy who looks like him is actually going to be attracted to a scarecrow like you?

“What’re you sorry for? I think that’s sexy. I like how your body fits in my hands.” To prove it, he squeezes me by the waist and kisses me on the lips.

I’m grinning now, liking Saul more and more. At the most crucial moments, he always seems to know the perfect thing to say.

It’s getting late. The little digital clock on the wall over the television reads 6:37 p.m., and that is darkest night at this time of year. As much as I don’t want it, the time has come for Saul to go. There’s no telling what kind of mood Mom will be in when she gets home. If her mood is an ugly one, I don’t want Saul to see the effects of it.

Just as I’m working myself up to send him off, he gives me a sweet little peck on the forehead and announces, “I should get out of here.”

I rise slowly off him and stand up. Our clothes are a little twisted on our bodies from the explorations of our hands. He gets up. We each adjust our jeans and sweaters. I get my notebook, and he writes his phone number on a blank sheet at the back. Then he grabs me and kisses me one more time.

“Thanks for the movie,” he says. (There was a bit of a friendly argument at the ticket counter as to who was going to pay. I won.) “I had a good time. See ya.”

I stand in the hall and watch until he disappears down the stairs.

T
HE
SOUND
of the door wakes me up.

I roll over and look at the clock next to my bed: 12:08 a.m. I climb out of bed and walk up the hall in my T-shirt and boxers.

Mom is standing by the door, still wearing her jacket, her shoulder bag dangling from one hand. She looks dazed. I stand in the living room for several seconds before she finally turns her head my way and looks at me. “What are you doing up?” she asks in a distracted manner.

“I was asleep, actually. I heard you come in.” The state of her mood is hard for me to gauge. That means I have to be careful around her. “How was your date?”

“It was nice,” she replies. That’s an understatement, I know. She’s working the breakfast shift tomorrow, which means she has to be up at four thirty in the morning. She must have had a hell of a fine time with Breeze to stay out so late. “How was your date? Did you have dinner?”

“My date was fine.” Another understatement. “I had a fried egg sandwich and salad for dinner. Do you want me to fix something for you?”

“No. I’m going to bed. Good night.” She floats down the hall, and I can tell from the faraway look I saw in her eyes that her mind is on her long Sunday date. Whoever Breeze is, he is already working some kind of magic on my mom.

I
DON
’
T
expect things to be any different at school. Saul and I only have one class together, and I rarely see him at other times during the day. But I’m thinking about him, and it makes me feel good. The other kids avoid me, as usual. I stop by my locker before first period to get my history book. A folded piece of notebook paper falls out. I pick up the paper and unfold it. It reads:
I’m stalking you. (Not really. But sort of.) Saul
.

The smile flashes across my face before I know it. I look up and down the hall, but Saul is not in sight. I wish I knew where he is right now. But I don’t have time to go find him, and even if I did, it’s probably not a good idea for me to do it. I don’t want to make him a freak by association around here.

I’m so glad he left me this note. It means he’s thinking about me too. God, that makes me so happy.

I still have some of the money left that Mr. Luigi paid me. On my lunch period, I treat myself to a burger and salad combo. With my tray, I make my way through the crowded dining area until I find an empty table. It’s empty because a bunch of kids ate there and didn’t bother to carry their dirty trays and dishes to the dishwasher’s station. I push aside one of the trays and sit down.

The burger is nice and hot, the salad is cool and crisp. I lucked out going through the line when I did. For once, the food is really fresh. I eat slowly. Soon, my mind is drifting. There is sudden movement right behind me, and I think it’s just some guy on his way to somewhere else. Only he doesn’t pass by. He plops down on the empty metal stool beside me.

“Man. Could you be any harder to find in this place?” Saul snipes at me with a smile. “I thought I was gonna have to send out a bloodhound.”

I’m surprised and pleased to see him but also nervous. “What are you doing here?”

“Cutting my Econ class so I can drop in on your lunch period,” he answers. “I couldn’t wait until Botany to see you.”

I take a quick look around. A couple of kids are giving us these weird, what-the-hell looks. Saul shouldn’t be here, not with me.

“Why are you hiding out on the backside of the cafeteria at a dirty table?”

“This was the only vacancy.” I hope he won’t keep pressing me on this. To make sure he doesn’t, I ask, “How’d you know this is my lunch period? And how’d you know where my locker is?”

“I asked at the office. The secretary didn’t want to tell me at first, so I told her you forgot your inhaler this morning and your mom gave it to me so I could get it to you, and if I didn’t get it to you, you could wind up having an asthma attack and going to the hospital. She gave up the information right after that. Please tell me you don’t really have asthma, because I’m going to feel like a major dirtbag if you do.” He leans toward me, his big shoulder almost touching my puny one.

“No, I don’t have asthma.” My throat is suddenly so dry my voice squeaks.

He’s sitting with his back to the table, very close to my seat, and his face shows how glad he is that we’re together once more. For the first time, it occurs to me that he actually
likes
me. I don’t want him to be hurt, but we’re sitting together in a crowded cafeteria, and kids are looking at us.

Saul kicks up a conversation, and I realize he’s not the silent person he appears to be in Botany. It turns out he is a real talker. He tells me about everything: his dad’s father, a big homophobe who would probably disown him if he knew the things Saul did with me on my living room sofa; his addiction to protein shakes; his favorite TV shows. I like hearing him talk, and I’m interested in everything he says. When he mentions how hooked he was on
Avatar: The Last Airbender
as a little kid, my brain blazes with excitement.

“Man, that’s one of my favorite shows of all time,” I blurt out, interrupting him. “I must’ve watched every episode about a hundred times, and I still get totally geeked every time it comes on.”

“I’ve got the whole series downloaded on my iPad,” Saul says. “Why don’t we get together and watch it from the beginning?”

“Wow. That’d be so cool.”

He says we’ll hook up after school, drive to my place, and watch the first two episodes before he takes off to do his workout. I look around again as he talks. None of the other kids are paying much attention to us. Thank God for that.

A
FTER
SCHOOL
,
Saul drives me home. We go up to my apartment, and Mom is still at work, so Saul settles down on the sofa to get his iPad ready while I make peanut butter sandwiches. We eat our sandwiches, huddled together on the sofa over his iPad, watching Katara and her brother Sokka free Aang from his ice cocoon. By the time the episode gets to the first fight between Airbender Aang and Firebender Zuko, Saul and I are both cheering crazily for Aang like spectators at a boxing match.

We don’t make it to the second episode, however. We laugh at how stupid we sound, doing rah-rahs for a cartoon character. I watch Saul as we tease each other. He’s so good-looking and rippling it sucks the laughter right out of me. His laughter fades too. He turns off his iPad. Then he grabs me, and we spend the next hour or so trading gropes and peanut-butter-flavored kisses.

At six o’clock, he lets me go and stands up. He stares down at me for a while with this wild look in his eyes. “Man,” he gasps with a hot little grin. “I could
so
take those clothes off you right now and… and….”

I smile back at him. “And what?”

“You don’t want to know.” He makes a frustrated noise in his throat. I’ve already told him Mom’s shift was over an hour ago, and she could walk in at any minute. “You want to come work out with me?”

I want to. But Monday is the day Mom expects me to clean the bathroom and the kitchen. I have to make sure that’s done. “Maybe another time.”

I get up to walk him out. He works his hand under my shirt and massages the small of my back as he pastes a long good-bye kiss on me. After he leaves, I start doing the cleaning. Even scrubbing out the toilet doesn’t bring down my mood. This has been the first day at school in a long time that I haven’t felt like a complete freak.

T
HE
LAST
thing I do in cleaning the kitchen is mop the floor. This evening, I mop my way toward the back door. It’s been a while since I talked to Cary, and I’m dying to tell him about Saul.

I take the fire escape down and knock at Cary’s back door. Through the window, I see him enter the kitchen. He gets a sort of pissed look on his face when he sees me. The second he opens the door, he says, “Where the hell have you been hiding?”

It’s freezing out, and I’m shivering. I hurry into the kitchen, rubbing my upper arms with my hands.

Cary closes the door. “I came up twice yesterday and nobody answered at your place,” he continues, chewing me out. “Hell, I started to wonder if you’d passed out in there or something. You never go anywhere on Sunday.” He’s wearing a tracksuit; his mom keeps the thermostat set low in cold months like my mom does. He takes off the jacket and hands it to me.

I pull the jacket on, wrap my arms around myself, and take a seat at the table. “Yesterday was my movie date with Saul. I told you that, remember?”

“Oh yeah. So how did that go?” He sits down across from me. “Did you ask him the big question?”

“Well… not exactly.” The grin spreads across my face. “But he
is
gay. He put his hand on my leg, right there in the movie theater, and we wound up holding hands. Then, after the movie, he came up to the apartment and we… did stuff.”

Cary’s mouth forms this exaggerated O, and he wags his head. “Oh ho. So that’s why you didn’t answer the door. You were in there gettin’ busy with the dude.”

“Actually, I don’t remember hearing any knock.”

“It must’ve really been wild if you didn’t even hear me pounding on the door.” He looks at me and nods approvingly. “Well well well. Scared little Ellis finally got himself some.”

“I can hear you, boys.” That’s Cary’s mom, calling out from the living room.