Loving Jay (12 page)

“She was beautiful.”

That stumped me. Here I was thinking he was gay and he was checking out pretty girls. “Was she?”

“What did you think of her legs?”

I frowned at him. “Yeah, poor girl. I was thinking she looked damn cold and isn’t it great we are guys and can wear trousers and socks.”

“That’s it? What else did you think about her?”

Was this a test? Was he testing my powers of observation? Gay guys were supposed to see these things on women, weren’t they? Weren’t they supposed to notice haircuts and weight loss? Oh, God—maybe he was testing my gayness? Did I want to pass or fail? I searched around for something to say and hit upon makeup. Yes! Makeup! Jay loved makeup and he would see I was great if I noticed makeup, too!

“I noticed her red lipstick. It was bright.”

“Bright.” Jay’s voice had gone flat as if I had just failed a crucial test. Shit! What else could I say to make him appreciate me?

“Yes. I noticed that you never wear red lipstick like that, even when you are wearing red clothes. Why not? I see you in lipstick sometimes. But never red. Do you have red? I thought you would have red. You wear a lot of red.”

Jay just blinked at me. “Let me get this straight. You were talking to a gorgeous blonde woman in a tight red skirt and heels, with a chest that has
Playboy
ringing her once a month for an interview, who was smiling and flirting with you like crazy and all you noticed was that she looked cold and her lipstick was bright?”

Oh. Whoops. We were talking about breasts. Straight men usually notice breasts, don’t they?
Shit!
“Ahh….”

With his head tilted to the side he speared me with his next question. “Liam, are you straight?”

Shit!
“Ahh….”
Confession time, Liam! You can do it! How the hell are you ever going to ask the guy out if you can’t even admit to liking guys?
“Ahh… not exactly.”

Jay looked shocked. “Not exactly? You mean you are gay?”

I cast a quick look around the train to see who was listening to our conversation. You never knew who was around these days—your high school principal, your mum’s best friend, John’s footy coach. I must’ve had some sort of frightened look on my face or something because Jay’s eyes went wide and he suddenly whispered, “Oh. My. Gawd! You’re in the closet!”

“Ahh….”

“You are!” He acted like he’d never met a person who was hiding their sexuality before. It was if I were some sort of freak of nature. His mouth dropped open and his hands came up to his face in some sort of “I am so shocked” pantomime.

This was not exactly the best place to be having this sort of conversation. I hissed angrily at him. “I’m not in the closet! I don’t even know if I am gay or not. I’m just… exploring my options.” Yes. “Exploring my options” sounded like a good thing to be. Isn’t that what people said when they were going job hunting? Well, I was going… sex hunting.

Jay didn’t look convinced but he at least got the message that we shouldn’t be broadcasting our conversation. He lowered his voice to an intimate whisper. “How can you not know if you’re gay or not?”

Well that was the big twenty-million-dollar question, wasn’t it? “Not everyone is like you, Jay. You sound like you have had it easy in life. You’ve never doubted yourself, you have a loving, supportive family, and you are free to be different. I don’t have that. I am trying to wade through some deep bullshit at the moment. Things are not as clear-cut for me. And why should I go through the hassle and the pain of telling everyone I am gay if I am not really? I just want to be sure of myself and make sure it’s worth it.”

It pleased me that Jay didn’t just wave it off like it was an easy decision. As if I were trying to decide whether to go to the beach or not today? Or should I buy the salt-reduced tomato sauce or stick with the better-tasting salt-laden variety? He sat back, deep in thought, as the train took us closer to our destination. He sipped his mocha and I appreciated the space. I had just cracked the door another inch by admitting my feelings to Jay and he was giving me room to breathe and digest without panicking.

We had just pulled out of the Canning Bridge Station when a sudden thought occurred to him and he became reanimated. “Oh my Gawd! I almost forgot! Mum reminded me last night but it was too late to ring you or send you a message because it was after eight o’clock at night and I didn’t know what time you go to bed. Because I sometimes go to bed before eight o’clock. Getting up before four in the morning is a real killer and I really need my beauty sleep. And I know you must need your sleep, too. Not that you aren’t beautiful enough or anything. Oh my Gawd! Does that offend you? Am I allowed to say you are beautiful? Because I hate to be sexist and only say women are beautiful and men are handsome. That’s so mean, isn’t it? Because I’ve known a lot of handsome women who I wouldn’t call beautiful. And there are men who—”

“Jay!”

“Huh?”

“Off track or something, are you?”

“What?”

I happily smiled at him. He was atrociously bad at going off on tangents. I was glad the attack hadn’t changed any of that. “You started off by saying your mum reminded you….” I prompted.

“Oh my Gawd! Just slap me! My mum wants to know when you can come over for dinner? She was thinking Sunday lunch? Because dinner would just be too hard when you have to work the next morning and I know that Saturday night and Friday night are ‘date nights’ and I wouldn’t want you to have to miss out because my family wants to meet you and say thank you and everything. And I told them you wouldn’t want to, and then Mum said that maybe you would. And Jackie said that you….”

I couldn’t slap him, so I did the next best thing. I brought both hands up and encircled his head—one hand across his mouth so it cut off the noises coming from his lips, and one hand around the back to hold his head still.

“Jay! Stop, man! Let a person respond. Jeez! Are you stopped?” I grinned at him and he nodded his head within the hold of my hands. “Right. I’m sorry but I can’t come to Sunday lunch because I have plans with my family. But Saturday night would be fine. I don’t have a date, and if you tell me your address and what time, I’ll be there.”

J
AY
ENDED
up coming to pick me up. I had assumed correctly that Jay’s house would be within walking distance of the bus, since he caught one each morning, but when Jay told me that I could turn up any time after five o’clock and that I should just park on the grass, I had to confess I didn’t have a car and—in a blow to my manly image—I didn’t have a license.

“Is it because of your leg?” he’d asked me, just curiously, not with any mockery in his voice.

It was a touchy subject for me and I had borne the brunt of my father’s scorn over the issue for many years. “Not really. It’s just more of bad memories of the accident. I was sixteen when the accident happened, then most of my mates got their licenses when they were seventeen. I was nearly nineteen before I tried, but I ended up panicking behind the wheel. So I left it. After a while I just got used to taking the bus or having friends and family drive me around. Now I really don’t see the point. Why spend fifteen grand a year on insurance, petrol, maintenance, and a car loan, for something I would use twice a week at the most? Instead I put it on my mortgage.”

So at five o’clock on Saturday afternoon, just before the sun set in the winter sky, I stood freezing my nuts waiting for Jay on the paving. I had fussed over what to wear, but in the end decided that if Jay’s family couldn’t accept my jeans and woolen jumper, then it was their own bad luck. I left the hair fixing and makeup to Jay.

The sky was turning a lovely shade of pink when Jay motored up the road, looking for an empty parking spot to pull into. It could only have been Jay’s car—no one else on earth could or would drive something as bad as that. He saw me and turned sharply into the space in front, waving gaily through the windscreen. I stepped back, unsure if I even wanted to get near that vehicle, but he leaned over and pushed the door open.

“Liam! Hi! Get in. Am I late?”

I shook my head and checked out his sunny-yellow car, complete with rust on every single panel and sprinkled with a fine layer of dirt. “I dunno, dude. I think if I get in this car I’ll exit wearing glitter and makeup and calling everyone I meet ‘darling.’ This has to be the gayest car I have ever seen!”

“Oh, hush! You’ll hurt Daisy’s feelings.”

“Daisy?” Oh, God! He’d even named the piece of junk!

He gave me a fake, put-upon face. “I’ll have you know that Daisy is a masterpiece of engineering. She is a classic Mini Cooper and worth a lot of money.”

I shook my head at his naiveté and checked out her rear. “Dude, I think they’re worth a lot of money when they aren’t full of rust and dents and aren’t held together with masking tape. Although, while I have to admit the pink fluffy dice hanging from the rearview mirror and the plastic flower hanging from the aerial does help drive the price up, I’m not sure if the rainbow flag in the window will do much for her.”

“Oh, piss off and get in, you wanker! There’s only one piece of tape on her bumper, and it’s duct tape, not masking tape. Just like MacGyver uses. I love my car and when I make a million dollars I’m going to do her up just right. But for now I’m a poor man.”

I chuckled and squeezed into the passenger seat. The inside of the car was neat and tidy, but rusty and broken. I had at last thrown away the crutches and I was glad because I would’ve probably had to stick them out the window to be able to fit in the cramped interior. Jay waited while I fastened my seatbelt, and we zoomed off.

Being closer to the ground than most other cars, it seemed as if we were flying through the streets, but I watched closely as Jay drove—an obsession since the accident until I knew the driver—and he was extremely competent. He shifted smoothly and kept well within the speed limit. His attention didn’t wander from the road and he didn’t pull out in front of cars like some people had a habit of doing. Of course, since it was Jay, his mouth never stopped moving while he was doing all this and his free hand frequently waved around, elucidating his point, but I never felt unsafe.

The house he pulled up at was pretty typical for the area—brick and tile, single story, decent-sized block, average garden. Jay had told me he lived with his mother, and his two older sisters lived nearby. Inside, Carol greeted me with a warm hug and told me we were having lasagna and salad for dinner. I assured her I loved lasagna and she flitted off to get me a beer while Jay introduced me to his sister, Jackie.

Jackie was… surprising. There was a family resemblance but she was nothing like Jay. It was as if someone forgot to tell her that you are supposed to grow past the age of nine. She was tiny
—
she barely came up to my chest. She had the same slender frame as Jay and his mother and that just made her seem even smaller. She was perfectly in proportion, just… pint-size. And I should’ve guessed her personality immediately. To make up for her size she had twice the amount of temperament and everything about her said, “Don’t mess with me if you want to keep your nuts.” From the tips of her chunky combat boots to the black spikes in her hair she screamed, “Watch out!”

She folded her arms across her chest and looked me up and down. Her voice was abrasive and she spat out her words like kitchen knives. “So you’re Liam, huh?”

No one has ever accused me of being a coward. And besides, if she yelled at me too much, I could just pick her up and push her through the cat door. “William Gregory Turner at your service, ma’am. Your service and Jay’s service. If you have a need, I will have the trusty steed and come racing.”

She didn’t crack a smile—just glared in my direction. “I understand you can’t race anywhere. Your leg doesn’t work, or something?”

I put my hand dramatically to my chest and sighed, “Alas and alack. My fair maiden, you are correct. But I can walk. So if you could just hold the dragon still until I can limp over, I will slay him for you.”

“You’re full of shit, do you know that?”

I rolled my eyes, heaving a sigh again. “I know. It has been mentioned on many occasions to me. But what can I say? You are what you eat.”

The sound of crickets chirping could be heard in the silence. Carol and Jay looked at me in horror, as if I had done something wrong. Didn’t anyone ever stand up to this mini-terror?

She frowned at me and her voice was flat when she replied, “William? I thought your name was Liam?”

“I’m named after my father. He is William or Will, so my parents call me by the second part of the name, Liam.”

“If your parents wanted to call you Liam, why did they name you William? Why not just Liam?”

“I don’t know. I have my mother on speed dial if you would like to call and ask her.”

Those crickets sounded really loud in the silence as Jay and Carol held their breath. Jackie and I stared at each other, she assessing me, me daring her to say whatever she wanted. She tried one more time to yank my chain.

“Why don’t you have a driver’s license?”

I could see she was just trying to rile me up. So I dished back to her. “Probably the same reason why you never grew any taller than four foot nine. I was too scared.”

Even the crickets held their breath this time.

Finally the side of her mouth jerked up. She flicked her eyes to Jay, and she gave me her stamp of approval. “I like him. You can keep him around.” She stomped out of the room on her four-inch rubber soles and Jay spun in my direction. His eyes were as wide as his mouth.

“You… you…. Oh my Gawd! She actually likes you! Is the sky green? Has the grass turned purple? Am I going to vote for Labor at the next election? I can’t believe it!”

I smiled at his reaction. “Really? You don’t vote Labor?”

He slapped me lightly on the chest as he walked past. “Daahling. Remember the poor hairless bunnies? How could I vote anything but Greens? Now follow me. I have a wonderful present for you in my room.”

He led me down the passageway to his room where he immediately opened a drawer and began rummaging. His room was startling. I knew that Jay’s personality was over-the-top, but his room was ten times more. It was painted stark white, fitted out with white furniture, and then decorated like someone had come in and thrown splashes of brightly colored paint everywhere. The posters and pictures that decorated the wall were eclectic and vivid—from Van Gogh’s
Starry Night
to a celebrity shot of Kiss in full makeup. A white wicker chair in the corner was stuffed with cushions in magenta, neon blue, and royal purple. Scarves and jackets were draped over the edge of wardrobe doors, thrown over furniture or just left on the floor where they fell, and a large pin-up board was filled with photos of Jay and a whole bunch of people I assumed were his friends. There were hooks drilled into the walls where bags hung, a giant stuffed panda was sitting next to the door, and a didgeridoo was propped up in the corner.