Date: Sun, 7 Mar 2004 21:08:08 -0800 (PST) From: SJL Subject: Paul and Adam: Chapter Eleven As always, I adore any comments you care to send to me. The address is geekwriter143@yahoo.com Don't read this if you shouldn't read this. Be a nice person. Eat more vegetables. On to Chapter Eleven, from Adam's point of view. ----------------------------------------------------- "So, what's in Chicago?" Laura asks as we head up towards Waterloo. She doesn't have air conditioning in her car so the windows are open, and that and the noise of the wheels on the gravel makes us have to almost shout to hear each other. "My, uh, aunt and uncle," I say. There's a pack of Winstons on the dashboard and I reach to pick it up. "Do you mind?" I ask. "They're my mom's," Laura says. "But she won't notice. I didn't know you smoked." I place the cigarette between my lips, lean down and cup my hand around the end as I light it. "I don't," I say after exhaling. "Just, you know, when I'm stressed." "What's going on?" I shrug. "Nothing." I gaze out the window at the fields of soybeans and corn flying past. I can smell a hog confinement farm somewhere nearby and the dust from the road smells thick like limestone. "Your dad was supposed to drive you in this morning?" she asks. I nod. "Yeah. But he spaced. Work's crazy, lately. And, you know, he's got his new girlfriend to worry about. Thanks for taking me. I called my dad, but he was already so busy-" Laura slams on the brakes and jerks the wheel, sending the car spinning around 360 degrees. If I wasn't wearing my seatbelt I would have probably flown out the window. When the car stops spinning the gravel dust floats through the open windows. My heart is hammering in my throat. "Jesus," I whisper. "What was that? Rabbit?" "Fucking piece of shit liar is what it was," Laura snaps. She turns the car off and looks at me. "What is going on, Adam?" I stare at her. I still haven't caught my breath. "You almost killed us on purpose?" "I didn't almost kill us, I just did a donut. Jesus. And what's with this?" She snatches the cigarette out of my hand and tosses it out the window. "Coach would blow a gasket if he knew you were fucking up your lungs." "You did that on purpose," I say slowly, trying to wrap my mind around it. "It got your attention, didn't it? Now what the hell is going on?" "With what? I'm gonna miss my bus if you-" "Don't give me that going to Chicago to visit your aunt and uncle crap," she snaps. "I know you weren't planning on going anywhere this morning because I saw you leaving the pool on your bike. You wouldn't have been there if you hadn't been expecting to have practice. Are you running away?" "No." I pull my knees up and rest my chin on them. "Adam," she says softly. She reaches out and touches my arm. "Look, if things are bad I'll help you, but I am not helping you run away. I'm more than a little pissed off that you asked me to." "I didn't ask you to help me run away." "No, you lied to me, instead. Do you even have an aunt and uncle in Chicago?" I sigh and shake my head. "No." "So what were you going to do when you got there?" I shrug. "I don't know. Disappear." Laura strokes my hair and I close my eyes as I feel her fingers against my scalp. "Do you want to tell me what happened?" I don't say anything. I'm dangerously close to crying. "You have a fight with your dad?" "He thinks I'm gay," I whisper. I'm surprised I told her, but it feels OK once the words are out. "Are you?" I look over at her and shrug. "I don't know. Probably. Or bi. I don't know." She pulls her hand away and looks out the windshield. "So you called me for help?" she asks. She sounds pissed. "Jesus." "Laura, I..." I have no idea what to say to her. "You couldn't have called Jake? Or is this some kind of sick joke the two of you cooked up? Hey, wouldn't it be hilarious to humiliate Laura even more than she already is?" "What are you talking about?" "Do you laugh about me?" she asks. "Do you think it's funny that the two guys that I-" She breaks off and closes her eyes, shakes her head. "Jake's gay?" I ask. Laura looks over at me for a moment, then puts her hand to her mouth. "Oh, my God. You didn't know." I shake my head. "When did this happen? I thought you guys were dating." Laura shrugs. "He told me last week. You can't tell him I told you. You can't tell anyone." "Like I would," I say. "Are you really pissed at me?" She shakes her head. "For what? For being the second guy I like to turn out to be gay in less than a week?" She rakes her fingers through her hair. "Oh, my God. I'm going to need therapy. It wasn't me, was it?" "No." Laura closes her eyes and rests her head against the back of the driver's seat. "What happened with your dad?" she asks after a moment. "He kick you out?" I shake my head. "No. He just...I got home from practice and he was going through my room. He was looking for evidence, I guess, not that there's much to find." "OK," she says. "And then?" "And what?" I ask. "And he's a selfish son of a bitch who only pays attention to me when he thinks I'm fucking up." "Was he mad when you told him?" "I didn't tell him." "So then why Chicago?" "You wouldn't understand." "Not if you don't tell me, I won't." I reach out and touch the delicate Black Hills gold cross Laura wears around her neck. "Aren't you going to tell me that I'm going to hell?" Laura looks down at her cross and sighs. "I don't know who's going to hell and who's not. I talked to Reverend White about Jake for a long time. A lot of the things he said surprised me-I thought he'd be more cut and dried about things. Is that why you stopped coming to church?" "I just stopped going when my parents did," I say. "It wasn't really a conscious decision." "You should come back," she says. "We have a group that meets every Thursday night to pray and just hang out. It's a lot of fun." I shake my head and look out the window. I want another cigarette but I don't reach for one. "Not exactly my scene," I say. "Come on. We're meeting at Chuck's tonight." I laugh. "Hanging out with Chuck Anderson on purpose. That'll be the day." Laura looks confused. "What's wrong with him? I thought you guys were friends." "I just laugh at his jokes, that's all," I tell her. "Despite myself." "What's wrong with his jokes? I mean, besides the fact that he can't tell them very well." "Then you don't listen to them," I say softly. Laura's still gazing at me with a quizzical look on her face. "How do you fit four fags on a bar stool?" I ask her. "Or, um, how many fudge packers does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Laura sighs. "He doesn't mean it like that." "Oh, right, he's a friendly fag hater." "He's not like that," she says. "He just...he just tells stupid jokes sometimes. It's not a big deal, Adam." "You only think that because the jokes aren't about you." "They're not about you, either." "Yes, they are. Maybe nobody knows it, but they are." "Christ. Jake's his best friend, you know." "What does that have to do with anything?" I demand. Finally, I reach for the pack of Winstons and light another cigarette. "You tell Coach about this and I'll kick your ass," I say. Laura takes the cigarette from me, but instead of throwing it out the window she takes a drag, then hands it back. "Why would Jake still be his friend if Chuck was such a homophobe?" Laura asks. "Does Chuck know?" She shakes her head. "Not yet. But, I mean if things were as bad as you say they are, why wouldn't Jake say something to him? Why would Jake still hang out with him?" "Because he's scared," I tell her. "Because you just smile and laugh and die inside when the Chuck Andersons of the world tell their stupid fucking jokes. Because you can't do anything else without the risk of exposure, and that's..." I shake my head. "I can't imagine anything worse than people knowing," I tell her. "Jake probably can't, either." Laura's silent. I tap my fingers on the door handle. "Can we get this thing moving again? I feel like I'm baking, here, like I'm one of Caroline's cookies or something." Laura starts the car and turns it around, heading us back home. I know without asking that she won't drive me to the bus station. I don't really want her to, anymore. I don't even know what I was planning on doing if I did end up making it to Chicago. "You should be careful with her," Laura says as the car begins to pick up speed, a cloud of dust rising behind us. "Who?" The wind feels good against my face. "Caroline. You're so worried about Chuck and the people that actually care about you, but she's the one you have to worry about." "You don't know her," I say. "I've known her my entire life. So have you, so don't play dumb. If you let her find out, it'll just be another weapon in her arsenal. I don't care if you are friends with her brother, she uses everybody's weaknesses against them." "She knows," I say softly. Laura looks over at me. "What?" I don't know if she didn't hear me or if she can't believe it. "She knows," I say more loudly. "And she doesn't give a shit, so don't tell me what she'd do. You don't know her." She silent as she speeds around a slow moving combine. Her face looks tense and she's chewing on her lower lip. "Look, Laura," I say. "Thank you." "For what?" "For listening to me. For trying to look out for me. I know you don't like her. I can't blame you. I didn't really like her before, either, and I know I can't talk you into liking her because Paul spent years trying to talk me into it and it didn't work." "He's the one you're seeing," she says. It's not a question. "What?" "When we...before, when we kissed, you said you were seeing someone. It's Paul Johansen, isn't it?" I press my back into the seat and look out the window, take a long drag on my cigarette. "It figures. First Caroline steals Mitch from Stacy, and then Paul..." She sighs and shakes her head. "Paul what?" I ask. "Steals me from you?" "Never mind," Laura says. "Forget it." "I'm sorry. I was...I shouldn't have kissed you, OK? I don't know if it'll make it better or worse, but I was involved with him even before you." She laughs bitterly. "Great. So I was, what? An experiment?" "No. Jesus, Laura, no." "What, then?" She's starting to cry. I feel like an asshole for not knowing how much she liked me. "I did like you," I say. "It was just...it was bad timing." It sounds lame, even to me. "They're not like us," Laura says as she takes the corner by the Haskell's farm onto the blacktop. "It's not...they just don't have the same values as we do." I frown and look over at her. "What?" "It's not their fault," she says. "It's just...it's just in their genes to be deceitful. That's just the way Asian people are, you know? There's nothing they can do about it." "Inuit," I say. Laura looks over at me. I can't believe I ever thought she was pretty. Maybe it's just what she's saying that makes her so ugly all of a sudden. "What?" "They're not Asian. Their dad's family was from Greenland. And I don't see what that has do to with anything." She shrugs. "I don't mean anything by it, I'm just saying. And if you're so worried about people finding out, then you probably shouldn't hang around him so much. I mean, everybody knows he's gay. It's obvious." I hate the way girls fight, the way they say things you could almost think were friendly if they didn't have such sharp razorblades hidden inside them. With guys it's so much easier. You piss them off and they punch you and then it's over. Maybe Laura knows that she's pissed me off, because she doesn't say anything else on the ride back into town. "You want me to drop you at home?" she asks finally. "Yeah," I say. It's the last place I want to go, but I don't want her to drop me off at Paul's. "You sure you don't want to come to the youth group tonight?" she asks as he pulls into my driveway. "Yeah," I say. I get out of the car and lean down to look at her through the open window. "Thanks, though." She smiles and shrugs. I step back and watch her pull out of the driveway, watch her drive away, make sure she's gone before I pick my bike up off the front lawn and head over to Paul's. I laugh when I see that Paul's still asleep. He's on his back, now, one hand resting on his chest, the other arm stretched across the bed. I pull my clothes off and climb over him, nestling myself between his body and the wall. "What are we going to do?" I ask softly, stroking his high cheekbones with my fingertips. Paul stirs and turns his body towards me in his sleep. I wrap my arm around his shoulders and pull him close. "Tell me what I'm going to do," I whisper. "Tell me that it's all going to be OK." Paul stretches and his eyes flutter open. "Hey," he whispers, his voice thick with sleep. "Hey," I say, kissing him. He runs his hand down my side, rests his fingers on my ass. "You're naked," he says. "Mmm." I kiss him again and keep my eyes open, look into his eyes, so dark brown they almost seem black. "How was practice?" "Cancelled. Coach's wife is having the baby." I'll tell him about my father later. I'll probably even tell him about trying to get Laura to drive me to Waterloo, about wanting to escape to Chicago and disappear. I'll tell him that I came out to her, but I won't tell him what she said. I forget that he's not white until someone reminds me. I guess I can tell that he's not, that his eyes are different, that even when he's pale his skin is tan, but he just looks like Paul to me until someone says or does something stupid. We were probably in third grade before I was even conscious of it. That's when Hannah Kinder started calling him chocolate cake face. Caroline, who was fierce even at ten years old, cut off one of Hannah's braids and started calling her jiggle butt, a name that people still use sometimes behind Hannah's back. That was the year he almost died. He mixed ammonia and bleach and rubbed it on his skin because he didn't want to look like his father, who'd left and who Paul had just realized wasn't ever coming back. I wonder how I could have forgotten something like that. I want to ask him if he thinks about it a lot, if, unlike me, he's always aware that he's different. I wonder if it hurt his feelings when Hannah called him chocolate cake face or when in the seventh grade Jason Randolph did an impression of Paul by taping his eyes into a slant and jumping around in what was supposed to be a war dance. We've never talked about it, which seems strange to me now. I want to ask him about it, but I don't know how to bring it up. "I love you," I say. I say it because it's true and because I like how happy it makes him to hear it. "I love you, too," Paul says, stroking my bare thigh with his fingers. "I love it when I wake up and you're next to me." I push him onto his back and start kissing his neck, kiss my way down his chest and slide his t-shirt up so that I can kiss his bare stomach. He smells faintly of cum and I stroke his him and smile up at him. "You jerk off last night?" I ask. My tongue darts out to taste his skin. "Yeah," Paul whispers, gazing down at me. "I can smell it on you," I say. "What were you thinking about?" He blushes and looks away from me. "You." "Yeah? What about me?" I start to tug on the waistband of his boxers. He lifts his hips and lets me slide them down his thighs. His cock is just starting to get hard, lolling to one side as it starts to swell. I run my tongue along it from base to head, pull his foreskin together with my lips and suckle gently. Paul gasps and reaches down to slide his fingers through my hair. "What were you thinking about?" I ask. "You thinking about fucking me?" He nods. "Yeah." "You thinking about how I love your cock?" I ask. He blushes again. I love how easy it is to make him blush, how every time he blushes his cock throbs. I lay my head on his hip and gaze at his cock as I start to stroke it, gently pulling the foreskin back, then pulling it back up to hide his cock again. I bend his cock to the side and peer into the circle his foreskin makes around his cockhead. "Hello in there," I say, making Paul laugh. "Come on out and play," I say, sliding his foreskin back slowly. I kiss the tip of his cock, tongue the slit. "I think he's shy," I say to Paul as I let go of his cock. It's mostly hard, now, the dark pink tip of his dick just beginning to poke out from beneath the cover of his foreskin. "Maybe he doesn't want to come out and play." "He does," Paul says. "Trust me." "I wish I wasn't cut," I say as I stroke the hot, silky skin of his cock. "I like your dick just like it is," Paul says. "Yeah, but still," I say, straddling his thighs and gazing down at him. "I can't imagine how fucking amazing it would feel if I didn't have scar tissue, you know?" "Well, here," Paul whispers, reaching for my cock. He bends it down and places our cocks head to head. "You can borrow mine." I groan as he slides his foreskin up around the head of my cock. It's so hot, so soft, feels so amazing to be enveloped by him like that. "Jesus," I murmur. Paul smiles up at me, his eyelids still heavy with sleep. "I always wanted to be cut," he admits. "What? Why?" I gaze down at our cocks, at his gorgeous foreskin stretched over the head of my dick. He shrugs. "Because everybody else is." I lean down to kiss him. "Why the hell would you want to be like everybody else when you can be better than everybody else?" Paul blushes, clearly pleased. I pull back, then stretch out next to him. "You are, without a doubt, the sexiest," I kiss his jaw, "hottest," I kiss the soft skin of his neck, "most amazing guy I have ever known," I kiss the hollow of his collarbone, "in my entire life." I don't even have to look up to see if he's blushing. My fingers are against his face and I can feel the heat of his skin. "I love everything about you," I whisper. The air conditioning is cool against my skin, so I pull the covers over us and curl up in his arms. "I love your voice, and the way you smell, and your skin, and the feel of your fingers in my hair." We're rubbing our cocks against each other, but it's slow and lazy and not about getting off. I slide my fingers over his chest, lay my head over his heart. I can hear it, can feel it beating against my cheek. "My whole life is fucked up," I whisper. "Everything's fucked up except you." Paul strokes my hair. His hand is warm against the back of my neck. "I came by earlier," I whisper. "When?" "A little after seven. I went home after practice and found my dad going through my room." Paul strokes my hair gently. "He knows. I denied it, but he knows." "How?" Paul asks the same question I've been asking myself all morning. I sigh. "You know how easy it was to hear my parents fighting?" I ask softly. "How easy it was to hear my dad and Rebecca the other day?" "Oh," Paul says. "Yeah. I guess I never thought about it working the other way around. I'm sure he heard us." "Oh," Paul says again. He knows as well as I do that the noises we make, the things we say-the things I say-aren't things anybody wants their parents to hear. Christ. He probably heard me begging Paul to fuck me with his big cock. "Is he pissed?" Paul asks. "Yeah." "Did he believe you when you denied it?" "I don't know," I admit. "In a way I don't even care. He can think whatever he wants." "Are you going to tell him the truth?" I shrug. "I don't know." I close my eyes and let my head rise and fall with the rhythm of Paul's chest. His arms are warm and strong around me, and I imagine that we're just waking up in our own bed in an apartment somewhere, and it feels good.