Chapter Seven

chapter seven

THE REST OF THE WEEKEND IS SO BUSY I BARELY HAVE TIME TO THINKabout anything besides the festival. Friday it was only half a day, but Saturday is from morning until night, and I’m on-site the entire time, cleaning puke, restocking condoms, running the ring toss booth, the health booth, the balloon pop booth. At one point the power goes out to the Fair But Frozen Maid truck and I need to stop the whole festival so I can flip a breaker. Sunday is almost the same, except some money goes missing until it turns up in a cashbox a freshman forgot to bring to me. And then we have strike, take down all the decorations, unwind the twinkling lights, pack away the giant fake tree again. By Sunday night, my muscles are so sore I feel like I can’t move, and all I want to do is sleep for a week. So it’s perfect timing for midterms.

With all the distraction, I’m not even annoyed that Clarke and Harrison haven’t gone on an official date yet. If I were Clarke, I’d be waiting until after midterms anyway. Sure, that first day at the festival would have been perfect, they could have gone for another ice cream, but knowing Clarke, another ice cream wasn’t on the menu if he was going to be in a Speedo every day. And honestly, I’d feel the same. But clearly sparks were flying, so I decide to leave it until after midterms. If they don’t have a date by Friday, then perhaps my intervention will be required again. It’s really a bit much, at this point. But like the festival, sometimes nothing would get done without me.

So I study and get ready for tests, and the student council has a little ceremony and photo shoot of us with the seats in the theater to show what we’ve accomplished (the email we send to the student body is all photos of us in the theater chairs and the slogan “Remember when you sit, we all earned it” to give everyone a sense of accomplishment). The NCCC money I write as a check, from the school checkbook, and mail in, after calling ahead. They say thank you and promise to send someone to the school to talk about cervical cancer, if we ever want them to. Dad would love that, but the principal says our health classes cover it, so I don’t mention it to him.

Dad’s very proud when I tell him how much we raised. He tears up so much he becomes worried about allergies and makes us both eat a tangerine for the vitamin C to help bolster our immune systems.

And then there are midterms. I think I’ll do all right with them. I’ve been studying, and I’ve never been bad at tests. It would be awful to lose my ranking this late in my high school career, but I can’t see myself dropping much. Certainly not enough to worry about Stanford rescinding their acceptance.

By the end of the week, I still feel like I need to go lie down, but at least now I can for a weekend. Well, not the whole weekend. There’s still Taylor’s party on Saturday.

“You’ll come over today after school to help me prep, right?” she asks on Friday as we leave our AP History midterm.

“Prep what?” I ask. “You don’t need to decorate.”

“Well, first of all yes, I do, but also I just want to make sure we have enough”—she leans in, whispering—“alcohol.”

“Taylor, you’ve drunk before, this isn’t a secret.”

“I know, but I basically just have beer. I don’t know those fancy mixed drinks. Come over, look at my parents’ collection, tell me what we need. Andre can bring anything we don’t have.”

“I thought he was just a sophomore,” I say. “And studying abroad this semester.”

“Well, he’ll be back for the party, obviously,” Taylor says, brushing her hair behind her ear. “It’s so you two can meet.”

“No, it’s not.”

“And he has a fake ID. He’s had it for years, apparently.”

“So he’s an alcoholic?” I ask as we arrive at our lockers. I open mine and put away my history textbooks, and take out my math.

“No,” she says, frowning. “I just mean… look, come over tonight, okay? I’ve never thrown a party before and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m an art nerd. You’re the cool one.”

“I am, aren’t I?” I say, smiling.

“Shut up,” she says, but she’s grinning, too. “You coming to the cafeteria for lunch?”

“Yes, but I must study, can’t talk.”

“Same, let’s cram together.”

So we go to the cafeteria, where I eat blueberries one by one as I drink my iced green tea and go over my notes for statistics. Statistics are very important in medicine. The string quartet plays softly below the quiet murmurs of conversation. It’s a wonderful way to study.

The midterm goes well enough, with me only being a little slipped up by a graph with irregular time intervals (a cheap trick from Ms. Schneider, but not surprising considering the outrageous heels she always wears to class), and then I’m done. Free! Which means I can once again focus on more important matters.

I spot Clarke in the hallway. He’s in his full cheerleader uniform, the shorts very short and tight, and wearing a pale blue headband. He smiles when he sees me.

“We have a little postmidterm practice party,” he says to me. “I can see you judging me for wearing my uniform in the halls.”

“I would never.” I lean on the locker next to his.

“Oh right, you’re too nice. I mean, you can join if you want. Alicia has a fake ID, so we basically just drink vodka tonics and try to do flips. It’s pretty chill.”

“Oh,” I say, a little confused. He’s probably just being polite. “Thanks, but I promised I’d help Taylor prep for her party tomorrow.”

“No worries.” He shrugs, then bends down to pick up his backpack. It’s a nice bend. Harrison is going to be very lucky. Clarke stands back up and smiles at me. “I know we’ve been kind of dodging around it, who’s going to ask who out first, but fine, I’ll give in.”

“You will?” I ask. “Good, because I don’t think—”

“So that’s a yes?” He smiles wickedly.

I’m confused. “What? I mean, I’m sure Harrison will say yes, but you have to go ask him out, I’m not going to be messenger.”

“Harrison?” He raises an eyebrow. “No, you, Emmett. I’m asking you out. Finally.”

“No.” I shake my head. “No, you’re supposed to ask Harrison out. I don’t date, Clarke. You know that. Everyone knows that.”

He frowns, puts his hands on his hips. “Wait, so inviting me to the group hang, the flirting at the carnival… I thought you were saying maybe your stupid little rule could be broken for me.”

“I wasn’t flirting.”

“You were definitely checking me out.”

“No,” I say. This is going all wrong. I feel my body getting warm, feverish. That can’t be good. “Listen. I was trying to set you up with Harrison.”

Clarke laughs, and I keep staring at him. He stops. “Oh. You’re serious.”

“Yeah.”

“So you’re saying no to going out with me?” He looks like I just slapped him.

“I want you to go out with Harrison,” I say, maybe a little louder than I should. I look around, but no one is paying attention.

“I’m not going out with Harrison.” He rolls his eyes. “As if.”

“Why not?”

“He has like no followers on KamerUhh. You have ten thousand. Not bad, enough to work with. I’m almost at fifty, but I need new content. Couple content. It would be so good, Emmett: you, me, black-and-white photos of us cuddling on the beach with only a heart emoji as the caption, us in matching onesie pajamas around a Christmas tree for the holidays, videos of us alluding to, or just outright saying, who the top and bottom are. People love that stuff from gay couples. We could get sponsorships! And from there the world would be ours—you want to be a doctor, right? Doctors who are famous on social media can get so much information out to people. I’d have my choice of cheer teams. And you’re so perfect for it. Social media is how we can make our futures.”

I feel the breath go out of me. “So make your future with Harrison,” I say, my voice raspy. “You made him your lock screen!” It sounds like I’m begging.

“I made us my lock screen,” he says, pulling out his phone and showing it to me. It’s the photo of the three of us, but Harrison has been cut out, so it’s just Clarke, me, and a random hand. It feels like my whole body is cramping.

“But Harrison—”

“No. He’s not perfect for what I need, or what I want. You are. And don’t pretend like you don’t want it. I’m not saying we have to be exclusive or anything—we can be very chill. But we’d look cute together, and speaking frankly, I’m amazing in bed. I’m guessing you are, too.” He steps forward.

“Clarke… Harrison is totally into you. I’ve been telling him for weeks that you two should be an item. He’s my friend, I could never. And I don’t want to. I thought you and me were just friends.”

He sighs and steps back. “We can’t be just friends, Emmett. That would be way too messy.” He looks me up and down, his mouth pinched. “Your loss.” He walks away, his hips swaying as he does. I have been staring, he’s right. Somewhere, the string quartet, maybe happy to be done with midterms, starts playing again, starting with Taylor Swift’s “Anti-Hero.”

What am I going to tell Harrison? And how could I have misread this? I still feel feverish, and shaky now, too. I should have let Dad run a blood test this week. Could I have something? I swallow and take a deep breath. No. This is just… embarrassment. Shame. Because I messed this up and now Harrison is going to get hurt because of it. I feel my eyes fleck with tears and head out to the parking lot, where the air is cool. There are speakers out here, too, but they’ve moved on to Tchaikovsky’s Sixth. Which is fine, it suits my mood. I take another breath, but now my nose is running, which never happens. I go to my car, quickly, and lean in to search the glove compartment for tissues, and manage to find a pink packet of them, with just one left. It smells like plastic, but I blow my nose into it anyway.

“Hey,” a voice says behind me. I turn around. Harrison. I feel like I’m dying.

“Hi,” I say, my voice wavering.

He narrows his eyes. “You okay?”

I should tell him. I need to tell him. But this information, this terrible misunderstanding I’ve created, it’s like a disease, and if it’s hurting me this badly, it will kill him. It can wait. Maybe I can find someone else for him first. Maybe I can—

“Emmett? You okay?”

I shake my head, force a smile. Breaking his heart wouldn’t be nice. “Just going over my last midterms. Statistics. I think I might have messed up the final problem.”

“I’m sure you did fine,” he says. He’s so nice. He deserves better than Clarke anyway. To be more than just a prop for likes. “So, I was thinking about asking Clarke to go to Taylor’s party tomorrow, like… as a date. Is that a good idea?”

I swallow. “Oh, well… we just finished midterms and I think he’s doing that cheerleader party thing tonight, so… maybe ask him at the party?” No, that’s bad, too, I realize, the moment it’s out of my mouth.

“Oh.” He tilts his head. “Yeah, that makes sense. Thanks, Emmett.” He smiles, a little shy. “I admit this whole you setting me up thing was kind of weird at first, but I feel like I can do it now. I can ask out a hot guy I thought was out of my league. So thank you for that.”

My body cramps again. I smile. “You’re welcome.” I need to tell him.

“See you at the party tomorrow,” he says, walking away.

“Yeah, and Harrison…” He turns around, happy, grinning. “Just. You’re great. You deserve the best relationship. So it’s not me that’s done this. It’s you.”

He beams. Glows. Is genuinely thrilled. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I mean it. You’re great. You deserve the best.”

He’s blushing now. “I feel like you’re hitting on me now,” he says. “So I’m going to walk away before I get confused.”

I laugh. “Okay. See you tomorrow.”

I’ll tell him tomorrow, I decide, watching him walk away. He doesn’t move his hips the way Clarke does, but there’s something sexy in him, too, and I wasn’t lying. He deserves the best. I thought that was Clarke, but I guess I fucked that up and now… I sigh and sit down in my car, on the passenger side, the door still open. How do I fix this? Who else would be a good match for Harrison that I can get to ask him out before he asks Clarke out? That’s the best fix, I think.

“Hey.” I look up. It’s Taylor. “Don’t forget you’re coming over to—” Her eyebrows furrow. “What’s wrong?”

I smile. “What?”

“Emmett.” She taps her foot.

“I…” She can always see through me. It makes me feel like crying. “Let’s talk about it at your place.”

“Okay. Then I’m driving. West picked me up today anyway.”

She goes around and gets behind the wheel of my car and I hand her my keys as I close the door.

“I messed up,” I say, and suddenly I’m crying, and it feels like a relief.

By the time we get to her place, I’ve explained it. Clarke liking me, like an asshole.

She sighs as she parks the car, then turns to me. “Okay. I get what’s happening. You feel like you failed. You never fail. You’re Emmett. So this is shocking and awful for you, and it sucks, and I am a hundred percent here for you. But maybe you need to stay out of it. Maybe it’s not your job to find Harrison a boyfriend. I know you want to be nice, but maybe that’s too nice.”

“But he’s my friend. And I found you a boyfriend!”

“Well… what happened was you saw us making eyes at each other and said to West, ‘Oh, would you just ask her out already,’ and he did.”

“Exactly,” I say, getting out of the car. “I saw the spark, and I made it happen.”

“Well, look,” she says, getting out behind me and leading me in through the garage, “I’m not saying I’m not grateful and that maybe we needed that push, but it was already pretty obvious we liked each other. You didn’t try to make us like each other.”

I nod. She’s right. Just because I had such good intuition with my first round of matchmaking doesn’t mean the second was going to be easier.

“I mean, they had a spark,” I say as we walk into her house and head to the kitchen. Her parents don’t have much style, but the kitchen is clean and white and big windows let in a lot of light. “I just didn’t realize that Clarke was looking for likes more than love. I think you’re right. My intuition is good, but that doesn’t mean that the people I’m setting up can see it.”

“That’s not quite—”

“I need to find someone for Harrison who he has real chemistry with. I can’t just prepare a man for him—preparation is the problem. It ruins happiness, foolish preparation. So tomorrow, at the party, I’ll just see who he has chemistry with and take it from there. Someone he clicks with. Or at least someone who I think isn’t superficial. Someone who really sees him.”

“I mean that’s a good idea, sure…” She trails off. “Let’s just look at what’s in the liquor cabinet, okay?”

“Yes,” I say. “Thank you. I feel much better about this now.” And I do. “Thank you so much for being such a good friend. I hate when I lose sight of… who I am. But you always remind me.”

She turns and light from the window catches her, and she smiles, a little shy. “Shut up,” she says. “How much vodka do you think we need?”

We talk about alcohol and mixers while decorating a little, and then order Chinese. Her parents are out of town, and West is having dinner with his family because his brother just got in. Afterward, we put on a bad movie and try each of the alcohols in the cabinet to see which are worth getting more of.

The house is this big Bel Air–style mansion, perfect for a party, but the truth is, I have no idea where Taylor got her artistic eye from. Her parents’ decorating taste is, and I’m not trying to be rude, bland. White walls in the foyer, beige walls in the living room, white again in the sunroom. The only art they have is family pictures, which is sweet, I suppose, but they’re all small things, framed and circling each room in the sort of pattern that looks like a computer came up with it. It’s all very tidy, but it’s not very interesting. Taylor’s room is gorgeous, though, with zebra sheets and pale pink walls. So even with the living room available, we hang out up there and make sure we have a sense of the guest list.

“We need to make sure all the gays are there,” I tell her. “So there are options for Harrison. Someone sincere, and kind.”

“You know, I think Robert has a crush on him.”

I wave her off. “I barely remember Robert when he’s in the room with me,” I say. “We can do better.”

“But isn’t it about if Harrison notices him? Chemistry, like you said?”

I think about it a moment. She’s right, so I nod. “All right, you can invite him, but I still think we can do better.”

“He,” she says, pulling out her phone.

“What?”

“Not ‘we can do better.’ He can do better.”

“Did I say we? Slip of the tongue.”

She messages Robert on KamerUhh (he has an account mostly about endangered animals) to let him know about the party.

“I’m more excited about the one boy I’m bringing for you,” she says, nudging me with her shoulder.

I laugh. “Still? Taylor, I told you, we’ll be family forever, even if we don’t marry brothers before we’re twenty.”

“I know,” she says. “But like… don’t you want a boyfriend? Don’t you want to kiss in the rain?”

“I’d want to kiss in the snow,” I say, letting myself think about it for a moment—his lips closing in on mine, cold snowflakes dotting his dark eyelashes, the chilly flecks making me shiver as his warm arms wrap around me… I shake my head. “But it would end poorly. You know my feelings on this.”

“Emmett…” She opens her mouth, then closes it, turns back to the movie, then shakes her head and turns back to me. “Emmett, I get why you’d feel like maybe a relationship ending is bad. Especially you. But having one is still—”

“What do you mean especially me?” I ask. I shiver.

“I mean…” She takes a deep breath. “You’ve had a relationship end in the worst way. But breaking up with someone isn’t the same as your mom dying. And besides, maybe your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re twenty-five or whatever, but that doesn’t mean anything. You and someone you love can develop into people who still love each other.”

“That seems very unlikely to happen. And it has nothing to do with my mother.” I turn back to the movie. I don’t want to talk about this. Yes, obviously, losing my mother was painful. Is still painful. Worse than that. It’s like part of me is missing. And yes, I’ve wondered if maybe that means I have to grow it back before I can fall in love, if it’ll ever grow back at all… but that’s not why I don’t want a boyfriend. “It’s complicated,” I say after she doesn’t say anything for a while. “It’s messy. I don’t like messy, you know that. Boyfriends, friends, sex… you have to put up barriers, figure out who’s who, otherwise it’s just drama. Think of your jewelry. Each piece has to be a ring or a necklace or an earring. You can’t just switch them around. And in high school, having to see the person every day… it’s cleaner this way.”

“Is it?” She raises an eyebrow.

“It is.” I nod, definitively.

“So trying to find a boyfriend for the guy you’ve been having sex with isn’t messy?”

The room goes silent. I turn slowly to look at her, my skin feeling hot. “How long have you known?”

“Since it started.” She lifts an eyebrow. “Harrison doesn’t need a tutor.”

I frown, ready for her to yell at me about secrets.

“I’m not angry,” she says first. “Your sex life is your business, and if you just want to be friends with benefits, that’s fine… but, Emmett. You can put a ring on a chain and it becomes a necklace. Relationships aren’t just cut-and-dry labels. Especially not for queer people. It’s going to be messy. And messy can hurt, but sometimes it’s great, too.”

“I prefer it when things are tidy, and they can be,” I say.

“Only if everyone agrees. Like back when we first met, when I hadn’t realized I was trans yet, and we thought we were two gay guys. Why didn’t we ever hook up?”

“I don’t know. We never had that vibe, did we? You said I was your first other gay friend, and you were mine and…”

“And after a month of hanging out all the time, I said to you, ‘I want you to be my friend forever, and nothing should get in the way of that,’ and you agreed. We put up lines. Defined ourselves. Have you done that with Harrison?”

“I thought so. He’s the one who approached me, you know. I didn’t seduce a junior into something sordid. He said we should spend time together, and he meant naked, and we did.”

“And you never thought he might also wonder where it could go? Sometimes romance, especially for us queers, can start physical and then become friendship and then romance.”

“I’ve always been clear I don’t want a boyfriend, haven’t I?”

“Look, I think you were probably pretty clear at first. But I think sometimes you’re just so, well, nice”—she laughs—“that people can see what they want. I did, once. That’s why I told you that we would only be friends. I thought I was dumping you.”

I feel my eyebrows rise. “What?”

“I thought you had a thing for me. And we weren’t even sleeping together. It’s that thing, you know, when your friends and lovers all come from the same pool.…”

I nod. “I know.”

“Sometimes maybe because of that, lines are fuzzier than we think… and it can get messy. And maybe you being nice to Harrison and sleeping with him, and then all this matchmaking, is confusing to him… and to you. Did you just volunteer to do it because he was catching feelings? I mean he must have told you he wanted a boyfriend. And you were already someone he was…”

I tilt my head away from her. “Maybe it was a little, at first… but I want him to be happy, genuinely. I care about him.”

“I mean… you’d be a cute couple. If you care about him, want him to be happy, and like having sex with him—why not?”

I sit back down and sigh. “I don’t know. I just think…” I look at my arm. There’s still a faint bruise from when Dad took my blood last weekend. I let him because I wanted to make sure I was in tip-top shape going into midterms. The bruise is a faded blue and green, small. I don’t think anyone else would even notice it, but to me it looks sad. “I just don’t want a breakup. I don’t want that. So I don’t want a boyfriend. He does. This is the easiest solution.”

“Okay,” she says. “Well… I hope you like Andre anyway. I’ve maaaaybe talked you up to him a little too much.”

“How? You haven’t even met him.”

“When West FaceTimes him. We talk. He’s really nice; you’ll like him. He’s funny—witty, really—like you. And cute.”

“I mean, if you don’t have a problem with me just using him for sex, with Harrison looking for a boyfriend, I could use a new—”

She shoves me. “Absolutely not. You gotta date him or nothing. Otherwise it’s messy for me.”

I sigh. “Well, we’ll see if I like him.”

“You will. And you should… let yourself be open to it. It’s not like you’d have much time to date him and break up before he goes back to college. Maybe it could be like a weeklong affair and ends with a bittersweet but inevitable parting, and then you reunite at Stanford. That would be romantic, wouldn’t it?”

“Maybe,” I say, imagining it.

“Yeah, yeah.” She rolls her eyes. “You can’t fool me, Emmett. Just because you don’t want a breakup doesn’t mean you don’t want a boyfriend.”

I look at the movie. She’s not wrong.

“Just think,” she says, leaning into me, “you could kiss him in the snow.…”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” I say, so softly I don’t think she hears me. “It might be nice.”