Chapter 13

Thirteen

Ezra

August 2018

T he do gooder looks peaceful. He’s lying on his stomach, one arm wrapped around a pillow, sheets tangled around his knees. Now that I’ve been lurking in his room for a while, I can see him better. Eyes adjusted to the dark and all that.

He’s got on boxer briefs. I keep looking at the way they fit him, looking at him in the bed. Weird iron bed—reminds me of another bed. His briefs seem almost too tight in the moonlight streaming through his bedroom window. But I can’t tell for sure unless I move a little closer.

I’m by the bathroom door, leaned up against his wall. I’m drinking Propel. I don’t want to go back on the stuff I quit, even though I can’t tell right now if how I feel is from the practice hit or from the lack of pills.

I want to feel better. Maybe in the daytime… Everything is always better wh en the sun is up.

Miller shifts onto his side. One of his knees comes up and out, as if he’s trying to press his dick into the mattress.

I don’t look there. Only at his legs. Sometimes he says stuff at the dinner table about being a dough boy, but he’s not. His legs are all hard muscle. They’re dusted with dark hair, and thick in both the quads and calves.

He sleeps without his shirt, so I can see he doesn’t have pudge. I can’t see his ribs one by one, the way I can still see mine, but he looks good and healthy. He’s got at least a four-pack happening, and his biceps are sturdy and strong.

I wonder what it would feel like to touch him. If his skin would be soft. I look at his face and think of how he wanted that guy Arnie to touch it.

His lips are full, his cheekbones wide and high. His nose turns up a little at the tip. And he’s got freckles.

One day, will he have a husband? What would that be like?

He makes me hate him.

I think of some faraway town. Maybe out near Denver. I think of their apartment, with its stupid little balcony that barely holds one chair, the way they’d hang a picture or a coat rack in the foyer. There might be a small coat closet, and they’d put their shoes there. I don’t want to think of DG’s future shoes in Denver.

I don’t want to think of anything.

I go back to my room, but I’m too edgy to sit down. I stand by the armchair for a long time, clenching my jaw. Feeling weird and sped up, like my body needs a fucking tranq. I don’t want to go to sleep, and for once, thanks to withdrawal, I don’t.

Morning comes, and with it, light. I rumple my duvet and shower, dress for school, and lock the door on DG’s side so he can’t get in. Then I sit down in my armchair and wait.

Josh

Well, that jackass lived through the night. It’s a good thing, too, because I set an alarm for 2:30 a.m. so I could check on him, and I slept through it.

When I go to shower, I find the door on my side locked, and I get all geared up to tango with him. When I finally pick the lock, I find he isn’t there.

By the time I’m down for breakfast, Mom says he’s already gone to school.

Dumbass drove himself. Let’s hope he doesn’t crash.

He doesn’t. He’s in homeroom, right in front of me. He’s wearing a slightly fitted, olive green T-shirt and washed out jeans, and if his head hurts, I can’t tell.

I sit at his lunch table, and when I glance his way, I find him leaning on Cara with one arm around her. Maybe he’s really not gay.

As soon as I walk into physics, I see Ezra sitting at one of the lab tables. Bumble instructs everyone to sit beside their partner. This’ll be good.

I’m not sure what I’m expecting, but I’m surprised when Ezra asks for the hall pass almost as soon as Bumble assigns a sheet from our workbook. Does he hate me that much? I’m halfway through the page when he slides back onto his stool, leaning on the countertop and smelling like a cigarette.

Over the next twenty minutes, I watch covertly as he licks his lips, chews the inside of his cheek, and bounces his leg under the table. My gaze dips down to his knee, and in the shadow of the lab table, I notice a round scar burned into his skin near there. I probably stare a moment too long, but he doesn’t look at me. In fact, he never does.

At one point, near the end of class, when Bumble is lecturing about mass-energy equivalence, dickface leans his forehead into his palm and shuts his eyes. When he opens them, I tear a sheet of paper from my spiral notebook and scrawl: No practice.

He flips the thing over and writes, Thanks dad

His handwriting is messier than mine. It’s tall and lanky, sort of like him—or like he was before he started bulking up for football.

I write below that: Don’t be a dumbass .

He smirks as he writes back: Such foul language

No practice , I write again.

His eyes slide to mine and he sort of rolls them. He looks perfect enough to be an Instagram influencer as he catches his lip in his teeth. Or what, Do Gooder?

I write: Or I might tell Mom and Carl you’re concussed. I’m going to come out someday. Why not now?

His expression hardens. Maybe now is the best time.

I don’t know why I give a shit , I write back—about him.

He replies, Because you’re a do gooder.

He ignores me for the rest of the class—which is just fine, because I’m ignoring his dumb ass too. I try to block him from my mind as I move through my last two classes and then band practice. I don’t see him on the football practice field as I play soccer. Afterward, I find out he went straight home.