I swallowed. I shook my head fast.
“They don’t?”
“No, I. Like the things. You say.”
He gave me two thumbs up. “Okay. Cool.”
Griffin pulled toward the front door, and I held tight because I had to say something. It was killing me to keep not saying everything.
So I said, “You are, out of your head, the way I am. In my head.”
He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “What? I’m out of my head?”
“No. Ugh.” I gathered myself. I breathed a few times. “The things you say. Out loud. They are like. The things I say, but only in my head.”
The corners of his mask lifted, and he looked down at his feet, as if he were shy like me. He didn’t say anything. Which was perfect because I didn’t have any more, either.
—
Our walks became the focus of my days. They started getting longer, too, which was great for me and great for Daxton, and probably less great for Griffin and Squirrel, who, despite looking and acting alike, behaved like inmates at the same prison who were in different gangs.
“The thing about my dad is that he’s selectively awful about my queerness,” Daxton said one morning, a week later, as Griffin battled Squirrel for what appeared to be the optimal sniffing spot on my neighbor’s white rock, the one I’d named “Urine Rock” because of Griffin’s need to douse it first thing every morning.
“What do you mean?” I leaned against the old Goldwater pine on the edge of my neighbor’s property.
“Ugh.” He rolled his head all the way back. He was standing in the middle of the street. No cars because of the pandemic shutdown. “On the one hand, he’s cool with it. He asks me if I have a boyfriend all the time like it’s no big deal. And then there’s ‘the other team,’ which I hate.”
Squirrel attempted to mount Griffin, and he growled at her.
“What’s ‘the other team’?”
Daxton groaned. “When we watch a show or a movie, if he thinks someone might be gay, he’ll nudge me. ‘I think that guy’s playing for the other team.’ And I’m like, Dad. What the hell team is this that you think we’re on? I’m on the other team. You idiot.”
“That sucks. What does he say when you say that?”
He kicked the asphalt below his feet and gently pulled Squirrel toward him. Then he started to walk, so I followed. “Well, I only say it in my head. That may be one of the reasons he doesn’t respond.”
Our silences were comfortable by now. I didn’t feel like I needed to fill up the emptiness with anything, and we just let them coast along with us as we strolled. I found myself walking at his side, maybe only four feet away, which wasn’t far enough, probably, but it was like I couldn’t bear to be far away from him. I glanced over to see his expression. He was looking down and there was this way his eyes appeared glassy in the midmorning sun that made me want to comfort Daxton, to reach out and touch him. He was right there, like if I stepped two steps toward him, those peach-fuzz-covered arms would be touchable. I realized it had been a really long time since Nimo. I longed to touch someone. But mostly, I longed to touch Daxton.
“I don’t always speak up with my mom, either,” I said.
He looked up, surprised, and it occurred to me I hadn’t said much that was personal to Daxton in the time since we’d been walking. I wondered if maybe I shouldn’t. If maybe this was too much, and I was opening up too much, like with Nimo. Like with Gus and Cyndi, my former friends who could now gargle Clorox for all I cared. Cross me once, shame on you. The end. I don’t need this second-time stuff.
“It’s like she’s ‘Busy Mom.’ Not just now with the COVID thing, but that doesn’t help. Always. And because she works and she’s a mom, when she says something that isn’t okay, I just feel like, Well, that was close enough. Like the time she said Nimo would one day wake up and realize she’s actually a girl, not a boy. I was like, Whut? But then I felt guilty, because she works so hard. I didn’t say anything.”
“Yes!” he shouted, his voice seemingly echoing in the silence of the morning. “It’s like my dad could be so much worse, and he brought me down here into the city where it’s safer for me, so I don’t give him crap when he’s kinda shitty. Like this one time this winter. I walked into the kitchen to get a soda, and he was on the phone with my uncle Arnie, who is awful, by the way, and I walked in just in time to hear him say, ‘something something, if I had a real son.’ ”
I exhaled and gawked, thinking about how that must have made Daxton feel.
“So that happened. I don’t even know if he saw me, because I just walked right out. And the rest of the day I was like, ‘Look at me, Dad! I’m a real boy! Like Pinocchio or some shit.’ ”
My gut twisted. Poor Daxton. Who so didn’t deserve that. Who was just this amazing, dynamic person, and his dad was negating like his entire existence. And suddenly I wanted to touch him even more, and I fucking hated COVID-19.
So after we watched Griffin scratch his ear manically with his left leg, and after I stared momentarily at Daxton’s tanned legs, which were shapely but not overly muscular, like he ran cross-country but not track, I softly said some words that were probably going to end in my humiliation, but I honestly couldn’t keep them in anymore.
“Well, I think you’re a real boy. Very real.”
I waited for the world to explode, because I was so cheesy or whatever. Cheesy
