but think it’d be easier to love me if I was at least thin like my sister or ripped like Tucker. That might make up the deficit somehow.
“Are you okay?” Hannah asks in a low voice while Clementine is in the kitchen heating up some queso.
I open my mouth to talk and then realize a few slow tears are rolling down my cheek. “Oh, yeah. Me? I’m good. I’m fine.”
Hannah eyes me suspiciously. “When Bianca Blanco won a couple years ago, I got that tingly feeling behind my eyes. I kind of still do.”
Hannah is Afro-Dominican, and Bianca was a Dominican queen who spoke a mixture of Spanish and English and had a signature phrase that caught on all over the internet. Two years ago, she was the first Dominican queen to win ever after a couple of near misses during previous seasons, and she became infamous for her catchphrase, Don’t you wishy you could be this fishy?
According to Clem, Hannah’s grandma got so into the show that season that she made a Dominican feast for the season finale and invited all their neighbors.
My phone vibrates in my pocket.
Lucas: I’m working until 1am if you want to swing by.
My cold, dead heart flutters as I type back.
We’ll see. Dad is working all night, so maybe.
Lucas: Really want to see you. Maybe we can talk too.
Talk? Ha! Lucas. Oh, Lucas. Lucas is my highly problematic and slightly older (literally by a few months) booty call. Is it still a booty call if you’ve never gone all the way? I guess he’s more like my Very Handsy Make-Out/Sometimes More Call.
I would say it’s complicated, but it’s not. What it is: two horny boys who like to make out in the stockroom of a gas station. We met last summer when I got a flat tire down the road and he let me hang out inside the gas station where he works until Dad could bring me a spare. We ate ice cream and flirted. I wasn’t sure if he was gay, but I found myself stopping at the gas station for Mr. Freezee’s soft serve ice cream every afternoon until Lucas made the first move, and we’ve been making out in the back room ever since. Lucas is charming and polite in that perfectly southern way, and if I’m being honest, he’s everything I dreamed of when I was a little boy and imagined someone sweeping me off my feet. But even though he is all of those things, he can’t be any of those things for me.
Maybe it would be more complicated if Lucas was interested in kissing me and holding my hand in well-lit places, but he isn’t ready for that. Lucas is very much in the closet, and he’s the kind of guy no one in Clover City assumes is gay. Yeah, it’s not easy for guys like me who are sort of like every nineties stereotype of gay, despite my efforts to be more subdued. But guys like Lucas can really throw people off, because if big, strapping Lucas, who is a total Clover City golden boy in his beat-up Wranglers and muscle shirt, can be gay without anyone suspecting it, then—GASP—anyone can be queer.
And even though I sometimes wonder if the reason Lucas and I aren’t publicly out together is because he’s embarrassed of me, I know that Lucas being out is a decision only he can make. Regardless of where I stand in the equation. Once you come out of the closet, there’s no going back in. The freaking closet door disappears, and you’re left totally unprotected in the middle of the world at the mercy of everyone else’s goodwill, hoping the people you’ve known your whole life really are decent and kind and that all that unconditional-love Bible stuff people spew is the real deal. That’s what coming out in a small town is. I would never jeopardize that for someone else. Never.
Small-town gay life doesn’t have to be a drag. It can be great in some ways, and it helps that I’ve not done anything like try to star in the school’s production of Oklahoma! Clem and I have been lucky, especially with our parents, but I’ve heard whispers about other kids in town. Everything from getting kicked out of their homes to being sent to Bible Bootcamp. (A real place with actual Yelp reviews, by the way. Five stars! Would send my once-homosexual kid back again!) Clem and I might have made it