Avani.
Me: Okay, this stays between us, right?
Avani: Sure! What’s going on? My lips are sealed.
Her reply was instant, but I was wary. I wanted to talk about how Pothan was starting to bore me, but with Avani you never knew if something would get out or not, and if Pothan knew I’d blown him off just to hang out by myself, he might get angry enough to drop me. Or to turn cruel and mean like Lyle would’ve.
Me: Never mind.
Avani: K, hope you’re all right.
Instead I texted Dave again.
Me: Okay how’re you and Mari?
Me: WHAT IS GOING ON?!?!
Me: NEEEEEEEEEED ANSWERS
Me: She’s wondering if you really like her. You could’ve come to me for advice you know.
Dave: Sorry, just been busy.
Me: Come on, what’s happening between you two?
He didn’t respond, and I already saw us texting nonsense back and forth, dodging each other’s questions—our friendship slowly dying on the rocks of the forever-unsaid—and the idea made me so sad that I called him.
“Hey,” he said. “I really don’t have much time.”
“Dave,” I said. “You can talk to me.”
“Can I?”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I’m busy.”
With Pothan or Ken, that would’ve been enough—I never would’ve brought up the subject again—but Dave was different. I wheedled with him, darting around the question Are we okay? in a dozen different ways, blatantly ignoring his attempts to get off the phone, exploiting all the tiniest little gaps and evasions in what he said, and, like a perp under the bright lights for ten hours, he finally broke.
“You know at the mall, I just wanted to hang out,” he said. “But you guys acted really weird.”
“Oh, shit,” I said. “That’s what this is about.”
“I may not even like her,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Dude, giving each other a hard time is a key part of being friends. And, anyway, trying to get with a girl is never pretty, it’s never not awkward.”
Dave didn’t say anything, but I heard him breathing over the phone, and my stomach twisted with the memory of his thighs under my hands.
“Hey,” I said. “Is this about us hooking up?”
“What?” he said. “No.”
“Because, like, we should’ve talked about it. That was your first time ever—”
“That was fine.”
The heavy pounding of my heart made me hop off the couch and walk in narrow circles around the edges of the living room. I went to the door and listened with half my brain to see if my mom was home.
“You know, it doesn’t mean anything about you. Come on, this isn’t, like, the fifties: a straight guy can fool around,” I said.
“No, no, I know. That’s not a problem for me.”
“I told Henry about it,” I said. “Oh, shit, I told Henry. And I used your name. Shit. I outed—” I was about to say outed you but realized that wasn’t quite right.
“That’s fine.”
“What? Really?”
“I don’t care. I’m glad you’re talking to someone.” I heard the unspoken words: someone who isn’t me.
“Wow, that’s astonishingly cool. I think I’d be pissed if you’d gone telling people. Wait . . . you haven’t . . . ?”
“No,” he said. “But Henry is good. Obviously he’s the one to tell. And you two are good friends.”
“We’re really not. But I guess we are now? Honestly I think he’s just lonely.”
“Hmm. Well . . . it’s good he has you.”
“You know I’ve sort of ghosted Hen, and it’s awful. But if he and I keep talking all intense, then we’ll end up together. Like, it will happen. And I don’t know if I want that.”
“But he’s nice. You could do worse.”
“Henry is not nice. That’s what I like about him.”
“Yeah, I guess you were with Avani, so . . .”
“What does that mean?!”
He laughed, and I heard the smile in his voice. “Well, she’s not nice either. Maybe that’s your thing.”
“Wait, so now you’re making fun of me?”
“You have a type. Like, you wouldn’t go for a Mari.”
“Why? Because she’s nice and sweet and genuine? You gotta be kidding me. I love Mari. She’s amazing. We’re in math together. Did I tell you this?”
I let the conversation drift into gossip and talking about our day and all that other fun-but-irrelevant stuff. I kept pausing, waiting for Dave to say goodbye, but then he would leap in with some question or some joke, and we’d circle around again.
Then he said, “Hey . . . it’s okay if you’re not ready to be public. Henry would understand. You should talk to him.”
“No, I know he’d keep it quiet. The real problem