the lagoon and Swan Boats glided lazily across the water.
And I was there with Dean. I hadn’t known what to do when I’d first seen him. I’d wanted to run from the train and leap into his arms like we were in a movie, but I doubted he would’ve thought it was as funny as me. I didn’t know what to expect from the day. Mel was always complaining how guys often looked at friendship with girls as a shitty consolation prize, and I didn’t want to be like that. If Dean never had feelings for me beyond friendship, I wanted him to know his friendship was enough. I wanted it to be enough. But at the same time, I couldn’t help the bubbly, giggly feeling in my stomach when his arm brushed mine or when he looked at me and held the stare a second longer than was necessary.
“Favorite movie?” I asked.
“A Quiet Place.”
“You like horror movies?”
Dean cocked his head at me. “That movie wasn’t horror. A world where no one can talk or make a sound? Sounds like a utopia to me. Your turn.”
“Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Book?”
Dean puffed out his lips like a duck when he was thinking and it was adorable, so I had to avoid looking at him.
“And don’t say Catcher in the Rye or I’m bailing on you and going back to Providence.”
“Fiction or nonfiction?”
“Both?”
“Beyond Good and Evil for nonfiction, and The Graveyard Book for fiction.”
I didn’t recognize the first book and made a mental note to google it when I had a chance, but I knew the second. “Neil Gaiman?” I asked, and Dean nodded. “Not bad. Mine changes, but I’m basically obsessed with this graphic novel called Descender right now. The artist, Dustin Nguyen, works in watercolors, and he’s brilliant.”
“I haven’t read any graphic novels.”
“That’s gonna cost you ten points.”
Dean frowned in my direction. “You’re assigning point values to my answers?”
“Obviously.”
“How am I doing?”
“Shockingly well,” I said. “I expected you to be negative double digits by now, but you’re still in the black.”
Dean glowed at the compliment, and I did enjoy making that boy smile. “My turn,” he said. “How did you know you were gay?” As soon as he got the question out, he looked like he wished he’d kept it to himself. “You don’t have to answer if it’s too personal.”
“Nah,” I said. “I don’t mind.” Which was true. I didn’t mind. I also didn’t know where to start. “It wasn’t any one thing, I guess. It was this gradual awareness during middle school that I wasn’t like other boys, but not in the obvious ways. I was obviously not like them because I was a little more glam and a little more everything, but people get it wrong when they figure a boy’s gay ’cause they caught him wearing his mom’s high heels or whatever.”
“What do you mean?” Dean asked.
“Dudes can be burly athlete bros and into race cars or whatever and be super gay or they can love bubble baths and manicures and be straight. All that masculine and feminine stuff is bullshit.”
“I get it,” he said. “It’s like how you assumed that, because of who my mom is and that I’m quiet and reserved, I wouldn’t know how to have fun or that I wouldn’t enjoy cutting loose and dancing.”
“If you keep bringing up your dancing skills, I’m gonna have to make you prove it.”
Dean smiled impishly. “Carry on.”
“Mel’s better at explaining how limiting the constructs of masculinity and femininity are than I am, but anyway, it seemed like the other boys had started speaking a language I didn’t understand. I felt shut out and cut off from them without knowing why. And then one day I was watching Glee on Netflix and Kurt was swooning over Blaine, and I was just like, ‘Me too,’ and fanning myself, and I turned to my dad and told him I thought I was gay.”
“Just like that?”
I nodded. “Just like that.”
“How did he react?”
“A little shook,” I said. “But he recovered quickly. Said it was cool and asked if I had any questions. I think he was terrified I was gonna ask about sex, and I think we were both grateful I didn’t.”
“My father’s sex talk was terrible,” Dean said. “He was sweating while he tried to describe the act in clinical terms. It didn’t help that my mother was standing in the doorway listening. She finally couldn’t stand it anymore and marched in and told me that if