See what I mean? Clear as mud.
From somewhere on my bed, my phone vibrates. Since I’m alone in my room, there’s no one to see me actually dive into my covers to retrieve it.
I’m around BYU all day tomorrow.
And then, while the screen is still lit up with his first text, another comes in:
And I’ll miss seeing you, too.
Something is happening between us. Something has been happening between us since our eyes met on the first day of class.
I want to see him before he leaves town. I don’t care what Mom says. I don’t care what the doctrine is.
After all, it’s not my church.
• • •
Provo High has a closed campus at lunch, but it’s an official thing that nobody follows. Campus is surrounded by fast-serve restaurants like Del Taco and Panda Express and Pita Pit. Four days out of five we skip out and grab something easy.
I’ll admit that I know Sebastian is an English lit major (it didn’t take a huge amount of sleuthing to get there), but I also know—because he told me at the library—that he likes to hang out in the Harris Fine Arts Center because it’s quiet.
Today at lunch, I buy enough Panda Express for two.
Before I moved to Utah, I heard a lot about the church from people who, admittedly, have never been a part of it. They marry their daughters off when they’re twelve! They’re polygamists!
They don’t and they’re not—polygamy has been banned since 1890—but because of my mom, I knew that Mormons were just people, and I expected Mormon teens to look like anyone else on the streets of Palo Alto. What’s crazy is they don’t. Really. They look like the upper end of the bell-shaped curve in terms of polish: They’re clean, their clothes are especially modest, and they are exceedingly well-groomed.
I look down at my old Social Distortion T-shirt over a blue thermal and mostly intact jeans. I would not feel more out of place on the Brigham Young University campus even if I put on a purple chicken costume and moonwalked across the quad. It’s early in the term, and there is some sort of youth program happening outside the main student center. It’s a lot of long skirts and modest shirts, straight trimmed hair and genuine smiles.
A few guys play Frisbee; one of them drops it and yells out a placid “Gosh darn it!”
A trio of girls is playing a hand-slap game accompanied by a song.
BYU is exactly like I imagined, and also probably exactly like its founders hoped it would be, even a hundred and forty years later. It’s only across the street from Provo High, but it feels like a different world.
Inside the Harris Fine Arts Center it’s surprisingly dark, and quiet. Modern architecture makes the space feel more “austere engineering” than “art building,” and the upper levels are open in a rectangular frame, looking down on the ground floor. Every sound—my footsteps across the marble, a murmur of voices coming from upstairs—echoes across the entire atrium.
Sebastian isn’t at any of the lounge chairs or small desks dotting the second floor, and in hindsight my bag of food seems embarrassingly overconfident. I wonder whether there are cameras tracking my movement, whether the BYU cops will come in, decide I don’t belong here, and gently escort me out of the building, wishing me safe travels and promising to pray for me when they leave me at the campus border.
After a few minutes on the third floor, I’m just about to leave and stress-eat two lunches worth of questionably Asian food when I spy a pair of red Adidas peeking out from beneath a desk.
Walking over, I declare, “I have plenty of the world’s least healthy lunch to share.”
Sebastian startles—and in the time it takes him to turn around, I beg myself to go back in time and never have done this. At the beginning of this school year, a freshman gave me an envelope and then actually ran off in the other direction. Bewildered, I opened it. Glitter poured out onto my shoes, and the letter inside was full of stickers and looping handwriting telling me she thought we might be soul mates. I didn’t even know her name until I read it at the bottom of the note: Paige, with a glittery heart sticker dotting the i. I don’t think I’d realized until that moment how young fourteen is.
But standing here, waiting for Sebastian to speak . . . I am Paige. I am an emotional infant. It suddenly feels creepy—or absolutely immature—to be here, bringing him food. What the hell am I doing?
Slowly, he pulls his headphones off.
I want to fall over in relief: His red cheeks tell me everything I need to know.
“Tanner?” He grins, so wide. “Hey.”
“Hey, yeah, I . . .”
Glancing back at the clock on his laptop screen, he makes the obvious observation: “You left campus.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“Actually, no.” Blinking back over, he gazes at me in mild confusion.
“I . . . brought you lunch.” I glance down at the food in my hand. “But now I feel like I’m breaking the law.”
Peering closer at what I’m offering, he says, “Panda Express?”
“Yeah. So gross, I know.”
“Totally. But, I mean, since you’re already here . . .”
He grins at me. It’s the only invitation I need.
I open the bag, handing him a takeout container of noodles and another of orange chicken. “I also have shrimp.”
“Chicken is good.” Opening it up, he moans, and it causes my entire body to stiffen. “I’m starving. Thank you.”
You know those moments that feel so surreal you have a legitimate Am I really here feeling? Where you’re not just using hyperbole but, for a breath of a second, have an out-of-body sensation? I have that right now. Standing here with him, it’s dizzying.
“My dad calls this Fatty Fat Chicken,” he tells me as I pull out the chair beside him and sit down.
I blink, working to get my brain and my pulse under control. “I won’t tell him if you won’t.”
Sebastian laughs. “He eats it at least twice a week, so don’t worry.”
I watch him tuck in, using a fork, not chopsticks, neatly managing to get a pile of noodles in his mouth without greasing up his chin. There’s something Teflon about him: He always looks pressed, clean, sanitized. Looking down at myself, I wonder what impression I give off. I’m not a slob, but I don’t have the same immaculate sheen.
He swallows, and a million pornographic images fly through my head in the ten seconds before he speaks again.
“What made you come over to campus?” he asks, then neatly maneuvers a forkful of chicken into his mouth.
Is he fishing? Or does he really think I’d come over to BYU for any reason other than to see him? “I was in the neighborhood.” I take a bite, chewing, swallowing through my smile. “Came over to campus to dance and sing some songs.”
His eyes twinkle. He doesn’t seem to mind that I’m not LDS, let alone mocking it a little. “Cool.”
I look down the hallway, toward the windows facing the quad. “Are there always people outside just . . . celebrating?”
“No, but it’s a pretty happy place.”
I lean in, grinning. “Someone actually said ‘Gosh darn it’ out of frustration.”
“What else would they say?”
He’s fucking with me again. Our eyes snag, and hold. His are green and yellow, with these razor-sharp flecks of brown. I feel like I’ve taken a running leap off a cliff and have no idea how deep the water is.
Finally, Sebastian blinks back down to his lunch. “Sorry I left so abruptly the other day.”
“It’s okay.”
I think that’s all I’m going to get on the subject, but somehow, the way he can’t look back up at me, the way color blooms again across his cheeks tells me so much.
Something is happening between us, holy shit.
From one of the floors below us, an older man’s deep voice rings out. “Hello, Brother Christensen.” In turn, this Brother Christensen murmurs a polite reply that drifts up to us, and as they move farthe
r away from the atrium, their voices echo away.
“Wait.” I look back at Sebastian, realization dawning. “Are you an elder yet?”
He swallows before answering. “No.”
This is amazing. “Sebastian Brother. That means you’re Brother Brother.”
He grins, thrilled. “I’ve been waiting my whole life for someone to make that joke. People at church are too nice to do it.”
I hesitate, unable to read the spark in his eyes. “You’re messing with me.”
“Yeah.” If possible, his smile widens and carves out a space in my chest when he breaks, laughing happily. “But I think it’s even better that Lizzy is Sister Brother.”
“Does she think it’s funny?”
“We all do.” Pausing, he watches me for a few seconds longer, like he’s trying to puzzle me out and not the other way around, before bending and taking another bite of food.
I think I’ve screwed this up. I have such a weird impression of Mormons as bland, serious, and secretly evil. It seems impossible to me that they would make fun of themselves this way.
“I’m being an asshole.” The word just slips out of my mouth, and I wince as if I’ve just cursed in a cathedral.
Sebastian shakes his head, swallowing. “What? No.”
“I’m not . . .”
“Familiar with the church,” he finishes for me. “Most people aren’t.”
“We live in Provo,” I remind him. “Most people are.”
He looks up at me steadily. “Tanner, I know the world isn’t represented in Provo. We all know that. Besides, and I mean this in the kindest way possible, it’s likely that the non-LDS kids in town don’t share the best side of the church when they talk. Am I right?”
“That’s probably fair.” I blink down, poking at my mostly untouched lunch. He makes me so nervous, in this giddy, excited way. When I look back up at his face, it almost hurts where my chest pinches. His attention is on his next bite of food, so I’m given a handful of seconds to stare at him without shame.
A weak voice tries to reach me from the back of the crowded room in my head: He’s Mormon. This is doomed! Pull back. Pull back!
I stare at his jaw, and his throat, and the skin I can see just below, the hint of collarbone.
My mouth waters.
“Thanks again for this,” he says, and I snap my eyes back up, catching the glint in his as he watches me realize I’m busted for ogling him.
“You really never snuck off campus?” I ask in the world’s most awkward segue.
He chews another bite, shaking his head.
“Part of me wants to hope you misbehave a little.”
Holy.
What did I just say?
Sebastian laughs, coughing through a rough swallow, and washes it down with a sip of water from a bottle on the table near him. “I did skip out once.”
I nod for him to continue, shoveling some food into my mouth in the hopes that it will calm my uneasy stomach and lunatic mind.
“Last year I had an orthodontist appointment, and when I came back, class was nearly half done. We had an assembly after that, then lunch, and”—he shakes his head, blushing that goddamn blush—“I realized no one would be looking for me. I had three hours to do whatever I wanted.”
I swallow a bite of shrimp, and it goes down rough. I want him to tell me he went home and googled pictures of guys kissing.
“I went to a movie by myself and ate an entire box of Red Vines.” He leans in, eyes full of that teasing shine. “I had a Coke.”
My brain is tangled: Cannot compute. Which emotion to drop into the bloodstream? Fondness or bewilderment? For the love of God, this is Sebastian at his naughtiest.
He shakes his head at me, and in that instant, I realize I’m the naive one here.
When he leans back and lets out a laugh, I’m screwed. Totally ruined.
I can’t read him. I can’t grasp him.
I have no idea what he’s thinking and if he’s messing with me or if he really is this good, but never before have I wanted so fiercely to lean forward and put my mouth on someone’s neck, begging them to want me.
CHAPTER SEVEN
I drive home still in sort of a daze, barely aware of anything that happened after lunch. Classes are a blur. I helped Autumn with her calc homework until late, but I’m not confident I was very helpful—or that her answers ended up being correct.
I’ve replayed my conversation with Sebastian over and over, and every time I wonder whether he looked as happy to see me as I think he did. We were flirting . . . I think? The idea of good, clean-cut Sebastian leaving school for what I suspect was the simple thrill of doing something he wasn’t supposed to is causing a serious malfunction in my brain.
I’m also trying to wrestle with the idea that Sebastian will be gone for the next week. I’ve always liked school, but seeing him in Seminar is pretty much the only thing making this final semester of high school bearable.
A thought occurs to me, and I fumble for my phone.
Can u text me while ur gone?
I regret sending it almost instantly, but figure at this point, what do I have to lose? Thankfully, he doesn’t let me spiral too long, and my screen lights up again.
I’ll be working with my editor and don’t know my exact schedule, but yeah, I’ll try.
I climb out of my car and shut the door, still smiling down at my phone when I stumble into the kitchen. Mom is at the sink, already wearing her bright rainbow pajamas, washing dishes.
“Hi, honey.”
“Hey,” I say, tucking my phone away and slipping out of my jacket. I’m distracted and drop it twice in an attempt to hang it up. “You’re home early.”
“Let’s just say I needed a glass of wine,” she says, closing the dishwasher door. She motions to the fridge. “Saved you a plate in there.”
I thank her with a kiss to the cheek before heading across the kitchen. It’s not that I’m particularly hungry—thinking of my lunch with Sebastian is enough to send my stomach back into roller coaster territory—but if I don’t eat, I’ll just disappear into my room, where I’ll obsessively reread his texts and possibly venture into less-than-wholesome territory. Which—let’s be real—is most likely going to happen anyway.
The plate has a Post-it note stuck to the Saran Wrap that says, YOU ARE MY PRIDE AND JOY. I pull it off and smile, although I can tell I’m too frantic, eyes too wide.
Mom watches me from the other side of the kitchen island. “You look a little . . . wound up. You okay?”
“Yeah, totally.” The weight of her attention follows me as I heat my food and pour myself a drink. “What happened at work?”
She steps around the counter, leaning against it like she’s going to answer. My phone vibrates in my pocket. As usual for this time of night, there’s a text from Autumn.
But there’s also a text from Sebastian.
Thanks for lunch btw.
I wasn’t having the greatest day and you turned it around.
Night, Tanner.
The roller coaster inside my stomach reaches the top of the hill and goes careening over the edge.
“Tanner?” Mom pulls her hair up into a ponytail, securing it with an elastic from around her wrist.
I tear my eyes from the screen. “Yeah?”
She nods slowly and pours herself that glass of wine before motioning for me to follow. “Let’s talk.”
Oh, crap. I asked her about her day and then stopped listening. Leaving my phone on the counter, I follow her into the living room.
On the giant easy chair in the corner, my mom tucks her feet beneath her, watching me sit down. “You know I love you.”
Inwardly, I wince. “I know, Mom.”
“And I’m so proud of the man you’re becoming, I could nearly burst.”
I nod. I’m lucky. I know I am. But there are times when the declarations of adoration begin to feel . . . excessive.
She leans forward, uses her gentle voice. “I’m jus
t worried about you, honey.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to what you had to say about work.”
“That’s not what this is about.”
I know this already. “Mom, Sebastian is a Mormon, not a sociopath.”
Mom lifts her eyebrow sardonically, as if she’s going to crack a joke, but she doesn’t. And in a wild rush of relief, I’m glad she doesn’t. Defensiveness for him rises like heat in my chest.
“But everything between you is still platonic, or . . . ?”
I grow uneasy. Our family talks about everything, but I can’t stop thinking about their faces the other night at dinner and the realization that they have a very specific idea of the kind of guy I might end up with someday: someone just like us. “What if I had more than platonic feelings for him?”
She looks pained and nods slowly. “I don’t think I’m entirely surprised.”
“I went and saw him at lunch.”
I can see her swallowing her reaction down like a thick mouthful of cough syrup.
“You’re okay with this, right?” I ask.
“About you leaving campus?” She leans back, studying me. “Not really, but I know everyone does it, so I’m willing to pick my battles. About your sexuality? Absolutely. You never have to worry about that with your dad and me, okay?”
Now, I know this isn’t the reality for most queer kids. I know I am endlessly lucky. My word comes out a little thick with emotion: “Okay.”
“But am I going to be okay with you pursuing an LDS kid, boy or girl?” She shakes her head. “No. Tanner, I’m not. This is just me being honest. And maybe it’s my blind spot, but it genuinely troubles me.”
My gratitude is immediately extinguished. “How would this be any different from his parents saying guys are off-limits?”
“It’s completely different. Among a hundred other reasons, going to church is a choice. Being bisexual is simply who you are. I’m protecting you from the toxic messages of the church.”
I actually laugh at this. “And his parents are doing it to protect him from hell.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Tann. The church doesn’t threaten fire and brimstone.”
My lid blows. “How would I know what the LDS Church says about anything?” I ask, voice rising. “It’s not like you give us any level perspective on what they actually believe and how they function. All I know from you is they hate the gays, they hate women, they hate, they hate, they hate.”