~ Adam ~
I sat on a bench and stared down the hill at the swing stand. There were some kids playing down there. I saw three little boys, teasing and pushing, climbing the outside of the play structure. One had blond hair, and I flashed back on Spencer and Mitch and me, so long ago. It was easy then.
Spencer and Mitch are in love. I finally had to let that thought claw its way out into the open. It wasn't a new idea. It had burned at the back of my mind for a long time. I'd noticed them looking at each other for what, two years now? Maybe more? But we'd all been looking, all three of us, ever since the other two realized that they liked looking at guys a lot more than at girls.
It was different for me, because I knew I was gay from about the time I could walk. My mom says I used to make my sister's GI Joes play house together, and apparently I told Mom in kindergarten that I was going to marry Mitch when I grew up. She joined PFLAG when I was six. So I've always known who and what I was, and for the longest time I'd prayed that one of the other two would turn out to be bi or gay. I must have had a pipeline straight to the big guy upstairs, or else he really liked irony, because both of them were.
Mitch came out to me first. He'd been my first friend too. We didn't pick up Spencer until second grade, when we found him crying over a road-kill squirrel and helped him bury it instead of laughing at him. He'd been acting the tough kid in school, but from then on we were the Three Musketeers, and he slowly lost the toughness when we were on our own. So when Mitch told me hesitantly, the summer we turned fourteen, that he thought he might be gay too, I felt bad for Spence, but thrilled for the two of us.
I didn't pounce though. I figured Mitch needed time to work through how he felt about it all, especially since his dad was not going to be happy about it. And then a couple of days later, Mitch came out to Spencer. Spencer got this funny look on his face, like he might be about to cry. Then he swore, about sixteen cuss words, three of which I didn't know. And said, “Yeah. Me too.”
And there we were, stuck.
I came out to the whole world in middle school, because I was already getting called a fag, and it seemed easier not to deny it. The other guys didn't yet, although they caught a lot of flak anyway for being my friends so I wasn't sure what they were waiting for. To my surprise it was Spencer, first day in high school, who walked up to the sophomore who'd just poked me in the chest and said, “I'm starting a Gay-Straight Alliance at this ass-backward school, and my buddies are joining it. You can join too, or you can stay the hell out of our way, but you can't pick on Adam anymore.”
The sophomore looked like some pet puppy had reared up and bitten his nose off. He said, “Who gives a shit what you're going to do?”
Spencer said, “You do. Just back off.” And he looked fierce, and then Mitch came up behind him, and even though Mitch isn't a really big guy, he's tall and has muscles. He did even at fourteen. And the creep said, “What the fuck ever,” and walked away. Then Spence actually marched into the vice-principal's office and got all the forms to start that GSA. We'd had each other's backs ever since, but that was all we'd had.
That wasn't all I'd dreamed about though. I'd been beating off to some nebulous idea about Mitch's hands and mouth for a while by then, and yet sometimes I'd imagine I was looking down and seeing Spencer's wicked grin, and it got me off and messed me up completely. I'd planned to marry Mitch since I was five, but Spencer's cute little butt and his fire-spark personality made me want all kinds of X-rated things. I was so confused.
Then for the last few months I'd started noticing how things felt more serious between Mitch and Spencer. I'd catch them looking at each other, and they would blush and look away, or have this look in their eyes like a man in the desert seeing water. I realized they'd stopped touching each other much, nothing more than a punch in the arm. We all used to wrestle around, or sling an arm over each other's shoulders. Now they never got that close to each other, or to me, which I figured was their sense of fairness coming out. We still spent most of our free time together, but it was different, charged with things moving under the surface. And because I was looking that low, on both of them, unable to stop myself, I noticed how often one of them would spring wood, just at the sight of the other one.
It hurt. It hurt so badly that some nights I almost couldn't stand it. They spent more time together than with me, because I had school government and several other activities, but usually we'd meet up at least for a couple of hours in the evening. I'd watch them walking in wide circles, so as not to touch each other too much, but their eyes would meet again and again. And then they'd look at me, like they were wondering if I'd noticed. Every night, after we'd split up and gone home from whatever we were doing that day, I would lie in my bed and try to figure out ways to leave town and let them be together. And pretend like it wouldn't nearly kill me to go. But not as badly as it would hurt to see them actually make a move on each other.
And then today I walked in on Spencer and Mitch kissing, with that soft look on both their faces. And I turned right around, ignoring whatever they said behind me, and ran.
I leaned back on the park bench and watched those happy, oblivious little kids playing together. Why couldn't things stay that simple? Why did the guys you loved more than all the world and wanted to make happy, have to find that happiness without you? How could I manage to be unselfish enough to go back and pretend to be pleased for them?
I was betting that was their first kiss. There had been wonder in it. Plus Spencer had told me just last week he'd never yet managed to kiss a guy, and I believed him. I'd almost offered to fix that. Would today have been different if I'd kissed him first?
The air was cooling as the sun began to set. I didn't know how long I'd been sitting there. I'd heard my cell phone chime and then ring. Several texts. Spencer's ringtone. Mitch's. I hadn't pulled it out.
But I could do this. I would do this. I'd be strong and tough and tell them how pleased I was that they'd finally found each other. I was glad for them, truly I was. They're my best friends in all the world and I'd step in front of a bus to make them happy, and if they did that for each other that was a good thing, a wonderful thing. And someday I'd stop feeling like all that happiness was stolen out of my heart for them. Because that was okay, wasn't it? Wouldn't I have given them all I was, all I had, if they'd only asked?
The wind picked up and I shivered, chilled to the bone despite the spring day. The sun was below the trees now. Mom might be wondering why I'd missed dinner. I got out my phone.
There they were. Four missed calls. Five waiting text messages.
I wasn't going to look, but... little bits scrolled across the screen. “Adam you idiot...” from Spencer. “Come back and...” Spencer again. “We didn't mean...” And then the one that made my heart almost stop. From Mitch. “Adam, we love you...”
That couldn't mean what it sounded like. I stared for long minutes at those four words running across my phone. My pulse in my throat was almost strong enough to stop my breath. It wouldn't be what I'd dreamed of. The next few words would be “like a brother” or “as our best friend” and then my heart would truly break. I closed the phone. Opened it. Closed it and put it in my pocket.
I got on my bike and pedaled slowly toward home, but my bike knew the way to Spencer's. At the bottom of his front walkway, I stopped, laid my bike down gently in the grass, and finally looked up. Spencer's window faced out the front. I glanced up there, and saw that it was empty, and the curtain swayed slightly, hanging open but askew as if tugged by some invisible hand. I wondered where they were, and what they were doing together. I felt cold and empty thinking about that. If they were lying on the bed, surely they'd have closed the drapes...
I pulled out my phone and looked at it again. “Adam, we love you...” Slowly, taking a breath to hold back the pain, I clicked to read it. And the first thing after that was a period. Full stop, no qualifiers. And then, “Both of us.” I sobbed harshly, and bit my lip, my eyes leaping across the words. “a
ll three of us together.”... “I'd have kissed you too.” I looked up, blinking.
The front door swung open and there they were, in jeans and T-shirts and socks, just the way they'd been when I left. Mitch's hair stood on end, like he'd been running his hands through it again. Spencer's brown eyes were wide and dark.
We stared at each other. Then Mitch said, “Where the hell have you been? We've been waiting for you for hours.” And Spencer added, “I want another damned kiss and he won't give me one until you do it first.”
I laughed. And then cried. And then walked up that front path into two sets of waiting arms. Mitch kissed my mouth, tasting of cherry Coke and all I'd ever hoped for. Spencer kissed my neck, until I guided him to my mouth too. I said, “You know you're both crazy. We're all crazy.”
Spencer said, “Hey, if it doesn't work, well, hell, it won't be because we didn't try.” And he grinned.
And Mitch said, “We'll find a way. I promise both of you, we'll find answers that work.”
So I kissed them again. And although I had kissed a boy before, experimenting a bit, it had been nothing like this, nothing like the feel of these two guys pressed up on either side of me. I said, “Spence, what time does your aunt get home? Because I want...”
He said, “Me, too.” But a glance at his phone had him swearing. “She'll be coming up the road any minute now.”
Mitch cursed too, but I laughed. “It doesn't matter. It really doesn't. We have all the time in the world, now.” And we did.
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Doubts and Darkness
~Picture prompt: Looking straight at the camera is a handsome young man with model-perfect features, flowing hair, and bare chest. His expression is controlled and unrevealing. Draped in a fireman's carry over his shoulders is another muscular young guy in dark shorts. This boy's eyebrows are raised, and his expression is wry, and amused.