“Wow,” Selina said. “He’s—”
“Yup.” I sighed wistfully. “He sure is.”
FRIDAY nights that fall consisted of football. Yup, I just wrote that sentence. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be spending my free time at school, but there I was every Friday, climbing the bleachers, sometimes alone and sometimes with whatever friend I could wrangle into joining me. And it wasn’t because I liked the game. In fact, the game made no sense whatsoever, the scent of hot dogs and processed cheese made me want to vomit, and more often than I care to recount, there was actual vomit from drunk classmates who liked to drink behind the bleachers. Sounds like good times, right? Strangely enough, I had fun at those games, despite all the olfactory horrors I just described.
Given all the time I’d been spending with Scott since that summer, I’d gotten to know his mother and stepfather pretty well. They were nice people, easygoing, and generally upbeat. Very much like Scott. I didn’t know much about his father and stepmother other than what I heard from Scott, because they had moved to Nevada the week after we’d met. It turned out that was part of the reason Scott moved into my building. His parents each had an apartment in the same building for years and they hadn’t left because they’d wanted to stay close together. But when Scott’s stepmother took a position out of state, his mom decided it was time to relocate closer to her husband’s job, which was around the corner from our building.
Anyway, I knew Scott’s mom and stepdad, so I sat with them at the games and heard all sorts of adorable stories about Scott as a kid or Scott playing sports or Scott breathing or whatever. I took any grain of information thrown my way and tucked it into the place inside that lit up when I thought about the boy next door.
“Third down,” Scott’s stepfather said during the last quarter of the homecoming game. He leaned forward and rested his forearms over his knees.
I followed his gaze to the field. The players were huddled together, rehearsing for a porn shoot or exchanging hair tips or whatever the fuck they did when they were all sweaty, pressed close together, and bent over. I tried to adjust myself without being obvious and then picked up my camera and stood.
“I’m going to snap some shots,” I said.
Whenever Scott saw my projects for photo class or art, he always said they were gorgeous and that I had a great eye. So I had taken to bringing my camera to the games, figuring it was a good opportunity to take pictures of him without coming across like a stalker. The party line was that I was taking pictures to send to Scott’s dad. The behind-the-scenes truth was that I got a lot of personal satisfaction from these pictures. I was still trying to figure out how to justify a request for a shoot in the locker room.
“Thanks so much, Charlie,” Scott’s mom said. “Scott’s father hates that he lives so far away now and can’t see him play. The pictures help, and yours always turn out better than mine. Plus, you save me from having to lug a camera around.”
“I’m happy to help,” I said. And also happy to use my zoom lens to zero in on your son’s ass wearing those ridiculously tight leggings they call pants. The wardrobe designer for football uniforms should win a fashion design award for pulling that shit off.
I walked over to the railing, lifted the camera to my eye, and moaned. Scott was directly in front of me, bent over, ass high. Good thing I’d packed an extra role of film, because I used up the rest of the one in the camera documenting Scott’s fine posterior.
“Hey, Charlie. What’d I miss?” Selina asked as she sidled up next to me and took a noisy sip of her soda. “Ohhh, I see.” We stood hip to hip and watched the game as we shared her drink. “Do you think he knows?” she asked me eventually.
“Knows what?” I asked nervously.
She raised one eyebrow.
Yeah, okay, so she realized I had a thing for Scott. I’d have had to be dead not to. Well, dead or straight.
“How long have you known that I’m, uh….” I licked my lips nervously. I’d never said the word out loud. What if she didn’t actually know? What if she was talking about something else and once she found out she’d hate me? What if—
“That you’re gay? I think you sealed the deal when you insisted on doing my hair and makeup for Todd Green’s bar mitzvah,” she said. “I’m still getting compliments about that, by the way. Everyone thinks I had it professionally done.”
“So you don’t mind?” I asked quietly.