“Right. Them. Look. I know they get shit. I did. Sometimes I still do. But I just want them to see that not everyone is against them if they don’t share an orientation or gender identity. We need to work together. It’s the only way things will change. Remember that It Gets Better campaign?”
He nodded.
“I get what it was doing. And all the good it brought. But it pissed me off with the implication that it will get better in the future, and things can’t be better now. Like, you’ll get crap for who you are today, but don’t worry! One day, you won’t!”
“It has its heart in the right place,” Jeremy pointed out. “Even if the message is a little muddled.”
I shook my head. “I get that. But I don’t know that it went far enough. With how everything is going right now politically, how are we supposed to tell those same kids it’ll get better when we, as adults, are fucking up things left and right?”
“You’ve got a good head on your shoulders, you know that?”
I groaned. “That sounded very placating.”
“It wasn’t meant to be, Corey,” he said, hands tightening on the steering wheel. “You’re an eloquent speaker when you want to be. It’s one of the first things I noticed about you. When I deal with hundreds of students a year, faces tend to blur together. But not you.”
I scoffed. “You’re just trying to say I’m loud and never shut up.”
He chuckled. “Well, there is that, yes. I think that these kids will need someone like
you. You’re going to make my job easier, that’s for sure.”
Oh no. Another soft compliment. I was going to be so fucking chafed later on. “How so?”
He glanced over at me before looking ahead. “I like being around young people. It gives me… I don’t know. Hope, I guess. I mean, sure, you’ve got the idiots like always, but every now and then you meet a person or a group of people you know are going to go on to do good things. Like you. Or these kids. I don’t know exactly what they’re going through, but I think I can understand. Things were… different when I was coming out.”
“Back in the eighties,” I said sagely. “When there were dinosaurs and you had to hunt and gather your food while wearing parachute pants.”
He scowled at me. “No. Not back in the eighties. Back in the nineties—”
“Oh, because that’s a huge difference. And I notice you didn’t say you didn’t wear parachute pants—”
“The late nineties,” he growled. “And I had only one pair of parachute pants.” He blanched. “And you can never ask my father about them at all. Or ask to see pictures. Of anything.”
“Too late,” I said gleefully. “The next time I see him, I am going to make sure he brings all the photo albums and—”
“I will fire you.”
“After hours, remember? Not my boss.”
“I take it back,” he muttered.
“Too late,” I told him ominously. “Remember what I said about never letting you go? It’s already begun.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
And boy, did that shut me up.
HE GREW quiet as I gave him directions to the house. His brow was furrowing, and I wondered if I’d said something wrong. Given that Ty had instilled in me the tendency to overanalyze everything I said, I replayed our conversation, wondering just where I’d gone wrong. Had I been flirting? I didn’t mean to. Mostly. But it was—
“You’re kidding me,” he said when I told him to turn down our street. “This is a joke, right? Did Dad put you up to this?”
I blinked, looking around. It wasn’t a bad neighborhood It was rooted firmly in middle class, and the houses were nice, if a little small. I was almost offended, ready to snap at him that not all of us could be Super Gays and to remind him that I was a college student and therefore broke, when he said, “I can’t believe this.”
“Believe what?” I asked, annoyed. I didn’t think he was the type of person to judge another’s home. Though I supposed it was good to find out he was an asshole now so I could get over whatever this… this crush I had was. “Stop here. That’s my house. That’s Sandy’s car in the driveway. And I’m sorry it’s not up to—”
“We’re practically neighbors.”
That stopped me cold. “What.”