LITMIR.BIZ

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been Amy who had kissed him, not Peter Lawrence, the slender, brown-haired boy who sat in front of him in math class and smelled not only like gym socks, but something that made his very skin tingle. The other time he’d felt that sensation, like an itch somewhere that couldn’t be scratched, was when he was twelve and had been spying over the fence next door. Scott Bradley, Amy’s brother, who was Emily’s age, was swimming in the pool. His body looked long and tantalizing beneath the surface, the points of his shoulder blades glinting through the water. Just then Michael’s father, coming home from work, saw Michael at the top of the fence—although not what he was looking at—and yelled at him for doing something so dangerous. Michael had jumped down from the fence, twisting his ankle in the process.

      After the kissing fiasco, Amy became obsessed with boys at school who would prove to be just as unattainable: guys who had girlfriends, jocks who would never look twice at her. Michael would accompany her to dances where she’d hope to steal some boy away from his date, but it would go off badly, and she’d drink too much spiked punch, and the evening would end with her in the girls’ room, throwing up, with Michael holding back her hair. Why are you so nice to me? she’d say in between sobs. Because I can’t be anything else to you, he’d wanted to reply.

      Amy was the only person from that part of his life who knew he was gay. She’d known from that night when he was sixteen, when he’d had nowhere else to go and no one else to turn to. She hadn’t treated him any differently since then, except to get a little jealous of the female friends he made when he went away to college; especially Shannon Krist, whom he’d brought home once, even though he told her that Shannon thought she might be a lesbian. Over the years, Amy grew into herself, letting her hair return to its regular strawberry blond, although it was still spiky and short; keeping only a few tasteful piercings; dressing in her own geometric, angular designs that would cause people to stop her in the street and ask her where she bought her clothes.

      Now, Amy asked, her eyes half-lidded from the pot, “Do you wish you’d ever talked to your father about what happened that night?”

      “That was almost ten years ago. He probably forgot about it.”

      “But you haven’t.”

      “Doesn’t make any difference. Maybe it wouldn’t have if I’d reminded him while he was around. He would never have admitted that what he said was wrong.”

      “But it was wrong.”

      Michael shrugged. “Not in his mind it wasn’t. I’m sure he’s said a lot worse. Done a lot worse, too, but that’s beside the point.”

      “Do you think you’ll ever tell your mom and sister?”

      “Which part of it?”

      “All of it.”

      He sighed. “Not right now. They have too much to deal with.”

      After a pause, Amy said, “I’m seeing someone. Don’t judge. He’s one of my teachers and—don’t judge—he says I have a lot of talent. What do you think?”

      “I think,” Michael said, “that you’re still going after the wrong men.”

      “That’s probably true.”

      “I’m seeing someone too. His name is David. He pays for everything.”

      Amy arched a brow. “So you feel like a kept woman?”

      “I don’t know how I feel about it. Sometimes I think things are going well, and I don’t know how I lucked out, and other times I feel like something bad is going to happen. Like this.”

      Amy said softly, “Your father didn’t die because you were enjoying yourself with a man.”

      Michael considered this for a moment. Amy spoke so plainly, with such conviction, yet he couldn’t quite disassociate what Emily had told him over the phone a few days ago with the feeling of David’s skin, the salty essence of him.

      “I think I’m going to break up with David when I get back,” he said.

      “You do that,” Amy replied. “Maybe I’ll break up with my guy too.”

      They looked at each other, as if daring the other to look away first, and then started laughing. Both of them knew that this was easier said than done.

      Michael left Amy on the porch and went upstairs to use the bathroom. He was passing his sister’s bedroom door, which was slightly open, when he saw something inside that made him pause: Emily and Julian, going at it like horny teenagers. He stepped away, and then chuckled to himself. So Emily wasn’t that perfectly behaved after all.

      After he got back to the city, he did break up with David. Then he couldn’t stay away, and they got back together. This pattern repeated itself over the following year, with little variation. When they were apart, Michael didn’t call for days, went out with other friends. During this time, he imagined David sitting in his tasteful apartment, sipping his mineral water, alone. David gave Michael expensive presents for his birthday and the holidays. Michael gave David nothing, unless you counted grief.

      It was pretty childish behavior, he had to admit. It was as if by not committing to David, he didn’t have to tell his mother and sister he was dating anyone, or that he was gay. He wasn’t even sure if it mattered now. The person in his family who would have been most upset by it would have been his father, who was gone; and besides, his father already knew he was gay, had known for years, even if he didn’t care to acknowledge it. But Michael had spent so long acting this way, it was as if he didn’t know how else to be. If he cared to admit more, there were things he resented about David, the least being that everything seemed to have come so easily to him, especially when it came to his identity. Well, there had been that incident with his high-school girlfriend, Laurel, but the fact that she had invited David to her wedding said something about how easy it was to forgive him. He was on good terms with his parents and his younger brother, and he doted on his twin three-year-old nephews. He had been in several long-term relationships, all which had ended amicably, and he had never been desperate enough to pick someone off the street, before Michael. And even then, with his luck, Michael had gone right along with him.

      David didn’t make things easy, though. Passive aggressive, Michael thought. At the same time as David allowed Michael his space, he also insisted Michael give him a key to his apartment, in case Michael were locked out or something happened to him (yeah, right). Michael finally made him a spare key in order to shut him up, but refused to accept one to David’s apartment. He was afraid of how easy it would be to stay there when David was away, and what that would lead to.

      David’s suggestion that they move in together came about quite innocently. It was on one of those late-summer evenings that had cooled down enough that they’d dared to open the windows, and sounds from the street below drifted in on the balmy air: murmurings from the bar next door, the distant wail of a siren. David lived in a neighborhood that seemed designed for young professionals with too little time to spend in their apartments and too much money to spend on food and drink. Although only a few dozen blocks away from where Michael lived, it might as well be in a different city. But, Michael reflected, this was the kind of life someone his age, or a little older, was supposed to live. And with someone like David.

      He turned away from the window to see David holding out a glittering object in the palm of his hand.

      “I made you a key,” David said.

      “I don’t want a key. I don’t want to be coming in and out all the time. Your doorman gives me enough suspicious looks as it is, like I’m a stranger.”

      “But you wouldn’t be. Not if you lived here.”

      “Who says I want to live here?”

      David laughed. “Come on. That place you live in is a dump. You need a tetanus shot to use the shower. Besides, didn’t you say that your lease was up soon and your landlord was going to raise the rent? You can’t afford that.”

      “How do you know what I can afford?”

      “You

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