I Brake for Christmas Page 4

  I shrug. I’m blushing. The attraction is obvious, but I don’t know exactly what that means. Did George come out to me? Is he gay, or just adventurous? Is he into me, or is he just super cock-hungry? Would he have made that move on any dude in the middle of nowhere? Will he blow whoever this jerk is who goes to Pepperdine and insists on driving people all over the place? He’s holding my hand, and I really don’t want him to let go. “Yeah,” I say. “Of course.”

  “Good.” He shakes my hand, then reaches to open his door.

  “Don’t forget your sweatshirt,” I say. It’s still balled up on my lap, although I managed to get myself put away before we got into town.

  He gets out of the car and opens the back door, reaches in for his bag. “Keep it,” he says, pulling a green Pi Omega sweatshirt from his bag. Last year’s, judging by the way it hugs his love handles once he’s squeezed into it.

  “Have a good Christmas,” he says. “Drive safe the rest of the way.” He throws me a wink and waggles his eyebrows, then turns and strolls into the store.

  I watch him go. As if I have a choice. If I turned my head from those overstuffed rugby glutes roiling under those flannel pants, I’m pretty sure my eyes would just pop out and roll after him. Even once he’s disappeared through the door, I sit for a minute. It’s a lot to process. I’ve bonded with George Cortner. I’m pretty sure I’m friends with George Cortner. I seem to keep telling myself George Cortner sucked my dick a little while ago, but now that he’s gone, the memory seems so ephemeral and disjointed it’s hard to categorize as true. There was a cop involved? That’s not life, it’s a Village People video.

  I keep watching the space beyond my windshield as if it’s a TV screen and juicy little George will bounce back into the frame after this—remarkably boring—commercial break and continue to read from the unlikely script about our newfound friendship. Which keeps not happening. And so eventually I putter out of the parking lot and back to the Business Loop. After a last, George-free glance over my shoulder at the store, I lay on the gas and head east. Shortly after I’m back on the highway and out of town I pass a sign: Grand Junction’s just 99 miles away. From the Junction, Boulder’s maybe another four hours. Totally doable.

  If I had any reason to haul my ass all the way home.

  Which I don’t.

  * * * *

  I feel like “lie” is a bigger word than is strictly called for. I am from Colorado; it is Christmas; I have aunts, uncles, cousins, friends who would be delighted to see me and only too happy to have me stay for Christmas dinner. That cruise George somehow remembered my parents going on? It’s a three week Antarctic Odyssey along the coast of South America that doesn’t dock in Buenos Aires until like January tenth. My brother Cam is spending Christmas with his girlfriend’s family, I think in Boston, and so my sister tagged along on some ski trip to Steamboat with a friend from school.

  My plan was in fact to be that exact guy, alone in the dorm with his Christmas dinner from Del Taco, kicking around an empty campus looking for any excuse to put off piano practice. Then George appeared in the Commons. Even after he came and sat by me, I never would have found the nerve to be like, Oh hey, we should hang out.

  But the drive was a better opportunity than I could let slip by: hours together, just the two of us, with nothing to do but get to know each other, saving his family’s Christmas in the process. That had to be worth at least a kiss under the mistletoe. Which was not originally intended as a euphemism for “blow job,” but he did offer, and I wasn’t spending a hundred bucks on gas just for the chance to say “No, thanks.” To not get a blow job from George Cortner, I could’ve just stayed put in my dorm.

  So yeah, the drive to Green River? Totally worth it. An extra five hundred miles to Boulder for no real reason other than to crash someone else’s Christmas and double the length of my solo drive back to Cali? It seems less rewarding. I’m low on gas and getting kinda hungry—unlike George, who had something in his mouth almost the entire trip, ahem, I haven’t had but a handful of chips since In ‘n’ Out. According to signs, the next chance for food and gas is nineteen miles away, and why am I going to drive that far east just to have to drive it again? Fuck it, I decide. I’ll pull over and rest my eyes if I need to, but I’m going back to Inland. I fly off the highway at the next exit, hang a left at the country underpass, and get myself turned around. I’ll be back in Green River in less than half an hour, and now I know a place to get gas and groceries.

  I fill up my gas tank and empty my coffee reservoir at the gas station once I’m back in town. By the time I get into the bathroom, my dick’s dried to my underwear. As I’m prying my more stubborn pubes from the dingy white cotton, I get that I should probably give my jock a little wet-paper-towel onceover, but this is jiz George sucked out of me. That the biggest crush I’ve ever had in my life sucked me off at ninety miles an hour already seems like a surreal fantasy; I opt to carry the crusty evidence with me at least as far as my own shower.

  People have begun to gather ‘round the Greyhound stop by the grocery store when I get out of the bathroom. If I have to drive all the way back to school by myself, I’m grateful at least I don’t have to fold myself into a musty bus seat next to who-knows-who. On Christmas Eve? No thanks.

  I swing through the store and gather up some groceries. A loaf of bread, some peanut butter, a box of crackers, a 6-pack of off-brand diet cola, an apple. If I was riding the bus, I’d buy a few apples, I tell myself. Maybe share one with my seatmate. You know, during the story she tries to sell me about the daughter she’s on her way to visit when really she’s heading to Vegas with the mortgage money because she feels lucky and her birthday present to Jesus is to give him one last chance to do something for her for once in her life and send her the jackpot she’s been waiting for. I’ve never set foot on a Greyhound bus, but this imaginary hard-luck woman is who I imagine rides one. L.A.-bound on Christmas Eve, I scan the collected passengers as I leave the store for the blonde girl about my age who must surely be among them, visions of Hollywood Boulevard dancing in her head. Is this someone’s trip to casino riches or stardom? I figure they’ve all gotta start somewhere. Someone’s gonna win that jackpot; why shouldn’t it be my lady? Maybe the apple I thought about buying to share with her is lucky.

  Still no sign of a bus when I come out of the store, crunching away at the impulse Butterfinger I picked up at the checkstand. I glance over at the small cluster of passengers, as if I might recognize—who? The imaginary seatmate I never had? A not-yet-famous actress? George?

  Wait, George?

  “George?”

  He drags his eyes up from his apparently fascinating feet and says, “Oh, hey.”

  I hurry across the few feet of parking lot pavement between us. “What are you doing?” I ask. “What happened to your sister?”

  “It’s just—”

  “Will you please let me drive you?” I interrupt him to ask. “It can’t possibly be so out of my way that you need to take a bus.”

  “No, it’s not…not exactly…” He hems and haws, his attention largely fixed on his feet again for a second before a question crosses his own face and he looks up at me again. “Wait,” he says. “What are you doing? You should be halfway to Grand Junction by now.”

  Oh, right.

  “It’s just…” I’m not sure how to finish this sentence, so I don’t really try. “What happened to your sister?” I ask again instead.

  “I’m not exactly sure…It’s just…”

  His cheeks are flaming red. He won’t let his eyes settle anywhere near mine. I can’t begin to frame the why, but I take a wild stab at the what: “Do you need a ride back to campus?”

  He chuckles awkwardly. “I mean, kinda. But not from you.”

  “Why not from me?”

  “You just drove me here. Like forty minutes ago. I can’t ask you to drive me back.”

  “You can.”

  “I’m not gonna. I feel like an ass. Go on home, will ya?
Have a good Christmas, buddy. I’ll tell you the story one of these days.”

  “Come on,” I say. I put my hand on his shoulder. “You can tell me in the car.”

  “No. Brent…”

  “I’ve already turned around,” I confess. “I’m on my way back. Come on.”

  “You’re just saying that.”

  “Why would I say that?”

  “But why would you be doing it?”

  “So we both have stories to tell.” I shrug. “Get in the car, will ya?”

  “Okay,” he says. He picks up his duffle bag and we start back across the parking lot. “But I feel like an ass.”

  * * * *

  The silence in the car for the first several miles is at least as companionable as awkward. We’re both obviously a little embarrassed. Neither understands the other’s predicament, but the fact that we both feel caught out seems to make it easier to swallow.

  “So, who goes first?” I finally say. I don’t really want it to be me, but we’ve just turned around to retrace five hundred miles worth of unnecessary steps. Some sort of explanation seems in order.

  George looks at me, then away out his window with a little laugh. “It’s just…” He stops himself. Lets out a big sigh. Starts again. “You offered. I couldn’t say no. Or, well, I could have.” He turns, like maybe he’s gonna face me, but is gazing out the windshield when he says, “But I didn’t want to. I was so excited when I saw you in the Commons last night, I was like, No way, Brent’s here, too? Like all of a sudden staying at school for Christmas was gonna be the best thing ever happened to me, right? And then you were like, Yeah, I’m going home tomorrow, and I saw my chance melt away.”

  “Your chance?”

  “I mean, we bullshit in choir sometimes, but I just felt like hey, maybe if we were both around over the holiday, you know, like, maybe we could, I don’t know…hang out. Like, I’ve got my buddies, you’ve got your thing, I just feel like we were never really gonna get a chance to connect unless, you know…we just did it. So I came and sat by you, and then you were like, Yeah, I’m leaving tomorrow. And I was like Damn. And you were like, I’ll drive you to Green River. And I was like Then let’s do it.”

  “But I thought you were going home,” I say. The quiver in my voice surprises me. Even when he had my dick in his mouth, it never occurred to me that George might have given two seconds of thought to whether or not we ever “connected.”

  The creaky old thunderbolt analogy is suddenly fresh; I feel so struck by the force of this revelation I fear I may actually start to sizzle under the heat. When it happens I realize I’ve never actually trembled before—I can’t control the buzz through my body.

  “I was going home,” he says. “You know, when we talked about it a couple weeks ago. Stuff just, I don’t know…changed, in between.”

  “So what if I tell you this?” I venture.

  “What?”

  “How you were like, but aren’t your parents on a cruise?…”

  “Yeah?”

  “They totally are.”

  “What?”

  “South America. They’re gone til like the middle of January.”

  “So…”

  “I wasn’t going home for Christmas, you were right. But then you sort of said it was no ride that was keeping you from going home, and I was like, I don’t know…” I lean on his phrasing. Acknowledge this choice with a bashful grin. “I kind of saw my chance. I didn’t really have anything else to do, and I was like, Spend the day thinking about George, or spend the day next to him…?”

  “Thinking about George?”

  I would never have found the nerve to say that, except I’m pretty sure, as a new wave of nervous energy rolls through me in an involuntary shiver, that he’s just copped to feeling the same way about me. I shrug with a little smile; that’s what I said.

  “You mean…?” he says

  “You can’t be surprised.”

  “A little bit I am.”

  “You’re surprised?”

  He grins. He’s blushing. “I never knew what to say,” he says. “I’ve never had a big problem with feeling gay. Hell, you know what a hot guy looks like—I love feeling gay!” We laugh. He goes on. “But I’m still working on, you know, how to act gay, I guess.”

  “Really? ‘Cause that what you did earlier? Sucking a guy’s dick, I mean. Pretty gay.”

  Again we laugh. “Maybe ‘how to be gay,’ is what I mean. You know, like, telling a guy I like him. That I think he’s cute and a good singer and that I kinda like the way he smells on the days he forgets to wear deodorant.”

  “That happened like once,” I say around a laugh.

  “You’re not wearing any today,” he scolds, exaggerating a leer.

  I take a second to marshal my thoughts. For all the nights I’ve lain awake imagining what George’s body might feel like under my hands, stroking myself along with the fantasy of breaching those heavy cheeks, I have no plan for actually saying anything meaningful, romantic, or sweet to him. Like I was ever going to need one? I settle on, “I guess you could just tell him.”

  He looks at me over the top of those ridiculous glasses. “You wait until after I’ve worked up the nerve to give out that advice?” he teases. “I just did.”

  “Oh, right.”

  Divider lines whiz under the car. George waits for me to say something else. I know this because, when I don’t, he says, “What about you?”

  “You know I’m gay,” I say, missing his point completely.

  “I do. I mean, what about you, is there, like, maybe, a boy you like?”

  I grin. Big. “Yes.”

  “And do you think he’s cute?”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “And obviously he’s a talented singer.”

  “You figure that’s obvious, do you?”

  “Oh yes,” he says. He slides his stocking feet out of his blue rubber soccer sandals and puts them up on the dash right in front of my face. “And I bet he smells good, too, huh?” He wriggles his toes. “Doesn’t he?”

  “He smells like feet and strawberry pie,” I say, twisting up my nose and giggling.

  “Yum.”

  “Yum.”

  George rearranges himself in his seat. Puts his feet on the floor and turns to look at me. “I bet he wants to kiss you real bad, too, doesn’t he? Like, I bet he’s been thinking about it for a long time. Like every time he looks at your lips…”

  I pull over. By which I mean I barrel onto the gravelly shoulder, the car stalls again, and I yank helplessly at my seatbelt until George stills my hands and pops the buckle loose for me. Turned on my knees in my seat, I look into his laughing eyes and I can’t believe my luck. This guy? Wants to kiss me?

  He must, ‘cause he cups my chin with his right hand and does it. Like the rest of him, his lips are ripe and full. He presses them timidly against mine at first, but once we’re lip to lip, whatever flimsy barrier we were pretending was between us dissolves. When his tongue shows the slightest flicker of interest, I part my lips to take it, and we caress each other until my tongue cramps. I can’t figure out how to pull myself away. More to the point, I can’t understand why I would. Stop kissing George? Where in the world is my forehead meant to go, if not against his? Why had God even bothered with eyes if I wasn’t going to use them to slurp up every detail of George’s plump pink cheeks and his flared freckled nose and the very beginning whispering hint of his adorable double chin? Five minutes become fifteen and we’re coming right up on forty-five before we somehow return to separate bodies and sit back, laughing.

  “You’re good at that, too,” I say, after my breathing slows back toward normal.

  He smiles. “I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.”

  “Yeah? Well, any time you wanna do it again…it’s cool.”

  “Cool.”

  “Cool.”

  After a brief reprise, we’re back on the road. George opens a sleeve of crackers and begins to dip them in the pea
nut butter. He eats one, passes one to me, then eats another.

  “So what did happen with your Christmas?” I ask. “Why didn’t you go home?”

  He sighs. Eats the cracker he had started to pass to me.

  “I mean, if you want to talk about it,” I say. “You don’t have to.”

  “Naw, it’s alright. I mean, it’s not awesome, but it’ll be alright.”

  “What happened?”

  Big breath. “You remember that guy Forrester?”

  “The blow job guy?”

  “Yeah.” He chuckles. “I like that that’s his claim to fame.”

  “It is how he came up…”

  “I know. It’s just kinda funny. ‘Cause at Thanksgiving, he wasn’t my blow job guy, and it kinda pissed him off.”

  “What is he, like straight now?”

  “He would tell you he’s been straight all along. He says it’s ‘cause he can’t let a girl do it. ‘I can’t have sex before I get married,’ he tells me. ‘And if she’ll suck me off, I can’t marry her, ‘cause she’s a whore.’

  “‘You know you don’t have to marry someone just for a blow job, right?’ I tell him.

  “‘That’s why I like you doin’ it,’ he says. Whatever. I just wasn’t that into it, and I told him that. I came out to him, I was like, ‘This isn’t just a drunk thing for me. I’m gay. Like, I wanna do it with a guy I’m into.’ And he got all butt-hurt about it. ‘What, you’re not into me anymore?’ I was like, ‘You’ve never been into me,’ and he’s all, ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ So I was like, ‘Forget it.’

  When he got back to school, he wrote my parents this letter, about how I was a big fag and liked sucking cock. Without mentioning how he knew that, I guess. My dad called me up, ‘Is this true?’. Made a big deal about what a big favor he was doing, giving me a chance to deny it and ‘stay in the family.’ I was like, ‘I’m in this family whether I’m gay or not,’ and he basically was like ‘That’s what you think.’ And then it kinda went downhill from there.”