How They Met, and Other Stories(38)
Author: David Levithan

I tried to imagine Graham there in his place, but I couldn’t. It was laughable. Impossible. Stupid.

Finally, after two or three songs of sitting in the folded-chair gallery, picking at the mixed salad with blueberry balsamic vinaigrette, Miles turned to me and said mischievously, “So…are we going to dance or what?”

“Yes,” I said. “Let’s.”

Miles smiled. “It’s about time.”

Just because two people can dance well on a stage to prearranged choreography doesn’t guarantee that they will be good partners in a simple slow dance. When Miles took my hand in his, there was no guarantee that our arms would fit right. When he put his other arm around my back, there was no guarantee that it would feel anything but awkward, unrehearsed. When his feet started to move, there was no guarantee that my steps would match his.

But they did.

As if we had rehearsed. As if our bodies were meant to be this. As if we were meant to be this. Together.

He closed his eyes. He was with me, he was elsewhere, he was with me. I looked over his shoulder. My mother smiled at me and I nearly cried. My aunt and uncle smiled. Jeremy watched, as a girl tugged on his sleeve, telling him to hurry.

I closed my eyes, too.

The sound of a dance. This dance. The ballad of family conversations, clinking glasses, plates being cleared. One heartbeat. Two heartbeats. The song you hear, and all the things beside it that you dance to.

When it was over, Miles pressed my back lightly and I squeezed his hand. Then we separated for a fast song. Instead of jumping off the dance floor, we jumped into the fray. We joined Jeremy and his friends, the aunts and the uncles. We electric slid. We celebrated good times (come on). We cried Mony, Mony. As a crowd, part of the crowd, together.

It was fun.

When the next slow song came on, there was no question. I reached for him, and he let me.

“May I?” I asked.

“Certainly,” he replied.

But just as we were about to start, there was a tap on my shoulder. I looked to my side and saw it was Jeremy.

“May I have this dance?” he asked.

I let go of Miles and turned fully to my brother, raising my hand to his.

“Uh…sure,” I said.

Jeremy looked at me as if I were an idiot. “Not with you,” he said. “With Miles.”

My brother wanted to dance with my not-quite-but-maybe-so boyfriend. I could imagine all his friends watching—his eighth-grade friends watching. Talking. Our family. Our parents.

“Why?” I asked.

He winked at me. I swear to God, he winked at me. And then he said, “I want to make Tom insanely jealous.”

“Let’s go, then,” Miles said, laughing. And with that, they left me. Stunned. They took the dance floor, laughing and awkward and wonderful. I felt such love for both of them. Such love.

I looked over to Jeremy’s friends, who were all watching. I wondered which of the boys was Tom. If Jeremy was serious. Then I looked over at my father, at everyone else who was watching, confused and excited. Something was happening. I knew my father would blame me. I knew he would say all of this was my fault. And I would take it. I couldn’t take any of the credit for my astonishing brother, but I would happily take all of the blame. If it could be in some way my fault, then I would know I’d done something right.

I would stay to find out. And stay, and stay, and stay.

It is never, I hope, too late to be a good brother.

BREAKING AND ENTERING

People never change the place they hide their keys.

It was right after midnight. Back when it was summer, back when I had some reason to hope. Cody’s parents were out of town for the weekend and Cody’s keys were locked in his car, seven blocks away. He took me around back and we walked quietly through the night foliage, listening like thieves for the neighbors who would notice, the ones who might tell. I wasn’t supposed to be there, wasn’t supposed to be the boy Cody loved, wasn’t supposed to see when he moved the flower pot and revealed the spare key underneath. He didn’t say anything, didn’t swear me to secrecy. He just held his breath a little as he squeezed past me to the door, ran inside so the alarm wouldn’t sound. When I walked in, I had to call out for him. He reached me before I got to the light switch. We found ourselves in the dark.

Now it’s afternoon, four months later. Cody is gone, but the key is still in its hiding place. I don’t know what I’m doing here, only that I have to be here, doing this. Breaking and entering. The breaking has already happened, is always happening. So I reach for the key. I fit it into the lock. I enter.

I should be in school. I should be enjoying the first breaths of the last gasp of my senior year. I should be living my days like they are the best days.

Cody is in a place I’ve never been, with people I’ve never met. Somehow I allowed him to step into the future without me.

From a schedule I saw back when all such things were hypothetical, I know he is sitting in an English class right now. I can picture him there. I can see him slumped back and doodling. I can see him after class, walking over the green. Or asleep in his dorm room, eyelids closed. The pattern of his breathing. I can see it clearly, and none of it is true. It is only my version, which is imagination.

This place is real. These steps are real. I am in his house, surrounded by the house silence that is not like breathing at all. There is only background. It is a sound like loneliness—enough to let you know you’re there, but not enough to fill you with life.

I have very few memories of the kitchen, but it’s still hard to be in here. It’s wrong and it’s stupid and it’s hard. I can’t deny what I’m doing anymore, not with the sink dripping and cereal bowls in the sink. I remember the sliver of the kitchen I saw that night when the refrigerator light knifed it open to us. Four in the morning, he could stand there naked and not be afraid. I wore his robe and took comfort in the thought that I was making it a little bit mine. Everything we did that night seemed so brave and so doomed. Brave because we felt doomed, doomed because we felt we’d always need to be brave. Even getting orange juice at four in the morning. Looking into that light.

I want him to know I’m here now.

I want him.

The sink drips and drips and drips. Cars pass outside. The key is still in my hand, fitting.

There are things he told me. His fear of stormy nights. The time he kissed a boy in summer camp, pretending it was a game. His father’s affair. The strength of his love for me, even if he didn’t always call it love.