He puts one hand on the topmost drawer.And then he smirks.“Underwear?”
“Are you for real right now?”
His smirk gets even bigger, and he moves down to the next drawer, with all my shirts.He rummages around until he comes up with a tee, a nice one—one of my staples.It’s white, and it’s a nice, heavy material, and it’s soft.He holds it out to me and moves over to my closet.He flicks through the hangers.A corduroy shirt I never wear, but I can’t get rid of it because Gran gave it to me for Christmas.And a Carhartt jacket—brand new, because the old one I’ve got is still good, and I don’t want to get this one dirty.
“This one,” he says, giving the corduroy shirt a shake, “if you want to be the invisible college boy.”He twitches the Carhartt jacket.“This one if you want to spontaneously impregnate every twink in a twenty-yard radius.”
I reach for the corduroy.
Gray pulls it out of reach.
“You are out of your mind if you think I’m wearing that,” I say with a glance at the Carhartt jacket.
“Please, Sam.”He actually sounds like he means it.“Please.I take back the twink thing, but you would look so good in this.You would looksogood.Please.”
“I’d look like a hoosier.”
“Oh my God.”He wavers.“Try it on?If you hate it, you can wear the corduroy, but at least see how it looks.”
“I can wear the corduroy if I want,” I say, but I snatch the Carhartt jacket from him.I’ve been in enough locker rooms that it shouldn’t be any big deal to unbutton my shirt and take it off, but somehow, it is.Like the air got real thick all of a sudden.And it gets even worse, for some reason, when Gray turns his back like he’s giving me privacy.
I pull on the white tee and the jacket.It looks like what it is: a Carhartt jacket, something you’d wear if you needed to work on the car in the cold.I mean, it’s alright with the tee and the jeans.But it looks like normal clothes.
“Jesus Christ,” Gray mutters.He’s pretending to peek at me through his fingers, because everything is a game to him.“Please do not take this the wrong way, and please don’t think I’m crass, but you are going to make some boyswettonight.”
“How in the world am I not supposed to think that’s crass?”
“Also, where do we stand on the slutty mustache?”
“I thought you were supposed to be helping.”
Gray gives me a lopsided grin and drops his hand.“What do you think?”
“It’s fine.”
Some of the amusement settles down in his expression, and he says, “Okay, here’s the thing: it’s important to look nice, right?But it’s just as important for you to feel comfortable in the clothes.Like, they’re your style, and you can be relaxed and, I don’t know, at ease in them.For example, you seem comfortable in high-quality solids—you’ve got a good wardrobe you’ve built around those.You seemed less comfortable, for the record, when John-Henry saw you wearing that shirt that said,Drill, Baby, Drill.I think I actually saw you hide behind the copier.”
I groan.“That fucking shirt.”
“Watch that potty mouth, Samuel, or Gran will have to go cut a switch.”
“And he knows I will,” Gran calls from the next room, which seals it: this is the single most humiliating night of my life.
Gray is grinning for real now, but he sounds sincere when he says,“If you don’t feel comfortable, let’s try the corduroy.”
“No.”I give myself another look in the mirror.The best I can say for it is that it’s fine.It’s nothing special, not like how Gray looks in his sweater-polo.The Carhartt jacket, the tee—it’s the kind of thing I would wear anyway, more or less.A little nicer, I guess.Like I stepped it up a tiny bit.“It’s all right.”
“Yes,” Gray says.And he drags out the s to make a point.
I ignore him.
“Cue the splooging,” Gray says.
Grancackles.
“Okay,” I say, and I take him by the arm and steer him out of the room.
“You look very handsome,” Gran says as we pass through the living room.She’s back in her rainbow plaid housedress, and she’s eating popcorn.She’s gotVertigoon TV, and I guess that means Dr.Whatever-His-Name is in the doghouse tonight.“You’re going to make all those fancy boys wet.”
