“I think it’s a rite of passage, kid.” Jackson winks and walksout, closing the door behind him before I can respond. Or knee him in his giant testicles.
Wait a minute. If I just did that, and if Jacksonhasdone that, does that mean it’s the same for Oliver too?
My toes curl into the floor as the memory of a fleeting moment of pleasure rewrites something fundamental.
I want to have sex with Oliver Jacoby.
Three hours,two showers, and one failed attempt at reading one of Jackson’s mystery books later, I pick up my phone and call Marvin.
He answers on the fourth ring. The screen fills with the familiar backdrop of his fire escape—wrought iron railing, a sliver of brick wall, and the distant chaos of New York City traffic seven stories below.
“Baby brother. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
“I need advice.”
Marvin’s eyebrows rise half an inch. In Marvin Abrams language, that’s the equivalent of a full-body double take. “About what?”
I open my mouth. Close it. Open it again. The words are right there, fully formed, ready to launch, and yet my vocal cords have staged a mutiny.
“Ryan.” Marvin leans closer to the camera. “You look like you’re about to pass a kidney stone. What’s going on?”
“I want to have sex.”
The silence that follows is deafening. I can hear a taxi honking fourteen blocks away. Marvin stares at me through the screen, his lips slightly apart. A pigeon lands on the fire escape railing behind him, regards the situation, and wisely departs.
“Come again?” Marvin says.
“I’d rather not repeatit.”
“No, I heard you. I just need a second to process the fact that my little brother, who once blushed at a Victoria’s Secret commercial, told me he wants to have sex.” He scrubs both hands over his face. “Okay. Okay, we’re doing this. Who’s the lucky guy?”
“I didn’t say it was a guy.”
Marvin gives me a look so withering that it transcends the digital medium. “Ryan. Please.”
“Fine. It’s a guy.”
“A guy you go to school with?”
“Yes.”
“A guy you’ve been spending a suspicious amount of time with recently?”
My silence is apparently answer enough.
Marvin lights a cigarette, takes a long drag, and exhales a cloud that obscures half his face. When it clears, his expression tells me he already knows who the guy is. “It’s Oliver Jacoby.”
My stomach drops through the floor. “I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. You’ve been mentioning him in every text message for the past month. ‘Oliver and I watched the eclipse.’ ‘Oliver and I are sorting archives together.’ ‘Oliver said the nicest thing about my bone structure.’” Marvin ticks each item off on his fingers. “I’m not an idiot, Ryan. I can identify a pattern.”
“I never said the thing about my bone structure.”
“You implied it. Heavily.”
I want to argue, but he’s right, and we both know it. I slump back against my headboard and pull my knees to my chest. “So you figured it out.”
“Sure.” Marvin shifts on the fire escape, crossing one ankle over the other. “So. You want to sleep with Oliver Jacoby. The hockey player. The guy who carried you across campus while naked.”
