“Those lotto numbers were bunk,” I tell him. His smile widens along with the door as he gestures grandly for me to enter. The inside looks like a garage that’s been converted into an efficiency apartment. Pretty basic, with unpainted cinderblock walls and a little kitchen area in the same room, a table for eating, and an adjoining bath.
“You live here by yourself?”
“Yup.”
In one way it’s pretty awesome. In another way, it seems lonely as hell.
“Where are your parents?”
“Charlotte. I was getting too hard to handle, so they sent me here.” He makes air quotes around thetoo hard to handlepart.
“That sucks.” I frown, feeling bad for him that he’s basically been banished to Florida, probably not the worst place to be sent, but still.
He shrugs. “My aunt hasn’t started charging me rent yet. Could be a lot worse.”
I glance around his bachelor pad. It’s kind of dark and dank, a slight funk in the air, though it does look like he tried to clean up before I arrived. The floor is a mishmash of old carpets laid over the concrete, still bare in some places. One window has the air conditioning unit balanced in it, and on the other, instead of a curtain, has a sheet tacked up rather sloppily. There’s also a beat-up leather couch situated in front of an old flat-screen TV and game controls.
“You want to play FIFA?” he asks. It looks like he has a game on pause.
“Yeah, sure.”
We do that for a while, and it’s not too weird. Dave does most of the talking, telling me about his parents, who weren’t too keen on him dating guys and didn’t want his “deviant lifestyle” to influence his little brothers. He doesn’t say it outright, but they basically kicked him out for being gay, which is shitty.
“So, what are you, like, bi?” I ask.
“Eh, I’m pretty gay. I’ve only messed around with one girl, and it didn’t really do it for me.”
That seems weird, considering all the smack talk around our lockers. “What about all those stories you tell?”
“All true.” He tilts his head and scores a goal on me because I’m not really paying attention to the game. “Just, it was dudes, not chicks.”
That kind of blows my mind as I recall some of his stories. He’s done all that with dudes?
“You must have been really popular in Charlotte.”
He chuckles at that. “With a certain crowd.”
“Why don’t you just come out with it?” I ask, though I probably shouldn’t judge because I’m not exactlyout with itmyself.
“New school. New people. Just trying to fit in, you know? Who wants to be the fat gay kid right out of the gates?”
I glance over at him. “You’re not fat. A little husky, maybe.”
He laughs with his head thrown back. He’s got a pretty decent laugh. Like his whole body gets into it. Makes me want to make him laugh again.
“How about you?” Dave asks. “What’s up with you and Mitcham?”
I turn my gaze back to the TV screen. At least I don’t have to lie about it. “We’re friends—best friends—since middle school.”
“You think he’s straight?”
“Pretty sure.”
Except there was this one time….
Dave cocks his head. “I think my gaydar needs a tune-up. All the guys around here look gay to me, but I think it’s just because it’s Florida and everyone’s naked all the time.”
I smile at that. And the way he says Florida, like “Flaaarida.”
