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“What happened?”
His chest rises under my cheek.
“Nothing until the weekend. Then I saw him at the basketball court in the park. My friends were there.” Clint swallows. “He looked right at me and yelled fag.”
Suddenly, the sheets are colder.
Clint’s hand goes still.
“I shoved him. He shoved me. Not much of a fight. Just two scared assholes making sure everybody knew how straight they were.”
I say nothing.
“Everybody laughed. I thought being bigger would fix it. More girls. More friends.” He breathes out through his nose. “I thought if I won the fight, I won the story.”
A long silence.
“I did not win the story.”
My hand is resting against his ribs. I leave it there.
“And after?”
“I walked out the last day of junior year and never went back.”
I lift my head again. “You left school?”
“Got my GED. Made pizza. Very glamorous.”
The joke arrives exactly where I expect it to.
I don’t laugh.
For a moment I think about all the versions of Clint I’ve been handed. The angry son. The cam performer. The guy in the pool. The man who knows how to stretch dough, bargain over a chessboard, make everyone laugh before they can ask what hurts.
I know more than I did ten minutes ago. I still don’t know enough.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
Clint looks back at the ceiling.
“Yeah.”
His arm tightens around me. I put my cheek back against his chest. His heartbeat is steady beneath my ear.
I don’t ask another question, but I have them. And after today, I wonder if there’s time for more.
“You’re fucking!”
I lunge for the phone and stab the volume down so hard I almost hang up on him.
“Don.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“You’re on speaker.”
I glance toward the open studio door. Something clatters in the kitchen.
