SUMMER, 2008 (cont'd)
Chapter 10

"Someday I'll laugh about it, all that pressure stashed behind it. Couldn't it last like that? I doubt it. But c'mon girl, let's laugh about it!"
N.E.R.D., "Laugh About It" - Seeing Sounds, 2008

The rest of the summer passed much too fast, the way time often does when things are relatively easy and uncomplicated; the tedium of good times. He worked more, and worked harder, got back on Hector's good side. He let Pete teach him how to drive, something he'd only done a handful of times before, surreptitiously piloting Pete's car, taking turns too fast and narrowly missing obstacles a handful of times. He did his summer reading, usually alone but sometimes at Vance's place when he woke up long after Vance left for work, curling himself into Vance's side of the bed with All the Pretty Horses propped open. He even took notes, sometimes.

Sometimes if they both woke in the middle of the night, twisted around each other, Jimmy would read poetry out loud to Vance, something it didn't occur to him to be embarrassed of until Vance said, the first time: "You like poetry?"

"Uh...sometimes."

"Really."

"I like this kind." He'd finally bought his own copy of What the Living Do, though he kept Zoe's page in his wallet still. "It doesn't rhyme. It's like reading someone's diary."

"That's a weird reason to like something."

"Yeah, maybe. Listen to this."

He flipped through for something short, settled on "The Last Time". It was just nine lines long, and when it ended, Vance said, "That was it?" And then, when Jimmy nodded: "Read it again."

He was quiet afterward. "That is kind of nice."

"Right?"

"It's dark."

"They all are." He was laying with his head angled onto Vance's warm, bare shoulder.

"Read me another one."

Jimmy thumbed through for something suitable, stopped on "What the Living Do." It was one of the longer ones. He began to read.

"Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days..." He fell into the familiar cadence of the poem, almost didn't notice when Vance lifted a hand to cover his own face. He reached the end of the final stanza—I am living, I remember you—and craned his head up to look at Vance, whose hand was still over his otherwise expressionless face. It was only much later that it occurred to Jimmy, clear as day, that Vance was trying very hard not to cry.

"You okay?"

"Mhm."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," Vance said, hand slipping from his eyes. "It's just the..." he trailed off, not looking at Jimmy. "Never mind."

Another time, Jimmy might have pushed him to speak his mind, but the pensiveness that had fallen over Vance since they'd left Johnny's house a few weeks ago had seemed to change something about Vance, settled a fundamental shift into their relationship, substantial but nearly imperceptible to Jimmy then. He looked over the poem again. Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days...

He felt stupid then, and guilty, but he didn't know how to apologize, and what for, without sounding even stupider. He closed the book, twisted around so that he was facing Vance, his chin propped on Vance's collarbone.

"Don't be sad," he said. Vance only looked back at him.

The second time he felt that familiar sensation that things had gone quietly and irreparably wrong was over the phone.

The beginning of his senior year fast approached, and the prospect of it seemed to settle some odd excitement into him every morning. The epithet itself seemed to carry great distinction—senior—and the years he'd spent looking forward to the day he'd finally be allowed to leave the American K-12 education system behind forever only aggrandized it further. He'd begun spending less and less time loafing around with Pete and Vance and more time chipping away at his summer assignments and seriously investigating his options when it came to universities, if only to confirm which ones he had any hope of being considered for. For the past couple years he'd treated college talk as the minefield it was, skirting around the topic any chance he got. Now he was the one who found himself bringing it up, to Hector as his shift wore down, or Pete, or Pete's parents, or Vance.

It was Vance that he was calling at just after five on a Monday. The main building at Bullworth had closed for the day, but Jimmy knew by then just about every way into the school, and he was able to sneak into the front office anyway to use their phone. He told Vance he was calling from Bullworth, and Vance said an unenthusiastic "Oh," and Jimmy, feeling a spark of irritation, pounced.

"Are you okay?"

"What? Of course I'm okay."

"You've been acting really weird."

"You think so?"

"Yeah." Jimmy thought about letting it drop but there was only so much caginess he could be expected to handle. "Ever since we went to see Johnny, actually."

A few moments of dead air and a heavy sigh was all the confirmation he needed. "Can we not do this over the phone?" Vance asked.

"Not do what? What's 'this'?"

"Argue, for one," Vance said.

"Are we arguing?"

"We might. Especially if I get fired because you keep callin' me at work."

Jimmy couldn't find a reasonable argument for that. "I just wanted to talk." His voice sounded small when he said it, which he hated.

"About?"

"About why you've been acting weird."

"Honey..." Vance said, very gently—probably, Jimmy thought, so that his boss would not overhear it, and whip the receiver out of his hands, but hearing it made his breath hitch all the same. Vance didn't say anything for so long that Jimmy almost thought he'd hung up.

"Are you still th—"

"Yeah, listen," Vance began. "Wait for me, okay? The shop closes pretty soon. I can come get you." He paused. "You're right. We should talk."

We should talk. Jimmy felt strange hearing a cliche occur in real life. "Uh, okay. Sure. I'll see you."

"Okay," Vance said, and the line went dead, a suitably foreboding end to the conversation.

Jimmy had no further need for the school so he walked right out the front door, waving at the night janitor, who only stared for a moment before shaking her head and going back to her work. It was late August by then, so the sun was still very high, and bright, and hot. Jimmy was still in his work polo, and he peeled it off, leaving just his navy undershirt beneath. The sky was blue and cloudless, and even he could admit that Bullworth's campus looked absolutely beautiful on a day like this. The weather viewed from Bullworth always made him feel small, but where a cover of clouds only increased the vague sensation of being hopelessly imprisoned any time he was on campus, a deep blue sky like the one that day felt open, as though to remind everyone beneath it how much world existed around Bullworth. It made him feel small in a good way.

He wandered toward the parking lot, trying to fight back the feeling of dread rising from the pit of his stomach. There was only so much that could be done about conversations, as he well knew. He knew how to fight his way out of a messy situation, was figuring out how to fuck his way out of one as well. And, he supposed, there were some situations he could talk out of. But talking down an aggressor, or chatting his way out of being written up...he'd had time and practice to perfect those. There wasn't much in his arsenal available for overcoming a discussion where there was no real winner to be named. That was probably the hardest part about the whole mess. He knew how to win things. He didn't know what to do when there was nothing to be won.

Jimmy leaned against the wall just inside the parking lot, didn't even think about the cigarette when he put it to his lips. He was smoking a lot those days—he shook the carton, heard the tell-tale rattle that he was getting low. When had he started smoking? He couldn't really remember. He vaguely remembered his mother letting him smoke nearly a decade earlier, but that memory could just as easily have been him stealing an abandoned cigarette from an ashtray, foolishly left within his reach. He supposed, either way, he could blame his mother. But he didn't particularly want to.

Vance finally arrived as he was grinding the last of the first cigarette into the ground balancing another on his lip. Jimmy waved, ran to the car.

"Hi," Vance said thinly. Jimmy slipped inside, shut the passenger side door, and held out his cigarettes. Vance just shook his head.

"Where are we going?" Jimmy asked.

"Uh...nowhere, yet," Vance said. The sun streaming into the car lit up the dashboard, warmed the leather until it was nearly too hot to touch. Vance leaned back—he still wore the deep blue-gray jumpsuit, his name embroidered on the right side of his chest—and a shaft of light fell across his red hair, turning it from its typical copper to a more brilliant, rusty red. He wet his lips absentmindedly. Jimmy felt the overpowering urge to kiss him. Of all the times to look this good...

They sat in silence. Jimmy was discovering that relationships involved a lot of silence, something he'd never properly anticipated. At one point, Vance's finger twitched as though he wanted to grab Jimmy's hand, but nothing came of that. Finally, after a few minutes, Vance said:

"I have to be honest with you."

"Okay," was all Jimmy could say.

"I can't..." he began. He hesitated. "I shouldn't," he corrected,"be dating a high school boy."

Holy shit, he's breaking up with me. His choice of words were not lost on Jimmy, who bristled. "Shouldn't?"

Vance looked regretful but he doubled down, a tactic Jimmy was all too familiar with. "That's right."

"So this is a moral choice. You're protecting me."

"No, that's not what I—"

Jimmy steamrolled on, thoroughly aggravated. "Wow, Saint Vance. What would I do without you around to protect me from men barely two years older than me?"

"Two years is a long time at this age," Vance said. Jimmy wasn't buying it.

"What else?" he asked.

"What do you mean, what else?"

Jimmy fought back the urge to roll his eyes. "You're telling me you're…you're breaking up with me for purely moral purposes?

Vance looked at him. "Of course not. It's practical, too. I mean, I remember what senior year was like, and I didn't even go to college. You're not gonna have time for me."

"You don't think I can make time?"

Vance bit the inside of his lip and looked away. Jimmy could believe that Vance was worried he'd lose time for him once school started again. Already they'd been spending less time together as his various summer project deadlines approached. But there was still something else. He couldn't imagine that Vance would look this troubled—frankly, this guilty—purely for wanting to initiate a breakup for practical purposes, even if Vance's unease every time school entered the conversation hadn't escaped Jimmy's notice. Those dots had connected easily enough. He'd even thought about it himself—he would have a lot of work to do his final year of high school if he wanted to graduate on time, and would he even have time for Vance? He wasn't sure.

But those uncertainties were recent, and Vance's discomfort had begun ever since they left Johnny's.

Johnny.

Jimmy wanted to punch himself. He slammed his head back against his headrest. "Fuck."

Vance jumped. "What?"

"Is it Johnny?"

Vance's eyes widened, just a little, but Jimmy knew he was on the right track. "Johnny told me about you and him."

"What?"

"He told me that...I mean, he didn't go into detail...he just said that he...really fucked with your head. Is that why? Are you just..." Jimmy struggled to put his thoughts to words. "...afraid I'll do something like that?"

"Oh, baby, that's not..." Vance put a hand over his eyes, sat back, shook his head. "...shit."

"What?" Jimmy had been sure that was it. Suddenly the growing pain at the back of his head where he'd whacked it against the seat felt less deserved. "What, then?"

Vance didn't say anything. His hand remained over his eyes.

The last vestiges of Jimmy's patience rushed away. "What, then?"

Vance lowered his hand from his eyes. With an internal struggle so powerful that it was evident on his face, he said, "I'm not…at least, I don't think…I don't think I'm over him."

Right there he said it, in the deserted staff parking lot at Bullworth, and Jimmy felt for the first time, in his limited experience, that he might have just had his heart properly broken. Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days... The way he'd reacted when Jimmy read the poem before, bewildering then, suddenly made too much sense. Of course he'd been trying not to cry.

Vance cried then, looking away from Jimmy, his jaw rigid and his face nearly emotionless as tears streaked down. Jimmy was familiar with those tears, as he suspected most people were, the tears shed by those who had done wrong and were in the presence of the wronged.

Jimmy didn't know what to say.

"I'm sorry," Vance said. His voice sounded hoarse.

"I know," Jimmy said, but he didn't, and wouldn't for years. How did he know that Vance was really sorry? He didn't. How did he know that Vance wasn't thinking about Johnny every time they kissed, every time they fucked? He didn't. Now, thinking of Johnny, he inexplicably thought of the Androscoggin River again, snaking past Johnny's home. His chest tight, he thought he had an idea for how all those suffocating fish must have felt. He wanted to slam his head against something again.

In life he'd figured out how to fight, but he'd also had ample opportunity to practice running away from things, and he chose that course of action now. He pawed at the passenger door latch, shoved the door open. "Well, bye," he choked.

"Jimmy!"

"See you around," he reiterated.

"Jimmy, wait, not yet," Vance said.

Jimmy knew that all he had to do was leap out the door and Vance wouldn't chase him, and he could go find somewhere to be alone where he could yell and destroy things until he felt a little bit better, if he ever even could. But Vance reached out, and grabbed his arm, and Jimmy let himself give into the familiar feeling of his grip for just a moment, and the feeling snowballed just enough to pacify him. Not completely, but enough.

He eased back into the passenger seat and shut the door.

Vance's face was streaked with tears now, his eyes red, his nose red, his cheekbone on the right side a little red from where he must have wiped some tears away. His eyes and lips glistened.

"I don't want it to end like this," Vance said.

Jimmy made up his mind right away. He wasn't entirely a lost cause when it came to making tough decisions. All those times he'd gone with Pete to see Gary when he could have easily stayed home, or stayed inside and studied when he could've been doing anything else...those were tough decisions. At least for him. But here he made the choice without even considering others, confirmed the first option that entered his head, measured against his oldest and most trusted device: Just do what you want.

"Okay, then," Jimmy said. "We won't." And he took Vance by the collar and closed the space between them.

The proceedings just seemed right to Jimmy. He leaped the armrest console into the backseat, hauled Vance back there with him.

"Not here..." Vance said.

"Here," Jimmy said.

"What if someone sees?"

"Don't worry about that," Jimmy insisted, peeling his shirt off. It was easy enough to get Vance to submit, Jimmy found, especially considering he had a good idea for what Vance liked by then. He unclasped Vance's coveralls, slipped his hands inside, feeling his shirt and the warmth beneath. He pulled Vance's neck down to his lips. "Worry about me right now."

"Jimmy, please," Vance said, resisting.

"Please, what?"

"Not here."

This part of the whole thing was close enough to a fight, was physical, at least, and Jimmy knew what to do. He secured his hand low on the back of Vance's neck and rolled him, pinned him to the seat with his knees on either side of Vance's hips.

"Tell me you don't actually want me right now," Jimmy said into his neck.

"Stop. For fuck's sake," Vance whispered, but he could barely speak, so Jimmy already knew he was winning.

"I mean it." Jimmy pulled away so he could look at him. "Look at me and tell me you don't want me to fuck you right now and I'll leave. But you'll never see me again," he said, hating how melodramatic he sounded. But he knew it was true. He wasn't the kind of person who got to properly say goodbye to people. He'd learned that now.

Vance's hands had come to rest on Jimmy's sides, then they climbed up his chest, and his shoulders, until they reached his face.

"Fine," he finally said.

If it was up to Jimmy, the final time would have been the best, and the hardest, and the loudest, gripping one another hard enough to leave bruises, gripping the way he'd grip anything he didn't want to let go of that was threatening to slip away from him. But spontaneity came with a price, and neither of them had come prepared for anything like this. Breaking up with Vance, it seemed, called for his entire skill set, and he would have to improvise—which, when it came to sex, wasn't too particularly daunting a task at all.

In hindsight he couldn't strictly say it was emotional, at least not in the sense of sadness. Maybe if they'd had more time together, more time to build up what they were now in the process of cutting down. But the only thing he felt beside lust was a minute anger that flourished from time to time, grew stronger as matters progressed, as he kicked off his jeans and settled himself against Vance, slicking his hand around both of them with his free hand braced against Vance's shoulder.

He came before Vance, sweating and tense, his face buried in Vance's neck, and he had half a mind to give into the throes of his admittedly mediocre orgasm and collapse against Vance completely (an act that seemed too intimate considering the circumstances), and half a mind to wipe himself off, tug his jeans back on, and leave Vance sticky and unfulfilled in the back of his own car. He could settle for a middle ground; obligingly, he fell to the floor of the car beside Vance, and finished him off with his hands. He had come to enjoy teasing Vance, after the first time he'd done it, and any other time he might have kept going until Vance pleaded with him to stop. Now, he released Vance the moment he climaxed, his obligation done. Vance watched him pull himself back up onto the backseat, watched him straighten his shirt and pull his jeans back on. Jimmy grabbed Vance's own shirt off the floor, flicked it at him.

Vance clumsily began to dress himself. Are you thinking about him now, Jimmy thought abruptly, and he very nearly said it out loud, but just the thought alone brought him such a feeling of shame that it made him want to hide his face. He'd feel a twinge of that shame every time he recalled the memory, even years later, and each time would thank whatever deities existed that he'd kept that one to himself.

"I guess you should go," Vance said, when he was finally dressed.

Jimmy was too spent to speak, or, at least, this was how he rationalized how quickly he chose to leave. He couldn't say nothing, he figured, and he leaned back into the door before he left for good and said the only thing he could really think of.

"Take care of yourself."

The phone at Pete's house rang well after midnight that night. Jimmy couldn't sleep, and he was the first one on it.

"It's Jimmy." Maybe an unusual way to answer a phone that didn't belong to him, but he had a feeling he already knew who was calling at two in the morning.

"You have things at my place still."

"Oh."

"You don't have to come get them right now. I just wanted you to know."

Jimmy was struck in the way he often seemed to be in those days by a mess of firsts. Mundane objects, months worth of miscellany casually abandoned in Vance's room, in his kitchen, were now "his things", by virtue of being in someone else's place. He'd never had a drawer of things at someone's place before, hadn't had the presence of mind to appreciate the idea that part of Vance's room was dedicated to him now—if only for that summer, he'd become a fixture in Vance's life, a physical thing that Vance's own trajectory had to bend to accommodate.

He'd never had to retrieve his things from someone else's place, either.

The thought had more of a poetic quality than a real emotional one, and, not for the first time and certainly not the last, he found himself thinking that all things considered, it could have definitely been worse. Only a few months, he rationalized. Any longer and then it'd really hurt.

"I'll be right there," Jimmy said, and he eased the receiver back onto the cradle.