Jay's Not Gay, You Guys 13

“Hey, you been doing okay?”

Dillon looks down at my hand. “Yeah man,” he says like I’m being weird, and shakes me off to follow his friends down the hall.

I know it’s gross to park myself by the door. This isn’t stalking, though. I haven’t kept tabs on him, I haven’t tried to message him, I haven’t, like, triangulated his whereabouts, I haven’t learned his schedule. This is just me keeping an eye on who’s leaving, and being sober at a party for once. The thing about Dillon is that he’s not an all night party guy. He’s said before that he has a strict weekend curfew of two in the morning. “Otherwise it throws off my sleep schedule too much,” he told me once. And I was like, of course, how else do you have time to fuckin’ iron a fresh shirt if you’re not up by eight every fucking day? And Dillon had laughed. So when he packs it in for the night, I’m just like maybe we happen to walk back across the Hill at the same time. It’ll be like a check-in.

For the record, it still technically isn’t stalking when I see him walk out the door and leave after him, because I was still talking to a couple of people in my Spanish class and actually waited until I could say bye in a normal way. So Dillon could be just hanging out on the lawn, or have gone somewhere else. It’s mostly a coincidence when I happen to catch up to him right as he’s peeling away from some people he’s walking with.

Maybe I had thought about what I’d say to him when we finally got a chance to, like, be around each other. Maybe I’d thought about it a lot. But after Dillon was, like, kinda mean at the Theta party suddenly I can’t think of a good opening line, so I end up walking up on him real fast like a fucking weirdo and going, “Boo!”

Dillon spins around so fast that I flinch, and loses his balance doing it.

You’d never know I shredded my ACL back in July; I catch him like a goddam hero. “Whoa, you okay man? Let’s get you some water, huh?”

This is a weird thing to say right now, but his weight feels, like, comfortable. Like I kinda want to hold on.

Dillon pushes me away. “I’m not drunk, Jay. I just tripped.”

“So I get to make fun of you, is what you’re saying.” I get the message: don’t touch him. I put my hands in my pockets.

He kind of chuckles as he turns to keep walking home. “Shut up, Jay.”

“Because you looked like—you know those old timey wooden toys with the wires, you push down on their little platform and they, like, dance?” I skip ahead of him to imitate the jerky motion.

“It’s your fault,” he says, but he doesn’t sound too mad.

“Sorry.”

We walk side by side for a little bit, and suddenly I’m like, overwhelmed with how much this month has sucked. Sure, technically I’m doing fine in my classes, and I don’t think anybody’s mad at me—Dillon wasn’t even mad when he told me we couldn’t be friends—and I’m finally on track to get back into football. Some of the people I’m around now are cool and all, but I don’t know them like I knew Dillon. Like I thought I knew him.

“Fucking cold out, bruh,” I comment, because it’s about eight more minutes to get to my dorm, and then five more to Dillon’s.

“Mm hm,” Dillon replies.

Without touching him, I make like I’m about to tap his chest. “Hey, I know you don’t care, but I’m gonna tell you anyway. I passed all my classes.”

He just nods and goes, “Nice.”

“So, thank you again. What all are you taking this semester?”

“Um, a bunch of education classes, Sociology, and Art Appreciation,” he says, and maybe because I’m shutting up Dillon keeps talking. “It’s fun; we’re taking two field trips this semester. Chicago and St. Louis. Have you been to City Museum?”

“Where you crawl around in trash? Fuck yeah, dude. It’s awesome.”

“Trash!” Dillon laughs.

“Like, clean trash,” I explain. “Construction site trash. And there’s hand sanitizer everywhere.”

“Something to look forward to,” he says sarcastically.

“Are you…enjoying…your college life?” I ask, because apparently when I’m around too much he isn’t.

Dillon cocks his head at me, kinda chuckling. “It’s okay. How’s your first night on Earth, Mr. Alien, sir?”

“Fuck off,” I laugh, “I’m just wondering if you’re having more fun now that you don’t have a dumbass following you around, begging you to help him study.”

“Ha.” Dillon’s voice sounds weird, so I look over at him, but it’s too dark to tell if he’s smiling or not. He says, “I have more free time, that’s for sure.”

The lights of the performing arts center start to brighten the path, which puts us at the halfway mark. That pathetic little part of me slows down. I wonder if Dillon matches my pace on purpose, or if it’s an automatic thing. A polite thing.

I tell him, “I hear that dumbass is actually trying this semester, thanks to a real judgy friend he had once upon a time.”

“It’s been over a month. He hasn’t found any intrinsic motivation yet?” Dillon asks in that judgy tone where, like, I know he’s looking off to the corner again.

“See?” I say loudly. “It’s that exact type of fucking little comment that keeps certain dumbasses on task when they get distracted. Other people aren’t as mean as you.”

Now Dillon chuckles. “Stop being on your best behavior for them and they’ll find it. I promise.”

Uuuuuuuugh fuck, I can’t stand it anymore. If we can talk like this, why the fuck are we not allowed to hang out? It doesn’t make any fucking sense.

“Listen. Okay.” I take a deep breath. “Bruh. Like, I really, like, really really miss studying with you.”

Dillon almost softens, his shoulders relax for a second in my peripheral vision, but then he straightens up again. “Give it time,” he says. “You’ll find a new tutor.”

“Okay fine. I also miss chilling with you, no homework.” I stop walking, and because Dillon can’t help being polite he stops, too.

It’s the first time in weeks that we’ve been face to face, and I’m suddenly really glad it's when I’m following the Theta party dress code. Obviously I’m not the hottest guy on campus, but I know I clean up good enough. But that’s whatever, like, I could still say all this shit in a hoodie, but Dillon is in a fucking suit, and his hair is braided in a way that looks like he’s about to walk a fucking red carpet, and he told me I was a slob that one time, and I just don’t want to look like shit right now, okay?

Dillon looks at me for a moment, and his face does that thing where he can’t decide what expression is correct. But I know at least some of them now—confusion, frustration, the one where he thought I was adorable, sadness, frustration again. Finally he rubs the bridge of his nose and goes, “I already told you it’s not a good idea—”

“But you didn’t fucking tell me why!” I explode. “Have you ever in your life had someone just go, ‘Oh hey, I know we got really close, but surprise! I think you fucking suck.”

Dillon’s face goes to angry. Oops. He squares up and yells at me, “I’m a god damn Black, gay athlete, motherfucker. You think coming out in high school was a fucking breeze?”

For once I know exactly what I said wrong. “No, you’re right, I’m sorry. Seriously. That was a fucking insensitive question, and I know that’s why it’s hard to be around me sometimes. I’m sorry.”

See, when you apologize like that and mean it, they can’t stay mad at you. Dillon’s whole ill-concuss-you-again vibe immediately goes away.

“Okay,” he grumbles.

“It’s just, like, so…” I shuffle a little bit. “If you know what it feels like, why the fuck would you do it to me?”

“So my childhood friends not talking to me after I revealed that I was gay,” Dillon says slowly, “is like me telling you that three months of intense hanging out is enough?”

“Well…”

“Why are you so obsessed with me?”

“I’m not!” Oh shit, maybe I am. “I’m really not trying to fight with you, man, I just really want things to go back to how they were.

“When, Jay? Tell me when you liked things the best. When you threatened me after I caught you and Brantley? When you had to fuck some poor girl to prove how much of a big, straight man you are? When you called me a faggot? When you had a fucking crisis while your fucking cock was still inside me? When, Jay?”

From his perspective, I sucked way worse than I could have imagined.

“I wanna, um,” I clear my throat. “Can I do over the part about the crisis? I, um, don’t regret that.”