“You thought we were together,” he says. “That’s why you asked me if I was jealous of Gerry?”
“I . . . yeah,” I admit. “I was trying to get you to tell me in the car.”
“And I was trying to not confuse you. You’d kissed Woods. You were considering Janie Lee. I thought throwing myself in the mix was douche and insensitive.”
“So you let me believe you were gay?”
“I only tried to let you believe that I love Thom. And I do.”
That makes sense. I still wish I’d known. It would have made my attraction to him not feel so ridiculous.
He explains that after their experimenting he stopped caring about everyone else’s opinions and listened when Thom assured him, “They’re shallow, bro,” and “We know who we are.”
“Billie, this shit is murky and personal. You had to be able to explore,” he says as a conclusion.
I tell myself he has a special Billie Edition Telescope that allows him this view. He is sure Janie Lee will be fine, whatever we decide. He is also sure we will win a thousand dollars.
“I mean, look at us,” he says.
Look at us, I think.
Our cell phones buzz with news. We’ve made the LaserCon costume cut.
We kill the next half hour making up things we’d do with a thousand dollars if we weren’t giving it to the Harvest Festival. Buy seeds for Mr. Nix? Get Thom some better rims? Purchase Gerry a shitty car so she doesn’t have to ride the bus to Denny’s when Thom’s at school? Dozens of footballs for the Spandex Junkwagons? Canvases for Mom? A new concordance for Dad? (He’d personally like a complete set of expensive dictionaries.) A couch more comfortable than the Daily Sit?
Davey offers another spontaneous option. “We could give it to the church. For the fire damages.”
“That would be nice,” I say. I’d love for my dad to know that even though I look different than him on the outside, we have similar insides.
“Assuming we win.”
“Don’t go doubting us now,” I say. “I like assuming we’ll win.”
One hour later, we have walked, paraded, posed, twirled, been examined and celebrated by a ballroom full of attendees and judges. This is a competition for nerds. Bonus points for special effects.
Fifty contestants are cut to ten. Ten are cut to two. Gerry and Thom and the Hexagon cheer as we make progress. Our remaining competition stands on stilts, towering over us, and is covered in actual bark from top to bottom. I’m not sure which character he intends to be—I am woefully bad at fandom—but his height alone is extraordinary. We’ve been lamenting our inability to bend and stretch; this dude has to balance.
Regardless, we have made it this far, and I am ready to collect my money and save Molly the Corn Dolly from being a cliché.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” an announcer says. “The judges of the 2017 LaserCon Costume Contest have selected a winner. It is my pleasure to award this check of one thousand dollars”—he reveals a big cardboard check from behind the podium—“to . . .”
The announcer then transforms into a masochistic bastard who allows the audience to pant with anticipation. My heart is on fire.
“A tale as old as time! David Winters and Elizabeth McCaffrey in their reimagining of Beauty and the Beast,” he yells into the microphone.
In the front aisle, Woods waves his arms like a conductor.
Fifty screams, “We’re walking the beam, bitches.”
Janie Lee blows me a kiss.
30
I like winning. I even like winning in a dress. I like winning next to Davey. I like Janie Lee’s fingers pressed against her mouth and then sending me love across the room.
I like it so much it spills into every fiber, every cell. I twirl. Everyone should feel like this. Even Tawny Jacobs. Ten years of losing can’t be easy when this is what winning feels like.
Back in the family bathroom, Davey and I are cutting ourselves free from Belle and Beast. We’re alone with our cardboard check and costume deconstruction. The others are getting food. Again.
Davey is leaning close to the mirror, removing signs of Beast, applying signs of Davey. He traces dark lines around his lids, and I review what I know about him. Dorky. Passionate. Helpful. He likes good music; doesn’t care if it’s popular. School isn’t hard for him. Making friends is. There’s no such thing as casual contact. He loves his complicated dick of a dad. Loves his best friend. Shares some of the same questions about sexuality and faith as me, despite having grown up in a different household.
He’s a bright, bright soul.
“You’re thinking hard over there,” he says to me.
I sigh at being caught. And then my stomach growls—low and rattling like an animal—because we, unlike the crew, haven’t stopped to eat all day. He pokes me in the stomach, and I poke him back, and then we are grappling, laughing, giddy that we have won.
Then, the six inches of height between the top of his head and the top of mine no longer exist. His lips are inches from mine, paused, asking politely, but longing to kiss me.
“I still don’t want to confuse you,” he says.
The slightest pressure of his body against mine is heavy. And warm. We’re both sweating from the costumes and smelling like powder from the makeup. Buzzing, delirious. The day is a Russian doll, unnesting layers I did not know existed.
I say, “Maybe it’ll help,” because I cannot imagine letting this moment pass.
We both turn our heads, and then our lips are on each other, hungry. I kiss him too hard, too aggressively. As if I have something to prove. There is pride in our tongues from a day spent winning what we want. He matches me stride for stride, and I don’t think he minds that I use my teeth. No one else could have kissed me like that. Not even Gerry, who is freer than anyone I know. This isn’t freedom; this is release. I let myself feel everything, the way I haven’t with everyone else because I’ve been too busy thinking to feel.
And at the end of it, I am a dandelion, and Davey is a gale-force wind. He scatters me everywhere. Part of me lands back in Kentucky, caught in Molly the Corn Dolly’s large hand. Another bit of fluff drifts to Missouri and lands atop the arch in Saint Louis. Another crosses the Mississippi River into Illinois.
Our foreheads are still glued together, both of us catching our breath, when Mash says, “Uh, guys, Woods is out front with the Suburban,” and I think, Damn, one of these days I’m going to kiss someone and no one will interrupt it.
“You okay?” he asks when Mash closes the door.
“I’m . . .” What am I? “I’m not sorry.”
“Good.”
“You’re not gay,” I say, because it keeps occurring to me.
He grins. “Nope. But you’ve got a lot going on, and if you’d rather be with her, I won’t make it hard for you.”