My beer is still full, so I say, “Here, finish this,” and hand him my drink. Nick hops from his seat and grabs it from me and settles back and chugs.
“You know,” I say. “Sam has changed.”
Nick looks annoyed that I’m bringing up Sam again.
“He’s actually pretty cool. He’s not the way . . . the way he used to be.” I want to tell him so much more about Sam, but there’s so much I can’t say—about what happened to him. About what happened between us. “He didn’t deserve any of it. He didn’t ask for it.”
“If you say so,” Nick says.
We don’t talk anymore about Sam, or me being gay, or whatever’s going on with us. I grab my iPad and we both sit on the floor and lean against the bed and watch a zombie movie until Nick’s mother yells up the stairs that it’s time to go.
“You better hide these,” he says when he stands, grabbing both beer bottles from my desk. I take them and shove them under the bed.
“Have a good Christmas,” he says.
“You too,” I say.
But he doesn’t move. “Listen, I . . . I still don’t know. . . . It’s okay if you want to spend time with Sam, but I’m not so sure I’m ready for that. But, I mean, we’re good, aren’t we?”
“Yeah,” I say, and it’s true, though I’m not really sure how things will be once we go back to school. “Promise not to tell anyone what I told you? I just . . . I don’t want the whole world to know yet.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” he says. “And . . . I mean, thanks for telling me. I want you to know I really am cool with it.”
“I know,” I say, feeling something altering in the air between us, but in a good way. Nick’s looking at me like he’s just now really seeing me.
His mom yells up again, and Nick yells an irritated “Coming!” He turns back to me. “I better go.”
We bump fists and then he walks down the hall, down the stairs.
Alone in my room, I try and picture me and Sam with Nick and my other classmates. The picture is still fuzzy. But it’s not so unlikely, maybe.
That is, if Sam ever speaks to me again.
===
Christmas morning is sunny and cold. We get up early, and Mom cooks a big breakfast—bacon, biscuits, scrambled eggs. When I was a kid I’d be jumpy to open presents, but today I feel older, like I’ve moved on from caring about that. The presents can wait. We eat, drink coffee, listen to Christmas songs on this CD Mom’s had for what feels like a century. Then we open gifts. I get clothes, and some thick tennis socks. From the garage, Dad hauls in this chair that Mom wanted for the living room, and he also gives her some new jewelry. Dad always says he doesn’t need or want anything, but this year Mom and I gave him some new hiking shoes, plus a gift card to Home Depot, where he loves to go on Saturdays.
That morning, I’d opened my closet for a sweater and I saw Sam’s portrait, but I left it there. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, but now I know. Whatever Sam thinks of me now I know he spent a lot of time on that picture. It doesn’t deserve to just sit in a closet. So when Dad starts picking up the wrapping paper, I say, “I’ve got one more, for both of you.” I race upstairs and grab the portrait from my closet and bring it downstairs.
“What is this?” Mom says. She takes the picture and holds it up. She and Dad stare at it, smiling, looking from the picture to me and back again. “It’s wonderful.”
“Wow,” Dad says softly. “Looks just like you.”
“You did this?”
“No,” I say. “Sam did it.”
“Sam Walsh?” Mom says. “Sam did this?”
“Yeah,” I say, feeling proud.
“I had no idea,” Mom says so faintly I almost can’t hear it.
Their expressions darken a little—or maybe I imagine that? “Lovely,” Mom says. And then I see her eyes are tearing up, and she hands the drawing to Dad and stands and hugs me. She keeps crying, sobbing actually, so I hold on to her, not sure what’s wrong. I manage to steal a look at Dad over her shoulder, and it looks like his eyes are wet, too.
Mom finally calms down and releases me and picks up the picture again. “It’s stunning. It really is. Thank you.”
“You should thank Sam,” I say.
She smiles over at me. “We will.”
Dad stands up and pats me on the shoulder. “We need to find the perfect spot to put this,” he says.
Mom and Dad walk around downstairs, trying to figure out where to hang it. I gaze out the window, and think about Sam opening presents, his first time back with his family. I want to tell him that my parents loved the portrait. I know it will mean a lot to him. But I don’t pick up the phone. I just wait, hoping I’ll hear from him, uncertain if I will.
===
But Sam does call. The day after Christmas. The landline rings and I know it has to be him, and I feel a lot like I did the other day when he came over—relieved but nervous. “Hey,” I say. I want to bring up Russell Hunnicutt, but what do you say about something like that? “You have a good Christmas?”
“Yeah,” he says.
“I gave the drawing to my parents, and they loved it. Like, really loved it.”
“That’s great,” he says, but he sounds sort of disinterested.
I don’t know what to say, and Sam is quiet, too, and as the silence builds I wonder why he even called. “Listen,” he finally says. “I . . . I need your help.”
“Okay. With what?”
“Um. Well, can you come for a sleepover on New Year’s Eve?”
“Sure,” I say, though I’m kind of surprised Sam would even want to after last time. “But what do you need my help with?” I ask.
He doesn’t say anything for a bit. I almost think the line is dead, and then he says, “The thing is, I need you to go somewhere with me.”
“Where?”
“Anniston.”
“Anniston,” I murmur.
He tells me his mom is going on a cruise with his aunt in a few days. He says Earl has to work on New Year’s Day—that he has a big project that has to be done, even if it means working on a holiday. “It’s my only chance.”
“Your chance for what?” I ask.
“They’d never let me, but I have to go, Josh. I have to go there. You understand, don’t you?”
“I think I do,” I say, because that’s what he needs to hear. But I don’t understand at all.
“So you’ll come with me?”
It’s like that day, when he persuaded me to go to the mall. When I knew it was a bad decision, and I said yes anyway. I get that queasy nervous rumbling in my belly.
“Please?” he says.
“Sam, I don’t know . . . I mean, I’m not sure it’s a good idea.”
The silence builds like a wall.
“Forget it,” he says. “It’s okay. Forget I asked.” He hangs up.
“Sam?” I say, but I know he’s gone.
After the phone call, I don’t feel like doing much, so I camp out in the family room in front of the TV. For now, Mom and Dad have propped Sam’s portrait on top of the fireplace mantel. But I don’t want to keep looking at it. I get up from the couch and turn it around so all I can see is the back of the frame.
Hours go by, the light of day fades to evening, and that’s when Mom comes in and asks if I’m okay.
“Fine,” I say. The dumb movie I was watching ends.
“Dad and I are going to Home Depot, you wanna come?”