In that moment, I was so jealous of Hannah I could scream. So jealous that I wanted to be her even more than I wanted to be with her. What must it be like to live in a house where you could just be gay and talk to your mom about girls? To go to school and not care if people knew you were a lesbian? What would it be like to be able to just be yourself without any fear of what other people would think? I didn’t think I would ever know the answer to that.
I had always told myself that the lie only really had to last until I went away to college. That once I was away from my parents’ home, there wouldn’t be any reason to keep it a secret. I wouldn’t need their money, their support, their approval. I could live my life the way I wanted. I still told myself that, but that didn’t mean that I would have what Hannah had. My life wasn’t going to be magically transformed. When I fell in love and found someone to marry, living away from home wasn’t going to change my dad into the kind of guy who would walk me down the aisle and give me away to another girl. My parents wouldn’t dance at my wedding. When I left home, when I came out, I would still be doing it without them, without a family, alone.
I collapsed onto my bed, my body so tense and tight I thought it might shatter into pieces from the contact. As I rolled over onto my pillow, I could smell Hannah’s hair in the fabric. She smelled like something baking; something so sweet and warm that the scent always made me imagine what it must feel like to have a place that felt like home. I had the fleeting thought that she could be my home if I would just let her, but I groaned into my pillow, releasing that thought back into the wind. It was too dangerous to entertain ideas like that. No matter how much you want to love them, a human being could never be reliable as an anchor.
That didn’t stop me from sniffing my pillow, from replaying the scenes of just moments before. The way her body had been so soft and her mouth so needy. The little gasps she made every time my fingers moved across the soft surface of her ivory skin. The goosebumps that sprung up like a trail of breadcrumbs, highlighting all the beautiful destinations I had explored. It had been heaven.
It had been Heaven, but what would happen when school started, and I saw her in the hall after touching her that way? Would I be able to make my face a mask and hide away the heat I knew would fight to rise in my cheeks? Would I be able to shove it all down and pretend there was nothing there? Hiding was the problem after all. Hiding feelings, hiding pain. Making everything seem simple when it wasn’t. Lying to my parents over and over again about where I was going, who I was going with. If I didn’t have to hide, maybe she and I could find a way to work.
If.
I might as well tell myself that if everyone else disappeared, we could work. There were a million impossible things that could happen that could fix everything, but only a possible one would make any difference.
I needed to clear my head. The space was getting that heavy feel to it, like I could hear the buzzing of the air. Like it was thick and vibrating around me, abuzz with the movement of the molecules. I kept catching myself breath holding, then forcing myself to take long, thirsty gulps of the air that wouldn’t quite fill my lungs. If I didn’t get out of that room, I was going to faint.
I made my way down the stairs hoping that neither of my parents showed up. I didn’t think I could keep it together with dad hammering me about where I was headed, his eyes ripping me open to find some truth I wasn’t hiding. I would crumble under that weight, become a tiny pool of Lennox on the hallway carpet. I was as quiet as I could be as I crept out.
I had no idea where I was going as I walked down the brick streets. The pavement was cracked, and the sidewalks randomly cut off in the middle of the block, so I had taken to just walking by the side of the road in Huntington. The day was mild, and the cool breeze tickled the back of my neck. There was an immediate lightness to leaving my house that day.
I kept walking until I got to eighth street, which was less of a side street and more of a thoroughfare. I followed it to Grindstone, a local independent coffeehouse. As soon as I walked through the doors and was hit with the nutty smell of thick, rich coffee, I was thirsty. I ordered a small mocha and started towards the door planning to carry on my aimless walking, but before I made it out, two kids about my age, one guy and one girl stopped me.
“I love your jacket,” the guy said with a gesture at my leather bomber.
“Thanks,” I said with a small smile and started to walk on, but this time the girl’s voice stopped me.
“Come sit with us for a while. We saw you walk up. It’s too cold out there to just wander the town.”
Her eyes caught mine and I noticed an eagerness to the invite. Her hair was in her face like Hannah’s always seemed to be and her smile was warm. The boy looked less eager, but also friendly enough, so I took a seat at their table with another small smile and a nod. “Okay,” I said.
With a circular rhythm of the wrist, I swirled my drink. It was a bit awkward, being invited to sit by these two kids. The boy had a slight, androgynous bone structure with swirls of freckles across his nose and cheeks. His hair was a rich chocolate brown and he had bangs that fell into his eyes like mine. The girl was pretty, with pouty lips, strawberry blonde knots of thick, curly hair that fell down below her chest, and bright green eyes. She kept looking at me, then blinking her eyes in a different direction each time I noticed.
“Do you guys go to Huntington High?” I asked.
The girl nodded. “Yep. I’m Lexi, this is Noah.”
I nodded. “I’m Lennox. I just moved here, but I will be at Huntington High, too, once the break is over.”
We chatted like that for a while; they gossiped about kids they did theatre with and talked about who was in trouble for Juling in the costume room and who was in trouble for making out. I didn’t follow any of it, of course, since I didn’t know anyone they were talking about, but I liked listening to Lexi. Her eyes widened when she talked, and she acted out people’s voices like someone reading a story to little kids.
The conversation led to a story about Lexi’s ex-girlfriend getting caught in the prop closet with some guy that was apparently a jerk and I jumped in my chair, my elbow hitting my coffee. I guess she had seemed to be flirting, but I’d been in a bit of denial and assumed she was just outgoing. Was everyone in this freaking town gay?
Lexi quirked her eyebrows and passed me a napkin from the stack in front of her.
“You okay?” she asked.
I don’t know what came over me. I was never the type to open up to people. Even my handful of friends from back home had never heard me say anything about liking girls or being gay. Somehow, though, the way she leaned in on her elbows and furrowed her brow made me feel like she gave a shit that there was something wrong and it was like word vomit.
“My parents are like uber conservative Christian and we moved here to get me away from these neighbor boys who were harassing me for being gay,” I shook my head quickly and corrected myself. “No, not to get me away from those boys. To get those boys away from me. To get me away from everyone my parents knew before I ruined their lives and humiliated them and everything. So, we move here, and I am trying to keep everything so quiet and hush hush and it seems like everyone in this town is just out and proud and leading the parade.”
As I finished my monologue, I felt my cheeks catch fire. They were literally hot to the touch, and I rested the back of my hand against one in an effort to try to cool myself down. I was so embarrassed that I just wanted to die. Lexi and Noah exchanged this bewildered look and I thought they were going to ask me to leave or maybe run away to avoid talking to me anymore, but instead they both chuckled. Noah’s was a soft, under the breath kind of laugh, but Lexi’s was loud and melodic and filled the room.