I was speechless, looking into Luca’s eyes. He was being honest with me. He loved me. My sense of guilt was devouring me. I didn’t think he cared, but as always, it was me who couldn’t care enough instead. I was a hypocrite and a traitor. I let out a short laugh to hide how miserable I felt and whispered, “You know tuna’s the ultimate emergency food.”
He laughed and took a step closer. “I missed you,” he whispered as I took his face in my hands. For the first time in months, I felt that I had missed him, too.
I leaned in, and my lips touched his. Luca’s mouth was warm and welcoming, and kissing him should have felt right. But it didn’t.
It was other lips that I’d rather kiss. I couldn’t help thinking that James might have cut his lip biting it too hard.
JAMES
After Luca arrived, my life in the small town suddenly changed. My relationship with my parents improved so much I could hardly believe it, and so did my friendship with Jenn. When I told her about the empty journal Dr. Westermann had given me, Jenn suggested we turn it into a photo album, “since social media is off-limit.” We got a polaroid and printed out selfies and pictures we took in the previous days. In the pictures Jenn and Claudia took, Roberto was often smiling next to me. I had lost him, but I was glad that at least those memories would stay with me forever... I was glad that he looked happy by my side.
When I met him at the beach or at the piazza, I tried to avoid looking at him. I was afraid to find out whether he was as happy with Luca as he had been with me, but I was also afraid that he might be sad instead. Whenever I was at home, I’d end up looking at his house from the window, and I thought about the two of them being there together. I thought about Luca kissing him. I thought about him sleeping in his bed. And in those moments, the pain was so unbearable that I wanted to die.
Jenn and Marco knew how I felt. I didn’t say it clearly, but they could probably see it on my face. I had the feeling they had made some sort of plan to never leave me alone. So I went out with them at night, trying to run away from my own thoughts. The other guys from their group of friends also seemed to be doing their best to cheer me up; I soon realized they thought I had been used and dumped by Rob when his boyfriend came back. Even before Luca arrived, I knew people looked at us and talked behind our back, but now, being in that position felt humiliating on one hand, and sort of comforting on the other. For once, the rumors made me into the “victim,” when they could have easily made me into the “whore.” I wondered what makes people decide whether you’re one or the other. Either way, nobody really wants to know the truth.
“It’s the same with me, you know,” Jenn told me, passing me a bottle of red wine while we were sitting on the sand at night. Around us, some of the kids were going for a midnight swim, while others danced to house music playing from portable speakers.
I took a long sip and gave the bottle back to Jenn.
“Today Mom told me I can’t wear a black dress to the wedding. And she said people talk about me and say I’m weird, and that’s embarrassing,” she said.
“Is it the dress that I saw in your room today?” I asked. She just nodded. “I think it’ll look great on you.”
“Thanks, sweetheart.” Jenn gave me a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“You guys are too sad!” Marco’s voice shouted behind us. He dropped on the sand next to us while clumsily trying to roll a joint.
“Where did you get that?” Jenn asked, and Marco replied something in Italian, gesturing toward his friends.
“You overloaded it,” I said with a sigh. “It won’t close now. Here, give it to me.” I wasn’t sure he understood all I said but he passed it to me, and I rolled it back and forth until it was ready. I added the filter, sealed it with a lick and gave it back to Marco. He and Jenn were staring at me with the dumbest expression I’d ever seen on their faces.
“James, do you have something to share with the class?” Jenn asked.
My cheeks flushed with heat. “Okay, I might have done this before. Don’t ask.”
Marco couldn’t repress a chuckle, which soon turned into an unrestrained laugh. “You are the best,” he told me and playfully slapped my back. “Want to share?” he asked me.
For a moment I wondered if saying yes was worth the risk of Mom smelling it on my clothes, but then I realized I was going to go back smelling like wine anyway. Drunk or high, it probably didn’t make much of a difference.
I just nodded my head and Marco lit up the joint. Jenn left us to go play in the water with Marta, Marco’s girlfriend, and we stayed back, without saying a word to each other. I let the sweetish smoke of the weed fill up my lungs, inhaling deeply. Yes, I had made the right decision. I wasn’t as tipsy as before and the alcohol alone wasn’t enough to make me feel less miserable. I grabbed a fistful of sand, remembering the last time I had spent the night at the beach; I was in Rob’s arms at the time. I couldn’t believe just three days had passed since that moment. My mind went back to my main problem, and I was really tempted to ask Marco about Roberto and his boyfriend. I turned to him, trying to find the courage to say anything, when Marco spoke to me first and said, “Are you okay?”
I looked deeply into his eyes, which weren’t half as pretty as his brother’s, and I just shook my head. Marco gave me an understanding look and passed an arm around my shoulders.
“My brother is an idiot,” he said, and suddenly all the frustration I had been keeping inside came out; I laughed, quietly and inexorably, until I didn’t know any longer if I was laughing or crying.
ROBERTO
I didn’t like seeing Marco so close to James. As Marco himself had remarked, he was supposedly straight and had a girlfriend, but that didn’t prevent him from passing his arm around James’ neck or getting definitely too close to him while talking. I wondered why James didn’t tell him to stay away, but then I figured he wasn’t used to Italians’ concept of personal space, and maybe he thought that was normal.
I knew, however, that it wasn’t normal. Marco acted with James in a different way compared to how he acted with his other friends. He even asked him to come over to teach him English. That attitude was beyond suspicious.
First, my brother had never shown any interest in learning a foreign language; second, he would never willingly study anything during his summer vacation; third, he canceled a date with his girlfriend for that. He had looked incredibly in love with Marta until a couple of days ago, and now he was refusing to see her – and most likely have sex with her – to spend time with James.
I was waiting for us to be alone to have a talk with him, when he surprised me at breakfast, asking Luca and me, “Did you guys always know that you were gay?”
His question almost made me drop my bowl of cereal to the floor. Luckily for me, Luca seemed more than willing to have that conversation with him, and explained a lot of things about experimenting and figuring things out, but I couldn’t get out of my head that Marco might be thinking of figuring things out with James, of all people. I wasn’t expecting it from him, considering that he knew well how special James was to me.