“What?” Josh asked, grinning but obviously puzzled. I guess monkey face is not a good look for me. Darn it.
“Babes, it’s really loud over there,” Akilah complained, shifting attention from my doctor-recommended-social-media-hermit situation.
“Can we go to your room or something?” Josh suggested.
Decamping, we left the adults to the mercy of Jillian’s iTunes. I led the way to my little bedroom. It was perfectly tidy and I was glad I hadn’t left the contents of my closet out on the bed after my earlier flap about what to wear. We sat on the floor, backs against the bed. I held the phone up so both Josh and I could see Akilah.
“So,” she said, breaking the silence, “how did you guys meet?”
Josh told her the story. He left out the part about how I got sick in the middle of dinner. She already knew about it, though. “I’m glad my dad is friends with your aunts,” he concluded, chuckling.
Which reminded me. “I really need to talk about my situation with Julie and Jillian. They are great, but I’m still not used to them as a couple,” I confessed to Josh and Akilah.
“Country bookie to the bone!” Akilah said.
“Like a country bumpkin,” I jumped in and translated for Josh because, from the look on his face, he was clearly confused by the Trinidadian expression.
“Josh,” Akilah continued, “to be honest, where we come from you never see a gay couple. And if you do, you’ll never see them show PDA. There are places where that will earn you and your lover a beatdown.”
“True?” he murmured. “I hear things like that about Jamaica but we never go there.”
“For reals. Can I tell you something?” I asked. He glanced up at me with those stunning eyes. I melted a little inside but then steeled myself to continue to talk about my living situation. “It’s great. They’re great. But I just don’t know how to feel about them being…well, you know.”
He raised an eyebrow and lifted his palms in puzzlement.
I sighed. “You know. Gay.” I said it low, spat it out like a bad word.
Akilah cackled on her end of the phone call. “You can say the word, chile! I know you can! Say it loud, say it proud!”
We all laughed, and then Josh said, “You can say ‘gay.’ Kids I know say ‘queer’ sometimes. It doesn’t change who people are, if they’re gay or straight. I mean, yeah it does, but a good person is a good person. You know what I mean? Folks are just folks.”
“That’s easy for you to say. Where I’m from, you just don’t call people that word unless it’s a joke or an insult. Nobody’s out as gay. I can’t think of one single gay couple at home, not even like a celebrity couple. I don’t know. People just hide it. For me this is…” With my hands I mimed my head exploding. We all laughed again.
“It’s not important, trust me.” He looked over at me meaningfully. “Can I tell you something?”
I nodded.
“My mom has had a boyfriend but when I was little she had a girlfriend. Some of the times she seemed the happiest were with her girlfriend, I think. Being gay or bi or whatever doesn’t change who she is or how she treats me. That’s the important thing: your aunts love you, don’t they? And they show it.” He looked frustrated, and fiddled with his own phone as he talked. “I just wish my dad was more…caring. Sounds dumb, coming from a guy, right?”
“Are you gay?” Akilah joked lamely.
He glared. “That’s not funny.”
“Yeah, I know. Sorry.” She looked abashed. He grinned and waved it away. I liked him even more.
Josh and Nathan weren’t the only ones staying overnight. A couple of other people did too. Most of the adults stayed up late into the night, taking over the living room, drinking wine or coffee and watching movies. Some ended up sleeping on the carpet, and some on the sofa.
We talked to Akilah for hours. Josh had music on his phone and I had a Bluetooth speaker so we listened to songs on that. It was mostly hip-hop and dancehall, but there was some rock music in there too. Akilah ratted me out, telling him that I was an old fan of Justin Bieber and he said he understood and liked me anyway. My heart sang.
“What about your school?” Akilah asked him.
“What about it? It’s normal. You know.”
“Well, actually, I don’t. Remember I live in Trinidad. School here is much different from what I see on American TV.”
He laughed out loud. “School everywhere is different from what you see on American TV. Nobody looks that good.”
I refrained from pointing out that he looked like a super-cute extra on The Vampire Diaries.
He continued, “I’m going to be a senior at Audre Lorde Charter School.”
“Where’s that?” Akilah was asking all the questions I wanted to ask but was too shy to speak out loud.
“Oh, in New York.”
“Duh,” she said. We cracked up again.
“Brooklyn, to be specific. Close to where my mom and I live. It’s okay, I guess. I’m doing a bunch of pre-pre-law stuff, like about the constitution and society, for extra credit. I’m applying to Columbia and I want to go to law school there eventually….But I don’t know if I’m going to transfer and spend my senior year up here with my dad before college.” He turned those hazel eyes on me. “What about you?”
“I’m in third form, which is like”—I did some quick math in my head—“about ninth grade?”
“You’re that young?” he said, surprised. “Thought you were about sixteen.”
I ducked my head. “Nah. Fifteen in two months. I’m kind of tall for my age.”
“You can say that again! How tall are you?”
“A little under six foot,” I said.
“With that height and your looks, how come you’re not a model? If you lived in New York you would have been spotted by now.”
“I know, right?” Akilah yelled. “She’s so pretty and she doesn’t even know it.”
“Oh, please,” I said.
“No, seriously. You’re really pretty,” Josh repeated Akilah’s assurances.
I turned away, scoffing, “Blah, blah, blah.” A boy had never called me pretty before. Tall, skinny, dark girls with short hair didn’t get called pretty at my school. Mostly they got called “black and ugly.”