“You’re not going to stay up?”
“For what?”
I shrug and nod and let him help me up—though it barely hurts now. I grab a few bottles of water as we head back to the tent. We’re both totally soaked by the time we get inside and Hudson takes out a towel from his bag and starts drying himself and the tent where we’ve dripped. Then he takes off his shirt.
I swallow as I look at his damp naked skin and quickly turn away. Romance may be over between us, but lust definitely isn’t, at least not on my side. He’s still top-name-on-the-marquee gorgeous, his body still carved from some stone I don’t know the name of. I pull my shirt off, too, and lay it flat in the corner to dry. I hear him unzip his shorts, the sound impossibly loud over the rain. I stare out the window, even though there’s nothing I can see. There’s some rustling behind me.
“You can turn around now.”
I turn, and he’s in his sleeping bag. In his corner of the tent, his shoes, shirt, shorts, and underwear are all laid out to dry.
“You could have turned around before, too.”
I glare. “Why are you flirting?”
“What?”
“Before and that, what you just said. You’re flirting.”
“I don’t know … we used to flirt before.”
I put my hands on my hips and cock them to one side. “Yeah, but now I’m not your type, right?” I lift a hand and bend my wrist at him. “Now I’m just some faggot,” I say, giving myself a lisp. “Some weak stereotype, right?”
He frowns. “No,” he says. “And I’m sorry for what I said. He sits up a little, his sleeping bag sliding around him to his stomach. Did he put on clean underwear? “Randy, I need you to know that. I am really so, so sorry for that.”
I let my arms drop and I sigh. “I know. But you still said it.”
“I was angry, embarrassed that everyone, the whole camp, knew everything and had known the whole time, and I …. I wanted to hurt you.”
I sit down, my wet shorts making me cold. “I know.”
“If you know that … why are you so angry? I’m not angry anymore. I … look, what you did is wild, no doubt about it. Over-the-top. Just … like from a movie or something. But … it was flattering, too. And the really out-there thing is that it worked. I really fell in love with you, Randy. I told you things I’ve never told anyone, not even Brad, and I feel closer to you than anyone else in my life.”
Some water drips from my hair onto the tent. Hudson sighs and reaches for his towel, and as he leans forward, I can see down his lower back to the top of his ass—he is definitely not wearing underwear. He throws the towel at me.
“Dry off,” he says. “Change out of those wet things. I won’t look.”
He turns around and I strip and use his towel to get myself dry. The towel smells like him—that electric deodorant and the faint maple smell. I try not to think about it as I get in my sleeping bag. I throw the towel back at him. It lands on his head.
“That means I can turn around?” he asks.
I grin, then make my face angry again. “Yeah.”
He turns around so we’re both facing each other on our sides, naked in our sleeping bags, a wide space between us. I hate it, but my body is tingling. Maybe I don’t hate it.
“So why are you so angry?” Hudson asks.
I shrug. “You don’t like me. That makes me angry.”
His eyes get large, sort of sad. “Why do you think that?”
“Because of everything you said. Everything you are.” I sit up and gesture up and down his body. “Masc4masc, straight-acting only, all that.”
“I just thought that people like that were … stronger,” he says. “And safer. I could never bring someone back to my parents who wasn’t … different, like me. Not a stereotype in their eyes. I could never hold hands with him on the street. So I just … didn’t even look at them. That was wrong, I know. You showed me that. I’m not better than you, Randy. I’m not better than George or anyone else in the show.” He pauses. “If anything, I’m worse.”
“Worse?”
“You guys are just being yourselves.” He sits up again, then lies down, unable to get comfortable. “I … I’m a character just as much as Del was, maybe. I don’t know. I don’t feel like I’m acting most of the time, but then … when Brad put on that nail polish, I was so jealous.”
“Jealous?”
“Yeah. It was a cool color.”
“Unicorn Trampocalypse.”
He laughs. “Is that the name?” He turns to look at the ceiling of the tent, on his back but out of his sleeping bag enough that his stomach is exposed. “I like it. I wish I could wear it. I wanted to, in that moment. I wanted to be … more like me? Not that I think all gay guys have to wear nail polish to be themselves or anything. But it reminded me of my grandma, and painting her nails, and her sometimes painting mine and how happy that made me. I really loved it. Picking out the color, holding it up to the light, seeing it on me. Not just nail polish, either. Lipstick, eye shadow. I had so much fun putting makeup on Grandma, and wearing it. And then she would wipe it all off before my parents got home and tell me not to tell them. She was protecting me. So then, when she died, I started protecting myself because of …”
“What your mom did.”
He nods. “But I think Grandma wanted to send me here because here is a kind of protection. Here I can … be myself. Right?”
“Like you’ve always said: You can be anyone you want,” I say. “I kind of proved that.”
He laughs. “Yeah.” He turns back to me. “So, I want you to know, and, like, you don’t need to say anything back, but I just want you to know, that I thought about everything—everything you said and did and … you were right. I do know you, Randy. Maybe not all the parts of you—I don’t know about your love of musical theater, or your real fashion sense or anything like that. But I know the parts of you that make me laugh, that make me feel good about myself, that talk to me and make me feel special not because of what I’m not, but because of what I am. And, so … I still love all those parts.”
I can feel my throat closing and force myself to take a deep breath through my nose. He reaches out his hand to me, but it doesn’t close the distance, so he wriggles his sleeping bag closer, which makes us both laugh and then his hand is on my cheek and every part of me feels like it’s filled with stars again.
“Wait,” I say, pulling his hand off me.
“I want to know all the parts of you,” he says. “I mean that. I want to hear all about the show and what you’ve been doing this week, I want to know about musical theater and clothes and … anything you want to talk to me about.”
I smile. “Okay,” I say. “But … I don’t know you anymore.”
“What?”
“Every summer, I’ve watched you, seen you inspire people—inspire me. You always made me feel like I can do anything … but it turns out what you meant was you thought I could be more … like you. And now, you’re saying you want me to be me, but …”