Gang of Five

by Douglas

Chapter 4

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The four of us, sitting side by side on the grass up on The Hill, watching the traffic and the little mini-mall down below us, and sipping our coffees on a warm, golden afternoon.  Maybe beginning to reconnect; a little.  Maybe.

“So,” went Tim, after a pause in the conversation.  “It must have kind . . . of sucked for you, leaving your friends in England behind.”  He hesitated a second, looking over at Jarod.  “I mean, first you had to leave us behind; then you . . . made new friends over there, and . . . now you’ve left them behind, too.”

Something changed, slightly, in the atmosphere.  I could sort of feel Jarod watching me, as Tim said it.

“Yeah,” I said, softly, looking down.  “It did suck.  And I’ll miss them.”  I glanced over at Tim and Jarod, and then over at Zach.  “But I wasn’t as close to them as I was to you guys.  Not nearly.”

“Are,” said Jarod.

“Huh?”

“ARE close.”  And Jarod shoulder-bumped me, and Tim was flushing a little and nodding, and Zach bumped my other shoulder; and I felt warmer.  A lot warmer.

“Tell us more about them, then,” went Jarod.  “We didn’t hear that much, in your emails.”

I shrugged, then paused for a second.

“Me mates?” I started, in my best Eastenders accent, which is very marginally better than Tim’s.  “Me mates?  Oi, a bloke’s got ’a hav ’is mates, do’s’nt he?  Do’s’nt he?”

“See, I KNEW he could do it!” laughed Tim, clapping his hands and falling backwards against the slope of the hill.

“’A Canadian who spent time in Poland’?”  Jarod lifted his eyebrow.

“Different accent.  I never tried East London.”

“I can see why.”

“All right!  I know.”  I grinned at him, and looked back down between my feet, thinking.  “Well, my best . . . mate was probably Robert; he’s a Brit, but his dad’s with the Foreign Office, and he spent a lot of time growing up overseas when he was a kid -- ”

“Here?  In the US?”

“No, Africa, mostly.  And in India.”  I thought about Robert -- some of his disgusting eating habits, and his lame jokes, and his loyalty, and good-heartedness, and I realized all over again how much I really WOULD miss him.

And that I had to email him, tonight.  The way Zach had emailed me.

“And there’s Jose; he’s from Chile, his family’s here -- I mean, in England -- for a couple of years, only.  He’s really, really interesting; I would so like to visit Chile, someday.  It just sounds incredible.”

“And he invited you over, of course,” went Jarod.

“Well, yeah.  And I’d like to go.”  I picked another blade of grass, and looked at it, close.  Looking at the cut-off tip, from the last mowing; a little brown, and ragged.

“No girlfriends, in London?” asked Zach, out of nowhere.  Evenly.

Talk about conversation stoppers.

Nobody said anything, nobody moved, as I went on looking at that blade of grass, kind of drawing in my breath; the sort of pause you take, before doing something really stupid.  Or dangerous.

Or final.

“Well,” I started.  Trying to sound casual.  “I had a massive crush on Philippe Coudrot, at school, but he didn’t even know I was alive.”  I tried to keep my tone light.  “His loss.  And yeah, I’m about as totally queer as you can get.  Like, totally.”

Long pause.  LONG pause; at least, to me.

And then, a bunch of things seemed to happen at once.

I heard a kind of ‘whoop!’ coming from Tim’s general direction; and then Zach had his arms around me from one side, squeezing so, so tight, burying his face in my neck, and then Jarod had his arms around both of us, really, and he kissed me on the cheek -- I think it was Jarod, Zach was still pressed too tight against me to move -- and then Tim kind of barreled into all three of us from the front, knocking us all back against the hill in a clump --

And, stupid, emotional git that I am, I began to kind of tear up.  Because it was the single best moment of my entire life.  So far.  No possible comparison.

And then, everybody began talking.  At once, of course.

“I told you.  I told you,” Jarod was saying, calmly, looking past me at Zach.

“Four out of five!  Eighty . . . . percent!” Tim was saying, with this huge grin.

“Jesus, Christian,” Zach was saying -- I probably would have laughed at that, in any other circumstance -- “Jesus, Christian, why didn’t you fucking SAY something?  Just give us a fucking hint?”

He wasn’t mad; he was saying it kind of wonderingly, like he really didn’t know.

“What do you mean?”  I was confused.

“You can’t count Liam as all-heterosexual,” Jarod was saying to Tim.

“Your emails.  It was like -- like you cut us out of that part your life, after awhile,” went Zach.  He’d lowered his voice, talking just to me, eyes on my face, as Jarod and Tim went blathering on.  “I -- we -- thought it was because, well . . . ”

“He SAYS he’s straight,” went Tim, to Jarod, from my other side.

“Yes, but look what he’s doing with us, every other day or so.  You think that counts as straight?”

“Well, I didn’t mean to!”  I said to Zach.  “I just -- well, look, there I was in London, alone, and the four of you were here, and -- nothing from you about any of that stuff, either -- for a LONG time -- and then, about Liam getting all involved with a girl . .  I don’t know . . . ”  I looked down at the grass.  “I was afraid I was the only gay one, ” I went on, softly.  “And that you guys -- well, straight boys fool around.”  Pause.  “When they’re young.”

I looked up at Zach again, as Tim and Jarod went on arguing about -- whatever.  I watched his face soften, and then he hugged me in close to him, again; a long, long hug.

“Oh, Christian,” he murmured, into my neck, at last.  He held on to me, a little longer; his body against mine was so warm, just shockingly warm and alive, his face against my neck so smooth.  “Jesus . . .  I am sorry.”  He let me go, looked into my face again.  “Maybe we both screwed up;  but I guess, also . . . maybe I just didn’t think.  I mean, we all had each other, back here -- Tim and Jarod and Liam and me -- and you were alone over there.  How could you know -- ?”

“Or you about me,” I went, not very articulately.

It occurred to me that maybe -- just maybe -- I’d been a little self-involved, when it came to The Question.  That if I’d put myself in Zach’s place -- and Tim’s and Jarod’s -- maybe I wouldn’t have been quite so paranoid.

And that maybe, even if they’d all turned out straight -- the love we’d had for each other would still have been there, one form or another.

Maybe.  Maybe.

Not that I didn’t still have questions.  A lot of them.

“So -- all three of you?”

“What?”, from Jarod.  By this time we were still sort-of-clumped, sort-of-apart, up against the hillside.

“Gay.”  I felt myself flushing, some.  “Like me.”

If you’ve ever come out -- you know what I was feeling.  These three boys were the first human beings I’d ever told, about me.

It had been the single hardest thing I’d ever said.  To anybody.

Zach reached over and massaged my neck, slowly, comfortingly.  “Gay like me.  Sounds like a ‘fifties movie title, doesn’t it?”

I glanced at Jarod, just in time to see him give Zach one of his patented looks.  Or Looks.  “Did you ever have any doubts?”, he asked, turning to me.

“About me?  No.  I always knew.  But, you?”  I looked at each of them.

“I should have said something before you left,” said Zach, still massaging the stiff muscles in my neck.

Driving me crazy in the process.  The massaging, I mean.  It had been so long . . .

“But -- what about Liam?”  I asked.  I really didn’t get it.  “He’s still, like -- getting together with you?  Like, at Zach’s house?”

“With us,” said Zach, firmly, and Tim did his nodding thing, and I felt more wetness in my eyes.  “With us.  You’re back, now.”

“Liam says he doesn’t believe in labels,” went Jarod, kind of gently.  “But he’s really fixated on Candace.  And, well, they haven’t done very much together, yet.  Physically.  Kissing; I guess.”  He glanced over at Tim.  “So he comes over sometimes, after a date, and . . . it’s a lot of fun.  He can get kind of wild.”  I saw Tim turn pink -- or pink-er -- and I wondered.

“But you’ll see him tomorrow,” went Zach.  “If you want, anyway.  My dad’s gone for the weekend, and Jarod and Tim and Liam are coming over -- Saturday night, too, and, and, it would be cool if you wanted to come over?  Sleep over, I mean?”

He sounded -- almost shy.  Zach, shy.  That was something new.

I could feel myself flushing, bright red.  Redder than Tim, even.

“Friday and Saturday?  Both?”

“I’d like it,” said Zach, simply.  “And Dad likes it, when I have company while he’s gone.”  He looked sideways at me.  “Would that be okay with your folks?”

“Uh-huh,” was all I said.

Having a weekend by themselves, while their morose teenage son re-connected with his best friends?  His best friend?  Who they loved like another son?  And who lived four houses over?

“So . . . you want to?” Zach asked.  Gently.  A little tentatively.  As his hand kept massaging, massaging.

“Yeah.  Oh, yeah,” I got out, looking down, almost whispering it.

And I got wrapped in a group hug again, but more gently than last time; and to my utter embarrassment, my eyes really WERE filling with tears this time, and running over, but I didn’t really care, because these really were my old friends, and in this one important way, anyway, I was home.

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