LJ Idol 10 - Week 2 - That One Friend
The rule was explained to him when he was 11, red faced with embarrassment and anger. His mama sat him down and paced in front of him, then crouched and took his small hands in hers. She always smelled of sugar and flour, he remembers that now, the smell coming to him like a dream.
“Boys don’t kiss boys Cal, boys kiss girls. But only good girls and only with their permission.”
Cal remembers being confused then, he’d never heard that one before. And he’d heard plenty.
No jumping off the porch swing.
Outside shoes are for outside only.
Hands off papa’s car.
But boys don’t kiss boys was a new one and he remembers trying to lock it into his brain.
His mama had sat him down when she caught him kissing Dylan.
“But Dyl’s my best friend,” he said and his mama had sighed.
“I know, but Dylan is a boy Cal, and boys don’t kiss boys,” there it was again, Cal thought, that rule. The rule that would decide the rest of his life, like someone steering him down a new path.
Dylan had been his best friend for 6 years since they had met at church, their mothers sitting the the boys between them like that would stop them getting into trouble. Cal remembers the silent game of I-Spy they played, childish fingers drawing the letters on the others leg and the other pointing with small chubby hands at random items till, by process of elimination, they got the right one.
It hadn’t seemed wrong when Cal had leant across the space between them and kissed Dyl. Sitting cross-legged in front of each other with an old copy of Dyl’s papa’s Playboy open. Cal remembers being confused at not feeling anything, the half naked women were interesting, but not exciting.
Dyl had put a hand to Cal’s chest and curled fingers into his top. Just a press of lips, experimentation if you will.
Cal’s mama had come in then, halfway through a command to wash hands, dinner was ready and Cal had sprung away from Dyl, like something had ingrained in him that mama’s shouldn’t be catching this happening.
“Do you hear me baby?” Cal’s mama said and Cal nodded silently. “Ok, well go wash your hands, dinner is ready. We won't tell your papa about this.”
…
They’d become blood brothers at 7, two years after the church service, sitting behind the shed on Dyl’s papa’s farm, a dull pocket knife clutched in his hand and Cal had winced, he remembers wanting to cry at the pain in his palm but then Dyl pressed their palms together and grinned at him across their joined hands.
...
Cal rubs the scar on his palm absently with his fingers as he drops a sugar cube into his coffee. His phone sits next to him on the table and he glances at it nervously.
…
At 9, they’d had their first fight and hadn’t spoken for three days. Cal remembers the malcoordinated fight like it was yesterday, small fists trying to get a punch in when they had no idea how to punch in the first place. Cal can’t even remember what it was about but they had been separated by Dyl’s older brother and hadn’t spoken for three days. The walkie-talkie that lay on Cal’s bedside table was silent.
“...Cal…” It had sprung to life early morning on the 4th day, the sun peeking in through the drapes and the sounds of the cockerel floating over from the farm next door.
“Yeah Dyl,” Cal answered.
“Friends again?” Dyl had said and Cal had laughed.
“For life Dyl.”
…
By 14, Cal knew why the rule was made, the rest of the small minded town had made that clear to him when one boy of 18 had been beaten up behind the bleachers and no one had been punished. Boys don’t kiss boys. Boys kiss girls, nice ones.
Alice was nice, sweet, pretty and smelled of citrus.
“You can kiss me, you know,” she had said, her feet dangling off the bleachers and Cal had leant forward and tucked that stray curl behind her ear.
He had kissed her then, with a memory flash of 11 year old lips of Dyl pressed again his. He’d kissed Alice and she had smiled at him.
He’d told Dyl later, under the cover of darkness, his old walkie-talkie barely holding together with the duct tape wrapped around it.
“I kissed Alice,” Cal said and there had been silence from the other end. The silence of Dyl holding down the button but not saying anything. “Dyl?”
“Good for you buddy,” Dyl had said eventually. “Boys kiss nice girls, remember?” Dylan had said with a laugh and Cal had felt the crackle of words unsaid across the static.
“Yeah.”
…
Sometimes he thinks he’s remembering the kiss wrong, like it didn’t happen, or Dyl pushed him away, or his mama opened the door before.
Except.
Except he knows he’s not. He thinks about it sometimes, more than a lot more recently since Dyl had walked back into his life.
…
At 17 Dyl started dating Kelly. A not so nice girl from the other side of town, with long brown legs and an easy smile. Cal liked her, Alice liked her, Dyl liked her. Parents? Not so much.
Cal remembers the tiny party the four of them had in the back of Dyl’s battered pickup, beers bought by Dyl’s older brother and the radio cranked high.
Both girls had fallen asleep sometime around 2am, blankets wrapped around them, curled up in the back of the pickup and Cal and Dyl had sat with their legs dangling over the tailgate. Shoulders pressed together Cal felt again the crackle of words unsaid.
“Remember when we were 11?” Dyl said suddenly, looking up at the clear sky, the lights from the town barely lighting up his face.
“What about it?” Cal said, his thumb nail scraping off the label from his beer.
“Boys don’t kiss boys,” Dyl had said and Cal had looked across at him then. The muscle in Dyl’s jaw quivered and Cal leant in a tiny bit more, pressing weight again Dyl.
“Boys kiss nice girls.” Dyl huffed out a laugh.
“I still don’t…” Dyl had started and Cal had held his breath. “I still don’t get why?” Dyl finished, looking down at his own beer.
“Dyl…” Dyl looked across at Cal. Cal couldn’t see his eyes and he remembers wishing he could read them. “This town? That’s why boys don’t kiss boys.” Cal whispered as Dyl leant closer.
The press of lips, when it happened, should have come as surprise but it felt more like finally to Cal. A small noise had escaped Dyl’s throat and Cal remembers wanting to chase that noise back down with his tongue. Dyl’s hand, slick and cold with condensation from the beer, cupped at Cal’s face, a slide of Dyl’s thumb across his cheekbone. Dyl had pulled back then, pressed his forehead to Cal’s and sighed.
“This town is stupid,” Dyl had said then and Cal laughed, quietly and wrapped his fingers around Dyl’s wrist.
…
Cal stirs his coffee and licks the spoon, laying it down on the saucer and runs his index finger through the foam. The bell on the coffee shop door dings and Cal looks up.
…
It happened again a few months later. They hadn’t talked about it afterwards but Cal remembers when Dyl called him about Kelly.
“She wasn’t nice enough,” he had said and Cal had gripped the phone tight to his face.
Dyl had turned up at Cal’s house then with a 6 pack and a packet of cigarettes and Cal had thrown himself into the pickup, ignoring his mothers disapproving face.
They’d smoked the cigarettes sitting on the tailgate looking over the town again and Dyl had kissed him. He tasted of smoke and beer, smelled like rain on tarmac and Cal had kissed him back.
It was Dylan that had pulled the blanket over the top of them and touched every inch of Cal’s body until Cal had shuddered over Dyl’s hand. It was Dylan that kissed Cal awake in the grey hours of the morning, Dylan that had whispered about loving Cal as Cal wrapped his own hand around Dyl’s cock.
“I wish we could just run away,” Dyl had said, as they’d thrown the empty cans out of the pickup.
“1 more year,” Cal had replied and Dyl had leant across the car and kissed him again and Cal remembers wanting to stay there forever.
…
“Hi Cal.” Cal looks up from his coffee.
Dyl looks the same, the same dance of a smile across his face, the same wild hair. There are wrinkles next to his eyes that Cal doesn’t remember but it’s been years and Cal always thinks that he remembers Dyl through rose tinted glasses anyway.
Cal is lost for words, has thought of this moment for years and now he’s stumped. He pushes the chair opposite out with his foot and Dyl huffs out an uneasy laugh and sits.
…
It was always easy kisses and touches snatched at uneasy moments with them. A brief press of Dyl’s lips against Cal’s behind the barn. A hand ghosting over the back of Cal’s neck that sent shivers down his spine. Fingers touching across the backs of the movie theatre seats with Alice and the girl of the moment between them.
Cal remembers that time that Dyl had pushed him into the tiny bathroom stall in Joe’s Diner and pushed his hand down Cal’s pants. Cal had panted into Dyl’s mouth whilst Dyl whispered “boys dont kiss boys” into his.
Cal’s mama had caught them 2 months before graduation, Dyl’s acceptance letter clutched in one hand, the other buried in Cal’s too long hair.
“Cal, a letter came for…” he remembers his mothers face, he remembers the hand that flew to her mouth, then he remembers the anger and disgust that flickered across his face. “Go home Dylan,” she had said in a voice that brokered no arguments. Dyl had stepped back and thrown a look at Cal before slipping past his mother and away.
That had been the last time he had seen Dyl.
…
He was seeing Dyl now through, sitting across from him, stirring his coffee with long fingers with manicured nailed wrapped around a spoon. Dyl lays his spoon on his saucer and Cal sees a flash of the scar across his palm, the one that mirrors his own. He rubs his right thumb over it and Dyl’s eyes flick down to the movement. He swallows and looks back up at Cal.
“How long has it been?”
“Too long,” Cal hears himself say, and not in the friendly way when people bump into each other in the grocery store. He says it with accusation and Dyl looks back down at his coffee.
…
“I love him mama,” Cal remembers himself saying. “I am in love with him.” His mama had looked sick then and covered her mouth again.
“It’s wrong Cal.”
“Why? Why is it wrong?”
“The bible…”
“The bible can shove it, mama,” Cal threw back at her and he remembers the sting of the slap across his cheek.
The argument had lasted for what seemed like hours, lecturing first, followed by shouting, followed by tears and finished up with resignation and the demand to move out.
Cal had slammed the door to his room and shoved what he could into a suitcase. He could start early at college, he had checked, wanting to get out with Dyl, to move away and just be. Screw graduation and prom, the only person he wanted to be with was Dyl and his mama had just proven that the rest of the town wouldn’t accept that.
“Dyl…” Cal gripped the walkie-talkie to his mouth, his hand shaking and he pressed down the button.
“Cal,” came the answer after far too long.
“I’m leaving. Now. Come with me,” they’d never been this bold before and Cal felt his heart still waiting for a reply.
“Cal…”
“I love you Dyl, fuck the rules, I love you. Come with me. Please?” He heard the pathetic pleading in his own voice.
After what had seemed like hours Dyl’s voice had come across the speaker. “I can’t.”
“No…”
“Cal, I can’t. I’m not...I...fuck,” Cal could imagine him running a hand through his hair.
“You don’t...feel the same?” Cal asked.
“Fuck no, Cal, don’t think that. Never think that, I just...Cal, you have to understand.”
“Two months Dyl, two months and we were out of this place. Were you ever coming with me?”
“Of course I was Cal, come on man don’t doubt me.”
“Don’t doubt you?” Cal scoffs, “you never gave me reason to until now.”
“Cal, I need my parents for college, I can’t…”
“Come find me,” Cal said down the speaker, “In 2 months, come find me. I’m leaving Dyl, now. If you dont come with me now, I’ll wait for you. But not forever. Come find me.”
“Cal... don’t...shit...Cal I love you, don’t…”
“See you around Dyl.”
The walkie-talkie had finally given up the ghost when Cal dropped it on the floor.
…
“Cal…” Dyl says, making an abortive attempt to reach across the table and touch Cal.
“2 months Dyl, I gave you two months. Another 6 moping over you,” Cal says and he can hear the bitterness in his voice.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Dyl says, running a hand through his hair. He always did that when he cussed. Cal remembers knowing every single piece of Dyl, every quirk, every aspect of his face. This Dyl seems the same but different. Like how you remember your High School then go back and you’ve remembered the layout wrong, or that number of lockers down the hallway yours was incorrectly, or the smell of chalk isn't the same.
Cal shakes his head.
“And sorry doesn’t cut it, I know but Cal will you listen?” Dyl rubs at his own scar on his palm and Cal is lost.
“Talk then.”
…
Over the past 5 years Cal had grown, filled out from the skinny teenager he was, he’s become his own person, knew deep down who he was and was happy with it. There had been few lovers, some for longer than others but there was never another Dyl. Dyl was always that one friend who had a piece of him, that one person that could never be replaced. There was always a sense of what if when he thought of Dyl, an ache of broken promises. He had never thought Dyl a coward, not until after graduation and Cal hadn’t come find him.
Dyl talked, spun the story between them and Cal found himself listening and nodding, the empty coffee mugs piling up at the side of the table until the cups turned into glasses and the smell of beer instead of the smell of coffee filled Cal’s nose.
Dyl explained the ultimatum his parents had put on him, stay in town and they’d pay for college. Dyl had always seen college as a chance to get out from under them, and his chance was going to be taken away.
He explained he drove to Cal, after graduation with the smell of prom still on his suit, cheap perfume and spilled beer, he drove and sat outside Cal’s door.
“Why didn’t you knock?” Cal asks. Dylan shakes his head and thumbs through the condensation on his beer.
“Jesus Cal I was terrified. You were my best friend, you still are, after everything there’s been no one like you. But what if we had just taken that one step too far?”
“Boys don’t kiss boys,” Cal says and Dyl’s hand balls into a fist.
“Not like that Cal, come on. What if we didn’t work out?”
“What if we did Dyl?” Cal asks and Dyl looks like he’s going to run again. “Anyway…” Cal shakes his head to clear it and Dyl lays hand across his.
“Exactly, what if we did? And it was epic. And it would have been epic Cal, you know that,” Dyl says and Cal frowns.
“I do, but evidently you didn’t,” Cal says and pulls his hand free from Dyl’s.
“I did, and it scared the shit out of me. What if it was epic and then it wasn’t and then I lost you. I couldn’t lose you Cal,” Dyl says.
“So you break your promise to me and leave me thinking I imagined the whole thing? Left me wondering why the hell my best friend had said he loved me and then left me?” Cal says, he can hear his voice getting louder and the bar man looks up at him. Cal pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I did love you...Cal, I think I still do,” Dyl says and Cal snaps his gaze from the bowl of peanuts to his oldest friend. The face he knows so well seems familiar and unfamiliar at the same time and Cal wants to run his fingers down the bridge of Dyl’s nose. “My life sucks without you. That’s why I called. It’s taken me all this time to realise that the biggest mistake I ever made wasn’t kissing you in the first place, but not carrying on kissing you.”
“Dyl, you can’t just…”
“Don’t shut me out Cal, I deserve it but please don’t.”
Cal was lost the second Dyl walked into the coffee shop and he reaches across to him now and brushes his knuckles across Dyl’s cheekbone.
“You’re my best friend and I’m in love with you,” Dyl says and Cal feels a tentative smile reach his lips.
“Prove it.”
“I intend to,” Dyl says. “Friends? For life?” Cal feels his smile reach a grin.
“Boys don’t kiss boys Dyl,” he says and Dyl laughs.
“This boy does.”
“Boys don’t kiss boys Cal, boys kiss girls. But only good girls and only with their permission.”
Cal remembers being confused then, he’d never heard that one before. And he’d heard plenty.
No jumping off the porch swing.
Outside shoes are for outside only.
Hands off papa’s car.
But boys don’t kiss boys was a new one and he remembers trying to lock it into his brain.
His mama had sat him down when she caught him kissing Dylan.
“But Dyl’s my best friend,” he said and his mama had sighed.
“I know, but Dylan is a boy Cal, and boys don’t kiss boys,” there it was again, Cal thought, that rule. The rule that would decide the rest of his life, like someone steering him down a new path.
Dylan had been his best friend for 6 years since they had met at church, their mothers sitting the the boys between them like that would stop them getting into trouble. Cal remembers the silent game of I-Spy they played, childish fingers drawing the letters on the others leg and the other pointing with small chubby hands at random items till, by process of elimination, they got the right one.
It hadn’t seemed wrong when Cal had leant across the space between them and kissed Dyl. Sitting cross-legged in front of each other with an old copy of Dyl’s papa’s Playboy open. Cal remembers being confused at not feeling anything, the half naked women were interesting, but not exciting.
Dyl had put a hand to Cal’s chest and curled fingers into his top. Just a press of lips, experimentation if you will.
Cal’s mama had come in then, halfway through a command to wash hands, dinner was ready and Cal had sprung away from Dyl, like something had ingrained in him that mama’s shouldn’t be catching this happening.
“Do you hear me baby?” Cal’s mama said and Cal nodded silently. “Ok, well go wash your hands, dinner is ready. We won't tell your papa about this.”
…
They’d become blood brothers at 7, two years after the church service, sitting behind the shed on Dyl’s papa’s farm, a dull pocket knife clutched in his hand and Cal had winced, he remembers wanting to cry at the pain in his palm but then Dyl pressed their palms together and grinned at him across their joined hands.
...
Cal rubs the scar on his palm absently with his fingers as he drops a sugar cube into his coffee. His phone sits next to him on the table and he glances at it nervously.
…
At 9, they’d had their first fight and hadn’t spoken for three days. Cal remembers the malcoordinated fight like it was yesterday, small fists trying to get a punch in when they had no idea how to punch in the first place. Cal can’t even remember what it was about but they had been separated by Dyl’s older brother and hadn’t spoken for three days. The walkie-talkie that lay on Cal’s bedside table was silent.
“...Cal…” It had sprung to life early morning on the 4th day, the sun peeking in through the drapes and the sounds of the cockerel floating over from the farm next door.
“Yeah Dyl,” Cal answered.
“Friends again?” Dyl had said and Cal had laughed.
“For life Dyl.”
…
By 14, Cal knew why the rule was made, the rest of the small minded town had made that clear to him when one boy of 18 had been beaten up behind the bleachers and no one had been punished. Boys don’t kiss boys. Boys kiss girls, nice ones.
Alice was nice, sweet, pretty and smelled of citrus.
“You can kiss me, you know,” she had said, her feet dangling off the bleachers and Cal had leant forward and tucked that stray curl behind her ear.
He had kissed her then, with a memory flash of 11 year old lips of Dyl pressed again his. He’d kissed Alice and she had smiled at him.
He’d told Dyl later, under the cover of darkness, his old walkie-talkie barely holding together with the duct tape wrapped around it.
“I kissed Alice,” Cal said and there had been silence from the other end. The silence of Dyl holding down the button but not saying anything. “Dyl?”
“Good for you buddy,” Dyl had said eventually. “Boys kiss nice girls, remember?” Dylan had said with a laugh and Cal had felt the crackle of words unsaid across the static.
“Yeah.”
…
Sometimes he thinks he’s remembering the kiss wrong, like it didn’t happen, or Dyl pushed him away, or his mama opened the door before.
Except.
Except he knows he’s not. He thinks about it sometimes, more than a lot more recently since Dyl had walked back into his life.
…
At 17 Dyl started dating Kelly. A not so nice girl from the other side of town, with long brown legs and an easy smile. Cal liked her, Alice liked her, Dyl liked her. Parents? Not so much.
Cal remembers the tiny party the four of them had in the back of Dyl’s battered pickup, beers bought by Dyl’s older brother and the radio cranked high.
Both girls had fallen asleep sometime around 2am, blankets wrapped around them, curled up in the back of the pickup and Cal and Dyl had sat with their legs dangling over the tailgate. Shoulders pressed together Cal felt again the crackle of words unsaid.
“Remember when we were 11?” Dyl said suddenly, looking up at the clear sky, the lights from the town barely lighting up his face.
“What about it?” Cal said, his thumb nail scraping off the label from his beer.
“Boys don’t kiss boys,” Dyl had said and Cal had looked across at him then. The muscle in Dyl’s jaw quivered and Cal leant in a tiny bit more, pressing weight again Dyl.
“Boys kiss nice girls.” Dyl huffed out a laugh.
“I still don’t…” Dyl had started and Cal had held his breath. “I still don’t get why?” Dyl finished, looking down at his own beer.
“Dyl…” Dyl looked across at Cal. Cal couldn’t see his eyes and he remembers wishing he could read them. “This town? That’s why boys don’t kiss boys.” Cal whispered as Dyl leant closer.
The press of lips, when it happened, should have come as surprise but it felt more like finally to Cal. A small noise had escaped Dyl’s throat and Cal remembers wanting to chase that noise back down with his tongue. Dyl’s hand, slick and cold with condensation from the beer, cupped at Cal’s face, a slide of Dyl’s thumb across his cheekbone. Dyl had pulled back then, pressed his forehead to Cal’s and sighed.
“This town is stupid,” Dyl had said then and Cal laughed, quietly and wrapped his fingers around Dyl’s wrist.
…
Cal stirs his coffee and licks the spoon, laying it down on the saucer and runs his index finger through the foam. The bell on the coffee shop door dings and Cal looks up.
…
It happened again a few months later. They hadn’t talked about it afterwards but Cal remembers when Dyl called him about Kelly.
“She wasn’t nice enough,” he had said and Cal had gripped the phone tight to his face.
Dyl had turned up at Cal’s house then with a 6 pack and a packet of cigarettes and Cal had thrown himself into the pickup, ignoring his mothers disapproving face.
They’d smoked the cigarettes sitting on the tailgate looking over the town again and Dyl had kissed him. He tasted of smoke and beer, smelled like rain on tarmac and Cal had kissed him back.
It was Dylan that had pulled the blanket over the top of them and touched every inch of Cal’s body until Cal had shuddered over Dyl’s hand. It was Dylan that kissed Cal awake in the grey hours of the morning, Dylan that had whispered about loving Cal as Cal wrapped his own hand around Dyl’s cock.
“I wish we could just run away,” Dyl had said, as they’d thrown the empty cans out of the pickup.
“1 more year,” Cal had replied and Dyl had leant across the car and kissed him again and Cal remembers wanting to stay there forever.
…
“Hi Cal.” Cal looks up from his coffee.
Dyl looks the same, the same dance of a smile across his face, the same wild hair. There are wrinkles next to his eyes that Cal doesn’t remember but it’s been years and Cal always thinks that he remembers Dyl through rose tinted glasses anyway.
Cal is lost for words, has thought of this moment for years and now he’s stumped. He pushes the chair opposite out with his foot and Dyl huffs out an uneasy laugh and sits.
…
It was always easy kisses and touches snatched at uneasy moments with them. A brief press of Dyl’s lips against Cal’s behind the barn. A hand ghosting over the back of Cal’s neck that sent shivers down his spine. Fingers touching across the backs of the movie theatre seats with Alice and the girl of the moment between them.
Cal remembers that time that Dyl had pushed him into the tiny bathroom stall in Joe’s Diner and pushed his hand down Cal’s pants. Cal had panted into Dyl’s mouth whilst Dyl whispered “boys dont kiss boys” into his.
Cal’s mama had caught them 2 months before graduation, Dyl’s acceptance letter clutched in one hand, the other buried in Cal’s too long hair.
“Cal, a letter came for…” he remembers his mothers face, he remembers the hand that flew to her mouth, then he remembers the anger and disgust that flickered across his face. “Go home Dylan,” she had said in a voice that brokered no arguments. Dyl had stepped back and thrown a look at Cal before slipping past his mother and away.
That had been the last time he had seen Dyl.
…
He was seeing Dyl now through, sitting across from him, stirring his coffee with long fingers with manicured nailed wrapped around a spoon. Dyl lays his spoon on his saucer and Cal sees a flash of the scar across his palm, the one that mirrors his own. He rubs his right thumb over it and Dyl’s eyes flick down to the movement. He swallows and looks back up at Cal.
“How long has it been?”
“Too long,” Cal hears himself say, and not in the friendly way when people bump into each other in the grocery store. He says it with accusation and Dyl looks back down at his coffee.
…
“I love him mama,” Cal remembers himself saying. “I am in love with him.” His mama had looked sick then and covered her mouth again.
“It’s wrong Cal.”
“Why? Why is it wrong?”
“The bible…”
“The bible can shove it, mama,” Cal threw back at her and he remembers the sting of the slap across his cheek.
The argument had lasted for what seemed like hours, lecturing first, followed by shouting, followed by tears and finished up with resignation and the demand to move out.
Cal had slammed the door to his room and shoved what he could into a suitcase. He could start early at college, he had checked, wanting to get out with Dyl, to move away and just be. Screw graduation and prom, the only person he wanted to be with was Dyl and his mama had just proven that the rest of the town wouldn’t accept that.
“Dyl…” Cal gripped the walkie-talkie to his mouth, his hand shaking and he pressed down the button.
“Cal,” came the answer after far too long.
“I’m leaving. Now. Come with me,” they’d never been this bold before and Cal felt his heart still waiting for a reply.
“Cal…”
“I love you Dyl, fuck the rules, I love you. Come with me. Please?” He heard the pathetic pleading in his own voice.
After what had seemed like hours Dyl’s voice had come across the speaker. “I can’t.”
“No…”
“Cal, I can’t. I’m not...I...fuck,” Cal could imagine him running a hand through his hair.
“You don’t...feel the same?” Cal asked.
“Fuck no, Cal, don’t think that. Never think that, I just...Cal, you have to understand.”
“Two months Dyl, two months and we were out of this place. Were you ever coming with me?”
“Of course I was Cal, come on man don’t doubt me.”
“Don’t doubt you?” Cal scoffs, “you never gave me reason to until now.”
“Cal, I need my parents for college, I can’t…”
“Come find me,” Cal said down the speaker, “In 2 months, come find me. I’m leaving Dyl, now. If you dont come with me now, I’ll wait for you. But not forever. Come find me.”
“Cal... don’t...shit...Cal I love you, don’t…”
“See you around Dyl.”
The walkie-talkie had finally given up the ghost when Cal dropped it on the floor.
…
“Cal…” Dyl says, making an abortive attempt to reach across the table and touch Cal.
“2 months Dyl, I gave you two months. Another 6 moping over you,” Cal says and he can hear the bitterness in his voice.
“Fuck, I’m so sorry.” Dyl says, running a hand through his hair. He always did that when he cussed. Cal remembers knowing every single piece of Dyl, every quirk, every aspect of his face. This Dyl seems the same but different. Like how you remember your High School then go back and you’ve remembered the layout wrong, or that number of lockers down the hallway yours was incorrectly, or the smell of chalk isn't the same.
Cal shakes his head.
“And sorry doesn’t cut it, I know but Cal will you listen?” Dyl rubs at his own scar on his palm and Cal is lost.
“Talk then.”
…
Over the past 5 years Cal had grown, filled out from the skinny teenager he was, he’s become his own person, knew deep down who he was and was happy with it. There had been few lovers, some for longer than others but there was never another Dyl. Dyl was always that one friend who had a piece of him, that one person that could never be replaced. There was always a sense of what if when he thought of Dyl, an ache of broken promises. He had never thought Dyl a coward, not until after graduation and Cal hadn’t come find him.
Dyl talked, spun the story between them and Cal found himself listening and nodding, the empty coffee mugs piling up at the side of the table until the cups turned into glasses and the smell of beer instead of the smell of coffee filled Cal’s nose.
Dyl explained the ultimatum his parents had put on him, stay in town and they’d pay for college. Dyl had always seen college as a chance to get out from under them, and his chance was going to be taken away.
He explained he drove to Cal, after graduation with the smell of prom still on his suit, cheap perfume and spilled beer, he drove and sat outside Cal’s door.
“Why didn’t you knock?” Cal asks. Dylan shakes his head and thumbs through the condensation on his beer.
“Jesus Cal I was terrified. You were my best friend, you still are, after everything there’s been no one like you. But what if we had just taken that one step too far?”
“Boys don’t kiss boys,” Cal says and Dyl’s hand balls into a fist.
“Not like that Cal, come on. What if we didn’t work out?”
“What if we did Dyl?” Cal asks and Dyl looks like he’s going to run again. “Anyway…” Cal shakes his head to clear it and Dyl lays hand across his.
“Exactly, what if we did? And it was epic. And it would have been epic Cal, you know that,” Dyl says and Cal frowns.
“I do, but evidently you didn’t,” Cal says and pulls his hand free from Dyl’s.
“I did, and it scared the shit out of me. What if it was epic and then it wasn’t and then I lost you. I couldn’t lose you Cal,” Dyl says.
“So you break your promise to me and leave me thinking I imagined the whole thing? Left me wondering why the hell my best friend had said he loved me and then left me?” Cal says, he can hear his voice getting louder and the bar man looks up at him. Cal pinches the bridge of his nose.
“I did love you...Cal, I think I still do,” Dyl says and Cal snaps his gaze from the bowl of peanuts to his oldest friend. The face he knows so well seems familiar and unfamiliar at the same time and Cal wants to run his fingers down the bridge of Dyl’s nose. “My life sucks without you. That’s why I called. It’s taken me all this time to realise that the biggest mistake I ever made wasn’t kissing you in the first place, but not carrying on kissing you.”
“Dyl, you can’t just…”
“Don’t shut me out Cal, I deserve it but please don’t.”
Cal was lost the second Dyl walked into the coffee shop and he reaches across to him now and brushes his knuckles across Dyl’s cheekbone.
“You’re my best friend and I’m in love with you,” Dyl says and Cal feels a tentative smile reach his lips.
“Prove it.”
“I intend to,” Dyl says. “Friends? For life?” Cal feels his smile reach a grin.
“Boys don’t kiss boys Dyl,” he says and Dyl laughs.
“This boy does.”