I lurched forward as the subway stopped, jerking into the station.
“Now arriving at College. College Station.” The recorded voice announced the stops over top of my music, and I jolted fully awake. I opened my eyes, stood, and dashed out of the subway car, trying to avoid bowling over the small child in my way as I did so.
I almost had the doors shut on me, and I laughed a little bit as I slowed my momentum. I was still kind of riding the wave of the adrenaline high from this afternoon with Holly—and I was riding it right into a high due to going to our three-month celebration dinner with Brent. And, since we were downtown, we were able to show that we were a couple.
I could still barely believe it when we held hands or kissed in public.
I spotted a familiar mop of black hair ahead of me, exiting the subway station, and ran up to catch him before we hit Fran’s. I grabbed at his arm and pulled as he swung around. I was kissing him almost before he knew it was me. I could tell that it hadn’t yet sunk in because it took a second or two for him to kiss me back instead of just having our lips touching each other.
“But Jesse, what will my boyfriend think if he sees us?” he asked as he snaked his arm down to hold onto mine.
“Oh, I don’t think he’ll mind.” I leaned into him and pulled down my hood.
He kissed my temple. “Happy three months, babe.”
We got up to the corner. Yonge Street was one of the busiest streets in Canada, but the turmoil wasn’t just from traffic; the streetlight was down.
“Really?” I sighed. Traffic was next to impossible to navigate through at this point.
If only Holly were here. She’d be able to fix this pretty quickly.
“Who would, hon?”
“Shit. I said that out loud?”
“Y-yes…” He raised an eyebrow, looking a little worried. “Thinking about your secret girlfriend, are we?” He smiled, though he looked confused.
“Obviously not secret enough if she crossed my mind while I was out with you.” I hugged his arm. “Sorry. I’ll try to stay focused.”
He didn’t reply to that as we crossed the street at the behest of a crossing guard. I stopped him once we’d hit the sidewalk again.
“You’re not mad at me for that, are you?”
He sighed. “I’m sorry, it—who?”
“Who what?”
“Who would be able to fix this mess?”
“Uhm… I can tell you who, but it’ll confuse you, and I can’t tell you why.”
He rolled his eyes. “Yes, because you can’t trust me.”
I looked him right in the eyes. “I promise there’s a good reason that I can’t tell you, and it’s Holly, so you don’t need to worry about there being someone else.”
“Holly could fix this situation?”
“Mm-hmm.”
“How?”
I shook my head, grimacing, and he sighed.
“Could we try to ignore it for the night, hon?” I pulled him towards Fran’s, a couple doors down. “I’ll buy you a milkshake, and I promise you that as soon as I can be sure you’ll believe me, I’ll tell you everything.”
“You don’t think I’ll believe you? Hon, I trust you complete—”
“No, honestly, I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”
He shook his head. “Let’s leave this discussion for later, shall we?”
I grabbed his chin and tilted it towards me, leaning in for a kiss. “Thanks.”
“You owe me. I want chocolate.”
I laughed. “Okay, okay.”
Milkshakes and onion rings: perfect, perfect anniversary food.
“…your day, hon?”
I looked up, blinking away my thoughts. “Sorry, what? I was thinking about…uh. About milkshakes and onion rings.” I smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of my head.
“Jeez, you can’t keep your mind on me tonight, can you?”
“Hey, you can’t blame me for this one! Milkshakes! Onion rings!” I said, laughing as we opened the two doors to Fran’s.
We found a table at the back of the restaurant, and our waitress brought us a glass of water each as soon as we’d sat down.
I relaxed a little bit when she was totally unfazed by us holding hands across the table. As much as I absolutely loved being out and about as a couple, it always worried me a little bit.
I had never experienced any sort of homophobia. Brent was my first boyfriend, and I’d gotten more teasing about my first girlfriend than I had about him. Admittedly, the number of people who knew was fairly low and mostly consisted of Alex—who had walked in on us one day—and the few close mutual friends we had who weren’t homophobic.
But I’d heard the stories. We both had.
We’d heard about the guys who were beaten to a pulp.
We’d heard remarks thrown at other gay couples walking down the street, both of them much more confident about it than I would be.
Hell, the gay couple at my high school—“the” gay couple, or, at least, the only out couple—had both been sent home due to being attacked by “unknown bullies” at least once, and everyone knew who it was who did it—the football jocks. The guys Brent and I were around three days a week after school and twice a week during games.
We were doing fairly well this year, considering we hadn’t had a football team in years, and neither of us wanted to see that go away because of something stupid like homophobia.
“You okay, Jesse?”
I shook my head, blinking away the fog. “What?”
“I said, are you okay? You’re zoning out a lot today.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I’m not sure what it is.”
“Mmm.”
“I swear it’s nothing you need to worry about.”
“So, then you do know what it is.”
“Well, I know what part of it is. Part of it is that I got really…good news, I guess, earlier today, and then I kind of rode that wave into this, and this is making it even more amazing, but…let’s just say you’re overloading my brain.”
I smiled warmly, and he smiled back, albeit a little lacking in enthusiasm.
“Would it help if I offered to overload your brain a little later tonight?” I asked, wiggling my eyebrows.
We were probably a bit too loud with our laughter, but I didn’t really care. Fran’s was popular enough, but a lot of people who had grown up in Toronto all their lives had never heard of it, and I had a feeling that most of the clientele would probably not be from North York—or not my end of it.
And hey, even if someone we knew saw us together, they probably wouldn’t see that we were together-together unless they were close enough to see our hands, right?