Chapter Twelve

In the middle of things, after the talking had progressed, after Dr. Emmett had worked his ways around the initial walls of Wade’s confusion and reluctance, after Dr. Emmett tugged away at Wade to relieve his stress, after Wade had become willing enough to try some oral stuff, the two conspirators had contrived a way to spend the night together. It was a January weekend night, and the high school basketball team was playing in a state tournament out of town. Wade told his mom and Jessa that he wanted to go support his friends. And they were so preoccupied with all the new baby stuff, at which they had probably realized he was useless, that they kind of shrugged off his requests to go with little complaint, so long as it was only for a night. Dr. Emmett was thrilled, eager to show Wade a full range of experiences. Wade was nervous with a tension that he carried from his shoulders to his toes and all stops in between. He wanted to please Dr. Emmett, but he didn’t know quite how to be, well, gay. Or bi. Homosexual. Heteroflexible. Open. Slutty. Or whatever it was that he was.

Wade didn’t feel like his sexual desires entirely fit what other people needed him to want.

His dick was amenable enough to any sort of stimuli, but most of the time he felt like he was checked out of his body. Like, things were happening, but he wasn’t there. He was elsewhere as his own cock crowed. If Dr. Emmett wanted to suck him off, then the soldier stood at attention. If Jessa read something in a Harlequin romance that she wanted to try, his soldier would oblige with a salute. But Wade himself couldn’t figure out which side his soldier preferred. His dick was a draftee, shooting wherever he was told to aim.

Wade was 16. He wasn’t supposed to know what he wanted. But the fact that he didn’t never ceased to bug the hell out of him. Wade wanted to be decisive. He wanted to be faithful. He wanted to be honest and good. And he wanted to know what he was supposed to like because, if biology was any indication, he liked everything. And it unnerved him.

The first time he and Jessa did it, Wade was aroused. His penis functioned. He was able to perform or whatever. She mounted up on him while they watched Marlene Dietrich, which was weird enough, and Jessa kept guiding his hands toward her bra. She unfastened it after he couldn’t get the damn thing undone. And it fell from her shoulders to her elbows and just caught there. And her breasts were exposed, and it was the first time Wade had ever seen breasts in person. And the whole thing went from surreal to real, and it was exciting and surprising at first. Jessa’s boobs weren’t massive. They were cute, and Wade tried to touch them the way he’d seen people do it in the movies. But it just felt like he wasn’t doing it right. He just kept pawing at them, swiping at them, like he was a kitten trapped under two balls of yarn. Eventually, he just cupped them and asked her if that was OK. And Jessa moaned a bit. But it felt like they were just playing at sex, imitating scenes from movies, guessing what to do next.

Dr. Emmett’s body was a map that was easier for Wade to read. He had a better sense of what to do with the dentist because they had the same equipment. There was no learning curve, at least not in the stuff they’d done so far. Wade worried, though, about the raised stakes. Things were moving too fast. The hotel room might be a game changer. He’d never touched those areas of himself, afraid of what it might make him. Worse, it might hurt.

“I’m going to see Nelson play point guard, it’s just double-A, but I think they have a shot,” he said to his mother, who wasn’t really listening. She was holding the baby, regarding Lydie with this sort of awestruck face, an unconditional love incapable of ever disappointing her or letting her down. Wade didn’t know what a point guard was supposed to do exactly. Guard, he supposed. He kind of knew Nelson from elementary school, and he’d read on some locker decoration that he was a point guard. He wanted authentic details so that no one would suspect that he wasn’t telling the entire truth. But no one asked him.

Wade felt certain about nothing, except that he was some loser failure who couldn’t do anything right. That he was certain about. That is how he felt all the time. And doing things to try and help people or satisfy people provided him with no relief or answers.

“What’s up with you lately?” Jessa asked him while he was packing. “You seem so—”

“What? Sad?” Wade asked her, a defensive tone in his voice.

“Different,” she answered.

The days of Tic-Tac-Toe were done. He couldn’t really talk to her anymore about his struggles. She wasn’t detached from his problems. She was there in them, adding to them, confusing them, all the time without knowing she was doing it. She meant no harm at all.

Δ

Wade tried to remember happiness, a freedom from worry. He thought about fishing with his dad and how boring it was. Even now, missing his father as much as he did, Wade still couldn’t romanticize fishing trips. Fishing trips at Lake Waverly were quiet and dreadfully boring. And Wade always thought it was pointless that, in the off chance that either he or his dad would catch a fish, neither of them would keep the thing. They would throw it back every time.

“I can’t bring that back to Mary,” his father would tell him. “She wouldn’t want to clean it.”

Wade’s memories of his dad were never satisfying enough. He thought of conversations he wished he could have or things that he’d wished he’d said. Wade wanted his dad to be the one with all the answers, but he couldn’t romanticize their time together. There was never a moment where Wade felt perfectly all right. There was never an answer that was absolute, something that would provide the boy with a map on how to be a good person. Instead, his father would answer him in iffy statements or wouldn’t understand the question. And Wade just got the sense that adults had no definite answers either.

Δ

As he drove to meet Dr. Emmett in the parking lot of the dental office on that January night, Wade actually prayed to his father for guidance.

“Dad, I don’t think I love Jessa,” he prayed. “I love Lydie. But I don’t love Jessa. I don’t mean to get so mad at her, and I don’t mean to cheat on her. And she’s a cool girl who doesn’t really deserve this. But I don’t know what to do.”

“Son, you keep making these choices. Jessa isn’t the only one making the choices. You aren’t blameless.”

What came next didn’t feel like an answered prayer, it just felt like an imagined talk. An answered prayer would feel different, Wade thought. An answered prayer would feel like it contained some certainty.

“Wade, do you think you love this dentist? Who is he, even?” he imagined his father asking.

“Dr. Emmett likes me,” Wade answered his dad. “He shows up at the store every night. He talks to me. He listens to me.”

“But what are you even saying to him?”

“Mostly, I think I talk to him about you,” Wade said to his father, who was only in his head and wasn’t actually there to be of any help or offer him any hugs or anything. “Or I talk to Dr. Emmett like I would talk to you. But it isn’t just that. I mean, it feels good to be liked like that, touched like that. I don’t know.”

“He isn’t me, Wade,” he imagined his dad telling him. He imagined his dad spoke to him in a soft, calm voice. He missed that voice. His dad never used it enough when he was alive. It was reassuring, loving and safe.

“Seriously, it isn’t just that. What if I’m—?”

“Wade, it’s OK to not know who you are,” his imaginary dad said in just the right way. “It’s the same with everybody.”

But Wade was fairly certain that wasn’t true. Some people knew exactly who they were. He didn’t understand why he couldn’t be one of those people. It would be so much simpler.

By the time Wade arrived in the parking lot, landing his blue Prius in its usual spot, the teen was crying. He wiped his tears and waited for the red Jeep to meet him. They were going to a Days Inn. Dr. Emmett said they could pretend to be father and son.

Δ

Hours later, Wade stood in front of one of the double beds, shirtless in his boxers, waiting for Dr. Emmett to emerge from the hotel bathroom. He wasn’t sure if he needed to be standing or sitting when the dentist opened the door after his shower. None of their previous encounters, always in a car, had been this planned. So, Wade was trembling, a mix of nerves and a really powerful heating unit that fogged the windows. This night, things were going to happen, thorough things. And no amount of porn Wade watched—in secret, in his car, when no one could catch him—could prepare him. Every move looked like it kind of hurt. Some of the activity looked like it might be worth the hurt, at least according to some of the participants onscreen.

But those dudes were professionals. And, like, acrobats.

Wade was curious about some of the stuff, some of the videos aroused him—the complicated ones with stories and seductions, and he trusted Dr. Emmett not to push him too far. And Wade kept looking at the two beds, knowing that he could always retreat if things got too painful, without having to sleep on the floor.

Still, they hadn’t really talked about it. Most of the ride up, Dr. Emmett asked him just stuff about the baby and how school was going. About 45 minutes in, Wade just went into this long rant about how much of a bitch the grocery store manager was about Wade requesting this time off. Dr. Emmett just chuckled at him, seeming to only be half-listening. Dr. Emmett spoke of nothing from his own life, except to say that Celeste was doing fine and keeping the office a funny place to be. To cut through the silence and to stop conversation from turning more invasively personal, Dr. Emmett put the radio on the oldies station, introducing Wade to pop music from the Eighties and Nineties.

After one particularly silly song by someone named Martika that Dr. Emmett knew every word to, some sing-songy one that sounded like a playground chant, Wade broke the tension that only he seemed to be feeling.

“So is your name Maxwell or, like, Maximilian?”

“What?”

“Your name, Dr. Emmett,” Wade clarified. “What is Max short for? The sign outside your office just says Max Emmett, DDS.”

Dr. Emmett winced, then tried to recover his composure.

“Wade, you can just call me Dr. Emmett if it’s easier for you. It’d be weird if you called me Max.”

“Sorry,” Wade muttered, unsure what he’d done wrong. They’d blown each other for weeks. Dr. Emmett had been inside his mouth with a variety of tools and methods. A first-name basis didn’t seem uncalled for.

“It’s OK, kid.”

Δ

All of this echoed in Wade’s head, making him feel like the world’s most stupid idiot, as he continued to question whether to sit or stand in front of the bed or whether he should remove his own boxers. He wondered if he’d be allowed to ask questions. He wondered what his mom would think if she could see him right now. He wondered if Dr. Emmett had lied about STDs or HIV or stuff. What if Dr. Emmett tried to kiss him? Had the wine Dr. Emmett given him before the shower been roofied? Why had they never kissed before? What even was this? Like, if Dr. Emmett was a serial killer, then Wade was just minutes away from getting strangled or something, and maybe this was all a trick. This was all unsafe. It was all a mistake. It was all a terrible idea, and he was going to ruin his life. And what if he was bad at it? Would Dr. Emmett laugh at him?

The bathroom door opened. Dr. Emmett, short, muscled and a little furry across his chest, wafted into the room amid a cloud of steam and Old Spice body wash, wrapped in a towel. He paused, regarding Wade’s body. Dr. Emmett had these penetrating green eyes. His smile was sly. Wade felt his gaze, and its effect prickled across his shoulders like static. Wade’s ardor betrayed him, the boxers suddenly alert.

Dr. Emmett moved closer. Dr. Emmett whispered hello to Wade, the words directed toward his neck and his shoulder blades. And then, warm and charged, Dr. Emmett wrapped his arms around him, tenderly and safely. And Wade still kept shivering.

“It’s OK,” Dr. Emmett said to Wade’s ear, biting the left lobe, exhaling over it, pulsating with heat. “You don’t need to worry about anything tonight. Just relax. There are no mistakes. I just want you to enjoy yourself.”

Jessa was never like this. Dr. Emmett’s body was firm, certain. He held Wade still. He said he wanted to focus on Wade. Jessa was never like this, for she was full of questions, nerves, and worry herself.

They just held each other in an embrace, Dr. Emmett’s mouth probing Wade’s neck, Wade’s ears, Wade’s chest.

And then it happened. Wade tilted his head to moan, and Dr. Emmett kissed him. Softly, only lips grazing at first. Then, they lingered. Tips of tongues touched, indicating intent, the give-and-take of a dance. Wade lowered his own boxers. Dr. Emmett’s towel fell. His whispers continued, making offers, positions, guidance. Dr. Emmett was never demanding, Wade’s curiosity was allowed to dictate the direction that things went. Warm. Tender. Good. New. For hours.

Dr. Emmett turned the television on low volume so that no one would hear them and suspect anything. A cable channel was showing all the “Leprechaun” movies, and they just kept going. Every once in a while, Wade would glance from his lover to the flickering screen, watching the green-suited mini-monster stalk some blonde and demand his stolen gold. And Wade would giggle, which made Dr. Emmett just work harder to keep Wade’s attention.

Neither of them talked of feelings or meaning. There weren’t many words at all once they found themselves on the same page, traveling the same road. But Wade had never felt anything so intense before. For hours, there was no one else but the two of them.

That night, he loved the dentist. And the dentist’s body had never looked so excited.

Δ

As Dr. Emmett lie unconscious in a hospital bed a month later as surgeons tried to save him, as Wade sedated himself with NyQuil to escape from the stress and the pain all afternoon, that Days Inn night—their only night where they did everything and didn’t worry about hiding or schedules—played a highlight reel across both of their memories, giving neither of them easy conclusions. Is a situation entirely tragic if you enjoy some part of it? Are you a victim if you actively participate in your own corruption? Neither of them could answer these questions with certainty. When you know you’re dreaming, you wake up. That crazy February afternoon of head injuries and bee stings, neither of them did.