WE MAKE THE TURN onto Manhattan Beach Boulevard in Cody’s BMW, Jeff’s iPhone hooked up to the speakers, a track I’ve never heard before.
“You don’t think she’s into you?” he says.
“Dorea? No. She must know I’m gay.”
“I mean, how?” Jeff says. “Not unless Chet told everyone but that would be a massive dick move and he’s not a dick. Even though he stole all your hangers.”
Chet bought pizza for the crew—like nine other people who live on our floor and are already the best of friends because everyone moved in over the weekend and had been hanging out except me.
“Well either way, she was hot for your body,” Jeff says as we head up the hill past the high school. Cody’s school. “And I’m sure you’ll reveal your sexuality eventually. Maybe after your second date.”
“I didn’t know Mindy and I were on a date!”
I slap him on the side as we crest the hill to the bright blue vision of the Pacific Ocean and it swells through my soul—the scent, the sound, the taste—the sand and the ocean and the waves. It’s like a rollercoaster almost, right at the peak of the first incline, when your heart seizes and your stomach collapses and your lungs want to scream but you hold it all in. Like a dream.
“That’s gorgeous,” Jeff says, staring out the same windshield as me.
“I know,” I say and we ride down the slope in silence, the singer on the stereo our soundtrack to this moment. I want to stay here forever.
“These guys are good,” I say, pointing to the screen, the singer’s pained wail over grinding guitars, like a post-rock track mixed with guttural punk.
“Drug Church,” Jeff says. “I just discovered them like a month ago.”
“Wow. They’re pretty great.”
“I’ve been getting into harder shit this summer,” he says at the light at the base of the hill, the salty air filtering through the windows. “Bands like Fucked Up and Envy and Drug Church.” The guitar and drums echo around the BMW’s multi-speaker sound system. “It’s tough to know what they’re saying with all the screaming but when you read the lyrics it’s kind of amazing.”
I nod without turning, staring at the ocean, a lighter shade of cerulean underneath the cloudless sky. The percussion crashes over me.
“I mean, it’s more hardcore than Joyce Manor, but melodic, you know. I’ve actually been trying to play some of their stuff on my guitar, but it’s really hard. I’m not even close.”
He moves forward through the light into downtown Manhattan Beach and I don’t speak. He notices.
“What is it?”
“I just wish we were hanging out,” I say. “This summer. You could have shared this band with me.”
I point at the next intersection, indicating we should turn left. Cody was napping when I texted but he said just to wake him when we get to his house.
“I know,” Jeff says. “But at least we’re together now.”
He reaches for my hand, taking hold of my fingers, and I press my palm against his. He passes the intersection.
“You missed the turn,” I say but Jeff keeps driving, his fingers clutching mine as we get closer to the beach, turning into the lot adjacent to the Strand.
“I don’t want to go to Cody’s just yet,” Jeff says, putting the car into park. “I thought we could take a walk on the pier. Just us.”
“Okay,” I say. I think that’s all I say. I might have gasped “Oh my god”—the way he’s still holding my hand.
“I don’t know when I’ll get to see this again,” he says, opening the door and pulling away from me. “The ocean.”
I stay inside as he climbs out, no room to move while a family on my side struggles to pack their beach gear into their car before piling inside their minivan. I take a breath. I don’t know what he said.
But I think Jeff is leaving.
The Manhattan Beach Pier is not like the Boardwalk in Wildwood, where we used to go every summer when we vacationed at Stone Harbor. There aren’t any rides and there aren’t any games and it’s a single pier, not a connected set, but it’s more peaceful—more beautiful, no flood of jellyfish beneath your feet like the Atlantic Ocean. A bunch of dudes are playing volleyball in the sand and heavy throngs of sunbathers are closer to the ocean. Out in the distance, the surfers in wetsuits are waiting for their waves. We don’t speak.
We walk side by side with an awkward space between us to the end of the pier, facing the aquarium, an octagonal building with a red clay roof that’s been here forever, I think. I lead Jeff counterclockwise around the building because Cody told me it was bad luck to circle past the other way.
I stop at the end of the pier and Jeff stops with me. I don’t know what’s happening.
“Jeff, what’s happening? Are you leaving?”
He takes my hand again and leads me the rest of the way around the aquarium, to a bench facing the ocean. The sunlight glows on his face.
“I’m sorry, Cy, but I booked a flight and it’s leaving in a couple hours. I’m going to Uber to the airport.”
The words hang in the space between the ocean and the waves and I don’t respond because I think I didn’t hear him right, the way it doesn’t make any sense to me. Why he would leave.
“I bought my own ticket so don’t worry about your dad. I’m guessing he’ll get a refund.”
“What’s happening?” I say.
The surfers are beneath us, under the pier and spread out across the water. The sun is bright in Jeff’s eyes.
“I’m not going home, though,” he says.
I blink a bunch of times, the glow on his skin pressing into my eyes.
“I got a flight to Tampa.”
“Florida?”
“Yeah, where my father lives,” Jeff says, holding my hand—I’m not sure if he’s been holding it the whole time. The lack of sleep might have broken my mind. “You know how we’ve been talking, and he’s going to all the meetings and he got a job in construction now, so he’s out of my grandmother’s place and he has a place where I can stay. He said I could stay as long as I want.”
It gets darker the further out you look into the ocean, from blue to black.
“When did you decide this?’
“I’m not sure,” Jeff says. “I’ve been afraid, you know, to put any weight on it—Dad being sober. But I don’t want to go home right now—back to Roland’s house—and I don’t have a place to stay out here—your kind offer of a hotel room notwithstanding—so I’m hoping, praying—” He shakes his head back and forth as a swarm of seagulls squawk over his shoulder. “Maybe he’s changed.”
I keep hold of his hand when he tries to let go.
“Why can’t you go home?” I say. “And why can’t you stay here? The money doesn’t matter. Seriously.”
“Yeah, I should have told you this a long time ago but—” A pair of surfers catch the same wave at once, but one of them falls a few seconds in while the other one floats above the water, all the way into the shore. “You know how I told you they found the weed under my bed and that’s why I was getting sent to New Bredford.”
“Yeah,” I say. Like it just happened yesterday. I look down at his T-shirt, riding up on the side the way he’s sitting, where the bruises once marred his skin.
“He didn’t find drugs, Cyrus. He found porn—gay porn. These stupid old magazines I stole from the 7-11 when I was twelve or something, before I even knew you.” He laughs, looking out onto the ocean again, and our hands are no longer touching. I’m not sure when he released them. “But I had them hidden still and Roland was looking for drugs I guess and I got super pissed so we did fight, because he called me an abomination, that was the word he used on me while preaching at me, and then Mom started doing her stupid bobbing and weaving, speaking-in-tongues bullshit like she’s done ever since she became ‘born-again’ and I punched his fat fucking face—not because he found the porn but because he’d ruined her, you know. My mom.”
A group of teens pass by on skateboards with hip-hop blasting from their speakers, loud and impatient.
“But that’s her now, you know. She thinks I’m an abomination too. She wanted me to go to New Bredford even more than him because they all believe that shit, that being gay will send you to Hell or whatever the fuck.”
A bubble of spit escapes his mouth as he laughs, an uncomfortable laugh.
“So, I faked it,” he says. “Or I did my best to fake it, and then I met Rachel at our church on Easter—like it was a total setup with my mother and her mother but she was really cool and we dated for a while and it worked for a while because she was a true believer too—she wanted to save herself for marriage.” The wind blows his hair in and out of his eyes. “But a few months in, she started to want more, you know. She wanted to do everything up to the actual sex so we did some stuff and it really bothered me. It really fucked with me. How much she loved me, and how much I—I couldn’t.”
He reaches out for my hand, his lips pursed and the tears coming down his cheeks. The skateboard kids round the aquarium on their way back past us, the hip-hop louder from their portable speakers.
“I’m sorry, Jeff,” I say. “That’s—I had no idea.”
He stares out at the ocean, his fingers squeezing mine super hard, hard enough that it hurts. I don’t let go.
“So, stay here in L.A. This is the literal opposite of Dallastown. You won’t have that here.” The seagulls circle again above me. “You’ll have me.”
I don’t know how he doesn’t laugh because it was a stupid thing to say but he keeps hold of me.
“You know, Cy, when you came into my garage the other day it was like—I don’t know, such a blast from the past—from a different part of my life where we were in a band and we could hang out all the time and I didn’t have to—you know, face it. All of it. The fucking—” He hesitates, a few tears escaping his eyes. “The all of it.”
I don’t know what to say because this is killing me, the way I wish I had known all along and why he never felt he could share this with me and the two years he spent in Jesus school being taught how not to be gay. I should have waited for him. I should have fucking waited for him that day.
“And last night was amazing, Cy. This whole weekend. And I can tell why you like it here so much—it’s so chill and the weather’s fucking perfect and the gay bars are—well—”
He forces a laugh.
“So stay,” I say. I just say it. “Why won’t you just stay?”
“I need to see my dad, Cy. I still love my mother, but—I don’t know, she’s been brainwashed by Roland or that stupid fucking religion and I can’t not be gay. Not after this weekend.”
I can hear the surfers shouting and the skateboard kids screaming or the children in the aquarium yelling out loud but it all feels distant. He blinks or I’m blinking and I feel like I’m floating now, out over the water, watching us speak.
“This was my first time, Cy. Doing any of this. And I’m not ready for it yet. It’s scaring the fuck out of me. Not just being gay or coming out but all of it. College too—I’m not even close to having the background or the classes to go to a school like yours. I mean, in my junior year most of my classes were about religion or counseling—‘re-education camp,’ we called it—and senior year I was angry at the world. I barely graduated.”
I’m shaking my head or my whole body is shaking because he’s making sense but it’s not making any sense to me. He could just come here. He doesn’t have to wait.
“But they have community colleges here too,” I say. “I could help you.”
“Where would I stay, Cy?” He shakes his head. “A hotel is not practical.”
“I told you I have money,” I say. “I’ll—”
“Cy.” He reaches out for my hand again. “I need to give it a try with my dad. He’s got a place for me to stay and I want to try to repair my relationship because when I tell my mom I’m gay I might loser her forever and I’m not okay with that. I’m not okay with any of this. I need one parent to love me.”
The tears are flowing, but he shakes his head in the wind to stop them, standing up.
“Wait,” I say. He breathes out, the sun on his face and the moisture fading, the wind creating massive waves for the surfers to chase. “Don’t leave. Please.”
Jeff wipes his nose with the back of his hand. The seagulls spin off the side of the pier and crash toward the ocean.
“Cy, you remember lunch with Dorea and Chet and that crazy kid with the orange hair who kept yelling about these secret tunnels Elon Musk is building underneath L.A?” I nod. It just happened. “I mean, dude was legit insane but funny, you know. And everyone was so excited for the first day of college but you weren’t, Cy. You weren’t there with them. Because of me.”
I reach out for his hand and squeeze so hard I think it breaks.
“You came out here for Cody, I think. At least a little bit. And that boy is amazing—he let you drive his freaking BMW all weekend and you don’t even have a license.” Jeff laughs but he’s the only one laughing. “And he really likes you, Cy. The way he talked to me about you, at the party at his dad’s house before they almost burned down the place. You need to give him a chance. You can’t be stuck on me.”
“But I am,” I say. It’s all I can think to say. “I love you, Jeff.”
I can’t feel my skin.
“Maybe you did, Cy. And maybe I loved you too. But we spent a world apart the last two years—literally. You were in the real world in shitty ass Dallastown and I was in Christian re-education camp wishing like hell I was back in shitty ass Dallastown. That’s how bad it was.”
Some tourists pass close to our bench, speaking with a Russian accent. Jeff’s still standing, one foot on the wood, knee bent. I’m holding on.
“And now you’re out here. With the Loyola crowd and with Cody and his friends and the Gym Bar. You don’t care if anyone knows you’re gay. But I do, Cy. This is all new to me. I’ve been hiding all my life.”
“You weren’t hiding at the Gym Bar,” I say. “You had a ball there.”
“I know,” he says. “But I also hadn’t had a drink in like two years so—” The seagulls swarm from beneath the pier, out into the air next to us. “I just need you to enjoy your first experiences at college without worrying about me, you know. Because last night was amazing, Cy. You have no idea how amazing it was for me. But also incredibly confusing, and all day I’ve been trying to work through it in my mind and I need time. I need time to work through it.”
“But I love you,” I repeat. He has to know that.
“I love you too, Cy.” We’re still holding hands, at the tips of our fingers, and he’s facing me. “Always.”
I think we’re about to kiss again, and if we kiss again that might convince him to stay. But his fingers slip from my grip as the waves crash in around me.
“I need to go,” he says. “But I swear I’ll come back to visit. Soon. And maybe someday we’ll live in the same place and start up the band again.”
“Someday?”
I’m drowning.
“Yeah,” he says. “I’m not saying it won’t be soon. I don’t know how long my dad will stay sober or how long I’ll last in Florida.” He laughs. It’s a small laugh. “But if it works out, I’ll take some classes down there just to catch up and maybe next semester or next year I could join you at Loyola. You and me and Chet and Dorea.”
He laughs again, longer this time. I’m still drowning.
I watch as he pulls out his phone to set up the Uber. I want to reach out to stop him but I can’t stop him. It’s killing me.
“Come on,” Jeff says, pulling me off the bench, back toward the aquarium. He leads me around the wrong way this time, stopping at the end of the pier.
“Jeff.” The sun isn’t as bright as the clouds spread in the distance. “What’s happening?”
“Just this,” he says. “I want to remember this.”
He pulls me in for a kiss.
It’s quick—way too quick—but we kiss. At the edge of the pier with the waves crashing under our feet.
He pulls away but I reach out for his waist to pull him in for a final embrace.
“I have to go,” he says when we separate. “The driver’s waiting.”
There’s nothing I can say to make him stay anymore and I don’t think I can speak either way so I just nod and hold onto him as long as I can until he walks away.
They say waiting is just like wanting because all you want is the wait to be over.
He turns and waves halfway down the pier and it’s so quick I almost miss when he kicks into a sprint.
My whole life has been waiting for him.