Everything You Want Me to Be(54)

“You mean last year?” he teased.

“I don’t know, old man. Why don’t you carve it into a stone tablet so I can understand how young I am?”

“I left my chisel at home.” He casually slid my glove into his and we kept walking like we did this every day, and no one we passed even glanced in our direction.

We went on—playing, baiting each other, both of us acting drunk even though we were completely sober—until we came to a restaurant with blue lights that rose three stories high.

“Hungry?” he asked, opening a door made out of bright mosaic tiles.

Since it was early afternoon, there weren’t a lot of people eating and we got seated right away. It turned out to be a tapas restaurant, one of Peter’s favorites, and he told me to order anything I wanted. Soon our table was filled with tiny plates of exotic food and I tried everything. Although a few things tasted weird, most of it was delicious. My favorite was a beef tongue wrapped in cabbage with this amazing dipping sauce. When I offered some to Peter, he declined.

“I’m a vegetarian.”

“What?” I was thrown. I scanned the table, like I could find some evidence of him eating meat, and realized all the dishes on his side were cheeses, vegetables, and breads. It was such a mundane thing, but somehow it shook my confidence, took us another step apart.

“What else don’t I know about you?”

He smiled and thought for a second before answering.

“I hate tofu.” His lip even curled as he said it. “It’s probably a vegan sin, but the stuff always reminds me of Soylent Green.”

“I’ve never eaten tofu.”

“Lucky.”

I laughed. “Why’d you become a vegetarian?”

“My mom was. She basically raised me as one.”

“I love my mom’s chicken and biscuits.”

“I love my mom’s roasted portobellos.”

“Mushrooms are gross,” I declared. “Who decided it was okay to eat fungus?”

“Fungi.”

“Thanks, fun guy. I also kind of hate speech correction.”

Peter closed his eyes and shook his head in apology. “Believe me, I do, too. It’s out of my mouth before I even know it.”

“I do that so much. I’ll be halfway through a conversation before I realize I don’t actually believe anything I’m saying.”

I was glowing, caught up in our game of reveal, but Peter fell silent just as the waiter came to check on us. When we were alone again he leaned in and took my hand, eyes intent on me, and in that moment there wasn’t anywhere else in the world besides this table with the two of us wrapped taut in its circle of light.

“Tell me something true,” he said.

“I just did. Chicken and biscuits. Mushrooms.” My teasing smile faltered.

“That’s different. Those are tidbits. They’re facts—meaningless, weightless. Facts are everywhere. Tell me something visceral, something that’s as part of you as your breath or teeth, that you don’t even know how to lie about. Tell me something that can hold you here with me.”

For a moment I stared at the plates on the table and then the memory was there, like it had been hovering right at the edges of my mind, waiting to be told. I smoothed my fingers over his and wondered where to start, then I wondered what he would think of me when I was done. Taking a deep breath, I chose my words carefully.

“When I was a kid, I used to tag along after my brother, Greg, and the Beason twins from the next farm over. They were older jockish boys I could hardly keep up with on my bike and they weren’t very nice. If I had anyone else to play with, I probably wouldn’t have followed them around. When you live in the country, though, you play with whoever lives nearby.

“Sometimes we chased barn cats or went swimming in the lake. Sometimes they had me steal stuff from the drugstore, because no one ever stopped me except to say How’s your mom doing? Other times they just made me go home.

“One day they biked down to the quarry and I followed as usual. An old wire fence circled the place, but it was broken in a few spots and no one had worked there for years. It was easy to get in. We left our bikes on top and climbed down the rock face. It looked like a giant staircase cut into the ground, like we were going to another world. I was excited and started exploring as soon as we reached the bottom. The boys set up tin cans and tried to knock them down with stones. I wasn’t paying attention and walked in front of them as they were throwing. The rock hit me here.”

I brushed a finger over the scar line just beneath my right eyebrow. The skin always felt too smooth there, glossy and slightly indented.

“I fell down and the blood gushed everywhere. It got into my eye and I couldn’t see. The boys were all yelling at each other and at me. I don’t think we were supposed to be playing in the quarry. When I accused them of hurting me on purpose, one of them—I don’t know which one—got really close to my ear and told me that if I ratted them out, I would pay for it. They’d never let me play with them again and if I tried to tag along, they’d throw more rocks at me.

“?‘It’ll be on purpose then,’ he said.

“They tried to push me back up the rock wall, but I still couldn’t see anything and my head was pounding so bad. I fell a couple times and finally Greg told me to stay there while they went to get help.