All We Can Do Is Wait(44)
He was turning in the mirror and just about to get second thoughts when he heard Kyle’s run-down car putter up, then its sad little cat’s moan of a horn. Jason braced himself and bounded out the door to meet Kyle.
“You look cute,” Kyle said when he saw Jason. “You dressed the part! All you’re missing is a little snapback hat.”
Jason blushed, immediately regretting this daring (for him) outfit choice. “Whatever. And I don’t own any hats.”
Kyle, used to this routine from Jason, the push and pull of Jason coming into himself, said, “You look great,” and put the car into drive, zooming them off toward the very end of Cape Cod.
The drive out was lovely, windy and green, full of excitement and romantic charge. Kyle was babbling on about some drag show in P-Town he’d talked his way into with a bad fake ID last summer. It was always so strange for Jason to imagine Kyle having a similar summer, working at Grey’s and traveling around the Cape on days off, the year before they’d met, but Jason couldn’t really focus on any of that. Not because he wasn’t interested in what Kyle was saying, but because something that felt so much bigger and more urgent was pressing on his mind.
Kyle eventually realized he was rambling, or noticed that Jason was staring at him in a new and different way, and he turned to him, giving him an unsure little smile. “What? What is it?”
Jason smiled back, feeling hot in the face, his knees knocking like the first time he and Kyle had kissed, almost two months ago now, not that long, but also an eternity.
“What?” Kyle asked, his smile broadening. Maybe he knew what was coming.
Jason blinked. Just say it. “I love you,” he said, and then, rather involuntarily, let out a huffy little laugh, like he was surprised he’d just said it. Which, really, he was.
Kyle raised his eyebrows, turned back toward the road. They drove in silence for a second or two before Kyle turned back to Jason. He reached out, affectionately ran a hand through Jason’s hair, a little thing he liked to do. “Well,” he finally said. “I guess I love you too.”
A wave of relief passed over Jason, a sudden comfort. “You guess? I mean, you already said it in a voice mail, if you remember . . . Which, from the sound of it, you might not.”
Kyle grimaced. “No, I know. But I didn’t know know then. But now I do.”
“You do what?”
“I do love you. I love you.”
“I love you too,” Jason said, giving Kyle a peck on the cheek and leaning back in his seat, a million little fireworks going off under his skin. They drove on, the sun dazzling above them, as if it was saying “Congratulations.”
But by the time they got to Provincetown, clouds had rolled in, threatening rain, and the streets Kyle insisted were normally “packed with gays” weren’t really any busier than any other tourist town on the Cape. And it was a lot of straight people, from the looks of it.
“How fabulous,” Jason said at one point, immediately realizing it was the wrong thing to say, more haughty sarcasm at a moment that was supposed to be fun, was supposed to be big.
Kyle was disappointed, dejected, and, despite the excitement of the conversation in the car, he quickly slipped into one of his petulant bad moods. They ate lunch in a sulky quiet. Jason made a joke, something like “We can come back for your next birthday, in two weeks,” but Kyle wasn’t really having it.
“Maybe we should just go,” he said dejectedly.
Jason was fine with that, fine to head back toward home and find a place to be alone together. But he didn’t want Kyle to be disappointed. “We can stay,” he said, grabbing for Kyle’s hand.
Kyle shook his head. “No, it’s fine. This was stupid. We should have checked the weather.”
They probably should have, and Jason was actually a little surprised that Kyle hadn’t. But it was too late now. Still, he wanted Kyle to have fun. The problem was, he’d never been to Provincetown before, so he had little in the way of suggestions. “Is there, like, a drag thing we could go to?” he asked lamely.
Kyle shot him a withering look, but it quickly dissolved into a little smile. “You’re sweet. But no. It’s the middle of the day, dummy.”
“I thought there were drag shows twenty-four/seven in P-Town!”
Kyle rolled his eyes. “Nothing’s twenty-four/seven in Massachusetts. Come on. It’s O.K. We can go. I know you wanna go anyway.”
As they made their way to the car, Jason felt bad that Kyle’s big day hadn’t gone as planned. But, he had to admit to himself, he was also deeply relieved to have gotten through the day without any real catastrophe. Then, just as Jason was thinking they’d made it, a voice behind them called out, “Kyle?” They both turned around—what could Jason do, really, just stand facing the other way while Kyle talked to whomever this was?—and there, to Jason’s plunging horror, was Nate Carlsson from Grey’s, one of the older workers there, a manager or something, in his mid-twenties.
“Heyyy,” Kyle said, shooting a look to Jason, either scared to see Nate or scared that Jason was going to freak out.
“Crappy day, huh?” Nate said. It had started to drizzle, and people were scurrying toward their cars or houses.
“Yeah,” Kyle said, nodding. “Yup.”
Nate looked at Jason, and there was a slight flare of recognition in his eyes, a subtle change in his expression. “You’re Lexa Elsing’s brother, right? Jared?” Jason was dumbstruck, speechless. He’d just been spotted, with a known gay guy, alone together in Provincetown. They might as well have been caught in bed.