All We Can Do Is Wait(60)

Kyle hadn’t called or texted, and Jason felt too stubborn to contact Kyle. So, once Jason’s parents were off to their dinner, and Alexa went to work, Jason—feeling reckless and sorry for himself, like he hadn’t since before the summer—dug into his parents’ liquor cabinet, finding a mostly full bottle of vodka and going to sit out on the porch, smoking a joint and wallowing in his misery. He scrolled through Kyle’s photos on Instagram, always so fascinated by the ones from before they’d gotten together, the life Kyle had lived before Jason, both mysterious and plain.

He kept drinking until he passed out, maybe around nine, he wasn’t sure. All Jason knew was that he was awoken around midnight by his phone ringing, his sister on the other end, screaming and crying. Jason, groggy and still drunk, tried to comprehend what she was saying.

“Alexa, Alexa, slow down, what are you saying? Alexa?”

“Kyle!” she said. “Kyle! He was in a car accident! He crashed his car!”

Jason felt sick, like he was going to throw up. “Is—is he O.K.?”

He heard his sister break down into sobs, and he knew then that Kyle wasn’t O.K. But he needed to hear his sister say it. He needed someone to say it, if it was real.

“He’s dead, Jason. He’s dead. Kyle’s dead. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Jason threw up, vomit splattering on the porch as he dropped the phone. He couldn’t remember if he screamed or cried or anything. All Jason saw when he tried to remember the finer details of that night was a wall of blackness descending, separating his life before and the life after.

It was only hours later, when Alexa and their parents were home, Jason sitting numb on the couch while his sister wailed and Linda and Theo tried to comfort her, that Jason felt his phone buzz, a little reminder that he had a message. He looked at it, his eyes bleary and unfocused. It was a message from Kyle. From the night before. From 9:07 P.M. Hands shaking, Jason pressed “Play” and put the phone to his ear.

“Hey, babe. I’m leaving work, wanted to talk to you all day. I’ve been thinking about it, and maybe you’re right. Maybe there’s time. Maybe all that stuff can wait. I know why you’re not picking up, but maybe you’ll listen to this after I leave it, so here’s me telling you that I’m just gonna drive over there and wait like a creep outside your house for a few minutes. If you want to come outside and talk or make out or yell at me some more or just sit next to me and not say anything, I’d really like that. I’d like that a lot. But I gotta hang up now because I’m driving. So, see you in like fifteen minutes. I hope.”

Kyle had driven to the house that night. To make up with Jason, to fix things, to set things right so they could figure out the future together. But Jason had been passed out drunk. He didn’t hear his phone, and Kyle had waited and waited outside. He was right there. All Jason had to do was run outside, tell Kyle he was sorry, and they could have gone to the party together. Or stayed in and talked and had sex, like the rest of the once-perfect summer.

But when Jason didn’t come outside, didn’t call back or text or do anything, Kyle went to the party alone, upset probably. He drank more than he normally did, making the careless, fatal decision to drive himself home. Or, even worse, maybe he was headed back to Jason’s. To try one more time. And then he died. Because Jason was asleep on the fucking porch. Because Jason couldn’t keep his shit together for a few hours, because he’d fallen right back into his stupid, destructive old self the minute he felt Kyle pulling away from him. Because Jason was too stubborn to apologize in time. Because he was too cowardly to just tell Nate Carlsson, “Yeah, I’m gay, and this is my boyfriend.” Because Jason had done everything wrong, the whole time he and Kyle were together. He knew that now. That this was all his fault.

He should have known that Kyle would call. He should have called Kyle. He should have driven to Grey’s and, who cared what his sister saw, apologized to Kyle and told him he loved him and everything would be O.K. Kyle would be alive, if Jason had just had two or three fewer drinks, hadn’t gotten stoned, hadn’t been so consumed with his own sadness and self-loathing that he’d forgotten there was another person, someone else on the other end of the line, waiting for him to say something too.

Jason had listened to that message probably hundreds of times in the last year. Torturing himself, agonizing over it. Sometimes he let himself slip into fantasies about what could have been, about the life he’d have now if he’d only heard his phone, run outside, grabbed Kyle and never let go. But most days he just buried himself deeper. He drank more, scored pills, stumbled in a haze through school, disconnected, speaking to no one, feeling empty and worthless.

And of course he had let Alexa grieve for her friend alone, not knowing that Jason was ruined inside too, that he wanted to scream and cry at his funeral, cling to Kyle’s mother, Sheila, and beg her to forgive him. But he couldn’t do that, because then people would know, and he would have to hear himself say it. That he failed Kyle. That he let him die when all he had to do was stay present, to keep being the person Kyle loved for a little while longer. It was the last night of summer. They’d almost made it. But Jason had, at the very end, managed to destroy everything.

? ? ?

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.” Alexa kept saying it, over and over again. She had her hands on her head, her eyes wild and frantic.