Him (Him #1)(25)

“You want to head out?” he asks from the bed.

“Yeah.” When I turn around, he’s changing his clothes, too. Thank Christ.

“To think that we can be out after dark without climbing out of the windows,” Wes cracks. “That’s just weird.” He’s dressed in hiking shorts and boots, and pulling a black wife-beater over his head, leaving his arms bare.

“You can jump off the fire escape if you want,” I tell him. “But I’m taking the stairs.”

“Where are we headed?”

I grab my keys and phone. “If your manly car is available, let’s go to Owl’s Head.”

He stops in the middle of tying his shoelaces. “Yeah? I thought we’d go to a bar.”

“We’re going to do both,” I say. “But only if you can move your ass out that door.”



* * *



Wes drives a newish Honda Pilot with a sweet stereo and leather seats. But it’s a mess. I have to move several copies of USA Hockey off the passenger’s seat and throw away an old McDonald’s bag. “This is...nice,” I tease as I chase an empty cup off the floor.

“I’m not going to gay up my ride for you, Canning. Let’s go. We’re racing the daylight.”

Owl’s Head is a short hike we used to do with the group as campers. It’s a few miles out of town, and there aren’t any other cars at the trailhead when we arrive. Wes bleeps the locks, and then we’re scrambling uphill over rocks and tree roots.

I love this. Hockey is great, but it keeps you indoors. My summer sport is surfing, but I’ve always loved a good hike.

Did I mention I’m from California?

“Slow down,” Wes pants at one point.

I stop, holding on to a sapling to wait for him. “Too much for Toronto’s recruit to handle? I’d better call my bookie. Who are you playing first?”

He smacks me on the ass. “I stopped to take a picture, *. Carry on.”

The views really are intense. We’re climbing up a ledge, basically, and Adirondack peaks stand out all around us, dark against the early evening sky. “It’s just two more turns,” I promise.

It takes us thirty minutes to reach the bald, rocky outcroppings at the top just as the sun prepares to set behind a distant peak. Panting a little from the climb, I plop down on a sun-warmed rock and take it in.

“What a dump,” Wes jokes, sitting beside me.

“Right?”

I’ve probably climbed this hill every summer for the last nine years. When we were fourteen, it was fun to scare each other by sitting way out on the ledge. When we were seventeen, we probably came all the way up here without really seeing it. Wes and I would have been arguing about hockey. Or football. Or some dumbass movie. We climbed because that was the activity on the day’s itinerary.

It had startled me this past year to realize everything I did from here on out I did for myself. College graduation is the end of the road map. It’s all uncharted territory from this point, and I’m the one in the driver’s seat.

The distant clouds turn orange-pink while I watch. My friend sits beside me, lost in his own thoughts. “We’re going to lose the light,” he says eventually.

“We still have time.” Another beat of silence goes by before I ask, “What are you thinking about, anyway?”

He chuckles. “Freshman year of college. What a dick I was to everyone.”

“Yeah?” I’m surprised Wes is going all introspective like me. I would have thought he was sitting there trying to figure out the best way to prank Pat and blame it on the kids.

“Yeah. Rough year. Lots of hazing.”

I sneak a look at him for the first time since we sat down. “Same here. Those seniors were psycho, seriously. Never seen anything like it.” I clear my throat. “That fall I kept thinking, Wes is not going to believe this shit when I tell him…” I let the sentence die. That was probably too harsh. If we’re friends again, I shouldn’t let my anger bubble back to the surface.

He makes an irritated sound in the back of his throat. “Sorry.”

“I know,” I say quickly.

“But I spent that first semester just praying those *s didn’t figure out I liked dick. And since I wasn’t so comfortable with that idea myself…” He sighs. “I wasn’t very good company that year, anyway.”

Something goes a little wrong in my stomach at the idea of Wes being scared. My whole life I’d thought of him as fearless. Nobody is. Intellectually I know that. But even the other night when he’d told me he had struggled with being gay. I don’t think I really got it.

“That sucks,” I say softly.

He shrugs. “Didn’t kill me. Just made me work twice as hard. Maybe I wouldn’t have ended up as a first liner if those jackasses hadn’t put the fear of God into me every f*cking day.”

“That’s looking on the bright side.”

“Canning, we’re going to lose the daylight,” he reminds me.

He’s right. The sky has already faded to a soft purple in some places. I hastily stand up. “Let’s go, then.”

It’s counterintuitive, but on a steep hike the way down is much harder than the way up. Every step threatens to sweep your feet out from under you. We don’t speak at all during our descent. We’re too busy concentrating on where to place each foot and which branches will make a steadying hand-hold.