Page 53 of Catching Kyle

Kyle leans back and puts his other hand on the steering wheel. “I guess I could have,” he says. “Sorry about that. But there you don’t need to worry. No one but our waiter will see us anyways.”

I frown. Right, because Kyle taking me, a gay man, out on a date in public… that would surely mean outing himself. So that answers that. Yet he is taking me on a date, so he’s had to come to some sort of acceptance about himself.

“So, what have you been up to this week?” I ask, after we reach the city. I’m curious. He went from crying on the couch about his sexuality to taking me on a date. There are some gay men who could never even dream of making that leap.

“I decided to get some help,” he says. “I talked it out with a therapist.”

I gawk. “After one therapy session, you felt confident enough with being gay that you asked me out?”

He winces slightly when I saw the word ‘gay’, and a pit forms in my stomach. But I ignore it.

“I didn’t just meet with her once,” he says. “I met with her several times—she happened to have a lot of openings that week.”

“Wow,” I say.

“And we got more meetings,” he says, pulling onto a less busy street that I’ve never seen before. “We’re gonna try to dig into my past.”

“How do you feel?” I ask, looking up at the buildings. The facades have that old Western look, and something tells me that somebody without money like myself would never just find myself in a place like this.

He shrugs. “It feels shitty and great at the same time.”

I reflect on my conversations with both Susan and my therapist. “You’re right there.”

He parks the car. “But enough talk. Let me take you inside.”

The next moments are strange. He opens my door, and then a man dressed in a suit like Kyle’s opens a nondescript door next to what looks like a fancy, New American restaurant. The man leads us into a dark hallway. Kyle’s hand hovers just over my back, as if he wants to touch me but can’t.

“Here’s the private room for you and cousin,” the man says, holding a door open.

Cousin?The pit forms again in my stomach, this time stronger. Kyle lets me walk inside the room first, and he follows. The man shuts the door, leaving us alone in a warm light. On the far end of the room, there’s a fireplace going. There are several dim lanterns hanging from the ceiling, also candlelight, and there’s one small table for two in the middle. Above the fireplace hangs a deer head, and I don’t want to know if it’s fake or real. The rest of the dark maroon walls are covered in landscape art. On the far wall, there’s a small opening, I presume for the waiter to walk through. But besides them, we’re completely alone.

Kyle grabs his napkin and sits down, covering his lap in white. He gestures to my seat and grabs his glass of water. “You wanna sit?”

After he called me cousin, I’m not sure. But I see no other option. I sit anyways.

“So it’s true,” I say. “You date your cousins in the South.”

He chokes on his water and spits it back into his glass.

A waiter emerges from the curtain covering the opening in the wall. He’s an older man, and he looks gay to me.

“Good to see you again, Kyle,” he says.

Kyle brushes off some water from his tie with a napkin. “You too, Charles.” After he cleans himself, he orders us some artichoke dip and drinks, and Charles disappears behind the curtain.

“I’m sorry,” he concedes.

“Sorry about what?” I ask. “Lying to me that this is a date, or calling me your cousin?”

He grumbles and looks up imploringly. “Thisisa date,” he says. “Can you just give me a break? I came out to you a week ago, and I barely did to myself before that. I’m not ready to tell the world.”

“Then why do you wanna date?” I ask.

“’Cause—” he raises his fist to his mouth and seems to burp. He presses his hand to his chest, takes a breath, then relaxes his shoulders.

“Because I like you, okay? And it’s not just because I’ve been watching your porn for three years.”

“Oh man,” I say under my breath. He’s been watching me since I first started. “You like me?”