Page 11 of Don’t Let Me Go

“Thanks for today,” Jackson says, taking a hearty bite of his bacon double cheeseburger. “After these past couple months,

I needed it.”

“Thank Duy. They invited you,” I remind him, sipping my Diet Coke.

After several hours of skating (and only a few near collisions), Jackson and I are resting our weary and blistered feet in

the Rink-O-Rama café while we wait for Duy, Tala, and Audrey to finish competing in the limbo tournament.

“I will thank them,” Jackson replies. “Though right now, Duy looks a little busy.”

I follow Jackson’s gaze over to the rink where a recently disqualified Duy stands on the sidelines chatting with a striking

Black boy who’s rocking a platinum-blond Afro and a zebra-print muscle tee that does indeed show off his muscles. I can’t

hear what they’re saying over the wail of Olivia Newton-John’s “Magic,” but from their body language, I can tell there is

definitely some hard-core flirting going on.

“Looks like someone made a friend,” Jackson says with a grin.

“Duy’s always making friends,” I grumble. “They collect people like strays.”

“People like me?”

“ Exactly like you.”

Jackson laughs, and I can’t help cracking a smile myself. There’s something infectious about Jackson’s happiness when he chooses to show it—something he’s been a lot more comfortable doing ever since our rather intense conversation this morning.

“I’m actually a little jealous at how easily Duy makes friends,” I confess, poking at my fried chicken sandwich. “I don’t

know if you’ve noticed, but I don’t exactly have, like, the best people skills.”

Jackson raises an eyebrow. “You don’t say.”

“Screw you,” I retort as I toss a fry at his head.

Jackson dodges it and laughs. And once again, I find myself basking in his joy.

“So, what about you?” Jackson asks, taking another bite of his burger.

“What about me what?”

“What kind of guys are you into?”

His question catches me off guard, and I choke on my soda.

“What?” I sputter after finally managing to swallow.

“You told me yesterday that Duy was into Greek gods and underwear models. What about you? What’s your type?” he asks, casually

dipping a French fry into a tiny container of aioli, then tossing it into his mouth. “Maybe we can find someone here for you

to practice your ‘people skills’ on.”

“I don’t have a type,” I retort, eager to shut down this line of conversation.

“Okay, but what kind of guys do you generally go for?”

“I don’t go for anyone. I don’t date.”

Jackson pulls a face like he’s just caught a whiff of rotting fish. “What do you mean, you don’t date? Everyone dates.”

“Not everyone . And not me.”

“Why? What have you got against dating?”

“It’s a waste of time,” I sigh. “Even if I manage to find someone at school that I’m actually into—and, let’s be honest, the odds of that happening at Olympus are about a trillion to one—I’ll just have to break up with him when I go off to college, so what’s the point of dating?”

“Um?.?.?.?it’s fun ?”

I bite a fry in two and scoff. “Maybe for you. You’re straight and hot. You’ve got options.”

“You’re not exactly ugly.”

“That’s not the point,” I reply, though the compliment doesn’t go unnoticed. “The point is, as one of the few out guys at

my school, I’m already a target. Walking around with a boyfriend would be like painting a permanent bull’s-eye on my back.”

“Don’t Tala and Audrey go to your school?”

“Yeah, and when they’re there, they keep the PDAs to a minimum.”

Jackson takes another bite of his burger and mulls over my words. “Okay, I get that dating is tricky for you. But if you don’t

date, how are you gonna meet someone and fall in love?”

“I don’t believe in love.”

Jackson pauses mid-bite and stares at me like I have two heads. Which is pretty much the reaction I get whenever I make this

particular confession. It’s also why I didn’t want to have this conversation in the first place.

“How can you not believe in love?”

Where to begin?

I could tell him the story of how my mom left my dad and me when I was six because, and I quote, she “never wanted to settle

down,” then moved to Boston, promptly got remarried, and gave birth to my two half sisters, Addison and Arianna, neither of

whom I’ve ever met.

Or I could tell him the story of Alex fucking Vargas and how freshman year he obliterated my heart and put me into the hospital. Either story on its own would absolutely justify my complete and utter distrust in love. But I’m not going to trauma-dump all my problems on Jackson.

“I just don’t believe in love,” I insist with a shrug.

“But people fall in love all the time.”

“People are horny all the time. There’s a difference.”

Jackson looks unconvinced. “So you have zero interest in a boyfriend? Like, at all?”

I roll my eyes and take a sip of my Diet Coke. “I have about as much interest in having a boyfriend as most guys have in being

my boyfriend.”

Jackson laughs. “Well, just so you know, if I were gay—”

“Don’t,” I cut him off.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say if you were gay, you’d date me. I hate when straight guys say crap like that. It’s so condescending.”

Jackson blinks in confusion. “That’s not what I was gonna say.”

I feel my cheeks burn. “You weren’t?”

“Uh. No. I was gonna say that if I were gay, I’d probably hold off on dating too. At least until I’d gone off to college or

moved somewhere like New York. That’s a pretty gay city, right? So you might feel safer. And you’d have more options.”

Well, this is fucking mortifying. Not only would Jackson not want to date me if he were gay, but apparently he doesn’t think anyone in Florida would want to date me and I need to move to another state to get a man.

“Gay people are perfectly capable of existing outside of New York,” I huff.

“Oh, I know—”

“Also, queer people shouldn’t have to move to a big city to feel safe,” I add even more adamantly, trying to put him on the defensive before he notices I’ve turned even pinker than his aioli. “We should be able to date wherever we want and

not worry about being harassed.”

“Yeah. No. Of course, I only meant—”

“In fact, maybe if more queer people didn’t have to flee to big cities because their hometowns were so unwelcoming, we could

start to build up queer communities where they’re needed and could do some good. Then we might finally have a chance of transforming

America from the homophobic wasteland that it is into a progressive, twenty-first-century country where everyone is safe to

love who they want no matter where they live. And maybe our straight allies could start stepping up to make that happen instead

of telling us to move to New York.”

I aim that last comment directly at Jackson, who looks appropriately tongue-tied. I know I’m deliberately twisting his words

because I’m embarrassed that he rejected me (even if it was only hypothetically), but I’d rather be prickly than pathetic.

Also, as we’ve established, I don’t have great people skills.

“Wow,” Jackson says, before shaking his head and letting out one of his warm, full-bodied laughs. “Have you ever thought of

becoming a lawyer? Because you really like to argue.”

In the presence of his bighearted smile, I find it impossible to hold on to my manufactured indignation. It evaporates in

an instant, leaving me humbled and not a little embarrassed by my outburst.

“Sorry about that,” I mumble.

“No, dude, don’t apologize. You went from passionately defending your right not to date to passionately defending your right to date in sixty seconds flat. I’m seriously impressed.”

Now it’s my turn to laugh. “Yeah. Well, I think it takes more to be a lawyer than having ragingly strong opinions and loving

the sound of your own voice.”

Jackson grins and pops his last fry into his mouth. “I don’t know. I’d be scared to face off against you in court.”

For some reason, this strikes me as one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.

“I’m actually starting an internship with the ACLU in a week. My dad set it up for me. He’s a lawyer there, and he really wants me to follow in his footsteps.”

“That’s great,” Jackson exclaims. The face I make must indicate that I think otherwise, because almost immediately he adds,

“Isn’t it?”

“You’d think, but...”

“But what?”

I shrug. “Do you remember earlier this morning when you asked if I ever felt like I was living the wrong life?” I don’t need

to say anything more. Jackson nods.

“Ah. Gotcha.”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so we’ve established that you don’t want to be a lawyer, and you don’t want a boyfriend or love, and you don’t want to move to New York,” Jackson says as he enumerates these items on his fingers before flashing me a mischievous

smile. “What do you want?”

I shake my head and let out a long sigh. “Great fucking question.”

This isn’t the first time someone has pointed out that when it comes to what I don’t want, I have the unrelenting certainty of a boomer, but when it comes to what I do want out of life, I’m about as clueless

as a newborn babe.

It doesn’t help that all my friends seem to have come out of the womb knowing exactly who they are and what they want to do with their lives. Audrey is going to be a singer like her dad. Duy wants to work in fashion. Tala has her heart set on becoming a therapist.

But me? You’d think by this point in my life I’d have found something that I’m passionate about. Some vocation or calling

or even a hobby that I could obsess over and build my personality and/or future around. But I haven’t.

“There’s got to be something you want,” Jackson presses.

I shake my head. “You sound like Tala. She told me she read this article online that said in order to be a healthy, happy,

functional human being, you can’t know only what you don’t want out of life. You also have to know what you do want. The way

Tala explained it, you can’t go through life just saying no to everything—‘No, I don’t want this.’ ‘No, I don’t like that.’