Page 22 of String Boys

“Yeah, well, he’s getting desperate. You’re not hearing him, and you need to.”

“My dad and I talked about it last night,” Seth told him reluctantly. He didn’t mention his dad much still, mostly out of habit, but partly because even though his dad was eight years sober, Seth didn’t want to jinx it. “I told him I didn’t want to go.”

“And how’d he take that?” Matty asked, stepping back from the curb as the bus approached.

Seth sighed. “I think it made him sad,” he mumbled. The bus hissed to a halt and lowered, doors opening, and Seth followed Kelly and Matty on board. Matty found one seat toward the back, and Kelly and Seth took the two together in the middle.

Kelly looked back and waved at his brother, and then the bus started, noisy and chaotic, and he lowered his head to talk in Seth’s ear.

“No telling my brother about us for a while, right?”

Seth nodded. “Right. Would he be mad?”

Kelly grimaced. “He’s been going to church with his girlfriend—”

“Isela?” Last month it had been Miranda. He seemed to like tiny floaty girls who could make V-neck T-shirts look like lingerie.

“Yeah. Isela. She’s a ‘good girl,’ which is Matty code for he hasn’t got past second base. Anyway, it’s not our church. They don’t seem to like gay people very much.” Kelly sighed and slumped forward. “Or, you know, I would have gone home and told the whole world that we finally kissed. And it was awesome. And I want to do it again.”

Seth’s heart ached. “I want to do it again too,” he whispered.

Kelly’s spine straightened, and his smile popped back in place, like the dimples were a lock. “I’ll run up and drop my stuff like always,” he said. “And that way, I don’t have to go watch Mr. Righteous Asshole play ball and be a jock and shit.”

“You….” Seth swallowed. “I thought you liked your brother.”

Kelly just shook his head. “Not when… not when every word out of his mouth is about why you and me shouldn’t kiss,” he said sharply.

They were quiet then, and Seth opened his eyes to the damage this could do to Kelly’s life. Kelly’s family. The happy little enclave of people upstairs who had provided Seth with the security his father hadn’t.

“I don’t want you to hate your brother,” he rasped after a few moments of the bus filling their senses.

Kelly looked sideways at him. “That’s between my brother and me,” he said firmly. Then he perked up. “Oh! Weren’t you even curious about camping?”

Seth let out a little grunt of frustration. “There’s a lot going on here!”

Kelly’s burble told him he’d been unintentionally charming, and he’d take that as a win. “Yeah, there is. My folks reserved a campsite near one of those lakes near Tahoe over spring break. They were going to ask your dad if you could come. I think it’s so they have a grown-up kid with each little kid. Personally, I think it’s so they can hold hands in the woods and moon about, but I don’t care. We get to swim in the lake and see bears.”

“I’d settle for deer,” Seth said practically. “Why bears?”

“I wanna see itall.I wanna see bears and deer and elk and birds and eagles and hawks and fish. I wanna see a hawk catch a fish while dive-bombing a deer. I wanna feed one of my little sisters to something bigger’n me. It’s gonna be like frickin’ Christmas, and I want you to be there.”

Seth could only see one downside. “We won’t be able to kiss,” he said softly.

Kelly grunted. “Well, maybe Matty will calm down by then about God hating gay people. And even if he doesn’t, this is… you know. Us. Like we are, without the kissing. That’s still good.”

Well, of course. Anything with Kelly was good. Seth’s stomach tingled, and he could barely stay still in his seat.

“Excited?” Kelly whispered in his ear.

“Yes,” he whispered back.

“Me too. I want to kiss all the parts of you.”

Seth let out a little moan, and knew his groin, which had stayed rather quiet through several years of awkward sex ed videos, was swollen.

Hisballshurt.

He’d never wanted something so bad his balls hurt.