Possibilities
1064 Words
Yes. Oh, hell yes! Donny wanted to scream. Instead, he replied, "No, I-"
"I think you did. Donny-boy's got a crush on me," he teased in a sing-song voice. "Your lips were all ready – in position to go mwah, mwah, mwah!"
"I was just trying to get a piece of cookie out of my teeth with my tongue."
Jay leaned back against the oak tree. He crossed his legs in a relaxed manner. "If you did want me to kiss you, I can see why," he said pensively.
"You can?" Donny asked, in a way that didn't commit to or admit to anything more than simply questioning the other guy's last statement.
"Of course," Jay said with that dry, matter-of-fact tone that Donny would come to know so well as time went on. "I'm freaking hot!"
Donny just stared at him. What should he do? Agree? Disagree? Throw himself against Jay's sexy body and go for it? Say nothing and run away? Tell Jay he was crazy and he better not tell anyone else about his insane theories?
Then Jay did the last thing Donny expected. He burst out laughing! Jay gave Donny a playful punch on the arm. "Wow, dude, you need to lighten up. I really had you going there! I wish you could have seen the look on your own face. I'm gonna have serious fun driving you nuts! Come on, let's go back to my house for some cold lemonade."
Jay stood up. He offered his hand to help Donny off the ground. "Last one there's a rotten egg!" Jay yelled as he took off running.
Donny grabbed his duffel bag and the empty cookie basket. He ran off after his wild, new friend.
* * *
Neither Donny nor Jay ever spoke over the next two years of what Donny came to think of as their "almost kiss." Donny thought about it plenty of times, though! Anything minor could trigger it. A lingering glance. An accidental bump against the arm. Jay's perfect smile.
Since they met, the two young men had become inseparable best friends who could talk about anything. Anything but s*x, that is. Sure, they joked about it. Well, Jay joked about it. Donny bit his lip and dug his fingernails into his palm.
Jay never had any long-term girlfriends, but he did go out on dates with different girls. He didn't offer any of the dirty details and Donny certainly didn't ask for them, that's for sure. He couldn't bear to think about someone else getting close to his friend in a way that he never could.
Donny would walk all over his family's desolate farmland, wildly imagining different possible outcomes if he did somehow manage to find the courage to tell his best friend the truth...
What if, against all odds, Jay somehow felt the same way?
"Wow, I wish you'd told me sooner," Jay would say with a huge smile on his face.
"You do?"
"Yeah, I've always had a thing for you, too!" Jay would grab his phone and snap a quick pic of the two of them.
"What are you doing?"
"I'm putting it online right now. What's a good caption? I know. Guess who's gay! Everyone you've ever met will know you like d**k within the next five minutes. You think your aunt and uncle will want to start chaperoning our dates?"
What if Jay freaked out?
"So you've been like, in love with me, for two years?" Jay would ask.
"Yes. It feels so good to finally say it out loud. Now that you know, maybe we can-"
"There's no WE, dude. You're a freaking weirdo and I'm never talking to you again!"
Unacceptable! Some part of having Jay in his life had to be better than none at all.
What if Jay's tastes lie elsewhere?
"Yeah, sure, I'd date a dude. Why not? Could be hot!" Jay would say.
"That's great, then you and I, we could..."
"We? Um, no. Gross! I said I'd go out with a guy. I didn't mean you! Come on, man, you're so not my type. But that bodybuilder who works at the gas station, now that's some manly hotness right there..."
Despite constantly thinking about it, Donny had kept his feelings locked up inside. At the same time, how could Jay not know? Couldn't he read it on Donny's face every time he looked at his friend?
All these confusing and contradicting thoughts had swirled through his head earlier when Donny had texted Jay, asking him to come to the barn right away.
Jay had texted back and asked if it could wait until morning, but Donny said no.
With Jay lying back shirtless on the hay bale, looking like a model at a photo shoot, Donny finally blurted out the reason he had asked Jay to come over that night. "I'm leaving Kansas."
"What? Why?" Jay asked with a dumbfounded look on his face.
"I just decided tonight, right before I texted you."
"So, what, you're running away from home? Did you have a fight with your Uncle Henry about curfew again?"
"No, nothing like that," Donny answered. Already, the conversation had veered off track from the way he planned it ahead of time.
"I don't understand. What's going on?" Jay patted a spot next to him on the hay bale.
Jay grabbed his shirt and mopped the sweat from his forehead. Then he swiped the shirt over his chest and under his arms. "Damn, it's seriously hot in here."
"Yeah, sure is," Donny gulped, meaning it on multiple levels. "So anyway, I got accepted to NYU. I'm gonna go."
"To New York?"
"That's what the NY part stands for," Donny laughed nervously.
"When?"
"Day after tomorrow. I'm going to tell Aunt Em and Uncle Henry in the morning."
"Day after tomorrow?" Jay repeated. "Why? That doesn't make sense. The semester doesn't start until after Labor Day. It's only mid-August. You've got like two or three weeks."
"There's a student-job program on campus. I can start now."
"You've been planning this and you didn't even tell me! Your best friend! Dude, what's up with that?"
"Do you want me to stay?" Donny asked.
Jay paused. "What kind of question is that?"
"The kind we've been avoiding since the day two years ago you almost kissed me," Donny said and instantly regretted.
- Writer
