Power Play

Chapter 4-4

Dante’s waiting in the kitchen when the

phone rings a little after eight the next morning. He’s been up and

dressed since quarter to seven, staring at the phone, willing it to

ring. Twice he picked up the receiver to call Ryan—twice he set it

back down, sure he missed the call just because he had the phone

off the hook. God, when was the last time he was this anxious? He

can’t remember.

He answers the phone on the first ring with

a breathless, “Hey,” that makes Ryan laugh. Dante grins at the

sound. “About time you called.”

Is it just him, or does Ryan sound coy when

he replies, “You been waiting long?”

All my life, Dante thinks, but he

doesn’t say that—great way to scare someone off, no? “I’ve been up

awhile,” he says evasively. “How are you feeling today?”

“Better,” Ryan admits. Silence fills

the distance between them. Dante listens to Ryan’s breath and

wonders if this is what it would sound like, lying beside him in

bed. The thought surprises him—after Jared, he didn’t think he’d

want to share his bed again with anyone else.

Finally Ryan clears his throat and,

hesitant, asks, “Did you still want to come over today?”

Dante laughs. “Of course! I’m already

halfway there.” Looking around, he spots a pen on the counter and

stretches to get it. No paper, but that’s okay—he holds his hand

out like a tablet, scribbles on the fleshy heel of his thumb to get

the ink flowing, then asks, “So how do I get there?”

He writes the directions down on his

palm—Ryan lives out towards the mall, on a side street in one of

the subdivisions where Dante’s never been. He can’t even afford to

look at most of the houses in that part of the city, but the bus

stops over near there and he takes his roller blades so he can get

a little skating in on the way. When he gets off the bus, he sits

on the curb, changes his sneakers for the ‘blades, and they aren’t

the same as his ice skates but the wind still stings his eyes and

pinks his cheeks. He navigates through the twisting streets of the

subdivision easily enough, checks the map he drew on his hand once

to make sure he’s headed the right way. Ryan told him he couldn’t

miss it—the only house on the block with a handicap ramp leading

onto the front porch. “It’s ugly,” Ryan told him. Dante laughed and

Ryan cried, “It is! It looks like part of an aluminum roof flew off

and landed on our steps. I hate it.”

Now Dante sits on the curb at the end of

Ryan’s driveway to swap his ‘blades for his sneakers, and he tucks

the skates into his duffel bag, hitches the bag over one shoulder,

heads up the driveway to the house. It’s a large home, with a

two-car garage and bay windows in the front room. Bare bushes like

tumbleweed surround the house—Dante suspects they’re azaleas, in

another month they’ll begin to bloom. He sees the ramp—how can he

miss it? It’s bigger than Ryan described, and he skirts it to take

the steps. Beneath his feet, the wooden slats of the porch creak

softly. The neighborhood around him is unearthly quiet—in the

distance he can hear traffic from the main road but these streets

are still, surrounded by barren trees, the homes like stone

sentinels watching him, waiting. He holds his breath when he rings

the doorbell. The chime echoes away into the depths of the

house.

Ryan’s mother answers, all smiles and wide

eyes. “You must be Dante,” she says in that overly cheerful tone of

voice mothers use when meeting their children’s friends for the

first time. She has the same hair Ryan has, thin and reddish

blonde, and she’s only about Dante’s height, shorter than he

expected. Dante smiles back, glances past her, sees stairs leading

to a second floor and wonders where Ryan is. As if reading his

thoughts, she asks, “You’re here to see Ryan, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dante says, following

her into the house. His smile falters when she closes the door,

cutting off the bright sunlight and drenching the hall in shadow.

It’s dark in here and chilly like a museum. Dante can’t picture

someone with a laugh like Ryan’s growing up in such a somber home.

The stairs stretch away above him into darkness—to his left is a

sitting room of sorts, with a fireplace and furniture that looks as

if it came from the pages of an expensive catalogue. To his right

is a formal dining room—intricately carved chairs hem in a

cherrywood table set with classy dishes and cloth napkins.

Cloth, not the disposable paper towels that his mom keeps

around the house. Maybe he’s in too deep here. Maybe he’s wrong,

maybe he and Ryan have too many differences to come together.

Skating is all they have in common—Dante can’t invite Ryan to his

apartment, even if the complex did have an elevator to his

floor. His mother’s furniture doesn’t match, they don’t even

have a kitchen table, their cups and plates are plastic,

Day-Glo colors that were on sale at K-Mart years ago. What would

Ryan say to that?

He knows you’re not rich, Dante tells

himself. He doesn’t like you because you have money, or your bed

matches your dresser. You’ve never let stuff like this bother you

before.

Ryan’s mother leads the way down the hall

and past the kitchen, down another hallway to a closed door.

“Ryan’s old room is upstairs,” she explains, lowering her voice as

they approach the door. “He was living on campus but after the…”

She motions with her hand and gives Dante a pointed look so he

knows exactly what she’s talking about. The accident, that’s

what she wants to say and can’t, Dante sees the words in her eyes.

“We set him up in the den until he gets better.”

She raps on the door quickly, then calls out

before she gets an answer. “Ryan? Your friend’s here.”

From the other side of the door, Dante hears

the unmistakable sound of rubber wheels over a hardwood floor, and

then the door eases open. Ryan grins up at him, opens the door

wider. “Hey you,” he says. As Dante steps around Mrs. Talonovich

into the room, Ryan gives his mother a quick look. “Thanks, Mom.”

She starts to say something but he closes the door on her. Rolling

his eyes, he tells Dante, “She’ll sit in here all day if I let

her.”

Dante laughs and looks around. The room is

obviously a den, complete with a fireplace along one wall, though

the grate’s closed and the hearth screened off. A hospital bed by

the door fills most of the room and when Ryan nods at it, Dante

sits on the edge of the mattress, dropping his bag at his feet.

Long vertical blinds cover a sliding door to fall behind a desk

complete with a computer and a vase of dying flowers. “From the

team,” Ryan explains when he sees Dante’s raised eyebrows. “My mom

won’t let me throw them away.”

“They bought you flowers?” Dante asks.

With a dramatic sigh Ryan nods, and Dante has to laugh again. The

awkward discomfort he felt out in the hallway is gone—Ryan wears

tattered jeans and an old sweatshirt, sneakers as worn as Dante’s

own, and it’s warm in this room, well lit, the blinds pulled back

to look out on a brick patio and covered swimming pool. Ryan’s

chair is close enough that Dante could reach out and take his

friend’s hand, if he wanted to. “So does that mean I have to buy

you flowers for doing my site, too?”

He likes the blush that climbs up Ryan’s

neck and colors his face to the roots of his hair. “Oh God, no,”

Ryan says, ducking his head into one hand to hide his burning

cheeks. “Dante—”

“I’m just teasing,” Dante tells him.

He swats at Ryan’s knee playfully, which makes his friend giggle.

“What kind do you like? Roses?” Ryan doesn’t answer, too mortified

to reply. Rubbing his friend’s knee, Dante says softly, “I’m

kidding, Ryan. You don’t have to answer. Are you always so easily

embarrassed?”

Ryan’s voice is thick when he responds, “I

didn’t think so.” Dante wonders if it’s him doing this to the boy,

making him bumbling and cute. He likes the blush and the way Ryan

can’t quite meet his eyes, the way his fingers pick at the threads

along the hem of his sweatshirt. He likes the faint smile that tugs

at the corners of Ryan’s mouth as his hand rests on his friend’s

leg. If it’s me, he thinks, give me a sign so we can get

past this touch and go stage, please.

But Ryan runs a hand down his face, wiping

away the blush and the grin. “Do you want something to eat maybe?”

he asks suddenly in a thinly veiled attempt to change the subject.

“Are you thirsty?”

“I’m fine.” Dante watches Ryan

carefully. When he removes his hand from his friend’s knee, he

imagines he sees a slight frown, gone in an instant, and was that

enough of an indication? Does that mean he likes the touch? Dante’s

never been great at relationships but when someone’s interested in

him, they’re usually overt about it, like Josey at the skate club

who follows him around with puppy-dog eyes, or Bobby with his

not-so-subtle requests to hook up. Even Jared was easy— “Do you

like guys?” he asked, and when Dante shrugged, nodded, Jared nodded

back. “Me too.” And that was it.

Ryan turns his chair around with an easy

grace that belies the bulky metal frame. “You’ll have to sit on the

bed,” he says, wheeling over to the desk where the computer is

already turned on. “My mom doesn’t think I need any other chairs

cluttering up the room.”

“It’s okay,” Dante says. He rolls onto

his stomach and stretches across the foot of the bed so he can see

the computer screen. Ryan slides his chair into the space beneath

the desk, close enough that Dante can trace the tread on the

chair’s tire with one finger. “Have you done a lot to the site

yet?” Before Ryan can reply, he smiles and adds, “Did I tell you

how much you rock for doing this for me?”

Ryan laughs. “I told you it’s not a

problem,” he murmurs, but the blush is back, thin and pink and

unbearably cute. Dante wonders if his cheeks are hot right now—he

imagines pressing his hands to Ryan’s skin, feeling the flushed

flesh beneath his fingers, cooling it with kisses. As Dante

watches, Ryan opens a web browser and the sound of a modem dialing

up fills the quiet room. “I worked on it a bit last night but

that’s it,” he says as they wait for the computer to connect. “I

got a few pictures up that I really like but I don’t have any of

your stats or anything.” When a page starts to load in the browser,

Ryan adds, “I got the idea for the layout from another sports site.

I was up all night looking at athlete pages.”

Dante’s impressed. What he knows of the

Internet he can count on one hand, stuff he learned in high school

because his senior year he was required to take a computer literacy

class to graduate. He thought it was cool, but it meant nothing to

him really—it wouldn’t help him pay his skate fees or the rent, it

wouldn’t put food on the table, it wasn’t something necessary. He

doesn’t even have a computer at home—what good was it to him

outside of school?

But a thrill races through him as his own

image stares back from Ryan’s computer screen, a great shot really,

him leaning against the railing at the rink, the ice lit behind

him, his hair falling gently to frame his face. He has a faint

smile and even from here he can see the smoldering look in his

eyes, the come hither look that was meant for Ryan—is the

boy blind? Can he not see that, the way Dante looks

at him? Every picture should be like that, every shot he was

staring through the camera, willing Ryan to see something more in

the lens than just a friend. What else does he have to do to clue

Ryan into the fact that he likes him?

“Wow.” Dante crawls across the bed to

sit up on the edge by the computer so he can get a closer look.

Almost unconsciously, he leans on the arm of Ryan’s chair, leans

close to the screen, until he can see his own goofy grin reflected

back at him over the picture. “You did this last night?” When Ryan

nods, Dante laughs. “It’s awesome.”

His name across the top, Dante

Espinosa. Beneath that, The Hottest Thing on the Ice!, a

tagline worthy of any major newspaper. Then his image, filling the

main part of the page. A little write-up about him—When he’s on

the ice, the crowd goes wild. With that mane of dark hair, those

heartthrob eyes, he’s more rock star than speedskater, but he can

fill the stands and never disappoints. Dante Espinosa skates like

the wind, whipping across the ice and leaving his opponents

behind…“You wrote that?” Dante asks. Ryan used the word

heartthrob to describe him, Dante likes that.

“It’s just something to fill up

space,” Ryan says softly. Dante turns to smile at him and suddenly

he’s all too aware of how close they really are right this moment,

mere inches apart—he can feel Ryan’s breath on his neck, and his

hair casts a shadow across his friend’s face where it falls to

block the light from the computer screen. I could kiss you

now, Dante thinks, studying Ryan’s mouth. What would you do

if I did that? Push me away, kiss me back? Ryan’s tongue licks

out between his lips, wetting them, and Dante tells himself he’s

going to do it, he has to. He’s never been this shy before.

Ryan’s eyes slip closed—see? Dante thinks, leaning closer.

His hand covers Ryan’s on the arm of the wheelchair. He wants

you to.

A knock on the door stops him, and then Mrs.

Talonovich’s bubbly voice calls out, “Ryan, dear? I have milk and

donuts for you boys. Open up.”

Ryan sighs. “Mom,” he starts, but the moment

is lost and he pulls the chair away from Dante, heading for the

door. “She’s going to be interrupting us all day long, I just know

it.”

Dante forces a thin laugh as he stands.

Pushing the hair out of his eyes, he sits on the edge of the bed

again, smiles at Ryan’s mom when his friend opens the door and she

comes into the room, a tray in her hands. Almost, he thinks

as she sets the tray down on a coffee table. He was going to let

you kiss him, he wanted you to. Almost.

He wonders what he can say or do to get the

moment back.