Exotic - Chapter 21: Chapter 21

Aaron answered the phone after two rings. He was reliable like that. My one constant. Sometimes I thought I relied on him too much, but my entire body did relax when he spoke. "I'm driving, so don't tell me anything too distracting. I don't have first party insurance."
"Aaron," I groaned, flopping down on my bed. "I've been lying to you."
There were a couple of beats of silence, with only the sounds of Aaron's car growling, before he responded. "Well, no duh. I was wondering when you were going to tell me."
I groaned again. "I'm not that obvious, am I?"
"You've been upset," he clarified. "And I guessed it was to do with your mum, but I suspected it was something more."
I rolled to the headboard, frowning to the ceiling. "I've been a bad friend."
"I mean, you've blown me off nearly every Friday night for a year now," he mused. "But I don't hold grudges. Generally. Unless I think you really deserve it. And you don't."
It was pretty late in the day on Saturday, and after the multiple revelations of the morning, I was in desperate need of some normalcy. The most normal part of my life was Aaron, and the dramatic arc of my life had me neglecting him terribly. I deserve a cold shoulder, but Aaron wasn't the passive-aggressive type. He wasn't the aggressive type. If he thought I had been an asshole, he wasn't going to tell me; leaving it to me to punish myself for deserting him.
"Where are you?" I asked.
"Picking up Max from the game," he told me. "Apparently they got demolished. Their star forward bailed without calling. He told me to park across the street because Aidan is raging hard."
In all the excitement I'd forgotten there was a soccer game on. I wouldn't have blamed Caleb for forgetting as well, although he was going to cop a whole lot more slack for doing so than I ever would. "Yeah, stay far away from that guy."
"Do you want me to pick you up?" he asked. "We can go to my place. Or I can drop Max home and we can go out."
"I can wait," I had been neglecting Max as well, but I was in dire need of a one-on-one with my best friend.
"Cool. I'll be there bout three, 'kay?"
I used the free time to escape back into my closet and attempt some lip art; using purple and pale yellow lipstick to create an ombre sunset and drawing pine trees into the scene with eyeliner. It didn't quite match the reference image, but I uploaded it to Sephora's Instagram nonetheless. It had been lacking the regular posts Zsa Zsa had recommended to maintain a following.
@themagnificent_zsazsa was the first to like the picture and commented a wildfire of flame emojis. It assured me that despite the heartbreak of the morning, we were on good terms. It put me at ease. I didn't know what I would have done with myself if he'd thought of me as a homewrecker. I needed to put more faith in my friends.
By the time Aaron was calling from downstairs, I had scrubbed it clean from my lips and was looking entirely plain, if not a little pink around the mouth. I spilled down the stairs, breezing past Reece on the couch and out the front door before any questions were asked. I ran across the front yard, slipping through the gate and jumping into the passenger seat. Aaron looked up in surprise, hands still resting on the steering wheel, and dressed up for far cooler weather in a striped sweater and toothpick jeans.
"What are we running from?" he asked, as I pulled down my seatbelt.
"The screaming, writhing Lovecraftian horror that is my life as I currently live it," I rattled off.
"Right. Maccas?"
We sat in the drive-thru, with Green Day blaring and the heater on blast. Aaron drummed his fingers to Holiday, seeming unfazed by the combination of sweater and car being the baseline temperature of a sauna. His backseats were smeared with grass stains, where Max had stretched out in filthy soccer gear.
"So," Aaron began. "Any truth-telling you want to get out before I get my drink to fling dramatically in your face if you go too far?"
I slid back into the passenger seat, drumming my feet against the glovebox. "Aaron, I didn't know how else to tell you this..."
"Oh god, it's bad isn't it?"
I paused for effect. "I'm pregnant."
He shot me a classically world-weary look.
"It's Max's."
He rolled his eyes and pulled forwards one space, turning down the music a few clicks. "I didn't know what I expected, but that seems about right."
I grinned. "Now anything else I tell you will sound completely reasonable right?"
"You smarmy fuck."
We collected our food and Aaron told me not to shock him too badly with anything while he was on the freeway. I filled him in on the lowest level of drama, namely the panic attack I'd had on Tuesday. He looked instantly guilty and began to babble that he wished I had called him, but I brushed him off. I told him about Alba, and the therapy sessions, leaving deliberate gaps in my stories where Caleb or Sephora was related. It was surprisingly easy, and that comforted me that my two lives were still mostly separate.
"Yeah, Alba is great," Aaron surprised me by saying.
"You know her?"
"I was, like, her number one client for the whole of ninth grade," he laughed. "She was my gay mentor. She helped me come out to Maya and Colin, Max as well... I call her anti-IKEA because she systematically dismantles closets piece by piece."
I didn't love the sound of that. "I didn't know you saw a therapist."
"I didn't talk about it," he shrugged. "It was embarrassing back then. I thought there was something wrong with me. But it was just nice to have someone to talk to, who kind of... got it."
Aaron had always been pretty open about his mental health, but he'd never come to me to talk about it directly. He'd certainly never come to me to talk about the struggles of being gay in a high testosterone place like Truman.
Why would he? As far as he knew, I was straight as a pole.
We drove up to the coast and ate lukewarm burgers on the hood of Aaron's SUV. A group of surfers was waxing their boards nearby, wetsuit peeled down to their waists, glistening torsos on display. A girl roller-skated by, accompanied by a slobbering staffy, and I considered that while Aaron's sweater wasn't weather appropriate, it was the middle of autumn and definitely not the temperature for a thong bikini.
"So," Aaron brushed spare lettuce from his lap. "Maya has decided to take a sabbatical on the weekend of Max and I's eighteenth and turn a blind eye to Max's blatant glee. So, in two weeks my house is going to become a cesspit of drunk and horny teenagers, and I was wondering if you had planned anything for the day to excuse me from hiding in my room all night?"
I hoped my immediate wash of guilt and shame didn't reflect on my face. "I've got a little something on the cards. Calls are being made, venues consulted, foods sampled..."
Aaron sighed. "You completely forgot, didn't you?"
"No!" I really hadn't. Aaron's birthday was imprinted in my brain, down to the exact hour he was born. In all the chaos of the last couple of weeks, I'd forgotten how rapidly it was approaching. "Wow. It's already April. This year isn't slowing down for anything."
Aaron made a confirmatory noise. I glanced across at him, and my heart fell at his expression. He looked completely crestfallen.
I'd been a bad friend. Not just recently. Since discovering the escape of Sephora Utah, I'd neglected the aspects of my life that made being Miles bearable. Aaron deserved better than I had been treating him, and he deserved honesty. It was there on the tip of my tongue, all of it; but I'd gotten so used to running circles around the truth that it caught on my lips, held back by a year of white lies.
"How's your love life?" I blurted out.
Aaron snorted into his drink. "As non-existent as your ability to derail a conversation. You told me you have been lying to me, I drove you out here to this beautiful location so you can tell me that you're a Russian Sleeper agent or you had sex with my aunt or..."
"Oh my god," I made an exaggerated gagging noise.
"Well, you're the one forcing me to think up hypotheticals instead of just telling me," he argued. "Miles. Whatever it is, we're cool."
"Why do all your hypotheticals involve me doing something gross or criminal?" I muttered. "In that order?"
"What I'm trying to say," he persevered. "Is there is pretty much nothing you could ever tell me you've done that I wouldn't be able to forgive. Even if you really are pregnant somehow, and even if it's Max's, then damn it I will be the best uncle the world has ever seen. So, out with it. I'm braced for impact."
The sky was beautiful. Clear and blue, despite the season. Sitting beside Aaron on the hood of his car felt so familiar, yet so long overdue. The bag of takeout sat forgotten between us, and Aaron's gaze was easy and open. Caleb's eyes set me on fire; Aaron's made me feel safe, warm, at home.
The setting was right. The time was right. God knew why I'd waited so long.
"Do you know remember how Ms. Trudeau made us play two truths and a lie last year because she had a migraine and icebreakers are easier to teach than biology?"
Aaron frowned. "Not really."
Great. My anecdote had already been cut off at the knees. "Well. We were paired up and the game didn't really work because... duh. So, we were just fucking around, and I gave you the options, 'I have never been to New Zealand', 'If I was born a girl my name would have been Montana', and 'Legolas was my sexual awakening'?"
Aaron looked all kinds of lost.
"And you guessed the New Zealand one, and I told you, you were right, and the game just kind of disintegrated from there," I continued, my voice peaking occasionally and my words running into each other. "But actually, funny story, my mum visited Christchurch when she was three months pregnant. So, I always kind of pretend I've been there, and I guess I have. In a roundabout way. And the Montana one is also true, so thank god I was born with a dick."
The waves lapped at the shore, white mares running up the sand. Aaron reached for my hand and took it; I realised that in my rambling, my eyes had started to glass over. I chewed the inside of my bottom lips to keep it from trembling. Aaron squeezed my fingers reassuringly.
"Aaron, I'm gay."
I expected a beat of silence, but Aaron didn't give the confession room to breathe. In a heartbeat, I was tackled and engulfed in a hug, which nearly sent us both toppling off the hood of the car. I caught Aaron's arm with a yelp, and he laughed into my shoulder, locking me in his arms tighter than I'd been hugged in two years.
"Thank you for telling me."
Aaron didn't care. Obviously. More than that, he seemed relieved more than shocked. The floodgates opened none-the-less, and within a few seconds, I was sobbing. Aaron held me as I cried into the cotton of his sweater, sniffing embarrassingly.
"I don't know why I'm crying," I choked out.
Aaron rubbed my back comfortingly. "It's okay. I get it."
We remained there until I could pull myself together, wiping my eyes with the palms of my hands and sighing, sitting back against the car as Aaron watched. There was snot on my sleeve and my eyes felt puffy, but my heart felt light. As if a lead blanket had been removed and it could pump blood through me freely.
I sniffed as I shakily wiped tears from their tracks down my cheeks. "Were you expecting something more dramatic?"
"Oh, that was plenty dramatic," Aaron smiled kindly. "That was the most long-winded coming out I've ever heard, and I wrote Max a letter."
I laughed weakly, and it hitched in my throat. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you. I don't know why I didn't."
"You don't need to apologise," he assured me. "I would have waited for another five, ten, fifty years if that's what it took you to say it. You come out when you're ready."
"Unless it's an accident."
"Unless you're so desperate to tell your best friend that it comes out at a completely random time with no pre-amble or tact," he corrected dryly. "Because that's what it was for me."
I pulled my legs up onto the bonnet and hugged my knees to my chest. There was a soft gale coming up from the water, which made the hair on my arms stand up. I didn't feel particularly cold. The sound of the waves crashing on the beachfront overwhelmed the humming of blood in my ears.
I felt uncharacteristically at ease.
"Did you know?" I asked, turning my head to him.
Aaron shrugged. "I never gave it much thought. I mean, Maya asked me once point-blank if you were and I said no, but then I considered it and you've never really talked to me about girls or sex or dating but... I mean, I live with Max, I thought maybe my perception of straight guys was just skewed by how he acted. So, I didn't want to presume."
"But you guessed."
He gave me a knowing smile. "All I knew was something was stressing you out. It could have been school or Reece or any number of other things. You've got a lot on your plate, Miles. It hasn't been lost on me that you're struggling right now."
I felt inexplicably guilty again. "I wanted to come out to you. It was just never the right time. And I'm not ready to come out at school, Reece can't know... I just don't want you to have to lie for me."
"I will buy you a mail order bride and pay for a fake wedding before I out you to anyone when you aren't ready," he said immediately, deadly serious in tone and expression. "It's not a burden. I'm just glad you felt you could finally tell me."
We watched the surfers zip up their wetsuits and hit the waves. I was glad I didn't feel the need to tear my eyes away to keep up the illusion. I'd never thought I was playing it straight but dropping the act, as Miles, made me realise how much energy it had taken me to keep it up.
"Is there any reason you're choosing right now to come out?" Aaron asked, and my blood pressure immediately kicked up to dangerous levels. It was one thing to come out to Aaron, but the rest – Sephora, the clubs, Caleb – came with a massive warning sign. His promise that he wouldn't out me to anyone before I was ready felt like a reminder that Caleb was very happy in his closet, and it wasn't my place to spill his secret to anyone, even if it wasn't attached to threats of exposure anymore. Aaron was a very moral person and telling him about my semi-illegal money-making scheme could have shifted his perception of me.
Besides, Sephora was a secret I didn't feel ready to share with the domestic part of my life. I wasn't ready to accept that the barriers between the two were breaking down, even if part of the reason I had told him was that I had begun to glimpse a ticking timer on the horizon, counting down to implosion.
Not if I could help it.
Aaron noticed my hesitation, and squeezed my hand reassuringly. "Maybe there are other revelations for other days?"
I nodded, relieved. Aaron smiled again and pulled me into another hug.
"Thank you for telling me," he repeated.
"Stop. You're going to make me cry again."
He pulled back, fingers still gripping my shoulders. "Now that you have one less thing to fret about, can I have my best friend back? Friday night, my house, Witcher marathon?"
I was performing at Avenue Q that night. I had some calls and apologies to make. "Fuck yes."
He beamed. Aaron and I were on the same page for the first time in a long while. I accounted the feeling of flying to that, not coming out.
Two truths and a lie hadn't worked last year because I knew almost everything there was to know about Aaron Sanchez, who wore his heart and soul on his sleeve. It was only fair he one day could say the same for me. The one person I had never felt the need to hide from was one step closer to knowing all of me.