The Taking of Jake Livingston, page 21
He looks bummed. And then he nods, takes a breath, and smiles. I just watched him be sad and transform his sadness into okayness. Glee, even. I guess that’s his special ability.
“I’ll work around not being able to stare at the back of your head in psych,” he says. “But if we won’t be seeing each other, you can’t ghost my texts anymore.”
“Ghost . . . was that a pun?”
“Of course, thanks for noticing.”
“Of course. Anyways . . .” It’s my turn to take a deep breath, and with it, I take in the air of the place, an air of TV screens, car bumpers, beer, sports and blue jeans and life. “I won’t ghost your texts. I’m trying to be a better communicator or whatever.”
“Good. Talking to the dead is not enough.”
“I’m not even good at that, though, which is the real tragedy.”
Allister lilts his head in agreement. “Yeah, that’s not looking great for you. I mean, it’s kind of like oral and written communication skills—you really need one or the other to have a strong résumé.”
“Thanks for rubbing it in.”
“In this house, we only deal in facts. What, would you prefer I lied to you?”
“Never. The main reason I like you is because you’re real.”
I grab a salt packet from its little house of salt on the table, rip it open, and spill it across the wood surface.
“Are we making contact with Satan now?” Allister asks as I run my fingers through it.
“No, I just think it’s cool to draw with salt.”
Allister clicks his tongue and then rolls it around his mouth. I’m noticing his tongue is really very intriguing—redder than usual, like a tangy cherry.
He looks around the joint, at the girls in their dresses and jeans, all with some dramatic tattoos—snakes and spiders. His eyes land on me again as he picks up his water for a sip. “What do you think ol’ Kenny’s gonna bring me back from the kitchen?”
“Probably the fried chicken burger.”
Allister snickers mid-sip and catches the falling water in his hand. “I was in the middle of a sip, you bitch.” He yanks a napkin from its dispenser and wipes away his sparkle of saliva and ice water. “I want my Kool-Aid in a wineglass, or else.”
“Or else you’ll lay everybody the fuck out.” I’m laughing through the words.
“Period. Every last one.”
And then we’re laughing together until our food arrives—not the fried chicken, as it would turn out. Something with bacon and a sweet jelly sauce that Allister calls “delightful!”
He orders me a milkshake, and I twirl it around until it loses its texture. “If you don’t drink that, it’ll drink you.”
So I take the straw out, leave it on a napkin, and chug the whole thing, then slam down the cup.
“Did that bring you joy?” he asks.
I feel about five pounds heavier. “A lot, actually.”
This is a really bad time to be noticing more things to love about him, like his left eyebrow, with the faint bald line through it that communicates a world of emotion I’ve yet to discover.
The bill comes. Allister pays and leaves Kenny a ten-dollar tip.
I have one question when we burst from the doors. “Do you get an allowance?”
“I steal my parents’ money.” He taps his pockets, I guess to make sure everything is all there.
“And they’re okay with you stealing from them?”
“Does it matter?” he says with the friendliest smile I could imagine. “You were paid for, right?”
The sidewalks are aglow from neon restaurant signs and string lights. It’s almost too quaint to be true. It takes everything in me not to press my body into his. I feel like the farther we walk, the closer our pinkies get to locking, and if I had it my way, I’d just hold his hand and nobody would stare at us at all, because we’d exist in our own universe.
The sidewalks here are so traversable. It would be a nice place to live together, if it came to that.
“I like the way you talk,” I tell him, and to myself, “I’m still learning how to do that.”
He swings around a streetlamp, shouts, “Yes!” to the night, as if for no other reason but to shout, to use his voice and his body. And I agree that we should do that more often.
He lands back in step with me. “So, tell me . . . What was the reason you left me hanging when I first told you?”
“I guess it was hard to believe someone like you could like someone like me.”
He balks at me and stops, like what I said was ridiculous. “Wait a minute. You’re an amazing guy, Jake—stop it.”
I stop and turn to face him, immediately wanting to fight the kind words. But I know Allister won’t take denial of my greatness for an answer. So I shut up.
“Say thank you, or else,” he says.
“Thank you, or else.”
“You’re annoying.”
Around the corner from a pizzeria, where smells of Italian meat and seasonings are wafting from the windows, Allister grabs me by the hand and pulls me down a dark alley.
He leads me over a glistening puddle and toward the dead end. “Your parents know about you?” he asks.
“Not exactly. Yours?” I check behind me to make sure no one’s following us and that the dead end is really a dead end and not a drop through dead world into some other century.
“Not exactly.”
This could still all be a dream. Or maybe, for once, it’s real, and temporarily perfect, and nothing terrible will come next.
I let my hand fold down so it locks through his fingers, and my heartbeat accelerates.
We’re holding hands. We’re holding hands.
Then I realize what he was walking toward—a dusky orange glow beaming from a light stuck in the mortar.
His cheekbones look soaked in a beach sunset as he cups his thumb in front of my ear, his fingers behind my head. He pulls his face closer to mine, so that the only thing left to do is what I’ve wanted to do ever since I first saw him. We kiss, and I grab on to his jaw, drawing him in.
We break apart suddenly and look at each other. It’s almost like we should fight. Or kiss harder?
We decide on the latter and rush back together. It’s an excited, open-lipped kiss, with tongue and the intoxicating flavor of menthol.
He tears his lips off mine, and I trip sideways, but he catches me, interrupting the danger with his safety.
He throws me lightly into the wall for support, and the bricks knock the air to the front of my lungs.
“You okay?” he asks.
“Yeah. I’m great.”
“Do you like stuff like that?”
“Honestly, yes.”
Allister grins as he licks the taste off his lips, pulls out lip balm, and applies it. All I want is his lips. So I go for it—a third kiss. In this one I put my hands on his chest, and around his neck, because I like how that feels.
Let someone see. Let someone jump out of the darkness and kill me. If there’s anything I’d want to be doing on a loop forever, it’s this.
It’s like everything that came before doesn’t matter anymore, and everything that comes next won’t either, because his mouth and our hands around each other trap me in a moment, a rush. Like the jolt I get after an astral glide, when my body reminds my soul that it’s alive.
Acknowledgments
To Rena Rossner, thank you for lifting me out of the query trenches and taking a chance on this offbeat story. Stacey Barney, thank you for challenging me to take my world to new heights. Michael Bourret, thank you for your friendship, your advocacy, and for believing in what I have to say. Thank you to Corey Brickley for creating such an unforgettable cover illustration, and to the entire team at Penguin for your enthusiasm about my work.
Thank you to Rachel Gurevich and Sarah Summerbell for being my first beta readers. To my high school besties, Alessandro Miccio and Aliki Fornier, thank you for giving me a place to be my truest self when I needed it most. Shout-out to Diego, Mia, Ludi, Kyle, Jessi, and Botai for making my college years a lot less hellish than they would’ve been without you.
To my uncles Bruce and Brent, thank you for loving my first self-published book and inspiring me to keep writing. Thank you to Mom and Grande for reading my early books when I was afraid to show them to anyone else and for giving me the tools I would need to make my dream come true. David, thank you for your enthusiasm for this concept, for keeping me down to earth, and for being a great brother.
Shout-out to my queer Black writer friends Pheolyn Allen, Jamar Perry, Lachelle, and Anthony Isom Jr. for inspiring me with your words, holding me down through the years, and understanding where I’m coming from.
To the creative writing and poetry professors at Hofstra, I appreciated the opportunity to learn from you. Huge thank-you to my first writing teacher, Rosemary McClellan, for telling me I’d be a great writer and for championing me through the publication of my debut.
Thank you to my fellow authors who’ve gone out of your way to extend any kindness, opportunity, or mentorship: Rita Williams-Garcia, Adam Silvera, Becky Albertalli, Kacen Callender, Amy Reed, Sarah Nicholas, Anica Mrose Rissi, Tom Ryan, Claribel Ortega, Celeste Pewter, Elsie Chapman, Dana Mele, and Rivers Solomon.
And to queer and trans Black people, thank you for your resilience, your magic, and the flavor you bring to the artistic landscape. I’m here because you are.
About the Author
Ryan Douglass was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, where he currently resides, cooking pasta and playing records. He enjoys wooden-wick candles, falling asleep on airplanes, and advocating for stronger media representation for queer Black people.
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Ryan Douglass, The Taking of Jake Livingston
