Autoboyography
Page 47

I love watching him eat—it’s usually so fascinating to realize how well mannered he is—but here he’s all brute construction worker: The pizza gets rolled in half, and he shoves most of it in his mouth in one bite. Still, nothing gets on his chin or shirt. I take one bite and have a smear of pepperoni grease on my T-shirt.
“Motherfucker,” I hiss.
“Tann.”
I look over at him, and he smiles, but then tilts his head, like Language!
I give him a sheepish “Sorry.”
“I don’t mind,” he says quietly. “Some of them would.”
We’re far enough away that I have this sense of privacy, even if it’s not entirely real. “How long have you known everyone here?”
“Some of them their whole lives,” he says, looking out at the group. “Toby’s family moved here only two years ago. And some of the kids here are more recent converts. I think this is Katie’s first service activity.”
“I would never have guessed,” I tease.
“Come on, she’s sweet.”
“Her being sweet is totally unrelated to the fact that it took her twenty minutes to count forty dowels.”
He acknowledges this with a quiet laugh. “Sorry about the prayer earlier. I always forget.”
I wave him off and look around the field of teens with new eyes. “You ever dated anyone here?”
He lifts his chin, indicating a tall girl on the other side of the soccer field, eating near the goal. “Manda.”
I know who he means. She graduated with Sebastian’s class, and was in the student council. She’s pretty, and smart, and I never heard a single bit of gossip about her. I’m sure she would be the dream match for Sebastian.
“How long?” I ask. Wow, that question came out sharp.
He heard it too. “You jealous?”
“A little.”
I can tell he likes this. His cheeks pop with a blush. “About a year. Sophomore year to just before junior.”
Wow. I want to ask what he did with her, how much they kissed, how close they came . . . but I don’t. Instead, I say, “But you knew, even then . . .”
He looks up sharply and then around, his features relaxing once he confirms we’re out of earshot. “Yeah, I knew. But I thought, maybe if I tried . . .”
This is like a hundred pins pushed slowly into my skin. A year-long relationship is a lot of trying.
I’m not . . . that.
“You didn’t sleep with her though, right?”
He takes another huge bite of pizza, shaking his head.
“So you think you might marry a Manda someday?”
I can see exasperation in his expression when he looks up at me, chewing. Swallowing, he looks around meaningfully. “Do you think this is the best place for this conversation?”
“We can do it later.”
“I want you,” he says quietly, ducking to take another bite. When he’s swallowed again, he looks straight ahead, but adds, “I don’t want anyone else.”
“Do you think the church will change their mind about us?” I ask. I nod toward the crowd of his peers across the field. “Do you think they’ll eventually come around?”
Sebastian shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“But you feel happy with me.”
“The happiest I’ve ever been.”
“So you know it isn’t wrong.”
His eyes clear and finally he looks at me. “Of course I do.”
Emotion rises, thick in my throat. I want to kiss him. His gaze drops to my mouth and then he blinks away, his face red again.
“You know what I’m thinking,” I say. “What I’m always thinking.”
He nods, leaning forward to reach his water bottle. “Yeah. Me too.”
• • •
The sun is hanging low in the sky when we put everything back in place and test to make sure it’s safely assembled. People are laughing, playing tag, tossing a Frisbee around. It’s so much better than the wrestling, name-calling of the trip to the lake the other day. There’s an undeniable layer of respect to everything we do here. Respect for the community, for each other, for ourselves, for their God.
Most everyone piles into a large van to head back to the church parking lot, but Sebastian and I hang back, waving as they retreat from view.
Sebastian turns to me, and his smile slips. “So? Was it terrible?”
“I was just thinking it wasn’t bad,” I say, and he laughs at this. “I mean, actually it was pretty cool. Everyone is so nice.”
“‘Nice,’” he repeats, shaking his head a little.
“What? I’m serious. It’s a nice group of people.”
I like being with his community not because I think this would be a good fit for me, but because I need that window into his head. I need to understand why he would ever say things like “I felt the Spirit so strongly this weekend,” or how he’ll pray to find answers. The reality is, this is the language he was born with and he was raised hearing. The LDS Church has an entire vocabulary that still sounds so stilted to me, but which rolls right out of them, and I’m coming to understand that it essentially just means things like “I’m trying to make the best choice,” and “I need to understand if what I’m feeling is wrong.”
The only sounds left in the park are of birds in trees overhead and the distant hum of tires on asphalt.
“What do you want to do?” I ask.
“I don’t want to go home yet.”
My whole body vibrates. “Then let’s stay out.”
We climb in my car with the weight of an anticipatory silence all along my skin. I pull out of the lot and drive. I just drive. I don’t even know where we’re going or what we’ll do when we stop, but when we’re miles from home, Sebastian’s hand slides onto my knee and slowly inches up my thigh. Houses fall away, and soon we’re on a quiet two-lane road. On instinct, I pull down a dirt road leading to a restricted-access side of the lake.
Sebastian looks back over his shoulder as we pass through the open gate with the sign NO ACCESS mostly obstructed by overgrown foliage. “Should we really go down here?”
“Probably not, but it doesn’t look like that gate has been closed for a long time, so I’m guessing we’re not the first to try it.”
He doesn’t reply, but I feel his uncertainty in the stiff shape of his hand on my leg, the rigidity in his spine. I have to trust that he’ll relax once he sees how truly isolated it is down here after dark.
The mud grows thicker, and I pull off into a firm patch of grass, shutting off my lights and then, finally, the ignition. My car engine ticks in the silence. Outside, it’s almost completely dark except for the shimmering reflection of the moon on the lake surface. Dad always insists I keep some emergency supplies in my trunk—including a thick blanket—and although it’s getting chilly with the sun gone, I have an idea.
Opening my door, I look over at him. “Come on.”
Reluctantly, he follows.
I pull the blanket from my trunk and spread it over the still-warm hood of my car. Using a few spare jackets and a random beach towel, I make some pillows for us up near the windshield wipers.
Like this, we can lie back and stare up at the stars.
When he sees what I’m doing, he helps me arrange it all, and then we climb up, lying back and letting out, in unison, a satisfied moan.