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one – swim lessons
When the boy sat himself on the edge of the pool, Ari didn’t think much of him. If anything, he just planned on ignoring him. No one really approached Ari unless it was to antagonize him, and he really didn’t want to deal with that right now.
To Ari’s surprise, the other boy just smiled at him. In a nasally voice, he offered a tentative but assured, “I can teach you to swim, if you want.”
Dante, as he introduced himself, didn’t look like much, but Ari soon discovered that there was more than meets the eye. He was patient in his instruction and actually seemed to know his stuff. Far more than Ari would learn from asking anyone else how to swim, at least.
Nearly an hour later, Ari heard Dante’s cheering as he came up for air.
“Look at that! Halfway across the pool without a breath!” Dante exclaimed, patting Ari on the back as he heaved in air. “You’re doing so well, Ari,” he smiled.
“Definitely better than I would have managed on my own,” Ari said.
The boys pulled themselves out of the pool and walked toward the locker rooms.
“So, what do you say? Same time tomorrow?” Dante asked.
“Sure,” Ari replied. A sudden lightness filled his chest, pulling the corners of his mouth upward. “See you tomorrow.”
two – sketch book
When Dante first handed Ari his sketch book in the hospital, Ari wanted nothing to do with it. He felt the blistering resentment at being treated so gently claw at his patience and tear at his sanity. Why are you being like this? Ari wished he could scream. Why are you acting like I did anything to deserve this?
As soon as Dante left the room, Ari used his only un-casted limb to hurl the book as far away from him as he could manage. The book thudded against the opposite wall, and Ari cringed as he heard some of the pages crumple once the book landed on the floor. He didn’t know why he did that, but now he only felt worse.
Once he left the hospital, Ari still couldn’t bear to peak into Dante’s vulnerable offering. He stuffed it under his bed so he didn’t have to deal with it – not yet.
It wasn’t until the night before Dante left El Paso that Ari thought about the sketch book again. Sitting on the front porch with Dante, Ari confessed, “I haven’t looked at it.” Now though, Ari held the book tenderly, flipping through the pages with care.
For all that Dante wore his heart on his sleeve, there was something deeply precious about seeing his view of the world so thoroughly detailed on each page.
“They’re honest,” Ari said, looking over at Dante.
“You don’t have to keep it,” Dante replied. He wouldn’t make eye contact with Ari.
“You gave it to me,” Ari pointed out, hugging the book to his chest. “It’s mine.”
Dante finally glanced up, and Ari saw that familiar smile unfurling across his face.
three – mini shoes
Ari sat in the bed of his truck as the mixture of the heavy desert air and the sun’s heat beamed down on him. He tore at the package in his lap, a small square box tumbling out along with Dante’s letter. Unlike most of them, this letter was short and sweet.
Merry Christmas, Ari. Dante wrote.
Ari tucked the letter under one of his legs, and he peeled back the wrapping on his gift. Two miniature tennis shoes tumbled out. One was red and the other was white, both tied together by their laces.
Ari felt a grin stretch across his face. He remembered reaching out for one of Dante’s white shoes while walking down the street one day during the summer. He’d tied the laces of Dante’s beat up Converse to Ari’s red ones before flinging the mismatched pair over the powerline.
The pair was still dangling there, as far as he knew.
Ari knew exactly where to put Dante’s gift; probably right where Dante imagined them, too.
When Ari pulled away from the desert for the night, the two shoes dangled from his rearview mirror, right on the edge of his sightline.
four – secondhand embarrassment
In January, Ari opened one of the worst letters Dante had ever written him.
Do you masturbate? the first sentence of the letter read.
Fire consumed his face, bleeding across his cheeks and burning the back of his neck. Immediately, Ari crumpled the paper in his hand. Why the fuck would you send this to me? Ari fumed. Granted, he was the one reading it right outside of his workplace, but how was he supposed to know the contents of what Dante had written?
Ari wasn’t the type of guy to tell anyone about his habits, much less write it down for someone else to read. He barely finished the end of the letter before he ripped the page into as many tiny pieces as he could.
Fuck, Ari thought. There are some things that should be kept private, and this is definitely one of them. At least the flames of the grill gave him an excuse to hide his heated face.
five – a confusing kiss
Dante came back to El Paso just after the start of summer. Maybe it should have been weird to see him again after reading some of his deepest truths written out on paper, but Ari found him as magnetizing as always.
Being with each other in person, though, meant brand new rules. For Dante, no kissing Ari because Ari doesn't kiss boys. For Ari, don’t run away from Dante, even when someone hurls abuse at him because of who he is.
Dante, being Dante, didn’t wait long before challenging the rule placed on him.
“How do you know that you don’t like kissing boys if you’ve never kissed one?” he questioned.
“I just know, Dante,” Ari replied.
“I think we should try an experiment,” Dante ploughed on, as if Ari hadn’t said a word.
Ari didn’t know why he was powerless to Dante’s suggestions, but the next thing he knew, his eyes were closing as Dante’s face neared closer.
It was a simple touch of lips, really – or at least it was at first. Ari felt Dante’s breath fan across his cheek before Dante closed the distance again. Dante’s calloused fingertips resting on the side of his face shocked Ari out of the moment.
“Didn’t work for me,” Ari crossed his arms and took a step away from Dante.
“It worked for me,” Dante said, shifting on his feet. “Are you mad at me?”
“A little,” Ari grunted.
“I’m sorry.”
Why do I always get talked into Dante’s ideas? Ari shook his head. “Maybe I should head out,” he suggested.
Dante didn’t look up from his bedspread.
They both knew it was better to call it a night. They both knew not to expect a call from each other in the morning.
plus one – unapologetic love
From the driver’s seat of his truck, Ari studied Dante’s side profile as he shifted the gear to park. From this angle, he couldn’t see the deep bruising on the other side of his face; instead, he watched the jut of Dante’s jaw, as it clenched and unclenched.
“You know,” Ari’s voice started, disrupting the quiet between them. “I love it out here.”
Dante’s silence echoed back.
“I love these things,” Ari continued, brushing his finger over the mismatched converse dangling from his rearview mirror.
“You sure love a lot of things,” Dante scoffed.
Stung by the bitterness in his tone, Ari spoke quietly, “I thought you weren’t mad anymore.”
Dante shoved open the truck door abruptly, jumping out and slamming it behind him. Ari scrambled to catch up, unwilling to let Dante walk off in this state.
“Hey!” Ari called. His right hand closed over Dante’s jean-clad shoulder.
“Don’t touch me!” Dante cried, yanking his body out of Ari’s grip.
Ari didn’t know what to do, so he stared for a moment at Dante’s back. “Dante, please,” he whispered.
“I don’t know what you want from me, Ari, but I can’t be just friends anymore.”
Ari knew he had to be brave at this moment. If he wasn’t, he might lose Dante forever.
“Remember that time you kissed me?” he said.
“Obviously, Ari. Why are you bringing this up?”
“Well, when I said it didn’t work for me, I lied.” Ari paused, hearing Dante’s sharp intake of breath. Ari reached out, taking Dante by the shoulders and turning him around until they were face-to-face.
“You said I wasn’t scared of anything, but that was wrong. I’m afraid of you, Dante.”
Dante’s gaze passed over the scabbed knuckles on his shoulders, slowly bringing his eyes up to Ari’s face.
“I want to be brave, though.”
Ari’s hands migrated up to the sides of Dante’s face, careful to avoid the worst of the bruising. He leaned in, his words ghosting over Dante’s lips. “How could I have ever been ashamed of loving Dante Quintana?”
The boys pressed their lips together, each of them pouring their joy and hurt and sorrow and excitement into the other. They stayed there, wrapped up in one another, until the stars above came to greet them.