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ONE
Asher
It would be impossible to say where the history of Jordan and me began. There were too many passing remarks and too many held breaths to count. Was it in middle school where I knew no more than Jordan’s name uttered by my mother when she spoke softly into the speaker of her phone? “How’s your boy? Jordan?” Or did it start when Mother announced we were going to Disneyland for a long weekend, failing to mention a man would meet us there, as well as his son?
I wouldn’t say our first meeting was where anything started. In fact, a lot of things stopped when I first laid my eyes on Jordan Mitchell. That was an exaggeration, in all fairness. The very first time I laid my eyes on him was in a 1950s diner. I was old enough, at thirteen, to notice how pretty the serving boys were. The pomade in their hair, combed to the side or all the way back, and red bow-ties on snowy white short-sleeved shirts. Already, boys were everything I thought about. Skinny limbs and sweet smiles, those diner servers were all around eighteen or nineteen years old, saving money for college shenanigans that were still far in my future, but they were nice. They weren’t scary at all like older boys at school were.
Mother had her bony hand on my upper back, although I wasn’t so short that the gesture was barely noticeable. I had been growing like a sprout the entire year and Mother could scarcely find the time to feed me as much as my growing body demanded. “Be nice,” she whispered, hardly having to lean down to reach my ear.
“Be…what?” I ogled her in confusion. “What are you…?”
Her hand seemed to press me harder. “I want you to meet someone important.”
“Sure,” I muttered, my voice cracking with the changes that caused annoying pimples to pop anew every other morning. I could suffer through the pimples easily enough, washing them, putting Mom’s skincare products on the way she had shown me, and squeezing them when I felt the time was right. But my voice? I hated it. The only options I had were to let everyone hear the crackling and squeaking when I laughed out loud, to hold my tongue and act like a mute, or to be the weirdo who only spoke in whispers. And no option would have won me any friends or admirers. Surely not among the boys who’d already had clear faces, had something to shave, and spoke in deep, smooth voices.
And so my mother pushed me in front of her like a lanky human shield. It wasn’t until the man and the boy paid attention to us that I realized I was a trophy rather than cannon fodder. Mother beamed when I turned my frowny face to her, wanting to ask what was happening. The sweltering heat outside the diner had left my skin shiny with perspiration and my darkening blond hair stuck to my brow. “Um, hello,” I said, my voice twitching an octave up on the last syllable. Damn it. The boy regarded me with a big pinch of distrust. The corners of his lips were pulled down and his eyebrows knitted in a frown. But the man was warm and kind.
“You must be Asher,” he said as he got up from the booth that could seat six people rather than just the two of them. “I’ve heard so much about you.” He wiped his hands against his rough denim pants. His checkered shirt sleeves were rolled up his tanned and hairy arms, his forearms muscled like he chopped wood for a living. Then, as he thrust his hand forward, I embraced it. What choice did I have? His grip was firm but not intimidating. His hand was calloused and I realized everything I had assumed about him was true. The cleverness of a thirteen-year-old. This was a man who worked with his arms and hands. He was big, outwardly happy to be here, but the new cold sweat on his palms said he was nervous.
I would soon learn why.
The boy, though, only nodded. “‘Sup,” he might have said in a murmur. His cheeks were pink with heat, his hair messy, his T-shirt plain and tight, hugging his sculpted body in all the ways that made my hormone-riddled body flare in alarm. Unlike me, this guy was shaped like those Instagram models. His dark and shaggy hair might have been tangled and unkempt, but he carried it like it was a style. His lips were redder than if he had put a rouge on. And the contempt in his eyes made the pit in my belly colder than if I’d swallowed an ice cube.
“Oh my, Jordan, how handsome you are,” my mother said in her silky voice. Heat flushed through me like there was no AC in the diner. Sometimes, when she spoke my most private thoughts aloud, I wondered how much she could guess about me. Maybe she noticed something I was unaware of doing. And when she turned to Mr. Mitchell, who I would soon start calling George — but never Dad, despite my most honest wish to find the strength and try — I knew. I knew what they were to one another. I knew what the conversations on the phone had meant.
When one of the slender young men reached our table, his arms bare and hair so blond and pale on them that it was nearly invisible, I despised my silly lack of taste. The fifteen-year-old boy across from me was so much more in so many ways. I knew I would never look at other boys the same way.
That was the end of a long era where seeing young men occupied all my free time. It was also the end of a lifetime in which I didn’t know anyone who was called Jordan. And it was the end of my comfortable habit of playing video games after finishing my homework. Jordan, it turned out, was so nicely built because he played hockey. Yes, there was a rink in our town, too. Would I be interested in trying it out? How wonderful… The adults droned on about us like we weren’t even present, then turned their voices lower and said things that made the other one smile, sometimes even giggle.
The weekend was a grind. The happiest place on Earth couldn’t provoke a smile from Jordan Mitchell. And neither could I, although I was too scared to try very hard. When it was over, we parted ways. Mom and George promised to do something as exciting as this again soon.
Maybe our history began two months later when Mom found a suitable group for my hockey practice. He was nowhere near me, but the entire course of my life took a turn on that day. Because of Jordan.
It was emblematic that I should change my entire future because of something Jordan did. The fact that I started practicing hockey when I was thirteen for no other reason than a boy with the body of an Olympian practiced it was the foreshadowing of all that was going to happen. I didn’t know it, but hindsight proved it more than once.
The obvious moment to blame for the mess we later caused was the day George and Jordan arrived with a moving company only two hours behind them. Mom had been preparing the house for days. And when they arrived, Jordan stalked inside as if he could appear smaller. Little chance of that when he had grown even bigger and more muscled in the year of our occasional encounters across the country.
“Asher will show you your new room, sweetheart. Won’t you, Ash?” Mother passed us to greet George with a wet and sloppy kiss on the lips that made both of us look away.
“Thank you, Ms. Sullivan,” Jordan muttered.
“Don’t be silly, Jordan,” George said, my mother in his arms. He fixed the cap on his head to shield him from direct sunlight and grinned a pearly grin. “Call her Eileen.”
“Yes, sir,” Jordan said curtly. “Thank you, Ms…Eileen.”
“Come on,” I whispered, bumping into him with my shoulder. It was deliberate because I saw his stiff politeness as a weakness and he was in my territory now. But the moment I bumped into him and discovered how rock solid he was, I knew I was the weak one. I gritted my teeth and avoided the impulse to rub my shoulder.
Jordan followed me up the stairs of the house he was supposed to call his home, the house that had been my home for the last fifteen years. Even then, I knew that I was uprooted. Everything about my entire life changed in a single afternoon.
I turned the doorknob and pushed the door that creaked on its hinges. The room hadn’t been used in ages, but Mother had had it deep-cleaned the day before. It was equal in size to my room but lacked all the character. It had a fairly sizable bed in one corner, a built-in closet, a workstation for his laptop or desktop, a corkboard I hadn’t used since Mother had gotten it years earlier, and a nice, new desk chair. The rest was up to Jordan to figure out. Lavender-softened curtains were diffusing the afternoon sunlight over the window. “This is you.” I expected him to dismiss me with a grunt. That was who he was to me. I squared my shoulders and waited for a careless remark that would render my entire existence meaningless.
“You still play hockey?” He asked that question like he was musing aloud.
The remark stabbed me unreasonably deep. Was I supposed to drop out in his view? “I do. Coach says I have a promising future.” The defenses geared up in me as I met his cold look of disdain.
“Cool, man.” He turned away from me and examined his room. The duffel that was hanging from one round shoulder slid and dropped at the foot of the bed. He looked at me, turning only partially. I wasn’t interesting enough for a complete turn, I suppose. He waited, then gave the smallest bob of his head toward the door.
I swung away, holding the doorknob, and shut his door. Screw that guy.
