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"What?"
"Do you need a ride or anything to help find him?"
"You'd do that for me?"
"That's what friends are for, man."
After three hours of searching every hotel in Groveton and the surrounding three towns, I'm losing hope.
"Hey man, don't worry. Let's take a break, get something to eat maybe, and we'll keep driving around until it gets dark. And then we can start again and look somewhere else if we need to."
"I was a dick to you. And then I was weird. Why are you being so nice to me?" I ask Luke, sitting across from him at a burger joint. Everything tastes like sand, even though I know the food here is good normally.
Luke makes a face and then begins to speak. I don't know why he's telling me this story, but he usually has something smart to say, so I try to be patient and listen.
"I never came out. My mom, who raised me and my sister on her own, she just knew. She kind of knew before I did, actually. We were sitting at a restaurant. I must have been, I don't know, twelve or thirteen? Old enough that puberty had started, but not full force, you know?" I nod, because I do know. I think I hit puberty a little earlier than some of my friends. It was fucking awkward. "Well, there was this bus boy at the restaurant. I didn't even realize I was looking, but my mom said, 'Luke, close your mouth.’ Just like that. No judgment, no conversation. It just was."
He puts his burger down on his plate and takes a sip of his soda. "It's not like that for most people. The first boy I ever kissed," he smiles awkwardly, but his eyes are welling up, so I hand him some napkins. He wipes his eyes and does this funny head shake, like he's trying to forget something he just remembered.
"You don't have to tell me anything," I say, feeling bad and uncomfortable.
He shakes his head again. "No, it's important. If we don't talk about shit, it can keep happening, you know? Anyway, this boy–Chris. He was an athlete, like you are. We were fifteen, playing soccer in his backyard, when it just happened. It was just a little kiss, so innocent." He looks down at the napkin he's shredded in his lap, puts the pieces on the table. "His mom saw us. They sent him to a ‘pray away the gay’ camp. Conversion therapy. He killed himself a year later."
I only have a vague idea of what conversion therapy is, but I know enough to know that it's nothing good. Brainwashing and torture and shit.
"That's fucking awful."
We both stare at the glass tabletop for a long while. I'm tracing the pattern of an old vinyl record, thinking about what my mom would say if she knew. Thinking about whether I care. I imagine Luke is thinking about the friend that he lost.
"I'm sorry about your friend."
He nods, sniffs, and sits up straight again. "Anyway, the point is there are so many ways that we all learn about ourselves. Who we are, who we love, what we're capable of. However much of a dick you were when I first met you, you're clearly on a journey. And I'd like to see yours have a happier, healthier ending than what some people have to endure." Then he dusts his hands off like he wasn't just mangling a napkin. "So, let's go find you a motherfucking happy ending."
"Oh shit! There!" I point at Bryant's green Jeep Cherokee in the parking lot of a rundown building that might be a bar. Immediately, my mind prickles with worry. I don't know everything about his struggles with alcohol, but I know he went to rehab more than once before. I wonder if he's going to need to go back after all of this.
Whatever happens, I'll be there with him. I'm not going to let him turn me away again.
Jack and I step inside the doorway of the dimly lit room, and he chortles. "Oh, shit. I heard about this place, but I've never been."
"An old hole in the wall cowboy bar?" Seems like a pretty standard Texas kind of place. Jukebox, a few pool tables. Normal stuff.
"This isn't just any cowboy bar," Luke says, and he points across the room to where a topless guy in a cowboy hat is riding a mechanical bull. Slowly. Suggestively. "This is the only gay bar in like three counties. They keep it pretty well on the down-low."
"Huh," I said. "I wouldn't have guessed, honestly."
"You have a lot to learn, baby gay."
"What does that mean?"
"Nothing—let's find your man. What's he look like? But first, please tell me that it's not the guy climbing off that bull, because I'd really like to—" he sees the look on my face and steers the conversation in a different direction than he originally intended. "Um, I'd really like to introduce myself."
I chortle. "That's definitely not my guy," I tell him. "My guy is–"
"Is that the Groveton Football coach?" Luke says, eyes wide.
I follow his gaze to where the topless cowboy sits down, right across from Bryant. As confused as I am about him being here, and talking to some oiled up topless guy in a cowboy hat, I'm mostly just so fucking relieved to see him. It's like I've been carrying around extra weight this whole time, and finally put it down.
“No shit,” Luke whispers to himself.
