Griffin spent his entire evening researching romance novels. He was looking for something that he could pass off casually as a decent read – something he’d stumbled upon, or maybe that was recommended by a friend. An ex-girlfriend, maybe? he thought, before dashing the plan. He didn’t have the confidence or memory for an elaborate lie.
He realized a few skimmed pages into Her Beauty Engulfs Me – the year’s most recommended novel for single (straight) men and a gift that he never got around to returning – that maybe he was getting away from himself.
Griffin worried that if Charlie caught on that he was developing a crush on him, he wouldn’t want to be his driving coach anymore. Or his project partner. Or his friend.
But at the same time, Charlie was sending him a lot of signals that were difficult to interpret. Were they even signals at all? he wondered. It was growing mind-numbing to try to puzzle out the intentions or lack thereof in an action as simple as a nudge on the shoulder.
Griffin decided he needed more data.
When Charlie rolled up to the curb that night – extra slow and cautious to avoid drawing the attention of Griffin’s mother – Griffin slipped into the passenger seat with a plan brewing.
“Evenin’, partner,” Charlie said, continuing the cowboy schtick from earlier. Griffin smiled, but caught himself before it grew too big on his face. He didn’t want to appear overeager.
“Evenin’,” Griffin replied. The word came out awkwardly, making him sound more like a Southern belle than a gruff Western scoundrel.
Charlie breezed past it. “Ready for lesson number two?” he asked. “I figure we’ll start with driving and then we can discuss the project after.”
Griffin nodded. It worked better this way for him, too.
Charlie pulled away from the curb and drove down the street towards the church like before.
Griffin didn’t want to let silence build up in the car, because he knew he’d find it impossible to break through if it did. It was time for him to collect data.
“So, are your nights always this free to teach helpless kids how to drive?” Griffin asked.
“Ha, yeah. I mean, I’m seventeen – it’s not like I’m moonlighting as a bartender or anything,” Charlie responded.
“Yeah, no, of course,” Griffin said. “But – no, like, girlfriend or anything?”
The car picked up speed a half-tick, and then slowed down abruptly as they approached the stop sign at the end of the street.
Okay, Griffin admitted to himself, maybe this wasn’t the most subtle approach.
“Uh,” Charlie started. He pulled the car to a full stop. Despite the quiet emptiness of the streets at night, he craned his neck to the left and right as if he was checking for cars in the dark. “No – no girlfriend,” he said.
It came out… cautiously. This was the first time Griffin had seen the air of casual confidence pull away from around Charlie. He felt a bit bad about it – but it was definitely interesting.
“Do you?” Charlie asked. “Have a girlfriend, that is?”
He pulled onto the next road and made down the dark, still street.
“No, not me,” Griffin answered.
He watched the streaks of passing streetlights roll over the car, just as they had the night before. He thought about the two books he’d packed into the backpack at his feet and imagined each of their covers illuminated beneath the rolling bands of lamplight. One was Her Beauty Engulfs Me, with a pale, curvaceous woman stepping out of the sea at night. She wears a white gown, which clings wet and translucent to her figure. Griffin never made it past the first few pages, but from the synopsis, he knows that she’s a modern-day Siren – and she spends the novel seducing and enthralling the protagonist. It was written in first-person, and as far as Griffin could tell, it was mostly wish fulfillment for the middle-aged man that authored it.
He felt somewhat slimy even possessing the book, but he had his mother to thank for that. He tried not to think about what she had been trying to say with this gift.
The other book in his backpack was actually not a book at all, but a thumb drive. It contained a digital version of Dip, a novella about two teenage boys spending the summer at their respective families’ beach house and falling in love – or something like it. Griffin had nervously downloaded it onto his computer a year ago and consumed it voraciously. He longed to own a physical copy, but didn’t want to risk it being discovered in his room. Still, he knew the cover well and could imagine what it would look like sitting on his lap now: two boys on the beach running towards the ocean, their hair wild and their thumbs in the waistbands of their bathing suits – one red, and one blue – as if they’re about to slip them off.
Charlie turned into the empty church parking lot. “I guess we’ve got a ways to go in the romance department,” he said.
Griffin’s heart jumped, but quickly settled when he realized Charlie was just talking about their project theme. He was making a joke. Griffin pushed out a heh, yeah.
Charlie pulled the car to a stop in one of the parking aisles, and they swapped seats. The traffic cones were out again in a new pattern. Charlie had taken the time two nights in a row to build Griffin his own personal driving course.
He followed Charlie’s directions through the course and fared well, only riding up on the curb twice when making a turn. He might have done better, but he was distracted. He wanted to ask Charlie more questions, but didn’t want to be too obvious.
At the end of his first run through the course, after packing away the traffic cones in Charlie’s trunk, he parked in a spot at the end of an aisle – somewhat crooked, Charlie observed, but technically within the lines – and shut off the car.
Griffin searched for something to say, a sly question that would tell him more about Charlie, but the words kept slipping through his fingers. His pulse picked up as the silence drew longer.
Charlie broke it first. “I’ve never had a girlfriend, actually.”
Griffin’s pulse seemed to double in speed. Then it’s been on his mind, too, Griffin thought.
“You?” Charlie asked.
Griffin shook his head. His heart was racing so quickly that he was afraid his voice would shake if he spoke aloud.
“Uh,” Charlie started. There was that rare hesitation popping up again. “I brought you a movie,” he continued, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a simple, black thumb drive. It looked just like the one Griffin had in his backpack.
“It’s called ‘Til the Morning Sun,” Charlie said, offering the flash drive to Griffin. “It’s about two lovers that meet on a holiday in the Mediterranean. The cinematography is amazing. And I really like the writing.”
Griffin reached for the drive, but Charlie’s hand flinched and his fingers half-closed around it.
“It’s about two guys,” he said. There might have been a slight tremble in his voice. “Does that... bother you?”
Griffin felt his pulse pounding in his eardrums. He shook his head, but knew the moment needed more than that. He cleared his throat.
“No, that doesn’t bother me,” he said with a careful steadiness to his voice.
Charlie’s fingers relaxed, and Griffin placed his hand over the thumb drive. Griffin’s fingers dragged against Charlie’s palm as he took the drive. He could have sworn that time was slowing down – he felt as if he was touching some forbidden material, some holy silk, and his brain was racing to memorize every nuance in its texture before having to pull away.
Their hands broke contact and time flooded back to its normal cadence.
“I have a book for you too,” Griffin said. “Open up my backpack.”
Charlie lifted the bag at his feet onto his lap. He unzipped the main compartment and reached in.
He pulled out the paperback copy of Her Beauty Engulfs Me, and his face tightened.
“Not that one!” Griffin rushed to say. “There’s a thumb drive at the bottom, the same as yours.”
Charlie placed the book back in the bag and retrieved the thumb drive. He held it up triumphantly, and that familiar, goofy smile returned to his face. “Oh yes, I’ve heard great things about this one!”
Griffin laughed – a real, unexpected laugh.
“It’s my favorite book,” Griffin said.
“I thought Moonsword was your favorite book,” Charlie replied.
“That was before I knew I could tell you about this one. It’s called Dip. It’s about two guys.”
They both let out short, nervous laughs. They had stepped over a line together – or were teetering on it, anyways. The moment in the car felt like a fragile bubble, and they were both afraid to be the one to pop it.
Griffin didn’t know what to do next, but it was late and he had to get home. Besides, things were going okay – even better than okay – with Charlie, and he figured the less time he had to ruin it, the better. He placed his hand on the door handle. “I guess we should head back.”
Griffin pulled on the handle, but before he could push the door open, Charlie reached across him and pulled the door shut. It seemed to startle them both.
He was achingly close to Griffin – his arm grazing Griffin’s chest, and his face only a few inches away from Griffin’s. Griffin felt another compression of time, an even tighter and more delicate bubble. It was broken as Charlie receded back into his seat.
“Uh, I was just thinking that you could drive us back to your place,” he said. “For practice.”
Griffin nodded, once again the only response he felt he could confidently muster.
He turned the key and started the car. It hummed to life, and both boys seemed to relax into their seats. The larger bubble containing their half-admissions to each other was gone – not burst, but more evaporated so that the moment could settle and breathe and inhabit every inch of the car in which it had been born.
Griffin pulled back out of the parking space and made for the street. The night was late and quiet, and he was close to home. After only two lessons, he was already feeling comfortable behind the wheel.
That worried him a bit. He wasn’t ready for these nights together in the empty parking lot to start to end. He needed to keep coming back to this car, to this private course, to these quiet moments with Charlie.
As he turned out onto the main road, he made sure to roll over the curb for good measure.
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