Two Boys Kissing Read Online Free Page A

straight from his bed to the kitchen—moppy hair askew, clothes sleepworn—and finds his parents there, gearing up in their way for his day. His dad is making breakfast and his mom is at the kitchen table, reading the crossword clues out loud so the puzzle can be filled in together.
    “We were just about to wake you,” his mother says.
    Harry keeps walking to the den. Craig is sitting bolt upright on the couch, looking like the morning is a mathematical problem he needs to solve before he gets out of bed.
    “Dad’s making French toast,” Harry says, knowing the addition of food to the equation will help it get solved faster.
    Craig responds with something that sounds like
“Muh.”
    Harry pats him on the foot and heads back to the kitchen.
    Tariq’s alarm goes off, but he doesn’t feel alarmed. With his headphones still dulling the outside noise, it sounds like there’s music coming from the next room, and he takes it, slowly, as an invitation.
    As soon as Neil is out of the shower, he texts Peter.
    You up?
he asks.
    And the reply comes instantly:
    For anything
.
    We smile at this, but then we look over to Cooper’s house and we stop. He is still asleep at his desk, his face just barely glancing the keyboard, keeping the computer awake through the night. His father is coming into the room, and he doesn’t look happy. All of Cooper’s chat windows are still on the screen.
    We shiver in recognition at what’s about to happen. Wesee it on his father’s face. Who among us hasn’t done what Cooper’s just done? That one mistake. That stupid slip. The magazine left spread-eagled on the floor. The love notes hidden under the mattress, the most obvious place. The torn-out underwear ad folded into the dictionary, destined to fall out when the dictionary is opened. The doodles we should have burned. The writing of another boy’s name, over and over, over and over. The clothes shoved in the back of our closet. The book by James Baldwin sitting on our shelf, wearing another book’s jacket. Walt Whitman beneath our pillow. A snapshot of the boy we love, grinning, the conspiracy of us in his eyes. A snapshot of the boy we love who has no idea that we love him, captured oblivious, not knowing the camera was there. A snapshot we kept in our top desk drawer, in a fold in our wallet, in a pocket next to our heart. We should have remembered to take it out before throwing it in the laundry hamper. We should have known what would happen when our mother opened the drawer, looking for a pencil.
He’s just a friend
, we’d argue. But if he was just a friend, why was he hidden, why were we so upset to have him discovered?
    We want to wake Cooper up. We want to make the door louder as it opens. We want his father’s footsteps to sound like thunder, but instead they sound like lightning. His father knows how to do this, his anger building quiet speed. He leans over his son and reads the remnants of last night’s conversations. Some are merely conversational, a bored patois.
What’s up? Not much. U? Not much
. But others are frank, sexual, explicit.
Here’s what I’d do to you. Is that the way you want it?
We look closely, hoping for concern to spread over the father’sface. Concern is okay. Concern is understandable. But we, who have looked so long for signs of concern in others, see only disgust. Revulsion.
    “Wake up,” the father says.
    Anger. Rage.
    When Cooper doesn’t stir, he says it again and kicks Cooper’s chair.
    That does it.
    Cooper jolts awake, his face pressing into the keyboard, creating an unsayable word. His contact lenses feel like dry wafers on his eyes. His breath tastes like morning worms.
    His father kicks his chair again.
    “Is this what you do?” is the angry accusation. “When we’re asleep. Is this what you’re up to?”
    Cooper doesn’t understand at first. Then he raises his head, swallows the meager spit in his mouth, sees the screen. Quickly, he closes the laptop. But it’s too