Fire and Rain [🗸]

25. boathouse row and voicemails

beware of Angst🙏

***

MYLES' MESSAGES AND THE GREENPORT GANG provide a welcome distraction from the voicemails building up on my phone.

I'd texted Myles about Zahra and I's officiality, and he just about lost it. My message to him yesterday evening was read not even a minute after I'd sent it, and instead of texting back, he'd requested a videocall. 

I must've looked ridiculous, Zahra asleep on the bed next to me after I'd convinced her to stay because she felt warm, and me with my back against the backboard of the bed, blankets pulled to my chin, the camera angle looking straight upwards to get a full frontal view of my chin.

Myles look anything but ridiculous. It looked late, but he had his phone positioned near what I assumed was a stove, and from this point of view, it looked like he was cooking. In the background, two guys were arguing and Myles explained to me that those were the "dumbass roommates" he had to deal with everyday.  

I eventually filled him in on the day and everything leading up to it. I told him about all the little things that I could never tell my mom about—the kisses, the teases, the soft words and warmth.

 Mom had actually tried to connect with me on a somewhat similar basis before, back when I was dating Matthew. She'd try to make it some bonding ritual between us. Mother-to-supposedly-heterosexual-daughter. Maybe, if she hadn't ever learned homophobia, hadn't ever learned that "gay" was a bad word—she could've been like that about Zahra. 

However, it's wishful thinking—the type of thinking that is akin to stumbling in a meadow and falling down a well. Nothing good will ever come out of it. So, every ring, every voicemail from my mom remains ominous, a staggering reminder that to her, my entire being is doused in sin. Even if she doesn't know that I'm queer yet, even if she's never said anything outrightly homophobic. 

I drag myself to the present.

At this very moment, the gang is walking by Boathouse Row, listening to an impromptu history lesson by one Rayne Campbell. We walk along the dock, the blue water mirroring the large houses that once belonged to big somebodies back in the day.

Although, today it's difficult for me to focus.

Even with the Greenport Gang laughing and talking all around me, even with Zahra next to me, brushing her shoulder against mine—I feel like I'm walking through sludge. And the sludge is seeping everywhere—into my lungs, my chest, my heart. It feels hard to take a breath and swallow my spit.

I listened to the voicemails. That's another thing I did yesterday evening after I had finished video-calling Myles. I listened to the voicemails from Mom. There was even one from Dad. The voicemails were asking about me: what I'm doing, how I'm doing, when I'm coming back. 

Home—that's the word they used. And I used it to, I always have. Until now, at least, when it dawned on me that home was a feeling, and that feeling was the slope of Zahra's nose or the curve of Azul's smirk, the freckles on Josiah's face, the warmth of Elliot's hands, the worldliness of Sadie's eyes.