AMERICAN BOYFRIEND

miserable america

the garden circling st. matthew's roman catholic church is obviously manmade, not the God-kind parishioners wanted so badly to believe that it is. all of it —the shape, the pattern, the picture-perfect vibrance— all labor of the clammy human flesh. too neat, too washed out, the colors too bright beside each other to be holy. the shadows of the gloved hands that had organized them fade like stars into the background.

kai runs through them all, through magnolias that wrap around his neck and roses whose thorns poke holes in his pant legs, open him up and up until he's one with them all, a flower amongst many. with his gasping lungs and sweaty hair and bloody ankles and heavy belt that hung a little too loose around his waist, he is the ugly rose. he falls onto a flower bed directly in front a crucifix and a pail dripping discolored holy water. he opens his mouth and takes the drops in like sour juice.

he allows himself to wonder, unlike the flowers, how he'd let himself fall so deeply into this new mess.

this was not supposed to happen. this was not supposed to be a part of geo-and-kai's-joint-life-plan. there was no wedding at nineteen, or silver-plated apartment in brooklyn, or a diamond ring heavy enough to sink kai's heart through his body but sit still on ali's thin fingers. no bitch ass mother-in-law who called him "him", like a curse or an inconvenience, nameless and bodiless, mashed into nothing, in her sight. no empty old apartment, where he eats breakfast alone, and choked through homework and exams alone, and sells his soul to sleep, every night, no flashlights involved, alone. these were foreign concepts that fit painfully into his brain. 

the holy water drops onto his eyes. he prays it makes him blind.

"damn. you got kicked out too? guess they really don't want us in there, ruining the wedding."

his eyes shift upward to a boy hovering by the back doors, dressed up in the brightwhite all the bridesmaids were wearing, each trying to outshine the other until he whole mass of them looked dull. a white flower is pressed to the side of his head, the petals peeling down his face.

"my sister gets married, and i'm too fucking black to get into the ceremony," he says, his lips curling into a smile. "crazy. this is that new type of racism."

"she's — alison's your sister?" kai asks incredulously. the boy's smile widens across his face.

"no, i'm not a schumaker. there are no schumakers from jamaica," he replies sarcastically. "but family's thicker than blood, my man, you should know that. you think anyone in there believes you're really geo's brother?"

"he's not my brother," kai respond quickly. "he's–he's my—"

"your ex-boyfriend? that's pretty big of you, to still show up at his wedding," the boy interrupts. "none of my exes would do that. i couldn't do that."

"no, he's just my friend, my best friend," kai corrects him, his skin warming against the fabric of his tux. "we've been friends since we were kids."

"same with us," the boy continues. "me and she, jaden and ali, us vee the world—until she met your boy geo and started listening to spanish love songs in the car. i had to learn all the words to sabor a mi to sing for the reception — if i even get in, that is."

the boy talks fast—like he had too many words to say and not enough mouth to say it with. kai wishes he could shut up so he could go back to sinking into the ground, dying from the inside out. but he does not—so instead, kai presses his knuckle against the pavement until he loses feeling.

"why—why wouldn't you get in?" kai asks bluntly, a couple moments later. more importantly—why wouldn't he get in? geo wasn't so demonic or lovesick as to let him, his best friend, miss the reception to his adolescent fairytale wedding. the very ruining of his young life. he wouldn't punctuate the bullet in the back with a knife, too.

jaden shrugs, his smile faltering for the first time. "i don't know. maybe she'll open the door. but love makes people forget, y'know."

he steps away from the wall and sits beside kai amongst the crushed flowers. he rips the white one from his curly brown hair and smashes it with his fist. kai watches as the stem is decimated before his eyes.

"i'll never forgive her if i miss the actual ceremony," jaden says bitterly, when the last parts of the flower have fallen to the ground. "screw all of the before, preparatory stuff. we've been dreaming about this day forever—she'd get married first, because even though she's scared of commitment, she's soft for love, and i'd be her boy-maid of honor—and then a couple years later, vice versa, because even though i'm not scared of commitment at all, i'm deathly afraid of things not working out." he talks like the air had been taken out of a balloon—all the air taken out from his blown-up dreams.

"i'd stand right next to her, like i was the one giving her away, because her father isn't coming since she's marrying a person of color, and thom schumaker is, like, an unofficial member of the klan, and then she'd stand next to me, because my mother won't come because if i marry a — someone that they won't like, probably. and everything would be perfect."

kai struggles for words to articulate his own situation. they had never really talked about it — about when, about what a marriage — a white wedding — would look like. they hadn't even talked about the shallow, unimportant stuff that kids do when they think about weddings — the playlists, what sodas would be in the sofa machine, the blunts they'd smoke if geo ever overcame his fear of instananeous addiction, the size of the limo. but what was certain was that they'd both be there, together. this was all wrong.

"he promised he wouldn't go without me," kai says quietly. there was no place for him in his new house with ali; just one bed, one bedroom, one fridge. year-long cable. no place for him in his life.

jaden glances over at him, eyes full and brown. "i know. i'm sorry. she promised me too."

he grabs one of the magnolias under his feet and puts it in kai's hand, before lifting himself from the ground, dusting brown dirt from his pristine suit. kai thinks he looks kind of like an angel, misplaced.

"where are you going?" kai asks, trying to hide the worry from his voice. "you're not gonna leave me too, are you?"

"never," jaden replies seriously. "i'm just trying to find a way we can get into the church."

he throws off his jacket and walks over to the side brick wall of the cathedral. a tree bends precariously by the steeple, brushing the thin, silver cross at the very top, so close it looked like it would fall if you blew on it.

jaden reaches upwards loftily with his hands, like he's reaching for the tree. he turns around, narrowing his eyes in kai's direction.

"question," he begins, "how much do you think you weigh?"

kai looks at him in confusion. "like, 145, 150? why?"

jaden nods, stretching out his fingers. "okay, so listen. I know we just met, um—"

"will," kai says. the lie comes out before he even thinks about it.

"william," jaden says dramatically, "william, i know we just met, but i'm going to need you to place all your trust in me."

kai look at the magnolia in his hands. white as snow. white as jaden's suit. his own suit as a deep red, almost wine-colored. geo has bought it for him as an early birthday gift.

"trust is a scam," he replies numbly. "but what do you want to do?"