For Us

1. Happy Ending.

{Jon}

The face of Jon White's first crush was everywhere on campus, pinned up on the message boards and bus stops. Kurtis Klassen's smoky smile, overlaid with a glowing rainbow filter, found Jon around every corner.

'Queer darling of U of A campus performing live at On the Rocks!' The campus paper ran a breathless interview with all the details of Kurt's promising athletic career, his fabulous secret nightlife dabbling in drag, and his explosive coming out just before the release of his band's first EP.

Jon read the story on his phone when he should have been taking notes in his Child Psych class, pulling the brim of his nondescript baseball cap a little lower.

He studied Kurt's familiar and yet altered face, his long scruffy chin and narrowed blue eyes. Those lips curled up in an enticing half-smile—Jon would have known that expressive mouth anywhere. He had been fifteen and Kurt seventeen the summer they met, drawn like magnets to each other in a lonely, difficult season of surviving high school as gay, Christian kids passing as straight.

It had been years since he'd seen the other man, but Jon had caught some of Kurt's music on the local radio station and his catchy melodies and heart-breaking lyrics were genuinely good. It was like getting the happy ending for a story he'd wondered about, late at night as his mind wandered before sleep. Unlike the smitten writer of this article or any of Kurt's new fans, Jon remembered the lanky, people-pleasing teenager Kurt had been and he was happy for him.

Jon clicked the phone screen closed and tucked it away, smiling privately. On impulse, over his lunch break in the campus food court, he found the concert event online; the date was a night he had off work. He sent the link to his closest friend and housemate: <want to go with?>

Cary Douglas' response was slow, as usual. Cary texted with his index fingers, like he was eighty years old instead of twenty-three.

While he waited, Jon found Kurt's page, plastered with links to music videos, a thousand group selfies coloured pink or purple with nightclub lights, and an equal number of queer memes. Jon bit the corner of his mouth, trying not to laugh. There was nothing secret about Kurt's sexuality now. He sent the page a private message:

<love your sound *white heart emoji* proud of you looking forward to the concert>

*

Saturday night, Jon waited in line on the sidewalk with his hands tucked in his hoodie pocket, with Cary looming beside him. The din from the club was so loud he almost didn't hear the bouncer say: "Jon White – there's a message for you at the bar," handing his ID back to him and waving him through.

"What?" Jon said, automatically moving forward into the hazy, strobe-lit interior. Beside him, Cary shrugged his bulky shoulders, scanning the room. Neither of them was prepared for the crowd to part and Kurt Klassen to sail up and throw his arms open to them, glammed out and practically glowing in the lights.

"There you are! Jon White, oh my fucking god it's really you. I couldn't believe it when I saw your message." Kurt looked from Jon to Cary, something like hunger in his face. His eyes were darker than Jon remembered, surrounded by smudgy eye make-up under his wave of white-blond hair.

As Kurt leaned in for a hug, his bony chest bare under his mesh shirt, Jon's arms came up automatically to hug him back. Anxiety tightened his stomach and he checked the people around them, hiding his blushing face behind the brim of his cap when Kurt let him go. He'd planned to blend in here, watch from the back and slip home. He felt as though Kurt dragged a spotlight around with him and he was caught in its glare.

Kurt pursed his lips at Cary, drawing his finger in a circle as if outlining the other man's broad chest and bearded face. "I recognize you." Cary's eyes were wary under his thick, dark eyebrows; Jon recalled a little too late that these two had not been friends in high school and had come to blows the last time they were in reach of each other.