Kameron

At night Kameron would pull up outside my house, leave his truck running, text me, and wait for me to crawl out the second-story window. It was a ritual, even though we never did much. I would sit beside him and he’d drive around our small town listening to top-ten country until he got bored and we pulled over to the side of the road to fuck.

It wasn’t hard to escape my house, even though my parents had an alarm system. I learned early on where the sensors were and how easy it was to take them apart with the right screwdriver. My parents were heavy sleepers anyway and Kameron always showed up early in the morning when anyone else had the good sense to be asleep.

I never knew what he got out of it. Sometimes I thought he was into me but just not willing to be out of the closet. Other times it felt like some weird obsession: he called me up because he could—not because he had any innate desire for men. We didn’t always fuck, though we did more often than we didn’t. Sometimes he just drove and listened to music. A few times we smoked weed in an abandoned playground. Once or twice we got drunk and I had to pretend I was too sick to go to school the following day.

Once on a Friday, I asked him and he just shrugged, turned the music down, and invited me back to his place. It was a surreal experience. He didn’t climb up any windows or sneak in through any backdoor. He parked his car in the driveway and opened the front door and the two of us walked normally up to his bedroom where he closed the door behind him and fell, face up, onto his king-sized bed.

“You can spend the night if you want.” He said. ”Only if I want?””You know what I mean,” he said, throwing a pillow at me. “That is if your parents will allow it.”

My parents wouldn’t care. I doubt they’d even notice I had left. I was at the age where I felt angsty and annoying, constantly screaming at them and demanding they shut up. They decided to call my bluff and mostly left me alone, so long as I wasn’t breaking any pre-established house rules. I texted them that I was staying at a friend’s house and paced awkwardly around the room, observing the trinkets, photos, and posters tacked up haphazardly on the wall.

Kameron stripped and crawled into bed. I didn’t know what to do. He didn’t really direct me. I kept clothed and laid down next to him, flat on my back, staring up at the ceiling. He fell asleep quickly, leaving me alone in the dark, the rickety movement of the ceiling fan keeping pace with my breath. I don’t know how long I stayed awake like that but eventually, I fell asleep. When I woke up, his arms were wrapped tight around me, and fearing he’d move the moment I stirred, I kept perfectly still.