It means everything.
Nate was glad they only had two days of school the next week. Only Monday and Tuesday to see Logan and Cody in social studies, ducking their heads together across the aisle to talk before the bell rang, both of them chuckling, even if Cody’s smile did look a bit forced.
By Wednesday, the first day of Thanksgiving break, the snow had stopped. The sky was clear and brilliantly, shockingly blue, the wind stronger than ever, so icy it seemed to cut right through every coat Nate owned. There’d been no talk of him going home for Thanksgiving. It hadn’t even been an option before Nate’s phone call home. It was even less of one now, in his mind at least. Still, he knew he couldn’t avoid the subject of his mother for a second week in a row.
Sure enough, his dad knocked on his bedroom door on Wednesday evening.
“Nate?” He’d just come home from work and was still wearing his uniform, his gun belt hanging from his hips. “Time to call your mom.”
Nate was lying on the bed in the darkness, staring at the blank ceiling above him. Howard Jones was spinning on the turntable, telling him things could only get better, but Nate found it hard to believe. He’d spent the last hour trying not to wonder what Cody was doing. Trying not to wonder if he was with Logan. Trying not to imagine Cody touching Logan and kissing him and whispering secrets to him in some dark, distant room.
Nate reached over and hit the button to lift the needle from the record, letting silence fall.
“I have nothing to say to her.”
His dad crossed his arms, resting against the doorframe even though it must have made his gun belt dig into his hip. “Are you okay, Nate?”
“I’m fine.”
His dad rubbed a finger over his mustache. “I know you never wanted to move here. I thought things’d get better once school started and you met kids your own age, but it seems like it’s going downhill. Seems like things are getting worse instead.”
Nate sat up on his bed, crossing his legs, thinking about everything that happened since he’d first talked to Cody behind the ICE cooler.
Could he talk to his dad about it?
He’d dismissed the idea before, but then again, he didn’t have much to lose. “I don’t belong here, Dad. I don’t fit in anywhere.”
“Oh, I’m sure it isn’t that bad.”
Of course he’d say that. His dad had no idea how claustrophobic Walter Warren High School was, with its tight cliques.
The bed shifted as his father sat down next to him. “What happened two weeks ago that made you want to sneak downstairs and call your mom?”
“I was going to ask her to let me come home.”
“Well, I figured that much. But what I’m asking is, what happened that night to make you want to go home right then? We’ve been here since August, but something happened this month that made things worse.”
Nate fidgeted with the hem of his jeans, debating. It all started with Cody. “I did something . . .” He shook his head, trying to come up with a way to tell his dad about it without actually telling him anything at all. “Something maybe I shouldn’t have.” But whether he meant letting Cody touch him and kiss him, or whether he meant pushing Cody away afterward, even he couldn’t have said.
“Are we talking about something illegal? Or . . . breaking rules?”
“No.”
“Cheating on a test? Stealing? A prank that went wrong?”
“Nothing like that.”
“Did you get in a fight?”
Did he? It almost felt like it. “Not really, but . . . an argument, maybe.”
“With somebody at the dance?”
“With the only real friend I have.”
“Ah.” He patted Nate’s shoulder. “Well, these things happen. Friends argue sometimes, but it’ll be okay. You’ll see.”
“It wasn’t okay with you and Mom.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
His dad took a deep breath, tilting his head back to stare up at Nate’s bedroom ceiling. He didn’t answer though.
“Somebody else answered the phone at our house.”
His dad blew out a puff of air. “Yeah, that’s what she told me.”
“He’s living there, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Who is he?”
His dad’s shoulders slumped. The answer came out a growl. “Greg.”
“Greg who?”
“Greg Merriman. They met at the gym.”
The gym? Nate thought of all the times his mom had come downstairs with a smile on her face and her workout bag slung over her shoulder, telling him she’d be back in a couple of hours. “All this time, I thought you were the one who had the affair. But it wasn’t you, was it?”