He took the coffee, careful not to brush Wes’s fingers, and the croissant. “You’re welcome. You didn’t have to.”
Wes smiled, and Justin nearly hit the floor, nearly sank to his knees and wept like his mom’s friends did on Sundays at their church. That smile, Christ almighty. That smile could melt his bones. It was an aw-shucks grin, a grin that said, I’m trouble, with Wes’s head tilted forward, hiding his open-sky eyes. How many girls had he led to his bed with that little smile?
“Well, I was starving, and it’s rude to eat in front of others.”
Rude. Sure. His luck, again. He got the cowboy with the manners. “Your mother teach you that?” He took a bite of the croissant. It was still warm. The chocolate oozed out, coating his tongue. He almost groaned.
Wes was still grinning. “She did, in fact.”
“Well, thank you, Mom.” Justin toasted Wes’s imaginary mother with the croissant and took a sip of coffee. “Good run?”
Wes nodded, biting half of his croissant off and chewing before downing a gulp of coffee. “Ran to the Arc de Triomphe, then to the park. It was nice. You, uh. You run?”
“I do.”
“Thought so. You have runner’s legs.” Wes shoved the rest of his croissant in his mouth and turned away, crossing the room to the open window and parking himself in front of it, his back to Justin. Justin looked from Wes’s back to his own legs and then back to Wes’s shoulders.
The rest of the morning was quiet, Wes figuring out the shower and banging his knees and elbows into the old tile every time he tried to move, and Justin finishing another croissant and trying not to imagine how water looked running down Wes’s spine or around his corded biceps. Wes finished the rest of the pastries, chugged another coffee, and then they were off, down to the street to wait for the bus. By unspoken agreement, they settled into the same seats.
Justin eyed Wes as he brushed dust and lint from his cowboy hat. When Justin gazed out the window, watching Paris roll by, he caught Wes’s reflection gazing at him.
“What are you doing for dinner?” Justin asked after class. “You going out with the group?”
Wes shook his head. He spun his hat in his hands, stared down at the cream wool. “No. I won’t be going on any of the outings. My scholarship is paying for this trip, and they didn’t include any of those. I’ll grab something simple.”
Justin blinked. There were a few questions he wanted to ask, all at once. Simple was usually a euphemism for cheap, for one. “Scholarship?”
“Athletics.”
“Make sense.” He waved his hand at Wes’s body, his massive muscles. “Which sport?”
Wes finally looked up. They trotted down the stairs inside the school, strode across the glass-and-marble lobby. The rest of the class was already on the bus. “I play a little bit of football.”
The bus driver glared, waving at them to hurry up. Justin stopped, his boots skidding on the pavement. Wes halted with him, setting his hat on his head and turning to Justin, his face a question mark. “Forget them,” Justin said. “Want to walk back? We can grab something to eat on the way.”
“Oui.” Wes grinned. “Oui, s'il te plaît.”
They walked the banks of the Seine, past Notre Dame and the Tuileries, past the Place de la Concorde and toward the Arc de Triomphe. Along the way, Justin pulled them into a bar for beers and sandwiches, insisting that he pay because Wes had brought back half the bakery that morning. Wes ordered the cheapest thing on the menu, so Justin ordered double appetizers and ate slowly, pushing the rest toward Wes. Wes was a big boy. He needed a lot of calories.
He found out they both attended the same campus in the University of Texas system, they were both going into their junior year, and that, when Wes said he played “some football,” he meant he was a tight end on Texas’s team and, had Justin ever turned on a game, he would have seen Wes on the field most Saturdays for the past two years.
“Football… that’s with the baskets, right? Orange ball?”
Wes stared.
“No, no, don’t tell me. They’re called goals?”
“Not quite.”
“I’m kidding. I’m Texan, I was born knowing football. And football is obviously played on a diamond. You’re the tight infielder, right?”
Wes laughed as Justin pretended to toss his hair and smirk. “Football isn’t my thing, but if you’ve ever scored a touchdown, I’m sure my dad loves you.”
Wes chuckled into his beer. The arches of his cheeks were dusted with burgundy. “I’ve scored a few.” He changed the subject, though, suddenly asking Justin about his major and his family. Where he was from.
Justin had been born and raised in a “best places to live” suburb outside Dallas, shuttled to school and camp and Little League by his mom in her SUV. His earliest memories were of hymns sung at church and the Sunday-best shoes that pinched. His childhood was a patchwork quilt of Bible studies, bake sales, and bicycles zooming up and down the block, little kids laughing away the hours under the Texas sun as their moms and dads drank margaritas in their driveways, condensation dripping down the glasses and onto their fingers, so that when one of them checked for bumps and bruises after a spill, their touch was as cold as the bag of frozen peas that would be offered for the boo-boo. He tasted salt and lime in his memories, heard laughter in the background, smelled fresh-baked cookies and cakes and pies. Football played on a TV in the garage. Dads from up and down the block would move from driveway to driveway, peering into car engines and changing tires. Tossing footballs and softballs back and forth. It was a storybook life. Until he turned sixteen.
Until he stopped faking it, stopped pretending he was going to bring home a sweet girl, stopped acting like he was crushing on the cute blonde in the choir loft. He was tired of the questions and the assumptions and, most of all, the pressure, the way his mom and dad looked at him like his life was already planned out, like they already saw him with his Texas bombshell wife and their two-point-five kids. Your future wife is praying to the good lord about you right now, Justin, his mom used to say to him every night. I can’t wait to meet the woman who will make you happy.
His parents always knew he was exceptional. Every finger painting he’d done in kindergarten was put up on the fridge, every macaroni necklace lovingly saved, every glitter ornament for the tree hauled out each year. His Little League photos and school portraits lined the hallway. He was taken to Aspen, Vail, Bermuda, San Diego. Nothing held back.
How were they to know he’d be one of the 10 percent of the population who was gay? He’d always been an overachiever. Exceptional in every way.
One night he sneaked out, took the DART to the gayborhood in downtown Dallas, faked his way into one of the clubs, and made out with every boy he could. He took selfies kissing guys, grinding with them against the dirty club walls and in the bathroom stalls, got an outrageous picture of an older man licking his bare chest as he threw his head back in ecstasy. And he sent them all to his parents.
His father wouldn’t speak to him for three weeks, and his mother burst into tears whenever she saw him. He was grounded for a year—no car, no outings, no going anywhere except school and church—but he didn’t care. He was finally free from their pressure.