Be True to Me by Adele Griffin

Author:Adele Griffin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
Published: 2017-06-01T04:00:00+00:00

FRITZ

Gil’s kiss on the tennis court had sealed something. Until that moment, we’d been playing tonight kind of shyly, with a whole string of qualifications—like if I wasn’t feeling it, or if he wasn’t feeling it, or if we got cold feet, or if we wanted to stick around and party with Julia and Oliver. “No pressure,” we’d kept saying to each other.

On the court, when Gil had picked me up and kissed me and held me like that, with everyone watching, a surge of electric connection had looped our bodies together, and we both knew.

Yes. Tonight. It was happening. No doubt.

As the day lightened up and dried out, Gil went home to check in with the Burkes, who always had him doing one thing or another for them—and apparently Fourth of July was no exception—while the rest of us headed to South Beach for the barbecue and an afternoon of diving in and out of the ocean, either with surfboards or for a simple swim. The sun was out and the ocean was perfect. When Gil finally came back, he was with Chip Knightley. They’d both picked up their guitars, and so we all got to mellow out to their Gordon Lightfoot and Grateful Dead covers.

“Play a classic, play ‘Little Wing,’ ” someone called, from over where Junior and his crew were sitting.

“Aw, man, that’s too hard,” said Chip. “What do you think, that I’m going pro?”

But Gil’s long fingers were already exploring the silky, bluesy opening chords, and we went silent, letting him work into it, figure it out and deliver it to us in the loose, fun way we’d all come to expect from him. I watched his expression, deliberately calm, knowing what the others didn’t, that underneath his ease, Gil was dead serious and obsessively focused. I’d watched him teach swim class, rig a sail, and manage a crushing lunch shift at the yacht club in basically the same way. Making it look easy was all part of the work.

The afternoon sun sank into its ripe pinks and reds. The crowd thinned as kids began to move bayside for the fireworks show. I rode with Gil back to Snappy Boy so that he could drop his guitar. I waited outside—for a moment, watching the door, my body went taut with apprehension. Were Carp and Weeze in the house? Would they give him permission to go?

When Gil appeared again, his windbreaker on, his smile untroubled, relief flowed through me. Why’d I been so worried?

I was paranoid, that was all.

We booked, speeding through the gate, and we left Sunken Haven behind.

Seaview, Saltaire, Robbins Rest.

George, the guy who ran the place we’d found the other day, was a cool, low-key hippie type, the kind of dude that Sunken Haven parents and all Fort Polk parents were united against because he was easygoing about being gay.

Tonight, George and his boyfriend, Eric, who looked like a Swedish action hero but was actually a math teacher from Michigan, were out on the porch enjoying a couple of Strohs.

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