Thomas and Niko in the City of Trees

Chapter 11 - Part 3

He drives us downtown and we park all the way at the top of a garage, on the open deck. There are only a few other cars up here. We go over to the edge and climb up onto a concrete platform about three feet wide. There's nothing to block anyone from falling, no rail or anything. That's probably because no one's supposed to climb on top of it in the first place. We're sitting cross-legged, just kind of looking out at the buildings for a while. I bet it's ninety degrees out. Heat like this has never bothered me much.

Thomas dangles his legs over the edge. I tell him to stop, and to my surprise, he listens to me.

I only have one scar from that bad time I was telling you about. It's on my knee. It happened because that guy my mom was dating got drunk and I gave him some lip, and he threw me outside. I fell down the concrete steps because they're straight outside the front door, and got my knee pretty bad. Anyway, it's a little white gash about an inch long.

I'm only mentioning it because Thomas is looking at it now. We haven't talked about all that stuff in a while. Without saying anything, he reaches out. My shorts have ridden up and he touches my thigh, just above it. Then he grazes it just slightly with his thumb. It's the weirdest thing, what he's doing.

"Does it hurt?" he asks.

"Of course not. It's just a scar," I say.

"Oh yeah." He laughs a little. "Sorry." He takes his hand away.

We're just sitting there, not saying anything for a while. Some small birds—doves, maybe—are perched out at the edge of a nearby bank tower. I look between the buildings and make out the rooftops of heritage houses in the neighborhood to the north, where the rich kids live, and then up into Boise Heights and the surrounding foothills neighborhoods, where they're even richer.

Thomas climbs back down from the concrete ledge. I follow him. We're just messing around, chirping our shoes against the fresh gray surface. We find some shade under a metal overhang. There's eight or ten floors of fancy glass condos above us. But this spot we've found, it's deserted.

Thomas is grabbing my arm a little, squeezing my bicep. He tells me I'm getting bigger. I'm pretty sure he's just playing around. He's kind of getting up in my face, and I'm finding it difficult to shrug off the attention. He's always getting into these playful moods, but it's starting to feel different these days. I think we both know it. There's an instant where I freeze with my back to the polished concrete wall. It feels so nice and cool, shaded from the sun. And he comes right up to face me. He takes my hands in his and gets really close. I feel his heat and his sweat. I tuck my face into his neck.

"Not easy to resist," I hear him say. So typical of him, offering up some stupid fragment of a thought I can't quite pin down.

I lift my head. We're chest-to-chest, ear-to-ear, still holding hands. I'm looking over his shoulder, out at the low, flat buildings of West Downtown. Thomas is facing the wall, practically holding my body against it with his own. He could keep me trapped like this forever if he wanted to. I let one hand go and reach up between us. I'm just feeling his big chest through his shirt.

Don't ask me what it means to be in love with someone. I'm in no position to speak about that kind of thing. But I will tell you that this moment between Thomas and me isn't all about sex. In fact, I don't think he's completely hard. I'd be able to tell if he was. And I'm not either. You might be surprised to hear that, but it's true. I'm wondering what exactly Thomas meant when he said it's not easy to resist. Because at the particular moment he said it, I don't think he was talking about wanting sex. He said it himself a while ago, when we were first starting to figure all this out. He asked me when I first knew I had feelings for him—not when I realized I wanted his dick, but when I started having real, emotional feelings.

All I can say is, a shift occurs right in this moment. I'm going to change the way I treat this whole situation. No, I'm not going to come right out tell Thomas I'm in love with him. But as far as my attitude and my behavior are concerned when we're alone like this, I'm done with pretending it's not true.

"I'm so glad we're together right now," I tell him.

He takes half a step back and looks me in the eyes.

I lean in and kiss him. I'm not aggressive about it. I lay my lips against his. It's like he knows what I'm up to, because he kisses back in the same exact way. He doesn't even open his mouth. He's just giving me these soft little kisses over and over. And then we part and walk slowly back to his car.