Enough Time Now

“Enough Time Now”
1
Jeremy Bynes doesn’t know how to say it, exactly. He has been trying to say it for minutes. Every time the sentence forms on the tip of his tongue and he’s about to open his mouth and spill it out, he loses his confidence and snaps his jaws shut again. But Holden is patient. Holden is older than Jeremy, about two years older. It’s not much of a gap; it’s big enough for patience and maturity to leak through.
“Here man.” Holden offers a perspiring bottle of water to Jeremy. “Just take a deep breath.”
Jeremy does just that. Deep breath in, deep sigh. After that little exercise he chugs water, relishing the painful numbness in his throat.
“I’m sorry,” he chokes. “I just….I just can’t word it right, you know? Fuck, I’m sorry.”
“No problem.” Holden takes the bottle back, caps it, stuffs it in his back pocket. The day is unbearably humid. He’s sweating profusely, his shirt collar already soaked. His bangs are clumped on his shiny forehead. Sweat is even running down his lower back, no doubt pooling in his ass crack like a miniature river bed.
But he is very patient.
“Is it because you’ll think I’ll judge you? Fuck that, man,” Holden says. He dabs at the bridge of his nose with one sleeve. “Fuck that. You know me.”
“I know, but-“
“But just tell me,” Holden pushes gently. Never a rough push. Holden knows that Jeremy is on the edge, and a rough push is the last thing he needs. Instead he needs a gentle tug backward until his feet are touching concrete ground.
“Okay, Holden. Okay. It’s just really tough. I could tell you online. That’s the thing. I could tell you online because I can’t see your fucking reaction. But now….now it’s like I’m so exposed and shit. Give me a cigarette.”
“I quit,” Holden says.
“Yeah, right. Fuck.”
A long pause. Jeremy holds up his index finger and middle-finger as if a cigarette resides there. “Okay, Holden. Dude. I’m trying.”
They are standing outside in Holden’s backyard, which is well-kept and cozy, if not a little too small. Roses over there under the windowsill; dandelions sprouting right over there next to the dilapidated swing set Holden’s dad put together back in the early 90’s. There’s plenty of time left because summer has just unfolded and senior year is millenniums away. Plenty of time to lose your virginity and get drunk in the park when it’s dark and tell your best friend – your best friend since fucking Kindergarten – a deep dark secret to end all deep dark secrets. Holden chuckles to himself. That phrase reeks of middle-school, but there’s no other way to put it. Generally secrets aren’t bright and shallow.
Jeremy clears his throat for perhaps the tenth time. Then he began: “Okay. Uh, you remember when I told you all that shit about Nikki? That she told me she was bi at Frank Weakland’s party?”
Holden gropes. Nikki. Nikki who? Nikki Fincher? Mellon? Does it fucking matter? “Sure,” he says. A featureless girl with a blank face materializes in front of his mind’s eye. The details will fall into place later. As for now, it just doesn’t fucking matter.
“Well, at first it really bugged me. It really bugged me, but I don’t know why. Like it was like Nikki was my daughter, right, nd she just told me that she was pregnant or fucking every guy on the Football team or something. I was just disappointed, that’s all, I guess.” Jeremy took out a pack of gum and popped a piece in his mouth. “It’s stupid, I know. But I loved Nikki, and when I was dating her, everything she told me about her sex life bugged me. You ever see Chasing Amy?”
“Nope,” Holden says. “It’s a Kevin Smith movie, right?”
“Yeah. There’s one character that flips on his girlfriend when he finds out about her past. It bugged the shit out of him. It’s like that. I can’t explain it.
“Anyway, I let it go. But then it hit me. I’m so hypocritical. I’m so stupid and I know it’s just going to weird you out.”
Holden sighed. But he was still so patient. “It’s not going to. Just say it. You’re so close.”
“I’m a hypocrite because….I’m bisexual too.”
The sentence – the sentence that took Jeremy so long to say – hangs in the air like smoke. Holden stands with his hands in his pockets. His heart is beating fast. This is probably what Jeremy felt that night at Frank Weakland’s party, when Nikki (probably tipsy on cheap vodka) came out as bi. It doesn’t have a name. It’s shock; it’s anger; it’s sadness, all rolled in one. So many emotions that pinning a name on it would just be ridiculous.
Jeremy senses Holden’s shock, his anger, his sadness. He hangs his head and starts crying. It breaks the silence, at least.
Holden is almost grateful.
“Oh, God,” Jeremy moans. His face is hidden behind his hands. His shoulders are trembling. “You fucking said…you fucking said you’d no-not get creeped out. Fuck!”
Holden stares off in the distance instead of replying. He sees some neighbors lounging out on their porches, sipping lemonade behind their paperback novels. A dog is galloping back and forth, getting soaked by a sprinkler.