Chapter 31: April 29th, 1992
The call with Cesar went as well as it could have. Last night Mark dialed him up and talked to him about their… bad habits, along with the nonstop anxiety that always came afterward as part of the package deal. It needed to stop—Sooner or later, it would all go wrong. Cesar, apologetic, promised not to cause him that kind of stress anymore.
Getting Cesar off his mind entirely was a different story. The damage was already done after days of stealthy flirting and Mark was left thirsting for more. Teasing Mark in class was Cesar's new hobby—he desperately needed a real one—and he invested everything into making himself impossible for Mark to ignore. Not today, though. Poor Cesar never looked so bored in his life. What else was he supposed to do when he didn't want to pay attention in Spanish class? Live up to his heritage and not suck at Spanish? As if.
Just before leaving him at his locker, Cesar asked him if he was sure he didn't need any "help", and Mark could only grunt in response with downcast eyes. There were a lot of things he wanted to say and do. All of them would have broken the illusion of heterosexual best friends they worked so hard to maintain. Cesar gave him a hard slap on the back and promised to call him at their usual time, punctuating with a sly little wink. Sounded like a promise of phone sex if Mark ever heard one.
There was a monster hidden deep in his mind that wanted to break free of its chains and beat the life out of him until he was a bloody smear on the floor. What was he thinking? He had the chance to screw Cesar silly practically whenever he wanted. Not only did he pass that up, but he even went out of his way to stop it. Who does that? Who does that?
Responsible people, he told himself. Risking a lifetime of regret for ten minutes of fun wasn't Mark's idea of a fair trade.
The creature retreated back to its prison and sulked.
The inescapable loop of his conflicting thoughts made it impossible to focus on anything else. He checked, rechecked, and checked again to make sure he was grabbing the right textbooks from his locker while his body was on autopilot. All he could think about were those eyes, those lips, that smile, and that dorky laugh that made his heart stop. Being away from him, not being able to touch and hold him… it was a cold, lonely prison. But for the sake of everything he had to stay firm on his decision. No funny business at school. That was final. Non-negotiable.
Not even if he was forced to sit close to Cesar in class, Mark on his deserted island of a lefty desk in the corner of the room and Cesar at the desk in front. Not even if every breath drew in strong traces of the same cologne he wore seemingly every day; the scent was now synonymous with him. Not even if his brain filled in the gaps with the memory of that cologne interlaced with his sweat. A Broadway play of visions of the things he associates with that smell would agonize him, and he'd pretend he couldn't feel a thing. No sympathetic smile or mischievous side-eye was going to shake him down. When their eyes met, Mark's gaze would certainly not follow the movement of Cesar's hand as he stroked a fingertip down his own leg in a snide reminder that a full-course meal was ready and waiting for him, if he would only play the game.
Fuck. This was going to be way too hard.
All Mark could think about now were those legs. Those inviting legs, pretty and lithe despite the thin layer of dark hair that Mark not-so-secretly loved, that welcomed him home every Friday night. He wanted to scoop Cesar from his desk, bridal style, and bring him somewhere they could be alone. To undress him, touch and kiss those legs, give him anything he wanted in fair exchange for such a feast for the eyes.
He held back the urge to bang his face against the door of his locker and checked his books again. Like he'd been telling himself every day for weeks, this was snowballing out of his control.
Gradually the crowd in the hallway thinned out, the ranks filing through the doors to their next classes. How long had he spent spaced out at his locker? He was going to be late. He checked his books yet again and started to close the door.
"Hey."
His head jerked in the direction of the familiar voice. The guy from gym class? Whoever that is. Mark still didn't know his name and didn't care. Only that he was very nosy and very annoying, his face memorable for all the wrong reasons. And that he didn't want to be dealing with him now of all times.
"Hey," he said back, dragging the word out to make it clear that this guy was not welcome, and slowly closed his locker. "Can I help you?"
"Whoa, take it easy big guy," he said, as he put his hands up in front of him in mock defensiveness, and Mark was already the snap of a thread away from swinging. "I just want to talk."
Mark made a show of swinging his backpack over his shoulder despite its weight. "Fine, but hurry up. I'm not getting a tardy pass because of you."
"I know what's going on between you and Cesar Torres."
His fist clenched around his backpack strap. "What are you talking about?"
"Break up with him."
"…Ex-fucking-scuse me?"
"Break up with him."
Mark blinked rapidly.
The audacity.
"Are you on drugs? Did the seniors pawn off their vodka on you? Weed? What gave you the impression that we're fucking dating?"
"Damn, look at you getting all defensive. You're sure as shit doing something. That lube bottle in the locker room? I found that. That's why they did that locker search."
"So it was yours?" Mark asked with a fake smirk.
"No, you douche. It wasn't there before, when everyone was in there getting changed. But you guys left the field to go back to the locker room, and then it was there."
"Calling me the douche when you came up starting shit," he snapped. "We didn't go in the showers. We only went to our lockers to get our stuff. It was probably there and nobody saw it or paid attention to it, I don't know. But it wasn't mine. Or his."
"Sure. And you guys coming out of the bathroom yesterday?"
He saw that? Where the hell he was and why he was tailing them? Obsessed.
"What about it?"
"Don't think it's normal to look all red and sweaty coming out of the bathroom like that. Like, both of you? And your hair combed like you're running damage control?"
"You think we fucked in the bathroom?"
He threw his hands up between them again. "You said it, not me."
"Cesar was taking me to the nurse because my stomach was acting up. We stopped in the bathroom because I couldn't make it that far. I was a red and sweaty mess because I spent like ten minutes throwing up."
"Doesn't explain why Cesar came out looking like that. Also, you went back to class instead of to the nurse? They would have let you go home for that."
"I wanted to. I forced myself to stay because I felt better after that and didn't want to make up the test I had in English later."
"Still doesn't explain Cesar."
"The fuck are you interrogating me for?"
He crossed his arms. "I want to know."
"I don't know, dude! I was hurling pretty hard, and he was probably struggling to keep me still or something since he was holding my shoulders while I heaved." Mark's arms dropped to his sides. He didn't realize until now, now that he was exhausted, how animated and aggressive he'd been throughout the argument. "Look. What do you want?"
"I told you what I want. I want you to break up with him."
"We're not fucking dating," he hissed.
"Do it. Or else everyone will know."
The late bell rang. Mark rubbed his palm down the side of his face. "They won't because we're not like that. What's your problem with me? I don't even know who you are."
"It's not you I have a problem with. Kinda."
"Him, then? What fucking for?"
The boy took a few small steps back as if he were anticipating Mark to lash out at him. "Why don't you ask him the next time you're ramming his ass?"
"I'm not asking him shit," he snarled as he stepped in closer. The first thing he'd said so far that wasn't a lie. Cesar didn't need to know about any of this. It would break him. Besides, he was done screwing around like that at school, so there was no way to prove anything. This guy was an obnoxious pain in the ass, but he had nothing. "Because we're not gay, we're not together, and you've got no proof because there is none, because it's not happening."
He seemed thrown off and even a little nervous that Mark actually closed the gap, subconsciously or not. "Yeah, you guys do a good job of not looking gay. Or sounding or acting gay. So yeah, nobody's going to believe me unless I get proof. But I'll get it. So you might want to ask him what he did to piss me off."
That was all she wrote; with that he was gone, in a hurry to get away from the much larger boy he picked a fight with.
Good riddance, Mark thought. But… Oh, Cesar. What did you do?
Curious as he may have been, there was still no telling Cesar about this. Not when that guy was full of shit; he had to be. Telling Cesar would mean stressing him out over nothing. There was nothing on them except his word against theirs. Perhaps if they'd kept up their risky antics for even a day longer there could have been a chance of him getting something, but now that they'd sworn off of it there was just no way unless their masks slipped.
Things would be better off this way. Mark made his way to the tardy slip counter a few hallways down. It would weigh on his mind, but he wouldn't let that boy near Cesar again if he could help it.
The question tormented him, though. What did Cesar do to make someone go through all that effort?
I love you so much, Cesar. But you're exhausting. The things I put up with for you.
