Page 32 of Disorderly

“Heart my foot,” Ashley scoffed. “More like sex. You men are all pigs.”

Greg and I shared a look as Dr. Stone admonished her. During the lecture, I slipped out, holding my hand up to mimic a phone receiver to let Greg know I’d call him. If I’d stayed any longer, I would have explained to Ashley how hypocritical her comment was when she was the one who kept propositioning me to have group sex.

The halls were empty as I walked towards my classroom. The students were either in the cafeteria, outside in the courtyard since the weather was still relatively nice which meant there wasn’t a windchill and it wasn’t snowing, or they were in various classrooms used for club meetings. But as I neared Katy’s locker, I saw her reaching in, looking for something. Since I didn’t have a meeting tonight afterschool, I thought I’d take the chance and offer to drive her home. It would be a way to get to spend some time with her alone. Something I hadn’t seemed to manage in what felt like forever. But certainly, since beforethe kiss.

“Katy,” I called softly not wanting to scare her. Anything in the normal range tended to echo in this hall for some reason that I’d never been able to figure out. Yet despite my best efforts, she jumped, clutching her chest as her eyes widened in fear. “Relax, Katy-bear, it’s just me.” I placed my hand on her shoulder. It was the most I could do in this school and even then, I was probably crossing the line if it had been anyone else.

“Oh, Pe-, I mean Mr. Evans”—she glanced up and down the hall—“you scared me.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to.” I wanted to roll my eyes at the phrase. I’d been saying it far too much to her lately. “I just wondered if you wanted a ride home today. My meeting was cancelled so I thought maybe we could spend a little time together. Maybe bake something.”

She chewed on her lower lip. A movement that both saddened me to see and never failed to make my muscles clench for a whole different reason. One I definitely couldn’t acknowledge on school property. But since I knew, she didn’t mean to turn me on with that gesture, I focused on the fact that she tended to do it when she was uncomfortable. And in this case, I knew without her even having to say it that she was turning me down.

To save her, I rushed in, giving her an out even if I hated the fact that I wouldn’t get to spend time with her. “It’s okay if you already had plans. I just wanted to make the offer. We miss seeing you at the house.”

“Now it’s my turn to say sorry.” She grinned at me, and I forced myself to return it. Both of them were fake. Something that we never did to each other before, and the act pained me. “I have to head downtown to seek donations for the gift baskets for the fundraising raffle for the Christmas hampers. But I promise I’ll stop in and say hi to Jarrod in case I don’t get to come over tonight.”

With the sound of doors opening further down the hall, I stepped back, widening the distance between us. I wasn’t satisfied with her answer, but there was nothing I could do. Not with the hallway beginning to fill with students. I’d sacrificed my privacy to keep her from being bothered by other students over our friendship. I wasn’t about to make it meaningless by having people see us together again.

I walked away even if each step felt like I was widening the chasm that grew between us. One that I needed to learn how destroy before I lost more than my friendship with her.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Jarrod

I paced through the house,searching for something out of place, something to organize, but with the stress of the last few weeks, I couldn’t find a single thing that needed my attention.

The house seemed emptier than usual with Peter chaperoning the school Harvest Dance tonight. It also meant that there was absolutely no chance of Katy dropping in since this was one of the dances that her social club used to gather donations of food and warm winter clothing for those in need in our community. It meant my evening stretched out, empty and boring before me. The Pikes weren’t even playing tonight—well they were, but it was an away game in Ontario so that was out.

I would have gone to Strönds with the guys, but although I knew them, they were still more Peter and Jason’s friends than mine. None of them called me up to invite me out. Instead they’d call one of the others and invite us all out in a group. In Winnipeg, I’d had friends. Friends that I’d made independently of Peter and Jason. It meant that on nights like tonight, I’d have someone I could call up to go out with. And while I could call Kyle or one of the others since I did have their numbers, I hesitated to do it. It didn’t seem like we were at that stage of friendship yet. Which meant I was alone with my rambling thoughts about potential and real problems. Never a good place for me to be.

“Fucking shit!” I slammed my hand against the wall leading down into the basement. Cracks appeared like spiderwebs radiating out from where my palm struck the drywall. Thankfully I used it instead of my first otherwise I might have gone right through it. At least this was an easier patch job. Something I could do tonight so that no one knew I lost control. As an added bonus, it gave me a job, something to keep my mind off the problems in my head. I just hoped that Jason left the spackling compound and tools in the garage as well as some leftover paint.

I pushed all thoughts about Peter, Jason, and Katy from my head as I stomped through the house to the garage, focusing on what I needed and the steps I needed to follow to fix the wall. But it was hard. So, so hard. Each place that my gaze landed on, attempted to push forward a memory with one of them. Some made me smile. Others made me sad. And others made me frustrated. Although frustrated tended to be the most predominant one lately. Hence why the wall needed to be fixed.

On the long shelving unit that spanned one wall in the garage, I found what I needed. A task made easier since I’d come through about two weeks ago, organizing and labelling all the shelves and drawers. I’d even taken small baby food jars that I found in one of the flea market sales we’d gone to earlier in the fall and filled them with the various paints used throughout the house. On each jar, I listed the paint name, the name of the company, the colour tints used, and then the rooms in the house where we’d painted with it. Even Peter should be able to fix issues if either Jason or I weren’t around.

Unfortunately, the repetitive movements of spreading the drywall compound over the section of wall containing the cracks, allowed the thoughts I’d been actively trying to supress, to filter back in.

Things in my life were stable at the moment. Work was great. The office was beating expectations with signing up new clients. Working with Angela and Nancy was a godsend. The office was calm and relaxed. None of the high-pressure stress that permeated the Winnipeg one. We could do our work without having the big bosses looking over our shoulders and breathing down our necks. It was better than I dreamed. And I was thankful for that since the other parts of my life weren’t as straight forward.

In the weeks sincethe kiss, nothing had changed, and everything changed. Peter treated me the same… mostly. While we’d kissed before that day, it was always in a sexual situation, but since that public kiss, he was freer with them… at home. In public, we were still the same. Except for the women. Neither of us tried to pick them up. For me, I could say that I didn’t want to complicate things when people knew that Peter had kissed me, thought we were a couple. I didn’t want to add to the rumours I knew had to swirling around town even if no one was saying anything to me.

But I’d be lying. I didn’t chase women the same way I used to, but it didn’t have anything to do with Peter, the kiss, or the move to Voyageur Bay. Instead it was Katy who kept me from doing those things. Or more accurately, it was the thought of her.

Ever since the that woman in Winnipeg, the one who I fantasized was Katy, thinking about being with another woman felt like cheating. And those feelings only intensified with the more time I spent with her. Not that I’d been spending much time with her since the kiss, and I didn’t know how to take it. Was it just because school had become busy? That’s what Peter said when I mentioned it to him. Then he told me that other than the few times she’d popped by to drop of some baking, he only ever saw her in passing in the halls at school. Their conversations as limited instead of the hour-long talks, they used to have over the phone when she’d been younger, and he’d lived in Winnipeg with me. Whereas I still saw her once or twice a week when she’d stop by the office for a few minutes or for a ride home.

And if that was the case, if her contact was limited due to school pressures, I was okay with it. I wanted her to be happy, to experience the life of a high schooler that we got it. Those were important foundational experiences, and I never wanted my feelings for her to impede that.

But still I worried.

What if she was pulling away because she didn’t accept the relationship between Peter and I? What if she looked me differently because she knew I was sexually intimate with guys? Well only two, but still, it was different that what she knew of me. And even thinking those questions showed me how far my thoughts had spiralled. Katy grew up with Jason being openly bisexual and she still treated him the same. During our phone conversations, he told me that she was still talking to him almost daily. So the lack of contact couldn’t have anything to do with her having a problem with me being, well, me since I wasn’t sure just what I was. I’d never stopped to think about it, to put a label on it. Instead I was just me. Crazy, obsessive, worrywart me.

“Jarrod? Are you here?”

The sound of someone’s voice breaking the silence out of the blue made me jump, dropping the plastic tub of spackle. I watched as it bounced, cracking open the side, flinging pink compound in every direction as it made its way to the bottom where it spilled a large clump. Fuck! This would be a mess to clean up.

“Jarrod?” The voice came again, louder, and easier to identify.

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