Page 33 of Diamond Ring
Alex doesn’t laugh though the edges of his mouth curve up. He looks around at the house, a McMansion special, all double-deck foyer and decorator-selected drapes. “These folks got money. Think they’d notice if some champagne went missing?”
“You know,” Jake says, “I’m sure they wouldn’t.”
The kitchen countertop is a colonnade of champagne bottles. Alex examines them while Jake plays lookout from the kitchen doorway.
“This work?” Alex holds up a bottle, the same brand that they sprayed on each other after winning the division series and league championship. And Jake has a hazy, ecstatic memory of them pouring it on one another, droplets from Alex’s skin ricocheting onto his. How it felt like they could reach up and touch the ceiling of the whole world. Until they fell about ten thousand feet too short. Alex must see him hesitate. “I’ll pick something else.”
They smuggle the champagne out of the party through the simple mechanism of Alex holding it by his thigh until they get out onto the quiet street. Light spills from neighboring houses. Fireworks crack and fizzle in the distance.
Alex is red-cheeked with the cold. He hoists the bottle as if toasting the neighborhood. And Jake didn’t rush as they left but his heart beats a rhythm against his ribs, an effusive, shaken-up kind of excitement.
“You want to go home?” Alex asks.
“We could. One of our neighbors always shoots off fireworks if you want to watch.”
Alex is even more careful on the drive back. A car merges into their lane, the driver either inebriated or distracted, and Alex slows to give it a wide berth, pumping the brakes suddenly enough to jar Jake’s arm.
“Shit, sorry.” Alex pats him on the thigh, hand curving over the muscle there, not moving his palm even after Jake regains his breath.
When they get back, Jake’s house is quiet and dark, his parents off at a party with their neighbors. They tiptoe inside anyway, turn on a minimal number of lights.
“We can watch from the deck,” Jake says, adding, “though it’s pretty cold,” mostly to watch Alex grumble.
“I’ll grab a blanket. Don’t want you to freeze to death in forty-degree weather.”
They sit on the outdoor sofa on the deck. Alex drapes a blanket over both of their shoulders, another across their laps, the way they do on flights when Jake gets chilly. The bottle of champagne sits on the deck table, foil glinting under the porch light.
“What time are the fireworks?” Alex asks.
“It’s not like a scheduled show. They just get drunk and pop ’em off until one of the neighbors yells at them to quit it.”
“Wow, that is scandalous.” Alex picks up the bottle and works off the foil, then, with slight hesitation, the little wire cap holding in the cork. “You mind if I drink this?”
“Figured that’s why you took it.”
Alex hums in agreement. He pulls the cork out, the neck of the bottle pointed away so it doesn’t gush. All that arises is a faint mist. He takes a long swig, wiping his mouth after. “You want some?”
“I probably shouldn’t.” Though Jake’s stuck with Advil all day, so he reaches for the bottle. It’s cold, but less cold than the air around them. He drinks then passes it back. They do that for a while, the mouth of the bottle growing warm from their lips like a transferred kiss. Even with the blankets, the air stings Jake’s face. Alex is warm the way he always is, solid the way he always is, and Jake’s mind drifts to the darkened corners of the backyard, to what their seasons will be like a continent away from one another.
“Did you really throw up on a playground?” Alex asks a few minutes later.
“Not my proudest moment. It was sort of a miserable night, even before the vodka.”
Alex doesn’t say anything to that, his silence itself a question.
“It was a couple months after Matt—After all that stuff happened. My parents were only just letting me go places by myself. I guess they were worried about me.” An understatement because his mom was his shadow for weeks. “But they let me once I said that I wanted to go with Blair to a dance. Like”—Jake takes a gulp of air—“withhim.”
A statement that hangs like the vapor curling off newly opened champagne. Jake feels similarly uncorked, as if all the built-up tension from the past few months suddenly depressurized.
“Huh,” Alex says eventually, “didn’t think he was your type.”
“He isn’t. Too tall.”And he isn’t you.
Another long silence, Alex not drawing away or shifting closer. Some of the neighbors are having a backyard party, noise rising from the adjacent lawn.
Jake checks his phone. A minute to midnight. His neighbors start counting down on the twenty; their voices intensify at the ten.
“We’re supposed to...” And Jake means that they should chant or drink or proclaim this year better than the last, but Alex misunderstands or understands perfectly, because he leans in, fingers skimming Jake’s jaw, calluses a gratifying weight on his cheekbone, and they kiss just as his neighbors cheer.
