Page 9 of Crybaby
Sasha laughed. “Okay, dancing good.”
Jason smiled and nodded, feeling caught out, overwhelmed. Hating himself a little for the spark ofwantingthat flared up, for his mind going anywhere but to helping a friend finally take a step out of the closet.
This wasn’t about Jason and the fucked-up issues he was going through. This was about Sasha, and it was going to stay that way.
CHAPTER THREE
How to Both Dread and Be Excited About Something:A Memoir by Jason Miller.
Jason tried to get into the right mindset by the time the next Saturday night rolled around. This was about Sasha. This wasn’t about Jason and the way he would curl up at night and feel the ache of something misaligned inside him. It wasn’t the taste of dirt in his mouth, as if he’d crashed face-first into the ground. It wasn’t about the way he couldn’t help but look at Sasha sometimes and think about touching him. Not sexually, not overwhelmingly, but with all the soft and painful feelings that had dug inside Jason, that made him want to brush his fingers across Sasha’s cheek, feel the curl of his smile, the warmth of it.
It wasn’t about how Jason only thought about making Sasha cry if it was followed by something so tender that it hurt to even imagine.
It wasn’t about Jason at all.
He’d never been anybody’s queer Sherpa or whatever, but he knew denying a crucial part of oneself, knew how frightening it was to finally acknowledge it.
They’d each decided to Uber there so they didn’t have to worry about drinking—something Jason was going to have to try hard at not overdoing—and Sasha was waiting outside of the club when Jason got out of the car. He was dressed in dark colours, clothes tight but not obscene. Jason had gone for light-wash jeans and a white T-shirt—it was a classic for a reason, okay? The place they were going to was casual, anyway—Jason called it a club because it had decent music and an area dedicated to dancing, but the bar was far enough away that you didn’t have to scream to be heard, and there were booths to sit and talk if dancing wasn’t your thing.
Sasha looked at him critically as Jason walked up, shaking his head. “Thought you wear fishnets,” he teased, a smile quirking his lips.
Jason rolled his eyes. “Shut up. How do you even know that term? Pervert.”
Sasha shrugged. “Sexy,” he pointed out as if that were all the explanation needed.
Jason knew that Sasha had never tried to get rid of his accent, but he’d spent enough time in America for wild inconsistencies in fluency, depending on what he was talking about, with incongruently complex words popping up every once in a while.
It’d been obvious to Jason from the start that Sasha was blindingly clever. Sasha had confessed to him how annoying it was when people thought he was dumb just because of his accent. When Sasha had first started working at Jason’s branch of the company, he’d sometimes see colleagues over-explaining things to Sasha, and Jason couldn’t help but snap, “He gets it,” at them.
It’d actually been why they became friends, although Sasha only told him that months after the fact. At first, Jason thought Sasha was indulging him, or taking pity on him, as Jason wasn’t very sociable with colleagues and often came back on Monday with a “nothing” reply to questions about what he did over the weekend.
It’d been nice to know he’d done something right—that he’d done something toearnSasha’s friendship. Jason couldn’t deny that it felt good to be the closest friend of the most popular person in the department. Not that itreallymattered—this wasn’t high school—but, well…high school hadn’t been the greatest experience for Jason, so he’d take his wins when he could.
The bar wasn’t excruciatingly full—it was one of those places that attracted queer people but wasn’t a destination for things like bachelorette parties or girls sick of getting hit on at bars—so they didn’t have to wait long for their drinks. They stayed leaning against the bar, Jason watching Sasha watch the rest of the crowd with curious eyes.
“What made you decide to, you know. Give this a try?” Jason asked.
Sasha turned to look at him. “Why not?”
Jason waited for something else, but when nothing more was forthcoming, he shrugged. “Okay, no need to tell me.”
Sasha laughed. “Is not like big thing. Like, not one thing. It just…I do a lot of work, you know? Thinking. Go to therapy…I talk, I look at…things. I don’t know.”
Jason nodded. He’d known Sasha was going to therapy and had sort of guessed why. “No, I get it.”
“You go here a lot? To bars?”
“Nah.”
“How you pick up, then?”
“For men, Grindr, mostly.”
“Ah, like Tinder.”
“Yeah, but worse.”
“Why worse?”
