Page 1 of The Friendship Study

Chapter One

Jesse

Between the music and my pulse thrumming in my ears, I think the pounding on my front door is thunder. The sky outside my window is slate gray, the clouds full to bursting.

But the pounding comes again, along with the ring of my doorbell, the two-tone sound distinctly un-storm-like. I turn my music down as I drag a balled-up T-shirt over my sweaty chest. My heartbeat is still coming down from the last set of back squats and my thigh aches from when the leg was in traction. A phantom pain that the doctors have hummed about skeptically in the two years since.

The doorbell rings again, three times in quick succession. “I’m coming,” I yell.

A broad-shouldered, stocky person stands on the other side of the glazed glass door. “George?” I ask as I yank it open, already knowing the answer. I’d recognize the shape of him anywhere.

He narrows his eyes and gives me a once-over, his lip curled in disgust. For a panicked moment, I wrack my brain for some event I’ve missed. One that I agreed to attend with him and forgot to cancel.

“You need a shower.”

I look down at myself. He has a point. My sweat has acted like glue, sticking dirt and dust to my skin. I need a shower and clearly my home gym needs one, too.

“I was working out,” I say stupidly.

He walks past me, careful to avoid skin-to-skin contact. George never liked to join me at the gym when we were together. We’d hit the yoga studio or spin class but he “declined to participate” in the toxic bro culture of most weight rooms. The result is that George has stacked, lean muscle and some of the best cardiovascular stamina of anyone I know. Since my accident he’s tried to get me to come with him to yoga again, and I’ve even acquiesced a few times, but I’m positive I didn’t agree to that today.

George stands in my entryway, his head swiveling between the living room and the kitchen.

“Not that it’s not nice to see you but...what are you doing here?” I ask.

He nods once and, seeming to make a decision, moves into the kitchen, placing a tote bag I hadn’t noticed on the counter and opening the fridge. Bottles and jars clink as he moves stuff around, placing a six-pack of beer inside.

This is officially weird.

The last time George drank beer, we’d stolen it from my grandfather’s beer fridge in the garage.

A fly buzzes past me and my still-hot skin puckers against the cool air. I’ve left the door open. I pull it closed and follow him into the kitchen. “Did we have plans?” I finally ask.

The answer is no. I know that it’s no. Not for his lack of trying. I’ve just been a terrible friend—ex—whatever, this past year...maybe even longer.

“Why don’t you go shower, Logan. You stink.” He places a bag of tortilla chips, a brick of cheese, sour cream, salsa, and avocadoes on my counter. He opens the cupboard at his feet. Shuts it.

“Where’d you put your casserole dish?” He sounds livid. Like rearranging my kitchen was a personal attack. But I’m still stuck on his use of my last name. He hasn’t called me Logan since we were in high school. Since we were both dragging ourselves through comphet in public, while giving each other hand jobs in his parents’ basement in private.

He came out first. By baking a cake and pipingI’m gayin rainbow icing on top, serving it to his parents after dinner. They were happy for him. His mom cried—out of happiness that he’d shared such an important part of himself with them, not out of any sense of disappointment. George came out and came into himself.

I came out more slowly. First, just to him.

I * don’t * just like girls, I’d typed into our private chat. Words I had written and deleted what felt like hundreds of times. The backspace button was practically smoking.

I know, he’d responded. He’d promptly asked me on a date.

Then I came out to our friends, but since most of my friends were George’s friends, other outcast kids he’d collected over the years, mostly queer theater kids, telling them felt less like coming out and more like landing in a loud, fluffy pillow of love and acceptance.

I came out to the fire station, too, but only after a few years on the job. After I made sure they saw my contributions as invaluable, and after a few of the old-guard vets, who used “gay” as an insult, had retired. For the most part, they were chill. A few blank faces that I’m sure were working hard not to show disgust, some confusion since bisexuality continues to be one of the most perplexing of all the sexualities known to straights. After I dropped a few “hose” jokes at my own expense, everyone calmed down. Since having sex in the firehouse, regardless of the gender of your partner, is expressly and certifiably prohibited, I didn’t have to hide much. But I was always worried that someone—one of my older coworkers who kept in touch or a rookie who’d idolized him—would out me to Pop.

Even when we were dating, to Pop, George was always just a friend. My best friend, butjusta friend. Back then, we’d used all of the same tools that straight boys used to emotionally distance themselves, including calling each other by our last names.

I probably don’t have the right to the feeling, butLoganmakes me angry. Pop isn’t here and to George, I’m Jesse. Jess. I’d even acceptJuicy, the name he called me only when he wanted to make me blush. A name I’d asked him to stop using once we stopped being boyfriends.

I let that anger dictate the next words out of my mouth. “Listen, you can’t just barge in on a Saturday afternoon,uninvited, and start making lunch. What the hell are you doing here?”

“No,youlisten.” He points a finger at me. George has always been able to give as good as he gets. “I tried giving you space. We all did. You’ve got yourself some new job you didn’t even tell me about, which is...whatever. You haven’t been dating and I get why you might not want to share that with me, anyway. Hell, you’re a private guy, Jesse. OK? I get it. But you are also my best friend.” His words end on a sigh, losing all of their bluster.

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