Writer’s note
Maybe if this boy had never fallen in love in the first place - but he did that when he didn't know what was happening. Do you get a do-over where you get to rewrite the rules of love? No, you don't. I'm writing about a time that comes after the fact, after it's too late. What then? The luxury of high school is in the past, when the illusions worked so well to keep the future away. But the time to get real seems to arrive sooner or later, and a boy doesn't necessarily know what to do.
All Those Sundays
A boy wakes up to the fact he has had a for-real relationship going on for a long time - but it does him no good to realize that. Forbidden love doesn't work when your boyfriend is the preacher's kid in the church that you go to. The hopeless love that Blaine feels sends him down the stone pathways of the town and cradles him in the lime-green lights coming off of his stereo.
Blaine at 20 is disillusioned in love, imagines wandering off to St. Louis for no good reason - as if they don't have love in St. Louis.
Where we meet... out of the way and nobody needs to know about it.
The beginning of the story…
I guess I found the wrong guy to fall in love with. I mean, the church that me and him go to is not exactly down with the idea.
Two boys that are like that.
You haven't heard the worst of it, though. He's the minister's son.
If you're gonna get yourself in trouble, you may as well go out in style.
He doesn't know how I feel about him. You see, we've been friends for a while. What it comes down to, I suppose, is that I can no longer tell myself that this is something other than what it is.
Yeah, I'm in love with him.
He's 19, I'm 20. We went to the same high school. Now we go to the same college and we've started hanging out more than we ever did before.
I'm gonna blame my feelings on the month of April but it's not gonna do me any good. The month gets off scot-free and I know I'm the one that's gonna pay the price.
I don't mean I plan to tell Raleigh how I feel about him. What I mean is that it's gonna hurt me because I can't tell him that.
What I'm gonna do is nothing. Me and him will keep on doing things and I'll just punch him in the shoulder once in a while.
There's no way around it. I love him and he can't know it. The world would blow up if he knew.
Whenever I think about it, it always ends the same way. If I say too much he is going to get suspicious. From there you can see how the conversation ends with him telling me that he doesn't want to see me again.
As for him telling his father, yeah, he probably would. Like I said, the world blows up.
I'm walking to this place we go on campus for sandwiches and stuff. First I need to tell you that we are not away at college. It's in our hometown, plus we both are living at home.
Sure, I've thought about how me and him could get a room together or something, but that's just another one of the ways my mind gets me in trouble. Then I think things through like I do. We have never talked about how we could be roommates.
Raleigh said he was going to meet me here. I get the table that we usually sit at. It's an underground place, this cafe or whatever they call it. I mean that you have to walk down these steps from the main level. Not that it matters.
I spot Raleigh when he reaches the bottom of the steps. He knows where to go, he doesn't need to look.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey yourself."
He sits down and looks at me. It's like he's gonna say something but he doesn't.
So I do.
"I might get one of those smoothies."
He looks right through me. If somebody asked him what I just said, he couldn't tell them.
"Blaine," he says, "I've got a problem."