Occasional Signs

CASSODAY 40 MILES

EL DORADO 60 MILES

WICHITA 90 MILES

They had been in the car for over an hour already and, besides Jeff asking Adrian if he was ready to go after they stopped for gas on their way out of town, they hadn’t spoken the whole ride. With each passing mile marker, with each destination sign, taunting him with how close they were nearing home, Jeff felt his heartbeat increasing, his palms growing sweaty, his stomach churning. Even his neck was hurting for all the times he had turned to glance at Adrian, waiting for either Adrian or himself to start speaking. But nothing ever happened. The thought that they would arrive in Wichita with nothing to show for all their time together made Jeff want to scream, and he began to doubt if the last hour and a half of the ride would be enough to change his life. 

Jeff partly felt he shouldn’t have been surprised at this turn of events, or lack thereof. Although they were in the same friend group, Jeff sometimes felt like he and Adrian never actually talked. Mostly Jeff felt like he didn’t know how to start a conversation with Adrian. Whenever they did have a few moments together to chat, just themselves, Jeff felt the pressure of his unrequited love consume him, pressing down on every word he might say until it was flattened and useless. And Adrian, for his part, rarely struck up conversations with Jeff, which Jeff had desperately tried to understand why, but to no avail. 

So when Adrian asked him one day at lunch about the scholarship exam at Washburn, Jeff was taken aback. In fact, he thought he had misheard, thinking Adrian was instead telling him he was going on his own. 

“Oh, that’s cool. Well, I guess maybe I’ll see you there,” Jeff said, his voice quavering with disappointment. 

Adrian had laughed at him then. “No, sorry, I was asking if you want to go together.” 

“You want to go with me?” Jeff asked so skeptically that Adrian began to doubleback.

“Well, yeah, but only if you want, or can…” 

“Oh! I mean…yeah, sure, of course. That’d be great!” Jeff exclaimed, telling himself to take it down a notch. 

“Ok. Cool,” Adrian replied with a small smile. “Do you actually mind driving? I think your car is nicer and my parents don’t like me driving too far with mine.”

Jeff’s car definitely wasn’t nicer, but he liked the idea of Adrian depending on him. “Yeah, that should be fine. I’ll check with my parents and we can figure out logistics.” 

For Jeff, this was as good as setting up a date. Adrian was asking to spend two and a half hours in a car on a Saturday, plus test time, plus lunch and then maybe a tour, even dinner, and then the drive home, alone together. Adrian was asking for a whole day affair. 

Though Jeff knew it was unlikely that anything would happen—Adrian didn’t know Jeff was gay, and Jeff was 99.99999% certain that Adrian was not gay–the chance to spend that much time alone with Adrian made Jeff feel like it was an opportunity for something. Maybe Jeff would come out to Adrian, maybe Adrian would come out to Jeff, maybe they would hold hands while driving, maybe they would kiss, maybe Adrian would declare his love for Jeff, suggesting they get a hotel room and stay the night, having already planned out what they would tell their parents. Maybe Jeff would finally have a boyfriend. Or, maybe, Jeff thought, bringing himself back to reality, he would simply finally have someone to talk to. 

WICHITA 20 MILES

WELLINGTON 55 MILES

OKLA. CITY 182 MILES

Jeff tried to time his glances to Adrian’s face with the headlights of oncoming cars, hopeful to catch a glimpse of something, anything, in his eyes. 

“Sorry, you don’t mind the music, right? You can choose a CD if you want,” Jeff tried, feeling stupid for asking such a question near the end of their trip. 

“Nah, this is fine with me,” Adrian said. Finally, Adrian’s eyes moved away from the road and onto Jeff’s. There was a message there, Jeff knew it, but he honestly didn’t know what it was. 

This too was something Jeff was used to. Jeff was constantly in search of some kind of nuance behind everything that Adrian did or said–every word, every look, every movement was an opportunity for Jeff to divine Adrian’s interest in him. And mostly, to Jeff’s dismay, nothing could ever be discerned…until it could. Indeed, what spurred Jeff on, what kept him going down this interstate of infatuation, were the occasional signs, or what Jeff thought were signs, of some kind of mutual interest. 

The most recent signs had appeared the evening of the fall homecoming dance a few weeks prior to this momentous Saturday. His friend group had dressed up and met at their friend Brian’s house for pictures before heading over to the school together. When Jeff arrived, he immediately looked for Adrian, and after he scanned the room for a second, he spotted him sitting on the couch with their friend Jason. To Jeff’s surprise, Adrian was looking directly at him, and he couldn’t help but wonder if Adrian had been waiting for him, watching the door for his arrival. Adrian smiled at him and then turned back to Jason. For a moment Jeff stood frozen in the room, unable to decide what to do next until Brian’s parents yelled for everyone to head outside for pictures. 

Despite this burning look he received upon entering Brian’s house, he and Adrian didn’t interact until later at the dance. Jeff was standing off to the side away from the dance floor studying Adrian as he danced with his on-again-off-again girlfriend, Kara, when Adrian stopped dancing and started to head off the dance floor towards Jeff. Adrian was walking with such purpose that Jeff half-wondered if he was coming to tell Jeff to stop staring, half-wondered if this was the moment they would finally kiss. 

“Having fun?” Adrian said with a big, knowing smile. He had to lean in close to Jeff so he could be heard over the blaring sound of early 2000s hip hop music. Jeff felt Adrian’s nose touch his ear before Adrian corrected himself away from Jeff.

“Oh, tons. I love this,” Jeff deadpanned over the voice of Mary J. Blige. He hated dances because it reminded him that he couldn’t dance with the person he most wanted to, but he always went because he also hated the idea of missing out on an opportunity to be with Adrian.

“You should head out there, find someone to boogie with!” Adrian clapped Jeff on the shoulder. He was teasing Jeff, which Jeff loathed and adored in equal measure.

“Did you just say ‘boogie with’?” Jeff gave Adrian an incredulous and disgusted look. “Who are you? My grandpa?” 

Adrian laughed and shoved Jeff a little. “Come on! It’ll be fun. You can come dance with Kara and me. And Alicia’s there, too.” Jeff saw Kara and Alica waving vigorously from the dance floor. He really didn’t want to dance with Adrian and Kara and Alicia. But he didn’t want to be a party pooper in front of Adrian either. 

Jeff rolled his eyes dramatically. “Geez, fine!”

Adrian’s face flashed with genuine surprise. “Really? Nice!” He grabbed Jeff by the elbow to drag him out to the middle of the dance floor. Jeff’s arm burned where Adrian held him, and he didn’t know how Adrian wasn’t pulling back his hand. When they got to the center where all of their friends were, Adrian announced Jeff’s arrival, which again embarrassed but also pleased him. 

After everyone acknowledged his presence they all went back to concentrating on dancing. He soon found himself getting caught up in the mood around him. From the outside, he must have looked…happy. And as the music started to move through him, he realized he was having more fun than he expected. Jeff gazed at his friends and pinpointed a feeling of belonging, of non-otherness, that wasn’t usually there. For a brief moment, Jeff felt like he was one of them, and the relief was as palpable as the thumping of the bass.

And then the DJ changed the song to a slow song. 

He had been mortified to be caught on the dance floor at such a moment and quickly started to make his way off. After a few steps, he felt a strong hand on his shoulder and found Adrian pointing to Alicia, who was waving Jeff over to her. He examined Adrian’s face in the colorful dance floor light to see if he could glean any meaning from this, from Adrian’s preoccupation with Jeff dancing with Alicia. But he couldn’t, he could only see Adrian’s encouraging smile. 

Instead of risking coming across as rude or drawing attention to his lack of desire, he moved towards Alicia and smiled, “Hey, shall we dance?” Alicia nodded and put her arms around his neck as he put his hands around her waist. 

He caught Adrian’s eye one more time. This time, he didn’t have to wonder if Adrian was looking at him because Adrian’s look seemed to barrel into him. Jeff didn’t know how else to interpret the intensity of Adrian’s stare. It had to mean something, right? But the longer he held Adrian’s eyes, Jeff realized that it was his own sadness being reflected back to him. Adrian may have wanted to tell Jeff something, but suddenly Jeff wasn’t sure he wanted to hear it. At this, Jeff, almost begrudgingly, turned away. He regretted it immediately. When he looked back a few seconds later, Adrian had already buried his face in Kara’s neck. 

Part of him wished at that moment that his crush was on Alicia and not Adrian, that this moment with her could have been the start of something, something that didn’t have to risk losing his family and friends. But he knew it would never be like that for him, and all that rushing happiness that had flowed through the music and into him for the last fifteen minutes was mopped up and wrung out. 

Jeff stayed away from the dance floor for the rest of the night and none of his friends tried to coax him on again. 

CITY LIMIT

WICHITA 

POP 355,076

As the car ride stretched on without any semblance of conversation, let alone proclamations of love, Jeff began to berate himself for being so pathetic. One for having thought something would happen at all, let alone of its own (that is, Adrian’s) making, and two, for being unable and too afraid to initiate some sort of chain of events, whatever that might be. 

On the way to Topeka, they hadn’t spoken much either, but Jeff had chalked that up to the early hour and anxiousness about the test. And then after the test they had talked a lot, but mostly about the test and the answers they got to different questions and pondering how they did. Both of them felt like they had done poorly, but both of them told the other that they were sure they had done great. And then they had the tour, where they talked only occasionally, trying to listen to the guide, but making time for jokes and comments about what they were seeing or awkward things the guide said. Later they had gotten a quick bite to eat at Wendy’s (Adrian made Jeff choose), where they scarfed down their food and barely spoke. 

Now they were alone, really alone, without distraction. Perhaps they were tired from a long day, but Jeff didn’t think this excuse held out for an entire trip from Topeka to Wichita. The more silence there was, the more intensely Jeff wanted, needed, something to happen. This was the time. Every road sign they passed seemed to have been overwritten with the word TALK. Talk, talk, talk. Why couldn’t they just talk?

The thought occurred to Jeff that he didn't even know what he would say. Was he really just going to say “I’m gay”? Or, worse, “I’m in love with you.” He pictured Adrian freaking out and asking Jeff to stop the car so he could get out and call someone else, or maybe even the police. 

But what if Adrian was waiting to say something? Maybe that’s why he wasn’t speaking. He was too scared, too afraid of the same rejection. No, not just rejection, absolute ostracism. Maybe neither of them could find the words to say the one thing they most did and didn’t want to say, and it was clogging up their throats and mouths until they could no longer breathe. 

WELCOME TO CEDAR PARK COMMUNITY

Time was both rushing by and stretching out, and suddenly, but not for the first time, Jeff wished he were a different person. A braver one. One that spoke. One that wasn’t shy. One that wasn’t afraid of being who he was. One that could be the stronger person for the both of them. One that could help them cross that impassable bridge. But he wasn’t. And they didn’t speak. With each passing block, Jeff became more and more agitated and yet quieter and quieter, until he was only a sigh and Adrian only the sound of breathing.

At last, Jeff pulled into Adrian’s driveway, and in a small moment of bravery, he parked and turned off the car. He felt Adrian’s eyes on him then but neither of them moved and again there was only silence for a few moments, perhaps only milliseconds, until Jeff cleared his throat. 

“Thanks for the ride.” For a second, Jeff was confused, thinking he had spoken. But it was Adrian’s voice coming through the silence. 

“Um, right. Yeah, no problem.”

Adrian grabbed the door handle. 

“Um,” Jeff said, clearing his throat again. 

“Hm?”

Jeff saw the mountain of syllables in front of him and couldn’t bring himself to climb it. 

“Did you say something?”

“No, sorry. No. I didn’t. Yeah, ok, cool. I guess, um…” Jeff waited at that moment for any kind of sign from Adrian, but there was nothing. Adrian was acting as if this was all normal and expected. “Yeah, I guess I’ll see you Monday?” 

Adrian nodded, “Yeah, see you Monday.” And then he climbed out and shut the door. 

The rush of air from the door hit Jeff in the face, bringing with it the realization that on this Saturday unlike any other, but somehow exactly the same as every other day, he was ending it the same way he started it: alone.