Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend Read Online Free Page A

crash in Dylan’s kitchen and scarf up all the food in the house, usually bagels. We always ate bagels and tea.
    Dylan always made my tea perfect, the way I can never make it. It would come out tasting like apples and cinnamon, not too strong, not too wussy weak like I make it. He’d put the perfect amount of honey in it, stirring the spoon around and around in the mug, without ever clanging the edges. Now, there’s no one to make me tea anymore.
    Now, he’ll be making some handsome boy tea, and they’ll kiss each other the way we used to kiss each other, soft and then hard, aching and then fulfilled.
    My heart throbs and my feet stop pedaling, because my lips will no longer be the kissed lips. My feet stop pedaling because really where do I have to go? I am in the middle of a road that winds through a blueberry barren.
    I was wrong. It is my heart that is the barren, not my head. My head is a river rushing, rushing, rushing and not knowing where it’s going. My head is a river rushing, rushing, rushing and looking for the home, looking for the ocean.

    There is nothing to do except go home and hide in my room, stare at Gabriel the guitar leaning against the wall, try not to think about music, try not to think about him.
    My mom knocks on my door.
    My arms hug my yearbook to my chest and I close my eyes, hoping she won’t come in. Hoping never works. The door squeaks open and her voice squeaks after it.
    “Honey?” she asks. “You okay?”
    I nod, but do not open my eyes.
    She says again, “You okay?”
    I nod but the nod is a lie and I do not want to be one of the liars so I make my tongue put air out of my mouth. The air forms a word. The word is no.
    She rushes in, because that is the kind of mom she wants to be. She rushes in and launches herself onto my bed. Her arms wrap up me and the yearbook in a hug.
    “Oh, honey? What is it? Do you want to tell me?”
    I shake my head.
    She smoothes down my hair with gentle hands. “You sure?”
    The volume of Barbra Streisand’s voice gets lower. My mom must have turned it down. Dylan’s song voice slips further and further away.
    I shrug. The thing is, I am really mad at Dylan. I am really mad at him but it’s not because he’s gay, it’s because he pretended not to be. How can I tell my mom that? How can I tell her that the boy she thought I’d marry never liked me that way at all?
    She hugs me and rocks me back and forth. “I’m here for you, you know. I’m right here.”
    “Yep,” I say. “Thanks.”
    I lean away from her. She moves the hair out of my face. It’s wet from my tears. Her voice comes out a murmur, “Oh, baby. I am so sorry you are so sad.”
    I sniff in. “Yeah, me too.”
    “Okay. I’ll give you some space, but you know if you need me . . .”
    “You’ll be right here,” I finish for her.
    “I haven’t heard you play today,” she motions toward Gabriel. “Maybe that would make you feel better.”
    I shake my head.
    I don’t think so.
    “My fingers are too cold,” I tell her. “Maine is too cold.”

    When you sit alone in your room, hugging your pillow to your chest and listening to pretty cheesy music because the love of your life has turned out to be gay, some pretty simple questions bounce around in your brain over and over again.
    Questions like:
    How long did he know?
    How many times did he kiss me and wish I were a boy?
    How many times did he groan inside when I kissed him?
    How could I not notice?
    It is a completely Mallory thing to hug your pillow to your chest and let your cat crawl all over you while you obsess about things, but I do it anyways and I start to remember one time last week. He came to my house after school. He held my hand walking up the steps and he had such sad eyes. He took my backpack off my back and said, “It’s too heavy for you.”
    I laughed and said, “It’s a heavy, heavy burden.”
    And he said, “We all carry heavy burdens.”
    I didn’t know if he said that because of my