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

seizures, which I hate thinking about, ever. Since I rarely have them, but then I thought maybe he was talking about himself, Dylan.
    His eyes were sad but I made it all jokey, because I couldn’t stand to see him looking sad, not my golden boy, not my Dylan. I wanted to press myself into him and take all his sadness away, but I also wanted to be inside of him somehow and be that sadness in his eyes, to be tall like him and golden like him, able to sing out those music breaths forever. All of a sudden, I was scared of being me and Dylan being Dylan and I just wanted, just wanted for us to be together, mingled souls like in the bathtub. Or else I just wanted to be a tiny, tiny girl who could disappear into his hugs and not have to see his sad eyes, not have to see them looking at me but not telling me anything.
    Tom Tanner drove by and honked his horn. There was a bunch of soccer players in his truck. He waved. I waved back. Dylan’s eyes narrowed. He’s never liked Tom, since freshman year, although they were best friends in grade school, then Tom went out with Mimi Cote and everything got all weird.
    Mrs. Darrow yelled to us from the front door of her house, “I’ve got cookies if you two want some.”
    “Thanks, Mrs. Darrow,” I yelled back.
    We ran over and took a plate of cookies. Mrs. Darrow makes the best cookies. She asked Dylan about his parents and his brothers. She thanked us for raking up her leaves, which we always do, every year, but she always spends the rest of the winter thanking us.
    When we walked away, Dylan said, “You ever feel like everything you do, everybody knows about?”
    “There are no secrets in Eastbrook,” I said and added a hideous movie ghoul laugh and reached my hands out like a zombie’s. Dylan’s mouth twitched but he didn’t quite smile.
    He walked behind me into the house like he was protecting me from the whole world outside, a knight in shining armor. He shut the door behind us and locked it.
    “Did you take the key out?” he asked me because I am forever leaving keys in the doors. Dylan always tells me it’s because I’m so brilliant, because my mind is thinking about so many big things it forgets to focus on the little ones.
    I don’t feel brilliant now, crying on my bed with my headphones on. I feel stupid and blind and empty, an unused guitar. I feel like someone who has no idea who anybody is.
    I wish I still had some of Mrs. Darrow’s cookies. What would she think? She always said, “Such a beautiful couple.”
    Then she would pinch both our cheeks.

    “You look sad,” I said to Dylan that day, when we walked into my house with Mrs. Darrow’s cookies and the memory of Tom’s truck horn vibrating in our heads.
    He shrugged. “We all have burdens.”
    I held him against me and he held me against him and he smelled. He smelled like pine trees and Christmas. He smelled like green earth ready to farm on. He smelled like the wind.
    We made love that day. We made love most days and then I’d help him with his homework. But I remember that day best because afterwards he kissed me on the nose, like I was his baby and he traced my collarbone with his finger and said in his husky voice, “I will always love you, you know. Always.”
    “Me too,” I murmured.
    He grabbed my hand and held it tightly in his. “I mean it.”
    “Me too.”
    I will, Dylan. I am so mad at you for being a liar, but I will. I will always love you. I am mad at me for that, too.

    He was just a boy and I was just a girl and that’s how it was for a long time. He was just a boy and I was just a girl and he would write me notes when he was bored in class and I would read them and carry them around in my pocket. Then I would write him back. And he would write, “Can I come over this afternoon?”
    And we both knew what that meant. It meant, “Let’s sing silly songs, play a little guitar, and make love at your house on your bed while your mom’s at work.” It meant, “Let’s lie on the