Page 20 of Jealous Guy

He throws an arm around my shoulder and sends a belt of laughter into the night sky. The sound hits the moon and the stars and bounces off them. “No, you’re not. You’re the best person I know, O.”

“Ugh,” I say, shrugging him off. It does nothing to dissuade him. “Don’t get all sappy like that.”

“You are. You’re my person, Orion. You have been since day one, and you always will be.”

He says things like this to me often. He means it. He means it from the bottom of his heart and has no idea that it hurts me in very specific, hard-to-live-with ways. Ways that whisper stupid, impossible things to my heart, even though he doesn’t mean it the way I want him to mean it.

Though I know all that, a wild, rampant rush of emotion comes up when he says it. A rush of good things that don’t care about things as mundane as reality. Beautiful things. Soft, gentle things. Things that feel like something completely different to me than they do to Jordan.

I put my arm around his waist, holding on to the back of his T-shirt to ground myself. We sway slightly as we walk, and after several paces, I become aware that he’s waiting for me to reply. What’s surprising is that he’s giving me time to speak without prompting me.

Unlike most nights when I push things like this down for all I’m worth, my truth is riding high in my body tonight, radiating out from my heart and traveling rapidly up my throat. I swallow hard, trying to restore the equilibrium that makes it possible for me to survive being only Jordan’s friend. It hurts more than it should. A sharp stab. A splintering sting at the back of my throat. Tiny blades slicing into soft flesh as I force it down.

“You’re my person too, Jordy,” I say when I can.

He pulls me closer, and I hear the smile in his voice before he utters a word. “Jordy,” he whispers. “It’s been a while since I got a Jordy out of you.”

“It’s no big deal.”

He clunks his head against mine as our apartment building comes into view. “It’s a big deal to me, and you know it.”

8

Orion

Jordan’s childhood home was one of those houses that was never especially tidy. There were always a pile of shoes at the door and stacks of things on the kitchen counter. Books. School assignments. Art projects that had been started and forgotten. At Jordan’s house, kids weren’t relegated to their rooms for anything. Homework, games, clothing all spilled into the living room, and neither his mom nor his dad seemed to mind it. If anything, they relished the chaos that came with having a big family.

I found out early on that Jordan had four older sisters, but it wasn’t until I got to know his family that I truly understood how that shaped him. His sisters doted on him. All of them did. They adored him. Fawned over him and praised him for the most minor achievements, and I swear, they meant it from the bottom of their hearts. They thought he was the cutest thing ever when he was little, and that sentiment stretched out and followed him as he got older. By the time I met him, each of his sisters had poured their unique brand of pride and affection all over him, and it had stuck and become part of who he is.

It’s like he’s loved all round, you know. Completely. From all different angles and for lots of different reasons by a lot of people. It showed then, and it still does.

His sisters included him in almost all aspects of their lives. They told him everything. They told him about their friendships and relationships. Their thoughts and feelings. They let him into their worlds without holding anything back.

It was unfair, really, because what they did was essentially give him a cheat sheet to understanding women, and it’s not like he needed it. He already had a major unfair advantage when it came to girls without being blessed with a hoard of sisters to induct him into the inner workings of the feminine mind.

The first time I went to his house, I was met by a stampede of blonde hair and big smiles. Kirst, the eldest, was home from college for Thanksgiving, and everyone was in a high state of excitement. As soon as I walked through the front door, Slater sisters popped up all over the place and mobbed me.

“It’s so nice to meet you, Orion,” they cooed.

“Jordy has told us so much about you.”

“Are you enjoying Cape Elizabeth?”

“Jordy says you lived in New York before. That must be a big change for you.”

It was a relentless chorus of “Jordy this,” and “Jordy that,” until at last, Jordan dragged me upstairs to his room to get away from the din.

“Jordy, huh?” I teased, expecting him to be embarrassed by the diminutive version of his name.

Of course he wasn’t. He shrugged my comment off without apology and smiled in a way that was unfamiliar. It was a smile for when he was home and completely in his own element. It wasn’t as wide as his school smile, and it affected his eyes more than his other smiles did.

He shrugged, raising both shoulders high. “People who love me call me Jordy.”

Right off the bat, I could tell Jordan’s mom was a force to be reckoned with. Her hair was a mess and she wore paint-splattered jeans, yet she carried herself with the grace of a woman on her way to the Oscars. She laughed often and paused to think about what she was going to say before she spoke. She had the fire of a thousand suns behind her and was passionate about an inordinate number of causes. She was an artist and an activist, always working on something she loved, or fighting for something she believed in.

Mr. Slater was a lot quieter than the rest of the family, and sometimes I thought he might be a bit bewildered by the situation he’d found himself in. He was steady though. Really steady. The kind of man who sets others at ease simply by being in the room. The kind of man who makes you feel safe because, with him, you are.

I can’t remember the specifics that preceded what happened, but one day during my second year in Cape Elizabeth, Mrs. Slater did something particularly outlandish, and I laughed and said, “You’re not like other moms, Mrs. Slater.”