Chapter One-Leo
Senior year, according to others, went too fast. Leo didn’t agree.
He’d asked his friend Colin about it over lunch on the first day of school, wondering why everyone seemed down. Usually, Leo was the quietest at their table, so he’d felt uneasy when his small group of friends had sat silently as they processed what it meant to be high school seniors.
“It’s the last time for everything,” Colin had answered. “Aren’t you a little sad?”
No, Leo wasn’t. Leaving high school was part of the natural progression from child to adult and being sad about it wouldn’t make a difference.
Thankfully, the dim mood had faded. Now, mid-way through December with semester exams fast approaching, his friends were back to their normal, lively discussion.
Instead of discussing the end of their time at Edgewood High School, they spoke about what came next: college. Three in their group of five had made their decisions already, deposits sent to reserve a spot at their chosen universities. The remaining two were unsure of where they’d spend the next four years. Leo was in this second group.
That lunch period, his friend Benjamin—the other indecisive one—was being cajoled into explaining how far along he was in the decision-making process.
Leo ignored the chatter as he mulled over a text from his French teacher, Michael Bradford. They often messaged each other, so getting a text from him wasn’t concerning. What gave him pause were the three simple words of this text.
Michael: Coffee after school?
Michael reached out to him with the offer of coffee only when there was something specific to tell him. He contacted Leo to do other things frequently. Dinner wasn’t alarming; that message came at least once a month and often resulted in Leo venturing to the apartment Michael shared with his husband, Ian. Even Come to my classroom after school didn’t make him think twice.
But coffee . . . To Leo, coffee seemed like what you would drink when you wanted to talk about something serious. He imagined his parents had discussed their separation over lattes.
The first time Michael invited Leo to a café was to share that he’d asked Ian to marry him. Back then, this information warranted coffee because of the slightly embarrassing history between Leo and his teacher.
For Leo’s entire life, the Bradford house was a few blocks down the street from his own. Every Saturday, Michael Bradford came by to teach French to Leo and his younger sister, Elizabeth. Michael was eight years older and attractive. It didn’t take Leo—young, gay Leo—long to figure out he felt something toward him. He wasn’t sure what anymore. In his freshman year, Leo began to realize that he had been calling his attraction to Michael feelings to avoid addressing actual emotions.
The revelation hadn’t come until later in Leo’s freshman year—not until after he’d learned of Michael’s plan to marry—so their afternoon of getting coffee to discuss the news ended with Leo awkwardly sitting in the passenger seat of Michael’s car, refusing to talk as he was driven home.
This coffee—whatever it was Michael wanted to talk to him about—couldn’t result in a situation as uncomfortable as that, Leo was sure. Still, he didn’t want to wait the rest of the day to find out, so he finally texted back:
Leo: Sure, but wouldn’t it be easier to come to your classroom right now?
An answer in the form of small lettering below his message stated that the text had been read. No actual reply came.
“Who’re you texting?” Colin asked. “New boyfriend you’ve neglected to tell us about?”
The suggestion made Leo frown. Throughout his high school career, he had managed two relationships—both with boys, and both failures. At the end of the first relationship, Leo did the dumping, and in the second, he was the one getting dumped. He felt indifferent about the endings, no matter who brought them on.
His friends called him cold for this. Leo didn’t agree. He’d dated both boys because he was unsure of how to reject them, and when he conducted a breakup, he was quite gentle with it. As far as he was concerned, whether he had romantic feelings was out of his control, and not wanting to date someone he had little interest in didn’t make him cold.
“I’m texting Michael,” Leo told Colin. He continued to eat the salad he’d started on before the concerning text arrived. “Why would I want a new boyfriend now? In eight months, I’ll be starting college.”
“Like any of your relationships have lasted that long,” his friend Elijah said. Leo dismissed the statement, not seeing why it mattered.
When he said he would be starting college, he didn’t mean he wanted to avoid being in a relationship when he left. Leo had five months left for him to secure his place as third in their graduating class, and he couldn’t afford to let his grades slip, costing him the hefty scholarship that Edgewood offered its top three graduating students. In addition to that, he would be moving out of his mother’s house. They had agreed it would be best for him to live on campus, given he sometimes indulged in antisocial tendencies. He didn’t want to waste any of the time he could spend with his family on a relationship guaranteed to fail.
“Mr. Bradford?” asked Colin, as he always did when Leo referred to their teacher by his first name. “I always forget you’re friends. You go weeks without mentioning him outside of class, and then you call him Michael and it throws me off.”
When discussing French class, Leo was careful to refer to Michael as Mr. Bradford. It was more professional and the girls in his class wouldn’t glare at him for being informal.
“I don’t know if friends is the right word,” Leo said. All three boys at the table—had his friend Jackson been at school that day, he certainly would have done the same—fixed him with the same teenage-boy-head-in-gutter expression. He gave them a disappointed look. “He’s like an older brother.”
“Who you find attractive,” Colin added.
His friends didn’t know about his past crush on Michael, but Leo supposed it wouldn’t be difficult to presume that he was attracted to their teacher. That man attracted everyone interested in men. It wasn’t only Michael, either. All the Bradford sons were enthralling.
Growing up, Leo had been jealous of the Bradfords. Leo had black hair and brown eyes, and he didn’t think it was fair that he was stuck with that underwhelming combination while there were seven boys down the street with dark hair and golden or periwinkle eyes. Over time, Leo realized that not having an eye-catching appearance was far from the worst thing. Actually, he learned to appreciate and prefer it.
“I said brother for lack of a better term,” Leo defended.
Colin grabbed Leo’s water bottle to pull at the label. “Anyway, have you thought more about where you’ll go next year?”
Leo had, and he didn’t mind discussing it if it meant they dropped the topic of Michael. “I’ve narrowed it down to four,” he admitted, holding his hand out for his drink.
Colin laughed. “I started with four schools.”
“Well, he applied to the most schools out of all of us,” said Benjamin. “You had a lot of options. How did you get down to those four?”
Leo was unsure what he was searching for in a university other than an astrophysics program. Luckily, Edgewood provided each student with money to apply to their top five schools, so maximizing his options wasn’t nearly as expensive as it could have been.
“We only toured six schools, and of the six, those were the ones I liked the most,” Leo answered unenthusiastically. They were all great schools but something seemed to be missing. He couldn’t put his finger on what. “I don’t know how I’m going to choose.”
“I feel the same,” Benjamin said, followed by, “Dude, stop. You’re making a mess.” This was directed at Colin, who had taken to shredding the detached water bottle label, creating a little mountain of paper scraps. Leo let his gaze linger on the destruction before eating a cucumber out of his salad.
He tuned out the bickering that began. It wasn’t of interest to him, and there were so many other things to think about.
The end of high school, which he was apparently supposed to be upset about. Maintaining his rank in his class. Which school he would go to. What he was even looking for in a school...
Coffee.
“You haven’t come over for dinner in a few weeks,” Michael said as he raised his mug to his lips. “What’s up with that?”
Leo leaned back in his chair. This clearly wasn’t what Michael had brought him there to discuss, and he wondered how long he should allow him to avoid the conversation.
“I’ve been studying a lot lately,” Leo said, deciding it wouldn’t hurt to play along for a little while. “And I guess Lizzy and her new boyfriend aren’t as insufferable as she and her other boyfriends have been.” In the past when he’d dropped by Michael and Ian’s apartment, it was often to get away from whatever relationship his sister was currently in.
Lizzy had started high school this year—not at Edgewood, because she’d failed the entrance exam, to their mother’s disappointment. And although Leo didn’t like to admit it, his sister was quite beautiful and had her fair share of suitors because of it.
She had terrible taste in boys, always bringing home the most obnoxious guy who expressed interest in her. This time it was a kid a year younger than Leo who was absolutely terrified of him. Because of this, Lizzy and her boyfriend spent most of their time in her room.
“Does that mean you approve of this one?” asked Michael.
“No.”
Chuckling, Michael looked out the window they had sat beside. “And what about college? You still struggling to pick a school?”
“I’ve narrowed it down to four.”
“Which ones?”
Leo listed off their names.
“All in Illinois, huh? How’d you decide on those?”
Leo took a sip of coffee and burned his lips. “I don’t really know why I narrowed it down to those. I like the campuses, but that isn’t a concern of mine. I don’t know what I’m looking for in a school so it’s making it hard to choose one.”
“I’m glad you’re not taking the decision lightly.” Michael sounded distant.
Leo didn’t respond. He felt as if they’d made enough small talk. It was time for Michael to tell him why he was there.
Michael met his gaze evenly. “We’re moving, Leo.”
“Oh.” Leo could handle that. If they were leaving Illinois for somewhere else in the Midwest, Leo was certain he would still make the time to visit them, and if they went even farther than that—say, either coast—he’d be able to take a summer road trip. It would be fine. “How far?”
“We’re leaving the country.” It was quiet then, the sound of a coffee grinder filling in the space. “Ian got a job at a restaurant in France.”
Leo didn’t know what to say. He felt his lips moving, searching for a shape that seemed right. He came up empty.
Michael smiled sadly. “I know this must seem a little unexpected, but I assure you, it wasn’t a hasty decision. It’s been a dream of his ever since he finished culinary school, and we’ve been talking about it for a while.”
“When is this happening?”
“After the school year ends.”
There were many more questions Leo wanted to ask, but the next thing he said wasn’t any of them. “I don’t have a passport. How am I supposed to visit you without a passport?”
Michael looked surprised, then amused. “We thought about that, actually. The paperwork is at our apartment, so you have to come by for dinner soon. We thought it would be a good eighteenth birthday present. You know, since I’m not going to date you.”
“Ugh, shut up,” Leo groaned. He managed a smile. “You’re really moving to Europe?”
“We are.”
“Wow,” he said. “How are you not absolutely terrified? I mean, your entire life is here. What are you even going to do? You’re a French teacher.”
“I’m going to teach English,” Michael said. “It’ll be an adjustment, but I’m willing to make it.” He smiled down at his coffee. “I don’t want to gross you out with old married couple sap, but my entire life is here until Ian is somewhere other than here, and then my entire life moves to wherever he is. Of course I’m scared. We both are, but we’re also really excited. It’ll be uncomfortable for a while, because there’s no way monumental change won’t be uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It’ll be good for us to start over somewhere new.”
Leo pondered these words. That’s it.
When Leo got home, he went straight to his bedroom, ignoring his sister calling after him from the living room. He took a seat at his desk. It was organized neatly, all his books stacked against the wall and his pencils and pens in their holder. The only things out of place were the four acceptance letters on the desktop.
In that moment, he ignored them, pulling open his desk drawers one at a time until he found where he’d discarded the letters from the schools he had ruled out. For the first time since they made their way into the drawer, he removed them.
He was searching for the first letter he’d gotten back, the one he’d barely read before dismissing. The only reason he’d even applied to the school was because of his mother’s insistence.
Am I really doing this? he wondered, finding the crinkled paper and stopping to study it. He remembered looking it over the day it came in the mail. This time felt different.
His fingers curled, further wrinkling the paper. Michael and Ian were moving to Europe. He could manage this.
He found his mother sitting at the dining room table, a novel open in front of her.
“Hey,” she greeted when she caught sight of him. “You didn’t come home right after school. Were you with Colin?”
“Michael and I got coffee,” he answered, putting the letter down and sliding it over to her. “This is where I want to go.”
Surprise showed on her face as she read the school’s name at the top of the paper. “Are you sure?”
Nodding, Leo pulled out the chair across from her. As he sat, he kept his eyes on her face, observing her reaction. He knew this decision was unexpected, and the last thing he wanted to do was upset his mother. While she had been the one to recommend the school to him, he was positive she wouldn’t be excited about the distance. “I think I need to do this. I’m sorry it took me so long to decide.”
There was a minute of tension in which neither of them spoke. Then she folded her book shut. “I guess I’ll call your father.”
