1: The Quiet War
In the summer of 1976, I chose Benedict Arnold for my AP history paper. I told my parents as they played their nightly game of Canfield—a kind of double solitaire. My father, a professor of American history, smiled. My mother, who taught Roman history, pursed her lips just enough for me to notice. In the war of attrition that was their marriage, I’d put a point in his tally, a loss in hers.
I hadn’t meant anything by it. It was the Bicentennial, and the country was drowning in red, white, and blue. From Volkswagen Bugs to my windbreaker jacket, patriotism was everywhere. A paper condemning the nation’s most notorious traitor seemed like an easy A. In 1976, even Judas might have had more sympathizers.
“You’ll want to look into his wife,” my father said, scanning his cards. “Everyone blames Arnold, of course. But his wife—Peggy? Some say she was the real traitor. A spy, a Loyalist. You know…”
His words drifted as my eyes fixed on my mother’s deft hands. They moved quickly but quietly, her cards held close, then moved to the stacks of shared aces. She was a meticulous player, building her empire in silence while my father talked. They played every night. Sometimes he won. Sometimes she did.
Her last card slapped down—the King of Spades. Her hand was empty; her side of the table clear.
“Canfield,” she said.
My father frowned, still holding cards. “Damn it.”
I sighed, my mind already elsewhere—far from their polite war that had nothing to do with me.
I slipped upstairs past the wall of sepia-toned ancestors and framed diplomas, into my room. I closed the door and locked it with an old bolt. The room was small but mine, with swim medals hanging next to posters of Elton John and KC and the Sunshine Band.
Above my bed was a poster of Mark Spitz in his swimsuit, Olympic medals gleaming, mustache immaculate. I told my parents it was for “inspiration.” They assumed it was about swimming. But under his gaze, I jerked off, quiet and quick, imagining him between my legs. A stifled grunt escaped me as I came, wiping my mess off with an old t-shirt.
Done, I flopped back onto the bed. The summer stretched ahead like a blank page. With graduation, my friends had scattered—some off to family lake houses, some to jobs in bigger cities to make money for college—leaving our college town emptier.
My AP paper loomed, but I couldn’t bring myself to work on it. The only revolution that interested me wasn’t in history but in the present—
It was everywhere—in the news, on the talk shows I watched late at night on the fuzzy black-and-white TV in my room. New York City channels, close enough to pick up, far enough for the reception to crackle. Sophisticated adults joked in barely veiled double entendres, talked about open marriages, free love, gay rights.
The sexual revolution, they called it on TV and in the news. But I was sidelined—too young, too distant, too tentative—watching it all through a grainy screen.
Downstairs, my mother’s voice called out: “It’s your turn to take out the trash, Michael.”
Even would-be revolutionaries, it seemed, had chores.
2: The Dentist’s Office
At the dentist’s office, my mother sat leafing through a back issue of Archaeology, her brow tight in concentration. My eyes drifted to the magazine rack—Reader’s Digest, Newsweek, and tucked in the back, a copy of Time with a photo of an Air Force sergeant on the cover and the headline: I AM A HOMOSEXUAL—The Gay Drive for Acceptance.
I cracked it open on my lap, careful to keep the cover hidden. Mixed in with ads for aftershave, cigarettes, and commemorative bicentennial quarters was an interview with the sergeant. The article spoke of gay bars and bathhouses where men met for sex. Not the few soft-spoken, neutered fops I’d seen on TV sitcoms—the ones I couldn’t see myself in—but men with muscles and body hair, men who had impulsive, reckless, unapologetic sex.
“‘It’s much easier dealing with men than with women,’” I read. “‘You don’t have to play any games or strike any poses. You just sidle up and pop the question.’”
I wondered if I could ever sidle up to anyone. Ever pop ‘the question.’
Later, as my mother scheduled my next appointment, I slipped the magazine under my windbreaker. In the car, I felt her eyes on me—a quick, arched eyebrow that said she noticed the bulge but chose to let it go.
At home, my father was in the kitchen, scrubbing paint from his hands. Flecks of white stubbornly clung to the soft hair on his arms. He’d spent the last two weekends fixing up the carriage house—patching drywall, slapping on coat after coat of paint—so they could rent it out as a studio apartment, to offset my tuition.
Since both my parents taught at the women’s college, I’d have had a free ride if I’d been born a girl. Instead, it was just another school I’d never belong to. Honestly, I was relieved—I’d be away at college in the fall. Maybe there, surrounded by other boys, I’d finally have my own sexual revolution.
“Michael,” my father called, drying his hands on a kitchen towel, “you might want to dig into Arnold’s time in Philadelphia. There’s a lot there—his resentment, the debts, the way Congress kept passing him over. People want their traitors simple, but it’s never that clean. And his wife, Peggy Shippen—people overlook her, but she’s fascinating. The real story’s in the motivations.”
He leaned against the counter, one wrist still streaked with white. “Just don’t leave it to the last minute, okay?”
“I won’t,” I muttered, clutching the magazine tight against my chest.
He nodded and turned toward the window, squinting at the carriage house, paint-stained but hopeful, like he could see the rent checks materializing out of thin air.
I slipped into my room, the door clicking shut behind me. I peeled off my jacket and shirt, standing bare in front of the mirror.
Boyish face, sandy brown hair that never quite lay flat, skin still pale from winter but speckling with freckles across the nose. Even teeth.
My stomach was flat, limbs long. My shoulders had broadened since last summer.
My mother always said I had a swimmer’s build, and she’d know—cutting through the college pool each morning in her wasp-waisted one-piece and bathing cap, my father plowing slow laps beside her.
I glanced down at the magazine tucked under my bed and tried to see myself in those places where men met for sex, wondering if they’d want me.
I looked athletic enough, maybe even attractive. For all the good it did me—in a house where people argued about the past while I waited for my life to start.
3: The Arrival
The day the tenants arrived, curtains shifted in every house on the block, like the whole staid avenue of faculty was holding its breath. A new Teaching Assistant for Professor Robinson, finishing his own thesis, my father said. I didn’t expect much.
Their lemon-yellow VW Bug pulled a trailer up the driveway. Laurie hopped out first—hip-hugger jeans, sunglasses perched in her long, wavy red hair. Then John unfolded from the driver’s seat, wearing a faded red-and-white baseball tee, sleeves rolled up over tanned forearms. Denim shorts on hairy legs. He looked like he’d just come from a pickup game, not a cross-state drive.
My father hustled out with a freshly copied key, slipping into his friendly landlord mode, while my mother followed, her smile polished for public show. They introduced themselves, then me.
“This is our son, Michael,” Dad said, giving my shoulder a little squeeze.
John grinned, stuck out his hand. “Good to meet you, Mike. Mind giving us a hand?” The nickname landed like he already knew I’d say yes.
The trailer was stacked with everything they owned: boxes of books and LPs, a mattress rolled and tied tight, a few wobbly lamps, painted canvases, dumbbells, and a sofa so light I could practically lift it myself.
As we hauled the crates inside, John said, “I’m working on my thesis. It’s about post-war American politics—boring stuff, but it’ll pay the rent someday.”
Laurie smiled. “I’m taking a summer session with a visiting art professor.”
John laughed. “So, while I’m buried in books, Laurie’s covered in paint. Keeps things interesting.”
I was athletic enough from swimming, but next to John, with his casual strength and sleeves pushed up, I felt unfinished. Like he knew some secret about being a man I hadn’t cracked yet.
Laurie caught my admiring eye as I hoisted a crate up the steps. “Don’t let him fool you,” she stage-whispered. “He’s only this organized when someone else is sweating for him.”
John just laughed, backing through the doorway with the mattress draped over one shoulder—a little showy but not even trying to hide it. For a second, the sunlight caught him just right, and I wondered if everyone felt this way near him—drawn in, a little off-balance.
By the time we finished, the carriage house was half chaos, half home: art propped against the walls, books scattered, the mattress sprawled in the corner.
John clapped me on the back—friendly, familiar. “Thanks, Mike. Couldn’t have done it without you.”
Back at my mother’s side, she leaned close, her smile never cracking. “They’re not married,” she murmured, just for me.
Elm Street suddenly seemed a lot less predictable.
4: The New World
Laurie was still unpacking when I slipped back in. Milk crate shelves now lined the walls, already bowing under the weight of thick books and stacks of LPs. On the homemade coffee table—plywood balanced on crates—there were a few copies of Playboy, their covers curling at the corners, and a thick paperback stamped THE HITE REPORT across the front.
The inside of the carriage house already felt like a new country—one where the rules were looser and the air was charged with young adult energy.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, browsing through the stacks of LPs. I pulled out the Rolling Stones album with the cover showing a visible cock outline in a zipper-covered crotch—Sticky Fingers.
“John’s, obviously,” Laurie chuckled, seeing my attention on it.
I flipped through more and stopped on one with a black-and-white cover: a strange, boyish-faced woman in a white shirt and black jacket, looking straight at the camera, defiant and unbothered. Patti Smith, it read. Horses.
“You a fan?” Laurie asked. “God, I love her.”
“Oh… sure,” I lied. I’d never even heard of her.
Laurie was kneeling on the floor, carefully arranging a row of small canvases propped against the wall.
“I’m taking a summer session with a visiting art professor—trying to finish a series of paintings before fall.”
She glanced up, eyes brightening. “His name’s Laszlo Szabo. Have you heard of him? He’s a genius—kind of wild, but brilliant. Makes you see art in ways you never imagined.”
I shook my head. “No, never heard of him.”
“Well, if you ever want to understand what art can really be, he’s the one to watch.”
John returned, grinning, balancing a greasy pizza box and three Cokes. “You’re staying, right, Mike?” he said. “Laurie’s a Scrabble shark. You can help me keep her honest.”
“If it’s okay,” Laurie added. “With your parents.”
“Sure,” I said, too quickly, then awkwardly. “I’m eighteen.” Then added, “Hang on.”
I jogged back through the dusk to the house. Through the window, I saw my mother at the counter, lining up bread, lettuce, and chicken salad. Her back was straight, her hair pinned in place.
“I’m eating over at the carriage house,” I said, a little breathless. “They invited me.”
“Don’t be a nuisance, Michael. They’re settling in.”
“They invited me,” I repeated, a little louder.
She glanced over, lips pursed, then nodded. “Don’t stay too late. And don’t take food you don’t need.”
I promised and slipped out before she could say more.
Back at the carriage house, Laurie queued up Patti Smith on the turntable. The needle scratched out a wailing voice, so unlike anything I listened to. John had already set up the Scrabble board and was rolling a joint, his movements loose and practiced.
We ate pizza cross-legged on the floor and drank soda right from the can, the three of us huddled close over the Scrabble board, words blooming and colliding. The laughter came easy—Laurie’s sharp and bright, John’s low and careless. Nothing like the dry strategy of Canfield.
John flicked open a battered Zippo, lighting the joint. He took a long drag, then offered it to Laurie, who shook her head. “I’m trying to think,” she said. “It’s hard enough to beat you sober.”
“What did I tell you, Mike,” John said, breath releasing. “She’s treacherous.” He laughed, passing the joint my way. “No pressure.”
I hesitated, the smoke curling toward me, smelling sweeter and heavier than anything I’d tried before. My fingers brushed John’s as I took it, trying to look at ease. After the drag, I struggled not to cough, tried not to stare at the way John slouched back, legs stretched out, one arm draped over the back of the couch, utterly at ease.
Laurie racked up points, and John kept score with a lazy grin. I lost track of time, of my mother’s rules—of everything but the heat of the room, the music, the haze of voices and smoke.
When I finally stumbled home, a sandwich on the counter was still waiting for me, limp and a little sad. I left it there, slid upstairs, and lay awake for a long time, trying to hold onto every detail of my time at the carriage house.
It was like the world had tilted a few degrees, just enough for me to slip through.
5. The Tenants
The carriage house became my summer home. I’d come by in the early afternoons to catch Laurie painting by the window, Patti Smith or The Ramones spinning on the record player—or maybe, when she seemed a little blue, Joni Mitchell.
“You ever hear this one?” she’d ask sometimes, and I’d nod, maybe not as convincingly as I hoped. She’d smile—sometimes commenting on the lyrics, I guessed for my benefit. Other times she just let the music fill the room.
Most afternoons, John showed up just as the light started to shift, racket in hand, tossing his bag in the corner and peeling off his shirt without a second thought. He’d stand there in cutoff shorts—furry chested and sweaty, hair damp and curling in the heat—laughing about trying to help another new Teaching Assistant learning to play racquetball, and how she kept catching him off guard.
He’d greet Laurie with a kiss, calling her “woman,” or “genius,” or “trouble,” depending on his mood, and she’d roll her eyes. But when he did, his palm always rested briefly at her waist, an absentminded touch that made my chest ache.
One day, he came home earlier than usual. “Took a break from the thesis to hit the courts,” he said, stretching. I couldn’t help noticing how alive John looked after playing. The pump of his muscles and loose grin were a side of him that didn’t come with book pages or deadlines.
After his shower, John came out with a towel slung low around his hips. As he padded barefoot across the creaky floorboards, I could see the the way the soft damp hair clung to his chest and belly. I tried not to stare, but it felt impossible.
I thought I caught Laurie watching me watch him out of the corner of her eye, a small half-smile on her lips—as if she was used to people losing their focus around him.
John didn’t seem to notice, or maybe he didn’t care. He pulled on a clean pair of shorts right there in front of me, back turned, towel dropping to the floor with a casualness that made my heart hurt, then disappeared into the kitchenette for a beer.
They looked so at ease with each other, but I couldn’t help noticing the spaces between them. Or maybe I imagined them. Laurie’s quiet moods. John always seemed to need something to do—rubbing the back of his neck, stretching his arms, flicking through his records or leafing through a battered Playboy, never really still.
I slipped inside the bathroom, still humid from his shower. The hamper overflowed with their laundry—Laurie’s paint-stained jeans, John’s gym socks, a tangle of shirts. I found his racquetball tee, still wet, and beneath it, a jockstrap—sweat-saturated. My hands nearly trembled as I brought them to my face, breathing in the sharp, musky scent.
For a second, the world dropped away—just me and the scent of his body, the ache in my chest. I sat on the toilet seat and closed my eyes. John looped through my mind—shirtless, damp, his usual easygoing way turned lusty and urgent in my imagination. I slid a hand under my waistband, jerking my erection. Everything was sharp and alive. My breath caught, the sound constrained, when I came, moments later.
I stuffed the shirt and jock back into the hamper and caught my own reflection in the bathroom mirror—cheeks red, my brow damp at the hairline. I felt excited and ashamed all at once.
When I emerged, Laurie raised an eyebrow. “You okay, Michael?” she asked, gesturing at her own cheeks to indicate mine.
“Yeah,” I managed, voice thin. “Just hot, you know?”
She nodded and put Hejira on the turntable. John flopped down next to her on the flimsy sofa, rubbing his hair with his towel. He looked at me and smiled—warm, open—and I felt my longing flare up again: wanting to be him, wanting him to be with him—wanting both—all confused and tangled up in me.
It seemed impossible that a guy like John—so good looking, so athletic—could ever have enough with just one person. Especially with Laurie—her airy ways and moods, her ceaseless talk about Laszlo Szabo and caterwauling music. I wondered if he ever thought about more, about wanting or needing something outside the lines. I wondered if he could tell how badly I wanted it too.
6: The Fourth of July
By the time the Fourth of July rolled around, the whole town had gone Bicentennial-mad—flags hung from porches, bunting draped over mailboxes. My father decided it was time for a barbecue, which meant it was my mother’s responsibility to pull it off.
It was a small thing, really—just the five of us. My parents, John and Laurie, and me. But my mother made a list—potato salad, deviled eggs, chicken to grill—and fussed over the details with academic precision. My father set the grill up in the front yard.
“It’s important to be seen as welcoming,” she said, slicing cucumbers just so. “Especially in front of the neighbors.”
John and Laurie showed up in their usual style. Laurie wore a paint-spattered sundress, her hair loose and wild around her face. John arrived late, in cutoff shorts and a faded tee, cheeks flushed from racquetball, carrying a bowl of chips. He laughed, teasing how the girls on the court didn’t go easy on him.
My parents sat upright in their folding chairs, chatting about courses and committees, asking about John’s thesis, Laurie’s summer session. John and Laurie, by contrast, rested on a blanket on the lawn—laughing, sharing stories, breaking into quiet whispers. Everyone was polite, in their own way.
When John leaned over to kiss Laurie’s temple, my mother’s smile flickered for a moment. My father cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. There was a careful distance in the way they watched John and Laurie’s easy freedom.
Dusk settled in and the first bottle rockets whistled over the trees. John was helping Laurie to her feet when he said, “Careful. Don’t want you tripping with the little one on board.”
My mother’s eyes snapped. Then my father understood, and finally, me.
Laurie blushed, her hand fluttering to her stomach. “Just barely,” she said.
My mother smiled a little too wide, my father raising his glass with a startled, “Well, then!”
I stood frozen, the news ringing in my chest. It wasn’t just that Laurie was pregnant—it was that everything I’d come to love about this summer, this strange new balance to my life, suddenly felt fragile, temporary, doomed to change much sooner than I’d expected.
Later, as the fireworks began, John pulled Laurie close, swaying with her in the grass beneath the bursting colors. I stood off to the side, my throat tight, watching the two of them folded together like the world had narrowed to just them.
Then John reached out, fingers brushing my wrist, and tugged me in.
For a few minutes, the three of us stood together, swaying in time to the distant band and the thunder of fireworks overhead. Laurie’s head on John’s shoulder, John’s hand warm against my back.
I closed my eyes and let myself belong, just for a little while, before the summer slipped away for good.
7: Things Change
After the Fourth, things changed faster than I’d expected. Laurie grew more distracted, leaving the carriage house with her bag tight at her side, letting me know she was heading out for long walks, or to meetings with Laszlo Szabo, or to doctor’s appointments.
She never invited me along, which hurt my feelings a little. I told myself it was just nerves about the pregnancy.
I still found excuses to swing by—“Forgot my jacket,” “Just checking if you need anything”—but it wasn’t the same. Laurie was quieter, more unfocused, John more restless—maybe more in need of something Laurie’s couldn’t give him.
Whenever my fingers brushed John’s as I took a joint he’d rolled, it wasn’t just the smoke that made my head spin. It was the warmth of him, the way he didn’t pull away, like he might be open to more than a passing touch. I wanted to belong with him—in body yeah, but also in everything.
One humid afternoon after Laurie left for one of her appointments, I saw that the carriage house windows were open, sheer curtains billowing in the slow breeze. A man’s shadow moved inside. A burglar, I thought for a second, but then realized it must be John’s, home early from racquetball, or skipping out on work—maybe in just his cutoffs, or wrapped in a towel after showering.
Emboldened by the chance to see for myself, I bounded up the stairs and knocked on the interior door, waited. No answer. Surely he hadn’t heard me—the door opened right into the tiny studio. I knocked again, louder, more insistent.
Then I heard it—a muted laugh, muffled voices—a man and a woman. As I was about to knock again, there was a gasp and a groan. Then grunts. The unmistakable rhythm of sex, even to a virgin like me.
I should have turned away but I stood rooted, listening through the thin door, picturing it in my mind: John, probably with one of the TAs he was always talking about. Of course, he knew Laurie’s appointment times.
John had always seemed hungry for more. I knew it. I’d seen how he moved through the world—the way people looked at him, the way he always needed something new to do, to touch, to chase. And now with Laurie pregnant, fragile, gone more often, leaving him alone and needing sex—of course a man like John would find someone else. He couldn’t help it, I told myself. Someone like him—someone so physical, so alive—would always need more.
I ran down the stairs and out, stumbling down the driveway, heart pounding. It hit me like a sudden hot blast—how right I’d been—and how much it hurt, as if I were the one betrayed.
Inside, I passed my mother at her desk in the sunroom, the bust of Brutus overseeing her work.
I’d picked the wrong parent’s field of study for my AP project—my father knew American history, but my mother, with all those murdered emperors, knew real treachery.
“You’re spending a lot of time over there,” she said, barely looking up. “Don’t wear out your welcome.”
I wanted to tell her everything, but how could she ever understand my feelings? How could I live with her seeing me that way?
“They like having me around,” I muttered, my voice barely audible as I turned away.
Upstairs, I saw my father at his desk, surrounded by books and yellow legal pads. He looked up, pushing his glasses onto his forehead.
“Michael—I was rereading some stuff about West Point. There’s a whole angle about betrayal and misunderstanding that might suit your paper. You could look at how the people around Arnold shaped his decisions, not just the man himself.”
“Yeah, Dad,” I said, already turning away. “I’m on it.”
He smiled, satisfied, turning back to his notes, as if all of life’s puzzles would yield if you just found the right angle.
I retreated to my bed, replaying every sound, every shadow at the carriage house. I tried to picture what I’d heard—John’s hands, his smile, his body moving in the dark. I turned away from it, half-hating John for betraying Laurie, half-hating him for not choosing me.
I didn’t have the right angle for anything.
8: The Hospital
That wasn’t the only time I saw shadows in the carriage house.
Even knowing what John was doing, I didn’t tell Laurie. It was just his nature, I assured myself—Laurie just wasn’t enough for him. How could she be?
It was my own betrayal of her, compounding John’s, but I couldn’t bring myself to speak up. And in some desperate, foolish corner of my heart, I wanted to keep the peace—keep the door open, hoping he’d someday want me instead.
One afternoon, during a visit, Laurie suddenly doubled over at the kitchen sink, sharp cramps twisting her face. One hand pressed to her stomach, the other bracing herself on the counter. John hovered nearby, rattling questions, but Laurie only said to get my mother.
She appeared in the doorway, assessing the scene with a glance, and said calmly, “We’re going to the hospital. John, get her bag. Laurie, can you walk?”
Laurie nodded, pale and sweating but grateful. My mother took her arm—gentle but firm—and led her and John out to the car. “I’ll call from the hospital,” she told me, “but don’t worry unless I tell you to.” She didn’t wait for an answer.
The house felt hollow after they left. My father reheated last night’s chicken, filling plates for the two of us. We ate in near silence, the only sound the drone of the fan and the scraping of forks on china.
Halfway through dinner, my father cleared his throat. “You know, there’s a lot about Arnold people get wrong,” he said, nudging his glasses up. “It wasn’t just ambition. The man was wounded—physically and otherwise. He felt betrayed himself. You might want to read up on how Congress treated him. There’s a complexity there, Michael. Don’t let yourself simplify the story.”
I nodded, poking at my food. “I’ll look into it. It’s almost done,” I said, a practiced lie. I hadn’t written a word.
It was nearly midnight when my mother came home. Her hair looked flattened, the calm control she’d worn earlier shedding. She poured herself a glass of water, then pinched her eyes shut—a flicker of vulnerability that vanished as quickly as it came.
“Laurie’s fine,” she said, voice steady but quieter now. “They’re keeping her overnight for observation. Nothing to worry about, just a precaution.”
“We should get ready to place the ad again,” my father said. “They won’t stay in the carriage house long, not with a baby.”
“No,” my mother agreed softly. “They won’t.”
“John’s still over there, I suppose?” I asked.
“He’s back home,” she replied, turning to me. Her eyes met mine in a long, conspiratorial stare. It felt like she was trying to tell me something without words—things she couldn’t or wouldn’t say, a quiet urging just beneath the surface.
My father, missing the weight of the moment, busied himself with the dishes.
But the news that John was home, alone—or maybe just the look in my mother’s face—stirred a sudden impulse I couldn’t ignore. I felt like John needed someone. Maybe not for anything specific, maybe just to not be alone.
Before I could stop myself, I was already slipping out the door, crossing the driveway toward the carriage house. The windows glowed softly. The door stood ajar. Inside, John sat sprawled on the couch, staring at the blank television, a beer sweating in his hand. The faint smell of hops hung in the air.
When I knocked and the door opened, his eyes—rimmed red and tired—met mine. The easy charm was gone.
“Hey, Mike,” he said, voice rough. “You want a Coke or something?”
I nodded and stepped inside. The air felt heavy, with worry and regret, I supposed. For the first time all summer, I saw John not as confident, unreachable, but as someone adrift—uncertain, not in control.
I sat beside him. We stayed quiet together, listening to the slow tick of the clock.
9: The Confrontation
I swallowed hard, the words coming before I could stop them. “I know what you’ve been doing,” I said, voice tight. “I saw you. Heard you—” I stopped myself but pushed on. “I’m not going to tell Laurie. I wouldn’t. I know you must feel trapped, or lonely, or something.”
John didn’t move. Then he set his beer down quietly and looked at me, eyes tired but sharp. “Trapped? What exactly do you think you saw?”
I flushed. “You. Here. With someone else. When Laurie was out. At her doctor’s appointments. I heard through the door.”
I told him everything I knew. John listened, eyes calculating, as if tallying the times and days himself.
“I get it,” I said. “Maybe you needed… something more.”
His eyes closed briefly, head shaking just so. When he opened them again, his lips twitched, almost a smile. “You’re a smart boy, Mike. Put it all together, huh?”
“If you…” I began, “I…”
Our fingers brushed, hesitant. I swallowed, the familiar ache of desire rising strong.
I closed the distance, clumsy and unsure, leaning into John. My lips found his. His body was still, hands light on my arms, letting me set the pace.
Then his arms wrapped around me, pulling me close. Our kiss deepened. We fell backward onto the couch, the tension between us snapping.
His tongue filled my mouth, hands tangling in my hair, then sliding down my back. I mirrored him, fumbling at the buttons of his worn jeans, tugging them open. He helped with my shorts, pulling them down in one quick motion.
Our bodies pressed together as his hands roamed my waist and hips. I grabbed his cock, thick and hardening. I wanted to show him how much he mattered to me—how much I wanted to give him anything I could.
I lowered my mouth, tracing kisses down his stomach until my lips reached his cock. Tentative at first, I put my lips around it, then moved down. I worked it with my mouth, slicking it with spit, trying to take more.
John’s fingers curled tighter in my hair and he groaned, a sound that hit me at my core. I went too fast, too deep—my throat tightening, breath catching. I pulled back, gasping, eyes wet and unsure.
Without a word, he pulled me up, his hands firm as he tilted my face toward his. Our lips met again, his tongue more assertive now. When we stopped, his eyes were heavy-lidded, warm.
I swallowed, breathless, and nodded.
He wet his fingers with spit and slid one slowly between my legs. The first touch was sharp, a pinch of pain, then softened, warmth spreading with every push in. My back arched, lips parted. “Fuck.”
He spat into his palm to slick himself as I watched, hungry for him. When he finally slid his cock into me, the sharpness returned at first, my hands catching his thighs instinctively. But as he moved slow and steady, the discomfort softened into something deeper—a pulse spreading through me, opening and filling an emptiness I didn’t realize was there. My hands rose to his hips, pulling him in, deeper.
His breath was hot against my neck. His lips and teeth trailed along my skin as the pace of his thrusts picked up. I wrapped my hand around my cock, slicking it with spit and stroking in time with him.
The rhythm quickened—slow building to fast to urgent. I gasped, pleasure rising until my body tensed. I came, hard, trembling. “Oh fuck,” I mumbled, as we both looked down to see my cum pooling on my belly.
John closed his eyes, lost in the moment, pounding harder. I grabbed his shoulder to steady myself, my insides feeling aching and undone. Then a hard thrust took my breath and my vision went white as he grunted and gasped, emptying himself inside me. His body shuddered with release.
Then, almost as quickly as it started, he pulled back. The absence of him in me left a hollow ache in the quiet that followed. His tired eyes met mine. “Go home, Mike,” he said softly.
I stayed a moment longer, my breath settling, hands slick and trembling. I pulled up my shorts, the weight of what we’d done settling on me.
Walking home under the cool night sky, a rush of elation surged—I’d done it. I’d crossed some invisible line, gotten closer to being a man. It wasn’t perfect—the look in John’s eyes, the heavy silence, was a distance yet to be closed.
Still, I’d done what I set out to do. I wasn’t a virgin anymore. I’d gotten some piece of John.
I told myself that next time, next time with John, we’d come closer.
10: The Departure
The next day, when it all unraveled, it happened fast. I didn’t know what to expect when my mother called me down to the kitchen, but the moment she said John’s name, the air shifted—went thin and brittle.
“John’s gone,” she said, her tone, like her eyes, tight but steady.
I blinked. “Gone? What do you mean, gone? How could he be gone? What about… his thesis?”
My father appeared in the doorway, waving a dismissive hand. “He can finish it from anywhere. Doesn’t need to be here.”
My mother shot him a look, then turned back to me, resting her hand over mine. “And Laurie… she’s not coming back.”
I swallowed hard. “Is she okay? Is it…”
She shook her head quickly, as if to stop me from worrying. “No, it’s not the baby. The baby’s fine. But her parents are coming to get her. They’re on their way. To take her back home.”
The words spun inside my head, sharp and unreal. How could they be gone? Why? Things had been set in motion without my ever knowing—when?
And then, most urgently: Was it because of what I’d done with John? Because of me?
Before anyone could say more, I bolted outside, ran down the driveway—the VW bug was gone.
The carriage house door was ajar. At first, it all looked just the same.
But then I noticed the little things.
John’s racquetball gear was gone. His dumbbells too. His thesis papers, the messy piles of notes I’d seen scattered before, had vanished. The albums on the shelves looked halved, like someone had taken only the favorites. His clothes were gone too.
That’s how you know what matters to you—when you have to leave fast, carrying only what you can, leaving everything else behind.
I stumbled outside, the morning sun too bright. Two strangers were just arriving, pulling into our driveway. Their faces were pinched, unfamiliar. Red hair. I realized with a jolt—they were Laurie’s parents.
My parents greeted them quietly, nodding and talking in low voices. My mother and her mother briefly held hands. Then her father said they should get started.
My father joined them, sleeves rolled up. They moved through the carriage house slowly, carefully packing away books, LPs, Laurie’s canvases, clothes. Like John, they left the furniture, the impersonal items. Taking only the pieces of a life that could be easily folded into boxes.
As they worked, I stood back, frozen. When the packing slowed and goodbyes began, I slipped away. Without a word, I retreated to my room, closing the door gently behind me. I didn’t reach for the light.
I crawled into bed and stared at the endless white of the ceiling. John was gone. Laurie was gone. My AP paper sat untouched on the desk. Summer was over—as if it had never happened.
11: The Truth and the Beginning
The afternoon had blurred around me, interrupted when the door creaked open softly and my mother stepped inside, holding something in her hands—I recognized the worn Patti Smith album.
“Laurie’s parents said she asked them to leave this for you,” she said quietly, stepping forward lightly and setting it down on my dresser.
She turned to leave as quietly as she came, but stopped at the door.
“Michael,” she said after a moment, hesitation in her voice, “the baby—it wasn’t John’s.”
The door clicked softly behind her, as her words unraveled everything. And then, bit by bit, it started to come back together.
Laurie’s silences, what she said were her weekly doctor visits or time with Laszlo Szabo, and long walks. The times she thought I’d stay away, giving her some privacy. And the way John had looked at me that night, when I accused him. His careful attention to the details. It was Laurie I’d overheard in the carriage house, not John—with someone I didn’t know, probably never would.
And my mother—the most capable spy in our house—had been there when everything came out. I imagined her sitting through long hours in sterile waiting rooms, catching whispers and confessions, the hard silences and the endings. She’d come home last night knowing it. I could see it in the way she’d looked at me, carrying secrets she didn’t want to say aloud.
Lying there in the cool dark of my room, questions bloomed—how long had it gone on? And John—was his betrayal with me payback? A check in his tally to match her infidelity? Or maybe he was just hurt and lonely, reaching out because I was the only one who wanted him.
I wanted to believe that maybe he wanted me too, at least a little.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I’d be leaving soon, heading off to school. The summer would have come to an end anyway. But what hurt so much was that for Laurie and John, the season would fade into their own histories—ones in which I would never be more than a footnote, even though it felt like the most important summer of my life.
I crossed the room and picked up the worn Patti Smith album, tracing its edges.
I set it on the record player and lowered the arm.
Lying back on my bed, I closed my eyes as Patti’s voice cracked through the quiet, raw as my feelings.
Over and over, I listened.
Time blurred.
Then a soft tap at the door. My father stepped inside, quiet as a shadow, as if not to break the fragile space I’d carved out.
He set a plate on my desk. A sandwich. Then I felt the bed dip as he sat beside me.
“About your paper…” he began.
“Dad,” I started, but he kept going.
“It seems to me Benedict Arnold must have felt deeply betrayed himself—to do the things he did. And Peggy Shippen… she must have been a great comfort to him in that dark place.”
He didn’t say more. Instead, he rested a warm hand on my side—steady, grounding, as I breathed in and out.
When he stood and left, the loss still felt heavy but somehow easier to bear.
I closed my eyes as Patti Smith’s voice filled my room. I felt it then—in the air, in my blood, all the atoms of my body shifting, breaking down and building back up again.
I wasn’t the same boy who’d started this summer. I was becoming a man, with a man’s responsibilities—things to do before it ended.
When the last notes faded I sat up slowly.
I rose and turned to my desk.
The sandwich waited, untouched. Grilled cheese. Even at room temp the bread had a buttery crunch. And there was havarti. Just the way I liked it.
The typewriter waited too, a blank page staring back like a challenge.
I pressed one key, then another; the clacking filled the room as my paper began to take shape, unplanned but certain.
“BETRAYAL: A LOVE STORY,” I typed.
“From Judas Iscariot to Marcus Junius Brutus to Benedict Arnold, the betrayals that grip us most deeply all share something in common: they aren’t just acts of hatred or spite. They’re born out of love, turned, and twisted.
“If those who betrayed didn’t wrestle with the twin aches of love and loss, their stories wouldn’t haunt and fascinate us centuries later.
“This summer, I learned that the betrayals that stay with us aren’t the easy kinds. They’re messy. They’re personal. They’re the ones that hurt like hell.”
I sat back and finished the sandwich my dad had left, licking the crumbs from my fingers.
I could see the paper coming alive—not just about Benedict Arnold or political treachery, but how love and desire complicate loyalty, and why we keep returning to stories of our own complicated pasts.
END
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