Hold My Hand Page 2

  “I don’t think there are any accounts of the pilgrims and the Native Americans sharing a fifteen-pound turkey and two legs of lamb.”

  “Still, it’s nice to have options,” Alek’s father answered happily, sprinkling flour on the counter. “Hand me the rolling pin?”

  Alek dug it out from under the counter. It was a classic French tapered cylinder, not the rotating contraption with handles that his parents scoffed at “these Americans” for using.

  “Sure, options are nice, but did we need to make six kinds of buregs? And stuff all those peppers and roll all those grape leaves and bake the kufteh?” Alek rinsed the kale, stripping the leaves from the stems.

  “That reminds me…” Alek’s father expertly rolled out the dough, picking it up and rotating it forty-five degrees after every stroke so it wouldn’t stick to the counter. “Do you think you’ll have time to make some hummus? I want to make sure that there’s something to snack on when the guests arrive.”

  “Good thinking, Dad,” Alek said. “With only three hors d’oeuvres and four appetizers, our guests might die of hunger before the four entrees and eighteen side dishes hit the table.”

  “I’m glad you agree!” Mr. Khederian was apparently deaf to sarcasm.

  “I’ll do it, Dad.” Nik had just popped out the last flash-boiled, X-sliced pearl onion. He retrieved chickpeas and tahini from the pantry, then opened the latter and began the laborious process of stirring it with a long cocktail spoon to reincorporate the liquids and the solids.

  Somehow, in a repeating miracle that Alek still couldn’t fathom regardless of how many times he’d witnessed it, every dish transformed from impossibly-far-from-done to perfectly garnished by the time the first guest rang the doorbell two-and-a-half hours later, at 3:30 on the dot.

  “Tell them I’ll be down in a minute,” Alek’s mom yelled, untangling curlers from her hair as she disappeared upstairs.

  2

  Five hours and twice as many courses later, after serving the soup (Armenian lentil, of course), almost burning his fingers making sure the buregs were hot enough, toasting the marshmallows for the sweet potato casserole, watching his father and uncle fight about how to carve the leg of lamb and then repeat the fight exactly ten minutes later about the turkey, hoping his mother didn’t notice the lumps in the gravy that resulted from his failure to whisk the thickening agent thoroughly enough, enduring his grandmother’s criticism about the lack of dessert options, saying goodbye to his aunts, his uncles, five real cousins, four step-cousins, doing the dishes, putting away the silver, and packaging up the leftovers, Alek mustered the courage to ask to be excused.

  “Ask your grandmother,” his father responded.

  Alek made his way to the living room, where his nana sat by herself, sipping cognac. “Nana, may I be excused?”

  “Ask me in Armenian,” she instructed him.

  “Gnerek, paytz bedke ganouch tsehem aysor?”

  “Close enough, although I wonder what they’re teaching you in Saturday school if you don’t know how to conjugate a simple verb.” Nana crossed her legs and placed the cognac down on a coaster. “And where are you going this late on Thanksgiving?”

  For a moment, Alek considered dodging the question, since he hadn’t actually come out to his grandmother yet. But instead, he took a breath, then another, and said as evenly as he could, “To my boyfriend’s.”

  “And why didn’t you invite Ethan over? Isn’t it time I met him already?” his nana asked without missing a beat. “You guys have been together—what—almost six months?”

  Alek regarded his grandmother anew. “And how do you know that, Nana?”

  “You think I don’t have Instagram? How adorable the two of you are! I set it up so that I get a notice every time he posts. Like that one from Asbury Park last month, on the abandoned carousel?” Nana leaned and whispered conspiratorially. “I wish my other grandchildren were doing as well in this department. Thank goodness things didn’t work out between your brother, Nik, and that Nanar girl. And have you met Ani’s boyfriend? He looks like a gangster.” His grandmother continued to criticize every one of Alek’s cousins’ significant others, revealing a familiarity with social media and their personal lives that left Alek amazed.

  But not as amazed as he was by how unconcerned she appeared to be about Alek having a boyfriend. It wasn’t like he had any reason to believe that his grandmother was homophobic. At the same time, he didn’t have any reason to believe that she wasn’t, either. And perhaps, if she didn’t have a grandson who came out by age fourteen, her thoughts on the issue would be different. But she did. And between that and a familiarity with Instagram that would put most people Alek’s own age to shame, his grandmother had apparently joined the twenty-first century.

  Finally, Alek was excused to go to Ethan’s house. He flew out of the house, onto his bike, pedaling so quickly past piles of corn bread, pumpkin, and cranberry-colored leaves, that he almost missed the turnoff for Taylor Street. He took the turn sharp, the back wheel of the bike skidding behind him. The slight slope allowed him to coast on momentum until he arrived at Ethan’s house. He knocked on the door, a formality he’d been told repeatedly that he could forgo, and let himself in.

  “Hey, Mr. Novick,” Alek called out from the foyer. He held out the bag of Tupperwares he’d carried over. “I brought you guys some leftovers.”

  “Thanks, Alek—how considerate of you.” Mr. Novick took the bag from Alek and placed it on the side table next to the front door. Earlier, this kind of behavior would’ve caused Alek great anxiety. Mr. Novick was a professor at NYU—surely he understood that the leftovers would spoil unless refrigerated. Why wasn’t he putting them in the fridge immediately? Who leaves a perfectly good container of food out at room temperature?

  But now, more than five months into the relationship, Alek knew what to do. He plucked the bag from the side table and navigated his way through the piles of books, records, newspapers, and magazines that surrounded the Novick furniture, heading into the kitchen. “Did you guys have a nice Thanksgiving?” he called over his shoulder, opening the sparsely populated fridge. He placed the Khederian leftovers on the same shelf as three takeout boxes and a plastic takeout soup container that had been repurposed as a condiment receptacle, teeming with mini soy sauces, duck sauce, hot sauces, spicy mustards, and ketchups. For good measure, Alek threw away a carton of milk that had expired around Halloween but left the half-and-half after a quick whiff. He knew the chances of it being used before it went bad were slim, and he was tempted to salvage it by pouring the cream into an ice-cube tray and then, on his next visit, emptying the frozen cream cubes into a ziplock bag, as he would’ve done in his own house, but he ultimately decided against it.

  “We went to the Prestige again.” Ethan’s dad had already resettled into his reading corner, adjusting the lamp and then his glasses. “I guess it’s really becoming something of a Thanksgiving tradition for us.”

  Alek could already imagine his mother’s horror at the idea of celebrating the holiday with canned cranberry sauce, mashed potato mix, and a possibly previously frozen, most certainly not-organic turkey that someone else had made.

  “Ethan’s up in his room,” Mr. Novick called from inside. “It’s good to see you, Alek. Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “You too, Mr. Novick.” Alek climbed up the stairs. He entered Ethan’s room and was greeted by the sight of his boyfriend, shirtless, sitting at his desk with his back to the door, feet propped up, slowly grooving to whatever music pumped out of his chunky headphones, oblivious to Alek and everything else in the world. Alek waited, watching, taking in the wiry frame, almost entirely smooth body, and wavy, sandy hair, all of which pointed to Ethan’s Western European mutt ancestry.

  Alek admired Ethan’s absolute ease. Even alone, Alek didn’t believe he achieved a fraction of his boyfriend’s effortlessness, his absolute lack of self-consciousness. Ethan carried it around like a force field, making him impervious to the anxi
eties of the world. And when they were together, that force field enveloped Alek, too.

  Slowly, Alek closed the door, approached Ethan, and laid his hand on his bare shoulder. Alek would’ve startled at the surprise of an unexpected presence, but Ethan didn’t even flinch, as if he had been expecting Alek to do exactly that exactly then.

  When the song ended, or when Ethan deemed that enough time had passed, he slid the headphones off. “You’re what I’m thankful for, boyfriend.” He arched his neck up and kissed Alek long and deep.

  “I feel like this is the first time we’ve been together in, like, forever.” Ethan caressed Alek’s face. He kissed his lips, his face, his ears.

  “I know,” Alek whispered back.

  Kissing Ethan.

  Kissing Ethan rocked.

  Alek shifted, pulling Ethan up, away from the desk, and down onto the bed. They lay next to each other, legs intertwined, punctuating words with kisses.

  “I love it when you’re like this,” Ethan purred.

  “Like what?” Alek asked innocently.

  “Frisky.” Ethan’s mouth traveled down Alek’s neck. Alek squirmed under the onslaught of pleasure.

  “Well, it’s been a whole week since…” Alek trailed off.

  “… since we’ve been alone?” Ethan finished for him, between kisses.

  “Uh-huh,” Alek managed.

  Alek thought, all the time, about what he and Ethan did when they were alone together. Whenever he zoned out, in class or in church or in the back of his parents’ car, that’s where his mind would inevitably wander. He’d recover from those daydreams abruptly, returning to reality aroused, terrified that technology had been invented that could project thoughts into image and that everyone around him had been witnessing his carnal meanderings.

  But during these daydreams, Alek didn’t just reminisce: he also tried to make sense of it. Where did the urge come from? Was it as primal and necessary as eating, drinking, or sleeping? What happened to priests or other celibates who abstained? Did a part of them shrivel up and die? Or did they get some special insight, some wisdom from their abstinence, like martyrs’ hallucinations while fasting in the desert? And most importantly, what triggered the chemical reaction that made it impossible for him and Ethan to keep their hands off each other when they were this close? What was the nature of that kind of basic, carnal, human, undeniable attraction? And how did it compare for Ethan with the other guys he’d been with, like his ex-boyfriend, Remi? Was it more, or less, or just different?

  Sometimes, when Alek and Ethan hadn’t seen each other for a while, like when Alek visited Nana over Labor Day weekend, their making out was urgent, hungry, and desperate. Their bodies communicated on an atomic level infinitely more efficient and direct than words could ever be, drawn to each other like metal to a magnet.

  Other times, it would be leisurely, like on a Sunday after church, when neither one of them had anywhere to be. They’d kiss, then they’d listen to music, then they’d kiss some more. But regardless of its nature, their making out was always effortless, the antidote to reality.

  Until it wasn’t.

  “You wanna do it?” Ethan asked suddenly.

  “Do what?” Alek asked, even though he already knew the answer.

  “Have sex.”

  And there it was, the question, hovering between them like an enemy drone, threatening to destroy everything beautiful they had built.

  “I think—” Alek stammered, pulling away abruptly, groping for words that weren’t there. “Not yet,” he finally managed to get out.

  “That’s cool.” Ethan kissed Alek again, quickly, lovingly. But underneath it, Alek could feel Ethan’s disappointment lingering the rest of the night, tainting their time, like an otherwise perfect dish spoiled by a single rotten ingredient.

  3

  Alek wanted to tell Becky. He wanted to tell his best friend about Ethan’s proposition when he saw her the next day, on that funny Friday after Thanksgiving that wasn’t actually a holiday but that everyone treated as one. But he didn’t know where to start.

  “You haven’t been paying attention to a single word I’ve been saying, have you?” Becky asked him at the end of a long story about the Thanksgiving she’d had to spent at her crazy grandparents’ house, with intricate detail of the process her grandfather underwent to remove his dentures after eating and impressions of other family members that would normally have Alek howling with laughter.

  Alek examined his options. Lying to Becky was a dangerous business—her BS-ometer was finely attuned, especially to him. As options went, however, telling her that he had spaced out was only slightly more promising.

  “Sorry, I’m distracted,” he admitted, trying to split the difference. Alek adjusted himself on the long, brown fold-out sofa that had been banished to the basement after the Boyces got a new furniture set for the living room a few months earlier.

  Becky scrunched up her nose, as if she could tell he was holding something back. But she didn’t pursue it.

  Every time Alek came over to Becky’s, her parents claimed they were finally going to finish the basement, where he and Becky spent most of their hanging-out time. But with the exception of the corner where an entertainment unit had been set up, the rest of the basement remained rough and raw, bare concrete with a hodgepodge of unpacked and often unlabeled boxes and discarded furniture, separated by sheets of exposed drywall. Only the near corner, defined by a bright green square of cut carpet just large enough to house the sofa and entertainment system, was inhabitable.

  “And what could possibly be distracting you?” Becky removed an Honest Tea from the mini-fridge next to the sofa, which had previously been stocked with Diet Dr Peppers until Alek’s mom began forwarding Becky articles about carcinogens in artificial sweeteners.

  Alek almost blurted out the truth. Maybe, if Becky had been a guy, he would’ve. Or maybe his best friend’s gender didn’t play a factor in his decision to chicken out. Maybe he just couldn’t find the words.

  “Are you going to say anything or just sit there like a fish with your mouth hanging open?” Becky asked.

  “I have to finish my ‘What Being Armenian Means to Me’ essay for Saturday school.”

  “I still can’t believe you have to attend Saturday school on top of Sunday school. Isn’t that, like, a bit overkill?”

  “We Armenians, we can’t help ourselves. We have to do more. And that more, in this case, means Saturday school, at eight a.m., which my parents have decreed that every young Khederian must attend beginning their sophomore year. So even though everyone else, including the Jews and Muslims and atheists and other non-Armenian Christians all over the world, get to sleep in, the Armenians have devised a whole new way to torture the next generation: a school to teach teens about the language, culture, and heritage of being Armenian.”

  “I wanna tell you something, Alek.” Becky sipped her Honest Tea thoughtfully. “If my people had been genocided over a hundred years ago, the last thing I would make them do is wake up early on a Saturday. Haven’t you all been through enough? It’s like rubbing lemon juice into the wound.”

  “You know you’re supposed to roll a lemon before you juice it?” Alek asked. “It increases yield.”

  “You increase yield.”

  Becky was the kind of girl who tended to blend into her surroundings: Caucasian, light-brown hair and eyes, average build that had just broken the five-foot threshold, and dressed like most of the other Gap/Old Navy girls in their tenth-grade class. Everything about her appearance was normal. But to assume her average appearance belied an average personality would be a tragic mistake. “Well, I guess you get to list Saturday school as an extracurricular when you’re applying to colleges. Isn’t that exactly the kind of thing Ms. Schmidt is telling us admissions officers are looking for? That’s why I’ve been hitting those competitions every weekend.”

  “Really? I thought it was so that you could exact your revenge on Dustin.”

  Sh
e tried to play it cool. “Oh, please. I don’t even think about that guy.” But then, as Alek had anticipated, she couldn’t help herself. “But if I did, I’d probably think about how I outscored him in the last three competitions in a row!”

  “So you’re totally over what happened in September?” Alek enjoyed getting Becky riled up about Dustin Chinn, a Chinese-American junior who was one of Ethan’s skateboarding buddies and the only person who had outscored Becky at the meets she’d begun entering since returning from rollerblading camp in August.

  “September was a total fluke! And the judges must’ve been blind—everybody said so. You were there! You saw that my plasma spin was perfection, while his nollie was painfully basic. And don’t even get me started on how superior my switch-ups were. Why do you think I outscored him at Plainsboro, Cherry Hill, and New Hope? I’ll tell you why. Because my alley-oop into makio combos were like boom! That’s why I haven’t given him a single thought since!”

  “I’m going to pretend that I understood even a fraction of what you just said so that you don’t repeat it.” Alek leaned back against the overstuffed arm of the sofa, catching a patch of sunlight from the small landscape windows at ground level. “I’d much rather be at those competitions, cheering you on, than at stupid Saturday school. And as if having to get up that early isn’t bad enough, they’re giving us homework, too.”

  “Seriously, I would picket.” Becky produced a bag of Haribo Fruit Salad candy seemingly from midair and began munching. “Can’t you just repurpose one of your English essays?” She offered the bag to Alek.

  “I wish,” Alek said, although they both knew that even if he could, he’d never do that. He picked out a grapefruit wedge, speaking while chewing that disgusting and delicious Haribo sweet-and-sourness. “I’ve got to finish my essay so I can email it tonight.”