The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know (Russel Middlebrook: The Futon Years Book 1) (21 page)

"Yeah," I said. "Of course." Part of me wanted to soar up right through the ceiling like Iron Man, screaming, "KEVIN WANTS ME, KEVIN WANTS ME!" But I didn't want to jump to any conclusions—maybe he was here selling magazine subscriptions.

So I grabbed my jacket, and we went for a walk along the lake. It was well after dark—the days had gotten a lot shorter—and the air was cool and wet. It was the time of year in Seattle when everything is so damp that your bath towel never really dries completely, not even twenty-four hours after you've used it.

"So," he said. "I left Colin."

"You
did
?"

He nodded in the dark. "Three weeks ago." He stopped and faced me. "I want to be with you. And I wanted to know if you still want to be with me."

I wasn't even tempted to joke with him, to pretend like I was seeing someone else, or I'd suddenly realized I was straight.

"Yeah," I said. "I still want to be with you."

We kissed right there on the boardwalk.

(For what it's worth, I apologize for making you wait this long to find out if Kevin and I got back together. Then again, I had to wait all the way until the middle of November to find out myself, so you can just deal. As for whether
this
is a fake, feel-good happy ending like in
Pretty Woman
, well, it was definitely feel-good, at least for me. But fake? I don't think so, mostly because I'd like to think I earned it.)

Finally, we turned and started walking again, toward downtown.

"Why?" I said.

"Huh?" Kevin said.

"Why'd you pick me?"

"I can't answer that."

"Sure, you can. It was the night I came for dinner, wasn't it? You realized what a total asshole Colin was?"

"No, I still don't blame him for that. He was just reacting to me. He sensed something that I didn't want to admit."

"What's that?"

"That I was still in love with you."

I smiled. I guess I'd known this was what he was going to say—it's what Min had said all those months ago. But it was still nice to hear.

"I feel horrible about what I did to him," Kevin said. "I hope that he'll forgive me one day, and he and I can be friends."

This was less nice to hear, since I remembered what had happened the last time Kevin had wanted to be "friends" with an ex-boyfriend. Then I realized how petty I was being. No matter how much of a jerk Colin was, Kevin and I had both treated him like shit, and the fact that we'd acted sort of honorably at the end didn't really change that. Besides, I was the one who'd ended up with Kevin, so the least I could do was be magnanimous.

Kevin and I walked on through the night, and he told me more about the breakup itself—how exactly it had gone down, how ugly it had been. I told him how sorry I was that he'd had to go through all that alone, but we both knew it had probably been better for Colin's sake.

Before I knew it, we found ourselves in Seattle Center, the site of the old world's fair, now this big city park. It's the location of the Space Needle, which was still open, even though it was after eleven p.m.

We bought tickets and took the elevator up to the observation deck. On the ride up, the elevator operator told us that the Space Needle was over five hundred feet tall, which, ironically, was the same height that Vernie and I had been at when we'd had coffee at the Starbucks on the fortieth floor of the Columbia Center (for
free
, except that totally wasn't the point).

Part of the observation deck is outside, an open-air ring all the way around the saucer. It was even colder up there than it had been on the walk along the lake, and a little blustery too. I didn't care. I had Kevin now, so I felt as toasty as a caterpillar in its cocoon.

"So," I said as we looked out at the city. "There's one thing that's different since we last talked. I've gotten into screenwriting."

"Yeah?" Kevin said. "I can see you doing that."

"And I have this screenwriter friend—she was nominated for an Oscar once."

"Cool."

"But she thinks I need to move to Los Angeles."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Kevin thought for a second, staring out through the metal webbing that they put up to keep people from jumping off and committing suicide. In front of us were the finished skyscrapers of downtown. To our left was the South Lake Union area—where most of the new buildings were rising, almost all of them still unfinished. Some of them were just cranes and scaffolding or even open pits. Amazon hadn't even started building its big geodesic balls.

"Okay," he said at last. "Let's go. You mean, like, this summer?"

"Wait," I said. "Go back. Are you saying you want to come with me?"

"Um, hello? Just picked you over Colin, remember? Besides, I think it's time for a change."

"But..."

"What?"

"Well, how can you be sure you and I will still be together this summer? How do you know for sure you'll even want to live with me?"

He half shrugged and just kept staring out at the city. "I just know."

"Kevin."

He turned to me. "What?" he said. Before I said that Kevin's smile was inscrutable, beyond even Leonardo da Vinci's understanding. But it wasn't that way now. On the contrary, he looked completely sincere, completely open. It was sort of freaking me out.

"
How
can you know?" I said. He and I had had this conversation once back in high school—about how the future was impossible to predict, and that you couldn't ever truly
know
you were going to be in love with someone in a month or a year (and that maybe that was okay).

Kevin just kept smiling, his hair blowing a little in the wind. Out beyond the webbing, a thousand glittery eyes watched us with bated breath—all the lights of the city.

"Russel, it's all good," he said. "After everything we've been through? We're meant to be together. It's the most obvious thing in the world. Can't you see that?"

It
was
obvious. But now I wasn't the only one thinking it. Now Kevin was too. And maybe that meant it wasn't just an illusion. Maybe that meant it was finally real.

"We're really going to do this?" I said. "We're going to live together? And we're going to move to Los Angeles?"

"We are," he said.

And to prove that I really might make it as a screenwriter one day, I think this just might be the perfect place to fade to black.

Coming in mid-2015:

Barefoot in the City of Broken Dreams
,
about Russel and Kevin's adventures in Los Angeles

ALSO BY BRENT HARTINGER

Russel Middlebrook: The Futon Years

(Adult Books)

*
The Thing I Didn't Know I Didn't Know
(Book 1)

*
Barefoot in the City of Broken Dreams
(Book 2, mid-2015)

The Russel Middlebrook Series

(Young Adult Books)

* Geography Club
(Book 1)

* The Order of the Poison Oak
(Book 2)

* Double Feature: Attack of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies/Bride of the Soul-Sucking Brain Zombies
(Book 3)

* The Elephant of Surprise
(Book 4)

Other Books

* Three Truths and a Lie (2016)

* The Divide (2016)

*
Shadow Walkers

* Project Sweet Life

* Grand & Humble

* The Last Chance Texaco

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brent Hartinger is an author, playwright, and screenwriter.
Geography Club
, the book in which Russel Middlebrook first appears (as a teenager), is also a successful stage play and a feature film co-starring Scott Bakula and Nikki Blonsky. Brent's other books include the forthcoming gay teen thriller
Three Truths and a Lie
, and the forthcoming supernatural thriller
The Divide
(co-written with Michael Jensen). He also has a number of film projects in active development.

In 1990, Brent helped found one of the world's first LGBT teen support groups, in his hometown of Tacoma, Washington. In 2005, he co-founded the entertainment website AfterElton.com, which was sold to MTV/Viacom in 2006. He currently co-hosts a podcast called Media Carnivores from his home in Seattle, where he lives with his husband, writer Michael Jensen. Read more by and about Brent, or contact him at
brenthartinger.com
.

If you enjoyed this book, please consider posting a review wherever you typically share your opinions about books. Also,
sign up for the author's newsletter
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, or
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.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

As usual, I couldn't do any of this alone. It all begins with my partner and husband Michael Jensen; my agent Jennifer De Chiara; and my editor Stephen Fraser. Talk about your holy trinities.

The amazing (and amazingly patient) Philip Malaczewski did my book jacket. The sublime Brett Every kindly volunteered his time and talent to write a song based on this book, and Jeremy Ward helped create the accompanying music video that I hope you'll check out. The eagle-eyed Amanda Coffin was my copy-editor (though any remaining errors are entirely
my
fault).

Early readers who generously contributed their time and extremely helpful opinions include
Connor Allison, Gervan Arneaud, Brian Centrone, Bill Konigsburg, Steve Leonard, Peter Monn, Tim O'Leary, Jesse Parks, Michael Queroz, and Robin Reardon.

And my life as an artist would be far more difficult without the advice and constant support of my assortment of creative genius friends: Tom Baer, Tim Cathersal, Lori Grant, Erik Hanberg, Marcy Rodenborn, James Venturini, and Sarah Warn.

Copyright © 2014 Brent Hartinger

All rights reserved.

The events and characters of this book are entirely fictional. Any similarity to events or people, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact:
 

Buddha Kitty Books
PO Box 30542
Seattle WA 98113
www.brenthartinger.com

Cover design by Philip
Malaczewski

ISBN-13: 978-0-9846794-7-8