Platonic by Kate Paddington Read Free Book Online

asphalt even as he fumbled with his phone, trying to hang up. The letter had been waiting for Daniel in his mailbox when he got home from school, and he’d called Mark before he even went inside. He needed Mark there when he opened it, and would wait for him.
    Mark pulled into Daniel’s driveway, behind his dad’s truck, less than twenty minutes later. He half-fell out of his car and was breathless by the time he knocked on the front door. As Daniel stared at the envelop, Mark babbled: “Daniel, whatever happens, whether it’s good or bad or…anything! You’re going to be amazing . You’re going to get to New York and blow everyone out of the water and in ten years we’ll be...“
    Daniel pushed his hair back out of his eyes and grinned at every little bit of hope in Mark’s voice. “How fast were you driving?” he asked, but Mark just shook his head and brushed past him into the house. His fingertips found the back of Daniel’s hand as he passed and he pressed them there for reassurance even though he knew Daniel would be able to feel him shaking.
    Sure enough, “Calm down,” Daniel admonished, but then he grinned as though the excitement radiating between them was catching.
    “Come on.” Daniel led him up the stairs to his room, and Mark followed, grabbing and squeezing his hand and wondering why Daniel hadn’t just ripped open the damned envelope already.
    But when the boys pushed through the half-open door, Mark saw that Daniel’s parents, Greg and Molly, were sitting on the bed. Mark stared as Daniel’s mom pushed off the mattress and muttered, “Finally.”
    They stalled then, Mark still breathing loudly through his mouth, Daniel’s dad crossing his arms, still in his jeans and boots from work, and Daniel, fingernails scratching at the corner of the flimsy paper in his hands, weighing it in his palm as though it suddenly felt heavy.
    “This is it,” Daniel breathed, but didn’t move.
    “Come on,” Mark told him.
    Daniel sighed as if preparing himself for the worst and looked to his mom, whose eyes were wide; to his dad, on the edge of the bed; and to Mark, who was beaming and nodding.
    Daniel ripped into the envelope, unfolded the paper and paused, just for a second, with his eyes closed. Then he opened them slowly and read.
    And that was the moment New York became a reality for Daniel, when art became his reality, and Mark got to watch it happen. Daniel’s face split into a grin, and he started to shake even harder in his excitement. Daniel’s first-choice school had not only accepted him, it had also awarded him the scholarship he needed. Every fantasy they had ever had suddenly seemed real, and Mark could see that Daniel was dizzy with it.
    And then Daniel’s family and Mark were wrapping around him, hugging the breath out of him and talking and laughing, and Mark was sure that Daniel had never, ever been so happy.
    ***
    “So you lost your boy to New York and you were stuck in butt-fuck nowhere for a year?” Patrick interrupts again, hazarding a guess. He pushes his chair back from the little table in his kitchen and starts rummaging through his pantry.
    “Not exactly,” Mark concedes, yawning and flexing his shoulders.
    “You tried long distance?”
    “Not exactly.”
    Patrick sits back down. “You guys were so young, though and the… excuse my stereotyping, but you were the only gays in the village, right?”
    Mark just shrugs, suddenly tired. The story still aches, but sharing it out loud is no worse than keeping it to himself and thinking about it late at night when he runs out of other things to think of. And everything that Patrick is saying makes sense. Mark had wondered, especially after Antonio and the empty, lonely months that followed, whether Daniel and what they’d had, how it had fallen apart, made any sense at all—or if what Mark remembered, what he went through, was just nonsense. But Patrick follows the story, offers no objection, just listens; it’s strangely