Coda 01 - Promises

these giant piles of stationary rock, rounded and covered with dry sage- and rust-colored lichen. This one was about twenty feet high on the downhill side. If you walked up the hill, you could practically walk right out onto it. But what’s the fun in that? Those rocks just beg to be climbed.
    Once we reached the top, we sat down. The view wasn’t really any different from there. We could see down the trail to the Jeep, but other than that, we were still just looking at more trees, more rocks, more mountains. I love Colorado, but this type of view can be found in hundreds of spots. I was surprised to hear a contented sigh from Matt. When I looked at him, his face showed amazement.
    “Man, I love Colorado. I’m from Oklahoma. This is better, believe me.”
    He turned to look at me, and I almost quit breathing. He was squinting a little against the sun. His skin was tan, and his eyes were shining. There was definitely a hint of green in them. “Thanks for bringing me up here.”
    “Anytime.” And I meant it.

    M ATT came by the shop the next day, cash in hand, to buy the Jeep. It was a Saturday, normally one of our busier days, so Lizzy and I were both in the shop.
    “Will you join me for a beer?” He had shaved that morning, and it made him look several years younger. Man, he was cute. “I’d love to, but you’ll have to give me a rain check. I’m having dinner with the family.”

    “Oh.” He actually sounded disappointed. “Well, maybe another time….”
    “Hey!” Lizzy interrupted, grinning ear to ear. “Why don’t you come? We’re just having dinner up at the house. We would love to have you.”
    He agreed, and we arranged for him to come back by the shop shortly after we closed at five.
    Once he was gone, I studiously tried not to look at Lizzy, who was standing next to me with the goofiest smile I’d seen in a long time. She has blonde hair that seems to fly all over the place when she moves and blue eyes, which at the moment were shining with excitement. I suppose she falls somewhere between “lovely” and “cute as a button,” and I swear she could charm the stars down out of the sky if she tried.
    “Well?” she finally asked.
“Well, what?” I knew I was blushing and hated myself for it.
    “You know what.” She smacked me on the arm. “He’s hot! And he asked you out. Aren’t you excited?” The fact was, I didn’t have many friends. Most of my buddies from high school were married with kids. The ones who weren’t married were all troublemakers who spent their nights drinking at the bar. Lizzy was probably the best friend I had in the world, and I knew that she was always hoping I would find somebody.
    “I don’t think he meant it as a date.”
Her smile faltered a little. “You don’t?”
“Does he look gay to you?”
    “Well, no. But neither do you, so that obviously doesn’t mean anything and you know it. He wanted to take you out and was disappointed that he wasn’t going to have you alone. I think he’s interested.” The smile was back in its full glory now.
    I felt a grin breaking out on my face. “I’m not going to get my hopes up, but I sure wouldn’t mind if you were right.”
    P EOPLE always ask me when I knew that I was gay. I guess they think I had some epiphany—lights flashing and horns blaring—but it wasn’t like that for me. It was more of a culmination of events.
    I suppose the first clues came early in puberty as I compared myself to my brother Brian, two years my elder. While he was hanging up posters of Cindy Crawford and Samantha Fox, I was putting up only cars and the Denver Broncos. I was aware of the fact that he found girls enticing and fascinating in a way I did not understand, but I didn’t think too much of it.
    One weekend when I was fifteen, my dad went to a Broncos game and brought a poster back for me that showed the whole team with the cheerleaders arrayed around them in various provocative poses. Brian helped me hang it up, and then we stood there for a few minutes looking at it.
    “Which one do you think is the best looking?” Brian asked me. “Steve Atwater,” I said without even thinking about it.
    He laughed, but it was a nervous kind of laugh, like he wasn’t sure if I was pulling his leg or not. When I turned to look at him, I found him staring at me with a look on his face that would eventually become very familiar to me: part humor, part confusion, part concern. I was embarrassed. I knew my answer was wrong,