Free Tips on Having a Gay (ex) Boyfriend by Carrie Jones

me a break. You don’t think you aren’t trying to live up to other people’s expectations?”
    “Well, yeah.”
    I grabbed a handful of grass and started sorting it on my thigh, separating the strands by lengths as Dylan kept talking. “When are you happiest?”
    “When I’m with you,” I leaned in and kissed him. He sighed and gently pushed me away.
    “Other than that.”
    I pouted and then decided to answer. “When I play Gabriel.”
    He nodded, excitement flushing his face. A squirrel twittered at us from a nearby tree. “Right. But you don’t play it all the time. You don’t even expect to do it for a living, do you? You’re going to be a lawyer, right? Why’s that?”
    I grabbed the grass blades off my leg and scattered them. I didn’t answer. I hated it when Dylan did this psychobabble stuff. I loved that he was smart and philosophical, but I hated when he used it on me.
    Up in the sky another osprey joined the first one. I wondered what we looked like to them, two tiny specks on the ground, too big to eat, but small, small, small in the scheme of things.
    Dylan answered his own question. “You don’t think of being a guitarist because that’s not what’s expected of you. You don’t sit around playing guitar all day because that’s not what other people want you to do. You change your own wants to fulfill other people’s expectations.”
    I stood up. “Like you don’t.”
    He kept sitting there, sad taking over his face. All my anger melted away. “No, believe me, I do.”

    Sometimes we would try to memorize the names of the people in the cemetery, the names of the people whose stories are long gone, who are invisible now, the unremembered. We would chant them like a mantra, with our eyes closed. Our voices overlapping each other.
    Larry Rohan
    Charlotte Block
    Frances Block
    Ebenezer Block
    Cpt. John Mortan
    Horatio Alley
    Elizabeth Alley
    “We should make up songs about all of them,” I told Dylan, propping myself up on my elbow so I could see his face.
    He kept his eyes closed. “Why?”
    “So people will remember them.”
    “Who’ll make up songs about us?” He opened his eyes. They were grainy green, like they had texture and depth.
    “We’ll make up our own songs,” I said, kissing him lightly on his lower lip. “Deal?”
    He nodded and closed his eyes again. “Deal.”

    When we were walking home, I stopped and wrapped my hands around him.
    “You should be who you want to be,” I whispered.
    His hands tightened on my back.
    “I can’t.”
    “Sure you can,” I said and then to lighten the mood I licked his ear.
    He hollered and chased me the entire way home.

    At the Key Club meeting, it is decided that we will sell bracelets at the YMCA’s Middle School dance to try to raise money for a gym at the Hancock Consolidated School. This girl named Gillian was killed in Hancock last summer by a car. She’d been riding her bike. There aren’t any shoulders on the roads in Hancock. It’s a dangerous place to ride a bike. Gillian was big into sports and she would have come in to our high school this year, because Hancock, like lots of towns around here, don’t have their own high schools. Anyway, her parents thought that building the Hancock School a big gym in Gillian’s honor would be a good way to make sure that no one will forget her.
    It’s a good idea. Still, Hancock County’s a small place. Nobody will ever forget about Gillian. Her big sister, Anna, is in Key Club, she starts crying when everyone agrees to sell the bracelets.
    “Thanks,” she sniffs and wipes her big, beautiful brown eyes with her sleeve. “It means a lot.”
    I tiptoe over and sit next to her and hug her, while everybody else finishes up and Rachel adjourns the meeting. Em clicks a picture of us hugging and Anna gives her the finger.
    Em lifts her hands up. “Sorry. Sorry. I don’t know when to quit.”
    Anna groans, smiles, and waves her finger a little bit more, before tucking it into a