Do-over

  Do-over

  OKAY, it was not Engall’s fault. Well, it was sort of his fault. Okay, it was mostly his fault, but who could have predicted it would have turned out that way?

  So he’d said no to a party—didn’t that make him a good guy? Cristina said, “Hey, Engall, you’re making yourself crazy! Come with me; Chandler’s throwing a thing!”

  “Chandler?” He tried to sound casually disinterested. It was hard.

  “Yeah! He actually told me to invite you personally!”

  Oh wow. That was a good thing, right? Chandler was smart and funny and cute and…. Stop it right there, Engall.

  “I may come over when my homework is done,” he said stiltedly, not wanting to talk about all of the good and bad things about Chandler, his physics lab partner, right now.

  Cristina rolled her eyes. “You do that, Engall. Just don’t stay here all night.”

  So he didn’t. He got shot in an all-night gas station instead.

  He’d just wanted some goddamned M&Ms—not even the illegal kind! He was up late, studying, it was too late to go to the party (he told himself), and he wanted some goddamned M&Ms, so he left his little crappy apartment in the Howe/Hurley apartment warren and went down to the corner Circle K to get himself some goddamned chocolate. And walked straight into a fucking robbery. In an only mildly shitty area of Sacramento.

  Who knew?

  It was all so surreal. He’d been pondering his trig problems in his head and wondering if the engineering degree was really worth it, especially when he liked history so much better, and checking out his shoes at one in the fucking morning. He could see the gum on the sidewalk, and the oil slick that doubled as pavement, and the cracks in the street. He could see the way the anemic blue light of the Circle K flickered so badly he was actually hoping for a seizure, and he could see the blue jeans and black Converse sneakers of the other person in the minimart.

  The person who was not getting out of his way.

  The person who was shouting at Engall like Engall had just clawed up and down on his last fucking nerve.

  The person with the ski mask and the gun.

  “Oh shit,” Engall said. “I should have gone to that party after all.”

  And that was when he got shot.

  He got shot in the head, which meant that basically his meatsack dropped immediately and twitched, and Engall sort of rose above himself and looked down at the whole affair. The guy with the ski mask took off, the clerk behind the counter—an elderly Indian man with a pained, stoic expression, like this had happened before—was crouched down in a puddle of his own piss, and Engall?

  Well, it wasn’t like he’d been that good-looking to begin with. Six foot three and gangly as hell, he’d had ginger hair, green eyes, and freckles. Everywhere. If he went outside in the summer it was like an invitation to the blister-balloon gods, which was just as well because he preferred to do his sweating indoors, in a gym, where he would never feel obligated to take off a shirt and reveal a physique sculpted by string beans and chocolate. His nose was too long, his jaw was too bony, and all the orthodontia in the world couldn’t change the fact that when he smiled, his teeth were a little too large. His ears stuck out like pitcher handles, even at twenty-three.

  Still, for all his plainness, and the way he’d avoided mirrors when he was alive, he looked a lot worse dead.

  “Oh fuck,” he muttered—or it felt like he muttered. “I didn’t even have a chance for my life to pass before my eyes! Goddamn it. My childhood was pretty goddamned choice, if I say so myself!”

  It had been, too. Two parents who loved him, an older brother and a younger sister who also (mostly) loved him. A house, a backyard with toys, a dog, water fights, camping trips, and a room he shared with his brother, who still liked model trains and action figures as much as he did when they were young and didn’t mind playing chess with him when he wanted to.

  Of course, the last four years in school hadn’t been all that exciting—that whole “party like a rock star” part of college had been, on the whole, a magnificent lie that he’d never gotten to partake in—but still. It would have been nice to have said goodbye to Mom and Dad, at least in his thoughts, before he got his head spattered across the dirty tiles of the Circle K.

  “You didn’t get a chance to say goodbye?” The voice was indignant, and Engall stopped looking down at his pathetically twitching body and looked around. “You didn’t get a chance to say goodbye? You weren’t even supposed to be there! Hell take it, boy, why the hell weren’t you at that party?”

  Engall was literally turning circles to find the owner of that voice, and since he was newly dead anyway, he was well on his way to becoming dizzy when the voice—which was sort of a reedy tenor and barely older than his own—said impatiently, “I’m up here, genius!”

  Engall looked up and saw an angel.

  “You’re an angel,” he said, which, all things considered, was one of the stupider things he’d said in his life, much less his death.

  “Was it the halo or the wings that gave it away?” the angel said irritably. The wings were pretty spectacular—they were mostly a wing-shaped aura, and at the moment, they were sort of an exasperated, twitchy maroon color. The halo, though—well, it was sort of tarnished, and the angelic head it graced was… well… mussed. It was mussed. The angel’s robes were crooked and ill-fitting, and the angelic hair—sort of nondescript, sandy brown—was mussed, and not in the attractive boy-band way, either.

  “It was the sarcasm,” Engall snapped. “I always expect my angels to sound like bitchy roommates on their periods.” Sort of like his roommate two weeks ago. He felt another pang of loss. Poor Cristina. She was such a total sweetheart—his parents had loved her, his sister had idolized her—and she’d be devastated to find out he was dead. Besides, she’d gone through four roommates before him, and they’d all flaked out on her one way or another, and she’d been so relieved that he was reliable and didn’t keep trying to get in her pants that she’d let him have all the chocolate milk and did the dishes, even when it was his turn, without complaint.

  “Well, yes, I’m irritated,” the angel snapped back. “You weren’t supposed to be here! You were supposed to be at the damned party! You had this test nailed, not that you were going to need it, because you were supposed to become a history teacher and not a bloody engineer, and you were going to make that decision after you hooked up with the love of your life at the frickin’ party!”

  “The love of my life?” Engall said cautiously. “Really? How… um… what’s she like?”

  The angel looked at him levelly. “Cut the crap, Engall. We both know that’s not happening.”

  Engall wondered if his ghost form blushed as unattractively as his human form, because he knew that was what he was doing at present. “Um, I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Angel, sir. If I were to find the love of my life, I’m sure she would be a nice gi—”

  The angel was rolling his eyes heavenward and shouting to unseen forces. “See? See? This is why we need to start smiting people! He was supposed to be going to a party and he ended up here, getting his brains blown out in the search for chocolate! Please?”

  The angel grunted. “Yeah. They always say that.”

  “What did they say?” Engall asked hesitantly.

  “They said we don’t smite people,” the angel told him sourly, and then, in a purely mocking voice, he said, “‘But Dagiel, that’s not what we do-oo.’” Dagiel stuck his tongue out at the heavenly forces that were, and then turned his attention back on Engall.

  “They also said you got a do-over.”

  “Heaven gives those out?”

  Dagiel the angel glared at him. “Apparently they do when stupid college students skip parties where their soul mates are because the stupid
powers that be make them afraid to admit who their soul mates are. Yes. Sometimes, Heaven gives those out.”

  Engall felt some optimism welling up from his toes. “So, a do-over, right? Can I start by calling my folks to tell them I love them?”

  Dagiel’s look at him was pained and almost patient. “You really are the sweetest puppy in the pound, aren’t you? Yes, baby boy, you can start your do-over by calling your parents, but there are a couple of other caveats that you need to hear before we get to that part.”

  Engall turned around and looked for his body and the Circle K, unsurprised to see that both were dissolving into mist. “I hear you,” he muttered. “Caveats. Let the do-over begin!”

  “ENG-AAALLLLLLLL!” Cristina wailed. She was a midsized, plump girl with cropped, bleached blonde hair and round brown eyes, getting her doctorate in philosophy. She was also one of the nicest human beings Engall had ever met.

  And one of the most insecure, which was why they were such good friends.

  “I don’t want….” Wait. That wasn’t true. He did want to go to the party. Chandler was going to be there. Beautiful Chandler, with his dark, toffee-brown hair and big brown eyes and narrow face and small, perfectly symmetrical nose and wicked smile. Chandler, who made Engall laugh all the way through physics lab and who knew more nicknames for a man’s nether region than Engall had ever seen in either print or on the Internet.

  That Chandler.

  Cristina looked at him, her fat little mouth pursed and pillowy. Engall looked back, wishing he could long for that fat little cupid-doll mouth, because he would so totally love to be Cristina’s boyfriend. He’d be great at it. She was plain and extroverted and he was plain and introverted. She knew all sorts of people who didn’t give a rat’s ass about plainness and who talked about important, interesting things like art and politics and music and gardening and cat cafes (he really loved cats and wished like hell their building would let him keep one) and who were… well….

  Gay.

  Engall had started out college thinking that maybe he was just a late bloomer when it came to girls.

  After four years in school, he was beginning to think that maybe he was a non-bloomer when it came to girls. But he seemed to be a big bloomer—or maybe that was a big boner!—when it came to other guys.

  He’d been a big boner around Chandler, that was for sure. This last semester, Engall had found himself tongue-tied and laughing like Goofy (Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!) every time Chandler told him a joke in class.

  “He might like you too,” Cristina said now, when they’d done the eyeball-to-eyeball thing long enough. “I mean, I’ve never seen him with a girl. He’s got all the same friends I do. Maybe….”

  She looked at him in an agony, and he looked away. He’d never said anything to her, not once, but then, he hadn’t said anything to his parents or his best friend from high school or his brother or sister, either.

  He hadn’t even looked in the mirror and said, “Buddy, you are the ugliest gay man on planet Earth,” yet, which would probably be a requirement to coming out of the closet, wouldn’t it?

  “He’s beautiful,” was what Engall ended up saying to the apartment’s crappy linoleum. He was surprised when Cristina wrapped her arm around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek.

  “You are the most beautiful man I’ve ever known,” she whispered, and then she pulled away. “But I’ll still hate you forever if you don’t come to this party with me.”

  Engall sighed. “No, you won’t.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  “No, you won’t infinity, now go! Have a good time.”

  “And you’ll what? Stay here and study?”

  Engall shook his head and looked down at his trig. “Not the whole time. I, um, I think I need to talk to my parents.” He couldn’t explain where that impulse had come from, but now that he’d had it, he couldn’t shake it. It was weighing on him, as well as a terrible urge to tell them he was gay.

  Well, shit. Why not? It wasn’t like he was going to get his damned trig done, anyway.

  He called and got his dad. Okay. Gerald Carpenter wasn’t as effusive or bubbly as Josie, his mother, but, well, he wasn’t an ogre, either. He could be sarcastic as hell, though—that was worrisome, but Engall felt like he was committed.

  “Hey, Engall. How you doing?”

  “Awesome, Dad.”

  “If you’re doing so friggin’ awesome, why are you home on a Friday night?”

  “Studying?”

  “Study on Sunday, after taking two aspirin for a hangover. Geez, kid, we didn’t send you away to school so you could live like your parents were going to check up on you!”

  Engall crossed his eyes. Sarcasm. Yes. It was his birthright.

  “Well, I didn’t come all the way cross country to barf up my tuition. I thought I’d maybe get an education instead.”

  Engall could practically hear his father’s scowl. “That’s not an education, kid, that’s a vow of goddamned celibacy. Now if you were getting educated, you’d be out getting laid!”

  Wow. It was like, the perfect opener. “Um, Dad….”

  And it really was that easy.

  “What?”

  “Would you mind if I didn’t want to go out and get laid by a girl?”

  “You mean you’re not horny?”

  “I mean I’m not horny for girls.”

  There was a digestive silence and a startled grunt. Then: “Please tell me you haven’t been putting off getting laid for this bullshit.”

  Engall blinked. “Not entirely, no.”

  “Well, good. Jesus, kid, after the investment we just made into your education, did you really think we’d disown you if you were gay?”

  He found himself laughing a little. “I was hoping not.”

  “Awesome. Now, could you do us a favor and warn us before you tell your mom’s mom?”

  Engall winced. Grandma Archer could be incredibly unpleasant about anything farther left than the side of a gnat’s bellybutton. “Do we have to tell her?”

  “Christ, yes. Your mom’s been itching to tell off your Aunt Lisa for something I forgot about years ago. Give us some warning so she can do that, okay?”

  “Mom held a grudge?”

  “Yeah—whatever that woman did, it must be a whole lot worse than what you should be doing right now.” Dad sounded bemused, and Engall had to laugh.

  “Okay, Dad. I hear you. Gay is good. Being bitchy like Aunt Lisa is—”

  “Really frickin’ awful. Now go buy some rubbers and get laid, okay?”

  Oh God! “Dad!”

  His father laughed hard, but when he spoke again, his voice was much softer. “Eng?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I love you. Your mother loves you. And, quite frankly, we’ve had our suspicions—“

  “You what?”

  “You’ve had a crush on the lead singer of Coldplay for years.”

  Engall felt the tips of his ears turn red. “He’s a very talented musician,” he said stiffly.

  “You made the same sounds your sister made when you saw him play SNL. It was… well, it was a really big clue.”

  Engall had to laugh then. He just had to. Only his parents, right? “Dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thanks for being… I don’t know. Buckets of awesome?”

  “You’re welcome, son. Thanks for being a kid I can be proud of.”

  Engall bailed from the conversation then, because he was going to start bawling, and given that he was alone on a Friday night, bawling over a conversation with his father was just the cherry on the loser sundae, right? But he sat there for a while, looking sightlessly at his trig, and found himself thinking about Chandler.

  Chandler liked Coldplay too. Wore the gray watch cap, all slouchy-like, grew the half stubble, even though his brown hair grew in sort of wispy on his chin, and liked the whole scarf thing, even when he was wearing a T-shirt. Engall sort of wished he’d leave off the cap and the scarf, because
he liked the color of Chandler’s hair and because Chandler worked out in the same gym Engall did (the one with the massive student discount!) and Engall knew from the showers that the guy’s chest was so tightly defined you could do an ink rubbing on it when he flexed. That, and his little brownish nipples seemed to have little baby perma-boners, and Engall could see them poking through his T-shirts. It was sort of cute, and really hot, and Engall liked to imagine he’d get a chance to touch them and make Chandler close those big brown eyes.

  Engall closed his own murky green eyes and groaned. He had a hard-on. Well, he was in his own room, and there wasn’t anyone else in the house.

  He slid his hand into his sweats (no underwear, because he just hadn’t bothered) and wrapped his fingers around his oldest friend, the little bald-headed man who had never seemed to mind that he was gay.

  His friend, in fact, had always been ecstatic to be in the know.

  Engall groaned, stroking from the base halfway up, teasing himself, and imagining Chandler’s eyes closing as Engall bent down (because Chandler was shorter) and kissed him. His lips would be sooooo soft.

  And that was all it took. Engall’s hand jerked on his cock, and his cock erupted inside his sweats, and… oh crap. He didn’t have any underwear on. He was sticky and smelled like come and he had to shower and change and….

  Well, he might as well go to the party, right?

  He showered in five minutes and was changed and smelling like aftershave five minutes after that. He ran out into the April night with hair still wet and a little foam still on his sideburns, walking to Chandler’s apartment because it was two blocks away, and he had a sudden thought about the conversation with his father.

  Condoms, right? Yeah. Well, they sold those at the gas station. Wasn’t there a Shell station on the way?

  “WELL,” Dagiel said, looking quizzically down at Engall’s body, “that was unexpected.”

  Engall gaped at himself, this time looking clean and pretty—and sporting a bullet-sized hole in his chest instead of missing part of his face.

  “There was a robbery at the Shell station too?” Engall asked rhetorically, looking at Dagiel in frustration, and Dagiel shrugged, as put out as Engall.