Author's Note: This chapter contains somewhat graphic sexual content and mention of past self-injury.
"When everything goes to hell, the people who stand by you without flinching - they are your family." -Jim Butcher
27 days sober
Convincing my parents that Ben and I aren’t really together would probably be easier if they didn’t walk in on me fucking him the night of the big ‘what are your intentions with my son’ dinner. That being said, the sight of me sitting up against my headboard and clawing at his back while he rides me like he’s a professional polo player… probably makes his intentions pretty clear. At least the blankets are pulled up and pooling around our waists so there’s no visible penetration?
“Garen, your mother’s here. Are you two ready for din—oh, holy mother of God,” is all I catch Dad saying before my bedroom door clicks shut again.
Ben attempts to scramble off my lap, but I reach up to grab his shoulders, slamming him back down onto me in a way that makes both of us groan, even as he hisses, “Can you not, Garen? Your dad—”
“—knows me well enough to realize he shouldn’t come back into this room anytime soon, because there’s no way I’m stopping now,” I say.
It’s the second time we’ve fucked today—the first being a particularly fantastic christening of my newly repaired Testarossa after I sneaked out of school during my lunch period—and the sixth time we’ve fucked since Saturday, but I don’t really envision myself getting tired of this anytime soon. I have months of sex to catch up on, and now that I know it’s possible, now that I know I can actually do it, as long as Ben listens to me and lets me take the lead and turns off the fucking television before we do anything, I’m back to being my insatiable whore self.
It’s almost better than it was before.
“What’s the etiquette regarding this?” I ask, ducking down to worry Ben’s earlobe between my teeth for a moment before I continue. “Are we supposed to shower after, even though it’ll make us late for dinner? Or are we just supposed to go eat, even though we’ll reek of sweaty gay sex? Or, in the interest of saving time, should I finish fucking you in the shower, and then—”
“Oh my god, stop talking,” Ben mutters, reaching down to take himself in hand.
In the end, he paints my chest with his cum and we wind up being forced to take a shower. I make a half-hearted attempt to initiate round three, and he makes a whole-hearted attempt to punch me in the balls; I’m still scowling at him by the time we’re dressed—though our hair is still damp, and Ben’s eyeliner is more than a little smeared—and making our way upstairs. Dad is studiously jamming a meat thermometer into one of the chicken breasts in the baking dish now resting on top of the stove; Mom is sitting at the table, sipping a glass of wine and smirking at Ben and I.
I can’t help but smirk back at her; apparently sarcasm and shamelessness are traits I get from the Weisman side of the family, not the Anderson side. I nod towards the glass in her hand. “Trying to drink away the pain of what you just witnessed?”
She raises the glass in a slight toast and says, “Learned from the best.” She looks past me to where Ben is still hovering awkwardly in the doorway. “Nice to see you again, Ben. I can’t say I was expecting to see as much of you as I did, but—”
“As you can see, both my son and my ex-wife are severely lacking in conversational boundaries,” Dad says loudly. “Garen, did you remember to stop at the store after school to pick up some salad dressing, like I asked?”
I hop up onto the counter and steal a slice of carrot, a piece of lettuce, and two olives from the salad bowl next to me. “That depends. If I say no, are you going to make me go out now and get it?”
“Probably.”
“In that case, I totally remembered it, and then I put it in the fridge, and if you can’t find it in there, you must have misplaced it on your own. I accept no responsibility,” I say. I pop one of the olives in my mouth and add, “Besides, if you make me go to the store, I’m taking Ben with me, and I can’t promise we won’t pull over somewhere and spend an hour fu—”
Ben jabs his fist hard into my ribcage and says, “I can make a dressing, if you’d like.” When Dad gestures to the rest of the kitchen, as if to say be my guest, Ben opens the refrigerator door and starts digging around inside. He glances over at me and says, “Make yourself useful and get me olive oil, red wine vinegar, honey.”
“Honey? Are we doing pet names now?” I say, hopping off the counter and wandering over to the pantry. “Should I be calling you ‘pumpkin’ or something? Sugarplum? Sweetcheeks?”
“You make me wish I were dead sometimes,” Ben says, and my mom nearly snorts up a mouthful of wine. I scowl at them both, but retrieve his desired items from the pantry anyway. When I return to the counter, he’s scooping a spoonful of Dijon mustard into a small bowl. I hook my chin over his shoulder to watch as he whisks it with the vinegar and some honey, then carefully adds in the olive oil. He sprinkles a little bit of salt and pepper into the bowl, whisks again, then lifts the whisk high enough to let a few drops fall onto the tip of one of his fingers. He sucks the finger into his mouth, presumably to test the flavor, but I like watching him put things in his mouth. I press my hips forward against his ass. He glares at me, and I allow myself to be shoved back in the direction of the table.
Only when I sink down into the seat across from my mom do I realize that she’s watching me with her eyebrow arched. I squint at her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says innocently. “How’s the play going?”
“Ugh. It’s eating dicks. We have a month and a half before opening night, right? And everyone is going crazy already. Not the rest of the cast, I mean—we’re all fine, and most people are already mostly off-book, but the crew? Nate? It’s insane. Every time somebody needs to double-check a line, he looks like he’s about to go into convulsions. And from what I hear, most of the people on stage crew are losing their minds. They made the mistake of voting to have Travis be their stage manager, and he’s working them all to exhaustion to build the sets as soon as possible.”
Mom cocks her head to the side as Ben sets the bowl of dressing on the table and slips into the seat at my side. She glances at him, then asks me, “Do you still talk to Travis much?”
“Nope,” I say. “By the way, are you almost done making Dad be not married to Evelyn anymore? Every time I remember that she’s my stepmom, I feel like I’m going to start sawing at my wrists with a steak knife.”
The joke is out of my mouth before I realize who’s sitting next to me. I immediately go cold with guilt, but I can’t exactly apologize to him without acknowledging why I’m apologizing, and that would--
I’m in the kitchen of the old house, sitting next to my dad and glaring across the table to Travis, who stares back at me with nervous, desperate eyes. I’m surprised I can even stay upright on this chair, I’m so unbelievably shitfaced, but I’m managing it. Even though I can’t take my eyes off him, my words are directed towards his mom. “Wrong son, Ev. You want to talk self-mutilation, maybe you should direct your attention to Travis.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” is his immediate, forced reply.
I laugh, even though I’m not actually amused, even though the motion jostles the twin lip rings I’m still not used to having jammed through my mouth yet. “The hell you don’t. Alex told me you started slitting your wrists again after I left. Or, maybe it was dating Ben that got you started again. Birds of a fucking feather, right? Does cutting yourselves mean you two finally have something in common besides my cock?”
Oh. Oh, shit.
I glance over at my dad, just to see if he’s remembering the same incident that I am, but his face is completely neutral as he sets the dish of chicken down on the table and commands, “Help yourselves.”
“Hate to break it to you, Garen, but you’re going to have to wait out that feeling a little while longer,” Mom says, spearing one of the breasts and transferring it to her plate. “Our ideal scenario was to reach all of the agreements before ever going to court. You know, figure things out, get some contracts drawn up, present it to the judge, and bam. Dissolution of marriage. Unfortunately, the agreements still aren’t going well.”
“I’m so over this divorce thing,” I mutter.
“Tell me about it,” Dad grumbles, and Ben laughs.
Mom shrugs. “Would now be a bad time to tell you that I’ll need you to come to a meeting with the McCall lawyers next Wednesday?”
There’s a silence, during which I carefully ladle some of the dressing onto my salad. Only when that silence stretches on for an almost uncomfortably long time do I look up and realize that she’s look at me, not Dad. I say, “Wait, you need me to go? Why? What did I do?”
“Nothing,” she reassures me. “It’s just so that the other lawyers can have a chance to interview you, as I have. I’ll be there the entire time, and then you’ll have to wait while I interview Travis and Bridget. She’s coming down from her school in Massachusetts for the evening.” I’ve always liked Bree, but I’ve barely spoken to her since I got out of rehab. I wonder if Travis told her about my relapse. When I don’t say anything, Mom adds, “I should probably tell you that Evelyn will be there as well. Travis is still a minor, so she has the right to be there with her son while—”
“I’d like to come along, if that’s alright,” Dad interrupts, though his tone makes it clear that he doesn’t care if Mom objects.
She raises her eyebrows. “I told you, William, I’m going to be there the entire time.”
“Yes, as his lawyer, not his mother. Garen needs a parent to support him. I don’t care if he’s eighteen, alright? That woman’s not coming near him if I’m not around. This entire problem started because she used my absence as an opportunity to tell him he should run away—”
“No, this entire problem started because you thought it was acceptable to marry a woman who would call my son a kike and say she wished Walczyk had killed him,” Mom snaps, and then suddenly, both of them are turning to stare at me.
Those words hit me like a bucket of ice water being poured down the back of my shirt. No one has ever called me that before. At least, not to my face. And no one has ever told me that they wished Dave had killed me. Fuck, not even Dave said he wished he had killed me. Underneath the table, Ben reaches over and grips my knee, but I can barely feel it. I lick my lips. “That’s, uh… that’s what she said?” No one speaks. A little louder, I say, “The day I went to rehab and you decided to get a divorce. That’s the thing everyone’s been keeping from me for all these months, the thing you guys wouldn’t tell me?”
Again, there’s no response, probably because there’s not a damn thing anyone can say on this topic that will make things better. I cut harshly into my chicken, turn to face Ben, and say, “How’s school going?”
“Fine,” he says, and it barely comes out as a whisper. He blinks once, clears his throat, and repeats, in a much steadier voice, “Fine. I finally got back that sociology paper I handed in weeks ago. I got an A on it, but my teacher’s handwriting is terrible, I can barely read her comments.”
I slip a hand under the table to stroke a silent thank you across the back of the hand he has left resting on my knee, and he offers me a very small half-smile. Dad asks, “And how are you liking college so far?”
“I like it a lot,” Ben says, nodding his head agreeably. “I mean, the course load I’m taking at Yale is obviously a lot more than I ever had to deal with at LHS, but I’m adjusting. I think it helps that I’m not living on-campus, because I don’t have to worry about being distracted by other people partying in the dorms or whatever.”
“Is there a lot of partying at your school?” Mom asks.
He shrugs. “I guess. Depends what crowd you hang out with, but that’s true of any school. There are a lot of bars in New Haven, and I guess that’s kind of popular for some people.”
I don’t miss the fact that Mom sets her fork down and steeples her fingers together before she asks, “Do you go out a lot?”
Ben opens his mouth to reply, then pauses, glances up. Seeing Mom’s posture, he also sets his fork down and folds his hands in his lap, smiling politely. “I do go out, but I mostly go to music shows, open mic nights. Sometimes poetry readings, which I can only assume is a hazard of being an English major. But I get the feeling that what you’re really asking me is if I go to clubs and bars, and if that’s the case, then I assume what you’re really trying to ask me is if I drink.” Mom nods once in acknowledgment of the correctness of his assumption. He shakes his head. “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t use any sort of controlled substance. I never have, and I don’t exactly see myself starting anytime soon. I have four younger sisters and one baby brother, and I-I try not to do anything that I know my parents wouldn’t want them to see me doing.”
All at once, I’m hit by the memory of him shaking in his parents’ basement as he tries to explain to me how wrong it is for him to want who and what he wants, how important it is for him to be a good, heterosexual—and failing that, asexual—example to his siblings. Even if he can’t be what his parents and his church expect him to be, he’s still doing everything right, in my opinion. I say, as casually as I can, “Ben’s sort of my only sober friend. He’s… actually the only completely sober person I know. It’s pretty impressive.” I pause, then grin a little as I reach over to ruffle his hair. “He has morals.”
“Which is a new and exciting concept to you, I’m sure,” Dad says.
“Speaking of which,” Mom says, taking a sip of wine, “how long have you two been together?”
“Really, Mom? That’s your segue? ‘My son has no morals, how long have you two been fucking’?” I deadpan. Ben chokes on a mouthful of chicken, and I reach over to clap him hard on the back without taking my eyes off my mother.
She raises a hand in protest. “‘Fucking’ is your word, not mine. I said ‘together.’”
“Yes, but ‘fucking’ is a more accurate word, because we’re not together,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Look, I already told Dad everything. Ben and I are friends. We talk, we hang out, we go to shows, and yes, sometimes we get naked together. Don’t pretend you’re not aware of this. You saw it in action less than an hour ago.”
Next to me, Ben turns to my dad and quietly asks, “So, in fifteen years of marriage, did you ever find a way to escape that ‘lack of conversational boundaries’ they both have?”
Dad shrugs. “Divorce. But I don’t know think that really helps your scenario.”
“Maybe if I just ran away?”
“Then I’d fucking find you, total payback for that time you did it to me,” I say. I turn back to my mom and say, “I don’t get what the big deal is. He’s a really awesome guy, we’ve been friends for a long time, and he takes it like a fuckin’ champ.”
Ben taps the heels of his Chucks together and mutters, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”
“I don’t care how well he takes it, Garen,” Mom argues, and Ben gives up and bangs his head down on the table. Dad reaches over to give him a consoling pat on the shoulder. But Mom’s on a roll. “The point is, you told us that your doctor recommended that you abstain from relationships during this first year. That’s because—”
“It’s because she’s worried about me becoming dependent on anyone, or tying my sobriety to a relationship, or my emotional involvement with guys. Well, newsflash, Mom: I’m already ‘emotionally involved’ with Ben, because he’s one of my best friends. I cared about him before the addiction, and during the addiction, and now I care about him after the addiction. I’m not tying my sobriety to him, because even if I wanted to do that, he wouldn’t let me. Ben is quite possibly the only person on this planet who cares about my sobriety as much as I do, and if he thought that our hooking up was jeopardizing that, he wouldn’t be doing anything with me. I’m not dating him. I’ve told you that, like, four million times. But if I were, there is absolutely no better person I could be involved with at this point in my life. Sooner or later, Mom, we’re going to reach a point where the things that they say in the NA pamphlets don’t work for me anymore, alright? I’m a person, and sometimes I need to make my own choices and do what feels right for me, instead of only following some bullshit rules that twelve-step programs and self-help books say I should live my life by.”
My words are followed by total silence. Ben still hasn’t lifted his head from the table, but he has reached over to stroke his fingertips across the inside of my wrist. My parents are looking at each other instead of at me. They seem to be having a very long conversation composed entirely of vague head tilts, tiny shrugs, and eyebrow twitches. Apparently four years of being divorced doesn’t outweigh the fifteen years of being married, because eventually, Mom sighs and nods, and Dad says, “Fine. Neither of us is exactly thrilled with this, but if you think that being… closer to Ben won’t affect your ability to stay clean, we’ll respect your decision.”
Holy shit. Is this what having an adult conversation feels like?
“Thank you,” I say, since it feels like the right sort of closing for this conversation. I turn to Ben. “Are you done eating?”
“Yeah,” he says, straightening up quickly. I stand and carry both of our plates over to the sink, scrape the remaining food down the garbage disposal, and put the plates in the dishwasher.
“And on that note, I think I’m going to head back to the city,” Mom says.
I allow her to hug me and tell me goodbye, and then I grab Ben’s wrist and drag him towards the door to my room. We make it halfway down the stairs before I start taking my clothes off. “If you’re not naked in my bed in like, five seconds, I’m going to die.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” he says, even as he wriggles out of his hoodie and kicks off his Chucks. “I mean, really, that got you going?”
“I’m a former boarding school brat who just won an argument with his parents,” I say, pushing him through the door to my room—I actually bother to lock it this time—and stripping out of the rest of my clothes. “You have no idea how hot that makes me.”
To demonstrate just how much I mean what I’m saying, I shove him unceremoniously onto the bed and crawl after him to lie between his legs, grinding my erection against his thigh.
“You have so many problems. By the way, nice speech, you complete and utter tool,” Ben says, lifting his hips so I can strip off his jeans and boxers in one motion. “Did you practice that?”
“Not as many times I practiced saying the part about you taking it like a champ,” I say. “And can we take a moment to marvel at how spectacularly I failed in my mission to convince my parents you’re not my boyfriend?”
“I’m not your boyfriend, but I’m willing to be your ‘it’s complicated’ on facebook,” Ben says.
“Does anyone really use their facebook anymore? I’m not sure I even remember my password, I haven’t logged into it in like, months.” I duck down to nibble on the pale skin of his shoulder. “But I see your ‘it’s complicated,’ and I raise you an ‘in an open relationship with.’ Has it been long enough that you’re ready for me to fuck you again?”
Ben scowls and pinches my arm hard, but he rolls over to grab another condom from the nightstand drawer anyway. “Don’t use that word. That word makes it too serious.”
“What, ‘fuck’?”
“Garen,” he sighs.
“Again?” I suggest. Before he can get more annoyed, I snatch up the bottle of lube, drizzling a little on my hand before I reach down to start stroking him. His next sigh is one of contentment, not of exasperation, which is kind of the point.
But the solace only lasts a moment or two, and then he’s muttering, “‘Relationship.’ We’re just friends, we agreed. That word makes it sound too serious.”
“Well,” I say slowly, pausing to trace his lower lip with the tip of my tongue. “Maybe it is.”
“What do you mean?” he asks. He tears open the wrapper and rolls the condom down onto my dick, moving my already lubed hand from him to myself so that I can slick up a little.
After multiple rounds today, he’s still relaxed and a little loose, so I don’t even really need to finger him before I line up and press inside of him. He makes another one of those delicious, satisfied noises, and I time my words with a particularly hard thrust. “Maybe this is serious, for me.”
He goes still immediately. “Dude, I thought I was really clear about not wanting you to ask me out while your dick is in me. That wasn’t a mouth-specific instruction. It kind of applied to all orifices.”
“I’m not asking you out,” I say, though I angle my hips to make sure that my next thrust is aimed directly at his prostate so that he throws his head back and groans, because fuck that. If I did want to ask him out, he could totally do worse. If I did want to ask him out, he should at least want to say yes. “I’m not—just, hey. Give me your hands for a second.”
He releases his grip on my shoulders and obediently holds them out to me. I lean back so that I’m sort of sitting on my heels, still buried inside of him, and I take his hands, flattening them against my chest. Keeping my eyes fixed on his, I guide his hands downward, first over my pecs, down to my abs, then around so that they’re framing my waist. Then, moving very carefully so as not to unsettle either of us, I wind my fingers around his wrists and drag his hands down so that he’s holding my hips. His eyes are wide and his movements are hesitant, but I squeeze down hard on his hands before shifting to brace my own against the mattress once more. Slowly, he tightens his grip on my hips and pulls me deeper inside of him. My eyes flutter shut as I bottom out, and then he’s guiding me back out, dragging me back towards him; it’s slow, and it’s nervous, but he’s the one controlling the pace, not me. He’s touching my hips and I’m not freaking out; he’s in charge right now and I’m still hard. I’m still okay.
“Please tell me you understand,” I whisper. “Please tell me you get that this—being able to do this, it’s a big deal for me. This is serious. I know you’re not in love with me, and I’m not in love with you, either. It’s not like that between us. It probably never will be. But I feel safe with you, Ben. I trust you more than I trust basically anyone else in my life. And with where I am now, with everything I’ve been through, being able to do this—” I card my fingers through his hair, run my palm down his torso, wrap my hand around his cock, “—and being able to touch you like this, maybe that’s enough.”
“Sex?” he says, and I can tell he’s trying so hard not to be offended by that, even as he grips my hips and drives me into him a little bit harder.
“No, you idiot,” I say, ducking down to kiss him briefly. “Trusting you. Feeling safe with you. Caring about you. Loving you, even if it’s not like that. Maybe it’s enough for right now.”
He releases my hips and surges up to kiss me again, and we don’t talk much after that. Actually, we don’t say anything at all, not until almost half an hour later, when we’re both dressed and I’m walking him to the door. I stop to give him a short kiss goodbye and say, “Think about it. Alright?”
He nods, and I lean in to press my lips to his cheek once more before he heads out with a quick goodbye to my dad, who is sitting on the couch and very pointedly not looking at us.
Later, when I’m sprawled out on my bed and reluctantly slogging through my homework, my phone chimes from the nightstand. I mark my page, unlock the screen, and blink down at my new message. It’s a facebook alert— Ben McCutcheon has requested to change your relationship status to ‘in an open relationship.’ The ‘personal message’ he has elected to attach reads, Shut up. I’m still not your boyfriend. Even though he’s miles away, I’m pretty sure he can feel me smirking at him, hear my unspoken, yeah, whatever. I accept the request.
29 days sober
It takes almost a month and a half of school for me to realize that I’m that weird music guy. Every school has one—the kid who wears his headphones pretty much all the time, even has them draped over his neck during class, the kid who’s always singing along to whatever song he’s got stuck in his head, the kid who’s deaf to pretty much anything that isn’t blasting out of the earbuds plugged into his iPod. I don’t realize that that loser is me until I’m standing in line at the cash register during lunch, drumming my fingers on my plastic-wrapped sandwich and singing softly along to the Mountain Goats song playing on my headphones.
Convincing my parents that Ben and I aren’t really together would probably be easier if they didn’t walk in on me fucking him the night of the big ‘what are your intentions with my son’ dinner. That being said, the sight of me sitting up against my headboard and clawing at his back while he rides me like he’s a professional polo player… probably makes his intentions pretty clear. At least the blankets are pulled up and pooling around our waists so there’s no visible penetration?
“Garen, your mother’s here. Are you two ready for din—oh, holy mother of God,” is all I catch Dad saying before my bedroom door clicks shut again.
Ben attempts to scramble off my lap, but I reach up to grab his shoulders, slamming him back down onto me in a way that makes both of us groan, even as he hisses, “Can you not, Garen? Your dad—”
“—knows me well enough to realize he shouldn’t come back into this room anytime soon, because there’s no way I’m stopping now,” I say.
It’s the second time we’ve fucked today—the first being a particularly fantastic christening of my newly repaired Testarossa after I sneaked out of school during my lunch period—and the sixth time we’ve fucked since Saturday, but I don’t really envision myself getting tired of this anytime soon. I have months of sex to catch up on, and now that I know it’s possible, now that I know I can actually do it, as long as Ben listens to me and lets me take the lead and turns off the fucking television before we do anything, I’m back to being my insatiable whore self.
It’s almost better than it was before.
“What’s the etiquette regarding this?” I ask, ducking down to worry Ben’s earlobe between my teeth for a moment before I continue. “Are we supposed to shower after, even though it’ll make us late for dinner? Or are we just supposed to go eat, even though we’ll reek of sweaty gay sex? Or, in the interest of saving time, should I finish fucking you in the shower, and then—”
“Oh my god, stop talking,” Ben mutters, reaching down to take himself in hand.
In the end, he paints my chest with his cum and we wind up being forced to take a shower. I make a half-hearted attempt to initiate round three, and he makes a whole-hearted attempt to punch me in the balls; I’m still scowling at him by the time we’re dressed—though our hair is still damp, and Ben’s eyeliner is more than a little smeared—and making our way upstairs. Dad is studiously jamming a meat thermometer into one of the chicken breasts in the baking dish now resting on top of the stove; Mom is sitting at the table, sipping a glass of wine and smirking at Ben and I.
I can’t help but smirk back at her; apparently sarcasm and shamelessness are traits I get from the Weisman side of the family, not the Anderson side. I nod towards the glass in her hand. “Trying to drink away the pain of what you just witnessed?”
She raises the glass in a slight toast and says, “Learned from the best.” She looks past me to where Ben is still hovering awkwardly in the doorway. “Nice to see you again, Ben. I can’t say I was expecting to see as much of you as I did, but—”
“As you can see, both my son and my ex-wife are severely lacking in conversational boundaries,” Dad says loudly. “Garen, did you remember to stop at the store after school to pick up some salad dressing, like I asked?”
I hop up onto the counter and steal a slice of carrot, a piece of lettuce, and two olives from the salad bowl next to me. “That depends. If I say no, are you going to make me go out now and get it?”
“Probably.”
“In that case, I totally remembered it, and then I put it in the fridge, and if you can’t find it in there, you must have misplaced it on your own. I accept no responsibility,” I say. I pop one of the olives in my mouth and add, “Besides, if you make me go to the store, I’m taking Ben with me, and I can’t promise we won’t pull over somewhere and spend an hour fu—”
Ben jabs his fist hard into my ribcage and says, “I can make a dressing, if you’d like.” When Dad gestures to the rest of the kitchen, as if to say be my guest, Ben opens the refrigerator door and starts digging around inside. He glances over at me and says, “Make yourself useful and get me olive oil, red wine vinegar, honey.”
“Honey? Are we doing pet names now?” I say, hopping off the counter and wandering over to the pantry. “Should I be calling you ‘pumpkin’ or something? Sugarplum? Sweetcheeks?”
“You make me wish I were dead sometimes,” Ben says, and my mom nearly snorts up a mouthful of wine. I scowl at them both, but retrieve his desired items from the pantry anyway. When I return to the counter, he’s scooping a spoonful of Dijon mustard into a small bowl. I hook my chin over his shoulder to watch as he whisks it with the vinegar and some honey, then carefully adds in the olive oil. He sprinkles a little bit of salt and pepper into the bowl, whisks again, then lifts the whisk high enough to let a few drops fall onto the tip of one of his fingers. He sucks the finger into his mouth, presumably to test the flavor, but I like watching him put things in his mouth. I press my hips forward against his ass. He glares at me, and I allow myself to be shoved back in the direction of the table.
Only when I sink down into the seat across from my mom do I realize that she’s watching me with her eyebrow arched. I squint at her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says innocently. “How’s the play going?”
“Ugh. It’s eating dicks. We have a month and a half before opening night, right? And everyone is going crazy already. Not the rest of the cast, I mean—we’re all fine, and most people are already mostly off-book, but the crew? Nate? It’s insane. Every time somebody needs to double-check a line, he looks like he’s about to go into convulsions. And from what I hear, most of the people on stage crew are losing their minds. They made the mistake of voting to have Travis be their stage manager, and he’s working them all to exhaustion to build the sets as soon as possible.”
Mom cocks her head to the side as Ben sets the bowl of dressing on the table and slips into the seat at my side. She glances at him, then asks me, “Do you still talk to Travis much?”
“Nope,” I say. “By the way, are you almost done making Dad be not married to Evelyn anymore? Every time I remember that she’s my stepmom, I feel like I’m going to start sawing at my wrists with a steak knife.”
The joke is out of my mouth before I realize who’s sitting next to me. I immediately go cold with guilt, but I can’t exactly apologize to him without acknowledging why I’m apologizing, and that would--
I’m in the kitchen of the old house, sitting next to my dad and glaring across the table to Travis, who stares back at me with nervous, desperate eyes. I’m surprised I can even stay upright on this chair, I’m so unbelievably shitfaced, but I’m managing it. Even though I can’t take my eyes off him, my words are directed towards his mom. “Wrong son, Ev. You want to talk self-mutilation, maybe you should direct your attention to Travis.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” is his immediate, forced reply.
I laugh, even though I’m not actually amused, even though the motion jostles the twin lip rings I’m still not used to having jammed through my mouth yet. “The hell you don’t. Alex told me you started slitting your wrists again after I left. Or, maybe it was dating Ben that got you started again. Birds of a fucking feather, right? Does cutting yourselves mean you two finally have something in common besides my cock?”
Oh. Oh, shit.
I glance over at my dad, just to see if he’s remembering the same incident that I am, but his face is completely neutral as he sets the dish of chicken down on the table and commands, “Help yourselves.”
“Hate to break it to you, Garen, but you’re going to have to wait out that feeling a little while longer,” Mom says, spearing one of the breasts and transferring it to her plate. “Our ideal scenario was to reach all of the agreements before ever going to court. You know, figure things out, get some contracts drawn up, present it to the judge, and bam. Dissolution of marriage. Unfortunately, the agreements still aren’t going well.”
“I’m so over this divorce thing,” I mutter.
“Tell me about it,” Dad grumbles, and Ben laughs.
Mom shrugs. “Would now be a bad time to tell you that I’ll need you to come to a meeting with the McCall lawyers next Wednesday?”
There’s a silence, during which I carefully ladle some of the dressing onto my salad. Only when that silence stretches on for an almost uncomfortably long time do I look up and realize that she’s look at me, not Dad. I say, “Wait, you need me to go? Why? What did I do?”
“Nothing,” she reassures me. “It’s just so that the other lawyers can have a chance to interview you, as I have. I’ll be there the entire time, and then you’ll have to wait while I interview Travis and Bridget. She’s coming down from her school in Massachusetts for the evening.” I’ve always liked Bree, but I’ve barely spoken to her since I got out of rehab. I wonder if Travis told her about my relapse. When I don’t say anything, Mom adds, “I should probably tell you that Evelyn will be there as well. Travis is still a minor, so she has the right to be there with her son while—”
“I’d like to come along, if that’s alright,” Dad interrupts, though his tone makes it clear that he doesn’t care if Mom objects.
She raises her eyebrows. “I told you, William, I’m going to be there the entire time.”
“Yes, as his lawyer, not his mother. Garen needs a parent to support him. I don’t care if he’s eighteen, alright? That woman’s not coming near him if I’m not around. This entire problem started because she used my absence as an opportunity to tell him he should run away—”
“No, this entire problem started because you thought it was acceptable to marry a woman who would call my son a kike and say she wished Walczyk had killed him,” Mom snaps, and then suddenly, both of them are turning to stare at me.
Those words hit me like a bucket of ice water being poured down the back of my shirt. No one has ever called me that before. At least, not to my face. And no one has ever told me that they wished Dave had killed me. Fuck, not even Dave said he wished he had killed me. Underneath the table, Ben reaches over and grips my knee, but I can barely feel it. I lick my lips. “That’s, uh… that’s what she said?” No one speaks. A little louder, I say, “The day I went to rehab and you decided to get a divorce. That’s the thing everyone’s been keeping from me for all these months, the thing you guys wouldn’t tell me?”
Again, there’s no response, probably because there’s not a damn thing anyone can say on this topic that will make things better. I cut harshly into my chicken, turn to face Ben, and say, “How’s school going?”
“Fine,” he says, and it barely comes out as a whisper. He blinks once, clears his throat, and repeats, in a much steadier voice, “Fine. I finally got back that sociology paper I handed in weeks ago. I got an A on it, but my teacher’s handwriting is terrible, I can barely read her comments.”
I slip a hand under the table to stroke a silent thank you across the back of the hand he has left resting on my knee, and he offers me a very small half-smile. Dad asks, “And how are you liking college so far?”
“I like it a lot,” Ben says, nodding his head agreeably. “I mean, the course load I’m taking at Yale is obviously a lot more than I ever had to deal with at LHS, but I’m adjusting. I think it helps that I’m not living on-campus, because I don’t have to worry about being distracted by other people partying in the dorms or whatever.”
“Is there a lot of partying at your school?” Mom asks.
He shrugs. “I guess. Depends what crowd you hang out with, but that’s true of any school. There are a lot of bars in New Haven, and I guess that’s kind of popular for some people.”
I don’t miss the fact that Mom sets her fork down and steeples her fingers together before she asks, “Do you go out a lot?”
Ben opens his mouth to reply, then pauses, glances up. Seeing Mom’s posture, he also sets his fork down and folds his hands in his lap, smiling politely. “I do go out, but I mostly go to music shows, open mic nights. Sometimes poetry readings, which I can only assume is a hazard of being an English major. But I get the feeling that what you’re really asking me is if I go to clubs and bars, and if that’s the case, then I assume what you’re really trying to ask me is if I drink.” Mom nods once in acknowledgment of the correctness of his assumption. He shakes his head. “I don’t drink. I don’t smoke. I don’t use any sort of controlled substance. I never have, and I don’t exactly see myself starting anytime soon. I have four younger sisters and one baby brother, and I-I try not to do anything that I know my parents wouldn’t want them to see me doing.”
All at once, I’m hit by the memory of him shaking in his parents’ basement as he tries to explain to me how wrong it is for him to want who and what he wants, how important it is for him to be a good, heterosexual—and failing that, asexual—example to his siblings. Even if he can’t be what his parents and his church expect him to be, he’s still doing everything right, in my opinion. I say, as casually as I can, “Ben’s sort of my only sober friend. He’s… actually the only completely sober person I know. It’s pretty impressive.” I pause, then grin a little as I reach over to ruffle his hair. “He has morals.”
“Which is a new and exciting concept to you, I’m sure,” Dad says.
“Speaking of which,” Mom says, taking a sip of wine, “how long have you two been together?”
“Really, Mom? That’s your segue? ‘My son has no morals, how long have you two been fucking’?” I deadpan. Ben chokes on a mouthful of chicken, and I reach over to clap him hard on the back without taking my eyes off my mother.
She raises a hand in protest. “‘Fucking’ is your word, not mine. I said ‘together.’”
“Yes, but ‘fucking’ is a more accurate word, because we’re not together,” I say, rolling my eyes. “Look, I already told Dad everything. Ben and I are friends. We talk, we hang out, we go to shows, and yes, sometimes we get naked together. Don’t pretend you’re not aware of this. You saw it in action less than an hour ago.”
Next to me, Ben turns to my dad and quietly asks, “So, in fifteen years of marriage, did you ever find a way to escape that ‘lack of conversational boundaries’ they both have?”
Dad shrugs. “Divorce. But I don’t know think that really helps your scenario.”
“Maybe if I just ran away?”
“Then I’d fucking find you, total payback for that time you did it to me,” I say. I turn back to my mom and say, “I don’t get what the big deal is. He’s a really awesome guy, we’ve been friends for a long time, and he takes it like a fuckin’ champ.”
Ben taps the heels of his Chucks together and mutters, “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.”
“I don’t care how well he takes it, Garen,” Mom argues, and Ben gives up and bangs his head down on the table. Dad reaches over to give him a consoling pat on the shoulder. But Mom’s on a roll. “The point is, you told us that your doctor recommended that you abstain from relationships during this first year. That’s because—”
“It’s because she’s worried about me becoming dependent on anyone, or tying my sobriety to a relationship, or my emotional involvement with guys. Well, newsflash, Mom: I’m already ‘emotionally involved’ with Ben, because he’s one of my best friends. I cared about him before the addiction, and during the addiction, and now I care about him after the addiction. I’m not tying my sobriety to him, because even if I wanted to do that, he wouldn’t let me. Ben is quite possibly the only person on this planet who cares about my sobriety as much as I do, and if he thought that our hooking up was jeopardizing that, he wouldn’t be doing anything with me. I’m not dating him. I’ve told you that, like, four million times. But if I were, there is absolutely no better person I could be involved with at this point in my life. Sooner or later, Mom, we’re going to reach a point where the things that they say in the NA pamphlets don’t work for me anymore, alright? I’m a person, and sometimes I need to make my own choices and do what feels right for me, instead of only following some bullshit rules that twelve-step programs and self-help books say I should live my life by.”
My words are followed by total silence. Ben still hasn’t lifted his head from the table, but he has reached over to stroke his fingertips across the inside of my wrist. My parents are looking at each other instead of at me. They seem to be having a very long conversation composed entirely of vague head tilts, tiny shrugs, and eyebrow twitches. Apparently four years of being divorced doesn’t outweigh the fifteen years of being married, because eventually, Mom sighs and nods, and Dad says, “Fine. Neither of us is exactly thrilled with this, but if you think that being… closer to Ben won’t affect your ability to stay clean, we’ll respect your decision.”
Holy shit. Is this what having an adult conversation feels like?
“Thank you,” I say, since it feels like the right sort of closing for this conversation. I turn to Ben. “Are you done eating?”
“Yeah,” he says, straightening up quickly. I stand and carry both of our plates over to the sink, scrape the remaining food down the garbage disposal, and put the plates in the dishwasher.
“And on that note, I think I’m going to head back to the city,” Mom says.
I allow her to hug me and tell me goodbye, and then I grab Ben’s wrist and drag him towards the door to my room. We make it halfway down the stairs before I start taking my clothes off. “If you’re not naked in my bed in like, five seconds, I’m going to die.”
“Are you kidding me right now?” he says, even as he wriggles out of his hoodie and kicks off his Chucks. “I mean, really, that got you going?”
“I’m a former boarding school brat who just won an argument with his parents,” I say, pushing him through the door to my room—I actually bother to lock it this time—and stripping out of the rest of my clothes. “You have no idea how hot that makes me.”
To demonstrate just how much I mean what I’m saying, I shove him unceremoniously onto the bed and crawl after him to lie between his legs, grinding my erection against his thigh.
“You have so many problems. By the way, nice speech, you complete and utter tool,” Ben says, lifting his hips so I can strip off his jeans and boxers in one motion. “Did you practice that?”
“Not as many times I practiced saying the part about you taking it like a champ,” I say. “And can we take a moment to marvel at how spectacularly I failed in my mission to convince my parents you’re not my boyfriend?”
“I’m not your boyfriend, but I’m willing to be your ‘it’s complicated’ on facebook,” Ben says.
“Does anyone really use their facebook anymore? I’m not sure I even remember my password, I haven’t logged into it in like, months.” I duck down to nibble on the pale skin of his shoulder. “But I see your ‘it’s complicated,’ and I raise you an ‘in an open relationship with.’ Has it been long enough that you’re ready for me to fuck you again?”
Ben scowls and pinches my arm hard, but he rolls over to grab another condom from the nightstand drawer anyway. “Don’t use that word. That word makes it too serious.”
“What, ‘fuck’?”
“Garen,” he sighs.
“Again?” I suggest. Before he can get more annoyed, I snatch up the bottle of lube, drizzling a little on my hand before I reach down to start stroking him. His next sigh is one of contentment, not of exasperation, which is kind of the point.
But the solace only lasts a moment or two, and then he’s muttering, “‘Relationship.’ We’re just friends, we agreed. That word makes it sound too serious.”
“Well,” I say slowly, pausing to trace his lower lip with the tip of my tongue. “Maybe it is.”
“What do you mean?” he asks. He tears open the wrapper and rolls the condom down onto my dick, moving my already lubed hand from him to myself so that I can slick up a little.
After multiple rounds today, he’s still relaxed and a little loose, so I don’t even really need to finger him before I line up and press inside of him. He makes another one of those delicious, satisfied noises, and I time my words with a particularly hard thrust. “Maybe this is serious, for me.”
He goes still immediately. “Dude, I thought I was really clear about not wanting you to ask me out while your dick is in me. That wasn’t a mouth-specific instruction. It kind of applied to all orifices.”
“I’m not asking you out,” I say, though I angle my hips to make sure that my next thrust is aimed directly at his prostate so that he throws his head back and groans, because fuck that. If I did want to ask him out, he could totally do worse. If I did want to ask him out, he should at least want to say yes. “I’m not—just, hey. Give me your hands for a second.”
He releases his grip on my shoulders and obediently holds them out to me. I lean back so that I’m sort of sitting on my heels, still buried inside of him, and I take his hands, flattening them against my chest. Keeping my eyes fixed on his, I guide his hands downward, first over my pecs, down to my abs, then around so that they’re framing my waist. Then, moving very carefully so as not to unsettle either of us, I wind my fingers around his wrists and drag his hands down so that he’s holding my hips. His eyes are wide and his movements are hesitant, but I squeeze down hard on his hands before shifting to brace my own against the mattress once more. Slowly, he tightens his grip on my hips and pulls me deeper inside of him. My eyes flutter shut as I bottom out, and then he’s guiding me back out, dragging me back towards him; it’s slow, and it’s nervous, but he’s the one controlling the pace, not me. He’s touching my hips and I’m not freaking out; he’s in charge right now and I’m still hard. I’m still okay.
“Please tell me you understand,” I whisper. “Please tell me you get that this—being able to do this, it’s a big deal for me. This is serious. I know you’re not in love with me, and I’m not in love with you, either. It’s not like that between us. It probably never will be. But I feel safe with you, Ben. I trust you more than I trust basically anyone else in my life. And with where I am now, with everything I’ve been through, being able to do this—” I card my fingers through his hair, run my palm down his torso, wrap my hand around his cock, “—and being able to touch you like this, maybe that’s enough.”
“Sex?” he says, and I can tell he’s trying so hard not to be offended by that, even as he grips my hips and drives me into him a little bit harder.
“No, you idiot,” I say, ducking down to kiss him briefly. “Trusting you. Feeling safe with you. Caring about you. Loving you, even if it’s not like that. Maybe it’s enough for right now.”
He releases my hips and surges up to kiss me again, and we don’t talk much after that. Actually, we don’t say anything at all, not until almost half an hour later, when we’re both dressed and I’m walking him to the door. I stop to give him a short kiss goodbye and say, “Think about it. Alright?”
He nods, and I lean in to press my lips to his cheek once more before he heads out with a quick goodbye to my dad, who is sitting on the couch and very pointedly not looking at us.
Later, when I’m sprawled out on my bed and reluctantly slogging through my homework, my phone chimes from the nightstand. I mark my page, unlock the screen, and blink down at my new message. It’s a facebook alert— Ben McCutcheon has requested to change your relationship status to ‘in an open relationship.’ The ‘personal message’ he has elected to attach reads, Shut up. I’m still not your boyfriend. Even though he’s miles away, I’m pretty sure he can feel me smirking at him, hear my unspoken, yeah, whatever. I accept the request.
29 days sober
It takes almost a month and a half of school for me to realize that I’m that weird music guy. Every school has one—the kid who wears his headphones pretty much all the time, even has them draped over his neck during class, the kid who’s always singing along to whatever song he’s got stuck in his head, the kid who’s deaf to pretty much anything that isn’t blasting out of the earbuds plugged into his iPod. I don’t realize that that loser is me until I’m standing in line at the cash register during lunch, drumming my fingers on my plastic-wrapped sandwich and singing softly along to the Mountain Goats song playing on my headphones.
The girl in line ahead of me turns around to stare at me, and I blink back, until I realize that I’ve just sung along, “guy in a skeleton costume comes up to a guy in a Superman suit, runs through him with a broadsword.” So, all things considered, the staring is maybe justified. I gesture vaguely towards my headphones, but she still looks incredibly grateful when the lunch lady makes her change and she’s able to move away from me. I try to shrug it off, but I’m still frowning—and singing—as I pay for my food and begin to make my way around the far edges of the cafeteria. It’s sort of pathetic, but I have to take the same route around the tables every day, unless I want to get tripped or shoved or whatever by one of the guys who sits in the middle, at what I can only assume is the Asshole Table. Usually, I’m able to make it around without incident, but today, someone snags my arm and drags me to a stop. I instinctively jerk my arm free, but there’s a faint twinge of guilt when I realize that I’m now looking down at a vaguely hurt-looking Miranda, sitting with the rest of the drama kids. She shakes it off though, and says, “Hey, Garen.”
I raise my hand in a tiny wave, but continue to sing under my breath, “I don’t know why it’s gotten harder to keep myself away.”
“I saw your car in the parking lot this morning. It looks like the repairs went well. You can barely tell anything happened to it,” she says.
I nod. “And then we fell down, and we locked arms.”
“Have the cops told you whether or not they’re any closer to charging anybody with it?” Riley asks.
I shake my head. “We knocked the dresser over as we rolled across--”
“In case you haven’t noticed, this is them trying to make conversation with you,” Travis interrupts. “Will you stop singing and sit down with us?”
I cock my head to the side. “I don’t mean it when I tell you that I don’t love you anymore.” He blinks once at me, then at Joss, then looks quickly back down at his food. I sigh and pluck the headphones from my ears. “What’s up?”
“What’s up is that we keep trying to get you to eat with us, and you keep blowing us off,” Annabelle says bluntly. “Why?”
Because I don’t need your pity. I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve told you before, I usually spend my lunch period in the music room. Or somewhere outside of school.”
Joss frowns at me. “We’re only supposed to go off-campus on Fridays.”
“I’m also probably not supposed to get my dick sucked in the parking lot, but that doesn’t stop me from doing that, either,” I say, and Riley snorts.
Nate finally looks up from his lunch tray to give me a once-over and ask, more than a little bitterly, “He comes all the way here just for that?”
I open my mouth to point out that plenty of people would travel a hell of a lot farther than the distance between Lakewood and New Haven just for that, but Nate’s words have captured Travis’ attention once more. No matter how much he might want to, he’s unable to stop himself from asking, “Wait, there’s a ‘he’?”
“Well, there sure as shit isn’t a ‘she.’ See, unlike some people at this table, I tend to remember that I fuck guys,” I say. There’s absolutely no reason for me to say something that rude, but there’s no reason for me to say half the shit I say. His jaw tightens, and he looks back at his barely-touched sandwich. I don’t let myself feel guilty, but I do let myself sigh and say, “Yeah. There’s a ‘he.’” I jerk my chin at Nate. “How’d you know that, anyway?”
“Facebook,” he says, shrugging. He shifts a little closer to Miranda, leaving a space on the bench next to him. They all look pointedly at the space, then at me, then back at the space. I roll my eyes and sink down into it, unwinding the headphones from my neck and stuffing them into my pocket. Schooling his tone into what I’m sure he thinks is calm, Nate asks, “So, where did you two meet?”
I unwrap my sandwich and begin carefully dismantling it so that I can reassemble it properly. The school sandwiches are always totally lopsided, with half of it being too thick to even get your mouth around, and the other half being nothing but bread. After a few seconds of Frankensteining my lunch, I say, “Here.” Nate frowns, and I add, “We met last fall, when he was still a student here. Before I got kicked out.”
“But you only just started dating, right?” Miranda says.
“We’re not dating,” I say, stacking my tomato slices and setting them aside for later. “I mean, we sort of are? But not really. Mostly we’re just really close friends who have a lot of sex.” A few seats away, Joss sneers at me. I try to focus on finding the perfect angle for my lettuce. “But, in regards to your question, yeah. We only just started not-dating.”
“Wait, who are you not dating? And why aren’t we friends on facebook?” Annabelle asks, frowning at me.
“We’re not friends on facebook because I barely use my account. I accept requests, but I never bother to send them,” I say. Kind of how I ended up in this very uncomfortable scenario in the first place. I replace my tomatoes, then finally add the top slice of bread. “And I’m not-dating-but-sort-of-am-dating my friend.”
Miranda shrugs. “Some Yalie named Ben.”
Travis’ elbow, which had been propping him up, slides right off the edge of the table, almost upending the open water bottle next to him. I take a small bite of my sandwich so I can have something to focus on besides the way his eyes are widening at me. “W—seriously? Ben McCutcheon?”
“No,” I say, “but also, yes.”
“What does that even mean?” Joss asks.
I look over at her with blank eyes and say, “I’m sleeping with and spending the majority of my spare time with someone who I don’t have any vested romantic interest in, but who I’ve inexplicably decided should be the sole focus of my attention. Are you really trying to tell me that that’s an unfamiliar concept to you?”
Across the table, I can see that Riley is trying very hard to keep a straight face. I’m grateful to discover that someone else finds Travis and Joss’ union as random and gross as I do.
Travis should probably be defending her, or their little love connection, or whatever. But when he speaks, all he says is, “Garen. Look at me.”
I do. His eyes are saying everything that his mouth has remained too stubbornly screwed shut to say. They’re saying, How could you start seeing my ex-boyfriend and not tell me? How could he start seeing my ex-boyfriend and not tell me? Why, out of everyone in the world, did you two have to pick each other? Are you starting to forget about me? Or are you just punishing me because you think I’m starting to forget about you? If I weren’t with Joss, would you still be with him? Do you hurt him? Do you like it? Is it better than it was with me? When you touch him, does it make you forget how much you still want me?
“Don’t be mean,” I say quietly.
Miranda looks around at me, baffled. “He hasn’t even said anything. At least, nothing other than ‘look at me.’”
“He doesn’t have to say anything. I can tell what he’s thinking,” I say. Or, I can at least tell what I’d be thinking, if I were him.
Joss tosses her napkin down on the table, brushes off her hands, and stands up. “Alright, that’s it. I’m over this. Garen, can I talk to you alone for a minute?”
“I’d really rather not,” I say flatly, but she hooks a hand around my elbow, and I allow myself to be dragged to the far corner of the cafeteria, where we can’t be overheard. I’ve been forced into conversations like this before—every guy or girl who Jamie has dated has pulled me aside at some point to give me the big lay off my man lecture, and that always ends the same way; I roll my eyes a lot, she or he gets angrier and angrier, and within a week, Jamie has chosen me over them. I’m getting the feeling that I won’t come out ahead in this version of that conversation, but that doesn’t mean I plan to do anything other than scoff and maybe stomp my feet a little.
But when Joss speaks, her tone is even and her words are horribly reasonable. “I know you care about Travis, and I know it makes you uncomfortable that he’s dating me, but you need to stop taking it out on him every time the two of you talk. It upsets him.”
“Good. It’s supposed to,” I say.
She crosses her arms. “You don’t mean that. I see the way you look at him, alright? And I see how pissed you look at yourself every time you say something that you know will hurt his feelings, so stop it. I mean, god, Garen. Do you even know what he and I do when we’re together?”
I wrinkle my nose, fight the intense urge to vomit, and admit, “Back when I was still using, sometimes I’d get so high I’d accidentally click the wrong links and end up watching straight porn. Once it was playing, I’d be too lazy to change it, so I’d mostly focus on the dicks and skip around to the blowjob parts. So, unfortunately, yes, I’m familiar with the mechanics of your perverted hetero unions.”
Joss closes her eyes, and I allow her a full thirty seconds to school her expression from mild amusement to indignant disapproval. When she can finally speak without smiling, she says, “I’m not talking about the sex—”
“How is that, anyway?” I can’t help but ask. “Is he any good at the straight stuff? ‘Cause he was fuckin’ bomb at the gay stuff, but obviously you guys aren’t really doing the same shit he and I did. Unless you’re into pegging, but you don’t really strike me as the type—”
She reaches out and covers my mouth with her hand. “Okay, you’re done talking now. It’s my turn. Clear?” I swallow a comment about wonder where that hand has been lately and nod. She releases me. “When Travis and I are together, we hang out. We do our homework. He helps me run lines, and I go with him to the hardware store to help him pick out fixtures for the pieces he’s working on for the Grease set. We go out to eat, or we go to the movies. Last weekend, we went to an amusement park. A few nights ago, we went out for mini-golf. And—this may shock you—not once, during all of that, did either of us propose, run away, get high, end up in the hospital, or attempt suicide. Know why? Because we’re seventeen years old. We’re in high school, and we both just want to enjoy our senior year, and what we have makes him happy. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s shitty of you to make Travis feel like he should be ashamed for wanting something simple and normal.”
“Not as shitty as it is for you to make him feel ashamed of the fact that what he and I had wasn’t simple and normal,” I snap. “I am so sick of people expecting us to pretend that the last year of our lives didn’t happen, alright? We were stepbrothers, I’m an addict, I get it. I get that it was a screwed up relationship. But it happened, and I resent the fact that you seem to expect both of us to pretend that it didn’t.”
“That’s not what I—” Joss breaks off and looks away. She drags her hand through her long, dark hair, then takes a deep breath before she allows herself to look at me again. “You don’t like me, or the fact that I’m dating Travis. You’ve made that incredibly obvious, and you know what? I don’t like you, either. You have absolutely no brain-to-mouth filter, you joined the drama club even though you don’t respect the amount of work the rest of us have been putting into those plays for years, and you seem like you have the tendency to be really manipulative of the people who care about you. Frankly, being around you makes me uncomfortable. But Travis loves you.”
It’s pathetic how much faster my heart starts beating at those words. Based on the expression on Joss’ face, she knows that it hits me hard, because she sighs, falls silent. And this entire thing is goddamn stupid—Travis and I aren’t even friends anymore. We barely talk, and we’re not close anymore, and it would make no sense for me to start bargaining with his girlfriend now, when I know I won’t really be getting anything out of it. But still…
“I’ll stop if you will,” I say finally. At her questioning look, I clarify, “I’ll play nice. I’ll stop making comments about how much he loved having me fuck him in the ass. I’ll stop making jokes about how, before this semester, the closest he ever got to sleeping with a woman was blowing my current not-boyfriend on the days when Ben was a little heavy-handed with the eyeliner. I’ll stop telling everyone that he probably only asked you out because he misheard your name as ‘Josh’ the first time you introduced yourself. I’ll stop loudly and enthusiastically speculating about whether or not he’s asked you to bang him with a strap-on yet. I will keep all my gay jokes to myself, and I will let you two go about your merry misadventures in heterosexual experimentation.”
“Thank—”
“But in return, you have to stop… I dunno, expecting him to be straight. You have to recognize that what he had with me was a legitimate relationship, and so was what he had with Ben. You have to stop glaring at me every time I speak to him. You have to stop getting offended at the fact that yes, I know him better than you do—and don’t protest, because that’s just a fact. I dated him, I lived with him, I was engaged to him, and he and I are both changed men because of all that. Even if it’s over, that’s still a connection, and you need to respect it, or you can’t expect anything from me. Do we have a deal?”
She isn’t even looking at me; she’s staring back at the table, probably at Travis. I don’t dare look over at him, because I already know exactly how beautiful he is. I already know that one glance at him will send me spiraling back into the stupid, childish crush that has been plaguing me for months now. Joss must not need much convincing, either, because she looks back at me and says, “We have a deal.” I nod once and am about to head back to the table when she quirks a brow and adds, “And for the record? He’s fuckin’ bomb at the straight stuff, too.”
“Joss, I haven’t felt my gag reflex work in almost four years, but you are dangerously close to triggering it,” I warn. “Seriously, I’ve been inside the dude. I really don’t need to know whether or not he’s skilled with all the disgusting things I’m sure you two do together, like the banging and that thing with the—” I raise my index and middle fingers in a V in front of my mouth and wiggle my tongue between them.
“Okay, wow,” I hear Travis say loudly from the lunch table. I look over in time to see him blushing bright red and saying, “Whatever conversation you two are having over there? I really need it to be over, if it includes that gesture.”
I shrug and stride back over to the table, returning to my seat at Nate’s side and picking at my sandwich again. Joss drops back down onto the bench next to Travis, and he slips an arm around her shoulders, tugging her closer to whisper something in her ear. She smiles, shakes her head, and pecks him on the lips quickly. He appears somewhat mollified and murmurs something else; her hand slips off the edge of the table, seemingly onto his lap. He grabs her wrist and wriggles away, but they’re both grinning. It’s cute; it’s gross. I tear the crust off my sandwich and say, “She was giving me advice. I’m thinking of switching teams, too, and I was curious about the—” I pause, turn to Annabelle, and ask, “What’s the chick version of the prostate?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for you to have this conversation in front of Nate,” Travis says. “You’re almost nineteen, and he’s still only fifteen. This might be contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
Annabelle reaches over and ruffles Nate’s hair, barely batting an eye when he viciously smacks her hand away. “Not for much longer! Our little baby turns sixteen in just a few short days.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say, flashing him the wide smile I’ve spent years perfecting to get guys’ pants off. I know I’m an ass for hitting on someone I’ve got no interest in, just because he’s obviously hard for me, but he makes it so easy; I can’t help myself. He opens his mouth to respond, but no sound comes out; his lip trembles for a second, and then he has to settle for a jerky nod. I slip an arm around his waist and rest my chin on his shoulder. “Happy early birthday. What day?”
“Friday,” he says softly. He hesitates, then turns to look at me, a move that surprises me with its audacity. Our noses are practically touching. He licks his lips—what, seriously? Is he expecting me to kiss him right now, in the middle of lunch? It’s not like I wouldn’t, but that didn’t seem like it would be his style—and says, “We’re all going out that night. There’s an Italian place in town that has these horrible karaoke Fridays. We thought it might be fun to go and put on a real show, since most of us can actually sing.”
“Most of us,” Miranda repeats, with a pointed look at Riley. He and Annabelle exchange high-fives, completely unashamed at their lack of vocal talent.
Nate clears his throat so that my eyes lock back onto his. He gives a tiny shrug that jostles my chin. “You could come, too. If you wanted.”
My Friday night plans are already sort of in place; I’d intended to meet Stohler for coffee after school, and then we were going to head over to Alex and Ben’s apartment to hang out and play Call of Duty until she had to leave for work. Stohler’s unreasonably good at it, and I’m unreasonably bad, especially considering that I had the best aim of anyone in my squad at Patton. I’ve already been granted permission to spend the night, though Dad had made it clear when I asked that he found the suggestive tone I used to say can Ben and I have ourselves a little sleepover on Friday night? completely unnecessary.
But Nate looks so hopeful, and I’ve never been good at rejecting people who use puppy-dog eyes on me. I release my hold on his waist and turn my attention to my sandwich. “What time?”
“We’re meeting at seven o’clock,” he says.
Right in the middle of my plans. But lately, Doc has been all over my ass about branching out; apparently, the fact that I continuously reject the kids I go to school with in favor of only hanging out with the same four people—Ben, Alex, Stohler, and Jamie—is a problem. I scratch the back of my neck and say, “I sort of had plans, but I’ll see if I can switch some stuff around.” When Nate continues to look hopeful, I add, “It’d be cool to hang out with you guys. You know, outside of rehearsal, or whatever.”
Nate isn’t the only one who smiles at that.
30 days sober
“No.”
“Stohler, come on. You said you’d—”
“Bite me, Anderson, I’m not doing it.”
I flop down on the couch and bury my head under a throw pillow. My voice is somewhat muffled when I say, “It’s at an Italian restaurant. Will you come along if I promise to buy you an entire bottle of wine?”
Stohler snorts and drags the coffee table a little bit closer so that she can rest her tiny mirror on the edge of it. Her makeup is only halfway done, but I’m already incredibly excited for the moment when Dad gets home from work and finds a painted-up stripper sitting on his couch. He should be home any minute now; I’m just hoping that Stohls gets a chance to put on that terrifying hot pink lipstick before he walks in. She selects another of the brushes from her giant train case and dabs it in a pot of glitter. “I’m not you, man. I can’t always be bribed with alcohol. I especially can’t be bribed into doing something as lame as going to some kid’s sweet sixteen with you.”
“But I don’t want to go alone,” I whine. “The extent of my interaction with these people—aside from play rehearsal—has been three days of lunches together, so I still barely know them. I want to be able to talk to someone I actually know and like, and we did have plans anyway.”
“Yeah, for coffee and COD. Not hanging out with a bunch of kids who are six years younger than me. I was already in first grade by the time he was born,” Stohler says. Having successfully completed the glitter application, she is now dabbing something that looks like cum onto a strip of—what the fuck?
“Dude, are those eyelashes?” I say, staring at her hands. I don’t even know why I ask. They’re totally eyelashes. This crazy bitch is smearing a tacky white substance all over a strip of eyelashes, right here on my couch. How do you even get eyelashes in one big strip like that? She probably had to skin somebody. What’s next? Is she going to whip out a flesh suit? But then her hands are moving towards her face, and I start to panic, “Oh my god, what are you doing?”
She sighs, pauses and says, “I’m trying to glue on my fake eyelashes. Don’t even give me that look—I’ve seen the shit you do to your hair to get it into that ridiculous little mohawk you’ve got there, this is no different.”
“It’s a fauxhawk, you idiot. It would only count as a mohawk if I shaved the sides. And it’s completely different. You already have eyelashes, why do you need to glue on fake ones?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond until she has carefully affixed the strip of lashes to her eyelid, then repeated the process on the other. She follows it up with some more glitter, a coat of mascara or whatever. Then she says, “I glue on fake ones so it looks better when I do this—” I snort as she shoots me her best pair of bedroom eyes. She shrugs. “Works on the guys who come into the club. Come on, you’ve gone into excruciating detail about how hot it is when McCutcheon looks up at you through his eyelashes when he’s blowing you.”
I sigh and stretch out over the couch, taking a moment to appreciate the visual she has just called up for me. “Yeah, it really is.”
“Keep it in your pants, man. Anyway, why can’t you just ask him to go with you to this little karaoke thing? He’s at least remotely close to them, age-wise, and that’s what boyfriends are for,” she says.
“He’s not my boyfriend, I told you. He’s my not-boyfriend. There’s a difference,” I say. She rolls her eyes, but she’s only pretending she’s not used to it; ever since he sent me that facebook request, I’ve been tormenting Ben by calling him my not-boyfriend, my half-boyfriend, my very-merry-un-boyfriend. Every time, he threatens to not-break-up with me, but he hasn’t done it yet, so I think he’s at least partly amused. “He’s working from four to ten. My original plan was to get coffee with you, go have him let us into the apartment before he heads to the bookstore, do the xbox thing until you leave at eight thirty, kill ten to fifteen minutes until Alex gets back from class, play some more xbox until Ben gets home from work, then spend the better part of the night fucking his brains out.”
“And that’s a quality plan,” Stohler agrees. “You should stick with it instead of—”
“I already told Nate I’d go to his stupid birthday thing. And I already told him I’d be bringing along my dear friend Lindsey,” I say in a sing-song voice. She applies her lipstick with one hand, slaps me across the face with the other.
Of course, this is the moment when my dad walks through the front door. He blinks at Stohler. She blinks back. I beam. “Dad, this is my friend, Lindsey Stohler. Stohler, this is my dad, Bill Anderson.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Stohler says, extending her hand to shake his. “Excuse the whore-face, I’m just getting ready for work. I don’t always look like this.”
“She kind of does,” I whisper, and she elbows me.
Dad has known me for eighteen years, which means it’s kind of impossible for him to fazed by the fact that I’m friends with someone who is obviously involved in the sex industry. He accepts the handshake, then raises the shopping bag I hadn’t noticed him carrying until now. “Nice to meet you. If you’re not heading out soon, you should join us for… well, it’s dessert, if you’ve already eaten. Dinner, if you haven’t. I stopped at that bakery downtown and got—”
“If that’s carrot cake, I’m eating it all by myself,” I interrupt.
Dad levels a look at me, but says to Stohler, “Garen’s mother and I made the mistake of forgetting to address the importance of manners while raising our son. Yes, it’s carrot cake. Yes, I technically bought it for you, Garen, to celebrate your thirty days. No, you cannot eat it all by yourself. You need to share.”
“Share? Sorry, I missed that episode of Sesame Street when I was younger,” I say, launching myself off the couch and taking the bag from him. He and Stohler trail after me into the kitchen, and I add, “My keys are on the table, if you want to see the new tag I got at the NA meeting after school. It’s kind of hideous—the thirty-day sobriety tags are orange, sixty’s green, ninety’s red. No idea what it is after that, considering I didn’t exactly make it any further than that last time. Grab some plates—yes, plates, plural. See? I can share.”
I dole out some of the dessert onto each of the three plates that Dad sets on the counter. He eats his portion normally, like a human would; Stohler eats hers carefully enough to not smudge her lipstick. I devour mine, and then I go back for more, because now that I’ve given up coke, the pleasure center of my brain needs to take it where it can get it. I contemplate thirds, but Dad catches me side-eyeing the cake and moves it to the fridge. Instead, I stroll back out to the living room to sprawl out on the couch and announce, “I would’ve gotten clean ages ago, if I’d known I could get treats for sobriety anniversaries.”
“Sobriety should be a treat in itself,” Stohler says blandly as she begins to pack her makeup back into the train case.
I aim a finger at her and say, “And in payment for that patronizing little aphorism, you’re coming with me tomorrow night.”
She sighs, stomps her feet a little, but eventually, she grunts out, “Fine. I hate you. Don’t expect me to sing.”
“I don’t expect you to sing,” I reassure her, even though I’m already trying to figure out how many glasses of wine she’ll have to drink before I can convince her to do a duet on something really embarrassing with me.
She says goodbye to my dad, and I walk her to the door. The second it has clicked shut behind her, Dad clears his throat, and I brace myself for the inevitable interrogation. Nothing about Stohler says ‘high school,’ so of course he’s going to want to know where I met her; of course I’m going to have to lie, because I met her during the middle of my relapse, but I swear she didn’t realize an addict when I was buying shots in front of her and it turns out she’s a really great friend, I promise just doesn’t roll of the tongue. He’s going to ask about the makeup, the outfit, what sort of career she must have that requires her to look like that for work. But, to my shock and delight, all he asks is, “Why would you be singing tomorrow night? I thought you were going to Ben and Alex’s apartment for the night.”
I flop down on the couch and grab the copy of Rolling Stone I left on the coffee table earlier. “I was just about to tell you, my plans for tomorrow night have changed. Nate—the kid who’s directing the school play—is turning sixteen, and he’s having a bunch of people go to that weird pasta place with the karaoke. You know, across the street from the bank?”
“Next to the chiropractor’s office?” Dad asks.
I nod. “Yeah, there. He invited me the other day, and I said I’d think about it. I changed my plans around a little, so now I’m going to go to that with Stohler, drop her off at work after, and then still spend the night at Ben’s.” I hesitate; I’m not used to having to ask permission, but with all these new rules in place, I’m treading a very fine line with seeking my dad’s approval. I reluctantly tack on, “Is that okay? I can stick to my original plan, if you want.”
Slowly, Dad shakes his head and says, “No, you don’t have to stick to the original plan. Enjoy your karaoke.”
“Thanks. I will,” I say, even though I probably won’t.
He unpacks some of his paperwork from his briefcase and begins to go over it, and I return my focus to my magazine. We fall into a companionable silence for a grand total of ten minutes before the doorbell chimes, and Dad points towards the front door without looking up from his paperwork. Tonelessly, I say, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I didn’t tell you to do anything, I pointed. Now, shut up and get the door,” he replies. I toss my magazine down on the other end of the couch and roll to my feet, clomping across the room as loudly as possible, just so Dad knows that I’m annoyed at his disruption of my laziness. I open the door, half-expecting to see Stohler telling me she forgot her lipgloss or something, and blink through the screen.
Travis is standing on my porch, gnawing on his thumbnail and looking completely wrecked. His eyes are watery and bloodshot, his hair is even messier than usual, most likely from running his hands through it repeatedly, the way he always does when he’s stressed to the breaking point. He clears his throat, but his voice still cracks when he says, “Hi. Can we talk?”
“Uh,” I say, unable to stop myself from glancing over my shoulder at Dad, who has looked up from his papers. I turn back to Travis and say, “Yeah, we can talk. Do you… let’s go to my room. It’s just um, this way—” I take him by the wrist and pull him inside. Dad says nothing, but nods at Travis as I tow him over to the basement door. Travis doesn’t say anything as he follows me down the stairs and into my room, but I can hear his shaky breathing behind me. Once we’re inside the room, door shut, I instinctively turn the stereo on before giving a stilted, awkward wave around—fuck, I wish I’d cleaned it today like I was told to—and saying, “So, this is my room. You can—I mean, there’s a couch, if you want to sit, or whatever.”
I raise my hand in a tiny wave, but continue to sing under my breath, “I don’t know why it’s gotten harder to keep myself away.”
“I saw your car in the parking lot this morning. It looks like the repairs went well. You can barely tell anything happened to it,” she says.
I nod. “And then we fell down, and we locked arms.”
“Have the cops told you whether or not they’re any closer to charging anybody with it?” Riley asks.
I shake my head. “We knocked the dresser over as we rolled across--”
“In case you haven’t noticed, this is them trying to make conversation with you,” Travis interrupts. “Will you stop singing and sit down with us?”
I cock my head to the side. “I don’t mean it when I tell you that I don’t love you anymore.” He blinks once at me, then at Joss, then looks quickly back down at his food. I sigh and pluck the headphones from my ears. “What’s up?”
“What’s up is that we keep trying to get you to eat with us, and you keep blowing us off,” Annabelle says bluntly. “Why?”
Because I don’t need your pity. I shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve told you before, I usually spend my lunch period in the music room. Or somewhere outside of school.”
Joss frowns at me. “We’re only supposed to go off-campus on Fridays.”
“I’m also probably not supposed to get my dick sucked in the parking lot, but that doesn’t stop me from doing that, either,” I say, and Riley snorts.
Nate finally looks up from his lunch tray to give me a once-over and ask, more than a little bitterly, “He comes all the way here just for that?”
I open my mouth to point out that plenty of people would travel a hell of a lot farther than the distance between Lakewood and New Haven just for that, but Nate’s words have captured Travis’ attention once more. No matter how much he might want to, he’s unable to stop himself from asking, “Wait, there’s a ‘he’?”
“Well, there sure as shit isn’t a ‘she.’ See, unlike some people at this table, I tend to remember that I fuck guys,” I say. There’s absolutely no reason for me to say something that rude, but there’s no reason for me to say half the shit I say. His jaw tightens, and he looks back at his barely-touched sandwich. I don’t let myself feel guilty, but I do let myself sigh and say, “Yeah. There’s a ‘he.’” I jerk my chin at Nate. “How’d you know that, anyway?”
“Facebook,” he says, shrugging. He shifts a little closer to Miranda, leaving a space on the bench next to him. They all look pointedly at the space, then at me, then back at the space. I roll my eyes and sink down into it, unwinding the headphones from my neck and stuffing them into my pocket. Schooling his tone into what I’m sure he thinks is calm, Nate asks, “So, where did you two meet?”
I unwrap my sandwich and begin carefully dismantling it so that I can reassemble it properly. The school sandwiches are always totally lopsided, with half of it being too thick to even get your mouth around, and the other half being nothing but bread. After a few seconds of Frankensteining my lunch, I say, “Here.” Nate frowns, and I add, “We met last fall, when he was still a student here. Before I got kicked out.”
“But you only just started dating, right?” Miranda says.
“We’re not dating,” I say, stacking my tomato slices and setting them aside for later. “I mean, we sort of are? But not really. Mostly we’re just really close friends who have a lot of sex.” A few seats away, Joss sneers at me. I try to focus on finding the perfect angle for my lettuce. “But, in regards to your question, yeah. We only just started not-dating.”
“Wait, who are you not dating? And why aren’t we friends on facebook?” Annabelle asks, frowning at me.
“We’re not friends on facebook because I barely use my account. I accept requests, but I never bother to send them,” I say. Kind of how I ended up in this very uncomfortable scenario in the first place. I replace my tomatoes, then finally add the top slice of bread. “And I’m not-dating-but-sort-of-am-dating my friend.”
Miranda shrugs. “Some Yalie named Ben.”
Travis’ elbow, which had been propping him up, slides right off the edge of the table, almost upending the open water bottle next to him. I take a small bite of my sandwich so I can have something to focus on besides the way his eyes are widening at me. “W—seriously? Ben McCutcheon?”
“No,” I say, “but also, yes.”
“What does that even mean?” Joss asks.
I look over at her with blank eyes and say, “I’m sleeping with and spending the majority of my spare time with someone who I don’t have any vested romantic interest in, but who I’ve inexplicably decided should be the sole focus of my attention. Are you really trying to tell me that that’s an unfamiliar concept to you?”
Across the table, I can see that Riley is trying very hard to keep a straight face. I’m grateful to discover that someone else finds Travis and Joss’ union as random and gross as I do.
Travis should probably be defending her, or their little love connection, or whatever. But when he speaks, all he says is, “Garen. Look at me.”
I do. His eyes are saying everything that his mouth has remained too stubbornly screwed shut to say. They’re saying, How could you start seeing my ex-boyfriend and not tell me? How could he start seeing my ex-boyfriend and not tell me? Why, out of everyone in the world, did you two have to pick each other? Are you starting to forget about me? Or are you just punishing me because you think I’m starting to forget about you? If I weren’t with Joss, would you still be with him? Do you hurt him? Do you like it? Is it better than it was with me? When you touch him, does it make you forget how much you still want me?
“Don’t be mean,” I say quietly.
Miranda looks around at me, baffled. “He hasn’t even said anything. At least, nothing other than ‘look at me.’”
“He doesn’t have to say anything. I can tell what he’s thinking,” I say. Or, I can at least tell what I’d be thinking, if I were him.
Joss tosses her napkin down on the table, brushes off her hands, and stands up. “Alright, that’s it. I’m over this. Garen, can I talk to you alone for a minute?”
“I’d really rather not,” I say flatly, but she hooks a hand around my elbow, and I allow myself to be dragged to the far corner of the cafeteria, where we can’t be overheard. I’ve been forced into conversations like this before—every guy or girl who Jamie has dated has pulled me aside at some point to give me the big lay off my man lecture, and that always ends the same way; I roll my eyes a lot, she or he gets angrier and angrier, and within a week, Jamie has chosen me over them. I’m getting the feeling that I won’t come out ahead in this version of that conversation, but that doesn’t mean I plan to do anything other than scoff and maybe stomp my feet a little.
But when Joss speaks, her tone is even and her words are horribly reasonable. “I know you care about Travis, and I know it makes you uncomfortable that he’s dating me, but you need to stop taking it out on him every time the two of you talk. It upsets him.”
“Good. It’s supposed to,” I say.
She crosses her arms. “You don’t mean that. I see the way you look at him, alright? And I see how pissed you look at yourself every time you say something that you know will hurt his feelings, so stop it. I mean, god, Garen. Do you even know what he and I do when we’re together?”
I wrinkle my nose, fight the intense urge to vomit, and admit, “Back when I was still using, sometimes I’d get so high I’d accidentally click the wrong links and end up watching straight porn. Once it was playing, I’d be too lazy to change it, so I’d mostly focus on the dicks and skip around to the blowjob parts. So, unfortunately, yes, I’m familiar with the mechanics of your perverted hetero unions.”
Joss closes her eyes, and I allow her a full thirty seconds to school her expression from mild amusement to indignant disapproval. When she can finally speak without smiling, she says, “I’m not talking about the sex—”
“How is that, anyway?” I can’t help but ask. “Is he any good at the straight stuff? ‘Cause he was fuckin’ bomb at the gay stuff, but obviously you guys aren’t really doing the same shit he and I did. Unless you’re into pegging, but you don’t really strike me as the type—”
She reaches out and covers my mouth with her hand. “Okay, you’re done talking now. It’s my turn. Clear?” I swallow a comment about wonder where that hand has been lately and nod. She releases me. “When Travis and I are together, we hang out. We do our homework. He helps me run lines, and I go with him to the hardware store to help him pick out fixtures for the pieces he’s working on for the Grease set. We go out to eat, or we go to the movies. Last weekend, we went to an amusement park. A few nights ago, we went out for mini-golf. And—this may shock you—not once, during all of that, did either of us propose, run away, get high, end up in the hospital, or attempt suicide. Know why? Because we’re seventeen years old. We’re in high school, and we both just want to enjoy our senior year, and what we have makes him happy. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it’s shitty of you to make Travis feel like he should be ashamed for wanting something simple and normal.”
“Not as shitty as it is for you to make him feel ashamed of the fact that what he and I had wasn’t simple and normal,” I snap. “I am so sick of people expecting us to pretend that the last year of our lives didn’t happen, alright? We were stepbrothers, I’m an addict, I get it. I get that it was a screwed up relationship. But it happened, and I resent the fact that you seem to expect both of us to pretend that it didn’t.”
“That’s not what I—” Joss breaks off and looks away. She drags her hand through her long, dark hair, then takes a deep breath before she allows herself to look at me again. “You don’t like me, or the fact that I’m dating Travis. You’ve made that incredibly obvious, and you know what? I don’t like you, either. You have absolutely no brain-to-mouth filter, you joined the drama club even though you don’t respect the amount of work the rest of us have been putting into those plays for years, and you seem like you have the tendency to be really manipulative of the people who care about you. Frankly, being around you makes me uncomfortable. But Travis loves you.”
It’s pathetic how much faster my heart starts beating at those words. Based on the expression on Joss’ face, she knows that it hits me hard, because she sighs, falls silent. And this entire thing is goddamn stupid—Travis and I aren’t even friends anymore. We barely talk, and we’re not close anymore, and it would make no sense for me to start bargaining with his girlfriend now, when I know I won’t really be getting anything out of it. But still…
“I’ll stop if you will,” I say finally. At her questioning look, I clarify, “I’ll play nice. I’ll stop making comments about how much he loved having me fuck him in the ass. I’ll stop making jokes about how, before this semester, the closest he ever got to sleeping with a woman was blowing my current not-boyfriend on the days when Ben was a little heavy-handed with the eyeliner. I’ll stop telling everyone that he probably only asked you out because he misheard your name as ‘Josh’ the first time you introduced yourself. I’ll stop loudly and enthusiastically speculating about whether or not he’s asked you to bang him with a strap-on yet. I will keep all my gay jokes to myself, and I will let you two go about your merry misadventures in heterosexual experimentation.”
“Thank—”
“But in return, you have to stop… I dunno, expecting him to be straight. You have to recognize that what he had with me was a legitimate relationship, and so was what he had with Ben. You have to stop glaring at me every time I speak to him. You have to stop getting offended at the fact that yes, I know him better than you do—and don’t protest, because that’s just a fact. I dated him, I lived with him, I was engaged to him, and he and I are both changed men because of all that. Even if it’s over, that’s still a connection, and you need to respect it, or you can’t expect anything from me. Do we have a deal?”
She isn’t even looking at me; she’s staring back at the table, probably at Travis. I don’t dare look over at him, because I already know exactly how beautiful he is. I already know that one glance at him will send me spiraling back into the stupid, childish crush that has been plaguing me for months now. Joss must not need much convincing, either, because she looks back at me and says, “We have a deal.” I nod once and am about to head back to the table when she quirks a brow and adds, “And for the record? He’s fuckin’ bomb at the straight stuff, too.”
“Joss, I haven’t felt my gag reflex work in almost four years, but you are dangerously close to triggering it,” I warn. “Seriously, I’ve been inside the dude. I really don’t need to know whether or not he’s skilled with all the disgusting things I’m sure you two do together, like the banging and that thing with the—” I raise my index and middle fingers in a V in front of my mouth and wiggle my tongue between them.
“Okay, wow,” I hear Travis say loudly from the lunch table. I look over in time to see him blushing bright red and saying, “Whatever conversation you two are having over there? I really need it to be over, if it includes that gesture.”
I shrug and stride back over to the table, returning to my seat at Nate’s side and picking at my sandwich again. Joss drops back down onto the bench next to Travis, and he slips an arm around her shoulders, tugging her closer to whisper something in her ear. She smiles, shakes her head, and pecks him on the lips quickly. He appears somewhat mollified and murmurs something else; her hand slips off the edge of the table, seemingly onto his lap. He grabs her wrist and wriggles away, but they’re both grinning. It’s cute; it’s gross. I tear the crust off my sandwich and say, “She was giving me advice. I’m thinking of switching teams, too, and I was curious about the—” I pause, turn to Annabelle, and ask, “What’s the chick version of the prostate?”
“I’m pretty sure it’s illegal for you to have this conversation in front of Nate,” Travis says. “You’re almost nineteen, and he’s still only fifteen. This might be contributing to the delinquency of a minor.”
Annabelle reaches over and ruffles Nate’s hair, barely batting an eye when he viciously smacks her hand away. “Not for much longer! Our little baby turns sixteen in just a few short days.”
“Oh, yeah?” I say, flashing him the wide smile I’ve spent years perfecting to get guys’ pants off. I know I’m an ass for hitting on someone I’ve got no interest in, just because he’s obviously hard for me, but he makes it so easy; I can’t help myself. He opens his mouth to respond, but no sound comes out; his lip trembles for a second, and then he has to settle for a jerky nod. I slip an arm around his waist and rest my chin on his shoulder. “Happy early birthday. What day?”
“Friday,” he says softly. He hesitates, then turns to look at me, a move that surprises me with its audacity. Our noses are practically touching. He licks his lips—what, seriously? Is he expecting me to kiss him right now, in the middle of lunch? It’s not like I wouldn’t, but that didn’t seem like it would be his style—and says, “We’re all going out that night. There’s an Italian place in town that has these horrible karaoke Fridays. We thought it might be fun to go and put on a real show, since most of us can actually sing.”
“Most of us,” Miranda repeats, with a pointed look at Riley. He and Annabelle exchange high-fives, completely unashamed at their lack of vocal talent.
Nate clears his throat so that my eyes lock back onto his. He gives a tiny shrug that jostles my chin. “You could come, too. If you wanted.”
My Friday night plans are already sort of in place; I’d intended to meet Stohler for coffee after school, and then we were going to head over to Alex and Ben’s apartment to hang out and play Call of Duty until she had to leave for work. Stohler’s unreasonably good at it, and I’m unreasonably bad, especially considering that I had the best aim of anyone in my squad at Patton. I’ve already been granted permission to spend the night, though Dad had made it clear when I asked that he found the suggestive tone I used to say can Ben and I have ourselves a little sleepover on Friday night? completely unnecessary.
But Nate looks so hopeful, and I’ve never been good at rejecting people who use puppy-dog eyes on me. I release my hold on his waist and turn my attention to my sandwich. “What time?”
“We’re meeting at seven o’clock,” he says.
Right in the middle of my plans. But lately, Doc has been all over my ass about branching out; apparently, the fact that I continuously reject the kids I go to school with in favor of only hanging out with the same four people—Ben, Alex, Stohler, and Jamie—is a problem. I scratch the back of my neck and say, “I sort of had plans, but I’ll see if I can switch some stuff around.” When Nate continues to look hopeful, I add, “It’d be cool to hang out with you guys. You know, outside of rehearsal, or whatever.”
Nate isn’t the only one who smiles at that.
30 days sober
“No.”
“Stohler, come on. You said you’d—”
“Bite me, Anderson, I’m not doing it.”
I flop down on the couch and bury my head under a throw pillow. My voice is somewhat muffled when I say, “It’s at an Italian restaurant. Will you come along if I promise to buy you an entire bottle of wine?”
Stohler snorts and drags the coffee table a little bit closer so that she can rest her tiny mirror on the edge of it. Her makeup is only halfway done, but I’m already incredibly excited for the moment when Dad gets home from work and finds a painted-up stripper sitting on his couch. He should be home any minute now; I’m just hoping that Stohls gets a chance to put on that terrifying hot pink lipstick before he walks in. She selects another of the brushes from her giant train case and dabs it in a pot of glitter. “I’m not you, man. I can’t always be bribed with alcohol. I especially can’t be bribed into doing something as lame as going to some kid’s sweet sixteen with you.”
“But I don’t want to go alone,” I whine. “The extent of my interaction with these people—aside from play rehearsal—has been three days of lunches together, so I still barely know them. I want to be able to talk to someone I actually know and like, and we did have plans anyway.”
“Yeah, for coffee and COD. Not hanging out with a bunch of kids who are six years younger than me. I was already in first grade by the time he was born,” Stohler says. Having successfully completed the glitter application, she is now dabbing something that looks like cum onto a strip of—what the fuck?
“Dude, are those eyelashes?” I say, staring at her hands. I don’t even know why I ask. They’re totally eyelashes. This crazy bitch is smearing a tacky white substance all over a strip of eyelashes, right here on my couch. How do you even get eyelashes in one big strip like that? She probably had to skin somebody. What’s next? Is she going to whip out a flesh suit? But then her hands are moving towards her face, and I start to panic, “Oh my god, what are you doing?”
She sighs, pauses and says, “I’m trying to glue on my fake eyelashes. Don’t even give me that look—I’ve seen the shit you do to your hair to get it into that ridiculous little mohawk you’ve got there, this is no different.”
“It’s a fauxhawk, you idiot. It would only count as a mohawk if I shaved the sides. And it’s completely different. You already have eyelashes, why do you need to glue on fake ones?” I ask.
She doesn’t respond until she has carefully affixed the strip of lashes to her eyelid, then repeated the process on the other. She follows it up with some more glitter, a coat of mascara or whatever. Then she says, “I glue on fake ones so it looks better when I do this—” I snort as she shoots me her best pair of bedroom eyes. She shrugs. “Works on the guys who come into the club. Come on, you’ve gone into excruciating detail about how hot it is when McCutcheon looks up at you through his eyelashes when he’s blowing you.”
I sigh and stretch out over the couch, taking a moment to appreciate the visual she has just called up for me. “Yeah, it really is.”
“Keep it in your pants, man. Anyway, why can’t you just ask him to go with you to this little karaoke thing? He’s at least remotely close to them, age-wise, and that’s what boyfriends are for,” she says.
“He’s not my boyfriend, I told you. He’s my not-boyfriend. There’s a difference,” I say. She rolls her eyes, but she’s only pretending she’s not used to it; ever since he sent me that facebook request, I’ve been tormenting Ben by calling him my not-boyfriend, my half-boyfriend, my very-merry-un-boyfriend. Every time, he threatens to not-break-up with me, but he hasn’t done it yet, so I think he’s at least partly amused. “He’s working from four to ten. My original plan was to get coffee with you, go have him let us into the apartment before he heads to the bookstore, do the xbox thing until you leave at eight thirty, kill ten to fifteen minutes until Alex gets back from class, play some more xbox until Ben gets home from work, then spend the better part of the night fucking his brains out.”
“And that’s a quality plan,” Stohler agrees. “You should stick with it instead of—”
“I already told Nate I’d go to his stupid birthday thing. And I already told him I’d be bringing along my dear friend Lindsey,” I say in a sing-song voice. She applies her lipstick with one hand, slaps me across the face with the other.
Of course, this is the moment when my dad walks through the front door. He blinks at Stohler. She blinks back. I beam. “Dad, this is my friend, Lindsey Stohler. Stohler, this is my dad, Bill Anderson.”
“Pleasure to meet you,” Stohler says, extending her hand to shake his. “Excuse the whore-face, I’m just getting ready for work. I don’t always look like this.”
“She kind of does,” I whisper, and she elbows me.
Dad has known me for eighteen years, which means it’s kind of impossible for him to fazed by the fact that I’m friends with someone who is obviously involved in the sex industry. He accepts the handshake, then raises the shopping bag I hadn’t noticed him carrying until now. “Nice to meet you. If you’re not heading out soon, you should join us for… well, it’s dessert, if you’ve already eaten. Dinner, if you haven’t. I stopped at that bakery downtown and got—”
“If that’s carrot cake, I’m eating it all by myself,” I interrupt.
Dad levels a look at me, but says to Stohler, “Garen’s mother and I made the mistake of forgetting to address the importance of manners while raising our son. Yes, it’s carrot cake. Yes, I technically bought it for you, Garen, to celebrate your thirty days. No, you cannot eat it all by yourself. You need to share.”
“Share? Sorry, I missed that episode of Sesame Street when I was younger,” I say, launching myself off the couch and taking the bag from him. He and Stohler trail after me into the kitchen, and I add, “My keys are on the table, if you want to see the new tag I got at the NA meeting after school. It’s kind of hideous—the thirty-day sobriety tags are orange, sixty’s green, ninety’s red. No idea what it is after that, considering I didn’t exactly make it any further than that last time. Grab some plates—yes, plates, plural. See? I can share.”
I dole out some of the dessert onto each of the three plates that Dad sets on the counter. He eats his portion normally, like a human would; Stohler eats hers carefully enough to not smudge her lipstick. I devour mine, and then I go back for more, because now that I’ve given up coke, the pleasure center of my brain needs to take it where it can get it. I contemplate thirds, but Dad catches me side-eyeing the cake and moves it to the fridge. Instead, I stroll back out to the living room to sprawl out on the couch and announce, “I would’ve gotten clean ages ago, if I’d known I could get treats for sobriety anniversaries.”
“Sobriety should be a treat in itself,” Stohler says blandly as she begins to pack her makeup back into the train case.
I aim a finger at her and say, “And in payment for that patronizing little aphorism, you’re coming with me tomorrow night.”
She sighs, stomps her feet a little, but eventually, she grunts out, “Fine. I hate you. Don’t expect me to sing.”
“I don’t expect you to sing,” I reassure her, even though I’m already trying to figure out how many glasses of wine she’ll have to drink before I can convince her to do a duet on something really embarrassing with me.
She says goodbye to my dad, and I walk her to the door. The second it has clicked shut behind her, Dad clears his throat, and I brace myself for the inevitable interrogation. Nothing about Stohler says ‘high school,’ so of course he’s going to want to know where I met her; of course I’m going to have to lie, because I met her during the middle of my relapse, but I swear she didn’t realize an addict when I was buying shots in front of her and it turns out she’s a really great friend, I promise just doesn’t roll of the tongue. He’s going to ask about the makeup, the outfit, what sort of career she must have that requires her to look like that for work. But, to my shock and delight, all he asks is, “Why would you be singing tomorrow night? I thought you were going to Ben and Alex’s apartment for the night.”
I flop down on the couch and grab the copy of Rolling Stone I left on the coffee table earlier. “I was just about to tell you, my plans for tomorrow night have changed. Nate—the kid who’s directing the school play—is turning sixteen, and he’s having a bunch of people go to that weird pasta place with the karaoke. You know, across the street from the bank?”
“Next to the chiropractor’s office?” Dad asks.
I nod. “Yeah, there. He invited me the other day, and I said I’d think about it. I changed my plans around a little, so now I’m going to go to that with Stohler, drop her off at work after, and then still spend the night at Ben’s.” I hesitate; I’m not used to having to ask permission, but with all these new rules in place, I’m treading a very fine line with seeking my dad’s approval. I reluctantly tack on, “Is that okay? I can stick to my original plan, if you want.”
Slowly, Dad shakes his head and says, “No, you don’t have to stick to the original plan. Enjoy your karaoke.”
“Thanks. I will,” I say, even though I probably won’t.
He unpacks some of his paperwork from his briefcase and begins to go over it, and I return my focus to my magazine. We fall into a companionable silence for a grand total of ten minutes before the doorbell chimes, and Dad points towards the front door without looking up from his paperwork. Tonelessly, I say, “Don’t tell me what to do.”
“I didn’t tell you to do anything, I pointed. Now, shut up and get the door,” he replies. I toss my magazine down on the other end of the couch and roll to my feet, clomping across the room as loudly as possible, just so Dad knows that I’m annoyed at his disruption of my laziness. I open the door, half-expecting to see Stohler telling me she forgot her lipgloss or something, and blink through the screen.
Travis is standing on my porch, gnawing on his thumbnail and looking completely wrecked. His eyes are watery and bloodshot, his hair is even messier than usual, most likely from running his hands through it repeatedly, the way he always does when he’s stressed to the breaking point. He clears his throat, but his voice still cracks when he says, “Hi. Can we talk?”
“Uh,” I say, unable to stop myself from glancing over my shoulder at Dad, who has looked up from his papers. I turn back to Travis and say, “Yeah, we can talk. Do you… let’s go to my room. It’s just um, this way—” I take him by the wrist and pull him inside. Dad says nothing, but nods at Travis as I tow him over to the basement door. Travis doesn’t say anything as he follows me down the stairs and into my room, but I can hear his shaky breathing behind me. Once we’re inside the room, door shut, I instinctively turn the stereo on before giving a stilted, awkward wave around—fuck, I wish I’d cleaned it today like I was told to—and saying, “So, this is my room. You can—I mean, there’s a couch, if you want to sit, or whatever.”
I point to the couch, but Travis sinks right down onto the edge of my unmade bed and leans his elbows on his knees so that he’s hunched in on himself. On my bed, what the hell, and my heart is hammering in my chest, but then he says, “I fucked up. Garen, I fucked up so badly. Y-You’re the only one I could think to talk to, the only one who might know what to do.” “What do you mean?” I ask. I want to touch him, to run my hands over his arms and kiss his forehead and give him some sort of comfort, because he looks so hurt, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to do that anymore. Not with the way things are now. Instead, I sit down next to him on the bed and tug his sleeve a little. “Travis, talk to me. What happened?”
He starts to cry.
It’s the last thing I’m expecting, and for a moment, I’m stunned into stillness. But then he gives a shaky inhale, and fuck what I’m allowed to do; I throw my arms around him and drag him towards me. He winds up halfway in my lap, his face buried in the front of my shirt, and he’s still crying. He clings to my arms, and I find myself whispering stupid, nonsensical comfort into his ear. Shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, it’s okay. It’s clearly not okay. If it were okay, my ex-boyfriend wouldn’t be sobbing on my bed right now. One arm still wrapped around his shoulders, I curl my other hand against his jaw to force his head up, saying, “Hey, hey, hey. Look at me. Travis, look at me. Tell me what happened.”
His face is so much closer than I had expected it to be, somehow. All I can see is freckles and tear-dampened skin. He leans forward, and for one blissful half-second, I think he’s going to kiss me. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe he’s this upset because we’re barely speaking, because I’m not-dating Ben, because I’m thirty days sober and he’s not really a part of it this time. Then his forehead is settling against mine and he’s whispering, “So, my girlfriend’s kind of pregnant.”
The hammering of my heart stops instantly. I lick my lips. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I… what?”
“Joss is pregnant.” His eyes are screwed shut now. There’s silence. He lets out a very shaky laugh. “Please say something.”
Something. Okay. I can say something. I can do that, I can— “I thought I was really, really thorough in teaching you about the importance of using condoms every time.” Oh, Christ. Really, Garen? That’s the thing to say right now?
To his credit, Travis doesn’t punch me in the throat, which shows more self-restraint than I have any right to expect. He flushes a little and says, “I know. And I—we did—”
“Every time.”
“Garen, I did. But they don’t always—I mean, nothing is one hundred percent effective, and I just—” He stops and takes a deep breath, tugging the sleeve of his shirt down over his hand to wipe roughly at his eyes. “She came to the Grind right at the end of my shift tonight and told me. Sh-She asked me not to tell anyone, but I couldn’t… I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t. But I needed to come talk to you. And I need you to say something that will make me believe I didn’t just ruin my life. Anything.”
I can’t say anything, not just yet, because all I can think is, I thought it was going to be us. Part of me, a stupid, immature, selfish part thought that maybe someday we would work through this, and we’d get back together, and we’d do everything I always wanted us to do. We could get married, and we could adopt some babies, or maybe we could use a surrogate, do the whole insemination thing so that all our kids could have his freckles or my green eyes—if we wanted them to come out as blond as he is, he could always just knock up Stohler, she’d totally agree to it if I whined enough. But instead, Josslyn—a girl he barely knows, a girl he’s been fucking for a month—gets to have all that. She gets a family with the boy who was supposed to be mine.
I can’t make it about me right now, so I stay completely silent. When I reach up to push his hair back from his eyes, he lets me. Neither of us says much for a while. Finally, though, I lean back a little and clear my throat, saying, “What is she going to do?”
“She wanted to know what I would think of her getting an abortion,” he says, with a tight shrug.
“Yeah?” I say. He doesn’t take it as the noncommittal prompt to continue that I meant it as. I add, “What did you say?”
“I-I asked her if she would consider maybe… not. If she’d maybe let me keep it.”
There’s a violent buzzing in my ears; I think it’s because I’m still sitting too close to him. I very carefully untangle my limbs from his and stand up. He lets me pace in silence for a few minutes, but the buzzing is just getting louder and louder, until I can’t hold back the words, “July, right?”
“What do you—”
“It’s October now, and nine months is—July. Right? If she has it, it’ll be in July? Or, second half of June, maybe. Depending on how far along she is,” I clarify. He nods jerkily. I scrape my fingers through my hair. “And then what? She pops out a kid over the summer, you become somebody’s dad, and then… I mean, what would you do about college?”
These are the things I need to focus on. I need to focus on facts, and plans, and reason, and practicality, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up if I think for even a second about a tiny blue-eyed baby that would create a life-long connection between him and Joss that I could never even dream of competing with. If I picture it, I’m pretty sure I’ll die.
He returns to his earlier pose of leaning his elbows on his knees, though his chin is now resting lightly on his fists. His eyes are fixed at a point somewhere near my desk, but he hasn’t blinked in at least a minute. He swallows hard and says, “Not go, I guess. I don’t know. Assuming I ever get access to it, the college fund your dad set up for me would handle my tuition, but I’d never be able to do all my schoolwork, and raise a baby, and work enough hours to be able to afford to support it. I have good time-management skills, but nobody’s that good. School would have to wait. Besides, it’s not like I could leave the state to go anywhere, not if Joss and the baby stayed here. It’s—I could leave later, when it was older, maybe. Lakewood’s not so bad, and I—”
“This town’s a fucking wasteland,” I interrupt, “and you’re supposed to be getting out of it. When we talked about colleges last winter, you told me Stanford. You told me you didn’t want to even stay in Connecticut, and you—fuck, Travis. You’re too good for this. You’re too good for Lakewood, too good to be that guy who knocks up his high school girlfriend and gets stuck here.”
“You think I don’t wish that were true?” he snaps, finally bothering to look at me. “If I could change this, I would, but I—”
“Joss asked you what you thought about her getting an abortion, didn’t she?”
His eyes harden. “Yes. And I told her that it was her choice, but that I didn’t want her to.”
“Fine, she doesn’t have to. She can have the kid, and then you guys can put it up for adoption, or for sale, or what the fuck ever. You don’t have to give up your entire future so that you can raise a baby you didn’t even plan to have,” I say.
“Some might argue,” he says, in a tone so even that I can just feel myself getting angrier, “that having a baby is a future, not that it’s giving up one. Most people would consider that ‘starting a family.’”
“Yeah, when you’re fuckin’ thirty, maybe. Not when you’re seventeen years old!” I burst out. My pacing is becoming quick enough that the clomping of my boots against the floor is starting to annoy even me; I stop, kick them off, and begin pacing again. “I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation with you. You’re supposed to be one of the smartest people I know, and yet you’re actually sitting in my room, trying to convince me that it’s not a completely retarded idea for you to keep a kid you didn’t want to have, with a girl you’ve been dating for—what, a month? If that? This is ridic—”
“It was supposed to be you,” he says, and I want to break something. I want to put my fist through a window, I want to fling all my belongings across the room like a little boy would throw his toys around, I want to take advantage of these sound-proofed walls to scream at him, I know it was supposed to be me. But he continues, “When this all started, before we moved in together, I had wondered if I finally had a chance to start feeling like I had a family. My mom and I were still barely talking, my sister and I aren’t close. Hank McCall couldn’t give less of a shit about being my father... I thought maybe you guys—you and your dad—I thought you could make me feel like I had something. But once things started to become real, it was nothing like I’d hoped it might be. I met Bill, and things were so awkward between us, and then I met you, and you were so fucking annoying.”
I can’t help but let out a tiny breath of a laugh at that. He’s right. I was trying to annoy him when we met, if only so he’d pay attention to me. I contemplate telling him so, but instead, I say, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Because you were annoying, but you were also just so… funny.” He breaks off, and for half a second, I think he’s going to start crying again. But he cracks a sad, watery smile, presses the heels of his hands to his closed eyes for a moment, then clears his throat and continues, “And you were passionate. Talented. Weirdly sweet, when you let yourself be. And so fucking hot I couldn’t stand it. Or, can’t stand it, I guess. You’re… still all of those things.”
“Even annoying?” I ask.
“Especially that one.” He shrugs, letting the smile fade. “Being with you was the closest I’ve ever felt to having a family. You were supposed to feel like my brother, but you never did. You just felt like… e-everything. You felt like home.” He looks up at me with wide, nervous eyes, like he’s afraid that I’ll deny him now, even though there’s nothing left between us to deny. He asks, “What if nothing else ever makes me feel like that again? What if having this kid with Joss is the only chance I’ll ever get to feel as close to someone as I felt to you?”
It’s a stupid thing to say, and his logic is totally flawed, but any objection I could voice right now would be hypocritical, because that same fear is the reason why I’m an addict. For months, I broke and abused myself—my body, my mind, my heart—because I believed that getting trashed was the only thing that would feel as good as loving Travis did. I thought that drugs were the only thing that I could ever get as deep into my veins as he was. And now I don’t know how to look him in the eyes and tell him it’s wrong for him to feel anything similar. I allow myself to collapse onto the couch as I say, “Don’t you think it’s sort of early to assume you’ve hit your emotional peak?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he protests.
It continues like that for ages; I ask him something, and he denies it. I push him for a deeper answer, he retreats. I try to force him to envision his future, he panics at the thought of losing something he barely has now. Eventually, it’s too much for me to handle, and I stand up. “I need a drink.” His eyes snap to my face, and I hasten to amend, “I need coffee. It’s—I need to go put on a pot of coffee. I’ll be right back.” I slip from the room and check the time on my cell phone. It’s already after midnight. Swearing, I jog upstairs; Dad is still sitting in the living room. Before he can speak, I say, “So, I know you said I have a curfew of eleven on school nights. And I know you said that I have to ask your permission before anyone stays over, but he’s—I mean, this is me, asking for permission, I guess.”
“Does Ben know?” Dad asks after a moment, and I head into the kitchen to set the coffee brewing.
“It’s not like that,” I say, even though part of me thinks it will always be like that with Travis. “We’re not—look, nothing is happening downstairs. We’re talking. You saw his face when he walked in, he’s not—he needs someone. And I think I’m the closest he’s got to someone right now. If you’re really not cool with this, then fine, I’ll ask him to go home, but…” I trail off, willing the coffee to drip faster into the pot. It doesn’t work. I glance over at the kitchen doorway, where Dad is now standing, watching me. I’m not ashamed to sound a little needy as I say, “Dad, please don’t make me tell him to leave. It’s your call, and I’ll do whatever you say, but I really, really don’t think I can send him home and not hate myself for it. Please, just trust me.”
Dad hesitates, and for half a second, I think I see a flash of stepfatherly concern in his eyes. He asks, “Is he safe?”
What he means, I assume, is, If I send him home, do you think he’s going to hurt himself like he used to? I shrug; it’s the only honest response I can come up with. The coffee machine beeps at the completion of its brew cycle, and I empty the pot into two mugs. Silence stretches out between us. Finally, he sighs. “He can stay. It’s not a problem. But neither of you can be late for school in the morning.” He takes two steps back towards the living room before he twists to say over his shoulder, in a slightly harsher voice than necessary, “I think you should text Ben and let him know what’s going on.”
I grab the handles of both coffee mugs in one hand, then dip the other into my pocket for my phone. It’s fucking stupid that he thinks I should have to text anyone—that he thinks I’m actually in a position where I’m expected to justify myself to anyone—but I still find myself thumbing out a message to Ben.
still not sure what the boundaries are of this thing between us. travis is at my house right now. he’s freaking out about stuff that’s going on in his life & he needs someone to talk to. i’m not going to touch him. but i think he might stay the night. i don’t want to ask your permission. but is this okay?
I remain upstairs for the five minutes it takes before I receive the reply. You’re an idiot. Yes, it’s okay, and no, you don’t need my permission to spend the night with someone else, especially someone you’re not planning to have sex with. Hope everything’s okay.
I close my eyes and once again find myself unbelievably relieved to have Ben McCutcheon in my life. I send, thank you, see you after karaoke lameness tomorrow night, tacking on a quick xoxo just in case he’s lying about this being okay and I need to win points with him, then head downstairs with the coffee. But when I push open my bedroom door, Travis is curled up on the very edge of my bed, dead asleep. His face is pale and still slightly damp from the tears he’s been unable to stop from occasionally falling over the course of the night. He looks so fucking young.
I carefully shift the blankets so that they’re covering him, then sit down on the couch with my homework and both cups of coffee. No part of me is willing to pretend that I’d be able to get any sleep tonight, anyway.
He starts to cry.
It’s the last thing I’m expecting, and for a moment, I’m stunned into stillness. But then he gives a shaky inhale, and fuck what I’m allowed to do; I throw my arms around him and drag him towards me. He winds up halfway in my lap, his face buried in the front of my shirt, and he’s still crying. He clings to my arms, and I find myself whispering stupid, nonsensical comfort into his ear. Shh, it’s okay, I’ve got you, it’s okay. It’s clearly not okay. If it were okay, my ex-boyfriend wouldn’t be sobbing on my bed right now. One arm still wrapped around his shoulders, I curl my other hand against his jaw to force his head up, saying, “Hey, hey, hey. Look at me. Travis, look at me. Tell me what happened.”
His face is so much closer than I had expected it to be, somehow. All I can see is freckles and tear-dampened skin. He leans forward, and for one blissful half-second, I think he’s going to kiss me. Maybe that’s what this is about. Maybe he’s this upset because we’re barely speaking, because I’m not-dating Ben, because I’m thirty days sober and he’s not really a part of it this time. Then his forehead is settling against mine and he’s whispering, “So, my girlfriend’s kind of pregnant.”
The hammering of my heart stops instantly. I lick my lips. “I’m sorry, I don’t think I… what?”
“Joss is pregnant.” His eyes are screwed shut now. There’s silence. He lets out a very shaky laugh. “Please say something.”
Something. Okay. I can say something. I can do that, I can— “I thought I was really, really thorough in teaching you about the importance of using condoms every time.” Oh, Christ. Really, Garen? That’s the thing to say right now?
To his credit, Travis doesn’t punch me in the throat, which shows more self-restraint than I have any right to expect. He flushes a little and says, “I know. And I—we did—”
“Every time.”
“Garen, I did. But they don’t always—I mean, nothing is one hundred percent effective, and I just—” He stops and takes a deep breath, tugging the sleeve of his shirt down over his hand to wipe roughly at his eyes. “She came to the Grind right at the end of my shift tonight and told me. Sh-She asked me not to tell anyone, but I couldn’t… I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t. But I needed to come talk to you. And I need you to say something that will make me believe I didn’t just ruin my life. Anything.”
I can’t say anything, not just yet, because all I can think is, I thought it was going to be us. Part of me, a stupid, immature, selfish part thought that maybe someday we would work through this, and we’d get back together, and we’d do everything I always wanted us to do. We could get married, and we could adopt some babies, or maybe we could use a surrogate, do the whole insemination thing so that all our kids could have his freckles or my green eyes—if we wanted them to come out as blond as he is, he could always just knock up Stohler, she’d totally agree to it if I whined enough. But instead, Josslyn—a girl he barely knows, a girl he’s been fucking for a month—gets to have all that. She gets a family with the boy who was supposed to be mine.
I can’t make it about me right now, so I stay completely silent. When I reach up to push his hair back from his eyes, he lets me. Neither of us says much for a while. Finally, though, I lean back a little and clear my throat, saying, “What is she going to do?”
“She wanted to know what I would think of her getting an abortion,” he says, with a tight shrug.
“Yeah?” I say. He doesn’t take it as the noncommittal prompt to continue that I meant it as. I add, “What did you say?”
“I-I asked her if she would consider maybe… not. If she’d maybe let me keep it.”
There’s a violent buzzing in my ears; I think it’s because I’m still sitting too close to him. I very carefully untangle my limbs from his and stand up. He lets me pace in silence for a few minutes, but the buzzing is just getting louder and louder, until I can’t hold back the words, “July, right?”
“What do you—”
“It’s October now, and nine months is—July. Right? If she has it, it’ll be in July? Or, second half of June, maybe. Depending on how far along she is,” I clarify. He nods jerkily. I scrape my fingers through my hair. “And then what? She pops out a kid over the summer, you become somebody’s dad, and then… I mean, what would you do about college?”
These are the things I need to focus on. I need to focus on facts, and plans, and reason, and practicality, because I’m pretty sure I’m going to throw up if I think for even a second about a tiny blue-eyed baby that would create a life-long connection between him and Joss that I could never even dream of competing with. If I picture it, I’m pretty sure I’ll die.
He returns to his earlier pose of leaning his elbows on his knees, though his chin is now resting lightly on his fists. His eyes are fixed at a point somewhere near my desk, but he hasn’t blinked in at least a minute. He swallows hard and says, “Not go, I guess. I don’t know. Assuming I ever get access to it, the college fund your dad set up for me would handle my tuition, but I’d never be able to do all my schoolwork, and raise a baby, and work enough hours to be able to afford to support it. I have good time-management skills, but nobody’s that good. School would have to wait. Besides, it’s not like I could leave the state to go anywhere, not if Joss and the baby stayed here. It’s—I could leave later, when it was older, maybe. Lakewood’s not so bad, and I—”
“This town’s a fucking wasteland,” I interrupt, “and you’re supposed to be getting out of it. When we talked about colleges last winter, you told me Stanford. You told me you didn’t want to even stay in Connecticut, and you—fuck, Travis. You’re too good for this. You’re too good for Lakewood, too good to be that guy who knocks up his high school girlfriend and gets stuck here.”
“You think I don’t wish that were true?” he snaps, finally bothering to look at me. “If I could change this, I would, but I—”
“Joss asked you what you thought about her getting an abortion, didn’t she?”
His eyes harden. “Yes. And I told her that it was her choice, but that I didn’t want her to.”
“Fine, she doesn’t have to. She can have the kid, and then you guys can put it up for adoption, or for sale, or what the fuck ever. You don’t have to give up your entire future so that you can raise a baby you didn’t even plan to have,” I say.
“Some might argue,” he says, in a tone so even that I can just feel myself getting angrier, “that having a baby is a future, not that it’s giving up one. Most people would consider that ‘starting a family.’”
“Yeah, when you’re fuckin’ thirty, maybe. Not when you’re seventeen years old!” I burst out. My pacing is becoming quick enough that the clomping of my boots against the floor is starting to annoy even me; I stop, kick them off, and begin pacing again. “I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation with you. You’re supposed to be one of the smartest people I know, and yet you’re actually sitting in my room, trying to convince me that it’s not a completely retarded idea for you to keep a kid you didn’t want to have, with a girl you’ve been dating for—what, a month? If that? This is ridic—”
“It was supposed to be you,” he says, and I want to break something. I want to put my fist through a window, I want to fling all my belongings across the room like a little boy would throw his toys around, I want to take advantage of these sound-proofed walls to scream at him, I know it was supposed to be me. But he continues, “When this all started, before we moved in together, I had wondered if I finally had a chance to start feeling like I had a family. My mom and I were still barely talking, my sister and I aren’t close. Hank McCall couldn’t give less of a shit about being my father... I thought maybe you guys—you and your dad—I thought you could make me feel like I had something. But once things started to become real, it was nothing like I’d hoped it might be. I met Bill, and things were so awkward between us, and then I met you, and you were so fucking annoying.”
I can’t help but let out a tiny breath of a laugh at that. He’s right. I was trying to annoy him when we met, if only so he’d pay attention to me. I contemplate telling him so, but instead, I say, “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. Because you were annoying, but you were also just so… funny.” He breaks off, and for half a second, I think he’s going to start crying again. But he cracks a sad, watery smile, presses the heels of his hands to his closed eyes for a moment, then clears his throat and continues, “And you were passionate. Talented. Weirdly sweet, when you let yourself be. And so fucking hot I couldn’t stand it. Or, can’t stand it, I guess. You’re… still all of those things.”
“Even annoying?” I ask.
“Especially that one.” He shrugs, letting the smile fade. “Being with you was the closest I’ve ever felt to having a family. You were supposed to feel like my brother, but you never did. You just felt like… e-everything. You felt like home.” He looks up at me with wide, nervous eyes, like he’s afraid that I’ll deny him now, even though there’s nothing left between us to deny. He asks, “What if nothing else ever makes me feel like that again? What if having this kid with Joss is the only chance I’ll ever get to feel as close to someone as I felt to you?”
It’s a stupid thing to say, and his logic is totally flawed, but any objection I could voice right now would be hypocritical, because that same fear is the reason why I’m an addict. For months, I broke and abused myself—my body, my mind, my heart—because I believed that getting trashed was the only thing that would feel as good as loving Travis did. I thought that drugs were the only thing that I could ever get as deep into my veins as he was. And now I don’t know how to look him in the eyes and tell him it’s wrong for him to feel anything similar. I allow myself to collapse onto the couch as I say, “Don’t you think it’s sort of early to assume you’ve hit your emotional peak?”
“That’s not what I’m saying,” he protests.
It continues like that for ages; I ask him something, and he denies it. I push him for a deeper answer, he retreats. I try to force him to envision his future, he panics at the thought of losing something he barely has now. Eventually, it’s too much for me to handle, and I stand up. “I need a drink.” His eyes snap to my face, and I hasten to amend, “I need coffee. It’s—I need to go put on a pot of coffee. I’ll be right back.” I slip from the room and check the time on my cell phone. It’s already after midnight. Swearing, I jog upstairs; Dad is still sitting in the living room. Before he can speak, I say, “So, I know you said I have a curfew of eleven on school nights. And I know you said that I have to ask your permission before anyone stays over, but he’s—I mean, this is me, asking for permission, I guess.”
“Does Ben know?” Dad asks after a moment, and I head into the kitchen to set the coffee brewing.
“It’s not like that,” I say, even though part of me thinks it will always be like that with Travis. “We’re not—look, nothing is happening downstairs. We’re talking. You saw his face when he walked in, he’s not—he needs someone. And I think I’m the closest he’s got to someone right now. If you’re really not cool with this, then fine, I’ll ask him to go home, but…” I trail off, willing the coffee to drip faster into the pot. It doesn’t work. I glance over at the kitchen doorway, where Dad is now standing, watching me. I’m not ashamed to sound a little needy as I say, “Dad, please don’t make me tell him to leave. It’s your call, and I’ll do whatever you say, but I really, really don’t think I can send him home and not hate myself for it. Please, just trust me.”
Dad hesitates, and for half a second, I think I see a flash of stepfatherly concern in his eyes. He asks, “Is he safe?”
What he means, I assume, is, If I send him home, do you think he’s going to hurt himself like he used to? I shrug; it’s the only honest response I can come up with. The coffee machine beeps at the completion of its brew cycle, and I empty the pot into two mugs. Silence stretches out between us. Finally, he sighs. “He can stay. It’s not a problem. But neither of you can be late for school in the morning.” He takes two steps back towards the living room before he twists to say over his shoulder, in a slightly harsher voice than necessary, “I think you should text Ben and let him know what’s going on.”
I grab the handles of both coffee mugs in one hand, then dip the other into my pocket for my phone. It’s fucking stupid that he thinks I should have to text anyone—that he thinks I’m actually in a position where I’m expected to justify myself to anyone—but I still find myself thumbing out a message to Ben.
still not sure what the boundaries are of this thing between us. travis is at my house right now. he’s freaking out about stuff that’s going on in his life & he needs someone to talk to. i’m not going to touch him. but i think he might stay the night. i don’t want to ask your permission. but is this okay?
I remain upstairs for the five minutes it takes before I receive the reply. You’re an idiot. Yes, it’s okay, and no, you don’t need my permission to spend the night with someone else, especially someone you’re not planning to have sex with. Hope everything’s okay.
I close my eyes and once again find myself unbelievably relieved to have Ben McCutcheon in my life. I send, thank you, see you after karaoke lameness tomorrow night, tacking on a quick xoxo just in case he’s lying about this being okay and I need to win points with him, then head downstairs with the coffee. But when I push open my bedroom door, Travis is curled up on the very edge of my bed, dead asleep. His face is pale and still slightly damp from the tears he’s been unable to stop from occasionally falling over the course of the night. He looks so fucking young.
I carefully shift the blankets so that they’re covering him, then sit down on the couch with my homework and both cups of coffee. No part of me is willing to pretend that I’d be able to get any sleep tonight, anyway.