Author's Note: This chapter contains mild sexual content, discussion of suicide, and a brief instance of mild gore that might bother some squeamish people (there's a tattooing scene).
"The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding." -John Updike
111 days sober
Maybe it’s just because we went to sleep so late, but it feels unbearably early when Travis’ phone alarm starts chirping from the nightstand. He rolls over to shut it off, leaving my side cold where he has shifted away. The second he returns, I squirm closer, stifling my yawn against his shoulder. “Why’d you set the alarm?”
“Honestly, I figured you’d sleep through it. I’m going to go take a shower and see if I can convince Ben to help me cook some breakfast,” he says quietly, pressing a kiss to my hair. “I’ll wake you again when food’s ready. That okay?”
I shake my head. “No, ‘s dumb. Go back to sleep for like, four more hours, and I’ll blow you when we wake up for real.”
He laughs. “In four more hours, it’ll be two in the afternoon. We need to get to the new place as soon after twelve as possible, because it’ll take forever to unload the truck and put the furniture together, and I doubt Ben wants to be heading back to Connecticut in the middle of the night.”
I’m about to argue with him when the guest room door opens and Jamie slips inside. I have to stifle a grin at the double-take Travis does when he sees how uncharacteristically disheveled Jamie looks in the mornings—sweatpants and a Lamb of God t-shirt that used to be Alex’s, glasses instead of contact lenses, and the faint red scratches of beard burn along his jaw and down his neck. Relieved to find us awake, he says, “Finally. I’ve been awake since eight thirty, and I’m starving, but I’m not going out to the kitchen alone, if it means interacting with the troll sleeping on my couch.”
Travis blinks at him and echoes, “Couch? Ben didn’t—I figured he would’ve slept in your room, considering the uh, wonderful noises we were privy to last night.”
“Seriously, that was ridiculous,” I say, lifting my head to give him the biggest leer I can manage while still half-asleep. “I honestly couldn’t tell if you were fucking or beating the shit out of each other.”
“Bit of both, and it was lovely, but it’s morning now, which means we hate one another again. Keep up, boys,” Jamie says.
I sigh and offer up one limp arm so that he can haul me out of the bed. “You are the actual worst. And if he refuses to cook, I’m beating the shit out of you and then going back to bed while you go out to bring me back a huge stack of waffles from… somewhere. I don’t even care where.”
Jamie makes an impatient, sweeping gesture with his hand, like he’s trying to dismiss my words as much as possible. Travis stretches and rolls out of bed after me, but the moment we’ve stepped into the hall, he turns towards the bathroom and says, “I’m going to stick with my plan to shower. But if Ben does agree to make food, I want some, too.”
Ben isn’t in a state to agree to much of anything; he’s still dead to the world, facedown on the couch with the blankets twisted around his motionless body. I trudge over to him and raise one leg just high enough to bring my knee down on the small of his back. He grunts, tries to wriggle free, and mutters a mostly unintelligible half-sentence that probably amounts to, “Get away from me.”
“Make me breakfast?” I say, hitching the end of the sentence even though it’s not really a question.
“’m not your fucking mom, you can’t just wake me up and expect me to cook for you,” he says. “Stop touching my back. It hurts, and not in a good way.”
I shoot Jamie an accusatory look, which he pretends not to see. I shift my knee off Ben’s back and onto the couch cushion on his far side so that I can make a seat out of the back of his thighs. He makes a noise like an angry cat, and I tug at the hem of his shirt. “What’s wrong with your back? More scratches?”
“Bit me,” he says.
I frown. “This has got to be the first time I’ve ever seen you tired enough to wreck the grammar of a sentence that badly. Either you meant to say ‘bite me,’ or there were supposed to be more words in that sentence.”
Ben heaves a sigh so deep that his whole body sags further into the cushions, jostling me where I’m still perched on his legs, then flings an arm back to shove his shirt halfway up his spine, exposing a line of evenly-spaced bruises in the shape of Jamie’s mouth. “Bit me,” he repeats.
“Clearly,” I say, cocking my head to the side. “Can’t you two just stake a claim by coming on each other’s faces, like normal people? Why does it always have to be biting and scratching and—I don’t know, cattle-branding?”
Ben tries to burrow deeper into the cushions, finally succeeding in tipping me off him and onto the floor. Jamie circles the couch and leans a hip against the back of it. “Good morning, McCutcheon,” he says, voice too pleasant to be sincere. “I apologize for Garen’s rudeness. However, since you seem to be awake now, would you please assist me in the kitchen so that I don’t have to cook breakfast for everyone by myself?”
Still without lifting his head, Ben reaches into his backpack, retrieves his wallet, and drops it on the coffee table. “Go buy yourselves some sandwiches. I don’t know what I ever did to make everyone think I’m the breakfast genie, but I’m not in the mood today. Go to Starbucks. Better yet, Garen, you can cook. Or, has it still not crossed your mind that either you or Travis should probably pick up that skill, now that you’re living on your own?”
I blink. It hasn’t occurred to me—not until this very moment. I turn to Jamie, who smirks. “I’ve been wondering how long y’all might take to notice that.”
Ben finally rolls onto his back, shoving the hem of his shirt down again so he’s covered once more. He still looks tired, but less annoyed now that he has the chance to berate me to my face. “Travis has three job interviews lined up for coffee shops looking for baristas to work their late morning and early afternoon shifts; assuming he gets one of those jobs, he’s covered for lunch. Dinner, too, if he grabs something in the city after his classes every night. What about you? Patton has a dining hall, right?”
My deer-in-the-headlights expression melts into something that involves a lot more eye-rolling. “No, Ben. A thousand teenage boys live there for ten months out of the year, but there’s no dining hall. They send us out into the woods around campus and expects us to hunt, gather, or battle each other to the death, Hunger Games-style, for our food.”
“Fuck off.”
“Only the truly strong prevail. It’s part of the Patton method for making sure their graduates are all vicious, bloodthirsty warriors. That’s how Jamie got on the honor roll—he took out a bear, fed the whole squad for three days.”
“I’m going back to sleep,” Ben mutters, pulling a throw pillow over his face.
I yank the pillow off. “One time, I ate a freshman.”
“Stop tormenting Ben,” Travis says. I jump; I’d heard neither the shower shutting off, nor him coming into the living room. He hitches his chin towards Ben. “They piss you off enough to make you not want to cook?”
“He woke up pissed off and not wanting to cook,” Jamie protests.
Travis shrugs. “I’d be willing to bet that’s your fault.”
“Garen’s the one who climbed on him,” Jamie says mulishly.
“Jamie’s the one who bit him,” I say.
Travis shoots us both a bewildered look. Ben yawns and says, “Settle down, boys. I hate both of you equally.” Then, to Travis, “I don’t feel like doing the breakfast thing. Not here, anyway. Let me shower, and we’ll find someplace nearby to grab something to eat before we head to your new place.”
Travis shrugs his complacency, and I glare at Jamie again for getting us both in trouble. Ben claws himself free of the blankets, stands, and grabs the backpack with his change of clothes in it. I poke it. “You have another shirt in there, or did you use your only spare last night after the whole beverage-spilling incident? Because I’m pretty sure Jamie’s got a few extra shirts of mine in his closet, if you wanna borrow one.”
He nods his thanks, and I snap my fingers at Jamie. He’s been there for the whole conversation, so he knows exactly what I want him to go get. I expect him to roll his eyes and make me go get them myself, but he rounds the end of the couch and heads back to his room without comment. When he returns a minute later, however, he holds out a black, long-sleeved dress shirt. Ben accepts it, takes one look at the Hugo Boss label inside the collar, and says, “There’s no way in hell this is actually Garen’s shirt.”
“I’m aware of that,” Jamie says coolly. “But the only shirts I have left that belong to Garen are all short-sleeved, and considering the fact that I’ve only seen your bare arms three times since I met you—all three of which were in bed—I made the assumption that you would prefer something offering a bit more coverage.”
Ben swallows and smooths out one of the sleeves of the shirt. “Yeah. Thanks.”
I deliver a hard smack to the back of his head. “Stop trying to have a moment, and go shower so I can get in there after you. You guys aren’t getting breakfast without me.”
“I’m so glad you’re moving away from Connecticut,” he grumbles, stumbling towards the hallway. I hear the thunk of his backpack hitting the tiled floor of the bathroom, and he calls out to us, “Alex keeps looking for that shirt, by the way!”
“How sad for him,” Jamie remarks, flinging himself down onto the couch next to me. The bathroom door slams as punctuation to his words. He shrugs. “It’s a rule of mine: if you don’t care about something enough to hold onto it, you don’t get to whine about losing it later. This applies to both relationships and clothing left in my apartment.”
Ben returns to the living room fifteen minutes later, once the rest of us have gotten sucked into some television show about people who wrestle alligators—none of us can figure out whether it’s for fun or profit, mostly because none of us can figure out how the hell someone could make money from gator-wrestling. Ben’s borrowed clothes are almost as hilarious as the rednecks on TV. The only thing that stops the dress shirt from looking like a straight-up dress is the fact that he has tucked the front of it in behind the buckle of his belt, presumably to disguise the fact that it looks like it should hang down to his knees. I open my mouth to mock him, but he waves me off, like he’s already filling in the blanks on all the height jokes I could make.
I roll off the couch and go to have a shower. It’s still early, so I take my time—playing around with the variety of body scrubs Rachael has left in here; having a deliciously slow jerk-off session, assisted by a handful of soap suds that smell like mangoes; washing my hair with some ridiculous deep-hydration-seaweed-protein-bullshit shampoo that I’m sure Jamie would try to pretend is Rachael’s too, but which he’s actually been using since high school. By the time I finish my showering fun, dry my hair, straighten it with the flat-iron I find in the cabinet under the sink, get dressed, and make my way back out to the living room, my existence has been largely forgotten.
“Oh my god, he’s going to die,” Travis says, his words muffled somewhat by the hands he has all but clamped over his mouth. “He’s going to die. Look at the teeth on that thing, he’s going to die.”
“He’s not going to die,” Jamie objects. “And even if he did, they wouldn’t show it. This is television—”
“No, this is evidence that we should have just let the South secede from the Union when y’all wanted to,” Ben says. He doesn’t look away from the screen—doesn’t seem to be able to even blink—but digs his elbow into Jamie’s ribs anyway. “The only place in the South I’ve ever been is Disney World. Is this what it’s really like there? Is this what the Goldwyn family does for fun?”
“Absolutely not,” Jamie says immediately, not looking away from the screen either. “This abomination of a show is filmed in Louisiana, and I refuse to take responsibility for it just because we happen to be from the same side of the Mason-Dixon Line. I don’t blame you lot for Jersey Shore, do I?”
I wedge myself onto the couch between Ben and Travis. “If you blame any of us for Jersey Shore, it’s gotta be Ben.”
“Why me?” Ben demands, finally looking over at me.
“Because I blame Italians for the existence of that show, and you’re the only one here who’s got a parent who like, came off the fuckin’ boat from Italy,” I say. Travis turns to squint at me; I squint right back. “Dude, did you guys talk at all during the time you were dating? His mom was born in Florence. She didn’t move to the States until she was like, six.”
“How could I possibly have known that?” Travis asks. “Seriously, why would that ever come up in conversation? She doesn’t talk with an accent, and her name is Hillary McCutcheon. That doesn’t exactly say ‘ask me about my classy European heritage.’”
I roll my eyes so hard, my entire head moves. Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in the McCutcheon household—or two minutes in their kitchen—should have picked up on the fact that they’re lightyears away from being an all-American, apple-pie-and-baseball sort of family. More to the point, anyone who’s had Ben’s totally uncut dick in their mouth should have picked up on the family’s more European tendencies, too. Travis is fucking hopeless.
“If you want to get technical, neither of those is actually her name,” Ben says, stretching and reaching for the remote. “McCutcheon is her married name, and Hillary is just the anglicized version she started using when she first moved to this country. But you can’t blame her for Jersey Shore, either.”
“Can I blame her for Mob Wives?” I ask.
He shoves me off the couch for the second time today. “No, what you can do is stop talking about my fucking mother, and get your stuff so we can go. I’d like to get out of here and get you guys moved in sometime today, if that’s okay.”
We end up getting coffee and bagels at a bakery two blocks over, all four of us crowded around one small table, knees bumping together with every movement. Travis and Ben are trying to map out the easiest route to the new place from here, but I’m pretty sure that’s what GPS is for, so I can’t be bothered to listen. I inch my chair closer to Jamie so that I can drop my head onto his shoulder. He reaches up to scratch at my scalp like I’m a puppy, then asks, “Are you starting school tomorrow, or the next day?”
“Next,” I answer. “I have to be there mad early, too. PT starts at five, and I’ve still got to pick up my class schedule, get my parking pass, and sign off on the student handbook—not like I’m going to follow any of the rules, but I guess I’m supposed to pretend. Tomorrow, I’ve gotta get my haircut to the dress code length and swing by the mall to get more dress shirts—”
“Do you want to just keep some of mine for the next few months?” he offers. “Seems like a waste to buy them, if you don’t intend to ever wear them again after you graduate in May.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think yours would fit me. You have arms like a stick figure.”
“I do not!” he says indignantly, shrugging out of his coat to bare his arms for inspection. I have no idea why he’s bothering to protest; his arms are toned, sure, but they’re long and thin, just like every last inch of him is. “Here, hold yours up next to mine so I can—stop flexing, you idiot—”
“I’m not flexing, ass, that’s just what my arms look like—”
“Can you stop whatever the hell it is you two are doing over there?” Travis interrupts. “We’re kind of in public, and you guys are like, touching yourselves and each other way more than is probably appropriate.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite,” I assure him, grabbing the edge of the chair he’s seated on and dragging him close enough that I can sling an arm around his shoulders. He rolls his eyes, twists to kiss the side of my neck, and then… checks his watch.
Right. Because we’d agreed to stop this at noon, and it’s eleven thirty now, which means I’ve got about half an hour before I need to know how to keep my hands off him. The idea leaves a twist in my gut and a sour taste in my mouth. I retract my arm and clear my throat. “We should go.”
On the way back to the parking garage below the building, Jamie seems to be the only one who picks up on the sudden downturn in my mood. He doesn’t say anything, but when I ask if he’ll give me a piggyback ride for the rest of the block, he nods and lets me scramble up onto his back without a single word about me weighing too goddamn much for this. He lets me down again only once we’re standing right next to Ben’s truck. I ruffle Jamie’s still-messy hair and say, “Thanks. You sure you don’t wanna help us unpack?”
“As much fun as I’m sure that’ll be, yes, I’m positive,” he says. “Some of my school friends are coming over later this afternoon, so I’ve got to clean the apartment before then.”
Ben leans his shoulder against the door of the truck. “You say that like that apartment is something other than spotless.” Jamie glares at him, and he lifts his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Fine, fine. Minding my own business and getting in the truck. I’ll see you around.”
“No, you most likely won’t,” Jamie says. “Now that these two are in New York, I don’t see any reason I’d return to Connecticut. Even if you come here to visit them, I live in the city, and they don’t. I can’t imagine a single scenario in which you and I will ever have to interact again.”
For a longer moment than I think he means to, Ben frowns at him. Only when Jamie’s eyebrows begin to rise, as if to say is there a problem?, does he snap himself out of it, taking a step backward as he says, “You’re right. Next time Garen’s in Lakewood, I’ll send him back with your shirt. Thank you for letting me borrow it. And for letting me spend the night.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Jamie says, examining his nails like they’re the most fascinating thing in this entire parking garage. “And thank you for—”
“If the next words out of your mouth have anything to do with sex, I will kick you in the balls,” Ben warns. A smirk spreads slowly across Jamie’s face, but Ben must not be far from the point, because the rest of the sentence never comes. Ben rolls his eyes and climbs into the truck, slamming the door shut and starting the engine. Jamie offers him a wide smile and an exaggerated wave; Ben comes back with a sneer and an obscene hand gesture before he shifts into drive and pulls out of the space.
“You guys are so sweet to each other,” I say. “Honestly, it’s heart-warming.”
“I’m not the one who picked him out in the first place,” Jamie replies, giving me a quick peck on the cheek before he turns to the door leading back to the building. “Now get out of here. Call me once your new place is all set up. I’ll come by later this week, alright?”
I salute him; he returns the gesture and ducks into the building. I turn towards my car. Travis is already in his and ready to leave. He pulls up next to me and says, “You have the address, right?”
“Yep,” I say. And then, because it’s still not noon yet, because I can, I lean in through the window, kiss him, and say right against his lips, “See you at home.”
He jolts a little, reaches up to catch my face between his hands, but I step out of reach and stride off towards my own car. Time to go, time to go, time to go. Time to get the fuck out of here, before I do something stupid, like ask him if he’s sure we can’t just be together now. By the time I get to my car, get the engine running and the stereo playing, and look around again, he has pulled out of the garage. I sigh, type the new address into my GPS, and point the car towards the road again.
It takes close to forty minutes to make the drive to the town halfway between Patton and Columbia. I make the turn the GPS has indicated, but something is definitely wrong, because I’ve managed to end up in some cute little neighborhood with sidewalks and picket fences and itty bitty houses full of itty bitty families. I snatch my phone from the cupholder, switch it to speaker, and call Travis.
“There a problem?” he answers.
“Yeah, I think I’m lost as shit,” I say.
He snorts. “You are not, I can see your car. Drive about five hundred feet. Red house on the right. The one I’m parked in the driveway of, you jackass?”
I hammer on the ‘end call’ button and fling the phone onto the passenger seat, because I don’t trust myself to stay on the line without shrieking, wait, you chose a house for us? I’d been expecting an apartment in some shitty building, full of other people in their late teens, early twenties. An apartment is safe, platonic. Alex and Ben have an apartment. Stohler and those random bitches who all hate each other have an apartment. This tiny house, with its dark red paint and its two cozy stories, its snow-covered lawn and its motherfucking porch swing, is not platonic. It’s a home, and pulling into the driveway behind Travis’ Subaru makes me want to get married and buy a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, even though I’m not entirely sure what a stand mixer is.
Heart still pounding so hard I’m sure my ribs are about to break, I cut the Ferrari engine and get out. Travis gestures towards the house. “So, yeah. This is the place.”
“Can I go inside?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah? Dude, we live here. You have a key. Go check it out, like you should have done a month ago, when I asked if you wanted the woman from the rental agency to show you the place we were getting. But you just said you trusted me and James to find somewhere decent, so, here it is. Now go poke around, I’ll wait out here for Ben.”
I didn’t even know that it was possible to rent a real home like this. I’d always assumed that people rented apartments and bought houses. It makes sense, I guess—this town is small, only half an hour from Patton’s sprawling, stereotypical New England prep school campus. Of course there aren’t impersonal apartment complexes around here.
It takes me a few seconds of standing in front of the door to psych myself up to unlock it and go inside, but then I’m standing in the entryway, a staircase in front of me. To my right, a door opens up into the living room—soft, slate gray carpet, off-white walls, and along the back wall, a sliding glass door that opens up onto a small back deck that overlooks a neatly fenced-in backyard. Christ, I’ve got a fucking backyard. I cut back through the entryway to the door on the left. It’s a kitchen, with white tiled floors, white cabinets and counters, and pale blue walls. It’s bright, open, and way too nice for two dudes who don’t know how to cook. There’s enough space for a real table and chairs, which I guess means the Ikea table Travis got is just the right size, even though I’d assumed it would be too big.
I make my way up the stairs. There’s a door immediately to the right that opens up to a bedroom the same size as the living room directly below it. On the other side of the staircase, a short hallway leads back towards the front of the house. There’s another door at the end of it, leading to a second, slightly smaller bedroom, which I guess is above the entryway and half the kitchen. The bathroom door is along the hallway wall as well, and that’s where I’m camped out when Ben eventually shows up. I’m sitting on the counter, banging my heels against the cabinet below, and he steps into the bathroom with me, nudging the door halfway shut with his hip. “What’s with you?”
“I didn’t realize it was a house,” I whisper, just in case Travis has followed him upstairs. “I can’t believe Travis didn’t bother to tell me that the place he picked out is a house, not an apartment. He and I just agreed not to be together, and now we have a fucking porch swing.”
“It’s just a house, Garen. And it’s just a swing.”
“It’s not, alright? I like porch swings, they’re awesome, they—what if I want to take my coffee out there once the weather starts to get nicer? Travis drinks coffee, too—dude’s a fucking barista, for god’s sake. What if he decides he also wants to drink his coffee on the porch swing? What if we’re out there, porch swingin’ it up, and our neighbors see us and assume we’re a couple, and then one of them stops by with a plate of cookies to welcome us to the neighborhood—”
“I thought you said you’d only go out once the weather warmed up a bit. Why would it take your neighbors like, three months to welcome you to the neighborhood? Also, I know you’re from Cleveland, but the whole ‘small town neighbors bringing you cookies’ thing only happens on televis—”
I shove Ben at the tub, and he topples right into it, glaring up at me and trying not to bang his head on the taps. I press on, “What if when our neighbor brings cookies, she mistakenly asks me about my partner, thinking we’re like, the fags next door—which we totally are, but not in a married sort of way, just a dick-sucking-stepbrother sort of way—”
“I am one hundred percent positive that there’s not supposed to be any such thing as a ‘dick-sucking-stepbrother sort of way.’” Ben says. “In fact, it’s possible that even saying that phrase is illegal in some states.”
“Probably not New York, though. Now shut up and let me finish, or I’m going to turn the shower on and drown you,” I warn. He makes a vague gesture of surrender. “Good. Now, maybe she asks me about my partner-who-isn’t, and it’s too awkward to admit that he’s my ex, so I go along with it. And what if she’s a goddamn gossip, and she tells everyone on the block, and I have to simultaneously play along and try to make sure that Travis doesn’t find out, because he’d be totally creeped out by it? And then one afternoon, he hears someone referring to us as the McCall-Anderson family—”
“You should go with ‘Anderson-McCall,’” Ben says, yanking up the hood of his sweatshirt in case I follow through on my threat to turn on the shower. I don’t. He peeks out from under the hood. “McCall-Anderson sounds stupid. And if you say it really fast, the first three syllables kind of make it sound like you’re going to say Michelangelo.”
I frown. “The Renaissance painter, or the Ninja Turtle?”
“Does it… make a difference?” Ben says slowly.
The bathroom door swings open and Travis blinks at me, then at Ben, who still hasn’t hauled his dumb ass out of the tub. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Porch swings,” Ben says, at the same moment that I reply, “Ninja turtles.”
“Okaaaaay,” Travis says, raising his eyebrows. “Well, if you’re done with that, can you like, stop gossiping in the bathroom like a couple of preteen girls and come help me unload the truck?”
“Of course,” I say, hopping off the counter. I aim a glare at Ben and demand, “What the fuck are you doing? Why are you in my bathtub?”
He snaps, “Because you threw me in it,” but I’m already darting out of the bathroom and back down the stairs.
Unloading the truck is exactly as awful as I’d expected it to be. The bigger items, like the kitchen table and the couch, require all of our efforts—usually, I’m on one end, and Travis and Ben are on the other. Surprisingly, when there isn’t enough room for both of them, Ben ends up being the one to do most of the heavy lifting; years of lugging around boxes of hardcover books at his dad’s bookstore or eight-quart chafers of food for his mom’s catering business have given him plenty of practice with moving items that should crush someone as small as him. Travis, on the other hand, spends most of the afternoon trying to pretend that he’s being helpful by unpacking all of the dishes or cutlery, even though that’s not exactly high on our priority list.
When he runs out of bullshit boxes to unpack, he sidles into the living room where Ben and I are taking a well-deserved break on the couch and asks me, “Do you want me to go upstairs and hook up your computer?”
I roll my head to the side to look at Ben. “Did we even bring in my desk yet?” He nods without speaking. I roll my head to the other side to look at Travis. “Do you know how to hook it up without electrocuting yourself?”
He gives me the most derisive look I’ve ever seen on someone who isn’t Ben or my mother, then goes upstairs without bothering to reply. Ben snorts. “Dude, you realize that he’s going to be majoring in engineering, minoring in computer science, right? I’m pretty sure he can handle connecting a monitor, a CPU, and an electrical outlet.”
I hadn’t known that Travis was majoring in that, actually. It hadn’t really occurred to me to ask, which seems stupidly self-involved now. Instead of admitting this, I say, “You guys make me feel so inadequate. He and Jamie are both at Columbia, you’re at Yale. I’m still reluctantly forcing my way through high school.”
“You’ll be graduating in a couple of months,” Ben says, shrugging. “Have you heard back from any of the schools you applied to during the fall?”
I slowly shake my head. “I didn’t apply early anywhere, so I can’t expect to hear back until sometime in March, probably. And even once I do—”
Abruptly, I cut myself off, because the truth is, even though my dad badgered me into applying to five different colleges, even though I think I rocked the music auditions and personal interviews I had last month, even though Patton Military Academy is a prep school that expects every graduate to go directly into higher education or Armed Forces… I still don’t want to go to college this fall. Or ever. I’m not Jamie, who chose Columbia for his undergrad because he already knows he wants to go to law school there, too. I’m not Travis, who graduated high school in three and a half years and will probably finish college in two, considering he plans to go full-time, year-round. I’m not Ben, who likes school so goddamn much he wants to become a teacher so that he can be stuck in a classroom for the rest of his life. For fuck’s sake, I’m not even Dave, who’s an abusive psychopath, but still makes dean’s list at Yale. I’m not my honor society friends, or my Ivy League parents—I’m just me. And I don’t know if that will still be good enough come September.
“Maybe NYU, if I get in,” I say quietly, reluctantly. “Stohler went there for dance. I think she liked it. Or—I don’t know. Berklee seemed cool, but it’s in Boston.”
Ben shrugs again. “Nothing wrong with Boston.”
“Something wrong with being completely alone in a city I’ve never really spent any time in, though,” I say before I can stop myself. The moment the words are out, I want to bite my tongue out; that one sentence makes me sound so pathetic, so needy. And I try to cover it with something less awful, but what comes out is an even lamer, “Travis came to New York for me. It’s not just because he wanted to get out of Lakewood. If that was the case, he could’ve gone to Yale, too. Moved in with you and Alex. He chose New York because of me, and I’d be the world’s biggest asshole if I left for Boston after that.”
“Of course,” Ben says, but he’s obviously being sarcastic, because Ben never agrees with anything that anyone says. “Because, you know, it’s not like he could transfer schools, if he really wanted to. It’s not like going to Boston could mean transferring to the engineering program at fucking MIT, which was his first choice anyway. You’re right, you should totally make your college decisions based on where Travis is.”
“Stop pretending that’s not the exact reason why you chose Yale over Juilliard,” I snap. “That’s—you can’t act like you weren’t fucking stupid enough to turn down one of the best music schools in the country just because you were scared I was going to fuck your boyfriend.”
Ben flicks his eyes towards the ceiling and sighs, “If you’re trying to start a fight with me, I’d recommend selecting a topic I still care about. And I know this will be hard for you to understand, but sometimes, people make decisions that don’t have anything to do with Travis or his ass.”
“Trust me, you wouldn’t be saying that if you’d had a chance to—” I cut myself off, because I can hear Travis heading back downstairs, and he always rolls his eyes at me when he catches me objectifying him in casual conversation.
“Computer’s all set up,” he says, sitting down in the bright blue, squishy armchair we bought even though it doesn’t match the couch at all. “I took the liberty of hooking up your printer, too.”
“You’re a peach,” I say, flopping over sideways and draping my legs over Ben’s lap.
At my insistence, we take a dinner break. Travis hooks up the DVD player, since the cable guy isn’t coming until tomorrow; Ben starts picking through my DVD collection, mocking me outright for the fact that I pretty much only own movies with car chases or singing cartoon animals. I look up the number to a local pizza place on his iPhone, then order two pizzas and a fuckload of garlic bread, because it’s not like I couldn’t polish off that much food alone anyway. It isn’t until halfway through Gone in 60 Seconds that Ben turns to me and says, “Dude.”
I raise my eyebrows and echo, “Dude?”
“Didn’t you say that your mattress was being delivered sometime this afternoon?” he says. “Or, did that happen when I wasn’t looking?”
“Um.” I grab Travis’ arm to check his watch. It’s nearly eight o’clock, well past the noon-to-four window I was told to expect the delivery. Slowly, I turn my eyes towards the coffee table, where my cell phone was abandoned hours ago. The little red LED is blinking, indicating a voicemail. I dial into my inbox and scowl through a bored-sounding voice telling me that there was a mix-up with my order, and my mattress won’t be delivered until tomorrow. They apologize for any inconvenience, but their apologies do fuck-all for me now.
I relay the message to the others; as expected, Ben smirks, and Travis says, “That’s not a big deal. You can sleep in my room tonight.”
“Not a good idea,” I say shortly.
He lets out a huff of annoyance. “Don’t be an idiot. My bed is big enough for two people—”
“Believe me, Trav, I’ve fucked you in that bed enough times to be more than aware of that,” I say. “And I know you’re just trying to be nice or whatever, but I’m telling you, if we’re really doing this whole platonic thing, we’re not starting our new lease by sharing a fucking bed.”
Travis opens his mouth to snap back at me, but Ben cuts him off with a casual, “G’s got a point. He’s constitutionally incapable of sharing a bed with someone in a non-sexual manner. The one time I managed it, he crept out of bed in the middle of the night and fucked my roommate down the hall.”
“Well, somebody needed to sleep with Alex, since you friend-zoned him so hard without even realizing it,” I say, even though I know it’s a dick thing to say, and even though I know I’m going to get smacked for it.
Travis is actually the one to deliver the smack. Ben just slouches down in his seat and mutters, “The friend zone doesn’t even exist. It’s a bullshit term invented by misogynist douchebags to make women feel like they’re somehow obligated to provide a sexual pay-off to any guy who’s nice to them.”
“I never should have let you sign up for that Gender and Sexuality in Pop Culture class,” I sigh. “I swear to god, if you declare a Women’s Studies minor, I’ll cut off your balls myself.”
Ben narrows his eyes at me. “It’s not called ‘Women’s Studies,’ you jackass. It’s ‘Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.’ And fuck you, maybe I’ll double-major just to piss you off.”
“Oh, so, now you’re going to graduate with an English degree and a Women’s Stud—sorry, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies degree? Awesome, that’s so useful. Hey, Travis, you should probably start showing him how to make those pretty leaf designs in the latte foam, because fuck knows this kid’s never gonna find an adult job—”
“Coming from the super-senior who has incredibly vague plans to maybe study music someday?”
“Eat me, dude. Maybe I won’t even go to college. I’ll just do porn or something. Bet I could make bank nailing twinks for a living. And then you could write your senior thesis about my dick. Though, beats me how you’d put all your firsthand knowledge in a bibliography. What’s the MLA citation for ‘it’s been in my ass’?”
“I’d cite it as a personal interview. Get me a piece of a paper, and I’ll show you right the fuck now.”
“You are not showing him how to cite his penis for a term paper,” Travis hisses, yanking the pen out of Ben’s hand. “Jesus Christ, dude, he’s still in high school, and you know he’ll find a way to turn that in for credit before the semester’s over. The last thing he needs is to get expelled again.”
I shrug. If I didn’t get expelled for that time I gave Andrew’s definitely married, definitely three-times-my-age teacher a blowjob to get him an extension on his Western Civ paper, I’m pretty positive there’s nothing I could do that would get me kicked out now. But statements like that tend to go over poorly with anyone who doesn’t understand how things work for places like Patton and people like me. Travis in particular always gets that look in his eye, like he thinks it’s goddamn tragic that I sometimes sleep with people to get what I want. It’s not tragic; it’s business. It’s practical, and it’s efficient, and it works—at least, it works for me—but Travis doesn’t get that, and I’d bet anything that Ben wouldn’t get it either. So for now, I turn up the volume on the movie and don’t say anything.
Even though it makes Travis glare at me before he heads up to bed after Ben has headed out, I sleep on the couch that night.
113 days sober
It doesn’t really sink in that I’m back at Patton until I’m standing in the quad again for the first time since heading back to Lakewood last April. It’s five in the morning—still dark out, still goddamn freezing. Most of my classmates have already joined their squads, but I hang back. Headmaster Samuels has already told me that I’m going to be in with the Whitman Hall squad again—possibly because Sergeant Smitth is one of the only faculty members who has ever managed to gain even a little bit of control over me—so I know where I should be standing, but it’s… awkward. I don’t actually know any of them, not like I knew my old squad. Instead of going over and introducing myself, I hover awkwardly at the fringe of the crowd, my hands stuffed into the pockets of my PT sweatshorts.
Most in the guys have noticed me by now, and a few of them are hissing at each other, like they’re trying to see who should come over and demand to know why I’m lurking nearby. I probably look like a total sex offender; I really wouldn’t be surprised if they called campus security on me. It takes about four and a half minutes of me standing there, watching the guys argue amongst themselves, before one of them breaks away from the rest of the group and jogs over to me. He thrusts out his hand for a shake and says, “Hey, man. You’re the new squad addition Sergeant Smitth mentioned we’d be getting, yeah?” I nod. “Cool. I’m Javi.”
“Garen,” I say, accepting the handshake.
Javi bounces a little bit on the balls of his feet and prompts, “Garen Anderson?”
“Uh. Yeah?” I say.
“The Garen Anderson who Sergeant Smitth believes is the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, left out of the Bible because he’s a harbinger of destruction too terrifying to put into words?” he presses.
“What,” I say, not up-talking even though it’s sort of a question.
“The Garen Anderson who once got himself locked in the trunk of Headmaster Samuels’ car and didn’t manage to escape until the New Hampshire border?”
“What,” I repeat, more urgently now, because how does he know these things?
“The Garen Anderson who broke into Mrs. Verdana’s office to blast Swedish dance pop over the sound system during midterms that one year?” he asks.
Maybe it’s just because we went to sleep so late, but it feels unbearably early when Travis’ phone alarm starts chirping from the nightstand. He rolls over to shut it off, leaving my side cold where he has shifted away. The second he returns, I squirm closer, stifling my yawn against his shoulder. “Why’d you set the alarm?”
“Honestly, I figured you’d sleep through it. I’m going to go take a shower and see if I can convince Ben to help me cook some breakfast,” he says quietly, pressing a kiss to my hair. “I’ll wake you again when food’s ready. That okay?”
I shake my head. “No, ‘s dumb. Go back to sleep for like, four more hours, and I’ll blow you when we wake up for real.”
He laughs. “In four more hours, it’ll be two in the afternoon. We need to get to the new place as soon after twelve as possible, because it’ll take forever to unload the truck and put the furniture together, and I doubt Ben wants to be heading back to Connecticut in the middle of the night.”
I’m about to argue with him when the guest room door opens and Jamie slips inside. I have to stifle a grin at the double-take Travis does when he sees how uncharacteristically disheveled Jamie looks in the mornings—sweatpants and a Lamb of God t-shirt that used to be Alex’s, glasses instead of contact lenses, and the faint red scratches of beard burn along his jaw and down his neck. Relieved to find us awake, he says, “Finally. I’ve been awake since eight thirty, and I’m starving, but I’m not going out to the kitchen alone, if it means interacting with the troll sleeping on my couch.”
Travis blinks at him and echoes, “Couch? Ben didn’t—I figured he would’ve slept in your room, considering the uh, wonderful noises we were privy to last night.”
“Seriously, that was ridiculous,” I say, lifting my head to give him the biggest leer I can manage while still half-asleep. “I honestly couldn’t tell if you were fucking or beating the shit out of each other.”
“Bit of both, and it was lovely, but it’s morning now, which means we hate one another again. Keep up, boys,” Jamie says.
I sigh and offer up one limp arm so that he can haul me out of the bed. “You are the actual worst. And if he refuses to cook, I’m beating the shit out of you and then going back to bed while you go out to bring me back a huge stack of waffles from… somewhere. I don’t even care where.”
Jamie makes an impatient, sweeping gesture with his hand, like he’s trying to dismiss my words as much as possible. Travis stretches and rolls out of bed after me, but the moment we’ve stepped into the hall, he turns towards the bathroom and says, “I’m going to stick with my plan to shower. But if Ben does agree to make food, I want some, too.”
Ben isn’t in a state to agree to much of anything; he’s still dead to the world, facedown on the couch with the blankets twisted around his motionless body. I trudge over to him and raise one leg just high enough to bring my knee down on the small of his back. He grunts, tries to wriggle free, and mutters a mostly unintelligible half-sentence that probably amounts to, “Get away from me.”
“Make me breakfast?” I say, hitching the end of the sentence even though it’s not really a question.
“’m not your fucking mom, you can’t just wake me up and expect me to cook for you,” he says. “Stop touching my back. It hurts, and not in a good way.”
I shoot Jamie an accusatory look, which he pretends not to see. I shift my knee off Ben’s back and onto the couch cushion on his far side so that I can make a seat out of the back of his thighs. He makes a noise like an angry cat, and I tug at the hem of his shirt. “What’s wrong with your back? More scratches?”
“Bit me,” he says.
I frown. “This has got to be the first time I’ve ever seen you tired enough to wreck the grammar of a sentence that badly. Either you meant to say ‘bite me,’ or there were supposed to be more words in that sentence.”
Ben heaves a sigh so deep that his whole body sags further into the cushions, jostling me where I’m still perched on his legs, then flings an arm back to shove his shirt halfway up his spine, exposing a line of evenly-spaced bruises in the shape of Jamie’s mouth. “Bit me,” he repeats.
“Clearly,” I say, cocking my head to the side. “Can’t you two just stake a claim by coming on each other’s faces, like normal people? Why does it always have to be biting and scratching and—I don’t know, cattle-branding?”
Ben tries to burrow deeper into the cushions, finally succeeding in tipping me off him and onto the floor. Jamie circles the couch and leans a hip against the back of it. “Good morning, McCutcheon,” he says, voice too pleasant to be sincere. “I apologize for Garen’s rudeness. However, since you seem to be awake now, would you please assist me in the kitchen so that I don’t have to cook breakfast for everyone by myself?”
Still without lifting his head, Ben reaches into his backpack, retrieves his wallet, and drops it on the coffee table. “Go buy yourselves some sandwiches. I don’t know what I ever did to make everyone think I’m the breakfast genie, but I’m not in the mood today. Go to Starbucks. Better yet, Garen, you can cook. Or, has it still not crossed your mind that either you or Travis should probably pick up that skill, now that you’re living on your own?”
I blink. It hasn’t occurred to me—not until this very moment. I turn to Jamie, who smirks. “I’ve been wondering how long y’all might take to notice that.”
Ben finally rolls onto his back, shoving the hem of his shirt down again so he’s covered once more. He still looks tired, but less annoyed now that he has the chance to berate me to my face. “Travis has three job interviews lined up for coffee shops looking for baristas to work their late morning and early afternoon shifts; assuming he gets one of those jobs, he’s covered for lunch. Dinner, too, if he grabs something in the city after his classes every night. What about you? Patton has a dining hall, right?”
My deer-in-the-headlights expression melts into something that involves a lot more eye-rolling. “No, Ben. A thousand teenage boys live there for ten months out of the year, but there’s no dining hall. They send us out into the woods around campus and expects us to hunt, gather, or battle each other to the death, Hunger Games-style, for our food.”
“Fuck off.”
“Only the truly strong prevail. It’s part of the Patton method for making sure their graduates are all vicious, bloodthirsty warriors. That’s how Jamie got on the honor roll—he took out a bear, fed the whole squad for three days.”
“I’m going back to sleep,” Ben mutters, pulling a throw pillow over his face.
I yank the pillow off. “One time, I ate a freshman.”
“Stop tormenting Ben,” Travis says. I jump; I’d heard neither the shower shutting off, nor him coming into the living room. He hitches his chin towards Ben. “They piss you off enough to make you not want to cook?”
“He woke up pissed off and not wanting to cook,” Jamie protests.
Travis shrugs. “I’d be willing to bet that’s your fault.”
“Garen’s the one who climbed on him,” Jamie says mulishly.
“Jamie’s the one who bit him,” I say.
Travis shoots us both a bewildered look. Ben yawns and says, “Settle down, boys. I hate both of you equally.” Then, to Travis, “I don’t feel like doing the breakfast thing. Not here, anyway. Let me shower, and we’ll find someplace nearby to grab something to eat before we head to your new place.”
Travis shrugs his complacency, and I glare at Jamie again for getting us both in trouble. Ben claws himself free of the blankets, stands, and grabs the backpack with his change of clothes in it. I poke it. “You have another shirt in there, or did you use your only spare last night after the whole beverage-spilling incident? Because I’m pretty sure Jamie’s got a few extra shirts of mine in his closet, if you wanna borrow one.”
He nods his thanks, and I snap my fingers at Jamie. He’s been there for the whole conversation, so he knows exactly what I want him to go get. I expect him to roll his eyes and make me go get them myself, but he rounds the end of the couch and heads back to his room without comment. When he returns a minute later, however, he holds out a black, long-sleeved dress shirt. Ben accepts it, takes one look at the Hugo Boss label inside the collar, and says, “There’s no way in hell this is actually Garen’s shirt.”
“I’m aware of that,” Jamie says coolly. “But the only shirts I have left that belong to Garen are all short-sleeved, and considering the fact that I’ve only seen your bare arms three times since I met you—all three of which were in bed—I made the assumption that you would prefer something offering a bit more coverage.”
Ben swallows and smooths out one of the sleeves of the shirt. “Yeah. Thanks.”
I deliver a hard smack to the back of his head. “Stop trying to have a moment, and go shower so I can get in there after you. You guys aren’t getting breakfast without me.”
“I’m so glad you’re moving away from Connecticut,” he grumbles, stumbling towards the hallway. I hear the thunk of his backpack hitting the tiled floor of the bathroom, and he calls out to us, “Alex keeps looking for that shirt, by the way!”
“How sad for him,” Jamie remarks, flinging himself down onto the couch next to me. The bathroom door slams as punctuation to his words. He shrugs. “It’s a rule of mine: if you don’t care about something enough to hold onto it, you don’t get to whine about losing it later. This applies to both relationships and clothing left in my apartment.”
Ben returns to the living room fifteen minutes later, once the rest of us have gotten sucked into some television show about people who wrestle alligators—none of us can figure out whether it’s for fun or profit, mostly because none of us can figure out how the hell someone could make money from gator-wrestling. Ben’s borrowed clothes are almost as hilarious as the rednecks on TV. The only thing that stops the dress shirt from looking like a straight-up dress is the fact that he has tucked the front of it in behind the buckle of his belt, presumably to disguise the fact that it looks like it should hang down to his knees. I open my mouth to mock him, but he waves me off, like he’s already filling in the blanks on all the height jokes I could make.
I roll off the couch and go to have a shower. It’s still early, so I take my time—playing around with the variety of body scrubs Rachael has left in here; having a deliciously slow jerk-off session, assisted by a handful of soap suds that smell like mangoes; washing my hair with some ridiculous deep-hydration-seaweed-protein-bullshit shampoo that I’m sure Jamie would try to pretend is Rachael’s too, but which he’s actually been using since high school. By the time I finish my showering fun, dry my hair, straighten it with the flat-iron I find in the cabinet under the sink, get dressed, and make my way back out to the living room, my existence has been largely forgotten.
“Oh my god, he’s going to die,” Travis says, his words muffled somewhat by the hands he has all but clamped over his mouth. “He’s going to die. Look at the teeth on that thing, he’s going to die.”
“He’s not going to die,” Jamie objects. “And even if he did, they wouldn’t show it. This is television—”
“No, this is evidence that we should have just let the South secede from the Union when y’all wanted to,” Ben says. He doesn’t look away from the screen—doesn’t seem to be able to even blink—but digs his elbow into Jamie’s ribs anyway. “The only place in the South I’ve ever been is Disney World. Is this what it’s really like there? Is this what the Goldwyn family does for fun?”
“Absolutely not,” Jamie says immediately, not looking away from the screen either. “This abomination of a show is filmed in Louisiana, and I refuse to take responsibility for it just because we happen to be from the same side of the Mason-Dixon Line. I don’t blame you lot for Jersey Shore, do I?”
I wedge myself onto the couch between Ben and Travis. “If you blame any of us for Jersey Shore, it’s gotta be Ben.”
“Why me?” Ben demands, finally looking over at me.
“Because I blame Italians for the existence of that show, and you’re the only one here who’s got a parent who like, came off the fuckin’ boat from Italy,” I say. Travis turns to squint at me; I squint right back. “Dude, did you guys talk at all during the time you were dating? His mom was born in Florence. She didn’t move to the States until she was like, six.”
“How could I possibly have known that?” Travis asks. “Seriously, why would that ever come up in conversation? She doesn’t talk with an accent, and her name is Hillary McCutcheon. That doesn’t exactly say ‘ask me about my classy European heritage.’”
I roll my eyes so hard, my entire head moves. Anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in the McCutcheon household—or two minutes in their kitchen—should have picked up on the fact that they’re lightyears away from being an all-American, apple-pie-and-baseball sort of family. More to the point, anyone who’s had Ben’s totally uncut dick in their mouth should have picked up on the family’s more European tendencies, too. Travis is fucking hopeless.
“If you want to get technical, neither of those is actually her name,” Ben says, stretching and reaching for the remote. “McCutcheon is her married name, and Hillary is just the anglicized version she started using when she first moved to this country. But you can’t blame her for Jersey Shore, either.”
“Can I blame her for Mob Wives?” I ask.
He shoves me off the couch for the second time today. “No, what you can do is stop talking about my fucking mother, and get your stuff so we can go. I’d like to get out of here and get you guys moved in sometime today, if that’s okay.”
We end up getting coffee and bagels at a bakery two blocks over, all four of us crowded around one small table, knees bumping together with every movement. Travis and Ben are trying to map out the easiest route to the new place from here, but I’m pretty sure that’s what GPS is for, so I can’t be bothered to listen. I inch my chair closer to Jamie so that I can drop my head onto his shoulder. He reaches up to scratch at my scalp like I’m a puppy, then asks, “Are you starting school tomorrow, or the next day?”
“Next,” I answer. “I have to be there mad early, too. PT starts at five, and I’ve still got to pick up my class schedule, get my parking pass, and sign off on the student handbook—not like I’m going to follow any of the rules, but I guess I’m supposed to pretend. Tomorrow, I’ve gotta get my haircut to the dress code length and swing by the mall to get more dress shirts—”
“Do you want to just keep some of mine for the next few months?” he offers. “Seems like a waste to buy them, if you don’t intend to ever wear them again after you graduate in May.”
I shake my head. “I don’t think yours would fit me. You have arms like a stick figure.”
“I do not!” he says indignantly, shrugging out of his coat to bare his arms for inspection. I have no idea why he’s bothering to protest; his arms are toned, sure, but they’re long and thin, just like every last inch of him is. “Here, hold yours up next to mine so I can—stop flexing, you idiot—”
“I’m not flexing, ass, that’s just what my arms look like—”
“Can you stop whatever the hell it is you two are doing over there?” Travis interrupts. “We’re kind of in public, and you guys are like, touching yourselves and each other way more than is probably appropriate.”
“Don’t worry, you’re still my favorite,” I assure him, grabbing the edge of the chair he’s seated on and dragging him close enough that I can sling an arm around his shoulders. He rolls his eyes, twists to kiss the side of my neck, and then… checks his watch.
Right. Because we’d agreed to stop this at noon, and it’s eleven thirty now, which means I’ve got about half an hour before I need to know how to keep my hands off him. The idea leaves a twist in my gut and a sour taste in my mouth. I retract my arm and clear my throat. “We should go.”
On the way back to the parking garage below the building, Jamie seems to be the only one who picks up on the sudden downturn in my mood. He doesn’t say anything, but when I ask if he’ll give me a piggyback ride for the rest of the block, he nods and lets me scramble up onto his back without a single word about me weighing too goddamn much for this. He lets me down again only once we’re standing right next to Ben’s truck. I ruffle Jamie’s still-messy hair and say, “Thanks. You sure you don’t wanna help us unpack?”
“As much fun as I’m sure that’ll be, yes, I’m positive,” he says. “Some of my school friends are coming over later this afternoon, so I’ve got to clean the apartment before then.”
Ben leans his shoulder against the door of the truck. “You say that like that apartment is something other than spotless.” Jamie glares at him, and he lifts his hands in a gesture of surrender. “Fine, fine. Minding my own business and getting in the truck. I’ll see you around.”
“No, you most likely won’t,” Jamie says. “Now that these two are in New York, I don’t see any reason I’d return to Connecticut. Even if you come here to visit them, I live in the city, and they don’t. I can’t imagine a single scenario in which you and I will ever have to interact again.”
For a longer moment than I think he means to, Ben frowns at him. Only when Jamie’s eyebrows begin to rise, as if to say is there a problem?, does he snap himself out of it, taking a step backward as he says, “You’re right. Next time Garen’s in Lakewood, I’ll send him back with your shirt. Thank you for letting me borrow it. And for letting me spend the night.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Jamie says, examining his nails like they’re the most fascinating thing in this entire parking garage. “And thank you for—”
“If the next words out of your mouth have anything to do with sex, I will kick you in the balls,” Ben warns. A smirk spreads slowly across Jamie’s face, but Ben must not be far from the point, because the rest of the sentence never comes. Ben rolls his eyes and climbs into the truck, slamming the door shut and starting the engine. Jamie offers him a wide smile and an exaggerated wave; Ben comes back with a sneer and an obscene hand gesture before he shifts into drive and pulls out of the space.
“You guys are so sweet to each other,” I say. “Honestly, it’s heart-warming.”
“I’m not the one who picked him out in the first place,” Jamie replies, giving me a quick peck on the cheek before he turns to the door leading back to the building. “Now get out of here. Call me once your new place is all set up. I’ll come by later this week, alright?”
I salute him; he returns the gesture and ducks into the building. I turn towards my car. Travis is already in his and ready to leave. He pulls up next to me and says, “You have the address, right?”
“Yep,” I say. And then, because it’s still not noon yet, because I can, I lean in through the window, kiss him, and say right against his lips, “See you at home.”
He jolts a little, reaches up to catch my face between his hands, but I step out of reach and stride off towards my own car. Time to go, time to go, time to go. Time to get the fuck out of here, before I do something stupid, like ask him if he’s sure we can’t just be together now. By the time I get to my car, get the engine running and the stereo playing, and look around again, he has pulled out of the garage. I sigh, type the new address into my GPS, and point the car towards the road again.
It takes close to forty minutes to make the drive to the town halfway between Patton and Columbia. I make the turn the GPS has indicated, but something is definitely wrong, because I’ve managed to end up in some cute little neighborhood with sidewalks and picket fences and itty bitty houses full of itty bitty families. I snatch my phone from the cupholder, switch it to speaker, and call Travis.
“There a problem?” he answers.
“Yeah, I think I’m lost as shit,” I say.
He snorts. “You are not, I can see your car. Drive about five hundred feet. Red house on the right. The one I’m parked in the driveway of, you jackass?”
I hammer on the ‘end call’ button and fling the phone onto the passenger seat, because I don’t trust myself to stay on the line without shrieking, wait, you chose a house for us? I’d been expecting an apartment in some shitty building, full of other people in their late teens, early twenties. An apartment is safe, platonic. Alex and Ben have an apartment. Stohler and those random bitches who all hate each other have an apartment. This tiny house, with its dark red paint and its two cozy stories, its snow-covered lawn and its motherfucking porch swing, is not platonic. It’s a home, and pulling into the driveway behind Travis’ Subaru makes me want to get married and buy a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, even though I’m not entirely sure what a stand mixer is.
Heart still pounding so hard I’m sure my ribs are about to break, I cut the Ferrari engine and get out. Travis gestures towards the house. “So, yeah. This is the place.”
“Can I go inside?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah? Dude, we live here. You have a key. Go check it out, like you should have done a month ago, when I asked if you wanted the woman from the rental agency to show you the place we were getting. But you just said you trusted me and James to find somewhere decent, so, here it is. Now go poke around, I’ll wait out here for Ben.”
I didn’t even know that it was possible to rent a real home like this. I’d always assumed that people rented apartments and bought houses. It makes sense, I guess—this town is small, only half an hour from Patton’s sprawling, stereotypical New England prep school campus. Of course there aren’t impersonal apartment complexes around here.
It takes me a few seconds of standing in front of the door to psych myself up to unlock it and go inside, but then I’m standing in the entryway, a staircase in front of me. To my right, a door opens up into the living room—soft, slate gray carpet, off-white walls, and along the back wall, a sliding glass door that opens up onto a small back deck that overlooks a neatly fenced-in backyard. Christ, I’ve got a fucking backyard. I cut back through the entryway to the door on the left. It’s a kitchen, with white tiled floors, white cabinets and counters, and pale blue walls. It’s bright, open, and way too nice for two dudes who don’t know how to cook. There’s enough space for a real table and chairs, which I guess means the Ikea table Travis got is just the right size, even though I’d assumed it would be too big.
I make my way up the stairs. There’s a door immediately to the right that opens up to a bedroom the same size as the living room directly below it. On the other side of the staircase, a short hallway leads back towards the front of the house. There’s another door at the end of it, leading to a second, slightly smaller bedroom, which I guess is above the entryway and half the kitchen. The bathroom door is along the hallway wall as well, and that’s where I’m camped out when Ben eventually shows up. I’m sitting on the counter, banging my heels against the cabinet below, and he steps into the bathroom with me, nudging the door halfway shut with his hip. “What’s with you?”
“I didn’t realize it was a house,” I whisper, just in case Travis has followed him upstairs. “I can’t believe Travis didn’t bother to tell me that the place he picked out is a house, not an apartment. He and I just agreed not to be together, and now we have a fucking porch swing.”
“It’s just a house, Garen. And it’s just a swing.”
“It’s not, alright? I like porch swings, they’re awesome, they—what if I want to take my coffee out there once the weather starts to get nicer? Travis drinks coffee, too—dude’s a fucking barista, for god’s sake. What if he decides he also wants to drink his coffee on the porch swing? What if we’re out there, porch swingin’ it up, and our neighbors see us and assume we’re a couple, and then one of them stops by with a plate of cookies to welcome us to the neighborhood—”
“I thought you said you’d only go out once the weather warmed up a bit. Why would it take your neighbors like, three months to welcome you to the neighborhood? Also, I know you’re from Cleveland, but the whole ‘small town neighbors bringing you cookies’ thing only happens on televis—”
I shove Ben at the tub, and he topples right into it, glaring up at me and trying not to bang his head on the taps. I press on, “What if when our neighbor brings cookies, she mistakenly asks me about my partner, thinking we’re like, the fags next door—which we totally are, but not in a married sort of way, just a dick-sucking-stepbrother sort of way—”
“I am one hundred percent positive that there’s not supposed to be any such thing as a ‘dick-sucking-stepbrother sort of way.’” Ben says. “In fact, it’s possible that even saying that phrase is illegal in some states.”
“Probably not New York, though. Now shut up and let me finish, or I’m going to turn the shower on and drown you,” I warn. He makes a vague gesture of surrender. “Good. Now, maybe she asks me about my partner-who-isn’t, and it’s too awkward to admit that he’s my ex, so I go along with it. And what if she’s a goddamn gossip, and she tells everyone on the block, and I have to simultaneously play along and try to make sure that Travis doesn’t find out, because he’d be totally creeped out by it? And then one afternoon, he hears someone referring to us as the McCall-Anderson family—”
“You should go with ‘Anderson-McCall,’” Ben says, yanking up the hood of his sweatshirt in case I follow through on my threat to turn on the shower. I don’t. He peeks out from under the hood. “McCall-Anderson sounds stupid. And if you say it really fast, the first three syllables kind of make it sound like you’re going to say Michelangelo.”
I frown. “The Renaissance painter, or the Ninja Turtle?”
“Does it… make a difference?” Ben says slowly.
The bathroom door swings open and Travis blinks at me, then at Ben, who still hasn’t hauled his dumb ass out of the tub. “What are you guys talking about?”
“Porch swings,” Ben says, at the same moment that I reply, “Ninja turtles.”
“Okaaaaay,” Travis says, raising his eyebrows. “Well, if you’re done with that, can you like, stop gossiping in the bathroom like a couple of preteen girls and come help me unload the truck?”
“Of course,” I say, hopping off the counter. I aim a glare at Ben and demand, “What the fuck are you doing? Why are you in my bathtub?”
He snaps, “Because you threw me in it,” but I’m already darting out of the bathroom and back down the stairs.
Unloading the truck is exactly as awful as I’d expected it to be. The bigger items, like the kitchen table and the couch, require all of our efforts—usually, I’m on one end, and Travis and Ben are on the other. Surprisingly, when there isn’t enough room for both of them, Ben ends up being the one to do most of the heavy lifting; years of lugging around boxes of hardcover books at his dad’s bookstore or eight-quart chafers of food for his mom’s catering business have given him plenty of practice with moving items that should crush someone as small as him. Travis, on the other hand, spends most of the afternoon trying to pretend that he’s being helpful by unpacking all of the dishes or cutlery, even though that’s not exactly high on our priority list.
When he runs out of bullshit boxes to unpack, he sidles into the living room where Ben and I are taking a well-deserved break on the couch and asks me, “Do you want me to go upstairs and hook up your computer?”
I roll my head to the side to look at Ben. “Did we even bring in my desk yet?” He nods without speaking. I roll my head to the other side to look at Travis. “Do you know how to hook it up without electrocuting yourself?”
He gives me the most derisive look I’ve ever seen on someone who isn’t Ben or my mother, then goes upstairs without bothering to reply. Ben snorts. “Dude, you realize that he’s going to be majoring in engineering, minoring in computer science, right? I’m pretty sure he can handle connecting a monitor, a CPU, and an electrical outlet.”
I hadn’t known that Travis was majoring in that, actually. It hadn’t really occurred to me to ask, which seems stupidly self-involved now. Instead of admitting this, I say, “You guys make me feel so inadequate. He and Jamie are both at Columbia, you’re at Yale. I’m still reluctantly forcing my way through high school.”
“You’ll be graduating in a couple of months,” Ben says, shrugging. “Have you heard back from any of the schools you applied to during the fall?”
I slowly shake my head. “I didn’t apply early anywhere, so I can’t expect to hear back until sometime in March, probably. And even once I do—”
Abruptly, I cut myself off, because the truth is, even though my dad badgered me into applying to five different colleges, even though I think I rocked the music auditions and personal interviews I had last month, even though Patton Military Academy is a prep school that expects every graduate to go directly into higher education or Armed Forces… I still don’t want to go to college this fall. Or ever. I’m not Jamie, who chose Columbia for his undergrad because he already knows he wants to go to law school there, too. I’m not Travis, who graduated high school in three and a half years and will probably finish college in two, considering he plans to go full-time, year-round. I’m not Ben, who likes school so goddamn much he wants to become a teacher so that he can be stuck in a classroom for the rest of his life. For fuck’s sake, I’m not even Dave, who’s an abusive psychopath, but still makes dean’s list at Yale. I’m not my honor society friends, or my Ivy League parents—I’m just me. And I don’t know if that will still be good enough come September.
“Maybe NYU, if I get in,” I say quietly, reluctantly. “Stohler went there for dance. I think she liked it. Or—I don’t know. Berklee seemed cool, but it’s in Boston.”
Ben shrugs again. “Nothing wrong with Boston.”
“Something wrong with being completely alone in a city I’ve never really spent any time in, though,” I say before I can stop myself. The moment the words are out, I want to bite my tongue out; that one sentence makes me sound so pathetic, so needy. And I try to cover it with something less awful, but what comes out is an even lamer, “Travis came to New York for me. It’s not just because he wanted to get out of Lakewood. If that was the case, he could’ve gone to Yale, too. Moved in with you and Alex. He chose New York because of me, and I’d be the world’s biggest asshole if I left for Boston after that.”
“Of course,” Ben says, but he’s obviously being sarcastic, because Ben never agrees with anything that anyone says. “Because, you know, it’s not like he could transfer schools, if he really wanted to. It’s not like going to Boston could mean transferring to the engineering program at fucking MIT, which was his first choice anyway. You’re right, you should totally make your college decisions based on where Travis is.”
“Stop pretending that’s not the exact reason why you chose Yale over Juilliard,” I snap. “That’s—you can’t act like you weren’t fucking stupid enough to turn down one of the best music schools in the country just because you were scared I was going to fuck your boyfriend.”
Ben flicks his eyes towards the ceiling and sighs, “If you’re trying to start a fight with me, I’d recommend selecting a topic I still care about. And I know this will be hard for you to understand, but sometimes, people make decisions that don’t have anything to do with Travis or his ass.”
“Trust me, you wouldn’t be saying that if you’d had a chance to—” I cut myself off, because I can hear Travis heading back downstairs, and he always rolls his eyes at me when he catches me objectifying him in casual conversation.
“Computer’s all set up,” he says, sitting down in the bright blue, squishy armchair we bought even though it doesn’t match the couch at all. “I took the liberty of hooking up your printer, too.”
“You’re a peach,” I say, flopping over sideways and draping my legs over Ben’s lap.
At my insistence, we take a dinner break. Travis hooks up the DVD player, since the cable guy isn’t coming until tomorrow; Ben starts picking through my DVD collection, mocking me outright for the fact that I pretty much only own movies with car chases or singing cartoon animals. I look up the number to a local pizza place on his iPhone, then order two pizzas and a fuckload of garlic bread, because it’s not like I couldn’t polish off that much food alone anyway. It isn’t until halfway through Gone in 60 Seconds that Ben turns to me and says, “Dude.”
I raise my eyebrows and echo, “Dude?”
“Didn’t you say that your mattress was being delivered sometime this afternoon?” he says. “Or, did that happen when I wasn’t looking?”
“Um.” I grab Travis’ arm to check his watch. It’s nearly eight o’clock, well past the noon-to-four window I was told to expect the delivery. Slowly, I turn my eyes towards the coffee table, where my cell phone was abandoned hours ago. The little red LED is blinking, indicating a voicemail. I dial into my inbox and scowl through a bored-sounding voice telling me that there was a mix-up with my order, and my mattress won’t be delivered until tomorrow. They apologize for any inconvenience, but their apologies do fuck-all for me now.
I relay the message to the others; as expected, Ben smirks, and Travis says, “That’s not a big deal. You can sleep in my room tonight.”
“Not a good idea,” I say shortly.
He lets out a huff of annoyance. “Don’t be an idiot. My bed is big enough for two people—”
“Believe me, Trav, I’ve fucked you in that bed enough times to be more than aware of that,” I say. “And I know you’re just trying to be nice or whatever, but I’m telling you, if we’re really doing this whole platonic thing, we’re not starting our new lease by sharing a fucking bed.”
Travis opens his mouth to snap back at me, but Ben cuts him off with a casual, “G’s got a point. He’s constitutionally incapable of sharing a bed with someone in a non-sexual manner. The one time I managed it, he crept out of bed in the middle of the night and fucked my roommate down the hall.”
“Well, somebody needed to sleep with Alex, since you friend-zoned him so hard without even realizing it,” I say, even though I know it’s a dick thing to say, and even though I know I’m going to get smacked for it.
Travis is actually the one to deliver the smack. Ben just slouches down in his seat and mutters, “The friend zone doesn’t even exist. It’s a bullshit term invented by misogynist douchebags to make women feel like they’re somehow obligated to provide a sexual pay-off to any guy who’s nice to them.”
“I never should have let you sign up for that Gender and Sexuality in Pop Culture class,” I sigh. “I swear to god, if you declare a Women’s Studies minor, I’ll cut off your balls myself.”
Ben narrows his eyes at me. “It’s not called ‘Women’s Studies,’ you jackass. It’s ‘Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.’ And fuck you, maybe I’ll double-major just to piss you off.”
“Oh, so, now you’re going to graduate with an English degree and a Women’s Stud—sorry, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies degree? Awesome, that’s so useful. Hey, Travis, you should probably start showing him how to make those pretty leaf designs in the latte foam, because fuck knows this kid’s never gonna find an adult job—”
“Coming from the super-senior who has incredibly vague plans to maybe study music someday?”
“Eat me, dude. Maybe I won’t even go to college. I’ll just do porn or something. Bet I could make bank nailing twinks for a living. And then you could write your senior thesis about my dick. Though, beats me how you’d put all your firsthand knowledge in a bibliography. What’s the MLA citation for ‘it’s been in my ass’?”
“I’d cite it as a personal interview. Get me a piece of a paper, and I’ll show you right the fuck now.”
“You are not showing him how to cite his penis for a term paper,” Travis hisses, yanking the pen out of Ben’s hand. “Jesus Christ, dude, he’s still in high school, and you know he’ll find a way to turn that in for credit before the semester’s over. The last thing he needs is to get expelled again.”
I shrug. If I didn’t get expelled for that time I gave Andrew’s definitely married, definitely three-times-my-age teacher a blowjob to get him an extension on his Western Civ paper, I’m pretty positive there’s nothing I could do that would get me kicked out now. But statements like that tend to go over poorly with anyone who doesn’t understand how things work for places like Patton and people like me. Travis in particular always gets that look in his eye, like he thinks it’s goddamn tragic that I sometimes sleep with people to get what I want. It’s not tragic; it’s business. It’s practical, and it’s efficient, and it works—at least, it works for me—but Travis doesn’t get that, and I’d bet anything that Ben wouldn’t get it either. So for now, I turn up the volume on the movie and don’t say anything.
Even though it makes Travis glare at me before he heads up to bed after Ben has headed out, I sleep on the couch that night.
113 days sober
It doesn’t really sink in that I’m back at Patton until I’m standing in the quad again for the first time since heading back to Lakewood last April. It’s five in the morning—still dark out, still goddamn freezing. Most of my classmates have already joined their squads, but I hang back. Headmaster Samuels has already told me that I’m going to be in with the Whitman Hall squad again—possibly because Sergeant Smitth is one of the only faculty members who has ever managed to gain even a little bit of control over me—so I know where I should be standing, but it’s… awkward. I don’t actually know any of them, not like I knew my old squad. Instead of going over and introducing myself, I hover awkwardly at the fringe of the crowd, my hands stuffed into the pockets of my PT sweatshorts.
Most in the guys have noticed me by now, and a few of them are hissing at each other, like they’re trying to see who should come over and demand to know why I’m lurking nearby. I probably look like a total sex offender; I really wouldn’t be surprised if they called campus security on me. It takes about four and a half minutes of me standing there, watching the guys argue amongst themselves, before one of them breaks away from the rest of the group and jogs over to me. He thrusts out his hand for a shake and says, “Hey, man. You’re the new squad addition Sergeant Smitth mentioned we’d be getting, yeah?” I nod. “Cool. I’m Javi.”
“Garen,” I say, accepting the handshake.
Javi bounces a little bit on the balls of his feet and prompts, “Garen Anderson?”
“Uh. Yeah?” I say.
“The Garen Anderson who Sergeant Smitth believes is the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, left out of the Bible because he’s a harbinger of destruction too terrifying to put into words?” he presses.
“What,” I say, not up-talking even though it’s sort of a question.
“The Garen Anderson who once got himself locked in the trunk of Headmaster Samuels’ car and didn’t manage to escape until the New Hampshire border?”
“What,” I repeat, more urgently now, because how does he know these things?
“The Garen Anderson who broke into Mrs. Verdana’s office to blast Swedish dance pop over the sound system during midterms that one year?” he asks.
Human words don’t seem to be working, so I try making a distressed noise in the back of my throat, but Javi plows onward.
“The Garen Anderson who taught like, half the guys in this school how to pick locks? The Garen Anderson who smuggled in a coffee machine and almost burned down Whitman Hall four times, but still didn’t let it get confiscated? The Garen Anderson who is single-handedly responsible for the twenty-thousand-dollar security camera renovation in the library because somebody tipped off administration to the fact that he used to fuck guys against the fourth-floor card catalog?”
“Okay, the phrase ‘single-handedly’ is a huge overstatement,” I say, mildly hysterically. “That is at least half Jamie’s fault. He’s the one who was obsessed with the idea of getting fucked in a library after one of his girlfriends made him watch Atonement with her—”
“Holy shit,” Javi breathes, and then he turns, waving his hand frantically in the direction of the rest of the squad. “Guys! You were right, it’s him!”
Before I can even process what’s happening, I find myself standing in the middle of a crowd of dudes, all of whom seem to want nothing more than to shake my hand and clap me on the back. Only two of the guys are hanging back, looking less than thrilled to see me: a guy with red hair, pretty golden-brown eyes, and a smattering of adorable freckles across his nose, and another guy with hazel eyes and glasses who looks sort of familiar, but I can’t figure out where I know him from. My instinctive thought is that I’ve probably gotten drunk and nailed him before, but he’s not giving me that embarrassed half-smile that my one-night stands usually give me when we’re forced to interact in a clothed scenario.
I don’t have much of a chance to give it further consideration, because there’s a hand on my back that’s definitely slipping into Bad Touch territory, and I don’t understand why everyone seems to care that I’m here. I say, “Uh, not that this isn’t, you know—I mean, you guys are super welcoming, but do I even know any of you?”
“Probably not,” says a voice behind me—I’m pretty sure it belongs to the blond boy who still hasn’t taken his slim-fingered hand off the small of my back. “We know you, though.”
That settles it: the Whitman squad became a cult while I was away. I contemplate taking a huge step back from this group, but that’ll just put me on top of the handsy blond, so I remain still.
But Javi—who, despite his overenthusiastic knowledge of my previous escapades, seems to be more normal and less tactile than most of these other dudes—picks up on my obvious discomfort and adds, “You’re pretty much a Patton Military Academy legend, man. We all probably seem like huge creeps right now, but we’ve all been hearing stories about you for years. It’s just cool to finally meet you, is all.”
“Oh,” I say slowly. “Well, um. It’s nice to meet you guys, too. I—”
“Whitman squad! Get in formation now!” bellows a sudden and familiar voice from about ten yards away. “There are twenty-one of you now, so I want everybody in alphabetical order by last name, standing three across.”
I don’t actually know anybody’s surname here, but I hedge my bets and head for the first row. Two other guys have also moved up there, so I nudge the one closer to me, the hot redhead who didn’t bother to shake my hand. “Hey. Didn’t really catch your name earlier—are you ahead of me, or—”
“Campbell,” he answers, then jerks his head to the other guy. “That’s Barrington. You’re first in the squad now.”
I offer up a quick, thankful smile and step into formation. Apparently, I should’ve done those in the reverse order, or left off the smile altogether, because Sergeant Smitth barks, “Anderson, get on the ground and give me twenty push-ups, right now.”
“I haven’t even done anything yet!” I say indignantly.
He gives me a smile that comes across more like a sneer. “I know that, but something about seeing your happy face after all this time just pisses me off.”
“Is it the fact that my face is super pretty?” I ask. “Because trust me, that gets me in plenty of trouble, so, you’re not alone.”
“Twenty-five push-ups now,” he replies. “Let’s see how out of practice you’ve gotten at that public school of yours.”
I make a show of stomping my feet, but only for a second or two—any longer than that, and I’ve got no doubt he’ll make me do push-ups until sunset. Considering I do fifty push-ups every morning, it’s not that difficult to drop to the ground and execute twenty-five perfect ones right now. I’ve barely had a chance to stand up again before I’m being ordered back onto the ground with the rest of the squad to do thirty more. By the time we’re all dismissed two and a half hours later, I’m soaked in sweat, and my muscles are aching, but it’s nice. It’s been over a year since I had a solid PT session, and it feels a lot like being welcomed home. Or… okay, it actually feels a lot more like getting jumped into a gang, but still, it’s good to be back.
The rest of the squad heads back to the dorm; I break off from the group and head for the locker rooms down below the gym, where the forty or fifty commuter students are given space to clean up before breakfast. Even though it’s my first day back, I’ve still got my morning routine down to a science. I claim a shower stall, scrub off the dirt and sweat that’s soaked into my skin, don my uniform—khakis, white Oxford, striped tie in the Patton school colors, freshly polished boots—and set to work on my hair in front of one of the mirrors above the sinks. Yesterday’s trip to the barber hasn’t left me with much to work with, so all I have to do is blow-dry it, work in a little bit of wax, and load it up with hairspray to ensure that this whole just-fucked look lasts until the end of the day. It’s much less work than I’m used to putting into my hair, so I’ve got plenty of time to head back to my car, drop off my gym bag, and grab my backpack.
The dining hall isn’t packed by the time I get there, but I still lurk near the door for a minute, trying to figure out where the hell I’m supposed to sit. Do commuters sit with their squads, or in another section? It’s not like I ever paid attention; it’s not like I ever had to.
“Yo, Anderson!”
My eyes snap towards the voice. One of the guys from my new squad is beckoning me towards one of the three smallish tables for the seniors of Whitman Hall. Slowly, I make my way over to the table. The guy who called me over pulls out the chair on his left side, the one between him and Javi.
“Have a seat, dude,” he says. Then, a second later, he adds, “Sam Ellis. Didn’t get a chance to say so earlier.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, sinking into the free chair.
There are seven seats at the table; Javi on my left, Sam on my right, and on Sam’s other side, the familiar kid with glasses, who neither introduces himself, nor looks at me. Directly across from me is a seriously built, dark-skinned boy who nods and introduces himself as Taylor. On Taylor’s right is a guy who eventually mentions, in a lazy, offhand way, that his name is Steven; he’s so relaxed, he looks almost boneless. Well, boneless or baked already. The only remaining seat stays empty for about twenty minutes before the guy who called himself Campbell wanders in and collapses into it without a word. Javi immediately turns towards him to engage him in quiet conversation. I can’t hear much of what they’re saying—I’m not really trying to—but I pick up enough to gather that Campbell’s first name is Declan, and that he and Javi seem to be roommates.
I spend a little while making small-talk with the lot of them, trying to find out more about them, but it doesn’t really work. No matter what I say, they manage to turn it around on me, looking painfully excited to learn more about the wonderful, whimsical life of Garen Anderson, Patton Military Academy royalty. It’s as creepy as it is flattering.
The kid in the glasses is still impossible to place, and it’s starting to irritate me. Halfway through breakfast, my curiosity overwhelms me, and I lean around Sam to address the guy, who tenses like he’s been waiting for me to say something to him.
“Sorry, this is probably weird, but we’ve met before, right?” I say. He nods once, not smiling at me. I wince. “You’re glaring. I totally got drunk and sucked your dick and then never called when I said I would, didn’t I? Or, we fucked, and you tried to say hi to me in the dining hall the next day, and I pretended that you’d hooked up with my twin? Or that I was a foreign exchange student who only spoke French? I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I do shit like that, nobody believes my lies. I swear I’m working on it—”
“We never hooked up. I’m straight,” the guy says. “But we met during my freshman year, when—you know my brother. Or, you did, I suppose.”
I squint at him, trying to find the family resemblance to someone I knew during my first three years at Patton, but I’m coming up blank. “Sorry. I’m bad with names, faces, people in general. What’s your name?”
“Charlie,” he says.
The word is like a bucket of ice water being poured over my bones, because the moment he reminds me of that, I remember exactly when we met during my sophomore year. The day after Thanksgiving, I’d told my dad I was taking the train back to Patton early, spending the rest of the long weekend in the city with friends, but I’d really taken a fifteen-hour train ride from Cleveland to New Haven. Dave had picked me up at Union Station at quarter to midnight, had kissed me on the platform and brought me back to his house. We’d only been together for a few weeks at that point; he had neither hit me nor fucked me yet. His parents had been—I don’t know, out of town? They definitely weren’t at the house, so Dave and I had spent two nauseatingly nice days lounging around his bedroom, watching movies on his laptop and making out in his bed.
I honestly hadn’t even realized there was anyone else in the house with us until Sunday evening, when we’d loaded our bags into his car for the drive back to school, and there had been some kid waiting in the backseat. Dave had laughed at my baffled expression, then said, “This is my brother, Charlie. He goes to Patton, too. Charlie, this is Garen, my boyfriend.” I had ridden shotgun, turned around in my seat to make small talk with Charlie for about twenty minutes before I got bored and turned forward to play with the radio. We’d been at a stoplight and I’d been singing along to a song by Dave’s favorite band when he had leaned over to kiss my cheek and whisper, “I love you.”
“The Garen Anderson who taught like, half the guys in this school how to pick locks? The Garen Anderson who smuggled in a coffee machine and almost burned down Whitman Hall four times, but still didn’t let it get confiscated? The Garen Anderson who is single-handedly responsible for the twenty-thousand-dollar security camera renovation in the library because somebody tipped off administration to the fact that he used to fuck guys against the fourth-floor card catalog?”
“Okay, the phrase ‘single-handedly’ is a huge overstatement,” I say, mildly hysterically. “That is at least half Jamie’s fault. He’s the one who was obsessed with the idea of getting fucked in a library after one of his girlfriends made him watch Atonement with her—”
“Holy shit,” Javi breathes, and then he turns, waving his hand frantically in the direction of the rest of the squad. “Guys! You were right, it’s him!”
Before I can even process what’s happening, I find myself standing in the middle of a crowd of dudes, all of whom seem to want nothing more than to shake my hand and clap me on the back. Only two of the guys are hanging back, looking less than thrilled to see me: a guy with red hair, pretty golden-brown eyes, and a smattering of adorable freckles across his nose, and another guy with hazel eyes and glasses who looks sort of familiar, but I can’t figure out where I know him from. My instinctive thought is that I’ve probably gotten drunk and nailed him before, but he’s not giving me that embarrassed half-smile that my one-night stands usually give me when we’re forced to interact in a clothed scenario.
I don’t have much of a chance to give it further consideration, because there’s a hand on my back that’s definitely slipping into Bad Touch territory, and I don’t understand why everyone seems to care that I’m here. I say, “Uh, not that this isn’t, you know—I mean, you guys are super welcoming, but do I even know any of you?”
“Probably not,” says a voice behind me—I’m pretty sure it belongs to the blond boy who still hasn’t taken his slim-fingered hand off the small of my back. “We know you, though.”
That settles it: the Whitman squad became a cult while I was away. I contemplate taking a huge step back from this group, but that’ll just put me on top of the handsy blond, so I remain still.
But Javi—who, despite his overenthusiastic knowledge of my previous escapades, seems to be more normal and less tactile than most of these other dudes—picks up on my obvious discomfort and adds, “You’re pretty much a Patton Military Academy legend, man. We all probably seem like huge creeps right now, but we’ve all been hearing stories about you for years. It’s just cool to finally meet you, is all.”
“Oh,” I say slowly. “Well, um. It’s nice to meet you guys, too. I—”
“Whitman squad! Get in formation now!” bellows a sudden and familiar voice from about ten yards away. “There are twenty-one of you now, so I want everybody in alphabetical order by last name, standing three across.”
I don’t actually know anybody’s surname here, but I hedge my bets and head for the first row. Two other guys have also moved up there, so I nudge the one closer to me, the hot redhead who didn’t bother to shake my hand. “Hey. Didn’t really catch your name earlier—are you ahead of me, or—”
“Campbell,” he answers, then jerks his head to the other guy. “That’s Barrington. You’re first in the squad now.”
I offer up a quick, thankful smile and step into formation. Apparently, I should’ve done those in the reverse order, or left off the smile altogether, because Sergeant Smitth barks, “Anderson, get on the ground and give me twenty push-ups, right now.”
“I haven’t even done anything yet!” I say indignantly.
He gives me a smile that comes across more like a sneer. “I know that, but something about seeing your happy face after all this time just pisses me off.”
“Is it the fact that my face is super pretty?” I ask. “Because trust me, that gets me in plenty of trouble, so, you’re not alone.”
“Twenty-five push-ups now,” he replies. “Let’s see how out of practice you’ve gotten at that public school of yours.”
I make a show of stomping my feet, but only for a second or two—any longer than that, and I’ve got no doubt he’ll make me do push-ups until sunset. Considering I do fifty push-ups every morning, it’s not that difficult to drop to the ground and execute twenty-five perfect ones right now. I’ve barely had a chance to stand up again before I’m being ordered back onto the ground with the rest of the squad to do thirty more. By the time we’re all dismissed two and a half hours later, I’m soaked in sweat, and my muscles are aching, but it’s nice. It’s been over a year since I had a solid PT session, and it feels a lot like being welcomed home. Or… okay, it actually feels a lot more like getting jumped into a gang, but still, it’s good to be back.
The rest of the squad heads back to the dorm; I break off from the group and head for the locker rooms down below the gym, where the forty or fifty commuter students are given space to clean up before breakfast. Even though it’s my first day back, I’ve still got my morning routine down to a science. I claim a shower stall, scrub off the dirt and sweat that’s soaked into my skin, don my uniform—khakis, white Oxford, striped tie in the Patton school colors, freshly polished boots—and set to work on my hair in front of one of the mirrors above the sinks. Yesterday’s trip to the barber hasn’t left me with much to work with, so all I have to do is blow-dry it, work in a little bit of wax, and load it up with hairspray to ensure that this whole just-fucked look lasts until the end of the day. It’s much less work than I’m used to putting into my hair, so I’ve got plenty of time to head back to my car, drop off my gym bag, and grab my backpack.
The dining hall isn’t packed by the time I get there, but I still lurk near the door for a minute, trying to figure out where the hell I’m supposed to sit. Do commuters sit with their squads, or in another section? It’s not like I ever paid attention; it’s not like I ever had to.
“Yo, Anderson!”
My eyes snap towards the voice. One of the guys from my new squad is beckoning me towards one of the three smallish tables for the seniors of Whitman Hall. Slowly, I make my way over to the table. The guy who called me over pulls out the chair on his left side, the one between him and Javi.
“Have a seat, dude,” he says. Then, a second later, he adds, “Sam Ellis. Didn’t get a chance to say so earlier.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say, sinking into the free chair.
There are seven seats at the table; Javi on my left, Sam on my right, and on Sam’s other side, the familiar kid with glasses, who neither introduces himself, nor looks at me. Directly across from me is a seriously built, dark-skinned boy who nods and introduces himself as Taylor. On Taylor’s right is a guy who eventually mentions, in a lazy, offhand way, that his name is Steven; he’s so relaxed, he looks almost boneless. Well, boneless or baked already. The only remaining seat stays empty for about twenty minutes before the guy who called himself Campbell wanders in and collapses into it without a word. Javi immediately turns towards him to engage him in quiet conversation. I can’t hear much of what they’re saying—I’m not really trying to—but I pick up enough to gather that Campbell’s first name is Declan, and that he and Javi seem to be roommates.
I spend a little while making small-talk with the lot of them, trying to find out more about them, but it doesn’t really work. No matter what I say, they manage to turn it around on me, looking painfully excited to learn more about the wonderful, whimsical life of Garen Anderson, Patton Military Academy royalty. It’s as creepy as it is flattering.
The kid in the glasses is still impossible to place, and it’s starting to irritate me. Halfway through breakfast, my curiosity overwhelms me, and I lean around Sam to address the guy, who tenses like he’s been waiting for me to say something to him.
“Sorry, this is probably weird, but we’ve met before, right?” I say. He nods once, not smiling at me. I wince. “You’re glaring. I totally got drunk and sucked your dick and then never called when I said I would, didn’t I? Or, we fucked, and you tried to say hi to me in the dining hall the next day, and I pretended that you’d hooked up with my twin? Or that I was a foreign exchange student who only spoke French? I’m sorry, I don’t even know why I do shit like that, nobody believes my lies. I swear I’m working on it—”
“We never hooked up. I’m straight,” the guy says. “But we met during my freshman year, when—you know my brother. Or, you did, I suppose.”
I squint at him, trying to find the family resemblance to someone I knew during my first three years at Patton, but I’m coming up blank. “Sorry. I’m bad with names, faces, people in general. What’s your name?”
“Charlie,” he says.
The word is like a bucket of ice water being poured over my bones, because the moment he reminds me of that, I remember exactly when we met during my sophomore year. The day after Thanksgiving, I’d told my dad I was taking the train back to Patton early, spending the rest of the long weekend in the city with friends, but I’d really taken a fifteen-hour train ride from Cleveland to New Haven. Dave had picked me up at Union Station at quarter to midnight, had kissed me on the platform and brought me back to his house. We’d only been together for a few weeks at that point; he had neither hit me nor fucked me yet. His parents had been—I don’t know, out of town? They definitely weren’t at the house, so Dave and I had spent two nauseatingly nice days lounging around his bedroom, watching movies on his laptop and making out in his bed.
I honestly hadn’t even realized there was anyone else in the house with us until Sunday evening, when we’d loaded our bags into his car for the drive back to school, and there had been some kid waiting in the backseat. Dave had laughed at my baffled expression, then said, “This is my brother, Charlie. He goes to Patton, too. Charlie, this is Garen, my boyfriend.” I had ridden shotgun, turned around in my seat to make small talk with Charlie for about twenty minutes before I got bored and turned forward to play with the radio. We’d been at a stoplight and I’d been singing along to a song by Dave’s favorite band when he had leaned over to kiss my cheek and whisper, “I love you.”
It was the first time he’d ever said it to me. Three years later, I know he never meant it—he couldn’t have meant it, because no one could ever do what he did to me to someone they really loved—and I know that I was a stupid, naive kid for letting my heart skip a beat at his words, for not even pausing to think before I said it back and kissed him so deeply that Charlie whined that we were traumatizing him. It had seemed so fucking sweet then, before I knew what it felt like to have my bones crunch under his fists or have him pin me with the full weight of his body while he dragged my zipper down. In the car that day, it had felt like he was being honest.
I can’t stop myself from remembering it now, and based on the look on Charlie’s face, he can’t, either. I admit, “I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask how he’s doing or not.”
“Neither do I,” Charlie says. “But if you actually care about the answer, he’s doing well.”
“That’s nice,” I force myself to say, and then I have to clamp my teeth together, because if I don’t, I know I’ll say something awful. Like, has he found another boyfriend to beat the shit out of? Or, does he still like to assault fifteen-year-old boys? How many other guys have restraining orders against him? Do you know what he did to me? Are you going to tell him we’re in the same squad now? Does he ever talk about me? Does he miss me? I hate myself for even wanting to know the answer to that. I use a spoon to smash my scrambled eggs into a paste-like mess on my plate, then flick my eyes towards the rest of the people at the table. “Do you all hang out with the other guys in the squad a lot?”
“Nah, not really,” Steven says. “We share the common room, obviously, and we’ve got MLEP and PT together every day, but it’s not like all twenty of us are buddies. When we wanna go out and party, we stick to this group.”
Sam claps me on the shoulder. “You’re welcome to join us, obviously. Though, based on the legends—”
“Stop calling them legends, I’m not a goddamn yeti,” I groan.
“--based on the legends,” Sam repeats more firmly, “Declan’s the only one who’d be able to keep up with you. Maybe Javi.”
“Dec’s pretty much the ‘you’ of our grade,” Taylor agrees.
I lean forward slightly so that I can look past Javi to Declan, who has been ignoring me for most of breakfast. Now, though, he glances up just long enough to flash me a small smirk that kind of makes me want to crawl under the table and swallow his cock. I refill my mug with coffee from the pot on the table and say thoughtfully, “That’s good to know. I mean, people are always telling me to go fuck myself.”
“He’s a straight version of you,” Sam amends. Declan isn’t looking at me like he’s a straight anything, but I’m sure I’ll find out the truth of that sooner or later, so I let it go for now. Instead, I shrug as if to say, that’s a shame.
“As far as I know, the only gay guys in the Whitman squad are me and Ryan Marten,” Taylor says, even though I really didn’t ask. I’m about to give him an appraising leer when he cuts me off with one of his own. “But, I’m guessing you already noticed that about Ryan this morning.”
I make a face and tilt my head towards one of the other tables full of Whitman boys. “Is Ryan the Bad Touch Blond over there? ‘Cause, yeah, I kinda figured he might be of a questionable persuasion when he tried to get himself a handful of my ass before PT even started today.”
Sam cringes. “Yeah, he’s like that. If you ignore him, he’ll eventually realize you’re not interested.”
I look over at the table where Ryan is sitting. He’s already half-watching me, so all I need to do to get his attention is lean back in my chair and stretch enough to pull the fabric of my Oxford tighter across my chest. The moment his gaze is fully focused on me, I flash him a wink, a smile, a tiny wave. He beams. Next to me, Sam snorts. I shrug and say, “What? He’s got a nice-looking mouth, and I wanna keep my options. Dunno how bored I’ll be by next week.”
The conversation moves onward, but not before I hear Javi whisper to Declan, “I told you he’d be exactly as cool as everyone says he is.”
“Reserving judgment,” Declan replies, not even bothering to lower his voice. I expect him to shoot me some unimpressed sneer, but he doesn’t even look at me. Instead, he looks directly across the table at Charlie Walczyk and quirks an eyebrow, mouthing the word, “Really?”
Charlie grimaces and shrugs. Fifteen minutes later, when we’re all wandering out of the dining hall to make our way to first period, he digs an elbow into Declan’s ribs and—not realizing that I’m right behind him—mutters, “Hey, don’t ask me to explain it. He’s my brother’s crazy ex, not mine.”
He may not have realized I’m standing so close, but Declan certainly has. He twists to look at me over his shoulder, then gives me a long, steady once-over. There’s the unimpressed sneer I was expecting earlier; he turns away. My skin feels too tight for the rest of the day.
114 days sober
After an entire semester of being shoved, having my car vandalized, and hearing a constant stream of taunts muttered any time I walk into a room, being back at Patton is… surreal. I’d assumed that my classmates would have largely forgotten about me by now, considering I haven’t been here for the past three semesters; I’d figured that I would have to start from scratch, slowly work my way up the social ladder by winning my squadmates over one by one.
That is pretty much the opposite of how it happens.
“Hey, Garen,” Javi—sociable little ray of sunshine that he is—says during our first Thursday chemistry lab together. “Do you want to be in our lab group?”
Considering the fact that the other two people in his group are Charlie and Declan, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to say no. But I still don’t know many other guys in our class, so I shrug and say, “Yeah, cool. Thanks.”
115 days sober
“Hey, Garen,” Taylor leans over to whisper during AP Government and Politics. “You’re talking about political action committees for your presentation at the end of the month, right?”
I nod. “Yeah. Dr. Stanford told me that you guys already covered that topic in class, but I should be able to find everything I need in the textbook.”
“Right before winter break, he gave us some pretty detailed information about the Federal Election Campaign Act,” Taylor says. “If you’re free after MLEP tonight, wanna meet in the library and go over it? I can show you my notes, just in case there are any gaps in the book.”
“That would be awesome, thanks,” I say, flashing a smile that he is quick to return.
116 days sober
hey man, it’s sam. bunch of us are going to a party with some of the girls from ward. wanna come? we can pick you up on the way, i’m DD tonight.
I blink down at my phone for several minutes. I can’t remember giving my number to Sam—I can’t remember giving my number to any of the guys from the squad, actually, so it’s a little bizarre to randomly hear from one of them on a Saturday night. I must look as confused as I feel, because Travis laughs when he glances up from our new espresso machine, where he’s been studiously working his way through recreating the Daily Grind’s old drink menu in preparation for his upcoming job interviews.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just, uh—one of the guys from school texted me. Says the squad’s going to some party with girls from Ward? I mean, Julia Ward Howe Academy, that’s Patton’s sister school. Anyway, he asked if I wanted to go.”
Travis nods along, then pushes over the mug he’s been practicing on; it’s a latte, with a tiny image of a bunny drawn into the foam on top. I snap a picture of it with my phone, even though that makes Travis roll his eyes, then take a sip. “Tastes perfect.”
“Like you have any preference when it comes to lattes, dude. I could’ve beat off into the frothing pitcher, and you still would’ve said it tasted perfect.”
“Might’ve liked that even more,” I say, winking at him.
He rolls his eyes, dumps the latte, and sets to work on preparing another. I don’t say anything else, and after a minute of him carefully dragging the tip of the tool through the foam to create his latest design, he adds, “You know you can go to the party if you want to, right? I mean, I know you say you’re ‘helping me prep for my interview tomorrow,’ but really, you’re just sitting there on your lazy ass, getting wired on espresso shots.”
“I’m providing emotional support,” I say, scratching the back of my neck. He shows me the latte--a bear. I take another picture, another sip. Once I’ve nodded, Travis gets himself a fresh cup to make something new. Finally, I add, “Besides, I uh… the guys in the squad don’t really know I’m sober? I mean, it’s not like that comes up in casual conversation. ‘What’s up, I’m Garen, I’m a recovering addict.’ It’s not really—I’m trying to avoid that revelation for as long as possible. So, I don’t really know what to say.”
“Just say you’re busy. If these guys actually wanna be your friends, they’ll be fine with it,” Travis replies.
I don’t say anything, because I don’t know if they actually wanna be my friends. Or, if they’ll still want to be my friends once they realize I’m not the legend they think I am. I add Sam’s number to my contacts list, then carefully type out, sorry, already got plans with the dude i live with. A moment later, my phone buzzes with a reply.
oh, that’s cool, Sam says. next time, yeah? :)
I push the phone towards Travis so he can see the message. He reads it, smiles, and pushes back first the phone, then the finished latte. This time, there’s a heart in the foam.
118 days sober
Any fears I’d had about being rejected by the squad after turning down the party invitation are proven completely wrong during Monday’s PT session, when we’re told to pair up to race through one of the campus obstacle courses. I barely have time to look around before Steven literally shoves Taylor out of the way to get to me. Taylor elbows him, and they continue to wrestle with each other long enough for Sam to slip past them and say, “Hey, G. Wanna pair up?”
I open my mouth to agree, but Sam is dragged back into the scuffle between Taylor and Steven before I can get the words out. I take a hasty step back, shooting an alarmed glance around at the rest of the squad, just in case I’m hallucinating. A few feet away, Javi huffs a laugh and says, “If you wanna avoid the fanboys, you can pair up with me or Dec. We usually partner each other for shit like this, but at least neither of us is going to try to give you a tongue-bath midway through the course.”
Again, I don’t get a chance to answer before Declan rolls his eyes and says, “You guys pair up. I’ll get somebody else.” He turns to the group of struggling guys and barks, “Taylor, get over here.”
Once Javi and I have taken our place in line at the start of the course, I take the moment away the others to mutter, “Dude, why does your buddy hate me so much? I haven’t even done anything to him. Yet.”
Javi snorts. “Who, Declan? He’s just got a bug up his ass now that he’s not the group favorite anymore. The guys weren’t kidding when they said he’s sort of our group’s version of you. You know, he parties harder than any of us, he’s always pranking the shit out of people, he hooks up with the hottest girls at Ward. He’s the coolest guy I’ve ever met, and he just—you know, I think he’s worried you’re gonna give him a run for his money.”
“Anderson! Santos!” Sergeant Smitth yells. “Quit running your mouths, and get ready to run!”
I take my mark next to Javi and say, “I’m not trying to compete with him.”
“Good,” Javi says, laughing. “Declan doesn’t respond well to competition.”
Smitth’s whistle blows, and I take off at a sprint. The course is grueling, and by the time I’m done with it—ten seconds ahead of Javi, not that I’m counting—I’m so soaked with sweat that it seems reasonable to just strip my shirt off, even though it’s January in New York. A few of the other guys have done the same, but none of them are sharing in Ryan Marten’s white-hot stare. He’s gazing at my abs like he wants to taste them. Almost as an experiment, I take a few steps away from the group and tilt my face down, pouring a generous amount of water from my bottle onto the back of my neck. It feels like a shock to my spine in the coldness of the air, but it’s worth it for the way Ryan’s eyes scrape almost desperately across my body, because all at once, I feel powerful in a way I can’t remember feeling in so long. I get attention, but not like this. I get joking catcalls when I’m taking my shirt off in the school play; I get Jamie’s constant, reassuring flirtation; I get Travis wanting me, but not enough to keep me.
I stand there, watching Ryan watching me, for I’m not sure how long. Eventually, Sergeant Smitth dismisses us, and most of the squad starts towards the dorms. Before I can think better of it, I call after him, “Yo, Ryan.” He turns to look at me again. Well, truthfully, so does half the squad. It occurs to me now that I haven’t ever actually spoken to him before. Not like it matters. I jerk my head in the direction of the commuter showers and raise one eyebrow in silent question. A slow smile curls over his mouth, and he breaks away from the rest of the group to follow me.
“Guess you got bored quicker than you thought, huh, Anderson?” Steven calls after me, and a few of the other guys laugh, but their laughter doesn’t matter to me ten minutes later, when I’ve got Ryan pinned up against one of the walls of my shower stall. The water stream is a shade too hot, and he’s moaning so loudly that I want to clamp a hand over his mouth, but I can’t—my hands are too busy holding his legs up around my waist, and he’s got his arms around my neck, but I don’t trust him to keep a solid enough grip that I can let go with one hand and still keep us both upright. I settle for kissing him, biting down on his bottom lip, then sucking his tongue into my mouth so I can swallow up all the groans that are probably about to annoy some other commuter into telling administration and getting us both expelled. I fuck him harder, faster, just to get my own orgasm out of the way. When I pull out, he’s still hard enough that he must be aching, so I set him down on wobbly legs, then drop to my knees to suck him off. He comes with a shout that has another one of the guys in the locker room snapping, “Jesus Christ, get a room!”
I let Ryan’s dick slip out of my mouth and say loudly, “We fucking did, you idiot. This is a locker what? A locker room.”
Nothing gets around this school faster than news about somebody getting laid. By the time I get to breakfast—only ten minutes late, and refusing to acknowledge Ryan’s attempts to invite me to sit at his table with him—word about my locker room exploits must have begun making the rounds, because Taylor gives me a mocking round of applause. Javi elbows me in the ribs as I sit down, and a few of the guys start to rag on me, but it’s Sam’s baffled frown that really sticks out.
“I thought you said you lived with somebody,” he says. “Like, a guy. Won’t he be pissed if you’re hooking up with other dudes in the shower at school?”
My fork freezes halfway to my mouth. I… hadn’t really considered how Travis might react, if he heard about this. It’s not like we’re together anymore, but there’s still the promise of September, of things between us maybe going back to the utter perfection we’d gotten to have last month. Worse than that, the idea of him hooking up with someone he meets at his school when he starts there next week is enough to make me want to throw up. But my squadmates are looking at me, expecting an answer.
Or, they’re expecting an answer worthy of Garen Anderson.
I force a shrug and say, “The guy I live with isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just roommates.”
It’s not a lie, but that doesn’t make it feel any better to say.
4 months sober
“Gotta say, dude, this is almost as nasty as the time I watched you get stitches. And, heads up? That made me puke, so…”
“Stop whining,” Ben orders, squeezing his eyes shut. “Your disgusted facial expressions are going to make me laugh, and then I’m going to end up with a gigantic scribble inked into my flesh for the rest of my life.”
I chance another peek though my fingers at his side, but watching the droplets of blood and ink bead up under the needle of the tattoo gun is still enough to make me turn away, sticking my tongue out as far as it’ll go so that everyone in the tattoo parlor knows how grossed out I am to be here right now.
Delilah—Ben’s artist friend with the black-and-gray tattooed sleeves and the septum piercing—grins. “Guess you’ll never be in the shop again after today, huh?”
“That’s the weirdest part,” Ben says, eyes fluttering open again. His pupils are blown wide, but I can’t tell if it’s because of the adrenaline spike from the pain, or because he’s enjoying that pain in a uniquely Ben-like way. “Garen has a tattoo. It’s not like he’s unfamiliar with this process.”
“Bullshit. All I have is this,” I say, thrusting my bare wrist out to show Delilah the T marked into my skin. “It took like, ten minutes. We’ve been here for an hour, and we’re still barely halfway done with your fuckin’ rainbow pigeon.”
Ben looks over his shoulder at Delilah. “Can you stop for a second, please?” She immediately rolls her chair back a few inches. Ben sits up, moving gingerly so as not to further disturb the half-finished tattoo that takes up about a third of his left side, placement mirroring the typewriter on his right side. I’ve been friends with this asshole for long enough that I should be expecting the hard punch he delivers to my shoulder, but I’m not, and I’m certainly not expecting the second punch to the same spot an instant later.
“Ow!” I yelp, flailing out of his reach. “The hell was that for?”
“It’s not a rainbow pigeon, you scum-sucking piece of shit,” Ben retorts. “It’s a starling, and it’s from one of my favorite poems, and it’s my birthday present to myself. If you’re going to be a tool about it, you can wait in the car.”
Scowling, I rub my injured shoulder. “It’s not your birthday until Wednesday, I can be as mean to you as I want right now. And if you hit me again, I’m not giving you the present I got you.” It’s a blatant lie; I have no use for the large box of piano sheet music sitting in the trunk of my car. Ben seems to know I’m bullshitting him, so I add, “Or the present Jamie gave me to give to you.”
Ben blinks, pausing in the act of carefully spreading himself out over the chair once more so that Delilah can resume tattooing him. “Excuse me?”
“Yep,” I say, pronouncing the word with a pop. “It was hilarious. Last time I saw him, he shoved this package into my hands, and he was like, ‘the midget left his book at my apartment on New Year’s—’”
“That’s not a present,” Ben interrupts. “Invisible Monsters is my book. The fact that I forgot it there a few weeks ago, and he’s finally giving it back isn’t—”
“And is Invisible Monsters a thousand pages long? Because the package he gave me is about this thick,” I say, holding up my hand with my thumb and index finger about three inches apart. “I asked him how many books you left there, and he got all cagey about it and was like, ‘just one, but I was at the bookstore the other day and I saw something I thought he’d like, you told me he was turning nineteen this month, shut up, don’t judge our embarrassing, nerdy mating rituals.’ I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist of it.”
“Jamie,” Delilah muses, cocking her head to the side and looking at Ben. “Is that the same person as the James you’ve described?”
Ben shoots her a sharp glance over his shoulder, as if that’ll silence her, but I can already feel a huge smile spreading across my face. “Why, yes! Yes, it is. And how exactly did our young Benjamin describe him?”
“Dee, if you say a single word—”
“Shut up, or I’ll turn this bird into a yeti,” she says, even though that’s the least effective threat ever, because a yeti tattoo would be awesome. To me, she flashes a cheeky smile and says, “If I’m not much mistaken, James is the… what were your exact words, Ben? ‘Southern boy who has a personality that’s about as appealing as shooting acid into your veins, but who is painfully intelligent and has the most beautiful—”
“Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking,” Ben groans.
“Don’t ever stop talking, oh my god. The most beautiful what?”
“Don’t say it,” Ben pleads. “Seriously, if you tell Garen, he’ll never let me live this down. I’ll have to move to the west coast to escape the mockery, and I’m a New Englander, I’d never survive in California.”
“You might fare well in Portland, if you stop shaving,” I point out, clamping my palm over his mouth, knowing he can’t struggle out of my grip unless he wants to drive the tattoo needles into his ribcage. I turn to Delilah and begin to whisper, over and over, “Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell—”
“Hands,” she announces. “Apparently, your buddy James has—and I quote—” she drops her voice to mimic Ben’s usual bored monotone, “‘The most beautiful hands I have ever seen or felt.’”
Hearing that is like having my birthday come two months early. I turn my delighted eyes on Ben. “His hands? Really, that’s what does it for you? Not his flawless face, his brilliant smile, his rockin’ body, his almost-nine-inch cock. His hands? But his fingers are so weird. They’re so skinny and long, like an alien—Jesus fuck!” I yank my hand away from Ben’s mouth, staring down at the new impression of his teeth marked into my skin. I scowl at him. “I met with my shrink not three hours ago, and you know what she told me? That I shouldn’t let boys abuse me, because I don’t deserve to be a victim of violence. And you know what you just did? You abused me, you fucking toad.”
Ben scoffs. “You’re a liar. This was your first therapy session since starting at Patton. I bet all she wanted to talk about was whether or not your new classmates are being nice to you.”
I snatch the latest issue of Tattoo off the table behind me and begin to page through it. The tattoo gun is making this hideous scraping noise as Delilah fills in part of the starling’s feathers; I can’t help but wince at the sound, and neither can Ben. His eyes are closed again, but after a minute or two, he slits one open to look at me. “Are they?”
“Are who what?” I ask.
“Are your new classmates being nice to you?” he asks. Sometimes, I think he forgets that he doesn’t have to try to be a third parent to me, the way his own parents have always expected him to be a third set of hands to help out with his five siblings.
I groan and slouch down in my seat. “Ugh, yes, they’re nice to me. And it’s awful.”
“You’ve got a weird definition of ‘awful,’ boy,” Delilah chuckles.
“No, you don’t understand. Every five minutes, they’re like, hey Garen, come hang out with us. Hey Garen, come study with us. Hey Garen, be on my relay team for PT—no, be on my team!—no, mine! Hey Garen, you have to come party with us this weekend. Hey Garen, let me jerk you off in the back row of Military Leadership Education tonight. Hey Garen, is it cool if I awkwardly hover outside your shower stall so that I can ogle you while you get changed even though it’ll make us both late enough for breakfast that, by the time we get there, fuckin’ Steven will have eaten all the bacon?”
“Your life is practically unbearable,” Ben agrees. Both eyes are open now. “Did one of them seriously ask to jerk you off during your Leadership class?”
I drop the copy of Tattoo back on the table and bury my face in my hands. “Fucking Ryan. He’s the absolute worst, seriously. I was only planning to hook up with the guy one time, but ever since that first time, he expects it to be a daily thing. He’s not even my type—he’s so goddamn scrawny, and he’s kinda got, you know, one of those lisps? Not in a speech impediment way, just in a gay way, and that’s fine for some people, I guess, but I like guys who are really guys.”
Delilah carefully wets an area of Ben’s skin to clear up some of the blood and ink residue that’s obscuring the design. She wipes it away and comments, “You’d think that finding a manly man at a military school would be easy.”
“It is,” I agree. “It’s finding a manly man who’ll let you come in his mouth that’s the problem. Like, the guy who sits next to me in English spends pretty much every class forwarding pictures of his dick to what seems to be half the girls from our sister school, which is pretty sleazy, but I guess it’s justified, because dude’s got a great piece. And there’s another guy in my stats class who I wanna climb like a fuckin’ tree, but my buddy Javi says the guy’s got a girlfriend back home in Jersey, so he’s obviously not going to make my ‘to do’ list anytime soon. For one thing, straight, and for another, Jersey. Oh, and there’s this fucking gorgeous kid in my squad—he’s got a great ass, got these super cute freckles, and you know how I am about freckles. He’s competitive as fuck, possibly to the point of being a little bit scary and psychotic? But it works for him, because he’s, hands down, the best guy in Whitman. Fast, strong, built, great shot—swear to god, first time I saw him hit a bullseye in target practice, I pitched a tent.”
“Possibly too much information,” Delilah says mildly.
“Oh whatever. I’ve only ever seen one person besides him hit the target dead-center, first shot, and that’s me.”
“So naturally, the only guy in your squad who you’re attracted to is the one who reminds you the most of yourself,” Ben sighs.
“The only guy in my squad who I’m attracted to is straight,” I amend. “All the other guys think it’s great, so of course they’re always talking about the latest Ward chick he’s fucking, or describing the random hot bitches he picks up when they’re all out together. It’s torture, because obviously, it would be completely inappropriate for me to say, ‘hey, Declan, I know you’re straight, but if you do a couple shots and let me choke on your cock a little bit, I bet I could make you forget that.’ Besides, I think I annoy him.”
“Imagine that,” Ben murmurs. I glare at him. He hesitates, licks his lips, then adds, “Does Travis know you’ve got a crush on this Declan guy?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not a crush, man, I don’t like him, like him. I just, you know, wanna nail him. And no, of course Travis doesn’t—wait, why? Do you think I should tell him?”
Ben shrugs, and Delilah swats his shoulder, giving him a warning look. “We’re in the home stretch of this piece, and I swear, if you fuck it up now by moving around, I’ll knock you out and tattoo a dick on your forehead.”
“Sorry,” he says quickly, his whole body going still once more. “But, G… look, I was sort of under the impression that you and Travis were getting back together. Not now, maybe, but in the fall. I thought you guys were set on your big post-year-of-sobriety reunion in September.”
I swallow and stare down at my hands, wishing I hadn’t dropped the magazine so that I’d have something to do right now. I feel like I’m a little kid, waiting to be chastised by his parent for doing something naughty. I say, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, if you’re getting back together, don’t you think you should maybe keep it in your pants for the time being?” he asks slowly. “How would you feel, if Travis was sleeping with a bunch of randoms at Columbia?”
Devastated. Destroyed. Betrayed. But it’s easier to roll my eyes and say, “I’m not saying that wouldn’t be awkward, but that’s why I’m not going to bother telling Travis. He can do whatever he wants at school, as long as I don’t have to hear about it, and I’m free to do the same. I don’t—Ben, what do you expect from me? I’m not going to be celibate for the next eight months, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s not unheard of. Before you and I first hooked up, I hadn’t had sex in nearly a year.”
“You’re not me. I seriously cannot go that long without sex. It’s just not an option. And if Travis won’t date me until September, he doesn’t have the right to get pissed about who I fuck until then,” I snap. “It’s not—Jesus, dude. He’s not my boyfriend, alright? He’s my friend, and he’s my roommate, but he’s not my boyfriend anymore, and I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“Okay,” Ben says simply, and I scowl down at my hands. I need a fucking cigarette, but I’m still trying to stick to that idiotic New Year’s resolution to quit. I paw through the pockets of my jacket until I find a half-empty packet of nicotine gum, then pop a piece into my mouth, chomping down on it viciously to be sure that Ben can see how pissed I am at him. He rolls his eyes and reaches over to knock his knuckles against my wrist. “Don’t be a brat, G. I just want to make sure you’re not doing shit now that’s going to ruin whatever you have in mind for the fall.”
“It’s fine,” I say, wishing I believed it.
135 days sober
Travis has been at Columbia for nearly two weeks before I realize I haven’t asked him a single question about it. That thought hits me like a kick to the teeth, halfway through some stupid movie I’ve got playing while I work on the posterboard for my AP Government & Politics presentation. At once, I turn to stare at Travis over my shoulder. He’s lying on his stomach on the couch, paging through his math textbook with a frown on his face. My stomach lurches—I didn’t know he had signed up for a math course. I don’t know any of his classes, because it never crossed my mind to ask.
There is a strong possibility that I am the worst person ever. At the very least, I’m the worst roommate slash friend, slash ex-boyfriend, slash possibly future boyfriend.
My legs are folded up under me, wedged halfway under the coffee table where I’m working; I stretch them out to relieve some of the cramping, then wriggle backwards until my back hits the couch and I can twist to drape an arm over the small of his back. The edge of his mouth twitches like the beginning of a smile, but he doesn’t look up from his work. I slump across his back, making a pillow out of his spine.
“Hey,” I say. “What’re you working on?”
“Econ homework,” he says.
“Do you like your class?” I press. He shrugs. I try again. “How many other classes are you taking?” He holds up four fingers. “Do you like them?”
He looks over his shoulder at me. There’s a small smile on his lips, but it doesn’t really reach his eyes. “Yeah, I guess. Some of them. I like my engineering classes, but my history class is pretty boring. One of my core requirements is this psychology course I’m taking with James, which is… nice. You know, to have somebody in my class who I’m already friends with.”
Later tonight, I’ll have to text Jamie and thank him for being a decent friend to Travis even though I’ve had my head too far up my own ass to be that. For now, the only thing I can think to do is slip my hand beneath the hem of his t-shirt and rub my knuckles over the ridges of his spine. It’s not exactly appropriate, and it’s sure as hell not in keeping with the platonic tone we’re trying to set for life in the new house, but it’s something that I know he likes. Sure enough, he pillows his head on his arms and sighs, his eyelids fluttering shut. I push his shirt higher up his back to rest my chin on his skin and ask, “Have you met any cool people? You know, made any friends?”
The relaxation of a moment ago is gone in an instant. I can feel him tensing up underneath me, suddenly enough that I sit up again. He shoves his shirt back down, knocking my hand off him. “I’ve—there are some people in my classes who are alright, I guess. I have people I talk to sometimes. But it’s… I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m friends with a lot of people? Right now, I’m mostly focusing on, you know, myself. My classes, my studying.” He swallows and turns his eyes back towards his textbook. “Columbia is, uh… it’s different from LHS, that’s for sure. And New York is different from Lakewood.”
“Well, of course. And that’s okay,” I say quickly. “You’re making a big leap from high school to college in a short period of time, so it makes sense that you wanna, you know, get settled or whatever. You’ll have a chance to meet more people later in the semester.”
The moment the words are out, I realize how completely patronizing they sound. Travis’ mouth is fixed in a thin line, and he nods without speaking. I wrack my brain for something to say that’ll make me sound less like I’m his mother, but before I can come up with anything, he clears his throat and says, “Yeah. Exactly.” He jerks his chin towards the coffee table. “You should get back to work on your project. What class is it for, anyway?”
“Government and Politics,” I sigh, turning back to the posterboard. I’m not sure how I managed to fuck this up and make him shut down so quickly, but it’s obvious that I did. I blink down at the scraps of paper I’ve been attempting to even out so that I can glue them to my poster. They sort of look like I closed my eyes and attacked them with a kitchen knife. “Um, so, there’s no casual, inoffensive way to ask this,” I say, “but… do you have any of those craft blades you and Ben are always using to slash your wrists? ‘Cause I can’t cut a straight line with normal scissors, and I’m almost nineteen. A sloppy posterboard is just embarrassing, at my age.”
Travis laughs. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve got any razors in the house. I haven’t… used any. Not since I got back on the meds. But here, let me help.” He slides off the couch to sit next to me on the floor. “If you pencil in the edges with a ruler and cut along the line, you’ll be fine.” A ruler. Right. A basic school utensil that I should probably own. At my blank look, Travis grins and gestures to the stairs. “There’s one in my room. Go grab it, and I’ll fix these for you.”
“You’re a goddamn treasure,” I say, tousling his hair and scrambling to my feet. My legs are still mostly asleep, so the jog upstairs very nearly ends in disaster, but I manage to make it down the hall without tripping and killing myself. Truthfully, I haven’t spent much time in Travis’ room at all, so I’m a little surprised by the lack of furniture. He doesn’t have a desk; his bed is pushed up against the house’s front wall, and as far as I can tell, he sits on the bed and uses the deep window ledge as a writing surface. That’s where his books and notebooks are stacked, and next to that, there’s a coffee mug with some pens and a ruler poking out. I crawl over the bed to steal it, but halfway into my retreat, something catches my eye.
My name is scrawled across the top margin of one of the notebook pages, like the beginnings of a letter, or the way I title my songs. Frowning, I tug it closer. Most of the words below that are scribbled out, but not well enough to make them indistinguishable.
Garen,
It sounds cliche to tell you this isn’t your fault, but I need you to know that it’s true. You’re the only--
Writing this letter is kind of impossible. I don’t know how to explain to someone as brave and strong as you why I have to do this. You’ve been through more in the past year than I’ve--
I’m terrified of what this will do to--
By the time you read this, I will probably be--
I need to start by telling you that I love you. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I am so grateful to have had the chance to be with you. But as much as I love you, I think I might hate myself more--
I can’t do this anymore. I know that makes me cowardly and selfish, but every breath I take feels more and more like a gasp, and I don’t know how--
This is the hardest letter I’ve ever written. Part of me wonders if this is how you felt when you left those letters last summer, before you went to Ohio. But you came back, and I--
Everything hurts. I’ve never--
I don’t want to be alive anymore. I can’t be alive anymore.
I don’t know how many minutes pass before I sit back, my bottom lip clamped between my teeth to keep me from being sick all over Travis’ bed. Obviously, he hasn’t acted on his impulses yet, but his pen is still resting on his notebook. These aren’t old drafts, leftover from that November morning in the Lakewood High School parking lot, when he’d confessed that a poorly-written suicide note was the only thing separating him from death. These are new, written as recently as last night. Maybe even today.
I snatch the notebook off the window ledge, sending the pen through the crack between wall and bed, and head for the door, grabbing the ruler only as an afterthought. When I return to the living room, Travis says, “Took you long enough. I know my room is messy, but—”
I drop the open notebook on the coffee table, right on top of the posterboard. Travis freezes, eyes fixed on the paper, hands clutching the pair of scissors. That unnerves me; it’s not like I think he’s going to commit hari kari on top of my AP Government project, but I wish he wasn’t holding onto a sharp object like a lifeline. Slowly, he reaches out and flips the notebook shut, slipping it under the couch and out of sight.
“Can I have the ruler?” he asks. His expression is blank, and his tone is neutral. It makes me want to hit him.
“Are you going to kill yourself?” I ask.
He squints. “With the ruler?”
I drop the ruler on the couch. “Forget the ruler. Forget the project, Travis. What the fuck was that paper? Were you—is that practice? Are you planning to—”
“It’s just a paper, it doesn’t mean anything,” he snaps. “And it’s none of your business. Why would you think it’s okay for you to read whatever you find in my room? It’s private, you—”
“Considering I’m the one who’d be finding your body, you bet your ass it’s my—” I can’t even finish my sentence. The thought of that actually occurring—of finding him hanging from the ceiling fan, or bleeding out in the bathtub, or lying on his bedroom floor with an empty pill bottle in his hand, just like Bree said she found him when he was fifteen—makes it impossible to breathe.
“You wouldn’t find my body. I wouldn’t ever put you through that,” Travis says quietly, eyes on his folded hands. “I’d never do it here, where you live, where you couldn’t escape it. I’d either do it in a way that meant I’d never be found, or where a stranger would find me. Worst case scenario, all you’d have to do is identify my remains at the city morgue.”
I hit the floor next to him and yank his head around so he has to meet my eyes. “No, you moron. Worst case scenario is you being dead. Trust me, dude, your body’s great and all, but finding it would not be the traumatizing part of you killing yourself. Everything else would be.”
Travis’ mouth hangs slightly open for a minute while he tries to formulate a response, then clicks shut as he turns away. I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, then watch his shaking fingers comb through his hair. Finally, he closes his eyes and says, “I just don’t think I can do this anymore. I know that doesn’t make sense to you—maybe it doesn’t make sense, period. But feeling like this, like every day is more painful and unbearable than the day before it… it’s exhausting. I just want it to be over.”
“You don’t think you can do this anymore? You just want it to be over? Trav, you sound like you’re giving yourself an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech. You’re acting totally blase about this, talking about it like it’s a fucking breakup—no, wait, scratch that,” I say, holding up a hand to silence him even though he hasn’t tried to cut me off. “You are—I swear to fuckin’ god—discussing suicide more calmly and casually than you discussed our breakup. You realize that, right?”
He hunches his shoulders in what might be a shrug, if his body wasn’t already limp enough to be slumped back against the couch. “Well, maybe that bothered me more than this does.”
“Being single would bother you more than being dead?” I say flatly. “Seriously?”
“Okay, wow, no? Don’t fucking say it like that, you’re making me sound like some crazy stalker—and, alright, for the record? The guy who tried to shoot himself in the head after our relationship went to shit would not get to judge me, if that was the case.” He scrambles up off the floor, onto his feet, and walks towards the kitchen. I follow him so closely that I step on his heels twice; he shoots me a dirty look. “And it’s—I didn’t mean that the breakup bothered me and the idea of being dead doesn’t. Of course I’m not exactly fond of the idea. I mean, I’m human. And I’m not crazy.”
It’s the second time he’s said that, but I’m still not entirely sure I’d agree.
“All I meant is that things were actually going well between us, before you told me that you wanted us to stop seeing each other once we moved here. It was a surprise. But waking up every morning and wishing I hadn’t? That’s… that’s not a surprise anymore. I’m used to feeling like everything in my life is just too much. I’m used to not wanting to be here. And th-that’s not okay, Garen. I can’t spend the rest of my life feeling this way. Christ, I don’t think I can even spend another month feeling this way.”
“Yeah, which is why you need to get help,” I say. He moves towards the kettle we keep on the back burner of the stove; I yank it out of reach and head to the sink to fill it for him. He rolls his eyes, but I don’t care—I need to feel like I’m doing something to help him, even if it’s something as lame as helping him make tea. “I think you should see someone about this.”
“I already am, you know that. I’m on anti-depressants, I have a therapist—”
“No, what you have is a once-monthly, fifteen-minute appointment with some guy who shouldn’t even have a fucking license,” I snap. “I mean, does he even talk to you, like, about your problems? About why you feel the way you do? Or does he just dope you up and think that’ll solve everything? It’s not normal, Trav, it’s not how you’re supposed to practice medicine.”
He sneers. “Oh, so, now you’re a doctor? Because last time I checked, you were in fucking high school, not med school—”
“Yeah, and I’m also in therapy. Do you know how many hours I’ve spent dicking around Doctor Howard’s office, talking to her about everything? Do you know how many weeks of daily sessions it took before she’d even consider trying to diagnose me with borderline personality disorder? ‘Cause I’ve got news for you, dude: your shrink isn’t supposed to medicate you just to shut you up. He’s supposed to help you.”
“The medication does help. I mean, it doesn’t make me happy, and it doesn’t make me feel like—I don’t cut myself anymore, okay? Not when I’m on the right pills.” He opens the cabinet above the stove and digs out a tea bag, then raises it towards me, almost in question. I nod; he grabs another for me, tosses each one into the bottom of a mug, and sighs. “The problem isn’t the pills, alright? Or Doctor Baker. The problem is me.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “That’s bullshit.” If someone as fucked up as me has to learn not to say that, then someone as perfect as Travis doesn’t have a right to even consider it. “The problem is that you tried to kill yourself when you were fifteen years old, and your dumb bitch of a mom freaked out and handled it in exactly the wrong way. She sent you to some fuckin’ psych ward instead of trying to understand what was happening to you, and she found you a shrink who’d put you on meds so she didn’t have to deal with it. And I don’t trust the opinion of any doctor who would put a fifteen-year-old boy on Prozac, okay? In three years, he hasn’t even changed the dosage. That’s not right.”
The kettle starts to whistle on the stove. Travis doesn’t even bother to reach for it, already knowing I’m going to elbow him out of the way and pour the water over the tea bags myself. For a minute or two, we stand there in silence, waiting for the bags to steep. Finally, I snatch them out and shove one of the mugs towards Travis. He drinks his plain, but I have to dump a few spoonfuls of sugar into mine before I can drink it. I drain nearly half my cup before I realize that he’s only taken that first sip, apparently preferring to gnaw on his thumbnail while he watches me drink. I catch him by the collar of his t-shirt and tow him closer and closer, until I can wrap an arm around his waist and bury my face against the side of his neck.
“I need you,” I murmur. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, T. And I know you’re afraid that you’ll always feel this way, but you won’t. I need you to believe me, and I need you to let me help.”
One of his arms is still crushed between our bodies as he continues to chew on his nail, but the other arm snakes carefully around my shoulders. “How can you help me?”
Those are the words he says, but I think that how can anyone help me are the words he really means.
“When I first told Doc I was moving here, she said she could find me a referral to a therapist in the area. Somebody she respected, you know? Tomorrow, I’m going to call her and ask her to recommend someone for you. Stay on your meds for now, until your new doctor evaluates you and tells you whether or not you should phase them out. And when you’re not okay, when you feel like you want to hurt yourself, when you feel like you want to die, you come fucking find me, okay? Talk to me. Trust me. It—That’s what I do, I mean, with you. And I need you to know that you can do the same.”
He wriggles his trapped arm free and wraps it around my shoulders, too. “’Kay.”
“I mean it,” I warn.
“Okay,” he sighs. “Jesus, Garen. I’ll let you get me a referral, I’ll talk to you about my pathetic problems, I’ll—I-I won’t do it, okay? I won’t write the rest of the note. And I won’t go through with it. I’ll try to work my shit out.”
“Good,” I say, stepping back and grabbing him by the wrists, dragging him towards the stairs. I can feel his questioning eyes on me, so I glance over my shoulder and say, “Life-coaching you is exhausting. We’re going to bed.”
“We are?” he asks, emphasizing the plural ever so slightly. “Did one of our bedrooms suddenly disappear?”
I shove him down the hall and into his bedroom. “Shut up and get in the bed. We’re not—I’m not trying to make a move on you, okay? I just…” I swallow. I just want to be close to you. “I won’t be able to sleep at all tonight if you’re in another room. I know it sounds so fucking stupid, but I want to be able to wake up, roll over, and see that you’re safe. Please, man. Come to bed.”
He doesn’t say a word, just strips off his jeans and crawls into bed, leaving the blankets pulled back so that I can join him.
136 days sober
I don’t sleep, of course. For the next few hours, I lie awake, watching the rise and fall of Travis’ chest, listening to his deep breaths and occasional mumbles, hooking a leg over his when he rolls over and kicks out unknowingly. I check the time on my cell phone every once in a while. At around quarter after four, I slip out from under the covers. I usually get my school shit together the night before—find all my books, set up the coffee maker to start brewing automatically at four, iron my uniform and pack it carefully into my duffel—but I was pretty preoccupied last night, so I have to rush around now, trying to locate everything I need to bring.
Every step that brings me further from Travis makes me feel a little bit sicker. I can’t figure out which would be worse—waking him up now, just to say that I’m leaving for school, or letting him wake up alone in a few hours. He’s not alone; that was the whole fucking point of sleeping in his bed last night, letting him know that I want to be here for him.
A note, I eventually decide. I can leave a note on the nightstand or something, just a quick I’m here if you need me sort of thing. But when I try to scare up a notebook, I find myself standing next to the coffee table and holding the paper that’s covered in false starts to his suicide note. My stomach turns over. Fuck it. An I’m here if you need me isn’t even close to enough.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I sink to my knees and drop the notebook back on the table. My project supplies are still scattered all over the place; I grab a fat green marker and scrawl across the top margin of the suicide draft, REASONS TO TEAR THIS FUCKING PAPER UP. Next, I reach for the stack of index cards and start to write down every single reason—no matter how idiotic—for him to stay alive.
Because you won’t always feel this way, I start. Might as well go for honesty, right? Because you once wrestled a gun out of my hands when I was having this same problem. Because you saved my life, so fuck if I’m going to let you end yours.
Some of the reasons are mostly to make him laugh--Because I can’t afford the rent on this house by myself. Because our fucking espresso machine is possessed by a demon that only you know how to deal with. Because you already paid your Columbia tuition for the semester. Because your sister would kick my ass if anything happened to you.
And then, when I’ve run out of jokes, I start to pour out every wish I’ve got. Every dream for the future, every secret hope I’ve been hesitating to mention.
Because I want you to introduce me to your father one day, I write.
Because I want to see you graduate from college.
Because I want my kids to blow shit up for their science fair projects, but I don’t know how to do that in a safe or legal way, so I want their other dad to be someone smart enough to swing that. Like an engineer, maybe.
Because I want you to be there when I reach ten years clean and sober.
Because I want to know what your arms will look like after your scars have faded.
When I run out of cards—because I don’t know that I’ll ever run out of reasons for Travis to stay alive—I stack them on top of the suicide note, grab a roll of tape, and head upstairs. His bedroom door is still slightly open, and he’s still asleep, occasionally shifting further and further into the space I’ve vacated. I tape the note right in the center of his door, where I’m sure he’ll see it first thing. Then, all around it, I tape the rest of the cards, like a giant web of reasons why he is loved. I’m going to be late for PT, but I still take the time to kiss Travis’ forehead and tuck the blankets in around him before I go.
When I get home from MLEP that night, Travis has already left for school. It’s an hour or two before I bother to go upstairs, but when I do, I find that my bed has been covered in the remains of the suicide note, torn up and sprinkled around like confetti, and all of the notecards are still taped up on the inside of his door.
I can’t stop myself from remembering it now, and based on the look on Charlie’s face, he can’t, either. I admit, “I don’t know if I’m supposed to ask how he’s doing or not.”
“Neither do I,” Charlie says. “But if you actually care about the answer, he’s doing well.”
“That’s nice,” I force myself to say, and then I have to clamp my teeth together, because if I don’t, I know I’ll say something awful. Like, has he found another boyfriend to beat the shit out of? Or, does he still like to assault fifteen-year-old boys? How many other guys have restraining orders against him? Do you know what he did to me? Are you going to tell him we’re in the same squad now? Does he ever talk about me? Does he miss me? I hate myself for even wanting to know the answer to that. I use a spoon to smash my scrambled eggs into a paste-like mess on my plate, then flick my eyes towards the rest of the people at the table. “Do you all hang out with the other guys in the squad a lot?”
“Nah, not really,” Steven says. “We share the common room, obviously, and we’ve got MLEP and PT together every day, but it’s not like all twenty of us are buddies. When we wanna go out and party, we stick to this group.”
Sam claps me on the shoulder. “You’re welcome to join us, obviously. Though, based on the legends—”
“Stop calling them legends, I’m not a goddamn yeti,” I groan.
“--based on the legends,” Sam repeats more firmly, “Declan’s the only one who’d be able to keep up with you. Maybe Javi.”
“Dec’s pretty much the ‘you’ of our grade,” Taylor agrees.
I lean forward slightly so that I can look past Javi to Declan, who has been ignoring me for most of breakfast. Now, though, he glances up just long enough to flash me a small smirk that kind of makes me want to crawl under the table and swallow his cock. I refill my mug with coffee from the pot on the table and say thoughtfully, “That’s good to know. I mean, people are always telling me to go fuck myself.”
“He’s a straight version of you,” Sam amends. Declan isn’t looking at me like he’s a straight anything, but I’m sure I’ll find out the truth of that sooner or later, so I let it go for now. Instead, I shrug as if to say, that’s a shame.
“As far as I know, the only gay guys in the Whitman squad are me and Ryan Marten,” Taylor says, even though I really didn’t ask. I’m about to give him an appraising leer when he cuts me off with one of his own. “But, I’m guessing you already noticed that about Ryan this morning.”
I make a face and tilt my head towards one of the other tables full of Whitman boys. “Is Ryan the Bad Touch Blond over there? ‘Cause, yeah, I kinda figured he might be of a questionable persuasion when he tried to get himself a handful of my ass before PT even started today.”
Sam cringes. “Yeah, he’s like that. If you ignore him, he’ll eventually realize you’re not interested.”
I look over at the table where Ryan is sitting. He’s already half-watching me, so all I need to do to get his attention is lean back in my chair and stretch enough to pull the fabric of my Oxford tighter across my chest. The moment his gaze is fully focused on me, I flash him a wink, a smile, a tiny wave. He beams. Next to me, Sam snorts. I shrug and say, “What? He’s got a nice-looking mouth, and I wanna keep my options. Dunno how bored I’ll be by next week.”
The conversation moves onward, but not before I hear Javi whisper to Declan, “I told you he’d be exactly as cool as everyone says he is.”
“Reserving judgment,” Declan replies, not even bothering to lower his voice. I expect him to shoot me some unimpressed sneer, but he doesn’t even look at me. Instead, he looks directly across the table at Charlie Walczyk and quirks an eyebrow, mouthing the word, “Really?”
Charlie grimaces and shrugs. Fifteen minutes later, when we’re all wandering out of the dining hall to make our way to first period, he digs an elbow into Declan’s ribs and—not realizing that I’m right behind him—mutters, “Hey, don’t ask me to explain it. He’s my brother’s crazy ex, not mine.”
He may not have realized I’m standing so close, but Declan certainly has. He twists to look at me over his shoulder, then gives me a long, steady once-over. There’s the unimpressed sneer I was expecting earlier; he turns away. My skin feels too tight for the rest of the day.
114 days sober
After an entire semester of being shoved, having my car vandalized, and hearing a constant stream of taunts muttered any time I walk into a room, being back at Patton is… surreal. I’d assumed that my classmates would have largely forgotten about me by now, considering I haven’t been here for the past three semesters; I’d figured that I would have to start from scratch, slowly work my way up the social ladder by winning my squadmates over one by one.
That is pretty much the opposite of how it happens.
“Hey, Garen,” Javi—sociable little ray of sunshine that he is—says during our first Thursday chemistry lab together. “Do you want to be in our lab group?”
Considering the fact that the other two people in his group are Charlie and Declan, I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to say no. But I still don’t know many other guys in our class, so I shrug and say, “Yeah, cool. Thanks.”
115 days sober
“Hey, Garen,” Taylor leans over to whisper during AP Government and Politics. “You’re talking about political action committees for your presentation at the end of the month, right?”
I nod. “Yeah. Dr. Stanford told me that you guys already covered that topic in class, but I should be able to find everything I need in the textbook.”
“Right before winter break, he gave us some pretty detailed information about the Federal Election Campaign Act,” Taylor says. “If you’re free after MLEP tonight, wanna meet in the library and go over it? I can show you my notes, just in case there are any gaps in the book.”
“That would be awesome, thanks,” I say, flashing a smile that he is quick to return.
116 days sober
hey man, it’s sam. bunch of us are going to a party with some of the girls from ward. wanna come? we can pick you up on the way, i’m DD tonight.
I blink down at my phone for several minutes. I can’t remember giving my number to Sam—I can’t remember giving my number to any of the guys from the squad, actually, so it’s a little bizarre to randomly hear from one of them on a Saturday night. I must look as confused as I feel, because Travis laughs when he glances up from our new espresso machine, where he’s been studiously working his way through recreating the Daily Grind’s old drink menu in preparation for his upcoming job interviews.
“Everything okay?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “Just, uh—one of the guys from school texted me. Says the squad’s going to some party with girls from Ward? I mean, Julia Ward Howe Academy, that’s Patton’s sister school. Anyway, he asked if I wanted to go.”
Travis nods along, then pushes over the mug he’s been practicing on; it’s a latte, with a tiny image of a bunny drawn into the foam on top. I snap a picture of it with my phone, even though that makes Travis roll his eyes, then take a sip. “Tastes perfect.”
“Like you have any preference when it comes to lattes, dude. I could’ve beat off into the frothing pitcher, and you still would’ve said it tasted perfect.”
“Might’ve liked that even more,” I say, winking at him.
He rolls his eyes, dumps the latte, and sets to work on preparing another. I don’t say anything else, and after a minute of him carefully dragging the tip of the tool through the foam to create his latest design, he adds, “You know you can go to the party if you want to, right? I mean, I know you say you’re ‘helping me prep for my interview tomorrow,’ but really, you’re just sitting there on your lazy ass, getting wired on espresso shots.”
“I’m providing emotional support,” I say, scratching the back of my neck. He shows me the latte--a bear. I take another picture, another sip. Once I’ve nodded, Travis gets himself a fresh cup to make something new. Finally, I add, “Besides, I uh… the guys in the squad don’t really know I’m sober? I mean, it’s not like that comes up in casual conversation. ‘What’s up, I’m Garen, I’m a recovering addict.’ It’s not really—I’m trying to avoid that revelation for as long as possible. So, I don’t really know what to say.”
“Just say you’re busy. If these guys actually wanna be your friends, they’ll be fine with it,” Travis replies.
I don’t say anything, because I don’t know if they actually wanna be my friends. Or, if they’ll still want to be my friends once they realize I’m not the legend they think I am. I add Sam’s number to my contacts list, then carefully type out, sorry, already got plans with the dude i live with. A moment later, my phone buzzes with a reply.
oh, that’s cool, Sam says. next time, yeah? :)
I push the phone towards Travis so he can see the message. He reads it, smiles, and pushes back first the phone, then the finished latte. This time, there’s a heart in the foam.
118 days sober
Any fears I’d had about being rejected by the squad after turning down the party invitation are proven completely wrong during Monday’s PT session, when we’re told to pair up to race through one of the campus obstacle courses. I barely have time to look around before Steven literally shoves Taylor out of the way to get to me. Taylor elbows him, and they continue to wrestle with each other long enough for Sam to slip past them and say, “Hey, G. Wanna pair up?”
I open my mouth to agree, but Sam is dragged back into the scuffle between Taylor and Steven before I can get the words out. I take a hasty step back, shooting an alarmed glance around at the rest of the squad, just in case I’m hallucinating. A few feet away, Javi huffs a laugh and says, “If you wanna avoid the fanboys, you can pair up with me or Dec. We usually partner each other for shit like this, but at least neither of us is going to try to give you a tongue-bath midway through the course.”
Again, I don’t get a chance to answer before Declan rolls his eyes and says, “You guys pair up. I’ll get somebody else.” He turns to the group of struggling guys and barks, “Taylor, get over here.”
Once Javi and I have taken our place in line at the start of the course, I take the moment away the others to mutter, “Dude, why does your buddy hate me so much? I haven’t even done anything to him. Yet.”
Javi snorts. “Who, Declan? He’s just got a bug up his ass now that he’s not the group favorite anymore. The guys weren’t kidding when they said he’s sort of our group’s version of you. You know, he parties harder than any of us, he’s always pranking the shit out of people, he hooks up with the hottest girls at Ward. He’s the coolest guy I’ve ever met, and he just—you know, I think he’s worried you’re gonna give him a run for his money.”
“Anderson! Santos!” Sergeant Smitth yells. “Quit running your mouths, and get ready to run!”
I take my mark next to Javi and say, “I’m not trying to compete with him.”
“Good,” Javi says, laughing. “Declan doesn’t respond well to competition.”
Smitth’s whistle blows, and I take off at a sprint. The course is grueling, and by the time I’m done with it—ten seconds ahead of Javi, not that I’m counting—I’m so soaked with sweat that it seems reasonable to just strip my shirt off, even though it’s January in New York. A few of the other guys have done the same, but none of them are sharing in Ryan Marten’s white-hot stare. He’s gazing at my abs like he wants to taste them. Almost as an experiment, I take a few steps away from the group and tilt my face down, pouring a generous amount of water from my bottle onto the back of my neck. It feels like a shock to my spine in the coldness of the air, but it’s worth it for the way Ryan’s eyes scrape almost desperately across my body, because all at once, I feel powerful in a way I can’t remember feeling in so long. I get attention, but not like this. I get joking catcalls when I’m taking my shirt off in the school play; I get Jamie’s constant, reassuring flirtation; I get Travis wanting me, but not enough to keep me.
I stand there, watching Ryan watching me, for I’m not sure how long. Eventually, Sergeant Smitth dismisses us, and most of the squad starts towards the dorms. Before I can think better of it, I call after him, “Yo, Ryan.” He turns to look at me again. Well, truthfully, so does half the squad. It occurs to me now that I haven’t ever actually spoken to him before. Not like it matters. I jerk my head in the direction of the commuter showers and raise one eyebrow in silent question. A slow smile curls over his mouth, and he breaks away from the rest of the group to follow me.
“Guess you got bored quicker than you thought, huh, Anderson?” Steven calls after me, and a few of the other guys laugh, but their laughter doesn’t matter to me ten minutes later, when I’ve got Ryan pinned up against one of the walls of my shower stall. The water stream is a shade too hot, and he’s moaning so loudly that I want to clamp a hand over his mouth, but I can’t—my hands are too busy holding his legs up around my waist, and he’s got his arms around my neck, but I don’t trust him to keep a solid enough grip that I can let go with one hand and still keep us both upright. I settle for kissing him, biting down on his bottom lip, then sucking his tongue into my mouth so I can swallow up all the groans that are probably about to annoy some other commuter into telling administration and getting us both expelled. I fuck him harder, faster, just to get my own orgasm out of the way. When I pull out, he’s still hard enough that he must be aching, so I set him down on wobbly legs, then drop to my knees to suck him off. He comes with a shout that has another one of the guys in the locker room snapping, “Jesus Christ, get a room!”
I let Ryan’s dick slip out of my mouth and say loudly, “We fucking did, you idiot. This is a locker what? A locker room.”
Nothing gets around this school faster than news about somebody getting laid. By the time I get to breakfast—only ten minutes late, and refusing to acknowledge Ryan’s attempts to invite me to sit at his table with him—word about my locker room exploits must have begun making the rounds, because Taylor gives me a mocking round of applause. Javi elbows me in the ribs as I sit down, and a few of the guys start to rag on me, but it’s Sam’s baffled frown that really sticks out.
“I thought you said you lived with somebody,” he says. “Like, a guy. Won’t he be pissed if you’re hooking up with other dudes in the shower at school?”
My fork freezes halfway to my mouth. I… hadn’t really considered how Travis might react, if he heard about this. It’s not like we’re together anymore, but there’s still the promise of September, of things between us maybe going back to the utter perfection we’d gotten to have last month. Worse than that, the idea of him hooking up with someone he meets at his school when he starts there next week is enough to make me want to throw up. But my squadmates are looking at me, expecting an answer.
Or, they’re expecting an answer worthy of Garen Anderson.
I force a shrug and say, “The guy I live with isn’t my boyfriend. We’re just roommates.”
It’s not a lie, but that doesn’t make it feel any better to say.
4 months sober
“Gotta say, dude, this is almost as nasty as the time I watched you get stitches. And, heads up? That made me puke, so…”
“Stop whining,” Ben orders, squeezing his eyes shut. “Your disgusted facial expressions are going to make me laugh, and then I’m going to end up with a gigantic scribble inked into my flesh for the rest of my life.”
I chance another peek though my fingers at his side, but watching the droplets of blood and ink bead up under the needle of the tattoo gun is still enough to make me turn away, sticking my tongue out as far as it’ll go so that everyone in the tattoo parlor knows how grossed out I am to be here right now.
Delilah—Ben’s artist friend with the black-and-gray tattooed sleeves and the septum piercing—grins. “Guess you’ll never be in the shop again after today, huh?”
“That’s the weirdest part,” Ben says, eyes fluttering open again. His pupils are blown wide, but I can’t tell if it’s because of the adrenaline spike from the pain, or because he’s enjoying that pain in a uniquely Ben-like way. “Garen has a tattoo. It’s not like he’s unfamiliar with this process.”
“Bullshit. All I have is this,” I say, thrusting my bare wrist out to show Delilah the T marked into my skin. “It took like, ten minutes. We’ve been here for an hour, and we’re still barely halfway done with your fuckin’ rainbow pigeon.”
Ben looks over his shoulder at Delilah. “Can you stop for a second, please?” She immediately rolls her chair back a few inches. Ben sits up, moving gingerly so as not to further disturb the half-finished tattoo that takes up about a third of his left side, placement mirroring the typewriter on his right side. I’ve been friends with this asshole for long enough that I should be expecting the hard punch he delivers to my shoulder, but I’m not, and I’m certainly not expecting the second punch to the same spot an instant later.
“Ow!” I yelp, flailing out of his reach. “The hell was that for?”
“It’s not a rainbow pigeon, you scum-sucking piece of shit,” Ben retorts. “It’s a starling, and it’s from one of my favorite poems, and it’s my birthday present to myself. If you’re going to be a tool about it, you can wait in the car.”
Scowling, I rub my injured shoulder. “It’s not your birthday until Wednesday, I can be as mean to you as I want right now. And if you hit me again, I’m not giving you the present I got you.” It’s a blatant lie; I have no use for the large box of piano sheet music sitting in the trunk of my car. Ben seems to know I’m bullshitting him, so I add, “Or the present Jamie gave me to give to you.”
Ben blinks, pausing in the act of carefully spreading himself out over the chair once more so that Delilah can resume tattooing him. “Excuse me?”
“Yep,” I say, pronouncing the word with a pop. “It was hilarious. Last time I saw him, he shoved this package into my hands, and he was like, ‘the midget left his book at my apartment on New Year’s—’”
“That’s not a present,” Ben interrupts. “Invisible Monsters is my book. The fact that I forgot it there a few weeks ago, and he’s finally giving it back isn’t—”
“And is Invisible Monsters a thousand pages long? Because the package he gave me is about this thick,” I say, holding up my hand with my thumb and index finger about three inches apart. “I asked him how many books you left there, and he got all cagey about it and was like, ‘just one, but I was at the bookstore the other day and I saw something I thought he’d like, you told me he was turning nineteen this month, shut up, don’t judge our embarrassing, nerdy mating rituals.’ I mean, I’m paraphrasing, but that’s the gist of it.”
“Jamie,” Delilah muses, cocking her head to the side and looking at Ben. “Is that the same person as the James you’ve described?”
Ben shoots her a sharp glance over his shoulder, as if that’ll silence her, but I can already feel a huge smile spreading across my face. “Why, yes! Yes, it is. And how exactly did our young Benjamin describe him?”
“Dee, if you say a single word—”
“Shut up, or I’ll turn this bird into a yeti,” she says, even though that’s the least effective threat ever, because a yeti tattoo would be awesome. To me, she flashes a cheeky smile and says, “If I’m not much mistaken, James is the… what were your exact words, Ben? ‘Southern boy who has a personality that’s about as appealing as shooting acid into your veins, but who is painfully intelligent and has the most beautiful—”
“Stop talking, stop talking, stop talking,” Ben groans.
“Don’t ever stop talking, oh my god. The most beautiful what?”
“Don’t say it,” Ben pleads. “Seriously, if you tell Garen, he’ll never let me live this down. I’ll have to move to the west coast to escape the mockery, and I’m a New Englander, I’d never survive in California.”
“You might fare well in Portland, if you stop shaving,” I point out, clamping my palm over his mouth, knowing he can’t struggle out of my grip unless he wants to drive the tattoo needles into his ribcage. I turn to Delilah and begin to whisper, over and over, “Tell me, tell me, tell me, tell—”
“Hands,” she announces. “Apparently, your buddy James has—and I quote—” she drops her voice to mimic Ben’s usual bored monotone, “‘The most beautiful hands I have ever seen or felt.’”
Hearing that is like having my birthday come two months early. I turn my delighted eyes on Ben. “His hands? Really, that’s what does it for you? Not his flawless face, his brilliant smile, his rockin’ body, his almost-nine-inch cock. His hands? But his fingers are so weird. They’re so skinny and long, like an alien—Jesus fuck!” I yank my hand away from Ben’s mouth, staring down at the new impression of his teeth marked into my skin. I scowl at him. “I met with my shrink not three hours ago, and you know what she told me? That I shouldn’t let boys abuse me, because I don’t deserve to be a victim of violence. And you know what you just did? You abused me, you fucking toad.”
Ben scoffs. “You’re a liar. This was your first therapy session since starting at Patton. I bet all she wanted to talk about was whether or not your new classmates are being nice to you.”
I snatch the latest issue of Tattoo off the table behind me and begin to page through it. The tattoo gun is making this hideous scraping noise as Delilah fills in part of the starling’s feathers; I can’t help but wince at the sound, and neither can Ben. His eyes are closed again, but after a minute or two, he slits one open to look at me. “Are they?”
“Are who what?” I ask.
“Are your new classmates being nice to you?” he asks. Sometimes, I think he forgets that he doesn’t have to try to be a third parent to me, the way his own parents have always expected him to be a third set of hands to help out with his five siblings.
I groan and slouch down in my seat. “Ugh, yes, they’re nice to me. And it’s awful.”
“You’ve got a weird definition of ‘awful,’ boy,” Delilah chuckles.
“No, you don’t understand. Every five minutes, they’re like, hey Garen, come hang out with us. Hey Garen, come study with us. Hey Garen, be on my relay team for PT—no, be on my team!—no, mine! Hey Garen, you have to come party with us this weekend. Hey Garen, let me jerk you off in the back row of Military Leadership Education tonight. Hey Garen, is it cool if I awkwardly hover outside your shower stall so that I can ogle you while you get changed even though it’ll make us both late enough for breakfast that, by the time we get there, fuckin’ Steven will have eaten all the bacon?”
“Your life is practically unbearable,” Ben agrees. Both eyes are open now. “Did one of them seriously ask to jerk you off during your Leadership class?”
I drop the copy of Tattoo back on the table and bury my face in my hands. “Fucking Ryan. He’s the absolute worst, seriously. I was only planning to hook up with the guy one time, but ever since that first time, he expects it to be a daily thing. He’s not even my type—he’s so goddamn scrawny, and he’s kinda got, you know, one of those lisps? Not in a speech impediment way, just in a gay way, and that’s fine for some people, I guess, but I like guys who are really guys.”
Delilah carefully wets an area of Ben’s skin to clear up some of the blood and ink residue that’s obscuring the design. She wipes it away and comments, “You’d think that finding a manly man at a military school would be easy.”
“It is,” I agree. “It’s finding a manly man who’ll let you come in his mouth that’s the problem. Like, the guy who sits next to me in English spends pretty much every class forwarding pictures of his dick to what seems to be half the girls from our sister school, which is pretty sleazy, but I guess it’s justified, because dude’s got a great piece. And there’s another guy in my stats class who I wanna climb like a fuckin’ tree, but my buddy Javi says the guy’s got a girlfriend back home in Jersey, so he’s obviously not going to make my ‘to do’ list anytime soon. For one thing, straight, and for another, Jersey. Oh, and there’s this fucking gorgeous kid in my squad—he’s got a great ass, got these super cute freckles, and you know how I am about freckles. He’s competitive as fuck, possibly to the point of being a little bit scary and psychotic? But it works for him, because he’s, hands down, the best guy in Whitman. Fast, strong, built, great shot—swear to god, first time I saw him hit a bullseye in target practice, I pitched a tent.”
“Possibly too much information,” Delilah says mildly.
“Oh whatever. I’ve only ever seen one person besides him hit the target dead-center, first shot, and that’s me.”
“So naturally, the only guy in your squad who you’re attracted to is the one who reminds you the most of yourself,” Ben sighs.
“The only guy in my squad who I’m attracted to is straight,” I amend. “All the other guys think it’s great, so of course they’re always talking about the latest Ward chick he’s fucking, or describing the random hot bitches he picks up when they’re all out together. It’s torture, because obviously, it would be completely inappropriate for me to say, ‘hey, Declan, I know you’re straight, but if you do a couple shots and let me choke on your cock a little bit, I bet I could make you forget that.’ Besides, I think I annoy him.”
“Imagine that,” Ben murmurs. I glare at him. He hesitates, licks his lips, then adds, “Does Travis know you’ve got a crush on this Declan guy?”
I roll my eyes. “It’s not a crush, man, I don’t like him, like him. I just, you know, wanna nail him. And no, of course Travis doesn’t—wait, why? Do you think I should tell him?”
Ben shrugs, and Delilah swats his shoulder, giving him a warning look. “We’re in the home stretch of this piece, and I swear, if you fuck it up now by moving around, I’ll knock you out and tattoo a dick on your forehead.”
“Sorry,” he says quickly, his whole body going still once more. “But, G… look, I was sort of under the impression that you and Travis were getting back together. Not now, maybe, but in the fall. I thought you guys were set on your big post-year-of-sobriety reunion in September.”
I swallow and stare down at my hands, wishing I hadn’t dropped the magazine so that I’d have something to do right now. I feel like I’m a little kid, waiting to be chastised by his parent for doing something naughty. I say, “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Well, if you’re getting back together, don’t you think you should maybe keep it in your pants for the time being?” he asks slowly. “How would you feel, if Travis was sleeping with a bunch of randoms at Columbia?”
Devastated. Destroyed. Betrayed. But it’s easier to roll my eyes and say, “I’m not saying that wouldn’t be awkward, but that’s why I’m not going to bother telling Travis. He can do whatever he wants at school, as long as I don’t have to hear about it, and I’m free to do the same. I don’t—Ben, what do you expect from me? I’m not going to be celibate for the next eight months, for fuck’s sake.”
“It’s not unheard of. Before you and I first hooked up, I hadn’t had sex in nearly a year.”
“You’re not me. I seriously cannot go that long without sex. It’s just not an option. And if Travis won’t date me until September, he doesn’t have the right to get pissed about who I fuck until then,” I snap. “It’s not—Jesus, dude. He’s not my boyfriend, alright? He’s my friend, and he’s my roommate, but he’s not my boyfriend anymore, and I’m not doing anything wrong.”
“Okay,” Ben says simply, and I scowl down at my hands. I need a fucking cigarette, but I’m still trying to stick to that idiotic New Year’s resolution to quit. I paw through the pockets of my jacket until I find a half-empty packet of nicotine gum, then pop a piece into my mouth, chomping down on it viciously to be sure that Ben can see how pissed I am at him. He rolls his eyes and reaches over to knock his knuckles against my wrist. “Don’t be a brat, G. I just want to make sure you’re not doing shit now that’s going to ruin whatever you have in mind for the fall.”
“It’s fine,” I say, wishing I believed it.
135 days sober
Travis has been at Columbia for nearly two weeks before I realize I haven’t asked him a single question about it. That thought hits me like a kick to the teeth, halfway through some stupid movie I’ve got playing while I work on the posterboard for my AP Government & Politics presentation. At once, I turn to stare at Travis over my shoulder. He’s lying on his stomach on the couch, paging through his math textbook with a frown on his face. My stomach lurches—I didn’t know he had signed up for a math course. I don’t know any of his classes, because it never crossed my mind to ask.
There is a strong possibility that I am the worst person ever. At the very least, I’m the worst roommate slash friend, slash ex-boyfriend, slash possibly future boyfriend.
My legs are folded up under me, wedged halfway under the coffee table where I’m working; I stretch them out to relieve some of the cramping, then wriggle backwards until my back hits the couch and I can twist to drape an arm over the small of his back. The edge of his mouth twitches like the beginning of a smile, but he doesn’t look up from his work. I slump across his back, making a pillow out of his spine.
“Hey,” I say. “What’re you working on?”
“Econ homework,” he says.
“Do you like your class?” I press. He shrugs. I try again. “How many other classes are you taking?” He holds up four fingers. “Do you like them?”
He looks over his shoulder at me. There’s a small smile on his lips, but it doesn’t really reach his eyes. “Yeah, I guess. Some of them. I like my engineering classes, but my history class is pretty boring. One of my core requirements is this psychology course I’m taking with James, which is… nice. You know, to have somebody in my class who I’m already friends with.”
Later tonight, I’ll have to text Jamie and thank him for being a decent friend to Travis even though I’ve had my head too far up my own ass to be that. For now, the only thing I can think to do is slip my hand beneath the hem of his t-shirt and rub my knuckles over the ridges of his spine. It’s not exactly appropriate, and it’s sure as hell not in keeping with the platonic tone we’re trying to set for life in the new house, but it’s something that I know he likes. Sure enough, he pillows his head on his arms and sighs, his eyelids fluttering shut. I push his shirt higher up his back to rest my chin on his skin and ask, “Have you met any cool people? You know, made any friends?”
The relaxation of a moment ago is gone in an instant. I can feel him tensing up underneath me, suddenly enough that I sit up again. He shoves his shirt back down, knocking my hand off him. “I’ve—there are some people in my classes who are alright, I guess. I have people I talk to sometimes. But it’s… I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m friends with a lot of people? Right now, I’m mostly focusing on, you know, myself. My classes, my studying.” He swallows and turns his eyes back towards his textbook. “Columbia is, uh… it’s different from LHS, that’s for sure. And New York is different from Lakewood.”
“Well, of course. And that’s okay,” I say quickly. “You’re making a big leap from high school to college in a short period of time, so it makes sense that you wanna, you know, get settled or whatever. You’ll have a chance to meet more people later in the semester.”
The moment the words are out, I realize how completely patronizing they sound. Travis’ mouth is fixed in a thin line, and he nods without speaking. I wrack my brain for something to say that’ll make me sound less like I’m his mother, but before I can come up with anything, he clears his throat and says, “Yeah. Exactly.” He jerks his chin towards the coffee table. “You should get back to work on your project. What class is it for, anyway?”
“Government and Politics,” I sigh, turning back to the posterboard. I’m not sure how I managed to fuck this up and make him shut down so quickly, but it’s obvious that I did. I blink down at the scraps of paper I’ve been attempting to even out so that I can glue them to my poster. They sort of look like I closed my eyes and attacked them with a kitchen knife. “Um, so, there’s no casual, inoffensive way to ask this,” I say, “but… do you have any of those craft blades you and Ben are always using to slash your wrists? ‘Cause I can’t cut a straight line with normal scissors, and I’m almost nineteen. A sloppy posterboard is just embarrassing, at my age.”
Travis laughs. “Sorry, I don’t think we’ve got any razors in the house. I haven’t… used any. Not since I got back on the meds. But here, let me help.” He slides off the couch to sit next to me on the floor. “If you pencil in the edges with a ruler and cut along the line, you’ll be fine.” A ruler. Right. A basic school utensil that I should probably own. At my blank look, Travis grins and gestures to the stairs. “There’s one in my room. Go grab it, and I’ll fix these for you.”
“You’re a goddamn treasure,” I say, tousling his hair and scrambling to my feet. My legs are still mostly asleep, so the jog upstairs very nearly ends in disaster, but I manage to make it down the hall without tripping and killing myself. Truthfully, I haven’t spent much time in Travis’ room at all, so I’m a little surprised by the lack of furniture. He doesn’t have a desk; his bed is pushed up against the house’s front wall, and as far as I can tell, he sits on the bed and uses the deep window ledge as a writing surface. That’s where his books and notebooks are stacked, and next to that, there’s a coffee mug with some pens and a ruler poking out. I crawl over the bed to steal it, but halfway into my retreat, something catches my eye.
My name is scrawled across the top margin of one of the notebook pages, like the beginnings of a letter, or the way I title my songs. Frowning, I tug it closer. Most of the words below that are scribbled out, but not well enough to make them indistinguishable.
Garen,
It sounds cliche to tell you this isn’t your fault, but I need you to know that it’s true. You’re the only--
Writing this letter is kind of impossible. I don’t know how to explain to someone as brave and strong as you why I have to do this. You’ve been through more in the past year than I’ve--
I’m terrified of what this will do to--
By the time you read this, I will probably be--
I need to start by telling you that I love you. You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me, and I am so grateful to have had the chance to be with you. But as much as I love you, I think I might hate myself more--
I can’t do this anymore. I know that makes me cowardly and selfish, but every breath I take feels more and more like a gasp, and I don’t know how--
This is the hardest letter I’ve ever written. Part of me wonders if this is how you felt when you left those letters last summer, before you went to Ohio. But you came back, and I--
Everything hurts. I’ve never--
I don’t want to be alive anymore. I can’t be alive anymore.
I don’t know how many minutes pass before I sit back, my bottom lip clamped between my teeth to keep me from being sick all over Travis’ bed. Obviously, he hasn’t acted on his impulses yet, but his pen is still resting on his notebook. These aren’t old drafts, leftover from that November morning in the Lakewood High School parking lot, when he’d confessed that a poorly-written suicide note was the only thing separating him from death. These are new, written as recently as last night. Maybe even today.
I snatch the notebook off the window ledge, sending the pen through the crack between wall and bed, and head for the door, grabbing the ruler only as an afterthought. When I return to the living room, Travis says, “Took you long enough. I know my room is messy, but—”
I drop the open notebook on the coffee table, right on top of the posterboard. Travis freezes, eyes fixed on the paper, hands clutching the pair of scissors. That unnerves me; it’s not like I think he’s going to commit hari kari on top of my AP Government project, but I wish he wasn’t holding onto a sharp object like a lifeline. Slowly, he reaches out and flips the notebook shut, slipping it under the couch and out of sight.
“Can I have the ruler?” he asks. His expression is blank, and his tone is neutral. It makes me want to hit him.
“Are you going to kill yourself?” I ask.
He squints. “With the ruler?”
I drop the ruler on the couch. “Forget the ruler. Forget the project, Travis. What the fuck was that paper? Were you—is that practice? Are you planning to—”
“It’s just a paper, it doesn’t mean anything,” he snaps. “And it’s none of your business. Why would you think it’s okay for you to read whatever you find in my room? It’s private, you—”
“Considering I’m the one who’d be finding your body, you bet your ass it’s my—” I can’t even finish my sentence. The thought of that actually occurring—of finding him hanging from the ceiling fan, or bleeding out in the bathtub, or lying on his bedroom floor with an empty pill bottle in his hand, just like Bree said she found him when he was fifteen—makes it impossible to breathe.
“You wouldn’t find my body. I wouldn’t ever put you through that,” Travis says quietly, eyes on his folded hands. “I’d never do it here, where you live, where you couldn’t escape it. I’d either do it in a way that meant I’d never be found, or where a stranger would find me. Worst case scenario, all you’d have to do is identify my remains at the city morgue.”
I hit the floor next to him and yank his head around so he has to meet my eyes. “No, you moron. Worst case scenario is you being dead. Trust me, dude, your body’s great and all, but finding it would not be the traumatizing part of you killing yourself. Everything else would be.”
Travis’ mouth hangs slightly open for a minute while he tries to formulate a response, then clicks shut as he turns away. I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, then watch his shaking fingers comb through his hair. Finally, he closes his eyes and says, “I just don’t think I can do this anymore. I know that doesn’t make sense to you—maybe it doesn’t make sense, period. But feeling like this, like every day is more painful and unbearable than the day before it… it’s exhausting. I just want it to be over.”
“You don’t think you can do this anymore? You just want it to be over? Trav, you sound like you’re giving yourself an ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech. You’re acting totally blase about this, talking about it like it’s a fucking breakup—no, wait, scratch that,” I say, holding up a hand to silence him even though he hasn’t tried to cut me off. “You are—I swear to fuckin’ god—discussing suicide more calmly and casually than you discussed our breakup. You realize that, right?”
He hunches his shoulders in what might be a shrug, if his body wasn’t already limp enough to be slumped back against the couch. “Well, maybe that bothered me more than this does.”
“Being single would bother you more than being dead?” I say flatly. “Seriously?”
“Okay, wow, no? Don’t fucking say it like that, you’re making me sound like some crazy stalker—and, alright, for the record? The guy who tried to shoot himself in the head after our relationship went to shit would not get to judge me, if that was the case.” He scrambles up off the floor, onto his feet, and walks towards the kitchen. I follow him so closely that I step on his heels twice; he shoots me a dirty look. “And it’s—I didn’t mean that the breakup bothered me and the idea of being dead doesn’t. Of course I’m not exactly fond of the idea. I mean, I’m human. And I’m not crazy.”
It’s the second time he’s said that, but I’m still not entirely sure I’d agree.
“All I meant is that things were actually going well between us, before you told me that you wanted us to stop seeing each other once we moved here. It was a surprise. But waking up every morning and wishing I hadn’t? That’s… that’s not a surprise anymore. I’m used to feeling like everything in my life is just too much. I’m used to not wanting to be here. And th-that’s not okay, Garen. I can’t spend the rest of my life feeling this way. Christ, I don’t think I can even spend another month feeling this way.”
“Yeah, which is why you need to get help,” I say. He moves towards the kettle we keep on the back burner of the stove; I yank it out of reach and head to the sink to fill it for him. He rolls his eyes, but I don’t care—I need to feel like I’m doing something to help him, even if it’s something as lame as helping him make tea. “I think you should see someone about this.”
“I already am, you know that. I’m on anti-depressants, I have a therapist—”
“No, what you have is a once-monthly, fifteen-minute appointment with some guy who shouldn’t even have a fucking license,” I snap. “I mean, does he even talk to you, like, about your problems? About why you feel the way you do? Or does he just dope you up and think that’ll solve everything? It’s not normal, Trav, it’s not how you’re supposed to practice medicine.”
He sneers. “Oh, so, now you’re a doctor? Because last time I checked, you were in fucking high school, not med school—”
“Yeah, and I’m also in therapy. Do you know how many hours I’ve spent dicking around Doctor Howard’s office, talking to her about everything? Do you know how many weeks of daily sessions it took before she’d even consider trying to diagnose me with borderline personality disorder? ‘Cause I’ve got news for you, dude: your shrink isn’t supposed to medicate you just to shut you up. He’s supposed to help you.”
“The medication does help. I mean, it doesn’t make me happy, and it doesn’t make me feel like—I don’t cut myself anymore, okay? Not when I’m on the right pills.” He opens the cabinet above the stove and digs out a tea bag, then raises it towards me, almost in question. I nod; he grabs another for me, tosses each one into the bottom of a mug, and sighs. “The problem isn’t the pills, alright? Or Doctor Baker. The problem is me.”
I cross my arms over my chest. “That’s bullshit.” If someone as fucked up as me has to learn not to say that, then someone as perfect as Travis doesn’t have a right to even consider it. “The problem is that you tried to kill yourself when you were fifteen years old, and your dumb bitch of a mom freaked out and handled it in exactly the wrong way. She sent you to some fuckin’ psych ward instead of trying to understand what was happening to you, and she found you a shrink who’d put you on meds so she didn’t have to deal with it. And I don’t trust the opinion of any doctor who would put a fifteen-year-old boy on Prozac, okay? In three years, he hasn’t even changed the dosage. That’s not right.”
The kettle starts to whistle on the stove. Travis doesn’t even bother to reach for it, already knowing I’m going to elbow him out of the way and pour the water over the tea bags myself. For a minute or two, we stand there in silence, waiting for the bags to steep. Finally, I snatch them out and shove one of the mugs towards Travis. He drinks his plain, but I have to dump a few spoonfuls of sugar into mine before I can drink it. I drain nearly half my cup before I realize that he’s only taken that first sip, apparently preferring to gnaw on his thumbnail while he watches me drink. I catch him by the collar of his t-shirt and tow him closer and closer, until I can wrap an arm around his waist and bury my face against the side of his neck.
“I need you,” I murmur. “I don’t know what I’d do without you, T. And I know you’re afraid that you’ll always feel this way, but you won’t. I need you to believe me, and I need you to let me help.”
One of his arms is still crushed between our bodies as he continues to chew on his nail, but the other arm snakes carefully around my shoulders. “How can you help me?”
Those are the words he says, but I think that how can anyone help me are the words he really means.
“When I first told Doc I was moving here, she said she could find me a referral to a therapist in the area. Somebody she respected, you know? Tomorrow, I’m going to call her and ask her to recommend someone for you. Stay on your meds for now, until your new doctor evaluates you and tells you whether or not you should phase them out. And when you’re not okay, when you feel like you want to hurt yourself, when you feel like you want to die, you come fucking find me, okay? Talk to me. Trust me. It—That’s what I do, I mean, with you. And I need you to know that you can do the same.”
He wriggles his trapped arm free and wraps it around my shoulders, too. “’Kay.”
“I mean it,” I warn.
“Okay,” he sighs. “Jesus, Garen. I’ll let you get me a referral, I’ll talk to you about my pathetic problems, I’ll—I-I won’t do it, okay? I won’t write the rest of the note. And I won’t go through with it. I’ll try to work my shit out.”
“Good,” I say, stepping back and grabbing him by the wrists, dragging him towards the stairs. I can feel his questioning eyes on me, so I glance over my shoulder and say, “Life-coaching you is exhausting. We’re going to bed.”
“We are?” he asks, emphasizing the plural ever so slightly. “Did one of our bedrooms suddenly disappear?”
I shove him down the hall and into his bedroom. “Shut up and get in the bed. We’re not—I’m not trying to make a move on you, okay? I just…” I swallow. I just want to be close to you. “I won’t be able to sleep at all tonight if you’re in another room. I know it sounds so fucking stupid, but I want to be able to wake up, roll over, and see that you’re safe. Please, man. Come to bed.”
He doesn’t say a word, just strips off his jeans and crawls into bed, leaving the blankets pulled back so that I can join him.
136 days sober
I don’t sleep, of course. For the next few hours, I lie awake, watching the rise and fall of Travis’ chest, listening to his deep breaths and occasional mumbles, hooking a leg over his when he rolls over and kicks out unknowingly. I check the time on my cell phone every once in a while. At around quarter after four, I slip out from under the covers. I usually get my school shit together the night before—find all my books, set up the coffee maker to start brewing automatically at four, iron my uniform and pack it carefully into my duffel—but I was pretty preoccupied last night, so I have to rush around now, trying to locate everything I need to bring.
Every step that brings me further from Travis makes me feel a little bit sicker. I can’t figure out which would be worse—waking him up now, just to say that I’m leaving for school, or letting him wake up alone in a few hours. He’s not alone; that was the whole fucking point of sleeping in his bed last night, letting him know that I want to be here for him.
A note, I eventually decide. I can leave a note on the nightstand or something, just a quick I’m here if you need me sort of thing. But when I try to scare up a notebook, I find myself standing next to the coffee table and holding the paper that’s covered in false starts to his suicide note. My stomach turns over. Fuck it. An I’m here if you need me isn’t even close to enough.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I sink to my knees and drop the notebook back on the table. My project supplies are still scattered all over the place; I grab a fat green marker and scrawl across the top margin of the suicide draft, REASONS TO TEAR THIS FUCKING PAPER UP. Next, I reach for the stack of index cards and start to write down every single reason—no matter how idiotic—for him to stay alive.
Because you won’t always feel this way, I start. Might as well go for honesty, right? Because you once wrestled a gun out of my hands when I was having this same problem. Because you saved my life, so fuck if I’m going to let you end yours.
Some of the reasons are mostly to make him laugh--Because I can’t afford the rent on this house by myself. Because our fucking espresso machine is possessed by a demon that only you know how to deal with. Because you already paid your Columbia tuition for the semester. Because your sister would kick my ass if anything happened to you.
And then, when I’ve run out of jokes, I start to pour out every wish I’ve got. Every dream for the future, every secret hope I’ve been hesitating to mention.
Because I want you to introduce me to your father one day, I write.
Because I want to see you graduate from college.
Because I want my kids to blow shit up for their science fair projects, but I don’t know how to do that in a safe or legal way, so I want their other dad to be someone smart enough to swing that. Like an engineer, maybe.
Because I want you to be there when I reach ten years clean and sober.
Because I want to know what your arms will look like after your scars have faded.
When I run out of cards—because I don’t know that I’ll ever run out of reasons for Travis to stay alive—I stack them on top of the suicide note, grab a roll of tape, and head upstairs. His bedroom door is still slightly open, and he’s still asleep, occasionally shifting further and further into the space I’ve vacated. I tape the note right in the center of his door, where I’m sure he’ll see it first thing. Then, all around it, I tape the rest of the cards, like a giant web of reasons why he is loved. I’m going to be late for PT, but I still take the time to kiss Travis’ forehead and tuck the blankets in around him before I go.
When I get home from MLEP that night, Travis has already left for school. It’s an hour or two before I bother to go upstairs, but when I do, I find that my bed has been covered in the remains of the suicide note, torn up and sprinkled around like confetti, and all of the notecards are still taped up on the inside of his door.