I’m alone in the bed again when I next wake up. My sense of déjà vu is corrupted completely by the fact that there’s sunlight pouring in through the window, and the soft whisper of counting coming from the foot of the bed.
“Fifty-six… fifty-seven… fifty-eight… fifty-nine…”
“Sixty,” I announce. The counting stops immediately, and Garen appears near my feet, his elbows braced on the edge of the bed.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says, his breathing only slightly labored. I sit up, stretch, and shift onto my knees.
“Morning. Push-ups?” I ask. He shakes his head.
“Push-ups were earlier. I was doing crunches just now,” he says. I wrinkle my nose.
“Sixty of them? In the morning?” I say. He grins.
“I was going to do a hundred. You interrupted me,” he says. I brush the sweat-dampened curls off his forehead and kiss him softly. He pulls back very slightly, just long enough to wipe his face with the hem of his t-shirt, then joins me on the bed. We lie there for a while, kissing lazily and touching each other with some unusual kind of feather-soft intimacy. Eventually, Garen settles for just pressing his forehead to mine and gazing at me.
“I could get used to this,” I whisper. “Waking up like this, I mean. Having you here with me like this, all the time.”
“I know. Guess it’s not really that long, either. I mean, assuming I don’t fuck up my grades too much more, I graduate in less than five months, and then I’m going off to college. A year and a half from now, you’ll be out of this house too, and we could… I don’t know. Find someplace of our own. For real. It could be like this every day.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say softly. I don’t mention that the idea of a year without him, while he’s off at college with plenty of older, hotter guys around him, starts to rip a hole in my chest. I brush my palm against his cheek, watching the sunlight glint off the silver on my finger. He reaches up and covers my hand with his, nuzzling it slightly, his eyes fluttering shut.
“Garen, do you think you can move your car? It’s blocking mine in.”
Bree’s voice only gives us enough warning to push slightly apart before the door opens. It doesn’t give enough time for us to sit up and untangle our legs, or for me to put on clothing that is not just a pair of Garen’s sweatpants. My sister freezes just inside the doorway, her huge blue eyes looking impossibly round. I move backwards so my spine is straight against the headboard, and Garen scrambles off the bed.
“Yeah, of course. M-My keys are right uh… right here,” he stammers, snatching them off his dresser. I tug on the shirt I abandoned on the floor last night and duck around my sister.
“I need to take my pills,” I mutter.
“Uh, yeah, clearly you fucking do,” Bree says. I can hear her footsteps behind me on the stairs, and Garen’s behind her. I make a bee-line for the kitchen as Garen heads for the front door. Bree stalks after me.
“What did I just see?” she demands. My hands are shaking as I stuff two slices of bread into the toaster.
“I don’t know,” I say. She appears at my side suddenly, leaning around me to get in my face.
“Don’t fuck with me, Travis. Not about this,” she snarls. I dry-swallow two pills and turn to face her.
“Fine. What do you think you saw?” I ask.
“I think I saw you half-naked, cuddled up in bed with the guy who is supposed to be our stepbrother in a couple of months. I thought you were dating that Blaire chick. I thought you were straight,” she says. I lick my lips, even though my tongue is dry.
“Believe what you want to believe, Bree,” I say. I try to move past her, but she grabs my arm and hurls me back against the counter with surprising strength.
“Don’t you fucking dare say that about this. Give me an answer, and do it now,” she says. God, where the fuck is Garen right now?
“It’s none of your fucking business!” I snap. As if in answer to my prayers, Garen appears at my side, gripping Bree’s shoulder firmly.
“Bree, let go of him,” he says. Bree shoves him off her, but releases me nonetheless.
“Don’t fucking touch me, Garen. I’d say I can’t believe you, but honestly? I’m not surprised. It was so obvious from the first day we met you that you were going to try something with my little brother, but I don’t know how you got it to this point. This is so fucked up it’s not even funny. You’re supposed to be his brother, not whatever the fuck else you want to be,” she says.
“It’s not about what I want to be, it’s about what I am,” Garen says. Bree’s response is directed towards me instead.
“What is he, Travis? Tell me the truth.”
The room is completely silent. My refusal to answer is answer enough, but it seems like I have to really say it. Garen and Bree are almost comical opposites. His eyes are shut tight and he is shaking all over; she is staring me straight in the face, perfectly still. My fingers are itching to hook through Garen’s belt loop and drag him towards me, my body aching to have his arms around me right now. I lick my lips again.
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“What did you just say, Travis Daniel?”
This has got to be a fucking apocalypse or something.
“Oh, fuck,” Garen murmurs, spinning around and bracing his hands on the countertop. Bree whirls around towards the door, staring wide-eyed at our mother.
“M-Mom. I thought you and Bill had already gone to meet with the caterer,” she says.
“Our appointment isn’t until two o’clock. We were in the den,” Bill says. There is a minute so silent that all I can hear at all is Garen’s shaky breathing from behind me. The bread pops up in the toaster. And then my mom explodes.
“What did I hear you say, Travis Daniel McCall?” she demands.
“Nothing,” I utter, on reflex.
“Don’t you lie to me!” she shrieks. I flinch. “Your what?”
There is no possible way out of this. I want this to end. Even if it does require an apocalypse, even if I have to die right now, I want this conversation to not be happening. But apparently it’s not my choice. “My boyfriend.”
“What are you talking about?” Mom says. “What kind of joke is this?”
“I’m not… it’s not a joke, Mom, I’m… I’m gay,” I say. My face is on fire, but it’s not out of embarrassment. A foreign terror is running through my veins, heating my whole body with panic. Mom’s eyes are round and blazing.
“You are not,” she says.
“Stop it, Mom. I really am. Why the fuck would I lie about this?” I ask.
“Don’t you swear at me!”
“Mother! I just fucking told you I’m gay, and your fucking problem is with my fucking swearing?”
Behind me, Garen chokes on a laugh. Bad move.
“You!” Mom shrieks at him, and I feel him spin around. “This is all your fault! You came here and poisoned his mind! He would never be saying this if you hadn’t stormed in here and made him consider all these horrible ideas! Who is it, Garen?”
“Who is what?” Garen asks softly.
“Which one of your disgusting friends did you set him up with? I know it wasn’t one of his friends! I’ve met them all, and they’re all perfectly respectable, perfectly normal. It was one of those disgusting little freaks you hang out with! The blonde or the short one, or one of those other faggots!”
I feel a stab of pity for Alex and Ben. They don’t belong in this conversation.
“I didn’t set him up with any of my friends, and they’re not freaks. ‘The blonde’ isn’t even gay!” Garen snaps.
“Then who is it? I want this boy’s name! I want his name, and his phone number, and his parents’ names!” Mom orders. Garen doesn’t reply. I turn my eyes to the floor, willing myself not to move. I will not say anything. I will not betray this one necessary secret. After several minutes, Bill speaks.
“I believe… that the boy’s parents’ names are Bill Anderson and Marian Weisman-Anderson.”
My head snaps back up. Bill is staring at Garen, who is staring back. Mom turns on Bill.
“What are you talking about?” she demands. Bill ignores her.
“I honestly can’t believe you could do this,” he says flatly. “After everything that happened at Patton, particularly. Every stupid stunt you pulled. Do you know how it feels, Garen? How it feels to be in my position?”
“I can imagine,” Garen mutters.
“No, no, I don’t think you can. You wouldn’t know what it feels like to get a letter from a headmaster, telling you that your son has set a building on fire, or punched a teacher. And you wouldn’t know what it feels like to see your son stumbling home drunk at four in the morning when he’s fourteen. Or what it feels like to find coke in his room when he’s sixteen. Or what it feels like to find out that his yearbook is a tally, and that all the boys circled in red are the ones he’s slept with. And if you can’t imagine any of that, I doubt you can imagine what it feels like to find out that you’ve been wrong all along. I thought things were different here, in Lakewood. I thought that you were done acting out in school. And I thought you were done drinking, and I thought you had stopped using. I thought you were done sleeping around, too. But I guess I was mistaken.
“No, you weren’t,” Garen says, his voice shaking. “I’m sorry about all of the shit I put you through, Dad, I really am. I’ve been doing fine in school, and I passed all my exams. You know I did. And you know I’m clean and sober, too. I haven’t gotten wasted since last summer, and I haven’t done coke since before we moved. And I’m in love with Travis. So, I’m not ‘sleeping around,’ as you so politely put it.”
“Don’t talk about my son that way!” Mom spits. Bill just shakes his head, again not seeming to hear Mom.
“Stop, Garen. Stop turning this into something it’s not. Stop lying to me, stop lying to Travis, stop lying to yourself. Stop pretending that this is more than a game to you. A conquest,” he says. My heart is screaming, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“It’s not a game, Dad! Look!” Garen grabs my left hand and raises it so they can see the silver band on my ring finger. “You don’t know everything that happened at Patton, and I’m not going to try to convince you that it wasn’t what you think. But I’m not going to let you call bullshit on the only thing I’ve got left that makes me happy. I’m serious about this.”
Bill’s green eyes flash and he lets his head roll back. For one second, he looks so much like his son that I almost can’t look at him.
“Of course you’re serious about it right now, Garen, because it’s the exact second you’re saying it. But this won’t still be going on a month from now.”
“Why not?” Garen challenges. “Hell, it’s been going on for months without any of you figuring it out. So I guess you really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know you better than you think I do, Garen. You’ll get bored of him. Or he’ll get bored of you. Things will end badly, as they always do when you’re involved, and Travis will end up with his heart broken.”
“I’m not going to break his heart,” Garen says.
“Why not?” Bill says, echoing Garen’s previous words. “You break everything else. Everyone else. You hurt people, usually intentionally, sometimes by accident. You destroy almost everything you touch, and then you never stick around to bother cleaning up your messes. It’s true. Don’t try to tell me it isn’t. And if you love Travis today, you won’t a few weeks from now. You treat human beings the way some people treat cell phones. The minute you find something newer that captures your interest, you’ll trade in what you have for what you want. You’ll break his heart, Garen, because that’s what you do. You break things. And I will not let you break this boy any more than he is already broken.”
There are several minutes of silence. My ears are buzzing, and I can almost feel Garen’s head spinning with all the thoughts crammed into it. Bree looks scared, and Mom is clearly still seething. Bill just looks tired. Slowly, Garen releases my hand and crosses his arms over his chest, his eyes on the floor. Bill sighs.
“I want you to get out.”
All the air in the house seems to disappear. I clutch the counter, staring at him. “What do you mean?”
“I want Garen to leave. I don’t know where he will go, and to be quite honest, I don’t really care right now. I love you, Garen, but I am tired of being your father when it’s obvious that you don’t want to be my son. So I want you to get out. Take your things with you, because you won’t be coming back,” he says. I almost laugh. There is no way this will actually work. There is no way this will actually happen.
Slowly… very slowly… Garen leaves the kitchen and heads upstairs to his room.
“You’re insane,” I snarl. Bill shakes his head.
“No, Travis. I’m not,” he says.
“Yes, you are. Yes, you fucking are! He’s your son, you can’t kick him out!” I shout. Bill doesn’t say anything. Neither Mom nor Bree seem at all concerned with backing me up, and there is still no air in this house. I bolt for my room. My schoolbooks are all backed in my bag anyway, clothes can fit easily in my track bag… I don’t need much else. Then, from the doorway.
“Travis,” Garen says, “stop. Stop packing. You’re not coming with me.”
I rotate slowly on the spot. “What do you mean?”
“If you come with me, they can call the cops and have them hunt down my car. An ’88 Testarossa kind of stands out around here. Besides, you’re a minor. I can’t take you over state lines,” he says. I stare.
“State lines,” I echo. “Where are you going?”
He shrugs and heads for his room. I trail after him.
“Back to New York? Back to Ohio? Doesn’t matter. I’m leaving Connecticut, that’s for sure. This place is fucking hell, and I don’t want to be here one second longer than I have to be,” he says. He dumps everything out of his backpack and starts to shove things into it. Clothes, cell phone charger, and notebook after notebook after notebook. Handwritten sheet music spills out onto the floor, and he blinks at it, but doesn’t stoop to pick it up.
“Take me with you. Please. All I need is you,” I say softly. He shakes his head and hoists his bag onto his shoulder.
“Goodbye, Travis. I’ll miss you,” he says. He leans down and kisses me, barely a brush of mouth on mouth. He picks up his guitar and walks out.
Previous Chapter Next Chapter
“Fifty-six… fifty-seven… fifty-eight… fifty-nine…”
“Sixty,” I announce. The counting stops immediately, and Garen appears near my feet, his elbows braced on the edge of the bed.
“Morning, sunshine,” he says, his breathing only slightly labored. I sit up, stretch, and shift onto my knees.
“Morning. Push-ups?” I ask. He shakes his head.
“Push-ups were earlier. I was doing crunches just now,” he says. I wrinkle my nose.
“Sixty of them? In the morning?” I say. He grins.
“I was going to do a hundred. You interrupted me,” he says. I brush the sweat-dampened curls off his forehead and kiss him softly. He pulls back very slightly, just long enough to wipe his face with the hem of his t-shirt, then joins me on the bed. We lie there for a while, kissing lazily and touching each other with some unusual kind of feather-soft intimacy. Eventually, Garen settles for just pressing his forehead to mine and gazing at me.
“I could get used to this,” I whisper. “Waking up like this, I mean. Having you here with me like this, all the time.”
“I know. Guess it’s not really that long, either. I mean, assuming I don’t fuck up my grades too much more, I graduate in less than five months, and then I’m going off to college. A year and a half from now, you’ll be out of this house too, and we could… I don’t know. Find someplace of our own. For real. It could be like this every day.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I say softly. I don’t mention that the idea of a year without him, while he’s off at college with plenty of older, hotter guys around him, starts to rip a hole in my chest. I brush my palm against his cheek, watching the sunlight glint off the silver on my finger. He reaches up and covers my hand with his, nuzzling it slightly, his eyes fluttering shut.
“Garen, do you think you can move your car? It’s blocking mine in.”
Bree’s voice only gives us enough warning to push slightly apart before the door opens. It doesn’t give enough time for us to sit up and untangle our legs, or for me to put on clothing that is not just a pair of Garen’s sweatpants. My sister freezes just inside the doorway, her huge blue eyes looking impossibly round. I move backwards so my spine is straight against the headboard, and Garen scrambles off the bed.
“Yeah, of course. M-My keys are right uh… right here,” he stammers, snatching them off his dresser. I tug on the shirt I abandoned on the floor last night and duck around my sister.
“I need to take my pills,” I mutter.
“Uh, yeah, clearly you fucking do,” Bree says. I can hear her footsteps behind me on the stairs, and Garen’s behind her. I make a bee-line for the kitchen as Garen heads for the front door. Bree stalks after me.
“What did I just see?” she demands. My hands are shaking as I stuff two slices of bread into the toaster.
“I don’t know,” I say. She appears at my side suddenly, leaning around me to get in my face.
“Don’t fuck with me, Travis. Not about this,” she snarls. I dry-swallow two pills and turn to face her.
“Fine. What do you think you saw?” I ask.
“I think I saw you half-naked, cuddled up in bed with the guy who is supposed to be our stepbrother in a couple of months. I thought you were dating that Blaire chick. I thought you were straight,” she says. I lick my lips, even though my tongue is dry.
“Believe what you want to believe, Bree,” I say. I try to move past her, but she grabs my arm and hurls me back against the counter with surprising strength.
“Don’t you fucking dare say that about this. Give me an answer, and do it now,” she says. God, where the fuck is Garen right now?
“It’s none of your fucking business!” I snap. As if in answer to my prayers, Garen appears at my side, gripping Bree’s shoulder firmly.
“Bree, let go of him,” he says. Bree shoves him off her, but releases me nonetheless.
“Don’t fucking touch me, Garen. I’d say I can’t believe you, but honestly? I’m not surprised. It was so obvious from the first day we met you that you were going to try something with my little brother, but I don’t know how you got it to this point. This is so fucked up it’s not even funny. You’re supposed to be his brother, not whatever the fuck else you want to be,” she says.
“It’s not about what I want to be, it’s about what I am,” Garen says. Bree’s response is directed towards me instead.
“What is he, Travis? Tell me the truth.”
The room is completely silent. My refusal to answer is answer enough, but it seems like I have to really say it. Garen and Bree are almost comical opposites. His eyes are shut tight and he is shaking all over; she is staring me straight in the face, perfectly still. My fingers are itching to hook through Garen’s belt loop and drag him towards me, my body aching to have his arms around me right now. I lick my lips again.
“He’s my boyfriend.”
“What did you just say, Travis Daniel?”
This has got to be a fucking apocalypse or something.
“Oh, fuck,” Garen murmurs, spinning around and bracing his hands on the countertop. Bree whirls around towards the door, staring wide-eyed at our mother.
“M-Mom. I thought you and Bill had already gone to meet with the caterer,” she says.
“Our appointment isn’t until two o’clock. We were in the den,” Bill says. There is a minute so silent that all I can hear at all is Garen’s shaky breathing from behind me. The bread pops up in the toaster. And then my mom explodes.
“What did I hear you say, Travis Daniel McCall?” she demands.
“Nothing,” I utter, on reflex.
“Don’t you lie to me!” she shrieks. I flinch. “Your what?”
There is no possible way out of this. I want this to end. Even if it does require an apocalypse, even if I have to die right now, I want this conversation to not be happening. But apparently it’s not my choice. “My boyfriend.”
“What are you talking about?” Mom says. “What kind of joke is this?”
“I’m not… it’s not a joke, Mom, I’m… I’m gay,” I say. My face is on fire, but it’s not out of embarrassment. A foreign terror is running through my veins, heating my whole body with panic. Mom’s eyes are round and blazing.
“You are not,” she says.
“Stop it, Mom. I really am. Why the fuck would I lie about this?” I ask.
“Don’t you swear at me!”
“Mother! I just fucking told you I’m gay, and your fucking problem is with my fucking swearing?”
Behind me, Garen chokes on a laugh. Bad move.
“You!” Mom shrieks at him, and I feel him spin around. “This is all your fault! You came here and poisoned his mind! He would never be saying this if you hadn’t stormed in here and made him consider all these horrible ideas! Who is it, Garen?”
“Who is what?” Garen asks softly.
“Which one of your disgusting friends did you set him up with? I know it wasn’t one of his friends! I’ve met them all, and they’re all perfectly respectable, perfectly normal. It was one of those disgusting little freaks you hang out with! The blonde or the short one, or one of those other faggots!”
I feel a stab of pity for Alex and Ben. They don’t belong in this conversation.
“I didn’t set him up with any of my friends, and they’re not freaks. ‘The blonde’ isn’t even gay!” Garen snaps.
“Then who is it? I want this boy’s name! I want his name, and his phone number, and his parents’ names!” Mom orders. Garen doesn’t reply. I turn my eyes to the floor, willing myself not to move. I will not say anything. I will not betray this one necessary secret. After several minutes, Bill speaks.
“I believe… that the boy’s parents’ names are Bill Anderson and Marian Weisman-Anderson.”
My head snaps back up. Bill is staring at Garen, who is staring back. Mom turns on Bill.
“What are you talking about?” she demands. Bill ignores her.
“I honestly can’t believe you could do this,” he says flatly. “After everything that happened at Patton, particularly. Every stupid stunt you pulled. Do you know how it feels, Garen? How it feels to be in my position?”
“I can imagine,” Garen mutters.
“No, no, I don’t think you can. You wouldn’t know what it feels like to get a letter from a headmaster, telling you that your son has set a building on fire, or punched a teacher. And you wouldn’t know what it feels like to see your son stumbling home drunk at four in the morning when he’s fourteen. Or what it feels like to find coke in his room when he’s sixteen. Or what it feels like to find out that his yearbook is a tally, and that all the boys circled in red are the ones he’s slept with. And if you can’t imagine any of that, I doubt you can imagine what it feels like to find out that you’ve been wrong all along. I thought things were different here, in Lakewood. I thought that you were done acting out in school. And I thought you were done drinking, and I thought you had stopped using. I thought you were done sleeping around, too. But I guess I was mistaken.
“No, you weren’t,” Garen says, his voice shaking. “I’m sorry about all of the shit I put you through, Dad, I really am. I’ve been doing fine in school, and I passed all my exams. You know I did. And you know I’m clean and sober, too. I haven’t gotten wasted since last summer, and I haven’t done coke since before we moved. And I’m in love with Travis. So, I’m not ‘sleeping around,’ as you so politely put it.”
“Don’t talk about my son that way!” Mom spits. Bill just shakes his head, again not seeming to hear Mom.
“Stop, Garen. Stop turning this into something it’s not. Stop lying to me, stop lying to Travis, stop lying to yourself. Stop pretending that this is more than a game to you. A conquest,” he says. My heart is screaming, but he doesn’t seem to notice.
“It’s not a game, Dad! Look!” Garen grabs my left hand and raises it so they can see the silver band on my ring finger. “You don’t know everything that happened at Patton, and I’m not going to try to convince you that it wasn’t what you think. But I’m not going to let you call bullshit on the only thing I’ve got left that makes me happy. I’m serious about this.”
Bill’s green eyes flash and he lets his head roll back. For one second, he looks so much like his son that I almost can’t look at him.
“Of course you’re serious about it right now, Garen, because it’s the exact second you’re saying it. But this won’t still be going on a month from now.”
“Why not?” Garen challenges. “Hell, it’s been going on for months without any of you figuring it out. So I guess you really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I know you better than you think I do, Garen. You’ll get bored of him. Or he’ll get bored of you. Things will end badly, as they always do when you’re involved, and Travis will end up with his heart broken.”
“I’m not going to break his heart,” Garen says.
“Why not?” Bill says, echoing Garen’s previous words. “You break everything else. Everyone else. You hurt people, usually intentionally, sometimes by accident. You destroy almost everything you touch, and then you never stick around to bother cleaning up your messes. It’s true. Don’t try to tell me it isn’t. And if you love Travis today, you won’t a few weeks from now. You treat human beings the way some people treat cell phones. The minute you find something newer that captures your interest, you’ll trade in what you have for what you want. You’ll break his heart, Garen, because that’s what you do. You break things. And I will not let you break this boy any more than he is already broken.”
There are several minutes of silence. My ears are buzzing, and I can almost feel Garen’s head spinning with all the thoughts crammed into it. Bree looks scared, and Mom is clearly still seething. Bill just looks tired. Slowly, Garen releases my hand and crosses his arms over his chest, his eyes on the floor. Bill sighs.
“I want you to get out.”
All the air in the house seems to disappear. I clutch the counter, staring at him. “What do you mean?”
“I want Garen to leave. I don’t know where he will go, and to be quite honest, I don’t really care right now. I love you, Garen, but I am tired of being your father when it’s obvious that you don’t want to be my son. So I want you to get out. Take your things with you, because you won’t be coming back,” he says. I almost laugh. There is no way this will actually work. There is no way this will actually happen.
Slowly… very slowly… Garen leaves the kitchen and heads upstairs to his room.
“You’re insane,” I snarl. Bill shakes his head.
“No, Travis. I’m not,” he says.
“Yes, you are. Yes, you fucking are! He’s your son, you can’t kick him out!” I shout. Bill doesn’t say anything. Neither Mom nor Bree seem at all concerned with backing me up, and there is still no air in this house. I bolt for my room. My schoolbooks are all backed in my bag anyway, clothes can fit easily in my track bag… I don’t need much else. Then, from the doorway.
“Travis,” Garen says, “stop. Stop packing. You’re not coming with me.”
I rotate slowly on the spot. “What do you mean?”
“If you come with me, they can call the cops and have them hunt down my car. An ’88 Testarossa kind of stands out around here. Besides, you’re a minor. I can’t take you over state lines,” he says. I stare.
“State lines,” I echo. “Where are you going?”
He shrugs and heads for his room. I trail after him.
“Back to New York? Back to Ohio? Doesn’t matter. I’m leaving Connecticut, that’s for sure. This place is fucking hell, and I don’t want to be here one second longer than I have to be,” he says. He dumps everything out of his backpack and starts to shove things into it. Clothes, cell phone charger, and notebook after notebook after notebook. Handwritten sheet music spills out onto the floor, and he blinks at it, but doesn’t stoop to pick it up.
“Take me with you. Please. All I need is you,” I say softly. He shakes his head and hoists his bag onto his shoulder.
“Goodbye, Travis. I’ll miss you,” he says. He leans down and kisses me, barely a brush of mouth on mouth. He picks up his guitar and walks out.
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