Author's Note: This chapter includes extended discussion of rape and abuse, with most of this discussion initiated and carried out by a victim-blaming rape apologist who refuses to believe Garen's story about what happened. If this is something you find triggering, please proceed with extreme caution in this chapter. Additional warnings for mild violence, graphic (consensual) sexual content, and consensual non-monogamy.

"The body is not the only target of rape. Violence does not always take a visible form, and not all wounds gush blood." -Haruki Murakami

224 days sober

I don’t know how Declan and I spend the night. I don’t know if he stays curled up with me, nibbling at my throat long after I’ve dozed off watching the video on his phone, or if he wriggles away the second my eyes are closed and sleeps pressed against the wall. When the alarm goes off at quarter to five, he climbs right over me and is out of bed, dressed, and out the door before I’ve even had time to blink the sleep from my eyes. He doesn’t even stop to turn off the alarm.

“Uh,” I say, turning to meet Javi’s barely-conscious gaze from across the room. “That was… abrupt.”

Javi shakes his head, though. “Nah. Same thing he does every morning. I mean, usually he makes the bed first, in case we have room inspections later, but usually there isn’t somebody in the bed.”

It doesn’t sound like Javi is trying to suggest that I do the same, but I’m suddenly feeling very aware of the fact that this isn’t my room.

“Why does he leave so quickly? PT doesn’t start for another fifteen,” I say.

“The ladies in the kitchen think he’s sweet, so if he gets down there early enough, they like to make him protein shakes before training.”

“Sweet,” I say doubtfully. I mean, I think he’s sweet sometimes, but that’s because he sets cars on fire for me. I’m pretty sure most people operate off a very different definition of the word.

Javi shrugs. “Most of the staff here would agree. I think Sergeant Smitth kind of wants to adopt him. But like, you of all people should know that there’s more than one side to Dec.” Javi gestures to my bed—Declan’s bed. “And now, apparently there’s a gay side, too.”

I slip out from under the covers—Javi flinches at first, like he expects me to have my dick out, ready for some hot Patton man action—and start straightening the covers, fixing them with hospital corners, the way we’re taught to do for inspections. On a normal morning, I would already be on my third cup of coffee, so I’m surprised I’m even capable of tying my shoes, much less remembering to add, “He’s not gay, you know. He still fucks girls, and as far as I know, he’s never even looked at any guy but me. He’s still straight, he says.”

Javi, who has finally untangled himself from his sheets, pauses in the middle of changing his t-shirt and peers out at me through the neck hole. “But he bangs you, right?”

No, he gets banged by me. There’s a huge part of me that wants to go door-to-door through this entire hall to make sure every single guy in the squad is completely clear on the fact that I absolutely do not bottom, but I’m not exactly sure how cool Declan would be with the idea of me telling people that he’s the one who takes it. Instead, I say, “We’ve been fucking for a while, yeah.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound like any version of ‘straight’ I’m familiar with, but hey. His dick, his business, I guess,” Javi says. He still sounds doubtful, far from his usual obnoxious cheerfulness. It’s disconcerting as shit, considering everything that went down yesterday, and I yank the door open to escape to the quad, only to find myself practically nose to nose with Taylor.

“Oh. An ambush. Delightful,” I say flatly. “Join us, won’t you? We were just having a fun little chat about where exactly Campbell falls on the Kinsey Scale, and as a fellow six, I’m sure you have some insight.”

“Yeeeeah, not exactly why I came by,” Taylor says slowly.

“Bi,” I echo, turning to raise my eyebrows at Javi. “That’s a possibility.”

Taylor clears his throat so I’ll look back in his direction. “Do you think maybe we could talk for a minute before we head down to PT? I’ll be quick, I promise.”

I’m pretty sure I stare at him a little longer than either of us is really cool with. He doesn’t look like he wants to start a fight with me, and he has been a fairly easygoing dude the whole time I’ve known him, but my hackles are still raised from last night’s confrontation with Charlie. I know where I really stand with the guys in the squad—no matter how much they like me now, no matter how much fun they pretend to think I am, Charlie is the one they’ve been friends with since freshman year, and he’s the one they’re going to stand by. Right now, I’m not sure I can trust anyone at this school other than Declan and his firestarting hands.

When Taylor doesn’t rescind his request, I square my shoulders and say, “Yeah. Guess so.”

He gives me a little smile and makes his way out to the common room, where he guides us to a corner that’s empty, but still out in the open. It’s good—I don’t want to be alone with anyone right now, and I’m fucking pathetic for feeling that way, but I can’t shake it just yet.

I’m not sure what I’m expecting Taylor to say, but I’m definitely surprised when he starts with, “How are you feeling today?”

I shrug, not wanting to say shitty, but not being able to truthfully say fine.

Taylor presses on, “You seemed really fucked up yesterday, after what happened with Charlie—”

“Don’t really wanna talk about that, dude,” I interrupt. “Not if you’re just going to call me a lying psycho, too.”

“That’s not what I want to say to you, so if you could just chill for a minute, that’d be awesome,” Taylor says, frowning.

I don’t wanna chill for a minute. I don’t wanna chill for even a second. What I want is to punch Taylor right in his smug face for daring to cop an attitude with me about this of all things. My jaw is clenched tight, so I know I’m not baring my teeth like an animal, but I can feel my upper lip curling just a little bit, the very beginnings of a snarl.

My face must be enough for Taylor to realize that I could use a more fucking delicate hand right now, because he ducks his head and says, “Sorry. That was obnoxious. It’s just, uh… I’m a little on edge, maybe. Charlie’s not really talking to me either right now, and I think Sam feels like it’s his responsibility, as Charlie’s roommate, to ignore me, too.”

“Why,” I say flatly, “did you accuse Charlie’s brother of rape, too?”

“No, but I did tell him that if he’s trying to start a fight in the group, then I’m going to be on your side,” Taylor says.

If Charlie’s refusal to believe me last night caught me off guard, it’s nothing compared to the disbelief I’m feeling now at Taylor’s seemingly unwavering conviction in whatever I might say. I blink. “You serious?”

“A hundred percent,” he says, hitching his chin. “Look, here’s the thing, Garen. Charlie feels like he has to stand by his brother no matter what, and I get why he feels that way. But the rest of us don’t have the same obligation. We have to make a choice. Some of the guys—Steve, Sam, they don’t really get that. They say that nobody really knows the full story except for you and David, so the rest of us should just stay out of it and not pick sides. Except, I’m not too sure I can do that. See, I’ve got this sister. She’s a couple years older, name’s Lisbeth. When—”

“Your parents named you guys Elizabeth and Taylor?” I have to interrupt. “Like, the old bitch with the diamonds and all the ex-husbands? That’s really fucked up—”

“Lisbeth. Two syllables. No ‘e,’ no ‘a’. And it’s not like you have any room to talk, because last I checked, ‘Garen’ wasn’t exactly cracking the top ten lists of most popular first names. And I’m trying to connect with you here, so shut the fuck up and let me talk.” It takes him a minute to seem entirely sure that I can keep quiet. Once satisfied, he takes a deep breath and says, “When my sister was a freshman in high school, something happened to her. She was at this party, and a guy she knew—a guy she thought she could trust—attacked her. It wasn’t the same as what happened to you. It was one time, and she was able to get out of the room before he could really… and she didn’t keep quiet about it, is the thing. She told my mom, and the cops got involved, and everybody at her school knew what happened, but none of that really mattered in the end, because most people she knew didn’t believe her. The guy who hurt her was older, popular, a good athlete, and people said that like it meant something. Like being a rapist wasn’t a big deal, as long as he smiled at the right people when he walked down the halls. The cops said they didn’t have enough evidence of wrongdoing to pursue a case against him, and everybody at Lisbeth’s school took that to mean that she was making it up, so they were just… they were fucking animals to her. She went through that whole ordeal, and then had to put up with their shit on top of it. Things got so bad, she had to change schools. Guess you know what that’s like, though.”

My nerves tingle a little at that, like all the blood is draining from my face, or I’m blushing—getting too cold or too hot at once. It feels like being right back in the classroom in Lakewood High where Josslyn Pryce tore into me until I choked out the truth about Dave. I don’t want to relive even a second of that afternoon, but I can’t really tell Taylor off for reminding me of a day he doesn’t even know occurred. Instead, all I get to do is look down at the toes of my sneakers and say, “I’m sorry that happened to your sister.”

“I’m sorry that happened to you,” Taylor says. “Because it did happen, Garen. I know it did. I know that no decent person would ever make up a story like that just for whatever bullshit reasons Charlie’s trying to convince himself you have. I also know that no decent person would value keeping the peace over keeping their friend’s trust, which is why I think it’s stupid for Steve and Sam to say they want to stay out of this. David Walczyk doesn’t give a shit what I think, okay? He barely knows me. You, on the other hand, see me every single day. We train together, we eat together, we have classes together. I don’t care if David thinks I’m butting into his business; I care if you feel like you can trust me, and I don’t think you can do that if you can’t be sure that I’m trusting you about this. I believe you, alright? I’m on your side. And I just, uh… I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”

He gives a half-assed shrug and wanders backward a couple of steps, like he figures we might as well head down to PT. Conversation over—move on.

I throw a hand out and grab a fistful of his t-shirt, rooting him to the spot. My heart is pounding, and my head is aching, and I just need a minute to process all of this. I’m either relieved or panicking, I’m not really sure which. Maybe both.

I’m relieved that Taylor believes I’m telling the truth about what happened to me, that he realizes I wouldn’t lie about something like that, that he wants me to trust him like he apparently trusts me.

And I’m fucking panicking because if Taylor believes that this really happened—if this guy who I’ve only been casual friends with for a couple of months believes me—then it’s the truest thing that’s left. It’s another thing to tack onto the list of shameful secrets I can’t seem to stop myself from revealing to these guys, until I’m just Garen: the guy who got raped, and Garen: the guy who got himself beaten, and Garen: the alcoholic, Garen: the drug addict, Garen: the whore, Garen: the monumental fuck-up.

“Are you okay?” Taylor says slowly, and I shake my head violently from side to side, but when I try to say any of the shit that I’m thinking, all that comes out is, “You shouldn’t talk about what happened to your sister.”

“What?”

“You shouldn’t—” I stop, close my eyes, and god, I should probably stop shaking my head before people start thinking I’m having a seizure. I make myself still. “It’s not your story to tell. You shouldn’t tell people what happened to her, she’d be so fucking pissed at you, she’d be so ashamed—”

“No, she wouldn’t,” Taylor interrupts me in that same slow, carefully enunciated tone. “She’s got nothing to be ashamed of, and she knows that. I mean, it took a lot of therapy, but she knows it now. She’s in school for social work, and she’s a counselor at a rape crisis center. She’d be okay with me telling her story to anyone who she thought it could help.”

I don’t fucking need his help. I know he’s trying to be a good guy right now, but everything he’s saying is just making me feel weaker—like I need people to help take care of me because I can’t fucking do it for myself. And I hate that, I hate being coddled like this, so I do the only thing I know how to do when things get hard: I laugh it off.

“Thanks, man. I appreciate the sentiment, but I’m, you know… I’m fine. And you don’t have to worry about taking my side over Charlie’s, ‘cause in case you didn’t notice last night, Declan is handling the whole ‘ruin a four-year friendship over Garen’s childhood trauma’ thing. Don’t need to add your name to the roster, right?” I say. There’s a big, stupid smile on my face, and it makes me want to rip my own teeth out.

Taylor frowns back at me. “G, if Charlie’s the type of person who’s going to end friendships with people so that he can side with a rapist, then I don’t—”

“Can you stop—” I’m yelling, oh, shit. I clamp my mouth shut, swallow, and say in the quietest, steadiest voice I can manage, “Can you stop saying that word, okay? I don’t use that word. I hate that word. I hate talking about this in general, so, it’s cool that you believe me and all, but I sort of just want to go to PT and get screamed at by Smitth and maybe hit something. Got it?”

“Yeah,” Taylor says. He nods, and for some reason, the fact that he’s agreeing with me pisses me off, too. “Got it. Let’s go.”

When we get down to the squad, Charlie, Sam, Steve, and Javi are all clustered together, shooting the shit like usual. Charlie looks more on edge than normal, though, and he keeps glancing over at the door to Whitman. When he spots me and Taylor approaching, his mouth thins out into a line, and he turns his back.

“Ignore him,” Taylor says quietly. “Campbell and I are both with you on this, and the other guys will eventually realize they should be, too. Until then, fucking forget Charlie, okay?”

“Yes, boss,” I mutter. Taylor gives me a small smile and goes to stand with the rest of the group, on the opposite side from Charlie. It’s distance, sure, but it’s not really enough distance, so I scan the quad until I find the sanctuary I’m looking for.

Declan is standing maybe ten yards away from the others, sucking on the straw of a plastic cup full of some pasty, off-white horribleness. When our eyes meet, he leans down to pick up a second cup, which he holds out to me.

“This looks like someone shot the world’s biggest load in a travel cup,” I say, popping the lid off so that I can give it a wary sniff. It smells like cashews and fake vanilla. Great. But when I look up, Declan is giving me that carefully blank stare, the one that says you fucked up, and I’m waiting for you to figure out exactly how you fucked up. The only thing I can assume is that I’ve rejected whatever mating ritual he’s trying to act out here—providing for the person who spent the night in his bed, proving he can fulfill more than just my periodic need for an arsonist, something else that’d only make sense in Declan’s warped worldview.

I snap the lid back into place and take a long sip through the straw, keeping my eyes on Declan’s and my cheeks hollowed maybe more than necessary. Once I’ve sucked down about a fifth of the shake—and Christ, I’d rather drink sixteen ounces of jizz than this foul mess—I lower the cup and say, “Thanks for the drink. And for letting me stay over.”

“I didn’t let you stay over, I asked you to. There’s a difference,” he says, because ‘you’re welcome’ is just too difficult for him, I guess.

I take another step closer so that the toes of our sneakers are touching and say in an undertone, “Alright. In that case, thanks for what you did last night.”

Declan’s breath hitches like I’ve just said something absolutely filthy. He sways in place, inching ever so slightly forward into my space so that his mouth is near my ear when he says quietly, “We can’t talk about this now.”

“But what if I want to show you my gratitude?” I murmur, nudging one of my knees between his.

He huffs a faint laugh and kicks at my sneaker. “You can show me whatever you want, but not now.” His free hand comes up to grip my wrist for the briefest of seconds before dropping back to his side. I’m all too aware of the fact that the other guys in our squad are standing less than fifty feet away. Declan must be, too, because his voice is barely a whisper when he says, “The police in New Haven will investigate what happened, but there’s nothing for them to find. I didn’t leave anything behind—”

“You left a big fuck-off burning vehicle behind, Dec. Can’t they test for an accelerant?”

“Acetone burns hot enough and fast enough that there isn’t much of a residue left. I stopped at a twenty-four-hour CVS halfway between here and New Haven, bought a couple of bottles of nail polish remover. Self checkout, paid in cash, didn’t have to say a word to anyone. I parked in a lot with no cameras, walked a few blocks to David’s building. He doesn’t even lock his fucking car. Do you realize how stupid that is?”

“So stupid,” I breathe, clenching my free hand around the hem of Declan’s t-shirt. Hearing all the details of what he did makes it seem so much more real, and fuck, I feel almost dizzy right now.

Declan must get it, because he crowds even closer so that his chest bumps against mine and his lips brush against my ear. It sounds like he’s talking dirty to me when he goes on, “The car alarm didn’t even go off when I cracked open the back windshield. I poured the bottles out in the backseat, tossed a match, filmed it from across the lot so that no one would see me standing near the car if they came outside. The second the flames got big enough to really get anyone’s attention, I bailed. Tossed the empty bottles in a trash bin outside a Dunkin Donuts halfway back, deleted the video last night after you fell asleep. There’s nothing, Anderson, especially considering you and I have each other and Javi as an alibi. But Walczyk and his parents are going to try to sic the police on one or both of us anyway. We need to cool off for a bit, just for a few days. Until the cops have looked into the whole thing and declared it a random act of destruction by some city kids.”

“I don’t want to cool off for a bit,” I say. “I want to take you back up to your room and fuck you into the mattress.”

“Just for a few days,” he repeats. “We just need to be casual about this for a couple of days, and then we can—”

But I don’t get a chance to find out what non-casual thing Declan thinks we can do once the smoke clears, because it’s officially five o’clock, which means we’re late to PT, an announcement that is heralded by the dulcet tones of my lord and master--

“Anderson! Campbell!” Sergeant Smitth barks from several feet away, startling us both. “I don’t know what’s going on over there, but I’m positive I don’t like the look of it. Get over here and get in formation.”

“Yes, sir,” Declan says, at the same time that I say, “We’re talking, Sarge, it’s rude to interrupt.”

I start that day’s PT session with twenty push-ups.

When I pull into the driveway that night after MLEP, Travis and Omelette are just rounding the end of the block. Omelette starts straining at his leash the second he sees me get out of the car, so Travis lets himself be yanked down the street. I drop to my knees to greet the dog, who licks my face a couple of times, then flops down onto my legs, content as all hell to pin me down so I’ll have no choice but to shower him with affection until nightfall. The attention is nice, actually. Declan’s ‘keep it cool’ plan has involved large amounts of fucking ignoring me all day, Charlie spent all of chem class glaring at me. Steve, Sam, and Javi all seem to be doing their best to keep things calm, and Taylor’s encouraging half-smiles are simultaneously sweet and infuriating. I feel too drained to do anything other than pet the stupid dog right now.

After a few seconds, Travis joins us on the asphalt. “You didn’t come home last night. I was worried. I was going to call, but I figured maybe you’d just, um… hooked up. With Declan.”

Agreeing with him would be the easiest lie in the world. All I have to do is nod, and I bet he’ll be quietly annoyed enough to stop asking. But playing like I’m fine has been difficult ever since I got out of Declan’s bed this morning, and it seems next to impossible right now. Instead, I admit, “I stayed in his and Javi’s room last night, but it wasn’t a hookup. Yesterday was kind of a clusterfuck.”

“Parents’ Day didn’t go well?” Travis says, frowning.

I shake my head and bury both hands in Omelette’s silky fur. He beats his tail against the ground and pants sloppily against the knee of my uniform trousers, slobbering right through the fabric. It’s gross, but I’m afraid he’ll wander off if I push him away, so I let him keep doing it.

Travis shifts off his knees and sits down cross-legged. He says, “I thought you said your mom was working yesterday. You told me she asked to come for dinner later this week. I was—” He stops, coughs, looks embarrassed. “I was actually going to try cooking something, instead of just ordering out again. Ben gave me a recipe, something he said was simple enough that even a couple of culinary failures like us could manage it.”

“Yeah,” I say finally. “Mom’s still coming for dinner on Thursday. My parents weren’t the problem; everyone else’s were.”

I expect a prompt, but Travis doesn’t give me one. He just waits for me to get it out in my own time. It takes a minute, but eventually, I continue, “So, uh, Declan’s mom showed up. She seemed to have every intention of glossing right over the part where she dumped him on his deadbeat, heroin-addicted dad when he was seven, then let him get shoved into a series of foster homes for two years until his grandparents found out where he was and adopted him. Declan is obviously less interested in forgetting all of this. He spent all day stoned out of his mind, ignoring her while I tried to piss her off so she’d leave, but she stuck around until close to dinnertime. After she finally left, the shit sort of hit the fan with Charlie’s parents.” I swallow the horrible sharpness in my throat. “I should’ve expected that, though. They’ve hated me for a while now, I guess.”

“How can they hate you? I thought yesterday was the first time you met any of your friends’ parents,” Travis says.

“’Cept for Charlie’s parents,” I say. Travis won’t understand, if I leave it at that. I can tell from the expression on his face that he has no idea where this is going. It takes me another minute before I can make my voice work long enough for me to softly add, “Dave’s parents.”

Travis goes very still. Too still. Still enough that it makes me want to crawl right out of my skin and into the dirt for having said something awful enough to make him look like that. I hoist Omelette off my lap and onto his feet so that I can stand and lead the way back into the house. Omelette follows me, but I’m not sure Travis does.

Sure enough, it takes about five minutes for him to join me in the living room. I’m curled up in the middle of the couch with the dog. There’s space for Travis to join us on my other side, but he remains standing, and I try my hardest not to think that it’s because he doesn’t want to be close to me right now.

“Dave Walczyk?” he says.

“I’m sorry, do you know of any other Daves who put this look on my face?” I say flatly.

“And Charlie—the Charlie you’ve been friends with for like, four months now—he’s Dave Walczyk’s brother? That’s… his name is Charlie Walczyk?” Travis says. I shrug, but it means the same thing as a nod right now. Travis rakes ten nails deep across his scalp, and when he lets his hands drop a minute later, his blond hair is sticking up in a dozen different directions, and his eyes are somehow blank and wild all at once. “How the fuck could you not tell me that you befriended your abuser’s younger brother? That’s the kind of thing you’re supposed to tell me, Garen. For fuck’s sake, that’s the kind of thing you’re not supposed to do.”

“I can be friends with whoever I want to be friends with,” I snap. “And look, Charlie’s not—he isn’t like Dave, okay? Or at least, he’s—I mean, I thought he wasn’t. But he sort of… things went to shit yesterday, I told you.”

“What does that even mean?”

“He said some things to me yesterday that—” I don’t believe you, I don’t believe my brother would do something like that. That’s not who he is. He’s not a fucking rapist. “He, um. We got into a fight, I guess. It was my fault, I tried to call his parents out for what Dave did, and it, uh—” He wouldn’t have had to rape you. You gave it up for him anyway, everybody knows that, everybody knows what a fucking slut you are. “Christ. Can I just—”

“Take as much time as you need,” Travis says, sinking onto the couch next to me. His posture is still rigid, and I can tell he wants to yell at me right now, but whatever look I have on my face must be deterring him.

I hate that. I topple sideways onto Omelette so I can hide my face in his fur. Om’s an idiot who thinks he’s getting a hug, so he doesn’t try to get away. After a minute of nothing, Travis carefully plants one palm between my shoulder blades, slowly rubbing them like he thinks I might be sick.

I close my eyes. “I told them about the thing.”

When I don’t clarify, Travis clears his throat and confesses, “I don’t really know what that means.”

“The thing,” I repeat. “What Dave did, but the, um… not the abuse. The other thing, the one we don’t talk about.”

Travis’ hand stops moving. “The thing I asked you about after you got home from that party a couple weeks back? The thing that people at school used to talk about?”

The fucking thing that everybody else in this world seems to know except for you, I want to say. The thing that Jamie knew happened as soon as he saw me that night, the thing I accidentally told Ben and Alex after my relapse, the thing Doc Howard keeps trying to make me talk about, the thing that Stohler saw on my face the day she shaved my head, the thing that Charlie doesn’t believe, the thing that all the guys in my squad known now, the thing that Declan committed arson over.

“The rape,” I say. The word feels so unbelievably heavy on my tongue, but I can’t take it back now. I roll over onto my back. I’m wedged between Omelette and the back of the couch, and my legs are twisted up under me, and Travis is fucking staring at me. I stare right back. “I told Charlie and his parents all about how Dave raped me when I was a sophomore—about how the first time he and I ever had sex, the first time I slept with someone who wasn’t Jamie, the first time I bottomed, it was Dave holding me down in his car and making me take it. And how he kept doing it until I broke up with him three months later, and how I had to be drunk in order to stand being alone with him because I knew he was going to do that to me every chance he got, and how I had to let him fuck me because I was scared of how badly he’d hurt me if I didn’t, and how it all happened again for those two weeks he and I were together last spring, and how I’m completely fucked in the head now because of it. I told them, but they didn’t believe me. They said I’m a liar. So, I guess Charlie and I aren’t friends anymore, and it just, um… it sucks.”

Instead of saying anything—telling me this is too much, telling me he’s done, kicking me off the couch or out of our house—Travis raises his free hand to his mouth and gnaws on his thumbnail, his eyes roving over my face. He looks like he’s waiting for me to continue, but I can’t think of a single thing I could possibly have to add.

I untangle my legs and stretch them out as much as I can, digging my toes under Travis’ thigh when I run out of room. “So, you could say something. That would be nice, maybe.”

“Yeah, I just—” he starts to say, but the words are kind of garbled because he’s still chewing on his nail. He lets his hand drop to his own knee, then after a brief hesitation, he moves it to mine instead. “Charlie is an asshole. So are his parents. I’m not too surprised about the latter, considering it must take a special kind of awful to raise a son like Dave, but it’s not—”

“Travis, you heard me, right?” I interrupt. “Not just the part about Charlie not wanting to be my friend anymore. Everything before that, too, the sex stuff, the—”

Travis shakes his head once sharply and says, “No, don’t say—it wasn’t ‘sex stuff,’ Garen. It was violence. Sexual abuse is still abuse, and the fact that he hurt you differently doesn’t mean it was about anything other than hurting you.”

“But why don’t you care?” I say.

Travis looks stunned, hurt by that for all of a second before he shakes off his own feelings and says, “Of course I care, G. But if you’re expecting me to say it’s too much for me to handle hearing about, you’re going to be disappointed. I want you to talk to me about this.” He hesitates, then tightens his grip on my knee. “I’ve wanted you to talk to me about this since I first realized what had happened.”

My whole body goes cold so quickly, I shiver. “What, you… you knew?”

He frees his hand from under my back and raises it to rub awkwardly at the back of his neck. “I don’t know if I can really say I knew. Nobody told me about it—James won’t talk about what it was like when you were dating Dave at Patton, and Ben won’t tell me anything you’ve said about it since. But I’ve, um… I’ve suspected it since the last night of the school play, when I stayed over and you asked me to be on top. I’m not an idiot, G, I could figure out why you weren’t okay.”

“I wish you’d forget that night,” I mutter.

“Well, I wish it had never happened,” Travis says. “I’m still sorry. I hate that I agreed to do that, I hate that I ever made you feel anything like what you felt when Dave—”

I try to protest, but at first, all that comes out is a hoarse, desperate whine, which sort of makes me feel like I’m going to pass out, or scream, or cry. I press the heels of my hands to my closed eyelids and say, “Jesus. It’s not the same, it’s not even close to the fucking same. I asked you to top me, I never asked Dave—you and I, we made a mistake. We shouldn’t have tried that, I shouldn’t have asked you to do it, but you stopped. Dave never stopped. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. He broke me, Travis. He ruined me. I’m completely fucked up, I’m a mess, I’m so—”

“You’re not.” Travis’ hand leaves my leg. My eyes are closed, but I can still hear him moving around, feel the couch shift as he slips off to kneel on the floor next to me and coaxes Omelette out of the way. Once the dog slinks off to curl up near the sliding door, Travis curls his hands over my wrists and guides my hands out of the way so that we can make horrible, shameful eye contact. “You aren’t broken, and you aren’t ruined.”

I try to squirm away. Travis gives up on holding my wrists and leans right in, winding his arms tight around my shoulders and pulling me halfway upright, even though my bones have all melted and I can’t do much but lean into him.

“You’re going to be okay. Fuck Dave Walczyk, and fuck Charlie, and fuck their parents, and fuck every single person who can’t see how strong and brave and good you are. Because trust me, Garen, I’ve seen you when you were at your most broken, and it’s nothing like the way you are now. You’re just—”

Travis pulls halfway out of the hug so that he can look at me, but his eyes only meet mine for a few seconds before they flicker shut and he leans in. It’s a kiss, but it doesn’t feel like a kiss. It just feels like comfort. When he pulls back, it’s only enough for him to rest his forehead against mine. “I know you, G. I know what you’ve been through, and I know it hurt you, but I also know that you’re doing so much better now. And that’s what matters, right?”

I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m willing to pretend it is, if it means I can stop feeling so shitty tonight. I nod and say, “Yeah, you’re right, you’re right,” until Travis smiles.

 

226 days sober

“So, do you remember all those times I told you how much I hate your mom?”

“Yep.”

“And do you remember all those times I called her a homophobe and an anti-Semite and a bitch troll sent from the bowels of hell to unleash chaos and torment upon my life?”

“Yep.”

“And do you remember that time I got unbelievably stoned before dinner, told your mom that you cut yourself, threatened to bite her fingers off, then tried to convince everyone that I had slept with Ben while you and I were together?”

“Yep.”

“Have you decided to get back at me by killing my mom?”

“Eat me.”

I take the wooden spoon from Travis’ hand and carefully prod whatever the fuck is in the baking dish on the counter. The mush gives easily under pressure, then sags back into place the second I lift the spoon back out. “Might have to, ‘cause I’m not sure we can eat this.”

“I followed Ben’s instructions exactly,” Travis groans, snatching up the printed, sauce-splattered email. He looks wild-eyed and kind of panicked as he rereads the instructions for probably the sixth time since we pulled the dish out of the oven and discovered… this. There’s a smear of sauce on his cheek, and it’s probably the cutest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He jabs at the instructions again and reads aloud, “Preheat oven to four-fifty. Butter the baking dish. Cut the tomatoes and line the dish with them. Blend the crushed tomatoes and the garlic in the food processor, mix that with the pasta, then add the olive oil, oregano, salt, and pepper. Pour mixture into dish in an even layer, cover with remaining tomato slices, drizzle with olive oil, and bake for one hour. See? And I did all that. I bought everything exactly as he said, I got the right tomatoes, I got the right pasta. Why the fuck does it look like this?”

“I have no idea,” I say, pulling my phone out of my pocket. “So, pizza. Think I should get two mediums, or a large?”

For a second, I think Travis is going to grab the phone right out of my hand and smash it on the ground. Instead, he just stomps around me and goes to get his laptop from the living room. “We’re not having fucking pizza. I said I’d cook for your mom, and she’s going to be here in half an hour. Ben got me into this mess, and he’s going to get me out of it.”

But once we’ve managed to coax Ben onto Skype so that we can show him the definitely-not-pasta-alla-formiana in the dish, he doesn’t seem like he has any intention of helping us at all. Mostly he just levels us with a completely silent, unimpressed stare for two solid minutes before he drags Stohler into frame and sends Jamie an invitation to the video chat so that more people can understand the depths of failure taking place in this kitchen.

“I tried,” Travis says miserably.

“I know, th-that’s why it’s so funny,” Stohler gasps out. She’s laughing so hard, there are actual, literal tears streaming down her face, tracking eyeliner everywhere. She turns and buries her face against Ben’s shoulder, giggling out, “Oh god, he tried so hard. He did his best, and that’s all he could do.”

Travis has still got the laptop turned around so the webcam is focused on the dish, which means our friends can’t see that he looks like someone just shot our dog in front of him. I snatch the laptop out of his hands and tilt it so that they can see my very best bitchface.

“Look, are you going to help, or not? Because in case you were too busy being assholes to notice, Travis is kind of panicking, and my mom’s going to be here for dinner soon.”

“Cut your losses. Order Chinese,” Jamie suggests. The top few buttons of his Oxford are undone, and he looks like he’s trying not to pout; I’m pretty positive that he expected Ben to be inviting him to the dirty-sexy-fun kind of video chat, and he’s trying to pretend he’s not disappointed that his dude is fully clothed right now.

“I said I’d cook,” Travis says stubbornly.

“It isn’t as if Marian has any culinary skills of her own,” Jamie points out. “I’m sure she’ll understand.”

Ben raises his hand and says, “I’m not sure I understand. Seriously, Travis, the instructions I gave you were painfully simple. What the fuck did you do, double the cooking time?”

“No,” Travis groans, collapsing at the kitchen table. I sit down next to him and adjust the screen so we’re both in view. “I did exactly what it said. I preheated the oven, I lined the dish with the tomatoes, I boiled the pasta, I blended the tomatoes and garlic, I put the mix in the dish, I—”

“You, ah—” Ben actually closes his eyes for a moment, one hand still raised to signal for silence. On the other side of my screen, Jamie is smirking, his gaze focused on the part of his screen where Ben’s face must be. I don’t fucking get what’s so funny, or so unbearable, but after a minute of trying to regain his composure, Ben finally says, “You cooked the pasta, and you mixed it with the sauce. And then you baked it in the oven.”

“Yes.”

“You cooked the pasta,” Ben repeats, “and mixed it with the sauce. And then you took that fully cooked meal, and you put it in the oven. And you cooked it again for an hour. And you’re still having trouble understanding why your pasta is overcooked.”

Stohler has reached the point of muffled sobbing. Jamie looks like the only thing in the world that’s keeping him from joining her is a steadfast devotion to his friendship with both Travis and me.

Travis opens his mouth, closes it again, and frowns. He looks down at the instructions, still looking lost. It’s sort of embarrassing. I put my arm around his shoulders, half hoping he’ll give up, but the contact just seems like enough to make him convinced that he must be right. “But why would a recipe call for that? Why the fuck would anyone bake uncooked pasta? It would just be hard as a rock.”

“It cooks in the sauce, Trav,” Ben says. He’s wincing a little now, like Travis’ heartbroken face is getting to him. “Do you have enough of the ingredients to start over? I can stay online with you and talk you through it.”

Travis sighs and turns to look at me. “You should call your mom. I think dinner’s going to be a little bit late.”

“Thanks, babe, I realized that on my own,” I say. I wipe the sauce off his cheek with the pad of my thumb, then kiss the spot I’ve just cleaned. “It’s okay. Take as much time as you need.”

I sneak outside to take Omelette on a quick walk around the block while I call Mom to tell her that Dinner: Mark One has turned out to be a shitshow. She tells me that she was about to leave the office for our place, but if it’s going to be another hour, she’ll stop at one of the bakeries on the same block as the firm where she works and pick up something for dessert.

“Thanks,” I tell her. “And just, uh… Travis is kind of spazzing out about dinner now, so even if it sucks, can you just tell him it’s really good? He and I both suck at cooking, but he’s trying.”

“Contrary to what you and your father believe, I do have some tact, Garen,” Mom says dryly. “I’m sure dinner will be wonderful. Regardless of whether that turns out to be an accurate prediction, I will thank Travis profusely for the delicious meal he has gone through all this trouble to provide. Now go help him.”

By the time Omelette and I get back to the house, dinner is back in the oven and the video conference has ended. Travis is camped out on the floor in front of the coffee table, working on his homework, and he glances up when I enter. “Dinner will be ready in an hour. And James says everyone should be at his place by eight o’clock tomorrow night. That’ll give us time to grab something to eat before you have to be at work.”

I climb up onto the couch behind him, and he leans back against my legs. I card my fingers through his hair and say, “Are you sure you guys even want to come to the club tomorrow?”

He tips his head back to look at me upside down. “Of course. It’s your first night, and we want to support you.”

I’m not sure I want them to support me. Letting Stohler trick strangers into slipping dollars in my waistband last week was funny, but the thought of Travis watching me shake my ass around for random club patrons makes me feel a little sick.

“I appreciate that. Really, I do. And I know Ben’s coming to the city anyway so that Jamie can shackle him to his bed, or whatever. But Stohler was just here last week for my audition, and you have to be at work early the next morning. If you don’t want to go, you can stay home.”

“Sounds like you don’t want me to go,” Travis says slowly.

“I do,” I say, even though no, I don’t. “But you, um… my job is basically to take off all my clothes, trap myself in a cage, dance around, and flirt with gross strangers so they’ll stick money in my shorts. Do you really want to see that?”

He tries and fails to hide the beginning of a grimace. When he sees that I’ve caught the expression, he admits, “Not really. You know I’m not a fan of seeing you with other guys. But this is different. Seeing you wink at a guy in a club so he’ll tip you won’t be nearly as bad as, like… walking in on you jerking off your boyfriend was that one time.”

Our current position isn’t great for staring incredulously, so I grab Travis by the shoulders and shove him around so that he’s kneeling in front of me, facing me properly. “Dude, are you talking about Declan?” Travis gives me an annoyed look. I shake my head. “Declan’s not my boyfriend, Travis. We’ve been hooking up for a few weeks, sure, but it’s casual. He’s still banging half the girls at Ward.”

“Yeah, but you’re not,” Travis says, and I make a face.

“Ew. Obviously. I wouldn’t even want to bang one girl at Ward, let alone—”

“I mean that you’re not having sex with other people,” Travis interrupts. “Clearly you care about being exclusive, even if he doesn’t. And I get that, because you told me months ago that you’re interested in having a relationship with someone who’ll be—”

I clamp my hand over Travis’ mouth because I can’t think of a single other way to shut him up. He’s so far off base, I’m not sure I even know what we’re talking about anymore. When I try to take my hand away, he inhales deeply, like he’s about to launch again, so I clamp back down. He glares at me. I give exactly zero fucks.

“Dec isn’t my boyfriend. He fucks other people, and so do I. I told you: it’s casual. I don’t get why you would think otherwise.”

Travis’ eyes flash, and I drop my hand, mostly ‘cause I’m scared he’s about to bite me if I don’t let him talk. Even once my hand is out of the way, Travis grabs at it so I can’t try to silence him again. “You told me you couldn’t do casual. Back in December, when we were still happy together, you told me that you didn’t want to date me because I wouldn’t be your boyfriend. You said you couldn’t have a casual relationship—”

“Because I wouldn’t have been able to have a casual relationship with you when we first moved here!” I burst out. “The entire reason I had to move away from Lakewood was because I was so fucked in the head. I needed to start over. If I’d tried to do that while still pretending that you and I were just friends with benefits, I would’ve lost my mind over you again, and everything would have fallen apart. I wasn’t ready to be normal about dating then. Not like I am now.”

The annoyance flickers out of Travis’ eyes in half a second. He sits up a little higher, and suddenly, I feel so much more aware of his hands on mine. “You mean… you can be normal about a casual relationship with Declan? Or with other guys, too?”

“Declan’s the only one who has asked,” I say.

Travis isn’t really blinking anymore; he’s too focused on my face, his gaze darting from my eyes to my mouth and back again. “Alright. But what if someone else asked?” He swallows. “What if I asked?”

The doorbell rings, and I turn to look at it so quickly, my neck cracks. “No,” I say. “No, no, fuck off. Bye, Mom, we’re talking.”

“Since when does your mom ring the doorbell?” Travis asks, twisting to look at the door, too.

And I hate not having his attention on me right now, I hate the fact that he already seems to have forgotten what he just said to me. I grab the collar of his t-shirt and yank him back around. He falls halfway into the kiss, and we mostly miss each other’s mouths, and it’s a pretty big disaster, but Travis cups my jaw between his hands and shifts me over a little bit, and then we’re good. We’re really, really fucking good.

The doorbell rings a second time, and before I can stop him, Travis scrambles to his feet and says, “I’ll get it. It’s cool, we’ll just, uh—we’ll talk about this later? After your mom leaves, we’ll talk this out.”

“Tell her to go home,” I suggest. He gives me a dirty look and goes to the door.

Except when the door opens, it isn’t my mom. It’s two dudes in suits. Two fucking pigs in suits, actually, because the thing about being a drug addict is that you get really fucking good at recognizing plain-clothes detectives who are trying to seem casual. Omelette barks and springs up to go greet them. I know he’s a dog and therefore doesn’t really get the concept of cops, but it still feels like a betrayal to see him trying to befriend them. They ignore him anyway.

“Garen Anderson?” says one of the cops, the shorter one with a precisely trimmed goatee.

Travis shakes his head, brow furrowed. “No, I’m his roommate, Travis McCall. He’s, um—” Travis gestures vaguely over his shoulder, then seems to think better of selling me out to total strangers. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“I’m Detective Kirshner, with the New Haven Police Department. This is Detective Hughes. We’re currently investigating an incident that occurred earlier this week, and we’ve been led to believe that Mr. Anderson might be able to offer some insight.” Kirshner takes a step forward. “You don’t mind if we come in, do you?”

My muscles tense up as I prepare to launch myself off the couch and tell them that yeah, I do mind if they come in, but Travis is already shaking his head and shuffling awkwardly to the side. “No, of course not. Garen’s just, um… he’s in the living room.”

Oh, Christ. If I get arrested because of Travis’ need to be accommodating, I’m going to be so unbelievably pissed. I’m not an idiot, I knew this was coming. Of course Dave would tell the cops to come question me about his car, after the scene I caused with his parents on Monday. It was probably fucking Charlie’s idea, his way of getting back at me once he heard what had happened to his brother.

The detectives step into the house, and I can’t stop myself from glancing around the living room to make sure there’s nothing out that could get me in trouble. The last thing I need is to have a couple of cops see that I’ve got a switchblade or an unregistered pistol, then take me into custody because it was in plain sight. Thankfully, all my sketchy, illegal weapons are secured upstairs in my bedroom, and god knows these cops are never getting up there without a warrant.

“Garen Anderson?” Kirshner repeats when he sees me.

I let my brows pinch together a little in hopefully convincing confusion. “Yes?”

I’m treated to a repeat of the introductions, this time from Hughes. I focus on letting my confused expression melt into something more wary without letting it go all the way to suspiciously caged. I stand and move to the armchair, gesturing towards the couch. “Yeah, I’ll help, if I can. Do you want to sit down?”

They move to the couch, and the knot in my stomach loosens a little. If they actually had anything on me and came here to arrest me, they wouldn’t be chilling on my sofa right now.

Travis is still lingering in the doorway, his hand twitching at his side as he does his best to refrain from gnawing nervously at his thumbnail, as is his habit. “Is there anything I can get either of you?”

“We’re both fine, thanks,” Kirshner says. “We just have a few questions for Garen here. It’s alright if we call you Garen, isn’t it?” I nod. “Excellent. I’m wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your relationship with a man named David Walczyk.”

It isn’t hard to let myself go rigid at the name. Talking about Dave isn’t suddenly easy, just because I know that these cops are here because he finally got his. Both detectives seem to notice my discomfort, but it’s easy to sell my unease as nervousness, especially when I add, “I haven’t had a relationship with Dave since he put me in the hospital last spring. If this has anything to do with the restraining order that I have against him, do you mind if we wait a few minutes to talk about this? ‘Cause my mom’s coming over for dinner tonight, and she’ll be here any minute. She’s my attorney, and I don’t think she’d want me to talk about this without her here.”

“Sure, we can wait for her,” Kirshner says, bobbing his head. “But I’m curious why you’d assume this is about the no-contact order, if neither of you has violated it.”

And it’s stupid shit like that that makes me fucking hate cops. What kind of asshole phrases something that way? How shitty does a human being have to be in order to think it’s cool to imply that I’m the one who might cross the boundaries the restraining order put in place?

Travis must agree, because despite my pretty fuckin’ explicit request that this conversation wait until my lawyer gets here, he says sharply, “Dave has violated the restraining order. On Valentine’s Day, he came to our house while Garen and I were still at school, and he left him this creepy box full of flowers and presents. A mixed CD full of ‘I miss you’ songs, a note asking Garen to call him so they could meet up. Ms. Weisman reported it—”

“Don’t call my mom ‘Ms. Weisman,’ that’s weird,” I say, but he steamrolls right over me.

“—to the police when it happened. Pelham Village cops came and did a walkthrough of our house to make sure that Walczyk wasn’t in here, waiting for G to get home. People from your department had to go to his place in New Haven to warn him that he’d be arrested if he violated the order again. That has to be on record somewhere, so I’m not sure how there’s even a question about this. Yes, the restraining order was violated. Two months ago, by Dave Walczyk.”

“That is on record, yes,” Kirshner says. “I only wondered why Garen would guess that we’re here about the restraining order now. If you reported the violation back in February, it would be a bit strange for us to only be asking you about it now. I wondered if he might be referring to a more recent incident that hadn’t made its way to the record just yet.” He looks at me, eyes cool. “Have you had any contact with him since February?”

“I want to answer your questions, really, I do,” I lie, letting my mouth pull into something like a regretful grimace. “But I told you already, I want to wait until my attorney gets here. Otherwise, she’ll just want to hear the whole story all over again later, and I try to avoid thinking about Dave as much as possible. The whole point of the restraining order is to keep him away from me, not to make it so I have to keep having conversations about—”

“She’s here,” Travis interrupts. I look at him, then follow his gaze to the window. Mom’s car is turning into the driveway.

I stand up. “Give me two seconds, I’ll go let her know we’ve got company.”

Travis gives me a blank, frozen look, but I can’t exactly let my mom come sauntering in without any idea that my living room is full of fucking pigs. I give everybody in the room the same bland smile and let myself out the front door. Mom is just getting out of her car with a bakery box.

I lope over to her and say, “Hey, so, there are maybe some cops in my house right now.”

I should probably be offended by the fact that she doesn’t even look surprised. She gives me a brief once-over, and finding me unharmed, she asks in an undertone, “What happened?”

“I didn’t do anything,” I say. It isn’t even a lie, technically.

“What happened?” she repeats.

I glance over my shoulder at the house, but the door is still firmly shut, and none of the windows are open. It’s not like they can hear me. I turn back to Mom and say quickly, quietly, “They’re here about something to do with Dave Walczyk. They haven’t said what it is, and I haven’t done anything, I swear. But they said they’re investigating an incident from earlier this week, and I guess they think I’m involved. I told them I wanted to wait until you got here to answer any questions.”

“Good,” Mom says, squeezing my shoulder, and I offer her a brief smile.

“You taught me well. But uh, we kind of need to go in now, because it looks like Travis didn’t grow up in a house that emphasized the importance of not talking to the cops without a lawyer present. He kinda launched on them a minute ago, and I don’t want him to put his foot any further in his mouth.”

Mom huffs and hands me the bakery box. I peek inside. It’s full of macarons. Part of me wants to shove a handful of them in my mouth, but the rest of me is still feeling kind of sick about Travis being alone with the cops right now. I close the box without taking any, and Mom’s eyes widen.

“You really must be nervous,” she says. Without another word, she strides off towards the house, with me trailing after her. When she comes face to face with the cops, she holds her hand out and gives each of them a firm, very lawyer-ly handshake. “Good evening. I’m Marian Weisman. My son tells me that you’re investigating an incident that took place sometime earlier this week, but he neglected to say what specifically you’re referring to.”

“We were just getting to that,” Kirshner says. “But if it’s all the same to you, we have a few things we’d like to get out of the way, first. Before you arrived, Garen was just about to tell us whether he’d had any contact with Dave Walczyk since the incident in February.”

Mom looks over at me, and I blink back. My face is completely blank, but she can see in my eyes that I wasn’t about to tell them shit. She looks back at Kirshner. “If David Walczyk had attempted to contact my son again, we would have reported it. Garen’s safety is our primary concern. I’m unclear on what Mr. Walczyk could possibly say to the contrary.”

“Well, Mr. Walczyk recently found himself on the receiving end of some incredibly threatening property damage. Given that this incident occurred not long after Garen allegedly had a confrontation with members of Mr. Walczyk’s immediate family, he suggested that we look into whether or not Garen might know anything about this.”

“What confrontation?” Mom says sharply. I can’t tell if her tone is directed towards the cop or me, but I’m guessing I’m supposed to be the one to answer.

“Mr. and Mrs. Walczyk were at Patton Military Academy on Monday. They were visiting their other son for Parents’ Day,” I begin, sinking back into the armchair. I’m keeping my voice even and my shoulders hunched so I look as unassuming as possible, but it’s kind of hard for a hundred-and-eighty-pound dude with combat boots and a lip ring to look fragile without seeming like a joke. “At the end of the day, Mrs. Walczyk came up to me and started saying things about how I’d torn their family apart. I said that what Dave did to me wasn’t my fault. Mr. Walczyk said it was, said that I’d seduced Dave.”

“Had you?” Hughes asks.

“How can you ask him that?” Travis snaps. I want to shake my head and tell him it’s fine, I can handle it, but I also sort of want to see him lose it over this. “When they first went out, Walczyk was eighteen and Garen was fifteen. Most fifteen-year-olds can barely manage to seduce their own hand, let alone an adult male. Aside from the obvious issue of statutory rape, which you’re apparently not too concerned with, that’s—”

“Travis, perhaps you should go check on dinner,” Mom interrupts. Travis doesn’t move. His jaw is clenched so tightly, I can see a muscle twitching in his cheek. Mom raises her eyebrows at him. “Please.”

He takes a slow, steadying breath, then walks to the kitchen, Omelette trotting after him. Hughes watches them go, frowning, then says to me, “As you were saying…”

There’s a thin, blue Columbia sweatshirt shoved between the cushion and the arm of the chair I’m sitting in now. It’s mostly mine, now. I’ve seen both Jamie and Travis wear it before, but I can’t remember which one of them I stole it from. The living room isn’t cold, but I pull the sweatshirt on anyway just so that I can pull the sleeves down over my hands and stare at the hems as I speak. “I said some stuff about Dave. About how I was just a kid when I met him, and he’d taken advantage of that. Then I went back to my friends’ room in one of the dormitory halls.”

“Do you happen to remember what time you left?” Kirshner asks.

“Five o’clock the next morning,” I say, glancing up at him. “My, uh… my friend, Declan Campbell. I guess he wanted to make sure I was alright, so he asked me to stay the night there, in the room he and Javi share. We went up to the dorm before dinner, so we had some pizza delivered. Watched a couple movies on his laptop. Slept. Woke up the next morning at about quarter to five, were down in the residential quad by five for the start of physical training. I didn’t actually come home until around quarter to six on Tuesday evening.”

“And neither you nor your friend left the room during the night?” Hughes says. I shake my head. “And he’d corroborate that, I assume? If we go ask him right now, he’ll tell us that he didn’t hear you get up once, and there’s no way you could’ve slipped out of the room without him noticing?”

I can only keep the innocent, wounded vibe going for so long before I snap. Instead of sneaking a little glance, I look Hughes dead in the eyes and say, “He has a twin bed. I slept between him and the wall, with his arm around me. Believe me, if I’d gotten out of bed, he would’ve noticed.”

“Ah,” Kirshner says awkwardly. “Well, we’ll be in touch with your friend shortly, just to confirm. You said his name is Campbell?”

I confirm, spell it, then give them Javi’s name, too.

“Assuming this checks out, I don’t think we’ll have any other questions for you,” Kirshner tells me. “Of course, this was all just a matter of routine. Whenever an incident occurs involving someone who has had domestic disputes in the past, we have to look into the possibility that their previous partner was at fault. Standard protocol for everyone’s comfort.”

“Obviously. I can’t tell you how comfortable I am, knowing that Dave Walczyk can hospitalize my son during the spring of one year, then accuse him of committing some sort of crime the next,” Mom says flatly. She gestures towards the door. “We were about to have a family dinner. If you don’t have any further questions, perhaps you can see yourselves out.”

The cops exchange a brief glance, then stand. “Of course,” Kirshner says. They move towards the door, but he pauses in the middle of the entryway and turns towards the kitchen. “If you don’t mind my asking, where were you on Monday night?”

I roll off my chair and stomp out to the entryway. Travis is still hovering in the kitchen, clutching an oven mitt in both hands.

“And is this more of your standard protocol, Detective?” Mom says flatly.

“No,” Hughes says coolly. “But it’s clear that Mr… McCall, was it?” Travis nods. “It’s clear that Mr. McCall here bears some ill will towards Mr. Walczyk. Given the obvious anger he expressed earlier, I think it merits some—”

“I’m angry that Dave did what he did, and I’m angry that someone I care about had to suffer because of him,” Travis says. “But I’d never—I know he’d just take it out on Garen, if I did anything to him. It’s what he did last year. He was abusing Garen, and I tried to tell him to get out of G’s life, and he put him in the hospital. It’s—” Travis swallows. “It was my fault that Garen got hurt then, and I’d never, ever do anything that could make Dave come after him again. I was home on Monday night. I was working on a group project with some friends from school, and we were all on Skype together until about two in the morning. You can check my call history, if you really need to. Or I’ll give you my friends’ names so you can talk to them directly.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” Kirshner says with a bland smile. “We might be in touch, if we have more questions later on. But for now, you all enjoy the rest of your evening.”

They leave through the front door. Travis, Mom, and I stand in absolute silence, listening for the slam of the car doors, the hum of the engine starting up, the car backing up and speeding off. The moment the car stops being visible through the window above the kitchen sink, Travis strides over to me, reaches into my pocket, and takes out my cell phone.

“You should call him,” he says.

“Call who?” I ask.

“Declan. If those detectives are going to go right over to Patton and confirm your story, you should make sure that he knows what he’s supposed to say.”

I take the phone from Travis, and he turns away from me to go retrieve the pasta alla formiana from the oven. I look over at Mom, who is staring back at me, her mouth drawn tight. “I didn’t lie.”

“Well, you sure as hell didn’t tell the truth,” Travis says. He practically slams the baking dish down on the counter. “If you didn’t know anything about what happened to Dave’s whatever, then you would’ve been pissed. You would’ve been completely furious that those officers had the audacity to question you. Instead, you hunched yourself up into a ball and tried to look innocent, and that’s not how you normally react to anything.”

“I said I didn’t do it. That’s not the same thing as saying that I didn’t know anything about what happened,” I say. “Look, I told those guys the truth. I argued with Charlie and his parents, and then I spent the night in Declan and Javi’s room. I don’t have to call Dec to get him to cover for me. He knows I was there all night.”

Travis finally turns to face me again. His eyes search my face for a long minute, but when that minute ends, I can see his shoulders drop a fraction of an inch. At the very least, he doesn’t look like he thinks I’m bullshitting him.

Mom is another story entirely.

“Tell me what really happened, Garen,” she says.

It’s not like I’ve got a choice. Travis dishes up plates of pasta for all of us, we sit down at the table together, and I tell them the entire story—at least, a version of it. I say the fight was about the abuse, not the rape, because ever actually telling my own mother that that happened is just not an option. I leave out the part about the video of the fire. I definitely leave out the part about Declan kind of getting off on the whole thing. I maybe emphasize the moment where I told Declan I wished Dave’s car would burn to ashes, because Travis is looking way, way too calm about this whole thing.

I’m not even remotely surprised when he says, after I’ve finished speaking, “Okay. Why don’t we just tell the cops it was Declan? They’ll go after the guy who really did it, and then you’ll be fine.”

“He’s my friend, and he did it to help me. I’m not going to turn him in,” I say flatly.

“You don’t have to be the one to do it,” Travis says.

I cross my arms over my chest. “Are you telling me that you’re going to turn him in? Because if so, you and I are going to have a problem.”

Travis opens his mouth to speak, but Mom cuts across him, “That’s not going to happen. As far as I’m concerned, this family is done talking to the police about this incident.”

“I’m not family,” Travis says.

“The hell you aren’t,” Mom says, and Travis’ mouth snaps shut, his dark blue eyes going round in something that seems like surprise. Mom either doesn’t notice or chooses to deliberately ignore him. “Nothing that Garen said to those officers was a lie. They never asked him if he knew who did it, or if he had any ideas who else they should investigate. If they find out that he tactfully omitted any details, he’ll get in nearly as much trouble as Declan would.” She sets her fork down and reaches out to touch my shoulder. “They saw the records, and they know what Walczyk did to you. Nobody who knows the truth about him would want you to suffer more because of him. My guess? Those officers didn’t want to have to arrest you. Now that they know David Walczyk’s first choice of a suspect didn’t do anything, they’re going to look elsewhere, presumably at people in the New Haven area.” She drops her hand and looks around at Travis. “I think it would be in Garen’s best interest to allow them to do so.”

“What if someone else gets in trouble for what Declan did?” Travis asks.

“There isn’t any evidence against anyone else,” Mom says. “Things like this happen all the time in big cities. Do you know what happens when they run out of leads? They put it on the back burner and focus on other cases. Dave Walczyk will get a nice, big check from his insurance company, he’ll buy himself a new car, and everyone will move on. And—” She turns to narrow her eyes at me. “I think that you should have a conversation with your new boyfriend about how he plans to handle things like this in the future. This kind of thing cannot happen again. Do you understand me?”

“Declan’s not my boyfriend,” I say.

Mom’s glare is withering. “Is that the only part you heard?”

“No,” I say, letting my head tip back so I’m rolling my eyes at the ceiling instead of her. “I just figured it was worth pointing out, considering everyone seems to be on my shit about Declan being my boyfriend, even though he’s not. When I get yelled at for things, I prefer for them to be things I’ve actually done.”

“No one is yelling at you, Garen,” she says in a tone that heavily implies that she’d be willing to start. “I’m merely saying that I hope we won’t have any nights like this in the future. I could happily go the rest of my life without having to mediate another conversation between you and the police. If that’s not something that you think your friends can manage, then perhaps you should reevaluate some of your friendships.”

I’m trying so hard to keep my expression neutral, but I doubt I’m succeeding it. I want to scream. Why is she acting like what Declan did to Dave’s car was a bad thing? Why is she acting like keeping my nose clean and keeping some random cops out of my living room is more important than the fact that I finally feel like I’ll be able to drive around Connecticut and not flinch every time I see a black convertible? She doesn’t get that I feel safer knowing that the people I care about are willing to get their hands dirty for me. My old drug dealer got shot in the kneecap by Jamie and punched in the mouth by Ben; my abusive ex can’t breathe without Travis taking offense and call the cops about it. It doesn’t freak me out that Declan joined the ranks of my overenthusiastic defenders by committing arson. It makes me like him more.

Travis looks down at his watch, sighs, and rubs both hands over his face. “I told one of the girls at the shop that I’d cover her opening shift tomorrow if she took my closing one, so I’ve got to be up at quarter after four.”

“We’ll let you get some sleep, then,” Mom says. They both stand, but when I do the same, Mom levels me with a look. “Don’t even think about it, Garen. You and I aren’t done talking.”

“But you said—”

“I said that Travis should get some sleep. Contrary to what you’ve been telling me for the last year and a half, he doesn’t actually need your assistance with that.” She gives me a dirty look, then moves around the table to hug Travis. “Dinner was excellent. Thank you so much for taking the time to make it.”

Travis looks embarrassed, but I don’t know if it’s because of the compliment, or because of how unused to motherly love he has become. “You’re welcome. Thank you for eating it, even though we all knew there was a chance we might get food poisoning.”

She laughs, and he turns to leave. My chest seizes up, and I nearly trip over my own feet chasing him to the bottom of the stairs. “Travis, wait. You—” I glance back at the kitchen, then say, a little quieter, “You said we were going to talk. Remember? We were going to talk after dinner. You promised.”

“I know. But it’s been a long night,” he says.

He isn’t looking at me, he’s looking up the stairs, and I want to die, because I know—I just know that he’s trying to find a way to tell me that he has already changed his mind about what we had only barely started to discuss before the cops got here. I didn’t even get him back, and I’m already losing him again. I’m always fucking losing him.

But then he cups my face between his palms and says quietly, “You have to leave for school at the same time that I have to leave for work. We can sleep tonight, talk in the morning. Trust me, G—I really, really want to have this conversation, and we will. Tomorrow morning.”

“Promise?” I say. I don’t even care that I sound stupid and needy for saying that, because he nods and leans in to kiss my forehead.

“I promise. I’ll see you in the morning.”

He turns and heads upstairs. I know I should go back in to get lectured by Mom some more, but I can’t move. I stay where I am, watching Travis until he disappears around the corner.

 

227 days sober

Travis wakes before me the next morning. By the time I get dressed for PT, collect all my school shit, and drag myself downstairs, he’s already showered, dressed for work, and drinking coffee in the kitchen.

“Hi,” he says. “I poured you a cup.”

He looks so much calmer than I feel. I slip into the chair across the table from him and reach for the second coffee mug. I take a quick sip—he actually bothered to pull a couple of espresso shots into it for me—in the hope that if I keep my hands busy, he won’t notice that they’re twitching slightly. I want so badly for this conversation to work in my favor, but it feels like a losing battle; every time I try to get Travis back, something fucks it up. It’s not like this time will be any different.

“We both have to leave in about fifteen minutes, so we should probably keep this short, right?” he says.

I nod jerkily. I changed my mind will probably actually only take him two seconds to say. I’m guessing the other fourteen minutes and fifty-eight seconds will consist of me crying and begging and making an ass of myself, while Travis avoids my eyes and exchanges embarrassed looks with Omelette.

“The casual thing you and Declan have,” he starts, and that’s wonderful, that’s exactly how I was hoping this talk would start, with Travis bringing up my arsonist friend-with-benefits. Why the fuck not. “As much as I really don’t want to hear the details of what you guys do together, I was thinking that maybe that could be a good, uh… starting point, or whatever. For us.” He looks down at his coffee cup. There’s a wry twist to his mouth, like he’s fighting a smirk. “I mean, we went from meeting each other to you proposing in a matter of three months. ‘Casual’ doesn’t exactly come naturally to us. But if you and Declan have been hooking up for almost a month now without feelings getting involved, then that’s probably a good model for us.”

“Us,” I echo, not really sure I’m hearing him right.

Travis sets his coffee cup aside and reaches across the table to carefully take my hands in his. “Yeah. Us.”

My heart is pounding so hard that I’m sure Travis must be able to see my chest vibrating with it. There’s some twisted, faithless part of me that’s convinced he’s fucking with me right now, and I want to crawl across the table and kiss him so that I can know for sure if he’s bluffing. But that’s one of those… impulses I have. One of the batshit crazy ones that I’m supposed to think through until I realize how unhinged I am. I take a deep breath and remain in my seat. Doc Howard would be so proud.

“Okay. What do you want to know?” I say.

“I know you said you two aren’t exclusive. But how far do you take that?” Travis asks slowly. His brow is a little bit wrinkled, like the idea of not being monogamous is deeply troubling to him. Pretty ironic, considering I can’t remember the last time he dated someone and didn’t cheat on them with me, but whatever. “Like, does he tell you before he hooks up with someone else? Are you supposed to get each other’s permission, or something?”

Why, are you fucking anyone else? I want to yell in his face. But, again—batshit crazy. Another deep breath. “No. We both just kind of do whatever we want. On the nights when I’m too busy to hook up with him, I’m pretty sure he just goes and finds some chick who will. I don’t really ask.” And the thing is? I’m fine with not asking. Dec fucks girls, I get it, I don’t care. But the idea of Travis doing the same thing turns my stomach, so I add, as quickly but casually as I can, “That’s just Declan, though. I spent part of January hooking up with this guy in my squad, and then I had a threesome with him and his boyfriend at that party I went to at the start of spring break. But other than that, I haven’t gotten with anyone since, you know… you.”

“I haven’t been with anyone since you, period,” Travis says. I can’t tell if it’s an accusation or not. He shrugs. “If we’re laying everything out like this, I went on a… I don’t even know, I guess it was kind of a date? Like, a coffee date thing with this girl from school, right before you and James went down to Georgia. But we both knew it wasn’t going anywhere, and I didn’t even touch her. I didn’t want to touch her.”

“You shouldn’t do anything you don’t want to do,” I blurt out. “Like, if you don’t want to hook up with randoms, I don’t want you to make yourself do it just because you want to make sure we’re not being too monogamous. ‘Cause honestly, T, if I’m with you—I mean, both of you, you and Declan—I’m not going to want anyone else. I’d be happy with just you.”

Travis doesn’t say anything. Usually, when Travis doesn’t say anything, that means I’ve taken the conversation too far. I try to replay the last five seconds in my head, and yeah, maybe I’m blurring the ‘casual’ line more than I should. I clear my throat and amend, “I’d be fine with just hooking up with you and Dec.”

“Good,” Travis says, and half a second later, “When you fuck him, do you stay over after?”

I stare, but I can’t get a single word out. Even the idea of actually getting into the gritty details of what I do with Declan makes me feel sick. But Travis either doesn’t realize this, or doesn’t care enough to let it stop him.

“I know you stayed at Patton the other night, but I’m speaking generally. Do you guys spend the night together? Or is it more like a booty call type of situation?”

Hearing Travis use the phrase ‘booty call’ is pretty surreal. For a few seconds, I have to focus very hard on trying not to laugh.

“Um… I guess it’s more of a booty call. He stayed here once last week, and I stayed there on Monday, but that’s it. We only really spend the night together if it’s more convenient than separating.”

Travis nods. “Okay. So, we can do that, too.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Spending the night together. If it’s not something you do with him, then it would probably be better for us to avoid that, too.” Travis ducks his head and adds in a hushed voice, “Besides, waking up with you has always felt so goddamn intimate. I’m not sure I can stay in a casual frame of mind if we’re doing that.”

I’m not sure I can stay casual at all. Right now, I want to lead him back upstairs and into his bed; I want to shut out the rest of the world—PT at school, his early morning shift at Starbucks, my first shift at Rush tonight, everything, everyone—and feel some of that intimacy he’s convinced we shouldn’t have.

I sneak my hands further forward so that I’m gripping his wrists instead of his fingers, and I know it’s impossible, but I swear I can feel his tattoo of my initial under my palm.

“There might be nights when it makes sense for us to share a bed, though,” I say quietly. “Like tonight. If we’re all out at the club until after four in the morning, and you’ve got to be at work five hours later, you know Jamie will want us to crash at his place. And it wouldn’t make sense for me to take the guest room and you to go sleep on the couch, or whatever.”

Travis smirks at me. “What, you wouldn’t offer to let me have the bed? That’s not nice.”

“You can absolutely have the bed. You just have to be comfortable with me being in it, too,” I say.

“Think I can manage that for one night. You know, for James’ sake,” he says. His fingertips trace over the veins in my wrists, and I have to grit my teeth to try to fight a shiver. But then his brow furrows, and he asks, “Are you in love with him?”

“Who, James?” I say, purposely misunderstanding. “Eh, kind of yes, kind of no. Only as much as I have been since we were fourteen. I’d say it’s more of a debilitating codependency than actually being in love with him—”

“I meant Declan,” Travis interrupts. “You say it’s casual, and you say you’re just friends with benefits, but are you sure you don’t have deeper feelings for him than that? You’ve never like, told him you love him, or any—”

“Of course I haven’t,” I interrupt. “God, Trav. The only person I’ve ever been in love with is you. Declan and I aren’t like that, I swear.”

A quiet, traitorous part of me can’t help but remember the way Declan had hidden his face against my neck when he said I like you more than anyone else I’ve ever fucked. It felt like a confession. And no matter what I’m saying to Travis right now about Dec and me not being like that, it sure as hell felt like we were like that on Monday night.

But with Travis holding my hands and offering me another chance, I can’t afford to consider that feeling right now. So, I fucking bury it.

“Okay,” Travis continues, “I think if we’re trying to keep things even, you and I should probably stick to that same standard. You know, keeping the whole ‘I love you’ thing out of the picture for now. That way, we can be sure—”

“Yeah, that’s not an option,” I interrupt. “I don’t tell Declan I love him because I’d be lying if I did. With you, I’d be lying if I tried to say I don’t love you. So… fuck that, I love you, deal with it.”

Travis scowls. “How is that even remotely casual?”

“Through tone, mostly. And gesture.” I give a dismissive wave of my hand and say, “Love you. Love you a lot, gonna keep saying it. Quit your whining.”

“I’m not whining,” he whines. And yeah, the language policing is annoying as shit, but the sullen twist of his lips right now is pretty adorable.

“Yeah, you are.” I tug on his hands. “Come here. Come kiss me with that whining mouth of yours.”

“I’m not whining,” he repeats, but his tone is distracted now, and he seems more concerned with getting out of his seat and over to me. He drops to his knees on the linoleum and drags my legs out from under the table so that he can nestle between them.

I curl my hands into the collar of his work polo and pull him into a kiss. He makes a gently pleased sound against my lips, then against my tongue when the kiss deepens. My heart is pounding so hard that I’m sure he can feel my pulse beating under his hands when he settles them just below my jaw. I’m so focused on this thought that it takes me a minute to notice that Travis has captured one of my hands and guided it down to his own chest.

“This is why I was trying to argue against us saying that,” he says against the corner of my mouth. “God. Can you feel what it does to me, when you tell me you love me?”

And he isn’t exaggerating—I can feel his heartbeat stuttering through the thin cotton of his polo shirt, and fuck, it drives me crazy. I shove the hem of his shirt up, up, up to his collarbone so that I can press my mouth to his skin as I say again, “Love you, Travis.”

“F-Fuck, G,” he breathes. He pulls out of my grip just long enough to shuck off his shirt, and then he’s grabbing for me again. “You don’t give a shit if you’re late to school, do you?”

“What are you, new? Of course I don’t give a shit, dude, I’ll take the whole day off, if you want me to,” I say, and I press him to the floor.

And the truth is, Travis was never as easy as he is right now. I’ve barely gotten him onto the linoleum before he’s winding his legs over mine and digging his heels into the backs of my thighs, arching up against me and murmuring, “C’mere, G.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m here,” I babble back at him, and I just can’t help myself. I hook his knee over the crook of my elbow and haul it up out of the way so that I can grind my growing hard-on against his ass through all these awful layers of clothes. “God, you’re going to be so fucking late to work.”

“It’s been four months, dude, I promise you this won’t take more than ten minutes. Here, let me just—” and he frees up my arm again by tilting his hips up a little bit more and slinging his leg over my shoulder. The hard, thick muscle of his thigh is pinned between our torsos. His knee is by my face.

Oh, god. Oh, god, I’m going to die.

“Were you this flexible in December?” I say in what I refuse to admit might be a hysterical voice.

“Not in December, no. But I was back when we first—when I was still doing track. You have to, you know, do a lot of stretching so you don’t pull a muscle while you’re running. And I lost a lot of flexibility during the semester I was doing stage crew instead of track, but I joined the fitness center at Columbia—”

I shove his face against my neck to smother his words and say, “What is this talking thing you’re doing? What is wrong with you? Shut the fuck up. Kiss me, get your dick out, something—”

“Take your shirt off. Please, I want to see you,” he all but begs, shoving his hands between our bodies to claw at the hem of my Whitman Squad t-shirt. I lean back on my heels to strip off my shirt, and Travis wriggles away from me to kick his way out of his jeans. He manages it quicker than I would have expected.

And then he’s naked on our kitchen floor, and god, he’s gorgeous. I pretty much fall onto him, pressing my body against his in every place I can, and kissing my way across his freckled collarbone. He’s only maybe fifteen minutes out of the shower, and his skin is so fresh and clean that it doesn’t taste like anything, not even the salt of sweat. A weird little part of me wishes it was later in the day, when he’s more like himself. When I can suck his fingers into my mouth and taste coffee grounds under his nails and smudges of ink from the ballpoint pen he uses to take notes in class. Since I can’t taste him like I want to, I nudge his head to the side so that I can nose through the damp blond hair behind his ear. I breathe deeply. He smells like coconut shampoo, just like he always has, and it makes my heart ache.

“Calm the fuck down, Edward Cullen,” Travis says, squirming against my hold on him. “You’re hyperventilating in my ear.”

“Shut up. I just missed you,” I say. My voice almost breaks. It’s kind of embarrassing, up until Travis catches up to what I’m feeling and clutches at my back with shaking hands.

“Christ, Garen. You, too. Can you—”

“Yeah,” I say, and I crawl down the length of his body to take him into my mouth.

He practically convulses under me and starts babbling, “Oh my god, that’s not what I meant, I thought we were only going to trade quick handjobs before we had to leave.”

I pull off with the loudest, wettest noise I can managed—Travis whimpers. I wait until he meets my eyes before I lick my lips and say, “Do you want me to stop?”

“No, Jesus, no, but I want to touch you, too,” he says, stretching a hand towards me. I roll my eyes and clamber off him so that I can lie mostly perpendicular to him, just close enough for him to jerk me off while I blow him. Honestly, I would rather suck his dick than get a handjob. Getting him off gets me off more than letting him get me off does, and god, that doesn’t even make sense.

Travis must not think so, either. Instead of reaching for my dick, he grabs my legs and drags me right around so that my torso is snugged up against his. Before I can stop sucking him long enough to make a comment, he twists around and guides my cock into his own mouth.

I almost choke on the head of his dick. This is the first time that Travis and I have ever actually gotten around to sixty-nining, and it feels surreal that it’s happening on our kitchen floor at quarter to five in the morning. It feels even more surreal that he can give me this, but I still want more from him.

I fling an arm out for my duffel bag, but only manage to reach the zipper of it. My fingers scrabble over the zipper pull for a few too many seconds before I get a good enough grip to drag it closer. There’s a tube of lube in the side pocket, and I suck Travis in so deep that my nose touches his balls, because that’s the easiest way to distract him from pulling away and getting sulky about the fact that I sometimes need lube and condoms when I’m away at Patton for the day. His moan vibrates through my groin, and I wish I could thread my hands into his hair and tell him how good it feels. Instead, I snap open the cap on the lube and coat my fingers in the slick, then reach behind him to rub over his hole.

His whole body shudders, and he lets my dick slip out of his mouth. “Want your fingers so badly. But—don’t want you to fuck me, not yet, okay?”

I want to say why the fuck not? But I can’t do that without sounding and feeling like a complete ass, so I just kiss the soft skin over his hipbones and murmur, “Are you sure?” Even without looking down, I can feel him nodding.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he says. “We can do that tonight, before we meet the others for dinner. O-Or tomorrow afternoon. I want to take our time with it, make it good.” He settles his hand in the small of my back and practically breathes the next words over my cock, “It’s going to be so, so good, G.”

When I start to suck him again, he jerks forward into my mouth. The head of his cock hits the back of my throat, and that’s nothing I can’t handle, I swallow around it easily enough, but he starts whispering hasty apologies and tries to correct it by moving back, right onto my hand. One of my lubed fingers sinks into his ass, right up to the first knuckle.

It’s too much. In this stupid position, I can’t finger him like I want to, I can’t suck him like I want to. He doesn’t feel like he’s mine in the way that I want him to be. I scramble upright and roll him onto his back, even as he protests the loss. I knock his knees apart and fit myself between them so that I can stretch my body out over his, as my hand drops between his legs again and my fingers return to the tight clutch of his hole.

He curls an arm around my neck and drags me as close as we can get, until I can barely move enough to fuck him with my fingers, until I’m just keeping them locked inside of him and snubbed up against his prostate while he trembles and grinds our cocks together and kisses me as deeply and desperately as he can.

“Love you,” he gasps into my mouth, and I can’t remember the last time I felt like this.

Travis doesn’t end up letting me take the day off after we’ve both gotten off, but he does make me insanely late to PT. I jog out into the residential quad sometime around quarter-to-six. The rest of the squad is paired off already, one member of each pair knocking out some crunches while his partner supervises his form—apparently today is one of our super-exciting, bullshit calisthenics days. Even with everyone else busy, my arrival isn’t as stealthy as I’d hoped.

“And where the hell have you been, Anderson?” Sergeant Smitth demands the second he catches sight of me.

“Sorry I’m late, Sarge,” I say, despite the fact that I’m absolutely not sorry.

I head over to where most of my friends seem to be congregated, and without me saying a word, guys start swapping out partners—Taylor shakes Declan’s hands off his sneakers and shifts over, Steven abandons Javi to come spot Taylor instead, Charlie takes one look at me and goes to the other end of the line to form a group of three with some dudes whose names I don’t know, Sam and Javi pair off—until Declan is laid out on the ground, all by his lonesome.

Technically, I’m supposed to kneel in front of him and hold his feet to the ground if he needs the support, but that sounds so boring, and I feel unbelievably wired after what has just happened at the house. Instead, I shuffle up close to his shins and wrap my arms around his thighs, resting my chin on his knees.

“Oh, hi there, Campbell. I have a fun little tale to tell. Guess who showed up at my house last—”

“Anderson,” Sergeant Smitth snaps again. I don’t let go of Declan’s legs, but I do at least have the sense not to ignore Sarge. I twist around enough to stare blankly up at him, and he glowers back at me. “Why are you so late?”

“’Cause I was giving my stepbrother a blowjob on our kitchen floor,” I say.

“What,” Smitth says. It doesn’t really sound like a question, considering the lack of inflection.

“I was giving,” I repeat slowly. “My stepbrother. A blowjob. On our kitchen floor.”

Smitth doesn’t say anything. Actually, none of the other guys in the squad seem to be saying much of anything, either. A minute passes, and Sarge hasn’t blinked, so I’m not sure he even understands. I release Declan’s knees so I can sit back on my heels and carefully explain, “A blowjob is when you put a guy’s dick in your mouth. If you’re feeling ambitious, you can use it as a segue to some sixty-nining and some assplay. I was, and I did. It took a little longer than expected, hence me being late.” Wait—manners. I add, “Sorry for that, again.”

Sergeant Smitth remains silent. I think he might be having an aneurysm; one of his eyes is kind of twitching. It takes me another few seconds to realize, “Oh, the stepbrother part! Yeah. But it’s not in a weird way, I swear. We’re both legal, and our parents are getting divorced, and they know we pound it out sometimes. In fact, that’s kind of why they’re getting divorced. Well, also because my dad had a kid with a Jew, and then married an anti-Semite, but I think it’s mostly the whole ‘I dick her son’ thing.”

“What is wrong with you?” Sergeant Smitth finally asks me. It feels like it’s maybe a trick question.

I shrug. “A lot of things. I could probably make a list, if you want.”

“Detention,” Smitth says. “Detention today. Detention next week. Detention every day until the start of final exams, actually, and you’ll be serving them with the Hampton and Montgomery squads, because I don’t want to have to spend any more time with you than I absolutely have to.”

“Whatever. You’re going to miss me after I graduate,” I scoff. Why not? If I’ve got detention every day for the next two weeks, I might as well make sure I’ve earned it. After Smitth has skulked off to bleach the image of me giving a blowjob from his memory, I turn back to Declan, who is propped up on his elbows and staring at me, too. I roll my eyes. “Come on, don’t give me that look. I know you know what a blowjob is, I’m not explaining it again.”

“I know what it is,” Declan says. “Wasn’t too aware of the fact that you still gave them to Trevor, though.”

“Are you ever going to call him by his actual name?” I ask.

“No.”

“It’s not even a funny joke.”

“I think it is,” Declan says flatly, and oh god, that voice.

“You’re not jealous, are you?” I blurt out. The look that he gives me in response is so withering, I don’t have to press for an answer. I slump against his legs again and sigh, “Good. That’s—yeah, awesome. ‘Cause he and I, we’re sort of, you know, together now. Well, not together. But we’re figuring things out, and we’re… casual.”

“Casual,” Declan repeats after me.

I nod. The only guys close enough to hear are Taylor and Steven, and it’s not like they don’t know that Declan and I are fucking around, but I still lower my voice when I add, “Like you and me.”

“Casual like you and me,” Declan repeats.

I squint at him. “Is there a fucking echo out here? Jesus Christ, Dec. If you’ve got a problem with—”

He sits up, and suddenly we’re almost nose-to-nose. “What was the story you were going to tell me?”

“What?” I say. It’s the most eloquent thing I can manage right now. My nerves still feel raw from everything I’ve done with Travis this morning, and even with my arms around Declan’s legs, I’m not prepared for him to suddenly be so close to me.

“When you first showed up to PT, you said you had a story to tell me. You said someone was at your house. Who?” Declan asks. He drops flat to the grass again, fixes his posture a little, then starts in on his crunches again.

It doesn’t escape my notice that I have to talk a little louder to be sure that he can hear me now. And it sure as hell doesn’t escape my notice that the other guys can probably hear me, too.

“Oh, right. Some cops showed up at my house last night,” I say.

Two pairs down, Javi perks right up and calls over, “Wait, you too?”

I raise my eyebrows at him, even though I know exactly what he’s talking about. If anything, I’m just surprised the New Haven detectives bothered to check my story as quickly as they did. Guess they only wanted to make one trip up to New York.

“A couple of detectives showed up at the dorm last night and had the desk attendant grab me and Declan out of our room,” Javi continues. There are definitely a few more people listening now. “They wanted to talk to us about you staying in our room on Monday night. The fuck was that about?”

I roll my eyes so hard, my whole head lolls back on my neck. “It was about some bullshit, dude. These fucking Connecticut pigs showed up when I was having dinner with my fucking mom, and they start asking me all these questions about like, where I was on Monday night, and if anybody could verify it, and then all this shit about the… you know, the restraining order or whatever.”

Javi sneaks a glance over at Charlie. There aren’t enough guys in the squad for us to be separated enough to stop Charlie from hearing everything I’m saying. His jaw is clenched tight in rage, and he looks more like his brother than I’ve ever seen before. I look away.

“I guess something happened to my ex,” I say, a little quieter and with my eyes now fixed on Declan’s bent knees. “They didn’t even tell me what, specifically. Property damage, that’s all they said. And apparently, when somebody broke something of his, he automatically assumed that I was getting revenge for all the things he ever broke on me—you know, leg, ribs, fingers, nose, and so on.”

I glance around. My friends look like they don’t know whether or not to fake a laugh at that. Most of them settle for giving me awkward half-smiles. I look back towards Declan, whose only allowance of expression is to raise his eyebrows ever so slightly, the way he might genuinely express surprise at me being questioned by the police, if he didn’t already know what was up.

“Is that why they came to talk to Javi and me?” he asks me. “So they could make sure you didn’t actually fuck off to Connecticut and break whatever your ex told them you broke?”

“Yep,” I say, hitching my shoulder. “They told me it was standard procedure, and honestly, I’m not sure they ever believed it could be me in the first place. I mean, Dave’s the fucking psycho, not me—”

A pair of hands come down hard on my back, shoving me forward so hard that Declan’s knees crash into my ribcage and knock the wind right out of me. Dec grabs my shoulders to brace me, but there’s a second shove from behind before Taylor jumps up and intervenes.

I get myself turned around, but immediately wish I hadn’t. Charlie is still glowering at me, still trying to get close enough to shove me a third time. Taylor has a pretty good grip on him, and Javi’s coming over to help, too; Declan is right behind me, crouched on one knee, every muscle in his animalistic body coiled tight like he’s ready to spring up and attack.

I don’t fucking care. It doesn’t matter that Taylor and Javi have a solid hold on Charlie. It doesn’t matter that Sergeant Smitth is storming over and snapping at the whole squad to calm down. It doesn’t matter that Declan’s body is so warm and tense behind me that he seems ready to tear his best friend’s heart out of his chest right here in the middle of the quad.

All that matters is those hazel Walczyk eyes burning into mine while Charlie snarls, “You shut your goddamn mouth about him, okay, Garen? Don’t you ever say my brother’s name again, don’t you fucking talk about him like he’s--you’re the crazy one, making up all that shit you said on Monday! Everybody knows you’re a fucking liar, everybody knows you’re just saying it for attention. Everybody knows you’re just hoping you can make up all this shit about getting abused and have Campbell ride up on some white horse and save your pathetic ass. Well, good fucking luck with that, man, ‘cause he doesn’t give a shit about you, Dec’s just as fucking crazy as you are, you deserve each other, couple of psychotic fucking faggots who can’t—”

“You need to shut the hell up right now,” Taylor warns, his grip on Charlie going tighter, “because you’re starting to piss me off, too. And I’m not sure if you’ve noticed this, but I’m a lot bigger than you, and so is Declan, and so is Garen. Between the three of us, you’re—”

“I’m not going to fight him,” I say quickly, like getting the words out as fast as I can will somehow un-say what Taylor has just said. The last fucking thing I need is for Dave to ever think I was ready to fight his brother.

My hands are shaking. All of the contentment and afterglow I’d been feeling at the start of PT is gone now, replaced by fear that curls tight around my bones and makes it almost impossible for me to move. Charlie’s rage is nearly as all-consuming as Dave’s was, and I’m trying not to be terrified of this stupid kid in a pair of glasses, but I’m sure, I’m so fucking sure that I’m about to get hit. I can’t stand the thought of getting hit again.

Charlie isn’t yelling at me anymore, but that’s only because Sergeant Smitth has taken control of the situation and gotten everyone quiet. All the better to hear his own screaming, I guess. He’s losing it on Charlie right now, and maybe me, too, but I can’t be sure. None of his words are really penetrating my brain, because none of them make a difference. The only thing I care about right now is watching Walczyk’s hands—still balled up into fists—and making sure they don’t get any closer to me.

There’s a sound that might be Anderson, Anderson. I don’t know. I keep staring at those fists.

“Garen,” Sergeant Smitth says, loudly enough that even I can’t tune it out. I blink, but keep my eyes on the fists. One of Smitth’s big paws comes down, maybe to grab my shoulder, and I--

God fucking damn.

I jerk away from his touch like I’m a bitch in a fucking Lifetime Movie. Smitth freezes. Nobody says anything. Not much they can say, really, after Charlie’s big rant about me making up an abusive relationship with his brother, then me doing a battered housewife flinch away from Sarge’s hand in front of the entire squad. I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn’t do anything to get rid of the shame that’s creeping down my spine. I should have just taken the whole day off.

“Walczyk: headmaster’s office,” Smitth finally says. “I’ll be going up there with you now. Campbell, you’re in charge. Keep everyone running through the rest of the routine, you know how it should be going. Anderson…”

When he trails off, I slowly open my eyes and raise them to his face. His expression is right on the cusp of pity, and it makes me want to burn the entire school down, just so he’ll go back to hating me instead.

“Hit the locker room. You’re done for the morning.”

I’m supposed to say yes, sir, but I can’t. All I can pull together is a half-assed shrug. I guess that’s enough, given the circumstances, because Smitth starts marching Charlie up the path to the administration building. They make it all the way to the doors before I make myself stand up.

“I’ll take care of it,” Declan tells me in something barely above a breath. I look at him, and he gives me a much more significant look back, leans a little closer and murmurs, “What, you think I’m going to let him talk to you like that? I’ll figure something out. For him and his rapist brother.”

I can still hear the yelling ringing in my ears. I can still see those cold, hazel eyes glaring right at me. I can still feel Charlie’s hands on my back. I can still feel Dave’s hands on me everywhere else.

“Whatever you decide to do,” I say quietly, “make sure it hurts.”

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