Nobody's Hero

by Katey Hawthorne

  I had a sick, sinking feeling he had.

  Confirmed when he said, "Jesus. Does she even know you're queer?"

  I closed my eyes. "Kellan."

  He took an audible deep breath, and when I opened my eyes again, his hands were spread wide in front of him, chest rising and falling with controlled slowness. He said, in a tight, frightening voice, "Okay. You know what? It's none of my business. Nothing about you is any of my fucking business."

  I pushed off the door and took a step nearer, reaching out for him. "No, it is. You're right. Just, you don't understand."

  "I noticed." He stormed past me and reached for the doorknob.

  "Please, don't just walk away. Let me explain."

  "I don't want to talk to you right now."

  "But—"

  "I'll say something I can't take back." He looked over his shoulder, biting his lip, but his eyes still burned hot and dark. "Megan will have to be your shortstop today. Tell everyone I'm sorry."

  "Kellan—" But before I got any farther, he was out the door. He closed it in my face—gently, but it still amped me hard. The charge started in that place deep in my middle, the source of it, and jumped from wire to wire until it raced all through me, begging to get free.

  I turned around, let little lightning bolts arc across my hands, jumping from finger to finger. The visible, tangible expression of all my frustration, everything I held inside, everything I wanted to scream from the fucking rooftops.

  I shoved one hand forward, sending a bright blue arc from my fingertips, right into the nearest poster frame on my wall. The plastic sizzled; the paper curled in sudden frenzied electrical flames.

  I put it out before it set off the alarm and emptied the whole fucking building. Feeling like exactly what I was: a giant fucking five-year-old. Lonely, frustrated, and pathetic.

  Shit. And this is why I can't have nice things.

  Or nice boys.

  Chapter Six

  I don't remember walking down Mayfield Hill, but eventually I found myself in Little Italy. So I edged into the incredible hole-in-the-wall we all knew and loved as Mama Santa's and searched for Mom at her usual table.

  Margaret sat there alone. Mom's Prada bag was next to Margaret's Gucci, but she must've been in the bathroom. I considered slipping out, but Margaret chose the exact wrong moment to look up and give me that unnatural Cheshire Cat grin.

  Any other afternoon, I probably would've been some combination of annoyed, frightened, and amused. But I was battle hardened, my brain still muddied from the instant, devastating wall Kellan had thrown up between us with so little effort or conversation.

  I took up a seat across from her, painting on a smile only half as fake as hers.

  She said, "Sweetheart, look at you!"

  She'd been Mom's friend since childhood, and so I was always as polite as possible. Her husband was a nice guy; Mae and her brother, Rick, were good kids. But Margaret's constant commentary on my appearance made my skin crawl.

  Wonder what kind of fee Mom gets if I knock Mae up, anyhow. Wonder what they'd say if they knew Mae wants to talk to me about as much as I want to talk to her.

  But no. That wasn't fair, and there was no point getting into that mess now, not with how fucked-up my head was. I'd only make a bigger hash of it, if that was possible, and I wasn't here to start another fight. I kept my comments to, "You just saw me, Margaret. Last month, I think."

  "But you were in that monkey suit; today you look like you. How's the current running?"

  Wouldn't you like to know? "Fast and hard, like always. Sorry, but I'm only stopping by."

  "Andrea said you'd be in and out." She winked, flashing improbable blue eye shadow at me. "But I knew you wouldn't abandon us. You're too good a son."

  Keep it classy, Margaret. "Yeah, except not. So how have you been, anyhow?"

  Thankfully, Mom's Chanel No. 5 cut through the baking-bread-and-cheese smell of the restaurant. She kissed my cheek and slipped into the seat next to me. "Honey, glad you're here."

  I glanced at her from the side, but she was looking down at the menu. "Mom."

  "Jamie's being modest, Andrea," said Margaret.

  "He's incredibly modest—when it suits him." Mom smiled, mostly unaffected.

  Under normal circumstances, I would've laughed. Today, not so much.

  "He says he's not a good son."

  Mom put her hand on top of mine. "He's the best son."

  Likely this was her way of telling me it was all right. That whatever happened that morning, whoever I was sleeping with, whatever I did, she loved me. I swallowed hard.

  "Mae's dying to see you again." Margaret had moved on in her bubbleheaded way. "After she missed Billy and Lisa's wedding, she promised to come back soon. She's working on nanotech—"

  "I know." I couldn't help it; I had to shut her up. "Brilliant stuff."

  Mom said, "Jamie e-mailed her a few weeks back."

  "She's apparently really busy," I said. Or just really grown up. Wonder what that's like.

  "I'll remind her to write back. You know how shy she can be."

  I was trying to strangle a smart remark when Mom squeezed my hand. I couldn't even begin to fathom her timing. The dark little restaurant started to close in around me, the current racing through my bones again.

  We'd never get to talk with Margaret there, and Margaret would never leave so long as I was there. I'd just tell Mom to come over after. I pulled my hand out from under hers. "Well, I should—"

  "Call her, maybe?" Mom said.

  I paused, mouth still open. What the hell? "Maybe not," I replied. Now my smile was utterly false.

  Margaret laughed. She had a sweet, low voice and a smooth, infectious giggle, but it irritated me anyhow. "Jamie, you were never shy. Let me give you her number." She started digging through her bag.

  I looked between her and my mother, suffocating. "She has mine. I'm pretty sure she's not interested, honestly."

  Goddammit, why couldn't she have just faced up to it and worked with me on this? Maybe I should write back and convince her—

  No. Shit. That wasn't even fair. If she wanted to run away and hide in California, hey, I couldn't blame her. If Margaret were my mother, I'd probably have done the same, and Christ knows I wouldn't want to hear about it.

  At least one of us could escape.

  But if Margaret was kind of airheaded, she wasn't stupid. Yet here she was, laughing like I'd just told the joke of the century. "She'd die if she heard you talking like that, Jamie."

  Oh, Jamie. I hope the babies are comedians like you! I bit my tongue to keep the sourness from spilling over, making to stand up. "It was good to see you, Margaret, but I have to be on second base pretty soon." I turned, searched my mother for a sign that this clusterfuck had just been a slip on her part. A momentary lapse, like mine not an hour ago, the one that had sent Kellan storming out of my apartment.

  I got nothing. "Mom," I said. I pushed the seat in behind me and started out.

  She said something to Margaret and followed me out onto the sidewalk. "Jamie, it's going to rain. They'll call the game."

  I looked down the street in the direction of Holy Rosary. Already signs up for the Feast of the Assumption, and it wasn't for another month and a half almost.

  I wondered if Kellan celebrated it. Wondered if he came down here and ate the deadly carnival food and watched the procession. Wondered if he spent the morning of the feast praying at the altar and his evening drinking wine and laughing and playing bocce with the old guys on the lawn.

  Or was that just an Italian thing? What'd the Irish get up to on—A fat raindrop plashed onto my forehead, reminding me where I was.

  "What's all this about?" Mom asked, laying a hand on my arm.

  "Be serious, Mother."

  She withdrew her hand and sighed. "You're acting like a child."

  I looked over and down at her, surprised. "What?"

  "You heard me."

  "Make up your mind."
r />   She cocked her head.

  My stomach fell into my shoes. I'd been wrong. She was not on my side on this one. Yes, maybe she knew what it was about. Maybe seeing my half-naked boyfriend—hell, she'd probably spotted his clothes all over the living room too—had informed her of my proclivities once and for all.

  But it didn't matter. Whether I was dating a man or a woman, it would never matter. It was irrelevant. It was just something to occupy me until I finally settled down with The Right Girl.

  Just like she had. Or just like Dad had.

  I felt sick. "First you want me to be a child so you can tell me where to work and who to marry and what I should do with my electricity. Then you want me to grow up and be you—or Dad. I don't even know, but I wish you'd make up your mind. What do you want from me?"

  She considered this question with a seriousness that made me despair, then said, "I want you to find the balance."

  "What does that even mean?"

  "The balance between who you are and what you want. The place where you can look at your life and know it is what it should be. I want you to be happy."

  I wished I could feign confusion, but I understood too well. I would never be free of this sense of duty. Of the honorable ideal, of the mechanical chivalry to which I'd been raised. I would never be happy if I felt like I'd betrayed it. And she knew it because she knew that six years later, I still felt bad about med school.

  But she didn't know everything. The truth was… "I know what happy feels like. Happy is my life twelve hours ago." I had the thought and spoke the words simultaneously. Hearing them out of my own mouth was a revelation.

  What the fuck had I done? How could I ever explain this to his satisfaction? Halfway would never do—he was too smart; he'd see right through me. One stupid little sentence, one unnecessary lie, and—

  "Honey, I—"

  "I gotta go." I started in the wrong direction, toward the church, shoving my hands into my pockets. Another raindrop smacked me in the face, fat and full. I finally looked up at the steel gray sky.

  They'd definitely call the game. Good, since that meant it would be perfectly acceptable to eat a couple of Presti's glazed doughnuts for lunch.

  At least the weather gods had my back today.

  "Jamie, please—"

  "Margaret's waiting for you," I said. "I'll call tomorrow."

  But not right then.

  Right then, I was afraid I would say something I couldn't take back.

  *~*~*

  That evening was…well, it wasn't pleasant, anyhow. I didn't have the game to distract me, and I declined Sarah and Clark's dinner invitation, then Derrick and Mike's request for my presence at West Sixth. My electricity was freaking out a little in spite of my fizzle of a temper tantrum earlier in the day. It was a hot, rainy summer night, and I wasn't about to subject the people I loved to my miserable self.

  I was, of all things, pensive—a new and strange state of being, with a confusion of emotions on which I didn't normally dwell. I bounced from bewilderment to guilt when it came to Mom, from agony to resolve with Kellan. I felt like shit about Mom, one part pissed and three parts hurt, but part of me knew we'd work it out. She's my mom.

  With Kellan, not so much. The resolve was the most confusing of all, maybe. Resolve to apologize, yeah, but also tentative resolve, or at least, the idea that I ought to have some, to let him go.

  He was open, honest, wholehearted. I couldn't begrudge him his dickhead moments, even when they hurt; they were his only line of defense. I was born to lie, mostly by omission, but I knew—I knew—it was all the same to him. He deserved better than I could give him.

  But how could I sleep at night with him out there hating me?

  All this chased itself in my head until well into Sunday afternoon. I wasn't ready to speak to my mother but had to force myself not to call Kellan constantly. I allowed it once or twice, and I never left a message, since he never checked them anyhow. A few texts, just "Please call me" or other simple, pathetic things, not even really knowing what I'd say if he responded.

  It didn't matter, since he never did.

  I refused to feel sorry for myself, as all my troubles were of my own making, but it didn't help with the gnawing loneliness. Half of my life was awakened, the other half full of sleepers, and what I could say in one wasn't allowed in the other. For the first time in a long time, I had no idea what to do with myself.

  And then I remembered Billy Armin's card in my jacket pocket.

  *~*~*

  We met for a drink on the roof of the Green House Tavern in Billy's trendy neighborhood. Lisa came with him to say hi, then left with some of her friends. We caught up on school, jobs, family, all the usual bullshit over our first Fox summer ale. Over the second, I got the lowdown on the latest advances in plastic surgery meets cold manipulation. That got him going, and just being around him, this same skinny, bug-eyed kid getting so excited about weird science, made me feel a lot better somehow.

  On the third beer, he finally said, "I didn't think you'd call."

  "I wasn't sure I would." Great, that sounded like some Kellan shit to say. "Not because I didn't want to. But…you know. Lots of memories."

  "I guess none of us will ever be over it. We shouldn't either."

  I considered saying that I was, for the most part. But I was sick enough of lying just then to leave it with, "Yeah."

  "At least you stuck up for the guy," he said.

  "Not my finest moment, for all that." I snorted and glanced at the late-Sunday-afternoon foot traffic below. The rain had cooled things off overnight, but the sun was back, though it hung low by that time. Seemed like everyone was out for a last nice meal, an evening at the Improv, something before Monday came and strangled them again.

  "We were kids. We got lucky." He shrugged. "You're not the same cheerful Jamie you were back in the day, though."

  "I am. Just not today." I scrubbed a hand through my hair, that wave of confusion and frustration crashing over me again. Hadn't really wanted to bring this up—I'd come here to escape it. But the hell with it, at this point. This was Billy. "Had a big fight with the boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. Maybe. Fuck."

  His eyebrows disappeared under his hair. "Uh…"

  "Yeah."

  "Oh." He flushed a little. You know a guy your whole life, that he's slated to marry some girl you've known just as long, it's natural to be a little surprised by that kind of thing. "I mean, that's cool and all."

  I smirked.

  He laughed and leaned back in his seat. "Hell, Jamie, you know what I mean."

  "Yeah. And for a while there, it was very cool."

  A pause while the bartender came to ask if we wanted another drink (which we did), and then Billy said, "I dated this girl for years in college. Lived with her, even. My parents hated it, wouldn't even meet her, but what could they do?"

  "What happened?"

  "Didn't work out." His smile slipped into something nostalgic but not quite sad. "I try not to be old-fashioned, but I'm not sure I ever could've told her. In retrospect, I think I sabotaged it. It was just too hard."

  "I've been there."

  "So…" He cocked an eyebrow. "Just guys?"

  "Yeah, my gate only swings one direction."

  "But your mother still, ah…?"

  "My mother is in a state of denial. Either that, or she's lost her mind completely."

  "They all do. This guy a sleeper?"

  "Yeah." I considered the question. That was the thing that strangled any tentative resolve to let Kellan go. If he were anyone else, any less honest, any less loyal, okay. But, "I think he might be the kind of sleeper you could trust with it, though."

  Billy looked impressed. "What's the old saying? After ten years, you can consider it?"

  "We're a long way off that. If he even speaks to me again."

  "They always do, if only to tell you where to stick it."

  "Sounds like Kellan." We laughed over that, and our beers came.

  By
that time, Billy had formulated another probing question. "Why'd you drop med school? Seriously?"

  "I never wanted it. I only tried so I wouldn't have to let Mom down."

  "Yeah, didn't we all."

  "What you do is brilliant. Just because I couldn't do it, it doesn't mean I don't appreciate that. All that power in you going to help people—"

  He snorted. "For a fee."

  "Everyone's gotta eat. And everyone knows you do clinic work."

  He shrugged again. "I probably wouldn't have chosen it, if I wasn't an Armin. But I love it now."

  There was a moment of silence as we both considered that, and I, at least, applied it to his entire life. Which seemed to be working out okay.

  Then he said, "But you're the brave one. You're doing what I think all of us secretly dreamed of when we were kids. You just said no."

  "I'm a goddamn coward."

  He made a face.

  "I don't mind little stuff, using it on someone's skin or even in the muscles, but any deeper…" I suppressed a shiver, afternoon heat or no. Suppressed the memories and the nightmares with it.

  "But that's good. You should respect it. I hate when I catch myself taking it for granted."

  "No, I mean—" I faltered. Half of me really wanting to just say it, finally, just get it out and admit it and get the fuck over it; half of me still stuck in mortified-teenager land. I took a deep breath and made myself finish. "I can't. I can't use it to fuck with someone's life, because"— it reminds me of being fifteen and scared and—"it makes me hate it."

  Something sour rose in the back of my throat, and it wasn't the beer.

  "You don't hate it. You'd drop dead if someone took it away, just like the rest of us."

  "That's exactly what I mean. I don't want to feel that way about it." That was why it made me shiver, in fact. Like two warring notes, some bullshit psychological dissonance that never resolved. Hate what I can do, love what I can do.

  "Look, maybe this is hypocrisy coming from me. But I was there," he said. "I saw what you can do, and I've never seen anything like it since. So you take the responsibility seriously. How is that a crime?"

  It didn't make me feel like less of a coward. But it did, at least, make me feel like less of a madman.