Scott (Owatonna Book 2)

by RJ Scott

  I watched Hayne as he checked his work one last time. Looking at him was relaxing and gave me time to think. I’d woken in the middle of the night, a nightmare chasing me from sleep, and Hayne had been hunched over his laptop, muttering. Something about symbolic artwork, or who knows what, I couldn’t make sense of it. So I lay there and watched him and thought a whole lot about nothing until I settled on my last counseling session. Monica was an angel, giving me private time, even though I couldn’t pay her or anything. She’d made me see so much, talked about something she referred to as my story, and how I just needed to get the narrative fixed and everything could begin to make sense. She never once promised me everything was going to be okay, and that was the right thing, I think.

  She’d talked me through all my options, and lying there, I realized I wanted to talk to Hayne about the decisions I was ready to make. He was part of my story, and I owed him an explanation.

  “It’s done,” Hayne said, shutting his laptop, then triumphantly punching the air.

  “All of it?” I kissed the top of his head, and he butted up against me like a cat.

  “In the cloud. Backed up three times. Every. Single. Word. Fourteen beautiful, sexy, double-spaced pages of cleverness.”

  “Do you want to go to the library and get it printed right away?” I yawned widely, glancing at the clock. I’d been awake for a couple of hours now, but it was still only six a.m., and the library wouldn’t be manned for another hour. Although privately I imagined there were a whole bunch of seniors still there working overnight on last-minute panic-driven submissions. I resolved that I wouldn’t be one of those, and that I would have my thesis finished well in advance.

  Just like I’d promised myself when I was younger that I would always do my school homework the night it was set. Yeah, that didn’t happen when I wanted to play hockey instead. Although at least now I was focused on a subject I loved rather than things that didn’t interest me. Maybe that would motivate me to get things done ahead of time.

  “It’s not open yet,” he said and flopped down on the bed, lying spread-eagled and staring up at the window. “I feel…”

  He evidently didn’t have the words to explain how he felt, so I immediately straddled him and began to help.

  “Happy?”

  “No. Well, yes, of course I’m happy about finishing and happy in general,” he qualified and frowned as he said it. This wasn’t the first time I’d seen him worrying, but up to now, I’d laid the blame for it on end-of-year stress.

  “Worried?” I gave him another option, and this time he closed his eyes and frowned so hard. “Hayne, what’s wrong? Talk to me.”

  He shook his head, and I kissed him gently, which ordinarily made him smile. Fear gripped me. Was he worried about his work, or was this something to do with me? Was he breaking this off? Was he done? Why was my traitorous brain immediately imagining the end of us? Suddenly straddling him seemed an embarrassing position, and I moved a little to leave him alone, and he sat bolt upright and clung to me. So tight I’m sure I’d have nail marks in my back.

  Something was wrong with Hayne, and I wondered if it was just post-thesis letdown. I eased him away, but he wasn’t crying. If anything, he looked angry, and he was still holding tight, so he clearly wanted us close, so this wasn’t about us or me specifically.

  “It’s you,” he forced out.

  Well, shit, it was about me.

  “What? Did I do something wrong?”

  “No, but what will you do now? I’m finished, it’s all done, and we won’t have a home, and even ramen will be too expensive, and then it won’t be fun anymore, and you’ll meet someone else and—”

  I pressed a finger to his mouth and eased away, sitting cross-legged facing him. This wasn’t a new worry of his. The thought of what happened next for us was constantly on his mind, and he spoke of it often. I wanted us to be a forever thing. At least that is what I wanted to work toward. I loved Hayne, and I knew he loved me, but what about the other stuff, the steroids, the counseling, the hockey kids, me going back to the team if I could, and his painting? How were all these tiny jagged parts of our two different puzzles ever going to fit together? He was waiting for me to say something, and I could just tell him everything was going to be okay, but I didn’t know that for sure, and I’d come to certain decisions in the last few hours that I needed to talk over with someone.

  Why not Hayne? He’s the best listener I know and part of it all.

  “The way I see it is this. We’re two separate stories…” He let out a small sound of distress, and I realized immediately that was not the way to begin this discussion. “No, what I mean is, you have your future, and I have mine, and somewhere in there, our futures are tangled together, in a good way.” I added the last part because he clearly thought I was working up to something terrible. “Your art is you.”

  He blinked at me. “Okaaay.”

  “God, that makes no sense. Hang on…” I closed my eyes and held out my hands, and he took them and held tight as I desperately tried to recall the things I’d said in my last session. Back at that moment when everything had clicked into place for me to decide, the words had come easy. They weren’t now.

  “Okay, it’s like this.” I opened my eyes and met his wary gaze. “You’ve only known troubled Scott, right? The jock who still can’t come to terms with everything, who messed up badly so that he’d be noticed by a dad who wanted him to succeed in the very thing he was fucking up. I want to play hockey again, if I can, and I want to be the best chemistry graduate Owatonna has ever had, and I want to have a career that matters, and one day, I want my story to be all up and entwined with yours for the longest time possible. But my story isn’t at the same place as yours. Do you understand? Am I making any sense?”

  Hayne shook his head. “Is this you breaking up with me?”

  Shit.

  “God, no, I just have to do one of two things, and it’s all simple if you think about it. Next year, I have nowhere to live, and maybe you won’t either, but if I spoke to my dad, talked to him man-to-man, made him see he does still love me, then maybe I could move home, and you could come with me.”

  His mouth fell open, and I read the horror in his expression. Hayne Ritter in the weirdly toxic environment of my parents’ house wasn’t something I ever wanted to see either.

  I pressed ahead before he could say anything. “I don’t want to write my parents off, because they lost a son, the same way I lost a brother. In Luke, they had perfection. Dad could push him hard, Mom would hug him and spoil him, and then he was gone.”

  “They had another son,” Hayne defended.

  “Yeah, well, if they really want to cut me out, then the other way is to be entirely clinical, talk to my dad, man-to-man, ask him to help me pay for housing, make it a loan I pay back, get him to see the kind of money I could make using my chemistry degree, come up with a payment schedule for the whole thing, even sign legal documents on repayment. If I had enough for a room in a house, you could share with me, and who knows, maybe we can get an attic with a window to the sky.”

  “Scott—”

  “Either way, you see what I have to do. I need to get my story back on track by seeing my parents, or the only other choice I have is to leave Owatonna with nothing resolved, and then our stories might never cross the right way, and you might hate me.”

  “Never!”

  I kissed him quickly. “Also, I’ve been talking to Monica, and she’s all about manifestations of grief, parents pushing away remaining children after a bereavement. She puts it in all this pretty language, but she said something yesterday that won’t leave me alone. She said that my parents must have love in there for me, but I need to make them show it, and if they can’t, then I need to start again and find a family that will love me for who I am and what I did. Dad threw me out, but he said he couldn’t watch another son die. So if I show him…”

  Hayne nodded then. “Scott, you didn’t do anything. Luke wasn’t you
r fault.”

  “Rationally, I know that, but it’s a lot to come to terms with, okay?”

  “So our schedules today then? I’m going to print out my work in the library,” Hayne began. “And you?”

  I entwined our fingers. “I need to talk to Mom and Dad.”

  “Today?”

  “Right now.”

  He smiled at me, kissed me, and then huffed. “We should shower first. Together.”

  I expected everything to have changed at my parents’ house, given I’d been away for months. But the fountain in the circular driveway still splashed water at me as I passed, windows sparkled as they always used to, and really, the only thing I noticed that was different was the realty sign at the start of the drive. Chloe Baker of Baker & Hull was the person to contact for viewing.

  My parents are moving away from Owatonna? Are they leaving me?

  This didn’t look good for a touching family reunion, and for the longest time I hesitated to knock. I still had a key, but the thought of using it, of walking into a place that didn’t feel like mine was awful. What if I walked in, and Mom was there, and she ignored me, or Dad was sitting at his desk, and he ordered me to leave? At least this way, they invited me in or not, and I waited with my shoulders back, my chin tilted, and all the words in the world waiting to spill out.

  Dad opened the door, and his eyes widened. “Scott.” He peered behind me as if he expected someone to be with me. “Is Hayne with you?”

  “Hayne?” What? How did he know about Hayne?

  “Your boyfriend, that’s Hayne, right? Did I get it wrong?”

  “No, that’s who he… how did you know about Hayne?”

  He pressed his lips together, then huffed out a breath. “I heard some of the boys talking on the bus to the last game. They like him, say he’s an artist.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Your mom and I looked into him and went to visit the exhibition where his painting was. He’s very talented.”

  “You did?”

  He nodded, and we were still in the doorway staring at each other, awkward silence between us.

  “Come in,” he said like it had just occurred to him I was outside. “Did you lose your key?”

  I bristled. “No, Dad, you said I wasn’t welcome here, so forgive me if I don’t feel like using my damn key.”

  Shit, I’d never planned to start this with negativity or an argument. That wasn’t how this was supposed to go. I’d resolved to talk calmly, rationally, lay out my case, agree to reparations, make things halfway right. Not argue.

  But he crumpled. Right in front of me, he backed away until he was at the stairs and he sat down heavily. I went inside and shut the door behind me. What the hell is going on? In the hall light, I got my first good look of Dad, and he was tired and gray. Was he okay?

  “I never meant to say any of that to you,” he began, and my simmering temper flared.

  “Leaving me with my bags in the middle of a parking lot was deliberate, Dad. Don’t tell me you didn’t mean what you did and said.”

  He closed his eyes, and abruptly I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wasn’t ready to listen to him talk shit. I wanted more than that from him. I backed away, shaking my head. What was I thinking, coming here with a well thought plan, when my old home contained nothing but chaos and sadness?

  “He was scared,” my mom said from the doorway, startling the hell out of me. I turned to face her and blinked in astonishment. Her eyes were bright, her shoulders back, her tone certain. This wasn’t the mom who’d lost herself to medication and drink after Luke died. This was the mom I remembered from when I was younger. “Your father let me grieve for so long, Scott, that he forgot to mourn for himself, and that day, when he packed your stuff so he didn’t have to watch you hurt yourself? That was the lowest day.”

  “It couldn’t have been, Mom. He spent all of Christmas telling my friends I didn’t want to see them.”

  She took a step closer to me and held out a hand. “No, it was the lowest point for me, and when I reached the bottom, it was like a switch in my brain. I stopped drinking, talked to my counselor about the medication, came to terms with things I’d never confronted, and only then did your dad actually have time to grieve.”

  I took her hand, but it felt odd because displays of affection from her had been few and far between for the longest time. The first thing I noticed was that she wasn’t shaky, her grip was steady, and she tugged me close for a hug. Initially, I resisted because none of this felt natural until she had her arms around me, and I bent to hug her back. She was tiny, but she was strong, and she held me so tight.

  “Scott, I’m sorry I let you down,” she murmured.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I lied because everything was still too raw.

  She stepped back and rubbed my arms. “Come on, you two, I’ll make breakfast.” Then she walked through to the kitchen.

  Dad looked at me; I looked at Dad. What now?

  “It was my fault,” Dad said and used the banister to stand up. He appeared shaky and older than I’d ever seen him. “If I hadn’t been so hard on Luke, if I hadn’t pushed him… he wouldn’t have left that weekend.”

  “No, Dad, it was my talking you into it.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing you said changed my mind. Luke and I, we had a deal.” He closed his eyes and rubbed at his chest, his voice hitching with emotion. “I didn’t want him to go. There were scouts at the next game, and I wanted him in top form, but he said if he didn’t go away, he’d give up hockey. He stood up to me, and I allowed him to go.” He collapsed back onto the stairs. “But I told him that if he ever thought he wanted to give up hockey, I never wanted to see him again.” Tears slid from his eyes. “I told my son that, and he never came back.”

  My face was wet. I knew I was crying. I wondered if the ball of grief and pain in my chest would end up killing me. All I could think was that maybe if Dad and I worked through our guilt together, then we could both find some kind of peace.

  Maybe we could remake this family.

  I took his hand and helped him stand, and we hugged briefly before I pulled away.

  “Let’s go, Dad. Drink coffee, eat pancakes, and start to make things right.”

  Sixteen

  Hayne

  I’d never been more on edge than I was that night. I was also proud. Proud of Scott and the progress he’d made in his recovery. But anxiety was overwhelming me. Would his parents slam the door in his face again? Would he stagger off, lost and broken, and get high somewhere? Would he die in some alley? I made another lap around the attic, bare feet slapping the floor in perfect time to Vivaldi’s Summer pouring out of paint-smeared speakers. Passing my palette table, I paused, my sight touching on tubes of earthy colors as the high tone of a singing violin made my skin break out in goose bumps.

  “Yes, I see,” I murmured to the colors. I threw a canvas onto the easel and hurried to remove caps from paint tubes. Little white tops rolled to the floor, unseen, unheard, my fingers squeezing dollops of cadmium red, raw sienna, deep forest green, and iridescent bronze to the porcelain tabletop. Medium yellow joined the greens and browns. Ebony and slate for the sky. I lifted a fan brush from one of several cans of well-used brushes. Lashes drifting downward, I breathed in the music and let it coalesce with the tumult inside me. Then, with a stroke of brush through a slick mound of gray, I went to my toes and began working in the sky. Clouds thick and dark, ominous, heavy with rain appeared before me. Grabbing an artist’s knife, I then carved jagged arcs into the stormy sky. Then I went for the yellow paint, smearing it into the marks the knife had made. The colors blended. I didn’t care. That was fine.

  I threw browns on and greens, whipped them into trees, and then ran a fat brush over them, bringing the wind from the music into the painting, spinning and twirling the paint on the canvas as the summer storm assaulted the land. I could smell the scent of rain on the air, feel the charge in the air on my skin, taste the force of a thunderstorm on m
y tongue. Red then leaped into the clouds, a touch of godhead observing the earth as he pummeled it with rain, wind, and lightning. Paint dribbled off my brushes to my bare toes, but there was no time to stop and wipe it off. Music and color possessed me, and I painted, uncaring of the world that spun around me, the strokes of the brush inching me closer to a completion that was like an orgasm. Was Scott in the middle of a familial storm such as this? Would he be washed away in a deluge of agony?

  “You’re amazing,” Scott said, startling me from the grip of my muse enough to make me spin to look at him. His lips pulled into an adoring smile as he closed the distance. “I love seeing you caught in your art. Look at you.” He cradled my face in his hands. I gazed into the most beautiful blue-green coloration only nature could create. No mere man could replicate the glory of Scott’s eyes. Oh, I wish we could. “Your pupils are blown out, your skin is flushed, your hair is free and wild, and you’re panting. It’s like watching you when we make love. Is that how it feels? This artistic rush you get?”

  “Yes… in a way.” I threw my brush onto my sloppy table and went to my toes to kiss him. “Take me to bed, now, please.” I ground my cock into his, thrilled to my marrow to find him as hard as I was. “Love me.”

  “I do,” he whispered before covering my mouth with his. I wrapped myself around him, allowing him to ease me from the floor and carry me to bed, my weight never causing him any strain. He peeled my clothes off and loved me as I had begged him to do. With touch and taste, he got me to the summit, his grip firm on my cock as he stroked me to completion, his own release coming directly after mine, our mouths joined, our bodies straining and damp with exertion.

  He lay down beside me, Summer feeding naturally into Autumn on the stereo, and wiped off his chest and my belly with the shirt he’d taken off my back not all that long ago. I curled tightly against him, like an old cat seeking warmth, and he tugged the sheet over us.

  “That was incredible.” I sighed, tracing the dark disc of his nipple with my finger, leaving a tacky dot of gray paint on the rigid nub.