Promises (Coda Book 1)

by Marie Sexton

  “Me too.” He sniffed. “Is he still in there?”

  “I’m afraid so.” I decided not to mention that he and Josh had been about to swallow each other’s tongues. The thing was, I knew Bryan was hurting too. He just happened to be handling it in the worst possible way. “I know he still cares about you. If you miss him, and you’re willing to give him a second chance—”

  “What’s the point?”

  “You love each other.”

  “I know. That’s the kicker, isn’t it? I love him. He loves me. But if he can’t trust me, how will we ever make it?”

  “You both said you were meant to be.”

  He made a choking sound that might have been a laugh, or a stifled sob. “I was a fool. I’ll never use those words again, I can promise you that.”

  “Did you cheat on him in New York?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I could have. I could have cheated on him in New York. Or in Paris. Or in Hawaii. I could have at least a dozen times since we met, but I didn’t.”

  We sat silent for several minutes. He never made a sound, but he couldn’t seem to stop tears from spilling down his cheeks.

  He eventually broke the silence. “Are you familiar with the Odyssey?”

  “What do you think?”

  “When Odysseus is captured by Polyphemus, he refuses to give his name. Later, after he escapes, he boasts it, and it costs him everything.”

  I waited, unsure where he was going, but willing to listen. I figured I owed him that, if nothing else.

  “I keep thinking about the day I met him,” he went on. “We were in the singles line for one of the Vail lifts. We ended up next to each other, and he asked me my name. Just my name, and somehow it got us here.”

  “I’m a physics guy, not a literature major like you. You’re going to have to spell out how Odysseus fits into this conversation.”

  He laughed. Not a big laugh, but it was good to hear nonetheless. “It’s the idea that when you give somebody your name, you give them power over you. And that’s what I did that day. I gave him the power to break me.” Tears choked his voice. “I gave up everything for him, Jared. I’d been accepted to Université Paris Diderot. I’d be in France right now. I’d be eating croissants and drinking a lovely chardonnay from Bourgogne. Instead I have pretzels and corn nuts and this crap.” He reached down and grabbed the empty bottle, holding it so I could see the label. It was a white zin by Ernest and Julio Gallo. “If only I hadn’t told him my name.”

  I took the empty bottle from him before he dropped it on the cement floor and broke it. “But then you never would have had that holiday together. Or those months of letters and phone calls. You told me how it was only because of him that you made it through your senior year of high school. You wouldn’t have had that summer on the beach, or our freshman year. You guys were so happy together. Would you really want to give all that up?”

  “If you’re expecting me to wax poetical about how it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, you’ll be waiting a long time. Right now, I’m wishing I’d never even been born, let alone fallen in love with Bryan.”

  The name twisted in his mouth, coming out a bit sarcastic and a lot angry. I wrapped my arms around myself. I was starting to get cold, despite my coat. I wondered if Bryan and Josh had retreated to the bedroom. “Maybe you’ve got it backwards. It’s not giving somebody your name that gives them power. It’s using their name that gives you power.”

  He turned toward me. “What do you mean?”

  He was so serious, I found myself laughing. “Not a clue. Physics guy, remember?”

  He smiled, leaning toward me a bit. I put my arm around him without even thinking about it, and for a minute we sat there, his head on my shoulder, a comfortable bond seeming to solidify between us.

  “I’m too drunk to drive,” he mumbled. “Will you give me a lift?”

  “I rode my bike here. Want to balance on the handlebars?”

  This time, his laugh was bright and real, the way it was meant to be. “Not in a thousand years.” He sat up, pulling away from me, and took a keyring out of his pocket. He dropped it in my lap. “We’ll take my car. Just get me out of here.”

  He had to give me directions to his apartment, but other than that, we didn’t talk at all on the way home. Part of me wanted to tell him how upset Bryan had been. How I still thought maybe they really were meant to be together. But the other part of me knew it was the last thing he wanted to hear.

  He directed me to a brand-new apartment complex a few blocks west of campus. His unit was on the top floor, with a view of the mountains. All of his furniture looked as new and shiny as the apartment. It was a far cry from our ratty two-bedroom in Ramblewood and the used couch that had probably been rotating from one student to another since the seventies.

  He disappeared into the bedroom and emerged a minute later with a pillow and blanket. He put them in my arms, but didn’t let go of them, bringing us within inches of each other.

  “I’m sort of tempted to invite you into my bed,” he said quietly. “It’d be a wonderful distraction. But you’re the best friend I have in the whole world right now, and I’d hate to mess that up.”

  Sex hadn’t even occurred to me. On one hand, it seemed like a great idea. We were both gay and single. Why not? But I thought he had the right of it. Their breakup was still too fresh, and Cole was drunk. I’d be betraying one friend while taking advantage of the other.

  “The couch is fine.”

  Cole let go of the blanket but rose onto his toes to plant a soft kiss at the corner of my mouth. “Thank you.”

  THE NEXT morning, Cole drove me back to the site of the party, where I’d left my bike. I rode home from there, enjoying the crispness of the cool morning air. Inside my apartment, I found Bryan, his hair a mess and his eyes bloodshot as he waited for the coffee to brew.

  “Rough morning?” I asked.

  “I’d rather still be in bed, but I have to work in an hour.” He poured a cup of coffee for himself. “You want some?”

  “I already had a cup.”

  He scowled as he came into the small living space of our apartment. He sat down on the couch and put the cup on the coffee table, eyeing it like it might jump up and bite him. I had a feeling he was weighing the pounding of his head against the sickening churn of his stomach.

  “You went home with Cole.” It was a level accusation.

  “I only gave him a ride.”

  “But then you spent the night. Did you sleep with him?”

  “No.” And I was glad I didn’t have to lie about it. “Did you sleep with Josh?”

  He put his head in his hands. “No. But only because he passed out before we got that far.”

  I perched on the arm of our one chair. “What the hell are you doing, Bryan? I know you still care about Cole.”

  “I do.”

  “Then why would you want to hurt him like that?”

  He took a deep, quavering breath. I thought he might have been close to tears. “He cheated on me.”

  “I don’t think he did, actually.”

  He shook his head and sighed heavily. “It doesn’t matter.” He sat back on the couch to eye me warily. “It can’t work. The more I think about it, the more I realize we were doomed from the beginning.”

  “Why? Because you can’t trust him?”

  “Partly, yeah.”

  He must have seen the disgust and disbelief on my face, because he sighed again, this time sounding exasperated. “Look. Here’s the thing. I’ve been thinking about my mom. She met my dad in college. Finished her degree, but never had a job. She stayed home with us kids all those years instead. Then fifteen years later, she finds out he’s cheating on her. Gets a divorce. Suddenly, it’s just her and three kids and a child support payment, on the months my dad remembered to pay. She realizes she can’t stay at home anymore. Not if we want to eat something besides ramen every night, so she figured she could work weekdays
while us kids were in school, earn enough to make ends meet. And she had a degree, so she figures how hard can it be, right? Except her degree had been gathering dust for fifteen years. She had no résumé. No work experience except the waitressing job she’d had in college. And in the end, that’s all she could find. Nobody else would hire her.”

  “What does that have to do with you and Cole?”

  “Think about it. He can’t stay in one place, right? He’s always going to be jetting off to Paris, or Rome, or Cozumel, and I can’t do that. I’ll never be able to do that. Even after we graduate. I’ll be working, and he won’t.”

  “He has a lot of money,” I said. “Maybe you wouldn’t have to work either.” But as soon as I said it, I saw the point he was trying to make.

  “Exactly. So I spend a few years following him from place to place. I won’t have a penny to call my own. I’ll have to depend on him for everything. But what happens if it falls apart? What happens if we break up in the end anyway? Then I’m stuck right where my mom was—a worthless degree and not an ounce of experience. I’d be flat broke too. Probably have to move back in with one of my parents.” He shook his head. “No way. The thought of it….”

  He didn’t finish the sentence, just kept shaking his head.

  “So, that’s it? You’ve loved him since the day you met, but you’re going to throw it all away? What ever happened to ‘meant to be’?”

  His laugh was short and bitter. “We were kids. We still believed in fairy tales. But this is real life, Jared. And in real life, Cole and I don’t stand a chance.”

  I ONLY bumped into Cole once over the next few months. We were both in the coffee shop of the student center, and we spent an hour catching up.

  “I love living alone,” he assured me, when I asked how he was doing. “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

  An obvious exaggeration, since his eyes filled with tears as he said it, but I pretended to believe his lie.

  Meanwhile, my anger at Bryan waned. He was still my friend, even if I thought he’d made a horrible mistake. Josh came over more frequently, and I had to admit, he wasn’t a bad guy. He was cute. Charismatic. Mellow and practical in a way Cole could never be. I could see why Bryan liked him. I would have made a play for him myself, if things had been different. But I also knew Bryan kept that photo-booth strip of pictures in his wallet, taken during his and Cole’s magical summer together. More than once, I saw him looking at it, so much sadness in his eyes, it hurt me to see.

  Sophomore year came to an end, as did our lease. Bryan and Josh, who were officially a couple by that point, decided to move in together. They invited me to share an apartment with them, but I’d already endured more nights than I might have liked listening to them have sex on the other side of a paper-thin wall, so I declined.

  The problem was, that left me in a bit of a bind. The school newspaper had a hundred ads of people looking for roommates, but that felt like a crapshoot. I could live by myself, but it’d be expensive. I was still debating when Cole called.

  “Hey, sweetie. Long time, no see. Want to be my roomie next year?”

  “I thought you were happy living by yourself?”

  “I was. Now I’m bored with it. What do you say? I have the option of upgrading to a two-bedroom, but I have to let them know by tomorrow.”

  “Nothing like waiting until the last minute.”

  “Honey, are you in or out? It’s a simple question.”

  My part-time gig at Checker Auto Parts paid minimum wage. I hated to admit how broke I was, but there was no point in lying. “I don’t think I can afford half the rent in your apartment complex.”

  “I’ll make you a deal—you pay the same amount you’re paying now, and we never talk about money again.”

  Was it selfish of me to take him up on it, knowing he’d be paying extra? Maybe. Then again, he’d made the offer, and living with him sure sounded better than rolling my dice on the “roommates wanted” section of the personal ads.

  “I’m in.”

  TECHNICALLY, COLE was my roommate as of June 1, but Cole being Cole, he left town the very next week. I had his nice, clean, not-Ramblewood apartment to myself over the summer while he gallivanted across Europe. His absence turned out to be convenient. I met a local boy named Greg at the club and spent the summer in bed with him, until the school year took him back to Oregon State University.

  We were halfway on each other’s nerves by then, so I wasn’t sorry to see him go. Our fling brought one solid point home for me though—I was woefully uneducated when it came to anal sex. All my previous partners had been short-term, and they’d all been happy enough sticking with hand jobs and oral. Greg had spent the last month of our time together trying to convince me to bend over for him. When I’d asked why it had to be me on the receiving end, he’d clammed up fast, putting an end to the argument, but not to the questions it raised in my mind. I knew why he only wanted to top because I felt exactly the same way. Of course it would feel good to fuck somebody. But being fucked?

  No. I couldn’t imagine that being fun. The bit of anal play I’d tried while masturbating hadn’t changed my mind. But fair was fair. I couldn’t expect somebody to spread their legs for me if I never intended to return the favor.

  Of course, I was back to being single anyway, so I mentally filed it away under “bridges yet to be crossed.”

  Two days before school started, Cole was back. Unfortunately, he wasn’t alone.

  “Jared, this is Tony. We met in Brighton. He’ll be staying with us for a while.”

  Tony was thin like Cole, but taller, with dark eyes that gave me the creeps. I didn’t like him from day one, but what could I do? He made Cole happy. Maybe not as happy as he’d been with Bryan, but happy enough. The problem was, Tony didn’t do anything. He wasn’t a student. He didn’t work. He didn’t even do his share of the housework. I wanted to complain, but I didn’t. After all, Cole was paying two-thirds of the rent. If he wanted Tony around, I figured it was his right.

  I had other things on my mind anyway. September meant my twenty-first birthday. I’d promised my brother Brian I’d be home that weekend, so I could drink my first legal beer with him. Technically, I’d now be an adult in every way.

  Except I was still lying to everybody at home about being gay.

  I needed to come clean. More specifically, I needed to come out. When I’d first left for college, I’d clung to the notion that maybe I wasn’t 100 percent gay. Now, I had no such delusions. I’d never so much as dreamed of kissing a girl, and lord knew I’d done plenty more than kiss with men. It was time I quit hiding.

  The three short weeks between the beginning of school and my birthday had me edgy and nervous. On the Wednesday before I was due back home, Cole sent Tony across town for takeout. He could have ordered it from a dozen places nearby, but instead, he insisted on a place that would keep Tony out of our hair for thirty or forty minutes.

  And then he cornered me.

  “Tell me what’s wrong.”

  I was sitting on the floor, wedged between the couch and the coffee table, tackling homework for my Physical Thermodynamics course. Not that I’d been able to concentrate much. I was too busy picturing scenarios where I came out to my family and ended up being told to leave and never bother coming home.

  “What makes you think anything’s wrong?” I asked.

  Cole gave one of his dramatic sighs and plopped onto the couch next to me. He ran his hand over the back of my head, like I was a dog he was trying to win over. “Honey, you’ve been moody and mopey since school started. Is it Tony?”

  I almost said yes, I hated the guy, but decided I was more concerned about my real problem.

  I moved to the couch, sitting next to him. “How did your parents take it when you came out?”

  He froze, as he so often did when the subject of his family came up. “I never really had to do that. My father died while I was working up my nerve. And my mother….” He shrugged. “I’m su
re she knows, but I never told her. Is that what this is about? Coming out with your family?”

  “I’m going home for my birthday this weekend. I know it’s time. I’ve kept them in the dark too long already, but I’m scared to death.”

  “Do you really think they’ll take it so hard?”

  “I don’t know. They aren’t religious or anything, so that’s not an issue. But I guess that’s the scary part—not knowing. What if they freak out? What if they tell me I’m not their son anymore? What if they refuse to help me keep paying for college? What if—”

  “Honey, stop.” Cole grabbed my hand and held it between his. “What if the sun explodes between now and then? Will all this agonizing have done you any good at all?”

  “There’s no evidence of the sun being about to explode. Me telling my parents I’m gay? That’s happening this weekend, one way or another.”

  He kept holding my hand with one of his but leaned close and put the other against my cheek. “Listen to me, Jared.”

  It was the first time I’d heard him say my name in ages. His penchant for pet names had grown, ever since the discussion we’d had on the back porch during our sophomore year. I often wondered if it related to his Odysseus comment, but symbolism wasn’t my forte. Mostly, I figured he did it because it annoyed people, and because he found some kind of pleasure in watching them decide whether or not to call him on it. “I’m listening,” I said.

  “You’re the sweetest, most open-minded person I’ve ever met. You’re one of the few people in the world who’s good all the way to their core.” I wasn’t sure that was true, but he didn’t give me a chance to argue. “I’ve never met your parents. I don’t know for sure how they’ll react. But I know that whoever raised you, they did it right. And I don’t think people like that could ever reject their son for something so frivolous.”

  His words almost brought tears to my eyes. I ducked my head, hoping to hide the fact from him.