by Jamie Shaw
My mom takes my cue and gets back to her point. She raises her water glass. “To good friends and good food.”
Everyone raises a glass in a toast, and before mine is even back on the table, all four of my brothers stand at once to grab the best parts of the turkey. I chuckle as I catch Adam, Joel, and Mike sharing looks from my dad’s end of the table, but they catch on quick. Within seconds, we’re all on our feet except my dad, who waits for my mom to make him a plate, since she’s always liked waiting on him and he’s never minded it.
I circle the table to get some space from Shawn, but my plate fills up quickly, leaving me no choice but to sit back down at his side.
“Oh my Goddd,” Joel groans as he chews on his first bite of my mom’s turkey. “This is the best turkey I’ve ever had.”
She beams, and I catch Mason grinning approvingly. But then he catches me catching him, and he ditches the smile. “So, Adam, I kind of remember you from high school,” he says, and the fact that he’s talking at all means he’s up to no good.
“Oh yeah?” Adam asks. He’s seated between Joel and Ryan, reaching across the table to grab a dinner roll.
“Actually, I don’t think I remember you. I just heard a lot about you.”
Adam smirks like he knows what’s coming. “People like to talk.”
Undeterred, Mason continues prodding. “Yeah, they said a lot of things.”
My mom takes the bait, her brow furrowed as she washes down a bite of stuffing. “What kind of things?”
“Adam hooked up with practically every chick in school,” Bryce offers with unbridled admiration. I’d reach across the table and punch him in the head if I thought I could even make a dent in his caveman-thick skull.
“Oh . . . ” my mom says. She glances at me, and I sigh.
“Adam has a girlfriend now. So does Joel.”
“Does Van Erickson have a girlfriend?” Mason goads.
“Who’s Van Erickson?” my mom asks, but Joel is already chuckling and giving Mason an answer.
“He has tons of them.”
My mom starts asking who he is again, but Mason interrupts her. “Was one of them my sister?”
This time, Mike is the one to set his fork on his plate and stare at my brother like he’s an idiot. “Do you really think your sister would be Van Erickson’s groupie?”
“Thank you!” I say with my hands thrown dramatically in the air.
Ryan grins and finally answers my mom. “Van Erickson is some big rock star. Kit’s band opened for them a few days ago.”
“One of the biggest rock stars there is,” Kale adds to throw glitter on my parade. When I look at him, wondering how the hell the guys know about us opening for Van in the first place, Kale shrugs and swings his finger at all four of them. “They looked you up online. There is this thing called the Internet, you know.”
“She gave him a wet willy,” Shawn volunteers from beside me, and the entire table explodes with laughter.
I’m staring at Shawn, wondering why he’s acting like he’s proud of me or something, when Bryce shouts, “She did not!”
Shawn gives a half smile and nods. “Five seconds after meeting him.”
Even Mason laughs so hard he has to set his drumstick down. My dad joins in from the end of the table.
“Kit,” my mom manages through giggles, “did you really?”
I shrug. “He deserved it.”
Shawn grins at me, but the gaze I return to him is hard. This doesn’t make us friends. This doesn’t make us even. And it sure as hell doesn’t make us okay.
I thought I could pretend not to hate him, but I can’t. Not with him smiling at me like it’s okay to smile at me. The light fades from his eyes, his lips, his face, and we’re just staring at each other with a million unspoken things in the air.
Don’t come, I texted him. And now all I’m thinking is, Get up, go home, don’t call me. Ever.
“That’s so badass.” Bryce praises my wet willy incident and then turns to my mom. “Mom, you should’ve seen her onstage last night. She was such a fu—” He coughs to stop himself from getting whacked in the head for cursing. “Freaking rock star. She took her shirt off and threw it out into the crowd and—”
“She took her shirt off?” my mother practically shrieks, stealing my attention from Shawn. But then his hand finds mine under the table, and when he tries to hold it, I jerk it out of his grasp.
My fists start to shake. My arms, my legs. What the fuck does he think he’s doing?
I don’t look at him. I can’t. I’m two seconds from standing up and running from the table in an angry fit of tears. Either that, or stabbing a fork in his eye.
He tried to hold my hand. Why the fuck did he try to hold my hand?
“Her flannel,” Kale corrects Bryce, but Mason cuts in before my mom can be relieved.
“She was practically getting naked.”
I break my thoughts from Shawn to glare at Mason from across the table. He challenges me with his stare, and I’m silently promising to murder him, when a pea hits me right in the cheek. Ryan laughs down at his plate, and I make a mental note to get revenge for the pea after dinner, because if I do anything about it now, every single person at this table will end up covered in mashed potatoes—and Shawn will probably end up with a chair smashed over his head.
“No more taking clothes off,” my dad proclaims with his eyes on the stuffing he’s soaking in gravy, and everyone at the table snickers. Everyone but me and Shawn.
“So, Mike,” my mom says when the madness has died down, “what about you? Have a girlfriend?”
He shakes his head as he finishes chewing his food. “Not for a while.”
My mom shoots me a quick smile, and I roll my eyes.
“Oh,” she says. “Why not? A handsome guy like you, I figured you’d be beating them away with one of your drumsticks.”
“Nah,” Mike says with a bashful smile and his cheeks turning pink, “I leave that to Adam and Shawn.”
My mom turns her mischievous grin on the boy who broke my heart. “No girlfriend for you either?”
When Shawn’s gaze slowly lifts to lock with mine, I curse the day he was born. I curse the day I was born. There’s not a damn person at this table who doesn’t see the way he’s looking at me—except maybe my dad, since he’s eyeball-deep in stuffing—and Shawn’s answer makes things even worse. “I’m not sure.”
“Oh?” my mom asks, and Shawn holds my lethal gaze for a moment longer before finally turning away.
“I don’t know.”
He doesn’t know? He lies to me for months, keeps me a dirty secret, apologizes for everything, shows up at my house after I ask him not to come, tries to hold my hand when I’d obviously rather shove his in a meat grinder, and he doesn’t know?
“What’s not to know, sweetie?”
I surprise myself by slamming my fork down so hard on my plate, even my dad gives me his undivided attention. Ten sets of eyes are on me when I snap at everyone, “I can actually think of a lot of things you don’t know.” With all those eyes on me, with Shawn at my side playing the victim, I can’t stop. I see the cliff I’m about to careen off of, and my foot punches the gas. This has been a long time coming. Six fucking years, and then some. Everything I’ve ever wanted to say to Shawn comes exploding to the surface, and I say it in front of everyone.
With my dark eyes bouncing between my brothers, I bark, “Like, did you know that Shawn fucked me at Adam’s party the day you guys graduated?”
The way I stare around at all four of their white-stricken faces without batting an eye stands testament to how much of my mind has officially left the building. Even the guys from the band have lost their color, but more and more secrets keep pouring from my mouth.
“That was the reason I was so depressed that summer. He asked for my number like he was going to call me, but then he never did. He fucked me in Adam’s bedroom and then he never even called me.”
Everyone just sits there, stunned into froz
en silence, and I laugh when I remember the most important detail. My head whips in Shawn’s direction, my fierce gaze stabbing him between the eyes.
“Wait, I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet! Did you know that was the night I lost my virginity?”
His face falls, and I go for the kill.
“Yeah, Shawn, that was my FIRST fucking time. I wanted it to be you. I wanted you to be the one, because you were the only boy I EVER fucking loved. And still, you’re the only one . . . the only one I’ve ever . . . ”
Tears scorch my eyes, and my voice cracks. When I glare at him from inches away, a few spill into the void between us. I blink hard and shake my head to regain my composure—however unstable it was in the first place. Turning my hard stare on my brothers and everyone else gaping at me at the table, I continue raving.
“I was fifteen years old, and then he just picked up and moved and never thought of me again. And I thought he didn’t remember who I was when I auditioned, but it turns out, he’s known this entire fucking time. And then he asked me to go out with him, and you know what? I said yes.” I start laughing again, or sobbing—the sounds blend together in the hysteria I’m in. “But then, he said I wasn’t even allowed to tell anyone. Because he never wanted anyone to know. All I’ve ever been is a dirty, pathetic, disposable fucking secret to him.” My anger bubbles to the surface once more, and when I turn my head and latch on to Shawn’s wide green eyes again, I scream at the top of my lungs. “Isn’t that fucking right, Shawn?”
I’m pretty sure words start coming from his mouth, but it’s lost under the sound of my chair crashing to the floor. I stand up so violently from the table that it flies backward and topples, and I’m pretty sure I broke it, but I don’t fucking care. I’m storming away from him, from everyone.
“Kit!” Shawn’s voice calls, and I hear a chorus of chairs scraping against hardwood, the thunder of footsteps following me.
I don’t stop until I’m at the front door. When I turn around, Shawn is right there. I swing open the door and stand on the threshold.
“Where are you going?” he pants, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think the look in his eyes is panic. Regret. A million things that I want to believe are there, but that I know damn well are not.
“NOWHERE.”
With the force of a woman’s scorn, I snare my fingers in the front of his shirt and yank him toward the door. Then I spin around and push him so hard, he stumbles backward onto my porch. I barely catch the pleading look he gives me before I slam the door as hard as I can in his face. The foundation shakes, my hands shake, the world crumbles, and when I turn around, everyone is staring at me. Everyone knows.
My mom, my dad, my brothers, the band. All of them are staring shell-shocked at me as I put all of my effort into simply staying on my feet. My heart is jackhammering against my ribs, threatening to tear me apart from the inside out. My skin shrinks along with the rest of me, and I can tell my eyes are wild. I’m trapped in open space with nowhere else to run.
In an attempt to stay on my feet, I find my twin’s face in the crowd, but his eyes are just as panicked as mine. I’m falling, sinking, and he’s feeling every bit of my desperation, making it his own.
I want to run. I want to hide. But there’s nowhere, nowhere, nowhere. I’m shaking in my own skin, about to lose what’s left of my dignity as I break down in hysterical, inconsolable, mortifying tears right here on my foyer floor—but before I can, before I can make the worst night of my life so, so much worse, Kale shouts at the top of his lungs, his voice echoing off the walls—
“I’M GAY!”
Chapter Twenty
MY MOM PASSED the fuck out.
One minute, she was gaping at me, at Kale, at me, at Kale, and then her eyes just kind of rolled back in her head and she dropped like a sack of bricks.
Mike half caught her since everyone else was too busy doing the same thing my mom had been doing—big eyes darting from me, to Kale, to me, to Kale.
Fast-forward to Ryan rushing to call an ambulance, a swirl of red and blue lights flashing through our windows, a team of medics sprinting into our foyer . . . and, yeah, tonight was a disaster of epic fucking proportions.
“She’s going to be okay?” Kale asks the medic standing on our doorstep, guilt weighing down his words.
“She’ll be fine,” the EMT assures him. “Just keep her hydrated and make sure she takes it easy.”
I don’t watch the ambulance pull away—because Shawn is still out there somewhere. When my mom finally regained consciousness and we were waiting for the ambulance, Adam gave me a quick hug, told me Shawn is an asshole, and went out to stand by his best friend’s side. But Mike and Joel are still in my house, with Mike running his hands anxiously through his hair and Joel gnawing on a thumbnail, neither of them knowing what to say or what to do.
Tiny step by tiny step, Joel backs toward the front door. “I’m . . . just gonna . . . ” When he’s almost there, he stops to rub the back of his neck. “Do you need me for anything?”
I shake my head. “Go.”
“I’ll see you next practice?”
“Yeah,” I say, not sure if I’m lying to him or not.
Joel slips outside, and Mike sighs before wrapping me in a strong hug. He keeps me pinned tightly against him when he says, “Look, Kit, Shawn only told me what happened between you guys after I found you on the roof, and when he told me . . . it’s not like he was proud of it. He knows he messed up.” Mike pulls away to study me, concern coloring his deep brown eyes. “If I had known you didn’t know—”
“Don’t say it.” I know he wouldn’t have told me, and then I never would have known.
Mike frowns. “I’m just saying . . . ” Another sigh escapes him. “If you really do love him—”
“Mike.”
“You should give him another chance. That’s all I’m saying.” When I just stare at him, he adds, “I really do think you’re good for each other, and I really do think he cares about you.” When I open the door a little wider for him to leave, he takes the hint. But just as I’m about to close it, his hand wraps around the edge and his head pokes back inside. “Don’t leave the band over this.”
“I’ll call you.”
The frown he gives me says he isn’t satisfied with my answer, but he releases the door and leaves anyway, and then it’s just me and Kale standing helplessly in my foyer. I lean back against the door and close my eyes. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Of all the ways Kale imagined coming out, I’m sure that yelling “I’m gay!” at the top of his lungs in a room full of strangers wasn’t one of them.
“I know.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Dad said we’re supposed to meet everyone in the den.”
I open my eyes, dead serious when I say, “Want to run away instead?”
“Only if we can be snake charmers.”
“I hate snakes.”
“Looks like we’re staying then.”
When I frown at Kale, he gives me a weak smile and pulls me into a tight hug—the kind that prevents you from breathing or thinking or feeling. I give him the same kind.
“I’m with you,” he says, and I tuck my face into the crook of his shoulder.
“I’m with you too.”
“Then we’ll get through this.”
“I know.”
“Are you ready?”
“No. Are you?”
Kale shakes his head against my cheek. “Not even close.”
Shoulder to shoulder, we cross the distance to the den and step down into it. My mom is lying on the couch, her head on my dad’s lap as he presses a damp washcloth against her cheeks. She sits up as soon as she sees us, batting my dad’s hands away when he tries to force her back down.
My brothers are camped on chairs and arms of chairs and the brick base of our fireplace. No one says a word. Everyone just stares and swallows and blinks and stares.
Kale sucks his
lip between his teeth. I twirl the diamond in my nose.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Bryce begins, and both Kale and I stare back at him. I don’t know who he’s talking to, since he’s looking at both of us, and neither Kale nor I are in a rush to answer him. “It doesn’t matter,” he continues. “So you like dudes, so what.”
When I gaze over at Kale, his eyes are already glistening. God, I want to hug him. I want to wrap him protectively in my arms. But Bryce beats me to it. He crosses the distance in no time, yanking my brother into a hug that brings tears to my eyes too. My hand lifts to my mouth, and I step away to give them space.
“You’re my brother,” Bryce says, and those three words say everything. When he pulls away, he smiles at Kale. And then he pushes his shoulder and crosses the room to sit back down.
Kale stares at everyone else—at our mom, our dad, at Mason, at Ryan. My mom slides her feet from the couch and pats the cushion next to her. “Come sit down.”
My brother does as he’s told, and my mom takes his hands in hers. “Before I say anything, tell me this isn’t just something you did to help Kit out.”
Kale silently shakes his head.
“And the reason you’ve been checking your phone for days . . . ”
“Leti,” Kale answers, and I hold my breath as I wait to see what everyone does.
A soft smile curls my mom’s lips. “But before Leti, you were still . . . ”
“Still gay,” Kale confirms, and my mom’s eyes drift to mine.
“And you knew?”
I swallow thickly. “Since sixth grade.”
She lets that sink in, but it’s Mason who barks out a response, his black eyes pinned on my twin. “Since sixth grade? You’ve been keeping this from us for . . . for . . . How many fucking years is that?”
“Ten,” Ryan answers, disappointment quieting his voice. “Ten years. Kale . . . why? Why would you . . . ” He chokes up and rubs his eyes, and Kale wipes the heel of his palm under his own thick lashes. “I don’t understand,” Ryan finishes.
My dad reaches over and pats Ryan’s knee, and Kale stares down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”
“What the hell are you apologizing for?” Mason snaps, and Kale just shakes his head at his socks.
