by Mia Kerick
Am I falling in love?
Who am I falling in love with?
Should I give myself a bit more time to figure things out?
The questions swirled around in my brain. As Tristan and Savannah happily watched the movie, I suffered with my staggering confusion over what to do. By the time the movie was nearly over, I was mentally exhausted, but I had almost convinced myself that I was straight, Savannah was my girlfriend, Tristan was gay, and Savannah and Tristan were simply friends without benefits. And that I was okay with all that. The operative word being almost.
Then when I looked down at Savannah, who was snuggled against me, I saw it. In her lap she held Tristan’s hand, their fingers entwined. And I knew right then that I couldn’t do this any longer. Because at that very moment, as I was cuddled up with the “girl of my dreams,” I experienced a sharp pang of jealousy that she was the one holding onto Tristan’s hand.
Looking back…. Savannah
ONLY the last man had spoken to me as he’d walked out the door. Nudging my rear with his work boot as he buckled his pants, he’d said, “You owe that kid big time.”
And the split second that I’d been certain those men were gone, I’d scrambled up off of the floor, desperate to get to Tristan’s side. I’d stopped dead in my tracks when I’d heard his frantic voice.
“Don’t look at me, Savannah!” His voice had sounded harsh, but I could still tell that he was more or less pleading with me. “I don’t want you to see me right now!”
I’d dropped my butt back to the floor without a second thought. “I won’t, Tristan…. I won’t look at you.”
It had been silent for a moment, aside from the sound of Tristan’s agitated breathing, and then he’d whispered one more time, “Please don’t look up here.”
So I’d waited, hearing only the rustling of the party guests’ coats beneath Tristan as he’d pulled his jeans up. At least that’s what I’d figured he was doing up there on the bed. A moment later, he’d risen stiffly from where it had happened, moved to my side, and had run his hands up and down my body from my head to my ankles, as if he was assuring himself that I hadn’t been hurt. But he’d refused to make eye contact with me.
“We gotta get outta here.” Rigidly, Tristan had leaned down to lift our backpacks off the floor and then he’d grabbed a couple of the strangers’ warmest coats from off of the bed. He’d held one out to me. “Put this on.” He’d slipped one on as well.
Then we ran down the stairs and scurried back out onto the street, quickly finding safety beside a dumpster. As soon as we’d been hidden from the street, I’d roughly grasped his sweaty face and held it in my hands, trying to see his eyes. “Are you all right, Tris? Those guys… they… they….”
He’d cut me off midsentence, his voice sharp, his words enunciated, but his eyes downcast. “I’m fine.”
“They were gonna do that to me… but you… you begged ’em to—”
“Are you fucking deaf, Savannah? I said I was fine.” At first he’d sounded furious, but then his speech had softened. “It wasn’t… it wasn’t the first time for me, Savi. I know how to take it.”
And I remember that his words had made me physically ill. Literally. “I can’t do this anymore” had been all I could say, over and over again.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Tris had wiped off my face with his coat sleeve, lifted me gently from the ground, and led me purposefully down the street holding my hand. I still hadn’t managed to catch a glimpse of his eyes.
“I know where to take you where they’ll help you.” He’d started walking faster; I’d been stumbling along, barely able to keep up now. “The Teen Outreach Center, it’s not far from here. They’ll know what to do.”
He’d been correct. It hadn’t taken us long to walk the few blocks to the Center.
“Come in with me, Tristan. They can help both of us.” At that point, I’d been crying and begging. “Then you can be safe too.”
That had been when I’d seen Tristan’s eyes for what I hadn’t realized would be the last time for almost four years. They’d been puffy—I hadn’t been sure if those men had punched him or if his eyes had swelled up from his having cried. But when those earnest brown eyes had finally found mine, they’d revealed just exactly what the world had done to him. In his fifteen brief years of life, Tristan had been so deeply wounded by everyone he’d encountered that he did not believe there was a place on earth where he could be safe.
There I’d stood, witnessing his pain and still knowing I was leaving him.
He’d reached up and touched the side of my face, his eyes filled with understanding. “I can’t do that.” Then he’d turned, swayed a bit when the frigid nighttime wind had smacked into his face, and staggered off into the night.
Before I’d stepped into my safe haven, I’d spoken three words; I’m still not certain if I’d said them aloud or just in my head. “I’ll find you.”
Chapter 10
Robby
PEOPLE say that if something doesn’t kill you, it just makes you stronger.
I wholeheartedly disagreed with that sentiment. The past several weeks of not calling Savannah and not returning her calls were simply killing me. And as of a couple days ago, Savannah had stopped leaving voice mails altogether. It seemed that I’d survived our “break up,” if you could call it that, but I didn’t feel as if I was any stronger for it. I just felt emptier. I truly missed them. Both of them.
I’d never called to offer her the standard “it’s not you, it’s me” line. Or the expected “this just isn’t working out with us” speech. I’d never been that adept a liar. But, shit, those wouldn’t have been lines at all, would they? It really wasn’t working out because I was more in love with Savannah’s male roommate than with Savannah. And I had a strong feeling she wouldn’t mind sharing him with me at all. No, that situation would not fit very well into my football-playing, white-collared, not-practicing-but-still-Catholic, all-American, upper-middle-class life.
Mikey and I sat staring out the window of my Jeep, having just attended a breaking-ground sort of ceremony to open up the spiffy new classrooms in the Tardiff Building at Somerville U. He certainly didn’t know what to make of my recent mini-depression, but I’m pretty sure he hadn’t bought it when I’d told him that I’d been the one to dump Savannah. Mikey’s opinion was that no matter what had gone down between “you and that bitch” (yes, his words), all I needed to do was to get it on with one of the girls on the street corner, and that would “fix me up just fine.” He couldn’t have been further off base.
Needless to say, Mikey was an unsatisfactory substitute for Tristan and Savannah.
“Do you realize that you haven’t fed me in going on two weeks now? I’m fucking insulted. Not to mention starving.”
I supposed my mind hadn’t been focused on food very much recently.
“Look, there’s that tacky diner we met at when you wanted me to give the Mike DeSalvo Stamp of Approval to that fag hag, remember? The S-Squared.” He got out of the car and headed directly across the street.
I jumped out of my Jeep. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, DeSalvo?” My mind scrambled to recall if it was a Tuesday or Thursday, Savannah’s nights at the diner. I wasn’t ready to see her; I’d never be ready to see her. “Get your ass back over here!”
“I’m getting something to eat, man. You may be ready to keel over from starvation and a broken heart, but I got shit to do and I need food. Do the burgers here suck?”
“No, they’re actually pretty good—but I’m not going in that place!” So there I stood beside my Jeep exchanging shouted questions and answers with my insubordinate employee, all because I had no balls. And of course, that’s the very moment when Savannah came out of the diner.
Over her coffee cup, Savannah sent me a half-lidded glance, an expression on her face that one would reserve for strictly the lowliest life forms. “Coward.” One word, that’s all she said. But she made sure to say it loudl
y enough to carry all the way to the place where I stood.
As Mikey disappeared into the diner, his hunger taking precedence over my anguish, I found myself rushing across the street to get to her side. “What did you say?”
“You heard me.” Savannah’s eyes were as dark as I’d ever seen them.
“Yes, I guess I did.” I thought I might crap my pants. “I deserved that.”
“Whatever.” She turned in the direction of her bus stop, but I grabbed her arm to stop her.
“Robby—what do you want?” Never looking more annoyed, she shook my hand off of her arm and pulled her draping wool poncho more tightly around her shoulders. “Is there something you forgot to say to us?”
I nodded. “Well, yeah, there are a few things I want to say.” I didn’t know exactly where this sudden clarity was coming from. All I knew was that I missed them, and fucking badly. “Will you meet me for coffee tomorrow?”
“Why?” Savannah was not making this easy.
“I want to apologize for—”
Savannah again started to walk away. “We don’t need your apology. So if that’s all you want, consider yourself forgiven and we can all move on with our lives.”
She was walking slowly, so I could see her face in the dull glow of the streetlight. She still looked more or less pissed off. “I want to talk.”
“Yeah? Well, Tristan and I wanted to talk last week, and the week before that, but there was no Robby to be found.” Savannah stopped dead in her tracks and turned to me. “You hurt him.” (The “you son-of-a-bitch” part was implied in her glare.)
“I’m sorry.” I was a grown man, I reminded myself; grown men do not cry in public. “I’m so sorry.”
“Tristan doesn’t deal well with disappearing acts.” I opened my mouth to say I was sorry again, but Savannah interrupted my attempt. “Where?”
“Where? Where what?” She’d lost me.
“Where do you want to meet for coffee?” (Again, the “you dumb-ass” part was suggested by the tone of her voice.)
“You name the time and place.” I’d go anywhere she wanted me to at any time she wanted me to be there.
Savannah told me to be at a small coffee shop near her apartment at ten the next morning. She gave me absolutely no clue as to what was going on in her mind.
“And, Savannah, could you come alone?”
“Robby.” She shook her head. If I’d fallen to the ground in respiratory distress right there and then, I would have received no mouth-to-mouth resuscitation from Savannah Meyers. “I wouldn’t bring him if you paid me.” She again started down the street. This time I let her go.
There was really nothing more I could say at that point.
I GOT to the generic hole-in-the wall coffee shop at nine. A full hour before our meeting time.
Eager much, Robby?
It was a Friday, so the work crowd had already cleared out, leaving plenty of space to sit. I picked a table by the window and claimed an extra chair for Savannah with my coat. Now all I had to do was wait. And I felt like a kid on Christmas Eve. But instead of wondering what Santa was going to bring me, I wondered if Santa was going to show up at all.
She showed up. Ten minutes early too.
Savannah looked amazing and what’s more, I could tell she hadn’t tried, or perhaps even wanted to. Jeans and a T-shirt and a high ponytail: that was all it took for Savannah to be the prettiest girl in the city. She whisked through the doorway, walked over to my table without looking at me, and sat down.
Before Savannah even took off her jacket and scarf, she was already staring out the window as if it was beneath her dignity to acknowledge my lowly presence. She said in a matter-of-fact tone, “We’re a package deal, Tristan and I.”
Zero bullshit. “I sort of figured that much out.”
“The hard way, huh?” She smiled, but her eyes were still far away.
“I guess.”
Savannah unwrapped her bright-pink scarf from her neck and unbuttoned her jacket but didn’t remove it. “There can be no us,” she pointed at me, and then gestured toward herself, and one more time back to me again, “without him.” She looked at me expectantly.
I nodded. “Okay.”
A waitress came over to our table and we ordered cups of coffee, which neither of us had much interest in. But the coffee was the price of the table. We were promptly served.
At that point I noticed Savannah examining me skeptically. In that Robby-the-lab-rat way, but more with more suspicion. “You said ‘okay.’ What does okay mean to you?”
“It means I understand what you’re saying. It means….” I couldn’t continue because I really had no idea what I’d meant. I just knew I wanted to be part of their little family. I’d been strangely happy there.
“Robby, have you ever had feelings for a man before?”
My stomach clenched. I hadn’t anticipated this particular line of questioning; I guess I hadn’t wanted to. “I-I don’t think so.”
“But you feel something for Tristan, beyond friendship?”
“Yes, I feel for him.” I nodded again, and then added defensively, “I feel something for you too.” My face was burning. I couldn’t believe I was saying these words aloud to another person—to a woman who’d passed Mikey’s Hot-Chick Test. “But it’s different with Tristan. I can’t explain it.”
Savannah grabbed my hands, suddenly impassioned. “I knew you were the one for us!”
I had no clue what she was talking about, but I was so afraid to say the wrong thing that I simply nodded like one of those bobble-head Chihuahuas on the dashboard of an old woman’s car. I didn’t know exactly why, but I couldn’t lose this chance to get them back in my life.
“It’s okay, Robby. Whatever you feel for him is, well, it’s just right. And whatever you feel for me, well, that’s fine too.”
“I don’t understand. I just don’t get it, Savannah.” I pushed my coffee off to the side and grasped her hands with even more vigor than she’d grabbed mine. “I don’t know how I should feel.”
Before I knew what was going on, Savannah had gotten up, dragged her chair around the table, and pushed it next to mine. “Listen, Robby.” She leaned right into my space so that we were shoulder-to-shoulder, “I want you to just go with your feelings, okay? There is no right or wrong way to feel for Tristan and me.” She took a calming breath. “But I need you to know this: I will not exclude him from any aspect of our relationship, and he’ll want to do the same for me. And you’ve got to understand this next part, but remember, Tristan doesn’t need to know about what I’m gonna tell you yet, and that’s more important than anything else.”
When Savannah touched my chin, I looked into her eyes. “Wh-what is it?”
“I want you to know that it’s okay with me if, well, if…. All right, I’m just going to say this directly, no more mincing words: it’s okay with me if you two get close, even if it’s in ways that you and I won’t.”
Savannah Meyers could yank the rug out from beneath my feet and send me sprawling like no one else. I couldn’t believe I was sitting here listening to this beautiful woman tell me it was okay for me to be gay with her, with her, well, I supposed the time had come to ask. “What is Tristan to you? Is he your lover?”
This time when she shook her head at me, it was not with her usual exasperation. “I can’t tell you all of Tristan’s personal business; it isn’t mine to share. But I can tell you that Tris and I aren’t lovers and we never have been.”
“But I know that you share a bed—I saw it!”
“Tristan and I are physically close but not sexually involved. There’s a big difference, Robby.”
I was officially overwhelmed and had a strong urge to run for the hills. I just needed to be alone to think things over. Starting with whether or not I was gay.
“He needs closeness. He needs to feel safe. And I need you to help me make him feel that way. I’m not enough for him anymore and he’s not….” She didn’t finish her thought
. Instead she sent me another hopeful glance. But I couldn’t speak; my head was spinning. “We can do it together. Tris and I, we both need you so much.”
“W-what are you a-asking me to do?” Robby the Stutterer seemed to have made a return appearance. And he needed to know what the fuck he was signing up for.
That was when she started to cry. Suddenly, the girl sitting beside me was a completely different Savannah, because the Savannah I knew certainly wasn’t the type to break down in public, or in private, for that matter. This girl was scared and confused and vulnerable. She seemed so young and, somehow, so tired. And despite the fact that I was struggling deeply with my own confusion, I knew the most important thing to do right then was to comfort her. So I dropped an arm around her shoulders in an effort to ease her worries, as well as to shelter her from the prying eyes of the waitress and the other customers.
Immediately, Savannah batted my arm away. Apparently, she didn’t give a shit what anyone else thought and had no need for meaningless comfort. She looked at me square in the eye in that no-nonsense way I was more accustomed to and had grown to respect. “I need you to help me love him.”
I suddenly felt sick. All sorts of X-rated images of Savannah and Tristan and me splayed out inside my head. Images I wasn’t at all comfortable with. “I-I don’t know if I can do that.” This was too much to wrap my brain around.
Savannah took my face in her hands, her grip almost too tight. “You can. Just start by being his friend, Robby, and when you discover his beautiful spirit, and believe me, you will, nothing will be more important to you than loving him.”
“But you? How do you fit into this picture? Tell me, Savannah. How?”
“Robby, love doesn’t have to mean sex; it can be just love.”
I had absolutely no idea what she’d intended with that cryptic statement, and I was actually too mind-boggled to ask her to explain. And since she was apparently refusing to voluntarily spell it out for me, I found myself completely out of my comfort zone. Not that sex had ever been a make-it-or-break-it issue for me, but it was sex, and we were talking about three people here. Gently but firmly I pulled Savannah’s hands from my face. “I n-need to think about all of this. I, uh, I have to figure out a few things. I’ll c-call you.”
