A Package Deal
Page 23
The first few nights, right after Savannah had left, I’d had some bad dreams. Really devastating ones about that horrible night when I was a teenager—the night I’d been raped—and I’d woken up shouting for Savannah. Wanting to be certain she was safe… wanting to be certain I was safe. What had amazed me, though, was that on those terrible nights, there had been no string of relentless questions from Robby, no demand for an explanation of my nightmares. He’d just pulled me against his chest and held me. And feeling so safe in his arms, I’d been able to go back to sleep without too much trouble.
No, I still hadn’t opened my soul to him completely. I refused to spill out my deepest fears, my pain. My story. But I was getting closer, much closer, to allowing myself to trust him. At least that’s what I told myself.
For some reason, a reason even I couldn’t fully understand, I still held back that one final piece of my heart from Robby. And he knew it. And he wanted more from me. But I just couldn’t release it all. Not yet.
Where was he, anyways? It was nearly eight now. I’d gotten off work at five and assumed we’d work out and then eat dinner together. When Robby hadn’t returned by seven, I’d gone ahead and put together a simple meal. But it was really strange that he hadn’t called to tell me he was going to be late. Hopefully, it was a sign that his meeting at the nursing home had gone better than he’d expected.
I could feel a gentle rocking motion take control of my body, even as I stood by the stove.
Robby
IT HAD taken me almost half an hour to calm myself down enough to be able to drive out of the diner’s parking lot. Maybe my life was all screwed up, but I still knew that there was no reason for me to drive when I was so distraught I couldn’t see straight, and then possibly hurt an innocent person. When I finally felt fit to start my car, though, I was presented with an entirely new problem: I had absolutely no idea where I should go.
My office was out of the question. I was likely to kill Mikey if I got close to him, because, yes, it would be way too easy to blame the asshole for all of my problems. But these were my problems. Created by me, and they had to be owned by me. And suffered for by me. Mikey had merely added fuel to the fire.
Our apartment was off-limits too. I’d betrayed the man I loved. I’d violated the precious little bit of trust that I had practically begged him for. But my misery didn’t end there, since I knew that if I went back to our place right now, I wouldn’t be able to simply beg Tristan for forgiveness for my weakness, and forge on ahead with him, hand in hand, into our blissful future, because I had absolutely no plans to tell my father to take a long hike off a short pier. In other words, I had already put into action an almost automatic and completely obedient response to my father’s demands, hadn’t I?
I was in the process of leaving Tristan. I was running away from him, not toward him.
I wondered for a moment if it was time I tucked my tail between my legs and went home to Mom and Dad. No, that was definitely not going to happen either. Sure, my father had laid down the law, and sure, I had spinelessly fallen right into step with his demands, but still I hated it. I hated my weakness. I hated myself. And I hated the home that had created me.
Lindsey. I could talk to Lindsey. But was it right to bring my drama into her home? Into her life? She was due to give birth any minute now and I wasn’t going to taint this perfect time in her life with my fucked-up, romantic saga.
So for a long time I drove around rather aimlessly, obsessing over the fact that I couldn’t move forward into the future I wanted and that I refused to go backward to the old life I’d never fit into. Finally, I ditched my car at a subway stop, hopped on a train, and headed to Boston.
I had come up with an idea that I hoped would help me to find clarity.
Tristan
IT WAS almost midnight and Robby still hadn’t come back home. I was seriously worried about him now. So worried, in fact, that when he hadn’t answered the half-dozen messages I’d left on his cell phone, I’d actually called his office, risking a conversation with Mikey. And then I’d called again and again. No one had answered.
I felt sick. As I paced around my apartment, my body didn’t know whether to sweat or to shiver. And at the same time that I was agitated to the point of nausea over where the hell Robby was and whether he was safe, I was equally worried about myself. I wasn’t proud to admit that the prospect of being left by both Robby and Savannah had my heart pretty much tied in knots.
Okay, I could easily be referred to as a complete fucking mess.
I was alone.
Alone, like I’d been for all those years.
Because no one had cared back then.
I was alone.
It looked like no one cared now, either.
Because I wasn’t worth much, was I?
I curled up on my side into a ball on the couch, wrapping my arms tightly around my knees. This position reminded me of the single obsession I’d lived with for so many years while I was growing up: my desperate need to be small. So small that nobody would notice me. So small that I wouldn’t even be conscious of me.
I always knew I’d end up like this.
Robby
IT TOTALLY sucked that bars closed at two.
The drinking had helped to lift my mood, or at least it had seemed that way for the first ten or so hours as I sucked down enough hard stuff to detach me from my fucked-up reality. But according to the plan to find clarity that I’d so hastily concocted, I had to ditch my wallet and my already-dead cell phone at some point tonight. I couldn’t exactly experience anything close to what Tristan had lived through with a wallet full of cash, a tall stack of credit cards, not to mention a high-tech iPhone at my disposal, now, could I? So, at closing time, I dropped my wallet and phone into a trashcan in the bathroom of the last nameless bar I visited. And I staggered out the back exit of the bar into the night.
It totally sucked that bars closed at two.
Tristan
THIS was turning into a long frigging night. I’d managed to get some sleep, but I was pretty sure my last nightmare had put a decisive end to all that. Getting gang-raped, and brutally so, even if it was just in your subconscious mind, again and again and again, as helpless as a fucking newborn, suffering indescribable pain and humiliation, begging out loud that they’d treat you as kindly as they’d treat their goddamned dog, well, those things were not exactly conducive to a good night’s rest.
It was tough to say which one of them I longed for more. When I stretched out on the couch in the dark and Runaway climbed onto my belly and started his usual paw-kneading thing, I had visions of Savannah.
The frigging weirdest memories of her popped into my mind: our first night together back when we were kids, with Savi alternately shivering from cold and crying from fear, and then me rubbing her arms ’til she was all warmed up and cracking jokes to distract her, the two of us trying like hell to get something going in bed, and failing miserably time and again, the way she moved to music, and how she loved troubled kids beyond everything else.
Beyond everything else.
Beyond me.
And then came the images of Robby, the awesome V-shape of his chest when he stood up in the hot tub at the gym, which consistently caused a physical reaction between my legs that genuinely surprised me every time, the way he’d grinned at me like I was a champion that time I’d dived headfirst into the dirt and had come up with the sky-high pop fly he’d hit, and what it felt like to be joined with him in love, wrapped up in his arms, living in each other’s eyes, just for a moment.
But he wasn’t here with me tonight either, was he? Robby had left me. He’d abandoned me, even after he’d promised me he’d stay. Or else he was dead. What other reason could there be for his absence? In either case, I was alone.
I was dealing with this alone. And that was the biggest surprise of all.
Robby
I WASN’T half the man that Tristan was, and I meant that in every sense.
&n
bsp; How had he survived this as a boy? How had he lived out here for years on end? I couldn’t fathom how he’d managed to stay sane.
For the first hour or so after I left the bar, I just sort of wandered the streets. I wasn’t even slightly tired, nor was I hungry; too much adrenaline was flowing through my veins for me to feel simple bodily needs. But I knew that at some point I’d have to crash.
It didn’t take too long until the cold set into my bones. And with the cold came panic. How was I going to stay warm? Would I freeze to death on my one night “trying out” life as a homeless person? Whatever the case, I needed warmth. I needed shelter. I had to find it.
So in the pitch darkness of this bitter winter night I began to search desperately, as if my life depended on it (which it very possibly did) for the right place to shelter me. For just a little corner out of the wind. Heat would be a bonus, a luxury even. After less than four fucking hours outside I was already feeling desperate. I marched down a street whose name I hadn’t even cared to note, tugging relentlessly on ATM doors and car door handles as I passed.
But beneath my panic, I knew I could pick up any telephone at any phone booth in the city, make a collect call home, and help would be on its way. Warmth, food, safety, and people who cared would be mine in less than thirty minutes flat. Fourteen-year-old Tristan had had no such assurances to bolster him on his desperate journey. He’d been completely alone in the world. If he got too cold, he’d freeze. If he got too hungry, he’d starve. If someone had wanted him dead on the sidewalk, well, I guessed that now I knew what that had meant for him as well as he had known it then. Ask anyone, except for possibly my dad; I was a quick learner.
After a thirty-minute search, I found an unlocked car door and was overjoyed. I may as well have located heaven’s pearly gates. Quietly, I slipped into the sedan’s back seat, curled up into a fetal position, and tried to relax enough to fall asleep. Which was impossible. I became hyperaware of every sound—there were sirens, gusts of wind, voices in the distance. At every small noise, I jolted upright and looked around, fear of being caught now added to my list of worries. Soon, I was a shivering, chattering, not to mention paranoid, mess. So much so, that I dragged myself out of my safe haven to search for a better place to call my own until the sun was higher in the sky.
My next stop was a loading dock on the back side of a commercial building. As I lay there, my overcoat filthy, my pants ripped and bloody from yesterday’s fall, my bare hands bloodied, and now frozen, I reminded myself that I was here by my own choice. I was out here right now because I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t move forward with Tristan because of my fear of losing my father’s love, and I couldn’t move forward in the way I’d promised my father because then I would more truthfully be moving backward. I’d be living a lie.
I closed my eyes and hoped for sleep, which stubbornly refused to come.
Chapter 37
Tristan
I’D MANAGED to survive the night without either of them. It hadn’t been fun and I hadn’t gotten much rest. But here I was. Alive and kicking.
Since I’d taken the day off work, I had to decide how I was going to spend the next twenty-four solitary hours. If Robby had been here, we would have gotten up early, headed for the gym to play basketball, lift weights, and take a long soak in the hot tub. I definitely couldn’t face that gym without my workout partner.
I considered calling Savannah and asking her to come home to visit. Which would surely turn into me begging for her to come home to stay. After all, I needed her every bit as much as those kids did, right? But instead, I decided that despite the frigid weather, I’d go for a long walk and then I’d try to eat something at a diner. Because if I lay on that couch for one more minute, I was going to start to think about the reasons that Robby hadn’t come home to me and the reasons that Savannah should. I needed that shit like I needed a fucking hole in the head.
And besides, I already knew why Robby hadn’t come home last night. He hadn’t come home because he’d come to his senses. He’d finally realized he wasn’t a gay man interested in being tied down in a relationship with a barely educated, runaway-prostitute-turned waiter. What handsome, successful, educated businessman would want to throw away his life with someone like that?
But a small part of me rebelled against accepting my automatic assumption that Robby had left me to find something better. Maybe Robby hadn’t come home because he’d needed to go out and find something much more essential—himself.
Yes, a walk was what just I needed. To hopefully keep me from crying my eyes out. And maybe just to find a measure of peace and acceptance.
Robby
I GUESS I did fall asleep, because all of a sudden I was aware of being prodded by something pointy, as well as being screamed at. “Get the hell out of here, you goddamn dirty loser! Go find yourself another stoop to sleep on.” Through my open coat and thin shirt, I felt the prickly bristles of a broom poking roughly into my side. “Yeah, you heard me, all right! Now get lost, and try getting a fucking job!”
I stumbled onto my feet and scurried off down the street, glancing back every couple of steps to be sure the storekeeper wasn’t chasing me. When I got far enough away to feel safe from the wrath of the man and his menacing broom, I reached into my back pocket, automatically feeling around for my wallet. Clearly, it was time for coffee, right?
And then I remembered. I wasn’t Robby Dalton anymore. I’d left him behind last night in an effort to live out this “homelessness experiment” of sorts. So now I wasn’t anybody but a nameless street person who had no ID, no money, no phone, and few choices. But this temporarily homeless guy was damn hungry and more than a little bit hungover. Now I had another problem, didn’t I? Food and water. How did you go about getting sustenance when you had not a dime to your name?
At first I scoured the filthy city street in search of lost change. This turned out to be painfully slow going. After a miserable hour all hunched over to examine the minutest details of the filthy pavement, I’d managed to find a mere thirty-two cents and my fingers had grown sticky and black with grime. But I was so damned hungry at that point I decided it was time to find out just what thirty-two cents could buy me at a convenience store.
After a quick browse around the next Quick Mart I came across, during which I received several scathingly dirty looks from the man behind the counter, and to top it off, a mother rather fiercely yanked her pretty little ballerina daughter, who happened to be about the same age as Madison, completely out of proximity of my objectionable presence, I came to the conclusion that thirty-two cents would buy me exactly nothing.
Still hungry, I continued my inelegant stroll down the busy street, suddenly overly aware of all of the passersby, nibbling on muffins and breakfast sandwiches, sipping tall cups of coffee. My mouth was watering enough to irrigate a desert when finally I succumbed to temptation. I wasn’t proud, but damn, I was hungry, so when a cleanish office-assistant-looking woman tossed the remainder of her donut and bottle of water into a nearby trashcan, I literally pounced.
As I sat on a bench, scarfing down a stranger’s leftovers, dreaming about sipping on a cup of hot coffee, I couldn’t help but admit how surreal this experience was. Eye-opening too. Yet another flicker of admiration for the man who’d survived this as a child sparked within me, only to quickly die out.
I wasn’t ready to analyze it quite yet.
Tristan
I HAD thought that a brisk walk in the winter air would have cleared my head, but that had apparently been wishful thinking. I returned home several hours later, depressed as hell.
The next big mistake I made involved going to bed. I thought maybe if I lay down, I’d end up falling asleep, and I’d get a little escape from missing Robby so badly. But that didn’t go as planned either because I started worrying.
Where was he? Was he hurt? Or sick? Had I done something wrong? Had he realized he wasn’t gay? Had he come to his senses about what kind of a person I real
ly was? Or was there another reason he hadn’t come home?
There was no end to my list of questions. But what was worse than all of the wondering was the way I missed him. Until then, I hadn’t realized how thoroughly Robby had become a part of my life. And being in our bed reminded me of the thing I missed more than anything else; I missed waking up all warm and snug against his chest. When I was in his arms, the world felt more or less like a good place. A place where I was safe. Robby had given me a sense of security that I’d never before even known existed. And I wanted it back.
I couldn’t say I took it for granted, because I hadn’t, but another thing I cherished about our relationship was Robby’s patience in teaching me things, like how he’d taught me all about sports. He’d devoted as much time and energy into teaching me the rules and skills of baseball, basketball, football, and lately, hockey, as any father had ever granted to his school-aged son. When Robby had been teaching me everything I ever wanted to know about sports but had never had anybody to ask, he had always been enthusiastic and encouraging. I’d felt smart when I’d learned and talented when I’d played. I truly loved that aspect of Robby.
Come to think of it, there was so much about him that I loved, but I wouldn’t neglect to recognize the way he made me feel sexually. All I could say was that being intimate with him felt perfect—in every way. Somehow, through his unique blend of masculinity and sensitivity, Robby was able to excite me and soothe me, both at the very same time, which, I realized, was how I needed to experience my sensuality.