by L B Winter
Fighting hard against the tears that threatened behind my eyes—no fucking way that dickwad was going to make me cry, again—I said, “So yeah, there are two sides. I’m not making it that way; there just are. And I don’t give a fuck whose side you’re on, and if you and Steven pick him over me, fine. But we aren’t equals here; we aren’t the same. And who I pity most, to be honest, are the poor, unsuspecting students who are going to have a hypocrite like him for a mentor. Because I know what it’s like to trust Jamie and get burned for it. And you have no right to tell me how I should feel.”
I was pretty proud of myself, though I was shaking with anger, because it isn’t every day you’re this upset and still can manage to articulate exactly what you think. But here in Trent’s car, I suddenly had a moment of clarity. My anger wasn’t my fault; it was justified by Jamie’s actions. That must have been obvious to Trent, right? He’d have to believe me now; no way he could stay on Jamie’s side after he knew the whole story.
After a moment’s silence, though, I turned to look at Trent. I was expecting him to have something like sympathy in his face, but there was nothing. Just the same serious, steady frown.
“Un-fucking-believable,” I said. We were parked at a stoplight, and the building for my Spanish class wasn’t too far away. I’d rather walk than deal with this bullshit from somebody I’d always believed was my friend. Maybe he was just waiting around for the next sad gay kid to take under his wing; maybe Lynn had been the only one who’d really liked me. Maybe...oh, hell.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “And have a nice life.” I flung the door open, darted out of the car, and slammed the door behind me. I never looked back at Trent.
It was cold and windy, and the only thing keeping me from crying was the way the wind would freeze my tears as soon as they touched my eyelids. I was angry with myself for crying, and with Trent for taking Jamie’s side, and with Jamie for—well, for a lot of things, it turned out. I’d never said all that before, never processed it. I hadn’t just had a fling with Jamie; I’d had this really traumatic first-time experience that couldn’t be resolved. It was like I was working through the whole episode, repeating it again and again, expecting things to change that I should have known never would. I was acting crazy, I knew. Maybe the best thing to do really would be to let him go, to just forget about being his friend. Too much had happened; too much just couldn’t be unsaid.
My day was a blur, and it didn’t help that neither Steven nor Trent attempted to reach me—no calls, no texts. I texted Taylor to update him on my project and let him know I was alive after I didn’t come home yesterday, but I never heard from anybody else. Had they really jumped ship and become Jamie’s friend now instead of mine? Nothing had ever seemed so unfair.
At least on Thursday, though, I got good news. One of the businesses with an internship—a paid one—got back to me and offered me the job. I would start the Monday after finals week, and work four days a week in their office, about a mile from our new apartment.
As soon as I hung up the phone, I declared to my empty dorm room, “This is awesome!” I looked down at my phone and had an instinct to call Steven—but then I realized that I couldn’t; we hadn’t spoken since Monday morning. Same for Trent, and definitely same for Jamie. Tay was busy, so I sent him a text, but I knew he wouldn’t see it until later. I texted Lynn, too, and Tessa, but it just wasn’t the same as having Steven to talk to about it. I stared at the phone in my hands until my eyes blurred, then threw it onto my bed. I always had a million friends around, and now when I finally had good news to share, was there really nobody I could talk to?
Mom would be at work, but I decided to send her an email so she’d get the good news, and if she had time, she could call me herself. For good measure, I sent it to Dad, too—and then, just to make myself feel better, I searched my email inbox for my dad’s email address. I wanted to read that email he’d sent to the church again, the one where he said he was proud of me. I was really pathetic, wasn’t I? I found it, and read it through—and then was surprised to remember the thread of emails I’d forgotten about that followed it. Months ago, I’d forwarded it on to Jamie, and then he’d replied with such venom, while I was sitting just in the next room. I’d expected the note to make me feel better, but now it only reignited my rage. How could anybody fail to see how messed up Jamie was, and how undeserving he was of any recognition or support from the LGBTQ Office?
Then, it occurred to me—I didn’t just have to stew over this. I could do something; I had proof. With rage still running through my veins at how all my friends had unfairly abandoned me, I clicked the “Forward” button from Jamie’s email and sent a note to the LGBTQ Office expressing my concern that they would hire anybody with such toxic homophobia in their recent past. I did it all so quickly that I barely had time to catch my breath before I’d hit the “Send” key. And then it was out there, out in the world to do whatever it would do.
If Steven and Trent didn’t learn from this that they were wrong about Jamie, then there was no helping them.
Finals week came, and my friends still didn’t try to talk to me. Steven, I assumed, was mad that I had snapped at him one time after pulling an all-nighter. Never mind all the millions of times he had snapped at me over the course of our friendship. Trent and I didn’t talk regularly anyway, but I was sure he was being his usual, supportive self to Jamie—who, in all likelihood, was going to meet all kinds of nice, good-looking, Dylan-type guys to fuck after he started working at the LGBTQ Office.
The cycle of pain and hurt and anger and resentment was taking over, and I hardly knew it was happening. I just knew I was bitter, and sad, and lonely, and there was nobody there to talk to about it.
Tay and I got the keys to our new apartment on Thursday, and because we had been living in the dorms with little of our own furniture, we hardly had anything to move.
“If Trent will let us use his car,” Tay said, “we can probably move it all in one load.”
“Let’s just ask Tessa,” I said, “since her car’s already here.”
“Oh, yeah, that’ll work,” Tay said, instantly smiling warmly as he pulled out his phone to write to her.
“I’m happy about this,” I said, smiling serenely at him. He looked up at me with questions in his eyes, and I gestured from his phone back to him. “This.”
He kicked me and said, “Dork.” But he was smiling, too.
Taylor and Tessa started “officially” dating last weekend, when she filled in my usual role as flash card coach, and Taylor had been too respectful to try anything with her.
“Naturally,” she’d told me in class on Monday morning, “I had to kiss him. Because if I didn’t, we never would!”
She sounded so happy about Taylor’s romantic apathy, but I knew he was just the right kind of guy for a girl like her—especially after all she’d been through with Daniel. Somebody who never pressured her, respected her, and had no problem with her taking the lead was exactly what she needed. Not to mention, Tay deserved somebody like her—smart, driven, independent, able to cope with being left alone for a week at a time while he did school stuff. I was glad they were such a good match, and it was nothing but my lifelong friendship with Taylor, who was really more like a brother to me, that could have softened the blow of feeling even more lonely than I had before, knowing two of my last good friends were about to have a lot less time for me.
God. When would I get it through my head that things weren’t all about me?
We were all settled in by Friday when I finally got a call from Steven. Tay still had one final exam, so he wasn’t home, but I was all finished with my freshman year and celebrating by flipping through the channels on the TV we’d just bought, aimlessly staring at anything or nothing.
I was jarred from the monotony by the phone ringing, and I was shocked by the name on the screen. Steven. Was it a pocket dial? Or did he really want to talk to me? My heart started to lift as I thought that maybe he finally
started to miss me as much as I missed him. Still, I didn’t want to let him off that easily.
“Hey,” I said when I picked up. “You do still have my number. I figured you must have lost it.”
“Paul, what the fuck is this email Jamie just got from the LGBTQ Center?”
“What?” I said. It had been more than a week, and I’d actually forgotten until that moment the email I’d forwarded to them. But now, dread settled in my gut.
“He got an email,” Steven said, anger clearly evident in his voice, “that said that, due to an email shared with them by a concerned fellow student, which they also enclosed, he was no longer being offered the mentorship position, though the scholarship could not, at this late date, be revoked. They encouraged him to look for alternate funding sources for the following year, however.” His wording, like he was reading the email word for word, was measured and articulate, but his voice was shaking with anger. “How could you, Paul? How could you sabotage him like this? Do you have no heart at all? I mean, was this your plan all along? Save him just to destroy him?”
Jamie was going to lose his scholarship? My heart was racing uncontrollably as I sat down on the couch and tried to steady myself, to convince myself that I hadn’t been wrong. This was a good thing, wasn’t it? Jamie being separated from people he could hurt was a good and important thing.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” Steven said. “Maybe at least pretend to try to defend yourself?”
“Nope,” I said, fresh rage pooling in my gut. “Not how this works. You don’t get to ignore me for two weeks, then call me being all self-righteous about something you know nothing about. I’m not ashamed of anything I did, and you don’t know the first thing about it. You would, if you weren’t suddenly his best friend instead of mine.”
“That’s not—ugh! Stop making it a competition! That’s what Trent and I are mad about, because it’s unfair, and unreasonable, and you’re acting like a child! But now your actions really have consequences. Jamie was turning his life around, despite all the cards being so stacked against him, and you ruined it all. I mean, he is devastated! You cannot imagine how devastated he is right now, Paul, and all because you couldn’t bear to have him be happy if you weren’t a part of it!”
“That’s not what this is!” I said. “And I don’t have to justify myself to you. I—I don’t know what happened to us, Steven. Like, you used to tell me that I should love myself and not give anybody the time of day who doesn’t love me, too. But then I met this person who always, I mean always, made me feel like shit about myself. Just beat down on me all the time and drained me of every good feeling, even when I was working my ass off to help him, and I finally got out from under all that negativity, and you decided to be his friend instead of mine! And it’s just—” I shook my head, though he couldn’t see me. “It’s bullshit. Because this isn’t between you and Trent and me and Jamie. It’s just between me and Jamie. You were wrong to take sides—but if you were going to take a side, it should have been mine!”
“No,” Steven said. “That is not fair. I don’t have to side with you, or think you’re right all the time. Friendship does not entitle you to that.”
“Then what the fuck is it good for?” I countered.
“Fuck you,” he muttered, and the line disconnected.
I was still shaking when I set down the phone, and I couldn’t honestly tell what was rocking my world more—that Steven had just effectively ended our friendship, or that Jamie’s upward trajectory, one that I had set in motion myself, was fizzling out spectacularly before my eyes. I had done it; my email sent in a moment of pure anger and resentment was evidently taken seriously and used as a reason to deprive Jamie of something that—but, no. He didn’t deserve this opportunity, and he’d lost it himself by treating me the way he had and expecting to do it with impunity. I wasn’t at fault here.
The rest of the weekend was quiet. Tay’s mom and dad came to pick him up for the week, since he had a short break before his internship resumed and this way he could drive my car to Philly for us to share, since we finally had a place to park it. I took the bus to church on Sunday, as it had been weeks since I was on good enough terms with the guys to borrow the car—and, probably, they were letting their best friend Jamie use it now anyway.
I got to church in a pretty shitty mood, but soon the friendly smiles, free coffee and donuts, and greetings from friends perked me up. Jason and Milton were there, and I was just walking over to talk to them when a man I didn’t know approached me.
“Paul, right?” he said, extending his hand and smiling. “John Cartwright. From—”
“Oh, from Thru-Line,” I said, smiling and shaking his hand. “I didn’t realize you went here.” Was that how I’d gotten the internship? Mr. Cartwright was a VP with Thru-Line, and he’d been my primary contact for my initial application process and phone interview.
“It’s a big church,” he said, “but I was excited to have somebody with good values and good friends to join the team. I’m a big fan of communication—well, obviously,” he added, smiling, “so when Jamie told me that he knew somebody who would be perfect for our internship, I was thrilled to give you the opportunity to show us what you can do. Who knows? Maybe if you’re a good fit, we’ll be looking at something more permanent for you.”
I shook my head slowly, unsure what I’d just heard. “Did—sorry, did you say Jamie recommended me? Jamie Campbell?”
“He sure did,” Mr. Cartwright said. “He’s joined our small group—Carole’s and mine, of course. We meet every Wednesday night. You should come sometime, if you can. Are you in a small group?”
I shook my head.
“Oh, you should join one. It’ll be a lot of laughs.” Then, catching his wife’s eye and seeing that she wanted him to walk inside with her, he added, “Hey, gotta run. But I’ll see you tomorrow! And hey, Paul—I’m excited to see what the future holds for you at Thru-Line.”
He walked off cheerily, and I was left reeling. Jamie had seen my application to Thru-Line Communications that day, months ago, when I’d brought him the scholarship application. The scholarship, of course, that I had just recently done all I could to ruin for him. But even when we weren’t speaking, he’d put in a good word for me and gotten me my internship.
Of course, that had been before he knew what I’d done. Now, he’d probably tell Mr. Cartwright not to hire me after all. I tried to hold onto my anger with him, but it was harder and harder to do as I went into the sanctuary and found my seat near Jason and Milton. They had their usual fun stories about their weeks, their jokes about people they’d seen and things they’d done, and their love-birdy ways that were even worse than Steven and Trent.
But my mind—and my attention—kept straying to Jamie. He was seated far from us, as always, but he’d come to church, just the same. His expression seemed cold, and though he never looked toward me, I could sense that he knew I was there. God, he had to be furious with me. But that made me want to cling that much harder to the rightness of what I’d done. I had to protect other innocent people from him—or, that’s what I told myself. I had to put a healthy distance between us—or, that’s what I needed to believe.
The sermon couldn’t provide me any clarity; I hardly heard a word the pastor said. When we sang the worship songs after, all I noticed was that Jamie wasn’t singing how he usually did. He always used to lose himself in the moment, looking as free and relaxed as I ever saw him—but today, he was lost in a totally different way. Brooding, distant, closed off. I began to hope he couldn’t see me. It was hard not to feel guilty when I could see the effects of my actions there in front of me all the time. The man who’d become happy, confident, alive again, looked just as depressed as I’d ever seen him. But didn’t he deserve to feel this way? Hadn’t he done this to himself?
No. No, I couldn’t tell myself that lie anymore. Until this moment I hadn’t even realized it was a lie, but this was undeniable now. Maybe he’d made some bad cho
ices—but he’d had help along the way. No matter how hard I tried to justify myself, I couldn’t quite feel blameless.
CHAPTER 23
If You Didn’t Love Me
__________
When church ended, I thought I saw Jamie working his way toward me. The thought of it made my heart race, and I purposely looked away from him.
“I’m gonna get going, guys,” I said to Jason and Milton, who instantly turned with concern in their faces.
“What? What about lunch?” We normally ate a quick lunch together after church, with a couple of other gay guys who go here.
“I’m not feeling my best,” I replied. “I’m going to head home a little early. Sorry, though. Rain check?”
They were cool about it, but I didn’t stick around to offer any additional explanations or answers to the questions they continued to ask me. No, I just needed to be away.
I hurried to the parking lot, looking resolutely downward and convincing myself that I hadn’t seen Jamie walking toward me, after all. He was probably just trying to leave, himself.
It was a warm day, sun shining brightly, and I had no problem standing out at the bus stop for the next twenty minutes, rather than visiting in the church like I normally did. I was halfway across the parking lot on my way there when I heard my name being called, loudly and boldly. Jamie’s voice, not taking no for an answer, and with it, footsteps approaching at a rapid clip.
