Love Lessons

by Heidi Cullinan

  No, Walter didn’t want to talk about it, but at the same time he really, really did. The idea of dumping some of this crap off his plate and letting someone else help him sort through it was a powerful draw. At the same time, he was painfully aware that was how his mother operated, and the hell he’d ever be her.

  “Is she in trouble?” Kelly pressed. “Is she sick?”

  “She’s depressed. Cara thinks she’s manic-depressive, but I really don’t know. She sees a shrink, and I figure they’d treat her for that if that was her diagnosis, but maybe not. Maybe it’s not working, or maybe she’s not taking her meds. She’s good at lying about what she’s thinking and feeling, putting up a front. Not to me, though. I get the whole hot mess.” He stopped and grimaced. “I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

  “I’m not going to tell anyone else, Walter.”

  Walter waved this away. “It’s not that. You don’t need this, Kel. This is deep crazy, this bullshit.”

  “Then tell me about it.”

  “No. There’s no way to fix it.”

  “All the more reason for you to get it off your chest. Because it’s killing you. Maybe I can’t help, but I can sure as hell listen.”

  “I’m not going to be her and dump all my problems on other people,” Walter snapped.

  Kelly let go of the wheel to briefly squeeze Walter’s hand. “You aren’t like her, Walter. Not even close.”

  How could Kelly know that was what he was afraid of? How had he figured that out without knowing his mom, not knowing what Walter would dump if given the opportunity? Obviously he was saying it because it was the thing to say. Except God, Walter loved hearing it, and yeah, he wanted to spill his guts. Which was all the more reason he shouldn’t.

  Maybe he could tell Kelly a little. He took a deep breath, held it and let it out.

  “I don’t know how it started. Because it was happening before they got divorced, her trying to dump everything on me, but I didn’t listen then because I wanted to be loyal to Dad too. I didn’t want to take sides. Plus I was thirteen and full of my own problems.” He ran his thumb along the inseam of his jeans. “It wasn’t so bad in high school, either that or I was numb to it. Things got bad when I went to college. That’s when Dad cheated on her too, which sent everything into a tailspin. I felt like a heel because crap, hers had been the right side. Which was part of why I came home. I felt like I’d betrayed her.”

  “How is that betraying her, if you were simply being fair? And why do you have to take sides?”

  God, he sounded like Williams. “Because she is all alone.”

  “You didn’t make her that way.”

  “I went away to school.”

  “Well, yeah. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

  “She fell apart, Kel. It was ten times worse than what you saw.” Though it was only a little worse than what Walter had seen before Kelly came downstairs. His insides began to knot back up.

  “Okay, but—” Kelly cut himself off and frowned at the road for a minute. “I mean, I get it. I’d leave Hope to help my family if they needed me, same as you did. I’d do whatever I had to. The thing is, I don’t—” He cut himself off and frowned harder.

  “You don’t what?”

  Kelly kept quiet for almost a full minute before replying. “I guess what I keep thinking of is the way you looked when I came downstairs. It wasn’t right. I mean, I know I’m naive. I do get that. I’ve been really lucky, and even with the gay thing, I’ve had it easy. So I might just not get it. I might be wrong. Yet I can’t help thinking you shouldn’t be the one to have to save your mom. It’s one thing for me to be careful with money and help out around the house, but if I came home and Lisa looked like you did, I’d want to know what the fuck was going on. And maybe I’m thinking a bit more of myself than I should, because maybe you changed your mind, but I also can’t help noticing you were different to me before you went downstairs and after. Like you’d decided, for some reason because of your mom, you didn’t want anything to do with us. That’s not right either.”

  Walter stared at the dashboard awhile, letting Kelly’s observations sink in. The last one rang in his head, and he said, “I was thinking some of that, I suppose. Which isn’t fair to you at all.”

  “Walter, it’s not fair to you. If you didn’t want to…date, or whatever this is, I could accept it. Yeah, I’d be sad, but I’d get over it. Still, it’s one thing for you to decide that, but another for you to push me away because—I mean, how does that even work? Why does your mom being sad and clingy mean you can’t be happy?”

  Why not, indeed? Walter sank deeper into his seat and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s not that.” He had the distinct feeling he should shut up, but he kept talking anyway. Why not? Blow it up now before things got too personal. “It’s more like, it reminded me I shouldn’t rock the boat.”

  “Because you think if you date me you’ll turn into your mom?”

  It sounded so insane, when Kelly said it. “I don’t know. But I don’t ever want to be that. I don’t want anything to do with that kind of pain.”

  “‘Life is pain, princess. Anyone who says otherwise is selling something.’”

  Walter couldn’t help a small smile. “Yes, Dread Pirate Westley.”

  “See? I watch more than Disney movies. Besides, it’s true. Avoiding pain doesn’t make everything okay. It means you’re avoiding pain instead of living.” Traffic had spread out, and Kelly relaxed and took one hand off the wheel. “I thought about that a lot over Thanksgiving. Here and there I saw people from high school, and the word has gone out that I’m gay. They look at me different now, and they whisper. Basically they’re doing the things I was afraid they’d do. In high school that fear seemed so important, and I had all this justification in my head. Mom didn’t help either, because she freaks out about everything and concocted scenarios where I got beat up behind the bleachers or dragged behind cars. I let that be my excuse too. Honestly, though? What I was afraid of was rejection. I liked how people saw me, and I was willing to trade my whole high school experience for that acceptance. An acceptance of bullshit, I realize now. And I don’t care. I don’t give a damn what those people think of me. I see them when we fill up our car at the gas station or go to the grocery store.”

  His jaw grew tight, his eyes hard, and he shook his head. “I can’t believe I gave them so much of my life. I can’t believe I let them convince me to be embarrassed about myself, to become so socially backward that while everyone else is hooking up I’m all doe-eyed and gooey like an eighth grader, because I was too busy hiding in actual eighth grade.”

  Kelly wasn’t embarrassed at all now, but he did seem sad, and it broke Walter’s heart. “You can’t look back from here and say it would have been fine. Maybe you were right. Maybe you were smart to do it the way you did.” He thought of all the stupid things he’d done in eighth grade and shook his head. “Better to be cautious.”

  “Not according to Cher. She says do everything now, that you can always look back and say you shouldn’t have done something.”

  “She also says she wouldn’t take her own advice, because advice is kind of bullshit.” Walter settled into his seat, distracted for a moment by thinking about Cher and her all-over-the-map, crazy life. “Though she’s really done it all, hasn’t she? And now she’s Queen of Weird Twitter.”

  That was supposed to make Kelly laugh, but he had this determination about him now, and as he spoke he stared at the road, clearly seeing something more than lanes of pavement and traffic. “I really do regret playing it safe now. I’d almost rather have been beat around a bit and been myself and been proud of who I was than hide. I feel like it cost me so much. Like not only am I behind everyone else, but that I lost years of my life.” He shook his head, his jaw going tight. “I gave up my life, Walter. My life. I’m never doing that again, ever, not for anyone.” He wiped at his eyes, a quick swipe, like he was embarrassed. “You shouldn’t, either. Not for your mom
. Not for anyone. It’s her life, Walter. And you have yours. What is it you think is going to happen if you don’t make yourself happy as some weird kind of solidarity with her? What is it you’re supposed to get?”

  Walter wasn’t doing it out of solidarity, he wanted to argue, but he knew Kelly would say what it was about then, and they’d be back to the life-is-pain thing. “Wouldn’t you want company if you were lonely?”

  “She’s not lonely. She’s in a bog, and if you give her a chance, she’s going to pull you in with her. Then all that will happen is we lose two of you senselessly.”

  Walter couldn’t think of a retort to that, so he sat there for a few miles, soaking in everything Kelly had said to him. Including the Cher quote. For someone who thought he was naive and clueless and got intimidated by Philosophy Club, he was pretty damn wise.

  Probably he should tell Kelly that, but instead he spied an exit and nodded at it. “Pull off here.”

  “Why?” Kelly asked, even as he aimed for the off-ramp.

  “Because life may be pain, but you hate driving and I’m out of my funk now, so let me. You don’t have to suffer quite that much.” He caught Kelly’s hand and brushed his thumb over the bottom of Kelly’s palm. “Besides. I want to kiss you a hell of a lot harder than I safely can while you’re behind the wheel.”

  That made Kelly swerve, but it made Walter smile. When they were parked at a gas station, Kelly turned to Walter—shy, eager, hopeful—and Walter caught his chin before kissing him with all the passion and gratitude that he felt. He let the last dregs of the idea of pushing Kelly away drown in that kiss, let himself sink into the space Kelly had made between them. When they finally parted, Walter pressed their foreheads together and stroked Kelly’s cheek.

  “Thanks,” he whispered.

  In answer, Kelly kissed his knuckles. Then he climbed out of the driver’s seat and came around to the passenger side, looking relieved, before Walter could even undo his belt.

  Chapter Eighteen

  In high school, when Kelly had needed to tell himself a story about someday in order to get through right now, a boyfriend had been a mythical, magical creature he pulled out of a box. A boyfriend called him on the phone, texted him, sent him supportive, suggestive emails. A boyfriend held his hand, touched him and gave him special smiles. A boyfriend took him out on dates, to the movies and to dinner. A boyfriend brought him presents and noticed things he needed. A boyfriend kissed him and filled in the gaps between Kelly’s fantasies of sex and the snippets of online porn he’d watched with the sound off underneath his covers.

  Except Kelly realized that since almost the moment they’d met—just as Rose had said—by that definition Walter had been his boyfriend, except for the kissing and sex. The weirdest part was how slowly the kissing-and-sex bit was getting folded into their dynamic.

  Kelly had assumed that Walter—sexually experienced, I-cut-my-teeth-on-Tom-of-Finland Walter—would try and take him to bed that first night they got back to Hope, and Kelly had been frantically processing whether or not he was ready for that. The very idea that Walter would move more slowly than Kelly wanted had completely stunned him.

  They made out on the futon—but that was it, kisses and a bit of groping. At first, Kelly assumed this was them going slow, Walter being noble or something. Except instead of adding to their repertoire of making out, Walter seemed to be cutting it off. He was staying out late too, like he was avoiding Kelly. It made him nervous.

  So he talked to Rose.

  “You should be talking to him, not me,” was what she said.

  Kelly didn’t dignify that remark with an answer, simply stared at her over his breakfast tray.

  Rose sighed and rolled her eyes. “I know. But it is what you should do.”

  “You’re telling me, with a straight face, that I should sit Walter Lucas—Walter Lucas—down on his futon and tell him I’d like us to talk about our relationship?”

  “Fine. You’re right, that would never work.” She moved her empty tray to the side and cradled her coffee cup in her hands. “So let’s review. You went to see him at Thanksgiving break.”

  “All I did was ask for a ride back. It was legit, because my family’s car broke down.”

  She nodded. “Right, good point. So he turned can I get a ride into let’s go out on the town. He took you to Boystown, out to pizza, out shopping, and to a gay bar.”

  “He tried to buy me this crazy expensive vintage leather coat first. That was when we started fighting.”

  “Interesting.” Rose leaned back in her chair. “You fought over him buying you the coat?”

  Kelly nodded. “I was going crazy, because I’d realized just how much I care about him while I was away, and I was trying to be good and not let it show. But he takes me on a freaking date, then tries to buy me things. Then, while I’m almost rigid from trying to resist him, he takes me to a gay bar—and gets mad when I dance with other guys.”

  “That’s when he put on your favorite song and made out with you on the dance floor.”

  “Right.”

  Rose raised an eyebrow. “This is pretty textbook fairy tale so far, hon.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m starting to realize they’re leaving out a hell of a lot, ending at the kiss in the castle window.”

  “Less Disney and more Shrek.” Rose sipped her coffee. “Obviously things have not been all HEA since the bar kiss. Give me the lowdown on that.”

  Kelly told her about the ride home to Northbrook, about Walter running hot and cold and freaking out. “He said he didn’t know how to behave. He was all wigged out, and he wouldn’t stop, so I kissed him. Then we went back to his house, watched Enchanted on his bed, then made out and went to sleep.” After hesitating a moment, he added, “There was this weird stuff with his mom the next morning. I still don’t understand everything that happened, but that’s when he shut down. I came down to breakfast, and it was like I’d caught him trying to brick himself in. His mom was crying—crazy crying—in her bedroom. I guess that happens a lot.” He stirred his hash browns with his fork. “He’s always so cool and snarky. He wasn’t then. Not even on that map. It broke my heart. I tried to help, got him to talk a little.”

  “But he’s been weird since then? Putting that wall back up?”

  Kelly nodded. “It sucks, because he’s more distant now than ever. In the car on the way back, I thought we’d be fine, but now that we’re back, it’s changed again, and not to what we were before Boystown. It makes me mad that he kissed me, that we started on this, because I’d rather have our old way than nothing.” He put down his fork, feeling suddenly sick. “God, I had a boyfriend for three-point-five seconds, didn’t I? And now I’ve lost my best friend too.”

  “Jesus. Stop.” She took his hand. “You haven’t lost him. But, sweetie, you’re going to have to talk to him. Ask him what’s going on.”

  “I can’t! Don’t you get it? I did that. It’s when he got super frosty.” He sank back in his chair, his stomach making him sorry he’d eaten at all. “Anyway, he keeps ignoring me. He’s out late. He was great the first few days too, but now he’s all reserved. How can I live with him and hardly see him, especially in my shitty-small room?”

  “Make a date with him. Stay up late or text him or something and get him to commit to Friday night. Even if you don’t want to talk to him, go do something together. Or hell, just fuck.”

  Kelly snorted. “That’d be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.”

  Rose gave him a look that told him, quite plainly, that he was being pitiful. “Try getting naked. I bet that will get things started without much additional effort.”

  Kelly gasped. “I couldn’t!”

  “So you won’t talk to your boyfriend and find out what’s wrong, and you won’t seduce him.” She picked up her tray and stood. “Good luck with that, Minnesota.”

  Walter knew this thing with Kelly was a bad idea—he’d known it since the first moment he’d realized the only way to be with Ke
lly was to date him. Somehow in Chicago that certainty had slipped. He couldn’t do this. He couldn’t be a boyfriend. He especially couldn’t be Kelly’s boyfriend.

  Except he couldn’t break up either, because it would break Kelly’s heart. Which meant he was fucked. Fucked. Fucked, and nobody but nobody could help him get out of the hole he’d dug for himself.

  Certainly not Cara. Jesus. Walter had called her up, given her the backstory, and from then on all Cara heard was that Walter was dating someone and wasn’t that so sweet that they were both hooked up now. She refused to see the problem, and the more he tried to explain it to her, the more tense their conversation became until he had no choice but to hang up on her.

  Which was awkward, because before they’d gotten to the Kelly part of the conversation, he’d agreed to be her First Attendant—the millennial version of best man/maid of honor. He’d be paired with Greg’s sister, their only other attendant. Walter was genuinely eager to be that for her too, which made their fighting One More Goddamned Thing he had to deal with.

  That, at least, he could talk about with Williams.

  “I was afraid of this,” the professor said, reaching into the bag of microwave popcorn Walter had brought over for them to share. “I’d hoped with you and Cara it would be different, but given how many factors you’re up against, that was probably foolish on my part.”

  “Factors?” Walter prompted.

  “Yes. First,” Williams began, ticking the incidents off on his fingers, “you have the fact that you’re still in college and she’s not. It’s a milder but significant version of that break you have after high school with your peers. You might have had an easier time if you’d graduated together and moved to the same town, but even then you’d be making adjustments. It’s the same kind of mental makeover everyone does at semester and summer break. Ever notice how everyone comes back with some new article of clothing or haircut or some physical marker of change? It’s like we have to mark the cycles with something physical, but if you really watch people, you’ll see they change internally at those moments too. Little cycles get little change. Big cycles get big change.”