“Greg, I really don’t want to—”
He cut me off with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I don’t want to talk about him either. I want to talk about you.”
“I really don’t want to do that either. I’d rather just go home.”
“I don’t think you do. I think something has you spooked. You stayed at the back of the store all day and watched the door like you were expecting an armed militia. You jumped every time someone walked through the door. You’ve missed the last three days of work, and you never miss work. Tell me.”
“Greg, I can’t.”
“You need to talk to someone. I know Adam didn’t do anything.”
“How? Did the two of you talk? What did he say?”
The faintest of grins twisted at the corner of Greg’s lips. He knew he had me. “Nothing really. I jumped him as soon as he came in. I thought he had done something to you. But when I asked…well, no, accused him of hurting you, he denied it. He said he hadn’t heard from you in days. He’d been texting you with no response. He’s scared. D, I could see it in his eyes. He was telling the truth.”
I could feel the anger and hurt surging. I had to fight to keep it under control. If I let it loose, everything that I had been feeling for the past three days would come rushing out, and I would be a sobbing mess. So, instead, I said, “You and I have never been friends, Greg. We’ve worked together for a little over a year and we’ve never had a real conversation. Why the sudden interest? What’s changed?”
Greg let out an exasperated sigh and scrubbed his hand over his face. “I’m doing this wrong.”
He went behind the desk and grabbed the rolling chair by its back, wheeled it around to the front of the desk until it was right in front of me, and sat. “What’s changed is you, David. You’ve changed since you met Adam. You’ve become more confident, more relaxed. Something happened a few days ago, though, that has you running scared.”
He was right, of course. But I couldn’t tell him that.
He sighed again, and his expression changed. The look of stone he normally wore was replaced with something softer, more vulnerable.
He took a minute to gather his thoughts. “I told you I had a little brother, right?”
I nodded, having no idea where he was headed with the sudden change of subject.
“We got along, I guess. At least as well as brothers could. I gave him shit all the time, because that’s what you do when you’re the oldest, right? He was a good kid, whip smart and nice, and I guess there was a part of me that was jealous of that. I was the meathead jock that partied too much and always got into trouble.”
I leaned forward in my chair, suddenly feeling uncomfortable. “Greg, I—”
“No,” he said, raising a hand to stop me. “I need to do this. I need to talk to somebody.
“So, I guess I wasn’t the best brother out there, right. I mean, I didn’t look out for him. I teased him mercilessly. I let other guys at school pick on him, and I never stopped it.
“Home wasn’t much better, either. He wasn’t like my dad or me. My dad was the typical man’s man, hunted and fished. Total grease monkey. And, like I said, Bennie was smart and I was the jock. He was the odd man out.”
“Bennie?”
“My brother. Benjamin, Ben. He hated it when I called him Bennie. Said it made him feel like a little kid. So, I kept doing it, just to get a rise outta him. I was a total dick to him. I see that now.”
Greg paused for a moment as if he were reliving a memory.
“For someone as smart as he was, he could really do some stupid shit. He was always forgetting to clear out the search history on his computer. I mean, that’s Porn Search 101, you always clear that shit out.
“He was sixteen, I think, when my dad ran across something Bennie.” He stopped. “Ben had been looking at. Wasn’t even porn, either. It was pages about questioning your sexuality and advice columns about coming out, but my dad didn’t care. He went ballistic. He stormed up to Ben’s room and threw the door open so hard I thought it was going to come off the hinges. I remember I went into the hallway to see what the ruckus was over. My dad had Ben lifted up by the shirt, just holdin’ him there, and screaming at him. Ben’s face was pale, and tears streamed down his face. My dad kept telling him that no son of his was going to be a fag, over and over.”
Greg stopped again, lost in the memory. His eyes filled with tears, but he wiped them away with the back of his hand. He dipped his head down and sucked in a deep breath, chewing on his lower lip before continuing. “He slugged Ben in the jaw. I mean, fully cocked his arm back and belted him. Ben fell back onto the bed. Then he stood over him, and…God, I’ll never forget this. He waved his fist in Ben’s face and Ben tried pulling away, but he only made it as far as the wall. My dad said, ‘whatever you do, never ruin my name.’”
Greg looked up at me. His eyes were red and his lips pulled together. I reached out on instinct, and squeezed his hand. We may not have been friends, at least not before, but he was sharing something with me so personal and painful that I had to.
“You have to understand, D. My dad never hit either of us. Seeing him punch Ben like that…it scared me. If he was able to do that, what else was he able to do? The hatred he had in his voice at that second wasn’t anything I’d ever heard before. He truly hated my brother, or at least, who my brother was.
“My dad stood over him for another second, then stormed out of the room, right past me like I wasn’t even there. I could have done something. I should have gone in to check on Ben. But I didn’t. He saw me standing in the hall, and he was begging me for help without saying a word. But I turned around and went back into my room.
“I know now how that looked. God knows, if I could do it different, I would, I’d go in there and hold him. I could hear him crying through the walls, and I didn’t do anything. He had to have felt abandoned, like everyone had turned their back on him, but I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. The only thing I could think about was my dad punching one of us.
“I spent that night in my room. I kept seeing that punch over and over and the look of terror when Ben was thrown onto the bed. How could my father hate my brother so much that he would hit him and throw him around? My entire opinion of the man changed. I promised myself that I would go to Ben and be the kind of brother I should have been all along.
“I woke up the next morning and went right to his room, but he was gone. His bed hadn’t been slept in, his backpack was gone, and his window was open. No note, nothing. Just…vanished. I haven’t seen him since.”
He stared off in the distance for a while, not speaking. I could see his thoughts spinning in his eyes, and I wished there was something I could do for him. He was obviously reliving one of the most painful moments of his life, and there wasn’t a thing I could do.
Finally, he turned to me and said, “He cares about you, you know. Probably more than he realizes.”
The words bulldozed their way into my chest. They matched what I was feeling, what I had been feeling for quite some time, but had been too afraid to admit to myself. There was no way he could feel for me what I felt for him. The idea had danced around at the edges of my brain, but I had never allowed myself to believe it. I had spent so much time questioning my own self-worth, particularly where Adam was concerned, that I never took into account how he might feel. “I don’t see how that’s possible.”
“You’re so full of shit. You can’t tell me you don’t see it. Fuck, I see it and I’m the densest fucker I know. D, if you could have seen him yesterday, you would have seen that look. He seemed…lost and confused.”
The sad fact was, I had seen him and knew the look Greg was talking about. A pang of guilt wormed its way into my gut because I was the one that put it there.
“I can’t fix it.” It came out as a whisper, but the words reverberated across my very being. That was my only course, it was all I had known and would ever know.
“Yes, you can.”
/> I looked into his eyes and saw something had replaced the sadness. Determination. “Why now?”
“Huh?”
“I mean, why are we talking now? We’ve known each other all this time, and barely spoken two words to each other. Why now?”
He seemed to choose his words carefully before speaking. “I was a shit to Ben his entire life. In the end, he thought that we hated him. I never got the chance to make it right. I never got the chance to tell him that I didn’t care that he was gay, he was still my brother and I loved him. I never got the chance to tell him that I wanted to watch him meet the man of his dreams, fall in love, get married, raise a family. I never got any of that. Because I was an arrogant ass, and because he ran. I’ll regret all of it, every last thing, until the day I die. David, don’t run away from the people that care. Even when everything seems to be at their darkest, those are the people that will stand by you. Whatever is going on, Adam will stand by you.”
And with those words, my resistance crumbled. Days’ worth of anger and fear, years’ worth of guilt and remorse broke through the surface and came pouring out. My body was wracked with sobs, and Greg lurched across the span separating us and held my head to his shoulder as I cried, slowly stroking my hair like a parent does a newborn infant.
Seconds turned to minutes until I finally got myself under control. I pulled away and wiped my eyes. Greg reached behind to the desk and pulled a box of tissues off it. “Talk to me, D. Let me help.”
There was no internal debate. Not after what he had shared with me.
I told him my truth.
All of it.
Every last, painful, bloody detail. I left nothing out, from beginning to end.
Greg listened in rapt attention, never interrupting me, never wavering, never interjecting. Just listening.
I often wondered what people got out of going to a therapist. I had been told that it was far easier to bare your soul to a perfect stranger than it was to your closest confidant. No fear of judgement or recrimination. I never believed it.
Until then.
When I finished, I sat and waited for the judgment that I was sure would follow.
It never happened.
Greg had a look of pure hatred in his eyes, but I sensed it wasn’t directed at me. He channeled that into four simple yet powerful words. “It wasn’t your fault.”
If only I could believe him. But a lifetime of conditioning was impossible to break in a matter of minutes. It would take far more time than that for me to believe it, if I ever did.
I shook my head at him. “I don’t know how you can say that. After everything I just told you.”
He smiled at me and patted me on the knee. “Because it’s the truth. That son-of-a-bitch did all of that to you not because of you. You are no more to blame than Ben was. I know you don’t believe me. At least not yet. But you will, eventually.”
He was right of course. I didn’t believe him. At least not entirely. But on some level, I think I wanted to. I think I wanted to be free from the burden I had carried for so long. And I think that after verbalizing everything, even if it was only to Greg, I was beginning to realize that maybe my truth wasn’t true after all.
“You need to talk to Adam,” Greg stated, as if it were a matter of fact like the sky being blue.
“I can’t do that. He—”
“Cares about you. He would want to know. He should know.”
The idea of telling Adam sent waves of terror coursing through my body. Everything would change once he knew. But then, everything already had.
“D, he’ll stand by you. I promise.”
With my eyes still on Greg, I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and slid my finger across the screen. My thumbs hovered over his contact information and I had to will myself to type out the message. –Can we talk?
Then I turned the phone face down on my lap and counted.
One.
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
My phone rang. Perhaps I should have expected Adam to call instead of text, but I hadn’t. I answered on the first ring, and all he said was, “I’m on my way.”
The sound of his voice alone, soothed my soul in ways I could never have imagined.
I glanced up at Greg and hadn’t realized I had started crying until he reached over and brushed a tear from my cheek.
“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I promise.”
I WAS SITTING ON THE couch with my phone on the coffee table. The television was on, but I wasn’t paying attention to what was on it. Ryan and Lucas had gone out to run some errands and I begged off. I wanted to be alone. I hadn’t talked to David since Thursday night and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. Depression and I had been on-again/off-again friends since returning from Afghanistan, but it had never felt like that. Like there was something missing from myself.
We had a fantastic time on Thursday, looking for costumes. At least I thought we had. I hadn’t seen his “walls” go up at any point. What had I missed? Something was off about the whole thing with David. Something didn’t feel right and that idea was reinforced by my encounter with Greg the day before, when he’d told me David hadn’t been to work in three days. That wasn’t David’s style. He was one of the most responsible guys I knew. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he had some sort of military background, that’s how responsible he was. After talking to Greg, I had gone to David’s door. I knew he was home, I could feel him just on the other side of the door. But he wouldn’t answer.
Yes, I had cried. I’m not afraid to admit it. He meant…more to me than I really knew. Maybe it took something like that to finally make me understand. Something had been growing inside of me since the moment we met. Something warm and tender. Something I had never felt before, but something I instinctively knew I never wanted to lose. I needed to protect it.
My phone vibrating on the table broke me from my thoughts. I snatched it up and swiped the screen. David’s name appeared, and my heart began racing. I opened the text and read it. Short and simple, it could have meant anything. He may have broken a leg, or he could be ending things with me. Either way, I saw my opening, and I took it.
I didn’t send a text.
I called.
His voice was strained. I could hear the fear in it, but it was mixed with something else. Hope?
“I’m on my way,” was all I said. I disconnected the call before he had the chance to change his mind.
I swear, I think I broke every law and speed record known to man to get to him. I don’t remember getting to his parking lot. I barely remember running up his stairs. But there he was, standing at the top in stark silhouette from the light of his studio. I couldn’t see his face, but his posture was rigid. Like he was expecting the worst.
I would gladly change that.
I was standing in front of him before I knew it. “Hey.”
“Hi.” Reserved David was back, but mixed with something else. His eyes flicked back and forth, scanning the parking lot below as if he were searching for something.
“Can I come in?”
He stepped to the side as I walked in, then he followed. I stood behind him as he closed the door and twisted the deadbolt into place, then gave the door a tug.
“Adam, I’m sorr—”
I grabbed him and pulled him to me, one arm wrapped around his neck and the other pressed to the door for support. Mouths mashed together and teeth clacked, and it was taking everything I had in my power not to devour him. The intensity of my feelings for him in that moment didn’t surprise me. I had been feeling lost earlier, like a piece was missing. He was that piece, he was what made me feel whole.
I’d never been good with words. I’d always let my actions speak for me. Whether it be my loyalty to my brother or my support for the men in my troop. I poured everything I had into that kiss, every ounce of my being, every shred of my soul. I needed him to know
what I couldn’t say. I needed him to feel what I was feeling.
I pushed him against the door, caging him between my arms, and peppered him with kisses; cheek, chin, forehead, and lips. Then I pulled away and whispered, “Whatever I did, I promise never to do it again.”
The dam broke. His body was wracked with sobs as the tears came. I pulled him to me, one arm around his neck crossed over to his shoulder blade and my other hand rested on the back of his head. His body sagged into mine, his forehead rested in the crook of my neck, and his arms wrapped around my waist, holding on to me as if his life depended on it. “David. Baby, what’s wrong? What happened?”
I stroked his hair while he cried, occasionally turning to kiss him.
I would never tire of kissing him.
I don’t know how long we stood like that. I could feel the tension he had been holding slowly dissipate until the sobbing turned to sniffles.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pulling his head away from my shoulder. “I’m sorry for everything.”
“I don’t understand. Tell me.” He looked like he was about to collapse, so I pulled him to the couch and sat next to him. “What happened?”
David wouldn’t look at me.
I knew, on some instinctual, primal level, that everything between us was about to change.
“Someone broke in Thursday.”
His words felt like ice shards against my chest. Ice cold mixed with red hot rage. I forced myself to stay calm, only for him. There was more. I knew it. “Are you okay? Did they hurt you?”
“I’m fine.”
He was lying. I knew that too, and he knew that I knew it. The proverbial other shoe was about to drop, and I got the sense he was doing what he could to minimize the damage.
“You filed a police report, right?”
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t.”
“David, why not?”
“I don’t want the cops involved.”
“You have to know that makes no sense.”
“You’re right. It doesn’t. None of this does.”
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