Boys Don't Cry

by Jennifer Melzer

  “She’s crazy. You know that.”

  “No, she’s right. I’m sorry,” he stammers. “I shouldn’t have come.”

  “Don’t you listen to her, Nathaniel. You’re far more welcome here than she is.”

  “I think we should go.”

  “Don’t you dare…” she warns, shaking him a little before rising onto the tips of her toes to look into his eyes again. “Cody was so happy that you were coming. He has missed you so much. So, so much. Don’t let that nasty little bitch come between you two.”

  Shaking his head, he takes a step back from her and says, “I’m sorry.” Without even looking at me, he mutters, “Come on, Tali.”

  I don’t know what else to do, so I glance apologetically over at Sarah and then fall into step behind Nate. He’s walking so fast toward the car, I can barely keep up, his keys trembling in his hand. I’m afraid if I let him drive like this, he’s going to lose it and wreck, so I pick up the pace, step in and grab the hand with his keys, swiping them out of his grip and informing him, “I’ll drive.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  He doesn’t protest, just throws himself into the passenger seat of his own car and slams the door, refusing to look over at me, even long after I pull out of the lot and begin navigating the course of potholes leading away from the river. I don’t say anything, not until we’re on the main road, and even then it takes me almost two miles before I find my voice.

  TWENTY-THREE

  “Are you all right?”

  Rigid as a statue, he’s got his window down, his arm gripping the car door so tight, as if he’s afraid the wind whipping through it will tear him away and send him spiraling through space.

  When he doesn’t answer me, I take my right hand off the wheel and reach over to touch the top of his thigh, but he’s stiff as concrete.

  “Nate, talk to me.”

  “What do you want me to say, Tali?”

  “You can start by telling me you’re okay.”

  “I’m fine,” only he doesn’t sound fine. Even that first time we had sex, when he nearly broke my heart, his tone wasn’t even close to the restrained rage I hear in him now. Like he’s unhinged, terrified he’s already lost control.

  “Right.”

  I have no idea what else to do, so I just drive. I’ve only been to the river lot three times, but I recognize the route we took before, so I find my way back to Sonesville with relative ease. Familiar landmarks begin making appearances, the Sheetz in Muncy, the bar on the corner where I have to turn to head toward Hughesville. I steer through them, making lefts and rights, turning onto 405, following it until it merges with 220 and watching the familiar landscape of Main Street Sonesville taking shape.

  “Can you stop at Turkey Hill?” He gestures toward the gas station as I’m pulling up to the light. The streets are all but empty. I turn right on red, easing into the parking lot and stopping the car beside a rusted grey pickup truck.

  For a minute we just sit there in the silence, and then Nate pushes his head into the back of the seat and lets loose a breath filled with frustration and anger. When I turn my head to look at him, the sorrow I thought was leaving is even more prominent in his eyes than ever. It consumes him, twisting the features of his face into misery beyond anything I’ve ever seen. His jaw is tight, his mouth a straight white line, and no matter how long I stare at him he refuses to look over at me.

  “Do you want me to go in?” I ask.

  “No,” he shakes his head. “I’ll be back.”

  Without another word he gets out of the car and walks into the convenience store. The sound of the bells hanging on the door clang loudly through the near-empty parking lot, and I just sit there watching him through the windows as he stands in front of the chips for almost five minutes before he grabs something and heads to the drinks cooler. He’s inside fifteen minutes, and when he finally comes out he’s got ice cream and Fritos, a Snickers bar and a half-gallon jug of iced lemon tea. I start the car and drive him home, but when we arrive I don’t know what I should do.

  He gets out of the car, and I start to follow him, but for a moment I wonder if I should just leave him alone.

  No, I’m not doing that. More than wanting to know just what the hell that entire display was all about, I want to know if he’s okay. If there’s anything I can do for him. If he’ll let me hold him and believe me when I tell him that whatever it is, it’ll be okay. I’m here for him.

  So I follow him inside the empty house through the back door, lay his car keys on the counter and cross my arms as he pours himself a glass of tea and grabs a spoon out of the drawer before turning toward the hallway leading into the living room. He sits on the edge of the couch, peeling back the lid on his ice cream. I lean for a few minutes against the doorway, watching him shovel large bites of rocky road into his mouth and washing it down with long gulps of tea that nearly empty the glass.

  I wait.

  I know he was hungry. Hunger and anger don’t work well together, and he’ll be less likely to tear my head off the way Gretchen ripped into him if I let him eat something and level out his blood sugar.

  “Are you gonna talk to me?” I finally ask.

  He pushes the spoon in again, chews and swallows, then says, “What do you want me to say?”

  It’s the second time he’s asked that, like I have any kind of answer. Like I know what I want him to say. I don’t even know what’s going on, or why she hates him so much. What did he do to her to make her react that way?

  “I don’t know. Do you want me to leave? I don’t want to, but if you don’t want me here—”

  “Gretchen is right about me.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a fucking prick.” He brings his shoulders up almost casually, as if that explains it all. “If you’re smart you’ll just walk away from me before I drag you in and destroy you like I do everything else I fucking touch.”

  “Nate,” I start.

  “I’m serious, Tali. Give up on me before it’s too late because I will ruin you.”

  “It’s a little late for me to just give up on you.”

  “It’s not too late. Just—”

  “Is that what you want?” Everything inside me is suddenly liquid, draining into my feet and making me feel lightheaded and cold, empty as a husk that’ll just blow away in the slow breeze. “You want to ruin me, Nate?”

  “Of course not, but it’s what I do. I destroy people. I don’t mean to, or maybe I do, I don’t know. It’s just what happens.”

  “You’re not even making any sense.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  “I want you to make sense. To talk to me.”

  His eyes are sharp, two severe blue razors that slice through my heart when he raises his head to look at me. “What do you know about me?”

  I know that you’re scared, that whatever happened to you in the past ruins you every single day. You blame yourself for something. I know you’re afraid to let yourself be happy.

  “I know enough.”

  “You know nothing.”

  “I know you have a good heart.” My voice cracks a little when I say that, mostly because it pains me that I have to tell him something he doesn’t even seem to know about himself. “I know you’re a good person, even if you don’t believe it. I wouldn’t have gotten involved with you if you weren’t. You like to talk about actions speaking louder than words, and your actions have been loud and clear from the start.”

  “Yeah?” He raises his eyebrow, a cruel hitch in his voice when he tilts his head and says, “Well, maybe you’re not as good a judge of character as you think.”

  “Oh, whatever. If you’re gonna tell me that everything that’s happened between us has been a lie, that you’ve pretended to be someone else this entire time, I’m calling bullshit.” He doesn’t answer, and after a few minutes I find my courage again and start with, “I don’t know what happened between you and Gretchen—�
�

  “No, you don’t, but I can promise you it’s a thousand times worse than you could ever imagine.”

  “So why don’t you tell me about it?” I try, taking a step toward him.

  “I’d rather live in a world where you thought I was a good person with a good heart, even if both of those things are a lie, than see the look in your eyes when you learn the truth about who I am. The things I’ve done.”

  “What are you saying, Nate?”

  “I’m saying…” And then he looks away, staring at the darkened picture window when he says, “I don’t know. Maybe you should just go.”

  “Is that what you really want?”

  “Yeah,” he whispers.

  “Why are you punishing me for what Gretchen did?”

  “It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Then why are you pushing me away?”

  I feel like I’m choking, like my feet are stuck to the floorboards. I want to walk to him, kneel in front of him and tell him no. That I’m not going anywhere, but I can’t move. When he finally turns his head to look at me, there is nothing peaceful about his face when he begs, “Just go, Tali, please.”

  “Nate—”

  “Please.”

  “You said you didn’t want to hurt me. You promised—”

  “Tali, please.”

  “No.” I stalk across the floor, rubber legs carrying me forward, and when I crouch in front of him, putting my hands on his knees, he tries to push me away so he can get up, but I don’t let him. I hold onto his wrist, stare at him through eyes filling with unshed tears and blurring my vision. “I don’t walk away from anything. It’s not who I am. I’m not afraid of who you are, or whatever you’ve done.”

  “You should be.”

  “Why? Because you made mistakes? Everybody makes mistakes.”

  “Oh yeah? How many of those mistakes that everybody makes get someone else killed?”

  I’m not sure how to answer that, and even though this has taken a far more serious turn than I could have possibly imagined when it started, I don’t back down because I believe there is more to him than his past mistakes. “I don’t know, but whatever you did—”

  “I ruined her, Tali. On purpose. Because I thought it was funny to be cruel. You think Cody’s obnoxious? You’ve never met the real me.”

  “Who did you ruin?” I ask. “Gretchen?”

  Shaking his head, he looks away from me, his lower lip trembling. “I don’t want to do this now, Tali. I can’t.”

  “You can.” I loosen my fingers, my hand stroking up the length of his arm until it rests on his shoulder. “Talk to me. Please.”

  “I can’t look you in the eye and tell you about the things I’ve done. Not tonight.”

  “So I’ll turn around.” I want to fix this. Fix whatever’s broken inside him because I’ve seen beyond the cracks, and despite what he believes, despite whatever it is he’s done, I know his heart. He is perfect and beautiful and…

  “Go home, Tali,” he sighs.

  “Nate…”

  “Go.”

  Rocking back onto my heels, I drop my hands between my legs and gulp down the tight, bitter ball of emotion that’s lodged itself in my throat. I stare at him, waiting for him to look me in the eye, for something, anything, but he doesn’t give it to me. His nostrils flare, the bitter line of his lips is so tight, pinched white in contrast to the black shadow of stubble I like to run my fingers through in the dark.

  I don’t know how long I stand there waiting for him to look at me. I don’t know what finally makes me concede to his wishes, but I push myself to my feet and almost stumble. I walk slowly, expecting him to give in, to stop me before I’ve gone too far, but he doesn’t.

  He doesn’t say anything at all, and then I’m outside. The humid night air oppressively fills my lungs. I walk across the street; at least I think I’m walking. The stairs to the porch feel unsteady, or maybe it’s my legs buckling, about to give out beneath me. Through the front doors, I hear Dad and Art throwing playful taunts at each other, the sound of cars racing just beneath their banter. I glimpse Mom sitting in the recliner, but they don’t see me as I disappear up the stairs so quietly I feel like a ghost.

  I’m in my bedroom. It’s dark in here, terrifying in its comfort as it wraps around me and draws me to my bed. I’m crying when I fall into it, and I don’t even know what happened just now. I don’t know if there’s any way to fix whatever just got broken, or if this is it. If the darkness in his eyes, the past I knew was there but never bothered to ask about, has finally crept to the surface and begun to unravel the ramshackle foundation I’ve built beneath our love.

  Because I love him. I think I have since the very first moment our eyes met, when he couldn’t even see me.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “No, no, don’t touch it, it’s… shit. Malik? Did he seriously just ghost himself?”

  Silence as I watch his status switch to OFFLINE, the skeleton of his avatar dropping into a pile of dust on the screen before me.

  “Uh…” Cerridwen21 drones into her headset and then silence. “Yeah, he uh… I’m looking at his profile right now, and he’s been taken by the reaper.”

  “Son of a bitch! I’m out.” Yanking my headphones away, I hit disconnect before anyone can protest and slam the lid on my laptop so hard the screen probably cracks. I release a breath, bring a hand up to rub my forehead, then roll my chair away from the desk, crunching the wheels over a bag of Cheetos on the floor and spilling bright orange dust across the hardwood.

  “So this is your life now? At least before you used to take showers and stuff.”

  I spin around and find Art standing in the doorway. He leans against the frame, his arms crossing over his chest and head tilting in disdain as he tightens his mouth into a scowl and glares at me. He is the only one who’s been bothering me, probably because I’ve been ignoring my phone. I imagine Nate would be bothering me that way, instead of vicariously through my brother, but in its own way it’s kind of nice having Art come up here to check on me.

  “Get the hell out of my room.”

  “I can’t believe you kiss Mom with that mouth.”

  “What do you want?”

  “The same thing I wanted the last three times I was paid to come up here.”

  “He’s paying you to come up here and bother me now? Give him his money back and tell him I moved. I’ll give you double whatever he’s paying you if you do that for me.”

  “He just sits on the porch and stares up at the light in your window. It’s pretty pathetic. He knows you didn’t move.”

  “Not today, but I will soon enough, then it won’t matter.”

  “What is your problem, Tali? Why do you hate him all of the sudden. Last week you couldn’t walk three feet without kissing each other fourteen times. Now you won’t even talk to him.”

  “It’s none of your business, Arthur. Now get out.”

  “He said he’s really sorry, and if you just answer his texts he’ll stop making me come up here. Personally, I’m okay with coming up here. I’ve made seven dollars so far. So if you want me to tell him—”

  “Tell him I broke my phone.”

  “Girls are freaking stupid. I am never having a girlfriend when I’m older, not if this is how you all act.”

  “Art,” the sound of my dad’s voice echoing through the long hallway surprises me, “go downstairs and tell Nate that your sister is in the bathroom. She has diarrhea and she’s puking and it’ll probably be days before she’s well enough to leave her room or have company. Tell him she’ll text him when she’s feeling better.”

  “She can’t text him if her phone is broken.”

  “Her phone’s not broken, she’s just really sick. Malaria, or something. Just make something up?”

  “E-coli?”

  “Sure, that sounds reasonable.”

  “Dad, lying is wrong. Or were you just lying when you told me that?”

  “Go on, Art. If I give you
my permission to bend the truth, it’s not really lying.”

  “Your parenting skills are commendable, Dad,” I roll my eyes. “No wonder I’m so fucked up.”

  “Art’s right. I can’t believe you kiss Mom with that mouth.”

  Smirking, I let loose a breath as he squeezes Art’s shoulder then pats him down the steps. He’s trying to provoke a reaction, but I don’t give him much more than that little sneer. I just sit there in my chair wearing the same clothes I was wearing two days ago, which was the last time I showered… I think. My braids are so frayed and twisted they’re probably one toothpaste smear away from becoming rainbow dreadlocks. Of course, that would mean I’ve made some effort to brush my teeth—I haven’t.

  We both listen to the sound of Art practically tumbling down the steps, gleeful at the thought of humiliating me entirely when he tells Nate I’ve got diarrhea. The worst part is, I don’t even care what he says to Nate.

  It’s been a week. I let the charge die out on my phone five days ago, so I don’t know if he’s still texting me, trying to get me to talk to him. Mostly I pretend to ignore the sound of his sad songs serenading me from the porch below, but the only person I’m lying to when I say it isn’t getting under my skin is me.

  I miss him, which just makes me mad all over again, so I throw myself into working on mods and screaming at my guild to either shape up or ship out because Guild Wars start in a week and they are nowhere near ready. I haven’t seen BlackSunMerc online. Yes, I checked. A part of me was a little worried he’d try to contact me through the chat bar. Maybe he’s not as smart as he thinks.

  I’ve been in-game almost nonstop, so when I look around my room my weary eyes see nothing but little yellow patches of stars before they can truly focus.

  Now Malik, my number one, just lost four years of leveling and gear over a rookie mistake. I’m at my wit’s end, and I can’t even turn to the one thing that’s always made me feel sane in the past.

  “Can I come in?” Dad doesn’t wait for me to answer, but navigates through the piles of paper plates and cups that have been accumulating on my floor for the last week. He sits down on the edge of my unmade bed, sinking deep into the mattress before folding his hands behind his head and leaning back among the piles of pillows. “When was the last time you slept?”