Trust the Focus

by Megan Erickson

  Chapter Seven

  I lay in the middle of the bed after tugging on a pair of boxers. I threw my baseball up toward the ceiling and caught it with one hand. The repetition, which was usually therapy, did nothing to calm my racing thoughts.

  The bed smelled like Landry, and I smelled like Landry, and I wanted him to come back. It’d been twenty minutes and I thought I was going to come out of my skin.

  Skin that felt alive for the first time in my life. Last night had been unexpected. Unplanned and unrehearsed. But I couldn’t stop thinking of my mouth on Landry’s, his hands on me, my lips on him. The feeling of being in the right place and the right time with the right person for the first time.

  Wondering if it would happen again.

  I dropped the ball on the floor and fingered the Saint Christopher’s medallion around my neck.

  Despite my revelation last night, I still didn’t know where the hell this journey was taking me. Or what the right journey was. I didn’t regret my admission to Landry, but looking at it without the haze of lust clouding my vision was almost enough to send me into a panic attack. Was I out? Could everyone tell now just by looking at me—hey, that guy kisses dudes? Did I need to learn some special handshake to join the club?

  And most of all, what the fuck did I do to Landry and me?

  Sally’s door banged open, and I bolted upright. Landry walked inside in a scent cloud of coffee and something sweet. I studied his face, but it was blank. My heart sank, but hell, at least he’d come back.

  He knelt on the bed and walked on his knees toward me, then dropped a greasy bag at my feet and handed me a coffee. I took a sip. One sugar.

  I opened the bag and peered inside. He’d even picked up my favorite doughnut—chocolate icing on top.

  I took a bite, not realizing I was hungry until the ball of sugary dough settled into my empty stomach. I washed it down with a sip of coffee and looked at Landry.

  He sat cross-legged and watched me eat, his clear blue eyes studying my face, but he didn’t talk.

  “Please say something, Lan.”

  He picked at a napkin in his lap, methodically tearing it into strips with trembling hands.

  The doughnut now sat like lead bullet in my stomach so I dropped the uneaten half back in the bag and tossed it away from me on the bed.

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Please stop saying you’re sorry.” He didn’t look at me, just paused as he spoke, then continued to shred the poor innocent napkin. At least he wasn’t shredding my balls.

  “Okay, I’m—” Shit, he said not to say that word. “Um, okay.”

  I didn’t know how much time passed while we sat there in silence. Five minutes? An hour? In the past, this is when I’d grip his neck or squeeze his knee, something to bring him back to the present, get him to focus. Ironic that last night I’d touched him all over and this morning, I couldn’t even brush his hand. Finally that napkin had been reduced to mere confetti, and he raised his head.

  I couldn’t read him. Landry had pulled the curtain closed, and I didn’t know when he’d let me see the man behind it again.

  “I’m not ready to do this right now with you,” he said, and my head spun. Did he mean the conversation? A relationship with me? Is that even what I wanted? For God’s sake . . . “You kept this from me for years and now you need to give me some time to process this, okay?”

  I nodded, sick to my stomach as the doughnut bullet grew heavier in my gut. I hoped it didn’t burst and send shrapnel into every organ. Death by spontaneous doughnut combustion.

  Landry exhaled roughly. “Why?”

  “Why what?” My voice was a croak.

  He looked at me with wet eyes. “Why didn’t you tell me before now?”

  Honesty time. “Truthfully, I was in denial about it. I know I had you, Landry, but I’m not as brave as you. I was surrounded by baseball, and that sport was important to me. But it wasn’t such an accepting place to be . . . gay.” I swallowed. “And I feel trapped now. I gave in to my mom and spent four years preparing for this fall and now . . . I don’t know how to get out of it.”

  Landry stared at the shredded napkin and didn’t say a word.

  “I had a plan,” I continued. “I was going to tell Dad and you but then . . .” I let my voice trail off. Landry didn’t look but his mouth moved, like he was biting the inside of his cheek.

  “Is this . . . did I ruin us?” I had to know.

  Landry’s jaw clenched, and I braced. “You changed us.”

  “Good change or bad change?”

  Landry eyes held a pool of grief. “I don’t know yet.”

  ***

  The drive to Monument Rocks natural area in Lewis, Kansas, was about seven or eight hours. Because of our late start—Lan’s diplomatic, avoiding-talking-about-it term—we decided to drive most of the way and then get some sleep before checking out the sites the next day.

  Our drive was silent. Landry tapped away at his computer, ignoring me. When he asked my opinion on which pictures of Pikes Peak to post, he did so without making eye contact. When he saw a photo I captured without him of a marmot, his mouth tightened.

  I wanted to apologize for being an asshole. I wanted to apologize for my whole fucking life but he didn’t want to hear it, and even I realized the words sounded empty. I could fill up this whole RV, the whole fucking state of Colorado with I’m sorrys and it wouldn’t mean shit to Landry.

  That night Landry slept as far away from me as he could, clutching the edge of the mattress, the muscles in his back quivering. I lay awake, listening to his breathing until his muscles finally relaxed and his breaths evened out.

  Now that I knew what he felt like and sounded like and tasted like, being in bed with him—but not touching him—was torture. He was inches away but it felt like the Grand Canyon separated our bodies.

  After about an hour, he woke with a start and a whimper. I froze as he crawled over me and stumbled into the bathroom. I heard heaves, and I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my fists to keep from running in to rub his back and wipe the sweat off his brow.

  The toilet flushed and he came back out to flop down beside me again.

  “You okay?” I whispered.

  Pause. “I will be.”

  “Can I do anything?”

  “No.”

  I tapped my fingers on my breastbone, the popping sound echoing in the silence. “This morning, when you said you’d never hate me, did you mean it?”

  A longer pause. “I meant it.”

  When his breaths evened out again, I let myself steal one touch, just a brush over his blond curls, which were shining in the moonlight. Then I rolled over to get some sleep.

  ***

  May 29

  [Picture]

  [Picture]

  The Monument Rocks natural area in Lewis, Kansas, includes huge chalk formations, some of them as tall as seventy feet. You can see Sally in the background on the second picture so you have some idea of the scale.

  Sorry this is brief but I don’t have much time. We’re on our way in Missouri now to see some caves. Wish us luck. Talk to you soon.

  4 Down

  8 To Go

  —L

  Comments

  Tomás: You guys going to be coming through Chicago at all? Would love to see you.

  Chapter Eight

  Onondaga Cave in Missouri made me flash back to ninth grade, when we created stalactites and stalagmites out of clay to make our own mini cave formations.

  Landry had hidden smiley faces etched with a pencil on the underside of his clay model and snuck in a formation that looked exactly like a cock and balls. Our instructor hadn’t noticed and used Landry’s as an example during parent-teacher conferences of an excellent representation of the class project.

  I stared at a particularly ph
allic formation now while breathing in the damp, cold air underground during our tour. Landry stood off to the side watching me.

  I nodded toward it with my head and grinned. His lips twitched, but then he lowered his gaze and toed the loose ground. I shivered against the damp chill in the cave. It wouldn’t have mattered if we were on a beach in Fiji, the chill Landry was putting off would have made me want to wear a parka.

  I sighed. Oh well, that small smile was the best I’d gotten out of him in a couple of days.

  We’d taken a photo with Dad at the mouth of the cave and then sprinkled his ashes near where Sally was parked at the campground.

  Our tour group in the cave was small. Most kids were still in school during the week, so our fellow cave dwellers were mostly older retired couples. Which meant that the pace was slow, so Landry had plenty of time to sketch. He used the light from his cell phone to help him see. I offered to hold it for him, and he snapped at me that he didn’t need help.

  We looked out of place in this group of happy elderly people. But then, we looked out of place everywhere this whole trip.

  The only place that was ours was in Sally.

  ***

  Landry’s silence was so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else. I didn’t know what to do to make him smile at me or talk to me. I was so off-balance, I wondered if I’d ever be right again. If we’d ever be right again.

  After lunch, we’d gone to the Laundromat, and that’s where Landry had stayed, gaze fixated on his sketchbook. The Onondaga Cave State Park offered on-site camping with RV facilities so we could dump Sally’s sewage tank and finally get our dirty clothes cleaned. I’d been doing the sniff-test way too often.

  I thought about staying with him, but then I made some sort of excuse about Sally’s tire pressure. Now I sat on the back bumper, swinging my legs and tapping my phone on my knee. Landry had always been the one I had gone to when I had a problem. But since my problem was with him, I was at a loss.

  I thought about calling Tomás, my old teammate, but that made me break out in hives. Hell, I showered with the guy. I wasn’t sure how comfortable he would be with me letting him know casually over the phone that I was kinda-sorta into guys.

  That left Mia. She’d always been a good friend to me, and she wanted to be a school guidance counselor. She had a way of holding a conversation without talking much. She knew when to pause so the other person kept talking until they told their whole life story. It amazed me every time how she could meet someone in a cafeteria and five minutes later, know random shit about them, like what game they played during recess in third grade.

  While the thought of calling her still made me break out in hives, they were less rashy than when I thought of Tomás.

  Oh fuck it.

  The phone rang, and I kept swinging my legs. When she answered, her voice was breathless. I pictured her just in from a run, slipping her earbuds out of her ears, long dark hair swinging from her ponytail.

  “Justin? Is it really you?”

  The smile in her voice made me grin and eased some of the ache in my gut. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “I’m so glad you called!” There was some banging in the background. “Sorry, just came in from a run.”

  I chuckled. “I thought so.”

  “So how are you? I’ve been following the blog . . .”

  Her voice trailed off and I raised my head, squinting into the sun. “Yeah?”

  A pause. “Yeah, and Landry made it seem like you’re not taking things so well.”

  I blew out a breath. “Mia?”

  “Justin?”

  “Can I tell you something?”

  Another pause. Then the sound of a chair scraping on the floor. “You can tell me anything.”

  And that was all it took. I vomited up words, so many words that barely scraped the surface of how I felt, but I tried anyway.

  I told her what a toll this was taking on me, visiting all these sites my dad had told me about. That’d he’d promised to take me.

  And I told her, in halting, broken sentences, what had happened between Landry and me. And how he froze up afterward. And how I didn’t know what to do to make it all better.

  She listened with strategically placed murmurs to encourage me to keep talking. And when I was finished, I wanted to take a nap. I was spent.

  I heard a big inhale on the other end, and then an exhale. “Wow.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “So, what’s your biggest fear in all of this?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s the worst-case scenario?”

  I thought about that. “I guess . . . that I can’t make this better. Make us better.”

  “So does that mean you want it to work between you two?”

  “I—”

  “What’s your first reaction when I ask that question?”

  “Yes,” I blurted out. “Yes, I do want it to work.” My voice lowered to a whisper. “He’s Landry, Mia.”

  She made a little sound in the back of her throat. “I know, Justin. And trust me when I say that I believe from the bottom of my heart that no two people were born for each other more than you and Landry are.”

  Had she suspected? “Mia—”

  “When we first met, I wanted you to look at me like you looked at Landry. I thought it was a friends thing or . . . I don’t know. But I quickly realized you’ll never look at another person the way you look at him. And it’s the same for him. You’re it for him, Justin.”

  “So you . . . you knew?”

  “Not for sure. But I . . . guessed.”

  I processed that and moved on. “So what do I do?” My voice was a plea.

  “You give him time. And be there for him. And you make sure he knows how much you care. But you can’t rush this. He’s probably feeling like his world got turned upside down. His best friend is not only into guys . . . but he’s into him. Cut him some slack.”

  I swallowed. “I can do that.”

  “I’m sorry, but I have to go. If you need anything else, you call me, okay?”

  “But I didn’t get to ask about you. How’s your summer?”

  She laughed. “It’s good, but we can talk about me some other phone call when you’re not in crisis mode, okay?”

  I scrunched my lips. “Yeah, that’s a good plan. Thank you so much. You really helped.”

  “I’m glad you called, Justin.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  I wasn’t sure how long I sat on the back bumper, staring at nothing. I heard the door to Sally bang open and closed my eyes. Then I took a deep breath and went into the RV after Landry.

  When he was finished folding his clothes, I plopped a brochure on the kitchen table, right in front of him. I pointed to it. “Wanna hike?” I didn’t know what to do to pull back the curtain that was permanently over Landry’s face, but I sure as hell was going to try.

  His eyes flicked down to the brochure, but he didn’t touch it. Then he shrugged. “Sure.”

  “Well, that was enthusiastic,” I mumbled.

  Nothing. No reaction. No flash of those eyes at me. God, I’d give anything to hear him raise his voice. To yell and rail at me, but all he did was lift one shoulder. So, now I got half a shrug. That was not an improvement, but at least it was a yes.

  We changed into jeans and hiking boots and T-shirts. I’d chosen a three-mile trail where we could see a stream and some waterfalls.

  Landry’s posture was better on the hike, more relaxed. A couple of times he closed his eyes and turned his face to the sun, a small smile on his lips. We passed some other hikers, but mostly we were alone, stepping over tree roots and brushing aside leafy branches.

  I wanted him to talk to me. This subdued Landry was a stranger, and knowing I was the cause for his behavior was almost unbear
able. Although, I guessed Landry felt his traveling companion was a stranger now, too. I wanted him to understand that Gay Justin wasn’t any different than Playing-Straight Justin.

  Or was I different?

  We reached a small waterfall, the sound of the water drowning out my thoughts as I gazed at the sparkling water.

  Landry perched himself on a rock, curling into a ball—his legs hugged protectively to his chest—a position I hated, because it meant he was hurting.

  I sat down beside him, toeing the ground at my feet. He rocked gently, and I willed him to speak. I opened my mouth a couple of times but the words died in my throat. I’m sorry. You are everything to me. I wish I could do this all over. I’m sorry.

  Until finally, he put me out of my misery and started talking. “You remember that party at the end of sophomore year at the Omega Chi house? I saw you carrying that girl from our freshman speech class up the stairs?”

  Her name was Marie. She’d been drunk off her ass. Her cousin was a brother, one of my teammates, so I’d helped her up to his room where she could puke and crash in safety. “Yeah.”

  “I thought you slept with her.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Yeah, I know that now. But at the time, all your teammates said you took her up to a bedroom. What was I supposed to think?”

  “I just carried her up so she could pass out—”

  “It doesn’t fucking matter now, Justin!” he shouted, the volume of his voice slicing through the stillness of the area like a blade.

  That blade, along with the tremors in his voice, cut through me. I started to sweat, that nervous sweat that started in my armpits and dripped down my ribs. That dread sweat, where I knew what was coming next. I wanted to hear it but wanted to shut my brain to it all at the same time.

  “Okay,” I whispered. “Go on.”

  He blew out a breath. “I knew you were straight. Or at least, I knew it at the time, not knowing it was a lie.” He spat the last word and I cringed. “But I think I carried some sort of rainbow torch for you. And after that night I felt so fucking pathetic. What was my problem? Pining for my best friend. Who sleeps with girls.”