Trust the Focus

by Megan Erickson

  He shook his head and rocked harder and I wanted to clap my hand over his mouth, stop the rest of this story, and just pretend it ended there. That he would say, Glad I was wrong! Hooray! And kiss me.

  But that’s not what happened. He kept talking. Each word opening little cuts all along my skin.

  “You remember I went out the next weekend with some members of the GSA club on campus? You had to travel with the team for a game so you couldn’t come.”

  Landry had started attending meetings held by the Gay-Straight Alliance. I’d tried to attend them with him when I could, but between classes and my games, I couldn’t make many. It made me uneasy, not knowing who those people were, but I trusted Landry to surround himself with good people. And I remembered that weekend, bummed I couldn’t make the trip to Sacramento with them.

  I nodded and he continued. “So, it was fun. I told you about how we went to a drag show and drank and sang and laughed. But then some of the older guys suggested going dancing to a club. A gay club. I’d never been to one so I thought, what the hell? All I’d done with guys at that point was kiss and some other tamer stuff. And you were straight. Completely straight, and I had to get over this Justin fantasy, so I went.”

  It was like he’d plunged a knife into my gut. What had I pushed him to do? “Landry—”

  He held up a hand, his eyes watery, and so blue from the reflection of the pool in front of us. “You need to let me tell you this. And I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty or place blame. What happened, happened. I just . . . never told anyone this before, and if we are going to . . .” He licked his lips and shook his head. “You need to know this.”

  “Okay.” The word was a toneless croak in my throat.

  “So I went. And I took some shots to get over my nerves. Tequila. Because I wanted to be cool. And I danced and laughed and kissed boys.” He closed his eyes. “It was a blur. I look back now and I can taste the tequila and I can feel sweaty skin and pounding base and hardness grinding into me. And I can smell the bodies. See the strobe lights.” His eyes popped open and he finally looked at me. “I guess I didn’t get it. I didn’t understand the hook-up culture in clubs like that. I’d gotten separated from the other guys . . .”

  Rage flashed through me, hot and sudden, because I knew those guys. They should have been watching out for Landry. As a sophomore, he’d been five nine, having grown a couple of inches since, and he’d been a buck thirty, maybe. But his size didn’t matter as much as his naivety.

  “And there was this guy—the worst part is, I can’t remember his name. Started with a ‘B’—so, Brad? Or something?”

  Bastard. In my head he was Bastard, because part of me knew what was coming next.

  “He was bigger than me and had dark hair and . . .” He gulped. “Gray eyes.”

  He twisted that knife in my gut. I shut my own silver-gray eyes that Landry always talked about and turned my face away. My heart beat painfully against the bricks stacked in front of it.

  “And he kissed me and it felt good, so I kissed back. But then we were in the bathroom and alone and I started to get nervous, but he told me I was pretty and he liked my eyes.”

  Please. Please. Please. Just no.

  “And then he slipped on a condom and he pressed on my shoulders and I thought, well, I guess if I suck at sucking, no big deal since I didn’t even know the guy. And it was okay at first. I mean, I was drunk but I tried and he seemed to like it. But it was difficult because he was big and the latex tasted awful.”

  I had to hold him, so I reached my arm toward his shoulders, but he pulled away. “Please don’t touch me while I’m telling this story.”

  I lowered my hand, then quickly grabbed his, and squeezing his fingers, pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist and released him. “Okay, go on.”

  He blinked slowly, his long lashes fluttering. He rubbed the inside of his wrist where my lips had touched and then reclasped his hands around his knees.

  “So I guess he didn’t like what I was doing anymore, because he pulled my hair. When I stood up, he spun me around. And then my pants were at my knees and he was doing something behind me and then I felt him. Right there.”

  I wanted to close my eyes, hide my face in my hands, but Landry was brave enough to tell this story, so I had to be brave enough to face him, look him right in those pain-filled eyes as he talked. Because he held my gaze, like I was his lifeline, like if I looked away, his strength would snap like a rubber band.

  “I wanted to say no. I did. But my lips were numb from . . . from . . .” Landry shook his head. “Then he grabbed my hips and pressed. And it hurt. It hurt so fucking bad, and I screamed.”

  I swore I felt the pain in my own body, a searing burn from the inside out. How Landry wasn’t crying, I had no idea. In fact, his eyes were dry, but they hadn’t left mine.

  “So he stopped pushing. I mean, I don’t even know if he actually . . . entered me. And then he swore and told me I was a fucking tease. And then he shoved me and walked out. I sat there on the floor and I . . . I don’t know. I put myself together because all I could think about was seeing you again, knowing you’d . . . do that thing you do. That you’d touch me and look at me like you do and all of this would just be a very distant memory.”

  I dug my fingers into my thighs and clenched my teeth until all I felt were those five points of pain on each leg and all I heard was the grinding of my molars. The rage consumed me now, coating the bricks of guilt in front of my heart in a bright shade of crimson. I wanted to take a sledgehammer to the whole thing, then hunt down Bastard Brad and fucking smash in his face.

  “So I got up and I walked out. And I tried to pretend it never happened.” He laughed bitterly. “But it didn’t work. You were busier with school and you couldn’t baby me.”

  “Landry, why didn’t you—”

  “Because it’s fucking embarrassing!” He yelled, his voice cracking on the last word. “Are you kidding?”

  “But we tell each other everything . . .” As soon as the words left my mouth, I knew they were a mistake.

  Landry jerked his head toward me, those eyes ablaze again. “Don’t even fucking come at me saying shit like that with the bomb you dropped on me a couple of days ago.”

  I clenched my jaw. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

  “No shit.”

  “You had every right not to tell me.”

  “Thanks for the unnecessary permission, Jus.”

  I breathed in through my nose and out through my mouth, accepting his anger because I deserved it. “But I wish I would have known.”

  He shrugged and looked away. I reached out and flicked his gauged ear. “You did this that summer.” I ran my finger down his inked arm. “And started this the next fall.”

  Landry got a couple of tattoos done after he turned eighteen, but it was the fall when he’d started his sleeve. He had his ears pierced since high school but didn’t start with the gauges until college.

  His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “Gave me something to focus on. I don’t know, I guess I wanted . . . control back. Of myself and my body.”

  “Did it help?”

  His lips moved from side to side in thought and he swiped under his eyes roughly with the heel of his hands. “Yeah, it did. Fuck, I hate talking about this. I’m not over it, because I don’t think there is getting over it. But I try not to dwell on it.” He gave me a sad smile. “And I guess I’m still technically a virgin. Like, halfway? Leave it to me to be half a virgin, in this gray area. I thought virginity was like pregnancy. You either were or you weren’t.”

  He laughed, but I found nothing fucking funny about it. I was bleeding around the twisted, rusty knife in my gut and there was a hammer banging away in my chest and I was a fucking mess.

  “Landry,” I whispered. “I hate that this happened to you.”

&
nbsp; He rubbed the inside of his boots together. “It’s not your fault.”

  “It kind of is.”

  He shook his head vigorously. “No, I told you—”

  “I know you said it wasn’t, but fuck, Landry, if I would have just told you the truth, then this wouldn’t have happened—”

  “How do you know that?” He shouted, jumping to his feet in front of me. “We can’t predict how our lives would have been if you’d come out in high school or college. What if we got together and broke up? What if this guy had been a rebound for me?”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Justin. I can’t do that to myself—look back and say, If only, if only. Because my history is what it is. I can’t change it. That’s what I’ve been thinking since that night you told me the truth. I wanted to hate you and blame you, but I can’t.”

  “I know that. I know that more than anyone, but that doesn’t stop me from looking back, learning from what I wish I would have done or said.”

  Landry’s face darkened. “What do you wish, Jus? How would you have changed our lives? Tell me.”

  I stood up carefully, mindful that one wrong word—one wrong step on a twig—would send Landry running like a skittish animal.

  I held out a hand. “Okay, you’re right. Maybe there is no point in looking back, but we can move forward, right?”

  Landry didn’t move.

  “Why’d you tell me about what happened, Landry?”

  “I don’t know. I hadn’t told anyone before and I wanted to come clean—”

  “You wanted to get back at me a little.”

  “No—”

  “Just fucking admit it, Landry!” I shouted. “Be mad. Yell. Do whatever you need to do. It’s okay. Because I’m not doing this with you if you’re going to hold this over my head. If I’m always going to be waiting for you to blow. If you can never forgive me.”

  Landry’s jaw shifted beneath his skin.

  “Just admit you blame me a little for what happened that night, Landry.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head. So when he whispered “I do,” I barely heard him.

  I took a step toward him and he faced me. In a stronger voice, he said, “I don’t think it’s fair that I feel this way, but I do.”

  I knew it. And hearing him admit it brought a whole new wave of pain, even though I’d asked for it. “Will you ever forgive me?”

  His eyes filled, but he blinked and beat it back. “I’m going to try.”

  My knees almost gave out. “Thank you.”

  ***

  We hiked back in silence, and when we heaved ourselves back into Sally, I nudged my boots off and flopped onto my back on the bed, arm over my eyes.

  The bed dipped beside me and two loud thunks told me Landry had slipped off his shoes, too. Then the mattress shifted again. I dropped my arm to my side and rolled my head. Landry lay beside me, his arms crossed behind his head, eyes on the ceiling.

  “Did you ever wonder if I was gay?” I asked.

  Landry blinked and rolled his head to the side and sighed. Our faces were inches apart and I felt his exhale gust over my face. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Part of me thought, sometimes, that you looked at me a little different. I wondered why you never had a long-term girlfriend. But . . . then I wondered if I wanted it too badly, that I read into things. Know what I mean?”

  I nodded. “That makes sense.”

  He chewed his lip. “I think that’s why I always gave you such a hard time about following rules. I thought if I got you away from your mom, away from everything, maybe you’d . . . I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I swore I was going insane.”

  I reached for his hand and laced our fingers together. “Me too.”

  His eyes flicked to our hands and then back to my face. “Did you think I liked you?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Not like like. No, I didn’t think so. You flirt with a lot of people, including girls, so I didn’t read into it no matter how much I wanted to.”

  He squinted at me. “We’re fucking ridiculous.”

  I chuckled. “Yes, we are.”

  “From now on, honesty between us.”

  “Honesty.”

  He lifted up our hands and shook them.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  “Handshake.” He grinned.

  I grinned back, then let it fade. “So . . . you said you never told anyone before. You never told Jud?”

  Landry huffed out a snort through his nose. He closed his eyes and sighed but didn’t answer.

  “Is that a no?” I asked as Landry heaved himself up. He reached for his phone where he’d dropped it on the kitchen table, then sank back onto the bed as I sat up beside him. “What?”

  “Honesty, right? Hold on, I need to show you something.” He pecked away on his phone, so I tapped my fingers impatiently on my chest.

  After a couple of minutes, he shoved the phone under my nose. It was a picture of Jud on a horse. With a cowboy hat. And . . . spurs? “Is he from Texas or something? I thought he lived in LA?”

  Landry took his phone back and swiped a finger across the screen. Now it was on a picture of Jud in a suit, leaning against a glass door like some Christian Grey-type CEO. “Uh, wow. I thought he was a student?”

  Landry dropped the hand holding his phone in his lap and stared at me. “Seriously, Justin?”

  “What?”

  “You are not stupid.”

  “Um, thanks?”

  “Jus! There is no fucking Jud!”

  I could have sworn the RV just rolled off a cliff and I tumbled end over end with it, smashing into the sides in a big jumble. Or maybe that was just my brain rattling in my skull. “What did you just say?”

  Landry shook his head, grimacing, with cheeks flushed. “I made him up.”

  “You what?” My brain hadn’t stopped rattling yet, like it was chasing Landry’s words around in my skull, but they stayed out of reach and I couldn’t process until I caught up with them.

  “You’re not going to make this easy—”

  “I’m sorry, Landry. I’m just shocked. What are you talking about?”

  “This guy—” He shoved the phone under my face. Made-up Jud was now naked in the shower, just the rounded top of his ass showing. Nice. “— Is a model. His name is Riley Sorenson.”

  “Why the fuck would you make up a boyfriend?”

  “Because I didn’t want to date. After the whole fiasco at the club, I just . . . wanted time to myself to deal with everything. So to avoid questions from my friends and from you, I made up a boyfriend.”

  Part of me wanted to fist pump that he hadn’t been kissing another guy for the past year, but then the other part of me banged that same fist on the brick wall of guilt in my chest. Because Landry hadn’t felt like he could confide in me, tell me about Bastard, and that he made up a fake boyfriend to keep people—me—from asking questions.

  And Landry looked at me now, smiling. “That’s so high schoolish, isn’t it? To make up a fake boyfriend?”

  I smiled back. “I’d say more middle schoolish.” Landry rolled his eyes as I continued. “But I’m sort of glad to hear it. I mean, I felt guilty that I macked on Jud’s ex-boyfriend.”

  Landry threw back his head and laughed, the first real joy I’d seen from him in days. “Poor Jud.”

  “I’m sure he’ll find someone who loves him for him.”

  Landry chuckled. “Yeah.” Then he raised his hands to his face and sneezed.

  “Gesundheit,” I said.

  “Danke. Fucking allergies. I need a tissue.” He stood up and began to walk toward the bathroom.

  “Hey, Lan.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Why Jud?”

  He pursed his lips and looked down
at the floor. “Jud . . . Jus . . .” He shrugged and my heart skipped. “Easy to remember and the closest to my fantasy I thought I’d ever get.” And then he shot me a wink and closed the door behind him.

  Chapter Nine

  I picked at the callouses on my palms, fingering the cracks where the chalk from the bag on the pitcher’s mound used to collect. I’d have to scrub and scrub after games to rinse it all out.

  The door to the bathroom opened and Landry stepped out. He stood in the doorway, the toes of one bare foot rubbing the top of the other. He bit his lip, then stepped forward and sat beside me on the bed, one knee bent so he faced me.

  I mimicked his position and rested my hand on his leg, tracing the outline of his kneecap through denim and skin.

  “I need to explain why I was such an asshole. In Colorado.” I kept my eyes on my fingers.

  He shifted closer. “It’s okay, I know why.”

  I looked up. “Yeah?”

  “Well, I can guess. You gave away your position in that stupid playhouse at the water park.”

  I nodded.

  “I did, too.”

  “I know.”

  He smiled. “I was so pissed at myself. I thought I was the guy who fell for his straight best friend. I hated myself for betraying your trust, by thinking of you in . . . that way. But I couldn’t help it.”

  “I didn’t realize how hard this trip would be.”

  “Me either.”

  I scooted forward an inch, Landry’s tilted lips an invitation. The last time we touched, it had been dark. I hadn’t seen the way his curls sprung back as I ran my hand through them. I hadn’t seen how his cheeks pinked. I hadn’t watched him nibble on his lips, the area reddened and so damn kissable. Now I could see everything and he could see me and there was no more hiding. Not from Landry.

  I wrapped my hands around his neck, my thumb brushing the base of his throat, and leaned forward until all I could see were his eyes. “Can I kiss you now?”

  The corners of his eyes crinkled and the blue shone like crystal. “I don’t know, can you?”

  “Smart-ass,” I muttered and closed the distance between us. His lips were just as I remembered, soft but firm, his mouth hot.