Trust the Focus

by Megan Erickson

  “Well, I didn’t know . . .”

  “Landry, I’m free. Well, I’ll be free as soon as I tell my mom I quit. Or, as free as I can be with my heart chained to yours.”

  Landry’s cheeks flushed red and he dropped his head down, a smile tugging at his lips. “Shit, Jus, the things you say.”

  “Well, it’s true, isn’t it?”

  Landry looked up. “Of course it is. It’s . . .” His voice faltered and he took a deep breath. “You’ve always had your hooks in my heart. You just finally let me into yours.”

  I shook my head. “Nah, you’ve always been in mine, too. I just finally got the balls to admit it.”

  Landry smirked. “This might be the gayest conversation we’ve ever had.”

  I threw back my head and laughed. Landry’s hyena cackle followed until he bent over the table in tears, half-eaten eggs forgotten.

  “You ruined the moment,” I said breathlessly, after we’d tumbled from our seats to roll around the floor holding our cramping guts.

  “Shit, I’m sorry. You fucking romantic.”

  That sent us into more peals of laughter.

  ***

  That night, we laid in bed, Landry’s naked thigh thrown over mine. I ran my fingers through his hair and down his face to rasp along the fine stubble on his jaw.

  “Stop, that tickles,” he said, brushing my hand away like it was a fly.

  I chuckled and rested my hand on the nape of his neck. We’d gone out to dinner, some fancy place to celebrate . . . well, to celebrate the truth, really. Our decision to focus on our future, which involved each other. The Maine restaurant made dishes based off of local ingredients. The menu items even listed which farm the beer and pork came from.

  That kind of grossed me out, because I didn’t want to think I was eating Bessie, but Landry geeked out about it.

  Tomorrow, we planned to start the eight- or nine-hour ride home.

  “You have a plan?” Landry’s voice cut into my thoughts.

  “Huh?”

  He propped his head on my chest and looked in my eyes. “Do you have a plan on what you’re going to say to your mom? How you’re going to say it? What you’re going to say?”

  My body chilled and I pressed him closer. “I . . . um . . . e-mailed her my blog post.”

  Landry froze. “You did not.”

  I bit my lip. “Bad choice?”

  “Did you say anything in the e-mail?”

  “I said, ‘I’d like you to read this. I wrote it. See you in August.’”

  Landry blinked.

  “So . . . I’m going to assume you think that was a bad choice.”

  Landry thunked his forehead into my chest and burst out laughing. His laugh got kind of hysterical and I nudged his shoulder to get him to stop.

  He wiped his eyes. “Justin, that’s really not the way to come out to your mom.”

  “She knew, remember? I just didn’t have it in me to be tactful.”

  He sobered. “I get that.”

  I rubbed my eyes. “I don’t really want to talk about this, to be honest. But I’m going to call when we’re close. And figure out how she wants to talk. If she even wants to talk. For all I know, she’s disowned me.”

  Landry shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Don’t give me that look, I’m serious.”

  “Okay, well, that’s your opinion. And whatever, I always have your parents to be there for me.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “That makes us sound like brothers.”

  “What we did tonight was not brotherly.”

  Landry burst out laughing again, this time shoving his face into my neck. I joined in and fell asleep later with a smile still on my face.

  ***

  The next day, we passed into New Hampshire on I-95. Landry sang softly in the passenger seat, then stopped and turned to me. “Oh, I forgot to tell you, when you were in the shower this morning, Lamar wrote back.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said, eyes focused on the road as a truck flew past us in the left lane. Sally shuddered, and I patted the steering wheel to comfort her.

  “He’s excited that you’re interested and he wants you to call him when you get back into town. Said you two can meet up and talk hours and payment. He said it won’t be much.”

  I grinned. “So you’ll be my sugar daddy?”

  Landry snorted and picked at the frayed edge of his shorts. “So, what were you thinking about where’d we live?”

  “Your parents’ basement?”

  “Jus—”

  “I’m kidding, Lan! I figured we’d get an apartment.”

  “Really?” There was that hopeful look in his eyes, that slight caution, and I hated seeing it.

  “Are you just waiting for me to say never mind and tell you this was all a game or you imagined it or something?” I didn’t want to ask, but we had to get this out in the open.

  Landry continued to pick at his shorts.

  “Landry, please look at me and tell me the truth.”

  He met my eyes. “Maybe,” he whispered.

  I nodded. I didn’t want to get angry with him. Because he’d earned the right to doubt me and be cautious. Hell, he’d earned the right to call me a fucking liar. Because I had been for a long time.

  I reached over and gripped his hand, stilling it from his fidgeting. “I get that, and I deserve it. But I’m telling you, Landry Jacobs, I have loved you, I do love you, and I will love you for the rest of my life. And if you can’t believe that yet, I’ll spend every minute of our lives proving it to you.”

  He pressed his lips together. “Are you trying to make me cry?”

  “Not really.”

  “Well, that’s what you’re doing.”

  “Lan—”

  “I love you, too,” he whispered. “And I do believe you. But I’m still going to be surprised when you say things like that.”

  I smiled. “Okay, I can handle that.”

  He smiled and gripped my hand back. “You want to stop and get lunch?”

  I returned both hands to the steering wheel. “Yeah, I saw there was a Subway or something this next exit, is that okay?”

  He nodded and I flipped Sally’s turning signal to get off the highway.

  It must have been the whole town’s lunch break or something because traffic was crazy. I stopped at a red light and tapped my fingers on the steering wheel in time to the music. The light turned green and I took my foot off the brake and gunned the gas. As I entered the intersection, Landry pointed to something outside of the passenger window. I turned to look and never got a chance to see what had captured his attention, because he turned to me with a huge smile on his face, which quickly shifted to something I never wanted to see. His eyes widened and his mouth opened, a horrible sound ripping from the depths of his throat, something that sounded like my name but I wasn’t sure.

  I heard the squeal of air breaks, the sickening crunch of metal crushing metal, then glass shattering all around me. An unbearable burning pain in my left shoulder. Landry screaming my name as a warm wetness streaked my face. A coppery iron taste filled my mouth.

  And then the pain consumed me until blackness took over.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The back of my hand hurt. A dull ache along with a chill that traveled from my wrist up my arm, into my shoulder and neck. Like I was a little shrimp chilling on ice, waiting to be dipped in cocktail sauce.

  Shit, I was dreaming I was a crustacean? What the fuck happened?

  I opened my eyes and blinked at my wrist, from which sprouted a clear, plastic tube. I lifted my frozen arm slowly. Shit, I had an IV. What . . . ?

  A sharp intake of breath made me roll my head to the side and there was my mom, face pale beneath the perfectly applied mak
eup and salon-styled hair. And then I continued to wonder if I was dreaming because how was my mother here? And where was here?

  At first she stared at me unblinking. Then with a twitch, she spoke. “Justin.” My name was an exhale and it slammed the memories back into my skull.

  I’d been in Sally. About to eat lunch. I saw Landry’s smile and felt myself return it. But then Landry’s face, full of terror as my body jerked with a sickening crunch of metal. Something warm and wet on my face. Pain. Landry’s voice. Landry’s voice. Landry’s voice.

  I sat upright in the bed, clutching my ribs as pain seared through my left side. “Where’s Landry?”

  My mom didn’t say anything, those same gray eyes I saw in the mirror wide and unblinking.

  “Mom, where is Landry?”

  Her mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. She just sat there, her purse clutched in her lap with white knuckles. Her legs crossed demurely at the ankles. My heart tripped and my head pounded because how was she so fucking calm? Was he okay? In another room? Because God forbid . . .

  “Where the fuck is Landry!” I screamed, flailing among the thin sheets and wires and bandages. Something tore on my shoulder and I gritted my teeth against a flare of white-hot pain.

  A nurse rushed into the room and that’s when my mom finally came alive, rising to her feet with a jolt. “Please calm down,” the nurse said, placing a hand on my chest while she braced herself on the bedrail, but there was no fucking way I was calming down until someone told me where Landry was. Or better yet, delivered him at the foot of my bed—whole, unhurt, and smiling. My mom murmured something beside me, echoing the nurse, but I ignored her, still trying to figure out why my limbs wouldn’t work right so I could get out of this bed.

  “Where is Landry? The guy I was in the RV with?” My heart was about to beat out of my chest and gallop down the hall to look for him myself. “Landry. My best friend. My boyfriend. Where the fuck is he?”

  “Jus.”

  Everything stopped.

  My mom. The nurse.

  My heart.

  Landry stood in the doorway, a small bandage on his right temple amid his now-long curls, standing with his weight shifted to his left side, like the other was sore. But he was there.

  Whole. Unhurt.

  And he was holding a Butterfinger.

  “Lan.” My voice was a croak as Landry walked to the side of my bed. I didn’t take my eyes off of him. My breathing must have been crazy or I must have looked half out of my mind because he grabbed my head, his hand like an anchor in my hair, and smashed our foreheads together like I’d done to him countless times. He didn’t say anything. And we stayed that way until our breaths and heartbeats matched.

  When he pulled away from me, I took a deep, cleansing breath.

  “Lay back.” Landry fluffed my pillow behind me and patted my right shoulder. “You have some cracked ribs and stitches in your shoulder where the glass cut it.”

  Oh, so that would be the warmth trickling down my arm. “I think I tore some stitches,” I said to Landry. But the nurse was already peeking under the bandage. She cleaned me up and applied a new bandage as Landry pulled a chair over and sat down. “Are you okay?” I asked him as the nurse fussed over me and took my blood pressure.

  He gently touched the bandage on his head. “Just a cut where my head hit the window. And my shoulder is sore from hitting the door. But I’m okay.” He gripped my hand as the nurse told me she’d be back in an hour and left the room. “You got it the worse. I’m so sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I wanted to get you a candy bar.”

  “I was worried when you weren’t here,” I whispered.

  His face softened. “I’m so sorry. I thought I had time before you woke up.” A small smile and I finally noticed Landry’s eyes were red, face lined with concern, curls mussed. “Pay you back for all the worrying I’ve been doing.”

  I smiled back. “Came back as soon as I could.”

  Lan chuckled. “Better late than never.”

  I threaded our fingers together and let my head fall back on the pillow.

  A chair creaked in the room and that’s when I remembered my mom was there. I turned away from Landry to face her. Her eyes darted from our joined hands to my face to Landry’s face, a triangle of horror for her, I was sure.

  The little boy inside me that always wanted to please his mom, never wanted to disappoint her, banged a weak fist in my heart. She’d held so much control over my life for so long—and I’d let her—that the gut reaction of her witnessing me holding hands with a boy raised my anxiety. My hand trembled and Landry’s grip on it tightened. He knew. And I gripped him just as hard in answer. I wasn’t letting go this time. Despite the flight instinct raging inside, this time I was standing up for myself

  Mom licked her lips, and I spotted a smear of lipstick on her teeth. It was the only indication that me lying in a hospital bed affected her nerves. “I’m glad you two are both okay.”

  “How long have you been here?” I asked.

  Her eyes flicked to Landry, then back to me. “The last couple of hours.” Her mouth opened, then she paused, and her tongue curled to sound out a different word. “How do you feel?”

  I shrugged and then winced as pain ripped through my shoulder. “I hurt. But I’ll heal.”

  “I came as soon as I could,” she whispered. Like that made up for telling me on the phone that my relationship with Landry embarrassed her.

  “Thanks.” I did have to acknowledge she drove or flew to New Hampshire at the drop of a hat.

  Her eyes darted to our hands again before she cleared her throat. “And I got your e-mail.” Something flashed through her eyes. I could have sworn it was hurt before she composed her mask. “I . . . you could have called me. Or waited until you came home.”

  “I guess I wanted to give you some time to process it before we talked,” I said. “But you knew all this time, didn’t you? Dad knew, too.”

  She didn’t speak for a minute, like her thoughts had to pass through her politically correct filter before she spoke them, now that we were in public and had an audience, even if it was only Landry.

  “We talked. We suspected.”

  That was it. That’s all she gave me. And I was too tired to play games with her. Too tired to filter my words.

  “Well, I’m gay. I love Lan. We’re together. And I’m sorry to leave you in a lurch or affect your campaign, but I can’t work for you. I’m working for Dad’s friend Lamar Crabtree as an assistant sports photographer.”

  Those five sentences. Said in less than ten seconds. Just like that. I’d imagined telling her most of that for over eight years. I laid awake at night and agonized over them. How to tell her. How she’d react.

  But with Landry holding my hand while I was tired and in pain, it all came tumbling out.

  And I didn’t regret one word. It was the most honest I’d ever been with her. The most honest I’d ever been with anyone other than Landry.

  But she gave me nothing. Blank stare. Those gray eyes as hard to read as always. Had I been like that?

  “If you want to disown me, please spare me the statement of how I gross you out or whatever, just leave.” I stared at the ceiling as I spoke. Landry squeezed my hand tighter, remaining silent, and I hated that he had to be here to witness it. But I needed him because I didn’t know if I’d get through it if he wasn’t. I squeezed his hand back. I rolled my head to the side to face him, then closed my eyes and waited for the click of her heels.

  Instead I heard the scrape of a chair, sounding like it shifted closer to the bed. Then her voice, uncharacteristically shaky. “Justin.”

  I opened my eyes and Landry’s face hovered above me, his eyes on my mom, his squared shoulders and set jaw radiating protectiveness. I rolled my head back and she had moved closer, a pink polished hand resting on the b
ed near my arm.

  “I’m . . .” She licked her lips, further marring her perfect lipstick application, and flicked her eyes to Landry and back to me. “I’m sorry for the things I said. This is going to take some time for me to get used to. I still don’t . . . believe in it—”

  “Mom, there’s nothing to believe in. Being gay isn’t a religion— “

  She held up her hand, so I stopped talking. My head hurt anyway.

  “I know,” she said. “But still. Be patient with me. After I received your e-mail, I did a lot of thinking. I . . . I guess I tried to control you because you were the only thing in my personal life I could control. Things didn’t work out with your father and . . .” She sighed. “I admit I didn’t want you to be gay. I wanted you to marry a nice girl from a nice family and give me nice grandbabies.”

  “Well, now I’ll marry a nice man from a nice family and give you nice grandkitties or grandpuppies. Or adopt.” I hadn’t realized ‘marry’ had slipped from my lips until Landry’s voice caught in his throat. I didn’t look at him. We’d address that later.

  My mom nodded, her movements jerky, like if she relaxed her muscles her head would roll off her shoulders.

  “I know I might not deserve it, but please be patient with me. It’s going to take some . . . getting used to.” She smoothed a crease in the sheet by my elbow. “And I think there are some changes in my future. Personal and career.”

  She didn’t elaborate and I didn’t ask. Because all that really mattered was that she hadn’t run out on me. She was still here, still standing by me as my mother.

  “Thank you,” I whispered.

  She looked up. “I do love you.” And this time, for the first time in as long as I could remember, she didn’t sound pained to say those words.

  “Love you too, Mom.”

  ***

  When I woke up next, my room was crowded. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs stood at the end of my bed fussing with something on my wheeled table.

  I blinked my eyes slowly, groggy from the drugs and a weird sleep schedule. The Jacobs’s hadn’t noticed I watched them.

  “Oh, you’re awake.” Landry stood at the door, a bright smile on his face, holding a bunch of string. My eyes traveled up and . . .