Then there was Connor.
After the fiasco with Brandon, he’d promised himself that he’d never again be someone’s dirty little secret. His attraction to Connor had him second-guessing that decision. He could understand why Connor wasn’t ready to come out to the world. After all, he’d only really admitted it to himself a few weeks ago. Graham should give Connor all the time he needed to come to grips with this new aspect of his personality. There was no timeline or rule for coming out, and Graham would never deliberately push someone into doing it before they were ready.
Which left him stuck squarely between a rock and a hard place. He was tempted to be with Connor in secret, but he’d probably end up hating Connor for it. Or he could beg Connor to come out so that they could be together openly. Which might push Connor away for good. He didn’t like either option, which meant he’d probably have to take option C—ignore his feelings for Connor and hope to stay friends. He only hoped he could overcome the temptation of taking Connor any way he could get him.
“And in case you have doubts about it…,” he muttered to himself and lifted the lid on the shoe box.
The top of the pile was a piece of newsprint with Graham’s school picture next to the headline “Local Teen in Intensive Care After Apparent Gay Bashing Attack.” The accompanying article began, “In one of the most violent attacks St. Louis has seen against a gay teenager in recent years, sixteen-year-old Graham Parker faces months of surgery and physical therapy. The attack by local teens left Parker with third-degree burns over 20 percent of his body, cracked ribs, and a broken wrist….”
Below the article was a postcard. It was blank, white, except for the writing on it, which was thick and black. “You’re an abomination. You deserve what you got. As you burned on earth, you will burn in hell.”
Graham dug into the box and pulled out a stack of photos. Each picture showed a different injury at various stages of healing. For the most part when he looked at them, he could distance himself, as though he were looking at pictures on the television of someone else. Blackened skin that had to be scoured away. Patches of donor skin grafted onto his chest and back. Two black eyes and a broken nose. They all belonged to someone else, someone not real. Someone not him.
There was a light tapping at his door. He looked up and his dad peeked in, figure highlighted by the golden light from the hallway. “Couldn’t sleep?”
Graham placed the photos back into the box. “Nope. You?”
His dad shook his head. “Nope. Want to talk about it?”
“I don’t know.” He leaned back in his chair and looked at his father. Man, he looked tired. “Do you resent me?” The words came out before his brain had a chance to process them. He hadn’t even known he’d been thinking it.
“What? No.” His dad sat on the edge of Graham’s bed, hands clasped between his knees. “Why would you think that?”
“I….” Graham cleared his throat and continued. “We moved from St. Louis to Green Valley because of me. You never would have even considered it before… before. And now you have to travel to go to your meetings and Mom had to quit her job, and it’s all my fault.”
“No, Graham, no. There is no fault. It’s a choice we made. For you, to protect you, yes, but not because of you. We love you. Things were getting out of control in St. Louis, and you were miserable. Between the hate mail and the protesters and those that wanted to use you, to make you into some sort of political poster child, St. Louis wasn’t a healthy environment for you.”
“Yeah, but—”
“There are no buts,” his dad interrupted. “In case you didn’t know, there’s nothing we wouldn’t do for you, nothing we wouldn’t sacrifice. It’s what being a parent is about.”
“See, you say things like that, proving how awesome you are, which makes me feel terrible because I do stupid stuff like leave the house in the middle of night without letting anyone know where I went. And then you’re pissed and Mom’s scared and I feel like crap.”
“Graham, I wasn’t pissed. I was scared. You came in, and I wanted to hug you and strangle you at the same time. We’d spent the last hour and a half with worst-case scenarios running through our heads and remembering. It was hard to process, that’s all.”
Graham looked at his box of memories. “You know, I keep this so I remember every minute. I don’t want to forget any of it, that way I won’t make the same mistakes again. I documented every step, every feeling of that process. I don’t know, I never asked what you guys went through, what it was like for you.”
“You had enough on your plate. You didn’t need the burden of our reactions too.” He reached over and grabbed the shoe box off the desk. He peered in and blanched. “Jesus, Graham, why did you keep all of this?”
“I told you, I didn’t want to forget.”
His father placed the lid on the box and set it aside. “Do you really think you’re going to forget?”
“Not forget, exactly, more like I’ll repeat the mistakes. Like tonight. Because I wasn’t thinking, you and Mom had to relive parts of that nightmare. Sometimes I need to remember the cause and effect.”
“I think you’ve relived enough for tonight.” His father handed him the box. “Why don’t you do yourself a favor and get rid of that box. It’s poisonous. In the meantime, try and get some sleep.”
Graham held the box against his chest. “Can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“Were you, are you, okay with me being gay? With everything that happened, I never really got to tell you, you know, in person. It was one more thing that sort of came up in the rest of that mess.”
His father sighed and looked at his slippers. Graham’s heart stuttered in his chest. What if his dad was disgusted, or worse, disappointed?
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I wish you had felt like you could tell me and your mother. The way we found out was difficult. And it hurt that you didn’t think you could trust us to react positively. Your mom took it a little hard, more the shock of it than anything. The thought that you might like boys better than girls never really crossed her mind. But she loves you, and once she wrapped her head around it, it was fine, just one more piece of you.”
“She hates that I’m obvious about it. She worries what people will think.”
“She’s afraid about what others will do, not what they think. She loves you, and she’s proud of you for being true to yourself. But you have to understand, as parents, we weren’t able to protect you from something horrible. Being helpless is hard on a parent. We couldn’t protect you then, so she’s determined to try and protect you now.”
“So it’s not that she wants me to be someone else?”
“No. She’s proud of who you are. But she worries, and the shirts and makeup give her something tangible to focus on.”
“How about you? You’ve never let on that it bothers you, but you’ve never really acknowledged it either.”
“It doesn’t matter to me who you’re attracted to. No more than it matters to me whether you like rock music or country.”
Graham snorted.
“Okay, bad example. My point, though, is that it’s part of who you are and I accept you for who you are. Besides, unlike your mother, I sort of suspected you might be gay before everything that went down last year.”
“No way! Seriously? How?”
“Oh, nothing concrete. You weren’t what I’d call obvious about it. You know, nothing that I would call swishy.”
The laugh that burst from Graham’s chest surprised him. “Dad, swishy is such a horrible stereotype.”
“Yeah, I know, but you know what I mean. You didn’t fall into a lot of the stereotypes. Sometime during your middle school years, I started to notice little things. You’d watch other boys while they were watching girls. But the real clue was when you started high school.”
His father’s wide grin made Graham distinctly nervous. “What was that?”
“You didn’t delete your brows
er history.”
It took a minute. The seemingly unrelated comment stumped him. Then it became all too clear. “Oh. My. God.” The blood drained from his head only to surge back in a blush.
When he was a freshman in high school, he’d been exploring his sexuality. That exploration had led to many hours on the Internet. Amazing what the right keyword search came up with. The results were enough to keep any fifteen-year-old boy glued to the computer for hours of entertainment and… education.
“Kill me now,” Graham moaned, burying his head in his arms.
“Well, let’s say that it was pretty clear where your interests lay.”
Graham released a heartfelt groan. His father knew Graham had watched gay porn. Never again would he forget to delete his browser history.
“Good night, Graham. Things will look better in the light of morning and after a few hours of sleep.”
“So we’re good?” Graham lifted his head.
“We’re good.” His dad stood up and headed toward the door.
“Good night.” Graham got up and turned off the light before slipping into bed.
Chapter 31
COCONUT RUM didn’t taste nearly as good coming up as it did going down. Connor learned this while hurling into the toilet at seven the next morning. In fact, even the thought of coconut in any form caused bile to rise in his throat and had his now-empty stomach roiling like a pit of snakes. His eyes were dry and crusty, as though someone had poured sand all over his face. His head pulsed in counterpoint to the lurches and surges of his stomach.
“Get moving, Connor. We’ve got to get to the shop!”
Connor cringed at Dad’s booming voice and squinted into the bathroom mirror. Bloodshot eyes stared back at him from a sallow face. It was not a good combination. Brushing his teeth had him gagging into the sink. He opened the medicine cabinet and searched desperately for some aspirin or ibuprofen or maybe a shotgun, anything to dull the pounding in his head. He eventually remembered he had a stash of ibuprofen in his room to help with the swelling in his knee.
“Get a move on!”
“I’m coming!” Connor shouted and immediately regretted it. The pounding in his head doubled. He wanted to curl up and bury his head somewhere dark and quiet.
He shuffled to his room and pulled out the bottle of pain relievers. Popping three, he swallowed them dry before making his way carefully down the stairs.
“Maybe he should stay home today,” his mother was saying as he approached the kitchen.
“No way. If he’s going to drink, he’s going to live with the consequences. Maybe this way he’ll think about it before he drinks again.”
“I’m never going to drink again,” he promised.
“Yeah, you will. Maybe next time you’ll be a bit smarter about it, though.” His dad was unusually cheerful this morning. Which was, Connor thought, an unforgivable sin.
“I’m only glad you didn’t drive,” his mom said. “At least you were smarter than that. But we’ll talk about this tonight. Consider yourself grounded until then.”
The way he felt should have been punishment enough, but he wasn’t going to argue.
Connor levered himself into his father’s truck, angling the crutches in front of him.
They’d only gone about a block before his dad spoke up. “Who was it that brought you home last night? I didn’t recognize him.”
“My friend, Graham. The one who I went with to Chicago.”
“I thought you went out with Allyson.”
Oh man, Allyson. He’d forgotten all about Allyson, but at the reminder, memories of his actions flooded his brain. He had so much explaining to do. That assumed she would even speak to him again. “Ah, we had a fight, and she left me at the party.”
“Is that why you decided to tie one on? I can tell you,” his dad said conversationally, “that drinking never solves anything, no matter how tempting it may be at the time.”
“That was part of it.” Maybe it was the hangover, but for the first time in a long time, there was no tension overshadowing his interaction with Dad. Which, given the circumstances, was kind of weird. His dad hadn’t freaked out at him coming home reeking of booze and stumbling drunk. He kept waiting for the accusations and rants to start. Wouldn’t his dad see this as one more sign that Connor was ruining his life?
“Your mom and I talked about it, and we’re going to offer you a deal.”
That didn’t sound good. “A deal?”
“Your mom and I were young once. We know kids your age are going to go to parties and drink. The only thing we ask is that you don’t drive and don’t ride with anyone who’s been drinking. Call us. We’ll pick you up, no questions asked.”
That seemed way too reasonable. “Okay. So I’m not in trouble for last night?”
“Yes and no.” Dad actually smiled. This was turning into such a strange conversation. “Tonight we’re going to talk about drinking responsibly and drugs—don’t roll your eyes at me, you’re getting off easy. And you’re going to be punished.”
Connor sighed. He’d known it was too good to be true. “Am I grounded?”
“Nope. By the end of the day you’re going to wish you were grounded. Instead, today you get to do the filing. I’ve got six months’ worth of parts invoices and customer contact info that has to be filed and added to the bill ledger. And since you’ve got the bum leg, you get to do it.”
Great. Tedium. He hated doing the filing. Nothing like hours deciphering invoices to bore a man to tears.
It was official. Dad was an evil, evil man.
THE POUNDING in his head had quieted to a dull thrum and, after two antacid tablets and a plain turkey sandwich, his stomach had settled into minor queasiness by the time he reached the equipment storage shed that afternoon. It was the first time back since he hurt his knee. Coach Baxter, who probably viewed it as an act of kindness, had given them a break from the cleanup until Connor was able to participate.
He’d driven his car to the school. His mom had thrown a fit, but Connor was stubborn. The seat was already pushed back as far as it could go, but he found that if he reclined the seat and shifted as far as he could to the right, he could fit his left leg, brace and all, into the car for the short trip. It wasn’t comfortable, but it got the job done.
How could he face Graham again after his moronic behavior the night before? He’d been a total asshole, and now he had two apologies to make, and neither was going to be easy. The apology to Graham, while embarrassing, was probably going to be the easier of the two. He at least had some idea of Connor’s state of mind. The apology to Allyson, on the other hand, was going to be excruciating. He owed her some serious explanations.
Might as well get it out of the way. Connor pulled out his cell phone once he was parked in the lot at school. He dialed Allyson’s number and waited through half a dozen rings before it cut to voice mail. Not a good sign. Unless she was in class, she answered her phone. “Hey, Allyson, it’s me. I know you’re probably still pissed, and you totally have a right to be. I’d like to apologize, in person. Ah… call me, okay? Please.”
He levered himself out of the Neon and withdrew the crutches from the backseat. He spotted Graham’s car in the lot, but there was no sign of him at the shed. Following his gut, he made his way around the court until the field was in view. From there it didn’t take him long to spy Graham.
Graham was under the netless frame of the goal, running a series of drills. He shuffled from one side of the goal to the other then dropped to the ground, landing in a way that made it look like he was about to do a push-up. Before a second passed, he brought his feet under his body and sprang back up. Then he repeated the process, first with a side-to-side shuffle of his feet, then with a step that reminded Connor of some kind of line dancing. He fell flat and bounced up. Occasionally instead of falling, he dove from one side of the goal to the other, arms stretched out in front of him.
Over and over he did this. Fall. Bounce. Dive. Jump.
/> After going through this cycle of drills, he jumped in place, hands raised above his head. With each jump he cleared a greater and greater height. It didn’t seem possible that a person could gain such altitude without a running start or a spring board. Connor sank onto the bench next to Graham’s gear.
Graham was so focused on his practice he didn’t even glance toward the bench where Connor sat. Connor leaned back to enjoy the show. Had it really been only a year ago that Graham was in the hospital recovering from his attack and burns? Watching him now, Connor saw no hint that Graham was in anything but perfect shape. And to think I’ve been bitching and moaning about my knee. What Graham had overcome was amazing.
He didn’t know how much time passed while he watched Graham complete his drills. When Graham sat to stretch, he was drenched in sweat, his longish bangs plastered to his forehead, and the long-sleeved T-shirt stuck to the bands of muscles along his chest and back. Graham leaned forward, head touching his knees, hands grasping his shoes. He stayed like that for a count of thirty before sitting up in a rush. He did one of those bounce things that allowed him to gain his feet without using his hands and strode to the neon-green-and-black soccer ball that sat several feet away.
Graham stared at the ball, then tossed it lightly into the air and caught it. He bit his lip, eyes darting from the ball to the goal and back again. There was a long pause, and then he lined himself up several yards away from the goal. He planted the ball, made one more check that it was centered between the front poles of the frame, and backed up another ten yards.
He rubbed his hands together, took a deep breath, and charged toward the ball. Instead of kicking it as Connor expected, Graham planted his feet on either side of the ball, whipped forward into a handspring, and threw—using his feet—the soccer ball into the goal. It was the coolest thing Connor had ever seen. He didn’t have time to react, though, because a harsh cry echoed through the empty field as Graham landed in a heap.
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