I pick my way through the debris and bolt up the staircase. The soles of my feet protest when a few pieces of glass embed themselves farther into my flesh. When I enter Will’s apartment, I stare around me for a beat, as if I don’t know the space, as if I haven’t spent every night here for the last few weeks. It’s only when I pull on my clothes and snatch up my phone and dial triple zero that I realise I’m shaking. My whole body vibrates, with rage, with fear, with anguish. I’m having a hard time keeping my shit together, and the operator has to ask me several times what my emergency is before I steady my ragged breathing and tell her as calmly as possible that we need two ambulances. I give her the address as I pull on my clothes. I discard the towel I wore downstairs in a heap on the floor, and my gaze drifts over to it, the blood thick, ruby red in some patches where it wasn’t watered down by my wet skin or sweat, pink in others.
He can’t get away with this.
The woman asks me about Will’s state, and whether both injured parties are still breathing. Whether I can feel their pulse. I know I’m not supposed to hang up. I can hear her barking at me through the receiver, but I can’t keep it back. Rage overrides common sense, and I roar my frustration and hurl my damn phone through Will’s bedroom window and out onto the street. Cars pull into the lot, shrill sirens pierce the morning air, and I scream with them as the apartment is filled with blue and red flashing lights.
After a beat, I leave the room, closing the door behind me and walking down the stairs as calmly as I can. It won’t do Will any good to see me torn up like this. I need to keep my shit together. I need to pay my father a visit. I need to beat his fucking head in.
Entering the bar, I find myself face to face with Sargent Johnson and Officer Wheeler. Their guns are out and pointed at me. I stop dead in my tracks and hold my hands up in surrender.
“Freeze,” Officer Wheeler says unnecessarily. I have no intention of moving.
“Not him, dumbarse,” Trevor says. “The attackers are long gone.”
Johnson lowers his gun. “Stand down, Officer.”
Wheeler looks to Johnson for confirmation, and then back to me. He slowly holsters his gun.
“What happened here?” Johnson says.
“My father happened.” I hold Johnson’s gaze. He and my dad have history. Hell, he and I have history, one that I know he hasn’t forgotten.
In a small town, everyone knows your secrets. Even the ones you thought you could keep. But I wasn’t the only one about to come out of the closet, my father’s skeletons were about to be unleashed in droves.
I wait until Rob Underwood shows up at the pub before I sneak out the back and run through the deserted streets all the way to North’s house. I check Butt Rusted first, an old fishing boat that Will and I had ripped the seats out of and built a new flat floor to lie on. When we were kids, we’d drag our sleeping bags out here and fall asleep under the stars. North isn’t waiting there for me like I’d hoped. He’s not in the graveyard at all, but instead he sits at the end of the pier, his legs dangling in the water, his head bowed. Several empty bottles of beer litter the jetty around him. The sun is going down, and the bay looks like it’s been set on fire.
“Big day, huh?” I pick up one of the bottles and toy with it as I sit down beside him. He shifts, putting a couple of centimetres between us, but he doesn’t say anything.
“You drink all these yourself? Or did your dad contribute?”
“Does it matter?”
“Well, yeah. Seeing as it looks like you’re about to keel over and drown, I’d say it matters a lot.” I get to my feet and grab his arm. “Come on. Let’s get some food in your belly.”
“Don’t fucking touch me.” North shoves me away from him. It doesn’t hurt my body so much as it hurts my pride.
“What the fuck, North?”
“What are we doing?” he slurs.
“What do you mean?” I ask, even though I know. Stupid of me to think that this wouldn’t come. This is the part where he sets fire to everything we are. It’s a miracle we’ve lasted this long.
“We can’t keep doing this, Will.” Blue eyes meet mine, and they’re both desperate and resolved. “Not here. We’re gonna end up getting our heads beaten in.”
“We could leave,” I venture.
“And go where?” he snaps. “With what?”
“We’ll start saving. Dad’s putting me on more shifts now that exams are finished. You start work at the steel mill in a few more weeks. We’ll save up some cash, pool our fucking pennies and get the hell outta here.”
“We can’t just leave.” He won’t meet my gaze, just stares out at the nothingness of the still bay at dusk.
“Why the hell not? What is there to stay for?”
“Our whole lives are here.”
“So we’ll make our lives somewhere else.”
“I’m not gay, Will—”
“Are you kidding me with this shit?” Now I have his undivided attention, and the look he gives makes me wish he’d go back to ignoring me.
“I can’t do this. I’m not like you!” he shouts.
“Screw you, North.” I walk up the jetty, but I’m not done, so I stalk back and tower over him. “If it had been anyone else, if you’d been saying this shit to anyone else, I might believe you, but I know you, arsehole. This isn’t just some fling. We crossed a line that night and you’ve willingly walked over it every chance you got since, so don’t tell me you’re not like me. You’re doing this because you want to, because you’ve always done whoever and whatever you wanted to. You’re just too much of a fucking coward to have anyone find out about it.”
“Fuck you.”
“Yeah, fuck me. I’m the one that did this to you, aren’t I? I’m the one who made you gay.” I hold my hands out in apology. “Oh wait, sorry, you’re not gay, just experimenting. So fuck me for being the one thing you want that you can’t have, because you’re too gutless to show everyone that they don’t matter and that we do.”
“What the hell do you want me to do, huh?” he roars, stumbling to his feet and knocking over empty bottles that spin and twirl on their sides like bowling pins. He bunches my shirt in his fist. “You know who my father is. You know what he’s like. You know what people in this town are like, Will. You think they’re gonna be okay with a couple of faggots playing house in their midst?”
He releases me, smoothing a clumsy hand down over my newly torn shirt. His large palm presses against my thundering heart. For a long time, we both stand in silence, staring at his hand on my chest. “This is Red Maine, not Sydney. Ain’t nobody marching down the street here with their rainbow flag shouting about gay rights. You do that shit here and you get your head beaten in. I can’t watch you go through that. I can’t go through that.”
“Then come away with me,” I plead, but I know already what his response will be.
“I don’t know why you’re making this more difficult than it has to be,” North says.
“Because I can’t turn it off like you can,” I shout. “I can’t fucking walk away. I wish I could. Fuck, some days it’s all I wish for. Sometimes I wish that night had never happened because I knew that this is where it would lead us.”
“What do you want from me, Will?” North’s voice rises to meet my own. “You want me to tell you that pussy just doesn’t cut it for me anymore? Huh?” North pushes me against the wooden railing, and I almost lose my balance. “Is that what you want from me?”
“I want you to stop fucking lying. To me, to this town, to yourself.” I dart my tongue along my bottom lip and taste blood. I hadn’t realised I’d been biting so hard. North watches the movement. He looks like he wants to kiss me, but he glances instead at the darkening water beyond. “Fuck. Forget about the town; forget about those arseholes out there. They don’t matter. Just be honest; just once, give me all of you.”
“You daft prick. I already did give you all of me. I’ve given you every-fucking-thing I have.”
“No, you
haven’t.” I sigh. “You can’t be who you are without apologising to the world for it, and I can’t be who I am without apologising to you.”
North steps back as though I just slapped him, and I turn and walk up the jetty, kicking away a stray bottle that falls into the bay with a heavy plonk.
A splash from behind me stops me dead in my tracks. It’s just like North to fuck around and make a joke out of everything. I continue down the jetty, but unease prickles along the length of my spine.
What if he didn’t jump?
He’s drunk. He should never have been that close to the water anyway. I turn, my gaze skimming over the bay. My heart races. Sweat breaks out on my brow. Fuck. He’s nowhere in sight. I run along the jetty and dive off the end. Despite the heat of the day the water is still cold, and it needles my flesh from head to toe. I ignore the pain and duck beneath the surface. Salt stings my eyes. My breath is shallow.
I can’t find him. Fuck. I can’t lose him.
Coming up for air, I tread water and scream his name. Nothing. My gaze darts from the jetty to the horizon and back to the shore, hoping that this is all some douche-canoe joke of his that I will kick his arse for later, but the fear gripping the pit of my stomach tells me that he isn’t playing.
I scan the surface of the bay again and duck below. Farther out, there’s a shadowy something in the water. I hope to fuck it’s not a shark coming in for krill, because I make the decision to head right for it. Water tugs at my clothes as I cut through it, and though my limbs are leaden and tired I push through and dive again when I think I’m close.
And there he is on the ocean floor, his eyes wide open and staring up at me, and not seeing me at all. I dive deeper and take hold of his waist, pulling him up. He doesn’t struggle. He doesn’t help. He’s a dead-weight.
We surface, both of us gasping for breath, though my heart sinks because I get the sense that his is involuntary. Instinct. I hold onto him for dear life and swim for the shore. It’s not a hard swim by any means—we’ve swam the bay and back a thousand times—but the drag of our clothed bodies against the water doesn’t help. North doesn’t help either. He doesn’t fight, struggle, or aid in any way. I want to beat the shit out of him for pulling a stunt like this.
Tucking my arms under his pits, I drag him onto the shore, far enough that I know he won’t drown on the tide, and I sink into the sand on all fours while I catch my breath.
North coughs and splutters. He’s breathing, awake and alive, but his vacant expression tells me he’s not here. He’s catatonic. With glazed and unfocused eyes, he lies there, stomach to the wet sand, face turned to the side, breathing but not alive.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Huh?” I shout. “Are you trying to kill yourself? To kill me? Fuck, North.”
He doesn’t answer. I can’t deal with this shit. I get up and walk away, but I’m afraid at some point he’s going to wade back in that water and I’ll never see him again. I sit down beside him and wring out the excess water from the hem of my shirt, because it’s all I can do to keep from hitting him.
I drag my hands over my face. “Say something. Goddamn it, North. Fucking say something!”
“Sorry,” he whispers, so quiet I’m not sure I’ve heard him right.
“Sorry? You try to drown yourself in the bay and you’re sorry?” I rub my temples. My skull pounds with fear or adrenaline, I don’t know which. I’m exhausted. I’m sick of fighting. I want to walk away, but just like I told him before, I can’t. “Jesus Christ. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“It hurts. I just want it to stop fucking hurting.” He sits up, curling his knees into his chest and pressing his forehead to them. “I just wanna make it stop.”
North beats his hands against his head. I grab a hold of his fists in an effort to make him stop. He tries to pull away, but I wrap my arms around him until he relents. Quiet, shuddering sobs fill the evening around us, and I cradle his head to my chest as he hangs on, gripping my shoulders as though he’s afraid I’ll be taken from him.
“It’s okay,” I whisper. “You’re okay.”
We stay that way in each other’s arms as the sun sinks behind the trees. The bay is shrouded in the shadowy blue-grey of twilight, and the moonlight shimmers on the water. We don’t say a word, but I kiss his forehead and pull him closer. We both shiver, our clothes weighed down by excess water that our body heat hasn’t managed to dry.
“Where would we go?” North whispers, his voice croaking from the salt and misuse.
“What?”
“If we left …” his voice is monotone, and he doesn’t look at me as he asks. He just settles his head into my lap, and my fingers automatically seek out his wet golden locks. “… where would we go?”
“Wherever we wanted.”
“I’m afraid.” North interlocks his hand with mine and squeezes. I squeeze back.
“I’ll tell you a secret—everybody is.”
He smiles, but it’s gone before I even have time to appreciate it. He never smiles anymore, and a part of me knows that it’s because of me. I’ve forced him to feel things he didn’t want to. I opened his eyes to a whole new world, but I slammed the door on the other one, and now he can’t find his way back.
“I can’t walk away either,” he says, shifting in my lap so he can glance up at me. He touches cold fingertips to my lips, and I close my eyes. “I don’t want this to—”
“What the fuck?” Rob Underwood shouts. My heart hammers out a staccato beat. North’s eyes fill with dread as he sits up, and we both clamber to our feet and face his father.
“Dad.” North’s voice is thin with fear.
“Jesus fucking Christ.” Rob staggers toward us. He’s drunk. Very drunk. No surprise there, but I’ve seen that look before. It’s the same way North looks when he’s spoiling for a fight. “I knew there was something fucking faggoty about the two of you, and what do I come home to find? My son, cuddling a fairy on the beach in the moonlight.”
“Will, get outta here,” North says, stepping his right foot back.
“I’m not leaving you here with him.”
“You get the hell off my property, Tanner,” Rob sneers.
“Go,” North shouts. I shake my head again, but he pushes me. I fall back into the sand and scramble to my feet when North’s dad takes several wobbly steps towards me. “Go!” North screams, shoving his dad back, and copping a blow to the ear for it. “Get the fuck outta here, fag.”
I get to my feet, torn between wanting to beat the shit out of them both and wanting to run and pull North along with me, but his expression is as murderous as his father’s. I turn, running up the beach and through his yard. I don’t know what else to do. I lost my thongs when I dove into the water after him, so I run barefoot through the graveyard, over wooden debris, past the old hull where we built our forts, in and out of sea-ravaged fishing boats where we lay and dreamed and lost ourselves in each other. I run until my feet are bloody and my heart feels as though it’s about to burst.
Hard to believe it could rupture when it’s already been shattered completely.
I wake with a start and meet a pair of blue eyes that have been both my solace and my torment for thirty long years. Now, they remind me of the man who almost killed me, and that is a tough pill to swallow. I take in my surrounds: annoying machines beep every few seconds, wires stem from almost every inconceivable place in my body. There’s a saline drip, flowers and get-well cards on as many surfaces as I have tubes stemming from my orifices, and North, hovering over me like a motherfucking hen.
Jesus. Someone needs to up my morphine.
“You’re awake.” He takes my hand, squeezing it too tightly.
I flinch and clear my throat. It feels like shit. My whole body feels like shit. Worse than shit. I feel like I’ve been kicked by a fucking mule … Oh, right. “What happened?”
“You don’t remember?”
“I remember the attack, dumbarse.” I claw at the catheter sticking
out of the back of my hand. It itches like a motherfucking bitch. Inwardly, I laugh at myself. Beaten almost to death and a tiny needle bothers me. “Just not what came after.”
“Cops came after. And surgery. You’ve had some work done to your nose—specialist came in and repaired the damage. Your left cheekbone was fractured; you have a lot of bruising and a couple broken ribs. You’re supposed to take it easy—”
“My dad?”
“He’s okay. A little busted up. He was in earlier; he’s been here the whole time actually. Went straight from his hospital bed to this chair, but he got up to get coffee and almost ended up on the floor. Sal demanded he come home with her to get some sleep.”
“Who are all the flowers from?”
“From Red Maine,” He points to an obnoxiously bright bouquet of yellow and pink gerberas. It has a big silver balloon poking out the top that reads: In Sympathy. North opens the tiny envelope pinned to the bouquet. “That one’s from Josh.”
With trembling hands, I take the card from North and I read it carefully.
Now you’ll never be a teen model. — J
I chuckle. It hurts. Everywhere. Arsehole.
“He came by earlier. He was pretty shaken up.” North leans his forearms on the bed beside me and I slowly extend my hand toward his, careful not to yank out the line running to the drip. North turns his palm up towards me and I place mine in his, taking comfort in the rough callouses pressed against my flesh. “I’m so sorry, Will—”
“Don’t.” My throat scratches like hell every time I open my mouth, and my cheek feels like it’s going to explode. I’m tired and heartsore. I ache all over, and I can’t even begin to process what he must be feeling. We both knew who led that little “beat the fag” expedition, and there’s nothing more to say about it. “Just don’t.”
He nods, but I know North. I see the guilt, the fear behind his eyes. I also see the need for revenge, the way this will dog him until he’s settled the score. I recognise that bloodthirsty glint to his eye, and I want it gone.
Finding North Page 15
