by Lisa Henry
He thought about Jason’s weight on his back. The slap of Jason’s palm against his flesh. The way Jason had fucked him, claimed him.
Calmed him. Touched him for what seemed like hours afterward. Not asking for anything. No demands or promises.
That was right. That was peace. Happiness.
“No.” Nate flinched as his father looked at him. “That’s not—what we want.”
“Nate.” His dad’s voice was gentle. “I know it’s hard to ask for help—”
“Tim, shut up!” Kristin slammed her hand on the table. Everyone jumped. “They broke up. Get over it.”
The sudden silence was broken by the scrape of Marissa’s chair against the floor as she stood. “I have to go. Thank you again for the snacks. I’ll see you all in church on Sunday.”
Kristin murmured something in reply, her tone gentle.
Nate listened to the click of Marissa’s heels on the floor, and then the sound of the front door opening and closing. A few moments later he heard her car start.
“Sit down, Nate,” his father said.
He sat. Couldn’t bring himself to look across the table at his parents. He was too afraid they’d know exactly why he and Marissa had broken up. He wondered wildly if he could tell them he had feelings for another woman, but even the thought of the lie tasted like ashes. He wondered if he could tell them he wanted to look into missionary work. Something outside of Pinehurst, outside of Moving Forward. But that wasn’t what he wanted at all. He didn’t want to proselytize. He didn’t want to be a hypocrite, and hide himself behind the tenets of a faith that condemned him. His relationship with God wasn’t the same as his father’s. It never could be. So Nate could never be a spokesman for his father’s faith. Not anymore. He had to find his own path.
He didn’t realize his father had even stood until he felt his hand on his shoulder. “Why, Nate?”
Because she’s not what I want.
Not what I need.
He is
Jason is.
“Dad,” he said in a low voice. “We just...”
“Tim, leave it. They’re adults. It’s none of our business.”
“Yes.” His dad sounded tired. He squeezed Nate’s shoulder. “Will you pray with me?”
Nate nodded, pushing his chair back.
He’d hated this, once. The way his father would just kneel wherever he was, whoever was looking, and pray. He’d been acutely embarrassed by it when he was younger, the same as the kids whose parents were drug addicts or alcoholics or mentally ill. But later, after UW, Nate had discovered the strength in praying like this. In wearing his faith like armor.
Now though, that was slipping away, and Nate had to be strong without it. He had to have faith in himself.
He went down onto his knees, his father beside him.
Once, he’d drawn comfort from this. Now it felt almost claustrophobic.
His father led the prayer. The words were so familiar to Nate that he spoke them without even thinking. He kept his eyes open, and caught a glimpse of movement. He turned his head.
His mother was standing in the doorway, holding the empty coffee mugs in her hands. She caught his gaze and smiled, and her expression was so full of love and pity that Nate’s eyes pricked with tears.
She knew.
Of course she knew.
Her smile wavered, and she turned and headed for the kitchen. For a moment Nate wanted to stand up and follow her, and leave his father and his empty prayers behind.
Fear kept him on his knees. Not the fear of God, or of Hell, but the sudden, cold fear that if he walked away now he might lose his father’s love forever.
Jason woke in pain. The worst since the injury had happened, seemed like—not that he was in any position to judge objectively. He wasn’t even in bed. He was on the floor beside the bed. He didn’t remember coming home last night. Had a vague memory of a cab ride. So whether he’d gone to sleep on the floor or rolled out of bed in the night, he couldn’t say. All he knew was that agony was ripping through his leg and into the rest of him. His head throbbed so hard he had to close his eyes, and he let out a cry through gritted teeth.
Please. Fuck. Please stop.
Rose hobbled into his room a few minutes later.
He shook his head feebly and tried to say “no.” He didn’t want her to see him like this. How the fuck could he say he was in pain when she had things so much worse?
She froze for a second, fear in her eyes. Then slowly made her way in and sat on the edge of the bed. “Do you need me to call an ambulance?”
“No,” he managed. He felt sweat dripping down his temples. “No…” For a moment, some of the pain subsided. “I just need to lie here a few minutes.”
She nodded, but didn’t leave. Jason tried to keep his face neutral, but it felt like every muscle was twitching and trembling.
“Wicked hangover,” he said lamely.
She didn’t answer.
He forced out a breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. He winced, trying to focus on a single spot on the wall. “I want to say that. It is your body; it is your choice. I’m sorry I’ve been such a prick.”
Her expression was soft as she gazed down at him. She leaned forward and placed a hand on his head, lightly.
His voice got smaller. “Just, I don’t want to lose you.” Selfish. Like Rob said. Jason hadn’t blocked out that part of the night. “I’m sorry,” he said again.
She stroked the hair back from his forehead. “You need me to bring you any medication?”
“No. Just let it…let it pass.”
“Do I need to call someone to help you up?”
He shook his head.
“Honey.” The endearment escaped her like a sigh. “Honey, who’s gonna look after you when I’m gone?”
“I don’t know.” His voice broke.
Rose twined her fingers through his hair. “This too shall pass.”
“What?”
“Let it pass, you said.” Her voice grew wistful. “It made me think of that saying: this too shall pass. Now, supposedly, some Persian king asked a philosopher to come up with a phrase that would make him happy when he was feeling sad, but would also work the other way around. Why you’d want the other way around, I don’t know.”
Jason smiled through his pain. “Yeah, me neither.”
“And you and me, we’ve had our share of the sad.”
Jason closed his eyes briefly, and thought of his parents. God, he’d lived such a charmed life before they died. A happy, free, nomadic existence. He’d just wanted that back, just a shadow of it. He’d thought coming back to Pinehurst, his leg a mangled mess, was the worst thing that could happen. Well, the universe had a great way of showing him just how wrong he was. “We’ve, um, we’ve had the happy too.”
She smiled. “We have, haven’t we?”
Jason saw them suddenly: a kaleidoscope of images. Late nights playing Scrabble around the kitchen table. Rose standing up and clapping at his high school graduation. Trying to teach him to bake, and the way they’d covered the kitchen in flour. When he was fifteen and had fuzz starting to grow on his cheeks, how Rose had showed him how to shave. And, years later, confessed she’d bullied one of her male co-workers into giving her a tutorial.
His eyes pricked with tears.
“Life doesn’t always give us what we expect, or what we hope.” Rose twisted her wedding band around her finger. “But, Jason, if you only look at what you’ve lost, you might not notice what you’ve found.”
He wished he could laugh it off as some dumb platitude. Wished it didn’t hit so hard, have such power.
He thought of Nate. “I don’t know what I’ve found yet.”
“I know you don’t.” Rose brushed the side of his face with the back of her hand. ”Now, can you get up off the floor or am I going to have to call Morris next door?”
“Morris is a hundred years old!”
“He’s seventy-one,” Rose said, “and he still chops his own
wood. He has muscles!”
“How long have you been staring at Morris’s muscles?”
“Longer than you’ve been alive.”
“I can do it,” Jason said. “Just give me a minute.”
In his pocket, his phone buzzed. He dug it out. The battery was almost dead, and there was a crack across the screen that he didn’t remember from last night. Maybe he had missed the bed when he got home.
“Probably Rob,” he muttered. “Telling me the stupid things I did last night.”
He unlocked the screen to find a text from Nate: Can I visit?
He twisted his head to look at Rose. He knew there was nothing wrong with her eyesight, but she gave no indication she’d read the message. Until she opened her mouth, anyway.
“Ellen from bingo is picking me up for lunch in about a half hour. I expect I’ll be gone most the afternoon.”
Jason rubbed his stubbled cheek. He stank of alcohol and sweat. “I think maybe I’ll grab a shower.”
“I think that’s a good idea.”
Jason texted Nate: Come over in a half hour?
He wondered if they’d ever be able to do this without the sneaking around, or the guilt, or the weight of betrayal between them. He frowned.
Rose leaned down and kissed the top of his head. “This too shall pass, honey.”
Nate lay beside Jason on the bed, facing him. Jason still seemed restless. The medication he’d taken had made him drowsy, but apparently the vestiges of pain prevented him from sleeping deeply.
“Shh,” Nate murmured as Jason shifted and moaned. Nate brushed the back of his hand across Jason’s cheek. Didn’t feel wrong at all, to be tender this way with a man. He didn’t know what he was waiting for—a lightning bolt from heaven, a feeling of sickness and shame—but whatever it was, it didn’t come.
Jason cracked an eye open. “Nate?”
“Mm-hm?”
“You don’t have to stay.”
“Shh,” Nate said again, moving closer and placing an arm around him. He rubbed Jason’s broad shoulders.
Rose had said a friend was picking her up for lunch and had gone to wait on the porch. But Nate didn’t know if she’d left yet, so he was a little tense. He liked Rose a lot, but he couldn’t shed his nerves around her. What did she think about him being here? Nate had always seen himself as the victim of what Jason had done, but what if Rose blamed him in some way? For refusing to stand beside Jason and say, yes, I’m gay, and yes, Moving Forward is wrong—and in doing so, leaving Jason in disgrace. Which had prompted Jason to go to Afghanistan, where he’d been injured, and…
He closed his eyes. Didn’t do any good to think that way. He was done with blame and guilt. The important thing now was that he had Jason.
“Do you believe your body is your own?” Jason mumbled.
“What?”
Jason looked at him. “Do you believe you’re in control. Of your body and your thoughts? Or are you an instrument of God? I’m not mocking you, honest. I want to know.”
Nate hesitated. Maybe part of him would always be eighteen, looking at Jason as his savior, wanting to impress him. And that part was tempted to give an answer Jason would like.
“The reason I ask…” Jason slurred the words a bit. “There’s something in the Bible, right? ‘I am not my own?’”
“That’s about sharing burdens. I believe I’m in control of my actions. But that I get help each day in making my choices. Not just from God, but from the people around me.”
“Oh.” Jason closed his eyes and nestled deeper into the pillow. He looked like a little kid. Nate almost smiled.
“What about you?”
“I think I’m in control.” Jason groaned and tensed suddenly. Nate kept rubbing his shoulders, and a moment later, Jason relaxed. “This fucking leg.” He sighed. “I think I can control everything. But I might be wrong.”
Nate smiled and leaned in to kiss his cheek. “You might be.”
“But how the fuck does anyone change the world unless they believe they have the power to do it?”
Nate thought for a moment. “Individuals don’t change the world.”
“Yeah, but, like...Hitler. He did.”
“Okay, horrible example. But, uh, he had help. Lots of it. Unfortunately. And he had lots of people standing, you know, in opposition to him. Trying to make things better.”
Jason sighed again. “But individuals have ideas. Do you think all my ideas are planted in my brain by God?”
“I think you get your ideas from the world around you. And God can help you decide what to do with those ideas, if you let Him.”
Jason was silent for so long, Nate figured he was either pissed off or asleep. “I want you to help me.” Jason opened his eyes. “I’m never gonna believe in God, because that’s just...not how things work for me. But I want you to help me let people in. The—the sharing burdens thing. I wanna be…” A yawn stole some of the passion from his words. “Better. Not just...taking what I want. But accepting what people give. Does that make sense?”
“Yes.” Nate kissed him again.
“Thank you.” Jason made no move to kiss Nate back. It almost felt like a rejection, but Nate reminded himself that was just the way Jason was. If he got an idea in his head, he wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted. It wasn’t always a fault. Sometimes it was a strength.
“You don’t have to help me,” Jason said after a while, voice thick. “I can’t...ask you for that.”
Yes, you can. I wish you had, a long time ago. I wish you’d believed I had something to give you, instead of taking what you wanted from me.
“Maybe you can help me be braver,” Nate suggested. “So I can tell my dad about us.”
Another pause. “You don’t have to be any braver,” Jason mumbled. “And you don’t have to tell your dad.”
“But I want to,” Nate said softly.
“Well, then. I can… I can be there with you. If you want.” He blinked several times. Studied Nathan. “Maybe you don’t want?”
“I don’t want to tell him,” Nate whispered. “I want to already have told him. I want to skip right over that part and get to the part where I can breathe again. I feel like—
like I’m about to burst out of my skin or something. I want it done, I want it done yesterday, except I’m...so fucking scared.”
“What are you scared of?” Jason’s gaze was suddenly intent.
“What if he doesn’t love me anymore?” His heart thudded harder as he spoke the words.
What if you don’t? What if I throw away my life here, make my dad hate me, and then you decide you don’t want me? I can’t do this on my own.
“Do you think that’s even a possibility?”
“I don’t know. He’s a good man. He has so much compassion. I know that, because—because of last time. But how can I do this to him again?”
“But this isn’t about him, or about God, or about the camp.” Jason’s voice sounded clearer now. He curled his fingers around the back of Nate’s neck and pulled him closer. He pressed their foreheads together. “This is about you. This is about your life, not the life that he wants for you.”
Nate nodded. This felt so good, this closeness. He wished he could close his eyes and fall asleep with Jason watching over him. But Jason fell asleep first.
Nate reached out and touched Jason’s hair, running his fingers through it. He’d tried to do this for Marissa sometimes, but it had felt strange, like trying to locate something in a house that wasn’t his.
It still felt strange. Jason’s snores, deep and masculine, his hard muscles, his stubbled cheek and the soft, dark curls on the back of his neck—none of that belonged this close to Nate. But he wanted it, all of it.
Swallowing, he reached under the covers and gripped his dick. He stroked gently, shutting his eyes and drawing breath through his teeth as he got closer. When he came, he angled toward the bed so he wouldn’t get any of the mess on Jason. He lay in the damp spot, his heart beating
hard. He’d changed. Because of Jason, he’d changed. Or this was who he’d always been. He didn’t know.
It took a certain kind of strength to admit you didn’t have the answers. Didn’t it? And to go forward anyway, without the answers, without a map. With love and fear taking turns spurring and protecting you, leading you astray and then helping you find your way back. And no guarantee of where you’d end up—just this shifting scenery of hope and sorrow, yearning and pain, a world where you learned things you couldn’t articulate; feared things that couldn’t hurt you, and loved the things that could.
Jason stopped at the diner—same one he’d met Isaac at a few weeks ago. He got two orders of waffles and two coffees to go, and drove out to the highway. Saw an RV parked in the field behind a local hardware store. He parked in the store’s lot, gathered the food and coffee, and walked out to the RV.
The motorhome was old—yellowed siding, dirty, streaked windows, rust-colored curtains. He knocked. Heard movement inside. A moment later, the door opened.
The woman standing there had curly hair and small, round eyes under thick brows. Her skin was red from the sun.
“Hi.” Jason felt suddenly awkward. “Jason Banning. I’m sorry to bother you—”
“I know who you are.” She stared at him. “You’re actually kind of my hero.”
“What?”
She stepped back. “You can come in.” She left the door open and went to the tiny sink to wash her hands. Jason entered.
“I brought breakfast.” He held up the bag. “Waffles. And coffee.”
She glanced at him. “Thanks.”
He looked around the RV. It was as rundown on the inside as it was on the outside, but looked comfortable enough. His gaze was caught by a pinboard above the tiny dining table: photographs of the woman. One must have been at a Pride parade. A crowd of people waving rainbow flags, and the woman in the center of the group, kissing another woman.
