Thick white smoke filled the air as my tires shrieked, skidding on the asphalt. I whipped the Z into a tight circle, pushed the clutch in as I braked, tapped the acceleration, and flew sideways through the turn.
Jess, sitting beside me in the passenger seat, was shrieking her lungs out. She hadn’t decided yet if she loved it or was terrified for her life.
But that was the fun part. As confident as I was behind the wheel, there was always a risk.
We’d driven around aimlessly for a while after leaving the gym, but I knew what would help me feel better. My happy place was behind the wheel, feeling the rush of its speed, experiencing the adrenaline of playing with death. Jess had seen me drift but she’d never felt it, she’d never had the opportunity to actually experience what it was like.
So we drove over to an abandoned lot on the far side of town, and I let loose.
The engine purred, the turbo whistling as I wrenched the wheel. The smells, the sounds, the pull of the tires — it was a rush. It made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
Jessica was clinging to the straps of the harness. “Holy shit, holy shit, holy —” Another turn, and her curse drew out into a scream. “Shiiiiit!”
Sweat was beading on my forehead when I finally stopped, and I was gasping from laughing so hard. It was impossible to listen to her reactions and maintain my focus but I didn’t mind.
I liked getting to show her things like this. I enjoyed being someone who could give her new experiences. It was a simple joy in the grand scheme of things, but that was what I needed today.
Simple joys, little slices of happiness. The weight in my mind was heavy, but laughter lightened it.
The interior of the cab felt like a sauna, so I stripped off my shirt and tossed it to the floor. Sitting there with the windows down, letting the cool breeze flow through the car, felt amazing.
“What do you think?” I said, once she’d caught her breath enough to speak.
“That was amazing!” she gasped. “Holy shit, it was terrifying…but amazing…oh my God. Let’s go again!”
I certainly wasn’t going to deny her.
We didn’t quit until my gas was running low and my stomach had begun to loudly growl for food. We went to our usual place, a tiny Mom and Pop cafe that had the best breakfast burritos I’d ever tasted. Sitting in silence as we ate allowed the bad thoughts to creep back in, but I’d expected it. This feeling wasn’t going to go away.
This day came around every year, as inevitable as clockwork, yet it never got any easier.
Some years, like this one, it felt like it had gotten worse.
My little brother’s birthday. The brother I’d been forbidden to see since my parents kicked me out. The brother who’d been fed lies about me since he was a little kid, who probably hated me now, who probably thought his big brother had intentionally abandoned him. That was how my parents framed it.
I’d chosen this. I’d chosen to leave, to live in sin. I could have simply followed the rules and overcome my sinful desires. The fault was on me, and probably always would be.
Most of the time, I gave little thought to the family I’d lost. But every time Charlie’s birthday rolled around, the reality of it sucker-punched me. How much I’d lost, how much they had taken from me in a fit of bigotry and rage.
The same people who had raised me to be kind, who had claimed to love me, held my hand, wiped my tears — were the same people who’d caused me so much pain it almost killed me.
My appetite fled. Jess noticed, although I tried to make it seem like I was simply full and preoccupied with my phone. When I wrapped my half-eaten burrito back into its paper, she frowned.
“So you didn’t get much sleep last night?” I said quickly, hoping to get her talking about her own problems instead of mine. I could deal with other people’s problems; I could figure out ways to solve them, I could offer advice, I could comfort. The problems I had…weren’t solvable. There were no easy answers. It was a constant process of hurt and acceptance, and year after year, I told myself that I was healing. I was improving.
But sometimes I doubted if I was healing at all. Maybe I was burying the pain, deeper and deeper, until it was so lost in the depths of my soul I couldn’t untangle it from the most natural parts of who I was.
Jess sighed. “Yeah. I got in a fight with my mom last night. Again.” I winced in sympathy as she went on. “Vincent dropped me off and she immediately started carrying on about how I smell like weed, and she was going to drug test me. Then she told me not to see any of you again, and…I kind of lost it.”
“Shit…what did you do?”
“I just yelled. A lot.” She folded her arms, glaring at her burrito as if it no longer interested her. “I told her I’m going to pay rent until I move out, which will hopefully be soon.”
A pang of worry throbbed through my chest unexpectedly. Until she moved out…soon. The uncertainty of that made my brain run in circles.
“How’s that going?” I said, trying to sound cool and casual. “Have you been looking for apartments?”
“Yeah. I mean…kind of. Sometimes.” She frowned, taking a sip of her orange juice. “It’s tricky. I was really certain I knew what I was looking for, but now…”
“Now?”
She looked at me across the table, like her lungs had frozen and only I could make her breathe again.
“Now, it’s more complicated,” she said. “I never had anything in Wickeston that I wanted to stay for, but…”
“Wickeston still isn’t worth staying in,” I said firmly. Yes, things were complicated, and I had no fucking idea what we were all going to do. But the one thing I was certain of was that Jessica Martin didn’t need to be questioning a single one of her dreams for our sake. “You’ve wanted to get to New York, and you will.”
A smile broke through the worry on her face. “Thanks, Jason. I guess I’ve just been feeling overwhelmed by everything. Work and my mom, the shit with Reagan, Alex, and Nate.”
“It’ll get better,” I said, although as soon as the words were out, I didn’t like how false they sounded.
It gets better was just another phrase people threw around when they didn’t know how the hell else to fix something. It gets better! Just wait and see! Just suck up the pain and let time bury it for you!
Damn, I felt like an asshole today.
But Jess nodded, and when she smiled again, I knew it was as fake as my words. “You’re right. It will.”
“But that doesn’t help what’s happening right now,” I said. “I’m sorry she’s giving you such a hard time, Jess. You don’t deserve that.”
“Oh, I’m used to it,” she said, exaggerated optimism making her voice pitch higher. “That’s just how my mom is, you know? Always has been. I told her she’d lose me…” Her optimistic expression froze into place. Her lower lip trembled for a moment. “She probably won’t care. I don’t fit into her perfect little world anymore.”
She cleared her throat, chugging down the rest of her juice. I hated to see her burying it: shoving the pain down, pretending it didn’t matter, a mask of smiles.
“Come on,” I said, rising from my seat and taking what was left of my food. “Let’s go for a drive.”
***
Jess picked the music, choosing something upbeat with a heavy bassline, and we drove around Wickeston with no particular destination in mind.
But eventually, without even meaning to, I drove down the familiar streets of a suburban neighborhood. It was quiet, mostly older houses on small plots of land, as opposed to the newer cookie-cutter housing tracts.
After a while, I pulled over and parked. The street was lined with trees, and birdsong filled the air. Ahead of us, at the far end of the street, was a familiar two-story house. There was one car in the driveway, a Toyota SUV that my mom had been steadfastly driving for years. I could only assume Dad was at work, as usual. Charlie would probably be in school.
We sat there for a while in silence. Jess wanted to ask; she kept moving slightly in her seat, drawing in her breath as if she was preparing to speak. Maybe she thought it would upset me to ask, or maybe she had her own shit to worry about and didn’t need my problems poured on her too.
“Jason…” When she did speak, as gentle as her voice was, it still felt like being prodded by something sharp. “Are you okay?”
I dreaded that question. Always had. Most people didn’t want an honest answer when they asked. They wanted a convenient answer, something that wouldn’t require them to feel anything or offer any sympathy.
Jess asked because she cared; I knew that. But the more cynical interpretation still gripped me.
“No,” I said. I turned off the engine, sighing in the silence that followed. “I’m not okay, Jess. It’s…it’s my little brother’s birthday. Charlie. He’s fourteen today.”
Why the hell was I complaining? What right did I have to sit here whining about this? My life was good. I was fortunate as hell with the things I had. Why should I complain when there were people who had ended up in far worse circumstances? People who had no one?
Sometimes I felt guilty that it hurt at all.
“Is this your old neighborhood?” she said, her words prodding me gently when I was silent for a while. “Are we here to see him? I’d…I’d love to meet him.”
God, she meant it so sincerely. She was looking around, trying to figure out which house belonged to my family, no doubt. But this wasn’t going to be some sweet visit like it was with Vincent’s family; she wouldn’t have dinner with my mom or hear terrible jokes from my dad.
“My parents won’t let me see him,” I said. “I haven’t…not since…not since I left. Since they made me leave.”
She reached across the seat and laid her hand on mine. She didn’t say anything …and I was so damn thankful she didn’t. Because this was the part where people apologized, where they said how sorry they were. But sorrow didn’t help, pity got me nowhere. Sympathy didn’t fix my parents’ bigoted views; it didn’t erase the ideas they put in my brother’s head.
Her silence made me feel like I could keep talking. When people expressed sadness for me, it shut me up quick. If my words were causing pain, why keep talking? But she was quiet, holding that space for me and touching me to let me know she was there.
“When you talk to Lucas or Manson about their childhoods, it’s obvious how it hurt them,” I said, starting slowly. “It would be clear to any decent person, I think, that how their parents treated them was fucked up. But for me…it’s not quite like that. My childhood was nice. It was calm, quiet. My parents didn’t yell, they rarely spanked us for anything. My mom stayed home with us all day, read us bedtime stories, played with us. We ate dinner together as a family every night, we went to church every Sunday, we took family vacations and had a big party on Thanksgiving. That’s the kind of childhood you’re supposed to want. But…it wasn’t that simple.”
For a moment, I swore I saw movement in the upper window of the house. Maybe Mom was cleaning, humming “Amazing Grace” as she dusted the windowsills and swept the floors. She’d always loved to sing. She was a shy woman, but when she joined the church choir, she had loved getting to perform.
“It’s strange that I can think of my family, and the way I was raised, and feel like it was good. But it was, in so many ways. It’s just that all that goodness, all that love, affection, and kindness, was conditional. It’s really foolish to think unconditional love even exists because it really doesn’t. Not from family, friends, lovers. Everything has a condition. And if you don’t meet them…”
I hated thinking about it. I’d replayed the day they found out everything again and again. The way they’d looked when they opened my bedroom door and said that we “needed to talk.” How they’d taken me out to the garage to discuss it, because they didn’t want my little brother to hear them yelling — berating me. Telling me I was disgusting, that I was a sick, confused sinner. That if I stopped now, I could be forgiven. I could “fix” it. I could fix myself.
But I wasn’t broken. I’d tried so hard to tell them, to make them understand. They’d only gotten angrier. My explanations were defiance, my desperate insistence was seen as me being lost to sin. They claimed they would have rather discovered I was addicted to drugs, or that I’d gotten someone pregnant.
But no. The worst thing I could have done was fall in love with a boy.
The next worst thing was to refuse to renounce it.
“Jason…” She grasped my hand, twining her fingers through mine. It was an anchor back to reality, a reminder that I’d moved past that event, past that pain.
“It was worth it, to give it up,” I said. “Even though I was scared. I was really lucky, honestly. I’ve known kids who ended up on the streets for years after their parents kicked them out, kids who died. That could have been me, easily.”
That was why Lucas had given me that warning back then, that was why he’d questioned if I should just keep my head down. Because he knew what happened to kids like me.
“My parents tried to use my safety as a bargaining chip. If I did what they wanted, then I’d be safe. I’d be cared for. I’d have a roof over my head, food, a bed.” The fear still felt so real. It still lived in me, that terror that everything I knew and needed could be snatched out from under my feet with the snap of someone’s fingers. “But I had to live a lie. I had to pretend to be someone I wasn’t, and keep pretending. I couldn’t do it. And I couldn’t…I couldn’t walk away from Vince. I remember my mom screaming at me that if I showed up at Vincent’s door needing a place to stay, he’d turn me away. They tried to make it out like he was using me, like he’d corrupted me.”
Admittedly, I had a corruption kink. So did Vince. But I’d come into it after the fact; it had become a coping mechanism. Roleplaying religious corruption was soothing for me. It reoriented my brain, allowing me to take something painful and turn it into play.
“He’d never turn you away,” she said, as if the very idea was ludicrous. And it was. But like her parents, mine had based all their assumptions on beliefs rather than actual knowledge. They hadn’t been interested in learning the truth, only in clinging to their fucked-up viewpoints.
“No, he wouldn’t,” I said. “But even if he had…even if my parents had been right, and Vincent was just some fuckboy who was using a naive guy for sex…even then…it didn’t change who I was. It didn’t change that there were parts of me they wouldn’t accept.”
When I looked over at her, she was staring straight ahead, her eyes far away. I could only guess at what she felt; I didn’t know what her mother had said to her, or what dark worries lived in her heart. But I knew that she didn’t deserve to live a lie any more than I did. Whether she chose us, or moved on, she still deserved to live authentically.
“It was worth it,” I said. “Even though it hurt. It was worth it to hold on to who I was and not let anyone take that away from me. It’ll be worth it for you too, I promise you. I know it sucks. It hurts to stand up to people you love. It hurts even more when they reject you. I honestly don’t know if that pain ever goes away. But even if it hurts for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t take it back.”
“You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met, Jason,” she said. “But you shouldn’t have had to be brave. You shouldn’t have had to fight to be who you are. That wasn’t fair.”
“Life isn’t fair, I suppose,” I said. “But I think things worked out for me pretty damn well. I mean…look at what I have. A boyfriend who’s been with me for over six years, lovers who understand me, a family unit that respects me, you…” I traced my finger along her face. “A remarkable woman, a fighter, a challenging little princess.” She laughed at me, and although she rolled her eyes, she did it with a smile. “It was hard as fuck to get here, but it was worth it. If I had to go back…I wouldn’t change anything.”
Once upon a time, I’d dreamed of bringing a girl like her home to meet my family. To see the pride on my father’s face, to have my mother’s approval. But those things were out of reach for me now, and that was okay. I had something better. My family had chosen me and I’d chosen them in return. I was loved…and desperately in love, too.
She leaned close and we met in the center of the cab. Our foreheads pressed together for a moment in silence as I held her hand. She used to make me so anxious. Every time I looked at her, my heart would beat faster, and I’d become suddenly aware of my every flaw.
It didn’t feel like that anymore.
My heart still beat faster when I looked at her, but it was because I couldn’t believe she was here. With me. Holding me, kissing me, fucking me. It blew my mind. A few years ago, I never would have thought this was possible. But now…
Now I wasn’t sure how it was possible to let her go.
“I know these past few weeks have been…weird,” I said. “It’s probably been overwhelming. But regardless of how we got here, I’m glad we did. I’m glad you’re a petulant little brat who couldn’t say no, so you ended up abandoned in our garage. I’m glad that part of you knew what was right, and that you were brave, and that you chose to face us instead of running away.”
“I’m glad too.” She sat up straight, gazing at me with a look that was partly fearful and wholly wild in its determination. “Jason, I…I have something to tell you…and I don’t know if I should…” Her voice trembled, on the verge of whispering.
“You can tell me anything,” I said. “Come on, you know me. I’ve heard it all already, princess.”
She lowered her eyes, and when she lifted them again, she looked as if she was bracing herself for something that would hurt.
“I love you, Jason.”
I stared at her, the words slowly sinking in. Her eyes were so sincere, and she reached over, grasping my hand. She traced her finger over my rings, nervously, and swallowed hard before she said, “I love you so much.”
To my alarm, it actually made my eyes sting.
Holy shit.
She loved me.
I laughed softly, a chuckle that became something more. It wasn’t enough to hold her; I wished I could pull her inside me and keep her there. I wished I could somehow impart, physically rather than with words, how fucking much this meant to me.
But physicality wasn’t enough either.
I brushed my hand through her hair, the golden strands coiling around my fingers. “God, Jess. I never thought I’d hear you say that.” My smile felt too vulnerable, too earnest. As if I’d forgotten my boundaries, my caution suddenly gone. “I love you. Fuck, I…” My hand was visibly shaking as I held it against her head. “I love you so much, Jess, I feel like I’m losing my mind. But I’m happy, I’m…” My words were getting tangled up. Shit, she’d fucked up my head, but I loved it. “I’m so happy. You make me so happy.”
