Dodging Trains (27 page)

PAISLEE

“N
o,” Mom says,
serious for once. Serious like she was back when Dad left with Cugs. “Your story doesn’t make sense, Paislee. I’m not stupid. I
see
when you’re not telling me the truth. What happened in Mexico?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“You sound like you’re not talking to your mother. You also sound like you have a lot of friends with whom you share secrets on a regular basis.”

Low blow.

She keeps guessing, knowing me from before I was born, which has been annoying more often than it’s been a relief. Again, I promise myself I won’t be this close to my own children. Then, as always, I reconsider.

“Don’t be mean.” I sink over the straw she’s put into my sangria. It gets you drunk on less effort and less money, they say.

“Well, something happened, because that boy was more taken by you than a bee to honey.”

“Wow, what an original comparison.”

“Sweetie, you see what I mean. If I were to guess, Keyon is in love with you. Listen: I’m your mother, and it’s my job to keep your secrets—unless you gave me permission to share, of course. With Keyon for instance.” Irises as green as my own light up at the thought of having a chat with him.

I try to leave a few times during the evening, but she’s got more stamina than me. She wants me to sleep over. She wears me down. It
is
Saturday tomorrow, and I have nowhere else to be.

Thanks to Mom, I go to sleep early. It’s the only way I’m going to catch a break. My mother overheard too much, and she’s a bartender and used to fixing people’s lives. If that wretched person is her daughter, then her efforts will be tenfold.

The morning comes
bearing sunny childhood memories. Before I’m fully awake, a film clip of my father steadying me on a pony makes me smile in my sleep. I doze long enough to replay the last clip of Cugs and me, where we’re hugging in the car before they drive off. It reduces my bliss from an eight to a zero.

I sit up in bed and swallow my sadness. I open my laptop, look around for inspiration, and send my brother a short message.
Slept over at Mom’s house. She has turned my room into the Seamstress Room, that meanie. ;-)

Then Mom’s there. I shut my laptop and curse myself for sleeping over on a Saturday she has off from Ivy’s. “Can you smell it?” she asks.

“Peach pie?”

“Yeah. For breakfast, because you’re not feeling good.”

In addition to being the noisiest, my mother is the sweetest. I’m going to feel gross all day, but her peach pie is so delicious it’d stop nations from bombing each other.

Mom brings it to my room with Cool Whip and coffee, a bad sign. It means I’m going to owe her and she’ll never let me pay her back in chores.

We eat while her eyes twinkle with questions to come. I chew my last bite so slowly it turns into pulp in my mouth.

Mom cuts straight to the core, showing exactly how much she overheard yesterday. “Why would you think Keyon is sleeping with someone else? I thought you guys were exclusive?”

I groan and shut my eyes as I let the last crumbs of pie slide down my throat. “We had a fight.”

“People fight. It’s normal. People don’t usually find other partners because they fight though, Paislee.” She doesn’t say the obvious, that I’m the exception to most rules when it comes to men. “Is Keyon just that kind of a guy?”

“No! No…” I correct my tone, lowering my voice. “I don’t think so. It was amazing to see him again after the match. He won, right. He was so happy. He rented a room for us, and…
after
everything”—I clear my throat because it’s weird to mention sex to her—“we talked all night. Then he woke up uninterested and detached, and hours later, he left.”

“He left?”

I bob my head. My eyes are brimming, which reduces my ability to speak.

“Sweetie, the talk you had, was it a good talk?”

“I thought so. He shared a really huge secret he hadn’t shared with anyone else, a dark one, and it must have been such a burden off his shoulders.”

“Uh-oh.” Mom looks grim. She grabs the edge of my tray, adds her own plates and the Cool Whip, and gets up. I’m relieved for a second, but then she doesn’t exit my room. Instead she deposits the tray on the office desk, comes back, and climbs in bed next to me.

“If Keyon’s secret was tough to share, then that might be why he’s less communicative these days. What was it?”

“Mom. How can you ask that?”

“Daughter. Do you really think Keyon will be the wiser? And don’t you think it will make
you
feel much better to talk about it?”

I bite my lip. Mom and I have been through this before. Whenever I’m around for her to see me sad, she makes me talk. And she
will
wear me down.

I pucker my mouth in an exhale. “Remember how Keyon became the high-school bully? How he started taking martial arts classes again even though his father had put a stop to it?”

“I do. Such an angelic-looking boy, he was. And then he became a bit of a devil child. Not with you, thank goodness…” she trails off.

“Keyon was raped, Mom. It happened right before he became aggressive, and by the sound of it, we had the same attacker.”

“Oh Lord.” My mother covers her mouth, wide eyes the only feature visible on her face. “Does he know what happened to you?”

“Yeah. I told him while he was here for the inauguration.”

Mom’s hand slides off her face as she nods. “And he’s aware that the two of you might have been molested by the same person?”

“Yeah.”

“And now you, his girlfriend, knows that he let a man do such a thing to him.”

“What? No! He didn’t
let
him. He was
assaulted
in a train bathroom.”

“Exactly. Listen, you know how long I’ve volunteered at the rape crisis center. It took you years to tell me what happened to you—”

I sit taller on the bed. “This again, Mom? I didn’t feel like talking.”

“—which is why I’m so dedicated to helping others in your situation,” she continues as if I hadn’t spoken. “But men are different. They’re not as resilient as women. They’re taught to be strong, to believe they should be able to protect themselves, and they bottle things up.”

She joins me against the headboard, leaving us shoulder to shoulder. I’d aimed at some physical distance between us, but I’m not getting that. “Look at you, Paislee. You took four years to share your secret. Keyon took even longer.”

“Because he didn’t remember until Mexico,” I say. “Keyon’s imagination had conjured up a better story, something less horrible.”

Mom nods like it’s understandable. “His mind lied to him to make the situation digestible. See, men don’t think of themselves as sexual objects, which means the whole experience makes no sense in their heads. A common reaction, which we try to amend at the crisis center, is that they question their own sexual identity, even their masculinity.”

This is a lot to process. Over the years, I’ve read a lot about sexual abuse, but I never had a reason to read about male victims.

“So you think he’s questioning himself?” My nerves from earlier raise the hairs on my neck.

“I’m sure he is. Right now, Keyon is trying to stomach what occurred all those years ago. Either that, or he’s working very hard to forget again.”

KEYON

The last weeks
have been a tornado of weight training, running, controlled weight loss, sparring, and mini-fights with small-time pros.

The win in Mexico spread like wildfire and increased my ranking like crazy. It’s why other martial artists want to fight me now, that and having Markeston’s talents and money in my corner.

Dawson has wanted me to reject the fights, but I’ve never had this many opportunities and I use them to get ready for Vegas. It’s in two weeks, and at this point, I am damn prepared.

I don’t relax. I don’t slow down. I don’t go home to sleep until I am so exhausted I fall dead to my pillows and sleep straight through Simon’s paws in my hair. When I wake, I start back on my diet, eating the same every day and drinking only coffee and water. I’m on the Paleo diet, ingesting tons of protein but no meats. My life’s goal is within reach, and I’m going to seize it by the balls.

I have my phone on silent and leave it at the front desk so Dawson’s wife can keep an eye on it and inform me if Paislee calls.

At any mention of that girl, my mind rushes to a hotel room in Mexico City. I’m sure psychologists would tell me not to bury shit, that I should talk, do group therapy, and blah, blah, blah. They’d say Paislee is the first person I should let in.

But I don’t know who I am.

I don’t
want
to know who I am.

The world needs to recognize me for who I
want
to be, and that’s exactly what will happen in Vegas.

I crave sex as usual, but I’m at a loss as to how to get it. Sure, I could hit up Stripes with Jaden and Zeke and find takers, I could call Amy any night and have a familiar body to push around on my bed, but it’s not what I want.

There’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m twisting my need for Paislee into some alternate reality I think I need. Who the fuck knows?

Once I was ridiculed for looking gay. A man made me gay by shoving himself into my body. But I redeemed myself; I became stronger than my bullies, and I destroyed them. Then I turned into a fighter. I’m on my way to being hailed as someone noteworthy. I’m on my way to success and to good money.

I’ve had so many women, so, so many, and I’ve never wanted to fuck a dude. That’s not me. I think. Or what if the train creep made me permanently gay and I’ve only been hiding beneath testosterone and virility, behind bedding chicks and fighting guys?

I sound like a fucking therapist.

I get out of bed, pat Simon on the head, and grab my training shorts. I toe into my running shoes and haul ass down the road to the beach.

It’s four a.m. I went to bed at one—this is my life since Mexico. I don’t need sleep anymore, not with all these thoughts frying my brain.

I run hard for an hour and a half. End it with my shoes off at the water’s edge and a dive into the cold ocean. I didn’t bring a towel. I’ll run myself dry back home anyway.

My mind doesn’t stop tonight. It’s driving me crazy because of a conversation Paislee and I had yesterday. She’s so desperate she makes my chest constrict. That beautiful, kind girl shouldn’t be waiting for someone like me.

Mack, her colleague at the factory, seemed like he cared. Was possessive enough of her, that’s for sure. My stomach churns at the thought. It churns harder when I think of her resuming her old ways. Even so, I can’t drag her down with me when I’m a mess with no order in sight.

The last few blocks to my house are a blur; I outrun my oxygen reserve, and my chest’s imploding.

Constructive thoughts, Keyon.
I’m realizing my dream. I’m on my way to the EFC.

Time to execute decisions, Keyon.
I’ll cut my strings to Paislee. Set her free. I’ll be all man, and the first to find out will be Amy.

Today. Is the day to make phone calls.