End of the Innocence (11 page)

I took my time going to the bathroom, giving Tom and Robbie more than enough time to digest what I said and to come to terms with the fact I wasn’t their guy. Worse than that, I didn’t even
want
to be their guy. I just wanted to finish this year and get the hell out of Foster, out of Texas as fast as I could.

Because I couldn’t shake the feeling I was going to end up having an obit on the other wall if I didn’t.

When I left the restroom and looked across the bar, the table had been cleared, and Robbie had his keys out. “You ready?” he asked brusquely. When I nodded, he looked to Tom. “Thank you for the hospitality.”

Tom nodded and walked over to me. “You and your guy are welcome here any time. Since we serve food, we can have minors in as long as they don’t drink.” I began to tell him that probably wouldn’t happen when he held up a hand. “And before you tell me the probability of that happening, let me remind you manners dictate you just say thank you for the invitation and move on.”

I closed my mouth, smiled, and said, “Thank you for the invitation.” He held out his hands, and I let him pull me into a hug. As I hugged him back, he whispered, “Don’t let those brains make you stupid. Everyone needs someone sooner or later. We will always be here.”

I wasn’t sure how to take that, but I just nodded and slowly pulled back.

“If you two need a room…,” Robbie complained impatiently.

“You know, Ms. Thing, I remember when you were a hot mess as well. Don’t make me read you right here in front of the kid.”

I was going to make a comment about not being a kid, but I resisted.

Robbie walked out into the afternoon sun to his car with me following a little bit behind him.

The return was about as uneventful as the ride out there, except now there was a big, ugly silence in the car with us. There was no music this time, no idle conversation, just Robbie, me, and the ugly silence in the backseat sticking its head over the center console, daring us to talk. I wasn’t sure if he was mad or disappointed, but either way it was not a conversation I looked forward to having, so I ignored Robbie and the silence and watched the road again.

“I get it,” he said after almost thirty minutes of nothing. I looked over at him silently. “I really do; I was the same way in high school. Keep my head down, don’t call attention to myself, don’t be the obvious fag, repeat until college.” He cracked his window as he lit a cigarette. “I didn’t want to be gay, I didn’t want people to know I was gay, and the only way to do that was to pretend my gayness didn’t exist. I just needed to get through those last four years, and then I’d be home free.” He took a long drag and flicked his ashes out the window.

“What happened?” I asked, curious.

He looked over at me and then looked away with a half smile. “Same thing that happens with every high school queen in the closet. I ended up having a crush on a straight guy I could never have and outing myself accidentally.” He took another two drags to settle his nerves. “The boy hated me because he was embarrassed; I was humiliated because suddenly I was the high school’s token homosexual, and I spent the last two years of high school alternating between being in a medical coma thanks to booze or flirting with the idea of killing myself.”

I sat there stunned, staring stupidly at him rubbing the butt of his smoke out in the ashtray. I had never heard anyone just admit they thought about killing themselves before. I mean, you heard people say stuff like that, but they were either making a bad joke or desperately crying out for help. I think it was the matter-of-fact way Robbie spoke that eliminated any thoughts I might have had that he was being cynical. No one I had ever known would have just said, “Oh yes, I had some breakfast, cleaned my room, and then thought about killing myself.” My mind recoiled from his words.

“Oh, don’t look at me that way. Trust me, every gay kid thinks about it at least once. Tell me you haven’t.” I looked away, and he let out a small, spiteful laugh. “Trust me, you don’t even want to know what the suicide rate is for gay teens. So anyway, yeah, my Brad wasn’t as nice as yours, so be thankful for what you got.”

“I am,” I said softly.

“Good.”

We had come to an impasse again, and the silence stuck its ugly head between us once more. Robbie turned on the music. I watched the nothing that surrounded Foster and was visible all the way to the distant horizon rush past my window. It seemed impossible that I’d ever escape this place. It was just too big, and at this very moment… seemed like it was my everything.

“Where am I dropping you off?” he asked when we got into town.

I checked the time and saw school was almost getting out. “School. I need to talk with Brad before practice.” He nodded and turned toward Foster High.

“So when do you want to start?” he asked as we pulled into the school parking lot. Startled out of my thoughts, confused, I looked over at him. “You still owe me for the clothes, and you’re going to need another set of clothes if you are going to the party.”

“Um, Monday, right?” I offered, since there was no way in hell I could pay for the clothes I’d already ruined. The business about needing more to go to the party I just let slide away.

“Sounds good. I don’t do mornings all that well, so any time after ten is good.” He didn’t sound upset now, but there was a difference in his demeanor from when he picked me up that morning.

“I’m sorry I’m not the person you thought I was,” I said before getting out of the car. “I wish I was.”

He stared straight ahead, both hands twisting around the steering wheel “The thing is,” he said finally, staring over at me, “you are. You just don’t know it yet.” I opened my mouth to argue, but he held his hand up, stopping me. “I’m not in the mood for a debate. Just remember what I said.” The dismissal bell rang, and he smiled. “You better grab Brad before practice.”

As much as I wanted that debate, Robbie had also made a good point; if I didn’t catch Brad before he got to the gym, I would have to wait until practice was over. “Thanks for lunch,” I said, getting out of the car.

“See you Monday,” he called back.

I watched him drive away, wondering why he thought I was someone I knew I wasn’t and didn’t want to be. I ignored the thought and jogged toward the gym. I caught up to Brad just as he pulled his gym bag out of his car.

When he saw me, he dropped his bag and scooped me up into a hug. You’d swear we hadn’t seen each other for years instead of hours. I wrapped my arms around him and buried my face in his shoulder. The smell of his hair gel, cologne, and his letterman jacket just made the stress of the day fade away as he whispered “I missed you” in my ear.

“Not as much as I missed you,” I whispered back. “I should have gone to school with you.”

He pulled back and looked into my eyes. “Are you okay?” I nodded. “I should have known that the clothes were—”

“Shut up,” I said before kissing him.

My day got a thousand times better right then and there.

“We have to talk,” he said after a few incredibly satisfying seconds of kissing.

And my day got a million times worse.

If I am ever made Overlord of the World, I’m going to make a few changes. After the whole world peace and wiping out bigotry things, I am going to make specific alterations to the way the world works. First on that list, after, you know, I make Taylor Lautner and Zac Efron my servants, I am going to ban people from using the phrase “We have to talk” unless the end of the world truly comes. There is nothing more frightening than someone looking at you and, in a serious voice, announcing “We need to talk.” I mean, I would rather have someone say “You are on fire” than “We have to talk.”

“We have to talk” was my mom’s way of telling me that something bad—or worse—had happened. When I was nine, we had to pack our stuff and move out of the apartment we were currently living in. One of the guys she had been dating got out of jail and was coming back to town completely pissed. Mom started her explanation by saying, “We have to talk.” When she told me she had taken my computer to a pawn shop so we could make rent, she started by saying, “We have to talk.” And when I asked who my dad was, she just got quiet, told me to sit down, and sighed, “We have to talk.”

I hated those words. Well, not those specific words, because they have other uses. But those four words in that order just caused every nerve ending I had to pulse with fear.

So hearing those words coming out of Brad’s mouth? I almost wet myself as I imagined the worst.

“What?” I asked as my mouth went dry.

“I just….” he began to say as he looked over at the locker room. “It’s going to take more time than I got right now. You going home?”

I shrugged.

He tossed me his keys. “If you want to hang out, listen to music in the car or go sit in the stands and watch us practice.” He leaned in and kissed me. “I promise to be fast.”

He turned and ran into the locker room.

I just knew he was going to break up with me.

Lunch threatened to come back up in the most violent manner possible as I berated myself for screwing things up. I shouldn’t have told him I wasn’t going to school. I shouldn’t have been so wrapped up in my own shit. And then it hit me.

I should have had sex with him.

Dammit! He had hinted he wanted to take the physical stuff further, but I had been so fucking afraid I put it off, and now he was breaking up with me because I was a coward. I thought about how crappy the last few months of school would be without having Brad by my side, and I honestly felt my stomach convulse in response. He was the only thing that made any of this bearable, and if I lost him….

I needed to have sex with him. I needed to get him to understand I was willing to do anything to keep him, no matter how unready I felt I was. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to have sex with him. I mean, look at him! Who wouldn’t want to have sex with him? I was just too freaked out about the whole mechanics of it to commit. I mean, it wasn’t like a guy and a girl. When they decided to have sex, they both knew what was going where and who supplied the necessary parts. With Brad and me, it wasn’t that easy. We both had the same parts and neither one of us seemed all that willing to have that part shoved into new places.

I was desperate.

I got into his car and turned the air conditioner and radio on full blast. “Somebody I Used to Know” came roaring out of the speakers, and I slammed my hand against the radio to stop it. My life had begun to sound way too much like that song for me to hear it right now. I took a look at myself in the rearview mirror and felt the normal wave of revulsion I felt when I looked at myself. Everything about my face was wrong to me. My eyes were too big, my nose pointy, and I didn’t even want to go into the catastrophe that was my mouth. It felt like I had been constructed by a lot of leftover parts from the Handsome People Assembly Line. I’d been given the castoffs since I had to have some kind of face.

I had been stupid to think he would want to be with me this long.

The cold air felt good, and I leaned back in the seat and tried to calm my pounding heart. I had started down in a steeply angled spiral of negative thoughts. If I didn’t try to level out now, I would just end up running home and locking my door for a year or so.

I fell asleep eventually. Images of Brad with his arm around Jennifer, laughing at me as they walked away, terrified me. I kept trying to run after him, but every time I did, I would trip and fall down. The third time I looked to see what was tripping me, and I saw I was wearing high heels and a dress. I heard laughing and realized all of Foster High’s students stood in a circle surrounding me, all of them pointing as they roared at me. I tried to pull the shoes off but they wouldn’t budge. Then I saw Brad standing in the crowd. “What do you expect? You’re a fag. You should dress like one.”

I woke up screaming. No laughing students, no dress, no shoes, and no Brad mocking me. No Brad— Dazed, I looked around and saw Brad frozen in midmotion next to the half-open driver’s side door, gaping at me in shock. “Whoa!” he said carefully. “You just scared the living shit out of me.”

I rubbed my face to banish the images of the nightmare from my mind. “I fell asleep…,” I mumbled.

He tossed his bag into the backseat. “Jeez, you’re lucky you didn’t die of hypothermia,” he exclaimed, turning the air conditioning down. “Bad dream?”

I nodded and shakily pushed myself upright in the seat.

“So—” he began to say.

“I love you and want to have sex,” I blurted so fast I somehow made it all one syllable.

He froze again, mouth hanging open. Eyes blinking slowly and brow furrowed, he stared at me.

“I mean it. I’m sorry I was an asshole this morning, and I shouldn’t have done it, and I want to have sex with you badly, and please don’t break up with me.”

His mouth snapped shut, almost as if it was spring driven.

“I know I’m moody, and I know you can get someone better-looking, but please, you’re all I have right now, and if I have to face people and have them ask me why we broke up, I think I’ll die, and I love you, and I don’t know why I kept putting off sex and… please?”

His eyes narrowed in anger, and he looked away as he started the car. “Buckle up” was all he said. I barely got the seat belt on before he threw the car into reverse. I heard the tires squeal as he turned the car with one hand and slammed it into drive with the other. Smoke from the burned rubber trailed behind us as the Mustang peeled out of the parking lot.

“Um, where are we going?” I asked, trying not to grab the door handle and jump from a car rolling along at God knows what speed.

He said nothing.

“Brad?” I asked, not liking the look on his face.

“Please. Stop. Talking,” he asked in a voice that sounded to me like pure serial killer.

This was the second time today I was stuck in a car feeling I was going to have internal organs harvested in some out-of-the-way place.

We headed out past First Street toward the lake. The sun was almost down, which meant there wasn’t much traffic at all. And it was deserted, a perfect place to bury a body. I tried to banish that thought as Brad pulled off into a small dirt road that would have been impossible to see unless a driver knew where to look. A tiny grove of cottonwood trees grew around the perimeter of a clearing that contained a fire pit for grilling. The place looked like an old, discarded camping spot that hadn’t been used in a long time.