Loving Jay (11 page)

“Ahh….”

“No arguments! I’ll get Jamie to ring you to find out what night suits.”

“Umm, okay.”

I looked at Jay; his eye and cheek were still so bruised and swollen. My hand came out and I cupped the uninjured side of his face without thinking about it. I placed a quick peck on his forehead. “I’m glad you’re okay, Jay. Send me a text to tell me when you’re going back to work so I can get your mocha for you.”

“Okay. Bye, Liam.”

I stumped away as quickly as I could, unwilling to make eye contact with Jay or Carol. Guys don’t kiss guys, do they? Even if it was just a quick kiss on the forehead. And straight guys definitely don’t kiss gay guys.
Shit!

J
AY
SENT
me several texts over the next couple of days, so I knew he had been released from the hospital, that he hated not being able to put on makeup, and that he couldn’t sleep at night. He told me that every time he rolled over he woke up in pain since it was the left side of his face that was injured and his right hip.

My sleep was extremely broken, too, but not because of pain. I began to experience nightmares where I couldn’t reach Jay in time to help him. I would try to run to him but I wouldn’t be able to move, and when I looked down at myself I was missing both legs. I would wake up, my heart pounding in my chest, terror and fear pumping through my veins. In the darkness I would be confused and panicked to the point I would have to turn the light on and check that my legs were both still there.

Aaron picked me up at dawn on Sunday morning for a spot of fishing out on his boat and I told him all about it. About the fight and the dreams, I mean, not that I thought I was gay and in love with Jay. Aaron cast out his line and settled back on the bench seat of his little dinghy.

“I dunno. Sounds like you are getting flashbacks to your accident. Probably just the ambulance and the adrenaline and everything have brought back memories.” Aaron had been in my life for as long as I could remember. Thick as thieves, Mum would say. He knew everything about me—except for the gay thing.

“I guess.”

We fished in silence for a while before I approached a subject I had never considered before.

“Aaron? Do you think I… changed after the accident?”

“Changed? What do you mean?” Aaron was a big bruiser of a guy, several inches over six feet with bright-red hair and a sunny, open, freckled face. He played both fast and rough Aussie Rules as well as tough and brutal Rugby, shared my penchant for exotic beers, and cheated on every single girlfriend he’d ever had.

“Like… I don’t know. It’s just that before the accident I wanted to join the police force and played football and video games and everything. Then after the accident I couldn’t play sports and it was ages before I could concentrate enough to play Playstation. I was always in so much pain and discomfort that I couldn’t get my hands to coordinate to play with you. It just seems that all that… masculine stuff stopped. I was wondering whether the accident… you know… affected me somehow. Damaged a part of my personality.”

“Are you asking whether I think the accident turned you queer?” Aaron was never one to muck around in life. He called a spade a spade and got on with life. He wouldn’t do well in politics.

“Yes. Well… no. I don’t know. It’s just I feel… less… of a man now. Like I can’t measure up.”

“That’s bullshit. That’s your dad talking. Your dad always measures people in terms of what they do on the outside, not what they are on the inside.”

“Still….”

Aaron sent me a look, shaking his head as if I was being stupid. “Excuse me? Aren’t you out here fishing at the moment? Didn’t you watch John play football yesterday? Don’t you have a cock and balls under those jeans? What part of that is not being a man?”

I looked out over the ocean. It was a great day for fishing—overcast, still, and no rain. I was here with my best friend, who’d known me since I was five. He’d known me through acne and bad teeth and my accident. He’d helped me with my physical therapy and brought me my homework so I could keep up in school. Would he still be my friend if I was gay?

“What if I decide I don’t really like girls?”

Aaron didn’t look surprised or shocked. “Are you saying you wanna try it with a guy?”

I turned the reel of my fishing rod, bringing the line slowly in, even though there was nothing on the hook. “I have tried it with a couple of guys.”

Aaron gripped my arm and swung me around. He didn’t look shocked or disgusted, just surprised and wildly curious. “What? When?”

I shrugged. “A while ago.”

“And?” My friend was agog.

“And what? It was… I dunno. About the same as with a girl.”

Aaron looked skeptical. “To me, being with a girl is the best thing ever. I never want it to stop and I think constantly about where I am going to get it next. Is that what it’s like with a guy?”

I shook my head. “See! I think the accident fucked something up in me. To me being with a guy or girl is about the same. I like it while it’s happening, but I’m not in a rush to repeat the experience again.” I pulled my line in and checked the bait before casting out again. “I’m broken or something.”

Aaron threaded some more bait on his line and hurled his tackle back into the water. “I don’t think the accident fucked you up at all, Liam. To be truthful, even growing up you weren’t into girls with the same intensity I ever was.”

“No?” This was news to me.
Jeez!
Had I been gay all along and no one ever bothered to point it out to me?

“No. You never had nudie posters on your wall or hid
Playboy
under your bed. You’d talk girls with me when I asked, but you never brought up the subject. You went out with Holly Stevens before your accident, but only because
she
asked you. When we hit the nightclubs, I was always checking out the flesh, seeing if there would be someone who would take me home for the night. You were more interested in getting drunk, and if the club offered expensive microbrew shit.”

“Flippin’ heck, Aaron. Have you been cataloging all that for a while?” My best friend (
who was supposed to help me out with this sort of stuff!
) just shrugged in reply. “So you think I’m gay?”

“Are you saying you are gay, Liam?”

I felt like my whole
fucking
world had been turned upside down. I didn’t know what to do, so I just pulled my line up and rebaited my hook. “I dunno. My dad would kill me.”

“Fuck your dad. What do you want? If you want guys, then fine. I don’t give two shits about who you do it with, as long as you are not checking me out.”

“Gross! Fuck off, dude!”

Aaron laughed, secure in his sexuality and not disturbed at all about mine. “So why are we having this conversation now?”

The big, blue ocean was calming and peaceful, the rocking of the boat serene. I sighed as I looked out over the surface. “I’ve been… attracted to this guy for a while now. But I don’t know why. He is… different.”

“Jay?”

I sighed again. “Yeah.”

“Okay, then. Tell me about him.”

So I did. I told Aaron all about the makeup and the dramas and quirkiness. And Aaron had only one thing to say: “Ask him out, mate. You have nothing to lose.”

M
ONDAY
MORNING
I encountered a big problem. Jay was returning to work so I went to get our coffees (well—one coffee and one mocha) and realized I couldn’t carry them while I was on my crutches. I stared at them sitting on the counter, debating what to do since I needed to get moving or else I was going to miss the train. It took me twice as long as anyone else to walk the distance.

“Can I help?”

I swung around and found a woman standing behind me, smiling widely. She had friendly eyes. I’d never seen her before.

“Can I help? I can see you didn’t realize you needed extra hands.”

“Ahh…. Sheesh. Are you going to the train?” I felt like a total dick. She grinned and began to pile the drinks on top of each other. She had her own coffee, so she carried all three in a stack as we slowly made our way to the platform.

“What did you do to your leg?” she inquired as we moved along.

“I tore the muscles of my thigh. Nothing atrocious.”

She winced. “Ouch. I’ve heard that torn ligaments and muscles can be more painful than a broken bone.”

“I guess it depends on how bad the break is. I shattered my thighbone seven years ago and it’s now held together with plates and screws. I can say that this is better than that.”

She laughed at me as we reached the gates. I held the coffee stack as she dug through her purse for her rail pass. We chatted about the weather and about nothing in particular as the escalator bore us down to platform level. The information board was telling us that the train was still two minutes away, so I sat on the metal bench and relieved her of the coffees.

“Thanks a million for carrying that for me. I wasn’t thinking this morning when I ordered them.”

She laughed, throwing her head back so her blonde hair flew over her shoulders before settling on the bench with me, the coffees on a spare seat between us.

“You must be addicted to coffee to need two!” Her smile was wide, the bright-red lipstick she wore making it seem bolder and bigger than it probably was. I wondered what Jay’s mouth would look like with that color. I’d never seen him with red lipstick, even though he wore red a lot. He was more into that colorless gloss stuff that made his mouth look wet. I noticed the woman was wearing a tight red suit that perfectly matched her mouth. The skirt was short and I wondered how she kept warm. Her legs looked cold, and her feet were probably frozen lumps of ice in those red high heels. At least men got to wear trousers and socks.

“No. Just one for me. The other is for my friend who will hopefully be here any second.” I twisted around and there he was. “Jay! Buddy! You made it! Jeez, your face looks terrible. At least the puffiness has gone. Hey! You got the stitches out. But I have to tell you, dude, that shade of yellow is not you!”

I thought he would laugh, but he wasn’t even smiling, just standing there flicking glances between me and the woman. He had his hands shoved in his pockets and his expression looked really strained, as if he were upset. Suddenly I realized with a sinking feeling that this was probably the first time he had been to the train station since the attack.
Fuck! The poor guy is probably scared shitless with bad memories and crap.

I bounded to my feet, ignoring the pain from my thigh to put my arm around his shoulders. “Jay! It’s okay. Jeez, you should’ve taken your car in today or something. You don’t need to be here. Is it the attack? Are you freaking out? Remember what I said? Nothing bad will happen if I’m here. Now sit in my seat and I’ll get your mocha for you.” I pushed him into my place and limped over to the coffees, pulling the lid off to make sure it was his frothy mocha and not my flat white.

“Here. Drink this. I got it just the way you like it.” He finally reacted, and grasped the cup as the train pulled in. I hated being a cripple and all the crap that went along with it, like the fact that I couldn’t just stand and walk onto the train. I fumbled with my gear, got my backpack on and my crutches under my arm. I passed Jay my drink as he stood in anticipation. The doors opened and I headed for the nearest seat—the disabled ones with lots of leg room so I could put my crutches on the ground. Jay sat next to me and I realized he still hadn’t said a word.

“Jay? What’s up? Talk to me.” I was starting to get really worried and placed my hand on his knee. Jay not talking was like snow in Perth during winter. People claimed it happened, but I’d never seen it before. “Jay?”

At last he turned to me. “Who was that?”

“Huh? Who?” I looked around but could only see four other people on the train. Nothing out of place. There was the fat woman who looked pregnant and the older thin man who I always thought sat as if there were a ruler taped to his back.

“The woman!”

“What woman?”

“The lady in red!”

“Chris de Burgh?” I was completely lost.

“Her name is Chris?”

“No. The singer’s name is Chris. Chris de Burgh. ‘The Lady in Red.’ The song?”

“What?”

We looked at each other in confusion for a moment before I sighed. “Start again. What did you want to know?”

Jay looked like he was going to burst a blood vessel. “Who was the woman you were talking to before the train arrived? The woman in the red suit?”

Clarity dawned on me, but I was still lost in the wake of the wave. “Her? I don’t know. She helped me from the café when I suddenly realized I couldn’t carry the two coffees and use my crutches at the same time. Did you know her? I didn’t ask her name.”

Jay’s head tilted one way and then the next, scrutinizing me. I felt uncomfortable, like I was the bug and he was the scientist—the mad scientist with the magnifying glass, ready to zap me with a beam of sunlight.

“You don’t know her name?”

“No. Sorry. She should be on the train somewhere if you want to look for her. I’d offer but my crutches make me pretty useless.”