Talker (6 page)

His aunt had hemorrhoids—he remembered her shopping list.

He came back and sat Tate down again, this time on the doughnut pil ow, and then sat close to him on the couch until Tate started laughing really hard at the part where Neil Patrick Harris sang commentary over the actual action.

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He laughed until he burst into tears, and sobbed into Brian’s chest until he fell asleep.

The next day, he wouldn’t mention it. Whenever Brian brought up the subject, he’d say, “Yeah, I know. Worst. Date. E ver.”

They’d both had the day off of work and school. Usually, when they had the day off, they spent it doing laundry and watching videos or sometimes running together until their legs ached and they looked back and realized they’d done nearly twenty miles together. O nce a month or so, Brian would drag Tate to the nearby homeless shelter, and they’d volunteer in the soup kitchen. Tate was always welcome there; he had a way of talking to people that made them feel at ease. Maybe it was the way he could just chatter through the numbness or shyness of the people in the soup kitchen line, or maybe it was the way he would touch their hands gently to make sure they had their bowls. E ither way, Brian had seen it that first day he’d invited himself to sit down in an empty seat.

This particular day had been a lazy day, and Tate had spent it twitching himself into the stratosphere. At one point, Brian realized he’d been down in the laundry room for forty-five minutes and found him standing over the washer with his clothes in the basket, staring into space, while an empty washer agitated in front of him.

Brian tried three times to get his attention, and final y resorted to a tentative touch on his shoulder. Tate exploded, sending clothes everywhere before he sank to a whimpering crouch on the floor.

Brian calmed him down enough to walk him up to the apartment, then went down and took care of the laundry. When he got back to the apartment, Tate was doing dishes as though nothing had ever happened.

That night they sat on the couch, and Brian made no pretense of being straight, of having “heterosexual space” or boundaries between them. He just pulled the guy’s head to rest into his lap and Talker |
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stroked the limp Mohawk away from his face. When Tate finally started talking, it had nothing at al to do with what happened, with what he wouldn’t al ow himself to admit had happened.

“You know, Brian, when we first met, I used to go to sleep every night praying you were gay. I thought, ‘Please let him be gay, and then he’l be my Prince C harming,’ because man, I’ve never loved another human being on the planet the way I love you.”

O h G od. “Tate….”

“Don’t say it.” Tate’s voice started to fracture, to fragment, and Brian did what he always did: he listened. “Don’t say it. Because the truth is, I’ve never been so glad you’re not. Man… I don’t think I could do this right now, not if I had to look at you and know you were gay and I couldn’t have you.”

“Who says you couldn’t have me?” Brian asked, begging Tate silently not to bring this up, begging him not to mention this right now, not when Tate was so broken. G od, he just needed some time to stitch himself back together and fil in the holes in the seams with bathroom caulk and good wishes.

“Why would you want someone as fucked up as I am?” Tate asked, weeping softly again, and Brian blew out a breath.

“Tate Walker, if I was gay, I’d… I’d be mesmerized by you. I’d listen to every word that fel out of your mouth like it was diamonds made of sound waves. I’d memorize the pattern of freckles on your back and spend months taking cooking classes just to find something you’d eat. You are kind, and you are funny, and you are brave, and any man who has you needs to see al that or he just isn’t worth the laces in your combat boots, you hear me?”

The biggest speech of his life, the one time in his life that he spoke with passion and power and love, and he’d prefaced it with one little deal-breaking motherfucker of a word. He’d said “if.”

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But Tate was too distracted to notice that truckload of truth Brian had just run over with a tiny lie. He was still lost in his own black sky, a tiny pinpoint of flickering lamplight, smothered by the vastness of space.

“I’m glad you’re not gay,” he murmured, and Brian stopped his own mental beat-down and said, “Why?”

“Because I thought I wanted a lover, but… turns out, al I real y want is to be safe. You’ll keep me safe, Brian. I love you so much because you keep me safe.”

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P a rt V II

See Me

LYNDSE Y blew out a sigh as Brian finished the story and handed him a tissue so he could stop wiping his eyes on his sleeves like the little boy he’d been when she’d brought him home.

“He loves you because you keep him safe,” she echoed very quietly.

“Yeah.”

“That’s a hel uva place to be when you love someone like you love him.”

“Yeah.”

“Did he ever see a counselor?” she asked, and Brian looked at her with raised eyebrows.

“Should he? I mean, nothing happened, right? No harm, no foul, right? He got an HIV test, because, you know, he was the one dumb enough to have unprotected sex, but no… why would the guy want to see a counselor when it was al his fucking fault….” Brian’s sarcasm died a painful death, and he used the damn tissue again.

He’d always known that shit rolled downhil , but he never knew tears did the same thing. Tate to Brian, Brian to Aunt Lyndie—who did Aunt Lyndie get to cry on?

Someone, he thought, looking around the little house again.

She’d always had someone. There were two coffee cups in the Talker |
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sink, and two oversized parkas hanging on the door because it was April and it stil got pretty cold outside at night.

“Are you stil seeing C raig Jeffries?” he asked suddenly, remembering the name of the school custodian that Lyndie had dated for the last years before Brian left for school.

“He moved in—January, actually,” Lyndie said with a smile, and Brian looked at her sharply.

“Why didn’t you say anything? C hristmas, your birthday—why wouldn’t you want him there?”

Lyndie shrugged. “Wel , for the first two years, I didn’t say anything because you were so damned lonely, sweetheart. I didn’t want you to think you couldn’t move back.”

Brian remembered that. C ollege had been as awful for him as Virginia had said—he’d felt out of place and isolated from the other students, even on the track team. Besides Virginia, the only person at Sac State to make him feel welcome had been Tate.

“It got better,” Brian murmured, remembering that first, tentative offering to come to his dorm and watch a movie. Tate had been the first person in two years to talk to him like more than a teammate. The first one Brian had wanted to talk back to, anyway.

Brian could admit that it wasn’t just shyness that kept him isolated—some of what drove him was snobbery. He really didn’t like mean people. However he came to be lonely, by the time his shoulder had blown out, not seeing Tate every day had been far more terrifying than not being on the team, or even not finishing his computer science degree. Brian could always scrabble for a living, but living without his friend?

“I know it did,” Lyndie said softly. “It got better the minute you met Tate.”

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Brian nodded and sighed, resting his chin on his crossed arms on the table. “He needs to get better. He needs to get better, and he needs me… al of me, not just the friend parts, to do it.”

“What are you going to do?” she asked, and he looked up at her hopefully.

“Wel , I’ve got a plan, but I need to borrow some of the old clothes you keep borrowing but never use.” He knew exactly where she kept them in the hal closet. “C an I use them?” he asked, a little anxiously. Lyndie had frowned, and he was afraid she would have gotten rid of them when her boyfriend moved in.

She nodded absently. “O f course, baby—they’re still there.

Anything in the closet, you know that.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“That guy… the one that hurt Tate—he’s not going to come back, is he? Those types… I mean, I know why you wouldn’t want to try to prosecute him, but he sounds like the type to just rub it in Tate’s face.”

Brian felt his expression go flat and hard. “No worries, Aunt Lyndie. He won’t bother Tate ever again.”

BRIAN had started taking Tate to work after his “date.” G atsby’s Nick was in bike-riding distance, or even bus-riding distance, and Tate had a car, but he’d just felt so… vulnerable. Brian had started offering the ride and then making it a point to get off before Tate so he could be there in the parking lot, ready to give him a ride home.

Tate…. Tate was grateful. He was grateful and distracted and… empty. Watching him walk into the club was like watching him put in a computer program of who Tate was supposed to be, and that’s who he was when he was around people.

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When Tate was home, he was often so silent, Brian would go thundering into his room to see if he was stil there—and, frankly, to make sure he hadn’t left some way other than the door.

Brian had yet to hear him sing, off-key or otherwise, and he twitched his head almost constantly, since the “worst date ever.”

About two weeks after Trevor Murray had made Tate cry, Brian saw him waiting in line to get into the club as he was pulling away. He shoved his car back into the parking spot and was running for the guy before he even knew what he was going to do.

“Hey, straight roomie!” Trevor cal ed as Brian strode up to him.

The smile dropped off his face as Brian twisted his arm around his back and hauled him behind the club. They were halfway there when Brian realized he had company.

“Uhm, Brian?” Jed, one of the club’s two bouncers, was a six-foot-four-inch black man built like a Panzer tank on steroids. He was one of the few straight men who worked at Nick, but he was very protective of his guys.

“Hey, Jed,” Brian panted.

Trevor said, “Man, you gotta help me… this guy just went…

ouuu!”

“Shut up!” Brian snapped, giving Trevor’s arm another yank.

Possibly for the first time in his life he threw those words at someone and meant it. “Shut the fuck up!” They’d reached the back of the club by now, and Brian shoved Trevor into the wal , giving him a chance to stumble against it and recover.

“Any chance you want to tel me what you’re doing?” Jed asked, rubbing his hand over the back of his bald head.

Brian saw Trevor trying to make a run for it, and feinted in that direction. Trevor subsided and stood, panting, waiting for the answer too. His carefully wisped “man-do” was a mess, and he had Talker |
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a smear of dust across his white clubbing shirt, but the arrogance was still there.

“He hurt Tate.” Brian said it and then he glared and settled into a crouch. He’d never looked forward to hurting another human being in his life—but he did now.

“Hurt?” Jed said, careful y neutral.

“Hurt.” Brian emphasized the word and made sure the piece of shit responsible for wrecking the guy he loved was making eye contact and on the same page.

O ne corner of Trevor’s mouth curled up. “That sweet little bitch? Man, he liked it….”

Brian’s first punch across Trevor’s pretty mouth sent him back into the wal of the club, his head making an audible “thunk” on the wooden siding. Trevor rebounded, fists out, and Brian took him down in two punches, and then followed him down, straddling his chest and proceeding to work him over like a boxer doing exercises on a heavy pummeling bag. He’d thought he was terribly dispassionate and reasonable about the whole thing, until Jed wrapped strong, thick arms around his shoulders and hefted him bodily off an unconscious asshole who was missing three teeth and could barely make out a moan.

“Brother, the cops are coming. You’d better go.”

F uck. C ops? “He hurt Tate!” Brian snarled—and until he tasted salt on his mouth, he hadn’t been aware of his own tears.

“Wel , you paid him back,” Jed said reasonably. “And I’ve got to do some quick talking, and some faster lying, okay? Just get in your car and go.”

“He hurt Tate….” Brian’s voice trailed off and he went to wipe his face when he saw the blood on his hands. It was thick, and some of it came from his own knuckles, which were ripped and Talker |
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bleeding, but a lot of it came from the useless sack of shit lying on the sidewalk in back of the club. “O h G od,” he said thickly, “I’m going to throw up.”

Jed made an exasperated grunt—he was still practically lifting Brian bodily into his car. “If you could go home and do that, I’d be really grateful. And I wouldn’t show back up here for a couple of days.” He let out an “oomph” here as he fished through Brian’s pockets and came up with his keys.

“I need to pick Tate up,” Brian said. It was the only thing he could think of as Jed opened his car door and shoved him in.

“Wel , how about I drop him off tonight, and you can drop him off tomorrow? I can pick up some of the slack, man, but you’ve got to get out of here, and I’ve got to cover your lily-white ass, okay?”

F inally, Jed’s sacrifice penetrated Brian’s fog. “Why you doing this?” he asked hazily, remembering to turn the key in his ignition and roll down his window while he was waiting for an answer. His adrenaline was pumping big time, and he had a shake in his hands and his knees that he couldn’t seem to get rid of.

“Tate’s good people,” Jed said quietly from the window. “I can’t count the number of hysterical kids he’s talked out of the bathroom come closing. I’m sorry he got hurt.”

Brian sniffed and tried to get control of himself. He had to work tonight, and he had to be there for Tate when he got home, and he couldn’t be a sniveling weenie because that’s just not how he rolled. “Thanks for helping,” he said at last, putting the car in gear.