Take It Outside (Trailhead #1)

14. Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fourteen

Adrian

B eau’s brown eyes flicker in the mid-morning light, but he lets the worst part of my comment slip by. I think I want him to, but it’s not what I need, and I’m curious about which other secrets I’ll regret holding on to if he refuses to drag them from me.

“Everyone loved him,” he says. “You told me that one night at Trailhead.”

“Yeah. And it’s all I’ve heard from them since.”

“So, you’ll keep pretending he was fine. Because none of his new coworkers got a chance to know otherwise, and you won’t be honest with anyone else, even when the truth can’t hurt him anymore.”

“Spare me the lecture about how to honor the dead. Your high school friend didn’t ruin you the night he was killed. An 18-year-old kid’s tragedy didn’t turn you into the ugliest version of yourself in less than a second. You mourned him and cried about a runaway instead.”

I spit the words at Beau because it feels better than choking on them, but I don’t feel any better yet, and I stare him down because I know he’ll accept the challenge. He chased me outside once upon a time, and all I need for him to do now is stay right where he is.

I’d let him take a swing at me, but we both know he wouldn’t do it.

Not when he can hurt me just fine from a few feet away.

“What was your first thought when you got the call?” Beau asks. “The very first one. Not the thought you would’ve told me about five minutes ago. The one that came right before you started to feel more than you could think. What was the first question to cross your mind?”

I take half a step closer, just in case I was wrong about the punch. “You already know.”

“You wondered whether he’d done it on purpose.”

“Yes.”

“He’d done it before. Maybe not that, but something.”

“Yes.”

“Tell me,” Beau demands. “Lord knows you’ve never told anyone else.”

It’s a hell of a thing to expect, but I’m left unsurprised that he wants the story from me, and even less surprised that I want to share. I might be getting close to hating all three of us again—or trying to—but I walk toward the sliding glass doors that lead to my tiny patio and gaze longingly at the fresh air I could breathe if I cared to open them.

“Two years ago. He’d been on and off meds and in and out of therapy since before we met, but things actually seemed to get better for a while. He was lighter. Smiled more. I thought maybe something was finally working for him, and I was so desperate to believe that.” I look sideways to see if Beau is about to make all the guesses that will put the rest of it together, but he’s so fucking patient when he wants to be. “I was supposed to be gone for the day, but I forgot something at home and went back. Heard the crash as I was unlocking the door. He’d taken a belt and—it was him kicking a small step ladder—it knocked over a table, and there was a glass on it. It was loud.”

Beau’s eyes slowly close and open again. “And then you got him down.”

“He was so angry,” I whisper. “Or maybe not. I don’t know. I was angry.”

“You didn’t move to California right away.”

“No. He went into treatment for a bit. Back on meds. But I think we both needed to get out of that apartment, and then when he found out about the job out here—”

He nods. “It was his chance at magic, and your chance at letting anyone else help shoulder the weight of it all.”

All we’ve done is loop back around to something I’ve already told him, so I don’t bother to respond. There’s something else I need to say anyway, partially because I need Beau to know every bit of the truth, and partially because granting Levi some absolution means Beau will be free to attack something else.

Someone else.

Me.

“It wasn’t his fault, though,” I say. “The crash. He was hit by another car. He didn’t do it.”

I stare through the sliding doors again because I don’t need to watch when Beau finally comes for me, slow steps carrying him forward until he’s close enough for me to feel his breath against the back of my head. For a moment, all I can think about is how smooth the glass would be against the palms of my hands. Then I blink, and it’s gone, and Beau’s voice rumbles low enough to make a tear or two fall down my cheek.

“So, you got your question answered. He didn’t do it. And you were free to grieve that loss and scream about the cruel world that took him from you after you’d devoted years to keeping him alive—”

“That’s not fair.”

“Of the world or of me?” Beau asks. “Because the world has never been fair, and I’m here to tell you it wasn’t your job to keep him alive.”

“I loved him.”

“You keep saying that like you’re trying to convince one of us.”

“I loved him so much.”

“I know that. And so did he.”

We’re both repeating ourselves, but it’s louder this time around, and I bite my lip to trap the sob I haven’t swallowed. When I release it, I say something I don’t mean.

“Stop.”

“Not yet,” Beau argues, as soft about it as I knew he would be. “You loved him, and he didn’t do it on purpose, and you were ready to grieve, but you couldn’t yet, could you? Not the guilt-free way you wanted to. Because first, you moved on to something really fucking awful—something like relief—and you’ve been stuck there ever since.”

I can’t breathe. I’ve wanted Beau to understand since the night we met—to turn around and see me and know —but now that he’s close, I’m embarrassed by what he’s about to find.

“Fucking awful. Yeah,” I agree, my voice breaking until I swallow around the wound. “And at the worst of it, maybe the relief would’ve made sense. I loved him so much, and I never blamed him, but I was exhausted. He wasn't a burden, but I'd become nobody . Years of pretending for our friends and family took so much out of me, and I barely knew who I was if I wasn’t the other half of him. So being relieved might’ve been okay.”

“But?”

“You don’t want to tell this part of the story for me?” I ask, so incredibly tired and trying hard to keep from looking into the glass for the comfort I wish I were allowed to seek. He’s still right there—I could lean back against him, and just like Levi had told me the first night they danced, Beau wouldn’t let me fall—but I shake my head and go on. “Things were better out here. Overwhelming in all the expected ways, I guess, but without an audience, we could just be. Got settled here, went to the beach. He met up with some of the other teachers a couple of times, but then he decided he wanted us to go out. Something more social than grabbing dinner or whatever. A place where we might make friends.”

“Lucky me,” Beau murmurs.

If he means for the comment to be sarcastic, I won’t bother to tell him it’s nowhere close. “He liked you right away, he seemed to like Darren and Riley, and I thought it was the beginning.”

“Of him finding people he could trust with all of himself.”

“Mmmm,” I hum. “And of me being able to walk away altogether.”

Beau’s gasp is an entirely physical thing, and I feel it against my back. I think I want to turn into it and soothe him somehow, and maybe if I end the conversation now, it’ll all be okay. I’m in too far though, and I already know he’s not going to help me paint anymore today, so I stay where I am, and I don’t stop him when he reaches for my hand just to brush his thumb against the wedding band.

“You would’ve said no. If he’d proposed, you would’ve—you didn’t want to marry him.”

Almost. “I wanted to marry him. And I would’ve had to say no.”

“And that’s the part of the relief that hurts you. Makes you feel guilty. Ruins you, like you said earlier,” Beau remembers. “It was bad enough that we fucked when you needed to mourn, but that same day you’d poked around here and found the ghost of a proposal, and you’d realized you’d never have to say no. He left you one night, and you were spared the trouble of ever doing the same. He died, and you never had to say goodbye. ”

My voice catches as more tears fall. “But I got to say hello to you.”

“Or I got to say hello to you.” He presses his face to the back of my head. Nuzzles against me. Breathes me in. And hasn’t let go of my hand. “Why’d you hate him, though? Why’d you hate any of us?”

I want to argue that I never did or that I still very much do, but both feel untrue, so I settle into the past tense Beau has offered.

“I hated him for doing exactly what we said we wanted when we went out that first night. He started to make friends and he brought his smile home, and he almost made it look possible. Like maybe we could be honest—and be okay again. I hated that he made me believe it might be that simple.”

“And you?”

“I hated myself for wanting to stop trying anyway.”

The silence that follows leaves room for Beau to push for an answer about why I hated him , and I’m surprised when he doesn’t. He doesn’t step away from me either, and while I still expect him to leave after everything I’ve confessed, he threads his fingers through mine, and I feel his grip tighten a split second before he decides he has something else to say.

“You were allowed to be exhausted and angry and overwhelmed and done with trying. He was allowed to hope it would all get better. Neither one of you was wrong for how you felt. The problem now is that I got tangled up in both. I spun him around the dance floor and gave him a taste of a future he never got to have. And then I followed you outside and gave you the same thing.”

“A taste of us.”

“And I—I think I was wrong.” Beau’s next exhale is slow enough to make me shiver, his lips at my ear. “Leaving Trailhead didn’t make things better for us, and we were never gonna be friends. Darren and Riley can be that for you. Or maybe a dozen other people in a dozen other places. But I’m gonna have to walk away before I ruin you, too.”

“You haven’t ru—”

“I could, though. I will. It’s why you’re wearing the ring like a shield,” he insists, interrupting me as gently as he can. “You'll always look at me and see a reminder of the night you let go of your anger and guilt and relief just so you could hold on to me. You’ll always remember the way I helped you forget.”

“So?”

“So, he once fastened a noose around his neck to cut off all the pain. You slipped one onto your finger to keep it there.”

I spin so quickly he has to catch me, my entire body reacting at once. “Fuck you.”

“It’s okay,” Beau says. “It’s okay that you’re not ready to take it off. But it’s also okay if you can find a way to make the hatred stick. Use it up on me and forgive him. Forgive yourself.”

He reaches for me then, his hand cradling the side of my tear-stained face, and I want so badly for him to kiss me goodbye even when that’s as backward and upside down as everything else we’ve screwed up between us. I meet his steady gaze until everything there is too much, and then I close my eyes and press further into the palm of his hand.

“Fuck you,” I breathe, the same words even weaker than they were a few seconds ago.

My mind wanders to an impossible future before it tumbles back to the past, and Beau gives me time to visit both before he drops his hand and steps away. When he doesn’t immediately turn toward the front door and disappears down the small hallway instead, I assume he’s using the bathroom before he goes, but he returns too quickly, a pile of bedding in his arms. It takes far longer for me to understand what he’s doing, even when it’s terribly obvious, and then I watch as he remakes my bed on the couch with a level of care I’ve reserved for very few precious things.

I want to scream. And throw something. Or throw several somethings. Maybe if I’m cruel enough, he’ll throw something back and we can have the kind of fight that will feel right. But I’m frozen in place, and Beau is brushing his fingertips over my pillow, and my voice catches on something important every time I try to speak. The ring should slide right off, but it’s caught too, and by the time I think I might be able to talk, it doesn’t matter anymore.

“You didn’t have to be ready for that either,” Beau says.

I didn’t go to sleep that night—on the couch, in my bed, or anywhere else. The rest of the day had been spent with my music turned up while I finished a second coat of paint on both walls, then assembled two bookcases and framed pictures to hang another day. When that was done, I tackled the bedroom, finally packing up most of the clothes of someone who hadn’t worn them in at least 217 days, keeping three shirts and a hoodie that wouldn’t smell like him forever. An extra pair of glasses moved from his nightstand to mine, along with a couple of bookmarks I could tuck between my own. I prepared to get rid of shoes, a bottle of antacids, and a lotion I hated, and I held on to journals I wouldn’t read. And when most of the room had become mine, I moved to the bathroom to throw his toothbrush away, and into the kitchen to trash the protein bars that tasted a lot like cardboard.

I should’ve been done then, Beau almost certainly sound asleep like the reasonable man he was, but I wandered into the spare bedroom, one that had been set up as a teacher’s home office within the first couple weeks of our arrival in California. There was little chance I’d turn it into a studio of my own when I still craved that separation of work and home, but it didn’t need to remain a shrine either, so the clutter was recycled or reorganized into boxes that fit into the closet. I considered buying more bookcases, then figured I should make those decisions when it wouldn’t be so easy to overspend my way out of heartbreak.

My stomach turned on me somewhere around 2:00 in the morning, and I fed it toast because that was the very least I could do. Around 3:00, I checked my phone like there was any chance I’d missed a text from the man who’d walked out with no real argument from me. By 4:00, I was sleepy but stubborn, and I’ve always loved a good sunrise, so I made a pot of coffee and showered and crawled into warm clothes and grabbed a banana for the road.

At my studio, I paused long enough to check work emails, responded to a couple of them, updated my calendar, and ignored the upcoming photoshoot at Trailhead. Then I made my way to a ladder I shouldn’t have had access to and climbed to the rooftop of the old building. I’d stashed blankets up there a while ago, and someone before me had left a couple of lounge chairs, so it didn’t take long to get settled.

The sun rose.

I cried until I could barely see.

And I screamed into one of the blankets until I lost the voice I’d rarely used right anyway.

I fell asleep on that rooftop eventually and returned to do it all over again the next day—cry, scream, sleep—but the tears didn’t fall as quickly, my scream became easier to smother, and I was almost rested when I opened my eyes. After that, the sun continued to rise and fall, and I had time to think about the anger, guilt, and relief that would likely stay with me long enough for me to learn how to live around them. Really, I had time to think about a lot of things.

Now it’s been two weeks since that first chilly rooftop morning, and if I’m as lost as I’ve ever been, I’m also calmer about it than I could’ve hoped to be. My entire life has been about my relationships with other people, even when I’ve been content to let it happen that way, years spent being the family peacemaker and the PR problem solver and whatever I was for Levi when nobody else could be.

And maybe whatever kind of friend or foe I was for Beau, too.

But I’d meant it when I told Beau I was exhausted, and he’d been only half right about me not being ready. I think I am —or at least I’m getting so much closer now—but I’ve needed to be alone with myself my entire adult life, and Beau’s only just forced it to happen. The solitude is scary and good, and I’m still angrier than I want to be too much of the time, but I started to let go of something when I finally let myself scream and I’m telling myself I don’t need it back.

Also, my house is emptier now, but I can sleep in a bed I’ve made all over again with bedding I chose by myself, and I have a picture of Levi on the beach that doesn’t make me hate anyone. It's the one I took, of course, and over the past couple of weeks, it’s helped me remember that photography once gave me a reason to be selfish in the name of a job I love. Becoming relatively aimless about it for the past several months means I’ve fallen further away from that too, and it’s only now, with too much time on my hands, that I’ve started to claw my way back.

I think tonight’s photoshoot at Trailhead will be important for me, but if it weren’t for the fact that a woman with a long gray braid and a wicked smile needs my help, I know I would’ve canceled already.

I’m terrified of seeing Beau there .

I’m more terrified he won’t show.

There’s still a wedding band on my finger either way, because I’m not strong enough for any of them to know how badly I want it off me.

My worn black jeans have the stretch I’ll need if I start climbing on top of tables to get a better shot, and I put on a thin blue sweater that matches the moonlit night—and my eyes, if it matters. I’ve never been great at controlling the hair that falls across my forehead, but I mind it less when it gives Beau a reason to touch me, and I can’t bring myself to wrestle with it tonight.

Hope feels as dangerous as grief, but I can tend to the wounds from both later.

I’ve loaded myself down with bags of equipment, and I’m not paying as much attention as I should when I approach the big barn doors, the hand on my arm startling me, maybe mostly because it’s reached for me at all.

“Riley.”

They nod as they open one of the doors for me, their back pressed against it to keep it there as I walk into Trailhead. Everything is heavy enough that I’m grateful for the open table I find quickly, but I’m also slow as I unload it all, taking in Riley’s oversized hoodie and ear buds and late arrival.

“You’re not working tonight?”

“Nope.”

“You’re just here for the photoshoot?”

“Yep.”

I glance down at the camera in my hand, then back up to icy blue eyes that are warmer than everything but Beau’s endless brown. “You don’t strike me as someone who loves having their picture taken.”

They smile and curl their long fingers around the cotton keeping them warm. “I’m very much not.”

“But you’ll do it for this place, huh?”

“I’ll do it for this place,” Riley echoes. “And for you and Beau.”

The comment is so far from insincere—especially from someone unlikely to bother with lies—but it makes me want to study the way Beau’s name fell from their mouth, and how any single syllable can matter to anyone as much as it does.

“His feelings for you aren’t one-sided.”

“Not at all.” Riley’s hands tighten and relax, and I itch to take a picture. I resist the temptation, but maybe Riley is compelled by the moment too, letting go of their hoodie a moment later just to brush a fingertip over my camera. “Is this where I turn the lens on you and say the same thing?”

“Wow, look at all the fancy gear,” Darren half-shouts as he approaches, his interruption more than fine with me. “Guess it’ll take all that to make this rowdy crowd marketable, huh?”

“And then some, probably,” I say drily. “The good news is that we’re using your pretty face to bait all of West Hollywood, so I’m sure V will be able to retire soon enough.”

Darren smacks an obnoxious kiss to my cheek while Riley finds a nearby stool and sits with their back to the wall, disappearing further into their hoodie and playing around on their phone. A second later, I glance around the room as subtly as I can, and I take note of V, Noah, and Jake, and a few other people who look vaguely familiar by now, but then I’m back to Darren and a raised eyebrow that suggests I haven’t fooled him at all.

“He’s not here yet.”

I almost ask him how much he knows about what happened between Beau and me, but I’m fairly certain I can answer that myself, Beau unlikely to have shared any of Levi’s story while spilling plenty of his own. Of course, I feature prominently in both, but Darren looks happy enough to see me, so I must have come out of it all as something other than the villain. Still, Beau’s not here and it feels almost suffocating that I am, and a look at Riley makes me long for any number of ways I could disappear.

At the very least, I still have equipment to prep while I continue to avoid any more eye contact. The music is loud, and that doesn’t hurt either, and I pull a few more things out of my bag without having to think too hard.

“He hasn’t officially bailed, though?” I ask.

“I have not.”

I spin too quickly at the sound of Beau’s voice and I’m probably lucky Darren doesn’t flat-out laugh at me for it, the man uncharacteristically silent as he returns to the bar. I’m some kind of idiot for thinking I’d make it through the night, but I figure I might as well say hello before I choke on it.

“Hey, I—you’re here, and—thank you. For doing this, I mean.”

Beau almost smirks, and I miss it before it exists. “Pretty sure that’s my line.”

“Yeah, maybe,” I agree .

There’s so much more I want to say, but I’ve got none of the words and too much actual work to do either way. At the very least, I’d love to ask Beau to stay with me, but I couldn’t manage that two weeks ago and he’s gone before I can try now, just barely tipping his cowboy hat in my direction before he leaves me there, eventually taking the empty stool next to Jake and accepting the beer Darren offers.

Watching him makes those first several seconds slow. And then it all goes so fast.

My goal is to capture Trailhead from multiple angles—literally and figuratively—and it’s been a while since I’ve done a photoshoot inside a dimly lit building like this, so I move quickly to test a few different options. I’ve got my off-camera flash and I play with the bar’s lights and if any of the crowd cares about the awkward shift from one minute to another, the camaraderie keeps them from complaining. They’ve got drinks in their hands and enough laughter to make me envy a couple of things, but I focus enough attention on my camera settings to make the sound less important than everything I can see. Some of what I capture early is a mess, and plenty of it makes me confident, and then I’m ready to crawl into every corner of a place I want to turn inside out until I have nowhere left to hide.

I get started with a bunch of broader shots, giving everyone very little guidance as I take pictures of them gathered around the pool table, laughing over drinks at the bar, or two-stepping to their hearts’ content. V and Noah have helped collect signed releases from everyone at Trailhead tonight, so I don’t have to worry much about whose faces show, and it’s easy to get lost in so many smiles, even while I’ve always been more comfortable on this side of the camera. The fun is undoubtedly contagious, and I don’t want to lose any of the vibe when I create Trailhead’s marketing material, so I allow myself to relax among strangers and would-be friends, and maybe each shot gets a little bit better.

And then it’s time for something more intimate, because however much people may want to get loud and drunk and wild, there are a hundred other options for that, and I need to draw people to Trailhead specifically. Drink specials will help, sure, but I have no control over that, and this is my favorite part of being a photographer—the same part I am ready to let myself love again—so I take a deep breath and look for all the moments hidden in plain sight.

V has a pool cue in her hands, and she’s lined up for a hell of a shot with her waist-length braid draped over her shoulder. While I’m eager to catch that glint of mischief in her eyes, I end up being far more pleased by the shock on the faces of two men behind her when she sinks three balls without blinking.

Jake is turned on his barstool, legs open wide enough for a lanky cowboy to stand between them while they talk. For someone described to me as a flirt, Jake looks a little unsure of where to rest his hands on the cowboy’s waiting body, and I can’t tell whether my attention has made him unsteady, or whether there’s something to the way he’s being touched under his leather jacket. Either way, my lens loves his wide eyes and the barest glimpse of the cowboy’s wrist before his hand disappears into the dark.

Riley, officially off the clock and unofficially my camera’s favorite, pours a line of seven shots. They’re sloppy about them only because they mean to be, and not only do I capture the splash of Jameson as it hits the bar, but an overhead light hits one of their nipple piercings until it’s a beautiful beacon calling me a little further forward.

I don’t need to move when my camera can do all the work. I take the step anyway.

But there are more pictures to take, and I’m not stupid when I go in search of another target, fully aware of who he is long before I find him sitting by himself at a table near the dance floor. His solitude is a stunning sight given his natural ability to draw admirers near, but as much as I might have thought I was ready to close the distance between us, I don’t approach him either. I lift my camera instead and swallow hard when I try to detach myself from the longing radiating from everything he is. Beau looks like he wants to dance, but it’s more than that—maybe because I can’t imagine there’s anyone who would say no to him even if three minutes was really all he was after—and I need a thousand pictures of the way he aches while he watches the crowd move to the beat of something I’ve never heard.

I don’t take any.

I crouch then, seeking the perfect angle when I notice the fist pressed to his jeans, restraint something I’d rather watch him drop to the sawdust-covered floor. I don’t take pictures there either .

My camera would be gentle about it, but I want to pry his fingers apart.

In the end, it doesn’t matter, everything about him shifting into something a little less honest when he sees me. Or maybe it’s just a different shade of the truth, his curiosity and frustration genuine enough as I get closer.

“You’ve been workin’ your ass off tonight, and I know you’ve got pictures of at least fifty other people,” he says. “Wasn’t sure you’d have to bother with me.”

“And I’m not sure ‘have to’ has anything to do with it.”

“Mmmm, does that mean you want me to pose for you?”

Very much so and absolutely not wage war in my head, and all I can do is shrug. “Like you said, I’ve got plenty of other pictures already. Maybe I just want to say hello.”

“I guess after being silent for a couple of weeks, it’s a decent place to start.”

“Really? You’re gonna come after me about that? Here? Tonight?”

Beau huffs. “Don’t think I was comin’ after you at all. Neither one of us picked up the phone.”

“I picked it up all the time.”

I swipe his beer then and take a long pull from the bottle, messy about it because I’m washing away something I shouldn’t have said out loud. Some of it drips from my lip, but Beau is there before I can lick it away, his thumb against my wet chin until both of us remember that there’s no good reason for us to touch.

“You think you got some good stuff tonight? Enough to use for whatever promotional shit you’re plannin’ to do?”

“Yeah, it should be really good,” I nod. “It felt really good, especially once I slowed down.”

“When did that happen? You haven’t stopped moving ‘til now.”

It’s true enough, and I’m sweating to prove it, my choice of clothing not the best in a place like this, even when I know it’s cold outside. Beau’s in a blue and green flannel, but his sleeves are rolled to his elbow, and it takes me a second to remember to answer his question.

“It’s emotional more than physical, I guess,” I start, clearing my throat a good way to stall before I go on. “You saw the pictures at my house—the ones I printed for the frames.”

“I did. And I should’ve told you how good they were.”

“That wasn’t—I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.”

“They were really fuckin’ good.”

“Thank you,” I sigh. “I think I found a lot of that kind of thing around here, and all I was trying to say was that those are my favorite pictures to take. Clocking some hidden detail other people miss. When I slow down long enough to really look , I can make a moment last forever.”