Chapter 2 #3
Nope. There was no way in hell I could’ve hugged him after he’d told me he was getting married.
It was like the sight of him had sent fractures across the shell I’d built around me after we’d imploded, if he’d taken me in his arms I would’ve shattered.
I couldn’t find the words to explain that to Shep, though.
“In a way,” I shrugged. “I agreed to do the tour.”
He let out a low whistle, although I could tell he wasn’t really shocked.
Shep knew me better than anyone (almost anyone) and he knew how much that tour had meant to me, all those years ago.
It was the first time I’d truly believed that I could make a real go of it, being a musician.
A lot of that was tangled up in Sebastian, Burning Bright, and the faith they’d had in us.
“What changed your mind?” Shep asked, nudging me with his stupid pointy elbow. I didn’t realize how long we’d been sitting in silence until he jostled me out of it. I tore my eyes away from the horizon, flicking a gaze over at him.
“He’s getting married,” I blurted. “Sebastian. He’s engaged. To some girl.”
“Wow, I didn’t see that coming.”
“Neither did I.”
“So I guess he’s not that snot nosed, art school punk kid anymore, huh?”
“We’re not kids anymore either,” I said, fighting back a sigh. It was time to put on my big boy pants and tell Shep the truth. Hell, if I was going to get through months and months on the road with Sebastian, I was going to need some serious emotional support.
“Are you alright, man? You know, we don’t need to do this tour if you don’t want to. We can go on our own tour, Max. We can headline some pretty big venues these days.”
“Sebastian and I were hooking up pretty much the entire time we were on the road together. I thought we could keep it casual, you know, just fucking around because he was there and he was gorgeous and he really, really liked me but I went and fell in love with him like a fucking idiot and he couldn’t…
I couldn’t be with him after the tour ended, I couldn’t face it and he let me go, Shep, even though I thought he loved me just as much as I loved him and now he’s back and he wants to go on the road again and he’s getting fucking married to some sweet girl from New York and I’m supposed to just…
just see him every day and pretend nothing happened? ”
It came up like vomit, just pouring out of me like I had no control over it. It felt like my whole body was spasming, bringing up more and more and more pain until I could feel my eyes stinging, my stomach clenching.
And then came the actual vomit.
I came back to myself groaning with my head between my knees, Shep’s massive hand rubbing soothingly up and down my back. I closed my eyes, tried to breathe even though it made my throat burn, and let myself just shake for a minute.
“Hey man, I know my beer’s weird but it’s not that bad,” Shep said, smiling weakly when I managed to crack an eye open to look at him. He handed me a glass of water and I chugged it gratefully before wiping my mouth with a trembling hand.
“Sorry, m’sorry,” I sighed, leaning back against the deck chair. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“How long you been keeping that in for, Max?” He asked, his expression solemn.
“That I’m attracted to men? Since I was an eight-year-old kid growing up Mormon in Utah, being told by my loving, warm, sweet parents that homosexuality was an affront to God and gay people went straight to Hell.
No passing go, no collecting $200,” I replied with a bitter little laugh.
My own voice sounded far away, like I was listening into the conversation with bated breath .
“Is that why you ran away?”
Shep and I didn’t talk about how I turned up in LA, broke and desperate and wide eyed at the possibility of being someone completely new.
He hadn’t even known my name was Gideon until we signed our first record deal because I’d always introduced myself as Max.
Everything he knew about me had been shared one morsel at a time, like a trail of breadcrumbs back into my past. This, though, this was the whole damn meal.
I could only look at him, let my gaze lock on his chocolate brown eyes.
He didn’t look angry, or even shocked. He just looked sad, sad for that eight-year-old kid and that seventeen-year-old runaway and his twenty-seven-year-old bandmate.
I nodded, and he nodded, and that was it.
Shep knew and nothing, everything, had changed.
“I meant what I said. We don’t need to do this tour. You have nothing to prove, Max. Not to us, not to him. This is gonna hurt you, it’s gonna hurt like hell.”
I knew that, was feeling it already. The sight of Sebastian standing in my driveway, smirking at me like we were twenty-two again, that was the worst of it. I was sure of it.
“It’s gotta hurt before it can heal though, right?
” I whispered, looking out at the flickering city.
Somewhere down there, among the twinkling lights, Sebastian was probably sitting alone in his hotel room.
I wondered if he was on the phone to her, his future wife.
I wondered if he was thinking of me, if the thought of going on tour together terrified him as much as it terrified me.
“You’ve been hurt enough,” Shep replied firmly, squeezing my knee. “But if you wanna do this, you know I’m here with you every step of the way.”
I nodded, wishing there was more water so I could swallow down the lump in my throat. His hand was warm, the heat of his splayed fingers seeping into my skin through the tear in my jeans. I sagged back in my chair.
“I should fucking hope so, Shep. We’re not gonna get far without our bassist, are we?”
His laugh echoed through the dark and I smiled at him, a small, real smile.