Chapter Nine
Ben
Ben rushed through his errand as quickly as possible. Maybe Gavin really did need a few minutes alone with his sister, but Ben didn’t like it. He’d already run through a long list of how horribly this could go. Maybe Tina was there to try and get Gavin to come back? Maybe she’d run away, and they’d come looking for her, find her there, torment Gavin even more. Maybe she was just feeling a little rebellious and would get Gavin’s hopes up and then walk away from him. Ben didn’t know what the hell was going on, and that bothered him most of all. Those people had fucked Gavin up in so many ways, he probably couldn’t name them all.
On his way back to their apartment, Ben tried to remind himself that little Tina with her scared, sorrowful eyes and a head full of bullshit was just as much a victim as Gavin. But Ben still wanted to keep him as far out of their reach as he could.
He didn’t have a problem with religion, any of them. Some of his best friends, even his own mother, had strong spiritual beliefs. Ben knew deep down that it was only the odd few—the Quiverfull baby farmers and the Westboro Baptist types—that gave the rest a bad name. He hoped all the extremists were in the minority, but far too often those minorities were the ones picking on his minority.
Gavin wasn’t the only person he knew who had been victimized by antigay fuckery. He wasn’t even the worst-case scenario. But Gavin was the one he cared about the most, so Ben wanted to keep him clear of it all. He’d wanted to protect Gavin from the world the first time he laid eyes on him, and this was no different.
He took the last two steps to his front door and paused, listening from outside. He didn’t hear much, maybe a laugh or two and some quiet voices. When he finally went in, Gavin and Tina were sitting together at the table. Tina had a plate of food in front of her, and she was eating as if it were her first meal in days.
Ben took another chance and walked up behind Gavin. He leaned down and kissed the top of his head, something he would’ve done back before the whole breakup thing. “Everything okay in here?”
Gavin surprised the hell out of him by reaching for Ben’s hand and giving it a squeeze.
Tina took another bite of her lunch and then asked, “Are you guys, like, married? You can do that now, right?”
It took everything Ben had not to tell her that there were a lot of people in the world who still didn’t have that right, but it would just be for the sake of picking an argument and he knew it. She was making an effort; Ben figured he ought to too.
Gavin didn’t give him a chance to respond, though. He smiled up at Ben as if the last week had never happened, and then he looked at Tina. “It’s on our radar, but no major plans yet.”
What the hell was going on? He needed to get Gavin alone and find out if he had lost his mind or if there was a reason to put on a little dog-and-pony show for his sister.
Tina looked around the apartment again. Her gaze landed on Gavin’s boxes, still stacked in the living room. “Are you guys moving?”
“Preemptive packing.” Jesus, Gavin was a good liar. Ben had no idea. He didn’t even blink. “We’re looking for a bigger place, so I started getting ready a little early.”
Ben stared stupidly for a minute, afraid to say anything, and then he went around the corner to the kitchen to put the groceries away. His apartment wasn’t that big, so eavesdropping was easy.
“Have you seen a doctor yet?” Gavin asked.
Okay, weird.
“Not yet,” Tina said, pausing when Ben glanced at her from around the corner. “I wouldn’t even know where to go.”
“Did you talk to your school counselor or anything?” Gavin sounded concerned, which made Ben concerned too. He shoved the canned goods into the cupboard and then pulled up a chair next to Gavin. Whatever they were talking about, Ben figured he needed a front-row seat.
Tina offered him a weak smile, and Ben did his best to return it. It probably looked like a grimace, but, hey, he tried.
“We’ve been homeschooled since you ran away,” Tina said, taking another sip of her water.
Ben looked at Gavin, who sat on the edge of his chair. “I’m sorry, since I what?” His tone was fairly neutral, but that last word had a sharp ring to it.
“Since you ran away,” Tina repeated, as if she thought Gavin just hadn’t heard her. “When you left, Dad said the schools were too secular and you’d been exposed to too much gay propaganda and that you’d been taken in by the homosexual agenda and led into sin.”
Cold rage wrapped itself around Ben’s spine. He clamped his jaw shut so hard it felt like he might crack his teeth. Under the table, he clenched his hands into fists.
“Tina,” Gavin said, but he glanced at Ben before going on. “That’s not what really happened.”
With a shrug that made her look even more like Gavin, Tina said, “I know. I mean, I figured. And Elise and Donny told us some of what they saw. But we were forbidden to ever talk about it again, so…”
So. Yeah, that about summed it up. Elise and Donny were the youngest of Gavin’s siblings, Ben knew that much. For Christ’s sake. He’d quit smoking years earlier, but he wanted one now.
Gavin was silent for a minute, looking stunned, wounded. Ben wanted to throttle the whole lot of them, one by one, and then stand on their bodies like a grotesque game of King of the Hill. Instead he reached for Gavin and rested his hand on Gavin’s back. I’m here for you went unspoken, but he hoped Gavin got the message.
After another beat, Gavin cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “Okay, well. Tomorrow we’ll get ya to a clinic and see where exactly you are. For now, though, maybe a nice warm bath? Not too hot, though. That info blog we found said that’s bad for the baby.”
Ben whipped his head around so fast Gavin probably felt a rush of wind with it.
Looking a little amused and a little guilty, Gavin smiled at Ben. “Surprise. We’re gonna be uncles.”