Chapter 29 #2
The banks of the river in this area were steep and lined with concrete.
That put the water far below the walking path along its sides so that, in the darkness of night, the babble of the river seemed to echo out of nowhere.
The two of us stopped to sit on a concrete bench along the path, illuminated by a pair of antique looking streetlamps.
Auggie draped his arm along the back of the bench, wrapping me up with his warmth.
“I told you about my coworker’s partner, Tyler, who attends University in Maryland, which is how we were able to find out about your past, right?
Well, Tyler has continued looking into things now that’s gone back to Maryland and… we’ve managed to track down Eli.”
The sound of the river stopped. The noise of the city stopped. Even my own beating heart seemed to fall silent.
All I heard was that familiar name repeating over and over in my head.
Eli. Eli. Eli.
I still remembered the man who had helped me survive my year of Camp Green Hill and learned the skills necessary to live on the streets by my side.
They were some of the clearest memories I had left, like my brain had realized it was standing on a sinking ship and bailed out as much as it could to try and save what was most important.
Some of my unpleasant or unnecessary memories like my father’s face and the heat of raging fire growing around me had been sacrificed, likely never to be recovered, but in exchange I got to keep important memories like Eli.
When I’d fled to the other side of the country to escape Detective Smith, I thought I would never hear of Eli again, and the unexpected sound of his name was like a bullet piercing my eardrum.
“You…” My dry throat cracked and I had to swallow several times before I could speak properly. “You found him?”
Auggie scratched at the back of his head, a gesture he made when he was nervous, but he didn’t try to pull away from me.
“Yeah. He helped testify against Detective Smith, and his testimony mentioned the location of the tent city where a lot of the homeless population lived, including you when you were there. Tyler checked it out, and some people who were still living there knew where to find him. Apparently he’d returned there often to see if anyone had any news of you.
I’ve, um…” He stopped to look out over the shadowed river that we couldn’t actually see.
“I hope this isn’t overstepping, but I’ve arranged for him to come here. ”
“Come here,” I repeated, not immediately grasping the meaning of these two little words. “You mean Eli? Come here? To Baton Rouge?”
“Yeah,” Auggie said, still sounding completely calm, as if what he was only admitting something minor and not monumental.
“Tyler was able to get me in contact with him. It was difficult to convince him to come here at first, apparently he didn’t believe you were even still alive and thought it was some sort of prank, but eventually I got him to believe me.
Eli was coming here. I couldn’t believe it.
Auggie continued to tell me about plane tickets and when exactly Eli was arriving, but I didn’t hear any of it.
I was still hung up on the fact that Auggie had bothered to hunt down Eli at all.
Finding out my past made sense. That information affected me, and by extension Auggie, right now.
It was a necessity. However, tracking down Eli wasn’t necessary.
I hadn’t asked for it. I’d barely even mentioned the other man and certainly hadn’t admitted how much I missed my old friend.
My only friend, until recently.
Auggie had done this on his own just because he knew it would make me happy. A lump formed in my throat and I couldn’t breathe, but for the first time in my life I was choked by overabundance of happy emotions instead of negative ones.
Grabbing onto the front of Auggie’s shirt, I pulled him closer to kiss him, but it wasn’t enough to express the mess of feelings swarming through me.
With a quick look around, I realized that, despite the nearby streetlamps, it was still pretty dark and there was no one anywhere near us.
Throwing caution to the wind, and gathering up the scraps of my courage, I shifted on the bench and swung a leg over Auggie’s thighs until I was straddling his lap.
“What?” Auggie gasped even as his hands automatically settled on my waist to steady me.
I linked my hands behind his neck. “You can’t be that surprised. After doing so much for me, going to such lengths just to reunite me with a friend that I miss. Of course, I’m going to want to repay you.”
I leaned in to kiss him again, but to my surprise, he grabbed my wrists and pushed me away.
“I don’t need repayment,” he said as he held me at arm’s length, even as I sat on his lap. “You don’t have to do anything for me. That’s not what this is about.”
The rejected kiss shocked me for a moment, but I wasn’t an idiot.
As soon as I heard the word ‘repayment’ leave Auggie’s mouth, I knew that I’d said the wrong thing.
Even to my own ears, as I thought back over my previous statement, I realized what it sounded like, and I couldn’t help laughing at myself.
“No, no, I don’t mean it like that,” I insisted, though I didn’t try to press forward or remove my wrists from his grip.
My forearms had been burned the worst in the fire, and the scaring left behind was particularly thick in that area. Auggie’s warm grip on the delicate, newly healed skin was surprisingly pleasant, like a weighted blanket chasing away the nightmare of old injuries.
Auggie eyed me warily. “I don’t need sex as any sort of exchange.”
The number of times I’d heard the exact opposite was…
well, more than I wanted to think about.
However, I wasn’t at all surprised by Auggie’s response.
If I’d thought he would say anything else, I never would have felt comfortable enough to get so physically close to him in the first place, and I made sure to tell him so.
Yet, despite my explanation, he still didn’t look assured and continued to maintain space between us.
“It’s not just because of how Detective Smith treated you,” he admitted. “Although, that alone would be bad enough. I’m concerned because, well…”
He bit his lip, a nervous gesture I would associate more with myself than him. It made him look younger than his years, and for a moment, I was reminded of a scolded child that had been caught stealing something he shouldn’t have.
A very large child whose lap could easily be used in place of a chair and whose hands could almost completely encircle my waist.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, equal parts worried and amused by his personality shift. “If you don’t want to do anything, that’s fine, but…”
“It’s not that,” he quickly cut me off, and the bright blush that spread over his cheeks was evident even on his dark complexion.
“I, um, I told you that I managed to find records about Camp Green Hill, right?” He waited for me to nod before continuing.
“What I didn’t tell you, is that those records contained more than just a list of everyone who attended the camp.
It also had descriptions of the so-called therapy that they used.
I feel like we really need to talk about that before we go any further. ”
I crossed my arms and I wanted to scowl at him, but I could bring myself to turn such an unpleasant expression in his direction, so instead, I glared at the arm of the bench off to the side.
“What’s there to talk about? The so-called therapy sessions that were basically just hours of guilt tripping?
The physical abuse when they would knock us around or starve us to try and make us do what they wanted?
Or maybe you’re talking about the electroshock therapy where they would electrocute us while showing us porn so that we’d associate the material with pain, just like training a damn dog?
Well, you don’t need to worry. None of it worked because that’s not how sexuality works.
Conversion therapy is just a bunch of bullshit. ”
My anger faded as quickly as it flared, and with an exhausted huff, I let my head drop onto his shoulder.
I wasn’t truly mad at him. Auggie’s questions were valid, and I would be lying if I said I hadn’t worried about the same things in the past. I just hated that my time in that camp continued to plague me even years after I’d left it behind.
It stuck to me like a shadow, but I wasn’t Peter Pan, who could lose his shadow so easily.
My shadow clung to me with the sticky hands of a needy child, refusing to be ignored.
One of Auggie’s large hands petted the back of my head.
“You’re right. Sexuality doesn’t work that way.
But that does mean you’re affected by what they did.
Plus, after escaping from the camp, the majority of sexual experiences you had were under coercion by that detective.
I just want to make sure I don’t accidentally hurt you because we rushed into things. ”
“I get it,” I mumbled against his shoulder, too embarrassed to look up. “I really do. I’ve worried about the same thing before, but I promise, it’s different with you.”
The shoulder under my face still felt tense. Nothing I’d said so far had reassured Auggie. With a long sigh, I pushed myself out of my hiding place and faced him.
“Can I… admit something to you that might sound weird?” I asked.
Unsurprisingly, Auggie automatically agreed.
“Look. You are right. The conditioning that Camp Green Hill put me through has made me jumpy about sex in the past, and Detective Smith certainly didn’t help.
But—damn, I’m not sure how to say this in a way that isn’t problematic—the fact that you’re a person of color actually makes things a lot easier for me. ”
It was almost comical to watch in real time as Auggie’s brain seemed to stall right in front of my eyes. I could practically see the wheels turning behind his eyes stutter for a moment as he struggled to process what I’d just said.
“That’s…” With slow, jerky movements the wheels started turning again. “Certainly a new one. I’ve never heard that before.”
He didn’t ask for an explanation, but he didn’t need to. I could tell he was still confused and launched into an explanation anyway.
“So, it turns out the bigots running a conversion camp are racist as well as homophobic. Go figure, right? During the electroshock therapy, they would show us explicit gay material they thought we would find arousing so that they could train us to hate it, but I guess it never occurred to them that people could be attracted to skin tones other than white. The material only featured white men. Plus, the fact that Detective Smith was also white didn’t help.
So, basically, they only killed my attraction to white men.
Literally every other race is still on the table. ”
A tense moment of silence passed between us, with only the sound of the river for background noise.
I waited for Auggie’s reaction, worried that he would be insulted, or maybe even think I was lying.
Race and sexuality were both such sensitive issues, and when you tied them together, things could get ugly.
However, after the moment passed, Auggie started laughing.
The laughter was so strong and boisterous that I was nearly bucked off his lap, and he wrapped his arms around my waist to keep me from falling off.
I had no choice but to laugh along with him, and our combined voices filled the night air, drowning out the rush of the river below and the chaos of the city in the distance.
After that, we continued to cuddle on the bench for a while, but we didn’t go any further.
The mood wasn’t right. However, a sense of physical intimacy continued to linger between us even after we returned home.
That single conversation had brought us closer, like we’d crossed over a barrier we hadn’t even known was there.
Touching and kissing came a little easier each day, and although we hadn’t slept together yet, we could both tell it was only a matter of time.