Chapter 14
Left Behind
Josha
He’s leaving.
Jessie says her mom can get him a spot at Ecole Nationale du Cirque in Montreal after graduation, and as soon as Shilo protests, it becomes Gem’s sole mission to defy her. I become a victim of friendly fire in the battle between him and his mom.
A casualty of an unwinnable war.
I pretend to be excited for him. I’m the perfect supportive friend, helping him figure out the financial aid and all the little administrative details his mom refuses to acknowledge.
I film his audition and grit my teeth through a dozen video calls with him and a euphoric Jessie, and I smile until my face aches and my eyes burn.
I tell myself it’s the best thing for both of us—that he needs to get out, and I need to move on.
That I’m not heartbroken.
Some days, I even believe it.
At the end of May, I drive him to San Francisco on a foggy Wednesday night, and he checks us into an overpriced airport hotel with an early morning shuttle.
He’s been hyper and overly chatty all day, running through our best memories like he can make up for nine months of slow, preoccupied withdrawal.
I don’t even try to keep up. Everything I want to say has been carefully buried, the graves covered with flowers.
My youthful daydreams have become a garden of denial I’ve spent years cultivating in a doomed attempt to protect myself from my desire.
He emerges dripping from the shower, towel clad and scrubbing at his hair, and I allow myself one last covetous glance before I flee into the vacated bathroom, willing him to be asleep before I return.
It’s a futile hope—and a lie.
The bedside lamp casts a small halo of light, and he’s sprawled in his bed with the quilt shoved to the side and only the white sheet covering his naked body. Barely. He looks up from his phone with a grin and rolls to face me as I scramble under my own covers.
I plug in my phone and set the alarm with absurdly clumsy hands, conscious of his eyes on me. We’ve shared a room a hundred times. Why is it suddenly different now?
Because it might be the last one.
“Are you gonna miss me?” he asks when I finally settle.
“You know I am.” Denying it would be farcical. Cocooned in the welcome shadows and the soft rush of the air conditioner, I slowly start to unwind. We stare at each other across the circle of amber light.
“I think you’ll survive. I think someone else will come along once I’m out of the way and sweep you off your feet.” His tone is soft and musing, but it’s the first time he’s voiced the lopsided longing between us, and faint alarm bells echo in my chest.
I don’t want someone else. I’ll wait forever if you let me.
“Maybe I’ll finally get to find out what it feels like to handle someone else’s dick,” I say, scrambling to lighten the sudden weight in the room. His gaze sharpens.
“Does it scare you?” he asks. “The idea of a hard cock that’s not yours? Do you think you’d know what to do with it?”
“I handle my own just fine.” What is happening right now? My attempted laugh comes out a croak, then dries up entirely at the next words out of his mouth.
“Want me to show you?” His hand trails down his bare chest and teases the top of the sheet draped over his hips. “It could be a going-away present.”
“I’m—” I lick my lips. “I’m not going away. I don’t need a present.” There’s no way he’s serious, and I am about to come undone at how foolishly I want this.
Ignoring my inane babbling, he arches a brow in challenge. I can barely parse the unspoken question, let alone formulate a coherent answer. My blood is a cacophony in my ears, and my brain is lost in the typhoon.
Please.
Don’t…
He slides his hand under the sheet.
…stop.
With a shift of his hips, he sheds the flimsy fabric barrier, and…
I. Can’t. Breathe.
He’s always been careless with his body. I’ve seen him naked a hundred times—at the river and the Sweetwater baths, peeling himself in and out of his wetsuit, in the locker room at school.
But never like this. Never sculpted and simmering and gilded in the lamplight like an offering from a pagan god.
I’ve never seen him hard.
He’s hard.
My own dick lurches to attention as he wraps his long fingers around his erection, and I couldn’t tear my eyes away if the world were ending around me.
Which maybe it is.
With a languid, honeyed grip, he starts to stroke himself, and everything locks up inside me like I’ve been hit with an electric current.
I’m captivated by the flexing muscles in his forearms and the play of his fingers as they sweep up and over his crown, lost in cruel fantasy.
His aerialist abs ripple and flex, candescent with sweat, and his ass clenches as his heels drag against the bed.
And his fucking cock. Thick and slightly curved, ruddy and slick with precum beneath his pale fingers. What would it feel like under my hand? What would it taste like?
The whole time, his gaze stays glued to my face, avidly devouring my every reaction, and I’m staggered by the realization that he’s not thinking about Jessie or imagining some other girl. He’s here, with me. I’m the one making him moan and arch and leak all over his hand.
The current in my body overloads, threatening to burst out through my skin. I’m terrified to move a single muscle in case I break the suspended moment of this spell. Afraid the slightest shift of friction will have me spilling in my pants.
When he comes, he bows off the bed with an unholy groan, laying his throat bare as ropes of cum splatter his chest. I roll onto my stomach and bury my own cry in the pillow, spurting into the mattress without ever touching my dick.
The scrape of the tissue box on the nightstand wars with my ragged breathing, and I squeeze my eyes shut rather than watch him clean himself up. The light clicks off before I recover, plunging the room into darkness that smells like pipe dreams and sex.
“G’night, Rocket,” he mumbles, already halfway to sleep. “Sweet dreams.”
I wait until his soft snores fill the silence before tiptoeing to the bathroom to change into my last pair of clean underwear, then lie awake for hours, hand pressed to the pounding of my heart.
I awaken to a pitch-black room and a vague feeling of dread. My phone says it’s almost 9 a.m.
“Shit. Quill, wake up. You’re gonna miss your flight.” It takes me five eternal seconds to fumble the unfamiliar lamp alight, only to find myself staring at an empty bed. I cock my head, listening for the shower, and check my texts.
He went to grab coffee in the lobby, that’s all. He’ll be back in a minute, laughing about missing the shuttle and asking me to give him a ride. He wouldn’t leave without saying goodbye.
But my empty heart knows the truth.
His backpack and suitcase are both gone. He turned my alarm off and pulled the blackout curtains so he could sneak away without waking me up.
This is the cost of his regret.
“You’re drunk,” my mom says when I let myself in through the kitchen door an eternity later. It’s a rare night when she’s home, and she and Rachael are in the middle of making spaghetti. My dad is on the couch with Jeremy, watching an old episode of Smallville and clutching the ubiquitous beer.
I’m not drunk. I’m sad and bewildered and bone-weary. I also took two Xanax from the stash Gem left behind in the hidden Star-Lord lunchbox he keeps—kept—by the hammock on the way home from returning the truck.
I pour myself into a chair at the half-made table and rest my head on my arms. Tomorrow I’m leaving this house, and if I’m lucky, I’ll never come back.
“I’m gay.” Apparently, non sequiturs are my coming-out method of choice.
“I knew you’d been sucking that circus boy’s cock,” my dad calls from the living room.
“Paul,” my mom chastises with a meaningful look at my little brother. “Language.”
Because of course it’s the word cock and not the malicious comment that bothers her. Rachael moves to sit next to me and lays her head on my shoulder.
“Don’t listen to them,” she whispers. “It’s not worth it.”
“Does that mean you’re the girl?” Jeremy asks, momentarily distracted from the TV by the real-life meltdown happening in the kitchen.
“No one’s the girl, shithead. That’s the whole point.”
“Josha, don’t call your brother a shithead,” my mom scolds absently. Then, with a slight frown, she adds, “And Jeremy, don’t call Josha a girl.”
“Oh my god. You guys are so clueless,” Rachael exclaims. “They’re called ‘tops’ and ‘bottoms.’” Tilting her head curiously, she studies me. “Or he could be vers. That means versatile, and—”
“Rachael,” I groan. “Please stop helping.”
“Shilo and Cheyenne are gay,” Jeremy pipes up, wide eyes darting between me and our father.
“Those people put you up to this?”
“No one ‘put me up to this,’ Dad. It’s who I am. And it’s not anything new. I figured it was time you knew.”
With a grunt, he returns his attention to the TV, sending Jeremy to fetch him another beer. The pot rattles on the stove, and my mom grabs a potholder and starts fussing with the sauce. Rachael and I exchange a glance, and she shrugs.
“I’m not hungry,” I say. “I’m going to bed.”
And that’s the end of that.
In the morning, I move into the Airstream with Hals and start my new life as a full-time member of Big River Big Top.
Gem is gone.
And I can’t tell if I’m sorry or relieved.