Chapter 32 Inside
Inside
Josha
“Mommy and Daddy are home. Quick—act like we’re working.”
Gem stiffens beside me as we enter the tent, then relaxes when he realizes Ellis is referring to us.
“I’m not calling you ‘Mommy,’” he whispers. Then, after a moment’s consideration: “Or ‘Daddy.’”
“Don’t worry, not my kink,” I assure him. “Ellis already tried.”
He scowls adorably, shooting daggers as the other guy approaches. Ellis is cheerfully oblivious, as usual.
“You boys have fun last night?” he asks, and it’s my turn to scowl as my ears flame.
“Boundaries, Ellis,” I warn, knowing it’s pointless. Gem is practically preening, a smug smirk replacing his glare and painting his face devilish. “Show me what’s up with the sound tech.”
Two more performers have arrived since yesterday and join Ellis, Julie, and Oscar in helping with the setup.
To my surprise, and Gem’s immense satisfaction, they’ve done a pretty good job.
The mixing board, amplifier, and equalizer are all laid out in the “booth”—which consists of the smaller box truck backed up to an opening in the sidewall across from the stage, with a folding table and two chairs set up on the tailgate.
The cables that connect the machines to the mics and onstage speakers are neatly coiled and color coded.
The only thing missing is the splitter, which we eventually find tucked in with a stack of spare stage lights.
If I have to, I can wait for Hals to run the checks, so all that’s left to do today is lay the cables down the aisle and under the stage to the various inputs.
Usually, this would be a long, messy project, involving a lot of crawling through the dirt with a headlamp, but Gem makes a game of it, getting the new crew to army-crawl race in pairs.
Oscar supervises the stage-side hookup, while I sit in the sound booth, trying not to micromanage and watching Gem stomp around the stage in an effort to dislodge spiders and make the competition more interesting.
Cheyenne is madly cleaning the trailer she shares with Milla and Shilo in preparation for their return, so she stays out of our hair. I’m zip-tying cords together for tape-down when she calls me in a panic.
“Babe, grab your tools and get your butt over here. I fucked up the screen door trying to wash it, and now I’m stuck standing on the steps while holding it in place so it doesn’t tear the second hinge out of the wall.”
“Go deal with her,” Gem tells me when I explain. “We got this.”
And since he apparently does, I do.
Shilo and Cheyenne’s “trailer” is actually a forty-foot luxury motorhome with better amenities than my double-wide.
Chey is sitting in the doorway with the screen door propped on an awkwardly bent knee, holding a fly swatter, when I show up with my tool bag.
She sags in relief at my approach, causing the door to dip alarmingly, revealing that the top hinge has come loose.
After determining that the screws are stripped but the catch plate is mostly intact, I set to work, while she returns to the sink to finish the dishes.
“How’s he doing?” she asks over her shoulder as I rummage through my tools for an appropriately sized washer.
“He went to a meeting today.” I can’t hide the hint of pride that bleeds into my voice.
“You really think it will be different this time?”
It’s already different.
“I hope so. We’ll never know if we don’t give him a chance.”
Propping a hip on the counter and drying her hands with a dishtowel, she arches a knowing brow. “It’s already like that, huh?”
I hesitate before replying. Gem and I haven’t discussed the issue of coming out to his family since the fight our first day back.
But I suck at lying, and Cheyenne is a friend—more of a surrogate big sister after mine moved away—and in a lot of ways, she understands me better than either of them ever did.
I don’t want to hide my feelings from her, and she’d never buy my indifference anyway.
And he called himself my boyfriend.
“It’s always been like that,” I admit. “I tried to hate him, and I know you think I’m being stupid, but it’s like he’s a part of me, and I can’t shake him loose. You told me once that I could make being gay look like whatever I wanted—for me, it’s always looked like him.”
“Please at least tell me he knows how lucky he is to have you.”
I think about him standing in the headlights of the old truck on a deserted Sonoma County road as I tighten the second bolt.
“You’re the only good thing in my life, and I won’t fucking wreck you.”
“I’m starting to believe that’s never been the issue.”
She shakes her head, but something softens in her expression. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was fondness.
“Is he still in the closet?” she asks. So maybe not that fond.
“I’m not sure he’s defined exactly how he identifies yet, and I’m not going to make that call for him. But he told Ellis about us yesterday.”
“In other words, he better figure it out real fucking fast. Ellis is about as subtle as a train wreck, and Shilo’s gonna take one look at the two of you and know something’s up. I hope you’re ready to have that conversation with him.”
“Ellis wouldn’t out anyone without permission. And don’t pretend you would either.”
This time, she really does smile, and I close the reattached screen door with a hopeful heart.
When I return to the tent, the crew is perched on the edge of the stage, passing a joint, and Gem is nowhere to be seen. Ellis glances up at my approach.
“He went that way about fifteen minutes ago,” he tells me, jutting his chin toward the back of the lot. “Said something about taking a walk in the woods.”
I find Gem at our clearing, sitting in the duff with his back to one of the old anchor trees, elbow propped on a bent knee.
His Star-Lord lunch box, paint faded and chipped with rust, rests at his side.
As I approach, he fiddles with the latch, snapping the little metal clasp up and down without opening the lid.
“It’s empty,” I tell him.
“I figured.”
“You didn’t check?” I hate myself for asking, and for the stone that sinks into my gut at the distant expression on his face. Dredging up a dry smile, he shakes his head, pulling his hand back and hugging his other knee to his chest.
He doesn’t ask about the missing hammock, but the vacant space it occupied grows larger and emptier the longer I stand there.
“It was falling apart,” I say eventually. “Cotton twine isn’t made to withstand the abuse of so many Mendocino winters.” And the sight of it made me sick after you left. I leave that part out, but I doubt he’s fooled.
Dropping his head against the trunk, he squints up into the canopy. “It must be mating season,” he says. “Those crows have been going at it since I sat down.”
Shading my eyes against the tangerine sky, I follow his gaze to the top of a nearby cypress. Seven or eight massive crows squawk and flutter atop the branches.
“Do you think there are gay crows?” he muses, and it’s so eerily evocative of my conversation with Cheyenne that I wonder briefly if he came looking for me at the motorhome and overheard us.
“Probably.” I lower myself down to sit beside him, close enough to nudge his shoulder with mine. “There are all sorts of reports of homosexuality in the animal kingdom. Don’t know why crows would be any different.”
He nods, but I can tell his thoughts are still clouded.
“Are you a gay crow?” I ask, trying to cajole him back to me. He tosses me a wry look, lips twitching.
“Only if you’re the crow I’m courting.” Turning his head, he rests his chin on my shoulder, his breath sending shivers down the column of my neck. “What did she say to you?”
There it is.
I’m not sure how to mend this rift between him and the family we both crave. How can I convince him there’s room for both of us when he’s always been so determined to compare?
But there’s no point in lying to him, and anyway, I need to know.
“She asked if I thought we could keep this a secret. If that was something we wanted. Well, that you wanted.”
“Why the fuck would I want that?” he asks, jerking back to frown at me. “You’re the one who asked me not to tell.”
“Because this is pretty fucking new for you? Because you begged her not to tell your mom that night you were rolling and I almost kissed you.”
He tilts his head to search my face. “You heard that?”
“Yeah.”
Slumping back against the tree, he closes his eyes. “God, that was a fucked-up night.”
“You were embarrassed.”
“No. Ha. I was covering my ass so it didn’t get chewed out.”
“Why would you have gotten in trouble?” I ask. Shilo wouldn’t have cared about the molly, not back then, when we all thought he was doing fine at ENC.
“Are you kidding? I’m still afraid of what my mom’s gonna do when she finds out I deflowered her precious Josha.”
“That’s ridiculous. Especially the ‘deflowered’ part. I’m not a child or some cloistered Victorian maiden.”
“Tell that to my mom. She warned me off you when we were seventeen.”
“What?”
“Yeah. That morning she caught us in the hammock together after I wrecked the box truck. Remember that little convo she wanted to have with me? After she practically threw you at Jesse?”
“She didn’t throw me at Jesse.”
“She hardly needed to. You were obsessed. You couldn’t abandon me fast enough the minute he came back into the picture.”
Abandon him?
The injustice of the accusation drives me to my feet.
“At least I didn’t follow him across the continent to another fucking country,” I spit down at him.
“I wasn’t following anyone.”
“Right. You were running away. God knows that’s your specialty.” I don’t mean it to come out so bitter, not really. But I’m reeling from the new betrayal of Shilo inserting herself between us when maybe there’d been a chance to avoid so much misery, and it makes the old hurts prick more sharply.
He flinches, and for some reason, it only fuels my anger.