Chapter 35 Even
Even
Gemiah
Tunnel vision.
As a concept, I’m intimately familiar. For years, it’s been a state I associate with self-destruction—the unrelenting drive to find the next fix, the next fight, the next not-Josha to save from the doppelg?ngers of my worst self.
Sometimes, it’s not a metaphor—I’ve spent more nights than I can count staring down the barrel of overdose while the world narrows and blackens at the corners.
Call it focused delusion.
Call it another flavor of denial.
Today, it’s my salvation.
Because the catalyst of so many of my regrets is standing in the kitchen, and all I can see is the man walking toward me.
“What do you need?” he murmurs, bringing his forehead to mine as his hand comes up to anchor me at the back of my neck. “Do you want me to stay?”
Fucking always.
The impulse to cling to him, to shield myself with his solid body and steady, selfless heart, thrums in every pore. No part of me wants to tackle this confrontation on my own.
Which is exactly why I need to do just that.
These are childhood fears and unworthy resentments, and it’s time I stopped carrying them around. This is what it takes to be a hero in our story instead of a villain or a victim.
“I’ll be okay,” I tell him. “But I wouldn’t turn down a good-luck kiss.”
He doesn’t hesitate, and now the whole world narrows further, until it’s nothing but his warm lips giving comfort to mine.
We’ve shared a myriad of kisses in the last week—from hateful to hungry to heavenly sweet. This one tastes like a promise.
“I’m going to go work on Bonnie,” he says when we pull apart. “I’ll have my phone if you need me.” His hand coasts over my head in a lingering caress, and then he heads into the bedroom to finish dressing, while I square my shoulders and make my way to the kitchen.
My mom is pacing the short distance between the small table and the door, mouth moving in silent conversation, but she stops short at my entrance. Her eyes shine with unshed tears as she drinks me in, and my own prickle in response.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi, baby.”
The endearment is unexpected and hits hard, conjuring a flood of complicated emotions that strip my lingering defenses and leave me blinking back boyhood tears.
“Can I hug you?”
I nod, and she wraps her arms around me.
After a second, mine come up to return the embrace, and I bury my nose in her hair.
How can she feel so small and so strong at the same time?
Her homespun scents assault me—sawdust and lavender soap and something subtle that reminds me of fireflies and stories on the porch swing at the Italian farmhouse.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper, but I’m not thinking of the last few years. I’m remembering the day she moved back to Big Top, Milla and Cheyenne in tow, and how in my teenage hurt and anger, I hid from her at Josha’s for almost a week.
Are we even now?
Does forgiveness always wait on the other side of shame? Or am I just a lucky asshole?
She lets me go in stages—running her hands over my shorn hair, turning my wrists to examine the apologies woven through the aquatic murals on my arms, squeezing my hands as she drags me to sit beside her at the table in the flimsy thrift-store chairs.
I manage not to flinch when I lower myself onto the hard seat, but I make a mental note to get Josha to buy some cushions if he’s going to keep rocking me to sleep with his cock in my ass.
He’ll thank me when it’s his turn to take mine.
The man in question enters while we’re still searching for words, his eyes assessing, and a tiny smile tilts his lips at the sight of our clasped hands.
After snagging a maté from the fridge, he heads out into the yard, teasing his fingers over the back of my neck in another one of those featherlight caresses as he passes.
I can’t stop my gaze from following him, or admiring his ass in the silky shorts, and when I turn back to my mom, her expression has gone fond and amused enough to make me squirm for reasons beyond my sore backside.
“Why don’t we start with the easy stuff,” she says. “Tell me about you and Josha.”
The easy stuff? Ha. And yet, in spite of everything, maybe it really is that simple.
“He’s Josha. He’s mine.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s always been true.” She smiles. “I want to hear about how you became his.”
I’ve always been his, too.
But that’s not what she’s asking.
“Did he ever tell you what happened the night I left?” I ask, pulling my hands from hers to pick at the peeling laminate along the table’s edge.
“Eventually. He said he kissed you. He felt horribly guilty about it.”
“Did he tell you I kissed him back?”
“No. Did you?”
“Oh yeah. And I almost let him…do a lot more.”
“But you didn’t?”
“No. I pushed him away. Literally.” I force myself to meet her eyes, bracing for censure, willing it to scour me clean enough to escape her purgatory.
“That must have been really hard.”
I blink.
Not Why? Not How could you do that to him? Not scathing condemnation, but compassion.
Empathy.
And now the tears spill free as a weight I didn’t know I carried lifts from my wounded soul.
“I hurt him so badly. That wasn’t even close to the first time. You were right to tell me I didn’t deserve him.” Confession flows easily when met with understanding.
“Oh, honey. I never meant to make you feel unworthy of love. When I told you he deserved someone wide awake, I always hoped it could be you.” She reaches out to cup my cheek and brush at the tear tracks with a thumb.
I let myself lean into the touch for a moment, then pull back to scrub a hand over my face.
“I guess it’s a good thing I woke the fuck up, then.”
“I guess it is.” Her smile is warm as sunshine, and she tilts her head, studying me as I pull myself together. “This new skin of yours, it looks good on you. You seem more comfortable in it than I’ve ever seen you before.”
Because Josha loves this skin.
To be fair—against all the odds—he loved the patchwork version too. The one made up of faults and flaws and messy fumbles. But this skin has tasted his—has opened up and let the man who loves it share space with all its dark and desperate innards.
This skin loves someone back, and that someone is called us.
“We can talk about the hard stuff now,” I say.
“Why don’t I make us some coffee?”
She putters around Josha’s kitchen, at home in the space in a way that makes me ache with envy and missed opportunities, while I tell her about the AA meeting in Mendo and my hopeful plans to stay clean. I give up on the chair and join her at the counter by the time the coffee is ready to pour.
“Have you thought about going back to rehab?” she asks, gently, as she hands me my milky mug.
“I don’t want to be locked up again,” I confess. “But I’ll do it if I have to. If Josha asks. But I’d rather not be away from him when we’re finally finding our way together.”
“Does that mean you want to come on tour?”
“If it’s okay with you. I know I fucked it up royally the last few times, and that I need to pull my weight if I come.
I’m not asking to perform or take Ellis’s place.
I just need something to do. You can throw me one of the apprenticeships if you haven’t already filled them both.
” I hold my breath while she considers me, keeping my face buried in the fragrant steam coming off my coffee.
“Gem. Of course we would love to have you. But you have a history with being on tour that hasn’t always been healthy.
Are you sure it’s the right environment for you while you’re trying to stay clean?
I’m worried it will be triggering.” She sighs then, setting her mug aside and taking my elbow to nudge me around to face her.
“I’m worried I’ll be triggering. I’m not oblivious to the fact that all of your troubles started after I left you and Hals.
I need to take responsibility for that, and I’d hate to be the reason you failed at something that’s so important to you now. ”
“I did blame you, Mom, but I wasn’t always fair about it, and it’s too late to change our past. You can’t fix me now—I have to do that for myself.
Josha should have a man at his side, not a petulant child.
I can’t be that for him if I keep blaming you or Dad or Cheyenne for a shitty adolescence I created mostly with my own bad decisions.
I want to forgive you. I do forgive you, or at least I’m trying.
Can you forgive me enough to give me one more chance? ”
“Honey, there is nothing to forgive. When your grown child is struggling, all you can remember is every time you failed them, everything you did wrong. It overwhelms the good memories and buries you in guilt and regret. If I could go back in time, I’d do so many things differently.
I’d pay closer attention. I’d be a better listener.
I’d try to be more of a mom and less of a director, and I’d make sure you knew that you were talented and brilliant and loved. ”
The roar of a motorcycle engine filters in from the yard, chugging throatily for a few seconds before dying with a sputter. A tiny thing when stood against the raw rainstorm of emotion sweeping through the kitchen, but adrenaline crackles in the pit of my stomach.
It’s not as fucked as I thought it was, I think—a prayer and an answer wrapped in one.
“I don’t know about brilliant and talented, but I’ll do whatever it takes.
I’ll run concessions or the ticket window or the door.
All I need is enough to feed myself.” Please say yes.
The money is a sensitive spot after all the times I took my earnings straight to the nearest dealer or liquor store.
But I can’t lean on Josha all summer, and I don’t want him to see me as a responsibility.
Or worse, a burden. When my mom doesn’t answer immediately, I offer up the last of my pride.
“You can drug test me on the road, if it helps.” It might even help me stay straight.
Well, maybe straight isn’t the best word for me anymore.
A manic giggle threatens to erupt from my chest. Why is my brain like this?
I’m having my first real, important conversation with my mom in years, and I’m making stupid dad jokes in my head.
It’s like as soon as the stakes get too high, I retreat back to the teenage version of myself that thought I could coast through life on charisma and flippancy.
My mom gives me a small, rueful smile, like she can read my mind and I didn’t just offer to piss in a cup for her.
“Let’s take it one day at a time,” she says. “Isn’t that the mantra?”
It’s not a yes, but I nod, knowing it’s the best I can hope for.
I could continue to beg or bring up the fact that they’re selling the tent and this is my last chance to make things right on that level, but I’m afraid the sale is my fault, and I’m hesitant to open that can of worms when we’ve come to a place of tentative harmony.
I never realized how much I took it for granted that Big Top would always be there—a home base I didn’t think I wanted but kept nestled in the back of my heart like a keepsake. My parents are the tent and the show and the wooded lot with its rotating cast of marvels.
I should have appreciated the miracle of it all while I had the chance.
This time, I will. And maybe between that miracle and the one currently sweating over my busted bike, I’ll find the courage to finally grow up.