Chapter 5 #2
Dad runs an appraising eye over me, like he’s trying to spot the evidence of gayness or lack there of in my face. On my clothes, like it would be a stain he’d be able to see if he just looks close enough.
Fucking idiot.
“Well, thank god for that.” A grunt. He pushes away from me. And then, like a punch to my stomach, “But you’re not going to have another damn thing to do with that pansy-ass friend of yours. No phone calls. Nothin’.”
“You can’t tell me that.” My voice is a broken wheeze. Like he really did just lay into me with his oversized fist as hard as he could. Doesn’t stop me from squaring my shoulders and narrowing my eyes right back at him. “I’ll talk to him whenever—”
“No son of mine’s hanging around with a damn faggot,” he snarls, teeth glinting. “Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“Then I’m leaving!” It’s like my brain’s just switched off and my mouth’s just going all on its own.
Well fucking let it. I’m fifteen fucking years old.
Only way he’s stopping me from seeing Charlie is if I let him, and I’ll never do that.
“You think you can tell me what to do? You can’t stop me from talking to anyone! ”
“While you’re living under my roof I damn well can!” He’s shouting now, vein throbbing and spittle flying. I don’t have a single shit to give. He can’t take Charlie away from me—
I must have shaken him off again without even realizing it, but the two of us are still right up in each other’s faces, so close I can see a muscle ticking in his cheek.
“I already told you I’ll leave! You can’t make me stay if I don’t want to. I fucking hate you!”
New pieces of me are breaking with each word I’m hurling at him, and those last four words snap free something so big, I’m not even sure what it feels like.
All my life, I’ve been the good boy, at least on the outside. Tried, no matter how much I’ve failed, to make him proud. Even when it was all a lie.
Not anymore.
I’m not giving Charlie up—
Aggression crackles between us, so thick and dangerous that I’m sure he’s going to take a swing at me, and there’s some sick, crazy part of me that’s cheering for it.
“You don’t know or care a thing about me, and you really think I’m gonna cut off the only person in the world who does, just because you told me to? Fuck you!”
Dad’s face breaks into a grin, and for a second, I’m sure he’s going to do it.
Instead, he takes a step back. “See, you’re not doin’ it for me though, are you?
You’re gonna do it for him. For that faggy friend of yours you care so much about.
You said it yourself, you’re not gay. But you don’t have to look twice at him to know he is.
And here he comes ‘round here looking for you—”
“Because he’s my friend—” All the adrenaline in my system’s slowing down my brain, but even ahead of understanding what he’s really getting at, there’s a dead sort of misery settling into my bones.
He shakes his head, eyes glinting as his lips pull into a disgusted sneer. “That’s not all he wants though, is it?”
“Even if Charlie is gay, that doesn’t mean—”
“Wake the fuck up, Myles,” he scoffs. “Coming ‘round here to see you one last time. Wantin’ to make sure you knew he’d call you tonight. Bringin’ you presents.”
He reaches over to the hood of his Chevy, grabbing a package I just now notice. When he shoves it into my hands, his fingers leave a greasy black stain on the pale green tissue paper. “Open it. Show me what it is.”
“No.”
“Open it or I will.”
My hands are shaking with anger as I pull apart the white ribbon. Slip my finger under the fold of paper and tear.
Inside is a book. The thick, satiny cover is printed with a painted forest scene, and in the middle, the cardboard’s been cut away in endless layers, each adding a new hint of depth to the scene until the details fade away into a misty softness.
Even without seeing what’s inside, just the cover makes it the most beautiful book I’ve ever seen, and my throat aches because I know Charlie would have known that’s exactly how I feel about it.
I hate that Dad’s watching as I flip open the cover.
Inside, it’s blank. Just pages and pages of heavy watercolor paper. More perfect than anything else could have been.
And on the top left corner of the cover, written in purple ink, a note from Charlie.
The prickle in my eyes turns into a full-blown sting. I’d thought I’d cried out all my tears, but no, more have to go and well up in the corners of my eyes as my throat constricts so tight, it’s hard to swallow.
It’s Dad’s scoff that snaps me back to reality.
“Just a friend? Wake the fuck up, boy. Either you’re lyin’ and you’re just as much of a fag as he is and the two of you really do have some sort of sick gay…
thing going on between the two of you, or he’s got it in his head it might happen, ‘cause either way, that pansy-ass cream puff’s in love with you. ”
A thousand pieces fall into place, and every one of them is a shard of glass burrowing into me, cutting so damn deep, I can’t breathe. Because it took my asshole of a father less than a minute to see what I’d been too blind or selfish or stupid to see in four damn years.
Charlie’s brilliant green eyes shining so bright, they look like they’re literally lit up from the inside when they land on my face.
The tiny hint of pink that sometimes creeps up under his freckles and over his cheeks that I always thought was just because we were outside. Or because we’d been laughing. Or because his sweatshirt had to be too warm on him. Or…
How I thought the way he’d sit so close to me was just because he’s just a touchy-feely sort of person. That when he hugged me every time we said goodbye, it was just because we were friends. I love those hugs too…
What he’d done that night last year, when I’d been sleeping over and—
“How selfish are you going to be?” Dad’s voice breaks through my thoughts like the final snap of a tree going down. Like the end. “Just how long you plannin’ to keep leading him on? Makin’ him think he’s got a chance with you?”
He shakes his head, disgusted. Not with Charlie this time, but with me, and my heart’s not just cracking open now. No, it’s crumbling.
“I’m right, aren’t I? You see it. You’re not doing that boy any favors anymore than you’re doing yourself any. Be a man, Myles. Let him go.”
Nothing about what he’s saying is for Charlie’s sake.
It’s all a sick, fucked up way for him to get his way.
I was right when I said he couldn’t make me carve Charlie out of my life unless I let him.
And he’s found the one way in the world to make me do just that.
Because the bastard standing in front of me, grinning like he knows he’s won, is right.
Not his homophobic bullshit, but about the other part.
I wish I was gay. I wish I could love Charlie too. The way he loves me. Because my fucking dad is fucking right, and even though I love Charlie more than anything in the world, I’m the one that’s broken and wrong inside, and I know I can’t ever love him any differently than how I love him now.
Charlie is in love with me, and all staying friends with him is doing is leading him on so I can eventually break his heart.
I can’t ever see him again.
I have to let him go, even if doing it feels like killing part of myself.