Chapter 15 #2
Harrison pulled up his car in front of the Bel House, gliding slowly in the mainly pedestrian zone of campus where speed limits were down to a crawling pace.
I shut the door after dropping into the passenger seat and leaned in by instinct as much as desire to kiss him. Harrison’s lips found mine, and he kept the kiss going for a few heated moments.
When he pulled away from me, I was flushed with warmth and just a little hazy. Then I buckled my seat belt and tossed my backpack behind.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
Harrison smiled. “It’s not so much about the where of it,” he said.
“Ooh.” I rubbed my hands. “Why are we going?” I asked instead.
Harrison shot me a challenging look that nearly undid me right there and then. “Because I want you all to myself for as long as I can have you. And I want to see how loud you can be without my neighbors calling in a wellness check.”
I would have laughed if I thought even for a second that he was joking. As it were, I shivered with anticipation. “You packed your toys, didn’t you?” I asked.
The corner of his smirking lips rose a little higher.
The place we were going was three hours away, deep in the mountains. There was only a winding road leading up to it, and by the sound of it, there were acres of forest around it.
“Is it a wolf den? I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.
Harrison laughed. “If it were, would you stay there for me?”
I shrugged. “I’m in the car, aren’t I?”
I paired my phone with the car’s speakers, then played Pink Floyd’s “Shine On You Crazy Diamond,” to which Harrison put a hand on his chest and pressed the back of his head against the backrest, matching the look of heartbreak that I felt listening to it.
It was the complete version, well over twenty minutes long, and it spoke to the former band member, Syd Barrett, and the creative superpower that had established the band’s identity early on.
What happened to him wasn’t entirely known, but they speculated that he suffered a breakdown before secluding himself away from the public and from the band.
The melody of this masterpiece matched both the fire and ambition as well as his vulnerability and beauty.
We listened to it in silence, murmuring the few razor-sharp lyrics when they came along. I drummed my knees hard enough to make Nick Mason proud.
“Dad had an old video recording of their Pulse performance,” I said. “It was one of the few things he carried everywhere we moved. And often there would either be a VCR in the apartment, or he would buy one at the flea market for pennies, and he’d sit me down, and we’d watch it together.”
“That’s sweet,” Harrison said. “I first watched it a couple of years ago, alone.”
“Still a core memory,” I offered. “If it was late at night or if you were high, I bet those pigs scared the fuck out of you.”
Harrison laughed out loud. “Nah, they didn’t scare me, sadly.”
“Really? Because I had nightmares about the glowing eyes and protruding tongues. I’m still a little uneasy when I remember them.”
Harrison looked at me then, softly, though far too quickly because we were nearing a bend, and he flicked his gaze back to the road.
I wished the look had gone on forever. I wished someone else had thought to look at me like that before, but then I walked that wish back.
Nah. It was perfect as it was. He showed me, however briefly, what it was like to be adored.
“I like that you told me that,” he said. “I like hearing things about you.”
I laughed softly, at a loss for words. Nobody was so direct, so precise with their words. It was almost corny, except that it wasn’t. It ran straight to the core and said exactly what he wanted to say.
“Tell me something else about yourself,” he said.
“No.” I held back a laugh at Harrison’s confused look. “You tell me something about yourself.”
Harrison thought about it. He looked at the road, leaned his head to one side, and drew a deep breath of air. I thought he wasn’t going to answer, so I looked at my hands in my lap. Maybe it wasn’t wise to ask him to dig deep for private thoughts when he was still raw with recent heartbreak.
“When I was twelve, we went on a vacation. I don’t have any siblings, and my parents like their time away from me, so they often brought along one of my friends for a trip.
Whoever was that year’s favorite, you know.
I never had a best friend. They always got bored with me, I guess, because I couldn’t do sports, and my interests clashed with everyone else’s.
So this year, they decided to invite Luke.
He was in my class, and I’d only been on okay terms with him until then.
For some reason, they had noticed him at my birthday party, and they thought he was polite and sweet enough to get along with me.
They invited him without consulting me, so I went along with it.
Not that I would have protested. Luke was as good a choice as any other of my school friends.
The trouble was that Luke had a mop of blond hair and incredibly big, blue eyes, and he had dimples when he smiled.
Even worse, Luke and I were put into a room with a bunk bed, so we were constantly around each other.
And all this would have been fine, except that I was twelve and just discovering girls.
So while I was busy trying to understand my feelings and this deep, terrible frustration, Luke sort of cut right through all that noise.
See, we were still kids, and he was daring as hell.
He could go to the biggest slides or jump off the biggest diving heights, and he could swim out the farthest without any fear that things could go wrong.
And it put a spell on me. For days, I wanted to match him.
I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to trade places with him.
His parents loved him so much that they played board games on weekends or went on day trips.
And I licked my wounds in all my jealousy for nearly a week before something much, much worse happened. ”
I couldn’t keep a grin off my face. Sad as it was, it was a sweet story.
“I noticed that he was pretty,” Harrison said, like he was narrating a chilling horror story. “And once I’d noticed it, I couldn’t stop seeing it. I couldn’t stop fussing over every look, every smile, every dare. I thought I was going to die.”
He went silent for a while, so I asked. “What happened then?”
“What could happen?” he asked, laughing.
“I cried myself to sleep for weeks after, then freaked out when I put a name to that feeling. And for a few years, I tried to pretend I hadn’t felt anything at all.
I was still straight. I still liked girls.
I even started kissing girls, and I was good at it.
Prom king of my year with Tracy, my first real girlfriend, who was crowned the queen.
We split three days later because we were leaving for college in different states.
It hurt, but not nearly as much as realizing I was in love with Luke and so terrified that something had to be very wrong with me to make that possible. ”
“But you realized that nothing was wrong with you later,” I said.
“Everyone does. Eventually. I realized it sooner than most people, but I missed out on so much. See, Luke had had a crush on me, too. Not that summer, but a year or so later. He’d gone through the same confusion as I had, worked up the courage to accept it, even though he’d never told me so, and then moved with his parents to California.
Not that it would have gone anywhere even if he’d stayed.
I was still so lost and in denial. But there were others like me, others who could have guided me through it.
And I could have been in love with so many more people had I allowed myself. ”
“What for? Those things never last,” I said, trying to remember all my crushes.
Harrison laughed. I wasn’t sure if he was laughing at himself or at my ignorance.
Then he looked at me briefly before focusing on the road as the darkness gathered outside the car.
“It’s always good to be in love, every chance you get.
Loving is never a bad idea. Even if it goes nowhere.
There isn’t a better feeling than falling in love.
Why waste a chance? It dulls you, hiding from those feelings, being scared of them. It makes you less than what you are.”
Air slowly drained out of my lungs as I gazed at his profile. I wanted to say just how wise he was, but I didn’t want to break this wonderful spell that had fallen around us.
Later, I asked, “How did you find out about Luke?”
Harrison then put on a small smile. “We saw each other three years ago by chance. At a gay party, no less. I almost didn’t recognize him, but he still had those big, blue eyes, and his hair was still that shaggy blond. All grown up and cute as hell.”
“So it wasn’t a completely missed chance, huh?” I asked.
Harrison laughed. “Not completely. But I don’t kiss and tell.” He looked at me and winked.
It wouldn’t have bothered me if he went around telling.
If anything, it would make me proud. Strange, how that worked.
I’d always been so politely distant from all my flings, crushes, relationships, and hookups that I had never given them any fertile soil to grow from. “What happened after?” I asked.
“The predictable,” Harrison said simply. “We realized in the morning just how different we were from what we had been imagining. And we went our separate ways, no hard feelings.”
For some reason, that filled me with even more pride and validation. That wasn’t what had happened this morning. We were very much not going our separate ways, but sitting in the same car, driving up a winding road, about to lose ourselves in the forest and each other.