Chapter 15
Fifteen
Just Call Him
I AM A MISERABLE SACK OF SHIT and I am going to die alone.
I’m back in my apartment in Brooklyn, twisted among the rumpled sheets on my bed, and I feel like I’ve spent the last twelve hours riding around in a cement mixer.
Fuck, maybe I have. It’s early afternoon, and I’m delirious with exhaustion, but I can’t make my brain shut up long enough to sleep.
After I left Cole standing in the middle of Bree’s lawn last night, I caught the last bus out of Hyannis to Boston, and then switched to a bus to New York at South Station.
And somehow it felt right, bumping through the night with all the jagged pieces of myself stabbing me in the gut, arriving at Port Authority at dawn, just one more garbage bin to put out on the curb.
I don’t know how the fuck I made it home, but I’m here now and I feel like shit and I look like shit and I smell like shit and I don’t know what I was thinking the past couple of months, acting like there was ever a way I was ever going to be happy.
It’s probably better that I remember what I really am.
Cole hasn’t called. Of course he hasn’t called. I can’t say I fucking blame him. Every time I picture his face, my stomach turns over. I’m a fucking bruise, an oozing flesh wound. I wouldn’t call me either.
With a groan, I drag myself out of bed, down the hall to take a piss. All I want is to lie down in the grass and pull the dirt up over me, but my fucking body insists on going about the business of living.
It’s when I’m standing in front of the kitchenette, forcing a glass of water down my throat, that my phone rings.
Seth. Probably trying to talk me into coming back or some shit.
I let it ring and go to voicemail. He tries again, and I put the phone on the counter, watching it skitter across the surface as I scratch my belly.
Then, a message pops up.
Seth: Hey, want to go for a walk?
Seth: I’m downstairs
He sends a photo, and sure enough, he’s standing on the steps of my building, the street where I live clearly visible over his shoulder.
I snatch up the phone.
Me: Hey, just give me a minute to put on a clean shirt
Me: I’ll be right down
When I open the front door a little while later, Seth is squinting in the sunshine, giving me a wry smile. His arms twitch as if he’s thinking about giving me a hug, but he thinks better of it and cocks his head, motioning down the street.
“Come on, let’s go for a walk.”
We start down the street, and we only make it about half a block before I decide that silence isn’t doing either of us any good.
“How’s Cole?” I blurt.
Seth shakes his head. “Not real great, I’d say. He was pretty hysterical when you left, and none of us got all that much sleep. When I left early this morning, he was curled up on the couch with Bree.”
“She really cares about him,” I concede.
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure she would disembowel anybody who hurt a hair on his head.” Seth gives me a half smile. “So, you know, maybe sleep with one eye open for a while.”
“Noted.”
We continue on a little further, our hands shoved in our pockets. It’s one of those muggy late summer days when the whole city smells like hot garbage and you hear an ice cream truck jingling every thirty seconds. August really is the armpit of the year.
“Cole and I —” I venture, and Seth looks at me out of the corner of his eye.
“Well, fuck, I don’t know what to call it.
I was in love with him once, when I was a kid.
Probably still am, but I’m fucking pissed at him right now.
We’ve been — I don’t know, hooking up? Since the beginning of May.
But we didn’t tell anybody because that was all it was. Or all that Cole said it was.”
I’ve been thinking about this shit all night, and this is still the best I can do to sum it up.
Seth sighs. “Yeah, I think we got most of that out of Cole last night. He seemed to think that you wouldn’t want us to know, but we could sort of tell something was up.”
“Yeah, we did make kind of a scene,” I agree. “I’m bi, by the way. I figure you’re not gonna be shitty about it because Bree is some flavor of queer and Cole is gay, but you know — if you’re gonna be shitty about it, now is the time, I guess.”
“I’m not going to be shitty about it.” A beat, and then he continues.
“And for the record? I fucking love you and I wish I was finding this out in a happy way so that I could — I dunno, buy you a cake with a rainbow on it. Maybe put on It’s Raining Men and dance around.
My little bro is finally telling me something real and I’m fucking ecstatic. ”
“Don’t get too big of a head about it,” I grumble, but I can feel the corner of my mouth twitching.
“Does Dad know?”
“Not as far as I know.” We’ve reached the entrance to Prospect Park, and I turn in, leading Seth along the tree-lined paths. “Fuck, I guess I should tell him. I dunno. Do you think he’ll be weird?”
Seth shrugs. “Far be it from me to understand how that man’s mind works. But you know Bree and I have your back, if you do decide to tell him, no matter what he does.”
“I thought you told me a little while ago that Bree wanted to disembowel me.”
“Well, I mean, she sort of does,” Seth acknowledges.
“But she loves you, too. She just — I think she knows things about Cole that nobody else does. Maybe not even you, from the way it sounds. And for the record — I don’t think she should have blurted out Cole’s business last night the way she did, and I told her so.
Not when we didn’t know the whole story. ”
“Why did she?” I demand. “If Cole told her something in secret, she shouldn’t have used it like that. Did she know he was talking about me?”
“Do you want to know the sad part?” Seth asks, and I nod.
“She told us last night that she thought you were into him, because you guys were flirting so much, and she was trying to get Cole to see the light about the New York guy and pick you instead. She thought if he took you dancing, maybe he would figure it out.”
“So she wanted Cole to dump me for being a fuckboy —” I pinch the bridge of my nose. “— So that Cole could go out with me?”
Seth laughs. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“What a fucking mess.” We’re on the banks of Prospect Park Lake, and I settle down in the grass. Seth sits down beside me. “For the record, I don’t think I’m a fuckboy. Maybe you can tell Bree I said so.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I lie down in the grass, folding my arms behind my head.
“I’m — kind of a dumbass. I mean, not about the stuff I actually do — you know, work shit — but when it comes to people.
I know I miss stuff. It’s like — I walk through the world and everybody else has the decoder ring to life but mine was lost in the mail.
But Cole — he never really minded, you know?
He just takes it in stride and he’s so fucking good to me.
And like, beautiful. I don’t know what the fuck he sees in me. ”
Seth lies down beside me. “It sounds like there’s a but in there.”
I sigh. “I just feel like — I dunno, he’s not telling me everything.
Like he’s the one who told me that if we got together, it had to be just sex and nothing else.
But then Bree says he’s calling her on the phone and crying because I’m the one who’s hurting him.
But all I ever did was respect the boundaries that he fucking set.
If he wanted something different, why didn’t he tell me? ”
“Have you talked to him about it?” Seth asks.
“I fucking can’t —” I burst out. “He just says he’s fine, like he doesn’t think I can handle anything.
And he won’t talk about —” Sky white over my head, the August haze pressing me to the earth.
Blades of grass poking my skin, tickling my bare calves.
The thick scent of dirt. I breathe in and out.
“I know I fucked up, back then. If I had that night over — but he won’t talk about it, he won’t tell me why he left — why he never called —”
“He told us about your prom last night,” Seth says carefully. “Did he ever tell you what happened after he left?”
Dad’s voice, frantic with worry. A sleepless night, the glowing digits on my alarm clock a mockery. Cole’s mother, cold as ice, as if her son’s face had been carved out of stone.
I’ve never talked to anyone about any of this.
“I know there was an accident.” The words come from some deep vault within me.
“Hannah’s mom drove me home from prom, but when I got there, Dad was out.
He got home a little while later, and he was — like he was when we found out about Mom.
He said Cole had crashed Sharon’s car, that she needed Dad to drive her to the scene.
He wouldn’t let me leave the house until the next day.
But when I finally did — Cole’s mom met me at the door.
She called me ‘the other boy.’ And she said they were taking him away.
And that was the last I heard from him until I saw him in April. ”
Seth takes a deep breath, and then lets it out slowly. “There’s more to the story, I think. A lot more that you deserve to know. But it’s not my story to tell.”
I glance over at him, and he’s lost in thought. “It’s Cole’s?”
Seth turns his head toward me, and his brown eyes are full of urgency. “Look, I don’t know the dude anywhere near as well as you or Bree do, but I believe him when he says he loves you. He’s losing his shit over you. And I hope you’ll give him another chance.”
I picture the whole tangled mess, and I cover my face with my hands. “I don’t even know where to start.”
“Just call him,” Seth urges. “I know he wants to work this out as much as you do. But it’s not going to happen until you actually talk to him.”
“I’ll think about it,” I sigh.
***
I don’t call him.