Chapter Fourteen
Idon’t really talk to Silas on the drive over to the trailer. I hope Kyle is there, because I’ve been building momentum the whole way, and if I lose it now, I don’t know if I can go through with this again.
I’m proving a point to Silas. That’s it. I don’t give a damn what Kyle thinks.
The amount of times I have to repeat it to myself makes me think it’s not true, but I want it to be. If I keep pretending, eventually I’ll have to feel it.
Right?
At some point in the swirl of thoughts coursing through me, I realize that there is no best-case scenario here. Even if he apologized for everything—which he won’t—it won’t help.
On the rare times that I end up dwelling in my memories, I put most of my mental energy into gaslighting myself that it wasn’t that bad.
My child’s eye must have made the bad things bigger and the pain brighter.
The people around me were adults doing their best, burdened by their own abundance of pain.
I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. I wish I’d been a better father. Everything you remember is true, and you have every right to be furious.
Even picturing him saying the words makes me shiver. It should feel good, right? The idea of acknowledgment and apology?
Instead, it makes the whole seething mass of memories creep closer. As if him acknowledging it makes it all so true that it will wrap its jaws around my soul and shake it, like wounded prey finally caught at the end of a long hunt.
And if he apologizes, then would I even have the right to be angry anymore? Or would I have to let that go, along with everything else. And try to be a whole person without that rage to shore up my personality. Without the doubt hampering me, providing a constant excuse for my failures.
I realize dimly that if he really did apologize, I would just consider it one more reason to be angry at him. Like he’d unburden himself and move on with his healthier, more responsible life, and I’d still be stuck here, mired in my own issues and unable to extricate myself from jack shit.
I’m aware that I look like a stompy, petulant child as I park sloppily and practically collapse out of the cab of Silas’s truck.
Especially considering how much I fought him to drive, even with my bad hand, like some worthless point of pride.
But I’m tired, sore, and already gearing up for the inevitable fight that’s about to happen, and petulant is about the best I can do right now.
I can’t think about what I’m doing. I can’t think about any of it. I’m just going to go in, have whatever conversation Silas wants me to have, and then flee the scene as soon as possible. And get the fuck back to my bed.
I’m about to yank open the door, when I realize I should take it down a notch.
The last thing anyone needs is for my bubble of rage to ratchet all their own issues up a notch without warning.
Instead, I knock. My entire body feels stiff and useless, and I can sense Silas hovering behind me like a shadow.
His silence is an indicator that he’s regretting his suggestion, but it’s too late now. We’re in this shitfest together.
Anger feels like a physical growl trapped inside my throat, and the pressure of it is so sudden, it snaps me back to reality a little. I roll my shoulders back, forcing my muscles to unclench, before reaching behind me without looking to take Silas by the hand.
I’m not angry at him. I’m just angry. And if I keep letting that spill over like this, I’ll turn into someone no better than Kyle, anyway.
Silas squeezes my hand and quietly blows out a breath, his other hand wrapping around my hip from behind.
He continues to stand there like a wall between me and the rest of the world, and I have the strongest urge to collapse back into him, begging him to pick me up like a child and carry me all the way back home.
None of this is my finest moment.
When the door finally swings open, it’s Kyle, and he does a double take. I stiffen on instinct, squaring my shoulders and looking him in the eye.
He looks worse than I do, which makes me feel a tiny bit of satisfaction.
Two black eyes, a swollen nose with a laceration across the bridge, jaw on the right twice as big as the other side, and both hands obviously stiff with swelling.
Despite the physical evidence of the beating he took, he still holds himself tall, though.
I’ve never understood how he does that. How he can do the shittiest, most chickenshit things possible and still walk around with his head high. Like he’s never doubted himself or his actions a day in his life.
He’s eyeing Silas warily when he finally breaks the silence.
“You’re mother’s not here right now,” is all he says, voice flat, left hand tightening around the bottle of blue Gatorade he’s holding. I’m honestly shocked it’s not a beer. It’s well past noon.
“I didn’t come to see her.”
I spit the words out with more venom than intended. I don’t know exactly why I’ve had a short fuse for her as well the past week, but I definitely have.
Kyle’s eyebrows raise while the rest of him stays completely still.
“Well,” he says, not following the word with anything else.
We all stand together, suspended in this awkward moment, before he turns around and ambles back into the trailer. His gait is easy, with long, slow steps. The way a predator walks. The way someone does when they’re not afraid to show you their back.
He doesn’t invite us in, but he also doesn’t close the door, so I take that as a hint. It’d piss me off if he invited me into my own home, anyway. Silas and I slip through the screen door and then close the main door behind us to keep out the early-winter chill.
Dad takes his time settling back into the armchair with a series of masculine grunts, swigging some more of his sad, room-temperature-looking drink and then fishing around on the side table to pull himself a Marlboro.
He goes through all the motions to light it up, and blows a long stream of smoke in my direction before he finally looks me in the eye again and speaks.
He doesn’t even have to say words to make me feel about two-feet tall, though. He just does. The familiar smells. The way he moves like we’re waiting on him to get comfortable. It all tells the story of who’s in charge here. I don’t even know if it’s deliberate, or if it’s just how he is.
“Well,” he repeats. “What do you want?”
I start to open my mouth, but before I get to the point of shaping the words, I realize I don’t actually know what I’m trying to say. All the thoughts that tumbled through my head on the drive here, none of them involved the actual beginning part of the conversation.
What am I supposed to do?
Just… come out?
Even the thought makes me wince, like it’s something that doesn’t belong to me.
Coming out is for kids who know themselves and are brave; I’m an adult.
I wasn’t repressed or dating women for show, I just figured out this part a little late.
The idea of having some big coming-out storyline makes me feel like I’m appropriating something that isn’t mine.
But as the thoughts bat around my head like rogue ping-pong balls, they always lead to something I know is not fucking cool.
I don’t need to come out, I’m still normal.
Nope. Scratch the word ‘normal’. That’s a gross, intrusive thought that’s not fucking cool. Bad brain.
I don’t need to come out. Coming out is for gay people.
I’ll take ‘internalized biphobia’ for a hundred, Alex.
I don’t need to come out. I don’t deserve it.
Ouch.
“Um,” I start, but don’t follow it with anything.
Dad’s still staring at me expectantly; half-engaged, half-bored. Silas puts his hand at the small of my back, stroking his thumb a little in a way that makes me shiver. I want to press back into the touch, but I can’t give in to the weakness right now.
It occurs to me all at once that I haven’t done this before. I haven’t consciously, deliberately come out to anyone. People just sort of found out one by one that me and Silas were together, and then once news spread around town, it was so well known I mostly didn’t even need to address it.
And it was always in terms of me and Silas. Us. Together, being gay. Because even if neither of us is specifically gay—although Silas might be gay, I really should fucking ask sometime—we’re in a gay relationship, and that’s what people are responding to, whether their reaction is good or bad.
This feels like it’s about me. Who I am.
I don’t like this. I don’t fucking like this at all.
“I’m sorry I hit you, sir.”
The words slip out of me without my permission, making my stomach drop, and I can physically feel how startled Silas is behind me.
We didn’t come here so I could apologize. That’s not the point of this little venture. But it abruptly felt like what I was supposed to do. Even the fucking ‘sir’ tacked itself on the end without my permission, like I’m still the obedient little punching bag I used to be.
I take a few deep breaths, but they come quickly and more ragged than intended, so I force myself to stand up tall and look Kyle in the eye.
Mentally, I’m flailing, trying to grasp some kind of structure to this conversation that isn’t fucking humiliating.
My expression gets hard, and I look at him like I normally do, injecting as much disdain into my voice as possible and burying the hint of fear that crawled up my throat a minute ago.
“I shouldn’t have turned it into a fight.
People got hurt, and we fucked with Gunnar’s business, and it wasn’t cool.
I’m here to tell you that it’s not going to happen again, if I can help it.
” I continue, my confidence growing with every word, because at least that stuff I actually mean.
“But I’m not sorry I stood up for myself.
If you want to be homophobic to me and Silas, it’s just another reason I’ll work to haul your ass out of town. ”
There. That was coming out.
Kind of.