Chapter 6
6
BECK
Fourteen Years Old
I was in deep shit.
I had a crush on my best friend, and I was pretty sure he didn’t feel the same way.
I mean, I knew he loved me, but…not in the same way I’d started to love him. And I’d always loved him, more than anyone in the entire world, but lately that love had started to change, like it was growing into something bigger. Stronger.
I thought I always knew my love for Gavin would never stop growing—even that first day when my mom and I moved into the house next to his when I was six. I would never forget when he saw our moving truck and came running out to greet me. He had a big, goofy grin on his face, one of his front teeth was missing, and he was holding a comic book that had stains all over the cover. I was so excited that we would be living next to someone my age, and when he asked me if I wanted to be his friend, I couldn’t say yes fast enough.
Before my mom and I moved here, it was just me and her, bouncing from place to place. She used to be a ballet dancer, and I didn’t know why she stopped but I didn’t have a single memory of her dancing.
She liked to drink, though. I had a lot of memories of that.
Sometimes she would be sober. Sometimes she wouldn’t. Sometimes she would play with me and tell me how much she loved me, and sometimes she would just stare into space like I wasn’t even there. Like she was somewhere else, far, far away from me, so I would just play quietly by myself. I was really lonely, back then.
I didn’t really remember what she was like before my dad killed himself. I thought I was happy, but nine years was a long time to remember, and besides, most of my new memories were filled with Gavin. They were overflowing with him, with all the happiness and laughter we shared.
Gavin was my hero.
The same day I moved next door, he took me under his wing and acted like we’d always known each other. It felt like we’d always known each other. Our bond had been fast and deep, something I’d never experienced before in my life. My mom drank too much and his dad didn’t really pay much attention to him, and for two lonely six-year-olds, having each other to rely on was more than enough.
In those first few months, he talked to me about everything in his life, like he’d just been waiting for someone he could spill all his thoughts to. He told me who his friends at school were, what shows he liked to watch, how he’d just started playing soccer but didn’t really like it. He told me his mom had left when he was just two years old, so he didn’t really remember her at all. He told me he thought that might be better than remembering her and being sad that she was gone.
He showed me his comic collection—his favorite was Thor—and let me read them. I just liked the pictures.
He taught me how to ride a bike. I’d never had a bike, never learned how to ride one, and when Gavin found out, he rolled out his bike with the chipped paint and rusted chains and told me to hop on because he was gonna teach me.
I’d never had anyone I could count on like that—not even my mom. Especially not my mom.
When her drinking got to be too much for me, he was always there, letting me come over so I wouldn’t have to be around that.
Through the years, Gavin kept being there for me, distracting me. Making me feel better. Giving me all his love and attention.
Always.
He held me when the nightmares about finding my dad would come. Whenever I slept over at his house, we’d set up an inflatable bed for me, and when I woke up crying, he would be right there, climbing onto the bed to settle beside me, telling me everything was okay, that he wouldn’t let the monsters hurt me, that he was right there with me. He’d press himself against me and whisper, “You’re the sky and I’m the stars, Becky. You’re stuck with me.”
I couldn’t ever remember which one of us had been the first to say that, and as stupid as it seemed now that we were older, it was something that comforted me. Made me feel like I’d never, ever be alone. I liked that. Loved it.
I didn’t think it was wrong to sleep with him like that. Nothing about being with him—nothing about him —ever felt wrong, even though his dad always gave us funny looks and got mad if we were touching each other a lot. He didn’t like hugs and I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen him touch Gavin with any kind of affection.
That was fine. Gavin got everything he needed from me, just like I got everything I needed from him.
Gavin protected me at school, too. I was small for my age, and other kids tried to pick on me because of that. But Gavin was always there, telling them to buzz off or hurling a few insults of his own right back in their faces. After a while, they stopped bothering me. Everybody knew they’d have to deal with Gavin if they messed with me.
Sometimes it felt like we’d always been together, that there’d never been a time when he wasn’t there. Gavin was so much more than I ever thought I’d have, and I loved him so much that it felt like I might float away on that feeling sometimes.
So…I was in deep shit.
But even if Gavin did feel the same way, even if we did become something…something more , I had a feeling Gavin’s dad would be really pissed. He was always mad about something. I thought maybe he’d passed a little of that anger down to Gavin, because he lost his temper a lot. I thought it was really cute, and I was always able to calm him down with just a few words. Sometimes a hug would do it. I loved teasing him, though, goading him into getting mad. It was just too easy to do.
Like right now, for instance.
It was the start of summer, and we were trying to make plans for Saturday. We always had jiu-jitsu training during the week—that never changed—but we were free in the evenings and on the weekends, so I suggested we go to Derek’s this weekend.
Last summer we’d biked down to our friend Derek’s house almost every day to swim in his pool. That was when I’d really started noticing how much muscle Gavin had been putting on lately. How tall he’d grown compared to me. How his voice was starting to get deeper, smatterings of facial hair beginning to come in.
It was when I’d started noticing how I was constantly blushing around him. How my stomach would fill with nerves, my heart would pound, my body would heat. How I was getting anxious around him all the time, like I wanted to find the right thing to say, like I cared way too much what he thought of me.
It was when I realized that I had a crush on my best friend. A huge one.
“You’ve seriously never noticed the way he looks at you, dude? It’s super fucking obvious. And annoying.” Gavin was scowling at me, and my lips twitched.
I bit back the smile trying to spread across my face and cleared my throat. “No, and I’m pretty sure Derek isn’t into guys, Gav. He’s been on Stacey’s tail for like a year now. I think you’re just imagining it.”
His scowl deepened as his light brown eyes flitted around my face, going back to the birthmark near my right eye again and again. I tried not to blush when he looked at me like that, I really did, but I could still feel my face start to heat. I didn’t know why he cared if Derek looked at me.
“I’m not fucking imagining it, Beck! He was staring at your ass last week, I’m not gonna let him just look at you like that.”
My belly swooped at his words, and part of me wished there was some bigger reason why he didn’t want Derek looking at me like that. Okay, all of me wished that, but it was pointless to hope for things that would never happen. Gavin loved me, but not like that.
“Who cares if he does?” I asked, suppressing a laugh at his expression. I was taunting him, loving the way his eyes flashed with anger, searing into me with an intensity that made me feel like I was the only person in his world. Sometimes making him angry was the only way to get him to look at me like that.
Gavin practically had steam coming out of his ears, and this time I did laugh, loud and long and god, I loved him.
He launched himself at me with a growl, pinning me to the bed and glaring at me with his teeth clenched. He was a lot bigger than me right now, had gone through a huge growth spurt this past year, so it wasn’t hard for him to hold me down. Plus, he was a wrestling champ and knew exactly how to use that big body to dominate his opponent. I mean, we’d both been doing jiu-jitsu for years, and I wrestled too, but he’d always been better than me. “Stop being such an asshole, Beck.” He bounced on top of me, shoving me into the bed and making the headboard rattle against the wall. I wasn’t sure what that was for—if he was trying to make a point or what, but all he accomplished was stealing the oxygen from my lungs and starting a fire under my skin. I could feel it blazing across my cheeks, and when his eyes left mine and darted over every inch of my face, his own cheeks reddening, my heart stuttered in my chest.
“Gavin,” I whispered. His eyes snapped back to mine, a brown so light they were the color of honey.
I wondered if other parts of him were just as sweet.
My gaze dropped down to his mouth, moving from his wide lips to his deep cupid’s bow where a little freckle sat right in the center.
I loved that freckle.
When I raised my eyes back to his, he was staring at my lips now.
And, oh, god , my entire body erupted into flames, a hopeful heat that made everything prickle. I flexed my fingers and Gavin tightened his grip on my wrists. I didn’t know what was happening right now, but I did know I wanted him to close the distance between us.
I didn’t think he would. As far as I knew, Gavin wasn’t into guys. He knew I was into guys, but he’d never said or done anything that would suggest he was, too. He never really talked about girls, either.
So far, he was the only person I’d come out to, the only one I trusted with something like that, and when he saw how nervous I was to tell him, that I was worried he’d judge me or not want to be my friend anymore, he’d told me nothing would ever make him not love me. Told me everything about me was just right, and to keep being exactly who I was, no matter what his dad said sometimes.
But the way he was looking at me right now…it was different. It was intense and heated and I knew—I just knew —that he was feeling something stronger than a platonic kind of love. Because I knew Gavin better than I knew myself, and he’d never looked at anyone that way before.
Not even me.
“Becky,” he said softly. I held my breath when he lowered his face until our lips were an inch apart. Every muscle in my body locked up, and when he closed the distance and pressed his lips to mine, an embarrassing whimper vibrated in my throat. Gavin groaned, then let go of my wrists and slid his hands up to mine, linking our fingers.
It was perfect.
It was everything.
It was the moment when things shifted into place, like they’d always been slightly out of alignment, slightly off balance, but now they were right where they were meant to be.
Three seconds after my very first kiss started, it ended in the most awful way.
The door swung open. “Gavin, what was?—”
Gavin startled so hard that he accidentally smacked me in the face as he scrambled off me. He looked utterly terrified as he stared at his dad, who was standing in the doorway with his hand on the knob.
Mr. Forster’s face went from shock to disgust to an outrage so potent, so unexpected, that I pushed myself up off the bed and moved away from him—toward Gavin.
“What the fuck?” he spat. His lip lifted in contempt, his eyes bouncing between me and Gavin, who was standing so still I wasn’t sure he was even breathing.
Up until this day, I thought Mr. Forster was…okay. I’d never gotten very close to him and didn’t really like being around him because he always looked mad and he was really tough on Gavin. He got mad a lot—at Gavin, mostly, but sometimes at me, too, so we tried to stay out of his way.
But right now, he looked almost deranged with how angry he was. His face was red with it, his eyes wide and crazed. He let go of the doorknob and walked to Gavin in three steps, grabbing him by his upper arm so hard that Gavin cried out.
“What kind of gay shit is this? What the fuck are you doing? Huh?” He cuffed Gavin over the head, who put his hands up to block the next blow as Mr. Forster screamed hateful words at him and just kept hitting him.
This happened all in the span of five seconds. Five seconds I stood frozen in shock, in fear, until the reality of what Mr. Forster was doing had me jumping on his back and throwing my arms around his neck. “Get off him!” I screamed, panic and adrenaline pumping through me. “Don’t hurt him, he didn’t do anything wrong!”
“Beck, don’t?—”
Gavin’s dad backhanded him so hard he stumbled into the dresser, his hand going to his bloody lip, tears in his eyes as he stared at his dad with more fear than I’d ever seen him have. It made everything inside me go cold. The only thing I wanted to do was protect him, but Mr. Forster was an adult. He was bigger than me, stronger than me, and when he reached back to grab at my neck and arms, I couldn’t stop him from throwing me over his shoulders. I slammed into the ground hard, my head knocking against the wood floor. All the breath whooshed from my lungs, my vision whited out, and I just laid there in a stunned daze.
“Beck! No, stop, he’s—Dad, don’t! Please !” I heard as I tried to push myself up.
“Shut the fuck up!”
Just as I was able to sit up, the room spinning around me, I looked toward the door to see Mr. Forster pointing his finger at me, still holding Gavin with his other hand. Except there were two of him swimming in my vision. “Get the fuck out of my house.”
I sucked in a breath and tried to push myself to my feet as I watched him shove Gavin down the hall.
And then they were gone.
“Gavin,” I whispered.
I got up on shaky legs and staggered to the door. I thought maybe I’d hit my head harder than I realized, because everything was swaying around me.
“Gavin!” I yelled, looking down the empty hall. I could hear his dad, still yelling at him, and just when I stepped out into the hall and braced a hand on the wall, I heard the front door slam.
Then silence.
A fear so profound rose up that my entire body felt like it was being shredded to pieces, and I heard Mr. Forster’s car start up, heard the tires squeal as he peeled out of the driveway and down the street.
I stumbled down the stairs, keeping a hand braced on the wall as I moved to the front door. When I got outside, Mr. Forster’s truck was gone.
And so was Gavin.
The fear and anguish and helplessness all coalesced into an unbearable knot in my chest. I choked out a sob and ran back to my house, tripping over nothing multiple times, barely able to see anything through my tears. I ran up the stairs to my room, grabbed my cell phone where it was charging on the nightstand, and called my mom, the tears rolling down my cheeks as I tried to talk through them, as she tried to understand what I was saying.
She got the gist of it. She left work and came straight home, told me Gavin and his dad weren’t home, that Mr. Forster wasn’t answering his phone, and held me while I trembled and cried.
She didn’t smell like alcohol today. I was grateful for that.
When I told her every last detail, she murmured into my hair, “It’s not your fault. I’m proud of you for standing up for him. Trying to help him. I’m gonna call the police now, okay? And you’ll have to tell them everything you just told me. Okay? They’re going to help us. They’ll find Gavin.”
I nodded, a hollow numbness creeping into my chest, expanding slowly until it filled every inch of my being.
“They’ll find him and he’ll be okay. He’s strong. He’ll be all right.”
But she was wrong about that. I had trouble finding comfort in her words from that day forward, even though she meant well.
The police didn’t help us, and Gavin was never the same after that.
Neither was I.
My mom took me away from that house—no matter how much I begged her not to—and we stayed with a friend of hers while she tried to get the police to take action. She didn’t want me anywhere near a man that was capable of hurting two children, she said.
But the cops never took action because Gavin and his dad both denied what happened, said my mom was a bitter woman and we were both making it up.
I never thought the cops would believe lies, that if we told the truth they would help Gavin. Except they did believe them, and my mom got a serious warning for “lying” to the police. I never trusted law enforcement again.
My mom sold the house, no matter how much I begged her not to, and we moved into an apartment across town.
Far away from Gavin.
I didn’t even have a bike I could use to try and go see Gavin because the one I’d used for years had been his old bike. My mom refused to take me over there no matter how much I pleaded with her to at least just let me see if he was okay, if he was all right, because she hadn’t been there when his dad was hurting him.
But she didn’t budge, told me it was too dangerous, and wouldn’t let me go.
I felt hopeless after that. Every day that summer, I tried calling and texting Gavin, but he blocked my number, which devastated me. I thought about him every single day. Practically every moment. I cried myself to sleep most nights, then woke up crying because the nightmares had gotten so much worse. Except Gavin wasn’t there to hold me anymore. He wasn’t there to wrap me in his arms and tell me he’d save me from the monsters.
He wasn’t there.
I didn’t like not being near him all the time. Most of my memories included him, and it was like someone had ripped out a portion of my soul. Taken an essential limb, making it that much harder to function. I thought about going to his house every single day, but I was terrified of his dad possibly answering the door.
The next time I saw Gavin was at school three months later, and he looked okay, he didn’t look hurt. The relief of having him physically in front of me again had me running toward him, and when I tried to throw my arms around him, he shoved me away and called me a horrible name.
I had to leave school early that day because I couldn’t stop crying. I’d never felt like more of a child.
We were in high school at that point, both on the wrestling team, though Gavin was varsity and I wasn’t. The ellipses of our orbits never quite lined up, but there were a few times I tried to approach him and he either physically pushed me away or told me to fuck off. Used words I’d never let loose from my own tongue. Words that hit harder than any fist ever could. Words that contradicted everything he’d ever told me, and I started to wonder if he’d ever meant a single one.
He sounded like he meant them now.
I stopped trying to talk to him after a while. I wanted to think his sudden hatred of me was because of his dad, and I told myself that maybe Gavin was just trying to protect himself for some reason. There was a reason he was pushing me away, a reason for him to go back on his word.
There was a reason. There had to be.
But…I never got close enough to him to figure out what the reason was. He never once gave me any sign that it was all an act, that the boy I loved was still there, that he still loved me, like he said he always would.
I decided to just keep the memory of him—who he was before that day—preserved in a safe pocket of my mind where it would never be tarnished. I could visit that pristine memory from time to time, could brush my fingers over its perfection and know that, at least for a little while, I’d had him.
I could forget how, one moment, I was the happiest I’d ever been, and in the very next breath, my entire world had been shattered.
I hated the way it hurt, to have to see him every day and try to convince myself that no matter how much he looked like my Gavin, he wasn’t mine anymore.
Not anymore.
And no matter how much I wished and hoped and prayed and begged whatever god was listening that this was all a dream, a nightmare, that I would wake up with Gavin’s arms around me, with his soft words in my ear, with his heart beating against my back and know that everything was okay again…
No matter how much I wished and hoped and prayed, the truth of what I’d lost was always right there in front of my face.
It was ugly, that truth. And I wondered how something so beautiful could become so ugly.