Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
WELLS
I’m wandering around my apartment when someone knocks at the door. Maybe the delivery person is angling for a fat tip and decided to bring it all the way up to me. It is Christmas, after all. Not that you could tell inside these four walls–there’s not a decoration in sight.
“You didn’t need–” But it’s not a stranger. I’m face-to-face with Carter, who looks like the blustery night has gotten the better of him.
“Hey, big bro.”
I still haven’t let him inside. “What are you doing here?”
True to my word, I did go away for about a week.
But something about the idea of spending Christmas surrounded by vacationing families made me want to crawl out of my skin.
Whatever this holiday brings, I wanted to experience it privately.
So, I got back from Aspen a few days ago after a week of lackluster skiing. Thanks a lot, climate change.
But to my family, I’m gone for at least another week, which is why it’s weird for multiple reasons that Carter is showing up at my door. I didn’t even know that he had my address.
“You going to answer me?” I push again.
He gestures around the hallway. “You going to let me in?”
I move to the side, letting him pass. He walks into the main area and gives the room a curious but not too nosy stare, which I appreciate.
I don’t love, however, that he plops himself down on my sofa without asking. “Mom and dad are driving me crazy.”
“And water’s wet,” I say at the same time I pick up the jacket he’s draped over said sofa. I remind myself that he’s eighteen, and I should at least be thankful that he’s housebroken.
“They hired a Santa Claus this year who ended up getting way too drunk and stumbled into the big Christmas tree in the foyer.” He holds his hand above his head. “You know, the one that’s like twenty feet high.”
I laugh, picturing the scene. “I feel like that would have made the party worthwhile.”
“It took two people to pull him out of it,” he says, matching my laugh before he grows serious.
“But then?” I can imagine variations of where this is going. I’ve been around long enough to see dozens of them play out in the Wellington household.
“At first it was funny, except then Mom went on a rampage trying to make sure that everything else was perfect. She overcompensated so hard on making it the ‘best day ever’ that I considered just walking my ass outside and freezing to death.”
I sit down on the couch next to him. “She’d probably have used your popsicled body as a yard statue for guests to tour. Add a bit of flash.”
He smiles. “It definitely would have made for a memorable ending to the day.”
The quiet stretches out between us until I break the silence. “So, what are you doing here? As far as you know, I’m not home.”
“Honestly, I just needed to get out of the house, so I took a chance,” he says, surprisingly glum before adding, “And I thought the trip may be a lie so that you didn’t need to come to the house today.”
Carter seems to be a lot better at playing along with their demands than I am, though none of them seem to come at the cost of who he fundamentally is as a person. So, even if he’s annoyed at them, I’m surprised he didn’t just go to his room to escape it all.
“Not interested in going to your girlfriend’s house?” I’m struggling to remember her name, but I know that it starts with a B. Beth? Maybe.
“Brittany,” he supplies. “She and I are having our own problems, not that she’ll admit it.”
I try not to look as uncomfortable as I feel. Carter and I don’t do this. Talk about relationship issues, that is. One, because I don’t have relationships, and two, because we aren’t that close. But still… he looks like a kicked puppy now. “Wanna talk about them?”
He runs his hands across his face, suddenly looking much younger. “Sometimes, I think she likes the idea of being with me more than she actually likes me, you know?”
I furrow my brows. I don’t know that anyone likes the idea of me. Or the real me. At least if the last few months are any indication. “What do you mean?”
He stands up and starts pacing around the living room at the same time there’s a knock on the door. Blessedly, it’s actually dinner this time instead of another unexpected visitor.
I take the bag that’s stuffed with way too much food for one person and walk over to the kitchen island. “You want some of this? Then you can tell me all about your girlfriend woes.” I smirk. “Clearly, I’ll have a lot of sage advice.”
His face drops. “Oh, would this be like… weird for you?”
I throw a fortune cookie at him. But I’ll give him credit that at least he’s thinking about my comfort instead of his own, which isn’t exactly a Wellington special when it comes to my sexuality.
“Other than the fact that no one would accuse me of being a very relationship-oriented person, I have to imagine that I can have a functional conversation about whatever’s bothering you. ”
We plate up our food and head back to the sofa, where I’ve been half-watching, though I’m loath to admit it, a replay of a hockey game on television.
Kellan didn’t text me when he got the gifts, but I’m not surprised.
And they were probably to assuage my own guilty conscience more than anything.
At least his brothers could get something out of it, too.
My brother inhales an obscene amount of food before he takes a breath. “She thinks that even though we’re going to college five hours away from one another, nothing needs to change.”
Ah, young love. “If you were going to the same college, would you want to stay together?”
Carter’s lips twitch. Yep, there it is. “I don’t know. Probably not.”
“And why’s that?” Actually, this whole advice thing is pretty easy. I’m approaching it like tutoring, letting a student work their own way to the answer.
He clears his throat. “It’s not because I want to be fucking around or anything.
She’s just like… obsessed with the fact that I’m a Wellington.
I feel like she wants to lock me down because of it, but she doesn’t even see the real me.
” I’m surprised at my brother’s level of depth, and it’s clear from his face that he’s warring with whatever comes next in his relationship.
I pick at my lo mein, trying to figure out what to say.
This has gotten more serious than I’d expected.
It would be easier if he just wanted to sow his wild oats.
“Well, I think that everyone knows that being broken up with doesn’t feel good, but if done responsibly, it probably doesn’t feel great for the one doing the breaking either.
But I don’t think that you should stay in something just because you’re afraid of a tough conversation.
” We’ve reached the point of the conversation where I’m talking out of my ass right now.
I’m shit at handling difficult situations.
Kellan flits through my mind again, but I push him away.
I well and truly burned that bridge before the holiday break, and I need to accept it.
A drunken shopping spree with aggressively expensive express delivery on the night I got back into town doesn’t change anything.
“I just feel like I’m getting it from all sides,” he says dejectedly before putting his empty plate on the coffee table. “Mom and Dad want to control me so tightly that I feel like I’m being strangled, and Brittany is over the moon that I’m now next in line to step into Dad’s shoes.”
I bite my lip. I know that Carter feels pressure, too, but I thought that, overall, he was a round peg in a round hole, his dislike of formal wear notwithstanding.
“What do you mean?” I’ve never asked Carter what he wants.
I just lumped him in with my parents and called it a day.
Suddenly, the guilt of that is gnawing at me.
He lets out a frustrated sigh. “Mom and Dad wouldn’t even let me play college hockey unless it was at Radford.
I got accepted to the top college program in the country, in Minnesota, and they absolutely forbid me to go.
It’s why things have been so tense at home.
I’m pissed, even though they’re thrilled and so is Brittany. That I’m staying so close.”
“You could have still gone to Minnesota?” I say, even though I know that would be an incredibly hard decision for him to make. Our parents aren’t known for making idle threats.
He shakes his head. “Easy for you to say. You decided to live your life exactly on your terms. You chose to go to Radford, and I’m sure you aren’t paying for this apartment with your tutoring job.”
I stiffen, even as I try not to snap at him.
For as little as I know about him, the same is true in reverse.
He has no idea what coming out cost me, regardless of whether I’d known what I was getting into at the time.
Maybe it’s time that he did. “I came to Radford as a last ditch effort to try and make them proud of me. To show them that I was still their son, even if I was gay. Clearly, they didn’t give a shit.
So yeah, they pay for my apartment and my tuition, but I mostly think it’s so that I’ll stay out of their way.
” I take a deep inhale. I didn’t expect to tell him so much.
But he’s looking at me, enrapt, like he’s maybe seeing me for the first time.
“I’m sorry they put so much pressure on you, but there’s a whole different shitty existence that comes from being ignored and rejected constantly. It doesn’t feel good, either.”
Carter’s mouth is set in a hard line talking, and for a second, I think that he’s going to disagree. “I didn’t know that you felt that way. I just thought it was like everything else in our house. Our parents ignore whatever doesn’t fit their perfect vision of the future.”
“Except that being gay isn’t a choice. It’s not something I could change, even if I wanted to.
And I’m sure there’d be something else after that Mom and Dad didn’t like.
Something that’s an affront to who they want us to be.
” I swallow the lump in my throat. I hate the way Carter’s looking at me–with pity.
He shakes the look from his face when he sees me scowl.
“I know it’s not the same, but I want to try to go pro.
I’ve been working for this my whole life, but they think I’m suddenly just going to stop caring after college.
That I’ll immediately trade my stick for a suit without even seeing how far I can go. ”
“Maybe they shouldn’t have raised kids who were told they’d be future leaders of the world if they wanted us to fall in line better,” I say, a smile finally toying at the edges of my lips. I like this side of my brother. Intense. Independent. Unrelenting in his goals.
Suddenly, he changes gears. “Why are you watching hockey? I don’t think that you ever came to a single game of mine.
” He’s not angry, just factual. But still, I feel the sting of his words.
By the time he was starting on his high school team, I was at private school, and I always had some excuse as to why I was too busy.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know how to explain Kellan, or how badly I fucked things up.
So I don’t even try. “I tutor a guy on the Renegades, and I’m trying to understand him better.
” Which doesn’t even scratch the surface.
But I don’t know what I’m doing. Torturing myself, probably.
Trying to find some way to feel close to him, definitely.
“That’s cool,” he says before adding, “what you do with tutoring, I mean. A lot of people who are really good at something don’t want to share that knowledge with other people. It’s a really generous thing for you to do.”
My brows lift. “Well, I don’t know that we’ll be going for the same jobs after graduation, so I don’t want you thinking I’m actually a good guy.” Because I’m not. I’m selfish, and that’s an inarguable fact. Just ask Kellan. He’d probably tell you that I’m an asshole, too.
Carter shrugs. “I like you.”
His words hit somewhere deep in my chest. Things with Kellan may be irreparably broken.
And I still have no idea what I’m going to do when I graduate.
But this new development with Carter… it’s not nothing.
And I’m done throwing away good things when they come my way because I think that I don’t deserve them.
“I like you too, Carter,” I say, leaning back against the sofa and kicking my feet up on the coffee table.
I gesture at the television, where all I can see is a free-for-all between two teams in different colored jerseys.
“Now, explain to me what the hell is going on.”