Rebel Hearts

Sneak Peek of Adam’s Song

SNEAK PEEK OF ADAM’S SONG

Read the first chapter of Adam’s Song, Book 1 in my 8 Million Hearts series…

Chapter 1

Adam

The first thing you need to know is that it wasn’t a suicide attempt.

Don’t get me wrong. It was embarrassing as hell. And misguided. And definitely not something I’d recommend as a way of dealing with your problems.

But no, four shots of tequila, a hand-full of prescription painkillers swiped off the back table in the green room, and a chugged-down, room-temperature Miller High Life was not actually a suicide attempt.

It was just the best way I could think of to deal with the fact that I’d just found out my boyfriend was cheating on me, that he’d outed me in front of the members of my band, a gaggle of sound technicians, and about a dozen concert-goers looking for the bathroom, and, oh—that he was breaking up with me.

Clearly, I would have broken up with him if the asshole hadn’t technically dumped me first.

And I suppose you also have to add in the crippling case of stage fright (which you’d really think someone my age who plays music for a living would have gotten over by now) for my decision to make any sense. 25 years old and every show still felt like the first, when I’d had a panic attack at an open mic night in college. So yeah, at least two of those tequila shots happened before Ellis—the asshole ex—walked in and ruined, well, everything.

Look, I never said it was smart. It was just the only way I could come up with to get through the hour-long set that lay in front of me at The Grasshopper. After, I’d go back to my falling-apart group house, crawl into my falling-apart bed, and close the blinds and sleep for, oh, approximately 12 years, or however long it took for my falling-apart life to stop sucking.

That had to happen sometime, right?

Only things didn’t quite work out as planned. My vision was blurry by the time I walked onto the stage—and okay, if we’re being honest, it wasn’t a walk, it was a stumble. I was supposed to do the first 5 songs solo and I was cursing my past self for coming up with that brilliant plan.

Put the solo songs first, Adam. Get the hard stuff out of the way early, Adam. Play those, and then it’ll be smooth sailing with the rest of the band.

Well, fuck past-Adam and fuck his logic, because now I was supposed to open with Cardiology , the world’s most emo love song that I’d written the night I’d met Ellis three months ago, drunk on blowjobs and bourbon and possibility. Justin, my friend and occasional drummer, helped me record it and then put it up online without telling me.

For some unknown reason, it had set the hearts of thousands of teenage girls a flutter and I’d gotten more attention as a singer and songwriter in the past three months than I had in the three years since college. And Ellis, a manager and booker in the business, kept getting me and the band show after show, playing bigger and bigger venues each time.

The Grasshopper was an indie rock institution. They hadn’t even said yes the first time Ellis tried to book us there. But when the woman who was supposed to play their midnight slot came down with food poisoning, they’d called me last minute to ask if we could fill in.

It was so rushed, I hadn’t even had time to tell Ellis about it before the show. It was a shame he’d miss it, but otherwise, I was psyched. Playing there that night was supposed to be our big break. And I figured I’d just tell him about it after the show. Instead, I literally ran into him in the hallway before our set. I was on my way to the bathroom. Ellis was on his way to giving another guy a tonsillectomy with his tongue.

It was clear that he was just as surprised to see me as I was to see him. But what did he say when he realized it was me who’d slammed into him?

“Oh baby, don’t look so shocked. You knew we weren’t exclusive, right?”

I’d stared, mute, as Ellis put his arm around the guy whose mouth he’d been hoovering and laughed. He’d fucking laughed.

“Who—how—what the fuck?” I’d spit out.

“Adam, be reasonable. You can’t expect someone to wait around for you for months while you work up your courage to finally try something most people have been doing since they were 18.”

I’d wanted to vomit. In fact, I was pretty sure I was going to. I could feel bile rising in my throat and I’d turned around and walked back into the green room. But Ellis followed me.

“But hey, if you ever put on your big boy pants, Troy and I would be more than happy to show you what you’re missing. You’re a born bottom, kid, and someone’s gotta break you in.”

“Get. Out.” I’d turned and spit the words in Ellis’s face. “Get the fuck out of here.”

“Suit yourself,” Ellis had said. “But if you ever change your mind… Well, you’ve got my number. Good luck with your set.”

And the asshole had sauntered off like he hadn’t just ruined my life.

I couldn’t look at anyone when I walked back into the room. My face was hot, my heart pounding, and I kept feeling like I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my lungs, no matter how hard I breathed. Fuck, I was pretty sure I was about to have another panic attack.

No no no no no. This was not good. This was very not good. I looked around the room wildly and realized that Justin had started loudly arguing with Clive, our bassist, about whether he was rushing the bridge of our song Peonies . If I’d had the spare brain space, I would have thanked him, silently at least. But I was reeling, wishing I could sink into the floor and disappear, and the floor stubbornly refused to turn to quicksand beneath me.

So I did the next best thing—I took two long swigs from the bottle of Jameson on the coffee table, then stalked to the back of the room and grabbed a handful of pills scattered on a shelf, swallowing them down with another drink. I hadn’t done something quite that reckless since highschool but dammit, if I had to go on stage, I certainly didn’t plan on remembering anything that came next. If I was lucky, some of those pills might even be anxiolytics.

And now, only 5 minutes later, wasted, I was supposed to play this excruciatingly earnest, heartfelt, claw-your-eyes-out sappy love song about the first guy who’d made me feel desirable. The guy who’d told me to take all the time I needed, that he was fine with waiting to have sex. The guy who was fine with ‘waiting’ because he’d been fucking someone else this whole time.

So there I was, grabbing onto the mic stand for support, staring down at my guitar like I’d never seen it before and didn’t know if you plucked the strings with your fingers or your teeth, wishing the room would stop spinning, when I saw the rum and coke Justin had been drinking earlier, balanced on an amp in the corner.

I lurched over to it, drank it like I was dying of thirst, and somehow made it back to the wooden stool at the front of the stage. I couldn’t see the faces of the crowd in front of me, and not because of the lights. I couldn’t even see my hands at that point.

Muscle memory and sheer blind luck got me through the first verse of the song. Then I got to the chorus, and I remember thinking, fuck, I might actually cry .

I’m high out of my goddamn mind and my boyfriend just publicly outed, dumped, and cheated on me and I’m pretty sure I’m slurring my words, but the most embarrassing part of all of this is that I’m about to cry because I have to sing a song about fucking beginnings when I’ve just been forcibly reminded of how all anything ever does is end.

Amazingly, I didn’t cry.

Instead, I passed out.

And stopped breathing.

Like I said, not the best way of dealing with your problems. Instead of waking up 12 years later, my very public breakup and shame lost to the mists of time, I woke up 12 hours later, in the ER, my sister beside herself with fury and relief as she leaned over my bed, and discovered that my meltdown was on the front page of entertainment blogs and websites across the country. I’d even made it onto the local news.

My big break had turned into my big breakdown. Hell of a coming out party.

***

“Fuck,” I said, starting to put a hand to my head, then stopping when I saw that there were tubes poking out of it. “Where am I? What happened?”

Esther, my sister, smiled down at me, relief washing across her face. “You’re in the hospital. New York Presbyterian. Thank God you’re okay.” She took my hand and gave it a squeeze. “You really scared me there for a minute. How much do you remember?”

“Not much,” I said, closing my eyes in an effort to make my headache go away. “We… had a show. At the Grasshopper. I was about to go on—oh, fuck.”

My eyes snapped open—headache very much still present, unfortunately—and stared at Esther in horror. Images from the night flashed through my mind, disconnected but with enough detail for me to piece the outline together.

“Oh, God,” I said.

“Adam, what happened?” Esther asked, trying her best to use her stern big sister voice and utterly failing to keep out a note of panic. “Why would you do something like that? I know you don’t like playing in public, but I thought that was getting better these past few months. You’ve been doing so many more shows.”

“I—it wasn’t—” I stopped, unsure of what to say.

“If you were feeling—God, if things were getting this bad, why didn’t you tell me? Or someone? We can get you help. I know things can feel really bad sometimes, but you can’t—you can’t just—hurting yourself isn’t the solution.”

“I know, Es, I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

“Adam, I have to ask.” Esther bit her lip, which, combined with her too-gentle tone of voice, had me worried. Unsure and mild were not words I’d usually use to describe her. “Did you—did you do this on purpose?”

My eyes widened when I realized what she was saying.

“God, Esther, no. No. Jesus, no, nothing like that. I wasn’t—I wasn’t trying to like, kill myself or anything.”

“Adam, it’s okay, you don’t have to hide it or anything. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I just—please, let me help you. You don’t have to go through this alone.”

Oh God, this was excruciating. It was bad enough remembering what had actually happened the night before. But Esther thinking it had been a botched public suicide attempt was somehow even worse.

“Es, please, listen to me,” I said fiercely. “That’s not what it was. I just had a bad night. Something… happened. I was just trying to get drunk and forget about it. It wasn’t smart but it wasn’t anything bigger than that either. Just a bad night.”

“What happened?” Esther asked, her eyes narrowing in concern.

“It’s not important. It was a one-time thing. It won’t happen again. Trust me.”

‘It's not important’ wasn’t true, exactly. It was important—to me. But if word of what had happened with Ellis hadn’t reached Esther yet, if it wasn’t written in the sky over New York City, I didn’t see the need to enlighten her. I wasn’t out to anyone at that point. Well, except for the 20 or so people who’d been within earshot when Ellis had let loose.

But to anyone else? No. I was awkward enough as it was. I’d known I was gay since I was 12 but high school—hell, even elementary school—had been hellish enough when people just thought I was gay and tormented me for it. I didn’t need to go confirming their suspicions and making everything worse.

And my family wasn’t much better. My mom was chronically checked out, abusing whatever benzo prescription she was taking at the time, my stepfather--well, the less said about him, the better, but my stepbrothers were pieces-of-shit bullies whose favorite activity was beating me up. And my father? The best that could be said about him was that most of the time, he wasn’t home.

Esther was the only person I could have come out to. And rationally, I knew she wouldn’t care, knew she’d still love me. But old habits die hard and I wasn’t ready to spew out the contents of my heart only hours after doing the same from my stomach.

Besides, the rest of what I’d said was absolutely true. It wasn’t going to happen again. Because not only was I never going to talk to Ellis again, I probably wasn’t going to date anyone else until I was at least, say, 80 years old.

“Adam, this isn’t the kind of thing you can brush off,” Esther said. Back to the big sister voice. “Even if you didn’t mean to do it. Adam, people don’t just take half a medicine cabinet’s worth of pills with a chaser of bourbon if there’s not something seriously wrong.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” I spit back. Except I knew that wasn’t true either. There was a lot wrong with me, but I didn’t need anyone else reminding me, thank you very much. “It was just an accident. You’re making way too big a deal out of this.”

“Too big a deal?” Esther’s eyes were on fire. “Adam, you could have died last night.”

“Don’t be so dramatic,” I said, wincing internally at the way that echoed Ellis’s words. “I’m sure it wasn’t—”

“Fuck you, asshole,” Esther interrupted. “I’m a fucking doctor and if I tell you you almost died, you have to listen to me. You stopped breathing . They had to intubate you. Pump your stomach. You were—” she stopped, tears welling up in her eyes. “It was a lot closer than you realize.”

I felt awful. All my life, Esther had just tried to take care of me and all I did was resent her for it—mostly because I didn’t want to admit that maybe I needed to be taken care of. It wasn’t like our parents had ever filled that role.

“Es, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t mean for, well, any of this to happen.”

“Well I didn’t go through four years of medical school and three years of residency just to have my shithead little brother question my medical opinion,” she said, her face softening. “You’re not dying on me, you hear that?”

“Yeah, yeah,” I said, smiling faintly. “Got it.”

A nurse stuck her head into the room.

“You’ve got another visitor. Says his name is Justin. Want me to send him in?” she asked with a sunny smile. I wondered if I was one of her patients, if she’d seen my chart and was judging me. And then an even worse thought occurred to me.

“Es, did you call Mom and Dad?”

Esther glared at me. “I called everyone I could think of Adam. I wasn’t sure you were going to make it. I called everyone whose name I recognized in your phone.”

“Hey, I only gave you my passcode for emergencies!”

“I’ll… come back in a minute,” the nurse said, ducking back out of the doorway.

“Well what do you call this, dipshit? I don’t know what the hell else qualifies as an emergency.” Esther snorted. But then she took my hand and gave it a squeeze, carefully avoiding the tubes sticking out of my veins. “Adam, they’re not coming. I couldn’t even get through to Mom—no surprise there—so I left a message, but I haven’t heard back. Dad… Well, Dad—”

“Said something about not wanting to indulge my disgraceful behavior by giving me the attention I’m so clearly seeking?” I finished, rolling my eyes.

It was no secret that my dad had seen me as pretty much useless since I was a kid. Esther didn’t get along with him either, but at least they could be civil. With me? Well, the last conversation my dad and I had had was two years ago and you couldn’t call it civil.

“I mean, he’s in Europe,” Esther said. “He said he won’t be home until September. I’m sure he’d come if he—”

“Don’t bother,” I said with a bitter laugh. “We both know he wouldn’t.” I shook my head. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I’m actually kind of relieved they’re not coming. So who else did you call?”

“Justin. Ryan. Ben,” Esther said, ticking the names off on her fingers. “I mean, Justin is the one who called me, actually. He rode over in the ambulance with you and asked me to keep him updated.”

“God.” I sighed and sank a little lower in the bed. “No chance of forgetting about it now.”

Esther winced. “Yeah, uh. So you’re probably not going to be thrilled to hear this, but Ryan’s on his way out here from Maple Springs to visit. And Ben’s buying a ticket home, too.”

“Oh God, no,” I said, feeling my stomach sink. “This is so embarrassing. It was just an accident. Fuck, Ryan’s already on his way?”

“Arrives at La Guardia in a few hours,” Esther said.

“Christ. What about Ben?”

“I don’t think he leaves until later this afternoon.”

“Can I use my cell phone in here?” I asked, looking around the room frantically. “Maybe I can call him and convince him not to come.”

“They’re your friends, Adam,” Esther protested. “They want to come.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want them to. Ben’s on a fucking world tour right now. There’s no reason for him to mess that up for me—for something that isn’t even that big a deal.”

“Yeah, you and I are going to have to have a talk about what constitutes a big deal,” Esther said, standing up. She walked over to a table in the corner of the room that I hadn’t noticed. My clothes from the night before were folded up there and she pulled my phone out from under them and handed it to me. “I’ll go keep Justin company for a minute. But I want to talk to you about something important when I get back.”

With that ominous sentence, she deposited the phone in my hands.

***

The second thing you probably need to know is that for the past seven years I had been stupid, embarrassing, undeniably in love with Ben. I know that’s a thing people say a lot, casually, like, ‘Oh my God, I love Chris Hemsworth,’ or ‘I would literally die for this salad, I love it so much.’ They don’t really mean it—at least, I hope they don’t, when it comes to the salad.

But the thing was—I did. I meant it hardcore.

Which made the fact that he was straight really awesome. Obviously.

Though I guess if you’re a stickler for accuracy, I’d actually only been in love with him for six years and nine months, because for the first three months of college—we were paired as roommates freshman year—I was convinced he was just another close-minded asshole. The body of a lacrosse player and the brains of, well, a lacrosse player.

I barely spoke to him until November. Maybe not my most open-minded moment, but in my defense, I’d been sent to—and kicked out of—five boarding schools and preparatory academies between sixth and 12th grade and not once had one of the cool, popular kids turned out to be a decent human being.

So when I met Ben on move-in day, I didn’t have high hopes. He had one of those faces where someone’s so good-looking you just expect them to be an asshole because they’d never needed to learn how to be nice. And when I’d discovered that he’d only been on campus for three hours and had already befriended most of the bros on our floor? My hopes were downright subterranean.

It wasn’t until he came home from a party one night and saw me playing guitar that everything changed. I hadn’t even asked him his major at that point, so I was shocked to discover he was studying music as well. And when he called me out for being a dick to him, well, there wasn’t much I could say.

So I did what any normal human being would do—stopped hating him and decided to fall for him instead.

In one sense, it didn’t even matter. I wasn’t out, so it wasn’t like Ben had any reason to suspect I had feelings for him. It was pathetic, sure, but it wasn’t hurting anyone.

But then, last year, things had begun to change. Ben Kowalski, my best friend, had gotten signed by a label, run through their popstar production machine and extruded out the other side in perfect, cookie-cutter fashion as Ben Thomas. A new album, full of radio-ready hits with ear-wormy hooks and saccharine lyrics, and a world tour followed. He’d been gone for months. And even though we talked as much as we could, we could both feel the strain that the distance, his crazy schedule, put on our friendship.

About the only good thing to come out of it—or so I’d thought, at the start—was that by the time I met Ellis three months ago, Ben had been gone just long enough that the secret-gay-crush fog had started to clear from my brain. And so I took my first, furtive steps towards being an adult, entering the brave new world of dating , leaving behind the dank, comforting garbage bin of illicit-feelings-for-your-best-friend.

And it hardly even counted as dating. Ellis had said he didn’t want to look unprofessional, dating one of the musicians he managed, and I definitely wasn’t chomping at the bit to come out, so it was more like three months of arriving separately at the same bars, making out in the backseats of cabs, and then blowing each other in his apartment before we passed out or he kicked me out, whichever came first.

And now that I’d seen how that had all turned out, I wished I’d just stayed in my dumpster. Yeah, it was weird and smelly there, but it was also safe. And if I’d just stayed put, I wouldn’t have ended up here, in the hospital, somehow still hungover even though I’d had my fucking stomach pumped, terrified of Ben coming home to see me.

Because that would be just the most Ben thing ever. My first impression of him couldn’t have been more wrong—he was disturbingly well-adjusted, suspiciously kind to everyone, and downright creepily loving and supportive of his friends.

I decided to start with a text.

ADAM Hey, Esther told me she talked to you. I’m so sorry for everything but everything’s ok here. Please don’t come home early - you’d just fuck up your tour and I’m really fine

For all I knew, he could have been on stage at that moment, so I figured a text was a good start. But of course, he called me back immediately.

“Heyyyy…” I said, bracing for impact when I picked up the phone. “How are you?”

“I’m good? Um, how are you ? Are you okay? Where are you calling me from? Is everything alright?”

I sighed. “I’m fine. I’m in the hospital, but it’s not nearly as bad as it sounds. I just accidentally drank too much last night and mixed some pills in with the booze.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.” I tried for a nonchalant laugh. “Knew I should have paid more attention in high school health class. Synergistic effects and all that.” I paused. “It wasn’t… it wasn’t on purpose or anything. I don’t know what Esther said but, well, it was just… a bad night.”

Ben was quiet for a moment. “Adam, are you okay? I know that’s like, a shitty thing to ask from across an ocean and I get if you wouldn’t want to tell me because I haven’t been around for a while. I should have… I should have been a better friend these past few months and I just—fuck, I just, I want you to know that if there’s anything you need to talk about…”

Oh God, kill me now.

Sure, yeah, actually, now that you mention it. I guess I should probably tell you I’ve been in love with you since we were 18 and I think about you naked like, a lot, and even though I try to limit myself to only thinking about you while I jerk off once a week, I still do it. And spend way too much time trying to imagine scenarios where you might fuck me. Desert island. Prison. Old-timey British boarding schools.

Oh, you meant like, do I have psychological problems? Uh, no. Of course not. What could possibly give you that idea? Also, please forget everything I just said.

“Ben, Ben, you’re fine. Really.” I tried to infuse as much confidence into my voice as I could. “Seriously, you are now and have always been an amazing friend. Dude, you’ve been traveling the world finally doing the job you worked your ass off to get. Do not apologize to me. I’m—I’m okay. It was stupid, but an accident. You do not need to come home.”

“I want to.”

“Well… don’t.”

“Real convincing argument.”

“Hey dude, I just had my stomach pumped. Cut me some slack.”

“And yet you call this ‘no big deal.’ ”

“I mean, to be fair, I’m not sure I ever explicitly used those words,” I argued. “It’s like, a modicum of a deal. Not quite a medium deal, but like, more than a little deal, I’ll grant you. Still though, don’t you have like a contract or something? Are you even allowed to leave?”

“Define allowed .”

“Like literally is it permitted in your contract or is you leaving going to put you in legal disputes with Greenleaf Records and have you paying court fees for years?”

“Years? Nah. Definitely not. Months…?”

“Dude. Don’t come home. Really truly times a million, I’m fine. I appreciate the offer and you can babysit me all you want when your tour’s actually over, but seriously. It’s not worth it for you to come all the way back for what, two days? Just to watch me go back to my house and avoid people?”

“I mean, I can think of worse things,” Ben snorted. “If you’re gonna be hiding out from the attention anyway, might as well have company. It would actually be kind of nice to get away from this craziness and just be myself again for a couple days. Hey, we could finally watch Twin Peaks .”

“In two days? I don’t think—wait, what attention?”

“Uhhh, fuck. Um. Did Esther… maybe… mention… the whole video thing?” Ben asked, his voice growing higher and more hesitant with each word.

“Noooo,” I said, starting to feel slightly uneasy. “Should she have? What video thing?”

“Um. Well. So there are maybe, kinda like, a few, uh, videos. Of you. Like, on stage? And then, uh… falling? And then being carried out to an ambulance.”

“Jesus Christ.” My heart sank. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah.” I could hear Ben wincing. “I guess people had their phones at the show, you know. It, um… Well, a bunch of entertainment blogs ran the story. And Esther said something about you being on Channel 9 news?”

“Shit. Did they… did they catch anything from before the show?”

“Before the show? You mean like, before you went on stage?” Ben paused. “No, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Just… curious.”

“Does whatever happened before the show have anything to do with you suddenly deciding to drink your weight in whiskey and pain-killers?”

“It—it doesn’t not have to do with it,” I hedged. “I, um. I don’t really want to talk about it, if that’s okay.”

Understatement of the year. What happened? Oh, you know. Just found out the first guy I’d ever called my boyfriend was fucking someone else the whole time. But don’t worry—he was really polite about it, and extended an invitation for me to join in. Oh, by the way, I like dick, I guess I forgot to tell you for the past seven years.

Ben was quiet, and when he spoke, I got the sense he was picking his words carefully.

“Okay,” he said. “I get that. And if you really don’t want me to come back, I won’t. But I just—I think you should talk to someone. Even if it’s not me. I just—I love you man. I don’t know what I’d do if something—”

“Eww, gross, stop,” I interrupted him. “If we’re segueing into the feelings portion of the program, I’d be just as happy to skip that part.”

“Figures,” Ben snorted. “Okay, fine. You don’t actually mean that much to me and I couldn’t care less what happens to you. Is that better?”

“Much,” I said, heaving a sigh of relief. “You have no idea.”

“Just—just promise you’ll think about what I said, okay? About talking to someone?”

“I pinky swear,” I said, rolling my eyes.

And, as it turned out, I did. Mostly because after I got off the phone with Ben, after Justin came in and then left, Esther cornered me—easy enough, considering I was lying in bed, pantsless, and wasn’t about to get up—and asked me how I was feeling.

“Fine,” I said for what felt like the fifty-millionth time that day. “Honestly. I just want to go home.”

Esther made a face. Her you’re-not-going-to-like-this-but-I’m-saying-it-anyway face. I narrowed my eyes in suspicion.

“I’ve been thinking about that,” Esther began. “I know you say everything’s fine. And that you weren’t trying to do anything yesterday. But Adam, I’m worried. What you took, what you drank… that’s dangerous. I think maybe you should go somewhere. A clinic or something.”

I felt a hot flash of shame in my stomach.

“I don’t need to do that,” I said, trying to sound calmer than I felt. “Not rehab. Es, I don’t even really drink much or anything, except before shows. Just to help with nerves and stuff.”

“That’s still problematic.”

“Okay, so I won’t do that anymore. I’m not going to be playing any shows anytime soon anyway.”

After the disaster and public embarrassment of last night, I wasn’t sure when I’d be able to handle that again. I hated the feeling of people looking at me, of being dissected, on display.

“Fine,” Esther said. “But clearly something happened. Even if drinking isn’t the main thing, it’s like, a symptom, right? Of something bigger? I just feel like something’s going on that you’re not telling me, and that’s fine, you don’t have to, but you have to talk to someone .”

“So what,” I asked petulantly. “You’re going to make me see a shrink or something? I’m not going to spill my troubles out to one of your psychiatrist friends.”

Esther gave me a withering glance. “No. That would be ethically gray in the first place, since they know you already, and know me. But Adam, this is serious. I can’t like, be around 24/7 but at this point, I’m afraid to leave you alone.”

“Jesus, Es, I’m not five, I can handle—”

“There’s this place in West Redding, the Peachtree Center.”

“What, you’re going to have me committed or something?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s more like, a retreat. I don’t know. Celebrities go there all the time for like, exhaustion and stuff. They have therapists, counselors. And they’re really discreet. If you just went for like, a month, no one would know. And I know you’re an adult, I know I can’t make you do anything but I just… Adam, I’m freaking out. I just want to know you’re gonna be okay.”

Esther’s voice broke on those last words and I looked at her and wished I hadn’t. Dammit, her eyes were full of tears and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to say no. The thought of having to pour my feelings out to strangers made me cringe. But Esther had always been there for me, even when our parents had been conspicuously absent. She’d taken care of me when I’d needed it, no matter how hard I fought.

I couldn’t say no to her.

And on top of that, she was probably right. I was a mess. Anyone could see that. Maybe it was finally time to admit it.

So that’s how I ended up spending the next 30 days at the Peachtree Wellness Center, a holistic health retreat where they had horses and yoga and hiking and private rooms with high-thread count sheets—in addition to enough psychiatrists and clinical social workers to fill a Greyhound bus.

I figured it was going to be mostly kumbaya sharing circles and talking about my childhood with a bunch of spoiled rich 20-somethings and there was a lot of that. But they didn’t make you talk and mostly I just hiked and wrote and read. I was pretty sure I pissed the hell out of the shrink assigned to my case— excuse me, the psychiatrist assigned to guide me on my personal journey towards wellness—but the month didn’t suck entirely, and that was mostly due to Nick.

Nick was a divinity student volunteering at Peachtree three nights a week as one of his pastoral care externships. I hadn’t been inside a church since I was eight but when I ran into Nick in the kitchen one night when I couldn’t sleep, he was making tea, offered me a cup, and I couldn’t think of a good reason to say no.

Turned out, Nick—bi, 26, Mets fan—had almost zero advice to offer me, which ended up making him the one person there I could stand to talk to. And that was how, eight days into my stay at Peachtree, I managed to come out to someone for the first time. He took it with an almost disappointing lack of fanfare and just nodded, asking how I felt now that I’d told him.

And somehow, telling Nick made me think maybe I should tell Esther. And telling Esther made me think that maybe, just maybe, telling other people wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. And the next thing you know, it’s 22 days later and I’m waiting for Esther to come pick me up as I check out of Peachtree, trying not to act anywhere near as panicky as I felt.

“I can do this, right?” I asked, glancing over at Nick where he sat in a wicker chair in the atrium. Indoor orange trees rose up around us, stretching to the glassed-in roof. My bag was packed, lying on the terracotta-tiled floor next to the chair I’d been sitting in until I realized I was too nervous to sit.

“You can definitely do this,” Nick said. “Unless you can’t, in which case, you come back here and we watch more Bob Ross and you avoid talking to any of the people here who are actually qualified to help you out.”

“You’re qualified,” I shot back. Nick arched an eyebrow and I made a face. “Well, kind of.”

“I’m flattered you think so highly of me,” he said with a smile.

“God. What if like, everyone’s seen those videos by now? What if there were even more than I knew about? You know, it’s not really fair that they make you give up your phone and internet use here. I have no idea what I’m facing in the real world.”

“Well, what if everyone’s seen those videos. What if there are more? How would you feel about that?”

“Terrible.”

“And what would you do about that?”

I sighed. “Probably nothing. Ugh, I get it. I know like, I still have to do the whole coming out thing and be honest with myself and all that but why does personal growth have to suck so much?”

Nick smiled. “Beats me. It definitely does, though. You’re right.”

“What if none of my friends like me anymore? God, that sounds pathetic, doesn’t it?”

“It sounds like a question we all ask ourselves like, once a week. That’s a normal thing to worry about, even if all you did was talk to someone at a party with food in your teeth.”

“What if Ben doesn’t like me anymore?” I blurted out.

Nick gave me a kind look. “I wondered when that was going to come up.”

“He gets back from tour soon,” I went on. “I know I have to tell him but I just. Fuck. I don’t want to. What if he’s mad that I’ve been lying to him for seven years?”

“What if he says he understands and he still loves you and is your friend no matter what?”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t know. Maybe I should just wait until I’m 80 years old and on my deathbed to tell him I’m gay. Might be safer that way.”

“I mean, you could,” Nick said, shrugging. “Would you really want to though?”

“Ugh.” I ran a hand through my hair. “I might. What if he hates me?”

“He’s not going to hate you.”

“How do you know? You haven’t met him.”

“But I’ve met you. And I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t be head over heels for someone who was that much of a dick.”

“God, this is so embarrassing,” I sighed. “Why can’t I just be a normal human person? Like, people come out every day and it’s not a big deal. Why does my stupid brain think it is?”

“I don’t know,” Nick offered. “But your stupid brain is also the same brain that made you the friends you have, that can play any instrument it sees, that got you this far in life. Be a shame to trade it in.”

I turned back towards the rest of the building, looking down the hallway to where my room had been. “Part of me just wants to run back there and never leave. Are you sure I can do this?”

Nick stood up and pulled me into a hug.

“You can do this,” he said, squeezing my shoulders tight before releasing me and stepping back. “I promise. And you can text me anytime you need to talk.”

“Thanks,” I said glumly. “God, I wish Esther would just get here so we could get this over with. Even if everyone ends up hating me—”

“Which they won’t—”

“—I just want to know.”

I turned and glanced over my shoulder absentmindedly, then froze. I was waiting for Esther to pick me up. But the person walking through the front doors wasn’t Esther. It was the most gorgeous guy I’d ever seen—6’2”, broad shoulders, blond hair, and eyes so blue you could swim in them.

“Ben?” I said, my jaw dropping open. “What are you doing here?”

Keep reading Adam’s Song…