Chapter 10 #2
Tean was still trying to figure out what to say to that when Kazen came back.
He’d pulled on a hoodie, and although he still wore the shorts, they were higher on his hips now.
With more time to study the young man now, Tean could see the traces of baby fat that still softened his face, the smooth skin, the lack of facial hair—he might have been twenty, but he could have passed for even younger.
“Sorry about that,” he said as he sat in the recliner. He drew his legs up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them and cast a glance at the hall before asking, “So, are you, like, police?”
“Tell us about Brennon.”
“What about him? I haven’t talked to him in a long time.”
“How long?”
“Like, a year?”
“Why don’t we start at the beginning?” Jem said.
Kazen frowned. “I met him when I was fourteen. Is that what you mean?” He laughed at whatever he saw on Tean’s face. “It’s okay. I was the one who went after him.”
“That doesn’t make it okay,” Tean said.
“I know. A lot of people tell me that. But I think people just don’t understand.”
“What don’t they understand?” Jem asked.
“Pretty much everything. What it’s like to be gay and fourteen.”
“You know, we’ve both been there and done that,” Jem said.
“Yeah?” Kazen perked up and seemed to consider them more carefully. “How old were you when you came out?”
“Around your age,” Tean said.
“I didn’t ever really have to come out,” Jem said. “I just kind of did my thing.”
“I knew I was gay, like, forever,” Kazen said.
He grabbed one of the hoodie’s strings and began to chew on it between sentences.
“I mean, I was totally in the closet at first because of church and stuff, but I watched so much porn. And I basically lived on Reddit. GayBroTeens was the shit. I used to do these posts, one for every day until I got a boyfriend, how much longer until I turned eighteen. That kind of thing. God, we posted the stupidest shit, but it was such a vibe.” He laughed suddenly, the string falling from his mouth.
“I got banned so many times from TeenDick. I don’t know how they knew I wasn’t eighteen, but I had to create, like, a million different accounts. ”
“Did you meet guys on Reddit?”
“Oh yeah, there are always guys on there. They have all these rules on GayBroTeens, so I’d just go to GayBrosGoneWild or TeenDick, and—oh shit, you mean Bren.” He laughed again. “No, I met him at a church dance.”
Tean couldn’t help himself, but he was proud the words came out evenly. “When you were fourteen.”
Nodding, Kazen continued, “The first one I ever went to. Can you believe that? He was one of the chaperones.”
“You said you went after him.”
“I had to. I mean, he was hot. Have you seen him?”
Tean shook his head.
“Oh shit, hold on. You’ve got to see him.” Kazen produced a phone from the hoodie, tapped it a few times, and held it out. “I deleted all our pictures after we broke up—I was super immature back then—but here’s his Insta.”
The picture showed a man on the early side of middle age.
He was White, with dark blond hair in a conservative cut and blue eyes.
Regular features that Tean might have called good-looking or handsome, but not hot.
A hint of stubble showed at his jaw, and he wore a gray suit.
He could have been any Mormon dad in any congregation in Utah.
“God,” Kazen said, chewing on the string again. “Like, I had to. You see what I mean?”
“How’d you approach him?” Tean asked.
“I’ve always been able to tell when a guy likes me.
” Kazen shrugged. “He was watching me all night. He kept pretending he wasn’t, but he was.
So, I started watching him. At first, he’d look away, like nothing had happened.
But then he started staring back. I got so hard.
Finally, when I knew he was looking at me, I left the gym.
I found one of the classrooms.” Eyes distant, Kazen smiled.
“I could hear him checking the rooms, going door to door. And then he found me. I started unzipping his pants, and he let me, and then I jerked him and sucked him—well, kind of just licked him, because I had no idea what I was doing.” Pride brightened Kazen’s voice as he added, “He came so fast. I had no idea what was happening, so it got all over me. He was really sweet about it, though, and he let me borrow a T-shirt from his gym bag. It was way too big for me. When my mom picked me up, I had to tell her someone spilled a drink on me, and I was supposed to give Brother Lee his shirt back after we washed it.”
“Did you give him his shirt back?”
Kazen grinned. “He came over when she was at work. Stood there on the porch and asked me for his shirt. He was nervous, but I kept asking him to come inside, so finally he did. He sat down, and I sat down next to him, and he said we couldn’t ever do that again, and it had been a mistake, and I was a special young man, which was why he hadn’t been able to help himself.
About three minutes later, I had his dick in my hand.
That time, I was ready and had a box of Kleenex.
I gave him my number before he left, and after that, we started dating. ”
“What does that mean?” Jem asked. “How often? For how long?”
“Three or four times a week, maybe? He lives just down the street. It was love at first sight. I mean, we were kind of each other’s firsts, you know, and that’s always, like, so important.
We wanted to do all the cute stuff couples do, but we had to keep it secret, so we had to get creative.
I wanted to get a tattoo of his name on my ass, but he told me we couldn’t until, you know, I was legal.
Thank God. Can you imagine? But he did it too—he bought me a promise ring, and we used one of those photo booths to get pictures of us, and he used my name for his password. Stuff like that.”
“How long did this go on?”
“We broke up when I turned eighteen; it was super sad. But I wanted to, you know, see what was out there. And Bren didn’t like that.”
“You were the one who ended things?”
“Yeah, I had to. See, Bren wanted it to go one way—he got to fuck around with whoever he wanted, and I was supposed to be this good little boy and only fuck around with him. It was, like, super unfair, and we argued about it a ton. Finally, I told him it was over.” Kazen added, “God, he cried so hard. I mean, I cried too, but, like, only because he was crying, you know?”
Before Tean could come up with a more elegant way of asking, he heard himself say, “What about his wife?”
“What about her?” Kazen said, forehead creasing. “Oh, like, was she mad? I don’t think so.”
“So,” Jem said, “you knew about her? And you knew she knew about you?”
“I guess. I don’t know. I didn’t really think about it. Bren just told me he loved me, and he didn’t love her. I felt bad for him. It’s got to be hard to be trapped in a marriage like that.”
“He wasn’t trapped,” Tean said. “He was an adult. He could have left if he wanted to.”
“Not really,” Kazen said, as though explaining something obvious. “Mormons don’t believe in divorce.”
“Did your mom know what was going on between you and Brennon?”
“No way. I never told her we were dating. She would have gone ballistic. She’s not really into church, and she doesn’t care that I’m gay, but she would have freaked out because he’s so much older.
I keep telling her that some guys are just into older men.
Mom says it’s because my dad took off when I was a baby, and I’m, like, trying to find someone who will fill that role, and it’s super messed up and I need to date guys my own age.
But my therapist says it’s more complicated than that, and I’m probably seeking the emotional stability of a more mature partner.
I think it’s just everybody likes their own thing, and my thing is daddies. ”
Jem’s expression was strange, and it took Tean a moment to realize the blond man was trying not to laugh.
“And after you turned eighteen,” Tean managed to say, “you didn’t see Brennon?”
“Not really. We hooked up a couple of times because I’d get pissed at how fucked-up gay guys are, and he was nearby and horny and we knew how to get each other off. But Bren wanted more than that, and he’d get clingy, and then we’d fight again, and it was way too much drama.”
“You said the last time you talked to him was over a year ago.”
“Oh my God.” Kazen glanced at the hallway and then back at them. “He got in a fight with her, and he wanted to vent. He texted me. We met up. I sucked him off because it was his birthday.”
“You’ve got a current phone number for him?” Jem asked.
The silence suggested how stupid Jem was, but finally Kazen said, “Yeah.”
“Give it to me.”
After another of those moments that suggested staggering disbelief at how weird and dumb they were, Kazen read them a number from his phone. “But he hasn’t texted me in, like, months. I should have blocked him, I guess, but sometimes we both needed it.”
“You weren’t angry at Brennon?” Tean asked. “As you got older and realized what he’d done?”
“What he’d done?” Kazen said.
“Taking advantage of you. Abusing you.”
Kazen laughed. “He didn’t abuse me.”
“You were a child—” Tean began.
“Let it go,” Jem said.
Tean twisted to stare at the blond man.
“Bren was sweet,” Kazen said. “I loved him. I wasn’t in love with him, you know, but I was happy when I was with him. I seriously don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t met him. Gone crazy from blue balls, I guess.”
“Can you think of anyone who would have wanted to hurt Brennon?” Jem said. “Anyone he’d gotten in a fight with? Anything like that?”
Kazen darted a look at the hall, and then he snapped his attention back to them, color rising in his cheeks. “I thought they arrested someone. I thought it was Brother Young.”
“We’re trying to cover our bases.”
Kazen shrugged. “Not really. Bren was such a great guy; everybody loved him.”
Nodding, Jem rose. “Thanks for talking to us, Kazen. Now, you hang here for a minute. I’ll be right back.”
“What? Why? What are you doing?”
“Going to see what you don’t want us to find.”
“But I talked to you! I told you everything you wanted!”
“Tean, keep an eye on him. Kazen, I’m serious: don’t move, or shit’s going to get real.”
“Hey, you can’t go back there!” Kazen shouted after Jem. But he didn’t try to follow.
From the back of the house came the sounds of drawers opening and shutting, the creak of springs, the squeak of wood against wood.
Then Tean heard that grating noise again—and this time, he recognized it: the sound of the lid of the toilet tank scraping into place.
Kazen stared down the hallway, breathing rapidly, jaw tight.
He sat back in the recliner, rubbed his mouth, and then grabbed his phone.
When he looked at the screen, he said, “Oh shit. It’s Bren. ”
“What do you mean—” Tean asked, leaning forward to look at the phone.
Kazen threw the phone at his face, and Tean flung himself backward. The phone still hit him, but a glancing blow on his cheekbone instead of striking his nose. For the second time that night, Tean stumbled into the glass-topped furniture. This time, he lost his balance and fell.
As soon as the phone left his hand, Kazen launched himself out of the chair. He sprinted for the front door and threw it open, and it crashed against the wall. A moment later, Kazen was outside, the storm door wobbling shut behind him.
Jem appeared in the hallway as Tean was still getting to his feet. The blond man cast a single glance around the room, threw something at Tean, and barked, “Shit!” He took off after Kazen without a backward glance.
Luck more than skill let Tean catch the object as it flew toward him.
It was a man’s wallet—black leather that had worn down to gray at the corners, and dripping wet.
Tean flipped it open as he started toward the door.
A driver’s license occupied a clear plastic holder, and from it stared back a familiar face: Brennon Lee.
Shouts broke the night outside.
Tean shouldered open the storm door, and the chill night air met him, catching in his throat.
A car was pulled across the front of the Shumways’ driveway, and the glow of the headlights picked out the shape of a small figure.
A woman, Tean realized a moment later. She was shouting, “Down! Down! Down!”
A familiar form stood with his hands in the air, his back to the woman, maybe thirty yards down the sidewalk—where he must have stopped when she’d started yelling. Slowly, with visible frustration, Jem lowered himself to his knees, and then he lay face down on the sidewalk.
In the silence that followed, the distant pounding of footsteps drew Tean’s attention up the street. At the end of the block, someone passed under a streetlight—bald, big, dressed in dark clothing. The man cut the corner and disappeared.
“Hands where I can see them!” the woman barked. She was looking at Tean now.
Carefully, Tean raised his hands. He was still holding Brennon’s wallet.