Chapter 7 The Worst Night of My Life #2
I reached for her, lacing my fingers with her, and I broke. Out there, on that rickety old swing set, I shattered. Tears fell like shards of glass from a crumbling building. Each one burned my skin as it fell.
“I’ve got a great-uncle.”
I had no idea what relevance that had to our current situation, but I didn’t interrupt. I just sat there sobbing as she held my hand.
“I never met him, but my great-aunt Dottie tells me about him sometimes. I think you two would have gotten along well.” she said.
“He died before I was born. Dottie doesn’t talk about him too much.
I can tell it hurts her to think about him, but sometimes you have to walk through the hurt to reach a peaceful heart.
That’s what Daddy says, at least.” She squeezed my hand harder. “He was gay.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. The air felt like jagged ice inside my lungs. Like it was ripping away the lining until I was nothing more than slathers of tissue barely held together.
“Something happened, and someone told the wrong person. He died when he was just a kid.” She turned and stared at me, but I still couldn’t meet her gaze.
“I know what the Bible says, but I also know that there isn’t anything wrong with love.
The heart wants what it wants, and no book is going to change my mind about it.
” She paused, taking in a breath before squeezing my hand again.
“You look me in the eyes, Gray Collins.” I whipped my head in her direction.
“There is nothing wrong with the way you feel about him. You hear me? Nothing at all.”
Oh, God. She knew. She knew, and she must have known for a while. Did that mean she knew I asked him to break up with her? Had she known I’d tried to trick him into leaving her by claiming she was cheating? She knew, and she held all the power in the world. Could tell everyone just to spite me.
“He never looked at me the way he looks at you. Sometimes I would catch him staring, just lost in his own head for minutes straight. I thought maybe he might like both, but that wasn’t the case.
I found that out Saturday night. He called me at two in the morning sobbing into the phone.
He said something had happened, and that he couldn’t see me anymore.
He must have apologized a hundred times.
I didn’t know he’d been hurt—not until he came to class this morning. ”
He'd called her. After everything, he still called her to end things. Did he do it for me? Was he still hoping we could be together? Could we still be together?
“Kate, you g-gotta get someone else to take my old seat. Kyle can’t sit there, it’ll—” I choked out another cry, and Kate was in front of me in a split second, wrapping her arms around me and holding me tight. “He sh-shouldn’t h-have to sit next to him, it’ll break him. You gotta—”
“Hey!” she said, full of force. “I’ve got this. I’ve got him, you don’t have to beg. Of course, I’ll find someone else to sit there.”
“He’s been through so much, he doesn’t deserve—”
“I have this,” she repeated, punching out each of the words.
***
June 2003
Two months passed since Trevor hurt him. Two months spent sitting in the same room with only space and stillness separating us. Trevor was true to his word. Tommy followed me like a shadow, clinging to my every move—my every glance—like he owned me.
I guess he did, in a way. I guess all three of them did.
Kent stopped trying to talk to me about a week after it all happened. Every plea, every unanswered plea had felt like I was kicking him the same way those boys did. Like I’d been striking matches to scare him off.
My world came tumbling down the day after graduation.
I was sitting at the table with Momma and Trevor, talking about traveling around to different churches where I could sing.
She’d never supported my passion before, but it was like there was a heavy weight on her, and allowing me this one thing somehow alleviated the pressure.
I picked at my scrambled eggs with disinterest as Trevor droned on about attending community college in the fall when Momma cut him off.
“I talked to Mrs. Fox at the Pick-n-Save yesterday.”
I jerked my head up and stared at her. She hadn’t mentioned any of the Fox family since that night.
I’d assumed she could tell the subject hurt too much, and she was trying to keep my heart safe by not prying.
But now? Now I wanted her to pry. I wanted her to mention Kent.
Did Sister Fox tell her Kent got hurt? If she knew, then she could override Trevor.
Momma could make it all better by telling me to go to him.
Trevor wouldn’t call me out in front of her, I knew that much.
If he did, it meant telling her everything else that happened in my room.
“She said Kent’s leaving West Clark. He’s heading out to Dallas to chase his dreams.”
He couldn’t. Kent didn’t have any dreams outside the city. I was his dream. He told me so.
“Good riddance,” Trevor said, his voice heavy with disgust. I wanted to take my butter knife and plunge it into his hand, but hearing about Kent—getting to talk about him again—that meant more to me than making Trevor hurt like I was hurting.
“Dallas? What’s he going to do in Dallas? He doesn’t know anyone out there. He doesn’t know anyone outside of West Clark besides his Aunt Jeanie, and she lives in Tyler.”
Momma shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. Caterina just said he was leaving.
Seemed torn up about it, but I guess that’s natural.
” She stared at me with a smile. “God knows I’d be beside myself if either of you left.
” Her eyes narrowed slightly, but her smile remained locked in place.
“I don’t think I’d survive if you moved away, baby.
I’m just so thankful I raised you to know where home is.
That it’s with your family. You do know that, right? ”
I didn’t know what the heck she was getting at, I just knew Kent was leaving. He was leaving West Clark, and leaving me.
“When is he moving?”
She stared down at her watch, her hand shaking slightly. “His bus should be leaving right about …” She paused, her head nodding with each tick of her watch. “Now.”
No. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t.
Kent would never leave without telling me goodbye. I knew that. I knew it deep down in the creeks and corners of my heart. Even if he had a bus ticket, he’d wait for me. Wait for me to come and tell him goodbye. To come and …
We could still have this.
It was less of a thought and more of an epiphany. If I could just make it to him in time, I could go with him. We would lose our families, but we’d have each other. I just had to get to him.
“I have to use the bathroom.” I launched up from my chair like a rocket shooting toward the sky. Because that’s what I was doing, wasn’t it? Launching out of West Clark, toward a new world, full of love and possibility.
I bolted up the stairs, ignoring Trevor’s heavy footsteps behind me. I ran into my room and grabbed my backpack without even trying to close my door.
I was an adult. An eighteen-year-old man who didn’t have to live by any of their rules anymore. Trevor was welcome to try to stop me. He could even threaten to out me to our parents. Let him.
“I know what you’re thinking of doing, and I’m not going to let it happen, Grayson,” Trevor said behind me.
“Screw you.” I emptied my backpack onto the bed and ran toward my dresser, pulling out enough clothes to get me by.
“I told you what would happen if you talked to him again. I told you what I’d do to him. That still stands.”
“Set yourself on fire. How about that?” I dumped my piggy bank into the backpack and zipped it closed. When I turned around, Trevor was blocking the door.
“I’m not letting you do this. There’s no use anyway, he’s already gone.”
“I’m not letting him leave. I don’t care if I have to beg him, he’s going back home, and you’re going to leave him alone. Do you hear me?”
He snorted. “Home? Are you an idiot? He ain’t got a home. He ain’t chasing his dreams, dipshit, his dad kicked his queer-ass out the second he turned eighteen. He knows his son’s a faggot.”
I shook my head. “Kent wouldn’t tell him. He wouldn’t.”
He shrugged. “He didn’t have to. I took care of that for him. Is that what you want? You want Momma and Daddy to find out about you, too? I’ll tell them. Don’t think I won’t.”
I glared at him. I hated him. Probably more than I’ve ever hated anyone.
He was nothing more than a bully who got off harassing smaller kids, just because he could.
That’s all he would ever be. He’d go to community college, get a job managing a gas station or a fast food restaurant, and that’s all he’d ever be.
He’d hoard hatred like ammunition he could use to ward off his feelings of failure.
To make himself feel better than others. That was fine. He was welcome to do so.
But I wouldn’t. I refused to allow myself to become him. To be stuck here with him.
Me and Kent, we might struggle for a while.
We might end up sleeping on the streets until we found jobs, but we would live.
We would have each other. That’s something Trevor could never have.
He might make a decent-enough living as a manager or something, but he’d never have what Kent and I did.
He’d have to have a heart to fall in love, and his was charred and blackened like it had been left on the grill too long.
That’s what happens when you invite hate in.
It burns away at you, leaving nothing but ash in its wake.
“If you don’t get the hell out of my way, I’m calling the police. I’m eighteen, you don’t get to boss me around no more, Trevor. This is my life, not yours. For fuck’s sake, focus on your damn self!”
He reared back his hand and slapped me. “Watch your mouth!”
Momma gasped.