Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Tim
EVERYONE IN THE BAND knows I hate coming back to Baltimore. We managed to avoid it during our first big tour. Management wasn’t thrilled, but Erin had my back, and when she sets her mind to something, she’s a force to be reckoned with.
We weren’t so lucky this time. Even knowing from day one that we’d pass through here, my stomach tied itself in knots the moment we took the highway exit for the city proper. At one point, Cameron asked in his quiet way if I was okay, and I told him yes convincingly enough that he let the matter drop.
I’m definitely not okay.
I’m so glad this is one of our rest stops, as much as I don’t want to stay here any longer than necessary, because I’m so nauseous by the time we get off the bus that I seriously consider barfing up my lunch in the hotel room bathroom. Cameron gives me more concerned looks, but I escape into the shower to avoid having to talk about it. The band knows I don’t like being here and that it has something to do with my family, but that’s all the information I’ve given them. There’s no way I want them knowing the whole story. They’ll think I’m beyond pathetic, and I’m barely hanging on as their drummer as it is.
When I get out of the shower, Cameron says everyone is going to dinner. I reluctantly tag along, as much as I’d like to hide away in my room. About halfway into a meal we share with half the crew at a local Baltimore restaurant serving chunks of fried chicken and greasy, dripping street tacos, I realize my stomach isn’t turning itself inside out anymore. I even laugh at the story one of the crew guys tells about having to fight with some sound guy over whether to connect the amps or not.
“How did they expect the show to go on with no amps?” Kelsey says around a mouthful of chicken.
“No idea,” the crew guy, Max, says. “He swore this was the way they’d always done it. I had to go past him to his boss to get anything done. It put us way behind.”
“Is that why we had to scramble like that in Nashville?” Erin says.
“You guys are lucky you’re too busy to notice most of the time, but we pretty much always have to scramble,” Max says. “That was just the first time it was bad enough to reach you, too.”
I feel a little guilty at that. When we were coming up, we did all this stuff ourselves, hauling our gear to whatever bar was letting us play, setting it up, tearing it down so the next band could get out there. It’s weird having people do so much for us. Most people don’t realize the army it takes to get a band onstage, especially stages of the size we’ve been playing lately.
It’s made the crew feel like family. I know all their names, even if we’ve rarely had a moment to breathe and sit down for a meal like this in the past three weeks. You can’t help getting attached to people you’re with so much for so long. It’s like having a ton of siblings all of a sudden.
A pang strikes my chest. I wonder how my real siblings are doing. I haven’t spoken to Eva or Rachel in years. I haven’t spoken to our parents either. The last time I tried, it didn’t exactly go well. Maybe it’s the homey, cozy meal, maybe it’s being in Baltimore after so long, but something makes me want to reach out and try. Maybe something has changed after this many years of silence.
I resolve to give it a shot before dinner ends. By the time we make it back to the hotel, I’m dead set on making the call. Cameron gives me a look when I don’t follow him back to the room, but I assure him I’m fine, and this time I manage a real smile as I do it.
“Okay, man,” he says. “Just call or text if you need something.”
“I will,” I say.
I wait for everyone to head inside, then I find a place off to the side of the main doors of the hotel. It’s not exactly private, but it’s private enough. The lights of the lobby barely reach me out here. I make anxious loops on the sidewalk wrapping around the building as I hit dial and listen to the ringing on the other end of the phone.
“Hello?” my mother says.
She sounds confused, and I suppose that’s only sensible. I haven’t called home in so long I don’t even know if she recognizes my number.
“Hey, Mom,” I say.
“Tim?”
“Yeah, it’s me. I just wanted to call and say hi. I’m actually in Baltimore with the band for the next couple days. We got in tonight. I would have called sooner, but…”
All the usual excuses feel inadequate. It isn’t that I didn’t have time or that I was tired. It’s that I didn’t want to make this call. I was afraid of this call. I could have reached out at any point in the past several years, but I didn’t.
Suddenly, the sound quality changes and my father’s voice rings through the speaker.
“Timothy?” he says. “It’s good to hear from you.”
Is it? I really, really hope it is, but last time I called it wasn’t exactly a heartwarming reunion.
“Yeah,” I say anyway. “Sorry I haven’t reached out. Been really busy with the band and all that. We’re on our second tour now, then we plan to get back in the studio and put together a new album.”
“That’s great,” my father says, and it sounds real.
Please let it be real.
“I think I saw something on the news about you,” my mother chimes in.
“That was probably the tour stop,” I say. “They’ve been selling out, so I guess it’s got some buzz.”
“So I suppose you’re doing well out there,” Dad says.
Is that a note of bitterness in his tone? No, that would be ridiculous. They’re the ones who took me out of my school in Baltimore and sent me all over the country in the hopes it would “fix” me. Well, maybe it did, but not in the way they imagined.
I push past whatever emotion may have colored his voice in that moment.
“I was thinking we should get a meal while I’m here,” I say. “Touring bands don’t get a ton of down time, but I’ll be free for a night while I’m here. Maybe we could go to that restaurant downtown I liked as a kid, the one with the good spaghetti? Is that still open?”
My mother chuckles. “Yes, it’s still open.”
“Anyone you’d want to bring with you?” Dad asks.
The first thing that hits me is confusion. I answer honestly. “Oh, no, not really. I mean, the only people I’m with during the tour is my bandmates and the crew and the other band.”
“I see,” my father says in a voice that suggests far more than mere understanding.
The second thing that hits me is bone-chilling dread. The cold seeps through me despite the balmy Baltimore night. A piece of me knows that tone far too well, knows it right down to my soul, but I try to push away the assumptions, the fear, the awful thought that I know exactly where this is headed.
Then my mother goes and confirms it.
“Maybe a girlfriend?” she says.
If my teeth didn’t clench the moment she spoke, I might have sighed.
A girlfriend. Right. It’s not enough that I’m a successful musician, that I’m on tour with a band who makes the news. I’m missing one crucial piece from my life, the piece I’ve been missing this whole time, according to them.
In their eyes, I’m still that broken, messed up kid they sent away for kissing a boy under the bleachers.
“No,” I say, jaw tight, “no girlfriend.”
“Oh Timothy,” Mom says.
“What?” I snap.
“Don’t yell at your mother. She was only asking. She’s worried about you.”
“There’s nothing to be worried about.” There’s no keeping my tone calm any longer. “I just told you I’m in town because I’m touring with my band, my damn near famous band, but all you can think about is whether or not I have a girlfriend?”
“Well, there’s more to life than your hobbies—”
“This is not a hobby,” I shout.
“There’s no need to take that tone with us,” Dad says. “We’re worried about more than your bank account. We’re worried about your well being. You’re a grown man, not a child.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I know exactly what it means. It means kissing Keannen was childish in his eyes, the sort of aberration a little boy might indulge but a grown man should put behind him. Forget the way that kiss lit me up, forget the way my whole world burst into color when we touched, and settle down with a girl like I’m supposed to.
“Stop acting like a child,” Dad says, his own voice rising. “We didn’t move you around so you could keep playing childish games.”
“No, you moved me around to ‘fix’ me. You moved me around because you thought I could only be gay in Baltimore, but you were wrong. It’s not a phase, and I didn’t grow out of it. I’m still gay, and I … I met someone. He matters to me. I like him. So you can either accept that or I won’t be able to have you in my life.”
My mother gasps. The quiet that issues from the phone scares a fragile piece of me buried deep in my chest, the piece that’s still the scared teenager who didn’t understand why his parents couldn’t seem to love him the way he was.
The day they caught me with Keannen flashes through my mind, the memory stinging like an open wound. I didn’t get to say goodbye. I didn’t get to retrieve my things from my locker even. One day I went to school in Baltimore. Then next, it was Pittsburgh. When that didn’t work, Dayton. Then Seattle. By the time I reached the West Coast, they’d run out of time to straighten me out, and I’d learned that I liked being away from them. So I stayed. I found a job. I found Erin. I built some kind of life for myself. I thought tonight I might let them back in on a piece of that life, a sliver I felt safe exposing to them, but even that tiny glimpse has proven a mistake.
These people never loved me. And they probably never will.
But Keannen…
“I’m hanging up now,” I say through clenched teeth. I’ll be damned before I let them hear me crying. “I wish this could have gone differently, but I guess it can’t. Goodbye, Mom. Dad.”
I hang up, and in the silence that follows, it strikes me that that might be the last time I ever hear my parents’ voices.
Alone in the dark, everything I clenched behind my teeth breaks free. A harsh breath bursts out of me, and when I inhale, the sound wobbles and wavers. I scrub hard at my eyes, managing to wipe away the tears before they can fall, but I probably make my face redder in the process.
I stand outside the hotel for several minutes, struggling to collect myself before I attempt to go back inside. Cameron was already worried. I don’t want him knowing about any of this. I don’t want him thinking I was out here crying.
When I finally gather myself and turn toward the door, however, I freeze.
Across trees and hedges, Keannen stares straight back at me. His eyes are wide, his mouth firm and tight. I’ve never seen him look so serious, or so scared. My heart drops as I realize the worst possible person just overheard the moment my parents disowned me.