Chapter 41
LACHLAN
I’m so fucking embarrassed about my family. Although Isak already knows all the awful shit they do. It’s not like it can get any worse.
I hate to admit that part of my calculation is the fact that Isak’s not likely to trigger Uncle Norm with the way he’s dressed tonight. It’s a shitty thought but a realistic one. He’s in jeans and a button-down, so he looks way less Isak than usual. Other than the snap-front hat.
I love him in his skirts and net tops and lace and flowers, but this will make it easier to announce to my family that he’s back in my life after all these years. And he’s back for good.
“Come on,” I whisper.
We walk down his porch steps and over to my house. My mom is standing in the open door, livid. She noticeably tenses when she sees Isak. “Where have you been?” she hisses.
“Hello, Ms. Doyle,” Isak says. “Lachlan and I had things to do tonight related to the spring musical.”
“In Santa Barbara?”
Shit. I forgot she stalks my phone. I should turn that tracking feature off.
He nods. “It was a cast bonding thing.”
I almost laugh. Almost. Bonding between me and him, but sure. Fine.
“Oh.” That seems to deflate her.
“I want to show Isak some homework,” I say. “Can he come in?”
“Um. Yeah.” Mom looks at both of us warily, but having the neighbor right there as a witness is different from him being unseen next door. “I just wanted to know where you’d got off to.”
“Well, Mom, I was with Isak. We’re fine.”
She sighs.
Was that it? Did I escape?
Isak follows me into the house, but before we get far, we run into my uncle, who eyes Isak like he’s dirt.
My hands form fists at my sides, but I call up my politest voice. “Hey, Uncle Norm. You remember our neighbor, Isak Hammond?”
Uncle Norm’s eyes flash with annoyance, but he’s a good politician. “Well, Isak,” he says heartily. “It’s been a long time. How’s your mom?”
“She’s doing well, thanks.”
“I’m working with him on a thing for school,” I say.
Uncle Norm nods and gestures down the hall to my room. “Be my guest.” I don’t miss the way he wrinkles his nose like its physically hard for him to be near Isak.
“I hate him so much,” I mutter when Isak and I get inside my room. I leave the door open. I don’t want to give my family any excuse to barge on in.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers. “He’s a prick.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve seen this room in my dreams,” he says.
“Ha ha.”
“I’m not kidding.”
I turn to him.
He shrugs. “What can I say? It’s true.”
I like the idea that Isak’s maybe been thinking of me as much as I’ve been thinking of him all this time. He starts looking around my room—at the football trophies, soccer medals, and neatly folded clothes.
“What’s this?” he asks, pointing to a small hardbound notebook sitting by the lamp on my desk.
“It’s, uh, a notebook.”
He gives me an exasperated look. “Yes, I can tell that. Is it a diary?” He doesn’t say it in a teasing voice.
“It’s my poetry.”
Isak nods as if he weren’t surprised at all, even though I can tell he is. “You weren’t kidding. You write poetry?”
“Yeah. If you don’t mind, I don’t want to show it to anyone yet. If I did, I’d show it to you. I just … It’s too new, and they aren’t good enough.”
“Okay,” Isak says quietly. “I’m not going to pressure you. But if you ever want to let me read one of your poems, I promise I won’t laugh.” He pauses. “Unless it’s a funny poem.”
“They aren’t funny. More like … kind of sad, I think.”
“I think you’re kind of sad sometimes,” he murmurs. “Or angry.”
“Yeah.”
We look at each other.
“Sometimes I want to scream,” I tell him.
“Then scream.”
I huff. “What? I can’t do that.”
“Sure you can.”
“It’s not okay.”
“If you need to scream into the void, I’ll be there with you. Let’s find a place where you can be noisy.”
“Maybe,” I say slowly. “I just feel like I’m going to go out of my skin. Like I need to hit something or lift weights or go for a run. Something physical.” I pause. “Not sex.”
“We could box.”
I scoff at him. “No.”
“You’re not going to take a swing at me?” he says jokingly.
The idea horrifies me. “No. I don’t want to hurt you, Isak. Ever.”
“What if I invited you to hit me?”
“I don’t want to hit you. I want to … I want this to all go away.”
“You need to let it out, though,” he says. “We need to find a way to release your tension.” He chuckles, then echoes, “Not sex. But seriously, keeping everything bottled up cannot be healthy.”
“I know it’s not healthy. That doesn’t matter. It’s what I do.”
Isak grins. “I have an idea. When do you work for Wendolyn?”
I tell him.
“Want to hang out after sometime, on a Sunday?”
“Absolutely.”
Isak looks out at the hall to make sure the coast is clear, then stealthily kisses me.
“Wendolyn?” I call as I stride into her warehouse/studio space on Sunday.
It’s a large area with open shelving for signed books, swag, and shipping supplies; a writing desk; and a smaller desk with a printer where I process internet sales.
It smells of the sage incense she burns.
The place is bright, and we can hear noise from the gym next door.
“Hey, kiddo. What’s going on?” Wendolyn is about fifty, with dyed pink hair and a penchant for wild-colored clothes.
She’s a friend of my mom’s, although I’m pretty sure my mom doesn’t know about this particular pen name of hers.
Wendolyn has written in several genres, but she’s settled into queer romance.
She’s using her laptop in a corner, likely working on a new book.
“Can I talk to you about something?” Leaning over the desk chair, I wake up the desktop computer we use for processing shipments by jiggling the mouse. Then I plant my feet wide, my body twitchy. I’m wearing one of Isak’s Peaky Blinders–type hats for luck.
“Always.” She studies me over her reading glasses, then takes them off.
Do it. Tell her.
“I’m gay,” I blurt, gripping the edge of the desk.
Shit, I didn’t mean to just say it like that. But I wanted to practice telling someone, and an older queer woman who writes queer romance seemed the safest place, after Isak.
Wendolyn’s face softens. “Thank you for sharing that with me. Have you told anyone else?”
“Only my boyfriend.” My chest warms, calling him that. “Oh, and his mom knows, and maybe a few people who have seen us, but that’s it.”
Wendolyn’s steady eye contact is comforting, not invasive. “I’m touched you told me. How does it feel to get that off your chest?”
I scoot the rolling chair back and drop into it, feeling unsteady. “Good, but also crappy. Because I don’t know what to do. He and I are in a secret … thing. Relationship, I guess. I want to be able to claim him in front of the whole town, but if I do, my uncle is going to find out—”
“And he’s an asshole.”
Chewing on my lip, I nod. “That.”
Can I tell her that I’m scared of what he’ll do if he finds out I’ve been intimate with a guy? That feels too far.
She’s quiet a moment. “What’s your boyfriend’s name?”
“Isak.”
Wendolyn nods. “You’ve mentioned him before.”
I pull out my phone and show her a selfie he and I took.
She smiles. “He’s cute.”
“I know, right? And he’s an amazing performer. We’re in the spring musical together, and he’s terrific. I could listen to him sing all day.”
Wendolyn gives me an amused look.
“What?” I ask.
“You’re gushing.”
“Well, yeah. I think the world of him. I’ve known him forever. I just wish I could show him off.” My cheeks heat. “Because he’s really cool.”
“How does he feel about keeping your relationship secret?”
“I don’t think he likes it—I know he doesn’t like it—but he understands.”
“Is he out?”
“Definitely. He’s very open about his sexuality. He’s open in all ways. He doesn’t have a problem with wearing what he likes, even if others think it’s a little weird. And he does his own thing unapologetically, like he knits and enjoys hanging out with his mom and watches old movies.”
She gives me a sad smile. “Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is show the world who we truly are. But there’s no rule that you have to do so, or when.
For some people, it’s not safe. It’s okay to live on your terms, Lachlan.
Relationships involve a certain amount of give-and-take, and it sounds as if Isak realizes that you’re in a tough situation at the moment. ”
“Still,” I say. “I want to come out. I feel like I should.”
Pressing her lips together, she hums.
“Oh,” I add, eager to change the subject, “I forgot to say he’s a huge fan of yours. I guess he’s read all your books.”
Wendolyn claps her hands. “Then let’s take care of him, shall we?”
At school, it’s getting harder and harder to hide my feelings for Isak, probably because I don’t really want to. I smile and talk with him in first period. We sit next to each other there, and at lunch when I don’t have student government meetings.
Over the next week, we keep up our texting and meetups in the closet, only now instead of blowing each other, most of the time we just kiss and kiss and kiss.
Okay, maybe sometimes we also stick our hands down each other’s pants.
“Who have you been messing around with?” Vince asks me when he catches me by the industrial arts building all disheveled, with swollen lips and rumpled clothes.
“What?” I ask.
Vince gives me his “no bullshit” look.
“No one I want to tell you about,” I say.
He grins. “Are you taking her to prom?”
Fuck. My stomach hurts. My hands start shaking. I don’t know what to do.
Do I tell him? Do I lie?
I don’t want to go to prom with some girl. I can’t imagine holding anyone other than Isak.
But am I brave enough to do that?
“I might just go by myself,” I say.
God, I’m an asshole.
“You bought two tickets, though, didn’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Maybe you can get a refund.”
I have a better idea.
“Isak?” I ask when I catch him after Spanish class and drag him into an empty classroom. Instead of one of his caps, today he’s wearing a black bandanna folded in a triangle, his dark hair escaping out the bottom. How does he make even that look amazing?
“Hmm?”
“I, we, I, um, can we …” I rub my face and start again. “As class president, I need to go to prom. I bought two tickets without knowing who I’d take. Do you want to use one?”
Isak blinks. “Are you asking me to prom? If so, that’s the least romantic ask I’ve ever heard—and Malik barely asked Zanita, he just kind of walked by while she was talking about it.”
I shift my weight and rub the back of my neck. “Fine. Willyougotopromwithme?”
Now he’s smirking. “Sorry, what was that?”
I take a deep breath, my chest rising and falling. “Will you go to prom with me? I mean, do you want to use one of my tickets? I don’t know if we can arrive in the same car, but we can sit by each other for the dinner.”
At first, Isak looks pissed, and I frankly don’t blame him. “You sure you don’t want to ask a girl?” he asks.
“I’m asking you.”
After an eternity, he nods. “Okay, fine.”
My heart leaps. “Really? Because you’re the only one I thought of when I bought the ticket. I’ve been wanting to go with you the whole time.”
He steps closer. “Now that’s the romantic ask I was hoping for. So yes, I’ll go to prom with you in stealth mode. What should we wear? Tuxedos?”
I nod. “I can’t wait to see you in one.” Then something occurs to me. “Or, hell, wear a prom dress. Wear whatever you want to wear.”
“What if we say we’re going as friends? It’s after the musical, so we won’t be able to use that excuse anymore.”
I stare at him. “Would you be okay with that? It’s not like it’s not true.”
“And it’s not like it’s any of their business what we mean by ‘friends.’”
“Fair.” A wave of giddy excitement pulsates through my body.
“You’re going to be prom king, you know that?”
“I don’t care about being prom king. I care about going with you.”
Isak wraps his arms around my waist and rubs his nose against mine. I put a leg between his, and we kiss. Anyone could walk in, and the risk spikes my heart rate.
“I don’t want to take you for granted,” I mutter. “And I’m sorry I can’t be more open.”
“It’s okay. I understand.”
I step back. “Hang on. I’ve been carrying these around, because I didn’t want to leave them in my house.” I dig in my backpack. “I brought you a present.”
Isak’s smile takes over his face. “Oh?”
I nod, handing him a stack of six slim paperback books: Wendolyn’s latest series, all signed and personalized to him.
“Holy shit!” Isak’s eyes light up when he realizes what he’s holding. He touches the books with reverence, opening each cover to read Wendolyn’s inscriptions. “Thank you!”
“You’re welcome.”
Watching him glow, I have a better idea of what happens when I ship the books out to readers.
He leans in and kisses me. “Thanks. This is the best present ever.”
“I told her you were my boyfriend,” I say.
Isak’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Really.”
“That’s an even bigger present.”
“I want to tell everyone. I wish I were braver. I wish I could walk into prom with you on my arm.”
He sets the books carefully in his backpack, then tangles his fingers with mine. “I understand why you can’t.”
“Do you?” I ask, tilting my head. “Do you know all the shit my uncle has said about you?”
Isak bares his teeth, and he grips my hand tighter. “He says shit about me?”
“Yeah. He’s the reason why I stopped talking to you, back when we were kids. He smacked me and told me that you were gay and that I needed to stay away from you. In so many words.”
His eyes well up. “Is that what happened? I thought you were angry because I asked about Denise and your dad or how your family fought.”
I shake my head. “I would’ve talked with you eventually about whatever. But I was so scared of Uncle Norm and what he’d do.”
“He hit you?” Isak growls.
“A few times, yeah.”
“What the fuck? I’ve heard yelling plenty of times, but I never thought he laid a hand on you.”
“Sometimes he’d drink too much and lose his temper. I mean, in the past.”
“I’ve heard him lose his temper, that’s for sure.” He’s shaking his head, pissed.
I sigh. “Yeah. He hasn’t hit anyone in years, though. That was just when I was little, and mostly when I was trying to sneak back over to you. He thought keeping us apart would keep me from being gay or something.” I grin mirthlessly. “Joke’s on him.”
A vein pulses in Isaac’s neck. “That’s not okay, Lachlan.”
My instinct is to deflect and deny, but I’m so tired.
The bell rings. We need to go.
“I promise I’ll tell you everything,” I whisper. “Tonight.”