MAC
ONE
FOUR YEARS LATER
Nothing has changed.
My mind snags on that realization, putting a temporary hold on the panic and terror that drove me here. How everything is exactly the same. As if preserved in a time capsule, simply waiting for my return. The same people, the same scenes all play out on repeat. It is like I never left.
I’m not sure how I feel about that.
The borrowed truck rattles as I go down the familiar roads, passing the old sign for Jessie James Trailer Park.
The gravel crunching under my tires is the only sound filling the truck.
I pass trailer after trailer, all of them the same as before.
All with the same people sitting outside in the same rusted lawn chairs.
Kids race around, all covered in dirt and happy about it. I used to be those kids.
For two years, I’ve stayed away. After the night my dad almost killed me, I swore I would never come back. But I always knew I would. I knew I’d end up back here, because of him.
My best friend.
Sage.
The only person I would ever come back here for. The only reason I didn’t want to leave in the first place. I begged him, I fucking pleaded with him to come with me. Did everything I could to convince him. It wasn’t enough.
The last time I saw him, I was sneaking out of his room. Sneaking out after promising I’d stay. I made the promise knowing I’d end up breaking it. I had to leave, even if he wouldn’t come with me.
But here I am, back at the old park. All because he called. Because he sounded like he was breaking apart. The forty-five minute drive here, my mind ran wild. Thoughts bounced and pinged around with no rhyme or reason.
Why now? Why call me after avoiding me for two years? After I left, I tried to reach out, tried to get him to talk to me. But he refused. After a year, I finally gave up. I left him in my childhood and tried to move on with my life.
But one late-night phone call has me dropping everything and rushing back. I barely got out a flimsy excuse to the man in bed, waiting for me. Ran to my car with one shoe on and tossed the empty condom in his front yard.
I don’t have time to feel guilty about that. Not when I’m pulling up to Sage’s trailer. Not when people are gathered around outside it smoking, drinking, and laughing.
I’m not sure what I expected—cops, flashing lights, screaming. Not a normal night in the park. Not the usual suspects all fucking around like always.
With Sage’s panicked voice still ringing in my ears, I climb out of the truck. A group of guys I used to know call out my name, throwing their arms out and laughing about how I just couldn’t stay away. I ignore them, racing up the creaking steps to find Sage.
The screen door flaps closed behind me. The same trailer I used to sneak into greets me. The couch where we used to drink and watch movies. The kitchen he almost burned down from boiling water. Everything is the same. The smell, the feel, it’s like walking straight into my past.
“Sage!” I shout, kicking away empty beer cans that litter the floor, straining my ears to hear him over the sound of the music playing outside.
“Mac?” Sage’s voice comes from his bedroom. The same bedroom I crashed in when I couldn’t go home. When I needed a place to feel safe. I move through the trailer like I never left. Like I have any right to be here.
My hand freezes over the doorknob. A wave of uncertainty washes over me.
The last time I was here, I was sneaking out.
Quiet to not wake Sage or Mom, who was passed out on the couch.
I had to leave, but my heart was left behind this door.
Will it be the same? Will it be different? Fuck, will he look different?
Before I can work myself up to turn the goddamn knob, the door flies open. I have to take a step back to avoid it smacking into my face.
Then there he is. I swear, my heart stops beating. My breath is lodged in my lungs. Everything pauses. A frozen moment in time. The boy I knew.
His blond hair is longer than I’ve ever seen. It stands in every direction. His forehead has a thin layer of sweat, his bare chest on full display. Two new tattoos mark his abs and side. Both shitty, but so him it makes my heart ache.
His face is bruised. His left eye is bloodshot, and his lip is split, a bruise on his jaw just beginning to show.
But he’s smiling. At me. I want to rush towards him, touch him, feel that he’s real under my hands.
My mouth parts; my eyes wander. Slowly, my heart resumes beating, hammering against my sternum when my eyes connect with his.
Deep and brown. A whole life together hidden somewhere in those eyes.
Two years apart feels like forever and like no time at all.
“You actually came?” he asks more than he states. His voice is confused, yet happy about it. His face tries to fight the smile from turning into a grin.
“Of course I did. What’s going on?” I try to peek into his room.
Call it punishment, call it a fucking need.
I have to know if it’s the same. If he kept the shitty poster we stole from the show we snuck into, if my teenage self has been wiped away.
If the small Mac was here I carved into his dresser is covered up.
The room is too dark to give the answers I didn’t know I needed so damn badly.
His hand running through his hair distracts me, and I refocus. “Nothing, man. Everything is fine.” He shrugs dismissively. But something was most definitely wrong. After two years of silence, he wouldn’t call over nothing. Wouldn’t have cried when I answered.
“You didn’t sound fine. And what happened to your face?” I make a vague gesture with my hand, as if he didn’t know his face was jacked up and needed reminding.
“Nothin’. You know how it gets around here.
” He shrugs and steps out into the hallway.
It’s small, but the two of us make it even smaller.
His chest brushes against mine, and electric shocks spark through me.
Only for my heart to sink into my stomach like a stone when he shuts the door behind him, closing me out of his room.
“You want a beer?”
“I wanna know why I’m here, Sage.” He moves past me. And for some reason, it feels like he’s the furthest he’s ever been. Obviously, he’s right here, but he shut me out of his bedroom. The bedroom he always said I was welcome in.
I was the one that left, I tell myself. With one more sorrowful look at the closed door, I follow behind him like I always did.
I always knew Sage was my person. I knew when I was ten and got punched in the face for standing up for him.
I knew when I was thirteen and I would climb through his window to escape my dad.
And I knew when I was seventeen and I started looking at him differently.
When sleeping next to him in his tiny twin bed became something more.
Now, after two years of silence, I know what we had. Walking away this time will hurt as much as the first.
“You’re here because I called,” he says flatly, opening the door to the fridge. Light floods out around him from the open door.
Sounds from outside are muffled behind the cheap walls of the trailer, the laughter and shouts all sounding so far away. As if we’re in our own bubble, like we used to have.
“But why did you call? Why now?” A deep part of me pleads him to say because he missed me. Because he wanted me back in his life. But that part dies when he answers.
“Don’t know.” Another damn shrug. “Got twisted.” He grabs two beers from the fridge and shuts the door with his hip. His eyes look down at his feet, refusing to look back at me. The smile that he gave me is a distant memory.
I used to be able to read him with ease. Silent conversations where we didn’t need words were a daily occurrence. But now he’s a mystery. Two years wiped away everything.
“Ok…” I say timidly, feeling ill at ease and so fucking confused. He passes me a beer after opening it against the countertop. I’m careful to avoid touching him when I take it.
“Fuck, man, what do you want me to say? Got fucked up and called. Didn’t think you’d answer, let alone show up,” he scoffs, lifting his beer to his lips, pausing once I open my mouth.
“Of course I would. You’re the one who wouldn’t answer my calls.” He finally looks at me, his eyes dark and fuming. Dropping the bottle from his mouth, he holds it in a tight fist. His eyes flash with all the anger he has stored up over the last two years. All his rage rises up to the surface.
“And you fucking left!” he yells, the grip on the beer bottle tightening. “You fucking left. You snuck out like a little bitch.” His voice rises with every word until it’s a booming roar.
“My dad—”
“Don’t you fucking dare!” he seethes, taking a step towards me, the beer bottle pointed towards my chest like a gun.
A few drops drip down onto the laminate floor.
I take an instinctual step back, putting space between his wrath and myself.
“I don’t want to hear what your dad did!
I saw you, remember? I helped patch you up before you fucking ran.
I want to know what he had on you. Why did he go that hard?
He hit you for years, but not like that.
Why?” He pauses to catch his breath after his rant, giving me a second to form an answer.
But every word dripping in disdain lands hard in the chest. I rub at the ache he put there, hoping to relieve some of the hurt his words cause.
But I take them all. Fuck, I’m even happy to. Every harsh word, every angry syllable shouted at me gives me a sliver of hope. A hope that he still cares enough to rage at me.
“And why did you listen and leave?” The bottle is now being waved like a flag in the air when he throws his hands up.
“You could have held out here for a few days till he calmed down or ran off again.” Another pause as he glares at me across the tiny kitchen.
The walls feel like they’re closing in on me.
Years of avoiding thinking about that night slams into me with the force of a truck.
But he’s not finished. The next strike steals my breath and silences my heart. “He did, by the way. He’s been gone almost as long as you have.” His words suspend between us like smoke in the air. Hanging stagnant.
Words escape me, vanishing into the beer I chug to buy myself time. Or to drown out the feelings trying to overtake me, I’m not sure which. I weigh what to tell him, what to leave out. I’ve already lost him, so how much further can he go if he knew the truth?
He waits. Those damn eyes staring through me, waiting for me to grow a pair and confess.
I didn’t know my dad left soon after I did.
I don’t talk to my mom. She’s called, but I’ve avoided her like Sage avoided me.
Would shit be different if I had known that?
Would I have come back sooner? I’d like to think I would have shown up at Sage’s window and apologized.
That the fear of my dad finding me wouldn’t have been as heavy, as consuming.
That I would have been brave enough to risk it.
But how long would we last? How long would I have kept my secret? He wouldn’t have wanted me in his room, in his bed, if he knew how I felt about him. Our entire relationship would have changed.
Better than the relationship you have now. I bat away the thought. I tell myself he wouldn’t care that I’m gay. But how would he feel if he knew I wanted him? My thoughts are too chaotic. They spin and dip, evading me.
“Fuck. I need another beer.” He hands me his untouched one in offering. It quickly follows the same suit as the first, still not strong enough to help me get through whatever I decide to say. The silences stretches and grows with tension while I try to formulate a fucking sentence.
“Just tell me why you left, Mac.” His anger is pushed to the side, and now only vulnerability stares back at me. I owe him more than just the truth. I swallow down the last of the beer and confess.
“I left because…” I pause, hoping I find some fucking courage. He waits, crossing his arms and refusing to help me.
“I’m gay.” I practically whisper the confession, but it sounds loud in the kitchen. Even the box fan seems to hold its breath. I wait as long as I can before looking up at him, my thumb anxiously rubbing the label off the shitty beer.
“You left because you’re gay?” he asks slowly after way too goddamn long. My heart is so loud in my ears, my palms sweating as I cling to the chilled bottles like a lifeline.
“Yes.” I’m proud of how solid my voice sounds with that one simple word. It doesn’t waver or stutter. It’s firm. Final.
“That’s the secret? That’s what you refused to tell me?”
“Most of it. Yeah.”
“Are you kidding me?” I expected anger, or shock, but instead a laugh bubbles out his mouth, his head tipping back as he unleashes a sound I haven’t heard in years.
Whatever I was expecting, this wasn’t it.