Chapter Thirty-Eight
TAD KNOWS he should turn off his phone.
He’s glued to it, though—watching texts and calls roll in. Lewis. Walt. Ava. Lewis. Even Alang and Stacy.
Lewis.
Lewis’s texts continue past midnight. Tad doesn’t read them, exactly, but it’s also hard not to read them when he looks at his lit-up phone screen. Please can we talk Lewis keeps begging. Please .
The word starts to look weird to him. Plllease. Puh-lease.
At 1:07, he goes to bed. Hetty settles on his stomach, a warm, furry weight. He pets her and she’s the only thing that keeps him from sobbing.
What if he ruined Stacy and Alang’s wedding?
His stomach churns, bile climbing his throat. Maybe he should apologize. But fuck, no, it’s their wedding night, and if he ruined the wedding, they don’t need to deal with him begging for forgiveness and being a needy asshole.
Plus, if he looks at his phone, he’ll see Lewis’s messages. He’ll listen to the voicemails. There are at least five.
His throat aches and his back gets tight, a spot dead center between his shoulder blades, and he really needs to roll over onto his side but he can’t because Hetty is still sitting on him, but if he could just move at least he could make his back stop hurting.
“Sorry, Hets,” he whispers, gently pulling her off him so he can roll onto his side. Maybe she’ll let him cuddle her.
She remains in the circle of his arms and he hugs her, burying his face in her soft fur. After a minute, she stands up, sniffs his face, and wanders across the bed. She sniffs Lewis’s pillow and looks at Tad.
Oh god. His cat is mad at him because his boyfriend isn’t here. Ex-boyfriend. Because Tad is the worst.
Nervous energy thrums through him. He’s not even tired. Why is he in bed?
He paces back to the living room. Turns on Netflix. The show he and Lewis were watching pops up with Netflix’s cheery offer to keep watching, so he turns off Netflix. Refills Hetty’s food dish, which confuses her. Checks his plants. Finds some brown tips on the leaves of his newest spider plant.
With the kind of zeal only sleeplessness brings, he trims the brown tips off. Then he pokes the soil. Could it be pot bound? Should he repot it?
Yes! Yes, he should definitely do that.
He covers the table with the old sheet he uses for repotting and transplanting, hauls out a bag of potting soil, finds a good-sized pot, and gets to work.
The spider plant isn’t actually pot bound, but the familiar rhythm of repotting soothes him. When it’s newly homed and back in its spot, Tad cleans up meticulously.
Now it’s 2:23. Tad goes back to the sofa and looks at the notifications on his phone. The most recent is a text from Lewis from seventeen minutes ago.
Madonna or kylie?
Tad’s stomach clenches and he sinks to the sofa. Oh god. Oh fuck. Oh, he messed up, didn’t he? He replaced one horrible thing with another, but it doesn’t mean the first horrible thing is going to go away. He panicked . All he saw was a repeat of John, who loved him and grew increasingly disappointed. And he loves Lewis so much, he can’t bear for Lewis to ever look at him the way John did at the end.
But , his brain offers tentatively, is it worth throwing everything away because of something that might happen?
Tad doesn’t have a good answer to that.
No, he does. It’s not worth throwing away what he has with Lewis because his last relationship crumbled under the inexorable weight of two people who weren’t right for each other. Lewis isn’t John.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck he fucked up so badly. Oh god. What was he thinking?
He forces himself to confront what happened at the wedding and it’s like something he watched instead of experienced. He knows Walt was there, and he knows Ofelia outed him. He knows he bolted, but he can’t really remember doing it?
And then—Lewis was there, but Tad’s brain was air raid sirens and jackhammers on concrete, screaming at him like he was prey on the savanna and the lions were closing in. His instinct when confronted with danger has always been to run and hide, to shut himself off in the most extreme way he can because that way the scary thing can’t get him.
Lewis wasn’t the scary thing. Tad just panicked. He panicked and ran from the man he loves, who loves him back.
Maybe Lewis doesn’t love him anymore.
His phone buzzes with a notification from one of his games, but the lit screen draws his eye to Lewis’s text. Madonna or kylie?
Slowly, Tad picks up the phone. His notifications are a mess. He’s never had this many texts in his entire life. The thought of reading them is overwhelming. What if they’re bad? What if everyone is telling him how horrible he is?
Hetty jumps up next to him and rubs her face against the corner of his phone. It yanks him out of his spiral, and he strokes her head. “Hi, honey,” he murmurs. “I know this isn’t normal. Sorry, sweetie.”
She blinks slowly and he almost starts crying. Even if no one in the world loves him, Hetty does. Maybe that’s stupid to a lot of people, but it means everything right now.
Tad’s finger hovers over his messages. He breaks out in a cold sweat. He can’t read them. They’ll be horrible. Why wouldn’t Lewis take back his I love you ?
Except his finger slips, and Lewis’s texts fill the screen.
His stomach lurches sickeningly. God he’s going to vomit. Except… he can be brave, right? He wasn’t brave earlier, but he could be. Walt found out he’s gay, and the world didn’t end, even though it felt like it at the time.
The first text from Lewis must have been sent immediately after Tad ran away: Please call me back, I didn’t mean to freak you out
Which isn’t so bad. Tad keeps reading.
Please can we talk
Please Tad, I really want to talk to you. Please can we not leave stuff this way
I’m so sorry
Tried calling you again but it went to voicemail
Please Tad can we just talk
I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve been an ass about the divorce stuff and not sticking to our original plan. We agreed on something and instead of talking to you about doing something different I just kind of did what I wanted to do. You’re right that maybe I got in my head that we had this like, perfect fairy-tale romance, and that’s a lot for someone to live up to. And that wasn’t fqir of me
*Fair
Maybe we can talk tomorrow
On the phone
You don;t have to see me if you don’t want to
Bt I really wANt tp see u
Srry I am drink
I am drink
Drunk
I miss you
Like a lot
The dj is playing I wanna dance with somebody and I want to dance with you
Remeber when I almost fell down the mountain when we were camping and you saved me? Thats how you and me are. Like I was all noooo I’m going to be alone forever and love is dead but then I met you and you cuaght me so ii didn’t falll
But actually I did fall so yeah
*In love
Blahhhh sorry fr spamming you
Hey now the dj is playing love at first sight. Kylie!! Brings me back
Now express yourself. Madonna
Madonna or kylie?
Something tickles Tad’s face and he puts his fingers to his cheek. They come away wet. He’s crying.
How could he be so stupid? How could he walk away from Lewis? How can he make this better? Once Lewis sobers up, will he want to talk to Tad? Maybe he’ll see these texts in the cold, hungover light of day and regret sending every single one. Maybe he won’t even remember sending them.
But maybe he will remember—and maybe he won’t regret.
Before he chickens out, Tad sends one text. If Lewis regrets all his messages, he’ll either tell Tad to fuck off or just never respond.
Can’t choose between Madonna and Kylie. I would have danced to both with you
TAD WAKES up when Hetty yowls in his face. He starts violently and topples off the sofa, where he apparently passed out.
Hetty stares down at him from her perch on the sofa, clearly wondering what he’s doing on the floor along with when the hell he’s going to feed her.
His stomach feels like battery acid has spent the last six hours eating a hole through it. His mouth is cottony and foul-tasting. He rubs his face and pushes himself up with his other hand, looking for his phone to check the time. Based on the way he feels, it’s five in the morning, but based on the way light is slanting through the windows, it’s definitely later.
His phone is MIA and Hetty is now swiping at his face with a paw. “Okay,” he groans, his entire body protesting as he climbs agonizingly to his feet. Note to self: don’t fall asleep slumped against the arm of the sofa.
Hetty trots after him as he trudges into the kitchen, twining around his ankles like she’s trying to murder him and collect on the life insurance. “Except I don’t have any, so joke’s on you,” he informs her.
“Mrow,” she replies, and he pets her.
The microwave clock says it’s 7:35. As he prepares Hetty’s canned food, he tries to math how many hours of sleep he got, until he realizes he doesn’t know what time he passed out.
Has Lewis seen his text? If he drank a lot, he’ll probably sleep in.
For a minute, Tad just stands in the kitchen staring vacantly. Caffeine. That’s what he needs. That will help, because it helps everything. While the water boils for tea, he conducts a more thorough search for his phone and finds it between the sofa cushions. A quick scan of his notifications shows nothing from Lewis, but he does have one text.
It’s from Walt. Are you around today? I really need to talk to you. Let me know pls
Tad feels too wrung out and sick for the panic attack that text would usually cause. A flare of fear and anxiety cramps his stomach, but more than anything, there’s an overriding sense of fuck it .
Fuck it, Walt already knows. Fuck it, let him say what he’s going to say. Fuck it, let his family disown him. He feels like complete and utter garbage right now, a human pile of rotting trash, and Walt can’t make it worse. Does throwing more trash in the landfill make the landfill worse? No. It’s already full of trash.
I’m home , he sends back. Text when you get here. Or just come up. Whatever
Tad is halfway through his second mug of Lady Grey when Walt texts that he’s outside. He must have jumped in his car the second Tad said to come over.
The knock on the door sounds more like a jail cell clanging shut. Hetty slinks away. Normally Tad’s okay with her shyness, but right now he wishes she’d stick around, because he could use the moral support.
Feeling like he’s walking to his doom, Tad opens the door.
His brother is twisting his hands together in front of his hips. Swallowing hard, Tad backs up, then curses himself for acting cornered in his own home.
Walt carefully shuts the door behind himself. He looks like he didn’t sleep much last night, either. Dark purple bags shadow his eyes. His red hair is messy and greasy, the way Tad’s gets when he can’t stop nervously running his hands through it.
But he doesn’t speak. The silence gets thicker and heavier until Tad feels like he’s suffocating. “Now that you’re in the same room as me, you can’t pick the perfect homophobic slur?” Tad asks, his voice shards of glass. “FYI, we reclaimed queer and faggot.”
The exhaustion lines in Walt’s face deepen. He takes a step forward, then back. He bends to remove his shoes and lines them up with Tad’s—and fuck, Lewis’s Pride Chucks. Tad’s chest aches.
Walt takes a couple more steps into the room, still maintaining a healthy distance from Tad. Probably doesn’t want gay cooties.
Walt blinks quickly, like he’s trying to stop himself from crying. Which can’t be right, because Tad hasn’t ever seen his brother cry. Slowly, deliberately, Walt says, “I’m sorry I made you feel like you couldn’t tell me.”
Tad stares.
It doesn’t seem like Walt expected him to say anything, because he keeps going. “I’m sorry I didn’t make you feel safe enough to tell me.” He closes his eyes and when he opens them, there are tears.
That’s the moment Tad realizes maybe he was really wrong about how this is going to go.
“I’m sorry I made you feel un safe,” Walt says. “Fuck. Tad. I’m just—I know I can stand here and say I don’t have a problem with gay people, and I have friends who are gay—”
Okay, that’s news to Tad.
“—or I can say when I’ve said stuff it wasn’t because I was homophobic, it’s just because I was stupid—” Walt fists his hands. “But I know… I know … it doesn’t really matter. Because I said it. And I can’t unsay all that stuff. But I’m so sorry. I’m just—I’m so fucking sorry, Tad. I’m sorry for being stupid and for being a shitty brother.”
Tad has to sit down.
A minute goes by while the two of them stare at each other. Walt stays where he is, standing a few paces in front of the door in his socks and knockoff North Face puffer vest. His hands are still fisted, his knuckles are white, and if this was twenty-four hours ago, Tad would assume Walt wanted to punch something. Probably him, for being gay.
The weight of how badly he misjudged Walt crushes all the air from his lungs for a good ninety seconds. He stands up. His legs are shaking, though, so he has to sit back down.
Finally, he says, “I thought you’d beat me up.”
Which is totally not even true, not anymore. When he was a kid, sure. Thirteen years old and panicking over the fact he got a boner when Daniel Craig walked out of the water all shirtless and dripping in Casino Royale ? No doubt in his mind that Walt would beat the shit out of him if he found out.
Walt looks at the floor. His shoulders rise and fall with several deep breaths before he says in an agonized voice, “I can’t say that’s never been true.”
The honesty is what finally cracks the sick layer of ice slicked over this conversation. Tad pulls his knees up and hugs his legs to his chest. “You want to sit down?”
Walt nods and crosses the room to sit next to Tad. His eyes roam the apartment like he’s seeing it for the first time. He’s hardly spent any time here, and Tad’s collection of plants is always growing.
“I remember coming here once and you only had about a third the number of plants. This is”—Tad braces for Walt to say something insulting—“kind of incredible. Is it hard to take care of all of them?”
Tad tries to decide if he should call out the subject change. Maybe this conversation needs to be approached in manageable chunks, though. “It’s a lot of work, but once you know what you’re doing, it’s not hard.”
Walt nods slowly. “I suck at taking care of stuff, so it would probably be hard for me. I’d kill a plant if I had any.”
“Walt.” Tad turns faces his brother, keeping his knees hugged to his chest. The movement looks stupid, but he doesn’t care. He’s in his pajamas and his hair hasn’t been washed since yesterday. He already looks stupid. “You really don’t care that I’m gay?”
“No,” Walt answers so reflexively that Tad knows it’s true. Then, he grimaces. “I mean—sorry. Shit. I—last night—fuck, I’m screwing this up. I knew I would.” He scrubs at his face with a hand. “It’s not a thing for me to care about. You know? You’re my brother. The only thing I care about is that you’re okay.”
A lump rises in Tad’s throat and his eyes sting. “I just… I thought you’d care,” he whispers.
Tentatively, Walt squeezes Tad’s shoulder. “I was a stupid asshole in high school. Well, I’m still a stupid asshole. But I don’t care who you sleep with or who you’re attracted to or whatever.”
Tad feels some of his tension dribble away. A lifetime’s worth of tension, of thinking his brother would hate him if he knew who Tad really is. One conversation can’t wipe all of it out. But there’s pain in Walt’s eyes that can’t be anything but genuine.
So yeah, it’s going to take more than one conversation. But it sure as hell is a start.
“Are you going to tell Mom and Dad?” Tad asks.
“No!” Walt says vehemently.
The tension creeps back. “Because you think they won’t take it well.”
“Because it’s not my place to tell them,” Walt says, his tone edged with the tiniest suggestion that Tad’s very stupid for not grasping this. He hesitates. “But. I don’t know. They might not be great.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Tad shifts, sitting cross-legged instead of his knees-to-the-chest, functional-fetal-position pose. With his shoulders straightened, he can breathe better.
Walt smiles hesitantly. “Was that some Tad sarcasm? Are we good?”
“Did you just imply sarcasm is my love language?”
“Isn’t it?”
With a hand to his forehead, Tad laughs, and it’s not even that hysterical. “God. I’ve spent so much time dreading this moment.”
“Yeah.” Walt looks pained. “I… yeah.”
Super articulate. But maybe that’s something they both have in common—they can’t spit out what they mean when they get nervous. It’s been a pretty long time since Tad looked for things he has in common with his brother.
“We’re good,” he says. “Even if, you know. It takes me a while to be totally good.”
“I get it.”
Tad flops back, letting out an explosive breath. “So how the hell did you end up dating Ofelia?”
Walt laughs, loud and startled. “It started in Vegas, weirdly. We matched on Tinder a couple days before the trip, and she DMed me to say hi. She was visiting her family, that’s the only reason we matched—she’s from Carthage, did you know that?”
“I don’t know her, really.” Tad rubs at the knobby part of his wrist. “I mean, I guess I technically met her in, um, Vegas. But I don’t really remember.”
There’s a look on Walt’s face that clearly says we’re coming back to this , but he goes on, “Anyway, we were chatting, mostly about home. I just started naming stuff from the area and she got a kick out of it, I don’t know. I liked talking to her, but she lived so far away. Then we went to Vegas and I figured that would be it, but she messaged me and it said she was only like half a mile away.”
“Wow,” Tad says. Lewis would love this story. This is exactly the kind of fairy-tale stuff he goes nuts for. His stomach hurts when he realizes he might never be able to tell Lewis about it.
“Yeah, right?” Walt shakes his head. “We figured it was so crazy that we should at least go on one date.”
“People use Tinder to date?”
Walt snorts. “Okay, yeah, I know I talk a big game, but I’m not really a hookup guy. So… yeah. I do, at least.” He faces Tad. “Tell me about Lewis.”
Maybe it would have been better if Walt was uncomfortable with Tad being gay so he wouldn’t have to talk about Lewis. The idea of talking about him is physically painful. He looks at his hand, where his wedding ring gleams in the early morning light. At this point, it would feel wrong to not wear it.
“Well,” Tad starts, “I broke up with him.”
“Yeah, he kind of said something about that.” Walt holds up his hands when Tad glares. “It was a lot for me, okay? I found out that not only is my little brother gay, but he’s also married—”
“Basically a technicality,” Tad mutters.
“You wouldn’t be with him if it was just a technicality,” Walt says.
“I’m not with him. I dumped him.” Like an idiot.
Walt clears his throat. “It was a lot. And I met Lewis at Stacy and Alang’s Friendsgiving thing, so he was the only person I felt like I could talk to, I guess. He was pissed at me. Asked me if I have any idea how shitty I make you feel.” He hesitates. “We talked for a long time. Not about you, really”—good, because Tad was about to get indignant—“but just about, like… how I can be a better brother. And support you. And stuff.”
Tad can’t help a tiny snicker. “So when’s the PFLAG presentation?”
“Ha, ha. Asshole.” Walt punches Tad lightly on the shoulder and Tad sticks his tongue out. “He told me some websites that might help. I guess his mom works at a LGBT youth center? So he knows a lot about this stuff.”
“He does,” Tad says proudly, even though maybe he doesn’t have a right to be proud of Lewis anymore.
Walt gives him a serious look. “Tad, that guy’s crazy about you. You know that, right?”
All the light seems to flee the room and Tad’s stomach twists. “Maybe he was before I freaked out and broke up with him.”
“You should talk to him, I think,” Walt says gently. “I’m pretty sure he’s still crazy about you.”
“Are you the expert on gay relationships now?”
“I thought love was love?”
“Ugh, yeah , fine.”
Looking thoughtful, Walt asks, “Or maybe you wanted to break up with him anyway?”
“No,” Tad mumbles. “No, I… that was stupid. I shouldn’t have done that.” He covers his face with his hands. “Oh my god, is this what siblings do? Do siblings normally talk about their relationships with each other?”
“Probably depends on the siblings.” There’s a pause. “Do you want to be?”
“Do you? ”
“Well, it would be kind of nice to be part of your life again. Like when we were kids. I miss that.”
Tad drops his hands to his lap. Walt is squirming and turning red. This is surreal. Tad’s spent the last fifteen years hiding his sexuality and here his brother is, saying he wants to talk boys?
Tad takes a deep breath. “I need to apologize to him. I really… I mean… oh my god, this is awkward.”
Okay, and now Walt looks like he’s enjoying this. “Do you loooove him, Tad?” When Tad flushes, the grin drops off Walt’s face. “Oh shit. You do. Oh. Hey, Tad. It’s okay.”
Which is when Tad realizes he’s gone from embarrassment to crying in the space of thirty seconds. “I really, really fucked up, Walt,” he sniffles. “I got all in my own stupid head, and I thought it would be like John again—um, John’s my ex who I dated for like three years”—Walt looks flummoxed and sad—“and I just freaked out and thought you’d hate me for being gay, and you’d tell Mom and Dad and they’d hate me too, and Lewis would have to deal with me being a huge mess and he’d hate me eventually because he’s like this huge romantic and I’m like the furthest thing from a fairy-tale prince but oh my god I was so happy with him—”
“Whoa, whoa, okay, slow down!” Walt puts his hands on Tad’s shoulders. It forces Tad to find some ground that isn’t spinning out of control. “So we’ll get you back together with him. That’s what you want?”
“Yeah,” Tad whispers. Then, louder, “Wait, what do you mean, we?”
Walt pats Tad’s shoulder. “I was there at the beginning of this relationship, so I feel like it’s only right I help you get the guy. Again.”
“Um, you were very explicitly not there at the beginning. I purposefully ditched you and your bro friends.”
Walt guffaws. “Okay, but I’m still taking some credit. I drove you into his arms. Now that I’m thinking about it, I probably should’ve guessed you’re not straight when you put that shimmery thing on that night. Wasn’t it see-through?”
“That probably shouldn’t have been your first clue.” If you’d told Tad twenty-four hours ago he was going to be joking about his queerness and plotting to get his boyfriend back with his brother, he would have thought he was having a psychotic break.
The amused expression on Walt’s face turns to scheming. “Did you say he’s romantic?” Tad nods, and Walt says, “So he’d definitely appreciate a Grand Gesture.”
The surprises keep coming today. Who knew Walt had any awareness of romance tropes? “Yeah,” Tad says. “Probably.”
There’s a gleam in Walt’s eyes. “Does he like rom-coms?”
A spark catches in Tad’s heart. “Like? Try love .”
Walt grins. And even though Tad torpedoed his own heart last night, things somehow look brighter.