by RJ Scott
“Danny, I don’t know how to say sorry… I’m sorry, so damn sorry. That wasn’t me…”
I said the same thing as I’d done to Hayne, It wasn’t me.
“I know it wasn’t you,” Danny murmured. I frowned because that wasn’t the right answer. He was supposed to say that it was me in the video.
“I don’t know why I did that.”
“Craig spiked your drink.”
“I wish that was the easy solution.”
“Scott, it is that simple. I don’t know what he put into your drink, but what I do know is that the two of us went from chatting quietly about hockey and being younger brothers, and then you glazed over, and snapped with so much hate. You were manic, but I put it down to beer and what I call jock-anger.”
I hated that he and Hayne even had to have an explanation for the way jocks acted with them.
He pressed ahead. “A few days after the party we were in the lunch queue next to each other, and I didn’t see that same hate in your face. You were back to smiling and talking about hockey; it was as if you were two separate people. When the video of what you did hit the net this morning, Craig was gloating about what he’d done. He even came up to me to tell me about it. Thing is, I have friends with phones who caught when he boasted that one pill was all it took to have you hurt me. I mean, does he have shit for brains or what?”
Danny smirked as he said that and tapped his phone. “The video of his gloating is currently uploading, and by this time tomorrow, no one will remember what you did to me, or why, only that Craig is an abusive asshole who spikes people’s drinks. I imagine the administration will have something to say to him as well. God knows how many others he’s done this to.”
“Fuck.”
“This will open a whole new can of worms. Are you ready for that?”
I didn’t know what I thought. I was lurching from one horrific and stupid mess to another, and in the middle of everything, I was spiraling again.
“Hayne will see what he did,” I murmured. “But, Danny, I’m sorry I did that.”
“It was the pill he slipped you.”
“No, I don’t… Is it inside me all the time? Is that what I’m really like? Did I want to hurt you? Hayne will see all the ugly inside me and…” I couldn’t say anything else, emotion choking me.
Danny reached over and touched my hand. “I wish I could tell you what’s inside you, but I can’t. Talk to Hayne. He’s a good guy, keeping himself safe from a world that doesn’t quite understand people like him and me.”
The door opened, my three friends entering, Ryker staring at his phone, then fist-pumping success.
“Shared,” he said and pocketed his phone. I knew Ryker had a Twitter and Instagram following. Actually, pick any social media app, and Ryker, future NHL star, embraced it.
Hayne would see it wasn’t me that had done this awful thing.
Only… what if it was the real me?
Twelve
Hayne
My studio had never been so quiet. No music played, no laughter rang out, no heated huffs of passion lingered on the stuffy air. It was just Scott and me, standing in the middle of our messy space, staring at each other.
“You have to know that what you saw wasn’t me,” he said again. He’d said that same thing at least five times since I’d unlocked the door to allow him in ten minutes before.
“It looked like you.” And that had been my reply to his repeated pleas. I hugged myself hard, avoiding his gaze and focusing on my toes peeking out from the ratty pant legs of a pair of old jeans. “It sounded like you. I’ve heard that laugh come from you just yesterday. When you laughed at something I said. Were you mocking me then? Were you making fun of me as you were Danny?”
I peeked up.
“No, God, no. Hayne, I just…” He shoved a hand into his hair. I bit down on my bottom lip to make it stop quivering. “Hayne, that’s me, yes, but my drink was spiked.”
I shook my head, curls curtaining my face, hiding the wetness of my cheeks. “It’s all you.”
“No, it’s not!” he barked, and I jumped instinctively. “Fuck, Hayne, don’t be scared of me. I would never hurt you. You know that. I love you.”
“No.” My heart thundered from a mix of fear and agony. Mostly pain, although my fight-or-flight reflex had kicked in big-time for a second. Shame there was nowhere to run to. He stood in front of the door, and I couldn’t reach the skylights.
“Hayne…”
“I think…” I paused, wet my lips, and swallowed past the choking ball of sorrow in my throat. “I think you should get your stuff and go. I can’t get past… you laughing at him whimpering. I just…” I glanced up and was shocked to see tears glistening in his eyes. “I’m reliving every time I’ve ever been bullied. How can I sleep with someone who can be so cruel? I can’t stop the memories, Scott. You have no clue, no idea of what it’s like to be… to be me. To be the kid everyone pokes fun at, the kid everyone shoves around. The kid that’s held down in the boys’ room and has his hair hacked off, or gets whipped with wet towels in the showers after gym, or is ridiculed and slapped and kicked and tripped and… and…” A sob escaped, but I bit back the tsunami of wailing that was coming right behind it.
“Hayne?” he had asked when I had refused to look into those beautiful eyes. “Hayne, please, you have to see that this isn’t me.”
I lifted my gaze from the hardwood floor. “Are you sure it isn’t?”
“Hayne, I love you.”
I shook my head, cursed curls falling over my face, tears welling.
“I do, please, just… come on, I need you. I need you to forgive me for this.”
“I will just…” I drew in a shaky breath. “I’ve forgiven lots of people, but I’m not sure I can ever forget the manic glee in your eyes when you… when you…”
“Can you still love me?” he asked, the question a shaky squeak that drove the knife into my heart just a little deeper. Soon it would be protruding from my back.
“I’m not sure.”
“Ouch, okay, that’s honest. I get it. I love you.” He sounded so sincere, so hurt, so desperate for me to forgive him. But I couldn’t. Not now. I was too raw, the wound too new. So I shook my head yet again, hugged my middle even tighter, and stood silently sniffling back tears as he gathered some of his belongings and threw them into an OU Eagles duffel bag. “Can you look at me please, just one time before I go?”
My gaze lifted from my toes. Peering into those tortured hazel eyes, I nearly buckled and gave in. I wanted to run to him, kiss him, have him take me to bed, and pretend I’d never seen him being so horrible, but I couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe never.
“I’m not taking all my shit, because I’m coming back. When time has passed and the hurt has lessened, we’ll talk. Okay? My hockey stuff is going to stay here so that the things that I love the most are in the same place. You good with that?”
“Yes,” I squeaked, the flow of tears building.
“I do love you, and I have changed.”
I nodded weakly, and he walked out, closing the door behind him. I sank to my knees and let the sobbing commence.
Blues and grays. Rain. So much rain. Rain that beat down on the man on the canvas, torrential and unending. It battered his flimsy umbrella, weakening the ribs until the thin spokes bent and the elements doused the man. Me. The man is me.
The man on the canvas is Hayne, and he is drowning in blue and gray…
Lowering my dripping brush, I stared at the painting and sighed. Then I threw it across the studio with a guttural sort of cry that fit the mood that now lay draped over my house like a funeral cloak.
Scott was gone.
My chest tightened.
“No, no more tears,” I muttered, spinning to stare at the skylights. Stars at night, millions of them, white pinpricks on an ebony canvas, a clear winter night. No rain fell outside. It was too cold for rain. The deluge was inside, soaking my soul.
The past few weeks had b
een harrowing. Ever since that video of Scott tormenting Danny had been brought to life, the joy I’d been wallowing in had dried up. Like a spring pond that now sat baking under a brutal summer sun.
I crawled into the bed that Scott and I had shared and looked up at the stars Scott and I used to look at. My stomach snarled in protest, but I ignored the sounds of hunger. How was I supposed to face tomorrow, and my mother and Mimi? How on earth was I going to be able to go to the museum, smile and shake hands and socialize, while Winter Knight hung behind me, reminding me of the love that I still harbored for a man who was no longer a part of me? A man who could be so cruel to men like me?
“How?” I gasped, rolled to my stomach, and wept and wailed into the bedding. Sleep was an atrocious beast, clawing at me like a hell hound, ripping and tearing, until I woke up with a snotty nose and red, swollen eyes, the morning still hours away. I rolled to my side, seeking the big, hard body that used to rest there, and finding just a cold blanket. Burying my face into the pillow his head had rested on, I drew the subtle scent of him into my lungs. Then I hugged the pillow hard, crushing it to me, as the replay of our last encounter weeks ago replayed in my mind for the ten-thousandth time.
How he’d come to me that night… the night it had all broken, and had shown me the video that exonerated him, or he claimed it did, and I stood there, listening. Even though agony and drama had dulled me, I still could see how all of this was Craig’s fault. Or was it? And that creeping doubt had begun to take root. Like a tenacious weed, it wrapped its tendrils tightly around me, the fears that lived with me, the pain of being bullied for ages because I was small and skinny and had curls and liked boys…
Hunger finally spurred me to rise. I hadn’t eaten in… who knew how long. My tiny fridge was empty, and so I had to brave going down to the kitchen. Lank curls dangling in my face, worn jeans, and a T-shirt that needed to be washed as badly as I did, I snuck down the stairs as my stomach roared. Maybe just a PB& J to tide me over or a handful of pretzels.
Stepping into the kitchen, I spied a loaf of bread on the counter and dove on it, taking out two slices and carrying them to the fridge. The inside of the fridge was gross, but there was food. Milk, bologna, cheese, salad, and a bucket of fried chicken. I slapped some bologna on my bread, took a huge bite, and sighed in pleasure. Then I took out the milk and a chicken leg and turned to find a plate.
Craig and Dexter stood in the doorway, neither seemingly happy to see me.
“Dude, we pay for that food. Yours is upstairs,” Dexter reminded me. Craig, being the insecure ass maggot that he is, took several steps in my direction. I held up a chicken leg to ward him off.
“Put it back. All of it. And then pay me for the sandwich.” He folded his arms over his chest. Dexter did the same. “Well, what are you waiting for, fag? Your fellow fag hockey-playing boyfriend isn’t here anymore, is he? What happened? Did you two have a fight over which one was the girl and which was the boy? Did he move out and take all your sissy cakes with him?” He snickered.
I’m not sure what it was about the sound of that derisive little snort, but something inside me snapped. I whipped the chicken leg at Craig, then threw the jug of milk at his big head. Both impacted his forehead within seconds of each other, the jug hurting way more than the chicken leg judging by the grunt of pain.
“Get out. Both of you. Get out now!” I shouted, throwing my sandwich at Craig, as well as a spoon from the sink and a dish sitting on the counter that held a dried-out pickle and four crusts of bread. Dexter jumped back, his eyes as round as the plate that sailed over Craig’s fat head. “Get out. Both of you.”
“Fuck you, fag.” Craig lunged at me, his fingers latching onto my biceps. I wished I still had my chicken leg. Dexter grew a spine then and jerked Craig away from me, his grip on my arm leaving bright red welts. I skittered out of reach, pulled out my phone, and held it in the air. “You better call for help, you faggot.”
“If you’re not out in ten minutes, I’m calling the police and reporting this incident as a hate crime.” That stalled Craig in his tracks. “I’ll show them the bruises, and you’ll be off this campus before you can spike another person’s drink. Now get out. Get out. Get out!”
“Fine, I was tired of living with a cock-sucking little fairy like you, anyway,” Craig snapped, jerking free of Dexter and storming up to the second floor.
“Sorry it came to this. Finding a place to crash is going to suck,” Dexter muttered before he too climbed the stairs. He never said he was sorry about the abuse that I’d taken from his buddy all year, just that he was put out that he had to find a new place to live. They left after fifteen minutes. I shook for several hours after the front door clicked shut, but my house was mine.
Life was a miserable kind of void after that one moment of bravery—or madness. Now that the adrenalin rush was over, I couldn’t decide which description fit that moment best. It was empty of all life and love and laughter. I left the attic only to go to class and work. I couldn’t skip classes, and I could not skip work. I needed every penny. I had no roommates now to help cover food and utilities. I begged my manager for more hours. She gave me weekends in the dish room at the campus cafeteria. Fun. Not. But it was money. My gas would stay on for another month, and the lights would still shine in my studio. I’d just not eat outside of work. I got a four-dollar allotment for food a shift. I could live on a sandwich and a pint jug of milk per day.
Now I lay there waiting for the day to dawn, a day that should’ve been fabulous but was now dismal and dark. Scott’s pillow was soft on my cheek, and I drifted off, sleep overpowering me as it did when body and soul were drained.
I woke to someone yelling my name. Torpid and caught in a dream where Scott was dangling me by my heels over a pit of hungry lions—it was far too Roman gladiator—I begged my mother for five more minutes, then fell back to sleep. The next awakening was gentler, the brush of fingers over my brow, the push of springy hair from my cheek, and the soft strains of Saint-Saëns The Swan from the Carnival of Animals began to play, and I cried softly because only my Mimi played that. She had a key to this place, and evidently she’d let herself in.
“Oh baby boy,” she cooed, gathering me into her arms as she had when I was little. Thick arms cinched me to an ample bosom, and I let my cheek rest on her breast, silent tears running down my face. “You let it all out now.”
She patted my hair, knowing better than to dig her fingers into the thick curls, as she had hair just like mine. Mimi had tons of them. My father had too; I’d seen his pictures. A tall black man in a crisp police uniform. He’d died when I was four months old in a simple roadside stop that had gone horribly wrong.
“Tell me to toughen up,” I begged. Someone had to.
“You’ll hear no such shit from me.” She patted my head softly, then sat me up, using the sleeves of her brilliant green crocheted sweater to dry my face. “Emotions, like art, must run free.”
“I love you.” She smiled at me, and the blues and grays seemed to lift just a bit. “I’m taking my pills. I am. It’s just too… I still love him.”
“Of course you do.” She cupped my face between her hands, her fingertips calloused from so many years of playing the violin. The music was working its magic, easing the darkness inside me. I should have turned it on as soon as Scott left, but it reminded me of him, of the paint and silliness and the kisses and caresses…
“Is Mom here?”
“She’s unpacking the food we brought for you. I’ve been instructed to bring you down to eat.”
“Blueberry pancakes?”
“Fresh from the griddle.” Mimi plastered a kiss on my forehead, then wiped at my brow with her thumb. My stomach roared at the mere thought of Mom’s pancakes. “You go shower. Make sure you condition,” she said with a patient smile. I nodded. “Then come down. We want to talk to you about… well, things.” Her brown eyes darted to the canvasses lying all over, the dour tones of black and blue and gray speaking rather
loudly to an ear as well trained as hers.
Thirty minutes later, I was sneaking into the kitchen. My mother smiled at me, placed the platter of enormous pancakes on the recently washed table, and opened her arms. I flew into them, hugging her to me, my breathing growing rushed and thick as she held me tight, the warm scent of soft rose engulfing me.
“Look up here at me,” she finally said, holding my face between her hands much as Mimi had. “You are such a beautiful man. So delicate and emotive. Your father would be so proud.”
I placed a kiss to her soft, white cheek. “I’m not sure, Mom. I’ve been hiding from life, from him, from everything…”
“Are you taking your meds?”
“Yes, yes, I am, every day. I just…” My sigh was enormous.
Mom patted my shoulder, then pushed me gently to a chair. “Sit and eat. You’ve lost weight, and you didn’t have any to spare.”
She forked five pancakes onto my plate. My eyes widened. Mimi chuckled as Mom then doused the pancakes with syrup. The rich smell of sweet butter and maple danced inside my nose, making my mouth water. They nibbled as I ate. When I was done, the plate was empty and my stomach was huge. Mimi’s head bobbed along to Mozart playing from her phone. There was always music where Mimi was. It was one of a billion things I loved about her.
“Now, tell us how you plan to fix your life.” Mom took a sip of black coffee, her keen blue eyes locked on me—my face—reading me as easily as one did her lyrical poems.
“I uhm…” I glanced at Mimi. She’d pulled out her crocheting, which meant she was in pure listening mode. Maybe she’d toss in a few ”Mm-hmms” here and there. Mimi jerked her chin at me to goad me on. “I uhm… well, I’m going to go to the museum today with you and Mimi and talk to bloggers and news people. And I promise I’ll eat more.”