Tell Me It's Real

by TJ Klune

  Afterward, Vince was supposed to go stand in line with the rest of his family so that well-wishers could offer their condolences. Vince looked like he would rather get punched in the face with a fork, but I figured his mom would have wanted it. So I told him I would stand with him, if he needed me to, as the others in the line had their immediately family standing behind them. The look he gave me then was wide-eyed, but then when the rest of my family and Darren said they’d do the same, you could see his surprise like it was a palpable thing. He couldn’t seem to find his words, but I thought I knew what he was trying to say.

  We moved to follow him to where the family gathered before leaving for the cemetery. With his shoulders squared and his head high, he took three steps toward them. We moved to follow until he stopped suddenly. He looked back at me and held out his hand. I took it without hesitation. If he was sure about it, then I would be sure for him.

  His father was not pleased.

  I know what you’re probably thinking: here comes the big scene, the disruption at the funeral, the father’s blatant homophobic remarks cutting deeply. I’d stand next to Vince and defend him and all would hear the weight of my words and silence would fall as the mayor and I glared at each other, daring the other to speak again.

  But it didn’t happen. Well, kind of. I was still pretty much a badass.

  Vince stood next to his father, only a few feet separating them. Both of them were stiff but aware of the other. Vince kept glancing back at me until I understood he needed to feel my presence, so every so often, I’d reach up and squeeze his shoulder, just to let him know I was still there. He relaxed further every time, focusing on shaking hands and receiving hugs from people I’d never seen before.

  As if he was the opposite, the mayor grew tenser. You could see it in the lines of his shoulders, the twitch in his jaw, the little sideways looks he shot Vince, the anger in his eyes. And when the line was finished, when the last person had offered condolences, I knew the mayor was going to turn on his son. So I stepped between them while Vince was distracted by my mother.

  Andrew Taylor stared at me like I was nothing better than the shit he’d scrape off the bottom of his shoe. I didn’t feel bad at all about not voting for the guy. “Don’t,” I told him quietly, just for him to hear. “Don’t do that now. It’s not about you. It’s not even about him. It’s about your wife. So don’t.”

  “Do you have any idea who you’re talking to?” he growled like some clichéd heavyweight. I felt sad for him.

  “Frankly?” I asked. “I couldn’t care less. He’s no longer your concern. He doesn’t belong to you anymore. We’ve got it from here, Mayor. I’m sorry about your wife, I really am. But you don’t get to make this worse for him. Not now. Not today. If I were you, I’d start focusing on what you’ve lost and what you can gain, rather than something that you don’t agree with.”

  “He told us about you,” he said, taking a step closer. “Me and his mother. How you’d just met. How he’s certain that you’re it for him. He’s going to leave you, just like he did us.”

  I shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Unlike you, I won’t give him reason to.”

  “Paul,” Darren called sharply. “We got to go.”

  “He’ll be with me,” I said, “if you ever change your mind. But if you don’t, that’s your choice. I don’t care who you are—if you try and hurt him, I will break you in half.”

  Andrew laughed. “You? You’re nothing.”

  I smiled. “Your son thinks I’m something. And that’s enough for me.”

  And just as I pulled off that wicked awesome exit line, I spun on my heels and didn’t trip and face-punch a wall or anything, even though it was what I expected. I might or might not have walked away a little bit slower and with more care than I normally did to make sure that I didn’t embarrass myself before leaving the church. After all, how often does one get to tell off one’s boyfriend’s father in God’s house and pull off some badassness before walking away practically in slow motion? One does not get to do that often.

  But apparently God has a funny sense of humor because I could see them all watching me, especially Vince, and I opened my mouth to say something to him, anything to continue my streak of being amazing, but instead, I accidentally sneezed and burped at the same time and it was pretty freaking gross. And, of course, it echoed throughout the church and several conversations near me stopped as people turned to stare at me, convinced, I’m sure, that I was possessed, and a demon was trying to crawl its way out of my mouth. I expected priests to come running at me, spraying me with holy water, screaming in Latin about how the power of Christ compelled me and the demon needed to be gone from my earthly body.

  “We can’t take you anywhere,” Sandy muttered.

  “That was very manly,” Dad said.

  “I’m pretty sure I thought he was barking at me,” Nana mused.

  “He used to do that as a child,” Mom reminisced. “It’s even grosser as an adult.”

  “Is he the man in your relationship?” Darren asked Vince. “Does he tell you to go make you a sandwich in the kitchen while he sits in his recliner and scratches his balls?”

  “You can’t say balls in church,” I scolded. “Jesus might hear you.”

  “I think Jesus is running away from you,” Vince said.

  And just because I wanted to, and just because I could, on the thirteenth day after I’d met him, I kissed him in the church.

  The world, interestingly enough, did not explode.

  Take that, homophobes!

  WE WERE the last ones at the cemetery. Vince wanted a chance to sit with his mother after everyone else had left. I asked him quite clearly if he wanted me to go as well, but he shook his head, gripping my hand tightly as the rest of the mourners cleared out, heading to the mayoral mansion for continued services. Vince hadn’t wanted to go to that, as he was almost done with the day.

  It was odd, really, sitting next to the hole in the ground that contained a mahogany box holding his mother. The employees at the memorial grounds understood that we needed a bit more time and could complete their interring once Vince was ready to go. It probably didn’t hurt that I reminded them who he was and who was being buried. They nodded and drifted away, starting to stack chairs and moving flowers.

  I walked back over to Vince, who lay on his back in the grass next to his mother. His eyes were closed when I reached him. My shadow covered his face, and a line appeared on his forehead. “Paul,” he said without opening his eyes.

  “Vince.”

  He sighed. “Today is one of those days that I wish was already over.”

  “I know.” And I did. Even if I didn’t know what he was going through, I could imagine. No matter what I said about my family belonging to him, no matter what my family did for him today, he’d still lost someone. He still had to say good-bye to his mom. I tried to think about how I’d be if it was my mom, and I hated the thought. And I hated the idea of what he was going through.

  He would need me, I’d been told.

  He was going to break, I’d been told.

  So far, he’d been far stronger than I think I would have been in his position. And for some reason, this filled me with great pride, knowing that he was stronger than people gave him credit for, stronger than I gave him credit for.

  I lay beside him on the grass, not caring about my suit coat. There were more important things to worry about. Our shoulders bumped, and as soon as I was down completely, he reached over and grabbed my hand, curling it into his own.

  I waited.

  “I’m trying,” he said finally, “to think of a good memory. Any single one that I can take with me when we leave here today.”

  I hesitated. “Can you find one?” I hoped he could, because he needed it. He needed to be able to say good-bye.

  “I was scared I couldn’t,” he confessed quietly. “I thought that I’d only be able to think about the past few years and that it’d piss me off and I’d just be angry about
it forever. I don’t want to be angry forever, Paul.”

  “I won’t let you,” I said, ignoring how I’d essentially just acknowledged the word “forever.” It didn’t freak me out as much as I thought it would. “I’ll be sure to kick you in the nuts if you stay angry forever.”

  He chuckled. “Thanks. I think.”

  “Did you find the memory you were looking for?”

  “I think so. Can I tell you?”

  I smiled as I squeezed his hand. “You can tell me whatever you want.”

  He turned his head to look at me. “I can, can’t I?”

  I nodded. “It’s kind of what boyfriends are for, I guess. Though I haven’t had much experience to say so.”

  “You’ve done pretty good so far.”

  “Pretty good?” I said as I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks for that ringing endorsement. Nothing strokes the ego like pretty good.”

  “How about amazing?”

  “A little better.”

  “Extraordinary.”

  “So it’s been said.”

  “Unexpected.”

  I grinned. “Likewise. What did you find to think about your mom?”

  He let out a low breath and turned to look back at the sky. I followed his gaze to the azure blue. “I think I was ten or eleven,” he said finally. “We lived up in the foothills in this old house on Windriver. I came home from school one day and found my mom and dad fighting. I wasn’t supposed to be home that early because I had soccer practice, but it got canceled, so I just rode the bus home.”

  He rubbed his thumb over my fingers. “It wasn’t a normal fight, like I’d heard them get into before. It was very loud. They were very angry. My mom was screaming at my dad, and he was screaming back at her. I couldn’t make out what they were talking about, I just knew it was bad. My friend Jake’s parents had just gotten divorced and his mom had moved away and he never got to see her and I remember thinking, This is it. They’re going to get divorced and she’ll move away and I’ll never see her anymore because she won’t want me. I thought that if they kept fighting, they would eventually see that they didn’t belong together and they would divorce and I wouldn’t know my place anymore.

  “It didn’t last that much longer. The voices quieted down, but they were still angry, and finally my dad left the house, slamming the door behind him. I heard the car starting in the garage before he left, and I didn’t think I was going to see him again. I didn’t think he was going to come back, and the only thing I wanted to do right then, right at that moment, was to find my mom and remind her that I was still there with her. That I was still alive. That I wouldn’t leave her, no matter how hard it got.”

  His voice broke, and I thought about asking him to stop, that he didn’t need to say any more, but he pushed on. I hurt for him.

  “So I went to her. She was sitting on the stairs, her face in her hands, and she was crying. That scared me more than anything because for all that I could remember, I couldn’t remember a time when I’d ever seen her crying. It seemed worse than I’d first thought, and I didn’t know what I could do. I was just a kid. I was little. What did I know?”

  “But you did something, didn’t you?” I asked him quietly. “You helped her.”

  He nodded and looked over at me again. Our eyes met, and for the rest of his story, we stayed that way. “Maybe. I like to think so. I didn’t know the best thing to say to her, so I sat on the steps above her, and I pulled her back into me. I wrapped my arms around her and put my chin on her head and told her the only thing I could, that it was okay. That it was all right. That somehow, I’d figure out a way to make it better for her. I asked her to stop crying because I would always be there for her and I wouldn’t walk out the door. I told her I….” He stopped as his eyes grew brighter and his face trembled. “I told her that there was nothing she could do to make me leave her.”

  I reached over with my free hand and thumbed the tears from his face. He kissed the palm of my hand, the tips of my fingers. “What did she say to you?” I asked hoarsely, knowing she must have said something.

  “She said… she stopped crying and she looked up at me and smiled. She said that she didn’t know what she would have done without me. She said that she was glad that I was there for her and that she was sorry she was sad. She said that she loved me and that she always would. And then she kissed my forehead and pulled me up, and we went to the kitchen and we made peanut butter cookies and it was a good day. It was a good day, and that is what I want to walk away with. Paul, that’s all I want to remember.”

  “Then that’s what you remember,” I told him. “That’s what you take with you, and fuck all the rest. The rest doesn’t matter. The rest isn’t important.”

  “It’s like the stars, you know?”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  He pointed toward the sky. “You can’t see them now, because it’s daytime. But you know they’re still there because they haven’t left. Not really. It’ll just be a little bit of time before you can see them again.”

  “Yeah, Vince. It’s like the stars.”

  “Paul?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I think I’m ready to go now.”

  “Okay.”

  “Can we go back to your house? I think I just want to lay down with you for a while and not think about things.”

  “I think we can manage that.” I stood and offered him my hand. He watched it for a moment, and then a beautiful smile bloomed on his face. He reached up and grabbed my hand, and I pulled him up with me. He put his arm around my waist and laid his head on my shoulder. I wrapped my arm around him and led him away.

  We were almost back to the car when he spoke softly. “I’m glad I found you. I think someone somewhere knew I’d need you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Me too.”

  And that was that.

  Chapter 22

  God Rides A Harley In My Very Happy Ending

  TWO months later, we broke up.

  I know, I know. What kind of a happy ending is that?

  Sorry.

  Unfortunately, it was pretty much all my fault. I hadn’t meant to let it happen. There was this new guy at work who seemed to take a shine to me for some unknown reason. It was like Vince had opened the floodgates, and all the people who didn’t even really know I existed before suddenly found me to be irresistible. One day, stupidly, I let new guy come over to my house and one thing led to another and Vince walked in right as new guy had his hand shoved down my pants, our lips fused together, pressed up against the wall where I’d hit my face months before getting ready for our first date—the first date I had with the guy I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.

  I regret it. I regret the shit out of it.

  The blowup was huge, and there were tears and apologies and begging and pleading. But I’d fucked up and Vince didn’t forgive easily and it ended. Badly. Vince quit his job so we wouldn’t see each other every day. He moved back to Phoenix, and I heard he started dating some random guy that he’d had an on-again-off-again thing with there before he’d come back to Tucson.

  My parents disowned me after that, saying that they couldn’t believe that I’d done that to him. I was no longer welcome in their house. Nana agreed with them and told me I that I was no better than what Johnny Depp had been calling me all along.

  Sandy broke off our friendship following that whole disaster, saying that no friend of his was a cheater. He moved to Colombia, where he married a drug lord and lived a life of leisure as the madam of the house. I heard a while ago that he had a tiara made entirely of blood diamonds and a wing in his mansion dedicated to all of his wigs.

  And as for me?

  Disgraced, I headed south of the border and ended up in that little town in Mexico that I knew I was going to end up in. I opened my bar, Taco’s Bell, just like I knew I would. I had a tiny little apartment above it that didn’t have air-conditioning, and the ceiling fan did nothing to move the stifling hot air aroun
d.

  On the upside, I grew a fantastic mustache and was never seen much without my poncho. The locals, initially wary of a gringo among them, grew to accept me as one of their own. I was eventually presented with the bride of my choice and married a tiny little woman by the name of Esmerelda Arroyo. She bore me two children—Guapo and Hortencia—and we moved out of that little apartment above the bar to a rambling old farmhouse on a spread of land right outside of town. It was hard work, but at least it was honest work. I grew wheat.

  Ten years later, masked banditos came to town and tried to take it over, as they had decided our little haven was the perfect place for a new center of operations for their cocaine empire. Women and children were held hostage, including my beloved Esmerelda, Guapo, and Hortencia. Deciding I’d had enough, I rode into town on the trusty burro I’d named Princess Snow Cloud, given her propensity for acting like a princess and looking like a fat, white cloud.

  The bloodshed was great and the violence extreme, but I emerged victorious and saved my little town from the banditos and rescued my family. The townspeople gathered around me and lifted me in the air, chanting, “Gringo! Gringo! Gringo!” A statue was erected in my honor in the middle of town, showing me riding Princess Snow Cloud. It was made from the bones of the banditos as a warning for any other masked hooligans who tried to take over my town.

  On my sixtieth birthday, as people laughed and drank and danced around me, I was asked by a young man if I had any regrets. I told him that I had just one. He asked what that was. I told him that I regretted never finding out if I’d actually been Freddie Prinze Juniored or not.