by John Goode
The calmness seemed to affect him more than me getting pissed. “Okay, let me go get them, okay?” He kicked Colt’s door again as he walked by. “Colt, if your friend kicks my ass, I am killing you.”
I sat down, trying to remember anything from last night. There was me going onto the dance floor, there was a flash of drinking again, and then nothing. Come on, man, I was way too young for memory loss after a night of drinking. I heard a door open and saw Colt stumble out of his room in just a pair of white Calvin Klein briefs. If I hadn’t been fighting the urge to kill him with my bare hands, I would have said he looked pretty good in them.
“Why are you awake?” he asked, walking into the living room.
“Because it’s almost noon and my boyfriend is furious at me because I didn’t come home,” I growled back. Shouting would have hurt, and growling was way more effective. At least when it came to the roommate, whatever his name was.
“You were wasted, man. I should have let you drive drunk?” he said, plopping down into an oversized leather chair.
“You could have not gotten me so fucked up I couldn’t drive,” I suggested.
He dismissed me with a hand wave. “Dude, you had a blast last night. You needed it.”
“I wouldn’t know because I can’t remember a fucking thing.”
Now I was getting pissed.
He shrugged. “It happens, man. First time doing GHB?”
I froze.
“What?” I asked.
He looked up at me, confused. “Was that the first time you did lollipops?”
I crossed the distance between us in a second and raised my fist. “You gave me drugs last night?”
He shrank back into the chair. “Dude, it was a little bit. You needed to relax. I asked you if you liked lollipops!”
“I didn’t know that meant fucking drugs.”
“Oh” was all he said.
My fist was quivering as I fought the urge to hit him.
Which was when Bruce walked in with my clothes. “Um, am I interrupting something?”
I turned away from Colt and grabbed my clothes and headed to the bathroom. I could not believe this was fucking happening to me. There were no socks or underwear, but I didn’t care. I slipped on my jeans and a shirt and walked out looking for my shoes.
“You know, dude, a lot of people would thank me for a night like last night.”
I found one under the coffee table and kept looking for the other.
“That shit isn’t cheap!” he added.
I turned back toward him. “You can bill me.”
“Here,” Bruce said from behind me. He was holding my shoe out to me, ready to drop it in case I swung at him.
“Thank you,” I said, taking it and putting it on.
“Yeah, run home to your boyfriend like a little bitch,” Colt called after me. “Let him know who has all the power in the relationship. Don’t stand up for yourself or anything, man, just go be his doormat.”
His words stung, but I ignored them as I walked out of the apartment. My car was parked out front; I thanked whatever god had arranged that and got in. I paused, because I still had no idea where I was. Thankfully Google told me the way home, but it couldn’t tell me the answer I really craved.
If I even lived there anymore.
Kyle
I DIDN’T even remember falling asleep the night before.
One second I was crying on the couch and the next it was morning and Brad still wasn’t home. So of course, being me, I panicked. I grabbed my phone and desperately pulled up his number and then stopped. This was his whole game, right? Me in a panic, dying to take him back. That was what last night was all about, and frankly, I was done with it. I splashed some water on my face, took a deep breath, and then called him.
Of course I got voice mail.
That was the next step of this game. I leave a frantic voice mail, he comes back like a knight swooping in the front door, and all is forgiven. Nope, not going to play your game, sir. I left a calm and pleasant message that in no way conveyed the blind panic I was feeling inside. Were we broken up? Did I want to break up? Was this the end?
I poured a bowl of cereal and waited. The ball was in his court now. Let’s see him return that swing. I pretended to watch TV, but instead I was counting the seconds that passed without him calling. I waited an hour.
Okay I waited, like, forty-seven minutes, but that’s close enough to an hour.
The next voice mail was less than calm.
When I hung up, I waited another ten minutes and then started crying again. This was how it ended, us not talking to each other?
My phone rang and I scrambled to answer before I saw it was Teddy calling.
“So what happened?” he asked, sounding concerned.
“He didn’t come home,” I said, the reality finally settling in.
“Oh” was all he said.
Oh? Oh? I was so fucking sick of ohs.
“I left a voice mail but he hasn’t called back.”
“Please tell me you didn’t leave a whining-ass Taylor Swift ‘please come home’ message.”
“I don’t know what that would sound like, but no, I yelled more than I whined.”
My answer seemed to placate him. “So what are you going to do if he calls?”
“When he calls,” I corrected him.
“If, when. What are you going to do?” he asked again.
My silence answered for me. I had no idea.
“If he calls, just ask him if he’s okay and when he says yeah, hang up,” Teddy advised.
“What?”
“When he calls, just ask him if he’s okay and when he says yes, hang up on him.”
I looked at the phone for a second to make sure it was working properly. “Why would I do that?”
“Because your message is going to sound like you missed him and want to apologize. You gotta take the power back.”
“What power?” Now I was completely backward.
“The power in the relationship, man!” He made it sound like he was talking about something as simple as boiling water and I still wasn’t getting it. “You need to lay down the law with him, tell him how’s it’s going to be.”
“So this is my law?”
“The law. Look, you need to make it clear to him what’s acceptable and what isn’t. If not, he’s going to walk all over you. Again. And you’re going to be miserable all the time.”
I shook my head even though he couldn’t see me. “It isn’t like that between us.”
“Well, maybe that’s the problem. Take control of the situation, Kyle.”
The other line beeped. I looked down and saw it was Brad. “It’s him,” I told Teddy.
“Just ask if he’s okay and then hang up,” he pleaded with me.
“Hold on,” I said and put him on hold and went to the other line.
I clicked over. Brad’s voice was frantic and pleading. “Please Kyle, don’t hang up, I know I screwed up and I want to make it better and I know I worried you last night but please… don’t hang up.”
Yeah, right. He just said, “Hey.”
“Hey,” like nothing had happened. “Hey,” like he was just calling one of his buds to see what was up. “Hey,” like I didn’t just ditch you and go to a gay club and stay out all night. Just “hey.” That “hey” made my mind up for me.
“Are you okay?”
He paused for a moment and then said, “Yeah.”
“Good.” And I hung up.
I dropped the phone. My hands were shaking, my heart was racing…. I’d said four words, but I felt like I’d just run a marathon.
My phone beeped to remind me that Teddy was still holding. When I picked up the phone, I saw Brad call back. I sent it to voice mail and picked up with Teddy.
“Well?” he asked me.
“I asked if he was okay and hung up,” I said, not feeling the least bit satisfied.
“Good,” he said, sounding like he had won something.
<
br /> “He’s calling back right now.”
“Don’t answer!” he shouted. “Make him come back if he wants to talk. He knows he fucked up—make him pay.”
I didn’t want to make him pay. I didn’t want to do anything. I wanted to go back in time to when we were happy and this was easy. What the hell happened to us? Was this real life? Was this growing up? No wonder guys read comics and play video games at thirty; who the fuck wants to grow up?
“What are you going to say when he gets there?” Teddy asked, and I realized I had zoned out and completely forgotten I was on the phone.
“I don’t know,” I said honestly.
“Okay, look, you got him on the ropes. Now you need to follow it up with—”
My phone beeped, telling me I had a voice mail, and I’m going to be honest, Teddy was starting to bug me.
“I need to go,” I said, cutting him off. “I’ll see you at school Monday.”
“Kyle!” he called out. “Don’t let him push you—”
I hung up with him and looked at my phone.
Brad: Voice mail & Missed Call
My finger hovered over it, not sure if I wanted to hear it or not.
Brad
PART OF me wanted to blow through every red light and race home.
The other part wanted the trip to take forever.
I still had no idea what I was going to say to Kyle, but I knew it was time to talk. When had this whole thing gone off the rails so badly? Why was love so fucking hard? I pulled into the alley, turned off my car, and took a few seconds to collect my thoughts. What I was about to say was for everything, and I couldn’t go in there half-cocked.
As I walked up the steps, I wondered if I should knock or just go in. Knocking would make it seem like I was unsure if I even lived there anymore, and walking in looked like I was assuming I did. See, this was the shit that made me freak out! When just knocking on the door took a few minutes to figure out, you knew the relationship was in bad, bad trouble….
I walked in. Since my stuff was still there, technically I still lived there.
He was sitting on the couch, the couch I had built for him. That day seemed like it was years ago instead of a couple of months. I went over and moved the chair across from him and sat down. “I wasn’t ignoring your call last night.”
“I know,” he said in a tiny voice completely unlike Kyle.
“I ended up…,” and I paused, because if I told him I’d ended up doing drugs last night by accident, he would lose his shit completely. It would just confirm that I was a complete fuck-up and there would be no coming back from that.
“… getting fucked up last night and I passed out. I didn’t even hear my phone ring,” I finished.
“Okay,” he said, still not looking up.
“It’s the truth,” I said, trying to get through to him.
“I’m sure it is,” he replied after a few seconds.
“We need to talk,” I said, not sure what was going on anymore.
“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked, finally looking up at me.
“What? No.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“Because I love you,” I said unhesitatingly.
“You love me?” he asked. I nodded. “You can still say that?”
“I will always be able to say that,” I said without reservation.
He sighed and shook his head. “I’ll give you two weeks to find a place, and then I want you out,” he said, getting up from the couch.
“Kyle? Don’t do this!” I moved toward him.
He turned around, and I saw the burning fury in his eyes. “Do not touch me.”
I froze, unsure what was really happening. “You’re that mad at me for staying out all night? Really?”
“Check your Facebook and then start looking for a place to live. I don’t care where you go, but you’re not staying here.”
“What did I do?” I was crying now.
He just walked into the bathroom and slammed the door.
I opened up his laptop and saw he was still logged into Facebook. It was open on my page, and what was there chilled me to the bone. It was a post by Colt.
It said, “You forgot these,” and under it was a picture of my boxer briefs.
My world collapsed as I realized Kyle had just broken up with me.
Kyle
SO YOU see? I told you it got messed up.
He tried to tell me it wasn’t what it looked like but honestly, what was he going to say? “Yeah, I fucked him but that shouldn’t count against me?” The weird part was I didn’t even want to fight about it anymore. Brad and I were over and I just wanted to move on to the next part. Brad wasn’t ready for that. He kept trying again and again to explain himself and to convince me it wasn’t what I thought.
Honestly, I didn’t care if it was what I thought or not. The fact that we were at a place where he ended up leaving his underwear at a stranger’s house was enough for me.
Normally that would have been enough. For normal people I’m sure that was enough crap for life to dish out, but I’m not normal and my crap quota is much higher than that. If all that happened was he cheated on me and we broke up, I wouldn’t be here in an airport waiting for a flight wondering what I was going to do.
Nope, of course things got much worse.
Brad
SO THIS was how my life ended, one act of fuckery at a time.
I begged him, I pleaded, I did everything in my power to get Kyle to understand that nothing happened that night with Colt. He wasn’t interested in hearing my story. He said it didn’t matter if nothing had happened or not, that my underwear got removed at a stranger’s place and then posted on Facebook was enough for him to tap out.
I couldn’t blame him all that much.
I walked around that weekend in shock. He wanted me to move out, but I had nowhere to go but home, and there was no way I was going back to Foster to sleep in my parents’ house. It would be a black hole I would never escape from. I’d rather live in my car before admitting defeat, so I checked the paper for apartments and realized I had no chance at all of staying out here.
That Sunday I slept on the couch, and it was the most miserable experience of my life. I tried not to think how this couch used to be such a source of pride for me. Now it was literally the worst place in the world.
Monday I went to work wondering what I was going to do. When I saw Colt waiting at the front door, I jumped out of my car and clocked him hard. I wasn’t surprised to see him go down like a lead weight. I can’t imagine he got into many fights. He fell to the sidewalk, and I started screaming at him.
“What the fuck were you thinking, asshole? Why would you put that shit up on Facebook?”
“I’m sorry!” he called back.
“You broke me and Kyle up, you fucking dick,” I screamed, wanting very badly to kick him a couple of times.
“I didn’t mean it! It was a joke.”
“You see anyone laughing?”
I looked around and saw we had an audience. “If you want to come in, wait until we’re open,” I said, unlocking the gym. “But leave me the fuck alone.” I slammed the door and locked it behind me.
That didn’t make me feel any better at all; if anything, I was just more depressed.
Colt was knocking on the front door, screaming, “Come on, Brad, I’m sorry! Let me try to make it up to you.”
I pulled the blinds back and glared at him. “Go away, Colt.”
“I’ll talk to Kyle for you! I’ll tell him nothing happened.”
“What makes you think you talking to him will have any better effect than I did?”
He paused. “I’ll tell him nothing happened.”
Now I paused.
“You mean you’d tell him the truth.”
He cocked his head. “I don’t think that would help. You’re better off if I tell him nothing happened.”
I unlocked the door and pulled him inside. “Nothing happened.”
“You really don’t remember?” he asked and I felt my stomach lurch.
“Remember what?”
“You and Bruce? Really?” He looked shocked.
My head swam and I felt the floor tilt beneath me at the thought of cheating on Kyle.
“Dude, you were fucked up—it doesn’t count.”
I’m sure the look on my face made it clear I didn’t share his opinion. “You’re saying I kissed Bruce?”
He chuckled. “Dude, from what I heard in my room, you did a lot more than that.”
And just like that, I realized the truth. Guys like me didn’t deserve guys like Kyle. We were incapable of being the people they deserved, and sooner or later the real us slipped out. Maybe it was being fucked up, maybe it was being lonely and out of town, but sooner or later, no matter how hard we tried, who we really were appeared.
And just like that, it was over.
I stopped trying to convince Kyle we should get back together after a week or so. Instead I began to look around seriously for a place to stay. I asked Todd, who of course offered me a place in his bed, but then said he was joking when I glared at him. I was tempted to put a notice up asking if anyone needed a roommate, but I wasn’t sure anyone in the gym would take it seriously.
Finally Colt came up to me after a session and asked in a low voice, “Dude, you still hate me?”
I didn’t hate him; I hated me. He just happened to remind me of who I was going to become in a few years.
“I think I’m going to have to move back to Texas,” I admitted, the first time I’d said it out loud.
“What? No way, man! You can’t go backward.”
I agreed with him, but what could I do? I wasn’t going to ask Kyle for any of the money Robbie had given us, because that was for us, like, together. I couldn’t afford to stay here, and I wasn’t ready to sell my ass just to have a place to live. Better I went home, got laughed at by everyone who’d just known I was going to fuck things up, and got it over with.
“You can crash on my couch, man,” he offered when it was obvious I wasn’t going to say anything else.
“Yeah, right,” I scoffed.