“I always read at night before I go to bed.”
“Not this trip. You’re sharing a room with me.”
“What?” I froze in the middle of towel-drying my hair and stared at him, shocked.
He laughed and tossed two books over his shoulder. “Mom and Ben finally gave up trying to figure out room arrangements. They could only get two rooms at such a late date, so they were going to have me sleep with them and Mea. And then that seemed ridiculous when there was an empty double bed in the room right next door. So ...”
A slow smile spread across my face. “So I’m stuck with you for a whole week? In Key West? Me and you? Together? Like alone? All night?”
He laughed and held up a pair of pajama pants. “You won’t be needing these either.” He tossed them over his shoulder too. I threw a box from my nightstand into my bag and he read the label. “Trojan natural lamb. For a more sensual feeling.” He held it up to me, smiling. “A twelve pack? Are you kidding me? I hope there’s a First Aid kit in here somewhere too.”
Key West—the southernmost point in the United States, a mere six square miles, the last in a string of keys off the tip of Florida, and a place where, as one Web site claimed, closets have no doors. But thankfully, the rooms did, with locks. Ben handed over the key with a slightly amused grin.
“I expect you two to behave.”
Fortunately, our room wasn’t next to theirs after all.
The week was pure magic. We filled our days with long walks on the beach and lazy swims in the ocean. We explored the island on bicycle, taking in the nineteenth-century architecture, dodging the free-roaming chickens, and chatting up barefoot hippies with tiny dogs nestled in their bicycle baskets. We wandered through Ernest Hemingway’s house and speculated about Tennessee Williams’s life as we stood, hand-in-hand, outside the bungalow he’d lived in decades ago. And when we got hungry, we ate Cuban sandwiches or conch fritters at a sidewalk table or sitting on the curb and watched other lovers in fearless public displays of affection.
Our nights we filled with passion and long soft gazes and sweet words. We weren’t behaving ourselves, and we didn’t for one moment feel guilty about that.
On Thursday evening, I paid a street performer twenty-five dollars to borrow his guitar for five minutes. It was the first time I’d played Adam his song, the song I’d written for him as a Christmas present, the song I’d not had the heart to play for him before then. And it seemed right that I’d waited. I played it for him sitting cross-legged under a street lamp in Mallory Square with the crowds and tightrope walkers and jugglers as a backdrop. He cried.
Too soon it was the last day, the sun on the beach just as intense as it had been on the first, but the water cooled our feet as we walked through the surf. Adam took my hand.
“Can I ask you something?” I said.
He smiled and strengthened his grip.
“When were you going to tell me about New York?”
The look on his face confirmed what I’d been dreading. The smile disappeared. He stopped and stared off at the ocean for a long time, then turned to look at me. “How do you know about New York?”
“I know.”
“I’ve been waiting until we got back to talk to you about it.”
“When do you leave?”
“I haven’t even agreed to take the job yet.”
I looked away, down the beach. Two guys who looked like body builders were making out on a striped blanket under a palm tree about ten yards away. A lone woman tossed a Frisbee into the ocean and stood with her hands on her hips while a black-and-white dog bounded through the surf to catch it.
“Come on,” he said, pulling me after him into the deeper water.
We rose and fell with the swell of the ocean, and finally he told me about New York.
“It sounds like a great opportunity,” I said.
“Mom’s not too happy with the idea. She wants me to go to Austin.”
“You have to do what’s right for you.”
He stared back toward the beach. “Just say the word, Nate, and I won’t go.”
I couldn’t do that. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t. “I don’t want you to stay,” I said.
His face told me he hadn’t expected that. A wave tossed me into him and then pulled him away.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You know what I mean. This is your time. If you don’t do this, then I’ll always feel like I robbed you of your dreams. I can’t live with that.”
“I’ll be a hero for you, Nate. Let me be that. I can chase my dreams here.”
I shook my head. “No, you can’t. Please, go to New York. Be fabulous.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
I drew in a slow, deep breath to steady myself. He’d saved me when I couldn’t save myself. And it was my time to return the favor.
“I don’t know who I am without you anymore.” True. And then the untruth that I knew would release him. “I need to find out. For me, for you, for us.”
What could he say? We were somber as we headed back up the beach some time later. He dropped my hand and slung his arm around my neck and pulled me snugly to him and sniffed.
Chapter 3
I waited off to the side as Adam took his place in line at passenger check-in. The line wasn’t as long as he had feared, and he seemed to relax a little. He adjusted his backpack on his shoulder, then slipped his cell phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. He smiled as he talked, then glanced at me and winked.
If I leave here tomorrow ...
I jostled my leg and drew in another shaky breath, then closed my eyes and tried to end the “Free Bird” death track loop in my head. Adam did that to me sometimes—he’d hum a song until I picked up the tune. It was an annoying little trick he liked to play on me, but one that he found endlessly amusing. There was this one song—“Wichita Lineman,” an oldie by Glen Campbell. I used to play it for my grandmother. She loved the song and she loved hearing me play the guitar, but when Adam told me it was about someone who strung telephone lines, it totally killed the romance. At odd times, he’d start humming the song and the next thing I knew I was humming it too (I am a lineman for the county ... ), looping it repeatedly in my head until suddenly I’d realize what I was doing and stop. He got such a kick out of messing with my head like that. I actually would have welcomed “Wichita Lineman” right then, but “Free Bird” played on.
A little kid bumped my hip with her SpongeBob backpack as she bounced past me, her hand tightly gripped in her dad’s. The line behind Adam had lengthened, and I was reminded of how quickly time was running out.
It wasn’t too late. I could tell him the truth. But, God, what was the truth? That I was still so pathetically needy and selfish that I’d let him throw away his dreams just so he could continue playing nursemaid to me? And for how long? He deserved better. He was my hero. But surely even heroes grow weary lugging around the burdens of their heroism.
The ticket agent handed a boarding pass to a man in a suit. Adam glanced back at me, then stepped up to the counter and set his backpack on the floor next to him. One at a time, he heaved his suitcases onto the scale while Lynyrd Skynyrd continued to tear at my heart.
What a waste. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines were dead. Gone. Forever gone. The 1977 plane crash had claimed six lives, six hearts that would never know sweet love again. You didn’t get any freer than that.
A few feet away, SpongeBob girl pulled a butched-up Barbie from her backpack. The doll’s hair had been cut almost to the scalp and she was wearing Ken’s clothes. I smiled to myself. The little girl caught my eye and smiled back, then buried her face in her dad’s pant leg. You go, sister, I thought. I turned to watch Adam.
But like fingers to an itch, my mind returned to the song, changing girl to boy like it did in all love songs now.
Sometimes I wondered, though, at his complete willingness to believe whatever I threw out there. I’ll be fine. I want
you to go. I don’t know who I am without you anymore. I need to find out. Did he believe the lies because he wanted them to be true? My stomach clutched at that thought, and I fought the urge to heave right there on the scuffed tile floor.
“Mom wants you to come to dinner one night soon,” Adam said when he’d finished checking in. He tucked his boarding pass into a side pocket in his backpack and hitched the strap back on his shoulder.
“Do you have any gum?”
He stuck the piece he was chewing between his teeth. I took it and stuck it in my mouth. He grinned. “Come on, I’ll buy you a pack.”
He checked the time on his phone as the newsstand clerk made change.
“Who’s picking you up?” I asked.
“Justin, I think.” He slid the change into his jeans pocket and the gum into mine, letting his fingers linger on my hip for just a moment, and looked at me with those deep blue eyes.
I looked off toward the crowds making their way from check-in to security and blinked a few times.
“Oh, Nate. If you cry, I’m gonna cry too.”
Would you, Adam? Would you still cry for me? Does this come anywhere near doing to you what it’s doing to me? “I’m fine,” I said.
He shouldered his backpack again and hooked a finger through my belt loop. “Come on. I have something for you.”
We found a spot just outside the newsstand. He slipped his hand into his backpack and brought out a black Sharpie. “If Juliet gets to write on you, then so do I.”
“That was a long time ago.” A lifetime it seemed, before there was a Nate and Adam. A time when his best friend had hoped her name would soon be linked to mine.
“Not so long,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “I already know your cell number.”
“I’m not writing my cell number.” He held the Sharpie poised in the air, and waggled his fingers at me in a come-on gesture. I held my arm out and he pulled it under his own, blocking my view with his back. “No peeking until I’m done.”
The Sharpie tickled, but I held still until I heard him snap the cap back on the pen. He released my arm and turned back to me and smiled. He had drawn a big heart on the inside of my arm. Printed inside in neat block letters: AJ + NS 4Ever.
I looked at him, then at the security agents clearing passengers about fifty feet farther down, then at my arm again, then at Adam. My chin started that awful quivering again.
“It’s just a month, Nate. I wouldn’t miss your birthday for anything. It’ll be here before you know it. I’ll feed you cake and then we’ll get you all tatted up.”
I nodded and blinked.
He cleared his throat and stepped in a little closer. When he spoke, his voice was low, conspiratorial, his breath warm against my ear. “And then I’ll let you do nasty things to me.”
“Promise?”
“Mr. Schaper. I. Am. Shocked,” he said with mock horror.
“You are not.”
He laughed, then pressed his mouth to mine. When he pulled away, I scanned the check-in area—a simple knee-jerk reaction I still couldn’t shake.
“Are we being watched?” he asked.
“Always the freak show.”
“Consider it a public service.”
I studied his face for a moment. “Is that what we are now? A flesh and blood PSA?”
He frowned, and a crease formed between his brows the way it did anytime he was worried or confused.
Adam glanced at the monitors hanging from the ceiling—Continental 1079, Houston to New York LaGuardia Airport, On Time—then at the passengers lining up at security. My stomach turned over, and again I thought I might throw up. My nose burned. I stared down at my feet.
Adam pressed his forehead to mine. “Don’t let that tramp Juliet steal you away from me.”
I laughed a little and blinked back tears, but one rolled down my cheek anyway.
“Oh, Nate.” Adam let his backpack slip to the floor and pulled me to him. I planted my face in his neck. “I’ll call and text and Skype every day,” he said. “You’re going to be sick of me before the month’s over. It’ll go fast. You’ll see.”
I sniffed, then he sniffed, and that made me sniff even harder, especially when he drew little circles on the base of my neck with his finger. “I don’t have to go, Nate,” he whispered. “Maybe it’s just too soon. If you need me to stay, I’ll stay. I can work at one of the community theaters and take classes at U of H and—”
“No.” I shook my head. “No. This is your dream. Broadway.”
“Off Broadway. Off off Broadway.”
“You’re going. And you’re going to be fabulous and amazing.” I swallowed hard. “I’ll be okay. I’ll start that blog or something.”
“Save the world for the queers?”
“Yeah, something like that. Maybe I’ll sleep with Juliet.”
“You’d never.”
I smiled weakly and blinked away fresh tears.
“I’ll stay, Nate.”
I shook my head, and when he asked if I was sure, I lied and said I was. He made me promise to write more songs for him. And then he pulled me to him one last time, kissed me, and let me go.
He held on to my fingers until he couldn’t anymore and took his place in line. I stayed there and watched him until he was lost in the crowd and the distance.
In the parking garage I turned the ignition key, ejected the CD, leaned it on a pencil behind my left back tire, and backed over it.
My hero was gone.
Chapter 4
Last March 14
Things that scared us
ADAM: Where r u?
ADAM: Answer ur phone, dammit! Ur mom is worried sick.
ADAM: Nate, pls call me.
ADAM: Im coming to look for u.
NATE: Im fine ok im fine no need 2 worry ... just nd some time alone k im fffiiinnneee!
ADAM: Just tell me where u r.
ADAM: Answer ur fucking phone!
ADAM: Nate, pls, baby. Its 2 in the am. Tell me where u r. Ur scaring me.
NATE: I HAV 2 GO! DAMN! IM FINE!
ADAM: Im calling friends to help look for u.
NATE: if u call... I will never forgive u.
ADAM: If something happens 2 u I’ll never forgive myself.
NATE: NO DO NOT CALL. I ND 2B ALONE FOR A REA SON! NOT TO WORRY THEM!!! DO NOT FUCKING CALL! PLEASE DON’T CALL. I DON’T WANNA WORRY ANYONE.
ADAM: Then tell me where u r.
Long pause.
NATE: Football field.
The moon was full and my eyes accustomed to the dim light, so I could see him when he climbed up into the bleachers and sat down, center field, six rows up. I hadn’t told him what football field. But he was here so quickly, it was obvious he’d guessed right. What other field would I have gone to but the one where I had suffered so many humiliations? The one where Coach Schaper, dear old Dad, had taunted me relentlessly—You’re throwing like a pussy. No son of mine is running like a homo. Don’t you dare cry. I didn’t raise a faggot—turning what might have been my field of dreams into his killing fields.
I dropkicked another football toward the goal. It veered to the right and dropped just a few feet inside the end zone. My bare toes stung from the impact. “I always wanted to be placekicker on the team,” I shouted. “Kickers have to have good form, nerves of steel. I would have been a good one too, you know. If I’d kicked, I might have even liked football. Maybe I’d still be on the team.” I sniffed and wiped at my dripping nose with my dirty, sweaty forearm. The pads on my shoulders were too small and pinched. I adjusted them again. “You wanna know why I wasn’t?” I picked up another ball from the six or seven lined up along the forty-yard line and dropkicked it cleanly through the goal posts. “Because my dad said placekickers aren’t real football players. And if you’re not a real football player, you’re not shit.
“Especially if you’re the coach’s son,” I muttered.
I picked up another ball and planted it on my hip and loo
k at him through the darkness. “You want to play?”
Adam got up, slipped under the railing, and dropped to the ground.
I nudged the other footballs out of the way and met him at the fifty. “One on one,” I said. I showed him how to hold the ball, tuck it up snug in the crook of his arm where it was less apt to get loose, and then how to get in line position. Even in the semi-dark, it was obvious what a mess I was. He took it all in, but he did what I said without a word. When we broke, he dodged me and sprinted for the end zone, but I flung myself at him, just catching his left ankle with my outstretched arms. He went down with an umph.
“Shit, that hurts,” he muttered.
The next time, I carried the ball. I went down on my knuckles at the forty-five. When we broke, I faked right and easily slipped past him on the left and ran for a touchdown, then jogged back. “Let’s go,” I said, gutting him with the ball.
He planted the ball on his hip. “Nate, you can’t keep doing this.”
“Come on,” I said. “Again.”
I got down on my knuckles, but he didn’t budge. “This didn’t just happen to you,” he said. “This happened to me too.”
I scoffed. “Nobody yanked your pants down and shoved a wagon handle up your ass in front of a couple dozen people.”
“You know what I mean.”
I stormed back over to him, snatched the football from his hip, then stormed back and jabbed it down at the fifty again. “Let’s go,” I said furiously. I got down again, mentally preparing myself for my next move should he decide to call me on it. Instead, he hesitated for just a moment, then got in position and locked eyes with me. “This has got to stop, Nate. You can’t do this by yourself.”
“Snap the fucking ball.”
“You have to—”
“SNAP THE FUCKING BALL!”
He snapped the ball and dropped back a few steps. I threw myself at him and he went down again, on his back this time. He groaned and then grew quiet. And still.
“Adam?” I grabbed his leg at the calf and shook it a little. “Adam? You okay?”
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