Don't Let Me Go

by J. H. Trumble

He was quiet for a moment, then, “Nate—”

  “If you don’t want to sleep on the beach, we could get a room. I’m sure the last weekend before school starts is crazy, but I bet there are still—”

  “Nate—”

  “I don’t care where we stay. We can throw a couple of blankets on the ground. I just want to be with you. Alone. Just me and you.” I turned the fan up on the air conditioner. Why was it so damn hot in the car?

  “Nate—”

  Don’t. The muscles in my chin started to twitch before he even said the words.

  “I have to leave tomorrow.”

  I stared at the road ahead. A Ford F150 with a bumper sticker that read I’ll keep my guns and my religion; you keep the change slid into the lane in front of me. I pressed on the accelerator. “You said you were staying for the whole weekend.”

  “I know. I wanted to. That was my plan. But the director said no. The show opens next weekend, and there’s some event tomorrow afternoon and I have to be there. He didn’t even want me to come down for one day. But I wouldn’t have missed your birthday for anything, baby.”

  “Who cares what he wants.”

  “I’m under contract.” In my peripheral vision I could see his legs tense, his feet braced against the floorboard. “Get off his ass, Nate. You’re gonna kill us.”

  “Asshole,” I muttered and eased up on the accelerator.

  Adam relaxed his legs. “Look, I’m here right now, and I promise you we’re going to make the most of it.”

  I took the corner at Lake Forest way too fast and then asked, “Just how much it do we have to make the most of?”

  He was quiet for a moment, then said softly, “I’m on the eight o’clock flight tomorrow morning.”

  I mentally calculated the time we had left. Too little. Almost nothing at all.

  “Come on, let’s get that tattoo, then we’ll ditch the family, and it’ll be just you and me.”

  “I don’t want it anymore.”

  “Don’t say that. We’ve been planning this for almost five months. I want to do this for you. Please let me do this for you. It won’t take too long, I promise.”

  He was making a lot of promises, but the promise of time, the one thing I really wanted, he couldn’t give me.

  Mea met us at the door an hour or so later wearing an animal nose strapped to her face and blowing a sparkly silver horn. “Happy Birthday, Nate!” She threw her arms out and I picked her up. Her long curly hair tickled my nose as she clung to me like a crab. “I’m a warthog!”

  I smiled. “I can see that.”

  I carried her into the kitchen with my unbandaged arm. I knew the second I saw Adam’s mom in a cat nose that party hats were way too cliché for this family.

  “Elephant or rhiiino?” Adam said, his eyes glinting. The way he emphasized rhino, I knew the choice had already been made for me. I rolled my eyes at him, but he just laughed and strapped the horned snout to my face. He pulled an opened-mouthed shark snout over his own.

  Adam’s mom grinned at me and finished lighting the candles. “Hope you haven’t had too much cake yet,” she said.

  There was only one thing I wanted to put in my mouth at that moment, and it wasn’t cake. “No way,” I said with every ounce of fake cheer I could muster. “It looks great.”

  “Happy Birthday, Nate,” Adam’s stepdad (in a pig nose) said, handing me a present wrapped in sparkly silver paper that matched the horn Mea was still blowing. I looked at the gift in my hands, really moved that they were doing this for me. They felt as much like my parents as my own mom, and more so than my dad. “You guys really didn’t have to do this,” I said, a little embarrassed.

  “Open it,” Mea said. I perched her on the bar and peeled off the paper. “It’s a picture,” she announced before I could completely finish the job.

  “Thanks a lot for ruining the surprise, brat,” Adam teased her. She pushed out her lower lip, looking a little hurt until I winked at her. Then she beamed.

  I set the paper on the counter and turned over the eight and a half by eleven frame. I recognized the photo immediately. It wasn’t one I’d seen before, but I knew the image. It was a candid shot of the two of us walking on the beach in Key West. We were holding hands and looking at each other and laughing. I couldn’t remember about what.

  Adam’s mom must have taken the picture. It struck me how beautiful we were together—tan, Adam in his white trunks with the black hibiscus print that I knew so well, riding low on his hips as always, me in solid black trunks. I bit down hard on my lower lip.

  Beside me, Adam exchanged a look with his parents, then wrapped his arms around me and pulled me to him. I planted my face in his shoulder, still not believing he was here, still afraid I’d wake up and it would all be just a dream, and knowing that this time tomorrow, he’d be gone again.

  “Mom’s been dying to give you that picture since we got back from Key West, but she wanted to surprise you with it for your birthday.” I sniffed and he squeezed me tighter. “I have one just like it. Every time you came over, I had to hide it in my closet. It’s by my bed in the apartment now.” He grinned into my hair.

  I clung to him and eventually he had to force my arms from around him so he could look at me. “Okay?”

  I nodded, not entirely trusting my voice just yet. His parents and Mea had left us alone, knowing it embarrassed me to lose it in front of them. The candles had burned down to little puddles of blue wax on the chocolate icing. Adam blew them out and led me upstairs.

  Chapter 14

  “Nate, baby, take it easy. You’re hurting me.”

  I rolled to my other side and flung the condom across the room. My chest heaved from the exertion, and from anger and hurt.

  Clueless, Adam turned and pressed himself to my back and trailed his fingers lightly up and down my arm. He kissed my shoulder. “You didn’t have to stop. I just meant you were getting a little, um, overly enthusiastic, and passionate, and—”

  “I wanted to hurt you.”

  He grew still behind me. The lava lamps along the high shelf were warm now and active. The lava swelled and stretched toward the top of the lamps, creating thin threads that eventually snapped, bouncing the lava up into fat globules that rose and slowly settled again. Red, purple, and green shadows floated across the ceiling. After a few minutes he got up and I could hear him dress. Then he quietly let himself out of the room.

  I found him lying on his back on the wraparound couch in the media room down the hall, a throw pillow hugged to his chest.

  I picked up his feet and sat down, pulling them back in my lap. I pressed my thumbs into the arch of his foot and slowly drew them toward his toes. He stared at the ceiling, but when I kissed his toes, he closed his eyes. “I didn’t know this would be so hard,” I said.

  “I understand that, Nate. But you don’t seem to understand that this is hard for me too. There are times when I feel like I can hardly breathe I miss you so much.”

  “Then don’t go back.” I didn’t plan to say it, but once I’d started, the words just tumbled out. “I don’t want you to go. Stay with me.”

  “I can’t.” He made a growling noise in the back of his throat. “I’ve made commitments. I signed a contract. I have to go back. I know that’s not what you want to hear. But I wish you had told me this before I left for New York.”

  “I didn’t want to hold you back. I knew this was important to you.”

  “And now you don’t care?”

  I winced. “No. It’s not that.”

  He draped his forearm over his face. “I know it’s not,” he said, his voice thicker and softer than before. “Come here.” He tossed the pillow over the back of the couch and reached his hand out to me. I stretched out next to him. He shifted up against the back of the couch to make room for me, then fingered the bandage on my arm.

  “We have to take this off.”

  “Later.” I molded myself to him, desperate to keep him close to me.

  “N
ot later. Now. Come on.”

  In the bathroom he peeled off the bandage, then gently washed my arm with Mea’s baby soap, using his hands to clean the area and rinse it. I felt like a little boy with a scraped knee.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “I know.” He reached for a hand towel and patted my arm dry. “Me too. I forget sometimes how much you’ve been through. You’re stronger than you think, Nate. A lot stronger. I don’t have half the courage that you do. And I couldn’t be prouder that you love me. You can do this.”

  If that was supposed to make me feel better, strong, it wasn’t working so great. I looked at my arm. Fear is temporary. Regret is forever. The skin around the black slanted lettering looked and felt sunburned. “Just leave it alone until tomorrow,” Adam said, “then you can use some baby lotion or maybe some A and D ointment if you don’t use too much.”

  I nodded, and then probably because I looked as shitty as I felt, he pulled me to him. “It’s just until Thanksgiving,” he whispered into my hair, but again, if he thought that would make me feel better, well, I had already checked the calendar—ninety-five days. I’d barely survived twenty-seven. The air conditioner kicked on. I hadn’t put a shirt on and the cool air made me shiver. I folded myself more snugly into him.

  “Mmm. I kinda like this,” Adam said.

  “Can we try again?” I said. “You did promise I could do nasty things to you.”

  He grinned. “I did, didn’t I? Well, I’m a man of my word.”

  I couldn’t let go of the hurt and resentment. The rest of the evening was like a bad song, set on repeat. Him, playful and sweet; me, not playful, not sweet. And all of it interspersed with moments of passion that at times felt more like fighting than loving. And even though he was next to me and he was warm and he was here, I didn’t have to look at the clock to know how little time was left before warm and here became warm and there. I scooted even closer to his back and felt the regular rise and fall of his breathing and tried desperately to memorize his smell, the warmth of his skin against mine, the feel of his fingers wrapped around my fingers. I couldn’t help thinking it would have been easier if he hadn’t come back, because letting him go again was so damn hard. I pressed my nose into the short hairs at the nape of his neck and whispered, more to myself than to him, “I don’t know how to let you go.”

  He twisted around under my arm, surprising me, and settled again, facing me now, his mouth so close to mine I could feel his breath. “Then don’t, Nate.” He ran a thumb across my brow. “Look, I don’t care if I break my contract. Let them sue me. It’s not worth having you feel like this. We all have our limits. Just say the word and I’ll stay.”

  It occurred to me that I had said The Word. And now he was asking me to say The Word again? And when he put it in terms of broken contracts and lawsuits, he made it all sound so immature and childish.

  “I thought you were asleep,” I said.

  He found my hand in the semi-dark and held it to his heart. I opened my fingers and lay my palm flat against his skin. He pressed his hand over mine.

  “School starts Monday,” I said. “It’s gonna be so weird without you there.”

  “I’ll stay, Nate. If that’s what you want, I’ll stay.”

  What I wanted was to never have to let him go, to crawl inside his skin, to be one with him, every second of every minute of every day. Forever. That sick kind of wanting that rips at your soul while making you look like some kind of psycho to the rest of the world. I had no doubt I could say The Word, and he’d stay. But he didn’t want to. I could hear it in his voice. He wanted me. He wanted to be with me. He wanted to be here for me. But he wanted New York too. And I knew I had to let him go. Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work—if you love something, set it free? If it comes back to you, it’s yours. If it doesn’t ... I didn’t want to go there.

  “No. I want you to go,” I said, “and then I want you to come back to me.”

  We sat facing each other—me on the edge of the bed, Adam on his desk chair. His thumbs traced circles in the palms of my hands. He looked at the still angry-looking skin around my tattoo. “Put some lotion on it later this afternoon. And no scratching.”

  I nodded.

  He smiled. “Good. Be sure to follow all the directions, okay?”

  He glanced past my shoulder at the clock on his bedside table, then back at me. My breath caught in my throat. He pressed his lips together and swallowed hard.

  “I’m gonna finally start writing that blog, I think,” I said. I hadn’t had the energy to figure it all out over the past month. I didn’t have it now either, but God knows, I had to do something to fill the long days ahead.

  “Good. You can help a lot of kids.” He glanced at the clock again. “Baby, I’m gonna miss my flight if we don’t get going.”

  “Can I have another lava lamp?”

  “You can have anything you want.”

  I wanted the one he’d put on the bedside table last night. He unplugged it and wrapped the cord around the base and handed it to me. By the time I got him to the airport, it was so close to flight time that I had to drop him at the curb so he could check in while I parked. When I got to passenger check-in, he was gone. I hadn’t even said good-bye. I groped for my cell phone, but it wasn’t there. I must have left it in his room. I made my way back to the parking garage, alone.

  Chapter 15

  I picked up my phone at Adam’s, then on impulse headed over to the music store. I wasn’t working today; I’d taken the day off to spend it with Adam. But I did need a phone number, and a life, I thought wryly. I called Danial on the drive back to my house, and he agreed to help me set up a blog the next afternoon. The rest of the day I spent in an emotional freefall as I came to terms with the lonely months ahead.

  Adam called the moment he got off the plane—at least I assumed it was the moment he got off—and the first thing out of my mouth was, “Why didn’t you wait for me?”

  “I’m sorry, baby, there was no time. I would have missed my flight.”

  As if that would have been the worst thing in the world. He was breathing heavily like he was running through the airport. Before I could respond, there was another voice, more distant, but near enough that I could hear every word: “There’s my sexy Adam.” A laugh—Adam’s—and then some muffled noise that I interpreted as Adam’s phone on the back of Justin’s neck as he embraced him.

  “Hey, baby,” Adam said in the phone again, “I’ll Skype you this evening.” Then to Justin, “Yeah, I’m all set.”

  “Don’t bother,” I mumbled.

  “What?” he said, having clearly missed my sarcasm in his juggling of two conversations.

  “Nothing. Yeah, sure.”

  When he spoke again, his voice was low and close to the phone. “Let’s make it late. Late late, after everyone’s gone to bed. Wear your football jersey. That mesh one. And lock your door.”

  I relaxed a little and grinned into the phone. “And what are you wearing?”

  “Whatever you want, baby. It’s just you and me.”

  Only, that night on cam, it wasn’t just him and me.

  It was him and me and Justin.

  The Skype had started out great, beautiful, and then in the background, there was Adam’s creepy roommate, parading around the apartment like the damn emperor, seemingly oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t wearing a stitch of clothing.

  Adam had on his headphones, so he didn’t notice him slither into the room behind him until I muttered a “What the fuck?” He turned just as Justin placed his hands on Adam’s shoulders.

  “What are you doing up in the middle of the night, hot stuff?” He dipped his head down next to Adam’s. “Oh, I see. It’s little Nate. That’s sweet.” He smiled one of those creepy smiles that seemed to say, “Enjoy it while you can,” and walked off.

  Adam turned back to the screen. “I’m sorry.”

  “I have to go.”

  “Don’t.”

  “He�
��s naked, Adam. Na-ked.”

  “I know he’s naked. What do you want me to do about it?” His voice was short, impatient, irritated.

  “Nothing. Not a damn thing.”

  I ended the Skype, then shut down my computer and turned off my cell phone.

  “Nathan? Are you still asleep? It’s one o’clock.” Mom jiggled my leg. I groaned and pulled the quilt over my head. “Wake up. You have a guest downstairs. A Danial Quasimodo or something.”

  Oh crap. I’d forgotten all about Danial coming over this afternoon. “Qasimi. It’s Danial Qasimi,” I said, getting up and stumbling to the closet. “He’s helping me set up my blog.” I yanked a T-shirt off a hanger. “Will you tell him I’ll be right down?”

  “Okay.” She turned to go, then paused and turned back. “Why were you sleeping in your football jersey?”

  You don’t want to know.

  I switched shirts and pulled on a clean pair of shorts. Danial was at the base of the stairs chatting with my mom when I got down. I reached out to shake his hand, suddenly self-conscious about my disheveled look. He just seemed amused.

  In my room, I pointed to the computer, then excused myself to brush my teeth, wash my face, and rake my fingers through my hair. My head ached thinking about last night. Adam hadn’t even been gone twenty-four hours and we were already fighting again. I knew Justin’s come-ons weren’t his fault, and yet I couldn’t help feeling like they were, just a little. But I couldn’t deal with that now.

  Danial had my computer booted up and was kicked back in my chair surveying my room—the unmade bed, yesterday’s shorts and T-shirt wadded up on the floor. My football jersey crowning the pile.

  “Sorry for the wait.”

  He grinned. “Rough night?”

  “Yeah.” I grabbed another chair from the desk in my grandmother’s room and pulled it up next to him. “So, what do I need to do?”

  “Do you know what blogging service you want to use?” Danial said. He shook his head and laughed at the blank look on my face. “Let me just show you some. The three biggest ones are free services. They each have a different look, different features.” He showed me some blogs that he followed, mostly geeky stuff, but I really couldn’t have cared less and yawned more than once. I was just going through the motions.