“I’m sorry, Adam. This...this shouldn’t have happened.” Those were the only words I could find, but they fell far short of what I felt I should’ve said.
“It’s not your fault, love,” Adam said as he shifted his gaze to me. His eyes were red rimmed and bloodshot. “Shit just doesn’t go my way, ever. Take my boyfriend out for a romantic getaway? Outed by pissy little old lady. We finally find a safe place to be ourselves? Your psychotic brothers have goddamn meltdown in the middle of a barbecue. Now the whole place is off limits to outsiders. I actually start rebuilding my relationship with mother to the point where she was happy to go bowling with me? My sister thinks now would be the perfect time to unleash all hell. Now I doubt my mother will ever speak to me again. Unless, of course, I tell her that I’ve begged God to forgive me and sworn off this sinful lifestyle.” He looked me in the eye. “I’m never going to see my mom again and if I do...all she’s going to do is spew hate. If it wasn’t for your parents and their somewhat naive, but ultimately positive worldview, I’d have completely sworn off Christians by now.”
“They’re like any other group of people, there’s good and bad among them. Usually, they’re more good than bad, but there are a few issues that tend to bring out the worst in them,” I sighed and shook my head. “I’m sorry, about your mom. I really am.”
“I thought I could pretend to be straight to keep her happy, y’know? That it would be worth it just to have a relationship with her again.” Adam sniffled and rubbed his eyes. “Anyway, now there’s Dad to worry about and I just...I don’t think I’m ready to get rejected by both parents in the same afternoon. But at the same time I don’t want to put it off. Especially because my sister is out there somewhere, spiraling because she thinks she’s homeless.” He took a deep breath and looked at me with resolve. “I think, I at least need to go and try to get him to let her stay.”
“I’m right here beside you,” I said, reaching across the gap to squeeze his hand. “Whatever you need, I’m there.”
“Right now, I just need this,” said Adam as he kissed the back of my hand. “You’re all I need.”
A shiver ran down my spine at his words. I caught myself thinking of all the ways that I could fill his needs and my cheeks started to flush.
He flashed a lopsided smile at me. “I saw that look,” he said as he started the car. “You’re sitting over there thinking up ways to take advantage of me while I’m vulnerable.”
“N-no,” I protested, as I tried to hide my guilty smile. “I’m not going to take advantage of you.”
“Aw, that’s too bad,” he said with a pout. “There you were getting my hopes up.” He winked at me and pulled the car out of the parking lot.
He was putting up a good show. Pretending like he was back to his old self. His laugh sounded genuine and that devious smile on his lips as he teased me was close to the real thing. He’d vented his feelings and was trying to move on as best he could. It was either that or waste time wallowing in self-pity. I just wished I could’ve done more to ease his pain.
As we pulled up outside Adam’s house, I caught him looking nervously at my phone.
“Still no word from Liz,” I assured him. “Don’t worry, she’ll find Allie.”
Adam nodded his head and drew in a deep breath. He held it for a long moment and then exhaled forcefully. “I can’t do this,” he said, looking over at me. “If I walk through that door, there’s every chance that I walk out homeless.”
“And if you never walk in than you’ll still be homeless,” I countered, turning in my seat to face him fully. “Whatever happens next, you’re not going through it alone. You’ve got friends who’ll be there for you no matter what.”
“Right, right...you’re right,” Adam nodded again as if doing so would give him more confidence. “Let’s just, do it fast. Like ripping off a band aid.”
“Y-yeah, okay,” I agreed as we climbed out of the car. It’s not really the analogy I would’ve used, but I had to admit that it fit pretty well. We had barely started up the driveway when the front door was ripped open and Adam’s dad flew out onto the porch. He stopped in his tracks when he saw us.
“G-good, Adam you’re here, good. Look, I just got a call...your sister’s been arrested.”
43
Sitting at the local police station waiting to pick up Allie was not how I expected to spend my day, but I had pledged to remain by Adam’s side no matter what, so that’s what I was going to do. We sat, side-by-side on a bench in a waiting area with a bunch of other people. Adam’s dad was the front desk chatting with the officer on duty and trying to make arrangements.
When Mr. Fischer dropped onto the bench beside Adam, he looked like he’d aged about ten years.
“What’d they say?” Adam asked gently.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” Mr. Fischer sighed. “She was arrested for stalking a man, one of her teachers apparently. I think they said his name was Perry?”
“Perry? He teaches A.P. History. Allie’s not in his class,” I commented before I could stop myself.
“Well whatever the case may be he’s engaged to the principal’s daughter. She’s been stalking him for a couple of months now. He apparently tried to handle it by talking to her. He said he didn’t want to get anyone else involved and ruin her reputation,” Mr. Fischer pinched the bridge of her nose. “At first she was just contriving ways to bump into him when he was out on errands, but lately she’s started hanging around outside of his home. They even think she might have broken in a couple of times and gone through his things. Today she approached him at work, hysterical, and begged him to leave his fiance so they could be together. She refused to calm down and had to be escorted off the property by security. She wouldn’t leave though and so they called the cops.”
“How much of this is true?” Adam asked. I could sense the protective older brother in him was already beginning to doubt the story.
“Apparently, all of it,” Mr. Fischer threw up his hands. “She admitted to everything and even filled in a couple details they were missing. Now the cops won’t release her until Perry decides if he’s going to press charges or not. Apparently he’s consulting with his lawyer or something.”
“I don’t understand,” Adam sounded exasperated. “Stalking a teacher? I knew she was acting a little out of the ordinary lately, but I didn’t think...”
“According to Allie, there was an encounter between the two of them earlier in the year. She said they ‘share a moment’ in the hallway. He reached passed her to open a class room door and she kissed him. And she claims that ever since that moment she’s been in love.” Mr. Fischer looked over at Adam. “She said that your mother kicked her out today and she had nowhere else to go. She had begged him to let her stay at his place so that she wouldn’t wind up on the street.”
Adam looked away. I could see the guilt in his eyes.
“This is not your fault,” I told him, reaching out and grabbing his hand without thinking.
Adam’s eyes went wide and met mine. I fully expected him to pull away. He didn’t.
“What do you mean, ‘not his fault?’ What happened?” Mr. Fischer interrupted our moment. Most notably, he didn’t comment on our exchange.
“We were bowling with Mom today,” Adam started to recount what happened, from the moment I arrived right up until Allie left. Mr. Fischer didn’t say a word and his expression never changed. He only listened.
“Sounds like your mom alright,” he said when Adam had finished his story. He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “Being married to her was like being forced to endure the trials of Job.”
“And what do you think about it? What I said I mean.” Adam watched for his father’s reaction.
“You mean about you being gay?” Mr. Fischer clarified. When Adam nodded, he chuckled. “Son, your mother was the only one that was fooled by the story you made up. You gave her a reasonable explanation and let her go back to sticking her head in
the sand, but...I regret the way I acted that night. I think about it all the time and more than once I’ve wanted to apologize to you about it. But...I kept putting it off. I told myself that you’d come to me when you were ready to talk about it again. The longer things went on, the more I began to worry that I had made you too afraid to ever want to confide in me again. So then I felt guilty and it was this whole pity party.” He looked Adam in the eye. “I’ve had a long time to think, and pray, and read the scriptures. I’ve done everything I can to try and make sense of homosexuality and religion and how it all fits together. I’ve probably read just about every article I can find on the subject. Nobody can agree. You can find just as many people saying that homosexuality isn’t a sin as there are people saying that it is.”
He took a deep breath and shifted his gaze to me for a moment. I saw a little bit of my own father in his eyes. A man who took his faith very seriously and who, until that very moment, had never struggled with it as much as he was right then.
“And what do you think?” Adam asked. “Is Mom right? Am I condemned to an eternity in hellfire for something that’s beyond my control?”
“I think...there’s too much quibbling over stuff that doesn’t matter,” Mr. Fischer said. “What I mean is...when Jesus was on Earth, the Pharisees asked him which commandment was the most important, or something like that. And, I’m paraphrasing a little here. I don’t have the whole chapter and verse memorized for every little thing the way your mom does Of course, the only stuff she seems to memorize are the verses that condemn people to hellfire.”
“Dad!?” Adam was becoming exasperated.
“Anyway, anyway,” Mr. Fischer continued his tale. “He basically told them that only two things mattered and that if you did those two things then you were set. The first was to love God with your entire being and the second was to love other people as much as you love yourself.”
“So, what? Be a good person and believe in God?” Adam asked, shaking his head in disbelief.
“That’s pretty much all it boils down to,” Mr. Fischer said with a nod. “Nothing else really matters outside of those two things.”
“I don’t where I stand on the whole ‘God’ thing,” Adam admitted. “I know you believe but my life has been pretty shit so far Dad, no offense. I don’t really see how you can believe in someone that would let things like hurricanes and tsunamis kill thousands of innocent people. I mean, if God created everything then he created natural disasters too. So why would he do something like that?”
Mr. Fischer shook his head. “That’s a question for more learned men than me,” he admitted. “All I know is that, I’ve seen enough stuff in my life that can only be explained by God’s presence. The rest is faith that he’s got a plan that’s bigger than us.”
Adam looked sidelong at me, but all I could was shrug in response. I’d given up on trying to understand the whole Christian belief system. I could admit to myself that there was probably a higher power of some sort, but I honestly didn’t think any one religion had all the details on what that power was like.
“Look, I’m not trying to convert you boys or anything,” Mr. Fischer assured us. “I know it’s a lot to swallow. All I’m trying to say is that...I love you, Adam. I don’t...I don’t understand how your mother can look at you and not remember the day we brought you home from the hospital. You were so tiny, so perfect. I would do anything to protect you and your sister. I can’t imagine that you’re even capable of doing anything that would cause me to want to push you away.”
“I love you too, Dad.”
We sat in the waiting room for several more hours before we heard any news. Adam and his dad didn’t talk anymore after their little heart-to-heart. I could tell that there was still a lot that been left unsaid. Regret on both sides and neither of them really knew how to move forward from here. I knew because it was the same when I came out to my parents. Can you really just move on with life and pretend that everything’s okay now? Maybe the last decade or so of your life didn’t actually happen the way you remembered, maybe you had a happy childhood instead. One where you weren’t constantly confused about who you were supposed to be.
Eventually, the never ending silence was broken. We were told that Mr. Perry wouldn’t be pressing charges. The only condition was that Allie transfer to a new school. Apparently she hadn’t been very happy with the deal that was being offered and had begged to be allowed to talk to Mr. Perry. Thankfully, she was still a minor and Mr. Fischer was capable of accepting on her behalf.
She was released into Mr. Fischer’s custody a short while later.
Adam and I left before she was released. He was glad that she was safe, but he was still upset about what had happened earlier. He’d come around eventually, but for now he wasn’t ready to talk to her.
We drove around in silence for several hours before we wound up at a park near the school right around sunset. Adam took my hand in his as we walked along the landscaped paths and enjoyed the cool evening breeze. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. It had been a stressful day, but something good had come out of it. We had nothing left to fear.
Nothing from our families anyway.
44
Our first date without Allie was a little awkward. We’d never actually gone to a restaurant alone before so it was a bit of an adjustment. I hadn’t realized just how much of the silence had been filled by her bubbly story telling.
The restaurant was nice, but casual. Their was a laid back atmosphere and the quiet murmur of conversation floated across the dining room. We were seated in a booth, away from the door, where we could feel a little more secluded.
We were both “out” now but it was still a big adjustment to be seen together in public. I’d been called out a few times by people that used to know my parents. They accused me of corrupting them with my lifestyle choices and causing them to turn away from God. I ignored them, but stuff like that really aggravated Adam. He wanted to ride to my defense, like some kind of knight in shining armor. It had taken a lot for me to convince him that he couldn’t fight every single person that hated us.
And there were always going to be people that thought we were being immoral or sinful, or that our relationship was an unnatural aberration. It wasn’t our job to run around telling them they were wrong. The only people that actually mattered had already accepted us as we were and being gay was becoming more socially acceptable every day. Gay marriage had even been legalized so who really cared if there were intolerant people out there? We were never going to win everyone over.
Really though, we counted ourselves lucky. We’d come through the coming out process more painlessly than some. Adam’s Mom had cut off contact for good but, for the most part, our families remained in tact.
Which is why we’d decided to go out that night, about a week after Allie’s arrest.
“Has she decided where she’s going to go?” I asked, trying to push the conversation forward. It wasn’t like we didn’t have stuff to talk about, but we’d always talked in private before.
“Not yet,” Adam said as he reached for his water. “I guess she’s been looking at boarding schools in Europe. Dad’s more than willing to send her if that’s where she wants to go.”
“It’s going to be weird, not seeing Allie at school I mean.” I took a deep breath and glanced around the room for a waiter. It felt like it had been ages since we ordered.
“I know,” Adam admitted, “but I think the change will be good for her. She says her therapist thinks that she’s been pushing herself to compete with her friends too much. That she’s been comparing herself to them and feeling like a failure because she doesn’t think she measures up. The stuff with Mr. Perry was her way of trying to compensate. In her mind, she would’ve been able to ‘win’ at life if she’d been able to get him to reciprocate her feelings.”
I grimaced. “I wish I could’ve helped her. Now, I feel like we were just using her. I didn’t realize she was so miserable.�
�
“She wanted me to tell you she’s sorry for the things she said at the bowling alley,” Adam explained. “She said she enjoyed looking out for us. It made her feel important. Like she was the only one who could protect us. The stress of losing Mom and realizing that she had royally messed up, just sort of sent her over the edge. She also said you were right, and she should’ve listened to you all along.”
I frowned and looked up at Adam. I could see the question in his eyes. He wasn’t going to ask me directly though.
“She told me she wanted to out you to your mom.” I looked away, not able to meet his gaze. “I told her over and over again that it was a bad idea and she shouldn’t do it. I thought she understood. I had no idea what she had planned at the bowling alley.”
Our food arrived just as I finished talking.
Adam just stared at me until the waiter left. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” He didn’t sound as upset as I thought he would be.
“At the time, I thought she understood what a bad idea it was,” I said, shaking my head. “I did my best to tell her and she seemed to drop it. So I thought it wasn’t important. I’m sorry, I should’ve said something. Maybe if I had you would’ve been able to confront her about it. Maybe you could’ve avoided that catastrophe and still been able to reconcile with your mom. May--”
“Maybe,” Adam said with a little shrug. I looked up at him in surprise.
“Maybe things would’ve been different if I’d known what she was thinking,” he continued, “but I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same if I’d been in your position. Besides, let’s be honest, my mom would’ve found out eventually anyway. At least now I can move on instead of trying to please her.”
“I still should’ve told you. It was something that affected you, you deserved to know.”
The Outside Series - Complete Trilogy: Books 1-3 Page 34