Through the Mirrorball

by Browatzke, Rob

  Nathan hadn’t been able to predict that that anonymous bathhouse fling he sent me out to would be anything but anonymous. Aaron showing up there that night changed everything. Our hookup served Nathan’s purpose, but Aaron showing up in my life, after all our years together and those last two years apart, confused the hell out of me, and as Nathan’s calls kept stringing me along, Aaron’s presence in my life was familiar and comfortable, and old feelings floated to the surface.

  I told Steven about the foursome that followed, and not even the fact that Allan had drugged me changed the fact that I was an essentially willing participant. Liquor and G and jealousy and dormant attraction led to that night with Aaron and the twins, and I had to accept ownership for what I had done. It wasn’t easy, but I did it.

  Even harder was telling Steven what happened next. When I found out the truth about Aaron, that he had quit his job, moved here, and been keeping tabs on me as the sensational Queen of Hearts at Wonderland, it only added to my confusion. That was a grand romantic gesture. It meant something. And so much had already happened, and I was still so unshaken in my love for Steven, that Aaron and I spent one last night together, and this time, there wasn’t the excuse of a crazed kidnapper or being drugged. There was just that itch that needed scratching one last time. It wasn’t a beginning; it was a good-bye.

  And then I was able to find Steven, with help from Aaron and Brandon, and rescued him from Nathan, and the teary confessions that followed were forgiven, and Steven welcomed Aaron into our lives. And we were all friends, and everything was wonderful: Steven and Aaron and myself and Brandon and Jesse and Colton.

  I never let myself think that every time Steven saw almost any of those people, he had to remember that I’d been with them.

  I never let myself think about the fact that while I was running about, ostensibly waiting for clues or orders from the kidnapper, drinking at Wonderland, having all that confused and confusing sex, he was bound and beaten. Nathan would vanish for hours at a time, and then come back and harangue him about the evils of gays in general, and me in particular, how I betrayed him by touching him as horny teenagers. Steven suffered, and I partied.

  I never let myself think of that. And Steven never indicated that he thought of it. It was as if the entire week never happened. I never commented when the engagement ring came off. Everything was eggshells and broken glass and fine lines. I was careful not to endanger the delicate equilibrium we were both so happy we had created.

  Until That Friday Night.

  Chapter 28

  The buzzer rang and pulled me from my memories of That Friday Night. Since That Friday Night, I had hardly seen Steven, and when I had, it was angry at worst, awkward at best. Even when I hadn’t seen him, it was drunken texts and phone calls. But now, he was here, for me, at my darkest.

  And that had to count for something. That had to count for everything.

  I buzzed him in and unlocked the door. I poured us both drinks. It didn’t matter if it was the middle of a Tuesday afternoon. This could only be made better with alcohol. Alcohol was safety and numbness and protection. What did he already know? What would I tell him?

  He knocked three times, each one ringing ominously in my head.

  I opened the door and there he was, my Steven. He was wearing a white dress shirt, just like he was the day I first saw him, getting into his white Rabbit in the parking lot at the grocery store. It fit tighter than I remembered. Had he been working out? It looked good. Was it for Aaron? Dinah said there was nothing going on between them, but I knew what I’d seen. He looked good.

  He looked really good, and it was a good that used to be mine.

  “Can I come in?”

  “Wha . . . oh . . . sure.”

  He passed by me, brushing against me. I could smell his cologne.

  “Okay,” he said, “tell me what’s going on.”

  “Drink?” I asked, handing him the extra I’d made.

  “This isn’t a social call, Alex.”

  “I know.” I sat down on the couch to stop my legs from trembling.

  He sniffed and smiled. “What’s up?” He took the drink and sat down next to me.

  “What do you know?”

  “I know about the graffiti on your door. Walter and Brandon and Mr. C called me to tell me. They’re all really worried.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  “Brandon says you went to see Allan with him though, and he says it wasn’t him.”

  I wondered what else Brandon had said about Allan. Steven didn’t seem mad, but would he get mad? We were over, and really, Allan was the least of my sins. “He said it wasn’t.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “I actually do.” In spite of how he’d acted when he was fucking me. In spite of his last whispered words.

  “Maybe it was just a random hate crime.”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “What else? That’s not everything, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me, Alex.”

  I finished my drink and took a breath. “I got something in my mail.”

  “What?”

  “It was a picture. Of Taylor.”

  “From high school Taylor?”

  “No, Taylor Swift. Yes, from high school Taylor.”

  “Who would send you that?”

  “Someone shoved it in there. It wasn’t in an envelope.”

  “What aren’t you saying?”

  “Someone wrote on it. It said ‘You killed me.’”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  I couldn’t help the tears leaking out. “Yes.”

  And then his arms were around me, and the tears flowed.

  “That’s sick, Alex. I don’t even know what to say.” He pushed me back and took my face in his hands. They were soft against my cheeks. “Are you okay?”

  “No, Steven, I’m really not. I’m pretty fucking far from okay.”

  “Do you have any idea who it could be?”

  “It has to be Nathan.”

  “But from prison?”

  “Who else?”

  “I don’t know, but we aren’t going through this again.” My heart soared at the we.

  “What can we do?”

  “We’re going to see him in the morning. I have sick time coming. Can you call in?”

  “Yeah, about that . . .”

  “What?”

  “I kinda got fired.”

  “Fired? Jesus, Alex, what’s going on with you?”

  “Things fell apart.”

  “Clearly.”

  “I miss you.”

  “Oh no, we aren’t going there. I will go with you to confront Nathan. I will make sure you’re okay. We aren’t talking about us.”

  “Sorry. Don’t be mad.”

  “Mad? I’m not mad, Alex. I wasn’t ever mad.”

  “What then?”

  He laughed. “You’re not doing this. I just said we aren’t having this conversation. You always do this. You always just run over whatever I am saying and keep it where you want it to be.” He shook his head, but he was smiling when he did it. “And there’s only ever been one way to stop you.”

  And then he kissed me.

  Chapter 29

  Since That Friday Night, a lot of lips had touched mine. Grindr hookups; bathhouse flings; drunken, hot mess nights at the Hole. Lips from faceless men, men who were just means to an end, just dicks to my end.

  Those kisses didn’t make my body vibrate like Steven’s did. It pushed away everything: getting fired, getting fucked, getting high, getting pictures. Everything fell apart, and it was just his lips on mine.

  But then it popped into my head again, the image of them in bed. The image of them kissing. The image of them fucking. I pulled away, my body suddenly shaking.

  “No,” Steven said. “I know what you’re thinking about. Don’t.”

  He kissed me again, harder this time. I squeezed my eyes hard, pushing away the pictures, and I ki
ssed him back. I lay down, pulling him down on top of me, my hands pulling up his shirt.

  “Alex, I don’t know if we should.”

  “You kissed me.”

  “I know, but just to stop you talking or thinking. I think we shouldn’t.”

  “I think we should.”

  He held my arms down and looked in my face. “We aren’t.”

  “We are.” I strained to kiss him again.

  “Brandon called me, Alex. I know what you did last night. I know who you did last night. We aren’t having sex.”

  I pushed him off me. “Then why kiss me?”

  “It felt right. And then it felt wrong. It was a mistake. I’m sorry.”

  “Maybe you being here is a mistake. Maybe you should go.”

  “I’m not leaving you alone, Alex.”

  “You really want to stay? You want to see what my life is like now?”

  “Yes, I want to help you.”

  “Don’t fucking patronize me.” I slammed back the last of my gin. “That helps me.” I opened up the drawer, pulled out the coke-covered mirror. “This helps.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Alex. I don’t want to see that.”

  “You said you did. You said you want to know what my life is like. This is my life now.”

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  “It does! You left me with nothing else!”

  “No! You left yourself with nothing else.”

  “Steven, you were doing Aaron.”

  “That one time! With you! That was it! Never before and never since! I barely even talk to Aaron.” He looked away.

  “Did you finish?”

  “What?”

  “After I left that night. Did you guys finish?”

  “What difference does it make now?”

  “I want to know. I want to know if you were so upset by the fight that everything stopped, or if you guys just rolled over and kept fucking while I went to Wonderland, got fucked up, got into a fight with everyone. Was his dick in your ass while my life fell apart?”

  “Yes, okay? Yes, he fucked me. You left! It was supposed to be with you. It was supposed to be for you! But you made it all about you and stormed off! Yes, he fucked me, just like he fucked you when I was tied to that chair. Is that what you wanted to hear, Alex? Is that what you wanted to know?”

  We were standing now, and he was waving his arms. All the frustration and anger and self-loathing and jealousy and misery of the past six months came pouring out of my mouth in a huge scream and I threw myself at him, fists flying. He caught my arm in his hand as I punched at his face. He pushed me down to the ground. I kept struggling against him, my limbs flailing, but he’d been working out and I hadn’t set foot in a gym in months. He had me pinned on the ground.

  “Stop it!” he said. “Just stop it. Right fucking now.”

  “Get off me! Get off me!”

  “Stop it!”

  “Please, just get off me.” I started crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  I pulled him on top of me and held him, our chests heaving against each other as we tried to catch our breath. “Everything fell apart. I let everything fall apart. You wouldn’t believe what I’ve done, Steven. I am so sorry. I made such a mess of everything. You must hate me.”

  “Would I be here if I hated you, Alex?”

  “Then it’s just pity. I’m just your pathetic ex whose life you’re here to fix.”

  “You’re not pathetic, Alex. You’ve just been lost. But I’m here, and we’ll find you again.”

  Chapter 30

  We sat there on the couch, staring at each other. It was the calm after the storm. I replayed everything in my head. That had always been my problem, replaying everything over and over, how things went, how things could have gone, how things should have gone. Sometimes, I even ended up replacing the actual with the imagined. I knew I did that, and Steven knew I did that.

  Five minutes passed, maybe ten. Then Steven grabbed the remote. “Want to watch a movie?”

  I nodded, and he flipped through Video on Demand until we found something we both hadn’t seen. We sat on opposite ends of the couch, watching it in silence. We were a commercial for perfect posture, sitting there so straight and rigid; I was nervous to even look at him, but by the end of the movie, we had both relaxed, sinking into the couch, our feet touching in the middle.

  When the movie was over, I got up. “Are you hungry? I could cook something.”

  “Since when do you cook? You sit down. I’ll cook something.”

  I smirked, and he smiled back. “Well, I can’t do nothing while you cook.”

  “You could clean this up,” he said, indicating the booze and blow and mess around the couch, from last night’s sexcapade, from today’s fight. “You can probably just throw this all out. You don’t need it.”

  “I don’t want to need it.”

  “You don’t need it,” he repeated, “but it’s your choice.”

  He went into the kitchen and I stared into the mirror. He was right, I knew that. It was my choice. It was such an easy fix, though. It buffered me against all the bullshit, and if another confrontation was coming with Nathan, I needed all the buffer I could get. Unless... could Steven be that buffer for me, this time? Could I face Nathan and get him to stop with this twisted game, with only Steven by my side and no alcohol or drugs shoring up my confidence?

  “Jesus, Alex, what have you been eating? There’s not much to work with.”

  “Sorry. We can order in. I just order in.”

  “No, you need something home-cooked. I’ll make it work, but Jesus, seriously.” He stuck his head around the corner and shook it at me, but his eyes were smiling. I smiled back.

  I wasn’t happy, that’s for sure. If I wasn’t happy doing it, why was I still doing it? What more would I lose? How strong would I let the addiction become before enough was enough? Would I be able to stop later if I didn’t stop now?

  “I don’t hear cleaning,” Steven called from the kitchen.

  There was a lot of cleaning up to do, I knew, and not just the mess in the living room. I had to apologize to Brandon for having Allan over. I had to apologize to Dinah for my scene at her bachelorette party. I had to try to get my job back. I had to talk to Aaron. I had to talk to Jesse. It was a long list of amends to be made, and it weighed heavy on me, and made me want to do nothing more than scrape together one more line off that mirror and forget about it all.

  I stood up and made a decision. This was not the person I wanted to be. I couldn’t let Nathan have this kind of power over my life. I couldn’t even blame it on Nathan. There had been drugs before him. There had definitely been drinking before him.

  I remembered the first time I got drunk. It was the day of Taylor’s funeral. Dinah stole some beer from her dad’s fridge and we sat out behind her garage and slammed them back. I didn’t want to talk, and she didn’t force the issue. He was gone, and right then, it seemed like the bullies would win. The bigger kids who used to circle me on their bikes and call me faggot. The guys like Nathan, like Taylor’s dad. They had killed him, as surely as if they had pulled the trigger themselves. Getting drunk seemed like the only way I could escape the thoughts that filled my head, that they would always win, that I should do it too, that I would never find anyone who I loved like I loved Taylor.

  “What are you doing?” Steven came out of the kitchen to see me just standing there, gin bottle in one hand, mirror in the other.

  “I’m throwing this all out,” I said, and marched into the kitchen and put them in the garbage, then sealed up the garbage bag and walked down the hallway to the garbage chute and placed the bag at the top of the chute, and let go.

  I turned around to go back to the apartment and Steven was watching me. He was smiling, and his smile wasn’t sad or a half smile or a patronizing smile. It was filled with pride and love, and it made me smile back, even as a part of me wanted to dive down the chute after the bag.

  Eve
n though things were bad, they had gotten better. The bullies didn’t always win. And I had found someone who I loved like I loved Taylor. He was standing there in front of me, and I would get him back for good.

  Chapter 31

  I woke up alone. That wasn’t unusual. I rarely let the Grindr tricks stay the night. They would come, then cum, then go, and I would polish off the booze and the blow and eventually pass out. So waking up alone wasn’t unusual at all.

  Waking up without a hangover, that was unusual.

  I picked up Griffin and we walked out in the living room, where Steven was sleeping on the couch. He looked so cute, even with his hair messed, and his mouth open, and his stuttered snoring. I chuckled under my breath, but it must have been loud enough for him to hear me. He stirred, stretched, yawned. “Is it morning already?”

  “I’ll make some coffee,” I said, and left him to wake up in peace.

  It was unusual that he had slept over, but that we hadn’t slept together. The first day we met, we ended up spending a whole weekend together. But last night, we had eaten dinner, and then watched another movie, and hadn’t really talked, and hadn’t touched. And then he said we should get to bed, and I thought he meant together, but he’d simply walked me to my bedroom door, and kissed me on the cheek, and then went back to the couch. I had lain there for a while, wondering if I should invite him down, wondering if a cuddle would be that out of the question, feeling anything but horny. But then I had fallen asleep sober, for the second time in weeks.

  “I don’t have much in the way of breakfast stuff,” I said.

  “You don’t have much in the way of anything stuff,” he said. “Don’t worry. We’ll get some groceries after we’re done with Nathan.”

  Done with Nathan. Three simple words. Three super-complicated words. What would the morning entail? Would he admit to sending me the picture? And who did he get to shove it in my mailbox? And why? Why me? There were thousands of gay people in the world! Why was Nathan so fixated on me? Would Nathan ever be done with me, because until he was, we would never be done with Nathan.

  Steven came up behind me, and wrapped his arms around me. “You doing okay?” I murmured affirmatively as he nuzzled my neck. “Good boy. We’ll grab a bagel or something on the way to the jail,” Steven said. “I’m going to shower.”