Trust the Focus

by Megan Erickson

  “Soccer balls?”

  Landry scowled. “Okay, so I wanted to get you baseball balloons. You know, like your dad did for senior night? But the stupid hospital gift shop was all out of baseball balloons. They only had soccer balls or footballs. And since I’m partial to soccer players because they tend to be super hot and European, I got you these.” He stuck out his bottom jaw and blew out a breath, ruffling the curls on his forehead, and then a blush crossed his cheeks.

  I smiled so big, my cheeks hurt. “I love them, Lan. Thanks.”

  He huffed out a breath, but I could tell me was pleased. He tied them to the back of my bed and then leaned down, smoothing my hair off of my forehead and pressing a kiss there. “How you feeling?”

  I shifted my weight. “Um, I gotta piss,” I said.

  He laughed. “Okay, no small talk, then.”

  “Nope, because I might explode.”

  His parents had listened to our exchange and began talking excitedly until Landry held up a hand, cutting them off. “You can squeeze and coo and coddle him after he comes back from the bathroom, okay? Now turn around or you’re going to see his ass.”

  Mr. Jacobs walked over and stood in the corner of the room, facing the wall like a scene from the Blair Witch Project, and Mrs. Jacobs blushed and sat on a chair with her hands over her face. “You didn’t have to tell them that, Lan,” I said as he helped me swing my legs over the side of the bed. I glanced at my table. “Hey, are those cookies?”

  Landry helped me to my feet and rolled his eyes. “Bladder first, then cookies.”

  “But your mom made them for me,” I mumbled, shuffling toward the bathroom.

  “I promise they will be here when you get out.”

  Landry insisted on staying in the bathroom with me in case I fell.

  “Lan, there’s that emergency string thing. If I fall, I’ll just pull it.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the sink. “Well, I can prevent you from falling in the first place.”

  I waved a hand. “Too late there, Lan.” His mouth opened to argue with me but I kept talking. “Way too late. I fell for you years ago.”

  Landry blinked at me. His face softened a fraction before his eyes narrowed. “That was a sneak attack.”

  “What?”

  “That was a Romantic Jus sneak attack.”

  “I thought you liked when I was romantic?”

  He threw up his hands. “Will you pee already?”

  “Fine,” I snapped, pulling up my hospital gown. While I aimed for the toilet, I wiggled my ass a little and grinned. “Is there a club, like the Mile-High Club, but for hospitals? Like . . . the Basement Gurney Club.”

  Landry glared at me.

  When we walked out of the bathroom, I made a beeline—albeit slowly—toward the cookies. Oatmeal raisin, which were my favorite.

  Mrs. Jacobs jumped up from her seat and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, Justin,” she cried in my ear. I winced because she was hugging me a little hard, but I was more concerned about the cookie she crushed between us.

  “Mom! Ease up,” Landry said, and she pulled away from me with a flutter of her hands.

  Mr. Jacobs walked over and shook my hand. Then Landry helped me crawl back into bed so I could demolish my cookie.

  I moaned when I took a bite and Mrs. Jacobs beamed. A throat cleared and that’s when I noticed my mom sat on the pullout couch in my room. She glanced at Landry and his parents uncertainly. I frowned and kept eating because nothing was keeping me from my cookies.

  But there were some movements and some whispers over my head. Mr. and Mrs. Jacobs excused themselves, saying they wanted to grab some food at the cafeteria, while pulling Landry with them. He looked over his shoulder between me and my mom. He didn’t look happy about leaving. I smiled to try to pacify him.

  When my mom and I were alone, she sank down on the chair beside me. I took her in closely. Her hair was a little frizzy and her blouse wrinkled. I hadn’t noticed that before.

  “That was nice of Mrs. Jacobs to bring you cookies,” she said, gesturing to the massive container on the table.

  I nodded. “Could you hand me another?”

  She did and then folded her hands back in her lap. “So I . . .” She shifted in her chair and I waited her out. “I made some calls.”

  I raised an eyebrow and kept eating.

  “I’m still going to run for Senate,” she said. “And I’m speaking to my campaign team now on how to handle . . .” She waved a hand at me. “. . . this.”

  I huffed out a breath. “This? You mean your son. Me. And what is there to handle?”

  She pursed her lips. “You know.”

  “Are we really doing this? Here in the hospital?”

  “Okay, so maybe that was a poor word choice. Will you let me speak?”

  I sighed and remained silent.

  “So since you were going to be my campaign manager, and you have the degree, you know very well that me having a homosexual son would turn off a large portion of my voters. So I’m asking you, what would you advise me to do, if you were my campaign manager?”

  I blinked, searching her words and tone for snideness or blame. But there was none. Her eyes were clear and her cheeks flushed. Her body leaned slightly forward, her head cocked, and she genuinely looked like she wanted my opinion.

  “You’re asking for real?”

  She laid a hand on the bed, then removed it like she didn’t know where to place it. So she returned it to her lap. “You’re so smart, Justin. And very aware of others. I knew you’d make an excellent campaign manager . . .” She swallowed. “I accept, grudgingly, that it isn’t what you want to do. However, I still want your opinion.”

  She did. She really did. And in another life, another time, one where I didn’t have Landry, maybe I would have grown accustomed to my role on my mother’s campaign. But now?

  No, no way in hell. But that didn’t mean I wanted her to fail.

  I wasn’t an expert. She paid other people a lot of money to answer this question. I didn’t know if I was right, but in my gut, I thought it was the best way to go about it.

  “Do you have any scheduled interviews coming up?”

  She nodded. “One on a local station’s mid-day show.”

  “Okay, well, maybe you can casually mention how you were out of town to visit your son who got in a car accident with his boyfriend.”

  She didn’t move, not even a blink. So I kept talking. “I mean, just slip it in, like it’s no big deal. I don’t think you should avoid it because someone is bound to find out and you don’t want to look like you are hiding it. But making a huge announcement . . .” I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s necessary. Despite what some people may think, my sexual orientation has nothing to do with your ability to do your job. If you make it seem like it’s normal and kosher, everyone else will feel that way, too.”

  She stared at me for a minute, then pulled a pen and a small notepad out of her purse. The only sound in the room was the scratching of pen on paper.

  “Mom?” I finally asked.

  She flipped the notepad shut and dropped it back into her purse. “I wanted to write that down. I will discuss it with my team, but I think that’s the best way to go.”

  I ran my thumb over the Twizzlers-wrapper ring. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Mom, that your campaign is affected by this. It’s one of the reasons I tried to keep this from you and deny it for so long.”

  Mom looked down, her eyelashes fluttering, and when she met my gaze again, her eyes were watery. “Justin, I’m sorry. I realize now . . . how hard this all must have been for you. I’m sorry for not being someone you could confide in.”

  I took a deep breath. “I wish I could be what you wanted me to be . . .” I paused, searching for the words,” . . . while still bei
ng me.”

  She shook her head, a tear dropping onto the hospital sheet. “By you being who you are . . . well . . . that’s who I want you to be.”

  Those words warmed my chest and my heartbeat sounded in my ears. Despite how angry she’d made me for so many years, she was still my mother. She was the only parent I had left. “I want to be there for you through this, even if I don’t work for you,” I said.

  She smiled through the tears. “And I want to be there for you.” Her eyes flicked to the door. “Also, I want to apologize for what I said. About Landry. I see that he’s a good fit for you. I’ve . . . I don’t think I ever saw you smile at anyone like you do him. Except for maybe your father.”

  This acceptance of Landry as my boyfriend wasn’t something I ever expected from her. “Th-thank you.”

  She nodded. “You balance each other. And I should have recognized that sooner.”

  A hesitant knock sounded at the door and my mother leaned back, swiping at her cheeks and dabbing at her face with a tissue. She excused herself to the bathroom as the Jacobs’s walked in, and left the room, choosing to use a public restroom.

  Landry looked at me with a furrowed brow. I smiled and his return smile was hesitant. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  I began to shrug off the question, but then caught myself. “Actually . . . yeah. Yeah, I think it is okay.”

  Concern passed over his face. “Did she—?”

  I pulled on his arm so he sat on the bed beside me. “She was fine. We talked and I’ll give you all the details later. It’s not going to be peachy over night. But she’s taking the first step to accepting me and that’s all I can ask for at this point.”

  He waited a beat, then nodded, his posture once again relaxed. I pointed to the cookies and grinned so he handed me another one. I turned to his parents. “Thanks for coming to be here for Landry and me,” I said with a full mouth.

  “Well, we know you have a lot of supplies in the RV that you’ll need to bring home with you. And you’ll need a ride, of course,” said Mr. Jacobs.

  I picked a rogue raisin off of my lap. “Sorry about that.”

  “What was that, dear?” Mrs. Jacobs asked.

  I looked up. “I said, I’m sorry.”

  She snapped her chin into her neck and flicked her eyes to Landry and back to me. “Sorry for what?”

  “This,” I said, waving my hand. “You having to drive here and doing all of this because of the accident . . .”

  Mr. Jacobs was shaking his head. “That’s not your fault. The truck that hit you ran a red light.”

  I accepted another cookie from Landry and took a bite. “So Sally didn’t make it?” I directed this question at Landry and watched his face fall.

  It was stupid, really. Sally was just an RV. A hunk of metal and rubber and electronic mumbo-jumbo. But she was also Dad. And she was Landry and me. And she was this summer when I finally learned how to take control of my life.

  I’d never step into Sally again. I’d never fill her with gas or pump air into her tires or drain her sewage tank. I’d never hold that wheel in my hands or press my foot to the gas. I wouldn’t sit in that seat I took for granted for months but now wanted to sit in again. I wouldn’t make love to Landry on that awful, uncomfortable pullout couch.

  I wouldn’t smell my Dad’s cinnamon candies. I wouldn’t hear the thud of the atlases in the top compartment when I took a turn too sharp.

  Landry and I became what we were in that RV. Would anything change once we weren’t moving on four tires? Could we grow roots?

  The whole thing made me want to cry and the cookie tasted like cardboard in my mouth.

  Landry leaned forward and gripped my wrist. “We’re getting her towed home.”

  I snapped my head up. “Towed? From New Hampshire to Pennsylvania? Lan, that’s gonna cost a fortune.”

  “I know, but . . .” He looked at his parents and back at me. “I don’t think we’re ready to say good-bye to her.”

  Nope. No way was I ready. “I’ll cover the cost—”

  “We’ll split it,” Landry said. “I’m your sugar daddy now, remember?”

  I laughed, inhaled a flake of oatmeal, and went into a coughing fit. Landry smacked me on the back, and when I was finished, he leaned in even closer, pressing a kiss to my temple. “I know how you feel,” he whispered in my ear while his parents fiddled with the TV remote. “But we don’t need a place to be who we are.” He leaned back and looked in my eyes. I saw so much truth shining in those blues. “We don’t need an RV. We don’t need a summer road trip. This is us. No matter where or when. Okay?”

  He read my mind. Like a ninja. “I fucking love you, Landry Aaron Jacobs.”

  He smiled a brilliant, white-toothed smile. “I fucking love you too, Justin Alexander Akron.”

  Chapter Twenty

  The pitcher’s windup was close to perfect. He started a little too squared up but made up for it with his steps.

  And his arm was wicked fast, a blur as he hurled the ball at home plate.

  The familiar whomp of the baseball in a glove was home to me. So was the whir of my shutter as the umpire called a strike, signaling the end of the game. And so was Landry’s laugh as he stood behind the fence, talking with Lamar’s wife.

  Serena was bent over at the waist, hooting up a storm. I rolled my eyes because Lamar had told both of them to be “inconspicuous” and instead the patrons on the bench were craning their necks to look at the jokers.

  I took a couple shots of the pitcher wiping his brow and greeting his catcher as they met halfway between the mound and home plate. Then more shots of the opposing teams shaking hands with each other.

  I readjusted my ball cap on my head, smiling to myself about Landry insisting I wear suntan lotion on my face because I had started developing a line on my forehead from my hat. Lamar had me attend most of Penn State’s spring training and now the season was in full swing. So it meant a lot of outside time and a funked-up tan.

  I removed my favorite zoom lens from the body of my camera and placed everything in my bag at my hip. I’d been working for Lamar for over six months now and had saved up to buy a new Nikon.

  I used my dad’s camera for pleasure—when Landry and I hiked or biked or road tripped. Or just when we sat on our back porch on Salvation Army–find lawn chairs, drank beer, and gazed at the stars.

  I walked toward him and Serena, who had now been joined by Lamar.

  “You guys don’t know what ‘inconspicuous’ means, do you?” I asked, nudging Landry with my shoulder and smiling at Serena.

  “This boy,” she said, pointing at my boyfriend, “was just telling me about how you hid in a purple plastic playhouse from a bunch of little kids at an amusement park.”

  I scowled. “You weren’t there. You can’t understand the kind of danger we were in.”

  Landry threw back his head and laughed while Serena cackled.

  Lamar sighed, but smiled at his wife with amusement. “You ready to go, sweetheart? Told the kids we’d be there for dinner.”

  Serena took a deep breath, calming herself. “Yeah, yeah.” She hugged Landry and then me, promising to have us over soon for some barbecue ribs as Lamar all but dragged her to the parking lot.

  We drove home in Landry’s car, the one he’d had since high school. Landry worked at a graphic design firm and made decent money. But at twenty-three, we were both much closer to the broke side of the scale.

  I took off my cap and tossed it on the dashboard, then rested my head on the seat and closed my eyes as Landry talked excitedly about his plans for our next trip, which was in a week. He wanted to visit the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. Even though we grew up in the state, neither of us had ever been.

  We tried to travel every couple of months. I knew it was time for a trip soon because I was restless. I hadn’t been sleeping a
s well. My patience was shorter. And Landry wasn’t much different. We needed the road and the sights and the time together to recharge our batteries.

  He pulled down the dirt road of the farm where we lived and in the side mirror, I watched the dust swirl behind his tires. When I recovered from the accident and we searched for a place to live, everything felt too confining. Apartments had thin walls and town houses had no yards.

  And then we found a family renting out a trailer on their farm property. We visited it and saw we had a whole acre to ourselves. But what had us signing the lease so fast the farmer’s head spun was Dad.

  Yeah, Dad.

  Because all around the trailer was a plant, something native to Ohio called a Shooting Star, that smelled like cinnamon.

  So yep, we lived in a trailer. That smelled like cinnamon. And it was great.

  Landry parked the car and I got out of the passenger seat and stretched. Immediately, the scent of cinnamon hit me. Like always, since our trip over the summer, the melancholy only clogged my throat briefly before contentment set in. I was home.

  I hauled my bags out of the car and followed Landry inside. Ugly was really the only word to describe the interior. The walls were faded brown paneling and the kitchen a perfect shade of mustard. We’d ripped the seats from Sally and Landry converted them into some kinds of chairs. They were horrid-looking and I wasn’t convinced they didn’t have fleas but I still watched TV in them.

  Most of our trailer had something from Sally. A cabinet door. A shower head. A table.

  My Saint Christopher medallion now hung in the window of our kitchen, catching the light of the sun sneaking through the trees.

  But I loved this trailer because it was home and Landry and I had it all to ourselves.

  Landry opened up our refrigerator and peered inside. “You want burgers?”

  “Burgers?” I said, placing my camera bag on the coffee table and sinking into the couch we’d bought cheap at an estate sale.

  Landry tossed a package of meat on the table. “Yeah, burgers. I think we have a can of beans, too.”