The Art of Hero Worship

by Mia Kerick

  “Get him the hell out of here before he hurls again!” Hipster-guy yells and Liam leads me down the hall and toward the stairs.

  “Your dorm room, Jason? What room is yours?” Liam is impatient. I get the sense he wants to cut and run but is too honorable to dump me in a stairwell.

  “Can’t go to my room. BJ is getting a B.J.” This hits me as inexplicably funny and I start to giggle.

  “Your roommate has a girl in there?”

  “He sure does.”

  “Lucky me.” He doesn’t sound too happy about it.

  “Nope. Wrong! Lucky him!”

  “Well, I guess you’re gonna have to come home with me.” I wish he sounded more enthusiastic. “No barfing in my car tonight.” But on a positive note, he doesn’t sound as mad as I expect, just kind of resigned to saving my ass for the fourth or the fifth—I lost track—time.

  ***

  “You can sleep in my bed. I’ll take the futon.” Liam’s bed is actually made up, all nice and neat and inviting. I wonder if he was hoping to get lucky tonight with some cute girl like tiny orange-haired Dacia, and instead all he got is me.

  “Nah… I’ll take the futon. I actually love futons. You can call me ‘Futon Jase’. I don’t mind… in fact, I kind of like it.” I don’t think my joke made sense but I’m nervous and if I can make Liam laugh I’ll know he doesn’t hate me. Even though he should.

  He leads me past the futon lying flat on the floor in the corner. “You’re gonna sleep in my bed. If you feel sick,” he’s giving me direct orders so I pay attention, “you can use this trash barrel.” He hoists me onto the bed and pulls off my sneakers. Then he proceeds to less than gently remove my T-shirt and jeans.

  “Are we gonna fool around now, Liam?” Hopefulness rings out in my voice. “I want to… I want to so much….” Last time we fooled around had been odd, in that everything but the happy ending had seemed so unfamiliar because Liam is what anybody would call all man… and that was a first for me… but it had also been strangely magical. Unforgettable is the best way to describe it. Unforgettable, even as I’d tried so hard all summer to push it from my mind… but it wouldn’t leave.

  I want to worship my hero, as he so deserves. I want to show him with my body the tangle of feelings inside me. Because my emotions are all caught up like a fish in a net… and the more I struggle to escape them, the more they entrap me.

  “No, Jason. We’re not gonna fool around. You’re gonna get into this bed and sleep off your buzz, and I’m gonna sleep alone on the futon. And in the morning I’m gonna drive you back to school and you’re gonna suffer all day with one hell of a hangover.” Liam’s voice is cool and apathetic. He walks to the little kitchenette and pours a glass of water. Then he carries it to me and presses it into my hand. “Drink this entire glass. In the morning, you’ll be glad you did.”

  I follow his directions and then look for approval, but his face is like cold, heartless, pissed-off-at-Jase-for-being-the-world’s-biggest-dickhead stone. “Thanks, Liam.”

  “Now do me a favor and go to sleep.” Without a glance at my face or my eyes, he turns and heads for the futon.

  “Come back here and look at me!” I don’t know why I shout this as he steps away. Sometimes words just spill out of my mouth. Especially when I’m plastered.

  “Go to sleep, Jason.”

  “No… not until I see your eyes.”

  I hear the sigh. Liam’s frustrated because he wants something he can’t have. I wonder what it is. He turns back toward the bed but doesn’t step any closer. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  I can see his eyes from across the room. They aren’t hard and cold like his voice sounds anymore. They’re injured. “I made your eyes look like this—all sad and hurt.”

  “What are you talking about?” Liam is trying his hardest to keep his distance from me. But I can tell he’s having difficulty with it.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I… I wanted to.”

  “No worries, Jase. It’s okay, and all forgotten. It’s over now.”

  He called me Jase and the hard edge to his voice softened. I think I’m making progress. “But I don’t want you to forget about me. And I don’t want it to be over.”

  Another sigh, and it’s louder than the last one. “I think it has to be over. It’s for the best… for both of us.”

  “I disagree strongly.” My remark makes him laugh, which I find irritating. “And I think I know what it is….”

  “I have no clue what you’re talking about… you’re drunk. But go ahead and tell me what it is if you must. And then we can both go to sleep.”

  I know when someone’s humoring me, even when I’m wasted. Nonetheless I explain myself. “This is what it is: I don’t really know if I could feel this way about any other guy. There’s just something about you, Liam.”

  He steps to the bed and looks down at me with those piercing dark eyes I missed so much. “You’re drunk and you don’t know what you’re saying.”

  I yawn. “Okay, then. I guess I’ll have to tell you the same damned thing again in the morning.” I turn on my side. “Night, Liam.”

  ***

  I’m incredibly thankful for the trash bucket beside the bed when I wake up in the morning. I lean to the side and make good use of it.

  “You okay, man?” The question comes from across the room.

  “Been better.”

  Liam makes this chuckling sound like he’s enjoying my misery. “I’ll get you something for your headache.” From my spot on the bed I can see him walk across the room to the bathroom. He brings me some Advil and then grabs my glass. “Let me fill this up for you. And when I do I want you to drink it all.”

  I like it when he tells me what to do. Maybe I like it because I know he’s right in everything he suggests. Or maybe it’s for reasons I’d rather not analyze. “Thank you, Liam.” I seem to say this a lot.

  “No problem.” He hasn’t yet put his T-shirt on, as he’d rushed to get my pain meds upon waking up. And I admit to myself that he looks incredibly good. Liam’s a tall guy, and rugged, too, but the overall effect isn’t so much like a tank, but more like a grizzly bear. His chest is covered in a blanket of light brown curls; his arms and legs are the same. Liam is the picture of masculinity, and I wouldn’t want him to look any different. “Time for you to get up so I can take you back to your dorm. It’s almost ten, so your roommate should be finished with his nocturnal activities by now.”

  I get that just-slapped feeling again, and I don’t like the sting. “Liam….”

  He sits down on the edge of the bed. “Jason, there’s no use trying to force something between us that isn’t there.”

  I sit up and try to ignore a blinding rush of pain in my temples. “Who’s forcing anything? I thought you liked me.” I sound like a child.

  Liam picks up my hand from my lap. “Of course, I like you. And I’ll always like you. But I was getting carried away with… with my feelings for you. I took it too far.”

  “You took it only as far as I wanted it to go.”

  “You were unstable emotionally and I think I took advantage of that.”

  “That’s not what happened and you know it.”

  We’re staring at each other now, really staring, as if this will somehow help us figure things out. “Listen, Jason. There’s a lot of shit that’s happened in my life you don’t know. Shit about me and my family… that might lead me to be… Forget it. I can’t explain this to you.”

  “I think you just were. Keep talking.”

  “Look, it comes down to this: something in me wants to help you, and needs to protect you…. See where I’m going with this?”

  I shake my head. “No.”

  “You aren’t sure if you’re gay, and guess what? Neither am I—how’s that? But there’s just something about how I feel when I’m with you… about how it feels when I take care of you. You bring out certain instincts in me.”

  And then there’s silence while we
both digest what he just said. After a minute or two passes, I say, “I think I told you this last night, but I’m going to say it again. I couldn’t feel the way I do for anyone but you—male or female. I feel so much… I think I could fall in love with you.” I’m in shock that I revealed this truth, a truth I haven’t even fully grasped.

  His eyes widen measurably upon hearing my claim. “You didn’t exactly say that last night.” His expression tells me that he wants to believe me. He starts rambling. “I was hurt when you didn’t call. I let myself… I let myself worry about you and really care for you… and then…you never returned my calls and….”

  “Climb in bed with me?” I lift up the sheets and pat the spot on the bed beside me.

  Liam appears to be assessing the benefits and drawbacks to joining me between his sheets. “I… uh… I don’t know, man.” But even as he says this, he does it… he climbs in. We stretch out beside each other on the bed, our shoulders touching.

  “Will you hold me?” I ask.

  He doesn’t reply but he pulls me onto his chest and sighs. I press my ear to his skin and listen for the sound I love. When I hear the steady pounding, I sigh, too.

  “How about we just try to be together? Like, we don’t think about whether we’re gay or straight or bi or whatever it is. How about we leave those labels for other people?”

  “You think that’s realistic?” He’s clearly skeptical and maybe so am I, but this is my life and I’m not going to live by rules I didn’t make. I learned that much from loving Ginny, who was honestly everything I wasn’t in the very best of ways, and I’m going to put the lesson to action in my life. It’s the least I can do in honor of her memory.

  “I think that I’m a human being and you’re a human being, and if we want, we can be two human beings who fall in love. It’s that simple.” I’m again reminded of Ginny, but not in a painful, gut-wrenching way, as it usually is. “Labels are for suckers” was the first thing she ever said to me. I think she knew what she was talking about.

  Gay, straight, bi, pan… all labels, and I want nothing to do with them. I immediately realize that my thought rings with bravado, but it’s not false bravado; I really think we can live this way.

  Liam allows the loudest sigh I’ve heard since I’ve known him, and then he shrugs. “That isn’t in any way simple, you know.”

  I decide to ignore his remark because it really doesn’t matter that what I’m proposing is complicated. “And I’m sorry for what I did last summer. I was scared of the wrong thing—of being gay—of living a life I’d never before considered. But now I’m scared of the right thing—of losing you.”

  Liam is quiet for so long I wonder if he’s fallen asleep or, worse, chosen to ignore my request that we give us a try. Finally he takes in a deep breath and says very softly, “’Kay.”

  With the utterance of that single syllable, that half of a word, I have a boyfriend.

  ***

  When Liam and I get back to campus and he walks with me to RetroHouse, we don’t hold hands. I don’t think it seems like the natural thing to do to either of us, and I vowed, just this morning, in fact, that I’m not going to do what’s expected of me, but rather what feels right.

  BJ’s overnight guest is just leaving as we arrive at my room. She smiles shyly, manages not to blush at all, and makes her exit, shoes dangling from her fingertips. BJ is glowing in a way I don’t recognize.

  “Dacia’s a cool girl… such a cool girl.” He stares after her as she walks to her room down the hall. “I might be in love.”

  I can relate. I don’t say so but I look at Liam and he’s studying me. “This is Liam Norwell. The guy I told you about.”

  BJ snaps out of his love trance and throws himself into Liam’s arms. “You. Are. The. Man.”

  Liam is at a loss for words, which makes sense.

  “You saved my bro’s ass and I wanna thank you somehow. Like, wanna meet a whole slew of freshman girls who’ll be thrilled to show you some major hero worship?”

  Liam gently pushes BJ back and says, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Get used to having Liam around. You’re going to be seeing a lot of him.” I figure I won’t spell it out for BJ, but I’ll give him lots of clues and plenty of fair warning.

  “You guys are having like a total bromance!” BJ laughs so loud it causes a return of my brain-splitting headache. “I gotta go get some food… used up a lot of energy last night.” He makes a rude “I had sex” gesture. “You guys wanna come along?”

  Liam shakes his head and I say, “I think we’re just going to hang out here for a while.”

  “Yeah, right… go ahead and chill. Sorry if it smells like sex in there.” And with that classy warning, he’s off to the dining hall.

  “I can’t explain BJ. But I can apologize for him.” I lead Liam into my room. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

  Liam looks around at our undecorated, slightly messy dorm room. “Cool.”

  “It’s not even slightly cool.” I perch on the edge of the bed and gesture for Liam to sit beside me. “Is the reason you decided not to live in RetroHouse because you didn’t want to run into me?” I can’t believe I ask the question so bluntly; I’m starting to do more and more of this.

  “I’m gonna level with you, man. When you didn’t call me back last summer, I got messed up in the head. And I figured that running into you every other day wouldn’t help me get over you.”

  I reach out to touch his thigh. It feels rock hard through his black jeans, like he’s very tense simply talking about this subject. “I’m sorry I screwed up your housing.”

  Liam shakes his head. “You know, I’m actually glad I have my own place off campus. I think I’ve had enough of dorm life.” He looks around at the standard college guy mess that is our room. “Maybe you did me a favor.”

  I’m also happy that we’ll have a place away from here to hang around, so we won’t feel like we’re under a microscope. Many students and faculty know that we are two of the survivors of the shooting in the theater, and me sleeping in his room in RetroHouse would have caused a lot of gossip that we don’t need to be subjected to. “I like your place off campus too. It feels more relaxing than here. A little more like a home.”

  Liam smiles—it’s honest and open and terrifying and brilliant, and it warms me in places that have always been, at most, lukewarm.

  BJ was right: Liam is the man.

  14

  We’ve been “together” for a week now. And I find it ironic that the thing I worried about most—suddenly being gay when I’d never before thought of myself that way—is not what actually ends up bothering me. Being with a man: anybody would think this would be the sticking point for a guy like me, especially when it comes to being romantically involved with another very masculine man who has also never before thought of himself as gay. But no, my problems are never that cut and dry.

  The bigger problem is that I know Liam is holding something back from me. I’m fully aware that I don’t have a right to access every personal detail of his life before I entered it, but whatever he’s holding back from me is hurting him. And that hurts me. Which hurts us.

  Tonight is the first night since the evening of my drunken, vomiting display of brutal honesty that we’re staying together—as in, sleeping together—at his place. By some kind of mutual understanding, we’ve allowed our new status as a “couple” to gradually sink into our brains all week, during which time we’ve only met for dinner twice. Our dinner conversations were at times stilted and awkward, which could be attributed to the fact that we were sitting in the crowded, bustling RetroHouse dining hall, being stared at from all sides. Now it’s Friday night and couples tend to spend weekend time alone together. Liam invited me to stay the weekend with him in his apartment, and I agreed. I think alone is the only way we’re going to truly learn about each other.

  Liam is always a complete gentleman. He refuses to allow me to take public transportation to his apartment, insistin
g that he come pick me up at my dorm, about which I’m secretly glad. I’m still extremely reluctant to put myself in small, enclosed spaces with strangers, despite the fact that in the Harrison Theater we were attacked by a fellow student.

  I slide into the passenger seat of his car and fight the urge to lean his way and kiss him. We haven’t yet re-established our physical relationship; I’m hoping we’ll find it again this weekend. I want the intimacy with him. Not just the sexual aspect of it, but the emotional bonding that comes with physical familiarity. He must want a physical connection, too, as he reaches across and squeezes my hand. I cling to his wide palm for a few seconds.

  As always, Liam looks impressive. He has a rough and tumble style that I never thought I’d get into—his blond hair is swept to the side, and he wears jeans, a baseball t-shirt, a leather jacket, and boots that I’m glad are brown, not black, because honestly, big black boots still freak me out.

  He mentioned in his last text message that he wanted to eat dinner somewhere off campus tonight, so I tried to look neater than my usual basketball shorts and T-shirt. I’m wearing a button down white oxford shirt and my least ripped pair of jeans, and of course, my standard dress-up boat shoes. I shaved extra-close and spent way too much time fixing my short dark waves just perfectly. I’m even wearing cologne.

  Liam studies me for a moment, but says nothing about how I look. “You ready to go?”

  I toss my pack in the back seat. “Any time you are.”

  And just like that we’re off.

  “You like Thai? Or are you a more a steak kind of guy?” I glance at his profile as he drives. I like what I see but I’m not sure whether I should say so.

  “I guess I’d prefer steak. I never know what to order at Thai restaurants.”

  “Then steak it is.”

  Within a few minutes we’re downtown and he’s parking outside Charlie’s Steakhouse. I climb out of the car before he can come around to help me, which seems to frustrate him. Our roles here are in question. Both of us are doing the best we can to be the man in the relationship. At the door of the restaurant a pretty hostess who I recognize from my photography class greets us, and she looks from one of us to the other, like she isn’t sure which flavor of eye candy she prefers—rugged, husky, hairy, and blond or sleek, smooth, slim, and dark.