by Mia Kerick
“Well, tell us what’s wrong,” I urge, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know.
“You guys are like together now, right?” She doesn’t wait for either one of us to reply. “Like you’re a couple?”
Liam answers before I have a chance to. “We are. Do you have a problem with this, Mariah?” He isn’t apprehensive about giving her his answer, which seems to surprise her.
Mariah’s sky blue eyes turn into midnight blue ones. “Well, yeah, maybe I do.”
“And?” Liam is better than either Mariah or me at keeping his emotions under wraps. “And what might your problem with us be?”
She doesn’t hesitate. “How about the fact that you guys aren’t gay, and two straight guys screwing is disgusting and sick?”
I choke on a sip of cocoa, and Liam hands me a napkin but other than that, neither of us respond. I literally can’t; I’m too busy coughing. But I can tell that Liam is biding his time, waiting for more. Which he soon gets.
First she glares at me. “Let’s take you, Jason—you were oh-so-frigging-in-love with Ginny last year…. I never heard a single word about you being unsure how you felt about her cuz you were gay!” The volume of Mariah’s voice has risen with every word. College Coffee is packed with students and all of the occupants are now staring our way. She shifts her angry gaze to Liam and even jabs her finger at him across the small table. “And you and me hooked up at that Marketing Club holiday party at Jarrod’s place last winter. What the fuck was that if you’re light in your loafers?”
I join Mariah in staring at Liam. He never told me that anything was going on between them. He glances at me uncomfortably before responding to her. “That was a one-time thing, Mariah. You know that—we talked about it.”
I’m floored by this revelation, but I don’t blame him. I don’t think we’re required to confess every detail of our lives to one another, especially stuff that doesn’t really matter. And unfortunately for Mariah, I think his hook-up with her qualifies as inconsequential.
“How do you think it makes me feel to find out that the guy I was seeing and the guy my best friend was hoping to marry are gay for each other? Did you ever stop and think about that?”
Not only am I feeling somewhat shocked from learning that Liam and Mariah hooked up last year, but also like a world class piece of shit, because—Ginny was hoping to marry me? She never mentioned this to me! Of course Mariah is confused; who wouldn’t be in her shoes? I’m damned confused right now, too.
Liam doesn’t see this situation in exactly the same way as Mariah does. “Look, Mariah, we weren’t ‘seeing each other.’ You and me had too many drinks and went too far at that party. I’m sorry it happened because we’re friends. But both of us knew that’s all it was… and as for Ginny and Jason, well, they were in love, but Ginny is… she’s gone now.”
“Jason was so in love with Ginny that he’s fucking a dude less than six months after she died in his arms?”
Mariah’s wrong on that count—Ginny didn’t die in my arms because I let go of her right when she needed me most. She died, cold and alone on the floor of the theater. But I’m smart, and I keep my mouth shut about this detail.
Liam is sufficiently patient to make one more effort to engage Mariah’s mind in an attempt to help her see reason. “Think about this for a second, Mariah: Jason and I survived a mass shooting together and then the guy tried to come and finish us off a couple days later where we were in witness protection. Thanks to that living hell, the two of us bonded. So maybe we can’t explain it, not even to ourselves, but now we don’t wanna be apart.”
“All I can say is, looking at your cozy little duo from the outside, everybody thinks you guys are mighty twisted.” She stands up and crosses her arms in front of her. “I mean, Jesus, Liam.…”
She’s really mad at us, and I have no idea what she wants us to say or do. My head is spinning with images of Ginny and me—how close we’d once been and how we’d drifted apart as lovers. Maybe I was gay all along… maybe my relationship with Ginny was nothing but a lie…. And maybe Ginny was hurt and angry because she knew I didn’t feel the same way she did, just like Mariah is feeling now. I’m getting a headache from all the scenarios fighting for a foothold in my brain. I drop my head down onto my arms that are folded in front of me on the table.
“Liam, come back to my hotel room… alone… and we can talk about this misunderstanding. We can sort it all out.” Mariah’s suggestion sends a spike of pain into my aching head.
She wants to “sort it all out” with my boyfriend? What the fuck does that mean? I stand up, too, and head for the door, because I can’t just sit here and listen to her proposition Liam. And then, like an idiot, I trip on absolutely nothing and nearly knock Mariah onto her ass.
Liam is on his feet in an instant. He grabs my arm to steady me. “It’s okay Jase… Look, Mariah, there’s nothing for us to sort out.”
“Liam—Jason just knocked me over and you’re jumping to his side?” I knew Mariah for almost a full year and I never saw this side of her—furious, bitter, and slightly vicious. “Are you for real? Well, I have an idea. You can actually answer that question for both of us. If you’re a real man you’ll take me back to my hotel and prove it.” She winks at me. “I know how he likes things, Jason… things you don’t have, no offense.”
Sometimes I feel like this thing with Liam simply can’t work. There’s too much going against it. And maybe Mariah has a point—we aren’t really gay guys. We’re just two guys… who don’t belong together as a couple.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t ignore the little voice in my head that’s screaming at me, telling me that somehow we do fit together. It may not make sense, but Liam and I work. Nonetheless, I don’t plan on standing here and listening to any more of this. In fact, I can’t, because it hurts too much for too many reasons. I turn around and head for the door, which brings me face-to-face with the Harrison Theater. I look through the glass and stare at the building where every scrap of normalcy in my life was destroyed. But then, it was also the place where something incredible and precious was born between Liam and me.
This is all too much. I shudder just once, but it shakes my entire body visibly, I’m sure. I push the glass door open and step outside. Standing on the sidewalk, nothing but the street between the theater and me, I’m soon lost in the past.
“Come on, Jase. It’s time to go home.”
“Home?”
“Home to my place.” Liam takes me by the arm as he had when I tripped in the restaurant, whenever that was…. “Don’t worry about Mariah. She was totally off base and I told her so.”
I let him lead me to his car that is parked behind the café. “You never told me that you were with her.”
Liam shakes his head. “It was one night. A mistake I never made again.”
I nod because I think I understand. “Does she know how you like things?” I’m thinking about the way he dominates me in bed, and I wonder if he did the same to her. I secretly hope it’s something he has wanted to do only with me, which I realize is a childish desire. A desire as strange as everything else going on here.
“No one but you knows how I like things. I didn’t even know until the first night I was with you.” Liam is burly and strong and looks tough in his leather jacket and spiked hair and heavy boots. It would be easy to believe that the inner Liam was what he projected on the outside—dangerous. But that’s not the case. He’s gentle and protective and I need him now… again… always, I think.
“I just want some ‘normal’ for a while. No shootings, no family drama, no interfering friends. Just time spent being… being boring,” I tell him, my voice too whiny.
“You know your wish is always my command.” He laughs and the sound is like a low roar; I place my hand on his chest so I can feel the rumble. “No pumpkin-carving contest featuring a round, orange Donald Trump, or wild parties or drinking beer for us this weekend, man. It’s pizza delivery/movi
e weekend. Your fine ass won’t be getting up off my big bed.”
“What’ll you do to me if I decide to get off the bed to clean your kitchenette?” I smirk.
“Just try it and see.” He winks. “It’s time for some ‘normal’ in our lives. Prepare yourself to be bored.”
I laugh and take his hand in mine. “Promises, promises.”
We walk past the theater and around the building to the parking lot where our very normal chariot, if you count red Dodge Chargers as normal, awaits.
22
I asked for normalcy, and Liam delivered. We spent the remainder of last weekend lounging around his apartment. We studied a little, watched plenty of movies, and consumed far too much pizza and soda. It was great in a very ordinary way, which was just what I needed. But it wasn’t even slightly boring.
More normalcy: Club soccer games are on Wednesday nights, and BJ and I have standing running dates on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, as soon as classes end. We meet in our dorm, change quickly into running gear, and are out the door within ten minutes because BJ works restacking books at the Batcheldor College Library most weekdays from six until nine.
Today, as we stretch out on the scanty patches of autumn grass in front of RetroHouse, BJ and I catch up on what’s been going on.
“So Dacia wants me to go home with her for Thanksgiving.”
“Doesn’t she live in Florida? Sounds like a mini-vacation to me.”
BJ isn’t laughing and joking as usual. In fact, he looks terrified. “I can’t go… I can’t meet her parents, cuz Jase—they’re lawyers. They’ll see right through my bullshit line and know that I’m no good for their daughter.”
My right calf is tight and I rub it hard with a pink rubber ball I keep in the pocket of my sweats when I go running. “BJ, you aren’t so much full of shit as you are a colorful kind of guy with a lot to say… about everything.”
“Yeah… like I said, I’m full of shit. I know it and you know it, but Dacia doesn’t.” BJ drops to the cold ground in a defeated pile of limbs.
“Get up, BJ. Dacia’s nuts about you. So you should go home with her and meet her folks… and while you’re there, soak up the sun. It’ll move you into a more serious zone in the relationship.”
“You met Liam’s folks. Did that move you forward in your relationship?”
I shake my head remembering the severely dysfunctional family I met in Lockwood, Maine. “I think his family falls into a unique category called ‘major exception to the rule.’ But my mom met Liam and fell in love with him and that moved us forward. As in, I have some serious competition for my boyfriend’s attention with my mother. He’s coming to my house for Thanksgiving. It’s already settled.”
“Your mom just accepted that you’re all of a sudden gay?” BJ knows how to get to the heart of a matter. “I’m pretty sure my folks would have something to say if I woke up one morning and told them I was into dudes.”
I get onto my feet and bend down to stretch my hamstrings. “You ready to run now?” There’s no way BJ will understand the “we’re not necessarily gay, we just love each other” relationship status Liam and I have come to embrace, and I’m not in the mood to explain it, especially since I don’t know how. It just is.
“Yeah… you go on ahead and set the pace.”
I start running slowly down the side of the country road, thinking about Liam. It seems I’m constantly trying to explain the exact nature of my feelings for him. How can I have fallen in love with Liam when I’m attracted to women? How can sex feel so good when I know it’s supposed to be a girl’s body providing the pleasure?
I turn up Main Street and head for the first set of lights, so deep in thought I’m only half aware of my surroundings. I might find it hard to explain in words, but I can’t deny that I love him. When it comes down to the barest of facts, I love a human being, not a gender or a sexual orientation. Maybe Liam and I are the only ones who are able to see love clearly, because we love each other for reasons that don’t involve sexuality. We love for how we feel in our partner’s presence: secure, protected, and treasured, and we’re compelled to be together. When we touch each other, it’s because we can’t not touch each other.
It isn’t really so complicated at all.
When BJ catches up with me, I’m ready to tell him the truth. “I don’t much care if my mother or my friends or Mariah Craft thinks it’s fucked-up that Liam and I are together.” I’m running at a good clip now, so I take a few deep breaths before I continue. “My sexuality hasn’t changed; but my life experience has changed radically. Shit, I almost got killed twice. And loving Liam works with the way I now fit into the world.”
BJ slaps my shoulder and pouts noticeably. “Hey, chill out! I wasn’t putting you down, dude! It was just an innocent question.”
“No hard feelings… I guess I’m just reacting to our meeting with Mariah.”
“This morning Liam told me she was super pissed at you guys.”
“Yeah… but I think a lot of it was because she felt like she needed to defend Ginny’s honor… and then there’s the part where she still has a thing for Liam.”
We’re far enough along in our run where the gab session has to end, and it’s time to get serious. I sprint out ahead of BJ and focus on my inspiration: Liam Norwell, who just happens to be pumping iron in the Batcheldor College Gymnasium.
23
“You’re no monster,” I whisper when he rolls off me, both of us sweaty and satisfied, but I see that troubled look in his eyes.
“You’re no monster,” I say as he gently pushes me beneath the spray of hot water, after soaping up my entire body in his usual attentive manner. Because I can see the suffering on his face.
“You’re no monster.” I tell him between spoons full of butterscotch ice cream that he’s feeding me in the ice cream parlor downtown, because his guilt is showing again.
“You are not a monster, Liam.” Time and again he hears these words from me, because I know that he hasn’t fully forgiven himself for something that doesn’t even require forgiveness. All he did was save himself instead of die trying to save his little sister. I plan to give him the absolution he thinks he needs, which his parents refused him.
And Liam still won’t open up fully about the details of the night he lost his little sister. Last time I brought it up he said, “You know what happened on the night of the fire. I’m not trying to hide anything from you, but it hurts like hell to think about, so there’s no way I can talk about it.”
I step into the shower and think about how far I’ve come in six months. Although I still experience some post traumatic symptoms from the shooting and the subsequent attempt on our lives—like feeling panicked when I hear sudden loud noises and completely avoiding small, enclosed public spaces—I’m back to being a reasonable facsimile of the Jason Tripp I used to know. And every day I hope it will be the day that Liam allows my words, with regard to Lucy, to sink into his brain, but I’m especially hopeful this morning, because today marks six months since the Harrison Theater shooting.
“I owe so much to Liam.” I say it aloud, the water dripping into my mouth as I speak. “I know I can help him feel better, like he helped me.”
***
I end the call and put my cell phone down on the desk where I’m sitting, studying Media Law and trying not to dwell on how it’s been half a year to the day since my life changed so dramatically. “Okay, BJ. I talked to Liam and we decided that we’re going to go see Dacia at the Volunteer Entertainers Show tonight at the Oakwood Theatre downtown.” I really want to support Dacia’s efforts at raising money for local homeless families, but the decision to enter a theater has been a tough one for me. All I can say is that I’m glad it isn’t taking place at Harrison Theater, as that would have been a deal breaker.
“So Liam worked his magic and got you to say you’d go?” BJ never takes a subtle approach.
Liam and I have been going back and forth about whether or not to attend the sh
ow all day, until finally I agreed.
BJ is dressed in black because he’s working as a stagehand for the volunteer event. “Awesome. And speaking of magic, Dacia’s been taking magic lessons at the Community Center since school started to get ready for this event. She’s gonna be so psyched you’ll be there! You said that Liam’s coming too, right?”
Hello! Like I would actually consider entering a theater without Liam….
“Yeah, I’m going to meet Liam in front of Charlie’s Steakhouse, and we’ll go across the street to the theater as soon as he gets there.” I swallow hard as I’m struggling with this decision. I’m honestly afraid. “But Liam might be a little late meeting me because he has a Marketing Club meeting until seven. So we’ll probably miss the first couple of acts.”
“Dacia’s magic act is second to last in the show, so you guys should be fine.” He pulls a black sweater over his black T-shirt. “Okay, so I’ll see you at the show and maybe afterwards we can all grab a bite to eat downtown. And fair warning: if you sit too close to the front of the stage Dacia might pick you for the audience participation section.”
“Then we’ll be in the back row, for sure, but tell Dacia good luck, or, maybe break a leg is more correct.”
“Will do…. See yah later, Tripp.”
As soon as BJ leaves the room, I place my head between my knees. The mere thought of setting foot in a dark theater has me ready to vomit.
***
The scene at Charlie’s Steakhouse is totally chaotic when I arrive. I thought the walk from campus would do me good, maybe even clear my head, but not in my wildest dreams did I expect to see people streaming out of the theater, screaming that there’s a fire. As soon as I notice that many of the theatergoers are children, my thoughts turn to Liam. How is he going to react when he gets here—to a fire in a place where there are children present? A tragic fire is his biggest fear, and to compound it, the fire is in a theater, which is a place that puts both of us on edge. And we both reacted badly to the fatal arson in the Imax theater that we heard about on the news a few weeks ago.