The Bravest Thing

by Laura Lascarso

  “If you’re going to counsel me on how not to be gay or try to convince me that homosexuality is a sin, then I don’t think I’m interested.”

  He studies me like I’m a lopsided cake.

  “I have a colleague who runs an excellent program just outside of Dallas. I think you’d really like it.” He reaches into his desk drawer and pulls out a brochure, passes it over to me. I read the front of it aloud.

  “A Man’s Journey.”

  “Check out their website. I think they offer exactly what you’re looking for.”

  Unless the website has the location of where Hiro has gotten off to, I doubt it’s what I’m looking for. I fold the brochure in half and stuff it into my back pocket. Pastor Craig rises to shake my hand. “I hope you get the help you need, Berlin.”

  “Yes, sir.” I keep my head down as I walk out of his office, then remember I need him to give me a ride home. Maybe I’ll just hoof it. I’m about to head for the side door when someone calls my name.

  “Berlin.”

  My dad’s sitting in the front pew with his hat in his lap. He waited for me.

  “Thought you might want to ride back with me,” he says simply.

  I nod, relief flooding me.

  “Yes, sir, I do.”

  Hiroku

  SETH AND I head west to Allister, Texas, a six-hour drive from Lowry. The town is on the edge of the Chihuahuan desert, a tiny place sandwiched between two small mountain ranges. Coming into it on Hwy 90, the views are breathtaking. From the yellows, browns, and greens of the desert grasses and cactuses to the blues and violets of the mountains to the corals and pinks of the painted desert sky at sunset, all the colors of the rainbow are present in one landscape. While Seth fills up the van with gas, I pull out my camera and snap a few pictures. I wish Berlin could see this.

  “I knew you’d like it,” Seth says to me.

  “How’d you find this place?”

  “We were doing a show in San Angelo. This guy gave me his card and told me he had a recording studio here in town. We checked it out and heard good things. The band liked the idea of getting out of Austin. Too many distractions, you know?”

  Seth makes it seem like the band’s idea, but I wonder if it’s him needing to get away as well. There’s a lot of temptation in Austin for someone looking to live it up like a rock star. Seth told me over lunch he’s been having trouble writing lyrics ever since I left, probably because I wrote most of them with him, sometimes just a line or two, sometimes the entire song. Seth always called me his muse, but we both know I’m more than that.

  Our first night in Allister, we stay in a cheap hotel. Seth gives me another bump of painkillers, and I work up the nerve to clean and re-dress my wound. It’s starting to scab over in places where the blisters have popped. The burning has subsided, and now it feels like a really bad road rash. I can only stand to mess with it when I’m high, more because of the way it looks than the pain. I douse it with hydrogen peroxide, and then when it’s dry, I slather it with aloe vera gel, then cover it up because it looks uglier every day.

  The next day we go nosing around town for a longer-term place to rent. I want to stay in town so I’ll have something to do while they’re recording, even though Seth says he wants me there for all of it. “I work better with you there,” he says more than once. It’s his money, so I don’t feel like I can demand much either way. We end up finding a guy who’ll rent us a trailer a couple of miles out of town. Seth likes it because it’s secluded. I like it because the views of the mountains and the desert go on forever.

  Seth wants to catch me up on everything I missed while we were broken up, every show they performed, every band they met, which ones sucked and which ones rocked, the different cities they toured, the fights they got into and what they were about. Seth always diminishes his own role in the conflicts between him and his bandmates. I have to form a more complete picture from the clues he gives me. If he says, “Sabrina was being such a bitch about it. You know how she is about keeping a schedule,” that probably means Seth showed up late to a show and might have been wasted as well.

  He even tells me about some of the guys he hooked up with, the ones he can remember, at least. Most of their names he’s forgotten, which is kind of sad. Even though he’s trying to make the tour sound like it was some epic adventure, it seems kind of lonely. I feel bad for him. I even feel bad for leaving him.

  On our third night together, he asks me to help him with the lyrics to one of the songs he’s written. He plucks at his guitar strings and hums the melody. He tells me he wrote it right after we broke up. It reminds me of some sadass country song, so I suggest a line that seems befitting of the mood… my broken heart is a melancholy tune, the minor chord of me without you.

  “That’s brilliant.” He scratches it down on a piece of paper. I think it’s a little over-the-top, but he seems to like it. “I fucking love you, Hiroku.”

  I kind of go quiet and still, concentrating on the grain of fabric in my jeans. I hope my silence will go unnoticed—it wasn’t a proclamation of love exactly, more like collegial appreciation—but I can feel his eyes boring into me, waiting for me to respond in kind.

  “You’re not going to say it.” He sounds hurt, and I try to not let it get to me. He knows how to prey on my sympathies. He sets aside his guitar and I hunch forward, avoiding his gaze.

  “You don’t feel the same?” he asks.

  I shrug, not wanting to answer. I do love him, I probably always will, but something has changed since we were together before. I used to think I couldn’t live without him, like I’d die if he ever left me, but I had a taste of life without Seth, and despite the bullshit of Lowry, it wasn’t so terrible.

  Because I had Berlin.

  “Are you punishing me?” he asks.

  “Maybe.” I haven’t said it because it doesn’t feel right, probably for a lot of reasons.

  “Do you love him?” Seth looks like he’s holding his breath, which kind of surprises me. In all the tales of his exploits, I never uttered a word about mine, even though he left the door wide open. I’m not going to bring Berlin into any conversation with Seth, because there’s no telling how he’ll twist it and throw it back in my face later.

  “Do you?” he demands.

  “I’m not going to talk about it.” Not him, but it. The subject of Lowry is off-limits, and Seth knows that. It’s probably eating him alive.

  “Was the sex good?” he asks, ignoring my request for privacy, or maybe asking because of it. I draw a line in the sand and he erases it.

  I stand and stuff my wallet and keys into my pockets. “I’m going to get a pack of cigarettes.” I’ve started smoking again. It’s a nasty habit, but it gives me a reason to get out of the trailer, and at times like these, away from Seth. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  “A few minutes, huh?” Seth plucks a few ominous chords. He doesn’t like it when I go off on my own for long stretches of time. He was controlling when I lived with my parents, but out here, his possessiveness borders on paranoia.

  “Maybe a little longer than that.” I’ll come back when I feel like I can breathe again.

  I head out into the dusk and mount my bike. There are only two roads that lead to Allister. They connect it with two other tiny towns to form a triangular loop that takes about an hour and a half to ride. I do that circuit, thinking about Berlin the entire time, feeling bad for leaving without telling him good-bye. Is he still chummy with Trent, or has the bigot brigade turned on him too?

  There’s one pay phone in Allister, and I think about giving Berlin a call, but I don’t know what I’d say to him, and I don’t want to be selfish and screw with his emotions. I stop at a gas station instead and pick up a pack of cigarettes, even though I still have a full pack, and then, because there’s nothing else to do, I drive back to Seth.

  He isn’t there, so I watch some television until he gets in around midnight, totally wasted. I’m not sure how he managed to get hom
e without wrecking the van, except that the roads out here are pretty deserted. He reeks like cheap cologne, and I figure he went out and got a piece of ass just to spite me. I don’t ask him about it. I don’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing I care.

  “Don’t you want to know where I’ve been?” he says to me after a minute. He looks unsteady on his feet, and he’s blocking the television.

  “Not really.” I glance around him so I can watch my show, even though I’ve already lost interest.

  “I went to a bar and drank myself under the table, then bought some aftershave at a gas station and put it on so you’d think I’d been with someone else.”

  I stare up at him. I actually believe him. This town is tiny, and even with his good looks and charisma, it’d take him more than one night of carousing to figure out who around here is gaytastic.

  “So, did it work?” he asks me.

  “Yeah, it worked.”

  “Did you care?” He throws out both arms as if this answer means everything. His muscles are taut and a little menacing. His eyes look desperate and sad. He’ll do anything to get a reaction from me, even something as batshit crazy as this.

  “Yeah, I cared.” It’s the truth.

  He nods like it’s the right answer. “Show me your chest.” He points at me, his finger wobbling a little. In the time we’ve been together, I haven’t taken off my shirt in front of him or showered with him. I change with my back turned. I don’t want anyone to see it.

  “No.” I cross my arms over my chest.

  He drops down in front of where I sit on the couch, spreads my knees far apart, and undoes the button on my pants, yanking the fly wide open like he owns me. He liberates my cock and strokes me a few times. It doesn’t take long for me to answer the call. My body always arrives at his doorstep before the rest of me.

  “Please, show me,” he coos in the same sultry bedroom voice he uses on his adoring fans. His voice is a weapon of seduction, and as he tugs at my cock lovingly, I feel my resolve crumbling. “I love you, Hiroku, and even if you don’t say it back to me, I know in your heart you love me too. I want to make your pain go away, but how can I if you don’t share it with me?”

  I glance away, feeling intensely sad and aroused at the same time. Seth’s magic is a strange brew. I know he won’t give up on this, and I don’t have the strength to refuse him right now. He knows all my weaknesses. I pull off my shirt and slump back against the couch, letting him ogle me. The bandage is off to let it air out. Seth stares at it and looks strangely fascinated. With his free hand, he traces a circle around it, still scabby in some places, pink and tender in others. I wish I could scrub it off my body altogether.

  “W,” he says. “Was that his name?”

  I shut my eyes and lean my head back against the couch, covering my face with my arms, trying not to think about that night. I want to keep the two things separate—my feelings for Berlin, and the anger and shame that overwhelms me whenever I think about what his friends did to me. Even worse is the fact that I let them get away with it. I hate myself for being weak and running away. Another win for homophobia.

  “You still think about him,” Seth says in an accusing tone, gripping my dick tighter, taking me to the edge of pain. I cringe, my muscles tense, but still I say nothing.

  “I’m going to make you forget all about him,” he promises.

  He swallows my cock and sucks me off like a man who’s been around the block once or twice. Then he lays out some lines for us to snort. We spend the rest of the night in a drunken, dizzy, lustful haze. I give him his pound of flesh and more, but I’m not entirely present for it. With Seth, I cease to exist as a person. I’m his vessel for pleasure and for pain.

  But the next morning, when I go outside and see dawn’s light pouring over the land, painted pretty as a picture, I think of something Berlin said about the hand of God, and I wonder if he still has that solid, unshakable faith. I imagine him coming up over the rise in his beat-up pickup truck and motioning with his one hand out the window like he used to for me to climb in.

  In my mind, I go.

  Berlin

  I ALWAYS liked school—the routines, the people, my teachers, even some of the lessons—but since coming out, school has become a nightmare. A nightmare that gives me stomachaches.

  My mom used to warn me if I didn’t open up and talk about my feelings, I was going to get ulcers. Now I wake up every morning with an upset stomach. Most mornings I can barely get down a glass of milk for breakfast. I have trouble eating at school, too, because I stress about when the next attack will come. One of the football players shoving me into a locker or socking me in the gut as they pass by in the hallway? Trent calling me a faggot in gym class or getting the other guys to go in with him on some stupid prank? Maybe they’ll empty the contents of my locker into a trash can or leave dog shit in my gym shoes or spray-paint slurs on the side of my truck.

  In football, I could navigate the field, and when I got knocked down, I’d get back up again. I was never alone. My team was there to cheer me on. We were in it together. Now I’m completely alone, and the guys I used to rely on for backup are the ones coming after me.

  Ever since I stopped going to church, even Kayla avoids me.

  Most days I carry all my books on my back like a pack mule so I won’t have to go to my locker. I eat lunch alone on the tailgate of my truck. I keep my head down in class and try to disappear completely. As soon as the bell rings, I practically sprint for the parking lot to get home as quickly as possible.

  I finally understand what it means to be gay in Lowry, Texas. It’s enough to make you want to kill yourself or head for the hills. Lucky for me, I have my dad and our farm. I spend a lot of time talking to the animals and rediscovering the land, doing manual labor to keep my mind off my troubles. I visit the creek and think about Hiro. In the evenings I search for him online, without much success.

  Two weeks after Hiro left, I’m at school picking at a cheeseburger left over from dinner the night before when a kid I don’t know approaches me. He looks familiar, but it takes me a second to recognize him as the redheaded kid I saw with Hiro at my football game. Spencer something or other. He’s in all the smart classes. I haven’t had a class with him since middle school.

  “Hey, Berlin,” he says and stands kind of far away. Maybe he thinks homosexuality is contagious.

  “Spencer, right?”

  “Yeah.” He looks pleased I remembered his name. He takes a few hesitant steps toward me. I realize then he’s afraid of me. I vaguely remember Trent picking on him freshman year, and me not doing anything to stop it.

  “Hey, um, I haven’t seen Hiroku around school for a couple weeks. Did he transfer or something?”

  Hiro didn’t tell him where he was going either. That makes me feel a little less sorry for myself.

  “He ran away,” I say.

  Spencer looks surprised, then worried. His face darkens. “Do you know why?”

  “I’m not sure.” I don’t know how close they are, and I’m not going to make the same mistake I did with Hiro’s parents. Kids at school know I’m gay, but they don’t know about my feelings for Hiro.

  “How’d you know I knew Hiro?”

  Spencer’s eyebrows rise like he’s been caught. He glances behind him. “I got this strange text from Hiroku a couple of weeks ago.”

  “Let me see it,” I demand. I didn’t mean to sound so stern, but the kid kind of jumps and pulls out his phone. He scrolls through until he finds the text and shows it to me.

  Check in on Berlin Webber for me.

  Hiro sent it two weeks ago, the same morning he left town. That was probably the last text he sent from his phone, and it was about me. Even then, he was looking out for me. I wish I could do it all over again with Hiro. I’d do so many things different.

  “I would have talked to you sooner,” Spencer says, “but it’s been a little crazy around here with Trent and all.”

  I shake my head. �
��Don’t worry about it, man.” I can hardly blame him.

  “Were you and Hiroku… um….” He doesn’t finish the question, but I guess at his meaning.

  “Yeah. He was my boyfriend.” There’s no point in hiding it from Spencer. If Hiro trusted him, I should too. Funny how I can say it now that Hiro’s gone when I could never say it then.

  “I see.” He scratches his head, kind of hops from one foot to another. He’s a jumpy little guy, kind of looks like that singer all the girls are crazy for, the short one with the red hair.

  “So, you two were friends,” I say.

  “Yeah. I think he told me about you. Over dinner, only he said you were older, out of school. I guess you two were, um, keeping it undercover.”

  “What did he say?” I ask even though it feels like prying. I’m so desperate to have a little piece of Hiro I don’t care about invading his privacy.

  Spencer looks me up and down. “He described you, pretty much like this, said you were, um, attractive—”

  “Attractive?”

  “Built, I think is the word he used. And sensitive. Thoughtful. The way he talked about you, it made me kind of jealous.”

  “You liked him too?” I ask.

  “Well, yeah, but it made me jealous that he had someone. It’s not easy to find that around here. It’s cool you two had each other.”

  My heart feels heavy as a sandbag inside my chest. “Yeah, it was cool.”

  Part of me wants to tell Spencer what happened, so that he knows it’s not Hiro’s fault. It wasn’t Hiro who was weak; it was me. The fault is mine.

  “Well, here, let me give you my number,” he says. “If you ever want to hang out or whatever.”

  I don’t want Spencer to suffer for being kind to me. I can’t deal with that on my conscience. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea. I’m not the most popular guy right now.”