Growing Pains

by Cass Lennox

  “You took that seriously?”

  “Uh, yeah? I love you. I loved you at the time. I didn’t want to screw this up.” Brock looked pissed off for some reason.

  Not that Gigi was feeling especially calm himself, because what the hell? Did Brock honestly think he was that high-maintenance?

  Well, okay, yes, he was high-maintenance, but he wasn’t loony-bin high-maintenance.

  “Um, hate to break it to you, boyfriend, but if you’d told me you weren’t out to your parents because they were going to fucking hurt you, I’d’ve understood.” Gigi stared at him. “Do you seriously think I wouldn’t’ve?”

  The expression on Brock’s face said yes.

  Gigi stepped back and crossed his arms. “Oh my God. Brock. Honestly?”

  “You were always so clear about hating closet cases. And I tried super hard to show you I wasn’t one. Like, all the freaking time. Every time we were in public, you know? I’ve tried to make sure you never doubted me, not even for a second.” Brock’s face was red.

  Gigi glared. “It depends on the situation! It always depends! Oh my God, you make me sound like I demanded you be out to everyone and her dog, and that I check on you. I don’t do that.”

  “Don’t you? I am so aware of our history. I am constantly judged by you. You don’t say it, but I can tell you think it. I know you watch me with other people, waiting for me to slip up and not mention my boyfriend.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t do that either.” He didn’t. Much. But he’d seen the judge-y looks from other people, the ones who didn’t like loud, femmy boys who enjoyed wearing dresses and could dance in six-inch stilettos. And he’d preened every time Brock had said Gigi was his boyfriend, because screw those people. So what if he liked hearing it?

  “Maybe not consciously, but I bet if I didn’t say it, you’d instantly be in my face.”

  Anger boiled through Gigi. Where the shit was all this coming from? “Sounds like you’re judging yourself way more than I ever did. You think I don’t know about bad family situations? I do. We all know about them. If you’d just told me, I would have understood, baby, and frankly I’m pissed you think I wouldn’t.”

  Brock dragged his hands through his hair but didn’t say anything.

  Which really was fucking typical. “No freaking wonder you didn’t want to come back here.”

  “No shit, Gi!” Brock pointed at his bruises. “This is nothing new. I never wanted to come back to this. But no, I had to, for you.”

  Wait, what? “Nothing new? What does that mean?”

  “It means what I said. My parents are assholes.”

  A picture clicked into place in Gigi’s head. A different one. One where those scars on Brock’s skin weren’t from self-harm, but from his parents. His stomach plummeted. “You mean . . .”

  Brock crossed his arms. “Yeah.”

  “When you were younger too?”

  He seemed to hunch in on himself. “Yeah.”

  Gigi didn’t know whether to hug him or shake him. “How come I’m only hearing this now? What the hell? Don’t you trust me?”

  Brock surged to his feet. “Seriously? Why the hell would I tell you? Our history is bad enough. The last thing I want to be is some victim of violence as well as a messed-up ex-closet case. I know I’m already not good enough. Not out enough, not fun enough, not brave enough. Never, ever enough.”

  Gigi’s jaw dropped. “When have I ever said that to you?”

  “You don’t need to say it.”

  “What the— Who even are you? This isn’t the Brock I know.”

  Brock’s face twisted. “Oh yeah? The Brock you know is done trying to be everything for you. You want the truth, Toby? I never wanted to come out to my parents. And I never wanted to come back here and pretend like that was okay with me. But I did it because of you.”

  “Do not put this on me—”

  Brock held up one finger at him. “Oh, I am. I totally am. I didn’t want to be here, but you didn’t care. You never care. You only ever think about yourself and your goddamn feelings, and I am tired of all your fucking drama. You exhaust me.” Brock threw up his hands. “I am done. Okay? Done with this, done with you.”

  He pushed past Gigi. Or, rather, Toby, because that’s who was standing with his jaw on the floor in shock.

  What did Brock mean, he exhausted him? What the hell was that about?

  What had just happened?

  Brock brushed past him again, picked up his plate of food, then turned and left the kitchen.

  Wait. Had Brock broken up with him? Then grabbed a snack?

  Oh hell no.

  Gigi spun and marched after him. He was heading for the stairs, past a group of wide-eyed Rosenbergs standing in the doorway of the rec room.

  “You did not just break up with me,” Gigi yelled at Brock’s back. “You don’t break up with me. That’s not how this works! No one breaks up with me! I break up with you!”

  Brock flipped him the bird over his shoulder as he took the stairs two at a time. Gigi ran up after him, only to have his own bedroom door slammed in his face. The lock clicked, and Gigi stared at it in shock. Why did that still work? And how come Brock was the one who got to hide in Gigi’s room?

  “Brock!” he started.

  Someone cleared their throat behind him. He turned around to see Sophie, her arms crossed and eyes narrowed.

  Oh, right. She was here with the bachelorette party. As was most of his family.

  Oops.

  “Toby. You done?”

  “Nope.”

  She leaned in. “How about you be done?”

  Like hell. Gigi gestured at the door. “How about I wait until my boyfriend decides he’s finished hiding in my room like a child before—”

  “Oh my God, shut up.” Sophie grabbed his shoulders. “I wasn’t asking. Toby, you have got to calm your tits. Or at least take it outside—I think Uncle Steve almost had a fit from all the gay drama.”

  Gigi bristled. “It is relationship drama, and he’ll handle it if he wants the usual birthday card from his favourite nephew.”

  She winced. “Tobes, that fight sounded terrible. None of us downstairs can really handle it. If things were going this badly, why did you both come here?”

  He glanced at the door, certain Brock was listening in. “I don’t know. I guess I didn’t know things were this bad. All I was expecting was my boyfriend to show up for my sister’s wedding and not be a total head case.”

  Sophie shook him gently. “Toby. There’s been this weird vibe around you two since you got here. You’re fine one moment, then you can’t seem to stop bitching at each other the next. Come on.”

  Gigi rolled his eyes. “Don’t worry, we’re not going to start catfighting in the fucking aisle.”

  “I can’t see Brock doing that, no.”

  “That’s not how— Wait, what do you mean, you can’t see Brock doing that?”

  She pulled him in close. “Tobes. Seriously. I thought you two were cool.”

  Her hands were warm on his shoulders and her grey eyes were steady on his. It was just the two of them, like it used to be when they were kids and Toby was freaking out over something that had happened at school. A rush of affection for her swamped him, helping to wash away part of the anger.

  And what was left were more crawly, awful gut feelings. Like, worse than preperformance nerves. Worse than anything Gigi had felt since leaving Maney.

  “I loved you.” Loved. Past tense.

  “We weren’t perfect, but I didn’t expect this,” he admitted.

  “Okay. Whatever’s going on, you need to figure it out and make up. I love you and I want you to be happy, whether that’s with or without him”—she nodded her head at the door—“but so help me God, if you ruin this for me and Alan, I will tear your balls off.”

  He laughed. “Don’t worry, loser, your perfect day will be perfect.”

  She nodded, her expression serious. “I hope so.” She drew back from h
im. “For what it’s worth, I think you should give him some space right now.”

  Gigi threw up his hands. “I am literally trying to fix things. How is space going to fix things?”

  “Try it. Come on.” She took his arm and gently pulled him away from the door.

  Across the landing from them, the bathroom door opened with a billow of steam, and Ed stepped out in a towel, hair plastered to his head. “Oh, hey, guys! Shower’s free!”

  Gigi scowled at him. Fucking Ed. If he hadn’t been in the shower, Gigi could’ve showered, and then he and Brock wouldn’t’ve had that stupid fight. Brock would be talking to him downstairs, and they’d be all loved up like they’d just been, and Gigi wouldn’t be having a freaking identity crisis brought on by being back in this town and his boyfriend possibly breaking up with him. Again.

  This was worse than Lifetime.

  He shrugged Sophie off and stomped down the stairs. Behind him he heard Ed ask her, “What’s with the face? What did I miss?”

  After pacing Gigi’s room and resisting temptations to destroy everything in it, Brock finally calmed down enough to eat and pull another set of clothes together. Once Ed and Sophie had moved away from the bedroom door, he gathered his clothes and a towel and dashed into the bathroom. Under the shower’s excellent spray, he could let himself unravel a little.

  Today was officially the worst day.

  He and Gigi had had fights before, but nothing like today. Other fights had been about dumb shit, like cancelling a date or getting a little too flirtatious with other men or simply being tired and hungry, and had nearly always been fixed by the end of the day with someone being fucked.

  This time, Brock was too livid to see straight, let alone think about fucking. He didn’t want Gigi anywhere near him. He didn’t even want to look at his face. That entitled, demanding, arrogant, self-involved, utterly fucking ridiculous—

  He sighed into the wet, tiled space of the shower. The heat of the water made his face ache.

  What was he doing here? He should just go. Pack his stuff and drive back to Toronto. Gigi could figure out his own ride. There was nothing here for Brock, not anymore. His parents were finally done with him, and why would the Rosenbergs want him here after that fight? No. Time to leave and never come back. And this time he’d keep that promise.

  Making that decision felt like the first good thing he’d done in a long time.

  He turned the shower off, stepped out, dried and dressed himself, then returned to Gigi’s room to pack. Throwing down the towel, his eye was caught by the trophy section on Gigi’s shelves. How had Brock ever thought those were amazing signs of early success? Why did Gigi still keep those? Wasn’t it fucking narcissistic to keep shit like this?

  He picked one up at random and glanced it over. Excellence in Drama, Maney High School. It was dated the year Gigi had graduated. Right. Drama. The two plays he’d been in that year had earned the theatre group a trip to some Ontario-wide school theatre thing in Toronto, and Gigi had won something for his lead in Anything Goes, so the school had given him this as recognition of his ability. Totally over the top.

  Anything Goes. They’d had their first kiss during rehearsals for that.

  He shoved the trophy back on the shelf and went to his bag. As he rolled clothes up and tossed them in his bag, someone knocked gently on the doorframe.

  “Brock?”

  He looked up. Naomi stood in the doorway, her face concerned. “Can I come in?”

  It was literally her house. Brock resisted the urge to shrug and said, “Sure.”

  She stepped in and leaned against Gigi’s desk. Brock continued packing. Whatever she was going to say, it wouldn’t change his mind.

  “I love my son deeply, but he can be a total pain in the ass.”

  Brock paused, jeans in hand. He looked at her again. She gazed back, totally serious. Okay. Wow.

  “I guess you heard us,” he said.

  “A lot of us did. Are you packing?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m not going to stop you, Brock, but please don’t think you’re unwelcome just because my son can be immensely selfish and shortsighted.”

  He let out a bark of laughter. “Should you be saying that?”

  “I raised him, so I’m allowed to say it. I got all of it. Years of singing and dancing and tantrums about stuff I barely understood.” She shook her head. “Sometimes the way he swung between loving something and hating it drove me nuts. The way he’s so open, so completely free with his emotions, it’s an incredibly wonderful and beautiful thing, but it is tiring to the rest of us who maybe don’t need to share everything all the time.”

  Brock winced. Guilt radiated through him at the memory of actually saying, “I am tired. You exhaust me.” He knew that wouldn’t go down well.

  “Living here was rough for him, and because it was rough for him, it was rough for all of us.” She crossed her arms and gazed out of Gigi’s window. “I can only imagine what it was like for you, growing up here.”

  “I didn’t have his problems at school.”

  She turned to him. “No. But I imagine that staying quiet to avoid those problems created new ones, right?”

  He shrugged. “It’s in the past.”

  “And maybe you had problems of your own?” Her grey eyes stared into his, and Brock was abruptly certain that she knew. Somehow she knew his father was an abusive asshole and his mother was a shell of a person and Brock was caught somewhere between the two of them. Sure, he had bruises on his face as evidence, but Naomi didn’t seem surprised at all by them.

  A lump rose in his throat. “Earlier you mentioned you talked to my mom.”

  “I know her from a book club a few years back. There were problems, right?”

  Wasn’t it obvious?

  He nodded.

  She sighed. “I thought there might be. There were signs. She never said anything or asked for help, so I just . . . Anyway. I’m sorry, honey.”

  He couldn’t deal with this. Not right now. “Doesn’t matter. I’m over it.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “Really? It might all be in the past, and you might try to let it go, but sometimes it’s hard to do that. Sometimes other people don’t let you do that.” She pushed away from the desk. “I know you didn’t want to come here, but something made you feel like you had to. Maybe it was my son, but maybe it was something else.”

  Maybe she didn’t know shit.

  “And I know you don’t think you have a place here, but it’s my opinion that you do.”

  Nice opinion to have. Too bad it was totally wrong. He stared down at his bag, open and messy, unsure if he should tell her how wrong she was about him. She was trying to be nice, though. Sure all of this sounded good, but he didn’t believe it.

  “I don’t know what sparked the fight between you two today. But if I know anything about my son, he said stuff he didn’t mean and he needs time to think. I hope you’re the same way.” She abruptly crouched next to him so they could look at each other face-to-face. “Brock, we’re not going to stop you leaving, not if you really want to go. But you make my son happy, and I think he needs you here.”

  “Sorry, Naomi, but I don’t care what he needs anymore.”

  She made a face but touched his shoulder. “Okay, that’s understandable. But listen: we also like you. We’re all happy to have you here. Please stay and celebrate with us.”

  Brock stared at her in surprise. “Are you serious?”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Do you know our history? What I did to him in high school?”

  Her mouth pursed. “I know pieces of the story. Isn’t all that behind you? Toby mentioned some of it when he told us you two were dating.”

  “He . . . did?” Brock thought Gi had just given his family the basics—they’d known each other and they’d crushed on each other. So Naomi knew what Brock had done?

  “Yes. He said you had changed, so none of it matter
ed anymore.”

  Funny. That wasn’t what he’d said just now. Clearly it did matter.

  She smiled at him and squeezed his shoulder. “Look, how about you take a little time to think this over? If you leave now, it’ll be past midnight when you get back to Toronto. Stay the night and leave in the morning if that’s what you want to do.”

  Okay, so maybe she had a point there, but Brock didn’t exactly care about arriving home at midnight if it meant being away from this fucking town and his insensitive boyfriend.

  Who probably wasn’t his boyfriend anymore.

  Shit. Shit.

  That . . . He hadn’t meant to break up with him. Not really.

  Fuck.

  After all, Gigi was his. Okay, Brock constantly warred between wanting to fuck Gigi’s brains out and wanting to shake them out, but that was just part of loving him. Yeah, he could be reactive, loud, and seriously self-involved, but the flipside of that was this self-awareness, intelligence, and sharp sense of humour. Sure, he was high-maintenance, but it fed into his perfectionism, his work ethic, and made him the performer he was. The femmy bitchiness that got Brock so hot also meant some serious inner strength on Gigi’s part, because Brock knew exactly what that had cost him as a teen, and he knew Gigi had earned every single moment of being himself.

  The thing was, everything in life was a trade-off. No way did Brock expect anyone to be perfect, because that was literally impossible. Enjoying all the good things about Gi meant handling all the not-so-great things about him, and Brock was okay with that. He really was. Because he knew the negative stuff fed into the good parts, and helped make Gigi so amazing and worth the wall climbing. And the negative stuff wasn’t even that negative. Not really, in the grand scope of things.

  And Brock had told him he as good as hated him.

  He didn’t.

  Shit, he didn’t.

  But he also didn’t see how he could repair this.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  “Great.” Naomi patted his shoulder, then stood with a small groan and several clicks. “Oh my God. My knees aren’t getting any younger, that’s for sure.”