Clueless (Keeping Secrets)

by Roman, J.

  “You are still a child, Thomas. You are not responsible for this or anything else while you live under our roof.”

  I really hated when he talked “dad” to me. It didn’t matter that Uncle Charlie and he had been the only real father figures in my life. I didn’t want anyone to try and parent me. I was used to being the man of the house, and I really didn’t appreciate the idea that I was some helpless kid in need of saving.

  “We’re fine. I swear. Please, lay off. I have a ton of homework, and I have to get up early.” I wanted to go for a swim in the morning before weights. I needed to keep swim-ready for the spring season. I was captain of the swim team, after all. Jason would either ride with me or get a ride with Dean. After tonight’s debacle, he’d probably want to ride with me. That was cool. He could do his homework while he waited on me to finish.

  Uncle Mark sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “Fine. I’ll just have to ask Jason myself.”

  “No!” I snapped, panic and adrenaline instantly dousing my insides. If Uncle Mark stuck his nose in it, Jason was liable to panic even worse than he was currently. He was already trying to erect barriers and establish distance. I’d worked too damn hard to get him to open up to me to see it ruined by Uncle Mark’s meddling. “It’s none of your business. He’s just having trouble with his stepdad and is depressed about it. He just needs his boyfriend. Let me deal with it!”

  Uncle Mark considered me for longer than I really wanted him to, but in the end he nodded. “I mean it, Tommy. If you need us, we’re here.”

  I rolled my eyes and continued on my way without comment. Instead of parking it on the couch or at the kitchen table like I usually did when I had homework, I went to the side door and out onto the small enclosed patio attached to the house. It was still cold out, but it wasn’t unbearable with the small space heater turned on. I turned the dial on the heater and then sat in the armchair closest to it. The room was nearly all windows, so the chill was understandable. I rummaged in the backpack I’d slung down beside me and tried to remember the most pressing thing I had due tomorrow. There was an essay for Mrs. Ferguson in lit class. That could wait. Algebra II was probably the first thing I needed to do, but… images of that man touching Jason wouldn’t get out of my mind.

  “Won’t work, you know. When he’s involved, it’ll just go in your head over and over. The only way to get him off your skin is to wash it off with something else.”

  I looked up at the now-open doorway where Jason leaned casually against the frame. “I thought you were in bed napping?” I asked. He’d been so shaken up not twenty minutes ago. Now he looked cocky as heck, and he had a glint in his eyes that was dangerous. I’d seen that devil-may-care attitude before.

  “I was. Now I’m bored. I’m going out. Want to come?”

  I hesitated. If I didn’t offer him something, he was going to bolt. “Uncle Mark is in a mood, so I doubt he’ll let us go.” It was the wrong thing to say.

  “No one tells me what to do! I’m not a child. They’re not going to trap me here! Got it? No one gets to put me in a box!” I tensed at the animal look in Jason’s eyes. He was wild.

  “Where do you want to go?” I asked quietly. I didn’t know how or where we were going, but I knew I had to get him moving, get him out of the house and away from questions.

  “I don’t know. I don’t….” He paled again. He shook his head as if he were arguing with internal voices. He expected me to either be for or against him. If he walked out the door without me, I knew I had lost him. Expectation is the root of all heartache. I would drink down his heartache in any way I could, delay the disappointment he would feel when I inevitably let him down. I wished Mom was alive for the millionth time. She always knew what to tell me and helped me weigh my options.

  “Where do you want to go, baby?” I asked again.

  He swallowed. “Bowling alley?” He wanted to score some beer. The bowling alley was the easiest place to get a pitcher since they never carded. I really needed to finish up this homework. I loved him so absolutely, though.

  “Bowling alley is fine. Say you need to sleep with me and we’ll go to bed. When Uncle Mark and Uncle Charlie crash, we’ll head out.”

  I saw the tension drain out of his body and that cocky look that marked his insanity take hold of him once again. “It’s a school night. You know Mark and Charlie won’t let us sleep together.”

  “Shit. You’re right. You’ll have to tell Dean.” We are so going to get caught. I stuffed what few supplies I’d grabbed out of my backpack back into it and pushed myself to my feet.

  He grinned. “Fine by me. Two hot guys as an escort with some beer to bring my night around right sounds like a freaking fabulous way to relax.” He ran his hands over my back, but I didn’t take the comfort from the action as I usually did. I had to protect him.

  “I’ll go play nice with Uncle Mark ’til he goes to bed. You go tell Dean what we’re doing and then hit the sheets yourself. Just be careful not to wake up Christian when you guys come downstairs.” Danny and Christian shared a room that was connected by a doorway to Dean’s room. Jason’s was across the hall from Dean’s in Uncle Mark’s former office. Danny might sleep like the dead, but Christian and Dean were both insanely light sleepers.

  Jason rolled his eyes but nodded. “I swear to God, that kid is like a burglar alarm.” We’d had our fair share of reprimands because Jason had tried to sneak downstairs to sleep with me on a school night.

  I pressed a kiss to his lips, needing some kind of connection between us. It wasn’t like we’d never done something “bad” or never snuck out to have a bit of fun. I’d certainly done it before him, and I would probably still do it with him long after we settled into a perfectly comfortable, long-term relationship. However, it was the reason behind our outing that made me uneasy. When his lips collided with mine, it was like kissing a stranger.

  THE house was quiet as we opened the side door that let out of the kitchen by my bedroom. Dean ducked under the doorframe and out onto the darkened porch. It was barely eleven, but our house tended to bed down early. When I’d lived with my mom, that hadn’t been the way she did things. She had been a night owl and was often up until two or three in the morning. Luckily for us, Uncle Mark and Uncle Charlie were early risers instead.

  A quick assessment of the driveway told me that the only two cars we could get out without moving all of them were Uncle Charlie’s, no thank you, or Dean’s. My cousin’s car was far from reliable. Shit. I could’ve sworn I was the last person in tonight, but Dean’s car parked behind mine meant he’d come in after me.

  “You have a late class tonight or something, Dean?” I asked.

  In the streetlight I saw Dean’s brows lower in his classic way that said two things: one, whatever was going to come out of his mouth next would be a big fat lie and two, that it was going to be smart-ass as hell. “Yoga class. Helps my flexibility, and the instructor at my school has an ass I want to sink my teeth into. Problem with that?”

  “No problem with you doing whatever. My problem is that it’s your old junker we’re going to have to take to the bowling alley,” I said, circling to the driver’s side. The door was unlocked, something Dean did more often than not. “Keys?”

  “Here.” Dean handed them over. “Put it in neutral, and we’ll back it down the driveway and push it halfway down the block. You know Charlie can hear that weird whining noise my car makes when I back it out of the drive.”

  Jason all but skipped over to me and squeezed my butt through my blue jeans. “Here, I’ll steer. You push.”

  I passed the key to Jason and stepped back out of the way. The grin on Jason’s face unnerved me. Here was the boy at school everyone talked about, uncaring, aloof, and reckless. I tried to shrug it off, to reconcile the man I was seeing with the boyfriend I lived with.

  Dean grinned back at Jason. “You’re kinda wild, J. I like it. Why haven’t we hung out more?”

  “Because Tommy makes me behave.” I n
ever made my boyfriend do anything. Jason ducked inside the car, put the key in the ignition to release the gear, and put it in neutral.

  Dean winked. “Tommy ought to let you let your hair down more often.”

  “Yeah? Screw you, Dean.” A flicker of resentment settled in my gut. Who was Dean to tell me anything about how to treat my boyfriend? As far as I knew, Dean had never even had a boyfriend. The two of them laughed and jealousy flickered. Dean was a good-looking guy for sure, and I didn’t like the easy, reckless energy that was flowing between him and Jason.

  I tried to just focus on what we were doing rather than on how off-kilter I was feeling and didn’t really succeed. We pushed the car back out of the driveway and then down the street. When we thought we were far enough from the house, Jason cranked the engine. Predictably, it didn’t start up right away, and we had to coax it to life under Dean’s careful guidance on starting crappy cars that hated the cold.

  Before long, we were on the way to late-night bowling at Sky Lanes, which had a lovely view of the interstate from the parking lot. It was a dingy little place but, like I said before, they never carded, so it was a favorite hangout for people who went to Erwin. Jason and Dean chatted like they were best friends, and the mild flirtation as they talked about getting drunk together set my teeth on edge. I was in a terrible mood when Jason put the car in park and we climbed out onto the cold pavement.

  He circled the car and tried to entwine our fingers. I jerked away. He frowned. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Not in the mood, J. Hold Dean’s hand since you two are so keen on slobbering all over one another.” I stuck my hands in my pocket and stalked toward the front entrance to the bowling alley.

  “Hey!” Jason called after me. I didn’t turn. Sometimes his games got freaking old. I was not going to get my homework done, I’d be tired as hell tomorrow, and I couldn’t help but be worried about Jason despite the fact that he was getting on my nerves right now. I stopped before I opened the door and took a deep breath while Dean and Jason caught up. Dean gave me a weird look as he reached for the door handle and pulled it open. It wasn’t quite apologetic, but it was close.

  “I’ll go get our shoes,” my cousin muttered before he slipped inside.

  “What is all this about?” Jason asked as he came up to stand beside me. He looked bewildered. He wore that expression when he tipped me over the edge from upset to pissed, like he couldn’t figure out what he did wrong. Doesn’t anyone ever adjust your moral compass like I do, J? Being the “only” anything of someone was at once flattering and terrifying.

  “You know what this is about. I know I’m being unnecessarily jealous, but you are…. I don’t know what you’re doing. I don’t feel you.” I can’t explain what I meant. Instead of beside me, he felt a million miles away, and that distance seemed to grow with his cockiness.

  He sneered at me. “I’m relaxing. If you don’t like it, leave.” He’d fought against me over and over again, but never had he told me to leave. He’d always begged for the opposite, in fact. It was my trump card, the one I used to tell him that I was serious. I was dumbfounded.

  “I… it’s… fine. Let’s just bowl.” I swallowed. Was this it? Was this the last night we would be together? Had his sleazy stepdad ruined the best thing that had ever happened to me? I wanted to kill him for what he’d done to Jason, for what he’d made him into. The rage settled into my gut and started to simmer. I opened the door and gestured him inside.

  There weren’t many people bowling at midnight; a couple of Goth kids were halfway through a game a lane over from us, and half the drumline was at the far left side of the joint. They were easily recognizable with their matching print T-shirts. Then there was a pack of country boys who were, by the looks of them, comfortably lit and spilling pitchers on their Carhartts and raising hell. We weren’t the only ones unwinding.

  The dirty brown carpet was worn in places and almost all the lights behind the lanes were out. It didn’t scream “family place,” though my mom had hosted more than one of my favorite birthdays here. She’d ordered us a pizza and we’d eaten it and toasted my birthday with a soda pop on multiple occasions. Life had seemed so much simpler and happier then.

  “I’ll try not to flirt with him,” Jason said out of nowhere. The almost-apology wasn’t something I’d expected from him, but I’d take it.

  I took the high road and cautioned myself for the millionth time to show patience. “Thank you. I just love you, okay? You promised it would be just me and you.”

  “I know.”

  Dean waved us over to lane nine, and we fell silent. “Size ten for you, cuz, and size nine for boy beautiful.” He handed us the rental shoes and pointed to the digital seat where we could punch in our names. “I didn’t know what order you wanted to go under. I’m going to go grab the beer since I’m biggest.” He may have been a year younger than me, but he was right. He did look like he was older. Plus he had a picture ID card from the community college, by virtue of him being enrolled in the Early College program, which usually talked when his looks didn’t.

  I sat at the bench and undid my sneakers, tucking them under my seat so they wouldn’t get in the way of walking back and forth. Jason did the same, and by the time we got our shoes tied, our names entered into the players’ list, and our balls chosen, Dean was back with a pitcher and some cups. Without preamble, he poured each cup almost full before lifting the red plastic up to the light in a toast.

  “To a night out,” he said, grinning.

  “What he said,” Jason agreed, returning that smile. I raised my container but didn’t offer additional commentary. I sipped my drink and nearly gagged. Warm beer was not my favorite thing to drink, but it wasn’t as if we could go to the corner store and get some. Dean drank about half of his, and we both watched in semi-awe as Jason polished off the whole damn thing and refilled his glass again.

  “Okay,” he said cheerfully. “Who’s up first?”

  “That would be me,” Dean said, walking over and picking up his ball. My eyes went to Jason as he started chugging the second cup. The boom of the pins as Dean’s ball hit them echoed through the room, and his loud whoop of satisfaction clued me in that he had a strike even before I saw it. My eyes were glued to my boyfriend instead.

  “Are you going to be all right?” I asked carefully, schooling my expression to one of indifference.

  He shrugged. “Yeah, baby. No worries. I’m bulletproof. Especially when I’m drinking.” My stomach churned. That was really what I was afraid of.

  It was my turn next, and I gutter-balled. Under normal circumstances, I wasn’t much of a bowler. Stressed out and mind half on Jason’s state, I was a terrible bowler. I turned back to the guys and watched as they nearly rolled on the floor laughing at my pitch.

  “Yeah, yeah, I suck.” I couldn’t help but smile sheepishly. I may have been epic at wrestling, swimming, and football, but I supposed everyone had to be terrible at something.

  “I’m so going to spank your ass!” Jason declared, sashaying up to the place our balls came out at and picking up his fifteen-pounder.

  I winked, starting to relax a bit. “Promise?”

  Dean howled at the suggestion and made a lewd remark that I was pretty sure was physically impossible. I took another long sip of my drink. He’s mine, I thought, staring at my boyfriend’s butt as he threw his ball down the lane for an eight-pin roll. I would protect him and do all that stuff I always wanted to do with him. It was a forever kind of thing, and I knew it. Maybe I was too young to think like that, but I didn’t give a damn.

  A relaxed Jason was a beautiful thing, and he was right: the more he drank, the more he seemed to relax. As the games went on and the pitchers came one after the other until the world was spinning and we’d run out of money and games to play, he lost that cagey attitude he’d begun the night with and became the carefree guy I knew and loved.

  “That’s game!” Dean declared as Jason rolled his final ball. We’d
played three games total, and Dean had won the first two. Jason had won the last. Being the loser of this particular outing didn’t seem too bad in my mind, because the consolation prize of a very drunk Jason perched in my lap and running his hands over my chest in between rounds made losing very worth it.

  We stumbled out the door and into the early morning cold. A frost had settled in the roughly three hours we’d been inside, but it wasn’t nearly as chilly as I had remembered it being before we’d started bowling. Jason’s affectionate nature really came out when he was lit, and he was all over me as we crossed the parking lot. I stumbled, falling against the hood of Dean’s car as Jason lip-locked me midstep. We both laughed at the silliness of the action, and I rolled him beneath me so I could kiss him properly.

  “I gotta take a leak,” Dean said from behind me. I didn’t bother to see where he went, probably ducked behind a car or something. It didn’t much matter to me because when I held Jason like this, nothing else seemed to matter. You’re so much trouble. My drunken thought seemed a little out of place, but it wasn’t thought in a bad way; more like Jason was the kind of trouble every guy wants but so few ever get to actually have.

  “Hmm, stop,” Jason said, pushing on my chest. I opened my eyes, and it took a second for my beer-muddled mind to understand what he said. I reared back in a clumsy arc and nearly fell on my ass for my trouble. Jason chuckled and sat up.

  “Why’d you stop?” I asked as he hopped off the hood and grabbed my hand.

  He just gave me a mischievous smile and tugged me back toward the bowling alley. Maybe he needed to take a leak too. I wasn’t sure why he was dragging me along with him, though. Instead of going to the entrance like I thought he was going to, he dragged me to the side of the building and around the back.

  “Gotta touch you, Tommy boy,” Jason said, backing me against the wall.