As it is, unable to account for the real reason Sebastian and I want to leave almost the second we’re done eating, I let my best friend’s prurient imagination supply the missing details. As we head for the exit, Lucy calls out, teasingly, “Good night, boys! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
Before the door closes behind us, we also hear Brent’s sarcastic reply. “What kind of advice is that? The only two things you won’t do are eat cilantro and watch anything starring Gwyneth Paltrow.”
“Dude,” Sebastian exclaims as soon as we’re in the relative privacy of the parking lot. “That’s it—that’s what we needed! We can show they were lying now; we have to tell the cops!”
“We can’t—I mean, not yet. What we just found out … it’s nothing that’ll make any difference to the police.”
Sebastian bridles. “Race and Peyton lied, Rufe! Their cover story is a load of crap!”
“They lied to us.” It’s an important clarification. “We don’t even know if the police have spoken to them yet, or if they’re still using the same story. Our big Gotcha won’t mean dick unless we know their lie is on the record first. They weren’t expecting you and me to come asking for a timeline of their evening, so they might have just made a sloppy mistake in the heat of the moment; but they’ll realize that Ramona will remember seeing them—especially if they were fighting. By the time they sit down with their lawyers and then talk to the authorities, you can bet they’ll have some way to account for everything.”
“But we can’t—” Sebastian tries to check his frustration, but it clearly gets the better of him. “You don’t know that for sure. If they weren’t trying to hide something, they wouldn’t have pretended they’d gone straight to Race’s house from the party in the first place. We know they lied to us, and we’ve got to explain it to the police! Maybe they’ll understand—”
“Understand what?” I spread my arms. “It’ll be our word against theirs, and they’ll just say they didn’t want to tell us about Silverman’s because their fight was none of our business. And don’t forget the cops have a freaking file on me, and that they were second-guessing everything I said tonight! I really don’t need to give them any more excuses to dissect my original statement.”
Sebastian claps both hands to his head and lets out an exasperated wail. “This is insane! It’s in-freaking-sane, Rufus. I mean, what the hell? We know they’re lying, but we can’t do anything about it?”
“The police can’t do anything,” I counter. “But we wanted to try turning them against each other, right? Well, maybe this is our leverage. Quick—don’t think, just answer. Which one of them is more likely to cave here: Peyton or Race?”
After a fractional hesitation, he decides, “Race.”
I consider his answer. It makes sense; Race isn’t especially smart, and if we can convincingly act like we know more than we really do—or maybe take a page from the cops’ playbook and tell him that Peyton is already telling people that he did it—he might actually believe us and crack under the pressure. “Race it is.”
We start for the Jeep, the fog even denser than when we arrived, the air around us as tangible as sea-foam. The temperature has dropped considerably since the stifling heat of the early evening, and clammy moisture causes the skin on my bare shoulders to pebble with goose bumps. Sebastian’s arm brushes against mine, and he takes my hand again.
“Your friends seem pretty cool,” he remarks after a nervous moment.
“Was that okay in there?” I ask, a little worried. “Like, are you okay? You’re having kind of a Big Deal night, I mean.”
“We’re both having a Big Deal night.” He gives me a fleeting grin that belies the anxiety I know he must be feeling. “It was sort of scary, I guess. Being, like … out all of a sudden. Trying to figure out what that even means. It’s like I’m walking through a room in the dark, and I’ve got no idea where all the furniture is, you know? Like I don’t know what people are gonna think when they look at me anymore.”
“Lucy and Brent liked you, I could tell,” I assure him automatically, even though I know it isn’t what he means.
“They accepted me. For you.” The correction isn’t bitter, but almost affectionate. “Your friends are weird as hell, Rufe, and kinda nerdy, but I like them. For real. And seeing how you are when you’re around them … it was cool. It was sorta like … I don’t know. Meeting a part of you I didn’t really know before?”
“A good part?”
“A really, really cute part.” We reach the back of the Jeep and stop, and Sebastian slips his arms around my waist, pulling me into him. His touch, and the scent of his cologne, warms me to my fingertips as he murmurs, “You’ll have to let me know what kind of stuff Lucy would do, by the way, because I’ve got some things in mind that might surprise her…”
He brushes his lips over mine, gently, and my breath catches; and that’s when we hear the sound of feet scraping against asphalt, startlingly close. I barely have time to glance up before a broad silhouette sweeps out of the fog on the other side of the Jeep, coming toward us and closing in fast. We jolt apart and stumble back, rising onto our toes to run … but then we freeze in place, dumbstruck, as the shadowy figure comes to a halt mere feet away and a recognizable face emerges from the swirling mist.
It’s Dominic Williams—Sebastian’s father.
“D-dad?” Sebastian’s voice is strange and foreign, his eyes like bottomless pits, and almost instantly his hands begin to tremble again. “W-w—what—”
“What the hell do you think you’re doing out here?” Mr. Williams barks in a sharp voice, solid as a wall before the translucent haze that blurs the night. I stare, unmoored and unsure what to do. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I was—” Sebastian falters, almost swaying on his feet. “I d-didn’t…”
“I’ve been calling you all night long, Sebastian!” The man clutches his cell phone in a tight fist, so hard I half expect the casing to crack. His gaze darts to me, burning with suspicion and something else—fear, worry?—and then back to his son again. “What the hell is the matter with you? You think you get to make up your own rules, now? Choose when you get to listen to me? Where have you been?”
“I … I—” Sebastian’s attempt at speech ends in a swollen gulp, his skin waxy looking. “I don’t…”
“I didn’t raise you like this,” Mr. Williams exclaims, cords standing up along his neck. “To show this kind of disrespect? To … to drop a bombshell on me and then walk out the door—to disappear for hours and not come home? It’s five in the morning! What the hell do you have to say for yourself?” Sebastian tries to speak, but no words come out; he gags with fear, the sound ugly in the soft stillness around us, and Mr. Williams adds, “Your mother thought you were lying in a ditch somewhere! I had to talk her out of calling the damn police!”
“I’m—I’m s-sorry,” Sebastian forces out in a choking whisper. Tears roll down his cheeks, and finally the world turns red, my face molten with rage.
“Don’t apologize to him; he should be apologizing to you!” I take a crooked step forward. It’s stupid and inappropriate, and I’m dimly aware that I’m only making everything worse; but the only two things I’m actually any good at are losing control and screwing up my life by antagonizing powerful adults—I’m finally in my milieu. “You’re the one who should be sorry—you’re the one who should be ashamed,” I shout at Mr. Williams. “Sebastian’s a good person! If you’re too fucking stupid to see that, then maybe there’s something the matter with you.”
“Rufus, stop,” Sebastian pleads, horrified, and before I can ignore him and launch into a second round—to say to Mr. Williams what I’m wishing I’d had the guts to say to Peter at the police station—I feel his hand on my arm, and I look over at him.
Beyond the stormy fear in my boyfriend’s eyes, I see a sort of resolution, and it makes my jaw snap shut with a click. This is the moment Sebastian has been running from all night, and now that it’s cau
ght up with him at last, he’s decided to face it—and whatever happens, he’s the only one who can fight this battle. If I really want to help him, I need to keep my mouth shut for once.
Turning to face his father, his tone as hollow and fragile as a rotten log, Sebastian says, “I didn’t come home because I d-didn’t … I didn’t know if you’d want me there anymore.”
His erratic breathing fills the stuffy silence around us, and Mr. Williams blinks, his mouth dropping open; gazing at Sebastian with dark, confused eyes, he takes a moment to find his voice. When he does, it sounds strangely rough. “You … didn’t know if I would want you there?”
“You were s-so … so mad at me,” Sebastian states thinly, his hands opening and closing. “I know you’re dis-disappointed—”
“I never—” Mr. Williams covers his mouth and shifts, sucking air through his nose; then, dropping his hands to his hips, he hangs his head. It takes him a moment to speak. “I wasn’t … I’m not mad at you, Sebastian, I—”
“You broke Mom’s bowl,” Sebastian whispers. “You threw it.”
“I was … I was upset.” The man tries to make it sound as if there’s a clear distinction. “I didn’t mean—that doesn’t give you the right to just leave—to disappear like that! It’s not acceptable behavior. This isn’t something you can just … drop on me and then walk away. You can’t expect me not to have a reaction.”
“You threw it!” Something catches in Sebastian’s throat. “You were so angry, and I thought … I didn’t…”
“Sebastian—” Mr. Williams begins, but his voice thickens so much that he has to stop. “I would never turn away from you—not ever. You know that. You have to know that. Nothing you could do would ever make me … reject you. Nothing. I love you, no matter who you are, or … or what you do with your life. That’s a fact. And you’ll always be welcome at home. It’s your home.”
“But you said.” Sebastian struggles to breathe, struggles to keep it together. “You said. You said it was wrong.”
“I said some … some very stupid things,” Mr. Williams admits with difficulty, seeming suddenly aged. He rubs a hand over the burnished dome of his shaved head. “I grew up in a very religious household. Your granddad was a pastor, and he taught me a lot of uncompromising things early on, about what’s right and what’s wrong, and I…” He peters out, giving his son an exhausted look like he’s run out of gas, and he changes tack. “You know, there are some openly gay athletes on a few of the teams up at the university now, and I’ve learned a lot from working with them. I respect them—we respect each other—and not so long ago that’s something I wouldn’t have thought possible. And I thought that meant I’d finally moved past some of the things I once believed—the things I was raised on. But when I saw those pictures … when I realized what they meant, what you’d been keeping from me, I just…” He shakes his head helplessly. “A lot of old feelings came back in a heartbeat. Feelings I’m not proud of. And I didn’t handle myself very well.”
“I didn’t m-mean for you to … to find out like that.”
Mr. Williams is silent for a moment. “But is that what’s going on, Sebastian? Are you gay?”
“Maybe?” My boyfriend can only offer an honest shrug, still unable to fully articulate the boundaries of his sexuality, perhaps not even aware of where exactly those boundaries lie; whether he’s bi or pan or heteroflexible—or something else. There’s no litmus test for this stuff, and you can’t exactly weigh yourself on the Kinsey scale. For now, it could be that “maybe” is the clearest and most accurate answer he knows how to provide. “Can you … can you handle that?”
Seriously, thoughtfully, his father asks, “What do I always tell you about family, Sebastian?”
“Blood is always thicker,” my boyfriend answers quietly, somewhere between a question and a statement.
“Blood is always thicker,” his father repeats with solemnity. “And you’re my blood. You’re my son, and I love you no matter what, Sebastian. I don’t want to be the kind of person you feel you have to hide yourself from. If you can be a little patient with me, I can handle anything.” Mr. Williams then puts on a brave smile, and gestures awkwardly in my direction. “So Rufus is really your … is he your, uh … he was the one in the pictures.”
“Oh, um, yeah.” Sebastian looks at me, as if surprised to see me standing there, and offers a nervous gesture. “Dad, Rufus is my … my boyfriend.”
“It’s nice to see you again,” I offer inanely, and then Sebastian’s father and I share what will probably go down in the record books as History’s Most Awkward Handshake, considering how pointedly rude to him I was just minutes ago.
“I hope that maybe we can start over.” Mr. Williams, it seems, is some kind of a mind reader. “This wasn’t exactly … it’s been a rough night, and I haven’t shown myself to my best advantage; but anyone who makes my son happy is important to me, and … and it looks like maybe the effort I plan to make for him extends to you, too.”
“I’m sorry for what I said,” I manage, embarrassed, feeling only slightly more comfortable than that time I had an open wound cleaned out with hand sanitizer.
We step apart again, a tense silence falling over us like a fireproof blanket, until Sebastian clears his throat and asks, “Does Mom know?”
“I told her. You know she’s way better about these things than I am.” Mr. Williams flashes a wry slice of a grin. “You think my temper tantrum was scary? You should’ve seen the one she threw when she found out I smashed her bowl.”
“Is she mad?”
“Not at you,” the man answers quickly. “Well, maybe a little, because you’ve been gone so long. But not about anything else. She’ll probably shout at you for a while when you get home, but then she’ll hold on to you until you’re about forty.” Soberly, he then adds, “You do need to come home, though, Sebastian. You’re not in trouble—I promise—and we’ll have a big family talk tomorrow about everything. But we should all be in bed right now.”
Sebastian nods, and clears his throat. “Okay. I will. I just … Rufus doesn’t have a car, and I’m sort of his ride tonight, so I have to…”
“Okay.” Mr. Williams rubs his arms as if noticing the damp chill in the air for the first time. “Drop him off, but then come straight home, all right? And maybe text your mother, so she can stop panicking? I don’t want her to send me out after you again.”
“I will,” Sebastian promises. He hesitates for just a moment, and then asks, “How did you know I was here, anyway?”
“Funny thing. I expected you’d be halfway to New York or Montreal or somewhere, and that I’d have to get the state police and the feds involved. Wasn’t until about thirty minutes ago that I remembered there’s a GPS system in your Jeep, and I used the antitheft tracking function to figure out where it was.”
Sebastian looks down at his feet, mumbling, “I’m sorry I scared you guys, I—”
“Let’s forget about it.” Mr. Williams shifts uncomfortably. “I scared you first, and Rufus is actually right—I owe you an apology. I’m sorry. I wish I could do this whole night over again, but … instead we start clean tomorrow. Okay?”
Sebastian nods his agreement and, after a quiet pause, Mr. Williams steps forward and draws his son into a hug. Feeling suddenly intrusive, I glance away to give them a little bit of privacy, studying the bright lights of the diner’s facade.
“I love you, Sebastian,” Mr. Williams says gruffly, and Sebastian murmurs a reply that’s lost to me. After a moment, I hear them step apart, and I look back in time to see the man give my boyfriend’s chest an affectionate thump with his fist, and then turn around to head for the other end of the parking lot. Over his shoulder, he calls, “I’ll see you at home. Soon, okay?”
“Okay,” Sebastian replies, his voice rocky and strained but filled with relief. Together, we watch in silence as Mr. Williams turns first into a gray shadow, and then vanishes altogether into the mist, leaving us alone again.
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nbsp; 24
We sit quietly in the cab of the Jeep as Mr. Williams fires up his car, exits the lot, and turns out onto the road, his taillights glowing softly through the smudge of pre-dawn fog. I hold Sebastian’s hand in mine, clutched tightly over the center console, and I watch him carefully as he stares out the windshield in a sort of daze. The event that just transpired was so significant that there proves almost nothing to be said about it, no easy words to boil it down or sum it up.
After a long moment, Sebastian finally looks over at me, his face completely unreadable. “Everything is different.”
“I know.”
“My whole life … it’s—”
“Been rebooted, with additional software,” I finish for him, sounding anxiously optimistic. “You’re Sebastian 2.0 now. You just have to get used to the improvements. Are you … How do you feel?”
Sebastian shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’m … scared still. I mean, I’m happy, I guess, but I’m also sort of totally freaking out. Does that make any sense?”
“It makes perfect sense.” It’s a feeling I remember from my own experience—that terrifying death-drop when my secret was out, when I was no longer in control of that part of my life. “But this is huge, Sebastian. There’s some bumpy stuff at first, but it doesn’t take long for it to get better. And, I mean, the hard part is over now, right? And your dad actually wants to make an effort for you.”
“Is the hard part really over, though?” Sebastian’s dark, expressive eyes are full of doubt. “My dad’s always been like my best friend, Rufe. We talk about everything. What if we can’t anymore? What if this is too weird for him? What if he’s just not ever able to look at me the same way?”
For just a moment, his anxiety conjures up some inappropriate envy in me. Peter and I have never talked about anything personal, never been anything remotely approaching “friends.” He must know that I’m gay—either April or Hayden would have certainly brought it up at some point—but I have no idea how he feels about it. I doubt he’s ever spared a single thought for what it meant for me to come out. I’m over being hurt by him … but I can’t stifle that shameful pang of jealousy when I see how important Sebastian’s relationship with his father is to him.
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