Boyfriend Material

by Jerry Cole

  Jason looked at him, opened his mouth to speak. He closed it and nodded, smiling at Taylor.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Jason didn’t want Taylor to go into his house, but he didn’t see what other choice he had. Taylor was right, he had driven from the other side of town and the least that Jason could do was ask him if he wanted a hot drink or something. He thought that maybe he had been exaggerating how bad his living room was, but it was worse than he remembered. He was more impressed than anything at the fact that Blaine had survived at all. He had drunk a lot. Jason rarely drank, but he had plenty of friends who did and were more than happy to bring alcohol around that they would then leave at his place.

  He was mostly annoyed at Blaine downing his anti-depressants. His prescription wasn’t ongoing and he would have to go back to the doctor if he wanted it refilled. He hadn’t thought he would ever need his antidepressants again, but he could really do with something to take the edge off then and there.

  Especially as Taylor looked around, looking shocked and not-at-all like he wasn’t judging Jason. Jason sighed and closed the door behind him, cursing the beautiful open space design that had attracted him to the small house in the first place. Because now Taylor could see exactly the kind of person he was, the kind of person that would let something like this happen in his house.

  “Jason?”

  “Sorry,” Jason replied, when he realized that Taylor had been talking to him for a while. “Sorry, it’s just a bit of a shock to come in here. What were you saying?”

  “I was just asking if you were okay,” Taylor said.

  “I, uh, guess,” Jason replied, sitting down on the edge of the sofa. “It was my ex, you know.”

  “What was?”

  “He tried to kill himself in my living room,” Jason said. Taylor was already in there, Taylor deserved to know the truth. He had made it that far and he still hadn’t run. If Taylor wanted to stick around — if, for any reason, Taylor wanted to stick around — then he deserved to know the truth. “I let him come in, tell me a bunch of lies and then I went to bed.”

  Taylor looked at him and Jason looked back. He was probably trying to decide which excuse to use to make himself scarce, leave Jason’s house and never talk to him again. But he didn’t do any of that. Instead of walking away from Jason, he walked toward Jason. “You said he tried to kill himself.”

  He was so close to him that Jason could see the curl on his eyelashes, a freckle on his left cheek he had never noticed before. Just one, almost next to his nose.

  “He did,” Jason replied, nodding.

  “Which must mean he didn’t succeed,” Taylor replied. He held out his arm and squeezed Jason’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry you had to see that.”

  Jason nodded, then swallowed. “It’s okay. I was just — it was so weird, it was almost like I didn’t care and that makes me feel like such an awful person. Like all I remember thinking was how irritated I was that he had done this in my living room, out of all the places that he could have chosen to do it. I remember thinking how bad it was that I would have to clean everything up and that I had spent fifty dollars on that bottle of wine. Which, I know, it’s so stupid. It’s just wine, and fifty dollars isn’t even that expensive.”

  “Did you call 911?”

  “Yes,” Jason replied, vaguely aware that Taylor’s hand was still on his shoulder. “I mean, I don’t think I stood there brooding for that long. It was a while, though.”

  “But he’s alive,” Taylor said.

  “Yes,” Jason replied.

  “And you canceled everything, and didn’t even shower or eat for a day, to make sure he stayed that way,” Taylor said.

  Jason shrugged. “I ate. I think.”

  Taylor raised his eyebrows, not saying anything. He dropped his hand to his side so he wasn’t touching Jason anymore. “I’m going to help you clean up.”

  “I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “It’s a good thing you aren’t, then,” Taylor replied. “I’m not asking you if you’re going to let me help you clean up, I’m telling you that it’s happening.”

  “But —”

  “Look,” Taylor said, sighing. “I’ve been where you are. You shouldn’t be alone right now. Okay?”

  Jason looked at him and nodded. “I — I guess.”

  Taylor sighed again. “Let me stay, please? I’m going to be worried sick about you if I don’t. And I’m going to feel like an absolute twat if I just stand around while I let you clean everything up.”

  “Okay,” Jason said. “Fine. But do you want a coffee or anything? I mean, I don’t really know the etiquette for these kinds of situations.”

  “Later,” Taylor replied, smiling at him. “Once we’re done cleaning up, I’ll take a hot drink.”

  “Promise?”

  “Yeah,” Taylor said. “I swear.”

  ***

  Jason looked at his newly cleaned living room and shook his head. He was covered in sweat, he smelled and he really wanted to take a shower. But there were no bottles on his coffee table anymore and if he was being honest with himself, he could see that the place looked better than it had in years. When Taylor had said that he was going to help clean, Jason never imagined that he actually wanted to clean properly. The first thing he had done was ask Jason if he recycled, as if that was the most natural thing in the world to ask. As if he was cleaning after himself at a house party. Jason had told him that he did, and just like that, Taylor had started to put the glass bottles in one bag and everything else in another.

  Then he had taken the vacuum cleaner from the utility room, he had taken the bedding off the sectional, he had taken it to the laundry room and then he had vacuumed the entirety of Jason’s living room, all while Jason did bits here and there that didn’t seem and probably were not enough. It hadn’t taken nearly as long as Jason had expected it to and it looked better than it ever had.

  And Jason had no idea how to process it.

  “It’s okay,” Taylor said, as if he was reading his mind. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  “What? No, God, of course not,” he replied. “I’m so sorry I didn’t ask you to sit down before. I’m such an idiot.”

  “You’re not,” Taylor said, sitting down on the sofa. “You just have a lot on your mind.”

  Jason nodded. “So how do you take your coffee?”

  “I don’t really want a coffee right now,” Taylor replied, looking up at him. “I know, I know, I promised. I’m just a bit warm. Do you have anything else, though? Maybe some pop or —”

  Jason snickered. “Pop? Sure, I have soda. What do you want?”

  “Honestly, just like, whatever,” Taylor said. “As long as it’s cold.”

  “All right,” Jason replied, walking over to his fridge.

  He wanted to do more than just provide Taylor with a cold drink after everything he had done for him, but he couldn’t think of anything. And that was all that he had asked for. Jason served them both cold drinks with ice, set them on the now empty coffee table and sat next to Taylor, but not too close.

  He didn’t want Taylor to think he was coming on to him, not after Taylor had been so nice. It would be good if Taylor was interested in him — well, no, it wouldn’t just be good. It would be amazing. But if that wasn’t it, then Jason supposed he could live with that. Taylor was a really nice person, which had become clearer and clearer through the day. And he would definitely be a great person to have as a friend.

  Jason would be okay with that. If that was all he could have. He just wanted more. He would normally never be okay with living with scraps, but even Taylor scraps seemed amazing when compared to what he had of Taylor in his life so far. Which was nothing.

  “Are you doing alright?”

  “I guess,” Jason replied. “I mean, yes, except for feeling guilty about how alright I am. I feel pretty bad about that.”

  “You shouldn’t,” Taylor said. “I get it. Do you mind if I ask you something?”
>
  Jason shook his head vigorously. “Mind? Are you joking? You’ve helped me so much already. The least you deserve is some information.”

  Taylor laughed at that, though he didn’t seem particularly amused. “You said this was your ex.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said. “I hadn’t seen him for years, then he turned up at my house like it was nothing. As if that was just thing people did. He looked so bad.”

  “So, you let him stay.”

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” Jason said. “I had no reason not to trust him. Well, no, that’s not true. I had every reason not trust him, I just — I don’t know. I really wanted to trust him. I really wanted to believe him that everything had changed for him and that things were good and that we could be friends.”

  Taylor nodded. “But you couldn’t.”

  “Right,” Jason said. “Exactly. We couldn’t.”

  “Believing in someone doesn’t make you an idiot,” Taylor replied. “And it definitely doesn’t make you a jerk. I know you’re feeling really guilty about what happened, but you shouldn’t. You did everything right.”

  “I could have stopped it,” Jason said. “I could have just not let him in.”

  “Well, here, let me ask you something else,” Taylor said. “If you hadn’t let him in, do you think he would have done it somewhere else?”

  Jason swallowed. “I guess. I don’t know.”

  “Look,” Taylor said. “It’s really easy to blame yourself for something like this. But the thing is, you didn’t do anything wrong. You saved his life. And all these emotions that you’re feeling, they’re perfectly natural. It’s normal to feel all of this, the guilt, the relief, all of it. You’re not a freak or a jerk or an idiot. You’re just a human being, and that’s all you can expect to be. Ever.”

  Jason looked away from him. Taylor was helping, but he didn’t understand how he could stay this calm, considering the circumstances. “How do you know?”

  “How do I know what?”

  “How do you know that it’s normal and human? Are you just guessing?”

  “That,” Taylor said, nodding. “And, I was the one to find my mom when she killed herself.”

  Jason’s eyes widened in horror at what Taylor had said. He wanted to ask him if he had heard him right, but that wasn’t really a thing that someone could ask another person to repeat.

  “You heard me right,” Taylor said, chuckling. Jason wondered if he could read his mind, again, for a second, before deciding that he was being ridiculous. “Everyone reacts differently when someone they love tries to take their own life —”

  “But that’s the thing,” Jason said. “I don’t love him. I don’t think I ever did.”

  Taylor’s expression changed for a brief second, but Jason wasn’t exactly sure what he was seeing on Taylor’s face. It could just as easily be relief as it was pity. And he didn’t want to know what it was, in case it was the latter. If Taylor felt pity for him, he wasn’t quite sure how he would be able to deal with that.

  “Okay,” Taylor said. “I get that, too. But you saved him, you called the ambulance — you did everything right. If anything, you should be proud of yourself.”

  “That’s not what you did?”

  Taylor sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I — it’s taken me a really long time to come to terms with the way I reacted and to be honest, I still struggle with it sometimes,” he replied. “I don’t want to put that on you, Jason.”

  “Well, after everything I’ve put on you, it’s really only fair,” Jason said. “Plus, I want to hear it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone with firsthand experience with something like this.”

  “Well, the — I was thirteen.”

  “Shit,” Jason said. “I’m sorry —”

  “No, it’s okay,” Taylor replied. “I don’t mind telling you about this. You’re right. People rarely talk about it and they should.”

  Jason swallowed, nodding. He was completely unsure of what to say. He sat back and took a sip of his cold drink, readying himself to listen to the rest of Taylor’s story.

  “She was really sick,” Taylor said. “That’s what my dad always used to say, anyway. Her and my dad got together when they were both young and she was, and I’m quoting here, ‘a lot of fun’. But it turned out that ‘a lot of fun’ was her having manic episodes or something, and she wasn’t as fun anymore when they turned into things that he had to save her from, like jumping into rivers or sleeping with half the people in her office.”

  “That sounds really hard,” Jason replied.

  “Yeah, well, he stuck it out,” Taylor said. “He tried to get her a proper diagnosis, but nothing ever took. You have to understand, my parents were high school sweethearts. My mom came from a well-respected family in a small community. When things started to spiral, they expected her to turn to the church and not to doctors. As if they were mutually exclusive.”

  Jason inched a little closer to Taylor. His voice was quiet, and he wanted to make sure that he could hear everything that he was saying. Because it seemed important. Because it was important.

  “Anyway, my father didn’t come from a family that was as well respected, but he’s — my dad’s pretty amazing. And he really wanted my mom to be okay, so he took her to the city, where they ran a bunch of tests. But they couldn’t find anything and my dad was out of money. So he went to ask her parents, my grandparents, for help.”

  “Let me guess.”

  “If your guess was that they said no way, then you’re right. They said that he had turned her away from the church, that at that point, she should be married.”

  “How old were your parents when all of this was happening?”

  “Younger than me,” Taylor replied, looking at the ceiling. “Like nineteen, twenty?”

  “Yikes,” Jason said.

  “Right, I know,” Taylor said. “So my dad decided that, if that was what they wanted, that’s what they would do. He knew what they meant to someone else, but they got married. Did the whole premarital counseling thing, got married in the biggest church in town. A beautiful ceremony. According to my dad, my mom looked amazing. Beautiful and radiant. And she had never been so happy. Despite — I don’t know, despite everything that was going on with her, my mom loved my dad. She adored him, and that was the only reason she would allow for these tests to happen, that was the only reason she would travel outside town and see doctors she didn’t trust. Because she knew my dad loved her, too.”

  “Yeah,” Jason said, though he thought he may as well not say anything, Taylor was so into his story. Jason didn’t want to interrupt him. He liked the way Taylor talked, and he liked his voice. He liked his barely-there Southern accent, too. He shook his head slightly, telling himself to stop focusing on silly things and focus instead on the very personal story that Taylor was telling him.

  “And then she got pregnant,” Taylor said. “I was an accident. I mean, not really an accident, they wanted children. Just not before they found out what was wrong with her, right? But of course, they didn’t find out. So she had me.”

  He was quiet for so long that Jason had to prompt him to continue. “Then what happened?”

  “I’m not sure,” Taylor replied. “People said she was a good mother at first, but I think she was jealous of me. Or, well, not me, because I was a baby with no agenda, but of the attention that my father paid to me. I think he always thought that, since my mom wasn’t all quite there, as he put it, he had to be both parents. And he spent a lot of time with me. As I grew older, I realized that I didn’t know my mom at all. Like, I knew she worked at an office, but there was little else I knew about her.”

  “When did she go back to work?”

  “I don’t know,” Taylor said, shrugging. “Pretty soon. She said it depressed her to stay in the house. Which would have been fine. I mean, I can respect that. But she could have talked to me when she got home. You know, ever.”

  “She didn’t?”

&n
bsp; “Not really,” Taylor said. “All she ever did was bark orders at me. If I did something wrong, I would hear about it. But we never really talked. Then she started disappearing for days, weeks, months. Whatever. I never noticed, to be honest with you. I only noticed because my dad was upset and I really hated seeing my dad upset.”

  Taylor rubbed his temple, took a long sip of his drink, and leaned forward. Jason watched him, waiting for him to continue.

  “The last time she left, I was thirteen. I had just turned thirteen,” Taylor said. “And I was so angry. I remember I screamed at her to never come back. My dad told me to go back inside and never speak to my mother like that ever again.”

  “Oh, wow.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Taylor said. “She came back a few months later. I remember thinking she looked better than ever. Her hair was like, really long and recently dyed red and I swear to you, she looked so beautiful. Completely radiant. And she ran up to me, as if we were going to hug or whatever. And all I thought about was how much money she had spent on herself while my father tried to keep us afloat with credit card debt. I told him, so many times, that I would get a job. And he would always be like ‘your only job is getting into college and doing something you love’. As if that was something people could take for granted. Anyway, when she went to greet my dad, he turned away from her. And he said something really quietly to her, I don’t know what it was, but it made her burst into tears. He was always nice to her, so it couldn’t have been that bad. I found her the next day.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Jason said.

  “It’s okay,” Taylor replied. “She wasn’t dead or anything. I mean, it’s not okay, she did die. But like, I don’t care. I didn’t care then and I don’t care now. And I know that makes me sound like a cold heartless bastard, but it’s just the truth. All that woman did was hurt my dad. When I found her, it took me so long to go for help. She was in the kitchen —”

  “Had she overdosed?”

  “No, she slit her wrists,” Taylor said. “So there was a big pool of blood on the tile. And I remember thinking, my dad is going to have to clean that. It won’t be her. It won’t be me because he won’t let me do it. It’ll be my dad, and he’s going to pretend that it’s nothing, and it doesn’t matter, but it is something, and it does. It does matter. She looked at me and she mouthed an apology, and I was so mad. I crossed my arms over my chest and I kept saying that I couldn’t hear her. Like, over and over again. She was actively losing blood and I was standing there, with my arms crossed, telling her to speak up.”