Detoured by Love

by David Horne

  “Exactly,” Lewis nodded.

  “Right, right, right,” Brett murmured, amending his move.

  Twenty minutes later, Brett still wasn’t getting the hang of it.

  “You can’t do that!” Lewis said, a little more exasperatedly, as this was the tenth time he was saying it.

  “What this time?” Brett exhaled.

  “Your Queen,” Lewis pointed out. “You can’t move it like that.”

  “I thought Queens could move anywhere!” Brett complained.

  “Everywhere except jumping over pieces and moving in ‘L’ shapes,” Lewis said. “Only knights can do that. So, Queens can only move diagonally, longitudinally and laterally.”

  “Huh?”

  “Diagonal, sideways and up and down,” Lewis simplified.

  “So, they can’t move everywhere,” Brett grumbled.

  “Harvey, why don’t you try actually concentrating instead of being purposefully difficult!” Lewis exclaimed. “Chess really isn’t that difficult, you just need to think about what you’re doing before you do it!”

  He leaned back in his seat. “Now, why don’t you re-take that move?”

  He locked eyes with Brett. Brett wasn’t moving, wasn’t speaking. His fists were clenched on the arms of his chair.

  “What’s wrong?” Lewis asked, shocked.

  “You—” Brett faltered. “You just-you—”

  “Spit it out,” Lewis said, quite alarmed.

  “You just called me Harvey,” Brett managed.

  Lewis had heard the term ‘heart skipped a beat’ many times before but had never experienced it so literally. His fingers simply lost their grip, and the whiskey tumbler fell, spilling whiskey all over the carpet. Lewis didn’t even move or make any attempt to clean it up. Neither did Brett.

  “N-no I didn’t,” it was Lewis’ turn to start stammering.

  Brett looked him in the eye, and Lewis knew he wouldn’t be able to lie to him. “Yes, you did, Lewis. I heard you.”

  A painful silence descended, and Lewis was eager to break it. “I-I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking, I just…it was like on instinct—”

  “It’s fine,” Brett said flatly. He got up. “Don’t worry about it. Listen, I need to go for a walk.”

  “Brett, it was an accident!” Lewis shouted after him, but it was no good.

  For the second time, Brett marched out and left Lewis sitting alone, as hundred-dollar whiskey stained the carpet.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Brett was in a foul mood. He didn’t even realize that it was raining cats and dogs until he’d already wheeled his bike out of Lewis’ garage and set off down the lane. As soon as he realized how heavy it was coming down, Brett made a mental note to keep his speed even, and not tug too hard on the brakes. Intense amounts of rainwater had been known to make brake cables simply pop out of their housings. Try as he might, Brett couldn’t keep his mind off of what had just transpired, not twenty minutes ago.

  Harvey. Lewis had called him Harvey. What did that even mean?

  Did that mean that Lewis could barely distinguish between Brett and his old fiancée? One young piece of ass was pretty much the same as another to him? Brett couldn’t even work out why he was so mad. He just knew that he wanted to punch Lewis as hard as he could. Then smack him with a paddle or something, until his butt was all red.

  Brett frowned. Whoa, where did that come from?

  Brett sharply brought his attention out of the dark and somewhat inappropriate recesses of his subconscious and sharply into the here and now. There was one question that he needed to answer—where was he going?

  The answer sprang to mind almost immediately, and without conscious thought. Home. He was going home. Where else? Brett was full to bursting with a lot of confusing emotions, and there was only one person who had any hope of helping him deal with them. He just hoped she was in.

  Ten minutes later, Brett cruised into his parents’ yard like he’d done a million times, but due to the wet soil, he almost slipped as he dismounted from his bike. He let go of the handlebars, and the bike crashed to Earth. He left it there in the yard, the front wheel still spinning and made a beeline for the house, the only cover from the rain for miles.

  The door was thrown open on Brett’s third knock.

  “Brett!” Sandra Evans gasped. “What are you doing here? Boy, get inside, you’ll catch your death out there!”

  Brett’s mother snatched him by the wrist and dragged him over the threshold into Brett’s childhood home. He stood there on the doormat for a few moments, silently dripping rainwater.

  “What are you doing here, son?” Sandra asked, dragging Brett through into the lounge and aggressively toweling his head dry.

  Brett didn’t immediately reply, simply walked past her into the kitchen. He reached out and switched the kettle on. “Nothing,” he said finally.

  “Brett, really?” Sandra drawled. “This again? How long before you trust me?”

  “I do trust you, mom,” Brett said seriously. “I just…I can’t ever be sure you’re really going to understand what I want to tell you.”

  Sandra laughed. “That’s what trust means, dear.”

  Brett couldn’t resist smiling too. She had a point. “Not now, mom. Maybe later.”

  Sandra sighed exasperatedly. “Are you refusing to answer, pursuant to your fifth amendment rights?”

  “No, Mom, not now!” Brett exclaimed. “I’m serious, I’m really not in the mood!”

  Usually, Sandra ignored this. This time, she didn’t. Something in Brett’s tone of voice told her that he really wasn’t in the mood for it. She nodded. “Okay, Brett. No court case this time. But you’re going to have to open up to me sooner or later. You know I can’t help you unless you do.”

  “Maybe you can’t help at all, mom,” Brett said, tossing a teabag into a plain white, porcelain mug and pouring steaming water on top.

  “I’ll have to accept that,” Sandra said soothingly. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want or need to know what it is. Something’s bothering my baby boy, and I’d be a pretty shitty mother if I didn’t want to know what it was.”

  “Mom!” Brett exclaimed. His mother never swore in front of him. As a matter of fact, Brett had been on trial in the lounge many a time for his use of foul language. The swear jar on top of the mantel was nearly full to bursting with all the dollar bills he’d thrust in there when his mood turned sour.

  “Oh, lighten up!” Sandra said, rather pink in the face. “We’re both adults here, if I want to curse once in a while, then I will.”

  Brett couldn’t help it - he cracked a huge grin. “Mom, when did you get cool?”

  “Excuse me?” Sandra asked indignantly. “I’ve always been fly, as the kids are saying these days.”

  Brett’s laughs were interrupted by a key in the door. “Honey, I’m home!” Jerry shouted from the corridor.

  “Your Dad’s here,” Sandra said in a low voice.

  Brett frowned. Far from stating the obvious, Brett noticed that his mom had tightened her grip on his forearm, and her eyes were darting back and forward. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  “Mom, what’s the matter?” Brett asked.

  “Brett,” Jerry said from the corridor. He traipsed into the lounge, not bothering to take his shoes off. He tracked watery prints across the carpet. “Is that you?”

  Brett walked past his mother and stood in the kitchen doorway. “Dad.”

  Jerry wasn’t smiling. His face was taut, and the tendons in his neck were tight. This was the look of a man holding himself in check. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

  “What makes you think something’s wrong?” Jerry asked, rather coldly.

  Brett narrowed his eyes. “Because you don’t look pleased to see me, and mom looks scared out of her wits.”

  Jerry glanced at his wife, then back at his son. “You’re right,” he said finally.

  “Jerry, let’s not do this now,” Sandra began.

  “
No, let’s,” Jerry said forcefully. “You can start by explaining to me what you think you’ve been doing.”

  Brett raised his eyebrows. “Me? What I’ve been doing?”

  “That’s what I just said,” Jerry said, his voice going up a few notches.

  “I don’t get it, Dad,” Brett squinted. “Have I upset you in some way, or-?”

  “You’re damn fucking right you have,” Jerry growled.

  “Jerry - language!” Sandra scolded, scandalized.

  “I’ll be damned if you tell me how to talk to my son in my own home, woman!” Jerry shouted. “You can stay out of this! It’s your fault he’s like this!”

  Sandra gasped. Brett’s eyebrows went up. “Like what?”

  “I told you when all this madness started we should’ve sent him off to a camp,” Jerry said. “Straightened him out. Stamped it out of him. But you wouldn’t have it. Now look!”

  The pieces of the confusion jigsaw suddenly started fitting together in Brett’s mind, and he started putting two and two together. “Is this about me?” he asked. “Being gay?”

  “Damn right!” Jerry shouted. “I can tell you, I’ll be damned if I watch my only son roll around with grown men and do nothing about it.”

  “I thought you two had accepted me!” Brett shouted.

  “I accepted you because your mother gave me an ultimatum!” Jerry shouted. “I thought I could learn to deal with it! But this is too far! That…that man is parading you all over town like some kind of common street whore! Have you heard what everyone is saying about him? And about you?”

  “I don’t care what anyone’s saying!” Brett hollered. “There’s nothing going on between me and Lewis!”

  “Oh it’s Lewis, now, is it?” Jerry asked. “What happened to ‘Mr. Taylor’? That old perv is taking advantage of my boy and encouraging this…abnormality, and I want it to stop! So, you can go over there first thing in the morning and tell him you won’t be working for him anymore!”

  “You can’t make me do that!” Brett snapped.

  “I don’t have to!” Jerry boomed. “You’ll do that yourself!”

  “I won’t!”

  “You will,” Jerry countered.

  “Or what?” Brett asked. A small part of him felt like a rebel. ‘Or what’ was a question he’d never have dared to ask his father, but he was firing on all cylinders now. His blood was boiling, his head was pounding. He was in a dangerous mood.

  Jerry stepped closer and pointed a thick finger in Brett’s face. “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to? If you don’t quit that job, I’ll slap that old sicko with so many lawsuits, he won’t know which way is up! I’ll have my partners so far up his ass, he’ll need a jackhammer to get them out! Try me if you want to!”

  “You can’t do that!” Brett screamed.

  “I can, and I will if you continue to defy me, boy!”

  “Jerry, Brett - both of you stop!” Sandra shouted at the both of them. “Just stop arguing!”

  “I’m leaving!” Brett growled. “Screw this house and screw you!”

  “You’ve got nowhere to go, and no-one to take you in!” Jerry shouted. “So, don’t try that!”

  “Wrong, Dad,” Brett fired back.

  “Oh wait, let me guess,” Jerry said sarcastically. “You’re going to go crawling right back to Taylor, aren’t you? Well, I hope for your sake you’re not there when the ax comes down because I’ll make sure he loses everything he’s got! When he hasn’t even got a shirt to warm his back at night, then we’ll see how much you still want to give that old perv a good suck—”

  Brett didn’t register doing it. His heart was beating faster in his chest than it ever had before. He briefly heard his mother screech Brett, no! Then it was all over. Brett pivoted as if he were moving in slow motion, and before Jerry had even realized what was happening, he right-hooked him in his lower jaw.

  Jerry was a big man, but the force of the blow made him stumble backward, knocking over tables and chairs. Jerry threw out his hands to stable himself and manage to keep himself from falling over. The shock on his face turned to rage, and his eyes focused on his son as his fists balled.

  “You little—!” he screamed as he lunged, hands outstretched.

  Sandra screamed in shock and anger as her husband hurled himself at her son, but Brett was much quicker than his father. He ducked the lunge and came back up with a devastating uppercut that clipped Jerry on the base of his nose.

  There was a sickening crunch as Jerry’s nose snapped like a wishbone, and the second blow was enough to put him on his ass. Blood spurted from his nostrils and splattered up Brett’s arm to his elbow as Jerry keeled backward, crashing down on his ass. Sandra immediately ran to help him, but Brett loomed over the two of them, fists clenched and blood pumping.

  “Don’t even think about filing any lawsuits,” he said, in as dangerous a voice as he could muster. “Not because you don’t have any grounds, but because I’m not afraid to batter you if you do. Call the cops on me if you want, we’ll see how well that goes.”

  Jerry’s eyes were wide and full of shock and, Brett realized, fear. Blood gushed from his broken nose down onto his lips, but he unblinkingly stared into Brett’s eyes.

  “Go,” Jerry croaked. “Get out of my house. And, don’t you ever come back.”

  “Jerry, no!” Sandra wailed.

  But it was too late. Brett had already turned on his heel and left, and by the time Sandra had rushed to the front door, her only son had already disappeared into the pouring rain.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lewis paced up and down his study, inwardly cursing himself with every footstep. It’d been nearly two hours since Brett had half-ran, half-stormed out into the rain and Lewis couldn’t help but let his mind drift back to that dark and rainy night, when he’d watched the love of his life walk out of his life.

  For the last hour and a half, Lewis had been wishing one of his descendants would appear in his lounge bearing the secrets to time travel. Then, Lewis would be able to time hop back to that afternoon, and instead of sitting on his ass like an idiot, he’d charge out into the rain after Brett and bring him back.

  The idea of time travel had always been appealing to Lewis - he’d always wanted to say the line “if my calculations are correct, once you hit 88 miles per hour, you’re going to see some serious shit”.

  Suddenly, there was a pounding at the door.

  Lewis had never moved so fast in his life. He changed direction and flew through the doorway from the study to the corridor so fast that if he’d been a centimeter to the right, he would have slammed straight into the wall. Lewis wrenched the door open, and there stood Brett, soaked thoroughly. His normally fluffy brown hair was drenched and now lay flat on his head, but the rain was not yet strong enough to wash away the blood that was spattered across his right forearm.

  “Brett!” Lewis gasped. “What the-what happened to—”

  “Hi, Brett,” Brett said sarcastically. “Sorry about before. How are you, by the way? Do you want to come in, it’s raining outside?”

  This was an interesting dynamic - Brett stood there, his face expressionless and his tone flat; for all intents and purposes, he was calm and cool and in control, while Lewis, the smooth-talking therapist with a degree in psychology was spluttering and tripping over his words.

  Brett stepped inside and squeezed past Lewis, kicking the door shut behind him. Brett paused to wipe his feet on the mat before kicking off his shoes and proceeding into the lounge. Lewis followed him, opening and closing his mouth like a fish, as Brett settled into an armchair and started pouring whiskey from the decanter on the table into a tumbler.

  “Brett!” Lewis managed.

  “That’s my name,” Brett said calmly, draining the tumbler and re-filling it. “Don’t wear it out.”

  “What happened to you?” Lewis asked.

  “I went home,” Brett said simply. “And…well…my Father wasn’t exactly pleased to see me.”<
br />
  “What do you mean?” Lewis asked, taking a seat opposite Brett. “He’s your Dad.”

  “He’s also a giant flaming homophobe, as it turns out,” Brett snorted. “He said that people all around town have been talking.”

  “About you?” Lewis asked.

  Brett arched his eyebrow.

  “Oh,” Lewis breathed. “About…us?”

  Brett nodded. “Bingo.”

  “But there is no…us,” Lewis said, choosing his words carefully. “You’re my employee. That’s all.”

  “Well that’s not what everyone around town is thinking, according to my Dad,” Brett said, taking another sip from the whiskey tumbler.

  “How bad is it?” Lewis smiled.

  Brett laughed. “Well my Dad accused me of ‘giving that old perv a good suck,’ and I am paraphrasing there.”

  Lewis went deep red. “Wow. I don’t even have any words for that.”

  “It’s okay,” Brett said softly. “He doesn’t have any more words either. I made sure of that.”

  Lewis glanced from Brett’s hardened expression to his grazed knuckles, and he understood. “So, I take it that that’s not your own blood?”

  Brett shook his head. “No.”

  “Is he okay?” Lewis asked.

  “I don’t care,” Brett said forcefully.

  Lewis leaned forward. “Yes, you do.”

  Brett didn’t immediately reply to this. He paused for a minute. “I didn’t knock him out. He should be fine. My mom was a bit upset, though. I really shouldn’t have hit him.”

  “No, you shouldn’t,” Lewis said quietly, almost a whisper. “But I’m touched that you did. How’s your hand?”

  Brett held up his right hand. The skin had been grazed and scratched over the knuckles, and tiny droplets of blood were seeping out. Whatever Brett had hit, he’d hit it hard. A few moments later, Lewis had cleaned the cut and put a plaster on it. It was a bit of a shoddy job, Lewis wasn’t that kind of doctor, but it’d do, at least for now.

  “So, did he hit you back?” Lewis asked.

  “He tried,” Brett admitted. “But no.”

  “How does that make you feel?” Lewis asked. “That he tried to hit you?”