aterovis_bm_reapthewhirlwind.p65 (5 page)

Aidan threw open the door dramatically before I could even knock.

“Welcome home!” he said with a grin, complete with dimples.

I smiled back and pushed past him; the box was starting to get heavy. “I guess this is home now, huh?” I said and laughed. I couldn’t believe how excited I was, and a little nervous.

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“Yep. Home is where the heart is or something like that,” he said as he followed me down the hall to my room.

“Does that mean my heart is here now?” We’d cleared out his remaining boxes during the week and replaced them with mine.

“I hope so; the rest of you is here. But sometimes I get the impression that your heart is somewhere else.”

I looked up sharply, but he was busy opening up one of my boxes. We spent the next hour or so unpacking enough of my stuff so I could at least sleep there that night.

“Hey, Will?” Aidan asked hesitantly after a while.

Something in his voice made me put down the box I was poking in and give him my full attention. A slightly concerned expression clouded his green eyes. “Yeah?”

I asked carefully.

“I have something I need to tell you and I guess I should have said something sooner, like before you moved in and all, but—”

“Please tell me it’s just that you wear colored contact lenses,” I said with a forced smile.

“Huh?” Now he just looked confused.

“It’s just that your eyes are so green—oh never mind…”

“My eyes? They’re natural.” He still seemed confused as if he couldn’t figure out how we had started talking about his eyes. “Look, can we maybe sit down to talk?”

Oh no, you never had to sit down to talk about something good. My feeling of unease heightened. What was he going to tell me? Was he from a mob family? Was that why he could afford this apartment? He had said he was from a big family. I sat down heavily on 37

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the bed.

Aidan looked around uncomfortably. “Uh, I was thinking of more like the living room.”

“Oh,” I said weakly and followed him down the hall.

I sat on the couch and Aidan sat on the chair closest to me. He blinked at me for several minutes then stood up and began to pace. I was getting more and more nervous with every second that passed.

“I don’t know how to say this,” he said finally, “so I’m just going to say it and let happen whatever happens. Will—I’m gay.” He stopped pacing and looked at me anxiously. I waited for the punch line. When it became apparent that it wasn’t coming, I stood up and walked to the windows.

“Did Laura set you up for this?” I asked with my back to him.

“What? Laura? What does she have to do with this?”

“Did she?”

“No, she doesn’t even know.”

“Does Joey know?”

“No, no one down here knows yet. You’re the first person I’ve told since I moved. Well, my cousin knows but he doesn’t live in town and he’s still in high school.

I only told you because, well…I thought you should know since we’re going to be living together and all.”

“You should have told me before,” I said. I was desperately trying to stay calm, but my delicate façade was dangerously close to crumbling. I couldn’t believe this was happening right now, when I was so confused about myself. I had avoided thinking about it all week and now here I was slapped upside the head with the same issue from a direction I’d never even suspected. My head was reeling.

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“I know I should have told you earlier and I’m really sorry. You’ve got to believe me; it’s really hard to tell people. But it’s not going to change anything, right? I mean I’m not going to hit on you or anything, and I don’t dress in women’s clothing or anything. I’m still the same person I was before, it’s just now you know a little more about me.”

“A little more than I wanted to know,” I snapped.

Immediately I regretted it. I could see the hurt written all over his face. “I’m sorry, Aidan.” I sighed. “I didn’t mean that. It just—it just caught me by surprise. You must be regretting that you even asked me to move in.

The first time you meet me I act like a jerk and storm out like some spoiled brat and now, my first night here, I freak out because you try to be honest with me.”

He gave me a lopsided grin, a weak shadow of his usual luminous grins but more than I could have managed in his place. “Hey, you were having a bad day that first night, remember? And as far as tonight goes, well...I would have to go through something like this with whoever moved in, and I have to say that you’ve handled it better than most of the people I’ve told.”

I sat back down, “I thought you said I was the only person you’ve told besides your cousin.”

“Down here. Back home I came out to pretty much everyone at one time. I didn’t know that it’s better to come out gradually. Most people didn’t take it very well and I didn’t have a support system built up yet so it was pretty rough. The people who would have supported me were too shocked to be much comfort when I needed it. That was what made up my mind to transfer down here. I would have never got through the rest of last year if it hadn’t been for my Aunt Meg. She was 39

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my rock through everything.”

“What happened?”

“Well, some people just stopped having anything to do with me, but those were the best case scenarios.

Other’s felt it was their duty to go out of their way to tell me how they felt about alternative lifestyles. But my cousin that lives down here, he’s Aunt Meg’s son, is gay and he’s been pretty much accepted since he came out, so I thought that maybe this would be a better area for me. I was already looking at Pemberton; that just cemented the decision. Does it bother you?”

“That you’re gay?” I thought a moment. “No, it doesn’t really bother me,” I said and I meant it. “It just adds to something I was already dealing with.”

“You want to explain that?”

“No, not really. Not yet anyway. I’ve still got a lot to figure out.”

He gave me a suspicious look but didn’t push the issue. “Well, if you change your mind I’m here for you.”

“So, uh—how did you know?” I asked, partly to di-vert his attention back to himself and partly because I honestly wanted to know.

“Actually, my cousin helped me. He figured out he was gay about a year ago and he just seemed to have everything together. He has a boyfriend that he’s crazy about and who’s crazy about him, and he’s two years younger than I am. When I came down for Thanksgiving and saw them together, I saw how happy they were and I realized that I desperately wanted that too. I’d had a few girlfriends but it just never felt right. So I asked him the same thing you just asked me. He may be younger than me, but the kid’s really sharp. He said,

‘Either you are or you aren’t. You just know. You either 40

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like girls or you like guys.’ When you boil it down like that it was pretty obvious, for me anyway.”

I nodded thoughtfully. I didn’t like where I was going with that train of thought. He said something else but I didn’t catch it since I was so lost in my own thoughts. I realized he was waiting for me to say something.

“Huh?” I said wittily.

“I said, ‘do you want to see a picture of my cousin and his boyfriend.’ You know, you actually remind me an awful lot of his boyfriend.”

“Sure,” I said absently.

Aidan went back to his room and came back out a minute later with a small, framed photo, which he handed to me. I looked down and felt my mouth drop open.

“That’s Asher!” I gasped.

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“You know Asher?” Aidan said in surprise.

“You know Asher?” I repeated in equal surprise.

“He’s dating my cousin Killian!”

“Asher’s my cousin!” I was dumbfounded.

“Whoa! What are the chances? That’s freaky.”

“No kidding. I didn’t even know Asher is gay.”

“You didn’t? He’s not like a closet case or anything; he’s really open about it. Their whole school knows. I can’t believe you didn’t see it on TV.”

“TV? Why would it be on TV? Do they televise coming out parties now? Is there a GAY TV—All Gay All Day?”

Aidan laughed. “Not that I know of, although it wouldn’t surprise me. You don’t recognize Killian?”

“Should I?” I asked as I took a closer look at the photo.

At first glance, all I had been able to see was Asher and, as Aidan had already said, there was a strong family resemblance between Asher and me. We both had inherited that same curly dark-brown, almost black hair and fair skin that blushes too easily. And we both have those same eternally rosy cheeks that Asher had once told me made him feel like one of Raphael’s angels. Now that I looked again, I realized that there were two other 42

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people in the picture posing in front of a Christmas tree.

Aidan was one of them and the other one I assumed to be Killian. He had lightly curling blonde hair and was very cute. It was hard to tell in the picture, but it looked like he might have eyes almost as blue as mine. I looked closely but I still didn’t recognize him.

“I don’t think I know him.”

“To hear him and Asher tell it you’d think he was some kind of minor celebrity around here. I’ve caught bits and pieces of the story, but I don’t know if I’ve ever heard the whole thing. From what I’ve gathered, Killian’s friend, Seth, was murdered and Killian investigated it.”

“Oh, wait—I think I do remember that now. Didn’t the murderer end up killing a bunch of other people too? But then Killian caught him or something.”

“Yeah, he was on the national news and was like some kind of hero or something.”

“I remember now, but I didn’t know Asher was involved.”

“Involved? He was almost killed. Man, you guys don’t talk much do you?”

“Actually, no. My dad and Asher’s mom are brother and sister, but they were never particularly close, so I only really see them on big holidays and at family reunions. Besides, I’m probably not the first person Asher would rush to tell that he’s gay.”

“Why’s that?”

“My dad’s a preacher and a pretty conservative one at that. Asher and I used to be pretty tight when we were little, but Dad can be kind of overbearing at times, so we’re not the most popular branch of the family tree.”

“Oh, does this have something to do with the prob-43

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lem you mentioned earlier?”

“No—well, yeah, I guess it does in a way.”

“Is it going to cause more problems for you to live with me?”

“Not as far as I’m concerned. Now as for my dad—

well, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt me, right?”

Aidan grinned, “Gotcha! So tell me some more about yourself, any brothers or sisters? What do you do? How come you’re not in school like Laura and Joey?”

“Whoa, slow down!” I laughed. “I can only answer one question at a time. I’m an only child, a spoiled brat if you listen to Laura and Joey. I work at the church as I guess what you’d call a secretary, but I really do just about anything and everything that you can imagine.

And before you ask, no, it’s not what I want to do with the rest of my life. That’s the thing: I don’t know what I want to do with the rest of my life. I know my dad wants me to be involved with the church, but I don’t know what I want. That’s the main reason I haven’t gone to college. I decided to wait a year and hopefully I’ll figure something out between now and then.”

“What about a girlfriend? Didn’t Joey mention you had a girlfriend? Becky or something?”

“Beth and we broke up. That was part of the reason I was having such a bad day last Saturday.”

“So you were heartbroken?”

“Not exactly.”

“So you broke up with her?”

“No, she broke up with me.”

“I see said the blind man.”

I laughed. “It’s complicated. It’s just as well that she broke it off; I would have just let things drag on forever. At least now it’s over and done with. See, I didn’t 44

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feel the same way for her as she apparently felt for me.

She wanted more from me than I felt like I could give her, and I don’t think I ever would have been able to.

It’s hard to explain. There just wasn’t—it wasn’t—I just didn’t feel anything with Beth.”

“I understand what you’re saying. I went through the same thing.” He seemed to realize what he was saying at the same time I did. He rushed on, “Not that it means anything as far as, you know, you or anything. I was just saying that for me...” He trailed off into an uncomfortable silence. I rushed to fill it.

“So tell me about you.” I didn’t want to lose our growing rapport, but I did want to get the attention off of me. This seemed like a safe enough topic.

“Well, I come from a pretty big family. There’re six of us altogether and I’m the oldest. My dad died three years ago from cancer, so it’s just been our mom and us since then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, well, it was rough, especially at first. My mom had to go back to work and I had to help a lot with my brothers and sister. I have one sister who is only two years younger than I am so she helped too, but with four boys under twelve, it was still a lot of work. Then, last year, my Aunt Meg moved in with us and that freed me up to be able to go to college. That was about the same time I started realizing I was gay. So when things got ugly up there I was able to just pick up and transfer down here. Like I said though, Aunt Meg was a huge support for me when I was coming out. I don’t think I could have made it without her. She’d already gone through the whole gay thing with Killian, you know, learning about what it meant and coming to terms with 45

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it and all, so she was really supportive of me and helped my mom a lot too.”

“So are you planning on coming out down here?”

“Eventually, when I’m ready. Not right now. I’d rather people got to know me for who I am rather than through a preconception of what a stereotypical gay guy is supposed to be like. Not that I’m lying, either though.

If someone comes right out and asks me I’ll be honest.”