Choices(Waiting for Forever BK 1) (19 page)

Only hours before, we had shared something so momentous, so incredibly special, that I felt like I had been fundamentally altered. I was his, and nothing would change that for me.
Will being discovered ruin everything we’ve built?
We sat side by side on the mattress, watching his mother’s nearly silent chanting. Jamie looked like he was going to hyperventilate, and I tried to take his hand under the sheet where his mother wouldn’t see, but he pulled it away. My chest began to hurt as the fear raced through it.

Then, inexplicably, she just… stopped.

She stopped swaying.

She stopped chanting.

As she stood motionless on the ladder, she may have even stopped breathing. Her eyes flashed as she looked up at us. Then, as her features relaxed into an eerie calm, she said, “Breakfast is ready. You boys need to come in and get ready for church.”

Without another word, she climbed down the ladder and was gone. It finally registered that she must have called us to breakfast, and when we didn’t hear, she had come up to get us. If we had just turned the radio off or dressed before we’d fallen asleep, none of this would have happened. We had been so careless.

“Jamie,” I whispered, terrified at his silence, too afraid to look at his face, sure all I would find was hatred or indifference. As he sat still as stone next to me, the pain in my heart took my breath away.

Then without warning, he threw himself at me, wrapping his shaking arms around my neck, nearly choking me. “Whatever happens, we will be together, Brian. I am not giving you up, not for them, not for anyone. You are everything to me.” Tears burned in my eyes as I nodded fervently.

“Forever,” I promised.

We got out of bed quickly and gathered our clothes that we’d strewn across the rough floor in our need last night. In the harsh morning light, we dressed side by side, and unbelievably, I found myself admiring his beauty. No matter what happened when we got into his parents’ house, he would always be the most beautiful thing in the world to me. I would be proud to stand beside him and weather the storm.

Grabbing our stuff, we headed for the trapdoor, but neither of us had the strength to open it. Not yet.

Standing directly on the worn wood so we could not be interrupted, we wound our arms around each other. Silently, we held each other, his head on my shoulder as I fought the impulse to take him and run.
If only we weren’t still in high school, that might work.
His breathing was still hoarse and uneven, and I wished I could take away his fear, his heartache.
What will his parents do now?

Just then, the fan and the radio both stopped. Someone had pulled the other end of the extension cord, the one plugged in on the wall nearest the door. His mother was getting impatient. I was sure she had figured out that we were being emotional and affectionate.

We had stood in each other’s arms as long as we dared.

Placing a small kiss on Jamie’s forehead, wishing it were more, I stepped back, waiting for him to move, and then lifted the trapdoor. We climbed down the ladder, each step taking us closer to the hellfire and brimstone that certainly awaited us. I wanted to hold Jamie’s hand as we faced our fate, but knew it would only make things worse. The thought of running was ever present, foremost in my mind—but I knew I wouldn’t.

We were in this together, whatever the cost.

Jamie stopped me at the back door and looked at me for a long moment, like he was solidifying a picture of me in his mind before he opened the door. He went over the threshold with a determined air, striding purposefully into the kitchen, where his mother was making pancakes.

“Oh, there you boys are,” she said in that eerily cheery voice. “Brian, darlin’, why don’t you go up and get ready in your church clothes while Jamie eats and then you can switch off.” She turned back to the stove and continued to mix up batter. I looked at Jamie, and after a brief glance at his mother, he nodded. I hated leaving Jamie in the kitchen alone to face the wrath of his mother, her fear and anger, but I didn’t have any other option. I turned and headed for the stairs. I was starting to get very tired of having no options.

As I pulled my clothes off in the Mayfields’ tiny second-floor bathroom, I felt the soreness in my body for the first time. I’d been so preoccupied since Mrs. Mayfield’s scream that I hadn’t realized just how much my body ached from the previous night. Gingerly, I stepped into the shower, the hot water relaxing my sore muscles. As my body calmed, so did my mind, and I couldn’t shut the images off, flashes of our lovemaking repeating: the way he brushed my hair out of my eyes, or the way his body tensed as he came, or the way he held me as we fell asleep. After the initial pain, the lovemaking had been beautiful. I felt closer to him than I had at any point since we’d met.

It was infuriating that things had gone so badly that morning. I had wanted to wake up in his arms, kissing and talking. I had wanted to tell him how much the night before meant to me. I had wanted, just maybe, to make love again. The one thing I hadn’t wanted was for him to have to choose between his family and me. One more year and we would have been gone; no one would have needed to know. After being caught, we would just have to pretend that much more, pretend we’d broken up, pretend we’d seen the error of our ways, pretend we weren’t in love. Of course, they would try to separate us, but no matter what they tried, it wouldn’t work. I would do anything for him, including waiting a year so we could be together.

It hurt to think about the wedge that would surely be driven between Jamie and his family. I was the catalyst for taking away his family, just as mine had been taken from me. As I washed my hair under the pounding spray, I wondered if I should leave him.
I’d been scarred and broken by losing my family; will it do the same to Jamie? Will he resent me? What if we stay together, but our relationship is irrevocably damaged by the fissure with his family? He said we would be together forever. Will he still love me for better or worse?

Even if I left Jamie, it wouldn’t change his sexual orientation, and that’s what his parents would be upset about. It wasn’t that he was with me; I think they had always liked me, even if I was just the foster kid from down the street. It was that he was gay, an aberration, and a mark against God. He would be a source of humiliation for them and proof of their failure to produce a normal, healthy Christian boy.

I stepped out of the shower knowing I could never leave him, not when he needed me. Drying off, I looked at myself in the mirror; I felt different. No longer the boy who had climbed up into the tree house, I was a man, and it was time I started to act like one. Dressing quickly in the church clothes I had brought, the only ones I owned, I went back downstairs. Jamie was sitting at the kitchen table, a plate of half-eaten pancakes in front of him.

His eyes lit up when he saw me, and it warmed me.

Without a word, he stood and carried his plate to the sink. As he passed me to head upstairs, I felt his hand brush against mine in a gesture of comfort, of promise. Sitting down at the table, I watched Jamie climb the stairs. Once he was out of sight, I waited for his mother to confront me. I expected her to tell me that I was endangering her son’s soul, or that I was going to ruin his life, or even that she hated me.

She said nothing. She just set a plate of pancakes in front of me with a soft smile and went back to the stove.

Briefly, I wondered if they had been poisoned.

Her strangely upbeat mood lasted through the ride and all the way into the church. Mrs. Mayfield left us to speak to the preacher while we sat with Mr. Mayfield, who looked tired and upset. That’s when I realized why she had put on such a happy face. She wanted to get me there so the preacher could talk some sense into us, try to scare us out of being gay.

Nothing, not even God, is going to take Jamie from me.

I didn’t listen to the sermon the man was giving; the most I got was the yelling and gesticulating while I waited for our judgment to be rained down on us once we were forced into the preacher’s office. I could feel Jamie next to me, and knowing he loved me got me through the remainder of the service. We never spoke, and we never looked at each other. It would have been too hard not to comfort him if I’d seen the fear and resignation in his eyes.

It amazed me how much my attitude had changed since that first sermon that had scared me so badly. Over the last few months, Jamie’s love had become like a talisman inside my heart, protecting me from the fear and the anxiety. Since the crushing weight of hiding from the Schreibers and from Jamie’s parents had been lifted, and they all knew the true nature of our relationship, I felt almost free. I could face anything with him beside me, even the wrath of God.

As I had assumed, Mrs. Mayfield led Mr. Mayfield, Jamie, and me back to the preacher’s office after the service was over. I didn’t even try to resist. It was something we were going to have to do at some point; we might as well get it over with. The door closed behind us with the finality of a coffin lid being closed over a corpse, and with just as much optimism.

Without being told, Jamie and I took our places in front of the preacher’s large, worn desk. We were flanked by Jamie’s parents; Mr. Mayfield sat closest to me, though he didn’t speak. He just sat stoically, waiting for the preacher to say something, as we were all doing. Mrs. Mayfield sat on the very front of her wooden chair, like a star pupil looking for praise from her favorite teacher. I wondered why that praise would mean so much when it would come at the expense of her son.

“Jamie, your mother tells me that you were caught committing an egregious sin this morning. Is that true?” The preacher sat back in his opulent leather chair, tenting his fingers, waiting for a confirmation. The haughty, self-righteous note in his voice made me angry. He made it sound like we had killed someone.

“No, Pastor Moore,” Jamie said confidently, looking up at the preacher with absolutely no fear. My shock gave in to pride in that moment. Just like Jamie, I held my head high because there was nothing wrong with my love for Jamie, and I wasn’t going to let him tell me that there was. Apparently, neither was Jamie. He could have just gone along with what they expected him to say, but he admirably refused.

“You weren’t caught laying in sin with another boy? This boy?” he demanded, waving at me, astounded to be contradicted. Sitting forward in his chair, he put both palms down on the desk. His moral superiority was going to be tested, and he knew it.

“Yes, sir, I was,” Jamie admitted with no hint of shame. “However, I don’t believe that my love for Brian is a sin. I believe that God made me the way I am.”

None of us expected the resounding slap that came next. Jamie’s mother had hit him across his face, leaving a red palm print on his cheek. I stood, outraged that she would strike him. Jamie held his hand up, cautioning me to hold my temper. My hands balled into fists at my sides.

“How dare you say such a thing, here in front of Pastor Moore, in God’s house? How dare you say that God made something that is clearly unnatural?” Mrs. Mayfield raged at her son. Mr. Mayfield, I noticed, remained strangely quiet. “What you were doing was evil, James. It was against God, and you two will not see each other again.”

She turned to me. “Boy, I have tried for years to help you. It was a shame what happened to your parents, but maybe it was God’s retribution for your nature. I know this was your doing. You drew him in to your Godless ways, but I won’t let you destroy his soul. He was a good boy before he met you, and he will be one again.”

Mrs. Mayfield grabbed Jamie’s arm and pulled him from the room, ignoring the preacher’s protests. Mr. Mayfield followed, and I stood there, feeling like she’d taken everything that was good about my life with her as she walked out the door.

12

“B
RIAN
,
it will just be a few more days until you’re back at school,” Carolyn said as we sat at the kitchen table. She was peeling potatoes for dinner while I sat staring at the table, picking apart a paper napkin. As she dumped the peeled and cut potatoes into the pan, I started on another napkin. She got up and carried the pan to the sink.

It had been nearly three weeks since I’d seen Jamie, and the pain in my chest had grown worse with each passing day. I missed him so much. She was right, though; it would be better when I could at least see him every day, even if I couldn’t express my love for him, even if we couldn’t be alone. The thought gave me some comfort, but not much.

Just one more year, and we can leave, together.

We just have to survive until the end of the school year.

I recited those two lines over and over in my head, holding on to them in my heart.

Carolyn set the pan on the stove, turned the burner on, and came back to the table. “It won’t be too much longer before you boys are eighteen, and then no one will be able to keep you apart. Whether you go off to college or get a job somewhere, you’ll be together. It will be all right, Brian, you’ll see.” I agreed, but when you’re seventeen, a year feels like forever. I was impatient, and I wanted Jamie.