Determination (18 page)

The debate over rehab seemed to break up the party. Mike and Alex had a shoot that afternoon, and Richard wanted to get settled in at the hotel. Mike offered to drop them. After the four of them hugged me and told me they would see me the next day, they left. Brian kicked off his shoes and sat cross-legged on the bed.

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“I’m not going to argue with you about this because I’m too tired, but you are not paying for my rehab. I got you shot. I think I’ve done enough,” I said and reached down on the side of the chair to pull the lever that flipped up the footrest. When my feet were resting comfortably, I tugged the blanket higher onto my shoulders and closed my eyes.

“I never blamed you for what happened that day, Jamie.”

I kept my eyes closed and wrapped my arms around myself under the thin shelter of the blanket. Maybe if I pretended I’d fallen asleep, we wouldn’t have to have this conversation. He’d blame everything on Steven or, worse, blame it on himself.

“If you’re tired, why don’t you come and lay on the bed?” he said quietly. It sounded like an invitation to lie in bed with him, and I hesitated. If he just wanted to be friends, we didn’t need to start blurring those lines. When I opened an eye to look over, I saw he’d moved from the bed to one of the chairs, and my heart sank. As much as I thought we shouldn’t blur the lines, I wanted so badly to feel his arms around me.

My body felt like lead as I pulled myself to my feet and stumbled over to the bed so I could sleep and not have to think about the nightmare my life had become.

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Nine

BRIAN’S head lolled to the side as he half lay in the reclined chair next to my bed. I’d tried at least half a dozen times to get him to go home to sleep, but he wouldn’t leave my side. Even though he never mentioned it, I think he knew how much the seizures scared me. He wouldn’t leave me to go through them alone. He couldn’t let me face anything alone. In fact, earlier, we’d continued the argument from the day before about him using the settlement to pay for rehab. Nothing I said seemed to deter him. With each day I grew stronger, I came closer to leaving the hospital. I doubted I could keep refusing him forever.

“He looks just like he did when he was a boy,” Carolyn said from the door, nearly giving me heart failure. I’d seen Brian sleeping a lot lately, both when we were together at the apartment and here in the hospital. I loved seeing how relaxed his face looked when all the stress and worry had left it. Sometimes, he had nightmares, but not always.

I’d have given anything to crawl into that chair and wrap myself around him. Aside from the fact that he no longer wanted me to, if I had another seizure, he’d just end up covered in vomit, drool, and piss.

“Hi, Carolyn. Richard isn’t with you?” I asked, surprised when she entered the room alone. She glanced at me with a smile and then walked over quietly to push Brian’s hair back from his eyes.

“He needs a haircut,” she said, the love in her voice unmistakable.

It made me miss my own parents with a blinding pain. “Richard had a few errands he needed to run. He’ll be along in a while.” I wondered what kind of errands he would be running in San Diego, but I didn’t say anything. If she’d wanted to tell me, she would have.

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“Oh, well, thank you for coming.” I hit the button on the television remote that raised the head of the bed. Like a slow-motion corpse rising from the grave, I sat up in bed. Even though I’d just woken from a nap, I still felt tired. Being either in bed or sitting down most of the time had drained me of what little energy I had left. I felt like my life was on the edge of a cliff, and if I moved too much one way or another, it would all be over. Unfortunately, every direction seemed to be the wrong direction.

We sat in awkward silence for nearly an hour, pretending to watch the television that played overhead. The court show where one neighbor sued another over a fallen tree had just changed to yet another talk show when Brian started to stir.

“You don’t need a gun…,” he mumbled and gripped the blanket in his fists. He shifted in the chair, and his head jerked to the side.

“Don’t hurt him….”

“Carolyn…,” I said, but she was already up and going over to wake him. He jerked when she shook his arm and called his name.

With a sharp, deep breath, he blinked rapidly and looked around like he was surprised to find himself in a hospital-room recliner and not on the floor at the apartment, bleeding to death.

“Mom?”

“It’s okay, honey. It was just a dream,” she said softly as she smoothed down the wild side of his hair. He used his heels to flip the footrest of the recliner down and sat up, almost as if he were afraid of falling back to sleep. Brian glanced around the room for a second and then asked her where Richard was. She gave him the same explanation about errands, and I could tell he didn’t buy it either.

A knock on the door surprised us all.

“James, my name is Detective Sanchez, and this is my partner, Detective Isaacs. We’d like to talk to you about what happened in your apartment the other night. Do you feel up to talking to us?” I looked up to see two men in suits standing just inside my hospital room door.

Brian sat up straighter in the chair next to my bed and rested the paperback he’d been reading on the arm.

“Jamie, you really should talk to a lawyer,” Brian warned. He stood up as the two men entered the room and stood next to my 116

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bedside. As the first officer took out a small notebook, Brian took my hand. Of course, I knew he was just trying to comfort me because I was exhausted after the seizure I’d had that morning, but the gesture felt so natural my heart ached.

“And you are?” The second cop asked, looking over at Brian evenly.

“Brian Schreiber. I’m a friend of Jamie’s.”

“And you?” He asked Carolyn as the first cop noted Brian’s name in his notebook.

“Carolyn Schreiber. Brian is my son,” she said, and I heard her voice shake, ever so slightly.

“Mr. Schreiber, Mrs. Schreiber, would you mind waiting in the hall so that we could talk to Mr. Mayfield alone?” The request came out more like a statement, and Brian squeezed my hand.

“I’ll be okay,” I told them gently as I squeezed back. Brian and Carolyn really didn’t need to hear all the gory details of that last night with Steven, though I admit that I didn’t want to be alone with the police in my hospital room.

Brian kissed my forehead and then walked slowly toward the open door leading to the hall. He stood back and waited for Carolyn to go first before the first officer, Detective Sanchez, let it close behind them. Once the door clicked, the detective joined his partner at my bedside. I slid up higher in the bed, trying to find some kind of equal footing with them, but failed. Feeling like a little boy, I pulled the blankets up a little higher over the flimsy gown and waited.

“James, can you tell us the nature of your relationship with Steven O’Dell?” Detective Sanchez asked, pen poised with a calm tone and expression.

“He was my manager,” I said truthfully, trying not to elaborate.

“Your manager for…?” the second cop asked, and I noticed he didn’t have a little notebook. Apparently, the first guy took all of their notes.

“For adult videos.”

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“People that we’ve spoken to indicated that your relationship was pretty volatile. Would you say that’s true?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell us a little about that?” The second cop had pulled up a chair next to the bed to sit down. I didn’t know if the gesture was supposed to make me feel more comfortable with them being there or to lull me into telling them my darkest secrets.

“We argued a lot. He hit me,” I told them and knew my answer probably sounded evasive, but I didn’t know what would get me in trouble.

“What kinds of things did you argue about?” He tried again.

“Money, sex, our relationship—the things people usually argue about.”

“Yes, but usually when people argue, one of them doesn’t end up dead.” The second cop pointed out, and I conceded with a nod.

“What happened that night, James?” The first cop asked, pulling up a chair for himself. Now they were my buddies. Everyone was comfy and cozy. I didn’t want to talk about that night, especially not with the police. Stalling for time, I tried to look like I was gathering my thoughts. My head ached, and I couldn’t decide how much or what to tell them.

It didn’t matter because before I could answer, Richard walked in through the door with another man. When I glanced over to see who the second man was, something caught my attention about the familiar way he stood with his arms folded across his chest. His thinning brown hair and lean frame didn’t seem familiar at all, just the way he stood. When the man looked up at me, I saw his sapphire blue eyes, the eyes that were just like mine.

“If you have any more questions for my son, you can contact my attorney,” my father said, handing Detective Sanchez a business card.

“James is over eighteen and can talk to us without a lawyer present if he chooses,” the second officer said as he stood up from his spot next to the bed. He looked over my father’s shoulder at me.

“James, would you like to continue to talk to us?”

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“I…,” I started, but nothing else would come out. The shock of my father standing in the same room, the overwhelming fear, paralyzed me.

“Jamie, tell them no. Talk to your dad first.” The calm, rational voice belonged to Brian. He was the one I trusted more than anyone else, including myself. I nodded to him, making sure the officers saw.

“Can he get your business card and call when he’s ready?” Brian asked the second cop, who pulled a business card from his suit pocket.

Finally, I found my voice.

“I do want to talk to you. It’s just that I’ve been having seizures and everything is just so jumbled up in my head right now.” The justification sounded childish and wrong, but it’s all I could think of to get them to leave.

“We’ll give you a call tomorrow to see how you’re feeling,” the first cop hedged, and I nodded. After they’d left the room, my father walked toward me, and I started to climb backward on the bed, terrified of what would happen next.

“No… no, no… I won’t go back to that place. I’m an adult now—

you can’t make me,” I cried as panic burned in my throat. Brian strode over to the bed and stood between my father and me with his arms crossed.

“You never told me that you found him!” my father yelled at Brian, who stood firm and tall in the face of his rage. The lines of Brian’s back were tense but beautifully strong. I wanted to run my fingers over the taut muscles, just to feel close to him, but I stayed still.

“You never told me that he called you, homeless and begging for help, and you turned him away!” Brian yelled back before letting one of his hands rest on my leg, and I felt comforted by the gesture. My father’s face, which just a second before had been red with anger, paled.

“What do you mean?” he asked and looked around Brian to see me. “Jamie, what does he mean?”

“He means that three days after I left the center, when I was terrified and alone, living on the streets in San Diego, I called your house. Your
wife
answered and told me that I was no longer your son Determination

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and she didn’t care where I went so long as I never came home.” My voice shook slightly as I replayed the phone call in my head. Brian turned to look at me. I had never given him the whole truth about that conversation because I didn’t want to unleash all the horrors of my time on the streets on him.

“I didn’t know,” my father said as he retreated a step and his back hit the wall. “She never told me.” He covered his eyes with a hand and tried to hide his emotions from the room. After a long moment, he took a breath to steady himself. “I hired investigators, former cops, and street kids, anyone I could find that might help me find you. They searched for six months and found nothing. It killed me not knowing where you were.” A tear ran down his cheek, but I refused to let myself feel anything but anger toward him.

“Why? So you and your wife could stick me back in that place?

Do you know what it’s like to spend a year having people tell you that you’re worthless and wrong? Do you know what it’s like to be a high school dropout because your parents couldn’t stand the sight of you?” I asked, the rage building in my head. Turning toward Brian, I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood. If I had to face my father, I was going to do it on my own two feet.

“I never wanted you to go there, but your mother was so determined,” he said and shook his head. “I thought maybe it wouldn’t be so bad for you, and then she’d get used to the idea of you being gay.

When I came to see you that last time, and I saw the dead look in your eyes, I told her that I wanted you to come home. She argued, but in the end, I told her I would leave and take you with me if she didn’t agree.

When she relented, I went to the center to get you, but you were already gone. No one would tell me where you’d gone. I’ve never been so scared.”