Out of Nowhere (23 page)

“You’re a good kid, Colin,” he says. “Good son. I’m goin’ta bed.” He squeezes my arm as he shambles past me.

“Yeah, me too,” I say.

I play the moment over and over as I stagger home, and all I can think as I fall into bed alone is
that’s
why. That’s why I can’t be with Rafe outside these walls. And even if I did, there’s no guarantee that things would work out. Knowing me, shit probably
won’t
work out. So, what if I gambled it all on Rafe—my family, my job—and then I fucked it up like usual. Maybe Pop’s an asshole sometimes, but he raised me, Daniel, Brian, and Sam after Mom died, kept food on the table, gave us jobs. I know he loves me. I think he does, anyway. But if he found out… he’d never say anything like that to me again. He’d never look at me like that, with warmth, appreciation. Love me? I don’t know. But respect me? Be proud of me? No.

And, god help me, I don’t think I can live with that.

THE NEXT
week, everything seems off. Work is normal, I guess, but nothing feels satisfying the way it used to. Every time I hear Pop or Sam tell someone we don’t do specialty repairs, every time I’m stuck changing a flat tire or explaining to some know-it-all who looked up engine trouble on the Internet what’s actually wrong with his car, I’m wishing for… more.

That’s what I want, lately. Just more. I want work to be more interesting, more of a challenge. I want to be able to do more for the kids at YA, give them more of what Daniel never had. I’ve thought about Anders a lot too. Wondered what he decided to do about telling his parents—if he’s decided yet at all.

And fuck me, I want more of Rafe. More of everything to do with Rafe. When I’m with him, things feel… good.

But I don’t think Rafe feels the same way. When he got to my place earlier, I asked him if everything was okay and he said it was, but it seems like there’s something he’s not telling me.

Ever since he asked me to come to dinner with his family, things have been strained. I think he’s getting frustrated with me. Impatient. He wants something that I’m not giving to him.

We’re on the couch and I’m leaning into him, enjoying his smell and the feeling of his arms around me. I’m making stupid comments about the movie—some eighties action thing—and he doesn’t respond but he keeps touching me. Small touches like you might reach a hand out to your bedside table to check that something you put down is still there.

Then he lets out a sigh and my stomach goes hollow and tight. It feels like he’s trying to work up to saying something, and that is never good.

“Rafe,” I say when I can’t take it anymore, “just tell me whatever the hell is wrong. You’re freaking me out.”

He looks a little sheepish. “Have you given any thought to what I said?”

“What you said when?”

“About having dinner with my family?”

“Oh.” I knew it.

“Look, it was great seeing everyone at Gabri’s last week. They’re crazy and intense and they drive me nuts sometimes, but it’s home. Something was missing for me, though, because you weren’t there. My mom would describe some cat video her coworker showed her and I’d want to tell you that it reminded me of Shelby. Or Camille would use text speak and I’d want to laugh at you because you never know what the kids are talking about at YA when they use it. I just… wanted you there.”

On the surface it sounds perfect: exchanging knowing glances over the dinner table or laughing gently at private jokes. That’s what you’re supposed to do, right? But it leaves out the part where I’m cringing just thinking about being introduced to Rafe’s family. About what it would mean. About us. About me.

He stops me from saying anything with a thumb to my mouth. “I know you couldn’t—that you already had plans. Family obligations. I respect that. And it’s not the point. It’s that I don’t know if you’ll ever be there. I don’t know if I’ll ever get to go out to dinner with you or… go on vacation with you or….”

He’s obviously sincere, but it’s kind of hard not to bristle at what’s basically a list of all the ways that I’m failing to live up to Rafe’s standards.

“I didn’t expect to feel this way,” he says, his voice more vulnerable than I’ve heard it. “I didn’t know that I wanted those things. Or, I didn’t think about it. Didn’t let myself think about them because I didn’t think—anyway. I know it hasn’t been that long. I’m not saying I need those things right now. But I want them. In the future. And”—his voice gets softer—“and you don’t think much about the future.”

“I—” I’m caught between relief that Rafe isn’t ending things and the sudden choking anxiety that his words bring. I guess it’s true that I don’t think about the future much. I’ve never had anything to look forward to, so there didn’t seem much point. Lately, though….

“I… um. We can go to dinner at your family’s. I—that sounds good, okay?” That’s what he wants, right? And it wouldn’t be in public where anyone could see. I can give him that if it means things will stop being so awkward.

He nods, but he doesn’t look happy. “Okay. I’d like that.”

He’s clearly waiting for something more, but I don’t know how to make promises about the future. Not when, for the first time, the present finally feels almost… okay.

“I don’t—I don’t know what you want me to say,” I mumble.

Rafe shakes his head. “I don’t know either.”

“I… I don’t want to tell them,” I choke out. Because that’s what he really means, isn’t it? Even if he says it’s not the point. I think about what I told Anders when he came to the shop. About how his personal shit is no one’s business and how it’s not worth making your life miserable just to tell people about it.

“I’m not asking you to do that,” Rafe says sternly. “I’ve never asked for that. It’s your family and your decision.”

“Okay, so then….”

“All I mean is, there’s a huge part of you that’s a secret to all the people you care about. And that means you can’t think about what the future will be like. You’re suspended in the present. Getting through each day without anyone finding out about you. Running hard enough that you feel okay. Drinking enough that you forget about the world long enough to fall asleep and wake up to a new day. Only it’s the same thing then, too.”

My life in his words makes me want to puke. Because he’s right: that’s how I feel most of the time. But… not when I’m with him.

“And I understand that. Truly.” He brushes his thumb over my lips. “It’s how I got clean. You need to focus only on the present moment so you
can
get through it. But… that’s not where I am anymore. I’ve already gotten through enough days. It’s all I did for so long. And now… I try to work
toward
things instead. Build things. With social justice work, with YA. It’s what I need to do. And it’s… it’s what I want for us.”

I pull away from him as anger shoots through me.
Now
he tells me these things? I feel like I just spent months building an entire car out of scraps and Rafe is now telling me that he wants me to build a truck instead.

It’s taken me a long fucking time to admit to myself that I want him. That I want him in my life, in my house, in my bed. And he’s saying, what? That those things don’t matter because I haven’t thought about going on vacation with him? What the fuck? I want to hit him.

“So, what? What do you want me to do? What do you want me to be working toward?”

“I don’t know, babe,” he says, his voice infuriatingly calm. “Only you can answer that.”

“What the hell, Rafe! Are you a fortune cookie or something? I—you—we—what the fuck do you want from me?” I’m yelling and he’s still, watching me impassively. “I’ve already—fuck!—I’ve already let you do everything to me. What else can I do?”

He’s up like a shot, fury I’ve never seen blazing in his expression. “Stop right there. I haven’t done anything that you didn’t want. I would
never
!” He looks offended. Outraged. Like he cares more about seeming beyond reproach than about what I’m actually saying.

It’s like the anxiety and anger and uncertainty that have been hanging over us boil over, and I’m utterly furious with him. The kind of furious that usually ends with me punching the shit out of someone.

“Oh yeah, I know,” I spit out. “Saint Rafe would never do anything wrong. You just want to make the world a better place.”

Rafe’s expression is ice, his fists clenched.

“I have done things wrong. Things I can’t ever take back. Things I wake up with every day and go to sleep with every night. Don’t you dare judge me for what I do to try and live with them.”

“And you feel so fucking guilty that you’d do anything to atone for it,” I snarl at him. “All your projects and your soup kitchens! You work so hard to make the world a better place for everyone else but you don’t even care about living in it. And now you’re too scared to ever break the rules, even when it would help Anders.”

Fuck, where did that come from? Rafe’s mouth falls open and still I don’t stop. I’m all twisted up inside and I just want to hurt him.

“You don’t think you deserve to just be happy and you want me to—I don’t know—be your next cause. Well, I’m not one of your fucking projects, okay? So, don’t treat this”—I gesture between us—“whatever it is—like we’re going to have committee meetings or whatever the hell you guys spend your time doing.”

I’m shaky with the same poison I felt every time I hurt Daniel. I’d try to hold back the tide, but then I’d see a glimmer of something vulnerable—hope or faith that this time I’d do the right thing. And in that instant of knowing for a fact how truly misplaced that hope was, how it made me responsible for him when I didn’t want to be, I’d strike the killing blow and the poison would flow through me. I’d hate myself for hurting him, but more, I’d hate him for letting me do it. For making me into a monster who hurts everyone I come in contact with.

I want Rafe to take a swing at me so I’ll stop. Or so I can hit him back. But he just stands there glowering and vibrating with a punch he doesn’t throw.

I can’t stop. I never can.

“But, hell, maybe that’s why you’re here in the first place, huh? Right? You took one look at me and thought, ‘Hey, there’s my cause of the month. I guess I should hook up with him and fuck him happy!’”

Rafe’s face is completely shut down but his eyes burn with something I hardly recognize and I’m careening right toward it.

“Is that it, Rafe? You want to fix me? You always said you wanted to be like Javier. Is that what you’re doing? You want to be my sponsor? Turn me into someone you can point at and say, ‘I did that’?”

Rafe hisses and I know I’m so far over the line I can’t even see it. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. I’m spitting mad but my face is white.

Rafe steps right up to me and he’s shaking, his quiet words cutting deeper than any yell.

“Don’t talk about him,” he says, and for the first time, I can see the man he might have been. Dangerous, menacing, cold. I can see him choose to control himself, but it’s clear he could’ve gone the other way.

I wish he would. I wish he would hit me, shove me, do anything to me. Anything would be better than this distance, this cold. He’s looking at me like we don’t even know each other.

“You,” he says, “are lying to yourself if you think you’re living in the world. You’re barely making it through. You know what you want but you’re too scared to go after it. You think being gay is what makes you weak?” He shakes his head, and there’s pity in his face. “Living a lie when you don’t have to. Acting like you’re the only one affected by your decisions. Those are the things that make you weak. It’s just fear.”

Something shifts in Rafe’s face. He lets go of something, or… or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.

“You know what you’re really scared of, though? You’re afraid of what will happen once you don’t have a secret to hide behind anymore. Once you’re just you. Strip away your fear and what’s left? I don’t think you even know.”

My heart is beating so hard that I feel like I’m going to pass out. I know now that I’ve been waiting for this moment since I realized how much I wanted him. The moment when he figured out what a waste of time it is for him to be with me because I’m fucking nothing.

“Fuck you,” I bite out, the response automatic.

Rafe nods once, like he wasn’t expecting anything more, and it hits me like a sonic boom. His total dismissal. But when he walks out—when he leaves me standing in the middle of my immaculate living room feeling like the fucking walls are coming down and the blackness beyond them is swallowing me whole—the sound of the door shutting behind him is almost silent.

WORK IS
just like it was yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. And I don’t care anymore. I try to lose myself in the vehicles. Distract myself by picturing their beautiful circulatory systems. The way each piece has a job to do. How every system is necessary to keep things running smoothly. But I’m just going through the motions. Waiting for something that might snap me out of this fog. Everything Brian, Sam, and Pop say pisses me off, and I’ve been walking around with my fists clenched in a constant state of readiness to fight during the two weeks since Rafe walked out my door. I feel like I’m sixteen again.

This morning I woke from smothering dreams, still half drunk, the sheets twisted and sticking to me with sweat, and I dragged myself up to run. The sidewalks were cracked, the remains of the snowfall a few days ago hiding dangerous uneven patches that can turn an ankle. I felt heavy, my legs useless like in dreams where I’m being chased—as if the pavement is quicksand, sucking my feet down no matter how hard I try to propel myself forward. I cut over to the track behind my old high school, shut down three years ago in budget cuts. The track’s just dirt now, really, but I didn’t trust myself to pay attention running around the neighborhood.

I zoned out as I ran, but the second I stopped, everything slammed back into me like the nasty return of punching bag when your head’s turned. My legs were shaky and weak, my stomach roiling, and my ears numb with cold.