He shrugs. “It’s your eviction.”
I lead him out of the living room into the hallway, pausing to set the music box on top of Laurie’s dresser. I grind my teeth, frustrated that I’m doing it again. Self-sabotage as a defense mechanism never ends well.
It doesn’t help that Stephen is passing all my tests. It happened with him yesterday too. I’d kept my testing light—but it was still testing. When I mentioned Laurie and drag in the same sentence, Stephen didn’t so much as flinch. And bringing up Sean and Laurie together is a non-issue for Stephen too.
I couldn’t bear it if he was one of them. The ones who try to not make a face but inevitably do. The ones who shrug and say, “I don’t care what they do, but I don’t want to hear about it.” The ones who whisper behind your back, who make excuses when you mention they don’t spend time with you anymore.
My last boyfriend turned out to be one of them. Watching that relationship fizzle out wasn’t any sort of epic tragedy. It would have died on its own anyway. His reaction to my brother was just a catalyst, speeding its demise.
I rarely think about Robbie these days, but when I linger outside my bedroom door, I know why I am now, though I’d rather not admit it. Association bites. But I can’t deny that these skittering feelings, the creep of heat up my neck paired with fluttering in my stomach—all signs of a blossoming crush—last appeared when I crashed into Robbie while carrying an armload of supplies into the art room at our high school. I swore till I couldn’t breathe and he laughed. A week later we were dating. Two months later I was screaming at him in the school parking lot while our classmates watched, whispered, and snickered.
“This is my room,” I say. “Do you want to see it?” I worry I am being too pushy, that I should ask if he wants to watch a movie in the living room, but I want him to see me, and me is my room.
“If you’d like to show me,” he says.
I take a breath and go inside. Despite all my pre-planning of the unpacking-with-Stephen event, I didn’t work a bedroom cleanup into that scheme. The remnants of my restless night of non-creation are still scattered across my bed. My pajamas are hanging from the chair at my desk. A basket full of clean clothes waits to be folded.
“Oh,” I say, and go to clear the paper and charcoals from my bed. I shove everything into my art case and slide it back under the bed. “Sorry about the mess.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “At least it doesn’t smell.”
I sit on the bed, patting the rumpled blanket next to me.
He settles near me, not close enough to touch. Somehow a mallet has landed in my chest and is now pounding on my rib cage. I want to run my fingers along his forearm, from elbow to wrist, and then clasp his hand in my own. But there’s something I have to do first. I have to get past my own fear.
“I hate to do this,” I say. “But after yesterday—when I told you there’s something here, I meant it.”
“I know you did.” He rests his fingers lightly on mine.
I flip my hand over, curling my fingers around his. “But I have some baggage to deal with.”
“More unpacking?” He smiles slowly.
“Of a different sort.” I lean back on my elbows and I’m sorry when my hand slips from his, but I have to focus if I’m going to get through this. When he’s touching me, it’s hard to think about anything else.
He bends forward, resting his arms on his legs. His voice gets rough. “Do you have a boyfriend back in Minnesota?”
I’m startled and it makes me laugh nervously, especially because I’d just been thinking about Robbie.
“Just a lame-ass ex-boyfriend. He claimed rebuilding motorcycles was his calling,” I say. “But I never saw him get near a bike, and I’m pretty sure if I set out a crescent wrench, a socket wrench, and a hammer, he wouldn’t be able to tell me which was which. Well, maybe the hammer.”
I’m relieved when he laughs. “But no strings attached?”
“I cut those strings in April,” I say.
“So where are the bags?” he asks.
I’m uneasy again, beginning to wish I hadn’t brought this up. “You asked why we left.”
“Heavy baggage?” he says.
I press my lips together, exhaling slowly through my nose. “Yes.”
“Then you should tell me. It’s more evidence of progress.” He says it so calmly that I almost curl into a ball, wanting to rest my head in his lap. Instead I twist my fingers in the blankets.
“We moved because of Laurie.”
He doesn’t respond, just leans in, listening.
“My brother is gay.”
Again, nothing. He doesn’t blink, doesn’t move, just listens. When I don’t speak again, he seems to decide I need something. He nods.
“This spring, six assholes at my school jumped him.” My voice starts to shake. I can’t remember the last time I talked about what happened. “Baseball team hazing, they said. Hate crime is more like it.”
I’m starting to feel dizzy. My stomach twists and I sit up.
“How badly was he hurt?”
“Broken jaw, broken collarbone, broken ribs, broken arm.” I clutch the edge of the bed. “They had bats.”
I hear him draw a sharp breath.
“He was in the hospital for weeks,” I say.
“That must have been horrible,” he says.
“It was. But considering Laurie was the one with all the broken bones, he took it better than the rest of us. He’s always been our family cheerleader. But my mom and dad fell apart. Dad didn’t take it well when Laurie first came out, but . . . what Dad did next none of us saw coming. He blamed Laurie for the assault, talked nonstop about how Laurie must have provoked them, said that they were ‘good boys’ and we shouldn’t press charges. Mom went ballistic.”
“I assumed your parents were divorced,” Stephen says. “Since you moved here with just your mom.”
“They will be when all the paperwork goes through,” I tell him. “My dad’s family is conservative, but he always claimed to be the liberal of the bunch. We didn’t spend much time with that side of the family. But I guess his liberalism only stretched so far before it broke.”
Stephen’s shaking his head. “I’m so sorry.”