Have A Little Faith In Me (19 page)

Dex laughed despite himself.  Charlotte looked at him.  “You think that’s funny?”

He shrugged.  “It’s a funny line, isn’t it?  ‘Agreeing with the weather’?”

She grabbed the remote and turned off the TV.  “What he said about his father.  That was terrible.  Nobody should talk about their parents that way.”

Dex didn’t reply.  Charlotte had plenty to say about her own parents, their smothering controlling domineering ways.  But that was the Southern Code, wasn’t it?  All the true things you could never say…in public. 

He got up and went to the kitchen.

“You’re not having another drink, are you?”

Dex gritted his teeth.  Why did she have to do that?  He hated that – a statement, a command, tagged at the end with a question mark, as if it was really his decision. 

“I’m not gonna
not
have another drink,” he retorted.

He needed another, and probably another after that, to blot out the image in his head.  Rocky, his handsome face and the magnificent rage that had only made it handsomer… His blistering sarcastic denunciation of Dex, of his father, of everything…

Of everything that makes me miserable
, Dex thought. 
Of all this fucking bullshit that I’m living my life for.  The whole script, not editable, infallible…

He and Charlotte were engaged now.  He’d put it off as long as he could, but finally the clamor from “Who’s Pregnant” magazine and its ilk had forced the issue.  “CHARLOTTE IN TEARS:  WHY WON’T DEX PROPOSE?  THE SECRET OF HIS TRAGIC LOST LOVE!”

That one really made Dex crack up.  Then cry, a little.  If only they knew the real secret of his Tragic Lost Love.

Charlotte followed him into the kitchen.  “I say you gotta do it.”

His hand froze with his glass halfway to his mouth.  He turned around.  “What?”

“The duet.  I say you do it.”

“Why?”

“If you don’t do it, everyone’s going to say you’re homophobic, it’s gonna be a big deal.”

“Well, aren’t we?  Homophobic?  But that’s the thing, isn’t it.  We just can’t be sayin’ that out loud.”

She pounced.  “What they’re saying is that if you’re scared, it’s because you’re gay.  You’re afraid to be in the same room with him.  And I know you’re not gay, Dex.”

That damn sentence construction of hers again.  This time, a question in the form of a statement. 

He looked at her.  Her face was certain of the statement, but her eyes asked the question.  They’d been having sex for a while now, since the engagement.  But less and less often, and it had never been good sex,  What they’d first written off as initial awkwardness had never turned into comfort, or pleasure, but had instead devolved into a joyless exercise.  Now they both found reasons to put it off longer and longer each time. 

He’d had a dream the night before.  He was onstage, by himself.  But there was no audience in the seats.  Instead they were standing in the wings, holding scripts.  And every time he tried to say something, they stopped him, whispering from the wings, giving him his new cue, his next lines. 

The script.  “When you gettin’ engaged?”  Then when he hit his mark there, “When you gettin’ married?”  Then when would they have a kid, then when would they have another…

Alex.  Thoughts of “the script” brought back memories of his friend, his first love.  His only love. 

The only person he could ever talk to honestly about anything.  The only person he could think of to talk to now.

“Yeah,” Dex said, knocking back his drink.  “We all know I’m not gay.”

It hadn’t taken much detective work to find Alex again.  Dex had deleted every text, every email, that Alex had ever sent him, but in the Age of Facebook, nobody was hard to find.  He sent Alex a message.

Sorry I’ve been blowing you off for, you know, forever.  I really need to talk to you.  I can come down to Chapel Hill and see you, if that’s okay.

The response took an agonizing two hours.  Dex went through the whole cycle of hope and despair over and over until then. 
He’s done with me, I’m an asshole, I should have left the past in the past…maybe he’s at work, maybe he’s asleep…
He felt like a fucking teenage girl.

Then he got the response. 
Dude!  All is forgive
n
  come on down and see us!

His heart soared and crashed in two seconds.  Who was “us”?  He looked at Alex’s profile.  Alex wasn’t single – he’d gotten married.  A guy named Matt.  Dex scrolled through the timeline.  There they were, the two of them, in their most recent travel photos, from a jaunt through Europe just this summer.  The two of them on a bridge in Paris, smiling, luminous – Alex, and his husband, a big tall dude…

Who looked exactly like Dex’s twin brother.

The sobs grabbed him like a muscle cramp, hard and sharp and painful with no external cause.  For one moment the Wall was gone, the Wall he’d built every day since he’d fallen in love with Alex.  The Wall that Pastor Panko had helped him construct, and fortify, that the whole world, the motherfucking
script,
had reinforced ever day. 

It was gone because that photo had created a tear in the fabric of the universe.  Ripped open a portal into an alternate universe in which, instead, Dex hadn’t built the Wall.  Hadn’t worked from the script.  A universe in which he’d gone to Athens and lived with Alex and made a life with him.  In which it was
Dex
who had his arm around Alex, smiling on a bridge in Paris while a stranger took a photo of the two of them, deliriously happy.

He picked up the phone.  “Hello, NetJets?  I need a plane to Chapel Hill.  Yeah, now please.”

Dex didn’t need to look at the address to know that it was Alex’s house.  He smiled, looking at the shabby Victorian house, almost identical to the one Alex had grown up in, the one in which he’d spent so many good times with his friend.

Alex must have been looking for the cab, because he came out onto the porch before Dex had time to get up the path.  Alex ran towards him, grinning ear to ear.

“Dude!  At last!”  He hugged Dex, hard, and Dex instinctively hugged him back.  It was like an electric shock, to feel him again, to hold a man again.  He thought of the last time they’d hugged, on the eve of Katrina…

Too late now,
he reminded himself, looking over Alex’s shoulder at the smiling man on the porch.  Dex’s twin.

Alex pulled back, saw Dex looking at Matt, and gave him a wry grin.  “Guess I’ve got a type, huh?”

Dex laughed.  “Seems so.”

Matt shook his hand, a clear bright happy look on his face.  “Dex,” he said, his North Carolina accent strong, “I’m so glad to meet you.  Alex has told me so much about you.  I’m late for a rehearsal, but I had to stay long enough to say hello.  I know you two have a lot of catching up to do!” 

He kissed Alex, just a peck on the lips, and Dex died a little inside as he saw the light in Alex’s face, the adoration, the gratitude.  The love.  Alex could barely take his eyes off his husband as he got in the car, waved, and drove away.

“Matt’s a professor at UNC,” Alex explained.  “Theater department.  Come on, I’ve got some iced tea ready.”

“Ah, thanks,” Dex said, sitting in one of the rattan chairs on the porch.  “What about you, you’re a music teacher, I think I saw on Facebook?”  The iced tea pitcher was sweating on the table between the two chairs.  There was a love seat, too, which Dex was pretty sure was where the two men spent their evenings.

“Yeah,” Alex said, pouring their tea.  “High school.  I still get mistaken for a student there, too.”

Dex laughed.  It was true, Alex was one of those boyish-looking men, who didn’t really age.  The Michael J. Fox type, ever-youthful.  He wondered how much older he looked to Alex.

“So you didn’t leave the South, after all.”

“No… I was hellbent on it, you know.  But then I met Matt.  He’s a southern boy all the way.  And this is a good town, you know.  It’s North Carolina but it’s like…like Austin in Texas, kind of like a mysterious island.”

“Yeah.  Not so bad, huh?”

“And you?  I saw in the news that you’re engaged.”

Dex looked down at the slats in the porch, wishing he could just slip between them, down in to the cool darkness.  “Yeah.  I…”

He shook his head, laughed.  “You know, this is weird.  It’s like… ‘The Christmas Carol,’ and all this…this is the ghost of Christmas future.  What it was supposed to be like.  If I’d just gone to Athens to be with you.”

Alex’s face was torn between sympathy for Dex and a memory of his own pain.  “Yeah.  I’m not gonna lie to you.  It hurt, dude.  A lot.  When you never came.  Not even to visit.  When you didn’t answer my calls or my texts or anything…” 

He laughed, and opened the table’s cabinet door.  He pulled out a bottle of Jack Daniels and poured a generous shot into each of their glasses.  Dex took a deep, grateful swallow, and tilted his glass back for a refill.

“I know.  I’m so sorry.  And…you know, more days than not anymore, I wake up and I think to myself, What did I do it for?  What was the point?”

“You did it for your family.  So they could have a roof over their head.  I get that.”

“Right, yeah, true.  But why am I doing it now?  I’ve got money, my family has…everything.  So why…” 

He paused, drank some more.  “I keep thinking about what you said, back then, about The Script.  The whole life that’s already been lived for you, the one you’re just supposed to copy step by step, like a recipe.  The one I thought I avoided by not being ‘The Angel of Biloxi.’ 

“And… I don’t want to be in this movie anymore.  I wanna be done.  I wanted to see you because…because I’m sorry, I’m so sorry I blew you off all this time.  I’ve been so scared.  And now, I’ve…I’ve met someone and, well, not really, but I’ve got these crazy feelings for him…”

“Rocky.  I saw the video,” Alex smiled.  “We saw it.  Matt’s first words were, ‘Your old flame’s got a new boyfriend.’”

They both laughed at that, clinked glasses, and Alex poured more tea and Jack.

“No, I don’t.  He hates me.  He hates everything I represent.”

“So do you, now.”

Dex was stunned.  It was true.  “Yeah.  I do.  I can’t live like this much longer.”

“Look,” his friend said kindly.  “No matter what, you need to break off this engagement with Charlotte Deakins.  No matter what else you do or don’t do, don’t string her along.  Don’t ruin her life.”

Dex nodded.  “You’re right.  I shouldn’t ruin two lives.  And I know what else I gotta do, too.”  He pulled out his phone and pressed a speed dial number.

“Sam.  It’s Dex.  Set up the duet.  Let’s do it.”

The tension in the recording studio was palpable.  Rocky knew it was his fault.  It was his anger, his drama, that was making this hard on everyone.

Dex had been so nice to him, so…friendly.  Sure he had.  Just like…just like Nico.  In the early days.  Before he ran away. 

They hadn’t agreed on a song, right up to the minute the recording studio was booked, and the producer was on the clock.  Given that situation, Mac the producer’s idea had been to just…freestyle it, throw shit out there and see what sticks. 

An hour later, nothing had passed muster with Rocky.  Everything was either a romantic duet, or a buddy song, or…something that he and Dex weren’t. 

The two of them had scrolled through the web along with Mac and Korey, looking for songs.  “Here’s a good one,” Dex smiled.  “Freddie Mercury and Bowie.”

Rocky laughed. “‘Under Pressure.’  That’s appropriate, anyway.  I guess I’d be Freddie.”

Korey nodded.  “It’s a good song.  Let’s…”

Rocky shook his head.  “No.  That’s not it.” He couldn’t say why, he just…didn’t want to agree with anything Dex said, maybe.

Dex scratched his head.  “Well, shit, we might as well be fuckin’ Donny and Marie.  Sing ‘I’m a little bit country…’”

“‘I’m a little bit rock and roll?’ Seriously?”

Rocky regretted the scorn instantly.  It was…unprofessional.  But he didn’t want to be here.  Didn’t want to do this.  Wanted to be…somewhere, anywhere, he didn’t know, but not here, making nice with…this closet case. With someone who represented everything his fucking father upheld as the way Rocky should have lived his own life.

“Let’s, uh, let’s take a break,” Mac the producer said.  “Fifteen minutes, everyone.”

Rocky went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, his hands shaking.  Being next to Dex, sharing the space around the monitor, had been unnerving.  He was so
warm,
his body heat tangible to Rocky.  He was so gorgeous, so big, so tall, so…

“So straight,” he said aloud.  He looked in the mirror.  Slapped himself.  “SO straight.”  He mocked Dex’s accent.  “‘I disagree with that lifestyle.’  Shit.  Fucker.”

He took the stairs to the roof, the cool night air and the sounds of New York City a balm to him.  He fired up the joint he’d brought along for just such an emergency.  He took a long hit , blew it out, and sighed.

“Sorry,” Dex said, startling him.  “I’ll just…” he waved at the stairs.

“No,” Rocky said.  “You don’t have to go because of me.”

Dex nodded.  “Okay.  I’ll, um, stay on the other side, or something.”

Rocky laughed, the THC hitting his brain, relaxing him, pushing up his levels of happy chemicals.  “Here,” he said, extending the joint as a peace offering.

Dex took it, to Rocky’s surprise, and hit it hard, clenching his face to keep from coughing.

“Thanks.  Look, you know, this isn’t working.  I know it’s bad press and shit to not do it now, but… I guess I don’t care much about that anymore,” Dex said, looking off into the distance, his mind clearly on something else.

Rocky finally bent.  “I’m sorry.  It’s me.  I…”  The weed freeing his tongue, he decided he’d just…say it.  “You’re everything I hate.  You’re the South, you’re homophobia, you’re religion.”

“I know,” Dex said.  “Sometimes I’m everything I hate, too.”

Rocky blinked, shocked. 

Dex sat down, wrapped his arms around his knees.  “Do you ever feel like there’s a script?  Like it’s all been written down for you and all you can do is just…read your lines?”

“Even if it’s the wrong part for you,” Rocky said, nodding.  “Like predestination.”

“Sort of.  But it’s not that, because you gotta…you gotta cooperate.  You can choose.  But also, you can’t, because everything around you that’s made you, well, you, is pushing you there.”  He paused.  “I envy you.”

“For what?”

“For…everything.  For not doing a deal with a big label.  For singing what you want to sing.  For being…who you are, and not…not giving a shit what people think!”

Rocky laughed.  “I do give a shit, though.  I’m always…I’m always worrying about what the wrong people think.  Thinking I can change them.  That this time it’ll be different.”

“Do you read a lot?”

“Yeah.”

“Ever read ‘A Visit from the Goon Squad’?”

“Yeah.  I wouldn’t think… I mean…”

“That the guy who sings about beer would read literary fiction?  It’s okay.  When I was in high school, I used to hide books inside copies of Guns and Ammo.  Remember early on in the book, what she does with some of the characters?  Just…out of the blue she finishes their story by narrating the rest of their lives in a paragraph.”

“The safari scene.  Who dies violently years later, who joins a cult, who becomes a cokehead.  Who gets married and divorced and married again, all the way down the timeline.”

“Yeah.  I never forgot that.  I sometimes feel like that, you know.  Or Harold Crick in…”

“‘Stranger than Fiction.’”  Rocky felt guilty now. “I’m sorry I thought you were a dumb hick.”

Dex shrugged.  “That’s what they told me to be.  That’s what I’ve sold myself as, all these years.”

“That Belle and Sebastian song you did,” Rocky recalled.  “That was…ballsy.”

“My little act of rebellion.  Man, you shoulda seen the comments on my Facebook page.  ‘R U Gay?’”

Rocky laughed.  “Right.”  He took another hit and handed the joint to Dex.

“You know, the thing is…” Dex said, exhaling a huge cloud.  “I am.  Gay.  There.  I said it.”

“You…”  Rocky was stunned.  He’d known it, sworn it was true, but to hear Dex just…say it?

“Yeah.  I’m breaking my engagement off in a couple days.  After I tell my family.  Get them ready for the coming shitstorm.”  He shrugged.  “So it really doesn’t matter if we do this duet, because my career’s over anyway.”

“Holy shit.”  He looked at Dex.  Something broke.  All the attraction he’d held back, all the desire, knowing it would only end up in pain and sorrow.  Could this be it?  The first time he actually had feelings for someone who…

But it didn’t matter, did it?  Dex didn’t want him, did he.  He could be gay but he still wasn’t the man for Rocky.

Rocky started to sing.  “‘You and me, we come from different worlds…’”

“‘You say poTAYto, I say poTAHto.’”

“That’s it!  ‘Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off’!  That’s the fucking duet!”

Dex laughed.  “Yeah.  Fuck yeah.  That’s perfect!”  He grabbed Rocky and hugged him.

Rocky gasped.  This was a friendly hug, a happy hug, a celebratory hug.  Right?  Nothing but that.  So why didn’t he pull away, like he’d done on the stage that night?  Why did he hold on for dear life.

It’s that extra second, you know.  One beat longer than being civil requires.  The one beat that says, don’t let go.

Dex only pulled back far enough to see Rocky’s face.  Rocky could see from the look on Dex’s face that his own yearning was mirrored there, the longing he couldn’t mask anymore. 

But he saw more.  He saw a longing that, for once, finally, was not just reflected, but returned.

Dex kissed him.  Rocky’s lips parted.  Dex’s stubble scraped at Rocky’s smooth chin.  Dex’s grip on him tightened.  A lover, a lifeboat.

Their hands moved, to the places they’d looked at on each other and dreamed of touching.  Dex’s hands in Rocky’s curly hair, Rocky’s hands measuring the dimensions of Dex’s broad back. 

Dex pushed him back, up against the door to the stairwell.  There was a look in his eyes, of wonder.  Discovery.  The New World.

Rocky turned his head, tilted it back, presented his neck.  Dex took it, kissing it, tonguing it, stroking it with his massive paw.  The calluses on his fingers, from countless hours of playing guitar, hard and familiar.  Rocky’s calluses on his smaller, more delicate hands, returned the signals as they lifted the back of Dex’s shirt to touch his hot smooth skin. 

Heavy breaths from both men, excitement but more than that.  A stone, a boulder, in each of their guts, alchemically transformed into something lighter than air, and released from the body at last.

Dex ground his erection against Rocky’s belly, the foot of height he had on the smaller man making it an unfair fight.  A fight Rocky wanted to lose.  It was like another hand caressing him.  He touched it.

Dex gasped.  “Oh shit…”

Rocky wanted it like nothing else ever.  He reached to undo Dex’s belt.

“No,” Dex whispered.  “Not here.  Not like this.  I want you in a bed.  Where I can spread you out and fuck you all night.  I mean, if you like getting…”

“Yeah.  I do.  I love getting.”

Dex laughed.  “Okay then.  Let’s go.  Let’s go fuck.”

Rocky grabbed his hand.  Smiled.  “You’re forgetting something.”

The studio was silent.  “Ummm…” Mac ventured.  “That was…”

“Fantastic,” Korey said.  “But, we’re gonna need a retake.  You didn’t change the lyrics, at the beginning.  You know, you guys sang ‘Things have come to a pretty pass, our romance is growing flat…’  You wanna change that to ‘our friendship,’ so…”

“No,” Rocky said, beaming at Dex.  “We don’t.  Do we?”

Dex grinned back at him, like Rocky’s personal Sun God.  “No.  Don’t change a thing.”

They stood outside the studio, reluctant to part. 

“I want this.  We’re gonna do it.  But…I’ve got to get my shit together.  Before it’s you and me, together, I wanna…I wanna settle my shit.  I got to break off my engagement and get my family ready and...”

“But you’re gay,” Rocky said, wanting, needing, reassurance.

“Yeah. G. A. Y.  And I think…fuck, it’s too early to say the L word, ain’t it?  I mean, really, we just met.”

Rocky laughed.  “You don’t believe in love at first sight?  I fell in love with you the night I met you.  Which really fucking pissed me off.”

“Yeah.  I guess I knew that night that shit wasn’t…couldn’t stay the same.  When I was singing ‘Walking after Midnight,’ I was thinking about…Well, shit I fucked up.”

“Me too.  Now it’s time to unfuck shit up, right?”

“Right.”

Rocky nodded.  “Yeah.  I’ve got some loose ends of my own to tie up.”