If You Really Love Me (12 page)

I keep my voice quiet too. “No, sir.” Somehow, that admission feels like a betrayal of Saul, so I add, “But he probably knew I didn’t want anything.”

“I see.” He sits down in the chair where I put my jacket. “Saul doesn’t usually talk very much to his mother or me, which is typical of teenagers, I suppose. His brother wasn’t like that, thank God.” Something about him seems very friendly and easygoing. “But he’s told us quite a bit about you. He only does that when he likes someone. In fact, he’s told us you guys are in love with each other.”

Again, I am stunned speechless. Saul and I haven’t said the L word to each other since that afternoon we had sex in my room. We’ve fooled around a lot after that, but the circumstances haven’t been right for us to have full sex again. Not yet.

Mr. Brooks is studying my face carefully. “You seem a bit surprised, Ellis. Is this news to you? Has Saul never told you how he feels about you?”

“Yes, sir, he has.” Maybe some people only feel love when there’s sex involved. But that’s not Saul or me. I know we love each other, sex or no sex.

“I hate to ask such personal questions when we’ve just met, but do you have feelings for Saul?”

“Yes, I do.”

“You love him?”

I don’t even have to take a moment to consider my feelings. “Yes, sir. Definitely.”

“Ellis, emotions can be tricky when you’re so young. Kids fall in and out of ‘love’ at the drop of a hat.”

My phys ed teacher said something like that way back in eighth grade, how kids can have mood swings because of all the changes in their hormones and stuff. I know what Mr. Brooks is saying, and I know what he’s saying doesn’t apply to me now. “This isn’t like that, sir. I really love Saul.”

His eyes seem to bulge with doubt. “After only two months, you’re sure of that?”

His doubt makes me angry. “
Yes, sir.
”

Mr. Brooks settles back in the chair. He looks tired suddenly. “Saul is not well. Has he told you that?”

A little tingle of fear goes through my chest. “What do you mean?”

“Has he done anything that makes you… uncomfortable? That makes you feel he’s smothering you, staying too close?”

Okay. This man is officially starting to creep me out. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What I mean, Ellis, is that Saul has become obsessed with you.” He gets up, grabs the books off the desk, and brings them over to me. He flips open the books. On the inside cover of both books, I see my name. Just my name, written over and over again in Saul’s neat block printing. My name in lines and columns, covering every inch of blank space.

It’s so sweet. No one has ever liked me this way. He thinks about me. This proves that I actually matter to him. That brings a smile to my face.

Mr. Brooks sighs. He seems to know exactly what I’m thinking. “You may believe this behavior is cute. It is
not
cute.” He closes the books and returns them to the desk. “When he’s not writing your name over and over or talking about you, he’s staring at your picture on his iPad. I’m sure he’s texting you every five minutes. I’m surprised he doesn’t call you up and keep you on the phone for hours at a time.”

“I don’t have a phone.” Saul can’t text me, but he does leave lots of notes in my locker. I keep every one of them, and they have filled up a whole grocery bag, which I keep under my bed. He shows up a lot between classes, just so we can smile at each other or exchange a few words, even though our schedules send us to opposite sides of the building most of the day. I’ve never thought about it before, but that
has
to make him late for some of his classes.

“Ah. No phone. That explains it.” Mr. Brooks nods grimly. He sits down in the chair and leans forward, staring into my eyes. “Ellis, do you know what obsessive-compulsive disorder is?”

“No, sir.” But the words bring a bigger rush of fear to my chest.

“Saul has been diagnosed with the condition. He’s controlled by his thoughts and impulses, and that makes him take ordinary things to an extreme. By now, you should know that Saul is into bodybuilding. When done right, exercise is a very healthy activity. Bodybuilding requires a respite between sessions because it works by tearing down the muscles. The muscles need time to recover. Saul knows he should only lift weights every other day. But his mind compels him to work out three times a day, every day. That’s harmful to his body.”

“But he looks so strong….”

“Strong doesn’t necessarily equal healthy. Saul works out so hard and so much it dehydrates his body. He not only loses fluid, he loses electrolytes, and that can make him very sick. He can die from it. He knows how worried his mother and I are about the workouts. He wears oversized clothes trying to hide the fact, but we can see how big his body is getting. After workouts, he becomes obsessed with cleaning his body. That means he showers three times a day. And, as you may have noticed, he is also obsessed with the number three. There are certain things he feels he must do in sets or multiples of three. None of this is healthy behavior, and it is ruining his life.”

Now I’m so afraid, I can only sit here and blink stupidly at this man. This man who speaks so calmly while his eyes are burning with anxiety and my heart is jumping for my throat.

“His mother and I tried cutting off his allowance so he wouldn’t be able to pay for his YMCA membership. We instructed the school that he was not allowed to use the gym there except as part of a class. He stopped participating in all of his classes and let his grades drop to zero until we allowed him to reinstate his Y membership. We have tried to get him in therapy. We make appointments for him, and he doesn’t keep them. If we take him to the doctor’s office, he sits through the entire session without saying a word. We have grounded him, taken away his privileges, done everything we can think of to get him to accept treatment. None of it worked. The only other option is to have him committed. I don’t want to do that to him, not at a point where he has to make so many crucial decisions about his life, but I may soon have no other choice.”

“Why won’t he let the doctor help him?”

Mr. Brooks sighs. “I can’t pretend to understand exactly how his mind works. He seems to have come up with a system to justify his actions. If he can steal three things from different stores without getting caught, or upset a teacher three times without getting suspended, or break three traffic laws without getting a ticket, that means it’s okay for him to do three workouts that day. When it comes to you, one of the things he talks most about is his doubt about your feelings for him and his fear that you will leave him. He worries whether he is good enough for you.”

“Good enough for me? But why would he wonder about that? I love—”

Mr. Brooks raises a hand, cutting me off. He takes a quick, worried glance at the bathroom door, beyond which the shower is still going loudly. “There’s not much time. I don’t want Saul to find me here talking to you. Here’s why I’m telling you all this. Saul has skipped Thanksgiving and Hanukkah with his family to be with you. We don’t observe the religious aspect of Christmas, but we set aside the day to be with each other as a family. Saul has announced he won’t be here for that this year because he intends to spend the day with you. For whatever reason, you mean a lot to my son. Guys your age are full of juice—forgive my crudeness—and some of you just want to spread it around as much as you can. I don’t know what kind of person you are. But if you are seeing other guys, if you’re not ready for a relationship with someone who is facing a very difficult challenge, if you’re going to dump Saul, do it now, when he can handle it better. Don’t let him get more deeply involved with you, because if you dump him then, I’m afraid it will destroy him completely.”

The sound of the shower stops. Mr. Brooks gets up and hurries quietly from the room, closing the door softly. I’m sitting on the bed, frozen, with the feeling that a bomb has just gone off in my face. It’s sort of like the room is spinning around me and all the air is being sucked out of the place. I lean forward, head down, taking deep breaths and blowing them out. In another minute, I’m going to break down and cry. I can feel it.

The bathroom door opens, and I look up. Saul is standing there completely naked, rubbing a thick bath towel over his hair, looking at me with eyes full of apology and insecurity. He is actually bigger than the first time he showed me his bare body. I can see that now. His physique looks so amazingly good and hot. He could probably break my bones if he squeezed me in those huge arms. But with all his size and strength, there is something about him right now that is like a lost little boy who needs a hug. “You’re still here,” he says in this amazed voice.

“Yeah.”

“Sorry I took so long.” He pulls the towel away from his head. His hair is slicked to his scalp and still dripping water down his neck. His body is still wet in spots. He obviously toweled off in a hurry. “Sorry to make you wait. You okay?”

I want to hold him. I want to make everything okay. “Saul. I love you.” The words spill out of me in a gush of feeling.

He gasps, and the breath seems to catch in his chest. His mouth trembles, and then it spreads in a soft little smile. “You haven’t said that in so long. I thought… I didn’t know if you still felt that way about me. I was afraid to ask….”

He drops the towel and rushes across the floor and suddenly I am lying under him on the bed. His skin is warm and his kisses are hard. He cries just a bit in this helpless but happy way as he touches me everywhere, pulling off my clothes in the process. I love the way Saul is making me feel now.

But I think about Mr. Brooks and all the scary stuff he told me. I can’t help it, even with the guy of my dreams all over me. I worry that I am going to break Saul.

I
THINK
I am going crazy.

Midterms are over, and we’re into the winter break. Saul has been with me every day since the break started. I like being with him, but I also want to spend more time with Cary because he’ll be moving away soon, and I’m already missing him. So I spend most of my time now hanging out with my two favorite guys.

Saul seems happy most of the time he’s with me. Sometimes, out of the blue, he starts looking worried or sad, and he’ll ask for a hug, or he’ll ask me how I feel about him. It’s like I can never say “I love you” enough for him. I think he would sleep over with me every night if he could. That’s how much he wants to be with me.

I love being with him. We have had sex two more times since that time in his bedroom. Only I don’t think of what we do as having sex. I know sex feels good. I’ve known that since the first time I jacked off when I was twelve. But every time I have sex with Saul, it doesn’t just feel good. It makes my feelings for him grow. It makes him more important to me. It creates this special chemistry between us where just the thought of him makes my body tingle even when we’re apart. We are not having sex. We are making love. There is a difference. I understand that now.

I’m excited Saul’s in my life, but I’m so scared. For the longest time, I worried he would find out what I did to that guy at school and turn away from me the way the rest of the kids did. Now I worry every time I get in his car and see a new magazine that doesn’t fit any of his interests. I worry every time I see a candy bar on the dashboard of his car when he doesn’t eat candy at all, ever. I worry over what chances he takes behind the wheel when he’s alone in his car. He doesn’t know his dad and I talked. How can I get him to stop shoplifting and running red lights? I won’t be able to stand it if he gets arrested or gets hurt in a car accident. I know what he’s doing, and I have to find a way to fix this.

I worry when he leaves me to go to the Y. He’s pushing himself harder than ever with every workout. That’s so obvious when he comes back sweaty and shaky, gulping down bottle after bottle of water, so jittery he’s just about twanging like a plucked guitar string. Once I asked to go with him so we could work out together (which we haven’t done since our first date), figuring that maybe I could keep him from overdoing it. Somehow, he knew what I was thinking, because he turned me down, saying it would be too embarrassing to have me there.

Having him go off for his workouts alone does give me time to earn some money. Since this will probably be the last Christmas I have with Cary, at least for a while, I want to get him something special as a gift. I also want to get something really nice for Saul and my mom, who treats me like I’m part of the wall or something when she’s around. Which, these days, is not all that often. She spends most of her free time over at Breeze’s place. On those rare occasions when we are home together, she ignores me. She never asks me how my life’s going, what I’m up to, or anything else. She’s happier than ever with Breeze; I know that. I also know that she doesn’t bring Breeze to the apartment anymore because she’s still high-level pissed at me.

I want Mom to have happiness. I want to be glad that she’s found someone who can give her that. I miss having my mom in my life. But the only way to fix what’s wrong between us is to accept something I think is wrong, and I can’t do that. Ever since I was a little kid, Mom has only dated guys, so I just don’t understand why she’s putting so much into this thing with Breeze. Most of the guys she got involved with turned out to be losers, but that doesn’t make it right for her to do what she’s doing with Breeze. Sooner or later, Mom’s going to meet a guy, or she’s going to realize she doesn’t really want to be with Breeze. Either way, it’s not going to be good for Breeze, and it’s just not right for that to happen to her. I don’t want things to be bad between Mom and me, so I’m trying not to focus so much on this stuff with Breeze. I’m hoping a really nice Christmas gift from me will thaw the chill Mom’s been giving me.

The Southern Market, which usually only operates on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, is open all seven days in the two weeks before Christmas. I go down there every chance I get. Saul drops me off when he goes for his workout and picks me up afterward. Mr. Luigi is there by himself during the week because his sons are working. He’s doing heavy business, so he’s especially glad to have me show up. By Christmas Eve, I’ve earned 170 bucks. After Saul finishes his morning workout, he picks me up and drives me to the mall. I make him wait in the car while I do my shopping. The gifts I buy are good ones. I hope they will make the people I love happy.