Trust the Focus (15 page)

He took a sip of his water, the flame of our candle lighting his eyes. He swiped his tongue over his bottom lip, then curled it slowly back into his mouth. “I thought you liked me tipsy.”

I shut up about the wine.

Our waiter delivered our wine and Landry approved it. We both drank almost a full glass before our calamari appetizer came.

Landry’s face was flushed, his lips stained red from the marinara sauce. His hair was long and unruly and I wanted to reach across the table and run my fingers through it. He must have read my thoughts because he leaned closer. “Jus, stop.”

I blinked. “Stop what?”

He snorted softly. “Looking at me like that.”

“How am I looking at you?”

He smiled. “Like you want to kiss me.”

My voice was almost a whine. “But I do wanna kiss you.”

He laughed. “Can you make it through dinner?”

I huffed and plopped my elbow on the table and my chin in my hand. “Fine.”

Our food was out of this world. Lan ordered his beloved lasagna and I ordered some seafood pasta with clams, muscles, shrimp, and crab.

We talked about Dad and college and the time I played Seven Minutes in Heaven in junior high with elementary school kiss-stealer Courtney.

We didn’t talk about the fall. Or my mom. Or my job. We weren’t avoiding it because we both knew it was there. We chose tonight to let it rest. And enjoy our time.

I grew bolder as the wine flowed through my blood. I stole touches under the table, squeezing Landry’s knee or rubbing my shoe along his calf. He would giggle every time and threaten to spit out his wine. And then deepen his voice and say something ultra masculine, like “Cool it, bro.”

And then I’d crack up and threaten to spit out my wine.

We ate our tiramisu and asked for the check. But whether it was the quiet, private atmosphere or our high comfort level or, most likely, the wine, we weren’t as discrete as we thought.

Our check showed our wine had been comped. Our waiter had written in heavy black scrawl,
Welcome to the club
.

When I handed over my card to pay, he didn’t say a word and wouldn’t stay to chat. We left a 30 percent tip.

And that night, in the privacy of Sally and our bed, we came together, slowly. I held Landry afterward, his face pressed into my neck as his breaths deepened and twined our heavy limbs together. This is what it would mean for me to be out, to be with Landry. Moments like this saved for when we were alone and safe, a different face in public to avoid the ire of those who hated us because we were different. Because we loved who we loved.

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. When I pictured being with Landry, it was happiness and laughter and waking up to blow jobs.

I hadn’t thought about the danger that came with it, the need to still be “in the closet” in some situations. Looking over my shoulder. Always being aware. Feeling like holding my boyfriend’s hand in public was something both exhilarating and dangerous.

Is that where my mother’s concern came from? She wanted me to have a normal life? I hadn’t thought of it that way. Instead I’d focused on her oppressing me or trying to make me into what she wanted me to be. Which could be part of it. But there had to be some kind of maternal concern in there somewhere.

But as Landry’s curls tickled my neck, his hand curled around my hip, I knew I’d pick this over normal. I’d pick these moments over living someone else’s life. I’d pick Landry.

***

July 1

[Picture]

We visited the Brown County State Park in Indiana. It was gorgeous and we spent some time with Justin’s dad in a lovely fog-covered ravine in the early morning

Also, Justin is gloating right now because he got me on a horse. Yes, you heard that right. Me. On a horse. And I didn’t fall. It was actually kind of nice. Smokey (that was my horse’s name) treated me well. My ass was only a little sore. Here’s how we looked on our horses. [Picture]

Next up is Ohio. We are in the home stretch and it’s a little weird to think this summer will soon be over. Thanks again for following our journey.

8 Down

4 To Go

—L

Comments

Mia: You guys look like naturals on those horses!

We pulled into the rest area, and I groaned as I threw Sally into park. My shoulder was screaming, and my thigh was shaking from the stop and go in the traffic jam we’d just made it out of.

I was sweaty and wanted food and a shower.

“I’m going to go get something to eat.” Landry yawned and pointed to the building ahead of us, which held an assortment of fast food and convenience store offerings.

I nodded, my mouth too dry to talk.

He hopped down out of Sally and walked toward the building, throwing a wave over his shoulder at me.

I gulped down half a bottle of water and then clamored out of the RV. I walked around the vehicle, giving it a once-over like I always did, making sure nothing was loose and the tires had enough air.

I tested the back ones and frowned.

I probably could have waited until the morning but what the hell, I was near the air pump. So I popped in some quarters and filled up Sally’s tires.

My phone rang just as the time limit for my air ran out. I fumbled it out of my pocket. “Hey,” I said, holding the phone in the crook of my shoulder while I wound the hose back on the air machine.

“Justin.” Her voice was colder than normal, like frost misting from the phone. “I told you.
I told you
that blog and letting
Landry
run it was a bad idea.”

His name was an icicle hurled at my heart. A chill started in the base of my spine, creeping up the bones of my back and into my neck until my head was a solid block of ice on my shoulders. “What are you talking about?”

“He needs to take that picture down before everyone knows.”

My jaw ached and I unhinged it in order to talk. “Knows what?”

She took a deep breath, and I wanted to stop time. Just freeze it, hang up the phone, put Landry in the RV and drive. Drive as far away as we could and live on some land in the middle of nowhere.

But that wasn’t practical. So instead I waited for her answer.

“That there’s . . . something between you two. I suspected it all along and this . . . picture confirmed it. Take it down.”

She suspected?
Why hadn’t she ever said anything and given me a chance to come clean? And what picture? All the thoughts whirled in my head like a blizzard, but she just kept talking before I could focus on my hands in front of my face. “In fact, he needs to take down the whole blog and you need to come home now. This trip has gone on long enough. You have responsibilities.”

“Mom, I—”

“I’m embarrassed, Justin. I’m embarrassed by this trip and this blog and your
friend
. And you should be, too.”

I blinked and tried to talk around my frozen tongue. “Embarrassed? This trip is important to me. It’s important to do this for Dad—”

“Don’t even try to spin this as being about your dad, Justin. You don’t care about doing anything but what you want, consequences be damned. Well, playtime is over. Come home.”

Consequences be damned.

Click.

The sound jolted into my ear and then rattled around in my head, colliding with the hunk of useless gray matter that was now my brain. My tongue was too thick in my mouth and my throat was swollen.

She knew. She knew what was going on and she hated it and what the fuck was I going to do? I looked down at my phone, this stupid hunk of plastic that at this moment was responsible for ruining my life. I cocked my arm back and hurled it into the field surrounding me, not giving a shit when it disappeared among tall grass and wildflowers and probably fucking poison ivy and a snake or two.

As I stared out in the blackness of the night, the coldness in my head thawed.

And what it revealed wasn’t pretty. I knew that, but I couldn’t stop the heat of anger as it roared down my spine, lighting a fire in my stomach.

“Justin?” Landry’s voice came from behind me and I whirled around. He had a plastic bag hanging from two fingers of his right hand, and his face was only half lit from the streetlamp above us. I knew it was going to happen, but I wasn’t strong enough to put out the fire. No way to stop it before I breathed it out and burned the man I loved.

“What the fuck did you do?” I took a step toward him and his body swayed back, but he held his ground.

He dropped the bag and held his hands out, palms up, frowning. “Whoa, what are you talking about?” His eyes shifted to the side. “And did you just throw your phone out there?”

“Look at me, Landry.” His eyes darted back to me. “What picture did you post?”

He blinked and furrowed his brow. “What’s going on? You’re scaring me.”

“Good!” I screamed at him, and he flinched. “Because I just got off the phone with my mom and she knows, Landry.
She fucking knows
because of some picture you posted.”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“What picture did you post?!”

His face paled at my shout and he shook his head. “I don’t know what picture you’re talking about. I posted a photo of us hanging out in Wisconsin. I don’t—” He stopped and took a breath, clenching his hands at his sides. His face shuttered, like he was bracing himself. “Isn’t this kind of a good thing? I mean, you were going to tell her anyway. . . .”

That was the problem, that’s what Landry didn’t understand. I had a timetable, sort of. A plan, and this wasn’t going according to the plan. “I wasn’t fucking ready!” I yelled. Landry’s eyes widened and his jaw ticked in warning but that fire was still burning a hole in my gut. “I wanted more time. I wanted to find a way to tell her the right way. Can’t you understand that?”

His eyes narrowed. “I do understand that, and I’m sorry. I can’t go back and make her unsee the picture. Which, for the record, I don’t even know what she means. I didn’t post a sex tape, for fuck’s sake, Justin!”

I took another step forward so only our hot breaths separated us. “I’ve seen some of those pictures, dumbass. It’s pretty clear by looking at them that we’re fucking.”

He flinched again and I hated myself. I knew he was getting singed. I knew we were going to leave this conversation covered in soot.

“That we’re
fucking
?” His voice was pure venom.

“Yes,” I hissed, knowing even as I spoke that this conversation had taken a turn with no bread crumbs to show us the way back.

“Right,” he spat. “My bad.”

I dug my fingernails into my palms and gritted my teeth at the pain. “Don’t get bitchy.”

Landry’s nostrils flared. “You know, you’re a real fucking expert at saying the most hurtful things you can when you’re angry, aren’t you? How about you just fucking hit me and get this over with?”

My skin itched and my shoulders tensed. “I’m not going to fucking hit you.”

Landry leaned forward so all I could see was his face. “I know you want to. Come on. I dare you.”

I cracked a knuckle in my first. But never, in a million years, would I lay a hand on Landry in anger. “I won’t hit you.”

“Why?” he taunted. “Would you have done it before when we were just friends?”

I uncurled my fists and flattened them along the side of my thighs. “No, I wouldn’t have. And it doesn’t matter, because we’re
not
just friends anymore.”

He jutted his chin out slightly. “What are we, then?”

He was pissed. Livid. But with that question, a pleading vulnerability showed through the blue of his eyes. So many words bubbled inside me. Best friends. Boyfriends. Lovers. Soul mates. The future.

But the fire was still raging, consuming those words until they were indistinguishable ash. All I said was, “We’re fighting.” I brushed past him, knocking his shoulder with mine. I heard him stumble in the gravel but I kept on walking.

***

I wandered around. I didn’t have a phone. Or a watch. I put one foot in front of the other in the balmy night and I separated myself from Landry and Sally before I razed the whole fucking rest stop to the ground.

I found some outbuilding with a muted yellow light and sank onto the ground below it, my back to the peeling brown paint, bugs buzzing around my head. I rested my elbows on my bent knees and let my hands dangle between my legs. When I got bored of counting the insects looking to eat me alive, I methodically tore apart the tall grass around me. I wished I had a baseball. I needed something to throw. And I’d already thrown my phone.

I concentrated on tearing each blade of grass into approximately inch-long pieces as I fumed at my mother and the injustice of how she wanted me to live my life.

I railed at Landry because he posted the picture that started this whole thing.

And then I fell into despair of self-loathing because I was really mad at myself. For not being truthful. For not sticking up for myself. For being a coward.

I tore the grass until my fingers were grass-stained and sore, and I was sitting within a mowed-down circle.

Only then did the fire inside me give up its last spark and sputter out.

And that’s when regret set in.

When Landry’s eyes as he said
What are we then?
flashed through my head. I missed that chance. To tell the truth about how scared I was. How I wanted to forge my own path in life but I didn’t know how. Instead I’d lashed out like I always did. Like a kid did.

When would I grow up and act like a man?

It wasn’t Landry’s fault. It wasn’t even really my mom’s fault. At what point did I stop blaming her for my problems and start blaming myself?

I heard the hissing of brakes and figured it was a bus based on the small chatter drifting through the humid air.

I didn’t know how much time had passed, and I knew I needed to go back and apologize. I was always apologizing. Because I was always fucking up. I stood up and shook out the soreness in my ass and knees. This had to stop, this lashing out and lying and generally being a giant dickhead. Landry didn’t deserve that.

I trudged back, knowing I had an RV-load of groveling to do. When I reached Sally, I took a deep breath and opened the door. I stepped up into the cabin and looked for Landry.

And I didn’t see him.

“Lan?” I walked back toward the bathroom but the door was open and it was empty.

Dread settled heavy as iron in my gut. “Lan?” I called again into an empty RV, knowing there’d be no answer but hoping anyway.

I trotted to the door and was about to head out to look for him around the rest stop when my gaze caught on the cabinet over the couch. It was open an inch. Even though there were ten other explanations for why the cabinet where Landry stored his clothes was open, my stomach dropped into my toes.

I reached for the cabinet. My arms heavy, my legs moving through quicksand. I crooked my finger around the edge of the cabinet and pushed it all the way open.

It was empty.

Empty.

“Fuck!” I yelled, tearing around the RV, looking for anything of Landry’s but his stuff was gone—clothes, toiletries. All of it.

I reached into my pocket for my phone but my hand felt nothing. And I remembered I’d thrown it into the field. “Goddammit!” I screamed and ran out of the RV, remembering too late that I’d thrown away my key chain light.

Would I always act like a toddler and throw things when I got angry? Fuck, this had to stop.

I ran back into the RV to get a flashlight. Then I was back outside, searching the tall grass for my phone. I swore at myself the whole time, ignoring the mud seeping into my shoes and the wetness creeping up the legs of my jeans. Mosquitoes ate my face alive and my only thought was that I hoped they didn’t have West Nile or something, because fuck it, I was on a mission. I needed to find my phone. Because when I found my phone I could find Landry.

I knew the general vicinity it landed in, and when I narrowed my search, I dropped to my hands and knees, rocks and thorny plants digging into my skin.

And when my hand closed around plastic, I nearly wept with relief.

I stood up in the field and turned it on, thanking all that was holy that it still worked.

I called him three times in a row as I walked back to the RV, leaving escalating voice mails, but he didn’t answer. Then I texted,
Where the fuck are you?

When he didn’t answer my text, I called three more times, not taking the time to leave messages.

Finally, as I sat on the couch and stared at the screen, my phone beeped with a text.

On a bus.

A bus? He left me?

No fucking way. You’re not on a bus.

Pretty sure it’s a bus.

I patted my pockets for my keys and then grabbed a pen to scribble an address on my palm.
Get off now. I’m coming to get you.

No.

I gritted my teeth and clicked the pen.
Yes.

No answer. Nada.

Landry?

Landry?

LANDRY!!!!

Finally my phone beeped again.
Quit yelling, it’s hurting my eyeballs.

Please, please let me come get you. Or come back. I’m sorry.

Nope. Not doing this with you. Being with someone who’s ashamed of me.

Fuck, is that what he thought?
I’M NOT ASHAMED OF YOU.

Yeah? Were you ever going to tell her?

He had every right to doubt me, but that question still stung.
Yes, come back and I’ll prove it to you.

He ignored my plea.
Then why did you flip out?

Because I’m an idiot.
Because I’m ashamed of myself.

Why?

I’m a coward.
I’m a coward.

My phone rang, startling me. Landry’s face appeared on the screen and my finger couldn’t press answer fast enough. “Yeah?”

“You’re not.” His voice. Oh, his voice. I wanted to wrap it around me and snuggle it.

“I’m not what?”

“You’re not a coward. You need to come out and do this when you’re ready. I know you have it in you to be proud of who you are, but I don’t want to be responsible for pressuring you before you’re ready. And I’m not going to be your scapegoat. I’m not going to be the one who gets the brunt of your anger when who you’re really mad at is yourself.”

“I don’t—”