Trust the Focus (19 page)

When my mom and I were alone, she sank down on the chair beside me. I took her in closely. Her hair was a little frizzy and her blouse wrinkled. I hadn’t noticed that before.

“That was nice of Mrs. Jacobs to bring you cookies,” she said, gesturing to the massive container on the table.

I nodded. “Could you hand me another?”

She did and then folded her hands back in her lap. “So I . . .” She shifted in her chair and I waited her out. “I made some calls.”

I raised an eyebrow and kept eating.

“I’m still going to run for Senate,” she said. “And I’m speaking to my campaign team now on how to handle . . .” She waved a hand at me. “. . . this.”

I huffed out a breath. “This? You mean your son. Me. And what is there to handle?”

She pursed her lips. “You know.”

“Are we really doing this? Here in the hospital?”

“Okay, so maybe that was a poor word choice. Will you let me speak?”

I sighed and remained silent.

“So since you were going to be my campaign manager, and you have the degree, you know very well that me having a homosexual son would turn off a large portion of my voters. So I’m asking you, what would you advise me to do, if you were my campaign manager?”

I blinked, searching her words and tone for snideness or blame. But there was none. Her eyes were clear and her cheeks flushed. Her body leaned slightly forward, her head cocked, and she genuinely looked like she wanted my opinion.

“You’re asking for real?”

She laid a hand on the bed, then removed it like she didn’t know where to place it. So she returned it to her lap. “You’re so smart, Justin. And very aware of others. I knew you’d make an excellent campaign manager . . .” She swallowed. “I accept, grudgingly, that it isn’t what you want to do. However, I still want your opinion.”

She did. She really did. And in another life, another time, one where I didn’t have Landry, maybe I would have grown accustomed to my role on my mother’s campaign. But now?

No, no way in hell. But that didn’t mean I wanted her to fail.

I wasn’t an expert. She paid other people a lot of money to answer this question. I didn’t know if I was right, but in my gut, I thought it was the best way to go about it.

“Do you have any scheduled interviews coming up?”

She nodded. “One on a local station’s mid-day show.”

“Okay, well, maybe you can casually mention how you were out of town to visit your son who got in a car accident with his boyfriend.”

She didn’t move, not even a blink. So I kept talking. “I mean, just slip it in, like it’s no big deal. I don’t think you should avoid it because someone is bound to find out and you don’t want to look like you are hiding it. But making a huge announcement . . .” I shrugged. “I don’t think it’s necessary. Despite what some people may think, my sexual orientation has nothing to do with your ability to do your job. If you make it seem like it’s normal and kosher, everyone else will feel that way, too.”

She stared at me for a minute, then pulled a pen and a small notepad out of her purse. The only sound in the room was the scratching of pen on paper.

“Mom?” I finally asked.

She flipped the notepad shut and dropped it back into her purse. “I wanted to write that down. I will discuss it with my team, but I think that’s the best way to go.”

I ran my thumb over the Twizzlers-wrapper ring. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry, Mom, that your campaign is affected by this. It’s one of the reasons I tried to keep this from you and deny it for so long.”

Mom looked down, her eyelashes fluttering, and when she met my gaze again, her eyes were watery. “Justin, I’m sorry. I realize now . . . how hard this all must have been for you. I’m sorry for not being someone you could confide in.”

I took a deep breath. “I wish I could be what you wanted me to be . . .” I paused, searching for the words,” . . . while still being
me
.”

She shook her head, a tear dropping onto the hospital sheet. “By you being who you are . . . well . . . that’s who I want you to be.”

Those words warmed my chest and my heartbeat sounded in my ears. Despite how angry she’d made me for so many years, she was still my mother. She was the only parent I had left. “I want to be there for you through this, even if I don’t work for you,” I said.

She smiled through the tears. “And I want to be there for you.” Her eyes flicked to the door. “Also, I want to apologize for what I said. About Landry. I see that he’s a good fit for you. I’ve . . . I don’t think I ever saw you smile at anyone like you do him. Except for maybe your father.”

This acceptance of Landry as my boyfriend wasn’t something I ever expected from her. “Th-thank you.”

She nodded. “You balance each other. And I should have recognized that sooner.”

A hesitant knock sounded at the door and my mother leaned back, swiping at her cheeks and dabbing at her face with a tissue. She excused herself to the bathroom as the Jacobs’s walked in, and left the room, choosing to use a public restroom.

Landry looked at me with a furrowed brow. I smiled and his return smile was hesitant. “Everything okay?” he asked.

I began to shrug off the question, but then caught myself. “Actually . . . yeah. Yeah, I think it is okay.”

Concern passed over his face. “Did she—?”

I pulled on his arm so he sat on the bed beside me. “She was fine. We talked and I’ll give you all the details later. It’s not going to be peachy over night. But she’s taking the first step to accepting me and that’s all I can ask for at this point.”

He waited a beat, then nodded, his posture once again relaxed. I pointed to the cookies and grinned so he handed me another one. I turned to his parents. “Thanks for coming to be here for Landry and me,” I said with a full mouth.

“Well, we know you have a lot of supplies in the RV that you’ll need to bring home with you. And you’ll need a ride, of course,” said Mr. Jacobs.

I picked a rogue raisin off of my lap. “Sorry about that.”

“What was that, dear?” Mrs. Jacobs asked.

I looked up. “I said, I’m sorry.”

She snapped her chin into her neck and flicked her eyes to Landry and back to me. “Sorry for what?”

“This,” I said, waving my hand. “You having to drive here and doing all of this because of the accident . . .”

Mr. Jacobs was shaking his head. “That’s not your fault. The truck that hit you ran a red light.”

I accepted another cookie from Landry and took a bite. “So Sally didn’t make it?” I directed this question at Landry and watched his face fall.

It was stupid, really. Sally was just an RV. A hunk of metal and rubber and electronic mumbo-jumbo. But she was also Dad. And she was Landry and me. And she was this summer when I finally learned how to take control of my life.

I’d never step into Sally again. I’d never fill her with gas or pump air into her tires or drain her sewage tank. I’d never hold that wheel in my hands or press my foot to the gas. I wouldn’t sit in that seat I took for granted for months but now wanted to sit in again. I wouldn’t make love to Landry on that awful, uncomfortable pullout couch.

I wouldn’t smell my Dad’s cinnamon candies. I wouldn’t hear the thud of the atlases in the top compartment when I took a turn too sharp.

Landry and I became what we were in that RV. Would anything change once we weren’t moving on four tires? Could we grow roots?

The whole thing made me want to cry and the cookie tasted like cardboard in my mouth.

Landry leaned forward and gripped my wrist. “We’re getting her towed home.”

I snapped my head up. “Towed? From New Hampshire to Pennsylvania? Lan, that’s gonna cost a fortune.”

“I know, but . . .” He looked at his parents and back at me. “I don’t think we’re ready to say good-bye to her.”

Nope. No way was I ready. “I’ll cover the cost—”

“We’ll split it,” Landry said. “I’m your sugar daddy now, remember?”

I laughed, inhaled a flake of oatmeal, and went into a coughing fit. Landry smacked me on the back, and when I was finished, he leaned in even closer, pressing a kiss to my temple. “I know how you feel,” he whispered in my ear while his parents fiddled with the TV remote. “But we don’t need a place to be who we are.” He leaned back and looked in my eyes. I saw so much truth shining in those blues. “We don’t need an RV. We don’t need a summer road trip. This is us. No matter where or when. Okay?”

He read my mind. Like a ninja. “I fucking love you, Landry Aaron Jacobs.”

He smiled a brilliant, white-toothed smile. “I fucking love you too, Justin Alexander Akron.”

The pitcher’s windup was close to perfect. He started a little too squared up but made up for it with his steps.

And his arm was wicked fast, a blur as he hurled the ball at home plate.

The familiar
whomp
of the baseball in a glove was home to me. So was the whir of my shutter as the umpire called a strike, signaling the end of the game. And so was Landry’s laugh as he stood behind the fence, talking with Lamar’s wife.

Serena was bent over at the waist, hooting up a storm. I rolled my eyes because Lamar had told both of them to be “inconspicuous” and instead the patrons on the bench were craning their necks to look at the jokers.

I took a couple shots of the pitcher wiping his brow and greeting his catcher as they met halfway between the mound and home plate. Then more shots of the opposing teams shaking hands with each other.

I readjusted my ball cap on my head, smiling to myself about Landry insisting I wear suntan lotion on my face because I had started developing a line on my forehead from my hat. Lamar had me attend most of Penn State’s spring training and now the season was in full swing. So it meant a lot of outside time and a funked-up tan.

I removed my favorite zoom lens from the body of my camera and placed everything in my bag at my hip. I’d been working for Lamar for over six months now and had saved up to buy a new Nikon.

I used my dad’s camera for pleasure—when Landry and I hiked or biked or road tripped. Or just when we sat on our back porch on Salvation Army–find lawn chairs, drank beer, and gazed at the stars.

I walked toward him and Serena, who had now been joined by Lamar.

“You guys don’t know what ‘inconspicuous’ means, do you?” I asked, nudging Landry with my shoulder and smiling at Serena.

“This boy,” she said, pointing at my boyfriend, “was just telling me about how you hid in a purple plastic playhouse from a bunch of little kids at an amusement park.”

I scowled. “You weren’t there. You can’t understand the kind of danger we were in.”

Landry threw back his head and laughed while Serena cackled.

Lamar sighed, but smiled at his wife with amusement. “You ready to go, sweetheart? Told the kids we’d be there for dinner.”

Serena took a deep breath, calming herself. “Yeah, yeah.” She hugged Landry and then me, promising to have us over soon for some barbecue ribs as Lamar all but dragged her to the parking lot.

We drove home in Landry’s car, the one he’d had since high school. Landry worked at a graphic design firm and made decent money. But at twenty-three, we were both much closer to the broke side of the scale.

I took off my cap and tossed it on the dashboard, then rested my head on the seat and closed my eyes as Landry talked excitedly about his plans for our next trip, which was in a week. He wanted to visit the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon. Even though we grew up in the state, neither of us had ever been.

We tried to travel every couple of months. I knew it was time for a trip soon because I was restless. I hadn’t been sleeping as well. My patience was shorter. And Landry wasn’t much different. We needed the road and the sights and the time together to recharge our batteries.

He pulled down the dirt road of the farm where we lived and in the side mirror, I watched the dust swirl behind his tires. When I recovered from the accident and we searched for a place to live, everything felt too confining. Apartments had thin walls and town houses had no yards.

And then we found a family renting out a trailer on their farm property. We visited it and saw we had a whole acre to ourselves. But what had us signing the lease so fast the farmer’s head spun was Dad.

Yeah, Dad.

Because all around the trailer was a plant, something native to Ohio called a Shooting Star, that smelled like cinnamon.

So yep, we lived in a trailer. That smelled like cinnamon. And it was great.

Landry parked the car and I got out of the passenger seat and stretched. Immediately, the scent of cinnamon hit me. Like always, since our trip over the summer, the melancholy only clogged my throat briefly before contentment set in. I was home.

I hauled my bags out of the car and followed Landry inside. Ugly was really the only word to describe the interior. The walls were faded brown paneling and the kitchen a perfect shade of mustard. We’d ripped the seats from Sally and Landry converted them into some kinds of chairs. They were horrid-looking and I wasn’t convinced they didn’t have fleas but I still watched TV in them.

Most of our trailer had something from Sally. A cabinet door. A shower head. A table.

My Saint Christopher medallion now hung in the window of our kitchen, catching the light of the sun sneaking through the trees.

But I loved this trailer because it was home and Landry and I had it all to ourselves.

Landry opened up our refrigerator and peered inside. “You want burgers?”

“Burgers?” I said, placing my camera bag on the coffee table and sinking into the couch we’d bought cheap at an estate sale.

Landry tossed a package of meat on the table. “Yeah, burgers. I think we have a can of beans, too.”

“Sounds delicious,” I said, my head on the back of the couch, my eyes drooping. It’d been a long day of shooting and I was so freaking tired. . . .

***

Something cold pressed into my hand, jolting me awake, and I stared at Landry standing above me with a smile on his face, wrapping my fingers around a bottle of beer. “Burgers are on the grill. Now sit on the floor.”

“What?” I mumbled, rubbing my eyes. “Did I fall asleep?”

“For a minute,” he said. “Now come on, sit.”

I took a sip of the cold beer and slipped to the floor. Landry sat behind me and began to work on the knots in my shoulders. I moaned and dropped my head between my bent knees.

“You’re so easy,” Landry teased. And all I could do was moan. “Your mom called.”

When I was working and Landry was with me, he kept my phone. I didn’t like getting distracted. “Did you answer?”

“Yep, and she wants you on the float thing with her.”

I rolled my eyes but inside I felt a little proud. “Really?”

His fingers stuttered and I craned my neck around. He worried his lip. “And me too?”

I jerked away from his hands in a swift motion, tugged him off the couch, and moved him in front of me. He sat cross-legged between my bent legs and I gripped his knee. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

He still bit that lip. “Telling you?”

“Will you quit phrasing everything as a question?”

He threw up his hands. “She wants her son and his boyfriend on her float, okay? It surprised me.”

Yeah, me too. “God, it sounds like a trap. Maybe they’re going to throw something at us.”

He squinted and his lips twitched in amusement. “Like glitter?”

“You’d love that. Or you’d complain it wasn’t your color.”

He glared. “I look better in silver. Don’t mock me.”

I cocked my head to the side. “You gonna try to turn this into a Pride float?”

He pressed his lips together, but I saw the smile creeping at the corners of his mouth. “Can I hire a go-go boy?”

“No.”

“Can I wave a rainbow flag?”

“I don’t think so.”

He paused. “Can I wear rainbow socks?”

“Lan—”

His eyes twinkled. “Okay, rainbow underwear.”

I laughed. “I’ll call her back. I feel a little like a political weapon, but whatever.”

The public response in my mom’s world to the knowledge that I was gay was conflicted. Some voters withdrew their support. Some didn’t approve but said they would still support my mother. And there was a new, large group who now supported my mother because of her acceptance of me and her reconfigured platform in favor of equal rights.

It was a gamble and sometimes I wondered if our relationship was built on the fact that it was good for her career. So I kept my distance but tried to support her as best as I could.

I looked down at my tattoo, the black lines bold on my tan arms. Lan told me that if I ever needed to, I could cover it up with a cuff. But I told him I placed the tattoo there for a reason. I didn’t want to cover it up.

“So,” I said, squinting at Landry. “You burning our burgers?”

“Oh!” he shouted, jumping up and running to our back porch, his bare feet slapping on the floor of the trailer.

I stood up with a groan and walked into the kitchen. I grabbed forks and a couple of napkins and then opened the overhead cabinet beside the sink to grab some plates.

Inside the cabinet door hung our calendar. He’d uploaded all the pictures he’d drawn to some site and had a calendar made. The original drawings were scattered around the trailer, the Mount St. Helens one hanging above our bed.

We were getting some made with Landry’s drawings next to my dad’s pictures. I thought about selling them and Landry approved as long as we donated a portion of the proceeds to The Trevor Project for LGBTQ youth.

Landry built a website with an online shopping cart and made it look all pretty as only he could do. We already had preorders for next year’s calendar, because of my dad’s popularity and the viral explosion of our blog. My mom muttered about how we could finally move out of the trailer but she didn’t understand that Landry and I weren’t in a hurry. Plus, we were talking to the farmer about someday purchasing this acre of land and building a house on it.

For now, we’d worked hard to make this little trailer our home. Landry made a collage of the photos we took on our trip of the two of us. They covered a whole wall in our bedroom with a variety of frames in different sizes. The center of the collage was the picture my mom had seen on the blog, the one where she knew we were together.

The one that showed how in love we were.

Once Landry rescued the burgers from the grill, we sat on the back porch, plates in our laps, beer bottles on the ground beside us.

The burger was pretty burnt but I was hungry and ate it anyway, then forked up a heaping side of beans.

“You want ketchup?” I asked.

“That joke is seriously not funny anymore, Jus,” Lan muttered.

I chuckled. It was still funny to me. Always would be.

When I was finished my food, I dropped my empty plate beside me and leaned back with my beer propped on my stomach.

I rolled my head to the side to see Landry in the same position, his head turned to me, a soft smile on his face. “You wanna sleep out here tonight?”

Sometimes we dragged sleeping bags into our two-man tent and slept outside in mild weather. It was a little hot and the mosquitoes were relentless, but fuck it. I slept well out here. “Sure.”

He smiled brighter. “Good.”

I took a sip of my beer and picked at the label. “You ever surprised we made it here?”

He didn’t speak and I looked up. Half of his face was in shadow from the setting sun. “What do you mean by ‘here’?”

I waved a hand. “Together.”

He blinked. “Yeah.”

“Really?”

“Well, I don’t mean together, together. I always knew we’d be friends. At least, I thought so. I never thought we’d be kissing friends, though.”

I chuckled. “I think kissing friends is better.”

The smile was back. “Yeah, me too.”

“And Lan?”

“Yeah?”

I ran my thumb over the underside of my ring finger. The Twizzlers wrapper-ring long gone. “You were right, you know? About how we needed to feel what was wrong to know what was right?”

Because at that moment, staring in Landry’s blue eyes, the beer just beginning to fuzz my brain, the thought of sleeping under the stars with him next to me, even the old trailer reminiscent of Sally behind me—that was right. Everything about it was right.

And instead of a future I dreaded, I had a life where I enjoyed living in the moment, and not because I was trying to avoid what happened next. Because every day, my life kept getting better. I blinked my eyes. Like the shutter of my camera. Because I wanted this moment framed in my mind.

A breeze blew softly, ruffling Lan’s curls and raising goose bumps on my arms.

“You smell that?” he asked.

“The cinnamon?”

He nodded and reached over, twining his fingers with mine. I kissed his finger, the third one, where he’d worn that Twizzlers ring during the summer. The finger that was naked now, but wouldn’t be for much longer.

“It’s like he’s here,” Landry said, eyes soft.

I squeezed his hand. “He is here. And he’s smiling.”