With or Without You (16 page)

“It was … great,” I mutter.

Erik grins. “Isn’t she amazing? I love Oxana. She’s so smart, really knows her stuff.”

“Yeah.” I nod, my eyes never leaving the flat-screen. “Yeah. She pretty much told me I was a hack.”

I try to stroll ahead to the next TV, but Erik hasn’t budged and, still tethered at the hand, I yo-yo back. He tries a smile. “I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

I want to focus on the compliments, but it’s the criticisms that thunder in my head. Maybe it’s because this is the first time anyone has viewed my work critically.
Or maybe I suspect she said the nice things because I’m Erik’s boyfriend. But even if the praise was sincere, it doesn’t change that I’m unnecessary.

“She said I’m a decent painter,” I concede, “but I won’t be any good until I find my own style.”

For a long time, Erik says nothing. Then he says, “Okay, then. What are you going to do about that?”

I unlace my fingers and retract my hand. “What do you mean?”

He points to the nearby dolly with my art. “Gauguin said, ‘Art is either plagiarism or revolution.’ You’ve got the first part down. What are you going to do about the second?”

Something electric sets the hair on my arms on end, clenches my jaw. Something I’ve never genuinely felt toward Erik until now: anger.

“Erik, did you know what she was going to say to me?”

In that instant, our roles reverse and I see him employ my own evasion tactics. A laugh to lower defenses. A smile to throw me off guard. Doesn’t he know I invented these maneuvers?

“What I know is that I have a supertalented boyfriend who is going to go all shock and awe on the art world some day—”

“Did you know what she’d say?”

His face falls. “Evan, I want to see you grow as an artist.
You’re sitting on a powder keg of potential—”

“I don’t believe this!” My shout comes back tinny as it ricochets off the gallery walls. “How could you put me through that? Why parade me in front of someone of Oxana Fedorov’s stature so she can tear me down? If you thought I was a copycat, why couldn’t you be a man and tell me yourself?”

The unthinkable, unfathomable, indefensible happens. My anger finds the chink in Erik’s armor of infinite patience. Every pass he’s given me—his tolerance and understanding—disappears. Now everything he’s held back finally finds its voice.

“Why bring you here?” he asks, bitterness cracking his thunderous tone. “Why couldn’t I tell you myself? If you really need to ask me, then you haven’t been paying attention for the last year. I’ve been pushing you and pushing you because I think you’ve got talent, but there’s nothing I can say or do to get you to go to the next level.”

“You should have said something, instead of subjecting me to—”

“It wouldn’t have done any good, Evan!”

We’re shouting. I can’t believe we’re shouting.

Veins pop out of his forearms as he clenches his fists. “You’re scared. I have no idea what you’re scared of, but you’re terrified. Maybe it has to do with keeping me out
of that part of your life that involves your friends or anything else remotely personal. Did you think we could get this close and I wouldn’t see the fear?

“Well, I see it.” He reaches out suddenly, grabbing my hand and pressing it tight to his chest. “I can feel it every time we touch. I can hear it when I mention Davis and you change the subject. I put you through this today because you’re never gonna get anywhere and be your own person unless somebody shoves you in the right direction. So, tell me, Evan, why are you putting
me
through this? Is it because you’re scared Oxana’s right?”

I’m used to fights with Shan where we go to last man standing. Those battles were a cornerstone of growing up. But none of that prepared me for this. I wasn’t prepared to wound Erik by questioning him. To be the reason he loses his temper. To see him look away, his wild eyes yielding to pain. The anger continues to course through my body but the urge to fight drains from me when he turns his back.

On the drive over, I pictured our return to Nolan and Anna’s. I pictured lying out on their deck, eating burgers off the grill, and cuddling with Erik under a blanket as fireworks lit the sky over Lake Michigan. I got different fireworks than I bargained for. I know I won’t enjoy any of that, the way I’m feeling now. Angry. Betrayed. Sickened.

“Can you take me to the bus station?” I ask, when I
know I can speak without trembling. “You should stay with Nolan and Anna. But I think … I think I need to go home. Process all this.”

Even now, there’s a small part of me that wants him to say,
No, I’m sorry, you’re right, I’m wrong, let’s stay and work this out.
That little part reels to hear him acquiesce in a very different way.

“I’m not putting you on a bus. I’ll take you home. I don’t feel much like being in Milwaukee anymore.”

Silently, we leave the gallery, load up the paintings, and begin the trek back to Madison. Erik gets on his cell to let Nolan and Anna know we’ve had a change of plans.

“It’s not gonna work out,” he says soberly into the phone. He means our visit. Not the relationship.

I repeat that all the way back to Madison:
He means our visit. … He means our visit. …

An hour and a half later, when Erik turns onto my street, I ask to be let out two blocks from home.

“Oh, right,” he mutters, his first words since we left Milwaukee. “Wouldn’t want to stop being a secret, would I?”

When we stop at the curb, I grab my bag and look at Erik. He didn’t even look at me the entire drive back. His hands remain on the wheel, gripping it with white-knuckled ferocity. I’m angry but I won’t leave it like this, so I lean over and kiss him on the cheek. I hear the breath he’s been holding exit his lungs posthaste. He finally looks at me, eyes shiny in the dusk, and says, “Do you see why I thought you needed time to think about San Diego? Welcome to our first fight.”

I promise I’ll call, and he drives off. I go to my room. The paintings on the wall only remind me what a loser I am. I take each one down and shove them under my bed. When there’s no room left beneath the box spring,
I take the tackle box where I keep my paints and shove it in the back of my closet. My brushes, too. Even though Oxana told me to, I don’t want to paint my Haring. Not anymore.

For the first time in a very, very long time, I cry myself to sleep.

Two weeks pass as Erik and I dance around each other. Work dominates Erik’s life, so we can’t talk about the fight in Milwaukee. We trade text messages, mimic real conversation in brief phone calls. Sometimes it feels like we’ve forgotten everything it took us a year to build.

This is foreign territory for us and I’m not sure how to proceed. But time dulls my rage and I’m left wondering if I overreacted. Maybe this fight is nothing. I need some sort of Richter scale to tell me how bad things were. Are. Will be.

Shan and I are back to working together, but she refuses to talk about anything that went down at Erik’s. And I don’t force the issue. There’s a part of me that wonders if she’s right to worry about my relationship with Erik. I wanted to prove her wrong. I’m no longer sure I can.

Davis finally deigns to make a guest appearance in my life. I should be angry, give him the silent treatment for ignoring me as long as he has. But when he shows up
with a bag of leftover Szechuan chicken and wontons, I grab at comfort while I can get it and we head up to my room.

For one glorious hour, I get something good back in my life. It’s like when Erik and I drove to Milwaukee; we compete to see who can talk the fastest and listen the hardest. We just want to talk and get caught up as quickly as possible.

It’s just as I’m polishing off the last of the fried wontons when he drops:

“What if I said I don’t want to go to Chicago?”

Davis’s voice is scratchy; I can only guess this comes from hours of smoking weed with Sable. I shove the wonton deep into my mouth to stop the first spurious comment from reaching my lips. Half the conversation has been
Sable this, Sable that, Sable can walk on fucking water.
Now, apparently, Davis has found something better than Chicago. And I hate knowing I wouldn’t react this way if I knew that San Diego with Erik was still a sure thing. One possibility I’d never considered: losing them both.

“Dude,” I say instead, mouth brimming with gooey wonton, “you’ve already sent in a deposit.” I go for where he’s vulnerable. Now that he’s supporting himself, Davis can’t afford to throw money away. Seeing how he reacts to the reminder that he’s locked money into a dorm room
and tuition will help me gauge how serious he is.

Davis rolls his eyes. “If. I said
if
. It’s just something I’m thinking about. Besides, deposits are refundable.”

Orange alert. He’s already made sure he can get a refund. I chew more wonton. “What would you do otherwise? You hate Madison.”

He leans back against my bed. “I hated the way people in Madison made me feel. I guess I’m just not feeling that way anymore. Without the trogs around, I almost feel human. And I’m not even saying I’d stay in Madison.”

What strikes me most about this is the “I” and the “me.” Every post–high school discussion we’d ever had was about us. Not us, a couple, but us, trying to find a place in the world. Cheesy, stupid—yes. I hate how fast it’s gone from we to me, us to I.

But I can’t say anything. I’ve secretly been part of a different us for a year now.

Two weeks ago, this would have been my out. If we’d had this conversation then, I would have told Erik that, yes, I was ready to move to San Diego. And I could have done it guilt-free. But now I find myself playing both sides to meet the middle. I don’t want Davis making plans that don’t involve me any more than I want to give up on Erik. I still want both of these futures because I don’t know which has the best shot of working out. It’s selfish but it’s all I have.

Davis reaches over and touches my wrist. When I meet his eyes, I see something I haven’t seen in a long time. Gentle, smiling, a little bit goofy. I see Davis.

“Hey”—his voice loses the rough texture and he actually sounds like himself—“don’t be a tardmonkey. We can talk about this some more. It’s just that I’ve got some new ideas. And I think you’re gonna like ’em.”

There’s a
bleet
from my computer. Only two people send me e-mail. One of them is sitting across from me. I hop up to shrink the window and hide what I assume is a note from Erik.

But it’s not.

“It’s from Sable,” I report. “It just says ‘Meet us in front of the Darkroom tonight at nine thirty.’” The Darkroom’s a gay bar on the southwest side of town. “We’ll never get in there. They card everyone. And what does he mean by ‘us’?”

Davis checks his watch. “Shit, I gotta go. Just do what it says. Meet us—”

“Hang on.
You’re
‘us’?”

“Us. The Chasers. Everybody. Meet in front of the Darkroom and whatever you do, don’t be late.”

A second later, he’s out the door.

At nine thirty, I pace back and forth in front of the ramshackle bar with the tinted windows. The music’s so loud I can feel the sidewalk vibrate under my sandals. Couples
go in and out; each one eyes me suspiciously. The streetlights hum and I check my watch. The Darkroom isn’t exactly in a bad part of town, but it does attract an element I’m not too wild about.

I’m about to call Davis on my cell when I hear shouts and joyful chants from down the block. The Chasers, sans Ross, turn the corner, fists in the air. Sable stands in the middle as though they’re his disciples. Their pace is brisk and they descend upon me, clapping me on the back and smiling. Sable winks at me.

“Thanks for coming, guy!”

And they all thank me. There’s something warm in the greeting. People—other than Davis and Erik—glad to see me. I belong. It seems genuine and I can’t help but smile. With everything that’s happened lately, I need to feel wanted somewhere.

Davis steps from the back of the crowd, holding a baseball bat that glitters as though embedded with diamonds.

“Evan, it was awesome!” Davis roars, showcasing a couple powerful swings of the bat off to the side.

“What’s going on?” I ask, looking from Davis to Sable for answers.

But it’s Mark, with his backward Brewers cap, who says, “We trashed their cars.
Smash!
” Soon, everyone is mimicking the sound of shattering glass.

“I don’t get it—”

I can’t finish my sentence because Pete rounds the same corner where the Chasers just came from. Shoulders back, fists clenched: He’s in fight mode. When he spots us, he calls out and in an instant, Kenny and the other trogs are at Pete’s side. Kenny, the only trog bigger than Pete both in height and muscle, is cracking his knuckles. They charge, shouting obscenities.

Micah, the smallest Chaser, makes to dart inside the bar, but Sable orders him to stay put.

“Wait for it …,” he whispers as the army of hate closes in. And then, just as they’re within a few yards, Sable mutters, “Go!”

As one, we turn and pile into the bar. The blast of the music almost sends me backward, but I know what’s behind me and I’d rather face the lethal bass beat and whatever’s inside. I grab on to Davis as my eyes adjust to the darkness. “Davis, what the fuck—”

A burly bearded guy on a stool just inside the door stands in our way. “C’mon, kids, get out. You know you’re too young—”

“You gotta help us.” Will, looking as pathetic as he can muster, pleads with the bouncer. “These guys. They’re gonna beat the crap out of us.” It sounds rehearsed.

We charge deeper into the bar, which is packed with shirtless dancers and guys downing beer by the pitcher as Pete and the trogs burst through the door. The bouncer
moves to intercept but he’s actually smaller than Kenny, who pushes him aside. We back farther into the bar. The trogs follow.

“You faggots totaled our cars!” Pete screams.

The F-bomb stirs the bar’s occupants. All eyes converge on us.

Then, strangely, Sable steps forward calmly, hands raised as though surrendering. “You must be mistaken—”