Page 5 of Boyfriend
My phone rings when I’m on the way into my econ class. This class bores me, so I stop outside the lecture hall and answer my brother’s call. “What’s shakin’, Stevie?”
“You’re coming home for Thanksgiving, right?”
Uh-oh. Cue the awkward silence. “Nah, I’m sorry. My practice schedule is awfully tight.”
“Bullshit!” he says immediately. “You’re a lying liar who lies!”
“Aw, come on now. It doesn’t make sense for me to rent a car and drive across the state for a meal, Stevie. I’m a busy guy, and it will be a—“
“Shit show,” he grumbles. “That’s why you should feel obligated to come home and suffer with me. It’s not like we live in Texas, asshole. Get a Zipcar. Drive a hundred miles. A hockey game is longer than your drive home.”
“I can’t, man. I have a date.” This is strictly true, seeing as I have at least three offers already this morning.
“A date,” he says, his voice betraying flat disbelief. “On Thanksgiving.”
“Yup.”
“That’s what you said last year, too.”
“It was true last year as well.” He doesn’t need to know that I’ve hired myself out. In truth, I feel bad that Stevie has to suffer through Thanksgiving at one of our parents’ homes. He’s a year behind me at Dartmouth, which is just a few miles away from our mom’s house in Norwich and a few more miles from our dad’s place in Fairlee. He can’t blame the hockey schedule, either, because he hasn’t played since high school.
He’s trapped. But that is not my fault. “You’ll have Lauren’s company though, right?” Our sister lives in town with her fiancé.
Stevie makes a disgusted sound. “You know what she’s like right now. All she can talk about is the wedding. Flowers and colors and the rest of that bullshit.”
We both shudder. As the owner of a dick, weddings were never interesting to me. But since our parents’ spectacular divorce a couple of years ago, just the idea of marriage makes me feel a little squicky.
At some point in the near future, I’m going to have to put on a tux and watch my sister marry her boyfriend of three years. I’m going to have to clap and smile and try not to suffocate in my bow tie, while I watch my sister make the biggest mistake of her life.
Nothing against her guy, either. He seems nice enough for now. That’s the problem, though. Once the glow wears off, people get restless. And then they do stupid, crazy things to each other. And they make their kids watch.
Fun times.
“Look.” I level with my brother. “I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving. You don’t have to either, you know. You don’t owe it to them.”
“Dad, though. He’ll be all alone.”
“That’s true,” I murmur. And I feel for the guy. “But our father is an adult, you know? The destruction of his marriage is about to celebrate its third anniversary. He can either stew about it, or he can find a way to move on.”
“Good luck telling him that.”
“Oh I’ve tried.” I was gentle, of course. I’m not a monster. The problem is that my father prefers rage to action. He’ll spend the whole holiday muttering about “that bitch,” which is how he refers to our mother.
Or, if Stevie went to Mom’s house instead, Dad would be mad at him for days. You really can’t win with him anymore.
He doesn’t see how much this upsets us either. Sure, we were all pretty astonished when Mom left Dad. It was brutal. But she’s still our Mom, and she still loves us. Three years later, and our father still expects us to take sides. It’s fucking exhausting.
I shove a hand into my pocket and absently rub the smooth piece of obsidian stone that’s resting there. Our assistant coach is really into crystals. He said obsidian would help me get rid of “emotional blockage” and give me strength, clarity, and compassion.
But what if I’m not the one who needs it? How much obsidian can I sneak into my father’s house without him noticing?
My parents’ divorce is why I no longer go home for Thanksgiving. And also why I will never ever fall in love. It turns you into a bitter freak when it ends.
“Dude, you have to come home for Christmas,” my brother says. “If you tell me you have a date, I’m going to drive up there and haul you back here myself.”
“Yeah, okay.” There’s no way I can pretend to be busy on Christmas Day. “I’ll come home. We’ll stay with Dad, yeah?”
“Yeah. And bring some nice clothes.”
