Page 68 of Past Tents

Dinner went by quickly, with all of us oohing and aahing over Judy’s cooking and the bread Julia and Shane brought. Clay was quieter than I’d seen him, and while we were finishing up the meal, I caught Clayton staring at his son with his head cocked to the side, like he was trying to figure out a puzzle.

“You handling everything okay?” he asked so quietly, I wasn’t sure anyone else heard him since I was directly next to him. But Clay answered immediately.

“All good.”

His dad nodded.

“People count on you. No problem’s anything a good attitude can’t solve, right, Clayton?” Judy piped up.

It bugged me that she called him Clayton, even though, obviously, it was his name. It didn’t fit him. It fit his dad—a little bit stuffy, a little rigid, a little emotionally unavailable. Not that it was my place to come into her home and tell her what to call her son.

Judy rounded the table putting down dessert plates. Her constant motion reminded me of how I used to think of Clay, but lately, he’d slowed down. For me.

“Have you seen Clay’s house?” Judy asked me.

“Oh, I have. It’s in such a pristine spot there on the lake. He’s so lucky to be there.”

“Not exactly luck,” Clayton grumbled from the head of the table. Clay had told me how he’d inherited the house from his grandmother who felt a kinship with him because they shared some traits. It was starting to make sense now—they’d both suffered from depression, and his grandmother had been his true north when he dealt with the worst of it. Meantime, his parents resented that she’d left the house to him.

“Dad, stop,” Shane said, his annoyance seeming like this conversation happened often.

“I’m just saying luck had nothing to do with it. Hard to argue with fact.”

“Okay, enough. Can we not discuss this again?” Judy patted her lips and pushed her chair back from the table. “I’ll bring out the dessert. Julia, will you help me plate the pie?”

“Of course.” Julia looked at me and mouthed,Sorry, before following her future mother-in-law from the room.

“What the hell was that about?” I whispered the moment the screen door to the back porch slammed behind us. Now that we were outside in the backyard, I felt the air returning to my lungs, but I was no less riled up.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s just them.”

“Meaning you’re fine with your own parents treating you like second best when you’re awesome in every possible way?”

I had more to say, more anger for these people, more confusion, but it was stifled for now by Clay’s large hands cupping the sides of my face and his lips landing hard on mine.

He didn’t hesitate for a second out of fear we might be seen by his parents or anyone else. His kiss told me how much he’d been holding back while we were inside the house. Every impassioned answer to his parents’ prickly questions, every bit of determination to live a life on his own terms poured out in this kiss. Hungry, insistent, plundering.

His hands gripped my hair like he was afraid he’d lose me if he let go. Lifting my face and angling my lips more squarely against his, he groaned as I pressed against him. He walked me backward with the certainty of someone who knew the terrain and had a plan. I trusted that he wasn’t guiding me into a ditch and didn’t drop my lips from his.

The light changed, growing shadowy, and I opened my eyes to see we’d entered a stand of trees at the perimeter of the yard.

“Thank you,” he said before dipping down to kiss me again. I knew he wasn’t taking me ’round back for a quickie before coffee. He just needed to get out of that house as badly as I did. “Thank you for being you,” he said in between kisses.

“I will always be me. You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“Thank you for caring enough to get upset with my parents.” His hands didn’t leave my face, and he tipped his forehead against mine. “That’s just my parents. They don’t totally...get me.”

“What is there to get? You’re amazing. They’re lucky to have you as a son. What’s with all the weirdness?”

He shook his head. “They just don’t understand my depression. Never have. They kind of think mental health isn’t a real health issue.”

I was floored. “Not a real health issue? How can they think that?”

He shrugged, leaning against a tree. He spun me around so my back was to his front and he wrapped his arms around me. Now when he spoke, his voice was soft near my ear. “When I first told them about the bad episodes I was having, they told me to cheer up, try to look at the bright side of things. My mom would remind me how much worse some people have it.”

“Like Shane,” I said, realizing.

I felt him nod against my neck. “I mean, it’s how they see it. He had a real, visible challenge that he was born with, and he’s overcome it in amazing ways. My depression hit me later in life and it’s not something you can see. Maybe that’s why they’d rather think it’s not there.”

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