Page 34 of When I'm Gone

Sage, used to the circus, is playing happily behind us with her dolls. “I think you did a good job.” The way Chase talks about his family is a magnificent thing, irritation and devotion, sentimental with a dash of irksome sibling squabbles.

“My son seems quite fond of you,” she observes.

Heat creeps up my neck. “He’s very much not, I assure you. But he’s been very helpful while I…” My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. What do I say? Learn to be a normal person? “Adjust,” I finish lamely.

Margeaux hums, and we watch the rest of the game in thoughtful silence. We’re well into the night by now, but this neighborhood doesn’t seem to mind the disturbance. When they’re water-logged and Michelin man fluffy with suds, she gets a gleam in her eye.

“Ready for the best part, my dear?”

A smile twitches at the corner of my lips at the maniacal smirk on her face. “What’s the best part?”

From somewhere, Parker groans like he’s been shot. “Hosing them off, of course,” she says at the same time that Logan calls her wicked.

Margeaux is my new favorite person. She really sealed the deal when she sprayed the soap off her husband and three of her kids, picked up the sleeping baby from the patio chair,passed off her weapon and left us alone. Now Chase is bartering for his life, and I’m drunk with power.

“Come on, Chaos. It doesn’t have to be like this.” That’s the third time he’s said that, it’s getting better every time. He’s really pulling out all the stops, unique eyes on a full puppy dog setting, playing innocent. Too bad, I’m damn good at holding grudges and I haven’t all the way forgiven him for coercing me into playing earlier.

I totally have, but motive is important.

Ready... Aim… “Fire,” I mutter as I unleash a torrent of icy spray on him. No sound is more beautifully victorious as his indignant yelp when it pierces his skin. He looks damn good wet. Sculpted and dripping like Poseidon.

Chase rushes me suddenly, making me squeal and latch onto the garden hose in a vise grip while trying to keep my aim true. My body curls up, bringing my knees to my chest and ducking my head just before frigid arms engulf me. We grapple over the hose, drenching each other in the process. Calloused fingers grab me by the back of the knee and roll me onto my back, and I forget to hold on to the stream of water. The hose gets kinked and then he’s just hovering above me, breathing my air with our noses almost touching.

I’m scrambling internally for the right thing to say or do, breathing in short pants looking into the eyes of the man I’ve had a crush on since I was sixteen years old. I skipped all the lessons that normal people learn from dating around. My love life went straight from never being kissed with a crush to in a serious relationship with a guy who picked me up off the streets.

Whatever this is with Chase, I want it. I just have no fucking idea how to get it. It’s too fast and probably the worst idea I’ve ever had, but when he’s looking at me like I matter to him in a way no one else does, it’s hard to remember why.

All I’d have to do is raise my head just the tiniest bit and our lips would be pressed together. That’s all it would take.

Insurmountable.

A frustrated noise builds in my throat that I can’t hold back. Chase’s eyes turn from smoldering to concerned in an instant. “What’s wrong, Chaos?”

He sits back on his heels to put some distance between us that I don’t want, but he wouldn’t know that. The worst part about it is there’s still a kernel inside of me that wants to call my brother. He’d know what I should do, he always had the best advice. He knew me better than anyone for three-fourths of my life. Any hurdles I didn’t know how to jump, he knew how to walk me through them.

Until he realized who I really was.

“Nothing, I’m just tired.”

The lie tastes bitter, there’s nothing more I want to do than stay here in this dark backyard with the crickets chirping and be able to actually be in this moment with him.

Chase pushes himself up and holds a hand out for me. “Let’s get you to bed, then.”

It feels like I tried to swallow a hundred cotton balls, all I’m capable of is standing up and walking away. If I tried to speak, I’d fall apart. This alternate reality where Chase seems interested in my well-being is great and all, but it’s making the steel cage I built around my heart to survive start to melt. All I do is fall apart around him, and I just fucking got here. I’m being plagued with hypotheticals and brick walls in my mind that never existed before. While my internal monologue was always self-deprecating, now it feels like a stranger. A month ago, I could hype myself up to endure a whole night out with him, watching him get drunker and drunker knowing that I’d be feeling disgusting whiskey breath on the back of my neck as soon as we get home, and I was lucky if I didn’t bleed when he was done with me.

I could do it with a smile on my face—a damn convincing one too.

This beautiful, raven-haired boy with the most giving heart I’ve ever known is getting the worst version of me to date, and I don’t know how to fix myself.

Chase leads the way through his parent’s house, only the light above the kitchen stove was left on. It’s late enough that everyone has probably gone to bed already, but I stop dead in my tracks in the dining room. A head of white-blond hair encased in a gilded frame halts my steps. I almost didn’t see it, I wouldn’t have unless I wasn’t trailing my fingers along the cornflower blue wall so I didn’t walk into something by accident.

I stare like I’m seeing a unicorn or vampire or some other equally impossible thing, because nestled comfortably between a photo of the Adler kids at Halloween fifteen years ago, and Sage at a year old covered with pink frosting while she inhales a birthday cake, is me.

Brady and I when he graduated high school. The moment is forever ingrained into my memory. He was so excited to start his future; he stayed up all night while I painted in his room, telling me how much fun we were going to have when I moved out and went to school nearby wherever he was living. That had always been the plan, just make it through high school and I’d get to move away from Florida and be myself unapologetically. By the time that photo had been taken, I’d known without a shadow of a doubt that I was gay for almost a year. But being ashamed of my newly realized sexuality didn’t cover half of it. Back then, I was forced into a tiny church three blocks from my house twice a week. Leviticus and Revelations played on a loop making me feel sick if I so much as looked at a boy. I spent years feeling like there was a neon sign above my head that advertised me as one of them.

If you looked closely into that moment captured and displayed on the wall, you’d see my reddened eyes from crying. Losing Brady to Washington shot terror into my bloodstream. I knew without a doubt that I wouldn’t be able to navigate without him. Our arms were around each other, his diploma front and center. Both of us were smiling, though one was lying, and it wasn’t my brother. It was taken approximately five minutes before my dad yanked me up by the front of my shirt and hissed at me to grow the fuck up or there would be hell to pay. Just so happened to be after Brady had split off to drive himself back home, having gone to the graduation ceremony before us.

But we’re all cheesy grins in the photo. Beneath my selfish panic, I was proud of him, and you can see it shining through my eyes. He had already heard from I.U. that he was getting a really good scholarship and he had made it out. People get trapped in small towns, not that there's anything wrong with it, but not when dreams about cute boys made me wake up pouring sweat and silently screaming my apologies to God, begging not to be sent into the eternal fire.

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