Page 60 of From the Ashes
Praying I’m imagining things, I pause without looking up, waiting to see if I hear it again. Not another second goes by before I hear Phoenix’s angry voice booming from my left.
“What.Thefuck.Isthat?”
I’d hoped things between he and I would be a little less fragile by the time he found out, but luck isn’t on my side lately.
I pull my earbuds out of my ears and stuff them in mypocket. Quickly reaching for my t-shirt draped on one of the fence posts, I already know it’s too late. My wrist brace gets in my way and I take forever pulling the shirt on, exposing my skin to him longer.
“What are you doing home?” I ask, sounding guilty as fuck.
Fuming, he replies, “If you plan to spend one more night in my house, answer the goddamn question.”
A lie about what he sees is on the tip of my tongue, but then I remember, I’m never lying to him again.
“You know what it is,” I say, my voice barely a whisper. But this bastard won’t let me take the coward’s way out. He never has.
“I want to hear you say it,” he says through clenched teeth, spitting my words from our phone conversation back in my face. I have to admit, it doesn’t feel great being on this side of the interrogation.
When I finally raise my eyes to meet his, he’s standingrightin front of me. If I fill my lungs, our chests will touch. The fury in his eyes causes his pupils to swell and remove all traces of the emerald green I love so much. It’s like watching the sky darken around the setting sun.
“It’s a phoenix,” I answer, knowing he’s talking about the bird with wings of fire tattooed down my left side.
“When?” The word is nothing more than an anguished groan.
“The day after I watched you get carried out of that ring.”
“Why?”
Fuck, he sounds so broken as he says it.
“Because phoenixes are reborn from their own ashes, and part of me died that night with you. I needed a reminder that I could rise again too,” I explain even though I know he won’t fully understand the metaphor.
He throws his hands in the air as he crowds my space. Itseems to be our thing, always on the verge of fighting or fucking. “So, you chose to commemorate the worst day of my life by inking it permanently into your skin? Jesus,fuck,Walker! You couldn’t even look at me that day!” He’s back to shouting and there’s no denying that the lid on the container keeping our history locked up tight is about to blow off.
“I’m so sorry I hurt you, Phoenix. I didn’t evenseeyou until it was too late.” I wince, realizing how bad that sounds. That I basically just admitted to looking right through him. “That’s not what I meant. I?—”
“Save it,” he says, cutting me off as he starts to walk away. But then he turns around and fires words that might as well have been a bullet to my chest. “When I finally woke up in the hospital, the first thing I asked was if you’d tried to contact me. When the answer wasno, it felt like I’d been kicked all over again. I’d just lost my career over a guy who used me and moved on.”
Tears well in my eyes as I launch myself at him, but he stops me with a hand to my chest.
“Phoenix, I…couldn’t. My life was a mess. Hell, it still is,” I try to explain before breaking down completely. “I wasn’t positive that I played any role in your ride that day, but I figured our night together contributed somehow, and all I could think was that I destroy everyone I care about. The only way to keep you safe was to walk away, which I’ve hated myself for every day since it happened. You were the only thing that could have saved me that night, and I’m so fucking sorry it cost you everything.”If my vocal cords aren’t bleeding from the strain of forcing these words out, it’ll be a fucking miracle.
“Bullshit!” he yells with his teeth clenched, gripping the front of my shirt and hauling me closer. “You knew damn well what I meant when I asked you if you’d had sex before. It might not have been a big deal to you, but it was to me! You took fromme without thinking about the repercussions. I wanted more with you. One night and I was fuckinggonefor you. And the next day you acted like it meant nothing, so why have that night immortalized? My fucking medical records could have done it for you.” He releases my shirt and shoves me away from him, the gesture twisting my insides.
I begin to pace, needing to dispel this restless energy for the final truth I’m about to reveal to him. “I wanted more too, Phoenix. So much more. But I wasn’t even sure I would get another day, let alone an entire future. I was a confused, frustrated, scared, ready-to-end-it-all teenager. When I turned my back on you and that bonfire, I was headed to my dad’s truck to get the pistol we kept in the glovebox.”
This statement sobers him up a little and his eyes snap to mine, the fear obvious in them. That fear tells me how much he still cares, and I cling to that with every cell in my body.
The sun is low enough that Phoe and I are now bathed in shade. We’re still too far apart for my liking, but any closer and I won’t be able to finish this conversation. To give him the final pieces of the puzzle about that night. The other lie of omission I told…or didn’t tell.
“Why?” His voice trembles as he utters the word. Once again, he already knows the answer, but I’m done playing games with him, so I spell it out.
“I was already dealing with some pretty hefty guilt and it was winning.” I switch gears with a seemingly random question, but it’s only so I can tell the whole story. “How old were you when you realized you were bisexual or whatever you want to call it?”
“Fourteen,” he answers.
“You know how old I was when I finally accepted that I was gay?” I don’t pause or give him a chance to answer before continuing while I have momentum. “I was eighteen years andten days old, Phoenix. The night you proved I could be a good cowboy and still be attracted to men, I finally accepted it. I’d been struggling well before I starting touring the circuit. Shirtless, ripped guys were everywhere and I felt things. Things I’d always been told I wasn’t supposed to feel. Thingsrealmen, especiallycowboys,didn’t feel for other men. ButIfelt them. And I was going out of my mind because of it. Trying to deny what I was, I’d taken a girlfriend my senior year in high school.Fake it until you make itand all that shit. She was a sweet girl I’d grown up with. She was really good to me. She was just really good,period. We had sexone timebefore I hit the road. It was an effort to try and prove to myself that I could…to prove that I was straight. Except, she got pregnant.”
Phoenix must decide the space between us is now too much, and he pulls my forehead to his. The minty scent of his chewing gum coasts across my face as he breathes, “Oh, fuck.”
