Page 23 of Broken

“Jokes on me, wasn’t it? Now here you are. Everything my father told me was wrong about myself, welcomed with open arms at his dinner table.”

“Here I am,” he says softly, pain lacing his every word. “How long ago was this?” he asks me gently.

“October,” I say on a sob.

Crying it is then.

“Your lovers?” Michele asks, speaking for the first time. “They are white, no?”

“Yes,” I confirm on a sigh.

Adam Newcomb rises from my father’s table and places his napkin on his plate. His husband, shaking in barely-contained anger, does the same, taking his husband’s hand. His gaze pivots to the floor, where my mother is on her knees beside my father, holding his hand to help him back to his feet. Not a single person rose to help him but her.

“We’re done here. My lawyers will contact you in the morning. Lancaster United is not a company that I’m prepared to share a name with.” He looks at me again. “If you’d like to come with us, son, I’d love to get you that cup of coffee.”

Avoiding the eyes of the twenty other people in the room, I step away from the table and chair, tucking my seat back in before I go. Without a word to my parents, still crouching on the floor, I follow Adam Newcomb and his husband out of my parents’ house.

ELEVEN

REMINGTON

Adam and Michele dropped me off at my apartment, wishing me a good night. I don’t think they were trying to be funny, but I thought it was hilarious. Good night? Right. Sure.

I hung around the lobby until their town car disappeared, then I flowed out onto the New York sidewalks again.

I don’t sleep anymore, and I don’t want to be home, alone, in an apartment where I feel no connection. What happy thoughts I do have about the space all revolve around Justin and Julia. Then I remember it’s basically a prison. Well-equipped to be sure, but its sole purpose is to keep me contained and controlled.

I hate it there.

It snowed several days ago, but the temperatures have warmed up enough that the snow has turned to slush, grey and dreary, dripping onto the road. If that isn’t the perfect metaphor, I don’t know what is. Snow, once sure white and pure, ending its life as a disgusting mess.

I’m lost, and that’s not a metaphor.

I have no idea where I’m at.

I’ve been walking for hours. I had to stop at one point in time to refill the bottles in my pockets, but so long as I keep ingesting them, one every other block or so, I stay warm enough and locked in my own head that I don’t even feel the cold.

I’ve thought about slitting my wrists. Putting an end to it all. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Not because I’m a coward. I am, but not of that.

Julia cut herself slicing an onion one night, and there was so much blood. Justin was fretting, in that overprotective way he does, but Julia...she had this gleam in her eye. Before we knew what was happening, she had her sketch pad open and painted in her own blood.

It would be a waste of an usable material if I slit my wrists and didn’t allow Julia to paint with it. The more I think about it, the more curious I become. I’m a man, and she’s a woman. She’s white, and I’m black. We’re as different as they come. But our blood? Would our blood be the same color? We all bleed red, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Julia, it’s all the different shades in the world.

No. I couldn’t slit my wrists.

Walking the sidewalks at night, I’ve thought about jumping in front of a semi. It would be easy this time of day. Traffic is thick but lighter than in the middle of the afternoon, and people get looser with their steering wheels. They press their luck with the changing of the lights.

It would be easy to step right in front of one when he was rushing to make the intersection before the red.

But that seems pointless too. The object is to put me out of my misery, especially after what I did to Julia. After the way I broke Justin’s trust.

Still, though, I don’t want to suffer unnecessarily. Something tells me death via semi would not be a quick way to go. Plus, with my luck, I wouldn’t die. I’d be stuck in traction, unable to feel my cock, and left at my mother’s mercy for the rest of my life.

I’m a right bastard, but even I don’t deserve that.

The cold touches my fingertips, and I reach into my pocket and pull out another bottle. I don’t bother to check the label or try to guess the liquor from the color. I open my throat and let the liquid pour down it, then toss the plastic into the closest trash container.

It’s long ago stopped burning my throat, but the liquor stokes the fire burning in my belly, keeping me warm from the inside out. My ears begin to buzz again, and a slight smile pulls at the sides of my lips as the alcohol hits my bloodstream.

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