As Far as You'll Take Me Page 17

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Sophie was trying to make a point, I believe.” Shane leans against the wall of his bedroom. “She wants you to bounce back. To be a stronger advocate for yourself, you know?”

  “I don’t think I can. I don’t know what this is, this haze that’s fallen over me.”

  “You could eat.” He tosses me a bag of crisps. “I didn’t want to admit it at first, and I don’t know how to talk to you about it. But I do worry about you sometimes. Your eyes glaze over and you hold your stomach. Plus, you sleep all the time. How many naps does one guy need?”

  I pull both ends of the bag. It opens.

  The tang of barbecue crisps hits my nose. I stare at them. Turning the bag over, I read the calorie information. I don’t know if I should.

  He rolls his eyes. “Eat. You’re not doing yourself any favors.”

  I want to end this … crash dieting. But I can already feel Pierce slipping away. He’s barely been in contact this week, and I wonder if maybe it was all too much for him. If I was too much for him.

  But we’ve got our trip to Florence soon, then our recital after that, and if I can drop another ten or so pounds, I’ll be closer to my goal.

  Though I still don’t know what my goal is.

  “I’ll have a few,” I say. And I put two in my mouth.

  Two becomes four, which becomes half the bag. He watches me eat like I’m some sideshow act. I quickly fold the bag and put it to the side. No more of that, for now.

  The weird thing about having a roommate is that for your entire roommateship, you’ve got one open-ended conversation going. He’s there when you wake and when you sleep, and all the hours in between. He’s there practicing for his new job while you’re watching a movie. And your trains of thought can travel on, day by day, an ebb and flow that never seems to end.

  It’s been a full week since Sophie first brought it up, and he’s finally talking about it. He’ll bring this up again, but for now, I turn away. To my computer. To the phone in my hand.

  My fingers type the numbers I know by heart. The only number I know by heart that isn’t my home landline.

  And it belongs to someone who fucking wrecked me.

  Skye’s texted intermittently over the last few days, but he’s got no answers.

  It would be so easy to cut her out of my life, but I can’t. I can’t recede into my turtle shell and wait for this to blow over, because I know it never will. I need a resolution—some kind of resolution to keep me going here.

  “Hi.” I clear my throat to lower my voice, which echoes back to me. “Take me off Bluetooth.”

  “Yes, sir. I can’t believe you’re actually calling me. Is this a confrontation?”

  “I thought it was about time,” I say. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “How about starting at the point in time you got too good for us.”

  Is Skye there too?

  “Megan, do you want to know the truth? I think that was ages ago. Years. Before we were even friends.” I choke back a tear. “I’ve always felt like a bad fit for the life I was given.”

  “Because you were gay?”

  “Yeah. In a state where half the people there would prefer I just die than be myself, it’s either you make yourself feel superior or you let them make you feel inferior. There’s no in between.”

  “Well, great news. I’m giving you fucking wings, Mart. You’re on your own. I’m done holding your hand, and it’s clear you think you can function just fine without me. So I kicked you out of the nest.”

  “And waited for me to splat all over the pavement.”

  She laughs. “And you did splat, didn’t you? God, I hate knowing you so well, I really do. I was just telling Skye—”

  “Keep me out of this,” he says. “This is your thing. You crossed lines.”

  “Skye, please. I told you what I was going to do; you still came to the bonfire with me.”

  “I didn’t think you’d actually do it!”

  “Skye!” I say. “She told you I was gay, even when I didn’t want her to. What makes you think she’d be bluffing about outing me to everyone else?”

  My hands grip the throw pillow by my side. Shane’s quickly gathering things to leave the room. Living in the same apartment may be one open conversation, but he’s ending it now, and I don’t blame him.

  Skye’s silent. Megan’s silent. I’m silent.

  The door clicks as Shane enters his bedroom, and I grit my teeth.

  “Megan,” I say. To make the conversation more serious. “I didn’t know where I wanted this to go, but I do now. I’m sorry I was running thirty minutes late on a call and you took that as me blowing you off for my boyfriend, which you said menacingly, but for your information, he is officially my boyfriend. But I’m sorry about a lot of things. I’m sorry I never stood up to you, and gave you this perverse superiority, where you think you can control what happens in my life. You were always pissed I told my parents first, and you next, so I’m sorry for that. Because really, you should have been the last one I told. Because every single memory about me coming out is tied to you. How you claimed you always knew. How you started quizzing whether or not every guy in my vision was hot. How you felt you needed to push me further and further out of the closet, like that was the thing holding me back.”

  I stop, and give her one last chance to interject.

  “There was one thing holding me back from being myself, and you know who that was?”

  She scoffs. “I can guess.”

  “You.” I let the word sing out. “I think we’re done here.”

  “I think we were done a long time ago.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The only thing I regret, days after my fight with Megan, is this:

  I let her have the last word.

  She’s a debater at heart, and she knows how to flip the subject over and attack the jugular. She’s not one you battle in words (or with fists either; she’s got the strength of an MMA fighter), but I held my own.

  I said what I needed to, which I’ve never done before.

  Beyond that, I’m looking at the positives: I leave for Florence in two days, and today’s the first day I get to see Pierce since I passed out, since he got stuck in Leeds longer than he planned and we never got to have that practice session. I’m still losing weight, but I’m eating more, if for no other reason than to not pass out. I still feel funny sometimes, but when I do, I take a nap. And naps fix all things.

  Right now, I’m just getting back to the flat after an especially distracting practice session. But when I stop to check mail on my way up, I see a package. I take it in my hands, and glance at the label from the bottom up.

  It’s from America. Kentucky.

  The address isn’t my mom’s.

  My hands start shaking, to the point where the contents of the box start shaking too.

  I take large steps to the apartment. The thudding of the contents of the box matches my heartbeat. I fling open the door and set the box and my oboe case down on the coffee table. Then I back away from it.

  Shane jumps up. “What are you doing?”

  “She really got the last word.”

  “What?”

  I snap out of it. “Sorry. Megan.” I gesture to the couch, where I made the call that ended our friendship. “She sent me something.”

  He bounces on the front of his bare feet, looking between me and the box.

  “Are you going to—”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Avoiding it won’t stop—”

  “I know!”

  “Then open it!”

  I sigh. “Fine.”

  Shane darts into the kitchen and brings back a butter knife. I ignore the bits of curry and lamb on the serrated bits. (I can only identify this because it was our dinner last night.) I cut into the tiger print duct tape, and the anticipation builds in my chest with every pull of the knife.

  I open the flaps, one by one, delaying the process as long as
I can.

  It’s a scrapbook. A red bound folder with a picture in the center. The picture is one I haven’t seen in years. It’s of our middle school homecoming dance. It’s the first picture of all three of us.

  “Wait, is that you?” Shane asks. “And her?”

  I laugh. “Megan and Skye went to this dance together, which was the extent of their dating life. I wasn’t friends with either of them yet. I’m that guy in the background with his mouth hanging open and looking surprised at the flash.”

  “How photogenic you are. Why did she send this? Is she sorry?”

  “It takes over a week for mail to come here.” I pick up the scrapbook and run my hand across the fabric. “She sent it before our fight.”

  I open it up.

  The first page is a letter:

  Happy Valentine’s Day, BITCH.

  Okay, that was harsh.

  Okay, it’s July. But it takes a few months for packages to go overseas. Or was that the Mayflower? You answer that—you’re the H.S. graduate, not me.

  Truth is I didn’t really know what to make of my utter need to scrapbook. Here are some memories of us from my iPhone. I could have done this online and saved a lot of time. But my mom likes to scrapbook a lot and she bought me all of these things from some Etsy store, so here you go.

  With all the love in my heart … BITCH.

  Megan

  If I had magic powers right now, I’d use them to stop the laughing. Each chuckle feels like betrayal, but I can’t help it. The letter’s so her. This scrapbook is so not her. I sit on the couch, and Shane takes that as a cue to leave the room. I take it page by page.

  I stare at an immaculately matted picture of her car, with cursive stenciling above that reads, “Where it all started.” We’d hated each other for years, mostly because she wouldn’t stop talking over the top of every single person in History. She was a know-it-all who didn’t know shit, but she wouldn’t let anyone get a comment in. I snapped at her once, ages ago, and she held the grudge for years. I’m talking hard eye rolls when I walked into the room, glares when I passed in the hall. All for nothing, really.

  It was all fine, until I needed her.

  Shane comes back with a plate of mini samosas he made for us in the oven, and points to the spot next to me. “Can I join?”

  I nod.

  “Nice car.” He takes a seat.

  “It’s hers. I usually took the bus to school, but I was finishing up designs for the yearbook one day, and had to stay super late. I’m within walking distance to school, but it would’ve been a long walk, and I was in a fucking leg cast—long story. When I left, there was only one car in the parking lot, hers. No one else in my family was answering, and I didn’t have many friends who could drive yet, so I was stuck. I asked her for a ride, and somewhere in that six-minute drive, a friendship was born.”

  I turn the page, and suck in a breath. The burning starts in my eyes, and I know the tears are coming and they won’t stop once they do and—

  “Um, do you need a tissue?”

  —I feel myself breaking apart. Sadness tears at my muscles, and I feel simultaneously hollow and overloaded. That picture. Her dad pulling me close, smiles plastered on our faces.

  “We—” I start to sob, but I pull back and force the words out. “We had just won a game of cornhole. It’s some lawn game you play in America. I don’t know if you—well, anyway, we won. Beat Megan and her mom, and took this picture. And he died. Just a few days later.”

  “And you were close?”

  “No, it wasn’t even that. But having your best friend’s dad die? It’s a mess. You’re sad, you’re grieving, and that doesn’t compare to what they’re feeling. You’re sad, they’re devastated, broken, losing faith, and scared. But they have to get it together in an instant. She gave the eulogy.”

  A tear makes its way down my cheek.

  “God, it’s hard when friendships end,” I say. Shane puts his arm around me, and I hold my breath to keep from losing it. “Let’s keep ours going for a bit longer, if you don’t mind?”

  “Are you going to make up with her?” Shane asks. He nods reassuringly, like that’s the obvious choice for a lifelong friend. And it kind of is. But …

  “A little perspective helps,” I say. “But this fixes nothing. You should have heard her trying to justify outing me like that. I can’t believe I kept her in my life for so long.”

  “True. It’s good you made it out of there,” Shane says with a scoff. “That whole town is full of idiots.”

  “Last week, I would’ve agreed with you, but I don’t think that’s true.” I shake my head. “Since she did that, I’ve gotten a ton of supportive messages from people back home. Skye keeps checking in on me too.”

  “Huh,” he says. “So there’s more to Avery than meets the eye?”

  “I didn’t give any of them a chance to actually know me, so I guess I’ll never know. When I found Megan, I thought she was all I needed. That is, until I got here.” Shane smiles, and I continue. “With Pierce, and Sophie, and everyone else, I was able to be myself right away. A group like this was something I never knew I needed. I’ve got my own family here.”

  Once I get my emotions back in check, I dip into the bathroom and reflexively take out my scale. It’s midday, and I’ve already checked my weight once, but I like to see how it changes through the day. Pierce asked me out to lunch today, so the number might go up later. I slip off my shoes and jeans and step on.

  My weight’s about the same. I don’t know what I expected, and I can’t explain why I feel compelled to do this so often, but there’s definitely been progress. I pull out the front of my shirt and see the extra room where my stomach used to be. It’s still there, but a little smaller.

  I put my pants back on. They’re a snug fit—I had to get them from Primark yesterday, as my old ones looked huge—but I like them. My shoulders pull back on their own, and I feel confident.

  Until I hear someone knock on the front door.

  Shane heads out for one of his final bookshop shifts as Pierce comes into the apartment. He gives me a quick hug without much of a glance at my new jeans or acknowledging the fact we haven’t seen each other in days. He sits on the couch and offers a wave.

  “Hi,” I say. It feels awkward, but I don’t know why. There’s tension in the air, but I can’t place why his shoulders are slumped, why his gaze is stuck to the floor.

  “Hiya,” he says. “Sorry, I’m not sure I’m up for lunch. But I still wanted to stop by.”

  I sit next to him, and put my hand on his back. “Everything okay?”

  “This school is hard, sometimes. I keep getting so frustrated. No one listens to me. It’s like they don’t think I’m trying or that I’m letting my cockiness get in the way. I’m a reasonable person. I set goals for myself. I meet those goals. I—fuck, I don’t know.”

  “Pierce,” I say, scratching the back of his neck.

  He swats my hand away. “I’m not looking for pity. I just need to practice more or something, I don’t know.”

  “I’m not pitying you. You’re my boyfriend; this is what we do—listen and support each other, right?”

  The silence lasts for far too long. And eventually, he shakes his head. “I guess. Never been the boyfriend type.”

  I don’t have a response, so I stay quiet.

  He sighs. “I talked with Dr. Baverstock yesterday, about the recital piece.”

  “Oh?” I ask. “What did he say?”

  “That he was excited to hear you play. Apparently he’s heard your practice sessions lately. I had to sit there, and smile, and listen, while he praised you for everything he critiques me for. I was gutted.”

  “I’m sorry,” I offer weakly.

  “It’s not your fault. Anyway, I should get out of here. There’s probably a practice room open. This isn’t helping. I’m sorry, sometimes everything is just … so hard.”

  I know what he means.

  He stands, and the t
ension sprawls out through my chest and shoulders. I stand, and try to follow, but he’s out the door. I didn’t even get to tell him about the scrapbook, or the earlier friendship-ending phone call. We could have stayed together, helped each other, but he didn’t want that. A part of me knows he’s right about one thing, and it worries me: he still might not be the boyfriend type.

  Our time outside Parliament comes back to me, and I remember the rush of emotions I couldn’t stop—whatever version of Pierce that was. He stuck with me, and he listened, and he adapted. And as much as I want to close off and sulk, I think it’s my time to do the same.

  I bolt out the door, oboe in hand, and spot him a few paces away, running his hands through his short hair. He’s pacing, back and forth, trapped by his emotions. I know that feeling, or something like it if it’s not the same.

  “Pierce,” I shout. He looks up and I smile.

  It takes a lot out of me to smile. Yes, I may be a good liar in some instances, but in most I’m crap. Especially when it comes to my mood and how I feel about someone.

  When I catch up to him, I put an arm around him. Heavily enough to show support, but lightly enough so he doesn’t think I’m trapping him.

  “Spending the rest of the day in the practice room might not be the best thing right now. Let’s grab a quick lunch, then go to Rio’s jam session. You still get to practice, but it’ll be for something fun. Might get you out of that headspace. I know I could use it.”

  There’s this hesitation in his expression, but eventually, acceptance creeps into his gaze.

  “Okay. You’re right. Let me grab my trumpet and we can go.”

  We wind through the park hand in hand—our instrument cases taking up our other hands—and an unusually cool breeze cuts through us. It’s a literal breath of fresh air. Time is resetting itself, and I had the power to change things.

  The sound of clarinets hits my ears, not unlike the last time we did this. But this one doesn’t sound like a fight. Sophie’s not showing off. She’s running through some scales and warm-ups with Rio. Their fingers fly faster and faster, until they both run out of breath. I stop, pulling Pierce back a bit as anxiety creeps into my shoulders.