“You’re awful!”
“But you love me anyway.”
Adam sighed heavily. “Yeah, yeah I do.”
Dane smiled. He could only hope to find friends so great someday. Maybe even these very same young men would be willing to fill that role for him. He wanted them to be friends that wouldn’t care if he was gay or hated food or worked out too much. They wouldn’t care if he said mean things without meaning to or admitted to having been in love with a bandmate he knew he could never have. He sighed to himself. Would Adam be angry at him for that? He seemed like a nice guy. Funny, friendly, polite, honest. Ru really did deserve a guy like that, not the faker Dane was.
“It’s okay to like sausage,” he said. “Right? Or not. I guess some people don’t like sausage, but that’s okay too.”
“I love sausage,” Bas said. “Short, long, fat, skinny... Sausage is good.”
“Bas! You’re such a horndog.”
Bas laughed hard, and Dane felt a bit of humor stealing over him like it was contagious. All three of them laughed for several minutes.
Finally Bas said, “I’m not a horndog. You know Dustin and I barely held hands. I may tease, but you know I’m looking for something more. Rainbows, unicorns, glitter, and all that.”
Who was Dustin? Dane wondered. Was he important to Bas? Why did the thought of Bas having someone else make him jealous? Was it unfair for Dane to want to be important to him?
“Because of Nate and Hank?” Adam asked.
“I don’t know. Dustin would have been the first since then. When I talked to my therapist, he said it’s because I am thinking more deeply about sex and emotional connections. That I need something more than the physical now. And Dustin and I just didn’t connect like that. When I kissed him, it was just a kiss. No sparks or magic. And maybe I’m naïve to want that, but you have it, so I know it exists. Dustin was nice, but I wasn’t dreaming of our future together,” Bas answered.
“Do you dream of a future with Tommy?” Dane had to ask.
Bas hesitated but then said, “Not in the way you probably think. I see myself going to his wedding someday. Maybe babysitting his kids. I see him coming to my wedding, buying me some ridiculously expensive present just because he can. It’s not sexual, if that’s what you mean. I see a lot of the same things for Adam and me. I better get an invite to your wedding, runner-boy.”
Adam laughed. “Not any time soon. We gotta survive prom first.”
“You wouldn’t marry Ru?” Bas asked.
“I would. But not yet. I love him. Want to be with him forever, but we have years for that. There’s no rush. We have school to finish, and I have a career to pursue. Having a piece of paper doesn’t define us, though it’s nice to have the option. I don’t understand why everyone is in a rush. Love isn’t about material things and contracts. It’s about being with someone who makes you smile and holds you when you just gotta cry.”
“Words of wisdom from the baby in the room,” Bas said. Dane smiled at their teasing. Ru and Tommy had been like this before AJ started pushing them apart. Dane had never had that ease with anyone, but it made him smile to listen to them.
“I’m not a baby.”
“Ru calls you baby, and that’s okay,” Bas said.
“I’m okay with being Ru’s baby. He’s mine too.”
“Aw. You’re so sweet that if I weren’t wrapped up like a burrito I’d squeeze the rice and beans out of you!” Bas said. They all laughed.
It was nice to know that Ru was loved. Dane hoped they did stay together forever. “I’d like to go to the wedding too. When you have one. Whether it’s tomorrow or fifteen years from now.” They were both quiet for a minute, and Dane thought he’d spoken wrong again. It was right to let Ru go. Ru had never been his anyway. And giving him up to Adam was okay. Adam was a good guy. Dane could learn to like the guy and not be jealous. He smiled at the ceiling, thinking through his recent discussion with his therapist. The real Ru was never who Dane thought he was anyway. It had been a dream, an image Dane had set up in his place to make Ru unattainable so Dane wouldn’t feel so guilty for wanting him. “Ru should be happy. I’d like to see him happy.” And that was no less than what Ru deserved.
“I’d like that,” Adam said. “I know Ru would love for you to be there. You and Tommy were like brothers to him. He was so broken when he left the group. Leaving you guys behind was hard. I hope you’ll give him a chance to get close to you again. Maybe tell him how he can help.”
Dane’s gut clenched. “I don’t want to disappoint him.”
“The only disappointment he gets from you is you not talking to him. Not letting him be there for you. He takes it to mean you don’t trust him,” Adam said.
“I do.” Dane thought about it for a while. He had to stop pushing people away. He’d come to Minnesota to tell them, to be close to them. Maybe he couldn’t admit to his misplaced affection yet, but he could admit his problem.
“I have an eating disorder,” he confessed. He heard Bas suck in a deep breath. “And other crap too, like depression and anxiety. But the eating disorder is bad. If I let my head get away from me, I work out too much. I fell through a glass coffee table after not eating for days and working out too hard. I didn’t want to be a burden to anyone but knew I needed help. My manager convinced me to check myself into rehab.” He was quiet for a minute, thinking through the past few months of his life, including the changes that had kicked him into decline and how recently he’d picked himself back up again after a kick in the pants by a certain flaming gay boy.
“Ru has his crap together. He didn’t me messing that up. I called Tommy instead, not knowing what he was leaving behind. Another mistake. I’m always making mistakes.” Dane sighed. “A girl at the center died. We weren’t that close, but I knew her and she was nice. She threw up so much she had a heart attack. I don’t want to be her. I want to get better. I want to look in the mirror and not hate myself. I want to feel like I’m not a monster. I want to stop viewing food as my enemy and remembering bad things when I eat. That’s what I’m working on. The baggage I didn’t want to dump on everyone.”
“You’re not a monster, Dane. I’ve met monsters. You’re not even a baby one in training,” Adam assured him. “Will you tell Ru all this? Will you let him be there? I think it would be good for him to hear the stuff you’re going through. He’s got his own stuff he’s working through. Some of it food related. He might actually understand better than you would think.”
The timer went off, making Dane jerk at the noise. “Okay.”
“Yeah?”
“I want him to be there. I want to be there for him. I have to get better. I want to love like you and Ru do. I can’t do that if I spend all my time trying to die. Bas taught me that, and I haven’t even known him that long.”
“Yeah, Bas is pretty great.”
“Keep singing, luvs. I enjoy the praise,” Bas told them. They all laughed again.
