I carried that key with me every damn day. Most days, it taunted me, calling to me from my pocket that I should go to him, even if it was the middle of the night. It told me that he would listen to the fucked-up shit in my head and help me work through it all. It comforted me in my times of loneliness and encouraged me to reach out to him, that he would be there for me, even though itwas the last thing I deserved.
But pressed in between the rays of hope offered by that stupid key was the very real and depressing fact that I knew there was no way for any of it ever to work out. My family could barely stand me as it was. Telling them I was gay simply wasn’t an option. Knowing that I’d have to hide Quinn, that I’d have to conceal even more of who I truly was kept me from goingto him.
Somewhere along the way, I’d decided that suffering alone was easier than going for what I truly wanted. And if that wasn’t the saddest realization of them all, I didn’t know what was.
So I carried that damn key with me everywhere as a reminder of the one time in my life when I felt like I was truly happy. It made sense that I’d be turning the key over in my hand as Quinn’s mom pulledup to the pump next to me at the gas station. “I thought that car looked familiar,” she said as she walked over to me. “It’s in my driveway half the time,” she added with a laugh.
“Hi, Mrs. Jacobs,” I greeted as we exchanged a warm hug. “How have you been?”
“Fine, just fine. Though I have missed seeing you around.” Her face was illuminated by a small smile and I caught a sparkle in her lightblue eyes that reminded me so much of Quinn it hurt. “Not going to lie, every time your brother used to pull up in that car, I would get a little excited that it would be you. Not that he’s not a nice boy or anything. Just, well, it’d just be nice to see your face in my house again. How have you been?” I don’t think she even realized that she tilted her head to the side as if she was talking to asmall puppy. I’m sure Quinn hated it, found it condescending somehow, or at least it was nothing more than an annoying thing his mom did. But to me, I found it more endearing than anything. It made me feel like she was really listening, as if she were truly concerned with whatever I was about to talk about.
“He got a new car today,” I explained lamely, as I pulled the gas pump from the car andreplaced it on the holder. “So I finally got to start driving this old heap around. Works okay, so I can’t complain too much.”
“I’m sure that’s why Sarah was getting herself all dolled up for before I left,” she said, with a dismissive but playful wave of her hand.
Just as I was about to go on my way, make some lame excuse to get out of whatever the rest of the conversation would be, I heardher curse, “Oh shit, you freaking piece of…” Her rambling trailed off, but her frustration was palpable from the other side of the pump.
Unable to walk away just yet, I poked my head around the pump to see what was going on. I couldn’t help but laugh as I saw her messing around with the card reader. “Here, let me help,” I offered, reaching for the card in her hand. “They just changed over tothose new chip reader things. You have to do it like this,” I said as I slide the short side of the card into the slot she clearly hadn’t seen.
She smiled and thanked me. “You know these things, they’re different at every store. They want your pin, they don’t. You swipe, then you have to insert. It’s all so damn confusing.” Her rambling made me miss Quinn even more because he did the exact samething. “It’s a good thing I ran into you.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, letting myself laugh a little at her flustered attempt to pump gas. “Here, let me,” I offered, taking the nozzle from her hand and standing next to her car. Leaning against the rear panel, I faced the pump and watched the numbers roll so quickly it was amazing the machine was accurate enough to calculate your total.
Mrs. Jacobs mirroredmy stance on the front panel and a touch of silence stretched between us. “So are you going to make me ask or are you going to man up and tell me?” The take-no-prisoners approach caught me off guard, so much so that I actually tripped over my own ankles as I righted myself.
“I’m sorry,” I answered, though it sounded more like a question than a statement of apology.
“So you’re going to make meask, huh?” A sad smile tugged at her lips and her eyes stared into mine as she waited for me to say something.
I didn’t know what it was that made me open up. Maybe it was because she had been so kind to me, maybe it was because Quinn had so many of her features I knew I could talk to her without fear, maybe it was simply because I hadn’t really talked to anyone since I turned my back on Quinnsix months ago.
“I don’t have many friends,” I confessed, the words falling easily from my mouth. “And Quinn is kinda intense.”
She cut me off with a sharp gasp as her hand flew to her neck to clutch her imaginary pearls. “Not Quinn? No way,” she joked.
A car behind us honked at us and that’s when we realized all the other lanes were being used and we were taking up the remaining spots. “Comeon,” she pressed, tilting her head to the small diner slash coffee shop attached to the gas station. “I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”
I could have lied, said I needed to be home. But the hard truth was that I had nowhere to be. “Sure.”
We moved our cars and made our way into the diner. After the waitress, who was also the hostess, sat us at a small, kind of dingy table, she poured two cups ofcoffee and went immediately back to her station to answer the endlesspingingof her cell phone.
“So keep going,” she prompted. “You were saying something about no friends, which I find very difficult to believe.”
“I wish it wasn’t true, but, yeah, aside from Quinn, I have no friends. So I guess when things… I mean… it just got,” I rambled, rewinding the weeks we’d spent together and how theywere all perfect, for lack of a better word. After searching through all the words I knew, I couldn’t find any way to explain to her exactly what happened. “I messed it up. Pissed him off and at this point, it’s just been so long, I doubt he even wants to see me.” It was the closest thing to the truth I could possibly share. “And even if he did let me explain myself, I know he wouldn’t possiblyforgive me enough to be friends again.”
“Nonsense,” she said with her lips pressed against the rim of the coffee mug.
And for a split second, I wondered if she meant she knew the real story, that she knew I was gay and ran away like the little chickenshit I was.
“I can’t say whether or not he’ll forgive you, but I do know one thing about my son.” Her face relaxed as she took a sip of the coffee.“He will always give someone he cares about a second chance. So whatever it is that you have to say to him, just be honest, and I would bet money that he’ll at least hear you out.”
I nodded, the only reply I was capable of and sipped at my coffee.
“So, other than the gym, what else have you been up to?” Tipping her head toward my arm, she pointed out the rather obvious.
With no one to talkto, and nothing to do but defend myself from my brother, I figured I might as well keep myself busy doing something productive. The added bonus was the way working out tortured my body—running burned my lungs, weights set my muscles on fire. There were days I’d pushed myself so hard, it was nearly impossible to walk the next day. “I guess I have gotten a little bigger, huh?”
A little bigger.That was a huge lie. I’d gained at least twenty-five pounds of muscle. Couple that with the few inches I’d grown in the last year, and I was actually really pleased with my body for the first time ever.
