11
Trevor
We’d been homeone week and my resolve was crumbling. It was harder than I’d imagined being apart from Gabe, especially since Mom was trying to make up for lost time. She’d taken vacation so we could spend some quality time together, which left me even more isolated from Gabe than I’d prepared for. Luckily, Gabe had a plan, because there were three weeks left before we headed back to Wilmington and I was ready to crawl out of my skin. Now, I had to convince Mom that I was a responsible adult and couldn’t be kept under lock and key all the time. To do this, I enlisted the help of Dad. He knew what it was like to be a young man trying to make a life for himself; surely he’d help me convince Mom.
I rapped my knuckles on the wall as I entered his den. He was kicked back with the tablet in his lap and the evening news playing in the background. He folded his reading glasses and set them on the end table. “Trevor, is everything okay?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” I hoped my voice wasn’t as unsteady as it sounded to my own ears. I sat in the chair across from him and tried to keep from fidgeting with the frayed strings at the cuffs of my hoodie. Gabe’s hoodie. Did any of the parents realize I’d swiped his sweatshirt and wore it around like a security blanket?
“You only knock like that when something’s bothering you.” Leave it to Dad to pick up on subtle tells.
“It’s nothing bad, I promise. I just….”
Dad leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He steepled his fingers in front of his lips while he assessed my face the way he used to when he was trying to figure out if I was lying to cover for Gabe.
“Really, Dad, it’s not bad,” I repeated. I was making this so much bigger of a deal than it should be. I was nineteen years old. I had my own money I hadn’t touched after graduation. That money had been given to me by my grandparents to do something fun. Well, I knew what I wanted to do, thanks to Gabe’s suggestion. He had a matching account, so if we wanted, we could live like kings. Instead, he’d scoured the Internet for deals and we were traveling as cheaply as we could. His logic was we could then keep using that money to take other trips when we needed to get away.
“Trevor, what’s going on? You’ve always been able to talk to me about anything.” Yeah, well I wasn’t always in love with my best friend, and ever since then, you only think I’ve been talking to you about everything.
I decided the only way to approach this was like ripping off a Band-Aid. “I want to take a trip for part of winter break.”
“Okay.” He drew out the syllables as though he was confused about why this might be an issue.
“Gabe and I want to go to New York. Well, it’s something I’ve always wanted to do and we figured this would be the best year to do it. There’s no telling if we’ll have to take winter interim classes in the future.”
Seeing New York City at Christmas had always been a dream of mine. Gabe used to tease me about it, but I wanted to see the tree at Rockefeller Center. I wanted to see the city dressed up in lights and baubles. I even wanted to see the Rockettes. Okay, so it was mostly that last one that earned me endless ribbing from my boyfriend, but it didn’t change the fact that I’d always been fascinated by their precision when I’d seen them on the Thanksgiving Parade.
“I think that’s a very responsible decision.” He sounded genuinely proud and I preened a bit. “So why the trouble telling me about your plans? Do you think you’ll be gone over Christmas? Because I have to tell you, that won’t go over well.”
“Um, no. I don’t think either of us has a death wish.” Dad and I both chuckled. “It’s just… okay, please don’t think I’m being disrespectful here, but Mom’s out of control. I’m pretty sure she’d take me to work with her if the clinic didn’t frown on it.”
“Ahh, I see.” He scrubbed the shadow of a beard he’d been trying to grow out. “And you’re hoping I’ll help pave the way, be an ally in your corner when you tell her?”
“Yeah, something like that.” I chuckled again. “I don’t want to upset her, but Dad, seriously, it’s like she’s trying to cram me back in the womb.”
“I don’t know that she’s quite that bad,” he countered. He picked up the remote and turned off the TV. “Trevor, she misses you. I know you’re trying to focus on your studies, but she wasn’t prepared to let you go so soon. She was convinced you’d do what you talked about your entire life and go to Duke. She would have driven you crazy if you had, so maybe it’s for the best that you’re far enough away that she has to make a time investment when she wants to see you.
“And I hate to tell you, but there’ve been quite a few times she’s seriously considered driving down to check on you on your days off,” he told me. It wasn’t a surprise, but it made me uncomfortable. If she’d made one of those impromptu trips and caught Gabe and me in a compromising position it would have sent her over the edge. Granted, sex didn’t happen often other than late at night, but I had faith Mom would choose the worst possible moment to knock on our door. Hopefully, I’d forget about that before we left for the spring semester, otherwise I’d never be comfortable doing anything with Gabe in our room.
“I’m not telling you this to make you feel guilty or upset you,” he added, his voice carefully moderated like it was when he delivered bad news. “I simply want you to understand that it’s been difficult on her to have you boys gone. And yes, she misses Gabe just as much as she misses you.”
“Because he’s not where she can keep an eye on him to make sure he’s not corrupting me.” And oh, the ways he was corrupting me were divine. It was wholly inappropriate, but my dick twitched at the unwelcome thought of our sex marathon the night before we’d come home.
“We have to have enough sex to get us through the next month,”he’d told me as he carefully stripped every stitch of clothing from my body the minute I’d walked in from my last exam. We’d originally talked about him packing the Jeep so we could leave as soon as I got back, but that was a changed plan I fully supported. It’d been after four in the morning when we passed out, needing to get a few hours of sleep so either of us would be fit to drive.
“There may be some truth to that,” Dad agreed, “But that’s not the only reason. When we got married, she’d hoped we’d have a houseful of kids she could stay home and raise while I worked. As you know, that’s not the hand life dealt us. The older you boys got, the more she clung to both of you. She always said that if she couldn’t have more kids, she was grateful Gwen and Joel were willing to share Gabe with us.”
Thank you, Dad, for heaping on more guilt than you could ever imagine. I’d been trying to work up the balls to eventually be honest with everyone about how much Gabe meant to me, but with this one conversation, I felt as though I’d been kicked all the way back to start when I’d been just about to win the whole dang game.
“I’m sorry, son. I’m getting away from what we were talking about,” he apologized. “I think it’s a great idea for you boys to take a trip. You both worked so hard over the summer so you wouldn’t have to dip into your graduation money during the school year.”
‘The boys’. That’s how we’d always been referred to. That was infinitely better than the short-lived phase when the dads jokingly called us twins from different wombs because our moms loved to buy us coordinating outfits. Never matching but always a matched set like salt and pepper shakers.
“Your mom isn’t going to be happy about it, but I’ll work on her,” he promised. “When were you thinking about going and when would you be back?”
Oh boy, here was the big sticking point. It was already the fifteenth, which meant we needed to leave in the next day or two if we were going to have any real quality time up there.
“Let me guess, Gabe’s already booked the trip and you’ve been struggling with how to tell us you’re going to do something as outlandish as live your own life?”
