“Will you tell us?” Benji asked. “Please?”
Van exhaled a long, slow breath. “I didn’t have many friends growing up. Not the real, close kind that stick with you. I was kind of shy, believe it or not. I was fifteen when I first discovered how much I loved bluegrass and blues, so I saved up all the extra money I earned doing odd jobs around town to buy a used guitar.”
Benji looked at Joshua, who seemed as surprised as he was. Van had mentioned he played a long time ago, but had given it up. He also hadn’t wanted to talk about why.
“I taught myself how to play by listening to tapes and watching public television,” Van continued. His voice took on a faint twang the more he spoke, as if falling back in time to when he lived in Texas and probably had a thicker accent. “I loved it. Music was my outlet, and I even performed at church and at holiday picnics. It was real nice, knowing I did something no one else could. It also made my awful home life a little more tolerable. And then my senior year, he moved to town.
“His name was Brady Gibbons. His family came from Austin, and he played guitar too, so we bonded fast. I was shocked that such a put-together guy wanted to hang with a hayseed like me, but we had a great time together. In winter, we’d go play in the barn so we didn’t annoy my parents. I think the pigs kind of loved it.
“For a while, I’d known secretly that I was attracted to girls and guys, but I lived in a tiny, homophobic town, so I’d never explored being a with a guy. Not until that New Year’s Eve, when Brady kissed me in the barn, after counting down the new year together. I’d never felt anything so right in my short life. I was nervous, of course, but Brady had fooled around before. He taught me about hand jobs and blow jobs, and we spent a lot of time in that barn, exploring each other.
“We started dreaming about a life together. On the road, both of us playing to packed houses all through the south, partners in public and lovers in private. I fell in love with him. As deeply in love as a seventeen-year-old can be, but it was real. Brady was three months older than me, so he’d turn eighteen first, but he promised to wait for me. And then we’d leave and be free.”
Dread twisted around Benji’s heart. No story with that sort of buildup had a happy ending, and the wetness in Van’s eyes told the end before he said it.
“The second Saturday in May was a huge county fair, and my parents never missed going. They showed my mother’s baked goods and canned jams, and she always won some kind of ribbon, so the whole family usually packed up to go for the day. Only I complained of a sick stomach so I could stay home. About an hour after they’d gone, Brady showed up because we’d arranged to have the day together. We were finally going to try anal sex, and we wanted to do it in a real bed, not in the hayloft. I wanted him to do me first.”
Van choked a bit on that. Benji slid out of his chair to kneel next to Van’s knee and clasp his hands. Joshua mimicked his pose, both of them there for whatever Van said next, no matter what.
“We were naked in bed, Brady ready to do it, when my old man burst in screaming about sin and beating the devil out of us. He hit Brady with my guitar case. I tried to run and he hit me too. A couple of times.” Van’s right hand twitched. “Then he crushed my dominant hand under his goddamn work boot. Broke a bunch of bones. All I remember is the pain, hearing Brady scream, and then my old man dragging him out of the bedroom. It was the last time I ever saw Brady.”
A lump thickened Benji’s throat, making it difficult to swallow or breathe. He didn’t want to hear anymore, but there was no escaping Van’s truth.
Tears slid down Van’s cheeks, but he barely felt them over the steady pounding in his skull and the ache in his stomach. Reaching into his past hurt more than he’d expected it to. The memories were so fucking fresh, so painful, as if they’d happened last week, instead of a decade ago.
That’s what happens when you block bad shit out, instead of dealing with it.
Regret and self-hatred continued to ooze down his cheeks from tears that weren’t really from sadness. His body simply couldn’t contain the pain any longer, and it had to go somewhere. He despised himself for dumping it onto his boyfriends. His two beautiful boyfriends who were watching him with so much compassion it nearly broke him.
“What happened to Brady?” Benji asked.
Van had to swallow several times to find his voice. “He ended up a missing person. My father took me to the hospitaland said my hand got damaged in a farm accident, and I didn’t correct him. I never spoke against anything he said to anyone, not even the police when they questioned us about Brady’s disappearance. I stayed silent, in survival mode, and as soon as I could, I left. I left everything behind. Brady, my guitar, my so-called family. I went to New Orleans, and I did my very best to forget and to punish myself for not saving him. Liquor and drugs and risky sex, all of it. I think I was trying to kill myself, but I was never strong enough to really go through with it.”
He should have died ten times over in the Big Easy, considering all of the stupid shit he’d done, but somehow he’d survived. He’d survived, while Brady lay in a dry gulch, his flesh eaten by wildlife, his bones bleached by the sun.
“Van, who called yesterday?” Joshua asked.
“My brother Kirby. We actually had a good relationship. He’s the only person from my past who knows how to get in touch with me if he needs to.”
“And he needed to.”
Van’s breaths shortened as the urgent need to vomit overtook him. “The cops finally found Brady’s body out in the desert.”
Benji made a soft, pained sound, his own eyes brimming with tears. Van didn’t want Benji crying over this. It wasn’t his pain to carry.
“The cops and coroner ruled his death an accident,” Van said. “They assumed he was out alone in the desert, fell, and hit his head on a rock, then probably died of exposure because he couldn’t get help.”
“But you don’t think that,” Joshua said.
The intense pressure in his chest and stomach was too much. Van vaulted out of his chair, ignoring his boyfriends’ surprised shouts. He bolted into the living room, every limb trembling with the force of his emotions. His regret and guilt and self-hatred, and the love he’d never stopped carrying for Brady. His first love, who died because he loved Van back.
He paced, because if he stopped, he’d explode, and he didn’t want to explode. He wanted it all to go away so he didn’t have to dump it on Benji and Joshua. Except he’d already put it out there. All they had to do was draw the inevitable conclusion, and they’d hate him. Hate him for not going to the authorities ten years ago. For never saying anything between then and now. For not immediately flying down to Texas to tell Brady’s parents the truth about their son’s death.
Maybe truth. The only people who know for sure what happened are both dead.
“You think your father killed Brady,” Benji said.
The words, spoken plainly and out loud for the first time, broke Van completely.
