“On everyone.”
“Including your neighbor, Jim, at the candy store?”
“Yeah. Jim’s a good man too. He wouldn’t have cared. I know that. But we were on the sidewalk at Pier Park. My old patrol route. I’ve arrested people on that block. Responded to domestics two streets over. Everyone in that area knows me as Officer Weaver. And you were standing behind my chair holding a stick of rock candy and I —”
“You what?”
“I couldn’t say the word. Boyfriend. I wanted to say it. I was proud to have you standing next to me and I wanted Jim to know who you were. But my brain got there first and all I could see was what could happen to you if the wrong person heard it on that street. Two seconds. Jim was looking at you and all I had to do was turn my head and say this is Benji, my boyfriend. And I let the moment pass because some part of my brain decided that saying it out loud on that sidewalk put you at risk.”
“Really, Mickey? On a sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon. In front of a man who wanted to bring you a casserole. How dangerous could he be?”
“I know how it sounds.”
“Do you? Because from where I was standing, it felt like you looked at me and decided I wasn’t worth one sentence. I was no one. Your mother called me her son’s boyfriend earlier and two hours later I was invisible.”
“You were never invisible to me, Benji. I was never ashamed of you. Not for one second. I know that’s what it looked like and I know that’s what it felt like. I’m telling you that is not what was happening in my head.”
“Then what was happening in your head, Mickey? Help me to understand. I’m having a hard time with this.”
“Fear. Pure and simple. I was afraid for you. Every single time. Not of what people would think of me.”
“Whatever your intention was, you still made me invisible to Jim.”
That lands. It’s supposed to. I take it.
“You’re right,” I say. “I made that choice. I told myself it was protection but it was a choice and it was mine. I didn’t give you any say in it.”
Benji doesn’t talk for a long time. His fingers are picking at a loose thread on my shirt pocket, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger.
“What about the party?” he finally asks. “You said I was helping out with the party. To your sergeant. The man you work for. Am I in danger from your boss and your co-workers too? Are they a threat? Because if they are, I might need to rethink me being here in Panama City.”
“No, they’re not, and I know what I said.”
“I need to hear why you said it.”
I close my eyes. The party is the one I’ve been circling around because part of it I can explain and part of it I can’t defend. He deserves to hear both.
“Two things happened at the party. The first one was real. Around eight o’clock, the bikers pulled into the lot. Patches I didn’t recognize. I asked Tex if he knew the motorcycle club and he said no. He’d never seen them before. They set up at the high-tops by the pool table. They were loud. Getting louder. And I noticed some of them watching you.”
Benji doesn’t say anything. He’s waiting.
“The way men watch someone they’ve decided doesn’t belong. You were crossing the room with a tray. You were being you — visible, beautiful, impossible to miss — and these men were tracking you, nudging each other. I clocked it and I couldn’t do anything about it from the chair except watch.”
“You didn’t tell me or say anything about them.”
“I should’ve told you. You were smiling and seemed happy, and I didn’t want to take that away from you. The crazy thing is that I didn’t want you to be afraid at the bar.”
“And the second thing?”
“The sergeant showed up with the guys from the department. They sat down right next to the motorcycle club. You came over to welcome them and you stood beside my chair. I had bikers we didn’t know on one side, my sergeant on the other and I couldn’t think straight.”
“Are you saying the bikers are the reason your sergeant doesn’t know I exist?”
“When I looked at you, I saw everything those men could do to you if they decided the cop’s boyfriend was a target. I wasn’t thinking about the sergeant. I wasn’t thinking about how it would make you feel. I was thinking about the men who followed you into a hallway in this bar. The last time that happened I could stand up. I could put myself between you and them. I can’t do that anymore and it’s the only thing I think about when I see someone look at you wrong.”
Benji’s face changes. I don’t think he likes what he’s hearing but at least he’s giving me a chance to explain.
“Mickey,” he says. “I need to tell you something and I need you to hear it.”
