“We’re getting together at the Darling estate,” Dad says. “Like always.”
“Any of the cousins coming?” I ask.
Dad scratches the back of his head and frowns up at the stark, barren oak overhead. “Preston and Dolly will be there,” he says, which is obvious, since they live on the estate.
“Anyone else?”
Dad keeps in touch with his brothers and their families better than I do. That’s who will be at Christmas dinner. All their kids are grown. Even my youngest cousin Magnolia, who seemed like she’d always be a kid, is all grown up now.
While Dad thinks it over, I go through the list of uncles and cousins in my head. Uncle JT doesn’t have kids that I know of. Jeremiah will be at dinner, but Magnolia is on tour and probably too busy to come home to dinner with her uncles and aunts. Sullivan is off with his weird-ass group—not judging, but the people he chose are all way over the line into Strangeville. Jedediah’s kids never come. James is back in the Darling family fold, but his kids never come, not having grown up with us and being basically adults already when we met. Justin will be there, but Devlin will be in New York with Crystal, and Mabel will be there with Baron.
With Duke.
“I think your cousin Lindsey will be there too,” Dad says at last.
I’m still stuck on thoughts of Duke. How I left him. I just found him, and instead of holding onto him, I left again. After five years of not hearing from him, only asking after him once in a while because Mabel always acts weird about it when I do, it was good to see his face—more than good. He’s doing so much better than I could have hoped for him.
Better than I am.
As happy as I am for him, it feels pretty damn shitty to look at your life and realize you’re a loser compared to the guy who bullied you in school. In all the movies, it’s always the bully who ends up stuck in some dead-end town in a lame job. The onehe bullied is supposed to make it big, to have a cool job in a cool city and be able to walk away knowing he won.
I didn’t win, but I walked away anyway.
And for what?
My stupid pride? My inability to let Duke be the man he is now and not the confused, angry, tormented boy he was in fucking high school?
I accused him of holding onto the past, but the truth is, I’m the one stuck in the past. Even Gloria moved on without me. And yet, here I am, in the same old town, nursing the same old bitterness at the same old wounds with the same old broken family.
The familyhebroke.
I sit with that a while, trying to decide if it’s something I’ve forgiven. Because I can’t go back unless I have. I have to have at least that much to offer. He offered me everything, and I walked away. If I can’t forgive him, that’s fair. As much as it sucks, it’s better to be apart than with someone filled with festering resentments. Even I know that can’t work, and I’m hardly a relationship expert.
If I didn’t forgive him, no one would blame me. He and his brother didn’t just bully me. They assaulted and maimed me, assaulted my sister and my cousins. They are the reason Mom tried to end her life. Duke may have changed, but he still did what he did when he was the typical homophobic jock who hated the queer kid for being himself when he felt like he couldn’t. The one who would shove him into the lockers at school hard enough to dislocate his shoulder, but then get drunk at a party and come over, get on his knees, and beg to suck the loser’s dick as long as no one would ever know.
The kind of damage he did can’t be undone by leaving the scene of the crime and putting on a disguise. But is it any better to stay, to defiantly refuse to wear any disguise at all, to the pointwhere it means I never change, never grow? I stopped taking chances because it never worked out, but how can anything ever work out if I don’t give it a chance? Somewhere along the way, I stopped moving forward and got stuck in a loop, an endless Groundhog Day of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Or maybe I’m stuck in the present. I’m sure as fuck not moving toward the future. I’m just lying back, waiting for the future to happen, whatever comes.
Duke has done everything to build the life he wants.
I’ve done nothing but let life happen to me. Even running into him was by chance.
But maybe it wasn’t just a chance with Duke, but the chance to wake up, to break out of the loop.
It’s not about whether I owe him a chance, or whether either of us deserve it. It’s about whether we want it, whether we’re willing to take that chance and make something from it.
He did. He put it all out there, even knowing I might reject him.
I wasn’t as brave. Like a coward, I did exactly what he accused me of. I ran.
If I don’t take the chance now, will I ever get another?
I already know the answer to that. Nothing stays the same. Life moves on whether we’re ready for it or not. He’s made himself a good life, one that any man would be lucky to share. If I run into him in another five years, I have no doubt he’ll be happily settled with that lucky guy who didn’t run, who saw what he had to offer and jumped at the chance to love the man he is, not punish him for the boy he was.
The only question is, when that happens, will I regret it? Will I always wonder what would have happened if I had taken the leap with him? If I don’t, will I look back and imagine what we’d be in another life, the one where I did?
I already know the answer to that question too. All I have to do is look at the last few years.
