Page 10 of What You Own
My insides twisted up tight, and confusion sent my brain zinging sideways. “You’re the one who walked away. You chose… well, whatever you chose, it wasn’t me. It wasn’t us.”
“I was scared, Ryan.”
Red flashed behind my eyes. “Fuck you, Adam. I was scared too. Scared of the bullies at school who spit at me and pushed me into lockers after everyone found out I was gay. Scared of facing school alone every day after my best friend fucking bailed on me. Scared in the hospital after we were bashed, when all I wanted to do was talk to you, and I couldn’t. Don’t talk to me about scared, hoss, not ever.”
I hadn’t raised my voice because I didn’t want our shit echoing all over the auditorium, but I’ll be hog-tied if Adam’s eyes hadn’t gone liquid. If he cried, I was gonna lose it. Really fucking lose it.
“I’ll take the bus home,” I said. I turned neatly on my heel, even though my hands were shaking, and slammed out of the auditorium.
Adam
ICOULDN’Thave been more stunned if Ryan had hauled off and punched me in the face. More than the words about fear, more than the anger in his voice, I was stunned by the anguish I’d seen in his eyes. Big, coffee-brown eyes that used to look at me like I was the only person in the world who mattered had silently accused me of stabbing him in the heart.
I did, though.
I hated that he’d been so scared. I hated that I’d spent two days unconscious after the bashing and had been unable to stop my father from spinning the story to blame Ryan. We had shared so much. I don’t know if I loved him romantically back then. I think I did. I know I loved him as my best friend and better half. We never had the chance to test the romantic waters. We never declared our feelings or shared a first kiss. Three bullies had stolen that chance away, and then my father had obliterated it completely.
More than anything else, though, I hated seeing Ryan walk away from me. I may have walked away first, three years ago, forced in that direction by my father, but I’d be damned if I would let him do the same thing today. We needed to talk. Really, truly talk about those final few weeks that had ripped our friendship apart, plan or no plan. I didn’t remember the bashing. Father always said that my memory loss was a good thing. I silently disagreed. I didn’t want to lose a single memory of my time spent with Ryan, even if it was scary and violent.
I wanted to take that anguish out of his eyes. I wanted to see him smile at me the way he used to, once upon a time. Maybe we wouldn’t solve our problems tonight, but I couldn’t let him walk away angry.
This is going to fuck up the plan.
He was already on the sidewalk, heading south toward what I assumed was the nearest bus stop, when I caught up with him. The hot, humid summer air pressed down on me from all sides, and even with my suit jacket off, I broke a sweat in the twenty steps it took me to get in Ryan’s way. He stumbled to a stop and glared. In the shadows of a nearby streetlight, he looked fierce and stunningly handsome, and my stomach did a somersault.
“You’re right,” I said. “I did walk away. I let my father scare me, and I walked out on you. I walked out on us, Rye, and I ruined the best thing I’d ever had.”
“We ain’t doin’ this tonight,” Ryan said, his voice ice cold, which made his accent that much thicker.
“Why not? In a few sentences you told me more about that night than I knew before.”
He hesitated, eyes searching. “What do you mean?”
I glared, sure he was having me on. He was right there when I was hit in the head. “I mean they scrambled my brain with that brick, Ryan. The last thing I remember is wanting to talk to you the night of the last performance. I missed you. I hated myself for not sticking up for you after Thanksgiving, and I wanted to talk to you, and then I woke up in the hospital with a broken arm and a skull fracture.”
Ryan looked ghostly ill beneath the streetlights. “You don’t remember anything?”
No, you don’t because you didn’t want to remember it, coward. Remembering means admitting your feelings about Ryan, then and now. None of that is part of the plan.
“I only know what the police told me. I went to see you at the cast party they held at Pizza City. We were talking. Chad and the others saw us, jumped us, and we fought back as best as we could.”
“That’s the condensed version, all right.”
“So what’s the full version?”
Ryan looked up, down, everywhere around us, as if the answers were written down somewhere, instead of locked inside of his head. Clearly I’d forgotten something important, something more than just the exact sequence of events while we were beaten up, and he seemed at a loss as to how to tell me about it.
Don’t do it.
“We talked, right?” I asked.
“A little, yeah. You apologized for not stickin’ up for me at school after I got outed. Said you were a shitty friend for that, and for quittin’ the play.”
I remembered wanting to do that—wanting to do that so badly. I’d left home, apparently for Pizza City, with the sole purpose of getting forgiveness from my best friend. Getting forgiveness and trying to understand the thing that had changed between us the first few months of our senior year—something that had slowly changed inside of me from the moment Ryan told me he was gay, only a year before. A gradual understanding of my feelings for a boy whose smile lit up the world.
My feelings for a young man who made my knees weak with his proximity.
“Did you forgive me?” I asked.
