Page 8 of What You Own
He could. His voice gave me chills, but he wasn’t lying. For all the rehearsals, Adam had quitRenta week before the actual performances. Quit theater altogether, even after doing the stage crew since freshman year. All because I got my queer ass outed at school. He let his bigoted father flush three years of friendship straight down the crapper like it was nothing, and then I went and got us both bashed.
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Lou said, making the decision for all of us. “Larry and Susan can’t sing for shit, but they’re doing a number as well.”
“Um, all right,” Adam said. “One number.”
“Excellent. Ryan, why don’t you show this young man around the center? Give him a feel for the place, maybe observe the art class?”
I’d rather stick my hand in a hornet’s nest, but I didn’t say that to Lou. He needed this fundraiser to work, and I wouldn’t let my tangled mess of a history with Adam ruin it. I was almost twenty-one years old, and I could act like a fucking grown-up. “Sure,” I said.
“It was a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Paige,” Adam said.
“Lou, please,” he replied.
“Call me Adam, then. Mr. Langley is my father.”
“Will do, son. Thank you, and thank your father for me.”
“I’ll do that.”
We three tumbled out of Lou’s office and into the hall. Ellie checked her phone for the time, and too late I remembered why.
“Shit, I can’t hang for a tour,” Ellie said. “I have to be at work in thirty minutes.”
“At night?” Adam asked.
She shot him a look. “Yes, Mr. Silver Spoon, some of us have jobs that require nighttime hours.” He flinched. To me she said, “You okay taking the bus home?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“I can drop you off,” Adam said.
“You don’t know where I live.”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter.”
Taking a ride from him sounded about as much fun as a poke on the ass with a branding iron, but it beat risking our crappy bus system. They never ran on time, and I was as likely to get home in thirty minutes as three hours. “Okay, fine, Adam will bring me home.”
“See you later, then,” Ellie said. She planted a kiss on my cheek, then left.
Adam leveled me with an intense stare. “You two live together?”
“Yeah, so?” I saw the questions in his eyes, the gears turning in the wrong direction. “We’re not together like that. I’m gay, remember? She’s my best friend.”
His mouth went flat, like he was mad I had a new best friend. Well, tough shit, hoss. He lost the right to care who my friends were years ago. So why did I have the weirdest urge to soothe his ruffled feathers?
“Anyway, this is the staff area,” I said, pointing out rooms as we walked. “There’s a room across the lobby for sign-ups and stuff, so only volunteers can come back here. Gives us a place, you know?”
The faded linoleum and twenty-year-old microwave in the break room had to look like shit compared to the fancy chrome kitchen his father’s building probably had—along with pretty tables to eat their sushi and Thai food, or whatever. Our little eating area smelled like someone’s Burger King bag.
The lobby was mostly empty when we came out, and I led him past the main auditorium, down a longer hallway dotted with doors. I felt him behind me like an electric fence, buzzing with energy and almost close enough to shock. “These are the classrooms. They see more kids during the day and weekends, but Cindy Winchester is doing a painting class tonight.”
I stopped in front of room six and opened the door. A dozen kids of all ages were standing behind wooden easels, each with a palette of colors in one hand and a brush in the other. They were painting a still life from a collection of sports items on a center table—baseball gloves, a basketball, part of a hoop net, stuff like that. Stuff that interested kids more than bowls of fruit or flower arrangements.
Cindy waved and came over. She was a wide lady with a gentle smile and big, strong arms. “Hey, honey bear,” she said, giving me a signature hug. I liked her hugs. She was everyone’s momma bear, and everyone else was her honey bear. “Who’s this?” Her wide smile hoped he was someone special, and he was, but not that someone. Most folks here knew I was queer, and they didn’t care.
Scratch that. They cared when they were trying to get me to date, which I didn’t like to do much. Mostly I scratched an itch, then went home. Sex was a lot simpler than feelings.
“Adam Langley, ma’am,” he said when I didn’t. “I’m working with the fundraising committee.”
