Page 58 of The Battle of Maddox
I nodded, choking back the laughs and the sobs. “Been waiting for that, actually. Just kind of hoped it would happen at home, away from everyone.”
“What’s going on?”
“Everything.” I shrugged. “There was a time where I didn’t know where or when my next meal was coming. And now I’m sitting on a train with you playing spies, because we had to sneak some women out under our tickets. Our first-class tickets. Very surreal.”
“You…were food insecure?”
I raised an eyebrow. “I was homeless, Maddox. From age thirteen to just after my sixteenth birthday. Where do you think I learned to pickpocket? That’s not a course at Cornell.”
“Homeless…” He looked absolutely horrified.
The pit of my stomach fell away and I backed off from his arm around me, unlacing our fingers. Where had my brain-to-mouth filter gone? I knew better than to bring up the homeless thing. Too many people who had appeared so kind at first turned against me, or just left me standing when they heard I had lived on the streets.
I made it a point not to share that fact with anyone.
Thiswas what happened, every time. Disgust and rejection.
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “Didn’t really have a choice.”
“Homelessness rarely is,” he said.
“Please don’t start with platitudes.”
“No, that’s a real statement—wait, why are you moving into the corner like that. Come back.” Maddox’s last two sentences were jammed together.
“You don’t want to touch the former homeless guy.”
“Please,” he grunted and yanked me back to him. “That’s not why I look angry, Ay-ay. I’m angry because when you’re homeless at age thirteen, you’ve either run from a foster system and situation that was impossible to deal with, or you were kicked out by your family. I’m mad about either of those being something that happened to you, not that you were homeless.”
I looked at him, and while the anger was still there, there was a look of compassion that didn’t have a drop of pity in it.
“When we get back after this tour, I’m going to introduce you to all of the charities we support. One of them is a house for homeless teens with an emphasis on LGBTQ,” he said. “It was one of Holland’s projects after his sibling came out as genderfluid and their girlfriend was kicked out for being involved with them.”
“Really?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. These guys were all beyond stand up.
“Rene and Pippa actually run the house, with a boatload of volunteers. We all take turns there. The kids love us coming in, and now we’ve roped Up Down Left Right into it as well. They all freak when one of us comes in that day. Breaks up the monotony.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Maddox of Robot Servant scoots in and does laundry while Austin of UDLR is chopping potatoes. That would definitely break the day up.”
Maddox pulled me in closer. “I’d bet they’ll be excited to meet the new drummer.” He leaned down and kissed me softly. “God, I really like kissing you.”
“Never would have guessed,” I teased him quietly.
Pushing me to stand, Maddox slid over to the outside wall of the train, settled himself into the corner and then, with a yank on my wrist, pulled me on to his lap. I let out a squeak, and slapped my hand over my mouth.
“I really try not to do that,” I explained. “It’s so stereotypically gay—”
“And what’s wrong with that?” His fingers trailed down my jaw. “Youaregay, right?”
“So gay,” I hissed as his lips followed his fingers. “So very, very gay.”
Maddox
“Papiery, prozce.”
The man in the Polish Border Guard uniform held out his hand.
I heard Aaron chuckle again behind me. He’d nearly busted a gut laughing at the Belarus station when he realized what they’d asked him.
