Rafe’s face is completely shut down but his eyes burn with something I hardly recognize and I’m careening right toward it.
“Is that it, Rafe? You want to fix me? You always said you wanted to be like Javier. Is that what you’re doing? You want to be my sponsor? Turn me into someone you can point at and say, ‘I did that’?”
Rafe hisses and I know I’m so far over the line I can’t even see it. I catch a glimpse of my reflection in the window. I’m spitting mad but my face is white.
Rafe steps right up to me and he’s shaking, his quiet words cutting deeper than any yell.
“Don’t talk about him,” he says, and for the first time, I can see the man he might have been. Dangerous, menacing, cold. I can see him choose to control himself, but it’s clear he could’ve gone the other way.
I wish he would. I wish he would hit me, shove me, do anything to me. Anything would be better than this distance, this cold. He’s looking at me like we don’t even know each other.
“You,” he says, “are lying to yourself if you think you’re living in the world. You’re barely making it through. You know what you want but you’re too scared to go after it. You think being gay is what makes you weak?” He shakes his head, and there’s pity in his face. “Living a lie when you don’t have to. Acting like you’re the only one affected by your decisions. Those are the things that make you weak. It’s just fear.”
Something shifts in Rafe’s face. He lets go of something, or… or maybe he just doesn’t care anymore.
“You know what you’re really scared of, though? You’re afraid of what will happen once you don’t have a secret to hide behind anymore. Once you’re just you. Strip away your fear and what’s left? I don’t think you even know.”
My heart is beating so hard that I feel like I’m going to pass out. I know now that I’ve been waiting for this moment since I realized how much I wanted him. The moment when he figured out what a waste of time it is for him to be with me because I’m fucking nothing.
“Fuck you,” I bite out, the response automatic.
Rafe nods once, like he wasn’t expecting anything more, and it hits me like a sonic boom. His total dismissal. But when he walks out—when he leaves me standing in the middle of my immaculate living room feeling like the fucking walls are coming down and the blackness beyond them is swallowing me whole—the sound of the door shutting behind him is almost silent.
Chapter 10
WORK IS just like it was yesterday. And the day before. And the day before that. And I don’t care anymore. I try to lose myself in the vehicles. Distract myself by picturing their beautiful circulatory systems. The way each piece has a job to do. How every system is necessary to keep things running smoothly. But I’m just going through the motions. Waiting for something that might snap me out of this fog. Everything Brian, Sam, and Pop say pisses me off, and I’ve been walking around with my fists clenched in a constant state of readiness to fight during the two weeks since Rafe walked out my door. I feel like I’m sixteen again.
This morning I woke from smothering dreams, still half drunk, the sheets twisted and sticking to me with sweat, and I dragged myself up to run. The sidewalks were cracked, the remains of the snowfall a few days ago hiding dangerous uneven patches that can turn an ankle. I felt heavy, my legs useless like in dreams where I’m being chased—as if the pavement is quicksand, sucking my feet down no matter how hard I try to propel myself forward. I cut over to the track behind my old high school, shut down three years ago in budget cuts. The track’s just dirt now, really, but I didn’t trust myself to pay attention running around the neighborhood.
I zoned out as I ran, but the second I stopped, everything slammed back into me like the nasty return of punching bag when your head’s turned. My legs were shaky and weak, my stomach roiling, and my ears numb with cold.
All of that was nothing compared to the fishhook of pain lodged somewhere between my chest and my stomach, throbbing with each beat of my stupid, pathetic heart.
As I come through the door of the garage with a second cup of coffee—an attempt to wake up after almost melting a mess of wiring with the soldering iron—Sam nearly slams into me and the mug falls, shattering on the cement, splatters of coffee mixing with oil, paint, and grease.
“What the hell,” I mutter.