“Then you could’ve pinned any pic from high school to your bathroom wall,” I point out coolly. “Why that specific one?”
He looks at a loss for what I’m getting at. “Well … other than it was a memorable night, I guess …? Prom night with my buddies. The five of us had a blast. As for Robby, well, sure we were rivals back then, we weren’t the closest, but on that night, he wasn’t his usual cocky shithead self. It was one of the best nights of my life.”
“Best nights of your life?”
“Yep, that’s what I said. So?”
I take a step toward him. My tone changes. Perhaps I need to jog his memory. “Wanna know how that night was for me?”
Chad’s face hardens.
Memory: jogged.
“I stayed home,” I explain to him anyway, not waiting for an answer to my cold, rhetorical question. “I pretty much had to. Do you remember why? The whole school was still talking about it the day before prom. They were talking about it all week, in fact.”
“Lance …” he tries, his voice sullen.
“I still don’t know how you did it, but you and your friends hijacked the morning announcements, and while I was sitting in my English class, peacefully preparing for a report I was about to give in front of them, a report I was already nervous as shit about giving, I sat there and listened to the nominees for Prom Queen. Imagine my surprise when ‘Lance Goodwin’ was one of them.”
“That wasn’t me who did that,” Chad says at once.
“And do you know what the whole rest of that week was like for me? Being fake-nominated for Prom Queen? Wanna know the things that were shouted at me in the locker room? Or how many extra times I had the boys shove me into my locker? Or corner me in gym class? The fake promo signs that were decorated and hung in the hallways, asking for votes for Queen Lance? Do you even know how humiliating all of that was for me? How badly I just wanted to … to fucking disappear?”
“I told you, it wasn’t me.”
I bring myself right up to Chad’s face. He doesn’t back down, but I watch with dark delight as his pretty blue eyes shrink in the slightest at my bold approach. “You threw the first punch years earlier when you singled me out freshman year to push around,” I tell him, icy cold. “You set the precedent for my whole high school career—for you and your friends. You taught your stupid buddies that I would be the easiest target for all your insecure homophobic venom. Chad, it doesn’t matter who the hell altered the morning announcements. You were the one who knocked over the first domino. Everything thereafter was because of you.”
“I already said I was sorry, didn’t I? I asked you before we left the school, I asked you to give me a chance to show you who I am now. To let go of all that stupid shit I did as a kid—”
“As a fully-functioning, capable-of-making-his-own-decisions, intelligent teenager,” I correct him yet again, my words clipped.
“—and let me redeem myself. I invited you into my house. I’m tryin’ to make an effort here, Lance. C’mon. We’re breakin’ beers. You just … did whatever you did with my shirt. Can’t we start over as grown men? As adults? Lance, work with me here. I’m trying here. I want to do better by you.”
“Work with you?” I laugh with dark mockery. “Really, Chad? You want me to work with you??”
My whole face feels stressed with the anger that just bubbled forth out of me like a poison.
I’m not sure I can relax my face for even so much as a deep, calming breath.
There is so much unresolved anger in me. I didn’t even know how much there was until I let my eyes fall on that photograph in the bathroom and woke it all up. It was like having my childhood demons mock me all over again.
I shouldn’t have come to Spruce.
This was a mistake. The whole reunion. Seeing him. Taking the ride out here.
Everything.
“Lance …”
I clench shut my eyes. My whole body trembles.
And I’m not happy about being so angry.
I don’t like being angry. It’s an underrated poison, and once it gets inside you, it won’t leave until it’s run its course.
And it intoxicates you in the worst, ugliest way.
I hate being angry.
Why did I let myself explode like that? I mean, maybe I had every right, maybe it was a long time coming, but it still feels horrible—even embarrassing, somehow—to have so brazenly let out all that verbal bile.
I can’t think straight.
Not in this guesthouse. Not with Chad.
“Can you just …” I start, then close up.
“Yeah?” he prompts me. “Can I just … what? Fuck off? You want me to fuck off? What do you want from me, Lance? You want me to write you an apology letter? Sing you a song? Beg you? I’ll fuckin’ do whatever you want, man. I’m sorry. Please, just name it. Name it, Lance.”