Her forehead wrinkled, brows pulling together. “Why would you say that? Is something going on with the two of you? Sammy, you don’t…” She shook her head, wrung her hands, shifted in her favorite chair. “You don’t wanna be alone like me. Don’t you dare lose that girl. I couldn’t…”
Her eyes welled with tears until they spilled over and became a river down her face. Because I would automatically be alone if I didn’t have Molly? That’s what she thought, and maybe she was right. Sometimes I wondered if she knew about me, if she knew I was gay and knew Molly was the only person I could spend my life faking it with. If she thought it would be easier to pretend with Molly than be myself.
“We’re fine, Mama. I don’t know why I said that. I’m just tired.” I grabbed a few tissues from the box on one of the side tables and handed them to her. “You know I love Molly.” Truth. I did. “I’m gonna head to bed. I gotta be up early for work.”
Mom nodded, let me get about ten steps away before she said, “You know I love you, right? I just want life to be easier on you than I make it sometimes. I’m sorry I’m like this.”
“I know,” I replied, an anchor around my heart, making it sink deep inside me. “I love you too.”
Later that night, I was in bed, phone in hand, looking at Emerson’s name in my contacts. We’d exchanged numbers before I left, in case one of us needed to cancel any given weekend. What would he do if I texted him good night? Told him I wanted to be on my knees for him, sucking his cock, before I fell asleep? If I asked him if he’d ever been in love, or how he’d come out, or if the world ever felt like it was closing in on him. I had a feeling the last question would be yes. Maybe not in the same ways as me, but we shared that. I felt it in my chest.
I didn’t text, though. I put my cell on the charger, locked away those feelings I tried to keep buried, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Emerson
I liked the farm at dawn, the sounds of the chickens waking up and the pinks and oranges as the sun peeked over the horizon. I thought maybe that was where peace lived, in those short moments in time when there was dew on the grass and the world gently eased from silence into the loud and constant buzz of life and pain that possessed every other time of day. Even though the farm was a reprieve in some ways because it made it easier to disappear, it couldn’t quite soothe what was inside me. For whatever reason, only dawn could do that.
Twenty-two stab wounds.
Crime of passion.
Bentley Fox charged with first-degree murder.
Why, Bent? Why did you kill me?
I’d spent two weekends with Sam so far. The second had been similar to the first. We hadn’t fucked yet. I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t gone there. It was what he came for, after all. He was more than willing, but I’d kept it at jerking and sucking each other off. I tried to spend as little time with him as I could when we weren’t being sexual. He kept pushing, though. Sam was good at pushing, at finding small moments of getting his way when he’d come find me on the porch or in my room and just start rambling all these conversations that lived inside him. When I’d walk away, he’d follow until I asked him not to or locked the door behind me when I was in my room. It didn’t escape my attention that I could just do that from the start if I truly didn’t want him to bother me.
He’d woken up early on Saturday morning and tried to help me with the animals. When I hadn’t let him do that, the hurt had been clear on his face. I’d seen the same look in the past. I was good at bringing people pain. I’d blown him three times that day as if it would make up for it, as if swallowing down his load would make him forget that I was an asshole. Sam pretended it did. I thought maybe he spent so much of his life pretending and accepting less than he deserved, it had become second nature.
This was a different situation than it had been with Daniel, but I still felt like I let Sam down the same way. I remembered once Daniel had wanted to go away for the week. Some friends going to Martha’s Vineyard. I’d had so much going on that I couldn’t get away. Or maybe I chose not to. It was all so tangled sometimes. Daniel had gone without me, but he hadn’t been happy about it. I understood why, that he hadn’t wanted to be the only single person there. The next month I’d planned something for the two of us—only a weekend, but still, it was something.