Chapter Eighteen

ETHAN wasn’t taking the trash out again, ever.

“I just want to talk,” Mike said.

He bet that Andy never had people he didn’t want to see hanging out back here. Or maybe he did. Maybe that was why Andy didn’t take the trash out, even though he said it was because he was too short to open the dumpster. He could stand on a box. Ethan would carry it outside for him, as long as Andy and his broom came out with him.

“Don’t want to talk to you.” He ignored Mike’s hand and the green nail polish in his palm. “Go away.” He tried to brush past Mike, but unlike Douglas, Mike blocked his way. Things were supposed to be normal now. Dr. Sorensen had said that if Ethan “rearranged his perceptions to meet his new reality,” he could cope with it. So Ethan had been coping, and doing great. He worked at the coffee shop under his regular schedule; a week ago he’d moved in “officially” at Carter’s house with his things, and they were talking about getting a dog. Having Mike turn up was not part of the plan.

“Ethan, please.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to know that the first time I came here, it was to apologize. But then you told me you were hit by a car. You didn’t remember what had happened, and I didn’t want to tell you. I thought, I don’t know, we could start over.” He stared down at his feet before raising his gaze to Ethan’s face again. “I just want to say how sorry I am. And I like you. I know it doesn’t matter and you don’t have any reason to care, but in case you were wondering if my friendship was a lie… It wasn’t. Look, I learned a lot in prison. I got….” He glanced around the half-empty parking lot. “I got turned out.”

“What’s that?” Ethan edged closer to the door, though it wasn’t in reach. If he could get to it, he could go inside and slam it in Mike’s face.

“Raped,” Mike said. “I was, um, I was an inmate’s bitch from my first day.”

“So, that’s why you’re sorry? Because you got raped a lot?”

“No. Look I… I’m sorry because it was a stupid, bad, horrible thing to do. I thought I hated gay people. But at the trial, they talked a lot about what you were like. Your parents testified and your teachers and… No one would do that for me and I just… I hated you, you know, for what you represented. But when I got older and I started thinking about you as a kid, and me as a kid, and to think that I ended what you could have been. I ended you and I—”

“You didn’t end me.” Ethan stood up straight. He felt cold, but a powerful kind of cold, the kind that came with anger.

“I felt like I did. So I wanted to come back and make sure you were all right. As all right as possible, anyway. And see if there was anything I could do to… to make it better.” Tears dripped down his cheeks.

“You can go.”

“Ethan. Please, if I could just….”

“We aren’t friends.”

“I know that. I… I’m not asking….”

Ethan stared at him, letting the coldness he felt wash through him until Mike backed away.

“Okay. I won’t come back. I… Not that this means anything coming from me, but you are fucking amazing.”

“Get out.” Ethan clamped down on his emotion, on the urge to yell out “You should have seen me Before.” because Ethan didn’t know how amazing he’d been Before, only that people told him he was. Mike wiped his nose. For a moment, Ethan saw the sixteen-year-old he’d been, not the hate-filled boy out for trouble but the lost, ignored kid who couldn’t get a break. Mike turned away.

“I forgive you,” Ethan said. He hadn’t expected to say it, but he often said things he didn’t expect to say. This felt right. It was the right thing to do.

Mike turned back, a hesitant smile on his face that mingled with the tears. “You do?”

“But I don’t want to be friends.”

“Okay.”

“And I don’t want to see you.”

“But you forgive me?” Mike sounded like Ethan had offered him sunshine.

“And Douglas. You can tell him.”

“I will. Thank you.” Crying afresh, Mike ran away.

The door banged open. Vera stuck her head out. “Did you get lost?” She followed Ethan’s gaze. “What the hell is he doing here? I’m calling the police.”

“I forgave him,” Ethan said.

She came out and put her arms around him. “I’d ask what the hell for, but you’ve got too much love in you to hate anyone.”

“Yeah.” He hugged her back and watched Mike run out of sight. The green nail polish sat on the hood of a car. Leaving it there, Ethan went inside the shop. He didn’t have time to think about Mike. He and Carter had finished their song, and tonight they were going to play it for Ethan’s family.

THE Harts’ dining room table spilled over with food. After eating a pork chop, potatoes both white and sweet, asparagus, and green beans, Carter protested Nolan’s effort to make him take another fresh-from-the-oven corn muffin.

“I can’t. I’ll explode.” He glanced over at Ethan, who eyed his own empty plate with wariness. “Really, no thank you,” Carter said to Nolan.

“I saw Mike today,” Ethan said. Nolan lowered the bread basket. “I forgave him.”

A few seconds passed. “Well. If that’s what you felt in your heart, then that’s good,” Liz said.

Carter stabbed the remains of his pork chop. Was it good? It wasn’t Carter’s place to have an opinion on it, but if it were, he might not go with good. Elliot sent one of his green beans shooting off his plate. In addition to celebrating the premiere of Carter and Ethan’s song, the dinner’s purpose was to cheer Elliot’s admission to a competitive summer music camp. There was cake waiting in the kitchen. Elliot pushed back from the table. “I’m done. May I be excused?” Without waiting for an answer, he headed upstairs.

“Um,” Jennifer said. “Do I need to ask permission too, or…?”

“No, you don’t have to,” Nolan said. “Go after him.” He turned to Ethan, who had chewed two more bites of potatoes as if he hadn’t just opened up a can of worms and flung them around the room. “Pal, what happened?”

Ethan looked earnest. “I can forgive, Dad. That’s what happened. I was angry at him, but I forgave him. We’re not going to be friends. I told him that. I don’t want to see him. But I can imagine what it was like for them because Elliot’s angry all the time and what if he did something right now that hurt someone like what Mike and Douglas did to me?”

“Elliot wouldn’t,” Liz said, but there was a trace of doubt in her voice. Ever since learning the truth, Elliot had been a lit fuse. His destroying Mike’s headlights had proven that.

“But if he did and had to live with it his whole life, wouldn’t you want him to be forgiven?” Ethan asked.

“We have to live with what happened to you too,” Liz said.

Carter sat still, feeling an awkward addition to the family conversation. Despite this, he had to speak up. “You have to live with Ethan. Ethan’s the only one who has to live with what happened. He was the only one there when it happened.” He risked a glance at Nolan and Liz. “And you’re the only ones with memories of what he was like Before.” He capitalized it in his mind now too.

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “Carter’s right.”

“I can’t forgive them,” Liz said.

“You can’t get me back to the way I was.”

“We love you the way you are,” Nolan said.

“It happened to me, not you. You shouldn’t be angry about it.”

“What happened affected everyone. Having this come up again, it raised old issues we haven’t thought about in years,” Liz said. The weather was too cool for air conditioning, but she’d been out in the garden, and her hair hung limp from the humidity. The stress of the past months had aged her a few years and now this took the color from her face, leaving her complexion sallow. “We need time to process our feelings before we can talk about forgiving them.”

“You always told me,” Ethan said, “that forgiveness is the reason for thinking about why you feel the way you do.”

Nolan gave a weak laugh. “I made that line up when Ethan and Elliot were fighting. Should have known it’d come back to bite me in the ass.” He nudged Carter and worked up a smile.

“Yep.” Ethan looked proud of himself. “I’m going to go talk to Elliot.”

“I’ll do it,” Liz said.

“No. He needs his big brother. That’s me.” Ethan left the table.

Liz smiled with wet eyes. “Elliot does need his big brother,” she said. “He has for a long time.”

Carter got up and carried the dishes over to the counter. Liz even gave him a hug when the table was clear. “You’ve made a world of difference to Ethan.”

Carter hugged back. “You can’t imagine what Ethan’s done for me. What all of you have.”

“Oh, I bet we can,” Liz said. She stepped back to arm’s-length and squeezed his shoulders. “Why don’t you head upstairs and bring him down. Ethan said there’s something else on the table for tonight.”

“I can’t handle another shock,” Nolan said, but he said it with a smile.

“You’ll like this,” Carter said. “I’ll be right back.” He jogged up the stairs, glancing at his guitar in the foyer as he went.

He went straight to Elliot’s room. Jennifer sat at the desk. She smiled at Carter and beckoned him in. Carter hadn’t seen her for awhile. He’d thought she and Elliot had broken up. On the bed, Elliot and Ethan sat together. Carter had seen them so many times with Elliot curled against Ethan, stroking the nightmares away with strong, sure touches along his back. But now Ethan held Elliot and scratched Elliot’s hair as he rested his head on Ethan’s shoulder. For once, Elliot looked younger than his sixteen years. He’d had a birthday the week before and received a used Mustang as a gift. He looked happy. Ethan looked over his shoulder and smiled at Carter. “We’re having some big brother, little brother time.”

“Yeah,” Elliot said. “Ethan’s telling me all about what’s what.” He looked stunned with the revelation, delighted with it.

Carter sat on the desk and watched as Elliot and Ethan ignored him and Ethan talked quietly about why Elliot had to let go of what had happened to Ethan. “You’re amazing, Elliot,” he said, echoing the words people always said about him, “and you can’t be that if you’re angry.”

“How long can we stare at them hugging before it gets weird?” Jennifer stage-whispered.

“The staring or the hugging?” Carter asked. He’d been wondering too.

Elliot extracted himself and hopped up. “We’re done. Sappiness over.”

“Feel better?” Ethan asked.

“I do,” Elliot said.

“It’s fun to be the big brother once in a while. Maybe later I can give you a noogie.”

Elliot laughed. “I’d like to see you try.” He batted Ethan’s hands away from his waist as Ethan grinned.

“We should go downstairs,” Carter said. “I think there’s a certain song we’ve promised to play for your parents.”

“Yeah. Our song.” Ethan grinned.

“Let’s do it.” Ethan was still seated, so Carter bent down and kissed him, ignoring Elliot’s comment that Carter bending to reach Ethan had to be a first, though Ethan laughed.

They went downstairs together. Carter grabbed his guitar from the foyer. Liz and Nolan were on the living room couch, feet up on the coffee table. “Everything okay?” Nolan asked.

“Yeah. We’re good.” Elliot sat down in the easy chair, which was big enough for him and Jennifer to sit in together.

“Carter and I wrote this,” Ethan said in introduction.

“It’s only been played at my house and yours,” Carter said. “No one has heard it except for Ethan and me.”

“So this is almost a world premiere.” Liz gave a big smile.

Carter sat down with his guitar and started to tune it. “It’s about us,” Ethan said. “It’s our song.”

“Ready?” Carter asked. At Ethan’s signal, he began to play. Ethan sang, his voice strong and happy.

All I want to do is

Race to you, arms open wide

Can’t wait to be with you

You make my world open up

Show me doors I’d slammed shut

Show me ways I forgot I could be

Carter joined in at the chorus. He couldn’t contain his pride for Ethan’s talent.

The best friend I never knew

Makes music with each breath

Keeps a symphony in his mind

Shares it with me, makes me see

The best friend I never knew

Turned out to be you.

Now that he was a semiregular at Pepper’s open mic nights, performing for strangers was easier for him. No one at Pepper’s laughed or mocked him, no matter how bad his tics got while he performed. (If Vera had kicked anyone out, he hadn’t seen it.) Sometimes people told him he inspired them because he didn’t hold himself back. He always laughed at that and pointed at Ethan. “He’s the reason I’m here.” But sometimes his tics went away when he sang. He didn’t know why or how, but he appreciated that stillness while he could. But funny enough, if it went on too long, he started to miss the rush and bounce of his usual mind. Either way, people clapped for him. It felt good.

There were no strangers here tonight, only family. As he sang, Carter focused on sending the love he felt back out to Liz and Nolan, to Elliot and Jennifer, and Ethan, especially Ethan, who saw music in the sky and goodness in every person. Ethan, who had seen Carter in a way Carter had never seen himself, and showed Carter that he was more than a series of twitches and consonants.

Ethan, who Carter loved. Ethan, who loved Carter.

Ethan finished singing, leaned over, and kissed Carter. He pulled away with a smile. Carter, his fingers on the guitar, couldn’t chase after him. Liz and Nolan applauded. “That was wonderful!” Liz said. “Thank you so much for sharing it with us.”

“You’re welcome.” Carter scooted closer to Ethan as the attention made him self-conscious. Ethan soaked it in. He looked delighted. Carter was happy too.

Looking at the people who had changed his life—the boy who had challenged him, the man who loved him unconditionally, and their parents who had enough confidence in their son and in Carter to want the best for them, to believe they were both good men—Carter filled up with love. He’d never imagined his life would be like this. He hadn’t thought it possible, but here he was with all this.

“What’s funny?” Ethan asked.

Carter hadn’t realized he was grinning. He hooked his arm around Ethan’s shoulders. “I was just thinking—moving here was the best decision I ever made.”

“Well, yeah,” Ethan said. “Because you met me.”

“Exactly.” Carter pulled him down for a kiss. Ethan smacked his lips.

Liz stood up. “Who wants cake?”

With his wrist caught in Ethan’s hand, Carter could only stumble along behind, laughing, as Ethan charged toward the kitchen.