SAM
I’m torn between needing to deal with Jeremy and wanting to chase after Luke. I rock back on my heels, and sit on the end of my son’s bed. I clasp my hands together, resting my elbows against my knees.
"Okay, Jeremy, unless you want to be grounded for the rest of your teenage life, I’d suggest you tell me the truth.”
Jeremy backs up to his windowsill and perches on it and the closed curtains. “Does that mean I won’t get grounded if I spill?”
I shake my head. “You’re smarter than that. But dragging this out longer than necessary will make things worse for you.” I look over at him, fidgeting with the edge of the curtains at his sides. “Why lie about your sexuality?”
It takes a moment, and then he speaks. “I like Suzy and I wanted to spend more time with her over the summer.”
“So why didn’t you just tell us that?”
“Come on, Dad. You and Mum are so worried I’m going to repeat the same mistake you guys made and ruin my life—you’d never let me have a girlfriend.”
“There would be some rules, yes—”
“Some rules? Have you met Mum? If I’d said I had a girlfriend, I’m pretty sure she would have had me under a lockdown. I wouldn’t be allowed out without a chaperone.”
“Look, your mum and I know what it’s like. We’ve been in the same situation. Our parents didn’t want us to date anyone. We were too young and so on. What happened? Your mum and I snuck out together one night, and long story short, nine months later you were born.”
I unclasp my hands and rub them over my knees. “We are not naive enough not to know if you want to go out there and have sex, you will. So you can be sure both your Mum and I see no point in telling you not to date Suzy. We’d rather know who you are with so we can be supportive and make sure you’re being safe. That’s why we go crazy on the sex talks and the . . . Golden Condom Rule.”
I shift on the bed, wishing I could pull Jeremy over and tuck him against my side as I used to when he was young and innocent. “Just give us a chance,” I continue. “We only want the best for you. We worry about you. Constantly. That’s our job. None of us—and this includes Luke—none of us want to see you get stuck in life because of a stupid decision.” I close my eyes and sigh. “We need you to be honest with us, okay? We need you to trust us. And we need to be able to trust you, as well.”
Jeremy’s head is bowed and his shoulders are slumped. “What’s going to happen now?”
“I think the first step is you going back to your mum’s and telling her the truth.”
He stiffens and mutters. “I don’t want to go back there.”
I rub my palm over my forehead and thread my fingers through my hair. “Because of Greg?”
He shrugs.
I push off the bed and move over to him, resting a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry this is hard for you, Jeremy, but you’re going to have to suck it up and learn to live with it. Your mum has met someone that makes her happy. You want her to be happy, don’t you?”
He turns his head away, but not before I catch his glistening eyes. I sigh and rub his hair fondly. “We love you, Jeremy. You come 1st, you always will. But let your mum have a close 2nd, okay? Please?”
His voice croaks. “I already do with you and Luke. Can’t that be enough?”
I suck in a surprised breath. “What?”
“You heard me, Dad. I come first for you, but Luke is your very close second—sometimes I wonder if he’s second at all.”
“What are you on about—?”
“You were so sad when he left. I heard you crying the night he flew out.”
I swallow. He’d heard that?
“I see things too.”
I’m unable to move, my hand frozen in place on Jeremy’s shoulder. “See what, exactly?”
Jeremy swings his gaze to me, and his bottom lip is trembling. He blinks and says quietly, with a dismissive shrug, “How happy you are when you’re with him.”
“Sure I’m happy,” I say carefully. “He’s my friend.”
“Let me put it differently. You light up like a freaking lighthouse when he comes into the room.” Silence cradles us for a few beats. Then he adds, “Luke does too.”
Jeremy shifts slightly, so my hand skates off him. “You know he pays for heaps of stuff for you and pretends it doesn’t cost him anything—or little? Last year that soccer camp I went to? It wasn’t free, but I knew neither you nor Mum could afford to let me go. I was so upset about it. Luke found out what was wrong and the next day at school my coach tells me my spot has been secured and is all paid for.”
“H-he did that?”
“Tip of the iceberg, Dad. Every week when he rang from Auckland, he always asked me how you were holding up. He always sounded so sad he wasn’t here with you.”
“Us.” I croak. “He missed being here with us.”
Jeremy shrugs. “Yeah, but you’re his number one.”
“He just called you his son,” I say through the tightness in my throat.
He sniffs and wipes his nose on the shoulder of his T-shirt. “I know. So if I’m like a son to him, what does that make you?”
“I—I . . .” I stammer, lost for words, until Jeremy’s lip quivers again. “Hey, come here.” I wrap him into a hug. He’s rigid at first, but soon his arms come around me and he molds against my chest. Hot tears leak into my shirt. I kiss the top of his head. “You’re my number 1, Jeremy, and Luke knows that. He wouldn’t want it any differently. That goes for your mum too.”
“I don’t want to move. I don’t want to change schools. I don’t want to lose my friends or my team.”
“See? That’s the discussion you need to have with your mum. She’s not trying to take everything away from you, okay? She just wants you to give her this.”
He pulls back, snatching the tears rolling down his cheeks and flinging them away. “I . . . guess I should head back to her place, huh.”
“Yeah.” He slides off the windowsill and skirts around me, picking up his stuff.
“Jeremy?” I say as he zips up a backpack.
“Yeah?”
“Your phone, please.”
Reluctantly he pulls the phone from the front pocket and hands it to me. “Being grounded is going to suck, isn’t it?”
* * *
“If I’m like a son to him, what does that make you?”
I know I have to speak with Luke, but I’m not sure I can form any coherent sentence.
I pace my dining room area, running my fingers over the repaired table at each pass. I glance out the window toward his place. I can’t see much in the dark save for his lit front windows.
“Just get over there,” I say to myself and push myself to the shelf where I have a set of his keys.
What am I nervous about anyway? So what Jeremy sees that we’re close? We’ve been friends for over seven years. It’s nothing new.
My stomach flips and a fizzy feeling rushes through my veins. I try tamping it down with a hard swallow, but it won’t let up.
I don’t bother with shoes, and the cool ground on the soles of my feet helps to keep me steady as I walk over to Luke’s.
I knock lightly on his door before inserting the house key and letting myself in like I’ve done a thousand-and-one times before. Except . . . except this time it feels different. This time all I can think of is the trust Luke has to let me come into his place whenever Jeremy or I feel like it.
We’ve always had our houses open to each other, though. Friends do that.
Before I turn right to go into the lounge, where I know Luke will be lying on his couch, staring up at the ceiling, I glance into the kitchen. As I do, I see the hundreds of meals we’ve made in there together, and the hundreds of laughs and hours of drama we’ve shared.
So you know his kitchen as intimately as your own, and vice versa—it always made sense to eat together.
I inch toward the lounge and pause in the doorway. I can see the back of the couch from here. I know Luke is on it because his feet are sticking off the edge.
I also know because he’s murmuring on the phone. His voice sounds heavy and tired. “No, Mum, I didn’t get your messages. My phone didn’t have any battery, and I was down South.”
Down South, taking me to see the sharks.
Suddenly, I need to find out what he actually paid for us to do this. I know it can’t have been cheap. The flights alone . . .
I tiptoe out into the hall and go into the bathroom. Pulling out my phone, I type in the name of the diving company.
When I see the cost, I blanch. 600 dollars per person?
I keep staring at the number, trying to make sense of it and come up with an explanation.
Friends can be that generous—
But I’m shaking my head, and my throat is so raw.
I shove the phone back in my pocket and walk back to the lounge. Luke still hasn’t heard me, lost in conversation with his mum.
“I screwed up this time.”
I stiffen in the doorway. There’s so much hurt leaking from Luke’s voice.
He sighs, and then continues, “I should have just told you the truth, and I should have told Sam about me right from the beginning. From the first moment we met.”
About him?
My pulse beats faster, and the wooden floorboard under me betrays my presence with a groan.
Luke springs off the couch and twists toward me. He licks his lips and swallows. Then his eyes close as he says into the phone. “Sorry Mum, I’ve got to go.”
The phone hits the couch. “Sam,” he says, holding my gaze, searching it.
“What should you have told me right from the beginning?”
I hold my breath, not sure if I’m hoping he’ll say what I’m guessing he’s about to say, or if I’m hoping—begging the universe to be wrong.
He skirts around the couch, coming over to me. “Sam, I—”
I stop him with a raised hand. “What should you have told me?”
He breathes out, looks down at the floor between us, and then back up to me. “That I’m gay.”
I’m nodding. Nodding because it’s making sense, but not making sense at all.
I don’t realize I’ve forgotten to breathe until I’m suddenly sucking in a fresh gulp of air. “All this time? Why didn’t you”—I close my eyes and try to keep my voice level—“why didn’t you tell me?”
Luke opens his mouth and shuts it again, shaking his head.
“How many things have you paid for, for me and Jeremy? How many things don’t I know about?”
“I don’t know.”
“The carpentry workshop you took me to. You said the first time is free. Was that true?”
He doesn’t answer, and it’s answer enough. Everything in my head is spinning as I try to calculate that math. How much has Luke been giving us?
Dad’s words come back to me: Numbers that can tell you about life.
But now I don’t think that’s all true.
I calculate 300 dollars for Jeremy’s soccer trip. The bi-weekly takeouts: 22 dollars. The flights down south: 200 dollars. The bed-and-breakfast: 100 dollars. The shark dive: 600 dollars. The carpentry workshop: 50 dollars?
And those numbers are only the beginning. What about the other ways he’s added to our lives? The number of times he’s taken Jeremy to the emergency room: 3. The distance he travels to drop or pick Jeremy up from school: 25 km one way. The times he’s watched Jeremy and fed him dinner when I had to work late: 20? 30? More? The times he’s taken us camping: 12. The times he’s changed my tires: 4. The times he picked me up from a bar, drunk, and cleaned my bathroom the next morning: 1. The times he’s held me over the last week: 23. The times he’s hurt me: 0. The times he’s let me down? Just this once.
Numbers. They can tell a lot. But they can never be enough. They can’t calculate how much Luke means to us. Me.
Can’t calculate how much I want to mean to him—
This is all too much. I can’t absorb all the math without crying it back out again. Shaking, I brace one hand against the doorframe for support.
Luke takes a step closer, but I wave my other hand in front of him again. “I just”—I lose my voice and have to clear my throat—“Luke, I—I can’t think right now. I have to . . .” I glance toward the door.
“Sam, don’t. Please. I’m so sorry. I wanted to, but I just couldn’t bring myself to tell you. I couldn’t bear the thought of you saying no.”
The edge of the doorframe where I grip is digging into my palm. My head wants me to escape with my thoughts so I can gather them into something that resembles sense, but my body doesn’t want to leave at all. It wants me to stay right here.
I focus on Luke. His eyes are tearing up, something I’ve never seen before, and I feel it echo in my own eyes. “Saying no? No to what?”
“No to loving me back.”
“I—I’ve always loved you, Luke. You’re my very close second. And Jeremy is right,” I bow my head as the numbers finally push their way out the corners of my eyes to dampen my lashes. “Sometimes you’re even my first.”
I sense Luke wants to come forward but is holding himself back, as I wished. “I mean,” he says softly, “I can’t bear the thought of you not being in love with me.”
I shatter in a 1000 pieces in all directions until I have no idea where I am anymore. I don’t know what to say or do and my instinct is to curl up into a tight ball until I’m all back together again.
“Hold me,” I gasp. And Luke’s moving—in 1 second, he’s pressing me against him, firm hands rubbing my back, outlining me, reassuring me I’m still all there.
I breathe shakily through the shoulder of his shirt. “I’m angry,” I say, even as I clutch him tighter to me. “God, I’m so angry.” And I’m digging my fingers into him as if to prove the point.
“You’re allowed to be angry. I should have told you.”
I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the side of his neck. “I never . . . I never would have fooled around with you . . . You should have told me. This is the reason you were so hot and cold about doing the taboo with me, isn’t it? I’ve hurt you. I didn’t even know it, but I was hurting you.”
“It’s not your fault, Sam. I had all the opportunities to tell you the truth. I didn’t.”
“Because you couldn’t.”
We stand there together, Luke never lessening the pressure of his hands, but soon I feel him shaking, and when I pull back enough to look at his face, his eyes are wet and slightly reddened at the edges. He can’t look at me either, concentrating on something at our sides.
“If nothing else,” he says with a taut voice that’s on the edge of breaking. “I still need to love you as a friend.”
“I’d do anything to go back and say no. I never . . . you were never meant to get hurt,” I say and slowly pull away from him. It’s not fair of me to make this harder on him, and he needs some space. “And I need your friendship too.”
His body crumples, shoulders dropping, head sinking toward his chest. He struggles to speak, and I apologize again. “Just give me a little while,” he says, not daring to look at me. And I’m thankful he doesn’t see my tears, because I know that would make it worse for him.
“Yes, Luke. Anything you need.”