Chapter 17

Interventions: Not Just For Addicts And Hoarders Anymore

 

 

“GO AWAY,” I moaned from underneath my blanket as Sandy pounded on my bedroom door. “The light, it burns! I’m all alone and it burns.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you go into the bedroom!” he said through the door. “You open it right this minute or I swear to God I will break it down.”

“You weigh, like, twenty pounds,” I reminded him. “The only thing you’ll be breaking is the idea that you could break down anything. Now go away and let me wallow in my own pity. Or you could go out and buy me six boxes of Ding Dongs so that I can eat them all at once and drown myself in chocolate while I decide if I’m going to go find Christ as a monk in the Himalayas or if I’m going to turn straight.”

“I’ll buy you so many Ding Dongs,” he said soothingly. “Just open the door and we’ll go get them together. I promise. I’ll eat them with you and then we’ll go to Los Betos and I’ll buy you the biggest burrito your face has ever seen. Or if you decide to turn straight, I’ll find you so many girls and all the vagina you can eat. We may need to get you a couple of practice girls first just to make sure you’re doing it right. Or we could just go get a cantaloupe and cut it, and you can practice on that while we look up technique on the Internet.”

“You want me to perform cunnilingus on a cantaloupe? It’s like you don’t even know me at all!”

He pounded on the door again. “Open this door!”

“No! It’s all your fault! I told you!”

“What? It was your idea to go!”

“No, not that. When we were ten years old! I told you then! You promised me!”

“Are you doing lines of coke in there or something? What are you talking about?”

“The promise!” I bellowed at him. “When we were ten and I accidentally told Billy Harvey that I had a crush on him and he ran away screaming, I made you promise me to never let me think of ideas on my own ever again, and furthermore, if I did think of ideas on my own, you were never to let me act on them.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. Then he chuckled. “I saved you on that one, though. It turns out Billy Harvey wasn’t that great of a fuck. He had a small penis. Even at sixteen, I knew the difference.”

I glared at the door. “You had sex with him? You do everyone! I can’t wait until it’s your birthday because I’m going to buy a sign for your front yard that says, ‘Sandy lives here and blows everything that moves.”

“If you open the door, I’ll blow you,” he promised.

“I don’t want your love,” I said dramatically. “Ha, I bet I’m the only person in the free world that’s ever said that to you.”

“Open this door!”

“Allllll by myyyyyyselllllf,” I sang forlornly. “Don’t wanna be, allllllll byyyyyy myyyy—”

Something slammed into the door. “Ow,” Sandy muttered. “When did you replace the doors with sheets of steel?”

I rolled my eyes. “They’re not. They’re oak. Maybe that’s like your kryptonite. Or maybe you’re just a tiny, tiny man.”

“Oak? So if I was a superhero, all anyone would have to do is bring a log of oak to a fight and I’d lose? That sounds supremely lame.”

“Or, like, what would happen if your arch-nemeses lured you into the middle of an oak forest in the middle of fall? He would stand above you cackling as the orange leaves fell from the trees and you writhed in pain on the forest floor.”

“What would my superhero name be? The Oak Diva? Got Wood? Lincoln Log?”

I considered. “Got Wood works, only because it’s kitschy. But you can’t be named after your weakness. It’d be too easy to kill you. Duh.”

“And what would my superpower be?”

That one was harder. “Insatiable dance moves,” I finally decided. “You can woo anyone with the magic roll of your hips.” I started getting excited at the idea, already picturing the superhero costume in my head, complete with bitchin’ thigh-high boots. “And then you could have a catch phrase that’d be all like—Wait a minute… you’re trying to distract me!”

He sounded bewildered. “‘Wait a minute you’re trying to distract me’ would be my catch-phrase? That sounds kind of dumb.”

“No, you bastard! You’re trying to distract me from the fact that you totally helped me fuck up everything!”

He snorted. “I didn’t do jack.”

“I knew this was a bad idea. I knew I should have never gotten involved with him in the first place. Stupid shit like this always happens. It’s fucking ridiculous.”

He groaned. “Are you really going to have an ‘I feel so bad for myself’ bitch fest? Really?”

“I’m allowed,” I said. “I think. While it was possibly the shortest relationship on record, it burned pretty brightly.”

“Who said it’s over?”

“You didn’t see the look on his face, Sandy,” I said quietly. “I don’t even really know why he got so mad, but he was. He didn’t want me there, he made that much clear.”

“That doesn’t mean you guys broke up,” he pointed out. “It could mean just what he said: that he didn’t want you there.”

“Yeah?” I sniffed.

“Yeah. Why don’t you open the door now?”

“Yeah, I’m not going to do that.”

“What?”

“Apparently your superpower is deviousness because I can see right through you! Trying to act like you’re on my side and shit and then make me open the door so you can bite my head off like a gigantic praying mantis! I won’t be your dinner, Sandy! I fucking won’t!”

“That’s it,” he growled. “I’m calling Matty and Larry.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“And Nana. And yes I would, you just watch me.”

“I’m calling your bluff.”

“I’m dialing my phone! That noise? That’s me pressing the buttons!” I could hear the loud tones of a number being dialed. “You better come out before I tell your mom that you’re pouting in your room because you and your boyfriend had a fight! You know what she’ll do, Paul.”

“Go to hell!”

“Hi, Matty? I’m good, sugar, thank you. Hey, you won’t believe what Paul is doing right now.” His voice faded as he walked down the hall.

I quickly looked to my window to make my escape, only to remember I’d put stylish safety bars on the outside after I’d moved in so no one could break in and rape me in the middle of the night. I cursed my intent to keep myself pure because I could not escape from my prison now. I was pretty sure I could take down Sandy if I tried, but then I remembered what he looked like as Helena and that was one fierce bitch and I didn’t think it would be good for my already bruised ego to get knocked flat on my ass by a man who weighed forty pounds less than I did.

I just couldn’t seem to get the look on Vince’s face out of my head, like I’d betrayed him somehow by going in and seeing his mom. Lori had been right when she talked about how much hindsight sucked. Granted, hers was a bit more profound, what with a lifetime of regret, and mine made it sound like I was a thirteen-year-old girl since I was pining after my weeklong relationship.

But I still couldn’t get him out of my head. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I should have opened my mouth the night before and said aloud what I’d thought when I’d looked at the star he’d named after me. I should have told him then that I knew about his mom and dad, how he was going to regret it for the rest of his life if he didn’t spend every waking moment with her until she was gone. I should have told him to put the past behind him and to just let it be until it was no more. It’s easier to be angry at someone when they’re gone, not when they’re still here and suffering. He could have hated her then. He didn’t need to now.

But she didn’t seem like someone to be hated. She didn’t seem like the wicked bitch I thought she’d be, the stereotypical bigot who didn’t love her son because of who he was. Granted, it sounded like she’d put her husband’s political aspirations ahead of her own family. That was a different kind of negligence. Indifference might not have the connotations of hate, but it could hurt just as badly.

I must have been lost in my thoughts a while, because the next thing I knew, there were the murmur of voices outside my door. I rolled my eyes and tried to shut them out.

There was another pounding on the door, this one a little lighter than Sandy’s egregious wailing. “Paul?” Nana called sweetly. “We’re here for your intervention. I brought you Ding Dongs and Los Betos.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mom said. “You can’t tell him we’re here for an intervention and then try to bribe him with food. He’s not going to fall for that. We tried that when he was a kid, and he locked himself in his room until we promised to get Zack Morris from Saved By The Bell to come to his birthday party. He didn’t believe it then, either. He said that if that was true, we’d put the food near the floor and blow on it so he could smell the burritos through the crack in the door.”

Yeah, yeah. I was a fat kid. So what. I liked food. Bite me.

“And Zack still never came to the birthday party,” I retorted through the door. “That’s probably one of the reasons I’m so messed up today.”

“Your father tried to dress up like him for you,” Mom said.

“He dressed like Screech! No one likes Screech. All the kids at my party thought he was a homeless clown! And I don’t smell Los Betos, you liars!”

“Oh, he’s a smart one,” Nana said, obviously sounding impressed. “You don’t fall for the bait unless you have proof of life.”

“I don’t think that’s quite what that means,” Dad said. “And a homeless clown? Really, Paul? I never made fun of you when you dressed up like an orange dice for that play you were in.”

“I told you,” Sandy crowed.

“He was so wonderful in that,” my mother said tearfully. “What was his famous line, Larry? You know, the one that everyone was quoting?”

“Give me dairy,” everyone said, “or give me osteoporosis!”

“This can’t possibly be healthy,” I muttered.

“Is he going to open the door?” Sandy asked. “I tried to break it down, but he must have changed his doors to some kind of unbreakable metal.”

“Or you could just eat more,” Mom scolded him. “I saw you, like, three days ago and I swear you’ve lost at least thirty-eight pounds.”

“It’s all the crack I smoke,” he explained. “I don’t have time to eat because I’m too busy thinking crack thoughts.”

“What are crack thoughts?” Nana asked.

“Oh, things like the government is going to come steal my babies.”

“You don’t have babies,” Dad said, obviously frowning. “Unless I missed something and you adopted that Croatian baby that Paul wanted.”

“I don’t have babies,” Sandy said. “But crack makes you think crazy things. That’s why Whitney said crack is whack, God rest her soul.”

“You shouldn’t be smoking crack,” my dad said sternly. “First Paul’s a pony, and now you’re smoking crack and having the government steal your babies? Who is Whitney? Is that your dealer?”

“Whitney Houston,” Mom said. “You know, dear. She was that singer who sang that song you like that Helena performed.”

“‘Hit Me Baby, One More Time?”

“That’s Britney, dear.”

“‘Dirty?”

“That was Christina.”

“Umbrella?”

“And that was Rihanna. Larry, you’re embarrassing yourself. You have a gay son, for God’s sake. How can you not know your divas?” Mom sounded affronted. “Paul? Paul! If you can hear me, don’t listen to your father! He obviously doesn’t know his ass from his elbow!”

“Language,” Dad scolded. “And I know my divas. I know them very well. What about that Woman Goo-Goo that Helena performs like?”

“That’s Lady Gaga,” Sandy sighed. “Did you really look at me and think I was Woman Goo-Goo? I don’t know how I feel about that. I just might be offended.”

“Your hair was very pretty,” Dad deflected.

“Thank you, sugar,” Helena purred. “You need to come back and see me sometime. I sure do miss you when you’re not around.”

“Oh, you,” Dad giggled, obviously blushing.

“Oh Christ,” I gagged.

“Language!”

“Dear, as much as I love you flirting with Sandy in front of me—Sandy, you should know Larry would most likely be a bottom, so I don’t know really what you two would do together aside from bumping bums—we’re here for Paul.”

“That’s right,” Nana said. “He’s obviously very depressed, and this is a cry for attention. I don’t want him to go all emo and cut himself.”

“I’m not going to cut myself,” I said.

“Paul could never be a cutter,” Mom said. “He’s too much of a baby when it comes to pain. He’d go the Sylvia Plath route and stick his head in a gas oven like a real lady.”

“Bull,” Dad said. “He’d take sleeping pills and then choke on his own vomit.”

“You’re both wrong,” Sandy said. “He’d get drunk on gin and fall asleep smoking Virginia Slim 120s and accidentally set the bed on fire.”

“For some reason, I don’t think the best way to start an intervention is by discussing the best way for the person you are intervening on to kill themselves,” I told them. “That person might take it the wrong way.”

“Mary J. Blige,” Dad exclaimed. “She’s another diva! She did that song ‘No More Drama’. I think that was my favorite costume you had, Sandy.”

“Oh, baby doll,” Helena exclaimed. “I love it as well.”

“That’s such an apt song for right now,” Nana said.

“If you start singing it, I’m going to lose it,” I growled at her.

She sniffed. “I’ll have you know that I was considered quite the singer back in my day. I didn’t even have to show my breasts like all the young women do now. What happened to talent for talent’s sake? Now if you want to be famous, it’s about how much meat is on your dress or how much nipple you are willing to show.”

“It’s a tragedy,” Dad agreed. “I don’t know why we have to live in a time with meat nipples or whatever you said.”

“Shall we get started?” Mom asked. “I have a feeling if we don’t start now, we’ll never get this done, and Paul will waste away in there because his pride won’t allow him to give in.”

“My body will just suck up its fat stores,” I reminded them. “Maybe it’ll be a good idea for me to stay in here. When I finally come out in a week, I could go into modeling and forget this week ever happened when I’m walking the runway in Milan.”

“You’ll have to change your name,” Sandy said. “Paul doesn’t sound like a modeling name.”

“Well, I think Paul is a handsome name,” Mom said. “I picked it, after all. But I could see how Sandy could be right. Maybe you should change your name to Gregorio?”

“Or Tunus?” Dad said.

“Or Talon?” Nana added.

“Ooooo,” they all breathed.

“Talon is a good one,” Sandy said. “Okay, let’s get started.”

“What are you guys doing?” I demanded through the door as something started to scrape on the other side.

“None of your business,” Mom said. “Go back to pouting.”

“I wasn’t pouting!”

“Dear, remember that little pouting face he would get whenever he didn’t get something he wanted? I always thought that he looked like a little cherub with those cheeks, even if it was the most annoying thing on the planet.”

“Yes,” Dad said, “but you fell for it every time.”

“That’s because I’m a good mother.”

“You are pretty good,” I agreed. “Most of the time. Right now is not one of those times.”

The scraping continued until I realized that they were unscrewing the hinges from the door so they could take it off its frame. “I’m going to call the police and tell them you’re breaking in!”

Sandy snorted. “If you do, can you make sure the fire department comes too? I am pretty sure I am owed some eye candy after having to put up with these shenanigans. And tell them I want the fireman to look exactly like the fireman calendar you had in 1999.”

“Mr. October,” we both groaned. Mr. October had been the most drool-worthy man ever to walk the face of the earth. My teenage fantasies of him (he who I had named Rodrigo) had included everything from him saving me from dragons (I was on a bit of a fantasy kick there for a while) to he and I being spies and falling madly in love on an undercover assignment, only to be betrayed by a mole higher up and being torn apart (no worries, though; the fantasy continued and after the betrayal, we were reunited three years later in a fiery passion on a beach in his homeland of Italy).

“I want firemen too,” I said. “Maybe I’ll just call them anyway.”

“I thought we were doing this because you were in love with someone already?” Nana asked. “I don’t think your parents raised you to be a whore.”

“Language!” Dad barked.

“I think he might try to beat our record,” Mom said.

“I’ve known him longer than a week,” I said for some damn reason.

“Yes, but you didn’t actually talk to him the first time until Monday, right?”

“I don’t think I told you that, so the fact that you know kind of creeps me out.”

“I have spies everywhere,” Mom said, cackling.

“She really does,” Dad said.

“Sandy is your spy, isn’t he?”

“You bet he is,” Mom said.

“No firemen for Sandy!” I decreed.

“You’re going to make me a spinster,” he muttered.

“And that should do it,” Dad said. “You know, you kids today with your fancy iPads and iPhones and iTunes and iPods. None of those would have helped you here. Maybe I should market this as the iScrewdriver and see how much money I could make.”

“Billions,” I said. “And I’m pretty sure the market value just dropped 300 percent on my house since you unscrewed this door. Thanks, Dad.”

With a grunt, he lifted it out of the way and set it against the wall. I glared at the four of them, especially when I saw that Nana did not have Ding Dongs and a burrito from Los Betos. One should not promise Los Betos if one cannot deliver, for it might make another person extraordinarily pissy.

“You done pouting?” Mom asked.

I crossed my arms and stuck out my bottom lip. “I’m not pouting.”

“He’s not done pouting,” Dad told Mom.

“Okay, well, let’s get this intervention started,” Nana said gleefully.

They all started forward into the room, forcing me to take steps back until my legs hit the bed and I had to sit. Nana pulled out my desk chair and sat in it with a grunt, scooching closer to me until our knees bumped together. Mom sat to one side of me and put her hand on mine, and Dad sat on my other side, pressing his leg against mine. Sandy sat on the floor near my feet, and I suddenly understood what it meant to have your family smothering you.

“Who would like to begin?” Mom asked.

“We’re not really doing this,” I snapped. “This is ridiculous!”

“I will,” Nana said as she pulled a massive pile of paper from her purse. She began to read in a flat monotone. “Paul, when you do stupid things, it makes me sad. I couldn’t believe when Sandy called us and told us that you’d—”

“When in the hell did you have time to write this?” I asked, dropping my jaw. “These things just happened! Sandy just called you!”

“I already had something written,” Nana said, affronted. “I modified it on the way over here. Can I finish, please?”

“Of course you can,” Mom said, patting her hand.

“No, she can’t—”

“Paul,” she shouted over me, starting to read again, “when you do stupid things, it makes me sad! I couldn’t believe when Sandy called us and told us that you’d gone behind your partner’s back to see his mom! And then, to make it worse, you locked yourself in your room and started to cry!”

“I didn’t cry—”

“It hurts me to see you like this! I want you to be happy, but you keep sabotaging yourself! You need to allow yourself to be happy and to stay off meth and—Wait… I don’t think I got this far to change it. Hold on a second.” She pulled a pen from her purse and squinted down at the paper, starting to scratch off words and muttering to herself.

“You know,” I told her, “I don’t know what’s more unreal: the fact that you already had an intervention speech written out in case I got strung out on meth, or the fact that this is actually happening right now.”

“I like to prepare for every eventuality,” Nana said.

“I told you to open the door,” Sandy said mildly. “Since you didn’t, this is what had to happen.”

“We’re here because we love you,” Mom said.

“And because Vince is pretty great,” Dad said. “You’d have to be pretty stupid to let him go.”

“He made me go,” I reminded them.

“You probably just surprised him,” Mom pointed out. “He wasn’t expecting you to be there and it freaked him out.”

“Okay,” Nana murmured to herself in concentration. “I should also probably take out the part where I ask if I could have your stuff if you ever overdosed. That doesn’t seem applicable here.” She crossed out even more. I wanted to ask her how many pages her intervention speech ran, but didn’t think I wanted to know the answer.

“You probably would have done the same thing,” my dad said. “Scratch that; I know you would have done the same thing. But it’s not about you. This is about him. This is about how he’s going to lose his mother very shortly. This is about how he’s going to need someone to lean on and that someone should be you.”

I tried to stand, but they wouldn’t let me. I was starting to get pissed, but at who, I didn’t know. “You know,” I growled at them all, “everyone keeps saying that to me, that he’s going to need me, that he’s going to depend on me, but that’s bullshit. If he needed me, he wouldn’t have sent me away. If he needed me, he would have told me what was going on. If he wanted me as much as he claimed, he would have fucking let me in instead of allowing me to act all stupid and do what I did. So you’re right. This isn’t about me. This is all on him.”

“That’s not fair,” Mom said firmly. “It’s not fair and you know it. Everything around him right now is heightened to an extreme.”

“Exactly,” I snapped at her, trying to ignore the hurt look on her face. “Everything is heightened. There’s no way he would have fallen for me that quickly. There’s no way I could love him this fast. Everything is just moving at light speed, and it’s because of what he is going through. That’s all it is. It’s just that and nothing more.”

Dad snorted. “You were always such a terrible liar.”

“That’s a good thing, though,” Mom said. “Rather him be bad at it than good.”

“He tried to tell me once that this singlet I found at the thrift store looked good on me,” Sandy said. “But he kept twitching like he’s doing now and it totally gave him away.”

“Did you buy it anyway?” Dad asked.

“No. Paul made the very good point that most likely someone else’s balls or vagina had been smooshed in that before I got my hands on it, and I couldn’t in good faith wear it without getting grossed out.”

“Oh, man,” Dad groaned. “Maybe I should be a homosexual. Smooshed vagina? No offense, Matty, but yuck.”

“I’ll support you with whatever you decide to do,” Mom told him, reaching over me to hold his hand. “I could always be your fruit fly if you do come out.”

“That would be interesting,” Dad said. “Do you think I could be a leather daddy?”

“You could pull it off,” she said. “I know you can.”

“Paul has chaps you could borrow,” Sandy said, a little bit of Helena poking through. “I would have no problem seeing that. You’d be pretty hot, Larry.”

“I probably shouldn’t add that I’d have Johnny Depp officiate your funeral,” Nana muttered, scribbling furiously. “Somehow, I don’t think that would be appreciated.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the world who wishes he could be deaf,” I said to no one in particular. “And blind.”

“You don’t wish that,” Mom said. “What an awful thing to say.”

“You should probably take that back,” Dad said. “You don’t want to piss off God and wake up tomorrow blind and deaf.”

“Fine, I take it back,” I mumbled. I didn’t really want to be blind and deaf. “But if God is granting wishes, I wish you’d all go away.”

“I don’t think God is a genie,” Sandy said. “But if he is, I wish for those two-thousand-dollar boots I saw in the boutique downtown. In red.”

“I wish for world peace,” Nana said. “And then six billion dollars.”

“I wish for more wishes,” Dad said.

“I wish for my son to stop being so pigheaded,” Mom said.

We waited.

“And for Vin Diesel to come to my house and be my naked maid,” she finished with a blush.

“I could take him in a fight,” Dad said, flexing his arms. “I’ll be your naked maid when we get home. Do you need dusting, Mrs. Auster?”

“I am feeling pretty dusty,” Mom agreed, winking at him.

“I’m sitting right between you two! Gross!”

“Gee, thanks for pointing out the obvious,” Dad said, rolling his eyes.

“Finished!” Nana said. “Paul, when you do stupid things, it makes me sad. I couldn’t believe when Sandy called us and told us that you’d gone behind your partner’s back to see his mom! And then, to make it worse, you locked yourself in your room and started to cry. I wish that things could go back to the way they were before. Like the way they were yesterday. Yesterday was a good day. Do you remember? You came over to my house with Vince and we all had dinner and I showed him Slutty Snow White and Johnny Depp loved him and Vince tried to eat your face outside after he found the bike. I wasn’t supposed to see that, but it was kind of hard not to notice when you got slammed up against the side of my house. In conclusion, you should go after Vince, and never do meth because you’ll lose your teeth and get weird spots on your face. No one likes weird spots.” She looked up at me and smiled.

“That was lovely, Gigi,” Sandy said, leaning his head against her leg. “You are such an eloquent speaker.”

“Thank you, honey,” she said, preening. “It goes on for an additional sixteen pages, but I felt that was enough to make my point.”

“Paul, do you love him?” my mom asked suddenly.

I didn’t have time to think. “Yes… oh shit. I meant no. Of course not. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

They waited.

I sighed. “Yes,” I whispered. “I don’t know how or when or why, but yes.” I hung my head.

My dad reached up and rubbed my back. “Paul, did you know that me and your mom almost got divorced?”

I snapped my head back up. “What? What are you talking about? You guys met, everything was rosy, and a week later you were married. There was no divorce. There wasn’t even an almost.”

“No. Not completely. Oh, I knew I loved her right away, and I knew she loved me after she tried to kill me with her car, but I didn’t know if that was going to be enough.” He smiled over at my mom whose eyes were a bit watery. “It’s one thing to love a person, but it’s another to love them regardless of their faults. And I had a bunch of them.”

“He really did,” Mom mused happily. “So many faults.”

“So many,” he agreed. “So when I asked her to marry me, I was sure she was going to laugh at me, even if she did love me. It was going to be too fast, I thought she’d say. We were too young. We didn’t really know a thing about each other. But I knew what I wanted, and I wanted her. For the rest of my life.”

Sandy sighed and wiped his eyes. “So lovely,” he sniffed.

“But she said yes. She said yes with this little laugh she has that sounds like bells. She said yes and we got married down at city hall and she moved in the next day. A week later, she moved out.”

“He was a bit of a slob,” Mom said. “And a jerk. He wanted things done his way and on his timeline. And, of course, that didn’t work for me. At all. I was used to living my own life, and suddenly I was thrust in with this man that I really didn’t know. So one day while he was in class, I packed up and moved back home.

“How long did that last?” I asked, unsure why I’d never heard this part of their lives before.

“Six months,” Dad said. “I was devastated when I came home, but I understood. Or at least that’s what I tried to tell myself. I went over to Nana’s house and begged her to come back but she said no. I asked her if she wanted an annulment, and she said no to that too. I asked her what she wanted. She told me she wanted to date.”

“We’d already gotten the falling in love part out of the way,” Mom explained. “That was the hard part, and we got it done before most people would. What was left was just learning about each other to make sure the love we had was something that would last. Sometimes it’s enough to love someone just the way they are. Other times, you have to work at it so that it doesn’t fade away.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked quietly. “Why now?”

“Because you love him,” Dad said. “Even with all the little voices inside your head saying it’s too soon, that it’s not enough, that he’s so much better than you are, you love him. And he loves you. And you know it as well as I do. Someone who tells you that they’re going to fall in love with you, or that they’re partway there, is already there.”

“But you’re not letting yourself believe it,” Mom said, admonishing me slightly. “You’re so used to what you had before that this is scaring you. And it’d be easier to walk away. It would be easier to pretend this never happened. But the things we want in life will never be easy, and if you want it, if you really do, then you need to fight for it with everything you’ve got. It’s only yours to lose, Paul. Only you can make it go away.”

“It’s like all of you are after-school-specialing on me,” I groaned. “I feel so cheap and used and covered in grossness, like some twink after a bareback gang bang.”

“And how would you know what that feels like?” Dad asked. “Is there something we should know?”

“Not at all,” I said quickly. “Just an expression gay guys use.”

They looked to Sandy, who shrugged. “I understood what he meant.”

I like you, I mouthed to him because I wasn’t quite back to love yet. He rolled his eyes.

“So what now?” Nana asked. “I feel like this intervention was modestly successful. I don’t think Paul will be doing meth again anytime soon.”

“I wasn’t on meth!”

“Well, if this were a romantic comedy, this would be the part where Paul would go out searching for the love of his life,” Sandy said. “There’d be really cheesy music playing in the background while he went over to his boyfriend’s apartment to apologize for being an idiot and to hug him and kiss him and then get down to bidness.”

“Oh my,” Mom said. “I think we’ve been watching the wrong movies.”

“By ‘bidness’, do you mean Paul would be a pony again?” Dad asked. “I must admit, I’m fascinated by that idea now.” He glanced back over to my mom. “We should get a riding crop.”

“Deal,” Mom said.

“I’m not a fucking pony!”

“Language,” Dad scolded.

“I should just call him first,” I said.

“No!” everyone said back.

“It’s not spontaneous enough,” Sandy said with a sigh.

“It has to be face to face,” Mom said, a wistful look in her eye.

“He has to see that you mean it,” Dad said, patting my arm.

“You should probably dress sexy,” Nana said.

“I’m not going over to his house if I don’t even know if he’s there. I don’t want to have to stand outside his apartment and have one of his neighbors call the police three hours later because I look creepy and bored. And lonely.”

“His car was there when we drove by,” Mom said without a hint of guilt. “So most likely he’s already home.”

I stared at them. They stared back.

“This isn’t like some fucking romantic comedy,” I said finally, grasping at my only and final excuse.

“Why?” Sandy asked.

“Because, this was just a fight. I think.” I hope. “We haven’t done the whole clichéd big misunderstanding, breakup thing before we get back together. That always happens before things get better. I don’t want it to get to that. I just… I can’t.”

“Maybe this time will be different,” Mom said.

“Or maybe it won’t,” Dad said. “Maybe this was your big breakup. Maybe it won’t work out. The point is that you’ll never know unless you try.”

“That’s reassuring,” I muttered.

“And you’re going whether you like it or not,” Nana said. “Even if I have to drag your ass there myself. Or maybe I could just call him for you right now?” She pulled out her phone. I made a lunge for her, but Mom and Dad traitorously held me back by my arms.

“I will call him,” Nana said.

“Why is everyone threatening me with phone calls today?” I growled.

“Because that’s the only thing you understand,” Sandy said.

“Oh, look,” Nana said. “I just hit another button.”

“You don’t even have his phone number,” I smirked, calling her bluff.

She read it off. She had his phone number.

“Oh sweat balls,” I mumbled, knowing I’d lost. “Fine. Jesus Christ.”

“I’m pretty sure I want to hug all of you right now,” Sandy gushed.

Gross. “I’m leaving before there’s hugging. I don’t think I want to drown in the sap anymore. This has been enough family time to last me the rest of my life. Don’t touch me.”

But, of course, as soon as I said it, I was surrounded. It was pretty fucking lame.

Sort of.

 

 

CUE the cheesy music.

I drove faster than I probably should have. I was nervous as all hell. All I wanted to do was to have Vince look at me and tell me he loved me just so I could say it back. I wanted to protect him from all the shit that was about to happen to him. I wanted to make everything better so he wouldn’t have to be upset ever again. Unlikely? Probably. Unreasonable? Sure. People do the stupidest things when they’re in love, no question. And while I still doubted myself, I don’t think I doubted him.

Well, not until I pulled up to his apartment at least.

And got out of my car.

And started walking toward his front door.

And looked in the big window in his living room.

And saw him up against a wall, his head rocked back, eyes closed, mouth slack.

And saw the Homo Jock King wrapped around him, his face buried in Vince’s neck, his body molded into Vince’s, pressing him against the wall.

And saw Vince’s arms around Darren, rubbing his back, up and down.

Yeah. There was the doubt right fucking there. A whole shitload of it.

My heart broke. And I turned to walk away.