Chapter Ten
STILL RATTLED from the smackdown he’d received in the barn, Jordan wasn’t sure he could handle any more serious conversations that night, but he didn’t want to be rude, so he let Phyllis lead him to the rockers on the front porch and sat in the one she offered him.
“I can see you’re tired, so I won’t keep you long. I promise,” Phyllis said gently.
“Okay. Thanks.”
She pursed her lips and studied him for a few seconds before her weathered face twisted in a grimace. “I guess it’s best if I just come right out and say it. No good ever came from dithering.” She drew in a breath and blew it out. “I talked to your mama today.”
Jordan felt the blood drain from his face. His stomach roiled as the meal he’d just eaten threatened to come back up. Swallowing bitter bile, he asked, “You did?”
Phyllis’s expression softened. “Yeah. I got an email from her yesterday that was kinda confusing. She said she had to cancel the visit she planned for later this summer because she and her son weren’t going to be able to make it. I thought it kind of odd that she didn’t mention your being here or ask after you at all, so I gave her a call this afternoon.”
“What did she say?”
“Now you know your mama’s never been one for, uh, sharing, per se—at least not with people outside the family, that I can tell—but even she couldn’t hide that she was upset.”
“You told her I was here?”
“I did. I didn’t know it was a secret, and she seemed awful worried about you.”
He smiled bitterly. “She could have fooled me.”
Phyllis frowned reprovingly. “Now darlin’, no matter what, she’s still your mama. Of course she cares.”
“She hasn’t tried to call or text me even once, except to get my brother and sister to harass me to go back home and apologize to all of them. All they want is for me to pretend it never happened, and I can’t do that.”
Phyllis’s lined and tanned face fell, and she placed a warm, calloused hand over Jordan’s on the armrest of the rocker. “I’m sorry. I had to read between the lines a bit, because she wouldn’t say it outright, but I think I know what we’re talking about here, and I’m so very sorry it turned out like that. Some folk are just taught to believe certain things their whole lives, and they’re afraid to change their minds… like if they did, it would change everything and nothing would make sense anymore. But that don’t make it right to hurt someone you care about.”
Jordan had to turn away from her for a few seconds to get control. His eyes stung and his throat felt tight, and the last thing he wanted was to break down where anyone could see him. “Thanks, Phyllis, Phyl. Did she say anything else, after she found out where I was?”
Her eyes filled with regret. “Sorry, hon. She thanked me for telling her, but that was about it.”
She squeezed his hand again and said, “I don’t know much about the ‘coming out’ or anything, since Sean and I only had the one girl and she’s happily married to a man in Tucson, with two grown kids of her own, but I do know family, and I got two good ears if you want to talk about it… anytime.”
After a long drawn-out breath, he closed his eyes and nodded again. He was going to thank her one more time and make some sort of excuse to leave, but his stomach chose that moment for a full-on revolt. Too much was happening all at once, and the tidal wave threatened to drown him in feelings he didn’t know how to deal with.
He clapped a hand over his mouth, leaped from the chair, and sprinted for the stairs as Phyllis called after him. He barely made it to the bathroom by his room before throwing up what he’d had at dinner. Over and over his body convulsed until he was left with only dry heaves. Tears spilled down his cheeks unchecked before he was able to beat back the floodwaters and put his walls back up.
If he had some sort of plan, any plan, he might be able to face what was beyond those walls, but he wasn’t ready yet. He couldn’t handle this now, especially after what happened with Russ. If he’d been even a little emotionally stable, he might’ve been able to brush off the slap across the face Russ gave him, but he was as brittle as glass, and he knew it. He had no defense mechanisms left.
“You’re weak. You always have been,” his father’s voice said inside his head. “Such a disappointment.”
Sitting down on the cool black-and-white tile floor, he wedged himself between the old bumblebee-yellow tub with frosted glass shower doors and the toilet, and shivered. After snagging a hand towel from the rod, he wiped his mouth, closed his eyes, and let his head thump back against the dimpled glass doors.
It had been almost two weeks since he’d taken a sledgehammer to his perfectly ordered life, and the pain hadn’t lessened any. Wasn’t it supposed to get better over time?
Suppress. Lock it away. Be proud. Be strong. Don’t let the world see you hurt…. These were the only tools he’d ever been given by his family, so much so that he’d never been completely honest with anyone, not even his therapist. He wished he had now, because those tools weren’t working. His walls were failing, crack by crack.
RUSS HAD just finished filling the dishwasher when he heard someone run up the stairs and a door slam overhead. He moved to the doorway of the kitchen in time to see Phyl come in from the porch calling Jordan’s name. She looked really shook up.
“What’s he done now?” Russ asked, ready to take him apart for putting that expression on her face.
She leveled a glare at him that set him back a step or two, placed her hands on her hips, and all but yelled, “Russell Patrick Niles, you need to stop ragging on that boy like he’s done anything but show kindness, decency, and a generous spirit since the day he got here. Ya hear me? Now I need you to pull your head out of your ass for one minute, show the compassion and decency I know you’re capable of, and go up and check on that boy, make sure he’s all right.”
Taken aback, Russ just blinked at her. “Me?”
“Yes, you! Do you see me talking to anybody else?” she spat, narrowing her eyes.
With a grimace, he took the dishtowel off his shoulder and wiped his hands on it, stalling. He cleared his throat and stared down at his boots as he said, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Me and him, we had a little exchange of words earlier. I don’t think he’s gonna have much interest in talkin’ to me about anything, especially if he’s upset about something.”
“What did you do?”
A quick glance up showed she was spittin’ mad, and Russ shrugged as the hairs on his neck prickled at the glare she was still giving him. “I just needed to set him straight about a couple of things, is all.”
“Well, whatever it was, if you need to apologize, then you’re gonna march right up there and apologize. Then you’re going to dig deep for that sympathetic and caring heart I know you have, and you’re gonna listen if that boy’s willing to pour his heart out to you, you got me?”
“Phyyylll….” The only thing that stopped it from being a whine was that his voice had dropped an octave since he was a teenager. He lifted his chin, cleared his throat, and straightened his shoulders. “Why me?” he asked in a slightly more grown-up tone.
“Because, of the two of us, you’re the only one here who might have a clue as to what he’s going through.”
Frowning, Russ threw the rag over his shoulder again and folded his arms. “What’s that supposed to mean? What could I possibly have in common with a twentysomething spoiled trust-fund baby from the East Coast?”
That seemed to draw her up short, and Russ thought he’d dodged that particular bullet when she cast a glance up the stairs and sighed. That was, until she turned her soft, pleading blue-gray eyes back on him and said, “It’s not really my secret to tell, but I’m pretty sure we’re all he’s got right now. He’s been carrying this around ever since he got here, and none of us even had a clue. He’s obviously upset enough to literally make himself sick, and I’m afraid if he keeps bottling everything up, he’s gonna burst at some point.”
“What are you talking about?”
With another sigh and a slight grimace, she said, “He came out to his folks, all right?” After a brief pause to let that sink in, she continued, “And, needless to say, it didn’t go so well. From what I can tell, his momma’s in complete denial, and I obviously can’t know for sure, but his daddy was never what I would call the soft and understanding type. He’s from that Jerry Falwell fire-and-brimstone country up there—not that we don’t have more than our fair share of that here too, but you know what I mean.”
Russ closed his eyes and slumped against the doorjamb. “Shit.”
In the silence that followed his exclamation, they heard a toilet flush upstairs. When Russ opened his eyes, he found Phyl glaring at him again. “If you won’t do it for him, then do it for me. I want you to check on him, make sure he’s okay. If he won’t talk to you ’cause of whatever happened between you, fine, but you’re going to make an effort, you got me?”
With a resigned sigh, he moved to the stairs and handed her the dishtowel on his way past. “I’ll do what I can, but I can’t promise anything.”
Her lips twisted. “I suppose that’ll have to do. Just be kind. I know you know how to do that. If you have to pretend he’s a horse, then do it.”
Outside the bathroom door, Russ took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. He tapped on the door but received no response.
“Jordan, it’s Russ. Can I come in?”
“Go away.”
Dragging a palm over his whiskers, he blew out a breath and tried again.
“Now, Phyl won’t let me do that, not until I’ve checked on you. Can I come in?”
“Whatever,” came the somewhat petulant response.
Jordan sat curled up on the tile floor, crammed between the toilet and the tub. His face was pale, and beads of sweat dotted his forehead and upper lip. His blue eyes were red and wary, like a wounded animal, as he watched Russ step through the door. His fake smiles and flirty winks were nowhere to be seen, leaving only exhaustion and vulnerability in their wake.
Instead of coming the rest of the way into the room, Russ slid to the floor and propped himself against the jamb.
“She told you, didn’t she?” Jordan asked, his voice raw with emotion.
“Yeah. Don’t be mad. She was worried about you, and she thought I could help.”
Jordan snorted, and Russ shared a wry smile with him as he nodded. “Yeah. I told her I probably wasn’t your favorite person at the moment, but she thought I might be able to understand a little of what you’re going through.”
“And do you?”
“What?”
Jordan sat forward a little and pinned him with intense blue eyes. “Do you understand? Did you fuck up your entire life by coming out, like me, or were your parents actually decent about it?”
With a sigh, Russ pulled a knee to his chest and rested an arm on top of it. He worried the corner of his lip as he contemplated how to answer that.
“Sorry,” Jordan rushed to say. “Of course you don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to. It’s personal. I get it. I know you don’t really want to talk to me. I—”
Russ held up a hand to stop the flood of words. Jordan sounded so wounded right now, if he kept going, Russ would be over there pulling Jordan into his arms before he could stop himself.
Damned bleeding heart.
“It’s not that I don’t want to, Jordan. I’m just not sure how to say it. My situation was a little different from yours. I’m not sure that I ever actually came out to anyone.”
Jordan frowned at him in confusion, and Russ sighed. “Look, my daddy wasn’t exactly the kind of man I looked up to… like, ever. By the time I understood who I was, and that I wasn’t going to be taking Mary Jo to the prom—or anywhere else, for that matter—my daddy wasn’t in the picture much, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass for his approval of anything I did. I never bothered to tell him, because I didn’t care enough to let him know me.” He paused for a second and grimaced. “My mama was a different story, but not that different. She remarried a couple of times after my dad and had a few more kids, and since I was the oldest by several years—and a reminder of her early mistakes in life—I kinda got shoved by the wayside. I still got fed and had a roof over my head until I was eighteen, but I was more like a built-in babysitter than part of the family. She had a lot on her plate besides me, so when I could, I left. We exchange a Christmas card every year, but that’s about it. I never really bothered to have the whole talk with her either. I think she knows, since I never mention a wife or girlfriend and neither does she, but we don’t talk about it.”
“I’m sorry,” Jordan whispered.
“Don’t be,” he replied with a shrug. “I’m not.”
Jordan searched his face as if he didn’t quite believe that, but then he dropped his gaze to the tiled floor and shrugged too. “I’ve seen all those commercials, you know, the ‘it gets better’ ones, and I guess I just wanted to hear that from someone real, to know if it’s true. That’s why I asked.”
Russ winced and dragged a hand down his stubbled jaw. “Look. I’m probably the last guy anyone should come to for a pep talk. Words—and people, for that matter—have never been my strong suit. I’m much better with animals. But I can tell you from experience that if you can’t get the love and acceptance you need at home, you can find it elsewhere… as long as you’re willing to go looking and withstand a few knocks along the way. I mean, look at Phyl. You’ve barely been here a couple of weeks, and she’s already turning mother hen on you. That should tell you something.”
The wariness was back in Jordan’s eyes. “You said Phyl was only being nice to me because of my parents’ money. She doesn’t really like me.”
Russ winced again. “I did?”
Jordan lifted an eyebrow and gave him a wry, watery smile. “Yeah, you did. And you know her a lot better than I do.”
With a grimace, Russ waved that away. “Well, obviously I was wrong, wasn’t I? She’s down there right now wringing her hands about you. And she tore me a new one before I came up here. She wouldn’t do that unless she cared.”
Jordan sighed and rested his chin on his knees. “You can tell her I’m okay.”
“I’m not gonna lie to her.”
He held Jordan’s stare as Jordan frowned at him in confusion.
“I don’t get you at all,” Jordan murmured after a long silence.
Russ groaned as he climbed to his feet and tried to rub some feeling back into his ass after sitting on a cold tile floor at the end of a long workday. “Listen,” he said, clearing his throat, “I’m sorry if I’ve been too hard on you since you been here. I didn’t know what you were dealing with, otherwise I might’ve laid off a bit.” Jordan’s expression had turned unreadable, which made Russ shift uncomfortably under his steady regard. “I’ll go tell Phyl you’re not going to pitch off the deep end tonight, but she’s right, you’re going to have to face what’s happened with your life eventually. The B STAR’s about healing, but only if you’re willing to put the work in. It’s not a place for running away… but we’re here if you want to do that work.”
“Okay. Thanks,” Jordan croaked.
Russ stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. He couldn’t watch Jordan fall apart without doing something stupid. Besides, he didn’t figure Jordan really wanted someone watching him right now anyway. At least not if that someone was Russ.
Straightening his shoulders, he took another deep breath and prepared to face Phyl again. Hopefully, he’d done enough to get him off her shit list.