please tell me which road you will take - short story
From the moment you are born into this world and named your name, things start running at a million miles an hour. What a sweet baby boy, the millions around you croon and poke at your little button nose. And that is fine- you are an infant, you cannot process this anyway. Then you start walking, and things start moving faster, and talking and things move even faster, and then soon you are a teenage boy standing all alone in the middle of the night in the smallest little town in Virginia. The small town traffic bustles around you as the private school kids leave their usual pizza parlor, leaving you still standing in the middle of the night alone in the smallest little town in Virginia. You begin to measure the pros and cons of stepping into the middle of the road, but as usual, the cons outweigh the pros. You breathe in the ice cold night air as your phone goes off in your pocket. Remus, you think. You know he must be worried because he is actually texting you instead of recklessly driving to the pizza parlor in his BMW and pulling you out of there with his own hands (you always wish he would pull you closer in those moments, but you will never know if he feels the same way you do). You sigh and reach into your pocket. It is Remus (because of course it is, he is the only one who talks to you besides Campbell, and he is off parading with his ‘child bride,’ as your friends call his girlfriend). hey man where are you, you read swiftly. Nana’s. Just got off work, you shoot back. im coming to pick you up, he responds. You know there is no way to tell him no, because you would be in a car with the most beautiful boy you have ever seen, but you will not be able to tell him you love him because what if he does not love you back?
You are standing on the curb of Nana’s Pizza when Remus rolls up in his BMW, your private school boy come to your rescue once more. You will never tell him what he really is to you, but sometimes you dream that he kisses you on the cheek before dropping you at your father’s trailer, leaving you trapped in a terrible metal cased world of pain and aching, and the longing for something more. You sit quietly in the passenger seat of his car as he turns the stereo up so you can focus as you look out the window (because he knows how much you love it, but he will never say it). He smells like grass and the hope for something new in your plain rotation of life. Normally, your car rides stay silent aside from the music, but this night is something different.
“Parrish?” He says. He catches you off guard, because talking is not a comfort for the two of you- he truly is better through text. You look over at him silently as he cuts the music.
“Yeah?” You find yourself asking.
“What does it feel like to be in love? You were in love with Bee, and you knew you were, so how is it different from friendship?” He asks. You do not know the answer to this question, and the scientific method will not help you now.
You shrug.
“You just feel it in your bones.”
In your lifetime, you think you will never feel anything more wonderful than an ice cold can of Coca-Cola, and maybe that is the truth for you. But then sometimes he will smile at you- a truly genuine smile, not the one he plasters on for his private school fundraisers, and you think you feel something. But other times, all you can feel is the handprint of your father’s previous wrath the night before, where he pushed you around like a rag doll, leaving the biggest bruise on your arm that Remus will glance at with extreme distaste, almost like he disapproves of you, and then bring you back to his house for an ice pack. And all you feel is the pain.
He nods back at you as you say that you never knew whether or not you were in love with Bee Smith, as if it was a small detail. You wonder who he is talking about- maybe he is in love with Miles, the only other friend he has besides you and Campbell, because he could never be in love with you.
“Oh. Maybe I can figure it out soon, before the good ones get snatched up and then leave for college.”
“I hope you do.” You say, leaning back against the window as he turns the stereo back on and you nod away into a land where maybe he falls in love with you and Miles goes away somewhere, somewhere far enough away for you to get Remus while Miles may marry some girl he meets in Venezuela or the Congo, or wherever rich boys go on vacation.
Soon you are at home, and you know in the morning Remus will return to his real life with his real life friends and you will still be left alone in the dust with your public school and ex-girlfriend (who now belonged to Campbell- she has not been yours for a long time and you are no longer in a hopeless love with her that would lead nowhere). She is Bee Smith, poet, ‘child bride’, the human embodiment of a songbird, and you are just Parrish Robbins, the boy with a heart of gold and a father with the fist of stone when it hits you after a long night at work. And you have come to be fine with that- you have accepted that you will never be more than what the football players at school call you as they laugh when you wear the same pair of pants for the fifth day in a row because you cannot afford more clothing.
You have come to be fine with the sharp sting of the palm of your father’s hand and the quiet hushed cry of your mother as she hears the skin on skin contact. You have come to be fine with so many things you should not be fine with. You have come to be fine with the one thing you really should be fine with- your sexuality. You were in love with Bee and now you are in love with Remus- it is something simple like a kiss (but not so simple at all because it takes courage). Falling in love with Bee is the fastest thing that has ever happened in your life, but falling in love with Remus happens slowly, like squeezing the last of the ketchup from the bottle for your week old McDonalds fries at four in the morning. Love is okay with you, and it sits like the most uncomfortable thing in your stomach.
It is soon a month later, and you are sitting in your apartment above St Rita Catholic Church, for one night your father stepped too far and you left, calling the police on abuse charges- and like that, you are gone from the trailer. You are sitting in your apartment and Remus is lying next to you on your barely big enough bed as you do your AP Statistics homework, and he is staring. You are okay with staring in the moment, because you know that for once he is not staring at a black eye the size of a softball, he is instead staring at your softly concentrated face. Your eyes flick away from your homework and down to his lips for only a millisecond, but you know he saw you do it. You pretend to focus on your work after that.
Then it is four days later, and you are sitting on your bed once more, alone. You hear a knock at your door. You know it can be one of two people- it could be Remus, mad at the world and ready to punch whatever God came close enough, or Campbell, ready to embark on whatever godawful mission he had decided on this time. You call that the door is unlocked, and you hear it open. It is Remus, drenched in rainwater and sweat, looking like an item from a dream (you want to push yourself against his chest and never leave his leather clad arms but you know it is impossible for someone to stay). He marches in.
“I’m staying here tonight.” He declares, storming in and sitting on your shaggy carpet. You nod- how could you ever deny him anything when he has given you so much?
“You know where the extra clothes are.” You say, though he holds up a bag full of his own clothes. You think about that bag of clothes and what it holds, the clothes you have taken from him in the past. The items include a dark blue sweatshirt that is just the color of his eyes and a black v-neck, both smelling of him and his stupid Old Spice body wash (you never told him why you kept them, he assumed you just missed out on laundry day, and how would you say it anyway? “I’m in love with you and your stupid blue eyes and that’s why I kept your v-neck”). You nod once more.
“What brings you here this time?” You find yourself asking, although you probably know the answer (because you know him like the back of your hand).
“Nightmares again. Here is the safest place I know.” You feel your heart race at his stupid comment and pretend to ignore that it is the safest place you know too.
You both fall asleep on separate sides of the bed, facing opposites, knowing he will be gone in the morning.
When you wake up, you see a note from him on your nightstand (it is a Saturday at nine AM and there is no way he should be gone by now). Sorry I had to go. Owyn needed me, and you know how she is- the neediest little sister ever. Anyway, you and your dumb face should meet me at the corner store at six tonight- we’ll go for a drive. - R.S. You don’t know if you expected anything different.
You hope that with time your feelings would go away and he could love who he wants and so could you but they only get stronger and stronger, eating you alive until all you want to do is tell him but you know you are unable to separate the feelings into words. That is fine with you.
You are sitting in Remus’ car in the middle of nowhere- you do not know where you two are, you do not know how you two arrived there. You are sitting in Remus’ car and his hand is clutching the steering wheel although you wish it was clutching your knee. You inhale. His breath is shaky and you can hear the years of night terrors in them when he speaks and you feel so much for him- this terrifying boy with a vendetta against the world but you know what lies behind his eyes. You know he is not angry but scared, his eyes fearful from when he found his father on the floor of the living room, years and years before. You know he is not angry but scared, his hands trembling not with hatred but with the most terrified feeling in the world. And you know how it feels to be scared.
Sometimes, in moments like this, you imagine him braking and leaning over to kiss you from the driver’s seat although you know he never will. Sometimes, you imagine that he will tell you he loves you or loved you or he will eventually and sometimes you imagine him telling you with abrupt sharpness to get out of his car and sometimes you imagine him grabbing you by the hair and pulling you closer and closer and closer until you share everything including your air and thoughts. But sometimes you imagine him locking the door and leaving you behind.
You snap out of your trance as he taps on your shoulder, even though you should not be as out of it as you are because you got enough sleep, you did not over caffeinate, and you sure did not go catatonic in the moments he had his hands on the steering wheel. He gestures to you to step out of the car once you have snapped out of it.
You step out and the cold air is a relief- it is fresh on your skin and you can feel it slide the disgusting feeling off you- the feeling your father left the last time he laid his hands on you (you know he will never touch you again because if he does you know that Remus will not hesitate to kill your father and you do not blame him for it). The air feels like a change is coming soon and you do not know what that change is (and you probably never really will, and that is fine). And then it begins to rain.
You are in the middle of the woods with the most beautiful boy you have ever seen, and his chin length curls are sticking to his skin as is his white t-shirt (another shirt you had been thinking of stealing but never did). Your mind goes back to the rainy night before and the way Remus looked in his rain and sweat soaked t-shirt and you are in love. You think that he truly is the most beautiful boy inside and out, and the full moon beating down on both of you shows this.
You think that love is a foreign concept- you think that maybe it is the sharp pain of your father’s discipline, or maybe it is Bee worrying over your wounds in the middle of Biology, or maybe it is cracking an ice cold Coca-Cola open with the most beautiful boy as he shoots you the most sarcastic grin on Earth. You think that seeing Remus in the rain, happy and free and living how he wants to is the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, and what you feel in that moment may be love.
He drives you both back to your apartment, rain soaked and happy, and you feel everything radiating through the air as his music blasts through the speakers and you watch the stars through the window. And things are okay.
When you arrive at your apartment, Remus has something in his eyes that you can not place properly. You can not place any time where he may have looked at anyone like that- it was close to the murderous glint he had in his eyes every time you spoke of your father, but you ignored it then, although it was impossible to ignore now when it was burning holes in you. And when you walk into your apartment and turn around to take off your soaking wet t-shirt, he pulls your head towards him and kisses you.
Kissing Remus is something magical. It is the sun and the moon coming together to make an eclipse, it is the stars reflecting against your sun freckled face, it is the feel of that burning sensation you get on your skin when you get too close to a fire and you can feel hairs almost singeing off of you, and it is everything you have ever dreamed of having and everything you have ever dreamed of feeling and everything- just everything. Kissing Remus is saving yourself from whatever happened in your past, kissing Remus is the feeling of your father’s bruises washing away with nothing but a fleeting touch, the feeling of whatever you may have needed in the past disappearing and taking the place of Remus’ lips. Kissing Remus is more than what you ever thought it could be and you are on fire, you are a blazing flame and he is the oxygen you need to keep you alive. You pull away to take a breath and he kisses you once more a moment later. You are still on fire as he drags his fingers up your hips, and stops. You take a deep breath in.
Kissing him makes you feel okay again. Tonight, you fall asleep together, not on opposite sides of the bed, but denim clothed legs tangled up and warm hands intertwined as you both fall into the most peaceful sleep.
From that moment on, every time his legs kicks up against yours in the backseat of Campbell’s car and he kicks his legs up on top of yours, you feel your insides light on fire and everything feels right again until his legs swing back off and you feel normal again (which was a feeling you had not felt since the last time Bee had touched your arm and told you that it does not matter that she will not kiss you (you were only relieved because it meant that you did not have to kiss her even though you thought you did but you were not positive)). Sitting in the passenger seat of his car makes you feel alive, which is something had not felt in a long time. And then he disappears. It is not uncommon for him to disappear, he does this constantly, but now that you know he feels the same way and it is not just a feeling in the pit of your stomach when you see him grin, you can not help but be terrified when he does not even take you with him. He is gone for a shorter time than he has ever been- only three days this time but it feels like three million years waking up alone in your barely big enough bed. You know that it is not because he does not want you, but it still hurts because nobody ever stays. You are awake for all three nights that he is gone, lying idle in your bed and alone again (because why would anyone stay when you have more baggage than an international airport?). And then you are wrapped up in your blankets, naked to the skin, all alone once more in the smallest little town in Virginia. And then it is morning. And then he comes back and you see him at your door, not rain soaked this time but worse than you have ever see him, and once he is back in your arms, you think that this may be better than an ice cold can of Coca-Cola.
