Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(15)
Author: C.D. Reiss

“So, well. Adam.”

“I’ve met him.”

He rubbed the label on his bottle. “Really nice guy. Really.”

“Really. So? Why aren’t you at the airport?”

“I kind of freaked out on him.”

I threw myself on the couch and patted the seat next to me. “Go on.”

He plopped onto the chair. Somehow, the couch had become my territory. “As we were loading up a cart, I just… I don’t know. There was this reflective metal panel in the wall, and I was standing next to him. I saw us in the metal panel. Foggy, but it was us. He was looking at his phone, and I was looking at the panel thinking, ‘Oh f**k. This is what other people see. Is this who I am? Did I decide this? And when?’ I care about him. I love being with him, but when do I start calling myself bisexual, or g*y, or…who the f**k am I, Monica?”

I had plenty of platitudes. I had advice I couldn’t even pretend to take myself about just being who you are and letting the world see what they wanted. Uttering those words without hurtful irony would have been obscene. “I don’t think any of us know ourselves.”

He rubbed his lips together, a gesture I remembered from our early days. Darren was trying not to cry. It was painful to watch.

“I’ve been trying not to worry about it,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out if I care whether people think less of me or not, and honestly, I don’t think it’s that. I mean, f**k, I’m a drummer. I’m always the one standing in the back. It’s just… I feel like I never had the chance to work it out and say, ‘All right. This is what I’ll be to the world.’ I got all wrapped up in him, especially after Gabby. Am I g*y without him? Or am I back to who I was? Because I never thought about it before him, so now I’m taking on this whole identity without ever deciding on it. Am I making any sense?”

“Yeah.” My throat was dry. “Did you leave him at the airport? Did he get on the plane?”

“No. He followed me to the parking lot. I mean, the poor guy was so baffled. He’s asking me if there’s someone else, or if I’m upset about Gabs and that’s causing the freak out.”

“The thing about a freak out is you don’t know why you’re freaking out,” I said, opening the fridge. “How do you feel about him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah.” I cracked a beer for myself.

“I do know how I feel about missing that flight.”

“How?”

“Fifteen hundred in the hole. Non-returnable flight. Whole new last minute ticket. I have seven hundred in the bank and two maxed out credit cards. I could take the car, but even if I start driving now, I’ll miss the show.”

I swallowed my beer, thought for a second, and said, “I think I have a solution to that part of the dilemma.”

CHAPTER 15.

MONICA

Darren had taken some convincing. He was obviously uncomfortable with using Jonathan’s money, but he needed it. He was swayed when I assured him it would be just him and me. Jonathan wasn’t coming, and I wouldn’t let the plane ride color my decision to stay with him or not.

We took the bus to Santa Monica Airport to avoid parking fees. I’d explained as much of the situation to Jonathan as I thought appropriate. I left out Darren’s freak out and replaced it with “he missed his flight.” Jonathan didn’t seem smug about winning the Great Private Jet Battle, only irritated that I insisted on taking the bus.

“It’s just a waste of time,” he said. I heard him tapping computer keys. Multitasking again.

“I have nothing else to do. And I like the bus. It reminds me of when I was a kid.”

“Were you this worried about tainting conversations when you were a kid?”

“My spankings weren’t undertaken so willingly back then.”

He sighed and let it go.

Darren and I sat with our bags between our feet. He got up for women with children twice during the hour-and-a-quarter long ride. By the time we got to Sepulveda, the crowd had thinned, and he and I had stopped the seat-flip.

“Did you tell Kevin you wouldn’t be on the flight?” he asked.

“Texted him.”

“He told me his side of what happened the other night.”

I shook my head. “I bet he did.”

“Really, Monica, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I think you should give Kevin another chance.”

I twisted around to look at him. “Are you serious? Is your mind totally poisoned?”

“He’s not the same.”

“No, he’s worse. Let me ask you something: Were you the one who told him about me and Jonathan? Maybe you mentioned the bruises on my wrists?”

Darren pursed his lips and looked down. “He had an idea already. Geraldine Stark spent a couple of nights with Drazen and came back with some stories. To Kev, it was like a lightning bolt.”

Geraldine f**king Stark. Of course. The artist who put the trompe l’oeil on the side of Kevin’s building had to have been with Jonathan. She told Kevin, probably post-coital, and then Kevin went ahead and told Darren. Together, they’d strategized how to get us back together.

“It bothers me that we worked together so many hours at a stretch to make this thing, and the whole time, you and Kevin are planning a reconciliation I don’t want.”

“What do you want?”

“Right now? To be left alone by anyone with a dick. You’re all trouble. I want to never again hear who Jonathan f**ked before I met him. Even if it was the first lady or Brad Pitt, I don’t want to know.”

“Why not?” His tone was confrontational, as if he was daring me to give him the truth.

“You know God damn well everything about this hurts. So stop being a prick.” I turned toward the window, shutting out further argument. We travelled in the fold of time between day and night, when headlights got turned on and the streetlights went from dead cold to humming half light.

“Did you open the envelope I left?” he asked.

“No, did you?”

“No. Is it still in the house?”

I turned away from the window to reengage our conversation. “I left it at your place.”

“Not even curious?”

“It’s probably a family tree.”

“Then why not open it?”

“I haven’t had time.” I could see, from his expression, he didn’t believe me. “I need to talk to him. And I need it to be clean. About us. No external shit. If there’s nothing in there, it’s nothing. If it’s external shit, then it’s not fair for me to know it.”