One Voice 02 - Here Without You (17 page)

“Shit, dude. That sucks.” Anna grabbed her mass of light brown hair, pulled it all to one side, and started checking the bottom for split ends or something. “Mind sharing with us what happened? I mean, what led to that.”

“Because you three seemed so solid and in love and….” Claire’s voice trailed away just like Anna’s had.

I only had to think about whether I was gonna spill the details for about two seconds. I needed to get some heavy stuff off my chest. “Remember when Casey and Nate and I split from the Coming Out Day rally, like all of a sudden? And you know how I called and asked you two to cover for me because I couldn’t come back?”

The girls nodded.

I went on to tell them the whole story about Cindy getting assaulted, choked nearly to death, and then the details of Nate’s ugly home life. I told them how Casey and I had sat by and watched—hoping things would be different and even encouraging him to make changes—but how neither of us had ever put a foot down and said, “No more.”

“How did that lead to you breaking up?” Anna asked.

“Nate fell off the face of the earth after what happened with Cindy. When he left that day, we never heard from him again. He never answered our calls or texts. So Casey and I went home last weekend. We tracked him down, and when we found him, he said he was done with us. Just done.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Anna, I
so
wouldn’t kid you about this.”

She nodded. “What did you guys do to change his mind?”

It was my turn to shrug. “We didn’t do anything to change his mind. I could see that Casey was having a meltdown and that Nate had dug his heels in. No good was gonna come of it if we stuck around and begged. So I just hung on to Casey for dear life and escorted him out the door.” I felt like a loser, admitting that I’d cut and run on Nate with such apparent ease. But I knew Nate, and the timing had been wrong to have any kind of civil discussion with him.

Claire leaned forward and examined my face closely. “Now what are you gonna do?”

“Don’t know, at this point. But I have two problems. There’s the whole Nate issue, and there’s also the fact that Casey and I are broken up too.”

“But why does it have to be over with him? You and Casey don’t have any problems.”

That was a very good question and one that needed answering. We had all agreed that we were a threesome. If one person was out, our relationship was invalid. Maybe it was, but Casey and I needed to discuss the situation in depth.

I doubt that a throuple—and particularly one that worked so well—can be downsized to a twosome and stay alive.

That’s my story. I’m sticking with it. Even though it sucks donkey balls.

Zan

C
ASEY
’
S
REAL
LIFE

Z
ANDER
AND
I finally sat down to have a discussion about him and me. He was the one to initiate the discussion, as I had absolutely no clue what to do next. As in, no clue whatsoever.

Zander took me to a diner about a thirty-minute subway ride away from campus so we wouldn’t be distracted while we talked. But it was Halloween weekend, so instead of being distracted by college students, we were distracted by families with adorable children in costumes. They reminded me of how Zander, Nate, and I had taken Lola and Sarah trick-or-treating the year before. They had dressed as Lilo and Stitch. That evening was now nothing but a painful memory.

“We gotta talk about this, Casey.”

I looked at Zander over my vanilla shake. “I know we do.”

“I hope we haven’t lost him, like, forever. And that when Cindy’s better and she’s settled in a new home, he’ll be calm enough to think this over and realize how much we love him.” Zander seemed pretty confident.

“I hope so.” I was not in top chatterbox form.

“But we still have to figure out what we are to each other until then.”

“Or if that ever happens,” I pointed out.

“That’s a possibility we have to consider.”

My chest tightened.

“Sip your shake.” Zander knew my mouth got dry when I was anxious. “Go ahead. Take a drink.”

I sipped my shake through my straw while gazing into Zander’s eyes, in an effort to absorb some of his emotional strength. Because Zander was the strong one, the well-adjusted one, and the most “normal” guy in our former group of three. I needed Zander’s strength and love and support.

“I can’t lose you, Zander. I still love you… so much.” My chest tightened a bit more as I uttered my traitorous thought. I struggled to inhale.

Zander smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I don’t want to lose you either, Casey.”

“And… and if Nate comes back to us, he needs an “us” to come back to, right?” I knew I sounded hopeful and that maybe I was also grasping at straws.

Zander reached across the table to take my upturned hand in his. When I felt his warm palm pressed against mine, I knew it was right that we stuck together.

“I don’t want to give up on him. I mean, I think he needs some time to deal with Cindy’s injuries, and probably the guilt that he feels over her being attacked when he was away from her, here with us. But I think we need to prove to him that we’re still here for him and that—”

“Casey.” Zander interrupted me. “Let’s not overwhelm him any further right now. We need to take things slowly. Like, for example, let’s not call him any time soon. That’s too direct and in your face. Instead let’s text him every few days and let him know that we’re still thinking of him. That we’re still here for him.”

He was right. “Okay. Maybe you should be in charge of when we contact him. I might be a little bit overeager.”

Zander squeezed my hand to let me know he agreed. And then we were served our burgers and fries.

“You need to eat that whole burger, dude.”

Zander had noticed my recent weight loss. It was just so hard for me to eat when my life was crumbling around me.

But I nodded dutifully and picked up the burger with both hands. I said, “I want to wait on… I mean, do you mind if we wait for a while on being intimate? You know, on having sex… without Nate?”

“Of course we can. There’s no rush on that stuff.”

I took a minute to study Zander’s face as he bit into his burger. He was handsome in a Justin-Bieber-without-an-attitude way. He was cool, cute, preppy, and just clean cut enough to make girls and guys look his way. And Zander was still mine, and he was going to be patient with me. I was lucky to have him, and I knew it, but the other half of my heart ached for what it had lost.

18

N
ATE
’
S
D
IARY

October 31

G
OT
FRIGGIN
’
toasted last night—and the night before that and probably the one before that too. But who the fuck is countin’? Cindy sure ain’t countin’ the days ’til she sees her big bro again, that’s for fuckin’ sure. She won’t even say no quick hello to me on my cell.

Called Aunt Terri’s house last night, hopin’ like hell that Cindy’d talk to me. Imagine my surprise when she answered Terri’s cell phone. I was like, “Cindy, I’m sorry. I fucked up major league and I know it.”

Know what Cindy said? She said, “Your little sister is dead to you, Nate. She’s gone for good. Her uncle choked the life out of her when her brother didn’t come home from his fuckfest weekend with his boyfriends.” Then Cindy ended the phone call, but not before she told me to leave her the hell alone. I was friggin’ crushed.

And then there’s Casey and Zander. Sure, they still text me now and again, but I don’t give a shit about that. I
can’t
give a shit. I let them two go, and I’m glad I did.

It’s like I’m just plain pissed off. Don’t know who at. Just pissed and can’t be bothered no more.

Can’t be bothered with talkin’ sweet to them guys. Can’t be bothered makin’ promises I ain’t no good at keepin’. Won’t be put out by them two no more.

Not that givin’ a shit about them two was ever some kinda chore.

Cuz it wasn’t.

I ain’t got time to think on this no more. It’s Halloween, right?

Time to party.

[email protected]

D—

I’m fucking everything up here at school, man. I just can’t concentrate on studying, let alone on planning agendas for One Voice meetings. My grades are starting to suck. I’m afraid I might lose my merit scholarship if I keep going like this. And I’ve canceled the past two One Voice meetings because I just can’t deal with it.

I’m
not
rising to meet the challenge. No. This fucked-up situation is proving that I’m weak and lost and scared and I can’t handle shit. Then I remember what Casey and Nate have been through in their lives, and I say to myself, “Cowboy up, dude.”

You know, bro, when I knock away all of the guilt and loneliness and worry that’s dragging me under, I realize I
have
experienced a huge loss. Casey and Nate and I were like a family for the past year and a half, Dan. Shit. It was almost two years, really. And you were gone, and you know the story with Ma and her flavor of the week boyfriend. I had
nobody
back home ’til they came along.

And Casey’s acting like everything’s just super fucking rosy—which we both know it’s not—and he’s filled with more energy than ever.

“Morning, Zander. Want to go for a run before breakfast? I feel like I’ve been studying nonstop, and I need a break for fresh air and exercise.”

Hello
. Casey Minton—
a run
? Not normal. Not normal at all. Well, not for Casey, our sweet bookworm.

My lifesavers have been Anna and Claire. I was gonna cancel One Voice again this week, but, like I said, they saved me.

We were sitting at New Caf on lower campus. It’s kind of my sanctuary from all other freshmen, and maybe even a little bit from Casey, because things are not flowing naturally between us. So there we were, eating lunch together—the fries are stellar—and I just came out and said it.

“I can’t handle the whole One Voice thing right now. My frigging life is falling apart and… and I just don’t have the motivation.”

When I said that, Anna and Claire exchanged one of their all-knowing glances. Whenever a complicated issue arises, Claire’s dark eyes shift automatically to Anna’s light ones, and then she tilts her head as if to say “You take this one.” It reminds me of the way Casey, Nate, and I used to be able to communicate without words
.

Well, that’s a done deal, so there’s no point dwelling on it, is there?

Anna piped up with, “Let us help out.”

Claire nodded. “If you cancel again, we’ll lose the few followers we have.”

I liked the way she said “we,” as if I wasn’t in this thing alone. So I said, “You’re right. You’re totally right.”

“From this point forward, the three of us will run it together. What’s on the agenda?”

“Um….” The three of us. The words “the three of us” echoed in my head, reminding me of Casey and Nate and what no longer existed between us. “I had planned for One Voice to give back to the community by sponsoring a food drive. I thought maybe we could work out the details.”

“Awesome idea. The food can be collected in time for Thanksgiving.”

Thanksgiving… without Nate coming over to Casey’s house and eating turkey wraps with stuffing and cranberry sauce, like we did on our very first ever date.

“Let’s bring some community maps, and we can divide up the campus apartments and surrounding neighborhoods. We’ll give everyone who attends the meeting an area to cover.”

“We need One Voice T-shirts to wear while we do community work. I know this guy—he can make them really cheap. I’ll get right on that today,” Claire offered.

“Do you have a logo that you usually use?” Anna was right beside her, making this happen.

The girls were refusing to allow me to wallow in my despair. And One Voice was the best distraction. “Yeah. In high school this super-artsy student designed a logo with a rainbow and a bunch of sort of stick people singing, with the words ‘One Voice.’”

“Get me a copy, and I’ll give it to my friend and….”

And so, my life goes on.

My life goes on—without Nate.

Bummed to the max, but I’m surviving.

Z

C
ASEY
’
S
REAL
LIFE

I
WAS
running on empty. But in order to survive Nate leaving us, I had to keep busy. I’d taken up running, which shocked Zander. Anything to
keep moving
so I didn’t have to think. And it was something Zander and I could do together without discussing our situation. We couldn’t very easily run and talk simultaneously—well, at least
I
couldn’t.

It was exactly four weeks since Nate had last been part of our relationship. Zander and I had just returned from our morning run. Zander was showering, and I was lying on my bed with nothing to do but think.

I was comfortable with thinking about Advanced Biology and Inside US History and Freshman Lit. And I was fine when I was running or helping Zander with One Voice plans or shopping online, even. But I was not okay when I stopped, because then I’d think about Nate.

Which was dangerous territory.

Note to self. Casey, do anything but think of Nate.

As I was scrambling to find something to distract me from dwelling on him, Zander came back from the shower. One white towel was wrapped around his waist, and he was rubbing his shaggy wet hair with another. He looked pretty good. Add to that my loneliness, my neediness, the fact that we hadn’t been in bed together to cuddle in a while, let alone to make love. I jumped on him.

“Hey, hey. Casey, what’s gotten into you, babe?”

Nate always called me babe.

Zander lifted my face to his. I could see in his eyes that he was hungry for closeness, for affection, for comfort—for me. He bent down and took my lips with a passion I’d missed.