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The day started off rough. Bev woke up to a voicemail from his mom, time stamped 5:32 A.M. He could just picture her sitting on their back patio in the faint dawn light, wrapped in a sweater, looking out over her bird feeders and fretting.
“Hi, honey. It’s mom. We’re all missing you here. It would be nice if you would come back for a visit. Just for a few days, so we can all talk. Your father has been so busy lately…they’re redoing the church garden and all that…he hasn’t been home very much. But I know he would love to see you, too.” Her voice wavered, and she paused. When she spoke again, she sounded more honest. More desperate. “You know your father isn’t good at all this, Beverly. You have to cut him some slack. He thinks that he needs to show you how tough the world can be. I love you, honey. Buh-bye.”
He laid in bed for a while, too sad to get up but too angry to cry. He hadn’t spoken to either of his parents since his father had cut him off. The idea that it was his fault, that it was his responsibility to begin reconciliation was infuriating to him. He wanted to shake his mother, to yell, what does he know about how tough the world is, anyway? He never once took a risk in his entire life.
Beverly had always lived with a lot of cognitive dissonance. He wanted so badly to follow the rules and make everyone happy, but he had never been able to tamp down his appetite for mischief. He loved his parents, and he had loved growing up in the tight-knit community of their church, but there were a lot of things about it that just weren’t consistent with who he was. His whole life, he had been set up for success. His parents had given him everything: the best schooling available, lessons in anything he chose, tutors when he was struggling. He had been an exemplary Boy Scout. He had been a counselor at church camp. When he had left his hometown for college, he hadn’t been planning to drop out within the year and sever ties with his family. He had been primed for greatness, to take up his father’s mantle, but then he had taken one small, unforgivable step outside the parameters his community had set and ruined his own momentum. Now he was just…nothing. Broke, disowned, alone. He loved Moonshine and Hardwon, but they were both older than him, and their problems were different. He didn’t want to bother them with his bullshit when they had so much bullshit of their own to deal with. He put on a brave face and kept things light.
my mom called, he texted Erlin.
what did she say ?? came back a few minutes later. It never took him long to respond. He was reliable that way.
she wants me to come home and forgive dad
that’s bullshit bev and you don’t have to do it
i know.
i love you ok
love you too
it’s your birthday soon egwene says she’s getting you 20 smacks upside the head
wow really looking forward to that tell her thnx
Bev couldn’t help but crack a smile at the idea of Egwene, Erlin’s older sister, counting out head-smacks, one for each year he’d been alive. That was what finally carried him out of bed.
He would never be quite sure afterwards how Moonshine managed to talk him into getting his ear pierced that morning. It started with some casual conversation about body modification over cereal and ended with her jabbing a dubiously-sterile sewing needle through his earlobe and into an apple. Like most things she did, it was poorly conceived, not very well executed, and consummately exciting. Bev admired Moonshine’s caprice, how comfortable she was with herself. He always seemed to have to pay for it when he did something wild, but Moonshine never second-guessed anything, regardless of the consequences.
After Hardwon left for the gym in the late morning, Bev took the bus across town to get his mouth looked at. He’d had a toothache for weeks, and it was only getting worse. There was a resource center downtown that served gay kids who had been thrown out on their asses. Besides refusing to pay for any more schooling, his parents had also booted him off their health insurance. He was sure that they hadn’t intended it to be permanent; it was the adult equivalent of pretending to leave the house without your kid to make them get ready faster. They were trying to force his hand, to make him come back home so that they could quite literally set him straight, but it wasn’t going to work. He could take care of himself.
He hated sitting in the waiting room there. They had tried to make it look at least a little festive, with a couple of rainbow flags and some faded posters featuring same-sex couples holding hands and laughing, but it didn’t change the fact that he was surrounded by pamphlets emblazoned with information about HIV testing or advertising suicide hotlines. It was so separate from anything he’d experienced in his previous life. He had to look at the other people in the waiting room and come to terms with the fact that without his friends, he would be homeless too, doing whatever he had to do for a place to sleep and something to eat.
The dental hygienist made him an appointment to get his cavity filled, which wasn’t the interesting part. The interesting part came after he’d left the building and was standing outside, waiting for the bus, fiddling with the earring that Moonshine had shoved unceremoniously through his lobe earlier in the day.
“Did you just get that done?” someone asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he replied sheepishly, turning towards the bus stop bench. “My friend did it this morning. Does it look stupid?”
The guy was older than him, pale with dark hair, dressed in all black. Bev couldn’t see his eyes behind the huge pair of sunglasses he was wearing. He suddenly felt very square in his usual button-down and khakis, like a country club kid thrust suddenly into a rave. The dude shook his head, blowing cigarette smoke from his nostrils. “Looks good. Let me guess: you’re trying to piss your dad off.”
Bev laughed, surprised. “I think that ship already sailed.”
The guy smiled cryptically. “Where are you headed?”
“Just home.”
“Come get coffee. On me.” Bev had grown up having stranger danger pounded into his brain, but so far he’d had some of the best experiences of his adult life talking to strangers. Besides…it was hard to turn down free coffee.
On the way to the coffee shop, the guy introduced himself as Akarot. He was a little bit of a drifter, he admitted, but when everything felt too hectic he always came back to the city, where he’d been born. Where the last of his family still lived. Bev ordered a cup of black coffee even though he really didn’t like the taste; he usually got something a little sweeter, but he didn’t want to seem any younger or dumber or any more vapid than he already was in front of this guy he’d just met.
Akarot listened while he talked about his problems. Nobody had listened to him like that in a long time, without interjecting, without giving advice, without getting bored. It was nice to be out with a guy other than Hardwon who wasn’t embarrassed to be seen in public with him. Erlin always seemed uncomfortable when Bev tried to do so much as hold his hand in public. He tried to be understanding, but most of the time, he just felt resentful. The city provided a unique opportunity to be someone else, to be what you were instead of what your parents had tried to make you. Maybe being a punk drifter who picked up dudes at bus stops wasn’t a great thing to be, but at least Akarot was owning it.
When Bev was finally done talking, Akarot paused for a moment, thinking. Then he said, “I went through the same thing when I was your age.”
“Really?”
“Really. As soon as I turned eighteen, my dad told me to get out of his house and come back when I’d done something worth his time.”
“What a jerk,” Bev said scornfully. He meant it, but he couldn’t help but backtrack a little. “I think my parents just…don’t understand yet, though. This is a lot for them to deal with.”
For the first time, Akarot pushed his sunglasses up to his forehead, revealing intense, pale blue eyes. Beverly was suddenly struck with the distinct impression that getting on this man’s bad side was inadvisable at best. Right then, however, he just smiled. “I like your optimism, Beverly. We should all be a little more optimistic.”
They stayed at the coffee shop for a long time, just talking, and then they wandered around the neighborhood, idly looking through shop windows at things neither one of them could afford. Bev didn’t ask the other man to come back to the apartment, but it seemed natural for them to get on the bus together and ride it to his stop.
“You can come in, if you want. I have two roommates, but I think they’re gone.” Moonshine had texted him that she was going to try to sneak into one of Shae’s hot yoga classes without paying, and Hardwon usually didn’t get back until late. Thankfully, neither one of them was there. Pawpaw jumped up on him excitedly; Bev ruffled his ears and gave him a treat from the bag near the door before the neurotic little dog went to hide under Moonshine’s bed. He didn’t like strangers very much.
“You want something to drink?” he asked, wandering into the kitchen while Akarot sat down on the couch.
“What do you have?”
Bev stared with consternation at Moonshine and Hardwon’s motley collection of mostly-stolen bottles of liquor. “Well…that depends on your standards. Hold on.” He ended up dumping some rum into an off-brand soda called Cola!!! along with a few ice cubes. He carried the glasses back into the living room and sat down on the couch beside the other man. When Akarot took a sip of the drink, he pulled a face like he had just taken a shot of bleach.
“What? Is it bad?”
“You’re not much of a bartender, are you?”
That stung a little. Bev wondered if this was how you negged someone. Or could you only neg someone with things that weren’t true?
“I didn’t really drink when I was younger,” he said with a shrug. “My parents didn’t believe in alcohol or caffeine. Or Halloween. Or fun in general.” He took a gulp of the luke-warm, boozy Cola!!!. It wasn’t great, but it wasn’t that bad.
“I know you want to believe the best about your parents…” Akarot set his drink down on the cluttered coffee table. On the coaster, just like Bev always tried to make his friends do. “But maybe they aren’t as good as you want them to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe they’ll never understand. Maybe nobody you grew up around will.”
Bev took another swig. He was starting to feel stressed out. “I guess I’ll cross that bridge when I get to it.”
“I think you’re already there.”
“I don’t know, then.”
“I guess what I’m really asking is…why are you letting them hold you back? You’re wasting time worrying about what small-minded people in a small corner of the world think of you.”
Bev finished his drink and set the cup on the table; he was starting to feel a little drunk. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. “You can have mine, if you want,” Akarot said, pushing his glass across the coffee table. Bev picked it up, feeling kind of numb.
“What do you think I should do?” he asked, starting on the second drink.
Akarot shrugged. “Whatever you want.” He studied Beverly’s face. “Why do you look so sad?”
“Can we talk about something else?”
All of a sudden, the older man leaned over and kissed him. It might have been better if Bev hadn’t wanted it, if he had felt the compulsion to push him away and ask him to leave, but all he wanted to do was lean into it. He wanted someone to take care of him again. He was scared, he was alone, and he was under a lot of pressure. It felt good to give in.
He had only ever kissed Erlin before. He was always soft and tentative; this was almost angry, a lot of teeth and tongue and hands in his hair, pulling too hard. Biting until the skin threatened to break. It was overwhelming, and he let himself be overwhelmed.
It was lucky that Hardwon staggered in when he did, looking like he had lost both a metaphorical fight with a mountain of cocaine and a literal fight with another human being. Otherwise, there was no way of knowing how far he would have gone. He hated himself for that.
Hardwon agreed not to tattle, but Bev was terrible at keeping secrets and telling lies. It was only a couple of days before the guilt got to be too much for him. He spilled his guts to Moonshine while they were walking Pawpaw one afternoon. Once he’d started, there was no stopping; he emptied his soul out like a garbage can. Before he’d even realized that he’d done it, he’d given up Hardwon’s secret, too. So much for his word.
“What should I do?” he asked when he was done, deflated, wiping the beginnings of tears out of his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“You gotta tell Erlin, Bev,” Moonshine said solemnly. “If you wanna keep him, you gotta tell him.” He should have known she was going to say that. Moonshine was a lot braver, a lot more straightforward than he was. She did not deal in euphemisms or subtle hints. “We can talk about it more later, but let’s take a lil’ detour on our way home, okay?”
They stopped outside the Red Fen. The sun was just setting, and in its bloody light he saw that Moonshine had the strangest expression her had ever seen on her face.
“They should bulldoze this shithole and turn it into a fuckin’ DMV,” she said, her lip curling, as she hefted the heavy wooden door open. They passed from bright red light into the dim, smoky interior of the bar. Moonshine handed Pawpaw’s leash to Bev, then took out her hoop earrings and gave those to him, too.
“What are you gonna do?” he asked apprehensively, but she was already striding across the mostly-empty bar to where the distinctive figure of Scarlet Montgomery was sitting.
“Hey, bitch!” she shouted. That was the only warning she gave before she grabbed Scarlet by the hair and dragged her out of the booth.
Moonshine didn’t get into slapping-and-clawing cat fights; she got into dirty MMA brawls. Once she recovered from the shock of being jumped on her own turf, Scarlet managed to hold her own, flailing with manicured hands and kicking at the other woman with her fashionable little boots. This was short lived. She had no chance when Moonshine was holding her by the hair with one fist and wailing on her with the other. Nobody at the bar lifted a finger to step in; if they were paying attention at all, it was with a resigned, drunken half-interest.
“What the fuck, you fucking hillbilly dyke?” Scarlet shrieked, raking at the other woman with her fingernails.
“Don’t fuckin’ sell your shit to my friends!” Moonshine shot back, punching Scarlet in the gut one last time before she released her with a vicious shove that sent her sprawling. It had only been a matter of minutes, but it seemed like it had been a full fifteen rounds. She sauntered back across the bar, wiped some blood from a split lip with the back of her hand, and put her earrings back in calmly. She grinned at Bev’s flabbergasted expression.
“Some problems are a lot easier to fix than others.”
*
It took him a couple more days to dredge up the courage to make the call. He forced himself to sit down on his bed and dial the number, heart pounding, palms sweating.
“Happy early birthday!” Erlin sing-songed when he picked up. There was so much on his mind that Bev had completely forgotten that tomorrow was his birthday. Twenty. It was supposed to be a big milestone.
“Thanks,” he said, trying to sound lighthearted.
“Sorry I can’t be there. I got you a present, though.”
Bev twisted a fistful of sheets back and forth anxiously. He thought about the first time they had kissed, in his bedroom during their senior year of high school. They had been up late, playing video games. He remembered the little shadows Erlin’s eyelashes had cast on his cheeks in the flickering light of the TV, the sound of surprise he had made when Bev had leaned in and kissed him.
“I have to tell you something, okay?”
Erlin groaned. “Beverly. You know it makes me nervous when you say stuff like that.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” It was then that he started crying, and he didn’t stop, not even after the call was over, not even after he heard footsteps padding softly down the hall. He was pretty sure he was going to cry himself to death, and in that moment, that seemed like an okay fate. He had never done anything this bad in his life before. He had never disappointed so many people at once. Not only did his family not want him, he had betrayed the only person who had stuck with him through every dumb thing he’d ever done. As far as he was concerned, he did not deserve to make it to twenty.
“How’d he take it?” Moonshine asked softly from the doorway.
“He hung up on me,” Bev hiccuped, scrubbing furiously at his eyes with a corner of his comforter.
“Well…give ‘im a while to cool off. You two’ll get through this.”
“How do you know?”
“You love each other.” She sat down on the bed beside him and pulled him into a hug. He laid his head on her shoulder, inhaling her comforting scent of cooking and weed and dog fur. “Everybody lashes out and does dumb shit when they’re hurtin’, Bev.”
“You don’t,” he muttered petulantly.
She scoffed. “Did you not see me whoop Scarlet Montgomery’s ass the other day?” He croaked out a laugh through his tears. “You’re goin’ through so much right now. Give yourself a break. Okay?”
“Okay.” They sat there for what seemed like a long time, until his hitching breath returned to normal. She didn’t once loosen her grip.
“You wanna come and do a lil’ band practice with me and Hardwon?” Moonshine asked finally, sitting him back and wiping the remaining tears and snot from his face with her sleeve. Hardwon had half a drum set they’d reclaimed from an beside a trash can in an alley. Moonshine had a battered old guitar that she only kind-of knew how to play. Bev, of course, had been to piano lessons as a kid, and he still had the keyboard he had practiced with. They called it the “family band,” but in all honesty, they had never successfully played even one song all the way through.
“Sure.” He followed her like a zombie to the living room, where Hardwon was sitting behind his drum set, his hair tied back in an impressive man bun, holding his drumsticks in much the same way he held free weights.
“You ready to jam, kid?” he asked. Count on Hardwon to know when not to talk about feelings.
“I guess so,” Bev replied, plugging in the keyboard. “What are we playing?”
“You pick,” Moonshine said, picking up her guitar and strumming what might have, in a parallel universe, been a G chord.
“I mean, we have such a vast repertoire,” he drawled sarcastically. Hardwon threw a coaster from the coffee table at him. Having anticipated this very reaction, Bev ducked, snickering. “Okay, okay. Let’s do one we definitely know: Chasing Cars.”
“Hell yeah,” Moonshine said. “I’m ready.”
“Ready,” Hardwon said. He tried to twirl one of his drumsticks, dropped it, and quickly picked it up again.
Bev counted them into the song. The first part was just him, playing an easy chord and singing the first verse. He had been a tenor in his dad’s church choir, and he was still pretty good, even though the songs he was singing now were much different. When it came time for the drums and the guitar to come in, however, things almost immediately went to shit. Hardwon forgot what time signature he was supposed to be drumming in, Moonshine kept playing the wrong chord, and Beverly couldn’t keep a straight face. The song devolved into raucous laughter and flying accusations before they all calmed down and tried to start again.
As he played the first few chords of the song, Bev looked up at his friends. Moonshine, wearing a cropped sweater and a pair of shorts that barely deserved to be called shorts, her pale, freckled skin covered in terrible tattoos, her knuckles still scabbed from kicking the shit out of Scarlet. Her tongue poked out with obvious effort as she tried to get her fingers into position for her first chord. Hardwon, so huge that his knees barely fit under the drum set, shirtless as always and glaring through the shadow of a black eye at the snare drum like it had personally offended him. Bev was still lucky, even though it didn’t always seem like it. He had lost one family and started all over with another. How many people could say that? How many people were specially chosen by their families instead of just being born into them?
Just when he was starting to feel overwhelmingly sentimental, they started playing their instruments: it was simultaneously the best and the worst sound Beverly had ever heard.