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“Do you ever… ever hear from your mom?” Steve asks hesitantly one night, when they’re lying at opposite sides of his bed without touching because it’s one of those days when Billy can’t stand it.
Billy blanches, snorts, rolls away. “Jesus Christ, Harrington, is that your idea of pillow talk?” he says irritably.
“I’m just asking,” Steve says, and Billy can hear the undertones. I want to know you, Steve told him once. As though it’s obvious, or easy. I want to know you.
“She left,” Billy says in a clipped voice. “She didn’t come back.”
Steve reaches out a tentative hand, falling short of Billy’s face in case Billy doesn’t want it. Sometimes he doesn’t - sometimes he can’t bear to be touched. He flinches away, and Steve lets his hand drop to the bed between them. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice aching with sympathy.
It’s all such a fucking lie, and Billy shrinks away from it. “Don’t fucking feel sorry for me,” he growls, and he means - Steve shouldn’t feel sorry for him. There’s more to the story than Steve will ever know, and he shouldn’t feel bad about it.
But Steve doesn’t take it that way. He rolls onto his back, stares up at the ceiling. “Fuck me for caring,” he sighs.
“I’m leaving,” Billy says, and does.
They started like this, strange and fractious and uncoordinated, and they haven’t found their way past it. Steve tells Billy that he cares, that he doesn’t mind keeping his hands to himself when Billy doesn’t want to be touched, that he’s okay not having sex - but those things can’t really be true. They fight about it all the time.
Steve says - believe me, you fucking asshole! Believe what I’m telling you! But Billy knows better than anyone not to believe what anyone tells him. After all, he’s the biggest liar around.
It’s three days before they speak again. Billy can’t look at Steve at school, can’t let their eyes meet in class or across the cafeteria or on the basketball court. Steve doesn’t look at him either, and Billy thinks - maybe this is it. Maybe this is the time.
It fills him with dread, the thought of losing Steve.
Then it’s Saturday, and he drops Max off at the arcade, and when he comes out into the sunshine wearing aviators and a leather jacket Steve is standing there waiting for him.
“Are you mad at me?” he asks, as though Billy is the one with the right to be mad.
“How could I be mad?” Billy says, pushing his glasses higher on his nose. “I’m the one who left.”
They walk in silence back to their respective cars. Steve has a twisted little frown on his face. He says: “My parents are away.”
“Your parents are always away,” Billy says.
Steve looks unhappy. “Yeah,” he says. He glances swiftly at Billy and then away. “Want to come over?”
“Yeah,” Billy says, and does.
They’re gentle with each other that afternoon. Steve looks as though he’s not sure whether or not he’s allowed to touch, so Billy is the one to take his hand, to press their mouths together, to slide their arms against each other. There isn’t very much to say, but sometimes it’s easier with their bodies.
Steve says, “Why did you leave, if you weren’t mad?”
“Jesus, let’s not talk about it,” Billy says.
“I want to talk about it,” Steve says.
Billy pulls away, releases Steve’s hand. He feels emptied out. He’s too weary for this fight.
“Don’t punish me for talking to you,” Steve says. “That’s really fucking unfair.”
Billy glances at him, startled. “What?” Steve lifts his empty hand, the one Billy just let go. Is he punishing Steve? That’s not - he doesn’t want to do that. He’s not trying to do that. “I’m not doing that,” he says.
“You are,” Steve says. “Tell me why you left.”
“Why did you come back?” Billy counters, frustrated.
Steve shakes his head, mouth open a little - and he’s tired. He’s tired of Billy’s bullshit. It’s obvious in the lines by his mouth and on his brow. “You wanted me to,” he says. Then he pauses, suddenly uncertain. “Right?”
Billy’s chest is tight and painful. He can’t lie, not about this. “Right,” he says.
“I don’t think you wanted to leave,” Steve says. It’s not the first time they’ve had this discussion. At least - it’s not the first time Steve has tried to have this discussion. “Why do you leave, if you don’t want to go?” He pauses. “Are you… Is this about your mom?”
A shot of pain, right through his sternum. Billy looks away. Of course it’s about his mom.
“Are you leaving first, so I can’t leave you?” Steve asks. “The way she left you?”
“Fucking armchair psychologist,” Billy sneers. “You think it’s that fucking simple, huh? You think you can fix me?”
“No,” Steve says, face reddening, and in spite of himself Billy reels with disappointment. Fix me, he wants to shout. Please, fix me. “I’m not trying to - I’m just trying to understand!”
Billy’s breathing is harsh and ragged. “She didn’t leave,” he says, and it’s so close - so close to the secret, to the secret and the lie and the thing he can’t explain. He is the architect of his own pain. “You don’t understand shit.”
“Yeah, because you won’t fucking talk to me,” Steve says, and he’s not even angry. He’s just tired and sad and totally worn down. He reaches out, clutches at Billy’s arm, and in spite of himself Billy doesn’t shake him off. “Jesus, Billy, please - please just fucking talk to me!”
It’s there in his head, that secret. It runs through him like the root of a tree. His entire personality has woven around it like a tapestry.
“She didn’t leave,” he says - but she did leave. She left him. She packed her suitcase, and she got in her car, and she left. She hasn’t turned back since.
Steve strokes his arm, so softly that Billy’s heart cracks just a little more, releasing a small sad cloud of dust. “It’s okay to be mad at her,” he says. “Or hurt, or upset, or - or whatever you feel.” He scratches his head, slightly embarrassed. “Sorry. I know I’m no good at this.”
“I’m not mad at her,” Billy says automatically. “I can’t be mad at her.”
“Why not?” Steve asks.
But Billy can’t - he can’t talk about it. He can’t do this, and he pulls away, pulls his arm out of Steve’s grasp. “I’m leaving,” he says.
“Don’t leave,” Steve says.
He has to leave. He has to go. It makes his chest ache to think of his mom, of her beautiful golden hair and the way she smiled at him when he was very young. “I’m leaving,” he says again.
Because that’s the secret, the secret that nobody knows, that he can’t tell and he can’t forget. She left him. She left, and she hasn’t come back, and as far as Billy can tell she’ll never come back. But he can’t be mad or hurt or upset or anything else, because—
“We don’t have to talk about it,” Steve says, and his face is creased and unhappy. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’ll stop, just, please - please don’t go.”
—because he told her to go.
I can’t stand it, she said, and she was crying, her beautiful face pale and tearstained. Her hands were like claws, scraping her skin, tearing through her hair, like an artist destroying his own painting. Oh, Billy, my sweet boy - he’ll kill me. He’s killing me. I can’t stand it another moment.
He should have begged her to stay. Steve - Steve is begging him to stay. But he didn’t.
Instead, he told her to go.
It’s okay, he said, although his heart was breaking into a thousand shards that he’s been fruitlessly trying to piece together ever since. You can go. It’s okay. I want you to be happy.
He should have fought for her, the way Steve - because Steve is brave and good and everything Billy isn’t - fights for him. But he didn’t, and she left, and he’ll never see her again.
“I have to go,” he says, and he waits for Steve to tell him to leave. To stop fighting, because one day Steve will stop fighting. One day Steve will be too exhausted by - by all of it. By Billy.
“Please don’t go,” Steve says, and when Billy leaves anyway, he stands sorrowfully in the doorway, tall and beautiful and unhappy, and he calls out, “I’ll be here, Billy. I’m not going anywhere.”