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Like Glass
Three: Ryan
When I get home, everything is quiet. I hang my coat on the hook by the door and walk down the drab, unbreathing hallway. There is never any color in this house. The mirror at the end of the hall shows me monstrous, and panting with a voracious lust.
I don’t look like that, I whisper.
There you are, he says. Where have you been?
Go to bed, I say. You’re drunk.
Where have you been, you little fag?
I’m not, I whisper, not not not, and the walls are made of liquid and are closing in.
And then Brendon is beside me, nuzzling my ear and murmuring, Are you sure?
I’m not, I think. I’m not.
Brendon is dancing his hand down my stomach and down against my skin past my waistband and then I am naked. And I nod and he pushes his finger in, deep in and dizzy, and the swirling hallway explodes with color and I throw my head back and scream even though the sheets are wrapped around me, binding me to the walls.
Prodigal! he growls – Brendon gasps into my ear, I’ll save you – and he hits me, his anger slamming into my jaw, stinging then throbbing then aching.
Brendon gasps, Just say you’re mine.
Are you fucking him, you dirty fag?! he bellows, towering livid over me.
I’m not, Dad! I’m not!
I open my mouth –
And then I gasp in the cold air and I am in the dark, lying on my bed. I can hear my ragged breaths because the room is silent and barely blue with morning.
I climb out of bed and look at the clock. 4:26 AM.
I sit on the edge of my bed and clutch my head. I will feel like shit in the morning unless I go back to sleep right now.
I won’t think about the dream. I won’t think until morning.
I think maybe I need to relax. Maybe then I will fall asleep instead of lying alone on top of the covers until the room lightens and I hear Spencer getting up and realize there is no point in pretending anymore.
I get up, and feel my way to the bathroom. I think how when I was here last night, Brendon sat on my bed smelling like rum and sugar and trespassed into my thoughts and feelings. I think how, if he hadn’t been drinking, he maybe wouldn’t have read my notebook, but he still might have, because “private” means nothing to Brendon. Brendon has no secrets.
I lean against the wall and slide my sweats and boxers down to my knees. I dance my fingers over my cock and feel it slowly start to harden, and I think how I will never ever tell a girl, this is how I like it: gentle. I hate it about myself.
I stroke myself and realize I am thinking about the dream even though I swore not to. Dad never hit me, never ever, except for once and he was so sorry afterwards he bought me a laptop. He loved me and wanted so badly to be a good father.
He never hit me, except for that time. Where have you been, George?
I’ll save you, I hear, even though I was never afraid, I never needed saving…I’ll save you…if you’ll say you’re mine…
My legs are shaking as I stroke myself to a cascading climax. I’ll save you, I hear, and I see Brendon’s lips moving to the words. I feel his hands on me. I see his mouth bobbing up and down my cock as he pushes me back and says Lie back, I’ll save you…
“Brendon…” I whisper as I come, and then I slide down the wall and sit there trembling, weighed down by the enormity of what I just said.
After what feels like days, but is probably half an hour, I stand and clean up and crawl back in bed. It is surprisingly warm under the covers, and surprisingly comfortable to rest there and let go.
The smell of coffee floats over me and I open my eyes. I hear noise coming from the kitchen so I get out of bed.
“Morning,” Spencer greets as I reach the doorway. “You look good. Sleep well?”
I shrug and sit down. “Better.”
“Oh, Ryro got his beauty sleep?” Jon asks, hugging me and smacking a kiss on my cheek as he comes into the kitchen. I hate how I always blush every single time.
“Douche,” I tell him with a smile.
“I try. Here,” he says, placing a steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of me. I sip the rich, bitter drink and it warms down my throat. “Thanks.”
“Brendon still sleeping?” Jon asks Spencer softly.
I see Spencer glance at me before he answers. “Yeah, he must be.”
“One of us should take him Advil. And Red Bull.”
Spencer opens his mouth, but I stand up and say, “I’ll do it.” They are surprised, I can tell. Spencer gets the Advil out of the cabinet and gets it down for me while Jon grabs a Red Bull out of the fridge. When I am done with my coffee, I put the mug in the sink and tiptoe into the bedroom.
I see a spare trap-set cymbal sitting on top of a box of Spencer’s stuff. Oh yes, that will be way better than my voice...I grab it and walk over to Jon’s bunk, where Brendon is sleeping off his hangover, the covers twisted around his legs. I kneel beside him. His breath still vaguely smells.
I strike the Advil bottle against the cymbal. The sudden crash shocks me a little even though I knew it was coming. The cymbal rings loud and clear and I hold it closer to Brendon’s head.
His eyes shoot open and his hands come up to clutch his ears as he moans.
I drop the cymbal to the floor and toss him the Advil and Red Bull. “Guess you should have thought of that before you got wasted,” I snap at him, meaning the hang-over and also my rage. I pause for a minute, watching him rub his eyes, giving him a chance. Then I turn and leave.
“Ryan, that was a really shitty thing to do,” I hear Spence say as I walk past him into the lounge. When I get there, Jon looks up from his laptop to meet my gaze.
“He deserved it,” I justify. “I wanted him to be sorry.”
Jon sighs. “You sure he isn’t?”
“I think he should apologize then.”
“Maybe you should both apologize,” he says.
I shrug and open my notebook to the first blank page. I write:
27 August 2006
He is such a fucking bastard. I can’t even write his name down I am so pissed. Who the hell does he think he is, reading my private stuff? Motherfucking piece of shit. I can’t stand the sight of him…
I had this weird dream last night. I dreamt about home and Dad. About the first night he had to go to the hospital. You’d think that first time would have taught him, but no, he just keeps going back and back again...
I can’t forget the way he looked; the tucked-in sheets strapping him down and the IV-needles stuck under his skin. Deep enough to reach the veins but just shallow enough that you can see them there, dark under the skin. It probably means I’m worried about him, because he’s all over there in Vegas by himself and I’m not there to look out for him.
Actually that’s
I might as well say it, I guess. He was in it, too. In like a...sexy way.
Which, really, when you think about it, isn’t that surprising considering what’s been going on. When he’s all over me all the time, how could it not be weighing on my mind?
Why is he involved in everything? Why do I keep thinking about him when I’m not gay?
Not that there’s anything wrong with homosexuality. It’s just that I’m not. Just because I look like a girl doesn’t mean I’m any less of a man that other guys. The same way that writing songs and wearing eye makeup doesn’t make me a “fag,” it just makes me artistic.
Just like accidentally thinking of a guy once when I jerked off doesn’t make me
I give up.
Who the fuck am I kidding? There is something wrong with me – I came while accidentally thinking about a guy.
The same guy I’ve accidentally made out with twice.
And liked it, both times. Also accidentally. How many “accidents” can you really have before it stops being coincidence and becomes routine?
I’m sick and twisted. I want him, and I don’t know how to stop.
To make it worse, he
“Morning. How are you feeling?” I hear Spencer ask one room away.
“Like shit.” That deep, captivating voice sounds gravelly and tired. I realize I am biting my cuticles and so I make myself tug at my hair instead.
“Bagel?” Spencer asks. “More Red Bull?”
“Thanks,” he says dully. “Where’s...”
“Lounge.”
I hear a chair scrape the floor and then footsteps. “Get me when it’s time for practice,” Brendon says, and then the door to the outside slams shut.
I chew on my pen. To make it worse, he...
acts like he weren’t one of my closest friends, as if I hadn’t told him all about driving my dad to the hospital before I even had my license.
As if I owed him and he could take payment in the form of betrayal.
He touches me, seduces me into being incapable of ignoring him, and then he goes and parties all night like nothing happened. He’s really good at that, isn’t he? Denying anything is wrong. It’s probably because he’s such a good performer. Someone could die, and that bastard would still say, “the show must go on!”
I look up when Spencer sets a plate down on the coffee table in front of me. “Bagel,” he tells me sharply. “We practice in half an hour so you’d better get over yourself, because if you do one more fucked up thing to Brendon I swear I will smash your head through my drums.”
I feel myself sinking deeper into guilt. “What the fuck, Spence? You’re supposed to be my best friend! How can you pick his side?”
Spencer rolls his eyes. “Grow up, Ryan.” Wow. No one has ever said that to me before. Brendon’s always the kid, and I’m always the boring one who grew up too fast.
I watch him leave, and I think, Brendon cries a lot. Not in public, ever, and not usually at movies because he laughed in Titanic when Jack said I want you to be a survivor, but a lot. I think how he could be crying right now, somewhere that isn’t with me.
I think about apologizing, and I know I can’t unless he does it first, because then saying Sorry would be like saying what he did doesn’t matter.
I find the page of the song I’m working on and I’m still writing and erasing when Spencer comes back in with Brendon. Spencer shoots me a look and I turn away. I go get my guitar.
The air is thick already and he’s only been in the same room as me for a few seconds. I feel a little bit sick, like my head is spinning just a little too much for me to remember any of the songs.
“You guys ready?” Jon asks, closing his laptop and standing up to go get his bass.
“Yeah,” Brendon says, sitting on the arm of the sofa as if it were a bike or a body. He sounds completely normal, hyper, happy, and headache-free. “I warmed up already. What are we starting with?”
“Camisado?” Spencer suggests.
No. I can’t stand to hear him sing that song, not after what he’s done. “Lying.”
Jon shrugs, and Brendon nods without looking at me. He hops up off the sofa and walks over to the microphone.
I check to see that I’m in tune and then I wait for Brendon. “Okay, guys,” he says.
“Is it still me that makes you sweat? Am I who you think about in bed...” he sings as I pluck the opening notes. He isn’t playing with the song as much as he usually does; he isn’t dancing and making faces and he definitely isn’t coming over to me, sharing the mic so we sing only inches apart. Which is good, really.
“You know it will always just be me...” he purrs, low and seductive, and I suddenly know why the girls go crazy and scream Marry me, Brendon! I feel the music pulling me in and I almost smile a little as I strum the first bar chords.
But Brendon is off – he comes in two beats late with “Let’s get these teen hearts beating faster, faster,” and Spencer stops drumming and Jon lets his notes trail off and then it’s just my chords clashing with Brendon’s voice.
“Sorry, guys,” he says. He combs his fingers through his hair.
“No problem,” Jon tells him. “I forgot it already. Try again?”
“Yeah. Everyone ready? ...Is it still me that makes you sweat...”
He makes it into the chorus this time, although it almost sounds like his voice wavers once on “Will you dance to this beat.” But he makes it through and I think, No, I imagined it.
“I’ve got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter...” and then his voice breaks, but Spence can’t have noticed because he keeps drumming, and Brendon tries to join back in. “...Boy you’ll ever... meet...” but it’s wobbly and off-key, and then I realize, Oh my God...
Then the music dies out, and I can’t remember if I was even playing or not anyway. And Jon asks, “You okay, man?” and reaches out, but Brendon shrugs him off and insists, “No, I’m fine – ” but he isn’t, he clearly isn’t, he’s wiping at his eyes –
He fumbles to slide the microphone back into the stand but within seconds he gives up and drops it to the floor. “I can’t – ” he chokes out, “Fuck this!”
And then he shoves past me and rushes from the room. I stare after him as I hear the door in the kitchen slam. I think how he’s out there alone, and wonder what he would say if I followed.
Spencer throws down his drumsticks, and I wince as one of them breaks. He glares at me. “You asshole.”
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