Tom's father was the epitome of the father I desperately craved. He talked to me as if I was his equal and he didn't focus on my appearance. He knew all about the anorexia but he didn't look at me differently or treat me like I might break. His demeanor towards me never wavered. We watched the game while he caught up with the events in my life since our last conversation and he occasionally glanced over at me as we talked. I loved the way he looked at me, so free of the confusion that haunted his son's eyes, the judgment that lived in the eyes of my classmates and the sadness that plagued my parents. I knew my parents looked at me and wondered why I wasn't like my brother and sister; they always looked at me that way. I swear they emanated disdain for all that I was. I failed them as a child as much as they failed me as parents.
"So how are your parents?" Mr. Yeager asked.
"They're good."
"Have they been talking to you lately?"
"Not really, it's basically the same as before. They ignore me and I ignore them."
"That's a shame. I had hoped things would get better."
"So had I." I responded unintentionally. As much as I told myself I both enjoyed and appreciated my lack of a relationship with my parents, I couldn't help but be envious of the relationship between Tom and his parents. They all loved each other so much and it was evident in everything from the way they talked to each other to the smiles on their faces in their family photos. They were everything my family would be if I weren't in the picture. I hated thinking about stuff like that because then that meant everything wrong with my family was my fault and my birth had ruined their lives.
"Well you always have me," he said with a smile.
"I know, Mr. Yeager. You've always been there for me, even when I was busy getting Tom in trouble."
"Tom never did anything he didn't want to do."
That was true, but the problem was the thing he wanted to do the most when we were younger was protect me. He spent most of his day defending me from bullies and making sure no one hurt my feelings. He was never violent, but he didn't tolerate anyone pushing him or me around. You would think the kids would get the picture and leave me alone, but that never happened. Picking on me was too enticing and exciting for them to refuse. They usually tried to pick on me when Tom wasn't around and things have stayed that way since then.
After the game, Mr. Yeager and I stayed seated while Tom showered and put on some clean clothes. Tom came out of the locker room and ran to us. "We won!" He announced excitedly as though we hadn't watched the entire game.
"We saw," I told him.
"Did you see me give you a thumbs up?" he asked.
"Yes, I saw it. I thought it was for your father though."
"No, it was for you." He smiled.
I had to remind myself not to blush, "Oh."
"You boys are so cute sometimes," his father said.
Tom turned crimson, "Dad!"
"I'll take that as my cue to leave. See you boys tomorrow." He hugged Tom and then he hugged me, "Take care of yourself."
"We'll walk with you to the parking lot," Tom said. Tom grabbed my hand for a brief moment as he pulled me forward. We walked his father to the visitor parking lot and then we walked to the student parking lot with our hands occasionally brushing against each other. I wanted to grab his hand and squeeze it but I knew better. Tom was treated to a lot of shouts of `good game' as we walked to his car. We got in his car and the guilt of knowing I was holding him back consumed me. We were five minutes away from the school when Tom asked, "What's wrong?"
"You would be so popular if you weren't friends with me."
He pulled to the side of the road and grabbed my chin then turned my face so I had to look at him. "Stop saying shit like that. How many times do I have to tell you that I don't want to be popular! You're my best friend and I wouldn't trade you for anything." He opened the glove compartment and took out a box. "This was supposed to be a surprise for our special night, but here, open it!" I didn't move. "I said open it!" He dropped the box in my lap and I picked it up. I opened it and there were two silver rings. I took one out and looked at it. "Read it," he told me. Around the outside was written Best Friends Forever.' "There's an inscription." I looked on the inside and saw, Tom and Sam Forever.' "The other one says the same thing. I thought we could each wear one. It was supposed to be a surprise for our anniversary, but"
"Our what?"
"Today is the five year anniversary of the first day we met."
"How could you remember that?"
"It was the most meaningful day of my life so far," he said. He looked sad for a second then he smiled. "I planned this whole evening with dinner and a movie and then camping. I was going to give you the ring while we sat at the campfire and talked."
"We never celebrated before."
"You were either sick or institutionalized before, but now things are looking up, aren't they?"
"I guess so."
He held his hand out, "Give me the rings." I put my ring back in the box and handed it to him. He took the box and picked up one of the rings. "Give me your hand," he said in a gentle whisper. I gave him my hand and he slipped the ring on my finger.
"Isn't this kind of gay?" I laughed but he didn't laugh with me. His eyes questioned my timing and then he put the box in the glove compartment and put his hands back on the wheel.
"We're going to be late for our reservation." He drove us to a local pizza parlor. I knew you didn't need reservations for a place like that but I kept my mouth shut. We sat down at a table and Tom asked, "Do you remember this place?"
"A little. I know we've been here before."
"Do you remember when?"
"No. It was a long time ago though."
"We were still in sixth grade. I convinced my father to drop us off here while he went to pick up a prescription for my mother." His facial expression told me this was a vivid memory for him. "It was the first time we ate alone at a restaurant. You nibbled on your slice of pizza like you were afraid to eat it and I ate a medium pizza by myself. We had our first fight because you wouldn't finish your slice and I knew you were hungry. Who would have known five years later we'd still be fighting about what you eat."
"Not me."
"Me neither." A waitress came to the table with a large pepperoni pizza and two bottles of root beer. "Thanks Sarah."
"Anything for you Babe." She looked over at me. "So he's the one huh?"
"Yep. Sam this is Sarah. Sarah this is Sam."
She held out her hand. "Nice to meet you Sam. I've heard so much about you."
I shook her hand. "Nice to meet you too." I wanted to tell her I had never heard about her before, but the words didn't come out.
"Well call me if you boys need anything." She rubbed her fingers through Tom's hair and I wanted to bite her hand off.
As soon as she walked away from the table I asked, "Who is she?"
"She's a cheerleader at our school."
"You never mentioned her before."
"There's a reason for that, but I'll tell you later, okay?"
"Okay."
"Now how many slices of pizza are you going to eat?"
"One."
"It's a special day. Give me two and we have a deal."
"Two? It's practically dripping grease."
"Do it for me. Please."
"I thought we had a deal. No bothering me for a week." He frowned at me. I looked at the pizza and then at the root beer and I estimated the number of calories I would need to burn off later. "Okay I'll eat two slices, but I'm not drinking the root beer."
"Will you at least drink half of the root beer?"
"I'll take a few swallows but that's it."
"Okay."
My stomach churned as I thought about putting all those calories in my system so late at night, but it meant so much to Tom and he was the only person in my life I wanted to please. Dinner was great. We talked about a lot of the good times we had together and pretended like nothing bad had ever happened. Sarah came over to check on us a few times but I managed to successfully ignore her.
We left the restaurant and continued to reminisce. I noticed we were heading further out of town. "What, we're not going to the first theater we ever went to together?" I laughed at my own joke.
"See, I try to be thoughtful and you make jokes."
"Okay, I won't make any jokes. Where are we going?"
"To see your favorite movie."
"But that movie is old."
"There's a theater in Greenfield that is having a marathon of old movies and guess what's on the list."
"No way!"
"I know. What are the chances? I saw it in the paper a week ago and I knew it was perfect."
I sat and thought about how much he must love me to spend so much time trying to plan the perfect evening. My wondering mind led to my wandering eyes and I noticed the way Tom's headlights lit up the highway in front of us and soon I was transfixed by the lines on the road which seemed to quiet the voices in my head.
We went to the theater and it was so nice. There were a lot of older couples there, but I didn't mind them because I was with Tom. I even splurged and had some popcorn. After the movie, we went back to Tom's house so we could camp out in his backyard which was really part of a local park, but we called it his backyard anyway and we treated it like his backyard. He lit the campfire and we sat next to each other on a large stone. "This day has been perfect," he told me.
"Even though you were stuck with me?"
"Don't do that."
"What?"
"Don't put yourself down. I'm not stuck with you! I want to be with you. Why can't you accept that?"
"Because it doesn't make sense. Why would anyone want to be friends with me? I'm such a loser." I was thinking out loud.
"How can you even think that after tonight? I spend a fucking month planning one night so everything will be perfect and"
`That's just it, tonight was too much. I don't deserve anyone to be so wonderful to me,' I thought. "The problem is with me, not you."
"I know the problem is with you and I'm tired of trying to fix it. You're just like Isaac! No matter how much I love you, it's not enough for you to love yourself. I'm not enough."
"I'm sorry," I told him. "I didn't mean to upset you." I wanted to ask him who Isaac was because his father had once called me Isaac, but I didn't think I deserved to know.
"You want to know the real reason why we moved here?"
"Um."
"We moved because of Isaac. Isaac was my older brother. I idolized him." Tom wiped his eyes and gathered himself a little. "He spent a lot of time with me and I never wondered why he didn't have any friends his own age. I didn't know that kids were picking on him when he was in school. He wasn't the smallest kid, but he wasn't obese or anything either, but the kids always found something to tease him about. It got worse when he went to high school. He was kind and gentle and they pounced on him. They were vicious and relentless in their attacks and he started retreating from the world, even me. He wouldn't play with me and he rarely talked to me. He would lock himself in his room and he wouldn't let me in. It was the same thing day after day after day. He begged my parents to let him go to another district but they told him there were bullies everywhere. He dyed his hair blue and my father started telling him he was giving people a reason to tease him. Soon after that, food became his best friend. He started gaining a lot of weight but that didn't make me love him any less because there was nothing he could do that would make me not love him. My parents were pretty unsympathetic though. They yelled at him to lose weight and that just made him cry more. My father forced him take a self-defense class, but my father didn't get that Isaac wasn't a fighter."
Tom slid off the stone and sat on the ground. He put his head against my knee and continued. He sounded choked up when he started talking again, "I'll never forget that day. Isaac came home with his hair cut off and his clothes tattered. He was almost hysterical. He begged my parents not to send him back to that school and my father told him to grow up. They yelled and screamed back and forth for at least five minutes before I cut in and begged them not to send Isaac back to that place. They ignored both of us and Isaac stormed upstairs and slammed his door. He didn't come down for dinner. I remember sitting at the table playing with my food because I couldn't eat anything. My parents and I went to bed without speaking to each other and I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of my mother screaming. I jumped out of bed and got to the kitchen about the same time as my father. My mother was staring out a window so I looked out too and there he was, swinging from a tree in our backyard. My father grabbed a knife and ran out to the tree to cut Isaac down. I tried to run outside too but my mother held me back. The worst part of that night was watching them take him away. We found his suicide note on his bed the next morning. We tried to stay in that house but it wasn't the same without him and we all needed a change so we picked up and moved. They don't talk about him at all anymore, it's like he never existed." I could tell he was crying.
"Why didn't you tell me about him before?"
"They said we were leaving the past behind." I sat on the ground next to him and put my arm around him. He looked directly at me with the tears in his eyes glistening from the light of the fire. "You reminded me of Isaac. That's why I stood up for you that first day. I think I thought you could be him and I had a second chance to protect him, but along the way I realized that you weren't Isaac and I loved you for you. Do you hear me? I love you for you. I don't care what's wrong with you or what you think is wrong with you, none of that shit matters to me, but you have to stop hating yourself because it's killing me. It's like losing Isaac all over again, but worse because of the way I love you. I love you so much."
He surprised me when he kissed me on my lips. He took my hesitation as an invitation to continue so he leaned in and pressed his lips against mine again. I couldn't process the situation. The moment I had secretly dreamt about for so long was happening and I was too overwhelmed by Tom's confession to enjoy it. I pushed him away and stood up. "I'm sorry," he said.
"It's okay. Let's um get some rest."
"You're not upset?"
"No, surprised, but not upset."
"Not even about Isaac?"
"Why would I be upset about Isaac?"
"It's been five years. You're my best friend and I should have told you before."
"I've spent enough time with Dr. Conley to know that people don't talk about things until they're ready."
"Well that may be part of it. I don't like to think about what happened. It hurts to know that the world can be so cold and cruel that it crushes a person's soul and then keeps moving like nothing happened. We kept moving. We moved here."
I was not used to being the strong one in our relationship, but my mind told me that I had to pretend to know what I was doing. I grabbed his hand and said, "Let's put out the fire and go to bed."
We put out the fire and crawled in the tent to go to sleep. I tried to act normal when we woke up, but I was afraid of everything. I was freaking out on the inside while a nervous smile stood guard on my face. "You're freaking out, aren't you?" Tom asked. I hated how he read my mind sometimes.
"A little."
"About what? Is it me? I said I was sorry. I'll never kiss you again. I don't know what came over me."
I should have taken the opportunity to tell him I loved him and I loved the kiss but I didn't feel worthy of his love. The one thing I wanted the most was the one thing I was denying myself and I didn't understand what was wrong with me. I should have been happy, instead I felt depressed. "I need to go."
"Please don't leave. Let's talk about it. I want to still be friends. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. We're still friends I just need to go and think about some things." I was almost out of the tent when I remembered my manners. "Thanks for yesterday, and thanks for the ring. It was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me." I was tempted to add that I didn't deserve it, but I didn't want to upset him again.
"You're welcome." He smiled. "Call me when you get home."
"Okay."
I walked to the bus stop in a state of confusion. Tom was offering me my dream and I was spitting it back in his face like I didn't want it. I mentally chastised myself all the way home. When I reached my bedroom I had an epiphany: I couldn't be with Tom because there was no way he would love me forever and a break up would devastate me because I needed him too much. I felt the urge creeping through my veins and I tried to fight it, but it was too strong. The pain I was feeling was a special kind of pain that needed a special kind of relief. I got the knife out of the drawer and went to the bathroom to clean it off. I locked my door and got on the bed, prepared to relieve some tension. I took off my clothes and held the knife against my thigh. I thought about Tom's kiss as I pressed the knife in to my skin and saw the familiar sight of my blood.
Tom said he loved me but I knew he didn't love me, he couldn't love me; no one could. I cut one more time as I thought about someone loving me. The pain felt euphoric and fulfilling at the same time and temporarily replaced the confusion with bliss. I cleaned my wounds and the knife and put my clothes back on. After I put the knife up and threw away the bloody evidence as if I had committed a crime, I picked up the phone and called Tom.
He said, "Hello."
I said, "You can't love me."
"I'm sorry, but I do."
"Why?"
"Because I do."
"Well don't."
"I can't help how I feel, but I promise I won't kiss you again."
"So things are normal now?"
"Yes."
"Okay." I knew things weren't normal but saying that they were pacified both of us.
We talked about his next game and his excitement and he opened up and shared a few memories of Isaac. I couldn't believe that events that happened over five years ago were still painful for him to talk about. I remembered random things from those times, but even my worst memories no longer caused me pain because I was over it. I couldn't help but wonder if my siblings would miss me half as much as Tom missed his brother.
I was off the phone with him for about ten minutes when I realized that I completely forgot to do a workout. I decided I wouldn't eat anything for the rest of the day and I hit the floor to begin working off some of the calories. I kept seeing Tom's face in my mind and hearing his voice in my ears telling me that he loved me. I didn't know why he had to say that. I didn't want his love, it scared me too much. I found myself looking forward to talking to Dr. Conley later that day, but I still wasn't sure if I was going to tell him about the kiss.
c Lustyville 2007 Please send comments to lustyville@yahoo.com and check out my other stories at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lustyville