If This Gets Out(110)

We lost.

And we’re trapped with the very people who are going to break us.





TWENTY-NINE





RUBEN


“What were you thinking?”

I raise tired eyes as Mom greets me at the door with a red-faced glower. “I don’t know,” I say, truthfully. The only answer I can give is a useless one. I wasn’t thinking about our contract terms, or being sued, or what finally standing up for myself would mean for the band. If I had, I would’ve stuck to the script, and simply announced my relationship with Zach.

Instead, I’ve ruined everything. I’ve destroyed us.

“I’m sorry,” I say.

“You’re sorry. You’re sorry? You went up on that stage and you recklessly…”

Her words fade into muffled humming. My eyes trail past her to take in the living room while she shouts. It’s empty. Dad’s not here. Not that he’d step in if he was.

So, who will?

Who’s going to have my own back if my parents won’t? If management won’t? If my friends aren’t here?

I drag my gaze back to Mom. She’s sneering at me, throwing her arms up while she bellows loudly enough for the neighbors to hear.

The words bubble up.

Then the dam bursts.

“STOP IT!” I roar, snapping back into focus. “I know, okay? I know I did something stupid, but it happened, and it happened for a reason.”

“You stand there and you dare to—”

“I don’t need this,” I cut her off. “I need support right now. I’m not a fucking idiot. I know what happened! The last thing I need is to hear it again from you!”

“Well, guess what, Ruben, this isn’t just about you—”

“Today it is,” I yell over her. “Today I just came out to the world and I’m getting sued by my management team, which means today it’s all about me.”

“Just like the rest of your life is, huh?”

Three things strike me simultaneously.

One: it feels wonderful to say what I’m really thinking, for maybe the first time while my feet are planted on these floors.

Two: shouting back at her hasn’t made things worse. She barely seems to notice I’ve fought back. The room didn’t catch aflame. She isn’t going to physically hurt me. She’s simply screaming, exactly as she always does. Terrible, but no more terrible than it was when I didn’t stand up for myself.

Three: I don’t need to stand here and be screamed at if I don’t want to.

So, I turn on my heel and go right back out the front door. “I’m going for a walk.”

I slam the door in the face of her reply.



* * *



I sit in the park for a while, watching the sun slowly set. As the darkness creeps in, fear starts to scrape at my chest with shadowy fingers. Maybe yelling back only went okay because she was so shocked. Maybe you’ve made it worse. Maybe when you go back, she’ll have something planned to make you regret what you did.

But if that’s the case, I can leave again. I can go to a hotel, I can go to Jon, I can even go to Zach in Portland.

It’s okay for me to leave.

So, psyching myself up with this mantra, I walk back home.

Mom and Dad are both on the couch watching TV when I enter. There’s no yelling. Mom looks up at me with a cloudy face, but all the redness is gone. Dad places a hand on her arm, and neither of them speak.

“I’ve been wanting to come out publicly since I was sixteen,” I say, by way of a greeting. “Chorus never let me. Whenever I tried to push back, they pushed me further into the background in the band. They make me dress plainly. They won’t give me any good solos. They never wanted me to be too big, just in case people saw too much of who I really am. When we got overseas, it got bad. They didn’t let us leave the hotel. They stopped allowing us to have visitors or speak to friends. They didn’t make time for us to eat every meal. Then, when Zach and I happened, they turned on us even more. They basically told us we could never make it public. They lied to the media about our personal lives, and forced us to lie, too. They separated us in public, and they punished us if we even looked at each other onstage.”

My throat is tightening, and it’s getting hard to force the words out. Usually, I’d swallow the sensation down, and breathe until everything loosened up. Instead, now, for the first time in a long, long time, instead of my emotions coming out in a tangle of anger and anxiety, I don’t fight them.

“I decided to come out anyway,” I say, the words fractured. “Which is not against our contract terms. It was so, so important to me that I don’t have to lie about myself anymore. I want to be myself. I want to be allowed to have boyfriends without hiding them. And then … I … started … and they turned my mic off.”

The anger has disappeared from Mom’s face. Dad’s nodding, but it’s a severe sort of nod. A funeral nod.

Finally, tears well up in my eyes. And I don’t fight them.

For the first time in a long, long time, I just let them fall.

“They turned my mic off,” I repeat helplessly.

Mom rises to her feet and wraps her arms around me. I fall against her chest, and everything feels hot and humid and wet. The tears flow more freely now, and I break into sobs as she rubs a flattened palm over my back.