Burn (Songs of Submission #5)(18)

The porch.

The door.

The key.

Click.

My breath.

Exhaled.

CHAPTER 14.

MONICA

I dried my hair with the bathroom door open. When Darren’s screen door opened, I jumped. He was on his way to Canada with Adam, and I wasn’t expecting anyone. I half hoped it was Jonathan but knew it wasn’t. Peeking out to the living room, I saw Darren shuffle in. I pulled a dress out of the hamper and wiggled into it so I could get to him quickly.

“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Men.”

“Men? What’s that mean?”

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and cracked it. “I mean, how the f**k do you deal with us?”

“You’re cute and you have these nice dangling bits. So?”

“So, well. Adam.”

“I’ve met him.”

He rubbed the label on his bottle. “Really nice guy. Really.”

“Really. So? Why aren’t you at the airport?”

“I kind of freaked out on him.”

I threw myself on the couch and patted the seat next to me. “Go on.”

He plopped onto the chair. Somehow, the couch had become my territory. “As we were loading up a cart, I just… I don’t know. There was this reflective metal panel in the wall, and I was standing next to him. I saw us in the metal panel. Foggy, but it was us. He was looking at his phone, and I was looking at the panel thinking, ‘Oh f**k. This is what other people see. Is this who I am? Did I decide this? And when?’ I care about him. I love being with him, but when do I start calling myself bisexual, or g*y, or…who the f**k am I, Monica?”

I had plenty of platitudes. I had advice I couldn’t even pretend to take myself about just being who you are and letting the world see what they wanted. Uttering those words without hurtful irony would have been obscene. “I don’t think any of us know ourselves.”

He rubbed his lips together, a gesture I remembered from our early days. Darren was trying not to cry. It was painful to watch.

“I’ve been trying not to worry about it,” he said. “I’ve been trying to figure out if I care whether people think less of me or not, and honestly, I don’t think it’s that. I mean, f**k, I’m a drummer. I’m always the one standing in the back. It’s just… I feel like I never had the chance to work it out and say, ‘All right. This is what I’ll be to the world.’ I got all wrapped up in him, especially after Gabby. Am I g*y without him? Or am I back to who I was? Because I never thought about it before him, so now I’m taking on this whole identity without ever deciding on it. Am I making any sense?”

“Yeah.” My throat was dry. “Did you leave him at the airport? Did he get on the plane?”

“No. He followed me to the parking lot. I mean, the poor guy was so baffled. He’s asking me if there’s someone else, or if I’m upset about Gabs and that’s causing the freak out.”

“The thing about a freak out is you don’t know why you’re freaking out,” I said, opening the fridge. “How do you feel about him?”

“I don’t know.”

“Ah.” I cracked a beer for myself.

“I do know how I feel about missing that flight.”

“How?”

“Fifteen hundred in the hole. Non-returnable flight. Whole new last minute ticket. I have seven hundred in the bank and two maxed out credit cards. I could take the car, but even if I start driving now, I’ll miss the show.”

I swallowed my beer, thought for a second, and said, “I think I have a solution to that part of the dilemma.”

CHAPTER 15.

MONICA

Darren had taken some convincing. He was obviously uncomfortable with using Jonathan’s money, but he needed it. He was swayed when I assured him it would be just him and me. Jonathan wasn’t coming, and I wouldn’t let the plane ride color my decision to stay with him or not.

We took the bus to Santa Monica Airport to avoid parking fees. I’d explained as much of the situation to Jonathan as I thought appropriate. I left out Darren’s freak out and replaced it with “he missed his flight.” Jonathan didn’t seem smug about winning the Great Private Jet Battle, only irritated that I insisted on taking the bus.

“It’s just a waste of time,” he said. I heard him tapping computer keys. Multitasking again.

“I have nothing else to do. And I like the bus. It reminds me of when I was a kid.”

“Were you this worried about tainting conversations when you were a kid?”

“My spankings weren’t undertaken so willingly back then.”

He sighed and let it go.

Darren and I sat with our bags between our feet. He got up for women with children twice during the hour-and-a-quarter long ride. By the time we got to Sepulveda, the crowd had thinned, and he and I had stopped the seat-flip.

“Did you tell Kevin you wouldn’t be on the flight?” he asked.

“Texted him.”

“He told me his side of what happened the other night.”

I shook my head. “I bet he did.”

“Really, Monica, I’ve been meaning to tell you. I think you should give Kevin another chance.”