Out of Nowhere(105)
Because I already was safe. I could protect myself. Rather, there was no one in my life I needed to protect myself from. Not really. Not anymore.
XAVIER OPENS the door and immediately pulls me into a hug.
“I’m so sorry about Pat, bro. So sorry.” He squeezes me, then thumps me on the back.
“Thanks,” I mumble into his shoulder.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the funeral, man? I would’ve been there.”
“I—well, I mean, you guys didn’t exactly get along, so I didn’t figure you’d care that much.”
“I would’ve wanted to be there for you, you fucking idiot,” he tells me, shaking his head and gesturing me into the kitchen.
“Oh. Sorry. Thanks. I guess I didn’t really think about it like that.”
X rolls his eyes and sits me down on one of the stools at the bar that separates his kitchen counter from his living room.
He grabs a beer out of the fridge and slides it in front of me.
“Oh, um—thanks, man… but I’m not, uh—I’m taking a break for a bit.” I push the beer away with one finger even as I can taste its icy bite in the back of my throat.
“Yeah?” X immediately takes it away from me and puts it back in the fridge. “That’s… shit, that’s good, man. Really good.” He sets a lemonade in front of me instead and takes one for himself. “It’s this lemonade from Lancaster that Angela’s obsessed with. Pretty good, actually.”
“She here?”
“Nah, she’s out with some of her girlfriends. Oh, hey, you know who I could swear I saw the other day? Daniel.”
“Um, yeah, he was in town. We… uh, we hung out, actually.”
“You don’t hang out with people.” X snorts. “And you definitely don’t hang out with Daniel. What’s the deal?”
“Well, I just… he wanted to talk about some stuff, so….”
“I always liked Daniel.”
I roll my eyes like I always do when he’s said this over the years. But then I stop and remind myself that I don’t have to feel that way about Daniel anymore.
“Hey, Colin,” X says, which is weird because he almost never uses my full name. “I’m real sorry about Pat, but… you look good, bro. I mean, you look—don’t take this the wrong way, but you look better.”
Xavier’s looking at me totally sincerely. My oldest friend. And all of a sudden, nothing makes sense. It makes no sense that I’ve lied to him all these years. That I’ve shied away from ever talking about anything real with him, since he’s obviously seen a lot of it anyway.
“Colin! Dude, are you listening?”
“I’m gay,” I blurt, my voice echoing wildly in Xavier’s spotless tiled kitchen.
I take a huge sip of too-sweet lemonade and choke on it. When I can get a breath, I say, “I get if you don’t want to be my friend anymore—” but X punches me in the shoulder before I can finish my sentence. “Ow, shit!”
X stands up and starts pacing in front of me. “That what you fucking think of me, you asshole? That I’m a damn bigot who’d throw away twenty years of friendship?”
I shake my head, looking up at him.
“God damn it, Colin!” he yells. “I can’t believe you!” He shakes his head. “This is—this isn’t a new thing, is it?”
He’s got his hands on his hips, staring down at me, and I stand up so I don’t feel quite so small.
“I—um, well, yeah, but I—”
“I could kill Pat!” Xavier roars.
“What?”
“See, I knew it.”
“Huh?”
X throws himself down on the stool next to me, looking thoughtful. “I always knew it was something. I even wondered if it was that you were gay, but then you always had such a problem with Daniel….” He shakes his head. “Fucking family, man. I get it. A lot of my family, they don’t… get me anymore. They think since I married Angela and started my job… like, that I’m not real anymore. You know? They think I’m putting on airs or something. It’s… you know, it’s bullshit—ignorant bullshit, but it still hurts that they think that. They think Angela’s a gold digger or something. Like, that she wants us to be all rich and living in the suburbs or some shit. But they don’t even know her. They don’t want to get to know her.”
The relief—no, the gratitude—that X is just talking like usual is so sharp that my throat gets thick and tears prick my eyes.
“And sorry to speak ill of the dead,” he’s saying, “but I didn’t just hate your dad because he was a racist dick. I hated him for this, too. The way you were always scared of disappointing him. How nothing you did was ever good enough. Man. I hated him for that.” X’s voice is fierce and I’m reminded of all the times he had my back.