Bound by Lies (45 page)

A few hours into the night and it’s finally dark out. Max, Art and Jackson are all angry, with good reason, at Jenner for giving Brayden an unheard-of pass. Every time he catches one of them looking his way, his reward is a cutting, accusatory glare before the rolling tide of customers breaking against the bar’s counter sweeps them away again. Luckily, they’re all too preoccupied for Jenner to have to defend that decision just yet.

Usually, the costume requirement is enough to take the edge off. The amusement that comes from seeing familiar faces, whether they’re people he loathes, tolerates or likes, dolled up in ridiculous attire gets him through. Even if his feet are killing him and his head is pounding from the shouting and constant, high-volume chatter echoing off the walls, when slipping out the back door become more and more tempting, he can glance up and see burly John Wensley who mans the butcher’s counter over at the supermarket dressed up like Little Bo Peep and have a good laugh.

Tonight it’s not enough. The costumes are mostly a disappointment—a mix of slutty you-name-its for the young women and an assortment of rubber masks or pitiful attempts at zombie or vampire make-up for the men. There’s no creativity, no out-of-the-box thinking. After spending so much time at Manse where the more outlandish you look, the better chance you have at being noticed and getting laid, the townsfolk’s pathetic efforts are just making him sad.

There’s also the matter of missing Brayden. Jenner thought that he’d be too busy to care if Brayden was absent. Things are hectic enough, but he can’t get Brayden out of his mind. After so many years of thinking of the holiday as a lucrative chore, something to suck up and tolerate for the good of their bottom line, he’s rather shocked to be so disappointed Brayden didn’t want to be there.

It’s not even about the extra help, though it would have been nice to have another set of hands pouring drinks. Jenner catches himself scanning the room, as if Brayden’s smile might be found in the sea of faces, able to warm Jenner’s heart in seconds and make the hard work feel worth it.

He wanted them to have this together; he’s slowly realizing he wants them to have everything together. In a purely selfish way, Jenner simply wants Brayden at his side because being apart from him is a greater hardship than the year’s most grueling shift. Without Brayden, Jenner feels that he is less than he could be. The shine on everything good is a little too dull and the wearying hours left to go stretch out before him like an endless ocean.

It feels just as crowded behind the bar as in front of it as the staff moves around each other, trying to do many things at once in a confined space.

Max is wearing her usual, which is cute enough, but Jenner has seen it many times before. She’s dressed in a black spandex body suit with cat ears, whiskers painted on her cheeks and a fluffy tail, an ensemble affectionately referred to as ‘Evil Pussy’. She’ll scratch your eyes out if you aren’t careful; her distaste for the comments, leering, and nightmarish collection of hours is so intense.

Art is also donning a classic, playing up his curly red hair for all its worth with a clown outfit and big red nose, though he lost the oversized shoes in the interest of efficiency.

No one gives Jenner’s costume a second look, since it’s the same thing he wears every year, without fail. Though he insists that everyone’s outfits remain a surprise and will go on and on about how unhappy he is when his friends repeat outfits previously worn, the big joke is that he never changes his. Partly because it’s his damn bar anyway, and partly because of the context of his costume, but he always gets away with it. No one ever gives him a hard time.

One strange phenomenon of being in such a crowded space is that the volume level of noise from conversation will ebb and rise as if someone is turning a knob, controlling every single voice at once. They’re kind of magical coincidences, when everyone pauses to take a breath between words at once, giving Jenner’s pounding headache a much-needed, yet too-brief, reprieve.

During one of these lulls, Jenner is able to detect raised voices near the entrance, clear across the room from where he is behind the bar. His gaze snaps up. People near the door move out of the way and surge toward it at the same time, both clearing space and taking it away.

Foreboding sends a sickly wave of discomfort through his body before he is even able to make out what they’re saying, or who they’re all looking at, because he can see it happening. He’s not the only one who has stopped to stare. The lull draws out, too long. Heads turn.

“Oh my god!”

“Is that Cry Baby Braydy?”

“Jesus, look at him,” some female voice laughs brightly, with malice.

Jenner’s hands are on the bar, his body still as a statue, every bit of his mental focus on what’s happening at the door. Nothing else matters. With tunnel vision, he lets the rest get lost in darkness.

One of the girls, dressed as what he imagines the package called ‘hot honey bee’, in a yellow and black striped minidress and stilettos, walks up to the person who just came through the door. Jenner doesn’t even process it at first. All he sees is oiled, tan muscles, long, golden hair, leather and metal and the honey bee’s hand pushing a crumpled dollar bill inside the newcomer’s wide belt.

He hears laughing, focused in the rear corner, the table closest to the door, which has been packed with all of Jenner’s old football buddies—Todd and Jason and Chad and all of the rest of them, claiming those seats so that they can get the first word in as soon as anyone arrives, laughing at their expense, making commentary on what they wore.

Jenner vaults the bar before Todd even stands from his stool.

Turning his shoulder in to the mass of people packed like sardines as they await their precious glasses of beer, he parts them, pushing to get there, to cross what feels like miles of distance, not looking away. Not blinking.

With both hands, Todd knocks Brayden backward into the guy who had been standing behind him. The guy frowns down at Brayden and pushes him back at Todd, from behind.

“Did you just touch my girl? Did you just touch her?” Todd sneers down at Brayden, bearing down on him, pushing him again, harder.

“No!” Brayden protests, his voice sounding fainter, slighter, getting swallowed up by the mob. “No, I…”

Jenner sees many things at once, still pushing, still trying to get there to save him in time.

He sees that his brother, Callum Parrish, is there, at a table with a date a few feet away from the action, watching it all.

Ruth Clare is there, too, over against a wall with a bunch of older ladies, diagonal from where Brayden is, and she’s getting to her feet, spying her grandson, looking horrified and worried.

Art has come out from the kitchen with a tray stacked with food, wearing the stupid clown suit, seeing Brayden instantly, looking like, at any moment, the tray is going to fall right out of his hand, the burgers and fries scattering over people and the floor.

Jenner sees Brayden, too, not for the outfit he’s wearing, but the wideness of his eyes and the pure, unadulterated, helpless confusion in them.

So Jenner pushes harder.

A hard shove to the center of Brayden’s chest almost knocks him off his feet as Todd steps toward him, one step for every shove, moving him back toward the door like he wants to take this outside, where there’s room for the real beating to happen.

And Jenner pushes harder.

“You just touched my girl, faggot,” Todd bellows. It’s impossibly loud in the now-quiet room. There’s no mistaking it.

In his peripheral vision, Jenner sees others that are now, like him, trying to carve a path to the door, just trying to
get there
.

There’s a clatter from Jenner’s right—sudden and loud—but he can’t look, doesn’t care. Just a few more feet, peering over people’s heads, trying to keep Brayden in sight as the aging ex-football stars laugh and grunt in encouragement and their girls just smile, clinging to the sides of their dates, looking at Brayden like prey, not a person. He’s pushed from behind again, from the front, tossed recklessly as Todd inches him towards the threshold with nothing but black night and masked strangers beyond.

Finally, just before Todd shoves Brayden back through the door, Jenner bursts free.

Immediately, Jenner gets Brayden away from the door, putting his body between Brayden and Todd, with the table full of Jenner’s old teammates behind Todd. Jenner doesn’t care about the rest of the bar, the rest of the people watching—hundreds of them. All that matters is that he got to Brayden, and that Brayden is safely at Jenner’s back.

Eyes locked on Todd, Jenner roars, “Get away from him! Now!”

“Jesus Christ, dude,” Todd laughs, looking around at his friends to share the joke. “What’s your problem? This doesn’t fucking concern you.”

“You don’t touch him,” Jenner growls, his deep voice carrying, keeping the crowd hushed, keeping all eyes on them.

Brayden is silent, but Jenner feels him there, brushing against his arm, a tense bundle of nervous energy and shrill fear that screams out to every one of Jenner’s instincts to protect and defend.

“What the fuck is this?” Todd squints, stepping up in Jenner’s face. “He your boyfriend, Parrish?”

There’s snickering and the low murmur of comments from the table filled with the people who used to be important to him. Winning their approval used to be everything. And why? He can’t remember. Why did he ever care what these people thought?

The question rings like a struck bell, and they’re still laughing, still thinking this is fun, that this is all a big joke, that even if the person they had just been attacking was kicked and bleeding or worse, it was all harmless. It didn’t
mean
anything.

But it does mean something. It means everything.

Jenner feels his heart beating heavily in his chest, feels the soft, warm pressure of Brayden’s body against his arm and knows he’s going to say it, even though he can still sense those bodies cutting through the crowd and those countless sets of eyes, watching.

There’s no time for second guessing, no time to take anything back.

“Yes,” Jenner says, loud enough for them all to hear, for there to be no doubt. “He is.”

The whole table erupts in laughter, thinking maybe that Jenner is in on their big joke at Brayden’s expense. He sees all of them—Todd, Jason, Chad, the honeybee, a few aging cheerleaders that Jenner, long ago, engaged in foreplay with just to keep suspicion off of him.

Callum appears at the edge of the mob, squeezing between two people, cursing and grumbling at them to get the hell out of the way. Then Art arrives, too.

And they’re all looking at him.

Staring. Judging.

It’s the culmination of a lifetime of lying, a lifetime of hiding in plain sight.

His voice loses its anger and bravado, becoming more vulnerable, less sure of itself—horribly so. He tells them, “I’m serious,” and reaches out to take Brayden’s hand.

Heart racing, head spinning, as soon as Jenner looks down into Brayden’s eyes, seeing proof of his trust, his love, in them, it all shifts even more. The urge to fight fades away and the threatening tears rise closer to the surface, especially once he realizes what could have happened if he hadn’t been there, hadn’t gotten there in time. In his mind’s eye he sees Patrick’s kicked kitten, lying motionless on the ground, and he can’t breathe.

He leans in, touching Brayden’s face, asking, “Are you okay, baby?”

“He’s your… boyfriend…” Jenner hears Todd saying, slowly putting it all together, just like everyone else.

Brayden nods, steadily, bravely holding Jenner’s gaze, grasping Jenner’s arm, leaning in to his kiss when Jenner’s lips touch his forehead.

“You look amazing,” Jenner tells him. “I’m handling it, okay?”

“Okay,” Brayden murmurs, giving his hand a light squeeze.

All that matters is making sure Brayden is okay, and keeping him okay.

Nothing
else matters.

Callum is staring at them. As is Art, and Max, and Marla the florist, and all of their regulars, like Bill and Steve, and the ex-high-school-football stars and the former cheerleaders and neighbors and everyone.

And Jenner doesn’t have any fight left in him.

He’s ready to go, to turn and leave and never come back—forsaking his inheritance, his legacy, his home, everything in the name of being with Brayden and taking off the masks they’ve been wearing for far too long.

Shattering the tense, awkward silence, Callum steps forward.

Jenner braces himself for anything, ready for the worst, wholly unprepared for what actually happens.

Callum, dressed in a pinstriped gangster suit and fedora, turns to Todd and the rest of the jocks and says, “You got a problem with my brother?”

“Or maybe,” Art adds, stepping right up to Todd, intimidating him exactly the way he had tried to do with Brayden and then Jenner. “You have a problem with my friend, Brayden.”

Shocked, Jenner slowly realizes that the whole bar is no longer looking at him and Brayden.

They’re looking at Todd and the table full of bullies.

From the corner of his eye, Jenner sees Ruth Clare looking starkly worried and trying to approach, one of her girlfriends trying to pull her back. She calls out, “Brayden!”

“Sit down, Nan. It’s okay,” Brayden tells her.

“N-n-no problem,” Todd tells Art and Callum, hands raised and backing off, literally. “No problem.”

To a woman just beyond the edge of the crowd, Callum says, “Get me my phone, I’m calling the police.”

She nods and begins to dig in her purse.

“Hey!” Todd exclaims, his voice becoming shriller, “We’re cool! We’re cool, right?” He glances around the table at the other guys. “See? It was just a joke. A bad joke. We didn’t know.”

“Apologize,” Art growls, bigger than all of them, a pissed-off, enormous man dressed like a clown. It’s one of the weirdest sights Jenner has ever beheld.

“S-sorry Brayden,” Todd chirps. “Sorry, Parrish! No offense. I swear.”

Brayden’s fingers are tightly woven around his own and the feel of his body pressed to Jenner’s side is everything worth fighting for, and he never knew. He never truly knew until that precise moment. But now that he does, he’s never letting go.