The Art of Hero Worship (14 page)

BJ’s overnight guest is just leaving as we
arrive at my room. She smiles shyly, manages not to blush at all,
and makes her exit, shoes dangling from her fingertips. BJ is
glowing in a way I don’t recognize.

“Dacia’s a cool girl… such a cool girl.” He
stares after her as she walks to her room down the hall. “I might
be in love.”

I can relate. I don’t say so but I look at
Liam and he’s studying me. “This is Liam Norwell. The guy I told
you about.”

BJ snaps out of his love trance and throws
himself into Liam’s arms. “You. Are. The. Man.”

Liam is at a loss for words, which makes
sense.

“You saved my bro’s ass and I wanna thank
you somehow. Like, wanna meet a whole slew of freshman girls who’ll
be thrilled to show you some major hero worship?”

Liam gently pushes BJ back and says,
“Thanks, but no thanks.”

“Get used to having Liam around. You’re
going to be seeing a lot of him.” I figure I won’t spell it out for
BJ, but I’ll give him lots of clues and plenty of fair warning.

“You guys are having like a total bromance!”
BJ laughs so loud it causes a return of my brain-splitting
headache. “I gotta go get some food… used up a lot of energy last
night.” He makes a rude “I had sex” gesture. “You guys wanna come
along?”

Liam shakes his head and I say, “I think
we’re just going to hang out here for a while.”

“Yeah, right… go ahead and chill. Sorry if
it smells like sex in there.” And with that classy warning, he’s
off to the dining hall.

“I can’t explain BJ. But I can apologize for
him.” I lead Liam into my room. “Welcome to my humble abode.”

Liam looks around at our undecorated,
slightly messy dorm room. “Cool.”

“It’s not even slightly cool.” I perch on
the edge of the bed and gesture for Liam to sit beside me. “Is the
reason you decided not to live in RetroHouse because you didn’t
want to run into me?” I can’t believe I ask the question so
bluntly; I’m starting to do more and more of this.

“I’m gonna level with you, man. When you
didn’t call me back last summer, I got messed up in the head. And I
figured that running into you every other day wouldn’t help me get
over you.”

I reach out to touch his thigh. It feels
rock hard through his black jeans, like he’s very tense simply
talking about this subject. “I’m sorry I screwed up your
housing.”

Liam shakes his head. “You know, I’m
actually glad I have my own place off campus. I think I’ve had
enough of dorm life.” He looks around at the standard college guy
mess that is our room. “Maybe you did me a favor.”

I’m also happy that we’ll have a place away
from here to hang around, so we won’t feel like we’re under a
microscope. Many students and faculty know that we are two of the
survivors of the shooting in the theater, and me sleeping in his
room in RetroHouse would have caused a lot of gossip that we don’t
need to be subjected to. “I like your place off campus too. It
feels more relaxing than here. A little more like a home.”

Liam smiles—it’s honest and open and
terrifying and brilliant, and it warms me in places that have
always been, at most, lukewarm.

BJ was right: Liam is the man.

We’ve been “together” for a week now. And I
find it ironic that the thing I worried about most—suddenly
being gay
when I’d never before thought of myself that
way—is not what actually ends up bothering me.
Being with a
man:
anybody would think this would be the sticking point for a
guy like me, especially when it comes to being romantically
involved with another very masculine man who has also never before
thought of himself as gay. But no, my problems are never that cut
and dry.

The bigger problem is that I know Liam is
holding something back from me. I’m fully aware that I don’t have a
right to access every personal detail of his life before I entered
it, but whatever he’s holding back from me is hurting him. And that
hurts me. Which hurts
us.

Tonight is the first night since the evening
of my drunken, vomiting display of brutal honesty that we’re
staying together—as in, sleeping together—at his place. By some
kind of mutual understanding, we’ve allowed our new status as a
“couple” to gradually sink into our brains all week, during which
time we’ve only met for dinner twice. Our dinner conversations were
at times stilted and awkward, which could be attributed to the fact
that we were sitting in the crowded, bustling RetroHouse dining
hall, being stared at from all sides. Now it’s Friday night and
couples tend to spend weekend time alone together. Liam invited me
to stay the weekend with him in his apartment, and I agreed. I
think
alone
is the only way we’re going to truly learn about
each other.

Liam is always a complete gentleman. He
refuses to allow me to take public transportation to his apartment,
insisting that he come pick me up at my dorm, about which I’m
secretly glad. I’m still extremely reluctant to put myself in
small, enclosed spaces with strangers, despite the fact that in the
Harrison Theater we were attacked by a fellow student.

I slide into the passenger seat of his car
and fight the urge to lean his way and kiss him. We haven’t yet
re-established our physical relationship; I’m hoping we’ll find it
again this weekend. I want the intimacy with him. Not just the
sexual aspect of it, but the emotional bonding that comes with
physical familiarity. He must want a physical connection, too, as
he reaches across and squeezes my hand. I cling to his wide palm
for a few seconds.

As always, Liam looks impressive. He has a
rough and tumble style that I never thought I’d get into—his blond
hair is swept to the side, and he wears jeans, a baseball t-shirt,
a leather jacket, and boots that I’m glad are brown, not black,
because honestly, big black boots still freak me out.

He mentioned in his last text message that
he wanted to eat dinner somewhere off campus tonight, so I tried to
look neater than my usual basketball shorts and T-shirt. I’m
wearing a button down white oxford shirt and my least ripped pair
of jeans, and of course, my standard dress-up boat shoes. I shaved
extra-close and spent way too much time fixing my short dark waves
just perfectly. I’m even wearing cologne.

Liam studies me for a moment, but says
nothing about how I look. “You ready to go?”

I toss my pack in the back seat. “Any time
you are.”

And just like that we’re off.

“You like Thai? Or are you a more a steak
kind of guy?” I glance at his profile as he drives. I like what I
see but I’m not sure whether I should say so.

“I guess I’d prefer steak. I never know what
to order at Thai restaurants.”

“Then steak it is.”

Within a few minutes we’re downtown and he’s
parking outside Charlie’s Steakhouse. I climb out of the car before
he can come around to help me, which seems to frustrate him. Our
roles here are in question. Both of us are doing the best we can to
be the man in the relationship. At the door of the restaurant a
pretty hostess who I recognize from my photography class greets us,
and she looks from one of us to the other, like she isn’t sure
which flavor of eye candy she prefers—rugged, husky, hairy, and
blond or sleek, smooth, slim, and dark.

“Know of any parties tonight, guys?” She
winks as she seats us in a corner booth. She obviously thinks we’re
loading up on food prior to a night of partying, when we’re
actually on our very first official date. “Maybe we can meet up
somewhere when I get out of work.”

Liam is gentle in his discouragement. “It’s
not a party kind of night for us. But there’s always something
going on at RetroHouse.”

The hostess looks puzzled by the rejection,
but she smiles and thanks him. After another long look at me she
strides back to the hostess table. Meanwhile, I struggle to accept
that I’ve voluntarily placed myself in an enclosed space with a
bunch of strangers who have not been frisked for weapons.

When we’re alone, Liam hooks his ankle
around mine. I suck in a quick breath, which I think he hears.
“This okay with you?”

I’m not sure if he’s referring to the
restaurant or our seating or the way his ankle is hooked around
mine, but I nod. I want to get to the heart of the matter that’s
weighing on me before we order and eat, and I figure there’s no
better time than the present. “Something’s been on my mind.”

“Yeah, what?” Liam looks at me from across
the table, and I know that I’ve made the right choice in throwing
most
of my caution to the wind and becoming involved with
him. His eyes are breathtaking—the most intelligent and
compassionate eyes I’ve ever seen—and I want him to always look at
me with such intensity. But there’s also concern. He’s worried
about what I’m going to ask.

“Last weekend, you started to tell me that
there were things about you that I don’t know. And I’m starting to
believe that these things are hurting you.”

Liam’s stunning gaze drops to his lap.

“I want you to trust me with the stuff in
your past that hurts.”

“Shit.” He doesn’t look back up at me. And
I’m pretty sure he slides just slightly to the outer edge of the
booth as if contemplating escape.

“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t
want to, but you need to know, I can help you cope with your
problem, whatever it is.”

He replies too quickly. “Okay… so it’s like
this… I feel like shit because I let my buddies die in that
theater… it’s not easy for me to live with.” I hear the sigh and
then his gaze is back on my face. He swallows hard and looks away,
and I know that there’s much more behind the haunted expression
I’ve started to see more and more often. “I lost somebody else a
long time ago… in a fire. Not a subject I like to talk about. But
there it is… and it still gets to me every now and then. Not gonna
lie to you.”

A fire. He lost “somebody” in a fire. I want
to know who, when, how… all of it. But I can sense that he just
confided more in me than he’s ever confided in anyone else. I don’t
press him for details. “Thanks for telling me that.”

Liam reaches across the table and takes my
hand in his. A public first for us and I wait for my own reaction
to it—embarrassment, shame, worry? I experience none of these; all
I feel is relieved that I’m the one sitting across from him who he
has reached out to. “Yeah, sure. Uh… no worries.”

Sometimes when he says no worries I think
it’s code for—you might want to worry about this, dude.

“So how about we check out the menu?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

***

Dinner is great and not nearly as awkward as
is sitting together in the school cafeteria being studied by the
masses. Liam takes the long route home, and I’m not sure whether
this is a stalling tactic or just a scenic ride through the rolling
hills of our Vermont college town. At his apartment, he parks,
grabs my bag, and escorts me to the door. Standing in front of his
apartment, he says very softly, “This… uh… this night means a lot
to me.”

I hope he means that we’re going to
fully
find our way back to each other tonight.

Once we’re inside, Liam gets a bottle of
wine, a couple of glasses, and we sit on his futon, which is now
folded up like a couch, to drink it. He makes no move to put on the
television or music, and I don’t miss the background noise at all.
I’m hoping to soon hear the thudding of his heart—a sound I’ve
missed.

“It’s not so weird as I thought it would be…
you know, being in a relationship with you… another guy,” I
volunteer, in an effort to say what I’m fairly certain we’re both
thinking.

Liam looks at me, tilts his head, and
smiles. “We aren’t exactly out of our own little closet yet.”

“You know what?” I ask. He shakes his head
slowly, so I continue. “I’ve faced death twice. I’ve lost the
person closest to me to a brutal act of violence. I don’t think I
care too much what the people on the other side of the closet door
think.”

“Same here.” And he takes my glass from my
hand, places it on the low coffee table beside his glass, and leads
me to the bed. “But the truth is, Jase, I never have.”

This is an area where we’re different, and
it’s one of the things about Liam that reminds me of Ginny. Neither
of them cares much what the crowd is thinking or doing. The list of
common qualities between my two most recent lovers really isn’t
very lengthy, though. It pretty much begins and ends with this.

No words are spoken as we stare at the bed,
but I’m not troubled by the silence. This man with whom I’ve shared
such significant moments in my life is about to express to me how
much he cares. And I’m going to show him how very mutual that
sentiment is. There really are no perfect words for this moment so
silence is better.