The Art of Hero Worship (8 page)

***

Liam turns all the way to the side to look
at me when I climb into the car. He’s quiet, taking me in very
obviously, his eyes roving from my head to my toes and then back.
Finally, he says, “Your hair grew back where the bullet… you
know.”

I nod, aware that I’m studying him with
equal attention to detail. And then I make my big confession. “I
left school and never said good bye to you.”

“Yeah, I know.” I’m surprised at how good he
looks. His blond hair is standing tall and his light beard shaped
into a long rectangle. And I think he’s been working out because
his shoulders are bulkier and his biceps are bigger beneath his
black Coldplay T-shirt than I remember. When I look at him, I’m
surprised that I’m not reminded of my fear and pain, but instead
I’m reminded of the strength he offered me and the warmth I felt
when he held me. Which is also surprising, but for totally
different reasons.

“I’m sorry for that, Liam. I appreciate what
you did for me. I wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

“The feeling is mutual.” When I look at him
curiously, because I did
nothing
to save him, he adds, “I’ll
explain that later this weekend.”

Still parked in my driveway, we sit in
silence. I just lean back in my seat and take in the secure feeling
I get when I’m with Liam that I didn’t even realize I’d missed.
“I’m glad you called.”

Liam shrugs with what seems to be
discomfort, and says, “Well, I guess it’s time to get this show on
the road.” He backs out of the driveway and I fight the urge to
reach out and touch him.

What’s going on with me?

This is the first time since April that the
idea of going forward with my life seems tolerable. It’s like
seeing him, and having him beside me, gives me hope. My response to
him
is
quite unique, and I don’t think it’s just because of
that one night we messed around… and acted like we were more than
just friends. But now isn’t the time to question my feelings. Maybe
I should just follow along behind Liam, like I did back in April
when chaos reigned. Maybe he’s going to save my life for the third
time.

***

After several hours of driving with the bare
minimum of conversation, we arrive at the little cottage near the
Bourne Bridge. It’s just after nine o’clock at night. The place is
nothing spectacular; a modest 1970’s beachfront cottage with what I
imagine are spectacular views of the bay in daylight. The exterior
is rustic and some may say it had seen better days, but the feeling
of escape in this little house is palpable. The interior is just
what I expected based on the outside: couches draped in floral
sheets that look like they belong to somebody’s blue-haired
grandmother, tables covered in plastic tablecloths, and
Your
Visit to Cape Cod
types of magazines stacked up in
old-fashioned wooden wracks.

“The parents of my buddy at work own this
place. They rent it out for most of the summer, but there was a
last minute cancellation for this weekend so they offered it to
me.” Liam places the pizza we stopped and picked up on the
plastic-lined kitchen table and I place the case of beer beside it.
“They’re great people. Wouldn’t let me pay a cent.”

“That was nice of them.” I look around at
the unfamiliar environment and wait to experience the anxiety I
have become accustomed to when in new places that has plagued me
ever since the shootings. But despite a chill of wariness, I’m
relatively fine. “Where’s your summer job, Liam?”

“I work in a pub on the ocean in Lockwood,
my hometown in Maine. Mostly I do the heavy lifting, janitorial
work, and the upkeep of the building. Not too glamorous but I like
it.”

I can picture big and burly Liam lugging
around beer kegs and cleaning the floors using a 26-quart janitor’s
rolling bucket with a mop sticking out of the mop wringer. “So you
don’t cook?”

“Nah, they don’t trust me too much in the
kitchen. My buddy, Tommy, is the main fry cook, and his Dad tends
the bar. He’s got a couple of younger sisters who do the serving
and bussing, and his mom does the books.”

“They keep it almost all-in-the-family.”

“Yeah, except for me. I’ve worked there
since I turned sixteen. The Dewey’s take care of me.”

The fact that he never mentioned his own
family hits me as strange but I don’t ask him about it. I wonder
how the Dewey’s feel about Liam’s multiple brushes with death this
past spring. But I offer him some truth instead of asking him
personal questions. “I stopped working about a month ago. Just
couldn’t cope with being behind the counter in a convenience store,
you know?”

Liam drops his duffle bag on the floor and
relieves me of my backpack, putting it carefully on the floor
beside his bag. “Yeah, I feel yah.” I think he actually does get
it, too. “Sit down and I’ll serve you.” The little cottage has an
open floor plan, and he gestures toward the couch in the living
room area.

“A guy could get used to this treatment.” I
walk to the couch and sit down, all the while watching as Liam
searches the cupboard for plates, and then stacks them and some
beers on top of the pizza box, and comes to where I’m sitting.

“Well, go ahead and get used to it… for the
weekend, at least. You’re my guest and I’m gonna treat you right.”
Our eyes meet and I feel a zing of human connection that I haven’t
experienced since I last saw him. He winks and breaks the spell. We
dive into the pizza.

“I haven’t been this hungry in a long time…
it’s good.” I’m suddenly ravenous and shove the pizza in my mouth
with a gusto I thought I’d lost forever.

“You look like you dropped a few pounds,
man. So go on and chow down.” I can tell he wants to ask me why
I’ve apparently been starving myself but he plays it cool and
resists. I’m sure he hopes I will voluntarily explain my
near-skeletal state, yet I have no explanation. I just haven’t been
very hungry lately.

We eat in silence and when the pizza is
gone, I get up to take the plates to the sink. “You’re my guest,
man. Sit down and drink your beer. I’ll go get us a couple
more.”

When he returns with the beers, the
lighthearted atmosphere is gone and I know that the time to talk
has come. I want so desperately to know how he’s doing in the
aftermath of the shootings, and if he feels as alone and scared and
numb as I do, but I’m a closed-off kind of guy. I can’t bring
myself to ask. I lift my beer to my lips and wait.

“I’ve thought a lot about you, Jase.” He
sniffs and then rubs his nose. “I can’t stop thinking about you, to
be honest.”

“What do you mean?”

He shakes his head and runs his huge hands
through his blond hair. “I don’t quite understand it… you know,
what’s going on in my head. But I figure I’ve got to be thinking
about you so much because I need to know how you’re doing. I must
need to know you’re okay, or something. Right?”

I nod. What he just said makes sense,
although it isn’t how I handled
my
stress. I’d simply
blocked him out of my mind along with every other reminder of the
spring shootings. “If you want to know how I am, honestly, I’ve
seen better days.”

“I had a feeling about that….”

“It’s hard for me living at home. It’s like
I’ve got one foot stuck in a rut. My mom doesn’t want me to go back
to Batcheldor at all because of what happened, and part of me wants
to stay at home and attend the school in my town. But another part
of me knows that if I don’t go back to Batcheldor College, I’m
going to find myself stuck in a rut so deep I can’t get out.”

“Well….” Liam brushes his beard with his
hand, evidently deep in thought. “Well, let’s see if we can’t get
you out of that rut this weekend. ‘Kay?”

His words are upbeat, but he’s not smiling.
And I’m confused. Liam confuses me. “Why are you doing all this for
me?”

“We’ll talk about that later this weekend, I
promise. But right now, how about if we just try to find some
comedy on TV and suck down some brews and kick back?”

Despite being mildly curious about Liam’s
reasons for looking out for me so attentively, I’m more relieved to
be experiencing this reprieve from my own emotional torment.
Something about Liam’s mere presence has me breathing easier, and I
like it. “Sure. Sounds like a plan to me.”

We drink all night. And most people would
think that a lot of talking would accompany all that drinking but
no, we quietly watch stand-up comedy and then an old black and
white war movie, and then we find an 80’s Big Hair Band Countdown
to the Top Rock Ballad, which pretty much gets us to sunrise.

“Wanna go to the bedrooms and crash?” Liam
asks, when the sun starts to peek in the window. “I’ll take one of
the bunk beds and you can have the room with the double bed.”

“Why can’t we just stay here and sleep?” I’m
drunk, but not too drunk to know that tomorrow I can blame my
suggestion to sleep together on having indulged in too much booze.
My typical cop-out.

We’re still fully dressed, shoes and all,
sitting on either end of this lumpy floral beast of a sofa that’s
probably older than both of us put together. Upon my suggestion, he
slides down on its outside edge and pats the spot between him and
the back of the couch. “Join me, won’t you?”

I scramble up beside him and wedge my newly
skinny body between Liam and the couch. He sighs and I remember the
sound so well that it makes me smile. “You always sigh….”

“I sigh when I want something I just can’t
have.” He sighs again. I’m too drunk to wonder about his remark.
Well,
almost
too drunk.

I face the high back of the couch, and I
wish so much I could turn around and push my face against the
softness of Liam’s T-shirt but in doing that I’d be going to a
place where I wasn’t invited. It would be almost like asking for a
kiss, at a minimum, and since neither one of us is gay that would
be too weird. So I cross my arms in front of my chest and enjoy the
feeling of being spooned by a person with whom I feel safe. I,
however, find it difficult to talk myself out of being aroused,
which gives me another reason to be thankful that I’m not pushed up
against him, face to face. My not so little secret would surely
then be revealed. And true to form, I blame my stiff dick on my
drunken state.

I lie there with him, listening closely for
his steady heartbeat, and enjoying the intimacy. Strangely, being
close to Liam also brings me back to memories of times I got close
to Ginny. She too liked to spoon me from behind. I smile, thinking
I must be very “spoonable.” Liam’s chin drops onto my shoulder,
returning me to the here and now, and his dependable arms work
their way around my shoulders. I don’t think I could ask for
anything more.

But as my eyes start to blink and close, I
let myself wonder what it is that he wants enough to make him
sigh.

Despite a nasty hangover, this is the best
Saturday I’ve had in months.

“Aaaahhhh! I’m never gonna live this down—I
forgot all about calling my mother last night. She probably thinks
you’re Ted Bundy and you took me to your evil dungeon to roast me
and eat my flesh and make a scarf out of my skin.”

“You’re mixing up your serial killers. I’m
pretty sure they’d be offended if they knew.” Liam smiles and I
notice that his teeth are not only chalk white but are also
perfectly straight, and I’m surprised. I have a hard time picturing
him as a twelve-year-old boy with awkward silver braces decorated
with red, white, and blue elastics, or as an adult wearing
whitening strips. This last thought reminds me of the organic
cinnamon-flavored whitening strips his marketing group was working
on before the shooting and I fight the urge to dig a hole in the
sand and stick my head into it. Memories of the shooting still have
this kind of effect on me.

“What’s the matter, Jase?” On the white
sandy beach in front of our cozy cottage, we’re lying on matching
pink bath towels, heads and feet in the sand. We spent the morning
alternately swimming and eating dry toast, thanks to the ocean in
our front yard and a loaf of bread left in the freezer by the
cottage’s former guests. “What just crossed your mind?”

“You don’t want to know, Liam. In any case,
I’m going to reply to Mom’s twenty-seven texts.”

He lets me off the hook and laughs. “You
don’t want to hold off until she reaches the round number of
thirty? I don’t think you’ll have to wait very long at this
rate.”

I shake my head. “Knowing my mother, she’s
had a tracking device implanted in my cell phone. She’ll show up
here if I don’t let her know I’m okay.”

“It’s cool that she loves you so much.” His
expression changes drastically. Not in a good way, either.

I wonder about this change, but just shrug
and send off the “I’m okay, Ma, so don’t panic” text.