Covet Thy Neighbor

branch, inching toward the vertical piece. Leaning in close, I watched carefully to be sure I made the corner clean and sharp. Once I was satisfied with that, and had begun the vertical line, I said, “You ever question what you’re doing? Or rather, what you believe in?”
    Darren was silent. I thought I might’ve struck a nerve, and not with the tattoo needle this time. I kept working, and he didn’t flinch as the needle touched his skin.
    “Yes.” It had been so long since I’d asked, the answer seemed to come out of the blue. Darren turned his head a little so I could see his face in profile. “I do question what I’m doing and what I believe in.”
    I dipped the needle again. “But you still believe.”
    “I do.”
    Silence fell again. I made it all the way down to the bottom corner of the cross’s vertical branch before either of us broke that silence.
    When he spoke again, his voice didn’t startle me as much as the words.
    “You don’t talk about your family much.”
    I winced. “No. No, I don’t.”
    “Touchy subject?”
    “Just a bit.”
    “Do you mind if I ask?” His voice was softer. “If you don’t want to discuss it, that’s fine. I’m just curious.”
    Seemed only fair, I supposed. Especially if I ever expected him to understand why things like this cross I was tracing kept me at bay. Well, aside from those times when lust got the best of both of us. And if it got his mind off the pain, then . . .
    I focused on the edge of the cross, keeping the line straight and sharp. “I haven’t spoken to my family in years. Not since right before I dropped out of college.”
    “What happened?”
    I moistened my lips. “My family has never been accepting of people being gay. I’ve known that since I was a kid, but I’ve also known since I was a teenager that I was gay.” I paused to dab away some more excess ink. “Kept dating girls just to keep up appearances, but I knew.”
    “Did anyone else know?”
    “Michael. My best friend. His family went to the same church I did, so he knew how scared I was of the secret getting out. Actually, he’s here in Tucker Springs now.” I dipped the needle in the ink cup again. “Runs the acupuncture clinic across the street.”
    “Must be nice, having an old friend nearby.”
    “When you can’t go back to your hometown? You’d better believe it.” I lifted the gun away, and tilted my neck and rolled my shoulders to pull some stiffness loose, pretending that stiffness was just from working, not the subject matter. “Anyway, so he knew, but no one else did. And he was also the only one who knew that by my senior year, I was a closeted atheist too. I just . . . I didn’t believe anymore. I couldn’t. No matter how much I wanted to.”
    I dreaded the barrage of you need to pray more and you have to have faith that always came from believers. But it didn’t come.
    “So what happened?” he asked softly.
    I started the tattoo again, turning the bottommost corner and working on the lowest horizontal line. “After I left for college—after I came to Tucker Springs—my parents . . . God. Every time I talked to them, they kept asking if I’d met a nice girl yet. You know, dropping hints about wanting me to settle down and get married as soon as possible.”
    “Ugh, that’s aggravating.”
    “Seriously. Anyway, I was just starting my junior year in college, and decided I couldn’t keep lying anymore. So I called my mom.” That familiar prickle down my spine raced some equally familiar nausea upward. “And I told her.”
    “And how did that go?”
    “Badly.” The word came out as a hollow whisper because I just couldn’t put any more energy into it than that. The whole thing had happened years ago, and it still felt fresh and raw every time I talked about it.
    “Have you spoken to any of them? Since then, I mean?”
    “My older brother and I tried to get back in touch a few years ago.” I swallowed. “Exchanged a few emails, talked on the phone once. But . . .” I dabbed at some more ink on his skin. “We just couldn’t reconnect.”
    “That’s a shame,” he said quietly.
    “Yeah. But what can you do?”
    He turned his head a little, probably just enough to bring me into his peripheral vision. “You must miss them.”
    “After what they put me through? No. I can’t say I do.”
    He was quiet, but kept his head turned, and I focused as intently as I could on continuing his tattoo, hoping he’d let the subject drop.