Microsoft Word - Talkers_Redemption_Lane.docx

It was Brian’s stoic silence, as though he were prepared to sit
    there, forever and ever and ever, just to wait for Talker to get his shit
    together.
    “It was stupid,” Talker said, rolling his eyes. “Hella fucking
    dumb. It was… a misunderstanding, you know? I mean, when I left
    the house, I was practically throwing myself at him. And, he had
    every right to expect….” Can’t finish that sentence. “And I was so
    excited. I was thinking, ‘Weehoo—tonight’s the night, I’m finally
    gonna get laid!’”
    Brian let out what might have been a laugh next to him, and
    Talker couldn’t look at him—couldn’t hardly stand his touch on
    Talker’s knee. Brian had been there the whole time. He must have
    said, “But I love you…” twenty times, and Tate knew… oh
    goddammit, he fucking knew how hard it was to put your heart out
    on the line like that, and Brian had done it for him, and done it
    repeatedly, and Tate had patted his head like a puppy dog and said,
    “Yeah, baby, too bad you’re straight.”
    “You and Brian weren’t together at this time?” Dr. Sutherland’s
    voice was surprised—as he should be. Talker would have been ten-
    thousand kinds of fool to not know Brian really was Prince
    Charming, right? Turns out, Talker was twenty-thousand kinds of
    fool, because he’d walked out on Prince Charming to go get his
    cherry popped by Snidely Whiplash.
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    And Brian saved him again. “Tate still thought I was straight,”
    he said softly. “My bad. I… I didn’t come out very convincingly at
    first.”
    The doctor frowned, as though knowing there was a story here
    and not sure if he wanted to chicken-walk into it, or stick to his guns.
    He finally just nodded at Tate to carry on.
    “I… I kept thinking about Brian,” Tate confessed. Brian didn’t
    know this. Didn’t he deserve to know this? “I… you didn’t see how
    he looked as I walked out the door. He….” An apologetic glance at
    Brian, who was looking at him like he held water in his cupped
    hands as they stood in the middle of the desert. “He looked at me
    like I was worth something. Like it hurt him to watch me leave. Like
    he was worried about me.” Brian made a tiny sound then—a sound
    almost like Sunshine the rat, except sadder. “So I decided to come
    home.”
    Brian sucked in a breath, and Tate risked a look at him. “You
    never told me that,” he muttered, his low voice broken like a fire
    grate.
    Talker shrugged. “It seemed like some useless information,” he
    said, and Brian shuddered, all over, and swallowed. Talker had seen
    Brian cry once, and only once. It had been the night they’d gotten
    together, the night Brian had shaved his head to a Mohawk and put
    on makeup and combat boots and tried to convince Tate that yes,
    his roommate was gay, and yes, dammit!!! he was very much in love
    with Tate Walker. So Brian was pretty good at keeping it low key,
    keeping it together, not letting anything hang out.
    But it was hard, a struggle, something that hurt to watch, as
    Brian swallowed and swallowed and willed his face into its usual
    placid, stoic expression. Finally, he got hold of the quiver in his lip
    and said, “Not to me. Not useless to me,” before he took Tate’s hand
    and kissed it, gently, and then looked away, to the same pile of
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    tinsel that Dr. Sutherland had studied with such intensity a few
    minutes before.
    “So if you were going home to Brian, then what happened that
    night was….”
    Tate shrugged, and tried to make it nonchalant and ironic, like
    one of those suave movie actors, confessing to hidden, echoing
    caves of pain in their past with a few, carefree words.
    “A misunderstanding,” he said faintly. “It was a misunder-
    standing.”

    HE LOOKED down now at Brian’s shattered face and damaged
    body. His lips moved, maybe to use the word again, because God
    knew, it had Brian choking on his own bitterness back in the shrink’s
    office.
    “What?” Lyndie asked. She’d asked him who the bad guys
    were, and Tate moved his mouth again, maybe to tell her that it was
    “a misunderstanding,” but he couldn’t. Not when his lover was here,
    damaged and bleeding, unconscious and in pain. This was no
    “misunderstanding.” This was retaliation, from a twisted, violent soul.
    “Revenge.”
    The word was so quiet, for a minute the labored sound of
    Brian’s breathing silenced