Talker

it, okay? Think
    about it. Next time a pretty girl flirts with you, tel her straight up you don’t swing that way. If it’s a guy, tel him you’re in love with another guy. If the subject of gay rights comes up in a conversation, actually
    open your goddamned mouth and talk. You make sure the whole
    damned world knows who you are, and maybe Tate wil see it in
    you.”
    Brian looked at her blankly. “G irls flirt with me?” They must, he
    thought belatedly, because he’d ended up bedding more than his
    fair share, but he couldn’t remember how it had happened. O ne
    minute he’d be talking to a girl and enjoying her company, laughing
    at her jokes, smiling at her happily because he was having a good
    time, and the next minute, she’d have her tongue down his throat.
    There hadn’t been any rhyme or reason to it, it just was. C ome to
    think about it, the boys that he’d kissed had been the same way.
    The look of blank despair on Virginia’s face made him feel
    stupid al over again. “I’m at a loss,” she said, almost to herself. “I’m at a complete loss. You and me together? It was like me thinking I
    was in the kiddie pool when I was real y in Loch Ness. Sweartagod,
    it’s just no goddamned fair at all.”

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    31

    P a rt V
    Wherever You Want To

    BRIAN stil didn’t know what she’d meant by him being Loch Ness,
    but he’d kept it in mind. The problem was, he real y didn’t talk to
    anyone but Tate. He’d managed to put one girl off with “I’m sorry,
    but I’m actual y gay,” and she had shrugged and said it was too
    bad, but it didn’t feel like an earth-shattering personal moment.
    Maybe he had to do it until it didn’t make his hands clammy, but he
    wasn’t sure that was ever going to happen.
    And that wasn’t something that was going to be fixed right
    now. What needed to be fixed right now was Tate, and the terrible,
    stomach-churning fear that every time his roommate went into the
    bathroom to bring some stranger off, he’d be sel ing a little piece of
    his soul that would be nearly impossible to recover.
    Brian had never felt so helpless about something so important
    in his life.
    And that was what penetrated his confusion. He was helpless.
    There was one person in his life who could help him when he was
    like this. It was the person who had arrived at the hospital when
    he’d been six with a suitcase of his clothes and his favorite toys and
    said, “C ’mon, baby. Let’s get out of here, okay? It’s you and me,
    and I hate this place.”
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    32

    Lyndsey C ooper was Brian’s only living family. She made a
    thin living off her paintings, and lived in a small, three-room cabin
    on a friend’s property in G rass Val ey. The day she’d come to pick
    Brian up from the hospital, she’d been wearing a loose, flowered
    dress and wore her hair in bleached dreadlocks. At home, she wore
    jeans. In public, it was pure flower child. Although the hair had
    changed, the clothing had not, and when Brian had asked her
    about it once, she’d replied with a shrug.
    I’m just dressing the part, baby. The world expects certain
    looks from certain people.
    And now, thinking about his Aunt Lyndie, Brian felt the
    beginnings of a plan knitting with tiny stitches in the pudding of his
    brain. He pulled out his cel phone and dialed Lyndie’s number,
    hoping she wouldn’t worry because he was cal ing three days after
    his usual Sunday call.
    “Hey, baby, what’s shakin’?” Lyndie always sounded happy to
    hear from him. He should have known better than to worry.
    “Lyndie,” he said with a swal ow, “I… I need to come up today,
    is that okay?”
    “Absolutely. Is anything wrong?”
    Brian blinked, and realized that this was what Virginia was
    talking about when it came to announcing stuff to the world. “Well,
    I’ve got something to tel you, and some advice to ask you, and I
    need some help. But mostly, it’s about my roommate, and….”
    “And it’s a long story. No worries. See you in an hour, okay?” It
    was at least an hour to G rass Valley.
    “Make it two,” he said, relieved and happy just to hear her
    voice, making it sound like there was nothing they couldn’t handle
    together. It was how she’d gotten him through his childhood, how
    he’d made it through his teen years—every laid-back,
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    33
    nonjudgmental, quietly optimistic fiber of Brian’s being, he owed to
    his Aunt Lyndie’s unconditional