Talker

the guy
    want to see a counselor when it was al his fucking fault….” Brian’s
    sarcasm died a painful death, and he used the damn tissue again.
    He’d always known that shit rolled downhil , but he never knew
    tears did the same thing. Tate to Brian, Brian to Aunt Lyndie—who
    did Aunt Lyndie get to cry on?
    Someone, he thought, looking around the little house again.
    She’d always had someone. There were two coffee cups in the
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    50
    sink, and two oversized parkas hanging on the door because it was
    April and it stil got pretty cold outside at night.
    “Are you stil seeing C raig Jeffries?” he asked suddenly,
    remembering the name of the school custodian that Lyndie had
    dated for the last years before Brian left for school.
    “He moved in—January, actually,” Lyndie said with a smile,
    and Brian looked at her sharply.
    “Why didn’t you say anything? C hristmas, your birthday—why
    wouldn’t you want him there?”
    Lyndie shrugged. “Wel , for the first two years, I didn’t say
    anything because you were so damned lonely, sweetheart. I didn’t
    want you to think you couldn’t move back.”
    Brian remembered that. C ollege had been as awful for him as
    Virginia had said—he’d felt out of place and isolated from the other
    students, even on the track team. Besides Virginia, the only person
    at Sac State to make him feel welcome had been Tate.
    “It got better,” Brian murmured, remembering that first,
    tentative offering to come to his dorm and watch a movie. Tate had
    been the first person in two years to talk to him like more than a
    teammate. The first one Brian had wanted to talk back to, anyway.
    Brian could admit that it wasn’t just shyness that kept him
    isolated—some of what drove him was snobbery. He really didn’t
    like mean people. However he came to be lonely, by the time his
    shoulder had blown out, not seeing Tate every day had been far
    more terrifying than not being on the team, or even not finishing his
    computer science degree. Brian could always scrabble for a living,
    but living without his friend?
    “I know it did,” Lyndie said softly. “It got better the minute you
    met Tate.”
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    Brian nodded and sighed, resting his chin on his crossed arms
    on the table. “He needs to get better. He needs to get better, and
    he needs me… al of me, not just the friend parts, to do it.”
    “What are you going to do?” she asked, and he looked up at
    her hopefully.
    “Wel , I’ve got a plan, but I need to borrow some of the old
    clothes you keep borrowing but never use.” He knew exactly where
    she kept them in the hal closet. “C an I use them?” he asked, a little
    anxiously. Lyndie had frowned, and he was afraid she would have
    gotten rid of them when her boyfriend moved in.
    She nodded absently. “O f course, baby—they’re still there.
    Anything in the closet, you know that.”
    “Then what’s wrong?”
    “That guy… the one that hurt Tate—he’s not going to come
    back, is he? Those types… I mean, I know why you wouldn’t want
    to try to prosecute him, but he sounds like the type to just rub it in
    Tate’s face.”
    Brian felt his expression go flat and hard. “No worries, Aunt
    Lyndie. He won’t bother Tate ever again.”

    BRIAN had started taking Tate to work after his “date.” G atsby’s
    Nick was in bike-riding distance, or even bus-riding distance, and
    Tate had a car, but he’d just felt so… vulnerable. Brian had started
    offering the ride and then making it a point to get off before Tate so
    he could be there in the parking lot, ready to give him a ride home.
    Tate…. Tate was grateful. He was grateful and distracted
    and… empty. Watching him walk into the club was like watching
    him put in a computer program of who Tate was supposed to be,
    and that’s who he was when he was around people.
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    When Tate was home, he was often so silent, Brian would go
    thundering into his room to see if he was stil there—and, frankly, to
    make sure he hadn’t left some way other than the door.
    Brian had yet to hear him sing, off-key or otherwise, and he
    twitched his head almost constantly, since the “worst date ever.”
    About two weeks after Trevor Murray had made Tate cry,
    Brian saw him waiting in line to get into the club as he was pulling
    away. He shoved his car back into the parking spot and was
    running for the guy before he even knew what he was going to do.
    “Hey,