Out of Nowhere (Middle of Somewhere 2)

“You can’t even say it, can you? You can’t even look me in the eyes and say you’re gay.” He shakes his head. “Jesus Christ, Colin,” he says, his mocking voice crawling deep into my gut, “does he have that much power over you?”

I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. This is not how this was supposed to go. This is not how this was supposed to go at all.

“Shit,” Daniel says softly. He backs away a step and looks at me. “Shit, he does, doesn’t he? And he always did,” he goes on, like he’s talking to himself. “Jesus, you were talking about yourself, weren’t you? That’s what you did. You played the role of the son you knew he wanted because you thought you could make it okay for him. That you could make him feel like he was an okay parent even without Mom….”

I’m concentrating on my breathing, pretending Rafe is here, his hand on the back of my neck helping me breathe in and out, in and out.

Daniel’s muttering to himself and pacing, his mismatched socks crisscrossing my spotless kitchen floor.

“And then when I—fuck, you knew you were gay, didn’t you? All that time. And after you saw how Dad reacted to me, there was no way you could….” He’s chewing on his lip, looking at me through the hair falling in his face every time he runs a nervous hand through it.

Jesus, that hand through his hair is just like Rafe.

“Are you okay?” Daniel asks. He’s standing a step away from me, his hand hovering near me like he’s afraid to touch me. My breaths are so short it’s making black dots shimmer in the edges of my vision. “Shit, Colin? Do you wanna sit down or something?” I shake my head.

The doorbell rings and a second later I see Rafe’s shoes walk into the kitchen. They’re the same beat-up Pumas he was wearing when we came back from the beach this morning, so he didn’t even go home and change. I joked when he left that we should have some secret signal like they do in the movies in case I wanted him to come interrupt my conversation with Daniel. Only I wasn’t actually joking. And like always, I guess he could tell.

“He’s—I’m—we were—and—I don’t know what’s wrong,” Daniel says, and he sounds like a little kid again.

Rafe doesn’t say anything to Daniel, just steps right in front of me and pulls my arms around his waist, crushing me to him.

“Okay,” he says in my ear. “You’re okay.” He rubs a palm up and down my spine, holding me tight against him with the other hand. I try and time my breathing to the expansion of his rib cage. I breathe in his smell and imagine his hair spreading out around me, veiling us both in our own little world.

Little by little, my breathing normalizes and the black spots recede from my vision. Rafe’s hand is cradling the back of my neck and my face is buried in his jacket.

The second I realize I’m okay, though, the mortification hits. Because Daniel just saw me a hundred percent lose it. I squeeze my eyes shut, wishing I could just hide in Rafe forever, then open them and see Daniel’s feet, one navy blue sock and one black, hovering a couple feet away.

I pull away from Rafe, my eyes still on the floor, then look up at Daniel quickly, like ripping off a Band-Aid. He has one hand at his mouth, chewing on his thumbnail, and the other wrapped around his stomach. He looks scared, the way he used to.

“Are you okay?” Daniel’s voice breaks on every word.

I nod and look down. An awkward silence settles over the kitchen until Rafe clears his throat.

“I don’t want to interrupt,” he says, “but I brought dinner.”

Daniel’s looking at Rafe very strangely, head cocked and eyes slightly narrowed.

“I, um.” He gestures to the apple and cheese sitting untouched on the kitchen table. The apple has started to go slightly brown and the cheese has gone slimy. It looks disgusting.

“I’ll just grab it from the car.”

Daniel and I look at each other, and his expression of terror at prolonging this get-together mirrors my feelings so perfectly that I almost laugh.

“I’m not really hungry,” I say to the floor.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Daniel says quickly, but then his stomach gives a loud growl. He squeezes his arm around it even tighter and rolls his eyes at himself.

Rafe chuckles and Daniel’s head jerks up.

“I’ll be right back,” he says again, looking between Daniel and me.

Daniel perches tentatively on the edge of the counter. “I didn’t know you got panic attacks,” he says softly.

“Well, you don’t really know anything about me,” I snap, but it comes out sounding a hell of a lot milder than I intended.