Go Your Own Way (27 page)

“We’re just being friendly,” Lennox said, his arms wrapping around Will. “Nothing wrong with friendly.”

Will smiled as Lennox kissed his neck. All afternoon Lennox had started to talk more, to address Karen with more certainty and less distrust and crudity. For a few moments, he could picture this being his life. Karen and Lennox and himself. Yet without his dad, the picture didn’t quite feel complete, as if one side of it had been washed away before it had finished drying.

A dressing attendant bustled in then, looking surly. She glow­ered at all three of them.

“Are you quite finished in here? This is supposed to be a dress­ing room. Not a-a canoodling room.”

Karen snorted. Will eyed the woman uncertainly, as Lennox took the little heap they’d set aside and showed her.

“We’re buying this. Happy?”

“Hardly,” the woman said under her breath as she straightened the clothes Will had meticulously placed in the restock bins by the entryway. “When you’re ready to purchase, Suzanne is at the registers.”

The woman grumbled all the way out of the room.

“Jackass,” Lennox sneered. He did nothing to keep his voice down, and the woman left.

“Lennox,” Karen scolded, but it was a gentle repri­mand. Will had heard that tone before when he was younger, right after he’d gotten comfortable with hanging out with his dad’s girlfriend.

“Sorry, did I speak the truth out loud? My bad,” Lennox said with a roll of his eyes.

Will held his arm and rubbed the inside of it. “Just ignore it. Let them be stupid. It doesn’t matter.”

“Like hell it doesn’t.”

“Boys, let’s leave the argument for the car, okay?”

Karen wasn’t looking at them though. Her gaze was directed out­side of the dressing room and Will saw why. The woman who had just been in the dressing room had summoned a secu­rity guard to the registers and they were both staring at them.

“Come on,” Will said. He gathered up the shirts and headed to the registers.

The cashier watched them as they approached, but she didn’t say a word to Will. Whenever he’d come here before, he was always met with a nice greeting, even a short, friendly conversa­tion, but not today. The woman from the dressing room stood at the next register with the security guard as their purchases were rung up. All three of the employees watched them until they were out of the store and in the car.

Karen scowled as she backed out and drove them back to Len­nox’s room.

“Absurd,” she muttered as she turned down one street and then another. For some reason, she was taking them around the same block twice. “Appalling that they would—they’re just
boys
.”

“Um, Karen?” Will called. “We, uh, aren’t going to drive around this same block all afternoon, are we?”

“What? Oh, sorry.” She stopped at the next street and took a left instead.

“She always drive like she’s got no brain?” Lennox muttered.

Will shook his head and curled into his side. If Lennox realized why—and Will had no doubt he did—he wasn’t going to say anything. He never seemed to talk about any of the important things that happened to him.

They pulled into the motel’s parking lot ten minutes later, and Karen laid on the brakes with a gasp. Will sat up and poked his head through the front seats. The lot was empty, but Lennox’s front door was wide open. They couldn’t put the trunk in place from the outside.

Lennox sat up, too. “Might have been the wind,” he said, but he sounded worried. “Or Lucy.”

But Lucy’s car wasn’t in the lot. Karen pulled into the space in front of the open door. Lennox hurried out, his pocketknife in hand. “Has this ever—”

“No,” Will told Karen as he unbuckled and rushed to follow. Cereal was spilled across the threshold.

The first thing Will saw made him choke. Along the wall over the bed, someone had carved right into the plaster: “HALFBREED FAG­GOT.” Chunks of drywall littered the bed and floor. Will took another step into the room as Karen swore behind him. A glass shard was still embedded in the wall.

Lennox reappeared from the bathroom, his pocketknife still in hand and his expression furious.

His trunk had been smashed and the contents strewn about the room. Most of his clothes looked as if they’d been shredded, and his books had been flung around. All of the dresser drawers were scattered around the room, and the food inside was squashed and smeared on the walls and ceiling. The mattress was hanging off the mattress frame, which had a large rip in it; the blankets were shiny with some kind of goo; and the stuffing from the pillows still floated in the air. Everything was ruined. From the toppled mini-fridge to the shattered, sparking light bulb Lennox moved to unplug. Water spots marked the walls and broken condoms were on the floor from what looked like condom balloons.

Will couldn’t take it all in, but no matter how many times he blinked, the room didn’t change. The words were still carved into the wall like canyons and Lennox’s expression continued to grow darker. Will would be lying if he said he didn’t know who had done this. He’d met the people who had done this only last night.

Lennox knelt and picked something up as Karen inched into the room. It was a photograph, and for one shuddering moment, Will thought it was the one his sister had sent this morning. As Lennox stood, however, Will saw that it was an old Polaroid. He moved closer to Lennox, his boots crunching on splinters of wood and glass.

The photo had a rip through the center, separating Lennox’s tiny face from his mother’s smile. Will struggled to take in a breath as Lennox’s hand shook.

“We can m-mend it or tape it,” Will said. “We’ve got an photo thing at the store that’ll restore it.”

“Get out.”

“No,” Will said at once, his eyes starting to burn. “I’m not leav­ing you here.”

He reached out to touch the ripped picture and Lennox yanked it away. The look on Lennox’s face was wild and hurt, more so than Will had ever imagined it could be. Lennox wasn’t ready for this, for anything that had happened since they’d met. Maybe neither of them were. The only thing Will was certain of was that if
he
wasn’t, then Lennox had just been barreled into by a freight train.

“I said get out,” Lennox hissed. He shoved Will toward the door, flinging the ripped halves over his shoulder. “Get out!”

“No,” Will repeated. He shoved right back. “You are
not
shut­ting me out!”

“I was so fucking stupid to think, for one damn second, that this— that y-you and me—”

“We’ll help you clean up and then figure out something, okay?” Will tried to move in, but Lennox shoved him back again.

“No!” Lennox roared. “We aren’t doing anything ever again! You can get out and go fuck yourself.”

His voice was wavering and high, strained and cracking like a spark trying to ignite a fire. Will felt as though a fist had pounded into his gut. Behind him, Karen bent and picked something up before she put a steady hand on Will’s shoulder.

“Come on,” she murmured. “Let’s give him time to calm down.”

“No.” Will was starting to feel like a broken record. “Lennox, don’t shut me out, all right?” He swore as the first few tears ran down his cheeks. “Just come back to our home and—”

“And what? This isn’t some fantasy world you like to live in,” Lennox waved his arms around at his floors and walls. “This is my world. This is the reality you don’t seem to get. Everything right here is how the world reacts to guys like me, okay?” He snarled as he hurled a soda can at the back wall. “All anyone is ever going to do is try to destroy us. What’s the point of being happy and feeling things when this is all I ever get in return?”

“You get me,” Will said, his voice shaking. “You get us and whatever it is we’ve got. We’re worth the chance, so are you.”

Lennox shook his head and threw another soda can across the room. It hit the pipe and sprayed cola.

“Nothing is worth this. Don’t you get that? No matter what, the people who say they’ll always be there
never
are.”

“That’s not true,” Will insisted even as his voice wavered and broke.

Lennox pushed him back toward the door again, and Karen caught him as he stumbled. “Yes, it is. Otherwise your stupid father would be here to pound my face in, too.”

The door slammed shut. Will stood there until they heard scraping behind the door and until the curtains were taped back into place. Every inch of him hurt. After a while, Karen ushered him back to the car. She buckled their seat belts before Will’s resolve broke. A harsh sob clawed its way out of him and she pulled him to her chest.

“Shhh, it’s all right. I’m right here.”

But she had never sounded less sure. She didn’t smell like cigarettes and peppermint either. Her arms weren’t thin and muscular, and her warmth didn’t make peace sink right into his toes. Karen rocked him until he quieted, but she wasn’t Lennox. She wasn’t his dad either.

“Let’s go home, have dinner, and see if he’ll let us in a little later,” Karen suggested as Will sat back. She tried to smile, but it turned into a frown. “We’ll keep trying until—”

A cheerful jingle played. Karen dug into her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone.

“Hello?”

Will sat there and shook as someone murmured on the other line. More bad news, no doubt. A sick relative or an emergency at the hospital or their house had exploded and Oyster was limping around the neighborhood yelping. He could sneak out of the car right now and bust in Lennox’s door. Make him see reason and accept the caring and love that was all Will could offer him.

Karen’s phone beeped as she turned it off. Will was taken aback by the watery smile on her face.

“Good news,” Karen said, and Will didn’t believe it for a second. “Your dad’s awake.”

“A-awake?”

Will stared at her, his cheeks damp from his tears. It wasn’t possible for that to be true. His dad was in a coma—had been for over a month now. Every doctor in the hospital was convinced he wouldn’t wake up, even if they’d never said it to Will’s face. Was he the one who needed to wake up? From whatever this dream-like nightmare every hour appeared to be—no longer safe or warm or calm. Nothing was ever going to be right again.

“That was Ruth at the hospital. She said he woke up almost an hour ago,” Karen said. She squeezed him again. “Finally, some good news. They wanted to check him out before they called.”

“And they’re… sure?” Will didn’t return her hug. He wasn’t sure he could handle any more hugs right now, no matter the reason for them. Instead, he watched Lennox’s door and the little dark sliver of the room inside. They couldn’t leave him here. “But Lennox—”

“Needs to calm down and take some time for himself, I think,” Karen said. She pulled her phone back out. “I’ll call Jim, see if he can have someone hang around here to keep an eye on everything until we come back tonight.”

“We’re going to—really?”

Karen grabbed his hands and held them tightly between her palms. “Do you really think I’m going to let him stay here tonight after this? Who knows what those—those—”

“Bastards?” Will supplied. He glowered at the one man’s door.

“You sound like Ben, but yes. They’re bastards. We’ll come back tonight, after we see your dad, okay?”

Will nodded as Karen called Jim. He meant to listen in, to correct anything she might say and to warn her that Jim or who­ever patrolled the area shouldn’t come to Lennox’s door. Lennox wouldn’t answer for them, and he certainly wouldn’t calm down enough to go home with him and Karen later. But Will never got the chance. A second car pulled up beside his window. It was a paint-chipped old Camry with a cracked driver’s side window and a pair of fuzzy purple dice hanging from the rearview mirror. Lucy was in the driver’s seat. He rolled his window down as she got out.

“Waiting on Lennox?”

“Not exactly,” Will said as he wiped his nose and watched her unpin her nametag. “He’s—those guys broke in while we were out. They tore his place up and he’s barricaded himself inside. But my dad—he’s been in the—”

“Hospital, yeah. Lennox told me.” Lucy leaned down on his door. “They hurt him?”

“Not like they usually do. Well, maybe a bit. They’ve never really hit him before, have they?”

“A few times over the summer from what he’s told me,” Lucy said. She hitched up her purse and pulled a little notebook out of it. “Here’s my number. Text me so I can get yours, let you know if anything happens. I’ll keep an eye on him until he’s cooled down. Get him tacos. He always lets me in if I’ve got tacos.”

“Thank you.” Will took the slip of paper and tucked it into his pocket. “We’ll be back in a few hours. My dad’s awake, so we’re going to go see him.”

“That’s great. Lennox will be happy to hear that once you tell him.”

Will nodded as Lucy said her goodbyes, but he couldn’t agree with her. Not about this. The last time—the only time—Lennox and his dad had met had been horrible.

“Jim’s on call after four,” Karen said as she backed out of the parking space. “Was that a friend of Lennox’s?” She nodded toward Lucy’s door as it closed.

“Kind of, I think. She said she’d keep an eye on him. I trust her.”

“I’m glad there’s someone nice here.”

It took half an hour to get to the hospital, and then another ten minutes before they were let in to see him. Ben was in a new room now, two halls over from the one where they’d spent so many long evenings. Will expected Karen to rush right in when they reached the closed door. Instead, she turned to him and grabbed his shoulders. It struck him then that this was the first time since Ben’s heart attack that he’d seen her cry. How could he have missed that?

“You okay?” she asked.

“Y-yeah, I think so.” But he didn’t feel okay. He wasn’t sure how he felt. Lennox’s life was cracking like an egg breaking open, and with his dad’s recovery, all of a sudden he had hope for his own. Lennox and his dad were two parts of his own life he couldn’t imagine bringing together after the last month without his dad. How would they ever get along?

“We’ll figure this out. You and me, all right? Your dad’s a good man, a fair one. He won’t turn Lennox away because he was rude the first time they met.”

“You don’t know that,” Will said as her hands wiped his cheeks and smoothed out his jacket collar. “Dad
hated
him.”

“And he loves you. Ben would never turn someone away that you care so much about. Part of the reason I love your dad so much is because of how much he loves and respects you.” Karen kissed his cheek and squeezed his hand. “If nothing else, we can overrule him, two to one.”

“No power of veto?”

“Nope. Not when we’ll be helping him do everything for the next few months.”

Karen gave him a quick one-armed hug and opened the door. This room was smaller than the last, brighter and with better furniture. As Karen rushed toward the bed, Will took everything in, let his heart slow and his eyes roam over the pale, striped walls and the chairs in the corner. His dad was right here. Right here and aware of him again.

“Hey, bud.”

Will let his eyes focus on the bed, on the thick, cream-colored blanket tucked in around the edges and on the railings Karen was lowering on either side. His dad was there, with a few tubes still attached to him, and a head full of gray hair that he and Karen had let grow while he was comatose. He was smiling, a little weak-chinned and tired, but he raised his hand toward Will.

“H-hi. You’re gonna need a lawnmower for your head.”

Ben’s laugh sounded like rust being scraped off a pole. “Come give your old man a hug, smart-ass.”

Karen had to guide him toward the bed before Will’s legs started moving. Everything about today had been unreal. Why would this moment be any different? Any second, it would burst like an overinflated balloon.

“I’m all right,” Ben said as his hand clutched Will’s. “They say I’ll be fine. Don’t look so worried.”

Will crumpled onto the bed, curling into Ben’s side and holding on with all his might. The tears wouldn’t come, but he couldn’t stop shak­ing as he clutched Ben’s hospital gown between his fin­gers and pressed his face into his neck. No peppermint or smoke to find here, but instead he caught a whiff of that underlying scent that belonged only to his dad.

“Shh, it’s okay.” Ben’s chin bumped his head. “What’d you do to him while I was out?”

“It’s nothing I did, honey.” The bed shifted a little as Karen sat on the other side. One of her hands rubbed Will’s arm as she rested her head beside Ben’s. “A lot has happened since you went under. We missed you.”

For a while, Karen and Ben murmured. Memories, reminders, promises of their love and everything they could come back to now. Will listened with his dad’s arm around his back and Karen’s hand brushing through his hair. After a time, the bed creaked and Karen climbed off.

“I’m going to go see the doctors,” she told them. “See what their plans are for the coming weeks and find out if there’s anything we need to worry about. You’re on a diet, if nothing else.”

“But that’s not—”

Karen’s hand covered Ben’s mouth and then she bopped him on the nose. “It is. Vegetables won’t kill you.”

As Ben grumbled something about “rabbit food,” Karen kissed each of them on the cheek and looked Will over. “Now’s as good a time as any for you two to talk. Catch up.” Will glanced up from his dad’s neck long enough to catch her gaze. “You two have a lot to talk about.”

The door shut behind Karen, but still Ben didn’t say anything. Maybe he would fall asleep. Sleep through tonight and forget all about what Karen kept hinting at and what Will couldn’t bring himself to say. If his dad said no to letting Lennox stay with him—and surely he would—what would happen to Len­nox? What would happen to them? If there still was a “them.” If there ever had been.

“Only feels like I’ve been out for a few minutes, you know that? Hard to believe it’s been a month.” Ben’s hand slid off his back and scooped up the bed’s remote control. The bed began to tilt him up into a higher position. The bed stopped tilt­ing. Ben sighed. “You’re different. You’re not happy right now, and I can’t figure out why.”

“I am happy you’re awake,” Will muttered. He sniffled and wiped his nose. “I’ve missed you so much, but… ”

Ben’s silence was more than he’d expected. It was as if his dad, still a little bleary-eyed and stiff, could sense what he hadn’t yet said.

“Do you remember that boy from the parking lot in Septem­ber? The rude one?”

A soft hum brushed his hair. “One with the crazy hair? The prick that said—”

“His name’s Lennox.” Will shifted as Ben fell silent again. Maybe that was all that needed to be said. Yet Lennox was so much more than a few syllables. He was a new piece of Will’s life—an enormous part of his strength from the last month—and his dad needed to know that. “He means a lot to me now,” Will added. “More than I thought he could.”

Ben grunted and shifted again. “He apologize for what he said?”

“Yeah. Not very well, but he’s working on it. He’s sincere.” Will sat up and turned to meet Ben’s eyes. “I know you don’t like him, okay, but so much has happened—he’s not at all how he seems. Not really.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“Dad, please.”

Will twisted around until his legs were crossed and he was facing his dad. Ben nodded once, still looking stern and unyield­ing. For half an hour, Will talked. About their detentions, Lennox’s pathetic little room turned home, what he knew of Lennox’s family, the men who kept harassing him, and most importantly, how much Lennox had been there for Will since his dad had fallen into his coma. How well he understood everything Will was going through and how much he cared about Lennox in return.

“We took him out to eat for his birthday earlier, and when we got back, they’d broken in. Everything was ruined and they carved these awful slurs into the wall, and… ” Will wiped his nose and pulled his knees up to his chest. “Karen said we’re gonna go back and make him stay with us for tonight.”

Ben nodded once more. “That sounds like a good idea.”

“I-it does?”

“He needs to be somewhere safe. Somewhere he can get some rest until we figure out a permanent place for him,” Ben said. “I’m not saying I like him, but I trust you, and I trust what you’re telling me and how you feel about this kid, okay? Until we figure something else out, our couch is his.”

“Dad, that’s—you’re—” Will dove into his chest, his face finding its place back in the curve of his dad’s neck. “Thank you.”

“If he means this much to you, I’ll give him another shot. Two or three if he needs it, but—” Ben pulled back and looked him in the eye. “If he hurts you or does anything dangerous,
anything
that puts you in danger, he’s going somewhere else.”

Will nodded as Karen returned with a folder thick with papers. “He won’t. He hurts himself more than anyone else, I think.”

“We got a yes?” Karen said.

“Unless he gives me a damn good reason to take it back.”

“He won’t,” Karen said, and having her agree with Will made Ben finally shut his eyes. “Get some rest, Ben. I’ll be back after we pick up Lennox and get him settled in tonight, okay? They’re going to talk you through everything then. Love you.”

“Be safe.”