Page 63 of This Might Hurt

JUDE

“Don’t look, but I think we’re being followed.”

Andrew glances at me from behind the wheel of our white Mercedes S-Class, because the boy is incapable of renting a normal, basic car. “You think?”

I crane my neck to study the side mirror. “That black sedan with the creepy driver has been up our ass for an hour. What are you supposed to do in this situation? Take three right turns in a row?”

He shakes his head and searches for the exit to Kearns off Highway 287. “I think you’re supposed to proceed to your destination and quit looking for excuses to drive back to the airport.”

“Ugh.” I slump down in the uncomfortably hot leather seat and close my eyes so I don’t have to look at the familiar scenery. “Do you realize how over-the-top it is to have Grant trailing us around like we’re in the Mafia?”

“Would you rather have him in the car with us all weekend?” Even with my eyes shut I can feel when we take the exit. After two years I still remember the perfect speed and angle. Andrew takes it a little fast and has to brake hard to obey the speed limit sign at the corner.

I have to open my eyes eventually, so I force myself to sit up and look around.

Not a single thing has changed. There’s a downtown made of low concrete buildings to endure the wind and snow that come in across the grassland, a giant elementary, middle, and high school complex on the far side, and a neighborhood near the river, planted thickly with tall trees.

I have so many good memories here, but they feel more and more sad every time I look back at them, like no one was ever happy with me and I was always kind of lost. If that’s the case, I don’t understand why I’m so desperate to come back.

I can feel Andrew watching me anxiously.

He’s been endlessly kind to me today. When we were packing, I had a meltdown because all the dress shirts we got at the designer showroom were various shades of oatmeal, but Lena likes colorful things.

He took me to a men’s store on our way to the airport and bought me five different colors of shirt without a word of complaint.

I’m pretty sure if I said I wanted to go to a zoo and kidnap an elephant he’d silently change the navigation on his phone and ask Grant where we could find a tranquilizer gun.

The road narrows slightly as it crosses the river east of town. It’s not as impressive as the Hudson, but it runs deep and cool between steep clay banks. When I see a familiar bent piece of guardrail, I tap Andrew’s thigh. “Can we stop? I want to show you something.”

He sighs, because he can’t physically make himself be that nice, then indicates so Grant can see and pulls onto the gravel shoulder.

I open my door to a rush of dry, windy heat, so different from New York, and step out into the ditch.

Andrew waves for Grant to park behind us and wait, then follows me back along the quiet road to the bent guardrail.

“I used to piggyback Lena down,” I say when he eyes the steep dirt slope, “but you have the audacity to be bigger than me.”

He wrinkles his nose, looking absurdly handsome in a casual t-shirt and designer puffer vest, sunglasses pushed up into his wind-blown hair.

I go first and give him a hand down to the river bank.

It’s permanently shady under here, the soil always damp.

We easily find the large, cave-like erosion in the bank with a few burned-out logs and empty beer cans scattered around.

“The high schoolers light fires here on Friday nights to get drunk and have sex behind that log over there.”

“Am I supposed to be jealous of your weird coming-of-age-movie childhood drinking in a hole in the ground?” But he puts his arms around my neck from behind and props his chin on my shoulder.

“It wasn’t so great, honestly. But this isn’t the part I wanted you to see.

” I worm my way out of his grip and jog twenty feet down the bank, praying it’s still there.

“Fuck yeah.” Bouncing with excitement, I point at a tire swing hanging from the branch of a massive, crooked oak tree.

It’s been used so often that the tire has worn away to a pathetic scrap of rubber.

The tree groans as I grab the filthy rope and pull it toward me, hooking my legs around the not-tire and leaning my weight into it.

“Don’t do it,” Andrew warns automatically.

I give an experimental tug, hoping he won’t notice that the rope above my head is barely hanging by a thread. “C’mere, princess. It works for two people.”

“No.”

I raise my eyebrows meaningfully and pat my thigh. Maybe it’s wrong to use my pull over him to make him do stupid shit, but no one’s perfect. “Sit on my legs facing me.”

“The river’s all brown.” He peers at it skeptically. “If it sweeps me away, you won’t even be able to see my body.”

“It’s the slowest river ever. No one’s doing any sweeping.”

For a moment, as he considers, I can see it in his eyes—a secret, like something’s changed.

He started acting weird yesterday, but he hasn’t said anything to me.

I have literally no idea what to do with that, so I’ve kept my mouth shut because right now I need him with me more than I need him to be honest with me.

The almost painful press of his body weight brings me back as he awkwardly straddles my lap and alternates his hands with mine on the rope.

“You’re on top, so you have to jump off first,” I tell him, holding his solemn eyes.

“If you don’t, I’ll get stuck and smack into this tree on the way back and die. ”

“Wait, is that—”

Before he can finish, I shove off. The tree makes an awful sound that reminds me I was a lot smaller the last time I rode doubles on this thing.

Andrew yelps as we reach the highest point, looking down into the muddy water.

Then he lets go just because I told him to, even though he’s scared.

That part will never cease to amaze me, for the rest of my life.

I launch myself off after him and flip away so I don’t land on his head.

I pop out of the lukewarm water, gasping, my jeans clinging to my legs as I swim lazily against the sluggish current.

A second later Andrew surges out of the water, sputtering and pushing his hair off his face with one hand, clutching his sunglasses with the other.

He’s smiling—wide, childish, part proud of himself, part embarrassed.

Fuck. If he had gone to my high school, I would have spent every hour of every day staring at him, drooling, pining, wanking to his yearbook photo, writing our names together on every page of my notebook.

In this moment he’s so shockingly normal, in a way I’ve never seen him.

I have this overwhelming feeling that if he becomes the CEO of that company, this part of him will disappear and never come back.

I almost swim up to him, take his face in my wet hands, and say that whatever he does, whatever we become, it can’t be that. But of course I don’t.

There’s no sun on the bank to dry us off, so we push each other back up the slope, dripping and shivering as the wind hits us.

Grant’s leaning against his car reading his phone, and he stares at us like we’ve lost our minds.

His eyes linger on Andrew, the whole drenched mess of him, laughing at me for almost falling down the bank.

The bodyguard glances at me with a look that I almost, almost understand because I feel it too—confused awe followed by the pain of knowing this isn’t going to last.

Approximately three cars come into Kearns a day, so I convince Andrew it’s okay to change our wet clothes behind the Mercedes, our suitcases open in the backseat. He brought the most normal parts of his wardrobe, t-shirts and jeans, anything that might not stand out here.

Kearns has more than one stoplight, but the biggest one is downtown at the intersection across from the Pancake House.

If you go straight, you get to the hotel and the school.

If you go right, you get to the neighborhoods.

We wait at the red light for two minutes, but it’s not until Andrew accelerates forward that I yell, “Turn right, turn right!” He makes a violent last second change in direction, but there’s no one around to care.

“What the fuck?” he protests, checking the rearview to watch Grant recover from almost rear-ending us.

“Keep driving. I’ll tell you where to turn.”

“Jude…” I expect him to snap at me, but instead he reaches across and gently rubs the back of my damp hair. “I don’t think this is a good idea.”

“I didn’t really think marrying me and showing up at your family’s mansion was a great idea either.” When he pulls a face, I squeeze his wrist. “Please just drive by. You don’t even have to slow down.”

Looking uncomfortable, he follows my directions down a road lined with old but clean houses, yards with trampolines and tiny plastic soccer goals.

Someone’s going to look out their front window and wonder why there’s a freaking Mercedes cruising around.

Then we turn onto the street I haven’t seen in almost two years, where I know every crack in the sidewalk that can make a bike wobble, all the decorations on all the lawns I’ve mowed a hundred times.

Andrew slows down, despite what we said.

The rooster mailbox I told him about on the day we met sits proud in front of a cute two-story house, brick on the bottom and dusty green siding above.

The curtains on my window are shut, but no one ever took down the dusty Spiderman decal I stuck to the glass when I was twelve.

Dad promised I’d be the one to help him rip out the dying aspen by the garage, but it looks like he found someone else.

A metal ramp covers half the front steps, ending on the path by the driveway.

I don’t recognize the black van parked out front, but it looks like it’s made to carry a wheelchair.

I want to beg Andrew to wait until someone comes out onto the porch, so I can convince myself I didn’t hallucinate my whole family, this entire life.

At the same time, the last thing I want is for that front door to open.

When Andrew accelerates, I realize my hands are shaking.

I stare at my lap and try to calm my breathing.

“You’ll see her tomorrow,” Andrew offers quietly.

He looks upset, but not in a sympathetic way.

His jaw is flexed, something burning in his eyes like he wants to commit violence. I don’t understand.

“Can we nap at the hotel?” There’s a nightmarish headache climbing up the base of my skull.

“Yes, please.”

I navigate us out of the neighborhood and back to the main road in silence.

There’s only one hotel within forty miles, and it’s not very nice, plus it will be overflowing with families for graduation.

Andrew’s pissed about it. I tried to picture us staying at my house, but I don’t think it would have gone well even if my parents didn’t hate me.

They said they were okay with me being gay, then proceeded to pretend I wasn’t for the next ten years.

The White Buffalo Inn is one of those long, ugly concrete buildings with the doors facing outward onto wobbly walkways.

Unsupervised kids are running all over, screaming and tripping people.

I score us an end room on the second level, next to the ice machine, which I tell Andrew is basically the equivalent of a penthouse suite.

Grant gets a separate room nearer to the stairs.

When we were booking them, Andrew told me there was no point in having a bodyguard four doors down, as if Grant was here for any reason other than Andrew feeling bad for leaving him behind.

I asked him if he wanted the man to hear the noises he makes when we fuck. I won.

As we carry our bags upstairs, I feel incredibly heavy, like I picked up more and more ghosts on the drive through town and now they’re all sitting on top of me.

At the same time, I’m so jittery I’m practically vibrating.

As soon as Andrew wrestles the ungainly door shut, I throw back the thin blanket, collapse on the bed, and curl up in a ball.

After going to the bathroom, Andrew flops down next to me hard enough that the mattress would bounce if it wasn’t as hard as a rock. “I set an alarm for two hours,” he mumbles.

“Hey.” I roll onto my back and lift the hem of my baggy t-shirt. “Get in.”

He props himself up on one elbow, his ears going red. “That…I was not awake when I did that, I swear.”

I just settle my head back on the pillow and close my eyes.

After so long I almost give up, I hear rustling and feel a huge, warm weight on my belly.

Andrew squirms his way up under my t-shirt, making cute little irritated sounds in his chest. He’s shirtless, our skin still soft and damp from the river.

Groaning, he rests his cheek right between my not very impressive pecs and goes limp.

It’s even less comfortable than I remembered, but he’s all over me like a weighted blanket, his lower body nestled between my thighs and his feathery hair tickling my chest.

Even though we forgot to pull the curtains to cut off the sunlight or the sound of kids fighting, we’re both asleep before I can even get settled.