Hugh's Pain - 6. Chapter 6

Hugh shook his head, forcing himself back to the present as he heard movement surround him. The game had ended and the boys were dispersing from the park. It was time for him to leave also, and make his way to the diner.

Two of the teenagers he’d seen playing went into the café ahead of him and he watched them sit at a table near the kitchen. One of them must have been related to the waitress, probably her son, because she greeted him with a hug and a kiss on the cheek while just ruffling the hair of the second boy’s head.

Hugh took a seat at the breakfast bar and ordered a mocha. It was one of the reasons the place was a favorite of his and Jason’s. As kids they would come in and order hot chocolate when it was cold outside, ice cream soda when it was hot. As they grew older they grew fond of the mocha that only this place had―iced or hot, whichever the weather stipulated. It wasn’t all that cold outside, but hot was what he’d had the day that he turned his back on his best friend.

As Hugh sipped his mocha, he heard a commotion behind him and turned to see what was going on. It was the boys from the baseball game. He watched, frozen in his seat, as the boy whose mother was the waitress shrunk in his chair. The other boy was up and shouting.

“Forget it, Toby. I won’t sit here another minute with a disgusting faggot. As far as I’m concerned, you are as good as dead.”

Hugh’s heart clenched and as the boy headed for the exit, he found himself standing and starting after him. He stopped when he saw a man, a town cop, reach out and grab the kid’s arm. When the boy was told to sit, Hugh looked back at the one left at the table. His mother was sitting with him, holding him to her breast as he openly sobbed.

Hugh heard a slap and snapped his gaze over to the table by the window. The kid was holding his left hand and rubbing the back of it. He watched as the boy picked up a pen with his right hand and began writing. It was obvious that the boy was left handed in the way he held the pen.

The boy wrote and held it up to the cop who in turn spoke, but too quietly for anyone else to hear. When the boy reached for the pen with his left hand, the cop slapped his hand again. This repeated itself a few times before the kid finally broke down in tears.

“Stop hitting me!”

The cop’s voice rose. “Use the correct hand.”

“You know how hard it is to write with that hand. I’m left-handed. Dad, don’t you remember yelling at the teacher when I was six? You told her to let me use the hand I was born to use. Why are you doing this now? You said you loved me just as I was and that you always would. Why do you hate me now?”

Hugh steeled himself to intervene, but the cop didn’t strike the boy again. Instead, the man was gentle in turning the boy’s head in the direction of his friend. His voice dropped again so that only his son could hear, and after a small amount of time, Hugh watched them hug before the kid actually came back to his friend.

“Toby, I’m sorry. I’m so stupid.”

Hugh tuned out the conversation and returned his attention to the cop. Where was this guy back when he abandoned his friendship? Why couldn’t his father have been like this man?

Hugh suddenly felt as though the air in the café was too thick to breathe. With shaky hands, he pulled a ten out of his pocket and set it on the bar. It would leave the waitress a good tip. He left the building just as quickly as he had seven years prior. Only this time, he didn’t rush home. This time, he went to the graveyard.

Hugh wasn’t sure what he’d expected to see when he reached Jason’s headstone, but seeing the gravesite carefully weeded with flowers overlaying the plot surprised him. Someone had been there very recently.

When he arrived at Jason’s headstone, Hugh dropped to his knees. He traced the name and dates engraved in the granite. Not sure why he ran here rather than keeping to the places he knew he needed to be, Hugh let out a shuddering breath, stifling the scream that he felt building in his chest.

Time passed as Hugh knelt with his head bowed and tears silently dripping onto the earth beneath him. He wanted to speak, to talk with his old friend. He wanted to hug him to his chest and tell him all the things that should have been told. But Jason was gone. And it was all his fault. If only he’d been there, if he’d not turned his back, if he’d not been so afraid.

Hugh stiffened and raised his head, wiping at his wet eyes, when he heard steps behind him.

“Did you know him?” He recognized the voice from the diner. The officer continued, “Shit, I guess that was a stupid question. Of course you knew him. Why else would you be here?”

Hugh stood, grimacing when the muscles in his legs began to spasm. He’d been on his knees long enough to almost put them to sleep. He took a couple minutes to compose himself before turning around. Once he did, he found the cop staring down at Jason’s headstone with a look of pure misery on his face. Hugh studied the face, trying to place it in his memory, but there was no recollection of who this man was.

“He was such a sweet soul,” the man whispered.

Hugh felt himself flinch when the tortured gaze rose to meet his face.

“You were at the diner. You were there when my son―”

“Yes.” Hugh was quick to interrupt. “You handled it well. Much better than most.”

The man nodded and walked closer to the gravesite.

“You knew him well.” The statement, rather than question, threw Hugh for a couple seconds. He felt the man’s gaze as it seemed to bore into him. “You look familiar, but I don’t recall seeing you around. You don’t live in the area do you?”

“No, not for a long time.” Hugh could feel his face heating under the other man’s scrutiny. He wanted to run from it, but was frozen in place. “I… I lived here before. In the house at the end of town.”

Hugh watched as a myriad of emotion flitted across the officer’s face, settling into one of compassion. The look surprised Hugh. He would have expected anger, judgment, even hatred from anyone that had been as close to Jason as this person had seemed to be. Never compassion.

“Hugh?”

He blinked. How did this person know his name?

“It is Hugh, isn’t it? Jason used to speak of you often.”

“How… who are you?”

Before answering, the man ran a hand through his hair and looked around. “Gary. Listen, I’m off duty and would like to sit down with you. Would you mind coming back to my place? If you’ve got time, there are some things you should know.” When Hugh didn’t answer right off, Gary added, “I know you don’t know me, and I can only imagine what you are thinking, but,” he rested a hand on Jason’s tombstone, “he didn’t get a chance to tell you.”

“What?” Hugh choked out. “I know he didn’t. I didn’t let him. I―”

“No,” Gary said and gently touched Hugh’s arm. “Don’t. You would have. He knew that, Hugh. There just…. Please, come with me. I’ll make us some coffee and tell you what I know of Jason’s family.”

“What you―” Hugh began to tremble so hard he almost fell to his knees.

“Please, Hugh, not here.”

They stood staring at one another for a few minutes before Hugh nodded and followed Gary to his truck. He almost changed his mind when the thought of getting into an enclosed space with a complete stranger came to mind, but resolutely took hold of the door handle and pulled. Then all he had to do was force himself to slide onto the passenger seat and close the door behind him.

Neither man said anything on the short drive to Gary’s home. Hugh was thankful for the silence. It gave him time to cordon off his panic and send it into the back corners of his consciousness. When the truck pulled into a familiar drive and up to a house that Hugh knew inside and out, he had to mentally put a lock on the door to hold himself together.

Hugh got out of the truck and followed Gary through the side door of the house and into the bright kitchen beyond. He stopped just inside the threshold and looked around. Not much had been changed. The color of the walls was a lighter shade of yellow than he remembered and the stove was one of the newer flat top units. Light green kitchen towels adorned both the refrigerator handle and the oven door, and there were matching cloth placemats on the same table he remembered. He and Jason had shared many meals at that old scarred table.

Hugh moved over to the table and ran his fingers lovingly along the edge before sitting in the chair closest to the door―his spot. He closed his eyes and visualized himself and a young Jason as they sat eating breakfast after a night over and planning out their day. They’d done that often in the years growing up. In this house or Hugh’s, but mostly this one. Neither one of them was real comfortable around Hugh’s father. He’d been cold even back then, though he’d never been physically abusive.

He opened his eyes when Gary set a cup of fresh coffee in front of him and he realized he must have been day dreaming for a bit since there hadn’t been any coffee made when they arrived.

“I’ve got cream and sugar if you need it.”

Gary waited for his answer and went to sit across from him when Hugh shook his head.

Hugh sipped his coffee and looked around once again.

“So, you bought Jason’s house.”

“Not exactly,” Gary said and waited for Hugh to focus on him. When he did, Gary continued. “The house belongs to Jason’s sister, Ellen, my wife.”

Hugh felt the blood drain from his face. “But, Jason didn’t have a sister. He was an only child. He told me that his mom couldn’t have any more kids, and that him being born was a miracle in itself.”

“That is what he was told, yes. But he was told the truth right before his eighteenth birthday.”

Hugh didn’t say anything. His mind was back at the diner, back to the time when Jason sat across from him and said that he had an important decision to make and that he needed Hugh’s thoughts on the subject. But, before he could tell him, he needed to tell Hugh something else. He needed Hugh to know that he was gay.

The way Jason had said it―with his eyes wide open, clear, and direct―told Hugh more than the words themselves. Jason had thought long and hard about what he was saying. He’d expected Hugh to understand and stay by his side. The devastation of Hugh’s reaction must have cut him to the core. Hugh hadn’t stayed. He hadn’t yelled as Gary’s son had, but what he did was just as bad. Hugh had stood, turned, and walked out of Jason’s life.

Fifteen years, they’d stood side by side, through anything and everything life could throw at them. And Hugh left it all as if it had never meant a thing. He had crushed the friendship they’d had, and the relationship that could have been. Hugh knew then that he loved Jason, but he’d turned his back and condemned that love to die.

And die it did. A slow, agonizing death, brought to head while Hugh held the dying body of his only love. The death fulfilled when the light left Jason’s eyes. Even as his breath left his body, Jason had tried to tell Hugh. But it was too late.