The Year I Stopped Being Invisible - 44. Chapter 44

"I came to see your audition. We'll talk after."

Taine followed me into the Polk High School auditorium, receiving a big hug -- despite a disapproving look -- from Linda, a high-five from Carter, and an acknowledging nod from Jim. He sat patiently through the auditions, and -- if I'm honest -- I have to say that I don't even remember auditioning myself.

I know I must have, because people complimented me on my way from the stage, and Mr. McRory was smiling as I made my way past the sixth row, where he sat with his work-light and a yellow legal pad, making copious notes on every actor. As I neared the back of the auditorium, Taine rose from his seat in the back row, following me outside and down the hall to the side entrance of the school.

I walked out onto the little apron of sidewalk and leaned on an empty bicycle rack, lit a cigarette, and just stared at Taine as he caught up to me, waiting for him to speak.

It had only been a few days, and already he looked different to me. He looked tired, exhausted even. There were dark circles and slight bags beneath his beautiful green eyes, which seemed hollow and glassy, without the mischievous spark which always made me shiver with emotion. His smooth face was even more pale than I remembered it, his mouth drawn and the color of his perfect lips lighter than normal. This had obviously been as rough on him as it had on me.

He slouched to a stop about five feet away from me, hands stuffed in the pockets of his battered army jacket, clearly unsure of how to begin this conversation, or even if he really wanted to. I wasn't sure that I wanted him to either, but now that he was here, I had to know.

Taine looked down at the ground, the brim of his cap covering his face while he wrestled privately with his thoughts and feelings. I was used to this preamble, but was impatient, so my inner turmoil came out -- as it often does -- with heavy sighs and exhalations of cigarette smoke in long, dragon-like columns of frustrated steam.

Finally, the brim of the cap raised, and I could see those magical eyes again, now a light grey beneath the cloudy October skies. Even through my roiling emotions, I always marveled at the way Taine's eyes changed color seemingly at will, and although I understood about rods and cones and refracted light, the color of his eyes always seemed to match his feelings like a 1970s mood-ring.

"Last night," he said softly, "I went downstairs to get some orange soda, some ice, and some Doritos. I stood there...thinking that I was coming to see you audition today...and I put the ice...right in the Doritos...instead of the soda."

His eyes held on mine, and he tried to manage a faint smile, but it didn't quite work. The one I tried to form in return didn't really work either. He must have seen the bewilderment and pain in my expression, because he nodded his head slowly, never breaking eye contact.

"It's hard for me, too," he said. "But it's better this way."

"Better!" I exclaimed incredulously. "What is better about this, Taine? What the hell is possibly better about this?"

"The world is a vampire," he replied. "It just slowly sucks away anything good. Nothing can ever stay perfect, Ricky, and what we had was perfect. It's like the snow when I lived in New York. It starts out perfect and pure, like us. And then it starts to melt a little bit, and it refreezes with dirt inside it, and looks ugly and flecked with mud. And then cars go over it and it melts some more. Then it turns to this black, yucky slush. And then it melts some more, and runs off the road, and what's left turns into black ice, and it can kill people, Ricky. And then there's nothing left but dirt and pain."

He turned away, and I could see that he was fighting to blink back tears.

I shook my head questioningly. It had become our sign that he needed to elaborate, to translate his elusive, ethereal thoughts so that my primitive mind could grasp his meaning. He tried not to show his frustration, as always, and turned back to me, his voice almost pleading with me to understand.

"What we had was the only perfect thing I'd ever had," he said. "I didn't want to watch it get eroded, eaten away every day by this shitty school and this awful world. I wanted to hold it, to remember it, to make sure that it never changed. That it never went away."

"So you just disappeared?" I was becoming upset. "Taine, what the hell? You made Sly and Blaine move, changed schools, all just to freeze our relationship in your head like a bug in amber?"

"No, no, no," Taine said, exasperation creeping in. "Sly wanted a nicer house, with more room. He didn't want me being bullied at Polk anymore. He wanted Blaine to have his own area in the house, all that stuff. So he started looking around for places in Windcrest, so I could still be close to you, or near Chamberlain so we could still take the bus and see each other. "

"So why Alamo Heights?" I cried out. "If he wanted us to be close together, why the hell did he pick Alamo Heights? That's all the way across the fucking city! The bus doesn't even go there unless you go downtown first and come back up! It takes like five hours!"

"I know," he smirked. "I just did that, and if Blaine wasn't picking me up, I'd have to do it again. I don't start school until Monday. But I had to talk to you one more time. I had to see you and tell you why, so you wouldn't wonder."

He came over to me and gently brushed the tears from my cheeks, taking my face in both of his soft, perfect hands and raising it to look at him. He wasn't crying, I noticed, and the thought made me cry harder.

"Rick," he said evenly, "it was me. I asked Sly to get a house in Alamo Heights. Shit...every day that I stayed here, Ricky. Every time you had to fight for me, or Sly's car got vandalized, or your dog got killed, or some other thing happened that would only happen to me, you would love me less. And don't say that you wouldn't, because I know you would. I didn't want that to happen...I don't want that to ever happen. I want you to remember us the way that I remember us."

I exhaled sharply and knocked his hands from my face, standing up and walking away from him. Then my anger got the better of me and I turned, my expression a mask of rage. I pointed my index finger at him, furiously jabbing the air to punctuate my words.

"You are so full of SHIT!" I growled. "You just ride into town, make me fall in love with you, make me fight for you, make me decide I can never love anyone else but YOU! Then you are going to turn around and ride right out of my life because you're too afraid to handle a real relationship? The mysterious fucking stranger who makes everyone swoon and then gallops away before anyone really knows him? Is that how you see yourself?"

Taine's eyes widened at my verbal assault. He backed up a few feet, but made no attempt to flee, which strengthened my resolve. He needed to hear this and I needed to say it.

"That's not you, Taine! All the Bauhaus and the perfect snowfalls and sad poems and pretty pictures are just your way of hiding what's really great about you! Life isn't a Goth song, Taine, and it would be really fucked up if it was. And neither is love. You can't spend the rest of your life in and out of infatuation with some stupid Wednesday Addams that disappoints you every other day. You are starving yourself of real love in some fantasy world of snowflakes and moonbeams when it's right here in front of your face!"

I stopped then, dropping my hand and softening my tone. I didn't want to scare him, and he seemed so afraid, so lost, so hurt all the time. Passion scared him, anger scared him, sex scared him, love scared him, I scared him. I didn't want to scare him. I only wanted to love him.

"Taine," I said gently. "Nothing on this earth could ever make me stop loving you. Can't you see that?"

"There is one thing," he said. "You're a great friend to me, Ricky. And before I say this, please don't think that what we did together was bad for me, or that I thought it was wrong, or anything like that. But I can't be gay. I'm not gay. I'm straight. What we did was really amazing, but it wasn't amazing because of the sex."

"You could have fooled me," I sneered, but instantly regretted it when I saw the frustration building in him again.

"No!" Taine barked. "Maybe it looked that way, but...no. It was amazing because of the feelings, the closeness, the...just being open with another person with no walls. It gets so hard to hold these walls up all the time...it tears me apart inside every day from the effort of holding up these damn walls...and it was nice to let them down for a few weeks with you. Really nice, but I can't do that forever. I can't. I wish I could, but I can't."

"Nice," I repeated. "It was 'really nice'. Like a poem or a song. Nice. You know what's nice, Taine? Waking up in the morning in the arms of someone who loves you more than life itself. Who would kill or die for you. Who would take all the crazy shit you dish out and love you anyway. Who can fight with you over song lyrics and movie quotes and still kiss you even in the middle of the argument. Who doesn't use the fact that you're in bed sick as an excuse to cheat on you. Who will always put your needs above his own. And who can fuck up sometimes and you love them anyway. And you explain to them how they fucked up and they love you enough to try not to do it again."

Taine nodded. "Yes, but I'm not gay. You want me falling asleep in your arms and wishing it was Cheryl Tiegs? You want me telling you I don't want to make love with you because once that initial emotional explosion happened, all it means to me is that we're good friends who live together? You want me still feeling that what I really want is out there somewhere and I'm just hanging around to spare your feelings? Every day, that would eat away at both of us until we were just like that dirty slush and black ice. Do you want that?"

I shook my head.

"No," I said. "And that's not what would happen. I get it, Taine. You don't want your soulmate to be a guy. I understand that. In your perfect world, I'd be a big-titted Goth chick who floats on the air and sings about ravens and graveyards. But you know what? That would be Hell for you. Because you love me. And I love you. And what we love about each other is something you will never find in a woman, nor will I. You know it, and I know it. And we'll never find it in any other man, either. This isn't about straight or gay or bi, Taine. It's about YOU and ME! And that's a lot more important than sex, Babes. Which, by the way, you enjoyed whether you want to admit it or not. I was there."

Then it dawned on me.

"I was there," I whispered. "I was there! That's why you wanted to pick up and leave and never see me again. It got to you, and you wanted to erase it. And the way to do that...was to not be around...the only other person who knew how much you enjoyed it. You're ashamed of us. That's why you left. You feel guilty and you're ashamed of us!"

I stared at him, stunned, looking for confirmation in his eyes. But the brim of the cap had come down. Taine was disengaging from me, maybe forever.

"You can think that if you want," Taine said, his voice sad and -- it seemed to me -- disappointed in my conclusions. "It seems like everything I say...even the little subtle things underneath that tell someone how you really feel...no matter how much I talk, no matter how much I 'open up'...I still get misunderstood more and more."

"Explain it to me," I said. "Two statements: One...'What we had was the only perfect thing I've ever had in my life.' Two...'I'm straight.' It doesn't make any sense, Taine. If you have a problem with the way our feelings get labeled, let's not label them. Let's just be together. We don't have to call what we have anything that makes you uncomfortable. It's just us, Taine. Just us."

"People have enough reasons to pick on me already," Taine said. "I just can't, Rick. Even if I really was gay, I couldn't deal with all of that. This is Texas, Rick. It's not normal."

"Normal? Since when have you ever cared about being normal in any other way? Taine...I love you. I know you love me, too. Don't end us before we've even really begun."

"I love you as a friend, Rick," Taine said. "But I can't be here. I can't be around you, because otherwise...well, it's better for both of us."

"Stop saying that!" I exclaimed. "It's not better for either one of us. And definitely not for me! Taine...Babes...I can't live without you. I can't."

I knew it was a lost cause. Taine looked up at me again, his face compassionate, warm. It was the "let him down easy" look and I hated it.

"You'll live," he said. "Please, Ricky. Live, love, be happy. I'll try to do the same. Please wish me luck in that."

The lump in my throat wouldn't let me speak. I just nodded, tears streaming from my eyes. I heard an engine in the parking lot behind me, and turned to see Blaine's Charger pulling up to take Taine away from me forever.

Taine shuffled slowly by me, his head down. He paused at my side, touching my shoulder briefly before hurrying to his brother's car.

I didn't turn around until I heard the sounds of the Charger's engine fading away as it pulled onto Walden Road.

I looked at the empty space where the car had been, wiped my eyes, and took a deep, lonely breath before walking back inside the school.