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“Is that what you really want, Brian?” Kathlene asked me after I had told she and her son the entire tale of what had occurred between Pete and me. “Do you want it to be over?”
“Are you going to give up on Pete?” Chris chimed in immediately after.
“Give up on— Chris, Pete gave up on me. He told me to…” I trailed off and swallowed hard with a guilty glance at Kathlene. “He made it clear how he felt that day, and several times after.”
“Yeah, but you told me not more than an hour ago that he tried to apologize to you just the other day!” Chris pounced on that portion of my tale. “Doesn’t that tell you something?”
“Yeah,” I answered sourly, “That he doesn’t like the way things turned out. Neither do I! But after the things he did and said to me… an apology doesn’t just wipe all that away!”
“No,” Kathlene calmly agreed, “it doesn’t, but it does indicate, to me at least, that he’s willing to try to put things right between you.”
“And you expect me to jump up and down and clap my hands? He hurt me! More than that, he crushed me! He said he didn’t want to be with a faggot, and then—”
“Brian Andrew Kellam!”
“Sorry, Mom, but that’s what he said— and then he hooked up with this other guy— who looks something like me, by the way— and comes out with him at his new school! I saw them at a party, and they were all over each other! I mean, how can I—” I ran my hand through the short-cropped hair on my scalp in frustration, and then rested my eyes on my palms. After a brief pause, I continued in a soft voice. “I can’t just forget everything that happened and pretend that I’m happy he wants to be friends again.” I looked up, meeting Kathlene’s eyes. “He hurt me too much.”
“No one is asking you to forget, honey,” Kathlene remarked, “but I would ask you to at least try and rebuild a friendship with him.”
“Yeah, Bri,” Chris added. “You fought so hard to get back to him. It would be a shame to just throw it away if there is a chance to keep the friendship.”
“I don’t know.” I sighed, and continued in a small voice. “I can’t hope for anything, because if nothing happens, then I’ll… it’ll hurt worse than it already does.”
“Is that why you started purging again?” Chris asked.
I glanced at him, meeting his eyes for a moment before dropping them and nodding. “Yeah.”
“Did… does it make you feel better?” Chris inquired curiously.
“No, not really. It’s more like… I started working out as a distraction, just like last time. I was watching my body and started noticing things that I didn’t like, so I worked out more to change those things.”
“Okay, but that doesn’t explain the not eating, and the purging,” Chris pursued the discussion. “Where does that fit in?”
I thought for a moment and then replied softly, “I wasn’t hungry because I was depressed, and I started to look… I didn’t like the way my body looked.”
“You thought you were fat?” Kathlene queried.
“Um… not fat, but too heavy. Out of shape. Out of proportion.”
“And how do you feel about your body now, Brian?” Kathlene asked.
“The same.”
“And you work out how often?”
“More than I should.” My answer drew a cross look from Kathlene. “Okay! Including runs, five hours a day? Sometimes more, sometimes less.”
“So you’re doing exactly what you were doing before,” Chris stated.
I nodded, looking away from them. “This isn’t going to go away, is it?” I asked quietly.
“No, honey,” Kathlene responded, compassion filling her voice, “it’s not. And honestly, I don’t know what Chris and I can do to help you any more than your mom and dad in Portland can do.”
A sharp thrill of fear ran through my body at her words, and panic gripped me.
“Brian, hold on, sweetheart,” Kathlene said as she laid her hand on my arm. “I said that I don’t think that we can do any more than your family in Portland, not that we can’t or won’t help you.”
“Mom, I—”
“Brian, honey, I know that you came here looking for help, and we are going to do everything we can to get you the help you need, but it may not be here, in San Francisco. It will probably be up in Portland.”
“I…” Words would not come to me as I sat there, shattered. My hopes that the Forns would be able to rescue me from myself had been in vain.
“Don’t look like that, Brian,” Kathlene said gently, and she moved to stand before me. “We’re not giving up on you, and we’re not pushing you away. You’re here, and as long as you’re here, we’ll do everything we can. But you need to look at this from a larger perspective. Your life is in Portland now. Your family is there. You go to school there. You have your counselor there. That is where you need to be.”
“It’s too hard.” I whispered. “I can’t do it.”
“Yes you can, Bri,” Chris answered. “You are strong enough, and your family is behind you. They love you. You can do it.”
Tears filled my eyes. The memory of Pete sitting in the living room at the farm house facing the specter of reporting what Curt did to him came vividly to mind, and the words Chris had spoken resonated with the words I had said to Pete.
“Why can’t my life just… why can’t I just be normal?” I asked no one in particular.
“There isn’t such a thing as normal, Brian,” Kathlene said firmly. “There is you. You are unique, and I for one wouldn’t want you to be any other way. If you were less than what you are, you wouldn’t be nearly as important to me, and to Chris.”
“Mmm hmm.” Chris nodded his fervent agreement.
“Even with all the problems I cause?” I asked with some bitter self loathing.
“Bri, I told you last night,” Chris responded, “that you taught me a lot, and most of that was because you had your problems. If you hadn’t had them, then I don’t know what I would have done when Andy got pounded.”
“And I wouldn’t have known how to react when Chris finally told me he likes boys,” Kathlene added. “Your problems, as you call them, make you who you are, and have done a lot to make us who we are— and for the most part, I think those changes are for the better. I’m not saying that we don’t want you to get the help you need, but I am saying that I don’t regret anything that has come to us from you or because of you.”
“David doesn’t think that way,” I said, and I didn’t need to hear Kathlene’s exasperated sigh to know it wasn’t on point. “Okay, I can accept what you’re saying. Doesn’t make me feel any better though. So what now?”
“Well, right now you need to call your parents and let them know you are okay,” Kathlene answered. “You scared them, Brian. I would expect a fair amount of yelling.”
“I know. It was stupid of me.” The tone of self-recrimination in my voice left nothing to Chris’s and Kathlene’s imagination.
“I wouldn’t say that, exactly,” my adoptive mother replied. “Foolhardy, yes. Stupid? Not necessarily. You came here because you were in trouble and didn’t know what to do. I believe that the fact you were reaching out for help after a fashion is a very good sign. I’m not certain what your parents will think, but I believe you did what you did for the right reasons.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I acknowledged quietly.
“Now, why don’t you call your family and let them know you’re here.”
“Okay. Um, Chris? Would you sit with me while I talk to them?”
“Of course, Bri.”
Chris stood and offered me his hand, which I took. He pulled me up, and before I could lose my nerve, I picked up the phone and dialed it.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Mom. It’s me. Brian.”
“Oh, thank God. Brian Andrew Kellam, if you ever do this again, I will tan your hide and tack it to the wall! Where are you? Are you safe?”
“Mom, you know where I am, and yes I’m safe.” I continued on before she could interrupt. “I’m sorry that I left like I did. I know it was stupid and wrong, and I know that I have to pay for that, but please, please don’t yell right now. I don’t think I can handle it.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line.
“Brian, are you in trouble?” She asked quietly.
“Not with the law or anything like that, Mom, but yeah, I have some problems, and I need help. That’s why I came here: I thought Chris and Kathlene could help me.”
“Why didn’t you come to me, Brian?” Mom asked in a surprisingly gentle voice.
“I… I needed someone outside of the situation… someone who wasn’t involved with everything that was going on. And since Chris and his mom have been here with me before… I thought of them.”
A quick pause filled the air, and then she said, “Okay, honey. I can accept that. And I’m sorry that you felt you couldn’t come to me. We can talk more about that later, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Your father wants to talk to you. Here he is.”
My mom and dad spoke briefly, but I couldn’t make out their words. My dad’s voice came through the receiver a moment later.
“Hey there, son. Seems like you’ve had a rough couple of months.”
“Hi, Dad. Yeah, it’s been hard.”
“Well, I was glad to hear you were safe when I talked to Kathlene. You went down there to get help with your eating?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. I’m glad you felt you could go to the Forns if you didn’t feel like you could come to us. I guess it really does take a village to raise a kid, huh?”
“Dad, why aren’t you and Mom angry?”
“Oh, Brian, we are, or rather we were. We’re still upset that you left like you did, but that’s not all that important at the moment. It’s something we’ll deal with as a family later. Right now, we want to make sure that you’re safe, and that we get you the help you need.”
“Oh. I… uh… I don’t know what to say, except that I’m sorry.”
“I am too, son. We talked with Kathlene last night and we decided that we’d come down and pick you up on New Years Day. It will give you a few days with Chris and Kathlene, and then we can spend the weekend as a family figuring out what we can do to help you.”
“Dad, this is freaking me out. You and Mom should be screaming at me right now.”
Dad chuckled. “What would that do but make things worse? We’ll talk to you about what you did, but it will be a talk, not a yelling match. I think this has done a lot to show us you are… have been growing up. It changes the way we look at things.
“I should tell you that you scared a lot of other people too. Your friends have been near frantic with worry. Terry and Tomas have been calling every hour they’ve been awake since you left to see if we’d heard anything from you.”
“I’ll call them and apologize,” I offered.
“That would be nice. Pete was also very worried.”
“Ah.”
An uncomfortable silence passed down the phone lines.
“Brian, I know that a lot of water has passed under the bridge,” my father said urgently, “but he really is ashamed of the way he’s treated you. We talked for a long time. I believe he is sincere in his wish to rebuild his friendship with you. Can you try to give him a chance?”
“Dad, Pete isn’t really forefront in my mind at the moment,” I said shortly, my tone telling him I wasn’t going to discuss my ex-boyfriend.
“Of course it isn’t. I’m sorry, Brian.”
I sighed deeply, and then answered, “I think about it, but not now.”
“That’s all I can ask, son. I’m going to let you go so you can relax for a bit. I can guess how much stress you’re under, so spend some down time with Chris, and we’ll talk tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay, Dad.”
“Love you, son. Your mom loves you, and Dawn, too. And Kevin, and Ray…”
“Fuckin’-A right I do!” I heard in the background.
“Raymond!” My mother bellowed in anger.
“Tagolog!”
I chuckled at hearing the familiar come from hundreds of miles to the north.
“Did he laugh?” Ray’s voice came through the phone.
“Yes, Ray, he laughed. Good bye, son. Love you.”
“Love you guys too. Bye,” I responded, still laughing to myself.
After hanging up, I made a call to Terry and let him know I was okay. He wanted to yell at me, but I interrupted him before he could get into full roar. I got away with agreeing to allow him to berate me when I returned to Portland, and a Terry said he would let Tomas know I was alive.
As the noon hour approached, Chris and Kathlene left the house to run some errands and visit with the Bradens. I begged off, claiming that I didn’t want to confront Tony and his dad, and I was sure that was what it would be. After extracting a promise from me that I wouldn’t enter the weight room or go for a run, they left, telling me they would be back a few hours later.
The phone rang some time later. I answered, expecting Mac or Pedro to be on the other end since they had said they’d try to drop by. Instead, another familiar voice came through the receiver.
“Hello?”
There was a pause on the other end.
“Hello?” I repeated.
“Who is this?”
“Who is this?” I asked in return, dreading the answer, but at the same time, a sense of anticipation grew in my gut; a sense of righteous frozen rage.
“This is David.”
“Hello, David,” I began civilly, hoping to avoid an argument. “This is Brian.”
“You! What the fuck are you doing there?” Chris’s brother grated. “Haven’t you done enough damage? Turning my family against me?”
“I’m not the one who beat down his little brother for something he can’t control!”
“No, you’re the one who turned him into a fucking faggot!”
“Oh, grow up and come into the twenty-first century, you arrogant-assed Cro-Magnon. You’re scared because it’s something that you don’t understand!”
“I’m not scared, and I didn’t raise him to be a faggot!”
“You didn’t raise him to be a bigot either, even though you turned out that way. How did you manage not to pass that off to him, anyway? Ignorance is usually very contagious.”
“I’m no bigot.”
“No? Then why are you holding Chris’s sexuality against him? Why did you beat the shit out of him if you don’t hate gays? That’s the definition of bigotry, by the way. And if you didn’t know, that puts you in the same class as McKinney and Henderson.”
“Who?”
“The guys who killed Matthew Shepard!”
“I’m not like them!”
“Wrong! You’re exactly like them! They killed that guy in Wyoming for the same reason you beat your brother to a pulp! They hated what he was— gay— just like you hate the fact that Chris is gay! No difference! And what you did to him and his mom last week is the same thing! You turned his grandparents against him, and you turned your mom against you with your hate and your arrogant ignorance. I didn’t do that, you did!”
“You made him choose that lifestyle. He’s not going to live like that!”
“How he lives is not your decision to make.” I sighed. “David, it’s not a choice. It’s an inborn trait, like eye color.”
“Bullshit!”
“Look it up. Ask any reputable psychiatrist. Read the studies.”
“It’s wrong!”
“David, think about it. You’re reacting out of fear, and based on prejudices that date back three-thousand years.”
“God says it’s wrong!”
“God said a lot of things are wrong! Why is it you’re picking this one thing out of the hundreds of things listed in the bible to go off on? You’re afraid of what you don’t understand. You’re in the navy, which is an environment that makes a virtue of homophobia. Use your brain! Chris isn’t a kid any more. You can’t beat this out of him with your fists. The only thing you’ll get out of this crusade you’re on is the loss of your family!”
“Let me talk to my mom!”
“No.”
“Let me talk to her!”
“No. She doesn’t need to be exposed to your bullshit. Why did you call, anyway? Didn’t she tell you not to call until you came to your senses?”
A strangled noise came through the receiver.
“Look, David. It’s obvious that I can’t change your mind. You have it made up, and you’re in a place where all that hate is being reinforced. If you want to throw away your family, that’s your choice to make. Chris isn’t going to change to make you feel better— he can’t change what he is. He can’t control it. It’s a part of him just like his hair color. The sooner you come to realize that, the sooner you’ll be able to have a civil conversation with your mom.
“You, on the other hand, can change. Your beliefs are just that— beliefs, and not fact. Do yourself a favor: read the studies. Talk to some doctors who aren’t mired in their religion. Look at the evidence without prejudice. If you do, you’ll see the truth. If you choose not to, you can stay in the third millennium B.C. and lose out. It’s up to you.
A loud noise was followed by silence on the line. I hung up.
“Wow.”
I turned to see Chris and his mother staring at me.
“How much did you hear?”
“We came in when you were talking about Matthew Shepard,” Kathlene replied. “I take it David hasn’t changed his mind?”
“So it would seem. I’m sorry.”
“For what, Bri?” Chris asked.
“I shouldn’t have answered the phone.”
“Nonsense,” Kathlene asserted, and then came over to hug me. “I’m sorry you had to deal with David.”
“It’s okay… I think I needed something like that. It helped me focus.”
“Good. Now we can figure out what to do with you,” Kathlene said, and we sat down to do just that.
“Wow,” Chris exclaimed as I slipped down from his back after he completed a set of calf-raises. “It’s been a while. My legs are rubbery.” After stretching a bit he turned and grinned at me. Sweat rolled down his bare chest and glistened on his face. The thin, scanty running shorts he wore were soaked with his perspiration and clung to his waist and hips like a second skin. He critically examined my body, which was clothed exactly as his was. “You’ve put on a lot of mass since I saw you last, Bri.”
“Yeah, I know. That’s part of the problem.”
“Bri, you have to think about this for a minute. You’re sixteen. You’re growing into a man’s body,” Chris explained. “You’re not a kid. All that exercise is going to build bulk. You’re expecting your body to react like it did before you really started growing. It’s not going to do that. You have to accept that.”
“I know I’m not a kid,” I protested. “But still… I mean, look at me!”
“Oh, I am. What I see is a body that’s ripped. Pose for me.”
“What?” I asked incredulously.
“Pose. Stand in front of the mirror and pose. If you’re that worried about being out of balance, then lets look at it objectively.”
“Chris…”
“Brian…”
I swallowed hard.
“What is it, Bri?”
I debated on how to answer him. The silence dragged on. I could not meet his gaze.
“Are… Bri, are you ashamed of your body?”
I grasped the lifeline he had thrown me and nodded, even though that wasn’t really my concern.
“Brian, listen to me. You have absolutely nothing to be ashamed of as far as I am concerned. Okay?” He approached me and put his hand on my shoulder, squeezing gently. The contact sent a thrill through my body. “I want to help you see yourself the way I see you. Please?”
I nodded and looked into his eyes. His honest concern showed through clearly, and it appealed to me.
During the next hour I stood in front of the mirror and posed in various ways. Chris examined my body closely, muscle by muscle, and wrote down his notes as we talked about them. His hands glided over my body in a clinical way as we went on, but no matter how clinical, his hands affected my body in ways I had been hoping to avoid. A palpable tension arose as Chris examined my abdominals, his fingers lingering on my skin as though he was reluctant to lose the contact. He undoubtedly noticed my obvious arousal, and I was surprised to see that the session was having the same effect on him.
When he finally pulled his hands away from my stomach, our eyes met. A hunger presented itself to me with startling ferocity, a hunger that I, myself, felt deep inside. Chris put his hand on my bare chest, and I felt another warm thrill run through my body. On impulse, I lifted myself up and kissed him on the cheek. He stared at me, and then pushed me back to arms length to blatantly size me up from head to toe, his gaze lingering on the tented running shorts that barely covered me. The tension was unbearable, and the intensity in his eyes held me in place as much as his physical presence. He stepped forward, towering over me by nearly a foot. Our eyes were locked together, his hunger unabated. He slowly bent down until we were nose to nose. He turned his head slightly and gently pressed his lips to mine, and we kissed. A few seconds later, I felt his tongue lightly brush my lips, and I let him in, meeting his tongue with mine. He released my arms and ran his hands across my chest a few times, and then he ran his fingers up my neck, and rested his palms on my cheeks. The kiss morphed from a gentle, loving kiss to a fierce, deep lust-filled full-mouthed war. A low growl issued from deep within Chris’s chest, and then he slowly pulled away.
His eye met mine, and I saw that he understood what I had just discovered for myself. No matter how much we were attracted to each other, we could never be lovers. There was too much in the way. Tears filled my eyes as his own tears slid down his face. He opened his lips to say something, but I stopped him with a finger.
“Shhh. You don’t have to say it. I know.”
I stood on my tiptoes and kissed him chastely on the lips— a long, lingering kiss that attempted to communicate to him how much I valued him as a friend, for that was all he could ever be: a friend. As I pulled away, I smiled at him.
“You’re one hell of a kisser, Chris. Whoever ends up with you…”
Chris leaned down and matched the kiss I had just given him. When he straightened, he answered, “Yeah, you too. I’m sorry, Brian. Really, I am. I shouldn’t have…”
“Chris, it’s okay. Do you know how long I’ve wanted to kiss you that way? About three years.”
“Why didn’t you, then?” Chris asked quietly. A glance told me he was curious, but not angry.
“For a lot of reasons. At first it was because I didn’t want to let on that I was gay, and then later it was because I didn’t want to make you gay, or do something you didn’t want to do, and you wouldn’t have let me anyway because you knew Pete was out there. Then I was with Pete, and you were with Tony. Now we’re both single, more or less, but neither of us could make it happen.” I pointed to his deflated crotch to emphasize the point.
“What are we going to do? You know it’ll happen again if we keep working out.”
“Well, we can do one of two things: stop working out, which I don’t want to do, or do our best to ignore it.”
“I don’t think I can ignore it, Bri.”
I laughed. “Well, then, we’ll take a break and one of us will go jerk off in the house and one of us will jerk off here. When we’re done, we keep going.”
“You’re not serious!”
“Yeah, I am. Come on, Chris. I’m just as horny as you are, and if it’s going to get in the way, then we need to take care of the problem, right?”
Chris thought it over for a moment, and then gave me a lopsided smile. “Okay. This time I’ll go into the house, and you can stay here. Next time, you go into the house. It’s cold out there.”
I laughed at him and he pulled me into a tight hug. The contact still thrilled me, but it didn’t matter. I could feel him harden against me, and I knew he could feel me doing the same. He looked down at me and smiled.
“I love you, Brian.”
“I know. I love you too, Chris.”
We could finally say the words to each other without fear. We understood exactly what was meant when using them. The uncertainty and tension was gone. The emotions we expressed using those words were plain, direct and filled with the absolute trust we had in one another. In a way, the words spoken by my friend that day meant much more to me than if he had spoken the same words as my lover. Chris and I would always be friends, and brothers. The bond was deep and nothing would break it.
We separated, and he grabbed his workout towel and headed for the door. “Ten minute break?”
“Yup!”
When he came back, Chris continued assessing my body as he as been before, with similar results. Any anxiety that had existed before was gone, and we accepted the fact that our bodies were going to react in a certain way at certain times. We ignored it as best we could, and when it got too much for one of us, we called for a short break.
When he was done with his observations of me, I jokingly suggested evaluating his build in the same way, and he agreed immediately. I went over his body in minute detail, exactly as he had done for me.
After we had completed our analysis, I discovered that my list was actually the same length as the one we had written for Chris, with similar items to work on. It helped me to believe that what I saw with my eyes in the mirror was not necessarily what others saw, and that what I saw wasn’t necessarily a reason to punish myself by exercising to excess.
The eating issue was a different matter altogether, however. I still didn’t feel hungry, and when I did eat, it was hard to stop myself from purging it. Chris and Kathlene gently encouraged me to talk to them about what I was thinking and feeling at those times, and I realized that most of my thoughts surrounded my body image and centered on the impression that I was too heavy. Chris’s evaluation and words had shown me that impression was wrong, but I also knew it would take time to adjust my thinking.
Kathlene spent some time with me going over some of the things I could do to keep track of how much food I needed each day, and also helped me to find foods I could eat that wouldn’t leave me with the hated heavy feeling that usually preceded the urge to stick my finger down my throat.
Kathlene also talked to me about what I needed to do regarding my exercise routine. She admitted that the decision to severely curtail my physical activity while I was living with them had been a mistake, but she emphasized that I needed to closely monitor how much exercise I was getting and to talk to a doctor about warning signs that I was overdoing it. She also demanded that I speak to a nutritionist to put together a diet that would give me the nutrients I needed.
I promised her that I would.
“How are you, son?” Dad asked as pulled me into his arms.
“Doing okay, Dad. Not great, but okay.”
He held me close for a moment and then pushed me out to arms’ length.
“I think you’ve grown since I saw you last,” he said, squeezing my biceps.
I shrugged and gave him a half-smile as he stepped aside to make room for my mother. She hugged me fiercely before looking me over as my father had a moment earlier.
“I love you, Brian,” She whispered, her eyes filled with tears.
“I love you too, Mom,” I answered with a soft smile. “Thank you for being so cool about this. It means a lot to me.”
“Well, we’ll talk about all of this later. Your health is more important right now.”
“Okay.”
“Shall we go inside?” Kathlene suggested and opened the front door to the house.
We followed her into the living room where my parents sat on the couch, Kathlene sat on the love seat, and I took a seat with Chris on the floor. We sat close enough to each other that Chris could hold my hand— a gesture that my parents noticed.
“Are you and Chris…” my mother began hesitantly.
“No, mom, we’re not. We’re friends. That’s all.” I looked up at Chris, and he nodded permission to explain. “Not that we didn’t think about it, but we talked and realized that we couldn’t have that kind of relationship. Chris is a brother to me, Mom. He could never be my boyfriend, but what we have between us is deep.” I gazed at my parents. “He’s my best friend, my closest friend, and someone I can lean on when I need help. He’s been here for me since I first came to live here, and he’ll always be here for me no matter what. I love him.”
“But not romantically?” Dad asked.
“Not any more.”
“I feel the same way Brian does,” Chris said softly. “When we were in the weight room the other day, there was a moment where our friendship could have… gone that way, but we both pulled back and talked. What we are to each other… there’s no word for it. Friend doesn’t describe it. Brother is the closest thing I can think of, but it’s even more. I love David, but the love I have for him doesn’t even come close to the love I feel for Brian. I love Mac and Pedro, and Andy, but not quite like this. It’s different.”
A hush covered the room for several seconds as the adults took in our words. Kathlene was smiling slightly. My father radiated approval. My mother’s expression displayed happiness and acceptance of what we said.
Dad spoke first. “I don’t think that I’ve ever witnessed anything quite like what you boys have said. What you two have together is something only a handful of people experience in their lives. You have something powerful between you. I hope you’ll never forget what you said here this afternoon, and you never let your friendship drift away. I can only wish I’d had a friend the same way you two have each other.”
Mom leaned into Dad a bit, and said, “I feel the same way about your father, Brian, so I understand what you mean.”
“Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Dad,” I said softly, and got smiles in return.
Conversation drifted from friendship toward my issues. We talked about the steps I would take when we got back to Portland, from seeing a nutritionist to consulting a orthopedic specialist to set safe limits for my exercise routines. Mom and Dad both seemed pleased that I was active and cooperative during the discussion and pleasantly surprised at the level of motivation I had to help myself combat the challenges I faced.
Chris had held me all night as we talked about what had happened between Pete and me. I ran the gamut of emotions from anger to utter despair, and Chris helped me come back to a more centered frame of mind. We talked about what might occur when I got back to Portland, and what might happen between me and Pete. He convinced me that I needed to give Pete a chance to rebuild a friendship whether or not I wanted him as my boyfriend. Chris pointed out that our families were linked together and a civility needed to exist between Pete and me if nothing else. I promised him that I would try, and we drifted off to sleep in each other’s arms, comforted by the presence of a brother.
We left for Portland the next day. I said good bye to Chris and Kathlene, kissing the mother on her cheek and my brother on the lips before hugging him tightly.
“You’ll come up for spring break?” I asked him, confirming what had been discussed the night before.
“I’ll be there,” Chris answered.
“I’ll try to get time off, too,” Kathlene added. “I think it’s time for me to meet everyone up there.”
“That would be wonderful,” my mother said with a big smile.
The adults had talked into the early morning hours, healing old wounds and laying the groundwork for their future friendship. I was gratified to see my parents, especially my mother, making the effort toward Kathlene to put their differences behind them. My mother finally realized that Kathlene was not trying to supplant her role as my mother, but both knew that Kathlene was going to play an important part in my life and the closer they were to each other, the easier it would be for everyone involved.
My flight to the Forns began with desperation and fear. Leaving them, I knew that I had a lot of work to do. Nevertheless, I found myself optimistic for my future. There was only one thing I didn’t know how to deal with.
Pete.