She took a deep breath. “The day that he—that it—well, both his father and I got a call from the school telling us what had happened with the teacher in the classroom and about his suspension. It was alarming enough to us that we both left work and came home right away. When we got there, we found an Eliot we’d never seen before—belligerent, abusive, profane. He was screaming invective at us, and threw a heavy glass at me. His father slapped him across the face.”
A few tears tracked down Rebecca’s cheeks, but she wiped them away impatiently.
“He was sent to his room, and for a while we could hear him shouting and breaking things. Louis wanted to call the police and have him arrested, thinking he needed some kind of wake-up call. I pleaded with him to wait, to give Eliot a chance to calm down, and then maybe we could talk to him. Then I heard a—a thump that didn’t sound right. It wasn’t him throwing something, or stomping, it sounded like what it was, a body hitting the floor.”
She sobbed, and Loren didn’t think, he just stood up and went to kneel next to Rebecca’s chair, covering her clenched hands with both of his, trying to comfort. She turned her palms up and gripped his fingers hard.
“I ran upstairs, and when I opened the door to his room—thank goodness he hadn’t locked it—I saw that he was lying on the floor and that he had slashed one arm open to the bone. He’d transected his artery, and there was—oh Jesus, there was so much blood spraying everywhere. It was on the walls, on his face—”
She shuddered, gripping his fingers tighter. “His father called an ambulance while I desperately tried to stop the bleeding. He went into shock, and it was touch and go that first night. When we knew he was going to make it, and he was stable enough, we had him transferred to the psychiatric unit at OHSU in Portland. He was there for two months.”
Loren had seen the scar on Eliot’s forearm, and knew what a close thing it had been. He swallowed hard, then asked, “How did you end up here, in Arizona?”
“His psychiatrist at OHSU said that a large number of people suffering from bipolar disorder also suffer from something called seasonal affective disorder, and that Eliot might make more progress in a climate that was more warm and sunny than Oregon is. We uprooted ourselves and moved down here, thinking that because we had a diagnosis and were being proactive with his treatment that everything would be okay.”
“And it wasn’t?” Loren kept his grip on Rebecca’s hands tight, soothing.
“The next three years were hell, Loren,” she said simply. “He wouldn’t take his meds. He drank all the time. His moods fluctuated almost daily. He lied, he stole, he sexually acted out. He got into fights, got arrested, was in and out of the psychiatric hospital. One year he was hospitalized five times.”
Loren closed his eyes. “Jesus.”
“His father couldn’t take it, left us,” she said with bitterness. “I tried everything I could think of. Doctor after doctor, medication after medication. Then we found Dr. Babcock. She’s a miracle worker, a chemist with the medications. We got him stabilized at last and things got better. He was able to hold down a part-time job, and he had one or two semiserious relationships.”
“What happened?” Loren asked, and he let go of Rebecca’s hands, pushing to his feet and heading back to his chair.
“He decided to stop taking his meds one day,” Rebecca whispered.
“Jesus, Rebecca. Why?”
She shook her head, the picture of weariness. “He didn’t say anything to me or his doctor, he just—quit. And after a while I could see that he was heading up toward mania again. The rapid speech, not sleeping, hardly eating. He’d disappear for days at a time, off doing God only knows what. He was fired from his job, and when he came to me one day and said that he wanted to move out, I—I let him.”
Loren’s gaze flew to hers in shock. He knew Eliot had a different home address than this one, but Loren wouldn’t have dreamed in a million years he was truly out on his own.
As if sensing his disbelief, Rebecca looked away. “I couldn’t take it anymore, Loren,” she whispered. “He’d been stable; he’d been productive. And he threw it all away. I couldn’t start over from the beginning, not with my husband gone, my practice struggling—”
“Rebecca, I’m no expert, but even I know that a mental illness like bipolar disorder is an ongoing fight for stability. You can’t have thought that just letting him go out on his own would solve anything. He needs support.”
“All the support in the world won’t do squat if he doesn’t want to help himself. He has to
want
to help himself, Loren, and it’s obvious that he doesn’t.” Her voice was harsh. “He has a monthly allowance and I pay for his medical insurance. Everything else is up to him now. I’ve given all I have to give.”
Rebecca fell silent, and Loren took a few deep calming breaths, memories washing over him with all their accompanying joy and pain. Eliot.
“Rebecca,” he began, then broke off. She waited expectantly. “I’d resigned myself to never seeing him again.” His voice was ragged. “I—I don’t know how to feel right now.”
The compassion was back in her eyes, chasing away the anger. “Go see him, Loren. Talk to him. Maybe you can help him when nobody else has been able to. Louis and I were very wrong to keep you from him after what happened. Even if we—weren’t around as much as we should have been, we did notice things, and there’s no denying the bond the two of you had.”
Loren thought of Eliot during that last night they spent together, entwined, words of love gasped into each other’s ears.
“Get away from me, you crazy son of a bitch.”
Loren flinched. Eliot, back in his life. A second chance, maybe.
“I’ll go see him today,” he whispered. Rebecca nodded and stood up, dismissing him.
“I need to get to work.”
Loren pulled a card from his wallet and laid it on the gleaming coffee table, next to the coaster that held his cup.
“My cell number is written on the back. Call me if you ever need anything.”
“I will. Thank you, Loren.”
Loren showed himself out.
ELIOT PACED
his apartment restlessly, from one end of the tiny living room to the other and back again. He’d gotten home from the club and the first thing he did was stash his tip money in the freezer along with the other almost fifteen thousand dollars he kept there, cash he’d rubber-banded into bricks and wrapped in plastic bags. After that he attempted to sleep, but it was no good. He tried to remember the last time he ate, and decided he didn’t care. Maybe some vodka—he was just about to head for the freezer and grab the bottle when he heard a knock on the door.
Eliot spun on his heel and threw the door open, not expecting anyone, and he paused in even further confusion as he took in the very tall, very muscular dark-haired man standing there. He looked so familiar, but the memory hovered just out of reach—then the man smiled, and Eliot knew.
“Loren,” he breathed, and then he blinked, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. Maybe this wasn’t real but just a cruel illusion; his stupid brain always played tricks on him, and the black demon would laugh and laugh in the background.
Please let this be real.
He opened his eyes and the man was still there.
“Loren?” he whispered again, his voice tentative. The man didn’t answer, just opened his arms, and Eliot stepped into them, the years melting away as Loren gathered him close. For one glorious moment everything went quiet, Eliot’s senses wrapped in warmth and safety and comfort. He slid his arms around Loren’s waist and just hung on.
Loren kissed the top of his head and then pushed him gently back, holding on to his upper arms and looking down into Eliot’s face. Had he always been so big? Loren was several inches taller than him, his shoulders broad, the fabric of his tight black T-shirt stretched across them. Eliot had forgotten how handsome he was, with his lean, scruffy jaw and full, sensuous lips.
“It’s so good to see you, El,” Loren murmured, letting go of him with obvious reluctance.
Eliot stood back and let Loren come inside, watching as he took in the shabby little studio apartment. The futon he slept on was unmade, and there were dirty clothes thrown over the backs of chairs and on the floor. Most times Eliot didn’t give a fuck what his apartment looked like, but now he was a little embarrassed.
“Do you want coffee, Loren?” he asked, hearing the thread of anxiety in his voice. “Except I don’t have any coffee. The fucking store was out of the brand I like. What kind of coffee do you like? I like this kind of Breakfast Blend, but it has to be the dark roast, the medium roast does nothing because it’s like drinking water. So I found this girl who was stocking the aisles and I asked her about the fucking coffee, and she looked at me like I was crazy because I wanted the dark roast. I almost told her to suck my fucking dick but I—”
Eliot realized what he was doing and viciously dug the fingernails of one hand into his forearm, gouging, doing something,
anything
to try to stop the embarrassing flow of words. Most people had a look of, at best, bewilderment, and at worst horror by this stage in one of Eliot’s episodes of profane word vomit.
Loren, though, just looked amused.
“You haven’t changed much,” he said in a wry tone, reaching out and taking Eliot’s clenched hand in his and giving it a gentle squeeze. “It’s okay. I didn’t want any coffee.”
Eliot smiled back at him, and he was anxious and couldn’t stand still, starting to tap his hand on his thigh, the words crowding his brain and wanting to escape through his lips.
“I wish I had somewhere nice for you to sit, Loren,” he said, the urge to talk just too great; he couldn’t fight it. “I know my house is a mess, but I don’t care about cleaning it, and one time my mother tried to hire a cleaning lady for me but she just messed with my shit and I could never find anything when I needed it, so I ended up screaming at her. I didn’t mean to, but what she did pissed me off. I mean, she moved my socks to the wrong drawer, and then, when I wanted the navy-blue socks, I couldn’t find them. So I told my mom to get rid of her, and I guess she did because I never saw that woman again. But now my house is messy, and it’s embarrassing and there’s nowhere for you to sit and—”
He broke off again when Loren gave a bark of laughter.
“Okay, let’s get out of here and go for a walk. You can tell me all about the neighborhood and what’s been going on with you the past nine years.” Loren patted him on the shoulder, and then, as if on impulse, pulled Eliot into a one-armed side hug, squeezing him tight.
“I’ve missed you, El,” he whispered, and it warmed Eliot’s heart.
No one ever missed him. Usually they were happy to see him go.
“WAS IT
really you at the club last night, Loren?”
Loren choked on the sip of water he’d just taken, and when he stopped coughing, he capped the bottle and set it on the ground at his feet. “Yeah, that was me, El. I didn’t think you’d recognized me, so I didn’t want to mention it.”
Eliot was perched next to him on the park bench, jiggling his leg up and down. “I don’t remember a lot of things, Loren,” he admitted. “There are huge gaps in my memory, things that I try to remember that are just—gone. It frustrates the hell out of me sometimes.”
“Is that because of your meds?” Loren turned on the bench to face him, pulling his knee up so that it touched Eliot’s thigh, hoping the contact would help keep him grounded. A look of agitation crossed Eliot’s face.
“I think that’s part of it, but a lot of it is because my goddamned brain is so fucked up,” he answered, rubbing his hands up and down his legs with almost unconscious motions. “Like I was trying to remember why it was I haven’t seen you in so long, and I can’t. Why has it been so long since I’ve seen you, Loren?”
Loren swallowed, and he cleared his throat before answering carefully, “Do you remember anything about the day you tried to—well, when you ended up in the hospital in Portland?”
Eliot was already shaking his head. “I don’t remember anything about you at all, I just remember lying on the floor in my room, looking at the blood that was ruining my favorite T-shirt and wondering why my mom was screaming.”
Loren reached out and put his hand on Eliot’s shoulder, rubbing his thumb over his collarbone.
“No one believes me, but I hadn’t planned to kill myself that day. I mean, I used to think about it all the time. Just knowing I always had that option, that I could make the pain go away anytime I wanted, sometimes that just—calmed me. It helped me not do it, as crazy as that sounds.” He snorted. “Crazy. That’s me, Crazy Eliot. Bats in the belfry, a sandwich short of a picnic, a screw loose, a—”
“Stop it, El,” Loren said. He brought the fingertips of his free hand up to brush over the ugly scar on Eliot’s forearm. “But I look at this, and I wonder how this couldn’t have been a deliberate suicide attempt.”
Eliot’s eyes flew to his.
“Explain it to me,” Loren whispered. “Please.”
Eliot pushed Loren’s hand off and stood up, starting to pace again. “No one ever wants to talk about it. No one ever lets me mention it, and Jesus fucking Christ, I was just cutting a little, like I did sometimes because that would make the black demon happy and make him shut the hell up. But that day what I usually did wasn’t enough, and I didn’t mean to. All of a sudden, I just wanted to feel the bone and I—and I did it.”
Loren held his breath, not saying anything, trying to wrap his mind around how something like this could have been an accident.
“You don’t remember you and me that afternoon, in the equipment shed? Tate Miller?” he asked, watching Eliot’s face.
“No,” Eliot replied, “but if Tate Miller was there, I bet I was sucking his dick.”
Loren felt long-buried pain well up, and he pushed it firmly aside. Eliot had been very ill back then, and that’s what Loren needed to focus on, not his own teenage hurt and disillusionment. It shocked him to his core, though, that Eliot didn’t even remember what happened that day and the things Loren said, things that haunted Loren for years. He would never know if that was part of the reason Eliot had slashed his arm open that night, or if it was a spur-of-the-moment accident like he claimed.