SWNOVELS Sworn Enemy: Chapter 23
We drive onto my property—saying that is still really weird, by the way—and it’s amazing to see the progress, not only of the barn but of the other buildings and the main house.
My eyes drift over to the trailer and…shit. I glance over at Justin, who is still asleep. Double shit.
We pull to a stop alongside my mom’s car, and Justin stirs, looking cute and rumpled. His eyes catch mine, and we share a smile.
“So…my mom is here.”
He grimaces and hunches down in the seat as though that’s going to do anything. Pretty sure my mom’s already clocked him.
“I’m afraid we can’t actually hide from her. You still need to go to your truck. It’ll be okay.”
He wipes his face, still sleepy and trying to make sense of things. “Okay. So should I just slip out, army crawl to my car, and make a run for it?”
I shake my head, chuckling at his nervous joking. “I don’t think you’d want to do that. It would feel dishonest, I’m guessing.”
“Well, there’s being honest, and then there’s waving a red flag at a woman who has every right to hate me.”
I snort, amused to think that my five-foot-one, slightly round mother could terrorize anyone.
“We’ll get out of the truck, you’ll wave goodbye to her, and I’ll deal with whatever she has to say.”
He lets out a huff of air. “Okay, but now I feel like I’m leaving you to the wolves.”
I wave him off. “She adores me. It’ll be fine.”
It is not, in fact, fine.
Erik gets out of the front of the truck, and Justin and I slide out from the extended cab. My mother’s eyebrows do a thing I’ve never seen them do before. Justin gives her one of his shy little smiles, and she, shockingly, isn’t immediately done in by his sweetness. That’s weird because the first time he pointed that shy smile at me, I folded like wet origami.
He waves and turns toward his truck, but I grab a belt loop and tug him back to me. Bringing a hand to his cheek, I kiss him softly. He grins, knowing what I’m doing, and kisses me back. It’s all very appropriate, complete with church tongue. He pulls back, a golden glint in his eyes.
“You are the worst,” he says, his grin broadening.
“Yeah. But I think you like that about me.”
He kicks a small rock at his foot, then looks up at me through his eyelashes. Fucking adorable.
“I’ll let you know how it goes,” I say, reaching out and grabbing his hand, kissing his knuckles.
He pulls away with a look of regret on his face. “Okay. I’ll talk to you soon.”
He gets into his truck and takes off with another little wave that, once again, does nothing to soothe the hard lines that have appeared between my mother’s eyebrows.
Erik opens the trailer door for my mother, whose jaw is somewhere around her collarbones.
“What. The. Hell. Was. That?” she asks with angry eyes and hands on her hips.
“That was Justin,” I say, smiling as I herd her into the trailer.
I look around for Erik, only to find he abandoned me to hide in his room, the bastard.
“What were you two doing, sitting together in the back of the truck? And why were you kissing him?”
I narrow my eyes at her. “Do you not know what kissing means, Mom?”
Oops. That was…yeah, snarking at my mom about Justin Jennings was probably not a brilliant move. Her eyebrows look like alpine mountains, and I suspect that if she had the power to shoot energy out of her fingers, she would have blown up Justin’s truck on his way out.
“Why would you have anything to do with your abuser?”
A fair question.
“Because that is not who he is anymore, Mom. You know this. You might not live here, but I know all of your gossipy friends are helping you keep tabs.”
“None of them said anything about this.”
“Maybe that’s because it’s none of your business.”
She points her finger at me, anger and hurt flashing across her face. “You made it my business by kissing him in front of me.”
God. I know she’s hurt, especially since she directed and protected so much of my recovery. But this is also part of my recovery, as is setting healthier boundaries between us.
“No, Mom. You showed up unannounced, and I wasn’t going to let my boyfriend go without kissing him goodbye.”
“Boyfriend,” she says, her tone low and deadly calm.
I take a breath to even myself out, hoping it helps her too. “Yes. Boyfriend.”
“When did this happen?”
“We’ve been neutral to friendly around each other for a few months now. We’ve had to be because we are in the same friendship and recovery circles. Proximity kinda did the rest.”
“Your father said something about going to Sunday dinner with him at the Goodnights. Why would they host that man and his brother? I thought they were our friends.”
“They are our friends, Mom. They have been so supportive of everything I’m doing here. That whole barn-raising-slash-fundraising thing was Desi and Sam’s idea, and everyone at the ranch helped out.”
“Then how could they possibly let a Jennings into their home? Renée would’ve never allowed for that.”
“Mom, that is simply not true. The Goodnights were there when Jason and Justin got honest with themselves and had everything stripped from them as a result. I can promise you that this next generation of Goodnights is following Renée’s playbook to the letter. Like everyone else in this community, they saw how the guys were struggling and failing and picking themselves back up again. This has not been some walk in the park for the Jennings brothers, especially not Justin. There’s no way you don’t see it too.”
Mom takes a few deep breaths, but I see the anger slowly bleeding away. She’s fighting it, but it’s just as hard for her to hold on to hurt as it is for me.
“Fine,” she admits, still not happy. “I am glad that they made the connection between being closeted and being assholes. I’m not exactly upset that it’s been hard for them, but I can give credit where credit is due. I still don’t understand what I saw.”
“Mom.”
“I don’t want to hear it, Charlie,” she says, cutting me off with a gesture. “I was there in the hospital with you. Holding your hand, praying over you. Praying for a miracle. Praying you’d come back to us. I didn’t even care how you came back to us, what disabilities you might have, what physical or mental issues you might have. I didn’t care. I just wanted you to live. And now here you are with the man who put you in that hospital room. How am I not supposed to view that as a slap in the face?”
I decide that now is not the time to discuss semantics or the fact that I looked up the best way to kill myself.
“He was the product of his family, Mom. He was a kid.”
She shakes her head vehemently. “He was a young man.”
“He was in high school. And yes, he should have been held responsible back then in some kind of age-appropriate way. But not only was he not held responsible, but at no point did anyone in his life make sure he got the help he needed. He didn’t even get grounded, Mom. He practically got a pat on the back. Can you imagine what that would’ve been like for a seventeen-year-old?”
She rubs her eyes under her glasses, looking, for all the world, sad and frustrated.
“Look. I won’t lie—it’s awful that they didn’t try to get him help. But that doesn’t mean you need to be his sherpa into being a gay man. You are not the dick whisperer.”
A deep chuckle filters out from Erik’s room, and I make a promise to myself that I will get him back for that later.
“That’s not what’s going on, Mom. He and I had a couple of really awkward conversations and one slightly violent interaction. But we understand each other. I understand what he’s going through. I see how hard he’s working, Mom, and he is working so goddamn hard. Even with everything that went on, I know you would want him to get better.”
Her lip curls. “Am I glad that Justin’s a better person now? Sure. Why not. I’m glad he did the work he needed to do. But he did not walk in on his son slumping to the floor as blood poured out of his arms. He did not have to put 911 on speaker so he could apply pressure to both arms. He did not have to see the look on your face when you realized that you survived.”
Guilt hammers me. My poor mother.
“You’re right. I didn’t think through that part, Mom. And I’m so sorry.”
She grabs my shoulders and shakes me more fiercely than you’d imagine someone her stature could.
“Son, it’s not about the goddamn day or the blood, or any of it. I don’t need you to apologize for that. You were hurting, and you had been hurting, and he was the one who hurt you for years, Charlie. For. Years.” She lets go, wiping tears from her eyes. “Son, make it make sense. I can’t…I don’t understand how you could possibly trust him after everything he put you through.”
I pull her into a hug, holding her as she sobs into my chest. It makes me sad, knowing she’s needed to wait until I’d grown up enough for her to talk through this with me. Sad but resolute.
“I want you to imagine who I would be if you and Dad withheld love from me. If you decided that who I was was so bad that you maybe paid for the roof over my head and the clothes on my back and the food on the table, but you didn’t like me very well. Imagine if you didn’t like me, Mom. Don’t you think a kid knows when they’re not loved?”
She wipes away a bit of running mascara under her eye. “Of course they do.”
“Now imagine if the very thing they didn’t like about you was something you recognized in someone else. Imagine if I saw someone happy and gay and open, all while knowing I would come home and you would hate me for the same thing. Can you imagine it?”
“No,” she says, sniffling. “I can’t. I can’t imagine either side of that equation.”
I hug her tight and kiss her cheek. “Well…I can. Or at least I had a front-row seat to it for years. If the tables were turned, I can’t say I wouldn’t hate that kid. If they had access to something so vital, something I would never have? I’d hate their guts.”
The anguish in her eyes reminds me of the co-counseling sessions in rehab. She broke down when she talked about the realization that there was always a part of this path I had to walk alone…it was heartbreaking to witness. And so fucking necessary.
Even with all the support in the world, there are parts of recovery that can only be done by the one recovering.
“We were just…we were terrified, Charlie.” Tears begin to fall again, but the cleansing kind, I think. “We wanted you to know that we accepted you. And I…I learned from PFLAG to lead with love and curiosity. I always thought you were such a cool and brave kid. It was shocking to me that other people couldn’t see that.”
“Imagine being a parent who let their fear treat their own children like dirt.”
She shakes her head. “I’ll never understand it. I gave birth to you, and immediately I knew I would do anything for you. Including—no, especially—anything to make sure that you knew you were loved. I don’t understand their parents. At all.”
“Thank God for that, Mom,” I say, hugging her again. “But you not understanding where they’re coming from means you will have a hard time understanding where Justin is coming from. He told me about what it was like to find out I’d almost killed myself.”
“Yeah?”
“It haunts him to this day.”
“Are you sure this isn’t some sort of weird, sick way of getting back at him?”
I laugh but decide not to tell her that Justin had the same question. “No, Mom. It’s been really frustrating to find myself attracted to him. Really fucking frustrating.”
More laughter from Erik’s room. Hemlock, for sure.
“And to see that he’s actually like a really good guy who’s actually willing to do the hard work? Annoying as fuck.”
Mom snorts as she lays her head on my chest.
“The most interesting thing is that his recovery requires rigorous honesty. Even when the honesty doesn’t paint him in the best light. To hear that level of honesty is…I don’t know why, but it makes me want more.”
“I can see that. Maybe.”
“He’s done one of the worst things a human can do, and he didn’t just give up and say, ‘Ope. Guess I’m just a piece of shit now.’ No. He’s…God, Mom. He’s been fighting his way back for years. His only goal is to become a better person. His humility and desire to help…” I shake my head, still unable to wrap my head around how brave he’s been. “It’s something he practices every day.”
She steps back, her hands in prayer as she touches the tips of her fingers to her forehead. She’s trying too. That she’s willing to try after everything is…tears fill my eyes.
“I’m going to need some time with this, Charlie.”
“I know, Mom. I needed time too.”
I sniff, and she sends a not-serious glare in my direction.
“I make no fucking promises.”
I bring her into another hug. “I know.”
She lets out a heavy sigh. “I fucking hate being the bigger person, you know? Like…can’t I just hate the guy who nearly got my son killed? Can’t the universe just fucking give me that?”
I step back, gesturing with both hands. “That’s what I fucking said! Like, sure, spiritual path to recovery, or whatever. Zen, yada yada. Even the Buddhists would have to let me hate that guy, right? What an asshole.”
“Dickhead,” she says, which is met with uproarious laughter from Erik’s room.
“Erik, get your eavesdropping ass out here,” I call out, rolling my eyes.
Turning to my mom, I say, “Just letting you know, we had a rescue that went well, but I could use some rest. Not trying to kick you out, but…was there a reason you came by?”
She grins. “I was visiting Margaret, and I thought I would stop by and see my son before heading back home.”
“I’m glad you did.”
Erik, still laughing, walks up and gives my mom a giant hug. “Want your son to buy us lunch before you go?”
She grins, resting her head against my shoulder. “Sounds good.”