Remember All the Things You Don't Want to Forget: The Prequels: Quinn, Ellis, and Amory (Southern Scandal Book 4) Read online

  “Get out of my house.” She stared, her mouth pursed, her eyes narrowed lines. “I won’t be the laughingstock of Savannah. I won’t be blamed for — whatever you want to call it. Because they’ll blame me, you know. And I won’t take it. I won’t have it in my house.”

  His father looked up from his brandy. Red rimmed his eyes. “Barbara.” No trace of drunkenness marred his voice, no slur, no lag. “You can have no son at all or you can have a gay one. And you can fucking pick.”

  The word “fuck” echoed through the dining room, bounced between the wooden walls, lingered over portraits of the long-dead, rang through the Waterford. His father did not curse. Ellis’s father had remained a consummate Southern gentleman for all his alcohol consumption, a man who stood when women entered the room and remembered to ask after people’s mothers. Bow ties and white bucks, mint julips on the porch and an insistence on opening doors. He did not utter the word “fuck.”

  His mother sat stunned, port midway to her mouth.

  “Ellis.” His father met his eyes, the green ones that matched Ellis’s own. “I fucking know which one I want.” The curse came from his mouth strange, unpracticed. The lump grew in Ellis’s throat. He couldn’t swallow. He couldn’t speak. His chest hurt. Ellis sat, stunned in the face of his father’s love, and wept, the ruins of a Thanksgiving dinner all around him.

  He’d probably lose this mesh shirt, too. Ellis was always losing his shirt, what a trip to say — he lost his shirt — but Ellis would never lose his shirt that way, not with the money he had since his father had passed a few months ago. He could lose a shirt at the club every day and twice on Sundays. They always just disappeared; he’d pull them off while he was dancing; he’d get overheated and toss them on a barstool.

  He should study. He should go over his class notes. He should get rid of what he called his Hunter S. Thompson stash: a lovely old antique box, wooden, filled to the brim with uppers and downers and coke and ecstasy, pot and mollies and acid, hash and even a little bit of opium. He regarded it once he finished his eyeliner and straightened his long bleached hair, almost halfway down his back now. Candy-flipping tonight: acid and ecstasy. He’d still be able to fuck if he candy-flipped; coke gave him a hard-on he couldn’t get rid of. Ellis took the pill, laid the blotter paper under his tongue, and waited. It would take some time to kick in.

  And once he hit the club, it had kicked in, all right. He looked, the walls breathing, the people in front of him waving, distorting. There: the wide-eyed twink in the leather. That’s what he wanted. Long hair perfect for pulling, beautiful dark hair and big dark eyes. “You here to dance or here to drink or here to go home with someone?” Easier to be up front about this shit.

  The kid looked Ellis up and down. He’d probably snuck in with a fake, but then Ellis was only nineteen, and so had he. “Go home with someone.”

  “I want it on top and I want you on your knees.”

  “You wanna dance first?”

  “You see a point?”

  “Not really, no.”

  Ellis took his hand and began to lead him out. The colors bounced, refracted, blew into beautiful shards of light. “You wanna get a drink first, though?” He wanted to watch the colors.

  “You get me up in the lounge I’ll stay as long’s you want.”

  Ellis led him upstairs to the blue velvet couches. His height let him spread his legs and settle the twink between them. He stiffened in his leather pants and goddamn if that little bitch didn’t grind on him while he leaned back and watched the disco lights explode above him. A cute, shirtless boy approached and took their order. Ellis tossed him his card. Maybe he wouldn’t forget to get it back this time. He ran his hands over the twink.

  “What’s your name?” He had to yell over the throbbing house music. It reached into his blood and his heart beat with it.

  “Tommy.”

  “Ellis. You got a hard cock yet, Tommy?”

  “Fuck yes.”

  “Lemme feel it. You gonna let me feel it?”

  “Uh-huh. If you want to.”

  “Aren’t you a good boy.” Ellis bit his ear, hard, and god it tasted good, sweat-salty, the lights exploding, sliding over them, rainbow colors while he licked and sucked and palmed Tommy in his lap. Yeah, he was stiff, stiff and big, a gloriously defined head and hard shaft tucked up nice and neat in briefs and oh, Ellis loved a twink in briefs, so dirty, so boyish. He unzipped Tommy, who gasped.

  “You want me to stop?” Ellis watched the disco balls reflecting and bouncing into a thousand silver suns.

  “No. God no.”

  “You want people to watch? Imma make you come in those briefs. Little brat. You want me to make you come like a little bitch?”

  “Uh-huh. Please?”

  Ellis ran one hand over those deliciously narrow, bumpy ribs and toyed with Tommy’s cock in the other. He watched the lights, like fireworks, like miniature bombs, like beautiful supernovas. They brought his drink, a swirl of Coke, a miniature waterspout moving in lovely circles as he jerked Tommy harder, faster, his dick hardening more, Tommy arching up to it, Ellis grinding on his back. A soft sigh and Tommy came in a lovely, glorious spreading stickiness in rhythm with the music, pulsing when it pulsed, a synchronic miracle of sound and flesh.

  “You liked that.” Ellis bit his ear for the salty taste.

  “Need to go clean up.”

  “See you around.”

  Ellis wiped his hand on the cocktail napkin and turned back to his drink. He sucked the lemon. It burst in his mouth, every molecule a miracle of sour glory.

  Mark came home somehow both gray and pale at the same time. He laid down on the couch and blinked at Ellis. “I don’t feel well.” His pupils looked strangely small, and he itched his left arm. Must’ve been the track marks.

  “Let me get you a cold cloth for your head.” Ellis bustled back to the kitchen. Fuck. He was using again. What could you do when someone was using but give them a safe space to land and beg them to get help? They wouldn’t get help until they were ready, and until they were ready you could only stand back and watch, a car crash you couldn’t stop, those horrible moments when you realized something had slipped from your hands and it was falling, oh god it was falling, and you couldn’t catch it before it hit the ground.

  He should’ve been studying. He should’ve been working on his drafts. But Mark, on that couch, oh god. His hair hung lank and he wore the same clothes he left in three days ago, three days Ellis spent pacing the floor and sleeping in bitter, guilty snatches.

  At least he was home. They could talk about the rest later. Ellis could hold him through it. Ellis always held him through the worst parts.

  He was sitting when Ellis came back, still gray, that gray color Ellis had never seen. He had brought everything: the bandages, the water, the first-aid kit. “Where’d you shoot?” Ellis kept his voice calm, no judgment.

  “Arms.”

  Ellis pulled up his sleeves gently. “The tracks marks are worse.” He used a neutral voice.

  “I fucking know, Ellis. God.” Mark closed his eyes. “I’m so tired.”

  “When did you last —”

  He looked down. Mark was asleep. Except Mark was not asleep. His breathing was strange and he vomited a trickle.

  Oh fuck. Oh fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  Ellis pulled out his phone and dialed 911. Opioid overdose, now now now, still breathing, barely, pulse erratic, please now. All the while he talked to Mark, whatever he could say, or think to say: stay with me baby, stay here, don’t go, stay stay stay.

  They came and they took him and Ellis couldn’t go because he wasn’t family but he still had to make that phone call, that worst phone call. Your son has OD’d. Duke Medical Center. I’m on my way please meet us there it’s really bad.

  They kept Mark. Mark pulled through.

  Mark walked out of the hospital.

  Mark walked back onto the street.

  Ellis never saw Mark again, not really. Mark with the
auburn curls, Mark who loved to watch comedies with him, Mark who was so smart, god so smart, who loved magical realism and spoke perfect Spanish. They came and went, these beautiful boys. They walked into his life and then out of it with no thought. They left him with nothing. He had never done anything with Mark. He had never done more than held Mark through his withdrawals and kissed his forehead. Goddamn it. God fucking damn it. They hurt him again and again.

  He heard Mark was using again. Late one night, when Ellis was driving to pick up drive thru as fuel for a particularly brutal exam week, he saw a boy on the corner. Auburn curls, thin frame, oh god. No.

  Ellis kept driving.

  He couldn’t look it in the face.

  That kid would never go out with him again, he saw the look on his face when he left him at Oliver. Trouble from top to toe, that one, but god he could ride and he seemed smart. Maybe Ellis would give him a try. If he could only get over the instant gratification thing, it could work. If he could only get over fucking guys every weekend. If he could only stop using drugs all the goddamn time. If he could only, if he could only …

  Yeah. It probably wouldn’t work.

  But he was so cute, and there was something there, something behind his eyes, something that made Ellis want to swoop him up and hold him, something vulnerable and frightened and desperate for someone to care. Something that needed him. This boy needed him.

  Ellis needed this boy.

  He picked up the phone one more time.

  3

  Recompense: Amory

  They’d taken the bikes out to the track Amory Reed had carefully constructed over that August. He’d dug up the hard sand, packed it into different-sized hills, and even scrounged some old boards, pulled the nails, and made sort of a ramp for jumps. He sweated hard in the Carolina heat for two weeks over that track, the thermometer hitting a hundred, a hundred and five, salt-sweat stinging his eyes, a splintering shovel blistering his hands until he wised up and found work gloves. His daddy’d just smiled and shaken his head. “That’s Joseph Amory. You work hard, you get what you want, son.”

  Amory had asked John over to see it before anyone else. John did homeschool and went to the same church, so Mama and Daddy didn’t care if he ran around the farm. The littles liked him and sometimes tried to tag along with them. Amory usually didn’t care about that kind of thing, but he wanted John to himself. He shouldn’t. Everything said he shouldn’t, but he couldn’t stop. He tried. Every single night, Amory knelt next to his bed. The moonlight peeked through the curtains his mama’d sewn. He asked God to watch over his mama and daddy, the littles, his grandparents, and then he begged. Please God make these feelings go away. I know You said they’re contrary to God and man and I just wanna be good. I only wanna be good, God, please make them stop. I’ll do anything. I’ll become a minister. I swear here and now I’ll become a minister, God, I’ll give you my whole life, if you make them go away.

  He read the Bible passages over and over. Leviticus 18:22: You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination. Leviticus 20:13: If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. Romans 1:26-27: For this reason, God gave them up to passions of dishonor; for even their females exchanged the natural use for that which is contrary to nature, and likewise also the males, having left the natural use of the female, were inflamed by their lust for one another, males with males, committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was fitting for their error. Recompense meant Hell.

  But John: John with the reddish-brown curls that tumbled when he laughed, John whose blue eyes grew so wide when he talked. John who Amory kept dreaming about. He’d wake up suddenly, hard, sheets and pajamas and belly sticky. John who Amory kept imagining, at his weakest moments, kissing and even more. He’d seen the magazines the older boys in church passed; they showed them to him and laughed. “You want that, perfect little Joseph Amory? You wanna get down on your knees and suck cock? You want someone to bend you over and stick their hard dick in your ass?”

  Amory had put his hands over his ears and run.

  But the thoughts didn’t stop. John on his knees. John bent over. Sometimes the other way around.

  Amory was trying to spin a 360 off the ramp when John asked.

  “You ever kiss a girl?”

  “Me? No. You?”

  “Yeah. Once.”

  “What was it like?” Amory kept his eyes on his bike and rode it back to try again. He didn’t look at John, who leaned against a longleaf pine in a T-shirt with the New Christ Baptist logo.

  “Hey, we’re like best friends, right?”

  Amory’d never really put that label to it, but yeah, they pretty much were. He didn’t have lots of friends and neither did John. No one’s parents let them hang out with “worldly” kids and John was always over. They talked about most everything if they talked to anyone. “Yeah. Yeah, guess we are.”

  “Can I ask you something, and you promise not to tell? Like swear on the Bible not to tell?”

  Amory looked up. John was biting his lip, those pretty lips, eyebrows drawn up, arms around himself in the sweltering heat. Amory stopped his muddy red bike, the one his parents had given him for Christmas that year. “Yeah.”

  “Say it. Say I swear.”

  “I swear.”

  John whispered, even though only the birds could hear him. “I think about kissing guys. I can’t make it stop.” His eyes shone. “Amory, I don’t know how to make it stop. Do you?”

  Amory wanted to cry or hug him or shout or run or something. “No.”

  “Is that — you don’t hate me? You still wanna hang out and all?” John hugged himself hard. His eyes threatened to spill over and his nose had turned red and Amory wanted to touch him so much. He closed his eyes.

  “Yeah. I still wanna hang out. I don’t care.”

  “You — you don’t care?”

  Amory shook his head. He was rising, oh no, his dick getting hard under his shorts and he couldn’t hide it, not where he was standing. He prayed: Please God don’t let him see. Please God if he sees and he says something I can’t stop it. I know I can’t and I don’t wanna go to Hell.

  “You don’t ever think about — you said you never kissed a girl.”

  He could tell or not tell and if he told, what would happen? But if he didn’t tell he’d be lying and lying was a sin. Amory never lied. He fixed his eyes on John’s old black Airwalks. “Yeah.”

  “Yeah what?” John barely whispered.

  “I do. Think about it, I mean.” He crossed his arms. “I pray real hard but it never goes away. I read the Bible. I tried fasting even but it always comes back.”

  And oh no, yes, no, John stepped closer to him. “You wanna walk the bike back to the barn?”

  “Yeah.”

  They didn’t talk. It hung heavy between them, heavy but charged, a thing magnetic, a desperate pull. Amory wheeled his bike into one of the empty stalls. His mouth had long-since dried and he could hardly swallow anyway. John stood on the hill near the hayloft. His mama would ring the bell for dinner soon.

  “Imma get going.” John shuffled his feet in the grass.

  “Yeah.” Amory looked at the brownish field behind him.

  “Can I kiss you?” John said it suddenly, like it had taken everything he’d had.

  Amory’s eyes widened. He looked at John and John looked at him. John stepped closer so their chests touched and it was everything Amory ever imagined. “You should put your arms around my neck. I’ll put mine around your waist.” John talked in that same whisper.

  The littles would be off washing their hands. His mama was cooking. Amory did what John asked. They leaned together. Amory’s dry lips touched John’s soft, soft ones.

  Amory’s father walked around the corner.

  Amory wore his full dress uniform, like everyone else at Gage Military Academy. People milled around after
the graduation ceremony, drinking punch and eating finger sandwiches and congratulating each other. The Reeds stared each other down. Amory’s father had gone gray in the six years Amory had spent here, home only for the holidays. The littles’ faces, all seven of them, had blurred and shifted as they grew through Christmases. Even his favorite sister Melanie had clouded into a person he hardly recognized. She had taken them all to the field to roll down the hill. His daddy looked Amory up and down. “You still queer?”

  Amory held it. He fully understood what it meant but Amory still didn’t lie. “Yessir.”

  His father turned and walked away.

  His mother, oh god his mother, his mother with her biscuits and her prairie skirts and her soft voice waking him in the morning, his mother who asked him to recite a Bible verse at the breakfast table, his mother who taught him to read and write and who kissed his forehead when she thought he was asleep, his mother reached behind her neck. She unclasped the gold chain of the cross she never, ever took off. God don’t make no mistakes, said the plaque she kept hung in their kitchen.

  He either made a mistake with Amory or He didn’t exist.

  “Bend your neck down, baby. You got too tall.” Her eyes spilled over. She fastened the chain around his neck. “I was so scared to have a baby. I could hardly take care of my own self and I didn’t know how I’d take care of someone else. And it was a hard birth, Amory, so hard, and it hurt so bad, but suddenly there you were. And you were mine and I was yours and that was the end of everything.” She hugged him tight, tight, as if she’d never let go, but she did, oh god she did, and she walked off after his father.

  Amory sat in the bar across from the BDSM club. Maybe this was a mistake, but goddammit, today was his fucking birthday. On his twelfth birthday, his mama had baked him his favorite, her chocolate cake covered in crushed peanuts. No one had really said happy birthday since. He didn’t tell anyone, not even the friends who passed through, came and went but mostly went. That was theater, people always going. And goddamn he could act and sing and dance. He could make everyone laugh, could bring down a bar with a song. Joseph Amory was born to sing, they always said. Joseph Amory has a preacher’s voice.