Audre & Bash Are Just Friends(74)

“Well, you know what, Bash? I’m a puzzle that I can’t solve. I’m complicated, too. I have secrets and hidden layers and worries and wildness! And I bury everything down to please some ‘Mercy girl’ ideal that doesn’t even exist. It’s not even our real last name!” She dropped her head back against the bench, gazing up at the dusky, early evening sky. “Nothing matters.”

“Nothing,” agreed Bash, who stopped trying to hide that he felt as hopeless as she.

“Everything’s a lie.”

“Everything.”

Audre slipped her hand out of his. “Especially you. You’ve been lying all summer.”

“I know.”

“And don’t try to deny it,” she said, too lost in her rant to hear him. “Whether it’s an act of omission or making up shit, a lie’s a lie.”

“I know,” he repeated, his brow furrowed with frustration and guilt. “It kills me. There’s so much I haven’t told you. But I wanna come clean now.”

“You can’t tell me we’re more than friends and then… just… disappear. Who does that?”

“I’m a piece of shit, Audre. And it’s torturing me that I hurt you. But listen, I—”

“If you’re not who I think you are, Bash, I swear to fucking God—”

“I’m not who you think I am.”

She let out a small, defeated sound. “Who are you, then?”

“Can we go somewhere quiet?”

“No,” said Audre firmly. “Tell me now. Here.”

Bash stared down at his hands for several breaths. “I don’t know how.”

“Be honest,” she said. “Emotionally honest. Anything else is cheating.”

Anything else is cheating.

Audre’s words hit him deep down, where his darkest fears lived. Where the past tortured him, day after day. And truly, he was sick of being haunted by the memories. Maybe he just needed someone to give him permission to let go of it. So then, right there on a random bench in front of a random restaurant, he finally let go.

“I’d always done everything my dad asked of me. Ever since I was little. It’s like, show me a child actor, or musical prodigy, or whatever, and I’ll show you an obsessed parent. And my dad was over-the-top with it. He needed me to be special. Because he wasn’t. In the nineties, he was a sprinter, too, and he had talent—but not enough to make the Olympic Team in ’92. They cut him in the last round. You ask me, I think it fucked him up for life. He got extremely religious. Which is cool, but the church he picked? Harsh. Way too harsh. You get punished for breathing. Women and kids should be seen, not heard. LGBTQ+ people are abominations. Men run the show, and they rule with fear. It’s the worst part. That place taught my dad that there’s only one way to be a man.”

“Sounds like a cult, not a church,” mused Audre.

“It was,” he answered, his brow pinched together. “Anyway, I don’t think he sees women and girls as real people with feelings. When he met my mom, he had three blond ex-wives and three daughters he didn’t take care of. Mom was the fourth blond wife. She gave him a son—me—and then he divorced her, too. Apparently, I was the Chosen One. His little Olympic hopeful. He even named me after the Christian patron saint of athletes, Saint Sebastian. Bash is my nickname.” He glanced at Audre briefly. He felt so open and vulnerable that he might burst into tears if he held her gaze for too long. “He had me doing drills, hard ones, by the time I was in kindergarten. Hurdles and shit, things kids shouldn’t do. I won almost every meet. But he was never satisfied.

“To him, ‘losing’ was anything less than first place. If I lost? No food for twenty-four hours. Or I had to sleep on the bathroom floor. Or he’d make me walk across the city to school instead of taking the bus.

“He only hit me once. I was fourteen, and I’d had so many running injuries, my doctor told me I had the body of a forty-year-old athlete. I was fucking heated. Like, why am I ruining myself for him? What for? It was never enough. So, I felt all rebellious one day and got my brow pierced.” Bash shook his head, remembering. “I knew he’d hate it. But I didn’t think he’d punch me in the jaw.”

Audre flinched in shock, her hand covering her mouth. Her eyes widened, but she kept quiet and let him talk.

“I just don’t think he liked me, you know? I didn’t line up with his definition of Black masculinity. He hated my obsession with the beach. He hated that I sketched all over my school notebooks, and that I wasn’t a fighter. He hated that I cried at Adele songs or when he yelled at me for too long. Surfing was for white boys. And art was for pussies.

“A couple years ago, a church elder got caught leaving a gay bar. He lost his job, his wife, and his kids had to take an oath in front of the congregation, swearing to God that they’d never speak to him again. This is who my dad was.

“Meanwhile, I’m in the background, right? Keeping my head down, running and crushing it. That was my whole life. I mean, I dated a little, too. I had a few girlfriends. But all genders have had crushes on me, and honestly? Vice versa. To me, attraction isn’t about gender. Who I vibe with is just… who I vibe with. It’s who I’ve always been.”

Bash looked at Audre. Slowly, she nodded.