Don't Let Me Go

by J.H. Trumble

Genres: LGBT Gay; New Adult Romance; YA LGBT & Pride

Synopsis

A Lambda Literary Awards finalist ALA Rainbow List (2013) Some people spend their whole lives looking for the right partner. Nate Schaper found his in high school. In the eight months since their cautious flirting became a real, heart-pounding, tell-the-parents relationship, Nate and Adam have been inseparable. Even when local kids take their homophobia to brutal levels, Nate is undaunted. He and Adam are rock solid. Two parts of a whole. Yin and yang. But when Adam graduates and takes an off-Broadway job in New York—at Nate's insistence—that certainty begins to flicker. Nate's friends can't keep his insecurities at bay, especially when he catches Skyped glimpses of Adam's shirtless roommate. Nate starts a blog to vent his frustrations and becomes the center of a school controversy, drawing ire and support in equal amounts. But it's the attention of a new boy who is looking for more than guidance that forces him to confront who and what he really wants. Tender, thoughtful, and unflinchingly real, Don't Let Me Go is a witty and beautifully written account of young love, long-distance relationships, and learning to follow your heart. "Don't Let Me Go is a charming story. Trumble's love for the characters is evident on every page, and it's contagious." —Robin Reardon, author of A Secret Edge

Release date: October 24, 2011

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 354

Sample

Saturday, July 26

Two things:

One. I lied. All that crap about me wanting you to go, about me needing to know who I am without you. Lies. Every stupid, lying word of it. I don’t want you to go. God, I don’t want you to go. And not only do I not need to know who I am without you, I couldn’t care less. There is no me without you. The yin and the yang. You, yin; me, yang. Adam and Nate. Two parts of a whole. Existing together in beautiful harmony. Without you, I’m just a broken piece.

Two. You had to know that.

I veered my car sharply into a Shell station a few blocks from Adam’s neighborhood.

“You’re kidding,” he said, glancing at the time on his cell phone. “Nate ...”

“What?” I maneuvered the car next to a pump and hit the brake a little too abruptly. “You want to get to the airport? We need gas.”

He huffed, one of those irritated and irritating noises he’d been making all morning. “Why didn’t you put gas in the car yesterday?” he said, turning down the stereo. “We don’t have time for this.”

“We don’t seem to have time for a lot of things lately.” I killed the ignition and popped the handle on the door.

“Come on. That’s not fair. We spent the entire night together.”

“Sleeping,” I muttered and dropped my head back against my seat. This was the part where he was supposed to console me, whip out his ticket and rip it up into a million pieces right in front of me, toss it out on the concrete, beg me to turn the car around, profess his undying love, confess he couldn’t live without me.

Instead he lit up his cell phone. “Shit,” he said softly. He dropped the phone in his lap and growled, which might have been sexy if I hadn’t been so angry and if he hadn’t been so freaking anal. “Are you trying to make me miss my flight?”

So much for love. “I don’t know why you’re in such a damn hurry. At the rate we’re going, we’ll have time to wax the stupid plane before they board passengers.”

“You’re being a brat,” he said. “You know that?”

Brat? He called me a brat? He’d called me a lot of things in the last ten months and nine days, a lot of sweet, beautiful things. But brat? Never brat. Not even close.

He opened his door. “I’ll get the gas.”

“I’ll get it,” I said, and got out.

I jabbed the nozzle into the tank and locked the trigger, but I kept my hand on it. The other hand I shoved deep in my pocket. I watched the air shimmer around the pump handle.

Adam leaned against the car and watched me. When I didn’t look up, he tipped his head low and fingered my T-shirt at the waist. “Just to set the record straight,” he said, “we didn’t sleep all that much either.” The tiniest of smiles tugged at the corners of his mouth. My eyes locked on his and my heart lurched in my chest. It was an unexpected moment of intimacy standing next to a gas pump on a stifling July morning, sweat trickling down my back and the smell of gas strong in the air, the moment so brief that in the days and weeks ahead, I would think I had imagined it. But for three, maybe four fleeting seconds, I saw in his eyes the guy who loved me, the guy I loved back so much that it scared me sometimes.

His eyes shifted past me to the spinning dial on the pump, and as suddenly as it had arrived, the moment was gone.

He took the handle from me and released the trigger with a thunk and seated it back on the pump. I stared at the dial, not quite believing what I was seeing—five gallons. Five gallons? That was all he could give me this morning? A five-gallon delay? I stood, stunned, as he secured the gas cap and smacked me on the butt. “Let’s go, handsome.”

As I pulled back onto the road, he checked the time on his cell phone again and then tucked it back in his pocket and resumed patting his thigh to the song. I thought if he pulled that freaking phone out one more time, swear to God, I was going to pitch it out the window. The gas gauge nudged just past a quarter tank, but my internal gauge was quickly slipping toward Empty.

“You won’t miss your flight,” I said, the hurt coating my words, weighing them down so that they tumbled out, heavy and muted.

He put his hand to my ear and rubbed my earring with his thumb. “I’m going to have to send you a new pair of earrings.”

I kept my eyes on the road but shifted my head and my shoulder to trap his hand just for a moment. “I don’t want another earring.” I swallowed hard past the lump in my throat. How could he even think I could part with this one? When I’d woken up in the hospital, one of the first things I’d noticed was that they’d taken my earrings, the ones he’d brought me from New York. He’d taken a black stud from his own ear then and put it in mine. I hadn’t taken it off since that day. I didn’t intend to take it off ever.

I glanced at him. He smiled and dropped his hand and looked back out the window. I could sense his thoughts slipping away again as he picked up the song and the beat.

“We’re pulling apart,” I said.

“Hm?” He looked over at me.

“The line. It’s we’re pulling apart.”

“What?”

I looked back at the road. “Never mind.”

He smiled distantly and turned back to the window. Up ahead, the freeway split. I slid into the right-hand lane and made the wide sweep onto the toll road as Adam butchered yet another line.

It was stupid, stupid, getting pissed off over something I did myself all the time. Who cared whether he got The Fray’s lyrics right or not? Except that he’d been doing more and more of that in the past few weeks—feigning attention, smiling vaguely when I said something or asked a question. Sometimes it felt like he was already gone, like his brain had been unplugged from the here and present and plugged back in to the there and future. Maybe I was to blame. I’d pushed him to take the job. This is your time. Please, go to New York. Be fabulous. I just never thought he’d go for it with such gusto.

“You’re wearing the green underwear,” I said.

“What?” He turned down the AC.

“I said, You’re. Wearing. The green. Underwear.”

“What? You’re complaining about my underwear? You want me to take them off?”

“We don’t have time for that, remember?” I said, sullenly.

He rolled his eyes. “Why does it matter what underwear I’m wearing?”

“Because I bought them for you in Key West.”

“I remember. I like them. A lot. I promise, they’re clean.”

“I just don’t know why you’re wearing them today,” I mumbled.

Okay, now I was being a brat.

I popped the cover on the storage compartment in the console and felt around until I found a thin jewel case. One-handed, I flicked it open and popped out the CD. The case clattered to the console, then dropped into the space between the console and Adam’s seat. I hit the eject button and switched the CDs, then dropped The Fray back into the storage compartment sans case and smacked the lid shut. Three Dog Night wailed about some stupid bullfrog named Jeremiah.

“Is there something we need to talk about?” Adam asked.

The heat was creeping back into the car. I turned the AC back up and stared at the toll booths up ahead, considering the penalty for crashing through the gates. We’d get pulled over for sure. I’d probably have to take a sobriety test—walk the line, breathe into some little tube. I’d get a citation for failure to stop and pay a toll and probably a hugely inflated bill for replacing the gate. And then Adam would miss his flight. And for just a little while longer he’d stay. But there were other flights. There would always be other flights.

I hit the brakes and fumbled in the tray at the base of the gear shift for quarters. I counted out five. “Dammit, I should have gotten some quarters before we left.” The tray held some loose change, mostly pennies and a stray nickel or dime. I slid the coins aside until I found two more quarters. I pinched one and added it to the five in my hand, then flung all six at the basket. Three overshot and fell to the concrete.

“Great.” I got the last quarter out of the tray. “Do you have any quarters?”

“Just back up and go to the full-service lane,” he said, clearly annoyed.

“I can’t just back up.” A horn blared behind us. I glanced in the rearview mirror, then popped the door handle and gestured to the dickhead behind us as I got out. He leaned out his window and called me a faggot. I found two of the coins and made some suggestions to the guy about how he might amuse himself while he waited for me to move, then got back in the car, slammed the three coins into the basket, and hit the accelerator, almost taking out the gate anyway.

I couldn’t stand any more joy to the fishes. Gag me. I jabbed the track button. After a pause, an electric guitar ripped from the speakers. I’d burned this CD of rock anthems years ago when I first decided guitar was more than just a way to blow a few hours after school each day. I might have lost myself in the music if it hadn’t been for the stupid lyrics.

Well, I’m hot-blooded ...

Oh, hell, no. I hit the track button. From the corner of my eye, I could see Adam staring at me, but I kept my eyes on the road. The airport exit was just ahead, three-quarters of a mile. I considered staying in my lane, driving until we ran out of gas. (How far would five gallons take us? Galveston, maybe? I could finish my senior year at Moody High. Surely there was a theater company Adam could perform with. It didn’t even matter. We could be beach bums, sell T-shirts to tourists in a beach shop, live on love. That’s all we needed, right? The toll road to I-45, then Galveston. It would be so easy.)

A jet screamed overhead. The noise—the jet, the AC blowing full blast, the music, the roar of traffic around us—it was all too much. I turned off the AC again and flicked on my blinker and slid into the exit lane.

Fame (fame) lets him loose, hard to swallow.

I jabbed the button again, twice, then a third time.

“What’s wrong, Nate?” Adam said.

I shook my head, not trusting my voice. The heat was creeping back into the car. This time it was Adam who turned the AC back on.

And then “Free Bird” was playing and my fingers ached with the urge to hit the track button again, but I could feel Adam’s eyes on me, so I didn’t. Death by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

“Hey,” he said, running his hand up and down my thigh. “Let’s do Key West again next June. It’ll be my graduation gift to you this time. No parents.”

I gripped his hand tightly and hoped to God I could make it to June. Key West was magic. And I was afraid I was going to need some magic by then.

“Open it! Open it!” Mea cried, bouncing impatiently in her chair.

Adam grinned. “I’m opening it.” He painstakingly worked the envelope flap loose just to tease his little sister. Adam’s parents had waited until the party guests had gotten out of the pool, dried off, and gone home to give him their graduation gift.

Clearly, the wait had been almost too much for his little sister. “It’s an airplane ticket,” she blurted out before he could finish the job.

“Mea!” Mrs. Jensen said, putting her hand over the six-year-old’s mouth.

Adam stuck his tongue out at her and removed not one, but two tickets from the envelope. He looked at them, said, “Wow,” cleared his throat, then held them up for me to see.

“What?” I said, surprised, because one of the tickets was issued to Nathan Schaper.

“Family trip,” Ben said before we could get the wrong idea, which was approximately two seconds too late.

Mrs. Jensen slinked her arm around her husband’s waist. “We’ve already cleared it with your mom, Nate. We have a lot to celebrate and, well, we’re really hoping you want to go.”

A week in Key West with Adam? Was she kidding? Even with his family, it was still a week in Key West with Adam. Just a week and a half ago I’d been girding myself for a second trial, a repeat of the painful and humiliating experience that had been the first trial in March. Facing the second assailant in the courtroom, reliving that horrible night five months ago, laying out the most intimate details of my relationship with Adam, and feeling like I was the one on trial. And then, at the eleventh hour, a plea deal.

Just like that, it was over.

I hadn’t felt this free, been this happy since last New Year’s Eve, until Mea innocently blabbed half an hour later, “Adam’s going to be a star.”

I was helping her get her toys out of the pool while Adam helped his mom and Ben carry the food back inside.

“Adam’s already a star,” I said, hooking a yellow raft with a net and dragging it toward the edge.

“No, he’s going to be a for-real star. In a play and everything. In New York. He even said I could visit him. And he’s going to take me to the zoo in Central Park. And let me feed the pigeons and ...”

New York? New York?

Over the next week, I kept waiting for Adam to hit me with New York, my excitement over the trip to Key West marred by a new impending sense of doom. But he said nothing. And by Friday afternoon I was beginning to think that Mea had gotten it all wrong.

Adam was rummaging through my suitcase when I got out of the shower.

“Why do you have so many books packed?” he asked, flipping through the pages of a novel I’d picked up at a used bookstore after work a few days earlier. “When do you think you’re going to have time to do all this reading?”

“I always read at night before I go to bed.”

“Not this trip. You’re sharing a room with me.”

“What?” I froze in the middle of towel-drying my hair and stared at him, shocked.

He laughed and tossed two books over his shoulder. “Mom and Ben finally gave up trying to figure out room arrangements. They could only get two rooms at such a late date, so they were going to have me sleep with them and Mea. And then that seemed ridiculous when there was an empty double bed in the room right next door. So ...”

A slow smile spread across my face. “So I’m stuck with you for a whole week? In Key West? Me and you? Together? Like alone? All night?”

He laughed and held up a pair of pajama pants. “You won’t be needing these either.” He tossed them over his shoulder too. I threw a box from my nightstand into my bag and he read the label. “Trojan natural lamb. For a more sensual feeling.” He held it up to me, smiling. “A twelve pack? Are you kidding me? I hope there’s a First Aid kit in here somewhere too.”

Key West—the southernmost point in the United States, a mere six square miles, the last in a string of keys off the tip of Florida, and a place where, as one Web site claimed, closets have no doors. But thankfully, the rooms did, with locks. Ben handed over the key with a slightly amused grin.

“I expect you two to behave.”

Fortunately, our room wasn’t next to theirs after all.

The week was pure magic. We filled our days with long walks on the beach and lazy swims in the ocean. We explored the island on bicycle, taking in the nineteenth-century architecture, dodging the free-roaming chickens, and chatting up barefoot hippies with tiny dogs nestled in their bicycle baskets. We wandered through Ernest Hemingway’s house and speculated about Tennessee Williams’s life as we stood, hand-in-hand, outside the bungalow he’d lived in decades ago. And when we got hungry, we ate Cuban sandwiches or conch fritters at a sidewalk table or sitting on the curb and watched other lovers in fearless public displays of affection.

Our nights we filled with passion and long soft gazes and sweet words. We weren’t behaving ourselves, and we didn’t for one moment feel guilty about that.

On Thursday evening, I paid a street performer twenty-five dollars to borrow his guitar for five minutes. It was the first time I’d played Adam his song, the song I’d written for him as a Christmas present, the song I’d not had the heart to play for him before then. And it seemed right that I’d waited. I played it for him sitting cross-legged under a street lamp in Mallory Square with the crowds and tightrope walkers and jugglers as a backdrop. He cried.

Too soon it was the last day, the sun on the beach just as intense as it had been on the first, but the water cooled our feet as we walked through the surf. Adam took my hand.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

He smiled and strengthened his grip.

“When were you going to tell me about New York?”

The look on his face confirmed what I’d been dreading. The smile disappeared. He stopped and stared off at the ocean for a long time, then turned to look at me. “How do you know about New York?”

“I know.”

“I’ve been waiting until we got back to talk to you about it.”

“When do you leave?”

“I haven’t even agreed to take the job yet.”

I looked away, down the beach. Two guys who looked like body builders were making out on a striped blanket under a palm tree about ten yards away. A lone woman tossed a Frisbee into the ocean and stood with her hands on her hips while a black-and-white dog bounded through the surf to catch it.

“Come on,” he said, pulling me after him into the deeper water.

We rose and fell with the swell of the ocean, and finally he told me about New York.

“It sounds like a great opportunity,” I said.

“Mom’s not too happy with the idea. She wants me to go to Austin.”

“You have to do what’s right for you.”

He stared back toward the beach. “Just say the word, Nate, and I won’t go.”

I couldn’t do that. As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t. “I don’t want you to stay,” I said.

His face told me he hadn’t expected that. A wave tossed me into him and then pulled him away.

“I don’t believe you.”

“You know what I mean. This is your time. If you don’t do this, then I’ll always feel like I robbed you of your dreams. I can’t live with that.”

“I’ll be a hero for you, Nate. Let me be that. I can chase my dreams here.”

I shook my head. “No, you can’t. Please, go to New York. Be fabulous.”

“I don’t want to leave you.”

I drew in a slow, deep breath to steady myself. He’d saved me when I couldn’t save myself. And it was my time to return the favor.

“I don’t know who I am without you anymore.” True. And then the untruth that I knew would release him. “I need to find out. For me, for you, for us.”

What could he say? We were somber as we headed back up the beach some time later. He dropped my hand and slung his arm around my neck and pulled me snugly to him and sniffed.

I waited off to the side as Adam took his place in line at passenger check-in. The line wasn’t as long as he had feared, and he seemed to relax a little. He adjusted his backpack on his shoulder, then slipped his cell phone out of his pocket and put it to his ear. He smiled as he talked, then glanced at me and winked.

If I leave here tomorrow ...

I jostled my leg and drew in another shaky breath, then closed my eyes and tried to end the “Free Bird” death track loop in my head. Adam did that to me sometimes—he’d hum a song until I picked up the tune. It was an annoying little trick he liked to play on me, but one that he found endlessly amusing. There was this one song—“Wichita Lineman,” an oldie by Glen Campbell. I used to play it for my grandmother. She loved the song and she loved hearing me play the guitar, but when Adam told me it was about someone who strung telephone lines, it totally killed the romance. At odd times, he’d start humming the song and the next thing I knew I was humming it too (I am a lineman for the county ... ), looping it repeatedly in my head until suddenly I’d realize what I was doing and stop. He got such a kick out of messing with my head like that. I actually would have welcomed “Wichita Lineman” right then, but “Free Bird” played on.

A little kid bumped my hip with her SpongeBob backpack as she bounced past me, her hand tightly gripped in her dad’s. The line behind Adam had lengthened, and I was reminded of how quickly time was running out.

It wasn’t too late. I could tell him the truth. But, God, what was the truth? That I was still so pathetically needy and selfish that I’d let him throw away his dreams just so he could continue playing nursemaid to me? And for how long? He deserved better. He was my hero. But surely even heroes grow weary lugging around the burdens of their heroism.

The ticket agent handed a boarding pass to a man in a suit. Adam glanced back at me, then stepped up to the counter and set his backpack on the floor next to him. One at a time, he heaved his suitcases onto the scale while Lynyrd Skynyrd continued to tear at my heart.

What a waste. Ronnie Van Zant, Steve Gaines, and Cassie Gaines were dead. Gone. Forever gone. The 1977 plane crash had claimed six lives, six hearts that would never know sweet love again. You didn’t get any freer than that.

A few feet away, SpongeBob girl pulled a butched-up Barbie from her backpack. The doll’s hair had been cut almost to the scalp and she was wearing Ken’s clothes. I smiled to myself. The little girl caught my eye and smiled back, then buried her face in her dad’s pant leg. You go, sister, I thought. I turned to watch Adam.

But like fingers to an itch, my mind returned to the song, changing girl to boy like it did in all love songs now.

Sometimes I wondered, though, at his complete willingness to believe whatever I threw out there. I’ll be fine. I want you to go. I don’t know who I am without you anymore. I need to find out. Did he believe the lies because he wanted them to be true? My stomach clutched at that thought, and I fought the urge to heave right there on the scuffed tile floor.

“Mom wants you to come to dinner one night soon,” Adam said when he’d finished checking in. He tucked his boarding pass into a side pocket in his backpack and hitched the strap back on his shoulder.

“Do you have any gum?”

He stuck the piece he was chewing between his teeth. I took it and stuck it in my mouth. He grinned. “Come on, I’ll buy you a pack.”

He checked the time on his phone as the newsstand clerk made change.

“Who’s picking you up?” I asked.

“Justin, I think.” He slid the change into his jeans pocket and the gum into mine, letting his fingers linger on my hip for just a moment, and looked at me with those deep blue eyes.

I looked off toward the crowds making their way from check-in to security and blinked a few times.

“Oh, Nate. If you cry, I’m gonna cry too.”

Would you, Adam? Would you still cry for me? Does this come anywhere near doing to you what it’s doing to me? “I’m fine,” I said.

He shouldered his backpack again and hooked a finger through my belt loop. “Come on. I have something for you.”

We found a spot just outside the newsstand. He slipped his hand into his backpack and brought out a black Sharpie. “If Juliet gets to write on you, then so do I.”

“That was a long time ago.” A lifetime it seemed, before there was a Nate and Adam. A time when his best friend had hoped her name would soon be linked to mine.

“Not so long,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “I already know your cell number.”

“I’m not writing my cell number.” He held the Sharpie poised in the air, and waggled his fingers at me in a come-on gesture. I held my arm out and he pulled it under his own, blocking my view with his back. “No peeking until I’m done.”

The Sharpie tickled, but I held still until I heard him snap the cap back on the pen. He released my arm and turned back to me and smiled. He had drawn a big heart on the inside of my arm. Printed inside in neat block letters: AJ + NS 4Ever.

I looked at him, then at the security agents clearing passengers about fifty feet farther down, then at my arm again, then at Adam. My chin started that awful quivering again.

“It’s just a month, Nate. I wouldn’t miss your birthday for anything. It’ll be here before you know it. I’ll feed you cake and then we’ll get you all tatted up.”

I nodded and blinked.

He cleared his throat and stepped in a little closer. When he spoke, his voice was low, conspiratorial, his breath warm against my ear. “And then I’ll let you do nasty things to me.”

“Promise?”

“Mr. Schaper. I. Am. Shocked,” he said with mock horror.

“You are not.”

He laughed, then pressed his mouth to mine. When he pulled away, I scanned the check-in area—a simple knee-jerk reaction I still couldn’t shake.

“Are we being watched?” he asked.

“Always the freak show.”

“Consider it a public service.”

I studied his face for a moment. “Is that what we are now? A flesh and blood PSA?”

He frowned, and a crease formed between his brows the way it did anytime he was worried or confused.

Adam glanced at the monitors hanging from the ceiling—Continental 1079, Houston to New York LaGuardia Airport, On Time—then at the passengers lining up at security. My stomach turned over, and again I thought I might throw up. My nose burned. I stared down at my feet.

Adam pressed his forehead to mine. “Don’t let that tramp Juliet steal you away from me.”

I laughed a little and blinked back tears, but one rolled down my cheek anyway.

“Oh, Nate.” Adam let his backpack slip to the floor and pulled me to him. I planted my face in his neck. “I’ll call and text and Skype every day,” he said. “You’re going to be sick of me before the month’s over. It’ll go fast. You’ll see.”

I sniffed, then he sniffed, and that made me sniff even harder, especially when he drew little circles on the base of my neck with his finger. “I don’t have to go, Nate,” he whispered. “Maybe it’s just too soon. If you need me to stay, I’ll stay. I can work at one of the community theaters and take classes at U of H and—”

“No.” I shook my head. “No. This is your dream. Broadway.”

“Off Broadway. Off off Broadway.”

“You’re going. And you’re going to be fabulous and amazing.” I swallowed hard. “I’ll be okay. I’ll start that blog or something.”

“Save the world for the queers?”

“Yeah, something like that. Maybe I’ll sleep with Juliet.”

“You’d never.”

I smiled weakly and blinked away fresh tears.

“I’ll stay, Nate.”

I shook my head, and when he asked if I was sure, I lied and said I was. He made me promise to write more songs for him. And then he pulled me to him one last time, kissed me, and let me go.

He held on to my fingers until he couldn’t anymore and took his place in line. I stayed there and watched him until he was lost in the crowd and the distance.

In the parking garage I turned the ignition key, ejected the CD, leaned it on a pencil behind my left back tire, and backed over it.

My hero was gone.

The moon was full and my eyes accustomed to the dim light, so I could see him when he climbed up into the bleachers and sat down, center field, six rows up. I hadn’t told him what football field. But he was here so quickly, it was obvious he’d guessed right. What other field would I have gone to but the one where I had suffered so many humiliations? The one where Coach Schaper, dear old Dad, had taunted me relentlessly—You’re throwing like a pussy. No son of mine is running like a homo. Don’t you dare cry. I didn’t raise a faggot—turning what might have been my field of dreams into his killing fields.

I dropkicked another football toward the goal. It veered to the right and dropped just a few feet inside the end zone. My bare toes stung from the impact. “I always wanted to be placekicker on the team,” I shouted. “Kickers have to have good form, nerves of steel. I would have been a good one too, you know. If I’d kicked, I might have even liked football. Maybe I’d still be on the team.” I sniffed and wiped at my dripping nose with my dirty, sweaty forearm. The pads on my shoulders were too small and pinched. I ad. . .