Just Between Us

by J.H. Trumble

Genres: LGBT Gay

Synopsis

Seventeen-year-old Luke Chesser is trying to forget his spectacular failure of a love life. He practices marching band moves for hours in the hot Texas sun, deals with his disapproving father, and slyly checks out the new band field tech, Curtis Cameron. Before long, Luke is falling harder than he knew he could. And this time, he intends to play it right. Since testing positive for HIV, Curtis has careened between numbness and fear. Too ashamed to tell anyone, Curtis can't possibly act on his feelings. And Luke--impulsive, funny, and more tempting than he realizes--won't take a hint. Even when Curtis distances himself it backfires, leaving him with no idea how to protect Luke from the truth. Confronting a sensitive topic with candor and aplomb, acclaimed author J. H. Trumble renders a modern love story as sweet, sharp, and messy as the real thing, where easy answers are elusive, and sometimes the only impossible thing is to walk away. Praise For J. H. Trumble's Don't Let Me Go "A sexy, vibrant, and heartfelt debut." --Martin Wilson, award-winning author of What They Always Tell Us "Deeply moving. . .will be appreciated by adults and teens alike." -- Publishers Weekly, starred review "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: September 24, 2013

Publisher: Kensington

Print pages: 320

Sample

Luke Chesser looks miserable and embarrassed as he grinds the toe of his athletic shoe into the superheated concrete not eight feet from me, his clarinet gripped tightly in his right hand. He slaps the instrument against his calf a few times, then glances my way. With my eyes shielded behind dark sunglasses, I feel no compulsion to look away.

It’s been a hard couple of weeks for him, but I don’t know if what I feel right now is more sympathy or irritation. He’s a mess, distracted, directionally challenged. Some days I think it would be easier for Mr. Gorman to change the band’s program than to change Luke. He’s been persistently dense since day one of marching camp. In fact, he’s the reason all two hundred of us are standing here again under the blazing August sun, waiting. He screwed up, and the domino effect took care of the rest.

I squint up at the viewing stand, where Mr. Gorman is conferring with the assistant band director. One day that will be me up there with a microphone clipped to my ear.

It’s been almost a year since I loaded up my truck, said good-bye to Dad and Corrine, and headed west on 290 to Austin. I’d spent the entire summer dreaming about walking down Sixth Street on a Friday or a Saturday night with a beer in my hand, staying out all night if I wanted to, flirting with college guys, maybe taking one back to my dorm room or spending a night in his, having sex for the first time, experiencing the freedom that comes with distance.

As it turned out, that freedom wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

By the end of spring semester, I couldn’t wait to get back.

It wasn’t Austin; it was me. Too many guys eager to share their bed for a night. Too much alcohol. Too many pieces of me chipped away and left scattered here and there, everyone taking what they wanted until I could feel myself fracturing under the weight of all that freedom.

A clatter catches my attention, and I look over to see Robert Westfall retrieve his flag from the ground. He’s a bari sax player, a freshman when I was drum major. Nice guy, but honestly, I never gave him much thought until I saw him rehearsing with the color guard last week. I hadn’t seen that coming. Apparently it’s no big secret. I have to say, I admire him for that. Maybe if I’d been more open in high school, I wouldn’t have been so boys-gone-wild at UT.

Luke Chesser, though . . . I had him pegged from day one. I can’t say why exactly. Just a feeling.

Over the portable PA system, Mr. Gorman calls the band back to set. I lift my sunglasses and wipe the sweat from my brow, then assume a wide stance and fold my arms. The freshmen squirm a little, but snap to attention when I clear my throat.

“Luke,” I say in a voice just loud enough to carry across the clarinets. “It’s right, left, right, left.” One of the girls giggles as the drum majors count off the beat.

“Toes up, toes up,” I bark as I shadow the moving section. Anna Newman misses a turn, then scrambles to catch up. “Laura, watch your carriage. Better.” I scramble back a few yards so I can get a better overall view of the ripple, then slip in and out of the lines, counting the beats aloud as I go. I duck under the twirling flags of the guard. The program is still new to them, so I anticipate movements, giving a heads-up when I can. I keep my eye on Luke, but he manages to fumble through without any major mistakes this time.

The opener ends with a one, two, three, drop. The kids stand frozen, faces parallel to the concrete.

“Much better,” Mr. Gorman says. “All right. Find some shade, take a five-minute water break, and we’ll do it again.”

I collect my thermos from the curb behind the viewing stand and take a long drink as Adeeb Rangan makes his way across the parking lot to me. His white teeth flash in his impossibly dark face, and I’m amused to see he’s wearing a Texas Aggie T-shirt again today.

“What’s this?” I ask when he hands me a folded piece of paper.

“The new section T-shirt design.”

“Yeah?” Section T-shirts are an annual tradition. My freshman year it was Reed my lips. Sophomore year: Clarinets kick brass. Junior year: Shhh . . . the clarinets are playing. And senior year: Fear the clarinets.

Clarinets just aren’t that funny.

Now saxophones, that’s a funny instrument.

I unfold the paper. There are two outlines of a T-shirt—a front and a back view. On the front, a formation of graphic faces with hats and plumes, all heads tilted to the right except one, which is tilted to the left. I’m already laughing when I read the caption: Luke Chesser, you are wrong. On the back: Will someone please tell him what to do?

Those were Mr. Gorman’s exact words last week. I felt bad for Luke that morning, but damn, he ought to know right from left by now.

“Does he know about this?” I ask Adeeb.

“He agreed to it.”

I scan the edges of the parking lot until I spot Luke again.

“He’s worse than the freshmen,” Adeeb adds. I smile. “He’s gonna drive Gorman crazy, you know.”

“Where’d he come from anyway?” I refold the paper and hand it back to him.

“Odessa. But he was only there for the spring semester. He marched with the band at Forest last year.”

Woodland Forest is the rival high school a few miles away. They have a good program. A damn good program. Can’t blame them. They were probably glad to see him go.

“He pees sitting down, you know?”

I look at Adeeb over the top of my sunglasses. “I kind of figured.”

He grins at me, juts an elbow in my ribs, and I know what he’s thinking. Not gonna happen.

“So when you moving up to Huntsville?” he asks.

“Dorms open a week from tomorrow. You’re stuck with me for a few more days.”

Across the parking lot, a clarinet girl (Phoebe Verbosky, I think), pours a load of water from her thermos down Luke’s back. He whips around and scowls at her. Come on, Luke. Lighten up. But he doesn’t retaliate. He leaves that to the clowns Jackson Stewart and Spencer Dunn. They’re going to be sorry at the next water break when those thermoses are empty. H2O foreplay will cost you in this Texas heat.

“Those idiots,” Adeeb says. “I gotta go break that up before they ruin the pads on those clarinets.”

He gives me a light punch on the shoulder. “We’re meeting at Cain’s after practice. Want to come?”

Adeeb looks up and motions me over to the tables they’ve claimed near the counter. About eleven of the twenty-seven clarinets are there—Adeeb, Spencer, Jackson, Luke, Phoebe, a few others. “About time,” Adeeb calls out as I approach. “I was starting to wonder if maybe you thought you were too good for us now, college boy.”

Luke glances over his shoulder. When he sees me, the smile slides right off his face and into his secret sauce.

What did I do?

“Eh, I stayed behind to talk shop with Mr. Gorman.” I pull out a chair next to Adeeb and sit, then nod toward Luke. “What’s wrong with him?” I mouth.

Adeeb shrugs. “I don’t know,” he mumbles. “He’s got a burr up his ass. He’s been in a funk all day.”

All day? I think funk is his default.

“He’s kind of a drama queen,” Adeeb adds and smiles.

Drama queen? I don’t think so. Antisocial, morose, depressed. Good thing he’s got that all-American boy look about him or he’d be one sad sack. I grab a box of chicken tenders at the counter and settle in to watch the hurricane coverage on the TV affixed to the wall between two banks of windows. Janine is still a ways out in the Gulf, but Galveston is in the cone of probability, so it’s news, and you can’t turn on the TV this week without getting an update.

“So, who you rooming with this year?” Adeeb asks when the station goes to commercial.

“Don’t know.”

“That could be bad.”

I suppose he’s right about that. But I got lucky enough the first time. I roomed with a fellow engineering student. Jared actually wanted to be an engineer. I just wanted to play music and party. But he spent most of his time in the library, so we got along okay until I stumbled into the room early one morning and woke him up. He pushed himself up on one elbow and asked in a disgusted voice, “Aren’t you afraid you’re going to catch some disease?” God, I was pissed.

Abruptly Luke pushes back his chair and gets up.

“Bedtime for Lukey Duke,” Adeeb teases in a voice too low for him to hear.

I grin at him as Luke gathers up his trash then hugs the girls good-bye.

“Call me later,” Spencer says.

“Yeah, sure.” He glances at our end of the table. “See you Monday, Adeeb.” Then he turns his back and walks out.

I’m dumbstruck.

I’m breathing hard as I approach the lake Saturday morning for the last half-mile stretch of my five-mile run.

I intentionally run my circuit so that the lake is on the backstretch. It’s my reward for going the distance. The lake is actually more like a pond. The duck pond we call it sometimes because of the gaggle of ducks that rule over the shoreline. It’s tucked between two neighborhoods and bordered on one side by the public sidewalk I’m running on.

As the trees recede from the sidewalk, I get my first look at the water, and I’m already thinking about stopping for a bit and enjoying the quiet beauty while I still can. In another week I’ll be doing my running in Huntsville, and as far as I know, there are no lakes within running distance of the Sam Houston campus. Suddenly, a duck squawks and takes flight from the western shore, quickly followed by a familiar streak of black and a splash.

I veer off the sidewalk and head down the gentle incline to the shoreline. The Lab, her black nose pointed to the sky, is already in hot pursuit. “Liberty! Come here, girl!” I clap my hands a few times. She ignores me as she gains on the duck and sets off another frantic flight. It’s fun to watch, but the dog is too fat for such strenuous exercise, and I damn sure don’t want to be playing lifeguard to the beast when her muscles give out. I put my fingers to my lips and whistle, then call again. This time, Libby cranes her neck around, smiles, then switches direction and dog-paddles toward me.

As I wait for her to reach the shore, I’m surprised and amused to see Luke Chesser grab hold of the wrought iron fence that separates the public area from the private backyard where Libby had apparently been nosing around. He grimaces as he wades into the water. If Luke is chasing Libby, then . . . huh.

Libby’s paws grip solid ground and she bolts from the lake and comes right to me, twisting and dripping water. “Hey, girl, you catching some ducks today?” I squat on my heels and slap her affectionately on her side. “Keep the leash behind your back,” I say to Luke as I see him approach in my peripheral vision.

When he gets close enough, I take the leash and snap it onto her wet collar. The big dog shakes and splatters us both. “You’re a pill, aren’t you, girl?” She nudges her muzzle into my hand.

“You know Libby?” Luke asks.

“Liberty and I go way back, don’t we, sweetheart? I was on dog catcher duty for six long years before I went off to school.” I use the neck of my T-shirt to wipe the splashes of water from my sunglasses and squint up at him. “Looks like I’ve been replaced.”

He squats down next to me. Libby rolls over and presents her broad, wet belly to him for a scratching. I take the opportunity to study his face close up for the first time. He’s all blond hair, blue eyes, and color spots on his cheeks. He’s actually pretty cute when he’s not so surly or pissy. “So how’d you end up with this job?” I ask him, dropping back on my butt.

“She’s our neighbor.”

“Yeah?” Surprise, surprise. “Well, I guess that makes us neighbors then too. We’re number eleven.”

“Twenty-nine,” he says.

I mentally try to place his house on our street. “Ah, you’re in the cul-de-sac. Two doors down from Miss Shelley, right?”

He acknowledges that with a nod.

“So how many times have you had to chase this beast down?”

He smiles a little. “A few.”

I bet. “She’s a little opportunist, this one.” I run my hand down her heaving wet side. Damn, I hope I don’t have to carry her home again. Last time I had to do that it was heatstroke. She ended up in the doggie emergency room, and that little excursion cost Miss Shelley plenty.

I uncap my water bottle and pour a little into my cupped hand and offer it to Libby. She lifts her nose and holds it there until the water dribbles through my fingers. “I guess she had her fill of water in the lake.” I expect some kind of response from Luke—a laugh, a smile, something—but I get nothing. Oh, what the hell. I’ve had enough of this nonsense.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” I ask.

“What do you mean?”

What do I mean? He knows exactly what I mean. “I’ve obviously done something to offend you. Cain’s?” I reenact for him what didn’t happen at the restaurant: “Hey, Curtis, catch you later. Great to see you.”

“Offend me?” He huffs. “No, I love being made fun of in front of everybody.”

Wow. He just laid it out there. I like that. But, damn, he’s sensitive. I think back to practice yesterday. I was giving him a prompt—right, left, right, left. If the other kids laughed, well . . . Aw, hell. Okay, I was having a little fun with him. But, honestly, he makes it so easy. I fight the urge to smile; that would be the wrong response right now.

“I was just doing my job, Luke. Nothing personal.”

“It is not a field tech’s job to belittle people. And why me? I don’t ever hear you making snide comments to the other kids.”

He’s got me there. But snide? And now I do feel like a jerk.

“Hey,” I say, and dip my head until he looks up at me. “Can we reset? I didn’t mean it that way. And I apologize if it felt as if I was picking on you. Okay? We good?”

He glares back at me. “Yeah. Sure.”

Nope. Not good. Not good at all. I decide to change the subject. Maybe that will get us back to a better place. “So you live on Split Rock, huh? I’m surprised I haven’t run into you before.”

“Yeah, well, we only moved here a month ago.”

“From Odessa, right? Adeeb told me.”

“Adeeb was talking about me?” He huffs again.

Touchy. “He told me where you came from. That’s all. So you were at Forest last year, huh? That was a pretty short stay in Odessa.” He looks at me hard, and I know there’s a story there. Okay, I’ll bite. “What happened?”

“You really want to know?”

Probably not. I uncap the water bottle again and take a long drink, then get to my feet. Libby scrambles to her feet too. Luke grabs the leash.

“Come on,” I tell him. “I’ll walk you and Libby home. You can fill me in on the way.” I have a feeling I’m going to regret this.

“Where do you want me to start?” he asks, falling into a lazy stride with me.

Oh boy. We shift to the edge of the sidewalk and wait as a bicycle whizzes past us, then resume walking. I glance over at him and note the deep furrow between his brows. He’s hardly said a dozen words to me up to now, and even though he looks like he wants to talk, surely this little trip into his past won’t take long. I take a deep breath and suggest he start with why they left Odessa.

“Odessa,” he says, then scoffs. “My dad got a transfer and since he gets to be the man of the house—”

“What do you mean, your dad gets to be the man of the house?”

“Mom makes more money than him. A lot more. She’s a dermatologist. She has a private practice here, but she had to turn it over to her partners when Dad got the transfer.”

“You’re losing me here.”

“She’s always let him make all the decisions—about where we live, when we do our homework, who we hang out with—because he can’t deal with the fact that she’s the one who really supports us. So when he said we’re moving, we moved.”

“But you moved back?”

He purses his lips and looks away. “Yeah. We moved back.”

“So . . .”

He takes up the slack in the leash and wraps it around his hand. “He wanted me back in the closet; I didn’t want to go.”

Oh. I’m getting the picture now. In fact, that explains a lot more than just his brief residence in West Texas. I wish I’d known. Maybe I could have—

“He hit me,” he says suddenly.

He doesn’t say why. He doesn’t have to. It’s a story I’ve heard too many times. But his admission is like a punch in the gut.

“Mom doesn’t know about that,” he continues. “It happened just before we moved to Odessa. But then, after we got there, Dad started grilling me about where I’d been and who I was with every time I walked in the door.

“I’m sure Mom wondered what was going on. But whenever she asked, Dad would tell her it was between us men.” He laughs a little. “Kind of funny when Dad doesn’t consider me a man at all. And then one day Mom asked my little brother Matt if he knew what was going on and he told.”

“How did your mom take it?”

“We’re back, aren’t we?”

“And your dad?”

Libby squats to pee in the dry grass next to the sidewalk.

“He’s moving back today,” he says quietly. “Any minute in fact.”

He looks at me, but I can’t do anything but blink back at him for a moment. “Why did you tell me all this?” I ask.

“Because you asked.”

Libby finishes up. We follow in silence as she moves on, but after just a few steps, she drops to the ground and lays her head between her paws. Luke tugs on the leash, but the big dog refuses to budge.

Aw, shit. Lazy dog.

“Is she okay?” Luke asks.

Good question. I doubt she’s overheated; she’s still nice and wet. She didn’t seem to stumble before she decided to drop. Not glassy-eyed. Breathing is okay—no heavy panting. Just tired and lazy. “How much weight can you carry?”

“Not that much.”

I laugh and look down the path. We’re less than a quarter mile from home, but, damn, the dog must weigh ninety-five pounds. And I know this routine all too well. Why walk when you can get a ride? She’s much heavier now than she was the last time I carried her. And dragging her, while tempting, is out of the question. But I don’t feel like parking myself in this heat until she gives up the game and is ready to move on either.

I slip my phone out of my pocket and call Corrine. She laughs when I explain the situation. “My truck keys are on the counter. And bring a blanket.”

“Who’s Corrine?” Luke asks when I end the call.

“My twin.”

A pause. “Does your dad know?”

“That I have a twin? No. We’re keeping that from him until we feel like he can handle it.” He smiles and I smile back. I guess he knows a thing or two about me as well. “Yeah, he knows,” I tell him.

“I’m sorry I laid all that on you,” he says.

“It’s okay. I’ll send you a bill.” I can see from the hurt expression on his face that my little joke has fallen flat. “I didn’t mean that, Luke. Look, if it helped for you to unload on me, then I’m glad you did.”

He holds my eyes for a moment, then looks away when Corrine pulls up to the curb and turns on the hazard lights.

Corrine’s eyes dart between me and Luke. An impish smile plays on her lips. I reach through the open window and grab the blanket from the front seat.

“All right, you big lazy dog.” I roll up half the blanket and place it next to her. Luke stoops and supports her head while I roll her onto the blanket, then unroll the rest of the blanket behind her. All that’s left is lifting the beast.

“You want to help us out a little here, Corrine?”

“No, thanks. You two big, strong guys don’t need me. I’ll monitor the tailgate.”

I scowl at my sister; she smiles sweetly back at me. “Looks like we’re on our own here, Luke.”

“I’ll take the head; you take the butt.”

“The story of my life.” Oh, brother. I have no idea why I said that. But Luke smiles at me across the dog, and damn if my heart doesn’t thud a little in my chest. “On three, okay?”

We lift Libby and stagger with her to the truck and slide her onto the bed.

“Nice work, gentlemen.” Corrine slams the gate, then looks wide-eyed at me, then Luke, then back at me.

“Corrine, this is Luke. Luke, my sister, Corrine.”

“Sooo,” Corrine says with a grin, “you two . . .”

I give her the look. “Luke’s in the band. Clarinet. Junior.” I say the latter with just enough emphasis to squash any thoughts of matchmaking she might be entertaining.

She flicks her eyebrows at me; I roll my eyes back at her. “You driving?”

“Hop in.”

I slide across the seat to the middle; Luke takes the window.

Corrine has barely eased the truck away from the curb when Luke nods over his shoulder. “Look at that.”

Libby is up on her feet again and scrambling up the slick wheel well to heave her front paws over the edge of the truck bed. Once she’s there, she points her nose into the wind and drops her long tongue out the side of her mouth. Luke looks back at me and grins.

“We’ve been played, Luke. Hey, Corrine. You better take it easy on the corners.”

“So what’s the story?” Corrine asks quietly. We’re waiting outside the truck while Luke hands the dog over to Miss Shelley.

“No story.”

“He’s a cutie patootie.”

“Too young.”

“You’re nineteen,” she chortles. “Not exactly an old man, little brother.” Corrine is one minute and sixteen seconds older than me, a fact she likes to remind me of frequently. She bumps her hip against mine. “I think you should ask him out.”

I yank her ponytail. “I think you should mind your own business.” Although, I have to admit, he is a “cutie patootie.”

“Mission accomplished,” Luke says, returning to the truck. “Thanks for the help.”

“Anytime. I’ll see you Monday at practice.”

“Sure.”

We’re getting back into the truck when an SUV pulls into Luke’s driveway and a gray-haired man gets out. I watch through the side mirror as Luke approaches him. They stand there stiffly in the driveway, talking. But I can’t help noticing there’s no warm hug for Luke like my dad would give me, no handshake, no slap on the shoulder.

I’m not ready for this. I’m not remotely ready for this. But he’s here, and I said it was okay. So I really have no one to blame but myself. I will my feet to keep moving forward as I head up the driveway, when everything inside of me is screaming to turn and head the other way. It’s not that I’m afraid of him; he only hit me that once. I just really don’t want to do this again.

“Luke. How you been?” he asks as he gets out of the SUV. His voice is light, but I suspect this is as awkward for him as it is for me.

“Hey, Dad. How was the drive?”

“Long. I drove all night. You’re wet.”

I look down at my lake-splattered T-shirt. “I had to get a dog out of the lake.”

He doesn’t ask what dog. He just nods, then gazes up the street. “Who was that?”

He hasn’t even unloaded his suitcases and already it’s starting again. I look back as Corrine steers the truck into a driveway seven houses up from ours, on the left. “Just some neighbors.”

“Well,” he says, slapping his chest. I wait for what comes next, but there’s nothing. Finally, after a long awkward pause, he asks, “Is your mom home?”

“She’s inside.”

He nods.

This is the problem: I don’t know how to be around him anymore. My guess is he doesn’t know how to be around me either. I’m the reason he and Mom split up. He knows it; I know it.

I’ve been dreading this moment since our second week in the house when Dad called and begged Mom to take him back. Mom posed it to me this way: “I promise you, Luke, things will be different. You have a right to feel safe and loved in your own home, and to have your feelings respected. But it’s your decision. I love your father, but you have t. . .