The People in Rossford

Brendan hadn’t gotten off the bed, Kenny turned around.

“When you gotta head back?”

“Well, school starts tomorrow. Mom’s going to want me back pretty early.”

“Well, then,” Kenny said, locking the door behind him, and then lifting up his arms and pulling off his tee shirt, “we should do this shit.”

Brendan sat up.

“You’re serious?”

“You heard him,” Kenny said. “If you wanna have some private time for goodbye sex… well?” he shrugged.

“Folks’ll… Won’t they ask questions?”

“These folks don’t know me, and all they see is a closed door,” Kenny approached him. He reached for the tail of Brendan’s tee shirt while Brendan, still looking amazed, lifted his arms for it to be pulled off.

“I want you to nail me before you go,” he told Brendan, kissing him hard on the mouth.

Brendan’s hands were tight in Kenny’s curls, and then he backed off a little.

“You know what, Bren?” Kenny told him, “us not having sex isn’t going to make Dena forgive you or me any quicker, and nothing we do right now changes the fact that she’s got Milo who, by the way, is kind of a looker.”

“I never heard you do that before,” Brendan said, startled.

“What?”

“Admit to looking at another guy.”

“You thought it was just you?” Kenny said, leering at him, He kissed him again and opened Brendan’s jeans, pulling them down, running his hands over him and cupping his ass before he pulled down his briefs and kissed him hard again,

“Oh, it’ll be just you,” Kenny muttered, undressing him. “It is just you. It’s no one else I’m looking at, Miller.

They stood there, neck and neck, mouth and mouth, hands tugging at jeans, caressing asses and thighs, bodies, going down on each other, making one another shock before Brendan brought him to the bed.

“We don’t have anything like… Vaseline or… anything,” Brendan whispered into Kenny’s ear, his arms braced over Kenny’s back.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kenny said in an equally small voice, the bravado gone.

“I don’t want to… hurt you or… anything.”

“You never do. You always feel just right. Just slip in me, Bren.”

And then they fucked, so close and so quiet, hardly making a sound, Kenny could feel him deep inside, in the place where there was a vacancy, where now there was no separation, and hear the slap of Brendan’s body more frantically against his, Brendan’s sweat, dripping on his back. Their hands twisting together, Kenny pushing back, small gasps escaping, Brendan’s mouth coming down on his throat. Kenny made a weak noise and turned over so he could hold his face, and smooth it, and look at the look on Brendan Miller and run his hands on his sides, over the smoothness of his ass, and then their bodies buckled and they came.

“At the same time,” Kenny said when the room had darkened and the sun was setting.

“We never do that.”

Brendan lay on his side and Kenny ran his hand across the plains of his face that was strangely homely and strangely beautiful all at the same time.

“I guess,” Brendan said, “this is going to be your bed from now on.”

Kenny chuckled, and then he lay on his back and was very quiet

“Penny for your thoughts?”

“Huh?”

“When I look troubled,” Brendan said, “my mom always says, penny for your thoughts.”

“Does she give you one?”

“No. And I won’t give you one either, but what’s going on in your head?”

“That you’re here right now, and in about a half hour you won’t be. You’re this close,” Kenny said, placing his hand on Brendan’s hip, and running it down his thigh. “And tonight you’ll be back in Rossford, and I’ll be here, and I hate that.”

“I hate it too,” Brendan said, sitting up, “I wish you’d gone to school in town.”

“Well,” Kenny shrugged. “Well, maybe I do too. But… it’s no use talking about it now.”

“No, not really.”

“Bren?”

“Yeah.”

“Since we’re not going to be together, uh… just, if you find someone else, I’m okay with it.”

“Don’t even say that!”

“I am saying it. And I am serious.”

Brendan was pulling his jeans on now, and had reached for his tee shirt. Kenny came up out of the bed and walked to the middle of the room, beginning to get dressed.

“They say if you love someone let them go, if they come back to you—”

“Kenny,” Brendan put a finger over his lips and grinned.

“That’s bullshit.

“Now walk me to my car.”

Later that night, in Will’s house, Brendan said, “It was really, really hard going back. I mean, it wasn’t real this morning. I really didn’t know how important he was to me.”

“Are we going to school together next year?” Will looked at Layla.

She stabbed her juice box and said, “Before I would have said, don’t be crazy, Will, we can stand to be apart. But looking at Bren…. I don’t know. Bren, you’ve got it bad.”

“We had the whole day together,” Brendan said. “And then we sort of… had a special goodbye.”

Layla was intentionally deaf, but Will said, “You all had sex.”

“Uh!” Layla groaned.

“Do you find gay sex to be so repulsive?” Brendan said to her.

“When you’re having it, yes.

“Dena said you all drove her back into town and jumpstarted her car?” Layla said flopping down on the bed with her juice box.

“Uh, yeah.”

“How’d that go?”

“Well, the car started. Is she supposed to be coming over tonight?”

“I think everyone’s coming tonight.”

“I should probably leave.”

“Look,” Layla said. “The two of you just need to get used to each other and deal with shit.”

“She hates me.”

“And you get diarrhea every time you’re around her. Personally, I think you both fucked up. I mean, I always knew you’d turn out gay.”

Will rolled his eyes.

“What?” she said. “He spent the last damn year talking about sleeping with dudes? Who the fuck was surprised? But Dena!

“Anyway,” said Layla, “if I can be civil in the same room with my new found brother—”

“Julian’s coming?”

Layla gave a heavily weighted, “Yes. And if I can be civil, then the two of you can be too.”

“But—” Brendan opened his mouth.

“But nothing. I don’t want to hear it. And,” Layla added, “no more talking about all the tender goodbyes and the sweet love you and Kenny made when she gets here. That’s just asking to get cut.”

“Incidentally, i want to go on record as saying I don’t love being a bitch. I don’t get up and say, ‘How can I be such a bitch today?’”

“You make a funny one, though,” Milo told her.

She smirked at him, and said, “But still. And then the way I feel after I’ve said something. Like, when he leans through the window with that… loyal dog look on his face, that… Old Yeller look, and he’s like, ‘You wanna hang out sometime?’ It just… ”

Dena shook her head, “Todd, it really got to me.”

Fenn had said nothing this whole time. He was just nodding his head.

“And it’s not like I feel that way all the time. It… I can’t explain it.”

“It comes and goes,” Fenn said, “like a wave. Like a wave you have no control over.”

“Right!” she said.

“And you think you’ll never stop being angry again.”

“Yes. That’s exactly how it is.”

Then she took a great chance, and said, “How did you do it? Get over being angry?”

“Well,” said Fenn. “I noticed that you, and me, we’re made up of these different people. Like, there’s the you that you know real well, and you know what it’s like to hold onto things, to be angry, or be afraid or… whatever. But then there is another you, and long after you’ve decided it makes you miserable to still be angry, that you isn’t ready yet to let go. He, or she, is still holding on. There is another part of you that has no intention of letting go of your rage, and to tell you the truth, it has every right to be pissed off. That you is the one that still sends everything raging through you.”

“Well, how do you get to it. How do you turn it off? How do I stop FEELING LIKE THIS?”

Fenn smiled at her and touched her hand.

“I’m not sure. I think you just wait the bastard out.”

The door opened and Todd said, “It’s about time, I thought we’d have to listen to this girl forever!”

While Claire, Julian and Noah came through the door, Milo shook his head and Dena said to her uncle, “You’re the reason I am the way I am, you know that, don’t you.”

Todd pushed his fingertips together, looked reflective and then said, “You’re welcome.”

“What’s been going on around here?” Julian asked.

Milo said, “You don’t even want to know.”

“Which means we do,” Claire looked at Julian. “Right?”

“Noah,” Fenn said, “could I speak with you?”

“Uh?” Noah looked like he’d been called into the principal’s office. “All right?”

He followed Fenn into the living room, while Fenn began turning on lamps.

Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Claire said: “Is my brother here?”

“You’re brother’s with Kirk,” Todd said.

“My God, don’t they ever let up?” She told Julian, “He’s a lot duller now that he’s living on the up and up. You guys ready to head out to Will’s?”

“I am,” Milo picked up his keys, “but are we going to get to see guyses dorms?”

Julian looked at Claire, and then Claire shrugged and said, “Why not?”

“All right,” Dena circled the table and kissed her uncle on the head.

“Goodbye, Todd. Thanks for the jumper cables and the good advice.”

“The good advice is all Fenn,” Todd said.

“Jumper cables?” said Claire.

Dena, stone faced, said, “I’ll explain it to you on the way out.”

And then to a general chorus of goodbyes, they were out the door.

“Noah, you keep on going and then coming back,” Fenn said taking out his can of tobacco and his cigarette roller.

“A perceptive person might think it’s almost like you don’t like us, but you can’t stay away.”

“No!”

“Yes,” Fenn said, putting tobacco into the little rolling machine and licking the paper.

“Well, I was looking for a place,” Noah said. “In fact, I’m going to get a place.”

“Yes,” Fenn said again. A sharp popping noise produced the cigarette and Fenn rummaged through his pockets for a lighter.

“I’m not a conceited person,” he said. “At least I don’t think. So I don’t have to be universally liked. But, usually I am liked, so it always makes me curious when I’m not.”

Noah didn’t say anything. He didn’t know what to say.

“But,” Fenn continued, “I guess, I guess what I’m trying to say is… Well, hell,” faint cigarette smoke went up around him, “I don’t know what I’m trying to say. I’m not going to say that I am owed…. Anything. But at the same time I wonder if I—and Todd—aren’t owed a little. Like, at least, a thank you. Or if not that, a smile, an acknowledgement that you’ve been living in our house rent free. I hate it when people act like you owe them something, I really do, so I hate to sound like you owe me something, but at the same time I think you do. Even if it’s simply a reprieve from… your constant sullen attitude and the general lack of charm that radiates from you in this house. You’re sort of like the teenager I didn’t want, and didn’t do anything to create.”

Fenn shrugged and, looking deeply at the cigarette, inhaled again before saying again: “I don’t know.”

“Firstly, I got a single dorm room because I cannot live with other bitches,” Claire said, “I’m sorry, but I need some fucking private space. I can just tell no one on that floor is going to be my friend and I’m okay with that because I’m prettier anyway.”

“Tell them about the auditorium,” Julian said.

“Yeah,” Claire nodded. “That auditorium is something else. Not like the cafeteria which is nothing like a high school cafeteria. I mean, we had the best burger there tonight…”

Because the bedroom was so full, Dena sat listening on the balcony that overlooked the Klasko’s yard. Milo had gone home a while ago, because his grandfather wasn’t feeling well. She asked if he wanted her there, but he said he didn’t see the point. Since he’d gone, Brendan had that look on his face, like he was going to pad across the room and put his nose on her knee.

And finally he did.

“Oh, God,” she said.

“Hello, Dena,” Brendan said, tiredly.

“Bren, I jusr don’t get you. I just don’t understand why you can’t… stay away. You could stay away before. God, you could stay away. But it’s like the more I just say, leave me alone, the more you keep showing up.”

“I thought we left things on a bad note.”

“Of course we left things on a bad note. All we have is bad notes.”

“Well, you know, you’ve got Milo.”

Dena looked at him.

“Yeah… I do… And?”

“And, it’s just… I mean, Kenny’s gone. I mean, you’ve got Milo and you can see him anytime you want, and I can’t see Kenny.”

Dena looked at him with critically lowered brows. “So…. We’re even… is what you’re saying?”

“I was saying I hoped we could talk. I mean, I’ve felt bad all evening. Tonight, you should have seen me, driving back. It was really… hard.”

“Good.”

Brendan looked at her.

“Did you cry all the way up Route Two? Did you cry till you got to your mom and stepdad’s driveway? I hope you did. I hope you gave him one goodbye fuck, which I’m sure you did because you couldn’t stop fucking him when you were supposed to be with me. I hope you are sick and miserable, and as far as I’m concerned you can just… rot on the dark side of hell—”

And then Brendan threw down the cup in his hand, it broke and all conversation in the next room stopped.

“YOU!” he snapped, red faced. “You…! I’m tired of apologizing to you. I’m tired of feeling sick. How dare you make fun of my feelings! My heart was ripped out. I haven’t been able to stop crying since the moment I got in the car and drove away, and I couldn’t hug him or kiss him in front of anyone, because he has to be there for the next four years and who knows how everyone there would take it. All I do is feel broken… All I do is … apologize to you. And nothing’s good enough. You’ve got Milo, who’s a hell of a lot better looking than me, and who is in town, who you’re with all the time, and I have someone I can’t see, and you’re still bitter. You win, Dena, and you’re still bitter. Well…” Brendan’s face had gone alternate red and white and his whole body was twitching like he might explode.

“Well, FUCK YOU!” he roared. “You BITCH!”

And then Brendan Miller turned on one heel, and making a straight line through his amazed friends, left.