With my arms clasped loosely around my knees, I sat facing the headstone that read GIBSON in large, bold font.
The damp grass was seeping into my school trousers, and a light drizzle of rain had set in, but I didn’t move a muscle. Instead, I continued to stare at their headstone, with her letter fisted in my hand, and my heart on my sleeve.
“Dad, if you’re listening, I could really use your help,” I said, hoping that the wind could somehow get my message to the one person I needed to reach most in the universe. If that’s even where he existed now. Who the fuck knew for sure?
“Beth, this is guy talk so close your ears,” I warned, as I plucked at a blade of grass. “So, I finally kissed Claire. And she kissed me back, so I guess that means the joke’s on you and Pete for always teasing Mam and Sinead about us ending up together.” I smiled sadly at the memory. “Because I want to end up with her, Dad.” I sighed heavily. “I really love her, Dad, and I want to tell her, but I’m so fucking scared of her walking away from me.” I hung my head in shame. “I feel like I’m wrong on the inside.” A shudder racked through me. “Like I’m infected.”
Wishing like hell I had a cartoon baboon that could take me to the river to speak to my father one more time, I sniffed my emotions back and wiped a tear from my cheek. “I don’t want to live like this anymore, Dad.”
Because I was a wreck.
I couldn’t get my body, heart, or mind to comply and work together. The three most dominant parts of me were raging wars against the other, all pulling me in three different directions.
Still, no matter the path I took, whether it was my body, heart, or mind in the driving seat, I always ended up at her door.
That had to mean something.
It had to be a sign.
“Am I going to be okay, Dad?” I asked, placing my palm on the stones covering his grave. “Am I ever going to get over it?”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” a male voice came from behind me, and I craned my neck back to see Darren Lynch, armed with a bouquet of flowers.
“Aww.” I shoved my letter back into my pocket and feigned a swoon. “How did you know daisies are my favorite?”
“Always with the wisecracks.”
“We’ll be dead for long enough,” I replied, gesturing around us. “Might as well crack the jokes while we’re still above ground.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Darren agreed with a reluctant smile.
“So, what are you doing on my turf, Darren Lynch,” I mused, climbing to my feet. “Your mam’s buried on the other side of the graveyard.”
“Actually, I was bringing these to Caoimhe Young,” he explained, waving the bouquet around. “I always bring her a bunch when I’m visiting my mam.” He studied me for a brief moment before adding, “She was your babysitter, wasn’t she?”
“So?” I shrugged. “She was everyone’s babysitter.”
“Do you want to come with me to visit her?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why?”
“Because it’s only half past two in the afternoon and you’re sitting in a graveyard. Which means one of two things. Either you bunked off school on a whim and didn’t think through where you would go, or you have a strange and morbid fascination with graveyards.” He shrugged. “Either way, you clearly have some time on your hands, so why not?”
Well, he had me there.
“It would sound a lot better if it was the second thing,” I decided to say as I fell into step beside him. “But I forgot my mam was at home.”
“Rookie mistake,” he chuckled.
“Says the fella who never skipped a day of school in his life,” I shot back with a laugh. “I have it on good authority that you were a fair bit of a swot in your younger days, Darren Lynch.”
“Hm,” he mused, and then stopped a few headstones up. “This is hers.”
I didn’t want to look at it, but I forced myself to read the name YOUNG in similar bold font to the one on my family’s plot.
Anxiety thrummed inside of me, making me feel faint because I shouldn’t have come over here. I wanted to run, to hide, to shed my skin like a reptile and escape the evidence of the worst day of my life.
Because my worst day was her last day.
“She was a good friend,” Darren said, placing the flowers on Caoimhe’s grave. “She was an all-round good person, period.”
“Yeah.”
“You don’t agree?”
I momentarily panicked when Darren picked up on my reservation. “I didn’t say that.”
“It’s not about what you said,” he replied. “It’s about what you didn’t say.”
For a moment, I held my breath, and wondered if he knew. But when he said, “The way she died hurt the people she loved but, in the moment, she couldn’t see a way past her pain.”
“So, you believe her?” I trailed my tongue over my bottom lip, feeling nervous. “You believe he did that to her?”
“I believe something happened,” he replied carefully. “And I believe he’s responsible for that something.”
“You got over it when it happened to you,” I blurted out, balling my hands into fists at my sides to hide my tremors. “If you could go back in time and Caoimhe was standing here in front of you, what would you say? What advice would you give her?”
“If Caoimhe was here, I would tell her that what happened to her doesn’t define her.” Darren looked me dead in the eyes when he said, “It defines him. He’s the monster in the story. The shame is on his doorstep.” He reached up and stroked his jaw before saying, “And I would tell her that it’s never too late to disclose.” His eyes burned with sincerity. “Never.”
“He wouldn’t have gotten prison time even if she had stuck around to prosecute him,” I heard myself whisper. “Everyone believed him.”
“I didn’t believe him.”
“No?”
“No,” Darren replied, shoving his hands into his coat pockets. “And from personal experience, I can honestly say that living with a secret like that eating away at your soul is a much worse fate than disclosing and having people not believe you.” He sighed heavily before adding, “The right people will listen, and they’ll believe.”
“I’m his age now, Darren,” I strangled out. “I’m almost the exact same age he was when he did that to her and I’m responsible for my actions. I know the difference between right and wrong, and I would never do that to anyone, so why the fuck would he?”
“Because he’s evil, Gibs,” he said gently. “Some people are just plain evil.”
“What happened to you in that home,” I choked out. “Do you think it has anything to do with you turning out—”
“You cannot be turned gay, or decide to be gay, Gibsie. You are born gay,” Darren cut me off and said, clearly having some psychic ability to read my mind. “Being raped by another man was not a deciding factor in my sexual preference, nor had it any dominion over my sexual orientation, because I was born this way.”
“Oh.”
“But it can cause you to physically recoil and withdraw from intimate situations with a partner.”
“Even women?”
“Trauma sees no genders,” he explained calmly. “It’s an instinctive thing.”
“Like the back of your mind kind of thing?”
“Exactly,” he agreed. “It’s your subconscious’s way of alerting your body to danger, even when you might not be in any.”
“Okay.” I nodded slowly, soaking in every word he was telling me. “Good to know.”
“Can I give you my phone number?”
I stared blankly at him. “Lad, I’m flattered, but I like pussy.”
Darren smirked. “Just take my number,” he said, retrieving a business card from his coat pocket. “Call that number when you’re ready.”
“Wait!” I called after him, but he was already walking away. “When I’m ready for what?”
He didn’t respond.
