“Yes, there are. Some really great memories.” Iggy flashed to lying in bed, cold and nauseated, sobbing so hard he nearly got sick, and wishing for a spring rain to flash-flood his teenage-self right out of Chance. “And some bad ones. But that’s most bedrooms, right?”
Malcolm’s smile faded. “Yeah.”
“Come here.” He reached out; Malcolm clasped his hand. Iggy pulled him over to sit beside him on the bed. The old spring mattress creaked in such an obvious, awkward way he might have laughed if his mind wasn’t already sifting through the serious thoughts he needed to share. “We need to talk about that night, Monte. We need to talk about how we got where we ended up. How did we gethere?”
Malcolm’s expression went from sad nostalgia to pained grief. “You wouldn’t talk to me, Iggs. You wouldn’t let me explain anything.”
“Do you blame me?”
“Yeah, actually, I do.”
Iggy might as well have been slapped across the face. Tangled emotions from that long-ago night rose like bile, and fear of real bile pushed Iggy away from Malcolm. Their hands fell apart, and Iggy mourned that loss only briefly, because confusion and anger were creeping to the top of the tangle.
“What the fuck do you blame me for?” Iggy asked. “I went to meet you at that house party at nine like you asked, and I found you in bed with some college girl you didn’t even know.”
“Yeah, and then you blocked me every way possible so I could never explain why. Howie even threatened a restraining order once if I didn’t stop trying to talk to you.”
“He did?” Uncle Howie never mentioned making that threat, but it also didn’t surprise Iggy much. He’d been a mess for several days, and it had been weeks before he wanted to walk farther from the trailer than their creek bank. But his uncle, bless him, had never once forced Iggy to tell him why Iggy was suffering alone, beyond a firm, “Monte and me are through, and I never want to see him again.”
“Yeah, he did.” Malcolm’s eyes glistened, and he looked seventeen again, confessing to another rough night avoiding hisdad’s temper and fists. “I needed my best friend that night, and for a while after, but you chose to believe I’d betrayed you, like your parents betrayed you. Like everyone else betrayed you.” A single tear slid down Malcolm’s left cheek. “You didn’t believe in us like I did.”
“I know.” Shame rolled through Iggy when he expected anger. Anger over Malcolm going for a sympathy ploy—but that wasn’t his Monte. Malcolm “Monte” Montgomery had always been awhat you see is what you getkind of person. He wasn’t manipulative or fake, and those tears were real. His pain was real. Real in a way Iggy hadn’t been capable of seeing or understanding back in high school.
Real in a way he hadn’twantedto see or understand.
Believing in the betrayal had been easier. And that had been the biggest betrayal of all: Iggy not believing in them the way he promised he would.
The party had been a month before graduation, at a farmhouse in the middle of the county, parents out of town for the weekend. Mostly for the football players and their social circle, but all graduating seniors had been invited through word of mouth. Some of the other stage crew were going, so Iggy and Monte had agreed to go and hang out with them.
For two days leading up to the party, though, Iggy was down with a spring cold. Congested, not sleeping, generally grumpy, and he’d begged off the party that night. Monte had volunteered to come over with herbal tea and hisIron ManDVD, but Iggy insisted he go. That if Iggy started feeling better, he might make an appearance just to be able to later say the school’s queer couple had attended.
Even though (he thought) no one knew about them as anything other than BFFs.
At eight, he’d gotten a text message from someone claiming to be Monte, using a classmate’s cell phone, begging Iggy tocome. Monte was bored at the party. Iggy had slugged cold medicine and caffeine, so he was wide awake and decided what the hell? He replied he’d be there by nine.
He’d actually been excited to meet his secret boyfriend at a school party.
The three-story farmhouse was teeming with students and older partygoers, and Iggy had a hard time finding anyone he knew. A girl from his biology class gave him a beer, which he’d only sipped because of the meds he’d taken. But he’d still been weirdly tipsy when Todd from Phys Ed told him to check for Montgomery upstairs. Someone else had turned him toward a bedroom door. The whole thing still felt fuzzy and muffled, like Iggy had watched it unfold while wearing ear muffs and gazing through foggy glasses.
What he believed now was something stronger than beer had been in that cup, but he had no physical proof. At the time, he’d just wanted to find his boyfriend. To hang because Monte texted and said he was bored, so please come chill with me. He’d had no reason to question the intentions of folks nudging him toward a specific shut door. No reason to dread what might be on the other side.
No reason to think he’d find Monte in bed with a brown-haired girl he didn’t recognize, him bare-chested and her in a bra, making out like oxygen only existed between their joined mouths. He saw skin and hands and Monte’s nipples, and the betrayal had socked Iggy in the heart like a sledge hammer. Pain and shock and disbelief had consumed him.
The girl had looked up, met Iggy’s eyes and smirked. “Room’s taken, honey,” she’d said, then gone back to kissing Iggy’s boyfriend.
A boyfriend who hadn’t even noticed Iggy was there.
“I walked in on you making out with a half-naked girl, Monte,” Iggy said, the words broken glass in his mouth. Theemotions more focused than the memories. “You were in bed with her, under the covers.”
“It’s not what it looked like.” Malcolm’s heartbreak was in his eyes and his voice, and he held both hands fisted in his lap.
Iggy tamped down on his instinct to bristle, to blame, and worked on communicating. He hadn’t been willing to communicate back then and it had cost him. “You texted me to come to the party. It felt like you wanted me to see you like that. And when I walked out of the room, people in the hallway were laughing at me. Our classmates were fucking laughing at me. Like everyone was in on the goddamn joke.”
“But not me, Iggs. Not. Me.”
“Why not? Because you were drunk and didn’t realize what you were doing?”
“No.” Malcolm wiped his nose with the back of his hand, then met Iggy’s eyes with a cold, unfamiliar stare. “Because I wasn’t in that bed willingly. I was drugged.”
