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I don’t even notice the other figure at first because it’s so dim in the shed. Then it registers that Colin is crying on someone, someone whose arms are wrapped around my brother’s shaking form.
A man.
A man is… holding my brother. There’s no other way to describe it. A man is holding my brother gently, and Colin is clinging to him, crying his heart out.
The man is broad and taller than me and Colin—much taller. His dark eyes meet mine over Colin’s head. I can see him tense and Colin must feel the change in his body because he turns around, though the man keeps hold of his shoulder. Colin looks destroyed from crying, but when he sees me his expression changes to something I’ve never seen before. Absolute panic. And it’s so clear that I almost laugh.
“Holy fucking…,” I start to mutter, but I can’t even get any words out. I drop into a crouch, my elbows on my knees, just looking up at Colin. With a man. My brother, who has treated me with nothing but revulsion since he found me giving Buddy McKenzie head in an alley, is gay. I can see it all in his panicked face.
Colin looks back at the man, as if he’s going to help, and then he holds out a hand to me, as if to placate. I stand up.
“Look, Dan,” he says, “don’t—”
But I throw myself at him before he can finish the thought.
“You fucking liar,” I yell, grabbing him by the lapels of our father’s coat and dragging him close.
My vision blacks out with fury. I thought I was angry at my father before, but this is murderous rage. I ram into Colin, every single nasty, homophobic word, every disgusted look, every punch and slap and shove slamming into me with the force of a brick wall. My weight bears him down to the dirt floor and I get in two punches to the face before he shakes off his surprise and fights back. He boxes my ears and gets me once in the stomach, but I am filled with a heavy rage so strong it feels like I could rip his head off and barely even break a sweat.
I push his shoulders to the ground and put my forearm to his throat. His fist slams into my lower back, just missing my kidney, and I rear back. A punch to my mouth, one to his stomach, and then we’re just wrestling on the floor, grappling, grabbing whatever parts of each other we can, both trying to inflict the maximum amount of pain. It’s only when a strong arm rips me away that I realize I’m still screaming at Colin.
It’s Rex.
The man who was with Colin is still standing exactly where he was when I walked in, watching.
Rex pulls my back tight to his front and I break off, my voice gone. Colin scrambles to his feet, bleeding from his nose and mouth, and spits out blood on the dirt floor. I can’t catch my breath.
Colin hangs his head.
“I—” he starts to say. “I—please, Danny—”
“Don’t fucking call me that, you fucking liar,” I yell at him, lurching forward, but Rex holds me back. My voice is broken.
“But, can I—?”
“How could you?” I yell, and my voice gives out completely. I’m vaguely aware of tears running down my cheeks, but I never look away from Colin. His expression is pure self-loathing and I realize that I’ve seen echoes of this expression my whole life. It’s just that I always thought they were directed at me, not reflected back on himself.
Rex is holding me up, now. I can’t believe it. I cannot wrap my mind around it.
And I can’t even imagine how destroyed Colin must be over our dad if he let a man hold him at the cemetery where we all were.
Rex is making desperate eye contact with the other man, clearly trying to figure out what’s going on, but the guy is stone.
I shake my head when Colin doesn’t say anything, and turn to leave.
“Dan,” Colin says from behind me, his voice strained. “Don’t tell Brian and Sam. Please. Please?”
I spin around to look at him. He’s crying, tears running through the blood from his nose and leaving pink tracks down his face. His scraped up hands are out to his sides, beseeching. For a moment, all I want is to do exactly that: tell Brian and Sam and watch Colin’s world come tumbling down. But I take a deep breath and give Colin a single nod. Then I close my eyes and leave, because I don’t have a voice for any of my questions, and I’m pretty sure Colin doesn’t have any answers for me.
REX CATCHES up to me a few yards from the truck, where Ginger is standing, waiting for us. When I see her chomping on a huge wad of gum, I realize I must have lost mine sometime during the fight with Colin, but I don’t know if I swallowed it, it fell out, or what. I lift a nervous hand to my hair, hoping I won’t find it there.
