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He leaves and I come back inside the house to find Teague gone and the couch empty. “Teague!” I go in search for him and find him crouching in the hallway in front of a closed door. “Teague!” I walk fast in his direction but something has caught his attention and when I go near him I see what that object is—it’s a photograph of the four of us, Holden, Daniel, Teague and me while we were vacationing in Vienna two years ago. He smiles as he holds the photograph in his hand. “Teague?”
“I can’t believe two whole years have passed since this,” he says. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that much fun before. By the way, where’s Mia? Why isn’t she in the picture?”
“She was taking the picture, remember?” I say. “She thought it would
be neat to just take one of the guys.”
“Right, I remember. That was the trip I realized I was truly, madly in love with her.”
“And she was ditching you for some European guy who sold flowers.”
“There’s nothing more painful than unrequited love,” Teague says.
“Teague,” I say. “What’s going on? Are things not going well between the two of you? Is that why you’re doing all this? Is that why you’re so angry all the time?”
“I’m angry because she doesn’t trust me. She doesn’t believe that anyone in this world can truly love another, not in the way I claim. She thinks it’s foolish to even think such a love exists and that if I truly believe that to be the case then I should look for a therapist.”
The truth at last.
Teague gestures to the picture. “Do you have more of these?”
“No. No…this must have…fallen from inside a book or something.”
He places his hand on the door knob and tries to turn it but it’s locked and doesn’t budge. “What’s this place?” he asks. “Why is this room locked? You live on your own, man. You don’t like have some kind of sex dungeon in there do you? Or hot, naked chicks with ball gags in their mouths, cause if that’s the case then I want in.”
“Teague!”
“Come on, Sebastian! Unlock this thing!”
“Teague, stop it,” I say, going towards him and forcing him to walk away from the door. “It’s nothing you’d be interested in. Just a bunch of old books and boxes of stuff that I’m not using. I haven’t gotten around to organizing it yet.”
“Don’t lie to me,” Teague says, as I lead him to a guest bedroom and help him to the bed.
“Teague,” I say wanting badly to change the subject. “Could you please just lie down and get some rest?”
When I finally manage to get him in bed and I’m about to leave the room, Teague grabs my arm. “You can’t tell her,” he says, and without his explaining I know exactly who he’s talking about.
“Teague, I’m not going to say a word of this to anyone.”
“She can’t find out about this!”
“How the hell are you going to pull that off, Teague? Look at you! Your face looks like it came under a fucking bus!”
“It’ll heal!”
“Yeah, but that’s going to take a while. Are you planning to just avoid her until then?”
“You know what…you’re onto something.”
“What?”
“We’ll just tell her I’m visiting a family member someplace, I’ll make something up. She hates that kind of thing, so she’s not going to ask too many questions.”
“I don’t think you’ve taken a look in the mirror, Teague. How long is she going to let you off the hook because she thinks you’re tending to a sick relative?”
“Most of this,” Teague gestures to his face. “Is swelling. It looks bad now but it will go down in a couple of days and the cuts aren’t that bad. I’ll tell her I got mugged, or got into a fight with someone.”
“I thought you didn’t want to tell her this came from a fight.”
