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Adrian
Iâve had counseling before. Itâs mandatory as part of discharge and getting hurt, itâs compulsory for a shit ton of reasons. I didnât need it, because cracking open my brain and sharing thought wasnât enjoyable. It was hell. The concept of having to talk about my feelingsâlosing close friends, the only man Iâve ever loved getting hurtâwas an alien thing that I didnât want to go through over and over.
âCan you tell me a bit about your time inââ
âNo.â
The counselor, a new guy to me and JC bothâAlanâpeered up from his notes and raised his eyebrows in surprise.
âI just needââ
âI donât need to sit here talking about how war is bad, and how devastated I was to lose friends, or how it nearly killed me to think JC was dead. Iâm done with all that.â I was stiff and sitting upright in my chair, and JC reached over to take my hand.
âWeâve talked about it a lot, at least I have,â JC murmured. He was talking to Alan but was looking at me with a ton of emotion in his expression that I had no hope of unpicking. Did he want me to talk about that part of our lives? Was this what couples therapy was like?
Was this even couples therapy when we were together but not quite?
In love but not acting on it.
Kissing but holding back.
âOkay,â Alan didnât seem phased by what I said. Instead, he smiled softly and nodded. âSo, letâs focus on how the two of you met?
âI was five,â I said.
âFour,â JC corrected me, ânearly five.â
âHe remembers that better than meââ
âWe had a party in the treehouseââ
âYou stole a pie from the kitchenââ
âI gave you my Transformerââ
We talked over each other in our usual way, and then we stopped and grinned stupidly at each other.
âI still have that Transformer, you know,â I said softly. âIn a box along with the photos and the letters you smuggled out to me from boarding school when they blocked your emails.â
âFor real?â
âAll of it.â All of you.
He frowned at me. âI donât know where anything I had from when I was little wentâmom cleared it out when Dad left, andâŚâ he stopped talking and shifted awkwardly in his chair, and I immediately felt protective.
âWe should go back and find it allâitâs probably in storage somewhere.â
âYou think mom kept all of my stuff?â
âSheâs your mom,â I reminded him, and he winced.
âExactly.â
I liked to think that JCâs mom had a heart somewhere under the picture-perfect model exterior. It was buried deep, but it had to be there somewhere.
âOkay, so you met as children,â Alan interrupted our musing, and I snapped back to him immediately.
âSorry. Yes, we did. My mom was housekeeper to JCâs grandparents.â
âShe made the best pies. She was like a second mom to me.â He snorted in disbelief then. âNo, a first mom, really. I grew up with her and Adrian was always there. Weâve always been best friends, and what we feel for each other isnât brotherly.â He side-eyed me, and he looked worried.
âNot brotherly at all,â I defended and then leaned in and kissed him squarely on the lips. He chased for more of the kiss when I moved back, and then we smiled at each other like idiots.
Alan scribbled something in his book, and I peered over to see if I could make out what heâd written, but his writing was tiny, and no doubt it was in counselor-code.
We talked about everything and nothing for the longest timeâmemories from when we were growing up, the moments we cherished between us, and I began to relax into this. We were clearly on the same page with the way we felt, with how close weâd been, and there was nothing awful that the counselor was pulling out from any of it.
âSo, what made you both enlist?â he asked.
And there it was⌠Alan had taken a grenade, pulled the pin, and thrown it between us.
âI enlisted first,â JC said, after a prolonged pause that I had no hope of filling. This was his story to start, but I dreaded where it would go.
âWhy?â
âWhy does anyone enlist?â I interjected defensively. âPatriotism, family, there are a ton of reasons.â
âI wanted to achieve something that would add up to more than the sum of my parentsâ lives. I wanted to be me, and not just the child of famous parents,â JC interrupted, and it sounded practiced, but then heâd probably explained his reason before in his regular weekly counseling. âIt was a thought Iâd carried with me a long time, from being a kid, I guess, and it seemed right to enlist. It wasnât some form of running from my dysfunctional family or avoiding real life; it was a conscious decision I made.â He sat back in his chair as if heâd run a marathon, and I wondered if heâd expected this question, and now that it was over, he could relax.
âIs that the same for you, Adrian?â
âYeah,â I lied.
âHeâs lying,â JC said very simply.
âWhy do you say that JC?â Alan didnât look surprised, and he didnât write anything in his notes.
âIâm not lying,â I lied again.
âYou went to keep me safe,â JC stared right at me, probably willing me to spill all my innermost secrets. I could feel the weight of his gaze, and that grenade that Allen had thrown was ticking down to an explosion that could open too many old wounds. âTell him,â JC encouraged, but I was frozen. âTell him itâs my fault you were even there.â
âJC, thatâs not trueââ
âWhy are you lying! We said weâd be honest in here.â
âI am being honest.â
âItâs my fault that you were out there, my fault you were hurt, my fault for everything. Until we get past that there will never be a real us.â
What? I had to make him see that he was wrong about most of it, and I sighed heavily, but to do that, I had to be honest about the bad part of it. âJC, this isnât what I want to do.â
âI need you to be honest. I need to know that we donât have an unhealthy co-dependency.â
âWhatââ
âI mean it, Adrian, tell me⌠tell Alan⌠everything.â
âOkay, so maybe, JC is half right,â I admitted after a pause.
âSee?â JC said immediately as if Iâd just validated his fears.
âNo, JC, wait.â I untangled our fingers and sat away from him, knowing that if I had hold of him that I wouldnât be able to say the words in the right way. He looked tired, pressing his fingers to his temples.
âWhat do you want to say, Adrian?â Alan prompted.
âI always look out for JC. Itâs as if protecting him is coded into my DNA or something, and when he went to sign up, I went as well, because it seemed right to support him. But I didnât go just to be with him, but to enlist myselfâto make a difference and begin a career that meant something to me. Maybe even to show the world what the son of a housekeeper in a rich Hollywood-shaped world was capable of. JCâs parents never thought much of me, and I wasnât sure what I actually thought about myself. No one expected us to be put together, that was on his grandmother, but maybe it was a chance for me to be on my own and to forge a path in the world.â That was the part Iâd never wanted to admitâthat maybe I needed to be alone and to make something of myself that wasnât connected to Adrian directly.
âI see,â Alan made a note. âAnd would you say thatââ
âYou wanted to enlist?â JC interrupted, and he sounded incredulous.
âYeah, I knew it was what I wanted.â
JC stood shakily, âyouâre lying just to make me feel better! Stop fucking doing that!â He stumbled toward the door, yanking it open then slamming it behind him.
Youâd better believe I was two steps behind him.
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