11. Creed

CHAPTER 11

CREED

The coldness of the bathroom tile as I slid to the floor shocked me out of my nightmare-induced haze. I leaned my back against the bathtub. The oversized tub in Avery's oversized bathroom was just another reminder of how different we were.

I blinked my way back from the fragments of the nightmare and reminded myself of where I was, bit by bit. Internally, I cursed my subconscious for dredging up my shitty memories. With the almost good day I had had, I hadn't expected to see bloodied and decapitated bodies when I shut my eyes that night. It wasn't like anything had happened in particular to trigger them.

A salty tang assaulted my tongue and I realized with a jolt that I was crying and rocking back and forth. The tears flowed free and uncontrolled, cascading down my cheeks in hot streams. I tried to stem the tide with the back of my hands, but it was futile; they came from a place beyond my control, fueled by a deep well of pain and anguish.

Avery was knocking at the door, quietly but desperately asking me to let him in.

Still seated on the cold floor, I attempted to tune out the sound of Avery's insistent knocking. My vision swam. I closed my eyes, rocking back and forth. I didn't see darkness behind my vision, it was blood—of children and my buddies mixing with mine. The bright red liquid flowed in abundance.

I forcefully swallowed the bile rising in my throat. Christ, would I ever catch a break? The banging of the door forced the grisly details of my dream back into the recesses of my mind.

"Creed! Open up. Please…"

Fuck.

Poor guy. He'd had a shitty night already. The last thing he needed was to have to deal with me and my bullshit nightmares.

My gut clenched. Humiliation coursed through my veins. It was the worst I'd felt in a long time, but I tried to swallow it down and let Avery in.

Hurriedly, I dabbed at my face with the hem of my T-shirt, cleaning the streaks of tears running down my face. There was no need to drag Avery further down into my mess. It wasn't in the plan to have Avery deal with my stupid nightmares, especially after the night he'd just had.

"Creed?" Avery whispered again. "Please, let me in. I'm not planning to leave in case you're thinking you could get rid of me easily. Open up."

My eyes darted around the room as I searched for an alternative escape route. There was no way I would be able to face Avery. To explain the nightmares that had managed to plague me every night since I'd been discharged.

"You'll either let me in or I'll find a solution to this. You should know that it won't take long…"

Finally, not sure what else to do, I rose shakily to my feet and unlocked the door.

Avery looked fucking terrified.

He beckoned me with a mumbled "come here," his arms stretching out toward me as if offering a hug. But as I instinctively recoiled, he hesitated and took a step back, his expression pained and uncertain.

The room was silent. Even the faint hum of electricity seemed to have disappeared. If Avery wasn't standing right in front of me, I wouldn't think there was anyone in the room besides myself. Our eyes locked in an intense gaze, the air between us tense. It felt like time had frozen, trapping us in this moment.

A war raged in my head. My entire body was rigid, except my chest and maybe my lungs. I hadn't realized until my breath caught in my throat that I was still hyperventilating.

I was vaguely conscious of Avery leaning into me.

"You're going to be fine. Take a deep breath. Inhale… Hold. Exhale. Don't think. Just let it all out of your mind."

His voice was calm and quiet, but it still fed past the fog in my mind. The grounding exercise Avery practiced with me was something I would have joked about if things were different, but now it seemed to work the magic I desperately needed to breathe.

"You have to push past the panic. Yeah, you are doing great. Just keep at it. Steadily…"

A hand rubbed my nape down to my back soothingly. I focused on it. It was my anchor back to Earth. The wave of panic was already receding. My breath had steadied but now, embarrassment made my toes curl.

I couldn't bring myself to look at Avery. Instead, I sank back to the floor and watched Avery mirror my movements from the side of my eyes. They fell closed as the silence stretched. There was nothing to say at this point and so I remained quiet, relishing the feel of Avery's hands rubbing my knees.

His touch was soothing and grounding, like an anchor keeping me from drifting away. As I regained control of my thoughts, I couldn't help but feel embarrassed. I didn't want to discuss what had just happened or even make eye contact with Avery. Yet, I couldn't bear the thought of his hand leaving me. So I stayed frozen in place, while Avery remained patient and understanding. A part of me wanted him to push for answers, but another part of me was grateful for the peaceful silence between us.

Avery's hand tightened around mine, his voice a choked whisper. "Like you, I have something I can't forget. It has never stopped haunting me. Being the gay child in my family was like being a monster, an abomination that they couldn't help but love because we were related by blood." Avery's voice trembled with the weight of all the emotions he had kept bottled up for so long, his eyes glassy. "Yes, other kids got it worse for having a secret of that magnitude, but for me, the suffocation and near invisibility was enough punishment."

Every muscle in my body tensed, ready for whatever he would say next.

"Then when I was eighteen, I finally summoned the courage to say it out loud: Mother, Dad, I'm gay. It felt like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders being able to own up to it, being able to admit who I was... but there were consequences for it. I should have suspected something when my father didn't get worked up about it. I assumed he had seen the signs and was struggling with acceptance, unlike my mother, who grieved like I'd died. Days later, my father asked to speak to me. Alone."

Instinctively, I tensed up, anticipating his next words. Without even thinking, I grabbed onto Avery's hand, holding it tightly as though my survival depended on it.

"He blamed me for Mother's hysterics. And then he gave me an ultimatum." Avery inhaled a deep breath and then released it slowly. "Either pack all my things, leave and don't come back, or head to conversion camp to get cured of the curse of homosexuality."

"You chose?—"

"Of course I chose to go to the conversion camp. I was too scared to go out on my own, so I tried to change myself and attempted to fit in more. It was the only way I'd be allowed to remain in touch with Becca. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't one of those camps that was a thinly veiled excuse for torture and abuse. I wasn't physically abused, I was well-fed. It was just 14 hours a day, every day, of prayer and prayer group and prayer exercises and talking about why it was so very, very, very wrong to be gay, and I was going to hell, eternally condemned, if I didn't stop. It wasn't as bad as I had thought it would be. But every single day I tried to change myself to fit their narrow definition of normal."

"It's complete bullshit." My frustration boiled over, causing my voice to come out louder than I intended.

For a second, Avery's mouth hung open in shock at my outburst. But pretty soon, he gathered his wits about him. "It wasn't really that bad, all things considered."

I was noticing a theme in Avery's account of what happened in his teenage years and it tugged at my heartstrings. Even after all these years, Avery was still trying to justify why his parents did what they did to him. "Forcing a child to conform to your moral and religious beliefs about their sexuality is just wrong." Nothing he said would convince me otherwise.

"We should go back to sleep." Avery pushed to his feet quickly. Turning to face me, he held out a hand.

I let him help me stand. My legs wobbled, as though I'd been sick for a long time and had to learn how to use them again. I pushed the sliding glass shower door open and stepped in. "You can go on without me. I've got to get out of this and clean up a bit," I said, gesturing to my shirt.

"Come on, I'll help you clean up." He followed me into the shower and mumbled something about needing extra assistance.

After that, the rest of it was pretty unspoken between us. Avery helped me wash up, and I let him help, even though that's the kind of thing my pride wouldn't normally allow. His touch was gentle and I couldn't say no to it. And in return, I found myself reaching out for his affectionate contact. Not because I felt obligated, but because I couldn't stop myself. My fingers were itching for it. It was just platonic, of course. It was just affectionate. We were together in the trenches now.

Back in bed, we lay together in silence, a heavy silence that hung over us. After a few minutes, I couldn't take it anymore and blurted out, "Were you thinking about conversion camp during dinner?"

He didn't respond at first, but then he sighed. "No, I wasn't."

I wanted to press further, to understand what was going on in his head. Deep down, I knew there was something more going on with Avery that he couldn't bring himself to share. What could I do to help? Feeling inadequate with my words, I reached over and awkwardly pulled him closer to me. It was a brotherly hug, I told myself.