28. Bare Tabby

I rushed home and tried to stop my left leg from shaking while I drove. I couldn’t practice a fake speech or anticipate Rob’s questions. All I could plan was to go in and do it.

How would he take it? My head hurt already, and I prepared for a screaming match. The optimistic side of me hoped Rob’s sympathetic core could relate to how I felt about Jax and the confusion surrounding his reappearance in my life. Hell, we might even get closer as friends because of it. After all, Rob did love me.

At least, that’s what I thought, anyway.

I stepped up to the front door and straightened my tie—the new one Rob bought me, covered in ornate leaves. I had matching contacts and velvet loafers. For my shifting aesthetic, it hit the mark. But if Rob didn’t choose it, the gesture felt empty. Instead, he was a stranger who happened to do nice things. He didn’t know me at all. We wouldn’t stand the test of time this way.

“Okay. Breathe,” I whispered, clearing my throat before going inside. Once past the threshold, my jaw dropped.

Candles everywhere, which gave off a warm smell of mouth-watering cinnamon buns. No other lights. Quiet music droned in the background. Jazz. The kind of thing I’d never listen to on my own.

“Rob?” I called out, only to get my echo in return.

He goosed me from behind and I yelped. “Hey, babe. Good to see you.”

“Fuck.” My hand went to my forehead, and I commanded my fast pulse to slow. “You scared the shit out of me. Please don’t do that again.”

“Okay, I won’t.” Rob turned me around and pressed our bodies together. The closest we’d ever been to dancing. “I’m glad you called off D&D tonight for us.”

Yeah. That’s why. “Mm-hmm.”

“How was your day?”

“Fine. Easy. Slow. Yours?” Stalling wouldn’t cut it forever. Why did the atmosphere have to be all wrong for what I had to say?

“Same. Nothing worth mentioning. Except my boyfriend looked great when he left in the morning, and I figured it would be worth burning up all these candles that he had stashed everywhere.” He pointed to the dim jars on every flat surface surrounding us. “If you never light them, what did you think would happen? You’d just keep them forever?”

For all that the environment had changed, Rob’s dig at my resistance to get rid of the candles was on-brand. He burned them in hopes to use them up so I wouldn’t have them anymore. He noticed I was dressed nice but didn’t do the same. His bright red, plain T-shirt clashed with everything and didn’t do him any favors, even though his body was well-worth showing off.

“I don’t know. I just like them, I guess.”

“We’ll break that habit. Like we’re breaking your eating out habit, huh?” He smirked and led me to the couch. Every second in his disjointed dreamland was another obstacle.

Come on, suck it up. Say something, anything. I closed my eyes after we sat. “Rob, I—”

“Shh, I have something to say first.” He took both my hands, and I opened my eyes again. His expression was like the apartment—soft, warm, and unexpected. “Tabby, you’re so incredibly special to me. You know that, right?”

“Yeah.” In half a second, my confusion turned to sheer terror. Oh, God, please don’t be proposing.

“Can’t believe we’ve been livin’ together for five months already. Truth be told, until I moved in, I wasn’t sure if this was gonna work.”

Seriously? I cocked a brow.

“I mean, no offense, you kinda drove me crazy.” Rob tittered. “Guess I’m glad you nagged me so hard.”

I bit my tongue. “Uh-huh.”

“Well, I...shit, you know I’m not good at this stuff. I never have been. But I found a great way to say how I feel.” He shifted in his seat and leaned forward as if drilling his gaze into mine. Taking a deep breath, Rob made a decent effort. “Tabby Ross, I need you in my life. When you’re not around, my life dries up. It’s just...um...dry and meaningless. Like a drought or somethin’. But you come in and you fill in all the ditches and...no, not ditches...your love’s like a stream or an ocean or...something.”

It didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Ugh, what was it? ” he said under his breath. Rob rubbed his temple like he’d forgotten the lines of a play. “It’s just that...when I’m alone, and I’m dried out and dying, you give me life. Like the stream gives life. It can’t go without it forever. The farms need the water or the crops will die. It’s...ah, shit , it’s...do you get it?”

I did. I got it. I heard it loud and clear. It was absolutely, indisputably, certainly not Rob. It was pulled from my memory and invented by my Wah.

“Are you trying to say, ‘I need you like water’?”

“Yes. Yes . That’s it, wow. See, I knew you’d get it.” Rob sighed and patted his chest with one hand. “Was a little worried there that I fucked it up completely.”

“Right.” I shifted my body away from him and stared at the coffee table. It’s time. It’s too late to pretend not to know.

Rob touched my shoulder, trying to get me to look at him. “Tabby? Are you, ya know, gonna say it back?”

I huffed. “I might if you tell me where it came from.”

He pulled his hand back. “What?”

“That phrase. That sweet thing you just said. If you’d made it up, you wouldn’t have forgotten it.” I fiddled with my fingers and felt his anger rising next to me. “So be upfront. Who did you get that from?”

He scoffed. “I—”

“And don’t you dare say Annie. I know that’s a crock of shit.” I stood from the couch and folded my arms. “I didn’t need to ask her to know. She thinks we’re better off with other people.”

“Well, fuck Annie then.” Rob stood with an intimidating grunt. “Who’s to say I didn’t come up with this myself, huh? The candles, the pretty speech—I can do good things, too.”

“Yeah, but you didn’t. So knock it off and stop trying to be something you’re not.” I pulled on the knot of my tie and yanked it forward. “Like this. Did you pick this out? Do you know why I like this color? Huh?”

He stammered and couldn’t answer before I cut in again.

“You come in and out of these moods where you’re suddenly interested in things that I like, but the next minute, you’re fucking bored. In all the pictures Annie took of you on my birthday, you looked so embarrassed by me, it was pathetic.”

“I was embarrassed by you. You’re still acting like a kid when you do shit like that.”

“And you might know why if you bothered to ask me. You didn’t ask me why I liked peacocks—and I bet whoever helped you tonight told you that. You didn’t even ask what I liked while we were there. You couldn’t give a shit if I begged you to. If you’d asked instead of implying I was just immature, you would’ve found out that zoo was the last family outing I went on with my dad before he died on the one-oh-one.”

“Oh boo-fucking-hoo about your daddy, Tabs. Mine’s still out there, and he wishes I’d get crushed beneath a semi.” He stormed to the stereo and cut the music at the same time I flicked the switch for the lights.

“That isn’t my fault,” I yelled. “Stop punishing me for your family bullshit.”

“You’re the one who rubs it in that your mom still wants to see you every week.”

“That’s not rubbing it in. It’s trying to welcome you into my family as a permanent fixture, but you don’t give a damn. You want to be abandoned. You want to be nasty. You hope you’re so unrecognizable that it’ll be some sort of golden ticket to a new life. News flash, Rob, your past still exists no matter how much you want to get rid of it.”

He held up his hands and tipped his head with a grin. “How would I know? You’re the one who actually knows what support feels like, babe.”

“Knock it off with that babe shit. I fucking hate it. I’ve always hated it. It’s like you had a whole ocean of nicknames we might share, and you picked the bottom of the barrel. Do me a favor and never say it again, ‘kay?”

“So that’s on your laundry list of shit I can’t do right, babe? Can’t always be there to rescue you, babe? Don’t make as much money as you do, babe? Nobody out of your friends likes me, babe ? How about you cram all your constant complaints right up your ass.”

I let go of all my hidden irritation and for once spoke my mind without fear of the consequence. “Great. I can finally stop asking you to do a better job when you’re back there. Huh? How about that?”

“At least I can take off my shirt without people askin’ why I’ve still got tits if I’m a dude.”

I raged and knocked a candle off the table next to me. “Are you fucking kidding me? You have some serious issues if you think my body says something about you .”

“It does. I’m gay and wanna be with a man. As you are, you’re like a goddamn mutant!”

“Oh, good one.” I gave a sarcastic slow clap, which only made things worse. “Thought your judgmental, asshole self went away when he swore he’d stop bugging me to have surgery. Did a decent job being hidden, but it turns out, policing my mayonnaise habits meant he never left. I’m not fat. I’m just too fucking feminine for you.”

He flipped me off. “You’re not trans. You’re just a fucking poser with hormones.” Rob terrorized the bedroom and threw open his few drawers, scooping armfulls for his suitcase. “You’ll never understand all the pain I went through. Not this time. This time, I’m gonna leave first.” Once it was decently full, he zipped it closed and rushed to get through the living room.

Maybe I should’ve stopped him or should’ve felt sorry. I couldn’t get over the fact that two people who meant so much to me could be so very different. “Why the hell did you bring Jax into this, huh? Why ask him for help with things you don’t even want to do?”

“I didn’t,” he said as he threw my shoes around while looking for his. “Your buddy called me first, right before I moved in.”

“Why the hell would he reach out to you when you treated him like shit?”

Rob muttered, “The fuck if I know.”

“Right. You didn’t even think to ask, I bet.” I opened the cabinet beneath our TV and stacked Rob’s games and DVDs in a rush, clapping them together with each addition. “Just like you didn’t bother asking why it threw me for a loop when he showed up at D&D and didn’t know who I was.”

“Why should I? And why anything else? I’m so sick of the passive-aggressive riddles you spew.” He came to my side and grabbed the stack I already had and threw it in a brown paper bag by the kitchen table. “None of these better be scratched, I swear to God...”

“I just put them in a pile you moron. If they’re scratched, it’s only because you don’t take care of them.” I finished weeding his stuff from my collection and went to pick out whatever dishes he brought.

“You were supposed to take care of me, too, you know.” His rage finally turned into tears, though he tried to hide them. “I said something nice, and you exploded at me. I don’t deserve that. Nobody deserves that.”

I stopped clanking my plates together and spoke to the wall. “No. We deserve to be with people who actually want to be with us, Rob. I don’t deserve to feel like I have to do something I’m afraid of to be worthy.” Slowly, I continued searching for the few things in the cabinet that were his. Instead of anger, a wave of sorrow made my fingers shake.

“Wait a minute. How did you know it was him? Did he bust me?” He came closer behind me.

“No.”

“Tabby. How did you know?” He sniffed. “Tell me.”

“It’s a long story. Too long to tell now.”

“Yeah?” He gripped my shoulders hard and turned me, pushing me against the counter.

“Ah—Rob, stop it.”

“Tell me, dammit. Did you fuck him? Did you cheat on me?”

“No, I...ow, let me go, I mean it.” I fought against him, but Rob was stronger. He moved from my shoulders to my forearms and held me still. “Rob, please don’t hurt me.”

“I wanna know why you’re so damn attached to him. Did he tell you about all the calls and texts he sent me every week since he came here? I swear, he’s fuckin’ obsessed with you. Why ?” Rob pushed me back even more, cutting the edge of the counter into my back and screaming in my face. “Why, Tabby? Tell me the truth!”

“You’re scaring me. You’re scaring me—”

“Spill it!”

I flashed back to the early days when he slapped me playfully before it escalated into something I couldn’t control. One bad night, then two, then a handful, but he promised. Said it was a mistake. Said it was his T dose. Said it was stress. Excuse after excuse. And I let it slide because I couldn’t do better. Couldn’t find a man who’d love me as I was. I had no hope. No Wah. No father. Nobody willing to stand up for me against the boyfriend I thought would become my endgame but was really my worst nightmare. My guilt over him was truly a fear—fear of this exact moment, playing out in my kitchen, after nearly a year of nothing like it at all.

“You swore you’d never hit me again. You swore. Stop!”

“Say it, Tabby. Say it!”

In a moment of courage, I refused to cower. I’m worth more than this. Instead of surrendering to Rob’s brute strength, I took a step forward. Pushed him off me. Watched him trip on himself and fall onto the tile. He crumpled with a thud.

“What the fuck?”

“I don’t need you. Look at me. I’m a man, too.” I opened the freezer and grabbed a handful of the ready-made ice from the dispenser inside. With each statement, I tossed one at him, chasing him closer toward his suitcase at the door. “You’re not water to me. You’re just a distraction. The asshole who hit me and hurt me—no more. I’m done. I was done a year ago. Done after you forgot Valentine’s Day. Done after you refused to see Mom at Easter. Done when you wouldn’t go with me to Pride. I was done when you asked Jax if he even belonged here and done when you asked if I was a child on my birthday. And now, right now? I’m done with you taking ideas from someone else and hoping I won’t know the difference. I do.” When I ran out of ice, I grabbed his keys on the hook and took off the one for my apartment. “You wanna know how I figured it out? He’s my soulmate.”

“You bitch,” he screamed, standing to yell in my face.

“Right. I’m the bitch.” I pushed the keys into Rob’s chest and spoke calmly. “Jax fucked me long before I ever met you. Now get the hell out of my house. Don’t come back.” Opening the front door wide, I presented the hallway and stood as straight as I possibly could.

He glared at me, burning holes through my face. He only had power when I was defenseless. I didn’t need Jax to be a knight in shining armor—I was my own. When I said I needed Rob, it was a gesture of my love. I allowed him to help me so he’d feel more valid. But when faced with reality, our broken bond wouldn’t ever have the strength we both needed to thrive.

Rob left my life without another word. He moved back to the place where he lived when we met, with the landlord whose bridge never burned.

His escape plan wasn’t such a bad idea after all.