All I Believe (Firsts and Forever, #10)(3)
“We’re just at LAX,” I told him. “There’s nothing to see yet.”
“I know.” He still craned his neck and bounced up and down a little.
“Switch with me.” I started to reach for my seatbelt.
Jessie grabbed my wrist. “Don’t do it! The plane’s moving, we’ll get in trouble!”
“Alright. We can switch when we’re in the air.” I pulled something out of the booze bag and held it up. “Tiny bottle of whatever?”
“Why not?”
He opened the bottle, which turned out to be bourbon, and I clinked a mini rum bottle against it. “Cheers.”
We both kept drinking during the long wait for our turn on the runway. When we finally took off, I looked out the window and mumbled, “Good riddance, L.A. I hope I never see you again.”
Jessie, Nana and I lived in San Francisco, but had come down for a concert the night before. My cousin Gianni, who was my closest friend as well as the person bankrolling this vacation, had invited us to watch his famous boyfriend Zan Tillane’s triumphant return to the stage after a long retirement. The concert had been great, until I spotted my ex and his boyfriend in the audience. It had been like flipping a switch. In an instant, I went from happy and exhilarated to feeling like I’d been kicked in the gut.
Jessie had gotten the condensed version of why I had a mini breakdown when I saw my ex, and he squeezed my shoulder in sympathy at my comment about L.A. That resulted in a lube-moistened hand, which he wiped on the leg of my khakis. When I glanced at him, he murmured, “Sorry,” but kept wiping.
“Not a problem,” I told him.
He looked past me at the sprawling city below us and asked, “Did you like Los Angeles when you lived here?”
“Yes and no. I was so happy with Erik and the life we were building that I could overlook the fact that L.A. itself never felt like home. When the relationship ended and I moved away, I never once missed southern California. But maybe that’s because it’s so tainted by what happened here.”
“I still can’t believe your live-in boyfriend cheated on you with your best friend. I mean, who does that?” Jessie’s eyes went wide and he blurted, “Shit, I probably shouldn’t be talking about this, should I? It must feel like rubbing salt in a wound.”
“Normally, this wouldn’t be my choice of subjects,” I said, pulling another little bottle from the sack on my lap, “but the good news is, I’m well on my way to getting totally smashed. So, if you want to talk about Evil Erik and Gruesome Gavin, feel free.”
Jessie grinned a little. “You really are getting drunk. You sound nothing like yourself.”
“What does myself usually sound like?” I asked before tipping back a cute little bottle of Crown Royal.
“Serious.”
I waved my hand and said, “Not this trip. I’m going to be new, fun, and really quite inebriated Nico for the next four weeks. I was gonna study. See?” I pointed at the law journals in the seat pocket. “But screw it. Not today. Maybe tomorrow, if I accidentally sober up. Right now though, I’m sticky and smell like bacon and I’m thinking about my stupid ex, which means I’m going to need a crapload more of these little bottles.” I pulled the last one from the bag.
“I’m still surprised we ran into him,” Jessie said. “What are the odds?”
“Pretty good, actually. That concert was a fundraiser for a big charity based in L.A. and Erik’s on the board of directors, so I should have known I’d see him there. I just didn’t think about it. If I had, I would have skipped the concert and kept myself from ripping off that bandage.”
“The concert was epic, though. You wouldn’t really have sat it out, would you?” I nodded, and Jessie said, “I’m sorry, Nico.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I thought you were over your ex. You never mention him or your former best friend, so I figured you’d put it behind you. I didn’t get that you were still hurting. I should have been a better friend and made you talk about it.”
I looked into Jessie’s earnest blue eyes. He was twenty-three, but often seemed much younger. “I don’t think making me talk about it was really an option.”
“You need to, though. That’s the only way you’ll get closure. Trust me, I know about this stuff. I go to that weekly support group at the LGBT community center, for people who were disowned by their families when they came out. Talking about it has helped me so much. I bet talking about your break-up would help you, too. It’s not good to leave this stuff bottled up.”
“Last night just caught me off guard, that’s all. I’m fine, Jessie. Really.” It was a lie I told so often that it had started to sound convincing.
He watched me for a few moments, and I offered him a little smile. I knew how to make that look real, too. Then he said, “Well, okay. But if you ever do decide to talk about it, I hope you know I’m always available, twenty-four-seven.”
I thanked him and gave his arm a squeeze before turning to look out the window. All of Los Angeles stretched into the distance. It was just after sunset. The sky was purple, and lights were coming on all over the city.
If Erik still had the same shift at the hospital, he’d be coming home to a pretty, white house in the hills right about now and turning on one of those lights. Gavin, my former best friend, would get home soon after. I pictured them in the kitchen making dinner together, my kitchen, which I’d painstakingly renovated when Erik and I bought that house. I’d done a lot of the work myself. It was a labor of love. I’d thought I was making a home for us and that we’d live there forever. I’d been so na?ve.