Boy Shattered by Eli Easton

Author:Eli Easton [Easton, Eli]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: gay romance
ISBN: 978-1-64405-476-5
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2019-08-13T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Brian

“HEY! HOW was your Thanksgiving?” Landon asked with a huge smile as I got into his car.

I dropped my backpack, filled with stuff for an overnight stay, in the back seat. I felt giddy. I hadn’t been able to see Landon on Thursday or Friday because we had a full house for Thanksgiving. Getting in the car with him felt like making a jailbreak.

“It was okay. Aunts and uncles and cousins I hadn’t seen in years came over. Nothing like nearly dying to make your relatives appreciate you.”

I meant it as a joke, but his smile was sad. “Yeah? Was that nice? Seeing everyone? What’d you guys do?”

I wrinkled my nose. Landon didn’t want to hear about how much my aunt Lucy hated her boss, my grandma’s sciatica, or my dad’s constant “Bull says this” and “Bull says that.”

“It was fine. All my cousins are younger than me, so it was more fun for Lisa. Mostly we watched football and ate. What about you?” I asked. “Anything new?”

Landon’s eyes were bright. He looked excited. “Take a look.” He handed me his phone. It was on his Twitter home page. I scrolled down the messages. There were a lot of messages from people I didn’t know.

“Look at my number of followers,” he said.

11,361.

“Holy shit!”

“I know.”

“What happened?”

“You know how in Chattanooga we all agreed to do video testimonies? Well, Madison and I filmed ours on Thanksgiving Day. And they went live last night on that March for Our Lives site. And the Parkland peeps have been tweeting the video link and recommending people follow us, and it just sort of blew up.”

“Shit.” I scrolled through the messages. Most of them were from people saying how moved they were and being crazy supportive. But some were hate posts. There were quite a few hate posts actually.

I put the phone down and forced a smile. “That’s great, Landon.”

“You can watch my video if you want.”

He sounded proud, and I knew he wanted me to watch it. But I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to see Landon talking about finding me gut shot.

I’d been so excited to see him, be with him. And now the black feelings were creeping in again. My personal Gollum whispering in my ear. Memories of the cafeteria. Of finding the hole in my stomach. Sweat broke out on my neck.

“I’ll watch it later,” I said, my voice raspy. “So. Um. How was your Thanksgiving? Did you guys eat good?”

Yeah, eat good. That was the level of conversation I was capable of. Landon studied my face before pulling out of my driveway. Fortunately, he went along with the subject change. He talked about the food his mom had made and about how he’d helped his dad work on the furnace because of the cold weather. The way he described them both sitting cross-legged in the basement with hiking headlamps on, reading through the furnace manual, was so beautifully geeky, and so them, that it made me smile.

And then, just like that, the bad feelings receded like floodwater, and the Gollum crept back into his hole.

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