Leaving
The conference room is completely silent when I walk in. Taylor and Isaac both stand on opposite sides of the table, like they’re both ready to leave at any moment. I can’t sit down, because then they’ll be literally and figuratively looking down me. I’m forced to stand, too, my arms crossed over my chest like that could protect me from whatever happens next.
“You’re moving to California,” Isaac states.
I nod. There’s no point denying it.
“And when did you plan on telling us about this? Does Kate know?”
“She knows,” I say, nodding again. I decide to skip the part about her supporting the move. “I was… I was going to tell you guys soon. I can’t leave until the divorce is final, after we get back from the tour.”
“So, three, four weeks?” Isaac asks. “That was all the warning you were going to give us before you left the band.”
“That’s not… I’m not…” I stutter out.
But I am physically leaving the band. The emotional distance that’s been between us for months will now be actual distance. A part of me doesn’t want that distance to grow further, but a bigger part of me doesn’t believe any of this hurt between us will be healed if we stay practically in each others pockets. I won’t be healed if I stay here.
I look to Taylor for some reaction, anything at all, to see if he too believes that I’m trying to quit the band. His face is a complete blank, nothing at all like the rage written all over Isaac’s. Taylor seems completely unaffected by my unintentional announcement. More and more, he’s convincing me that he just doesn’t care. I can’t believe he’s that good of an actor, no matter how much he has manipulated and maybe even lied to me. Taylor really just doesn’t care.
“I’m not leaving the band.” I have to force the words out, but at least it sounds like I mean them. My eyes are trained on Isaac as I speak; Taylor’s reaction, or lack thereof, means less and less to me by the second. Even though Isaac is still staring daggers through me, I prefer that to Taylor’s blankness. Somehow, it gives me the confidence to keep talking. “I’m just moving. That’s all. You’ve talked about it. Tay’s talking about it. I’m just the first one to do it. Now that Kate and I are divorced, why do I have to stay here? We can still be a band. We always record in L.A. Anyway. Everything… everything will be fine.”
I don’t know that I fully believe that, but I have to. I have to force myself to believe that this is all going to work out, because if I don’t believe it, then I know it won’t happen.
“You have two children,” Ike reminds me. “You could stay here for them.”
“Or he could just run off with his boyfriend,” Taylor cuts in, the words so matter of fact that it’s obvious he isn’t making a joke, the way everyone has always joked about Carrick being my boyfriend.
He’s outing me.
Isaac kneads his forehead like this conversation is giving him a headache. “I really can’t deal with all of this right now, not when we’re leaving for Australia in a few fucking days.”
“Sorry that my life is too difficult for you to deal with,” I reply, feeling my own anger boiling up inside of me. “It’s not like I have to live it or anything. You don’t have to deal with it. But I do. And I’m dealing with it by getting out of your hair, so you ought to be thanking me right now.”
“Who are you?” Isaac asks, staring critically at me. “I don’t even recognize this guy.”
“Why, because I’m ‘leaving’ or because I’m gay?” I ask, drawing little quotation marks in the air to indicate that I’m not leaving leaving. I pause to give Isaac time to answer, but when he doesn’t, I continue, “You know what? It doesn’t matter. I don’t know me either, but I’m sure as hell not going to figure out who I am if I stay in this city forever. I can’t take it. I have to get out, and you can either support that or not. It won’t change my mind.”
He still doesn’t answer the most important question. I lied when I said it didn’t matter. It does matter. It matters a lot, especially when I’m not even sure that gay is the right word to describe me. It just came out, the word falling out of my mouth like I’d called myself that a million times before, and now I can’t take it back.
But I also can’t stick around for any more of this conversation.
Isaac isn’t going to see it my way, of that I’m sure. And Taylor? Taylor is just going to keep being a total blank slate, void of any emotions even as he spills one of my biggest secrets like it’s nothing. I suppose it is nothing to him. I suppose I’m nothing to him.
Then it shouldn’t matter at all if I never come back.
Before he or Isaac can say anything else, I turn and hurry out of the room. I don’t pass Carrick in the hallway, and I’m glad for that. He’s not in our office either, when I duck into there to grab everything I dropped on my desk earlier. That’s good. I don’t know what to say to him right now. I’m not mad at him, though, even if he is resisting my plan to move. I’m just mad in general. Mad that no one but my ex-wife seems to be able to let me live my own life and make my own choices.
And I’m tired.
Once I’ve made a spectacle of myself, storming out of the office like that, I head straight back to my apartment, intent on taking a nap. If I don’t wake up again for the rest of the day, that would be fine by me. As soon as I’m in the apartment door, I start stripping out of my clothes. I’m so tired that I end up just flopping down on the couch in my boxers and t-shirt. If I could flip my brain off as easily as I can flip the television on, I would.
I don’t just need a nap, I need a break, and right now, California feels like a long, perfect break from everything.
Within minutes of collapsing on the couch and flipping on the tv, I feel myself starting to drift off. My eyelids have just started to get heavy when I hear my phone ringing from wherever it fell in my haste to get naked. I recognize the ringtone as the one belonging to Kate, so I know I have to answer it. We may be friendly now, but she wouldn’t call me unless something was wrong.
Luckily, my pants landed next to the couch, so I only need to stretch a little to retrieve them and my phone. It’s still ringing, miraculously, and I quickly answer Kate’s call. “Hello?”
“Are you alright?” She asks, sounding a little breathless.
“Why… wouldn’t I be?”
“Nat just called and told me you quit the band. I told her she must have misunderstood Taylor, but she insisted that you quit the band and stormed out of rehearsal or something.”
I roll my eyes so hard that Kate can probably hear it even on the other side of Tulsa. “No, I didn’t quit the band. I just told them I was moving to California, and it would be a huge understatement to say it didn’t go well.”
“So you didn’t storm out?” She asks.
“No, that part is true,” I reply. With a sigh, I decide to just tell her the truth. “Tay decided to tell Ike that I was leaving to be with my boyfriend, and while he didn’t say anything awful about it, it was pretty obvious that Ike wasn’t happy about that either. I just didn’t feel like sticking around to debate whether or not I was leaving the band and going to hell, so yeah, I stormed out.”
There’s a brief pause on the line before Kate finally says, “You know, I’ll probably be shunned at church if I admit this to anyone but you, but… I’m proud of you. I know this isn’t easy, and I know we’ve all been taught that it’s wrong or whatever, but it’s you. Maybe I didn’t ever know you as well as I thought I did, but I did know you. And you’re not a bad person, so… I guess I just can’t find it in me to believe that you being with Carrick—or any man—is bad, either.”
I can think of one man she wouldn’t want me to be with, but thankfully, she’s still ignorant of that. Somehow, in the midst of everything else that has happened and thanks to Taylor’s possibly abusive actions, Natalie has kept mum about that dirty little secret of mine. The longer that she does, the more I’m inclined to believe that she never will tattle on us.
“I’m glad you feel that way,” I mumble. “I guess I didn’t even give Ike a chance to let me know how he feels, but it just seemed like… it wasn’t gonna be good.”
“Give him a chance,” Kate says. “Not right away. Let him calm down. But you’re going to have to get through this tour with him, and honestly, I think he’ll be more open minded than you’re assuming. It isn’t like any of us haven’t known about Taylor for years, and no one really cared as long as he wasn’t cheating on Nat.”
She has a point there, one that I haven’t really thought about, because we never discussed Taylor’s sexuality and infidelity. Like Kate said, we all knew, but it was just a dirty secret that we brushed under the rug and tried to ignore. It wasn’t because he had been with Alex, or any other guy, though. It was because he was unfaithful and reckless. Maybe I haven’t had enough faith in Isaac. I still don’t want to come out to the rest of my family, but I’m realizing that at some point soon, I’ll have to do some serious explaining about the move to California.
I don’t want to think about that.
“Is that all Nat said?” I ask, although I don’t really think I want to know what they talked about. I just need a distraction. “She just called to gossip about what I did at the studio?”
“Yeah, that was all,” Kate replies. “Well, and to talk about how she hates having to monitor her blood sugar and stuff. Honestly, I kind of tuned out some of that stuff.”
Somehow, I’ve almost forgotten about Natalie’s health problems. With everything that happened at the studio today and with the way Carrick is seemingly pulling away from me, I’ve got a lot more to think about than Nat’s dramatics and lies. But now that Kate has mentioned it, I have to ask. “What’s she saying about it? And what do you think about it?”
“I really don’t know.” Kate sighs. “It’s just… how did I not know? I’m not a doctor, but I should have known something was wrong. Or she should have known. I just don’t really understand anything about what’s going on with her. I thought I knew Nat, you know? We’ve been best friends forever. Now I’m just… I’m just not sure.”
“It’s been a rough year for her,” I reply, as though that’s some sort of explanation for why Kate is suddenly starting to see her best friend in the same light that I’ve always seen her.
“It’s been a rough year for all of us,” Kate counters.
“Yeah,” I reply. “And I’m trying to fix it. I know if I leave, it will help. I just know it. So why can’t everyone else see it?”
“In time, they will,” Kate replies, her voice soft but firm. “Give them a little time. You guys have gotten through so much worse than this and come out stronger as a band and as brothers. You’ll get through this too.”
“I guess you’re right,” I mumble.
Kate chuckles softly. “I know I’m right. Now, I need to go cook dinner for the kids. You wanna talk to them for a minute while I get things started?”
“Yeah,” I reply, without even a second’s hesitation to decide whether or not I really do want to talk to them.
As soon as I hear Shep’s voice on the phone, there’s a twinge of guilt deep in my stomach. How am I going to explain to my babies that I’m leaving? I don’t have an answer for myself yet. I don’t have answers for a lot of my questions, and I don’t have Kate’s faith that everything will work out. But as I talk to the kids so easily, I remember how just months ago I felt like I couldn’t relate to them at all. Things have changed. I have changed. That realization gives me just a little bit of hope that maybe I am strong enough to make this all work out… somehow.