Wren Ridley
With Christmas having come and gone, and the new year upon us, Landon had to move back to the dorms to continue his hockey season. We hadn't really talked about what we'd be doing during that time while I couldn't move back into my dorm for another three weeks.
During that first week, I drove down to New York to watch one of Landon's games, which also turned into a visit with James who insisted on showing me around the city in the freezing cold.
"If you make us late for Landon's game, I'm going to kill you in your sleep," I told him as it got later in the day.
"We're not going to be late, chill out," James assured me.
We weren't late, but we cut it close which irritated me and James knew it. He insisted on bothering me the whole time and distracting me from watching Landon.
I had never cared much for hockey, but I loved seeing Landon on the ice. He was in his element out there, looking confident and poised and elegant. James yapping in my ear the whole time was not a welcome distraction.
After spending an entire day with James, I was glad for the almost four hour drive back home to be alone and listen to my book the whole way. I couldn't even complain about the traffic because it wasn't like I had anything to do or anywhere to be. I got about half way through an audiobook in the amount of time it took me to drive back.
By the second week, I had basically moved into Landon's dorm room. Neither of us would say it, but we were both quite attached to each other. It was bordering on clingy, but I couldn't find it in me to care. I had never had such a connection with someone that made me want to be with them all the time, and I could tell that it was the same for him.
Even though at times Landon was acting a little strange, it was clear that he wanted me to be there. I couldn't tell if the times he acted strange was because of our situation, the way we were so caught up in each other that at times it was a bit overwhelming, or if it was something else like that asshole on his hockey team starting something with him again.
Either way, I tried my best not to point it out so to not upset him. But at times, I couldn't hold it in. And of course, he would brush me off and tell me it was nothing, then kiss my face and make me forget that I ever had a concern at all.
When Landon was gone for hockey practice or games, I had to keep myself busy which was good for the writer in me, but also left me extremely bored. I continued writing and read over my own words hundreds of times to the point where it didn't even feel like I had written what I was reading.
One day Landon came back while I was doing this and I didn't even notice until he stood right behind me, placing his hands on my shoulders.
"What are you working on?" he asked, leaning down to kiss my head.
"Nothing of substance," I muttered, closing out the page I had been staring at for probably close to an hour.
"Are you ever going to tell me about it?" Landon asked, backing away from me to lean against his bed.
I turned to face him, closing my laptop.
"If it ever has a chance of getting published, then yes."
"So it's a book?"
"It's trying to be," I replied, getting up to stand in front of him
"Would you let me read it?" Landon asked, his hands finding their way to my waist. Lately, our hands always seemed to find their way to the other person like they were magnetic. I couldn't say I minded it. I liked Landon's hands on me.
I shook my head at him with a small smile forming on my lips.
"You don't even like to read," I reminded him.
"I do now, sort of," he said, moving his hands up and down on me. "I would like it if it was written by you."
"You don't have to flatter me," I said. "I'll get you off if you just ask."
Landon scoffed and shoved me away lightly.
"Do you have to be so crude?"
I feigned surprise. "When did you learn that word?"
Landon rolled his eyes at me and went over to his closet to change his clothes. He threw what he was previously wearing into the hamper and grabbed the hamper after changing into something else.
"I'm going to throw this laundry in," he told me as he went to the door.
"I put some of my things in there as well," I said, grinning at his look of fake annoyance.
When Landon left the room, I looked back at my closed laptop. I didn't know if I'd let anyone read my work, let alone Landon. While the ultimate goal was to get my work published, I didn't even know if that was a possibility or if I would even use my own name to publish it or use a pseudonym.
What I was writing was fiction, but it was semi-autobiographical. I was one of the characters. Not by name, but I wrote myself into him without really realizing it at first. And I had gotten too far along before I did realize it. We shared a personality, experiences, mannerisms, thoughts, insecurities, fears. So what was originally supposed to be a sort of campus novel, a satirical yet dark look into life in academia and the university as an institution, turned deeply personal.
Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to put it out as an anonymous person and let others read it without really knowing me. But to let Landon read my work would be a different story.
Landon came back into the room a few moments later and the two of us got into bed together.
"I think I'm going to go to Livi's skating competition," Landon said as he raked his hand through my hair, my head on his chest. "Alone."
I picked my head up and looked at him with an incredulous expression.
"I'll go with you," I offered, not liking the idea of him going there alone, of the possibility of him running into his parents while he was by himself.
The two of us had talked about it briefly after Livi initially asked him to go, agreeing that it would be risky, but that was all that was said. How he went from apprehension to going alone was beyond me.
"I don't want you to have to see my dad if I end up running into him," Landon explained.
I sat up more. "That's exactly why I should be there. In case you see him."
I didn't like that he was trying to push me out and keep me on the sidelines when I should be by his side. Landon didn't tell me much about his father, but I knew enough that seeing him would be bad for Landon emotionally, mentally, maybe even physically.
"I don't want that though, Wren," Landon argued. "I don't want you to see him. I don't want him to even look at you!"
"It is entirely out of the question that I let you go on your own," I said, sitting up straighter so Landon was no longer touching me. "So let's not even argue about it."
I knew my words would only irritate him. It seemed that even if I was trying to diffuse a situation, I had a way of making him angry. Maybe it was my tone or just the way I said things. Or maybe he was just always ready to be defensive.
Landon didn't say anything for a moment, just letting his glare linger on me as if trying to make me give in. We both knew who had the stronger will.
Landon sighed and pulled me back down with him.
"Why do you have to make everything so difficult?" he asked, pulling me against his chest. "You always have to be such a pain."
What he was saying wasn't a compliment, but he still said it with a hint of fondness like what he was saying was true but he wouldn't have it any other way.
"I'm naturally argumentative," I said. And extremely protective of him, it seemed.
"And naturally infuriating."
"Well, I didn't make you angry enough to throw a punch, so I can't be that infuriating," I joked.
Landon didn't seem to find it funny. I suppose that was a sore subject for him.
"Just don't try to provoke my father if we see him," Landon said with a sigh. "He's... he's not a good guy. And I don't know what he'll do."
"I kind of figured he's not a good guy," I replied, part of me hoping that Landon would elaborate.
He hadn't told me much about his upbringing, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that it wasn't good. I had already decided that Landon's father was an evil man and should be punished eternally in hell for whatever he did to him.
"He's good at faking," Landon said. "He can keep up appearances, but at home, it was a different story. He made me work so hard because he had a dream for me. He wanted to live vicariously through me, so I had to be exactly as he wanted. His perfect Christian son."
"So, what is it, he couldn't achieve what he wanted with his life, so he had you to do it for him?" I asked.
It seemed like a case of a father whose dreams were shattered so he expected his son to realize them for him, even if they didn't share the same dream. It was like he viewed Landon as an extension of him rather than as his own person.
"Pretty much," Landon responded. "I had to play hockey. It was never my choice. Livi has to figure skate. Because that's what our parents did. We were basically born just to be younger versions of them, to live so that they could relive their glory days."
It made me angry on behalf of him to hear him say that. It was like so much of his youth was stolen from him because his father wanted him to be his puppet instead of his child.
"My dad controlled everything," Landon continued. "He obsessively controlled my diet. He barely let me hang out with my friends. He made me work out so hard that I threw up. My mom controls Livi like that. In a different way, but still."
"Then why would you want to face him on your own?"
"Because I'm... I'm embarrassed, Wren," Landon admitted, tightening his hold on me. "My father wants me dead, or he wishes I was never born. I have no idea what he would say or do if we saw him, but I do know that I don't want you to see that."
I physically recoiled at the thought of Landon's father wanting him dead because now I was at the point where I couldn't imagine a world without him.
"He said that?" I asked.
"Apparently," Landon said, a humorless chuckle falling from his lips. "I ran into one of my old teammates while we were skating and he told me that my father tells people that I'm dead. It kind of checks out since he wishes that was true."
That was probably why he had been acting weird. He had been dealing with that on his own. Seeing an old teammate, getting told his own father wants him dead, it had to take a toll on him.
"My father hates me because I'm not exactly as he wanted me to be," Landon continued. "He basically forced me to come out to him. He already knew I was gay, he knew it for a long time, but eventually he just made me say it to his face, so I did. And then he stood up at church and told everyone that he needed help for his gay son because he didn't know what to do anymore. He didn't care that everyone I went to school with was there and he didn't care about what being outed could do to me. He wanted me to be hurt, to be forced into being straight. So he was going to send me off to conversion therapy with Elijah and his stepdad. I think he knew it wouldn't do anything. He just wanted to get rid of me."
I started to feel sick at the thought of Landon being treated that way, the thought of him being scared of what would happen to him, of him being sad and alone and humiliated. I wished I could go back in time and protect him from that, to go back and pull him out of that church, to hold him close to me and bring him home. If only things could have been different, if I could have met him sooner.
"Your father is a cold hearted man who doesn't even deserve to breathe the same air as you," I told him in a low voice. "If he sees you at Olivia's competition, he should know to keep walking because he doesn't deserve to even speak to you."
The two of us had accepted that if we went to this competition, we would see this man. It was just how the universe worked. The one person you didn't want to see would always show up.
"I still hear his voice sometimes in my head," Landon admitted after a few moments, his hand stroking my side lightly. "Therapy has helped a lot with that, but sometimes I can't block him out. I hear him calling me disgusting and worthless. Sometimes I believe him."
I grabbed onto Landon's hand and squeezed it tightly in my own as if I could take all his pain away through touch alone.
"You are neither of those things, darling," I murmured, kissing his collarbone then up to his neck and jaw. "You are so wonderful it's nauseating, but not at all disgusting."
Landon gave me a real laugh at that, and I smiled against his skin.
"You could have told me about the old teammate when it happened," I told him, making circles on his chest with my finger.
"I didn't want to ruin our date," he said. "I was trying to keep my cool about it. And I didn't want you doing anything insane."
"Insane like what?"
"Like letting a bunch of bugs loose in his house or something."
"Well, I wouldn't reuse my ideas like that," I said, which caused him to let out an adorable snort. "I would have had to figure something else out."
"Something even more insane?" he asked.
"It would depend on what he did," I replied.
Landon shook his head at me. "You're crazy."
"Yes, yes I know," I said. "You've used that one before. Same with infuriating."
"I don't have as big of a vocabulary as you."
I chuckled at that and closed my eyes, cozying up against him. My rest didn't last long because Landon eventually had to go change the laundry over, and when he got up, I no longer wanted to lie down. I grabbed my book that was laying on the nightstand and opened up the page the bookmark Landon had gotten for me was holding.
Usually, I would just remember the page I was on without a problem, but I liked that this came from him. I liked how thoughtful it was and how it would always remind me of him whenever I saw it.
Landon came back to the room after switching over the laundry and got back into bed with me, leaning his head on my shoulder as I read as if he was reading the words with me. I knew that he wasn't, but it still felt like we were doing this together.
After all that he said today, I somehow felt closer to him, like I could understand him better than before. But I always felt that I was understanding him more and more all the time. It was like any time he spoke I felt even closer to him.
I tried not to let that scare me, but it did anyway.
**
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