Bad Wrong Things

by C.P. Harris

I was the one who didn’t love him back.

“Why are you so afraid to try?” “Because it’ll feel too good. Because it’s been too long, and I won’t want it to stop. And I know you won’t stop me. You won’t hold me accountable. And when it all goes bad—” “If…” “It always does, Raven. It always does. I can’t lose my son, and I can’t lose you. Because that’s the same as losing me.”

I prodded the fire, stoking its flame as Raven plonked down across from me, his open sleeping bag wrapped around his curved shoulders. The firelight did dangerous things to the blue hue of his eyes, as his inky hair fell in waves from having air dried. “You’re an addict’s worst nightmare,” I said, and the edge of his plump, pink mouth kicked up.

If death were to revisit, it would have to see me first. Not Raven. Never Joey.

“The mouth and the heart are connected. That’s why words hurt. I’d never give either to anyone but you.”

“Anything. I’ll fucking agree to anything to have you.” “Why does that turn me on, Raven? How do you know what to say?” “Because I know what you need, and I plan on giving it to you, Clint. I plan on showing you that taking what you want could never be a bad thing. Not when it comes to me.”

“When the curve of your neck stopped being just the curve of your neck. When it became a place I wanted to bury my troubles away in. A place I hungered to breathe from. When the sun in my eyes stopped being a simple annoyance, but a plot of the universe to keep me from gazing at you. When seeing you do what you love stopped only being an inspiration of pride, but also an inspiration for my attraction.”

Not once had it crossed my mind that a confession needed to be made. What we’d done in the past was his secret, not mine. And like all secrets I kept for him, that one was to be buried with me. To the grave. That was then. Now the secret felt like ours. And maybe it had always been ours, but this would be the one, if revealed, that made the others hard to ignore. That made the others look like the gateway leading to where we were now. Immunity wouldn’t be granted to me. The trial, in the court of Clint, would end with a guilty verdict. Fear clung to my ribs, racking its claws across bone.

And while I capped out shy of six feet tall, Clint could have easily given the Jolly Green Giant one of his infamous pecks on the head. In my mind, his size equated to safety, the thing I’d longed for as a kid. One of many things he’d provided since stepping foot on my playground.

It was the Saturday afternoons spent detailing my Harley while he rebuilt his dad’s car, the playlist he’d created of my favorite songs blasting from the car stereo. Songs I had never given him the titles of. He observed, he listened, and like a sponge, he soaked up all things me because he fucking cared.

“Hey, sticks—I mean, Raven.” I laughed. “I should’ve cut you off five beers ago.” “You’re no fun.” She whacked my shoulder. “He’s no fun,” she said to Raven.

I’d prepared myself to lose them to marriage, careers, hell, even a move to another state. Losing their love, respect, and losing my family… That’d be a pill I could never swallow.

We got home, showered and crawled under my blankets, foregoing making love for making out. I ended it too soon, much to Raven’s dismay. “I need to get to sleep right now, because I can’t wait to wake up to you.” “That was cheesy, but okay, you win.”

“Who rids themselves of their underwear before ditching the sweater, T-shirt, and socks?” I asked, the soreness of a loser in my voice. I’d had to play the last four games watching his cock bulge and wave. “A winner, that’s who,” came his salacious reply.

“Don’t think so hard, Clint. The answer is yes, always. Even when it sounds like no. Now fuck me.”

“I hate that others have been here,” I said. “That out there, right now, someone’s remembering you were the best fuck of their life.”

“I need to touch your bones,” he said, palming my sternum, getting comfy. “I can’t get deep enough inside you, or close enough to you. I want nothing in our way. Not even skin.” He yawned, his voice sleep heavy. “I sound crazy.” “No, you don’t,” I said, shimmying around to graze the tip of his nose with mine, my next words a gust of wind blowing over his lips. “You sound like a man in love.” You sound like me.

There was a time I believed maturity mended the imperceptible fractures of our hearts that couldn’t be physically touched or seen under a microscope. That I’d hit this magic age and poof, suddenly it would all make perfect fucking sense, and life wouldn’t hurt so bad. Then I looked at Clint, who was too afraid to ask the tough questions of the one remaining parent he had, and I analyzed his mother, who ran to a whole other country to avoid having to heal. And my mother, who chose to live in an alternate reality because facing the abused little girl inside her proved to be too risky. I examined it and concluded that no matter how old we got, we were still too young to have it all figured out. It scared and relieved the shit out of me. It gave little hope and, at the same time, released the pressure. I’d likely have a volcanic eruption one day, and so would Clint. Until then, we’d deal the best way we knew how with the tools we’d been given. I only prayed we’d eventually use those god-given shovels to dig our way out, not dig ourselves in deeper.

No one knew me better than me, and I wore my trauma like a badge of honor because if life didn’t hurt sometimes, we wouldn’t have a frame of reference when things were going good. I didn’t want to be fixed, I wanted to be loved for my brokenness.

In the past, during dark times involving his mother, Raven would close himself off. Insist on being alone. He’d sit on the back porch, like tonight, and I’d worry about him from the kitchen window, wondering if going to him was the right move or if I should let him be. One time—the last time—I chose option A. I went to him and before I could muster up an “are you okay?” he’d hopped up and hugged me tight. “I told you I wanted to be alone,” he’d said, his reprimand gobbled up by my sweatshirt. “I’ll always find you in the dark, Raven,” I’d said, wrapping my arms around his shaking shoulders. Raven hid to be found. He ran to be caught. When I stepped into his dark place that night, it solidified for him that he was worth the effort it took to chase him.

I should’ve kissed him longer, harder. I should’ve made love to him properly. I shouldn’t have gotten out of bed at all. I should’ve treated that moment like it would be our last. Because after that morning, everything changed.

“You don’t know how to love, Raven.” He rose from his chair, giving me his back as he analyzed my childhood in association to my actions, reducing me to a walking grenade of trauma detonating on the world all willy-nilly. He was hurting, so I didn’t take the war on my character personally, but it was fucking hard not to when his words were driving my body underground.

He swayed on his feet, and I could only assume it was from a combination of intoxication, blood loss, and a heart being cracked down the middle.

“So what?” I laughed through my mania. “You’re fucking sacrificing me? Giving me to him like I’m some whore to pass around?” “Aren’t you?”

“You didn’t seem to have a problem being loved by a whore, Clint. Does it scare you to know no one will love you more than me? More than this whore.” “Terrifies me,” he confessed hoarsely through pooling eyes.

Clink spoke quietly, deceptively placid. “Bad things happen to me sometimes, and good things are taken away because of it. I just don’t know if you’re the good thing taken, or the bad-wrong-thing that’s happened to me.”

I did the wrong thing for the right reasons, but on paper, it didn’t read that way.

Tattoos weren’t like T-shirts, you couldn’t just get one from anywhere, and folks would travel, go out of their way for a good ink job.

I wanted him to remember each piece of us he dismembered when he tore into this place in a scotch-induced wrath. He’d have to remember that through it all, he still loved me. Because only love could make someone hate that big.

“I’ve never ignored his calls. I don’t know what to say to him.” “You act normal. He doesn’t know anything.” “Normal? Not all of us are good actors, Raven.” Ouch.

On a bad day, Joey was the man I had to one day look in the eye and know he’d had what belonged to me. On a cataclysmic bad day, I wanted to pin Raven down by his neck and fuck Joey out of his memory bank. My son. Needless to say, I had my jealousy to contend with. My loneliness to tackle, and an addiction to kick. Because Raven didn’t only ensure that I fell for him, he’d made breathing impossible without him.

The hurt in his voice sliced through me like the chasing reaper’s scythe. Or a boxcutter. Something old, jagged and rusty, something I was more worthy of.

Tell him you love him. Make it better. His surname rang out in the distance. “That’s my sergeant. I gotta go. Get him to read my letter,” he whispered. “And you read yours, too. Love you, Dad.” Tell him you love him. Make it better. Click. He was gone, and my emotions ambushed me several at a time.

Raven eyed me with skepticism from the floor. “You want me to shack up with Link?” “Yes.” No. I love you. More loathing.

“Don’t let me do this to you,” he said, voice breaking. I once watched my mother’s boyfriend, from a hole he’d punched through her bedroom wall, have sex with someone else while my mother whimpered from the corner he’d sent her to. He’d forced her to watch as punishment for whatever bullshit druggies punished each other for. Maybe she’d snorted the last of the dope. The redhead on all fours beneath him got everything. His fire, his lust, his payback, and his pleasure. My mother received nothing but pain. That day, I swore I’d never be the one whimpering in the corner. “Pour your hate all over me, Clint,” I said, battle ready. “I can take it.” Because the only other option was to sit this war out in the corner. And being here was far better than being there.

Panic had set in. Could I really be losing him? On the tail end of that was paranoia. What if he wasn’t working doubles? What if he was out there doing what needed to be done to get over me? It was that moment, that second of that hour, that a shift happened. If I couldn’t bring him around by way of my repentance, penance, and crucifixion, I’d play on his insecurities. I’d play in the mud and hope for the best. For anything. I’d created a new abyss for us to sink our teeth into.

The things we’d done to each other, the things we’d said… I was a junkie, and I’d take more of it because with the drug coursing through my veins it’d be hard to remember why I needed to say no and mean it.

“You don’t even get it, do you?” he said in soft astonishment. “Your body isn’t what does the seducing, Raven. It’s your love. The way you make us believe we can be and do anything. The way it protects us… I bet he never saw it coming. He’ll never get over you. Never.”

I’d been searching for a level of unconditional love that could only be reached by the utmost pain. By surviving it. By opening the blackest and most remote parts of myself and having someone see it and say: I still love you.

‘Today I’ve decided to forgive you. Not because you apologized, or because you acknowledged the pain that you caused, but because my soul deserves peace.’ ~Najwa Zebian

And the things I said—” “You meant every fucking word of it. Don’t start apologizing now.” “I wasn’t planning on it,” he said, facing off with me. “I want you back, and I don’t want to pretend I don’t. It’s been eight long years. I won’t spend another eight seconds beating around the bush or lying to you or myself.”

“No more sacrifices. I fight for the both of you. I’ll fight for us all, Raven.”

“Stay, please. Talk to me. Tell me what the last two thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine days four hours and,” he checked his watch, “twenty-one minutes have been like for you. Don’t leave anything out. Let me get to know you again, Raven.” I sighed. Damned because his love still got to me. And because he’d been keeping count, too. “I can give you three days. Three. Days.” “I’m in luck, then.” He smiled wickedly. “The new Drew Barrymore movie releases tomorrow.”

It took everything not to embarrass myself by jumping into his arms and screaming, “You fucking did it!”

“I’m fucking drowning in you, Clint.” “How can I help?” he’d breathed, rowing into me, gasping for air himself. “Hold me under…”

The final sketch was of our time in his dungeon. In it, I’m handcuffed to his bed, mouth open, tongue snaked and spitting venom. Clint kneeled behind me, blood seeping down his back from a wound I’d put there, a wide leather belt caged around his fist. The bed balanced on a hill of serpents, and we both bore red eyes and horns. There was beauty in that, too, because even at our worst, I was loved. Only love could breed such hate.

“Remember, we’re not enemies, Raven. We can be as much or as little as you want us to be. We can even be nothing. But we aren’t enemies.”

I ripped the blue paper off, smiling at the framed photo underneath until my cheeks burned. It was the selfie Clint had taken of us while I slept, the one from my sketch book. The word forever written at the bottom in faded black ink next to a date and time. This was vintage us.

time of day, and I didn’t smell gas when I pulled onto the driveway. I entered through the kitchen door and immediately got the sense I wasn’t alone. My hand automatically went to my waist, where my service weapon would’ve been had I not quit the force. “Don’t shoot, old man.” The grinning voice came from the living room. “Joey?” I breathed, urgently pushing through the swing door. My son stood up from the sofa, handsome, smiling, and fighting back tears as we soaked each other in. I hadn’t seen him smile in over eight years, and I broke, right then on the spot. “Joey…”

“I need you to know you were the best father anyone could ever ask for. I need you to know,” he said, fisting the back of my shirt. “I hate that you’ve spent years not knowing that.”