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The entire project was coming together in just a matter of days. And to think, it had all sprung from his imagination.
Since he’d been here this morning, Chris had interviewed Sara, Vin, and one of the girls Robby didn’t know very well yet. Chris wanted to put real faces on the project. Make it relatable, make people care.
Most of the regulars made it a point to be here to support the center, even if not everyone felt comfortable putting their life stories on display. They sat in groups of three or four on the various sofas, and a few gathered around the big table, laughing and shooting the breeze.
“Has anyone seen Brady?” Vin raised his voice over the low din.
Robby surveyed the room, but he only saw other people doing the same or shaking their heads. Come to think about it, he’d only seen Brady at the center the day they met, and the guy hadn’t shared his story. He resolved to track him down. The idea of the young man returning to the back room at Nitro chilled him to the bone.
Chris beckoned him over.
He walked back to Sara’s room where Chris had been conducting interviews. “Have you got everything you need?”
Chris lifted a hanging microphone attached to a long pole and braced it on his shoulder. “The only person left to interview is you.”
Gaping like a fish, Robby took a step back. “I—I’m sorry, Chris. I can’t talk about the things I’ve shared with the group. Not publicly.” The air in the room felt thinner. He couldn’t breathe right. “I want to help, but my dark days are not—I can’t—"
“Whoa. Slow down.” Chris lowered the microphone and set it on the twin bed against the wall. “You do not have to talk about anything you’re uncomfortable with.”
No. No.No.
A sea of faces flashed through his memories. The men at the shelter. Tex. Harry. Dozens of faces and he couldn’t remember all their names. Some of their names he never knew at all.
He couldn’t even face some of the things he’d done when he looked in the mirror, much less in the lens of a camera. The ground seemed to tilt beneath his feet.
“—just calm down. Breathe.” Chris gripped his shoulder, the pressure grounding him as he lowered himself to the bed. “Robby. I wanted to interview you as a mentor and a volunteer, not as…not to ask you to relive your past.”
Squeezing his eyes closed, he swallowed against the lump in his throat, then sucked in a wheezing breath through his mouth. Then another. Lights flashed behind his closed lids.
When the world stopped spinning, and the urge to scream finally fled, he pried his eyes open. Black spots danced across his vision before the room came into focus. He almost wished it didn’t.
All the young men and women who had been talking and laughing in the main room now crowded in and around the threshold of the bedroom. Their concern, pity, and fear crashed over him.
Then, thankfully, he couldn’t see them anymore. Sara knelt in front of him, her face obscuring everyone else from view. She pressed a water bottle into his hand. “Drink.”
Robby didn’t think; he just obeyed. The cold water made it easier to swallow and helped restore his calm.
Smile. Make everyone feel better.
He got so far as lifting one corner of his mouth before he realizedhe didn’t have to.They didn’t need him to be sweet. They needed him to be real.
Holding Sara’s gaze, he released the attempt at a smile and nodded once instead. “Thank you.”
Standing, she melted back into the crowd.
“I didn’t mean to scare you guys, but I guess if anyone could understand getting triggered with something like this, it would be you.”
“I don’t.” A tiny girl, five-foot-nothing in her shiny Doc Martens, shouldered to the front. Curly dyed red hair, the kind from a salon, not a bottle. She wore jeans, a graphic T-shirt, which screamed Hot Topic, and a bohemian rainbow braided bracelet.
Meggie. She was earning service hours here for her high school beta club.
“Of course you don’t get it, princess.” One of the guys from the back. “You’re only here to earn a badge for your Girl Scout troop.”
She crossed her arms at the waist. “Screw you,” she muttered. “I’ve got as much right to be here as anyone. Or does the B in LGBT not count anymore? Are you saying bisexuals aren’t gay enough for you?”
“No.” The young man, a teenager with a shaved head and long blond bangs, stomped forward. “I don’t care who you want to French kiss on your mama’s sofa. You don’t belong here because you don’t need this place. You live in Johns Creek and drove here in a shiny new Kia you probably got for your sixteenth birthday.”
“I’m sorry. I missed the sign on the door saying exactly which queer people are allowed. News flash, Pete, a happy home life doesn’t exclude me from the gay experience. We’re not all the same. Or assholes.”
