How to Repair a Mechanical Heart - By J. C. Lillis Page 0,38
she makes halfhearted stabs at concealing identities—”B” for me, “Father X” for Father Mike—but the story’s all there. How my mom let the leftover meatloaf sit on the counter and spoil that night. How my dad kept saying but how can you be sure, as if it was a diagnosis that needed a second opinion. How I sat on Nat’s bed and cried about the sermon Father Mike had given two weeks earlier, the one where he held up a picture of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph and gently explained the “true definition of family.” Poor little nerdling, Nat wrote. I nagged him into this coming-out drama and maybe he wasn’t ready. He was a Father X fanboy as a kid and now he’s so terrified of his real self I just want to smack him. I think it’s his destiny to be fucked up his whole entire life unless he gets serious help.
I go lie down on the couch. I think of Sim on the Henchmen’s operating table, his chest pried open and his cold organs clicking and whirring out of sync. Abel takes another minute with Nat’s blog entry, and then he comes over and kneels down beside me.
He’s quiet for a minute. Then he reaches out and pats my hand.
I don’t know what about that sets me off. It’s kind of a neutral gesture, something Sim would do, and maybe that’s part of it. Or maybe it’s just that it’s so unlike Abel, or maybe my nerves are rubbed raw right now and any little touch would have done this, make my sore eyes fill up and spill over.
“It’s okay.” He squeezes my hand. “Seriously.”
I drape my arm over my eyes.
And I tell him everything.
I tell him about Father Mike. I tell him about Put on the Brakes!, my three awkward months trying to date Bec, my parents and the sad looks they shoot me when they think I won’t notice. I even tell him about the Ryan Dervitz kiss and the Dairy Queen freakout. When I lift my arm off my eyes I see him watching me like I’m some TV show about one-legged orphans with Olympic dreams, and it kind of makes me want to smack him but it feels so good to tell him that I keep going and going until the cut on his lip opens up again, and I remember what happened outside.
He grabs three tissues from the box on the desk. One for his lip, two for me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.
“Just forget it.”
“What I said—”
“Forget it, Brandon. All that shit in your head—”
“I’m used to it.”
“And I’m such an idiot, I kept shoving boys at you.”
“Only two.”
He glances over his shoulder, as if someone’s watching at the window.
“So…” He lowers his voice to a stage whisper. “Do they really tell you all that?”
“All what?”
“Like, you have a ‘special calling’ to be celibate?”
“Pretty much.”
“’Cause if you believe that you should totally talk to my dad’s friend Mitch, he’s this Unitarian minister or whatever and he’s on his third husband so maybe he can help you—”
“I don’t believe it. Not anymore.” I sigh and stick my hands in my hair. There’s no way I can explain this logically. “It’s just hard to turn it off.”
“Why?”
I pick at the hem of my shorts. “There’s still this little part of you that’s like ‘what if they’re right?’ What if there is a hell and you’re like gambling with eternity just because you want a boyfriend, so you get terrified and think it’s not worth it, I’ll suck it up and be alone forever, but then on the other hand what if it turns out there is no God or he’s up there shaking his head because people keep twisting the Bible around, and you wasted your life being alone and miserable for nothing, and then—” I’m babbling like a freak. “Stuff like that. You know.”
Abel lifts the tissue off his lip and runs his thumb over the splotch of blood. “That Father Mike guy never…like, tried anything with you, did he?”
“No! No. Never. He just has really specific ideas about God.”
“You believe in God?”
“I’m…confused.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
“I left my church.”
“So? You can believe in God without church. I do.”
I blink at him. I would not be more surprised if David Darras pulled up in a white limo with two dozen blue roses and begged me to elope with him. I’ve consistently shut up about religion around Abel; he talks so much crap about it I