Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2022 14:51:23 -0700 From: Roman Jeffries Subject: Miles from Home- Chapter 22 Thank you for reading this story! I welcome and very much appreciate hearing your comments, questions, and reflections, and you can send them my way at romanjwrites@gmail.com If you'd like to receive an email alerting you when new chapters are posted, please drop me a line there. ************************** October Junior Year ************ Lyons Hall was the largest lecture space on campus, and it was packed to its full capacity this afternoon. But even with the standing-room only crowd, the cavernous space felt eerily quiet. The only noise echoing through the room was the amplified voice of a single freshman rambling into the microphone stationed in the aisle by the front row of seats. Up on the stage, there were just two chairs. The College's President was squirming uncomfortably in one, looking like he'd much rather be anywhere else on this planet right now than sitting in this particular seat on this particular stage at this particular moment. Next to him, Pete's father appeared much more at ease as he was looking down at that freshman with his cool, collected politician's smile locked on his face. The freshman was meandering his way through a long diatribe denouncing the Senator's prominent championing of the war in Iraq. And it really seemed as though his monologue could keep going on forever, so the College President finally cut the freshman off after he crossed past the four-minute mark without ever landing on any actual question for Senator Lyons to respond to. The President curtly thanked the freshman for his remarks and then reminded the other students lined up at the microphone behind him that they should be posing actual questions for the Senator during this Q&A period following his guest lecture on traditions of the U.S. Senate. The College President looked relieved when the freshman begrudgingly relinquished the microphone and ceded it to the next student waiting in the queue. But when my eyes slid over to where Pete was seated next to me in the back row, it was clear to me that he was feeling no such relief. Pete's poker face was every bit as good as his dad's, but it still couldn't fool me. Somehow, Pete was managing to stay stone-faced enough to appear impassive to every one of the multiple people I'd caught sneaking glances over at him throughout this lecture, but his knee that kept pressing into mine under the desk told me a much different story. It was the only point of contact we could dare to allow ourselves in such a public place, but the crackling tension I felt coiled up behind that touch was more than enough for me to sense how Pete was really feeling: Pete was seething. Years' worth of anger towards his father that Pete had kept contained down to a quiet simmer was raging to a boil now, bubbling up closer and closer to the surface than I'd ever seen it get. And I already knew the reason why. It had started two weeks ago with an email that arrived out of the blue in the inbox of Pete's school account. Pete hadn't known the sender before that day, but the message had hit him like a punch to the gut all the same: "Dear Mr. Lyons, "My name is Ashley Collins. I'm SO sorry to bother you with this random message but I'm writing to ask if you could please, please help me get in touch with your father. Last week my brother, Army Private Nate Collins, was killed by an IED explosion while he was serving a deployment in Kirkuk. "Our father, David Collins, was proud to volunteer as the Custer County Chair on the Senator's last campaign, so I just know it would mean the world to him if Senator Lyons were there with us for Nate's funeral in Miles City on October 5th. I've been trying and trying to contact the Senator through our friends from the campaign but haven't been able to reach him. I really am so sorry to track you down and bother you, but I just think my dad would be so grateful to see Senator Lyons right now. "Please, could you help me? "Ashley Collins "406.xxx.xxxx" It wasn't the first time a stranger looking for his father had successfully pieced together Pete's college email address. I knew for a fact that his inbox had always included a steady stream of messages from people either seeking favors from the Senator or wanting to angrily rip into Pete's dad for a vote or a public statement he'd made. But this was the first of any of these messages that had hit Pete hard enough to make him show it to me too. And so I was there in our room when Pete immediately called Ashley to gather all the details about her brother's funeral service. I was there to hear the choking sobs of grief coming through from the other side of that call and to see all the color drain out of Pete's face as he listened. I was there when Pete proceeded to call his dad over and over again, hounding him to attend the service. And I was there to see Pete's jaw set tighter when the answer from his father was "no" again and again until Pete eventually gave up and replied: "Then I'll go myself." I drove Pete to the airport to fly back to Montana. And when I was there to pick him up from his return flight, it was immediately clear how shaken he was by what he'd witnessed out there. Pete could never do any better than stiffly recounting to me what had happened in his interactions with Nate's family. It never took very long for the memory of their grief to overwhelm Pete to the point that he would just trail off into vaguely muttering "This is so fucked..." I knew, now, how to spot the warning signs when someone was spiraling. And more than at any other time that I'd known him, that's exactly what I'd seen Pete doing every day since he'd returned to campus. The week since he'd been back from Montana had also marked the first nights we'd ever slept together without having sex. "Can I please just hold you?" Pete would ask me when we crawled into bed together at the end of the day. And with each night that passed with Pete's arms clutching me close to his body that felt knotted through with tension, I worried more and more about how I saw Pete shutting down before my eyes. But I didn't know what I could do to help Pete through this though. Nothing I had tried seemed to work to snap Pete out of stewing silently and retreating into himself. All of my usual approaches to getting Pete to open up to me had been failing this week, one after another, as he kept insisting that he was fine. But from just the little flashes of what he would allow himself to express out loud to me, I could still sense Pete's anger growing hotter and hotter with each new day as his father's annual visit here for family weekend drew closer. And now, here at this lecture in front of a crowd of our peers and their families, I kept holding my breath because I could sense that Pete was right on the edge of finally exploding. When the College President cut off the Q&A period and mercifully ended the lecture, the audience gave only a smattering of perfunctory applause for the Senator. Pete remained stiffly rooted in his seat as people began to file out past us to the exits, so I stayed there with him, hoping we'd eventually be left with some privacy that could allow us to talk. When that freshman who monopolized the microphone was making his way past us in the aisle, I caught him glaring at Pete. To my surprise, Pete seemed to register that look even through the fog he was in because he reached out and touched the freshman's arm to stop him. "Hey," Pete said quietly. "I hear you." "Then do something about it," the freshman scoffed icily, barely breaking his stride as he continued walking past us with his friends. Pete's jaw tightened even further at that, and he finally rose up to his feet. I stood as well and followed him out the exit behind us. Outside, we had to wade through a small crowd of protestors gathered on the steps in front of Lyons Hall. It was a mix of student groups from campus and local residents from nearby towns taking this opportunity to demonstrate against the Senator's votes to authorize the war and to increase funding for its rapidly escalating costs. When I caught a few students pointing at Pete and whispering quickly to their fellow protestors, it dashed any hope I had that I could really talk with him out here. Still, I grabbed Pete's arm once we were past the demonstration and likely beyond earshot of anyone else out on the quad. I wanted to stop him because it seemed like he was going to just keep walking away in stony silence. "Hey, are you okay?" I asked. "Do you need to talk?" "No, I'm fine," Pete replied. But the robotic tone in his voice belied his words. "And I gotta get to practice anyway," Pete added, avoiding meeting my eyes. The white grip I noticed in his knuckles holding the strap of his gym bag slung over his shoulder hardly reassured me that he was in any kind of shape to go do that right now. I wanted to hug Pete so fucking badly that it hurt. But that would be impossible right now. We could never do that here with so many other people out on the quad around us. And so Pete just turned and walked off alone in the direction of the gym before I could think of anything else I could say to him here. Going for a run did nothing to clear my own head, even though running was what I'd always relied on to reset my mind from anything nagging at me. It was the one thing I'd ever discovered that could actually get me to not think for a minute and to hit `pause' on any turmoil I was churning through. But no dice today. I was way, way too worried about Pete. I cut my run short, wanting to be sure that I'd be back in our room by the time Pete returned from his tennis practice. I knew he'd need to come back to change before the dinner with his dad we were supposed to go to this evening in what had become our annual tradition for family weekend since my parents had never been able to afford to come out here. I was showered, dressed up, and pacing circles in our room in ever-increasing anxiety when Pete finally returned from his tennis practice. He was late. So late, in fact, that it was already only a few minutes before we'd have to leave to make it over to the restaurant off campus to meet his dad at the appointed time. But as soon as Pete opened the door and stepped into our room, it was immediately apparent from the rigid set in his shoulders that he was no more relaxed than he'd been at his dad's lecture earlier this afternoon. My eyes dropped down and noticed the tennis racquet he was holding in one of his hands, and I only grew even more concerned. Pete's racquet was smashed and mangled far beyond any possible hope of repair. "Pete?" I asked, stepping across our room to meet him as he closed the door behind him. Pete blinked his way out of whatever trance he'd been in when he saw me there waiting for him, and then Pete's eyes followed mine down to the wrecked racquet in his hands. It looked like he was only just now becoming aware that he was even holding it. "Don't ask," he sighed, lifting his eyes back up to meet mine. He looked fucking exhausted. I stepped forward and wrapped my arms around Pete in the hug I wished I could have given him earlier out on the quad. Pete dropped the racquet and his bag down to the floor and hugged me back, but he still felt stiff in my arms- and not at all in the usual way he would when our bodies were this close together. "You don't have to do this right now," I said to him softly. "You don't have to go to this dinner." Pete stiffened even more in my arms before stepping back away from me. He lifted both of his hands up to his head and threaded them through his hair. "But it's my dad," he replied tightly through his hands that were now covering his face. "I have to. I don't have a choice." "Do you still want me to come too?" I asked. Pete dropped his hands away to look at me. His eyes softened, just barely, when they met mine. "Yes. Of course." He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. "We better get going." Even though Pete didn't bother to take the time to change out of his hoodie and dress up like he always would around his dad, the Senator was already there waiting for us at our usual prime table at the restaurant by the time we arrived. As we settled in to dinner, Pete's dad didn't need much prompting to set him off on rambling through stories about his beloved college days, just like he always had every other time I'd seen him. But this time, perhaps due to the icy reception he'd gotten from the audience at this afternoon's lecture, the Senator started peppering those stories with asides lamenting how he thought our college had changed and wasn't quite the same as it used to be back in his old glory days. I did my best to keep up appearances for Pete's sake. I nodded along with the Senator's conversation, carrying the weight of keeping it going on my shoulders because Pete seemed to still be drowning in his own murky thoughts. Throughout the dinner, Pete could only bring himself to silently stare stone-faced down at his plate, his food going untouched. Eventually, even Pete's dad could no longer pretend to still be oblivious to how disengaged Pete was tonight. The final straw for the Senator came when Pete failed to laugh at one of his stories about a destructive prank he'd orchestrated against our rival college's baseball team. "Peter!" he boomed. Pete looked up finally, his eyes snapping back to attention and focusing on his father. "You always laugh at that story. Didn't you think it was funny?" "No." Pete replied in a monotone. Before this moment, I didn't think it was even possible for the sound of a single syllable to carry that much dead weight. "Well you're being rude," the Senator scolded him. "And you had better be more attentive at our fundraiser tomorrow night." A fundraising dinner for the Senator's next reelection campaign had become yet another annual tradition during family weekend, and it had always been Pete's duty to give a speech at them to introduce his father. I'd never been to one of those events myself, but I knew they were a cash cow for the Senator's campaign coffers. Evidently, many of our wealthy classmates had parents who were more than happy to shell out more money than my parents could make in several months' time for a ticket to rub elbows with one of the most powerful people in Washington. "No." Pete repeated to his father again now, that single word landing with that same leaden tone. But this time, I could see a spark of defiance glinting in Pete's eyes as he stared down his dad from across the table. "What did you say?" the Senator asked, raising his brows incredulously. "I said `no.'" The Senator stiffened in his chair, and I saw his jaw set in the same way that Pete's always would whenever he was tense. "You shouldn't be doing this in front of company." "Max isn't company," Pete spat quickly, color suddenly flushing back into his face. "He's..." Oh SHIT. My heart pounded up into my throat as my entire body tensed. Pete's eyes darted over to mine, catching himself just barely in time as I held my breath. "... My roommate." Pete's eyes returned to his father's. "We live together, for fuck's sake." The Senator's flat brown eyes darkened as he dropped his fork on the table by his plate. "Peter! Enough," he snarled, his voice lowering in volume but taking on a hard edge to it. "I won't have you talking to me like this." The Senator looked over at me, warily now, and then his eyes scanned across the crowded restaurant to assess how many people's gaze was wandering over to our table. "What's gotten into you today?" he asked Pete tersely, looking back at his son. That spark in Pete's eyes blazed into a full fire now as he continued staring down his father. "You're never even going to ask me about the funeral, are you?" "What funeral?" "Private Nate Collins," Pete replied woodenly. "Remember? His dad volunteered on three of your campaigns, so he wanted you to be there. But you couldn't even trouble yourself to go." "I told you. I had business in-..." "-... You always do, when you feel like it." Pete snorted, cutting him off. I had the distinct sense from the color flushing through the Senator's face now that I was witnessing the first time Pete had ever dared to interrupt his dad. "You chose not to be there." "You know I can't go to every-..." "-... But I was there," Pete spoke over him again. "And so was Nate. Except Nate was there in a closed casket shipped back from Iraq with the flag draped over it." "It's unfortunate that it ended up this way for him," the Senator replied tightly. "But he chose to serve." "Unfortunate??" Pete snapped back, his voice rising high enough now that I noticed people from neighboring tables starting to stare over at us more blatantly. "`Unfortunate' is me not having enough time to change after practice before I came over here. He was my age, Dad. Nate was my age, but now he's fucking gone. And what happened to him isn't just `unfortunate.' It's a consequence of things that you chose too, and you should-..." Pete's dad slammed his palms down loudly on the table to cut Pete off now. The clattering of silverware and dishes amplified the noise of that impact all around the restaurant, and I could sense even more eyes snapping over to our table. "So you want to lecture me about the consequences of my decisions?" the Senator sneered at Pete. "My decisions are what got you into this college. Or do you actually believe you would've been accepted here if it weren't for being my legacy??" The Senator was fully red in the face now, and his eyes darted over to me for a moment. "Do you think your friend would even be here if it weren't for my decisions? Or are you so naive that you've forgotten where the money in this college's endowment comes from? It's my donations to that endowment that are paying for his financial aid. And if it weren't for my decisions, he'd probably be out running around the streets in whatever wetback backwater he came from instead of sitting here now. So don't you go whining to me about the consequences of my decisions when you should remember that you wouldn't have a Goddamn thing without them." My skin burned hot with what felt like a sudden and absolute certainty: Pete's dad would never have said any of that about me if my skin looked white instead of brown. Under the table, I felt Pete's knee pressing against mine. A hushed silence had fallen over the rest of the restaurant now. I didn't even need to look around us to be certain that every other table was now blatantly eavesdropping on ours. So then when Pete stood up abruptly, the sound of his chair scraping across the floor echoed out all across the room. "Peter! Don't you-..." The Senator shouted at him. "...-No, Dad," Pete interrupted, towering over his dad now that he was standing up. "I'm not doing this anymore. I've told you a thousand times: This war is bullshit. What you're doing in the Senate is bullshit. And I'm..." I could see Pete's chest heaving, his breath racing as he stared down his father and choked on his own angry words. "... I'm leaving." Pete turned and started to walk away from the table towards the exit. I moved to get up too, but Pete's dad reached across the table to put a hand on my arm to hold me in my place. The Senator was staring at me, his poker face long gone now with the red flush still darkening it. "It's unfortunate you had to see that," the Senator said, his voice dropping lower now. But his use of that same word again churned my stomach. "Peter is too stubborn and too soft for his own good." "Pete is a lot of things, but `soft' isn't one of them," I replied tightly, somehow choking down everything else I wanted to angrily cuss at this man right now. "No, he's always been too sensitive," the Senator insisted, shaking his head and leaning over the table as he dropped the volume of his voice down even lower. "And now all the Goddamn bleeding hearts at this school aren't helping him to keep his head on his shoulders. So I trust that you'll talk some sense into him and get him to apologize to me for this childish outburst before tomorrow night." "I... What??" I asked, breathless at the audacity it took for him to even ask me that. "I'm doing what's best for Peter," the Senator sighed, sitting back in his chair now as his polished politician's smile returned to his face. "Even when I'm not doing everything that he wants me to, I'm still doing what's best. But Peter has always been too foolish to understand that." "So then what makes you think that I would understand that?" "Because you already know what it's like to have nothing," the Senator replied, his eyes hardening again as they held mine from across the table. And as soon as he uttered that last word at me, my skin burned hot with outrage once again. Nothing. ... That's what Pete's father thought of my family, of my home, of everything that made me who I am: Nothing. I was too choked up with anger to say anything right now, so the Senator just continued on, smiling and coldly oblivious to my outrage: "... And so you must know how grateful you should be to even be here. You've got a lot more to lose than Peter does if you weren't." And then just as quickly as that seering flash of anger had overtaken me, it was replaced by a chill running down my spine. Was this a threat? I was speechless as I was confronted with what sounded like direct evidence that all of Pete's fears about his father could actually be more than just unfounded paranoia. And as I continued to just sit there in stunned silence, the Senator went on: "... So when I ask you to talk some sense into my son now, I expect that you'll do it. It's the least you can do to show some gratitude to me for how you're benefiting from even getting to be here." Fuck this. I'd had enough. I was so blindingly angry that I didn't fucking care if I was burning down every bridge around me. I couldn't stand another second of being insulted by this man when I knew that what I should be doing right now was going to find Pete. "I am grateful," I snarled, standing up from my seat. "For everything that got me here. And I'm grateful for Pete because he's the smartest person I've met here." I looked down at the Senator's eyes widening in surprise as he realized that I wasn't going to be cowed by his orders and that I would actually walk out on him too. I never thought that I'd be tempted to punch a man older than my grandfather right in the face, but it took all the restraint I had left in me to stop myself from doing just that right now. I took a deep breath instead and then said: "You really could learn something if you actually listened to him." And with that, I walked right out of the restaurant too, ignoring all the staring eyes that followed me. Once I was outside, I looked around for Pete but didn't spot him anywhere. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called him, but it went straight to voicemail. I broke into a cold sweat of panic and then took off running back to campus, praying that I would find Pete back in our room. I was breathing heavy from my sprint when I finally got there and pushed through the door. And, thankfully, Pete was here. He was seated on the edge of my bed, his face buried in his hands when I arrived. Pete's head snapped up as soon as he heard me enter though, and the look of absolute panic I saw on his face right now just fucking gutted me. I lunged across the room as Pete rose to his feet. We collided into each other, and I wrapped my arms around him as tightly as I could. I could feel Pete's chest pressing into mine as he clung to me. His breathing was so quick and so ragged I worried he might be hyperventilating. "I can't... I can't..." he repeated in choking breaths with his face buried in my shoulder. "What?" "I can't fucking do this anymore," Pete said clutching onto me even tighter as the thunderheads that had been boiling up inside him ever since he'd read that email two weeks ago finally burst. "I could take it if it was only me that he was fucking over. But it's not." I held Pete close to me, trying to comfort him. "I love you, I love you," I repeated, kissing the top of his head. But then Pete started crying, hot tears spilling out and soaking right through my shirt. It was the first time Pete had allowed himself to actually cry in front of me. He'd almost cried before. But the floodgates opened this time, and Pete sobbed into my shoulder, his whole body shaking with the sheer force of it. I held Pete. Tight. I held him until his sobs exhausted him and he started to just go limp in my arms. "I hate it..." Pete whispered wetly into my chest, clinging onto me with the last remaining energy he had in him. "I hate it here." And I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to comfort Pete other than holding him tight. Because I could understand why Pete would hate it here: 'Here' was what kept him still squarely under the thumb of his father. And `here' is where Pete would always remain trapped in his shadow. ... But then `here' is also where I was. ... And 'here' is where we could be together. A deep pit cracked open in my stomach. And as I held Pete in my arms, I could feel a single seed of doubt falling down into the bottom of that pit. And then with each new tear that Pete cried onto my shoulder, that seed of doubt germinated. It grew roots that plunged even deeper and deeper into my gut, wrenching it apart: Here is where I was. But the best thing for Pete would be to get himself miles and miles away from here. *************** To be continued.