Defining Us: The Calvin & Eric Story (69 Bottles) Read online

  “I have to tell you something,” he tells me.

  “Dude, you’re gay, I get it.”

  “No Calvin, listen to me, please?” he pleads.

  “How drunk are you?” I ask him and he smiles.

  “I’m not. I just feel…” he shrugs and then starts pacing around the room, it looks like an office area, there are filing cabinets and yeah, whatever, it’s not important. “…Free,” he finally finishes.

  “Free of what?” I take a pull on my beer.

  “Everything, all the burden of wondering what people will think, free of the fact that I no longer feel I need to hide who I am from people.”

  I snort, “Dude, you’ve never hidden who you are with us. So you like the dick, no big deal. Honestly, Eric, we all knew.” I shake my head dismissively at him. It’s not entirely true that we all knew, I suspected, of course, but… I shiver involuntarily and fight the bile that rises in the back of my throat and my blood runs cold with hatred, hatred of myself, and of my father. Hatred that this conversation is going to turn ugly faster than I’m sure Eric intended it to.

  “Did you?” he asks.

  I give him a sideways glance as I take another sip of my beer, hoping that it will wash down the bile and give me something else to think about. Yes, in a way I did know, in another way I truly hoped I was wrong. I could deal with loving someone when I didn’t think they could or would love me back. I could easily sit back and let him have his own happy life while I sat quietly in love with him. It was easier for me to admit my love for Eric when I thought nothing would actually happen between us.

  He shrugs off my glare and goes back to pacing. Without saying anything.

  I was safe without knowing for certain that I really was in love with a man who didn’t stand a chance of loving me back. How is it possible that I could be attracted to someone who wasn't capable of feeling the same way toward me?

  That was how I rationalized all this until now.

  My inability to talk to Eric drove him mad and he stormed out of the room, leaving whatever he came in here to say unsaid.

  Sex is something I take a lot of pleasure in, until I come.

  Orgasms are the trigger of conditioned therapy. A belief that was ingrained in my brain for far too long. So much so that the idea of giving into being with a man, I have to swallow the bile rising in my throat, is enough to set off the little triggers my body and mind were conditioned to have as a response.

  The never-ending knot I get in my stomach anytime I’m around Eric, alone with Eric or I’m really struggling with holding myself back, returns with a vengeance and I keep attempting to swallow back the bile that keeps creeping up the back of my throat as I pace behind the bar.

  Why do I have to be in love with someone I can’t fucking have?

  How did I ever manage to fall in love with someone without once connecting with them on a deeply personal level?

  The answer really isn’t all that simple. I honestly can’t tell you at what point in our friendship, pseudo relationship, that I actually fell in love with him. I just know that I did. A feeling that, until his coming out back in New York, I’d been able to ignore. I guess there was a part of me that wondered if he’d try and make a play for me after coming out. Sometimes I wonder if he’s still trying to figure out exactly how to do just that.

  “Goddammit,” I growl as I kick at an imaginary rock on the ground.

  “Care to talk about it?” I hear Eric’s sympathetic voice and I slouch. All the fight I felt moments ago drains from my body in a rush. His voice carries a calming effect with it. A voice that has always managed to calm me down, addicting to the rolling waves of emotions running through my fucking body. Emotions that will send me running in the opposite direction, looking for a place to hurl, if I even attempt to act on them.

  Denying who I am is much easier than admitting to myself or anyone else, the truth. It is impossible, physically and mentally, to give in. I have no choice but to let something so unbelievable wipe out any and all ability to love and be loved by the one person I want and the only person I know I need.

  “No,” I finally manage to work out past the rising lump in my throat.

  “Okay then,” I hear him say. Despite looking away from him, I have no doubt that he shrugs behind me. He doesn’t leave, though I never expected him to. Eric has a way of quietly probing, a strange way of making sure he gets what he wants, or at least what he wants to hear. But, he also knows me well enough that if he probes me, in his silent, ‘I’m here, I’m listening’ kind of way that I will more than likely start talking.

  Resisting the urge to tell Eric everything is becoming increasingly difficult. Desperate to tell him why we can never be together, I am not. You see, there is something about him, aside from his sexy as hell good looks, his quiet demeanor and his outspoken opinions on things he’s passionate about that I fell in love with long ago.

  How do you tell the one person you’re deeply attracted to that you can do nothing about it without becoming violently ill?

  “You know…” Eric says softly, the worn out bench I’d passed when I came outside creaks under his weight as he shifts. “You’ve been telling me since New York that we needed to talk, promising me that we would…” He doesn’t finish his question, he doesn’t have to.

  After our impromptu meeting that followed his admission, he’d left me alone with my thoughts and it was then that I realized I needed to tell him. I’d found him a little while later and promised him we’d talk, but that night, in New York and while on tour was hardly an appropriate place to do so.

  Even now it’s not the right time. I know that when I manage to muster up the courage to tell him about my past, he needs to be able to escape me. He needs to be able to run away screaming. He cannot do that while we’re on tour. Though I know that we can’t have this discussion until we’re back in California, off the bus and off the tour, I can’t tell him he has to wait until then. I can’t do that because the more time we spend together, quietly talking or not talking, the harder it is becoming for me to hold it all inside.

  I also needed time to come to grips with the fact that he’d finally come out of the closet, finally confirmed what I thought I needed to hear. I often wondered if Eric admitted it to the rest of us, thereby admitting it to him and myself, if it would be the catalyst that would drive me over the edge to figuring out if I’m capable of wiping away more than two years of ingrained ideas about gay men.

  “I’m not ready,” I finally manage to tell him quietly. I can’t bear to see the hurt in his eyes again, so I don’t look at him. “And honestly Eric, I’m not entirely sure you’re ready to hear what I have to say.”

  “Is that supposed to give me hope, Cal?” he says angrily.

  I whip around, staring at him. “Hope for what, Eric?”

  He just shrugs.

  “You know, I don’t understand you sometimes, man,” I snap at him. I’m trying desperately to let the anger roll off of me without pushing it at him. He doesn’t deserve my wrath, but fuck, he knows how to turn this into something to do with him.

  God, I wish Dex was here instead of at some ‘all-exclusive’ club with Raine. He’d fucking help me with this shit. “One minute you want to know, you want me to talk, then the next minute you’re pulling out the 'pity-me’ card. I don’t understand exactly what it is you want me to say, Eric.”

  I watch as my words sink into his heart, the longing, aching devastation washes over him.

  “If you haven’t figured it out by now, I don’t suspect you ever will, Mouse.” My nickname on his lips sends ice through my veins as I watch him stand up. My nickname coming from him is a rare occurrence anymore. Unless we're around everyone else.

  He threw down the line in the sand; built the Great Wall of China between us. Neither of which I can cross unless I’m ready to talk.

  I stare after him in astonishment wondering what in fucking hell crawled up his ass and died.

  This isn’t the fir
st time he’s turned the tables on me, bringing himself into the center of the conversation. It’s also not the first time I feel guilty for not coming clean with him. For not telling him that I wish he could be to me what he wants me to be for him. Why it is that I can never have him.

  “WHAT’S the matter, Eric?” Jess asks through the phone. I’d walked straight through the bar and onto the sidewalk in front of it. The streets of Nashville are bustling, people walking from bar to bar, stumbling around, screaming, hollering, whatever they do when they’re drunk. It’s almost comical to watch. “He still won’t talk to you, will he?”

  “No,” I grumble. “Tonight he got pissed at me, rightfully so, I was being an idiot,” I tell her. I met Jess in San Diego, after our very first show on the tour. A tour that would prove to be more challenging to me, emotionally, than I ever thought it could be.

  Jess is one of Addison’s friends. She came to that first show and somehow we’d managed to hook up afterward. And no, we didn’t have sex, though I’d wanted to, at first. Having sex with women is easy, not entirely unpleasant. But when you’re trying to hide, miserably I might add, that you’re gay from your friends, it becomes necessary.

  We talked almost all night. For some strange reason, talking to her was like talking to myself in the shower. It was easy, effortless and freeing. I unloaded a shit ton of dirty laundry on her that night and she’s been here for me ever since.

  “You, an idiot?” She snorts into the phone and I can’t help but laugh a little.

  “I just don’t know what to do anymore,” I tell her, and it’s the truth, I don’t. “I just get more and more hurt every time I try and talk to him and he shoots me down.

  She sighs into the phone, “Is it really worth it?”

  “Jess,” I reprimand her.

  “No Eric, listen to me for a minute, please?”

  I slouch and round the corner of the bar, it’s a little quieter back here. “Fine.” I roll my eyes even though she can’t see me.

  “You thought that coming out would be the kick in the ass he needed to finally bring him into your arms, right?”

  I grunt.

  “And that’s not what’s happening. At least not that you can tell. Maybe he really isn’t into guys, Eric.”

  “Into guys or into me?” I retort.

  “Does it matter?” she counters quickly and continues, “Have you honestly thought about that? Or come straight out and asked him?” I don’t answer, I don’t have to. She already knows I haven’t. She’s just trying to make me think. “Until you know, you can’t judge him like this. Instead, pull him out, make him jealous, or grow a fucking pair and ask him, make him talk to you.”

  “Jess!” I scold her again.

  She laughs, “Look, you cannot sit around and wait forever for him to figure his shit out. You need to be able to find your own happiness, you deserve it. But you need to find out for yourself, Peacock. You can’t sit here wondering whether or not he is, whether or not there is ever a possibility of the two of you getting together unless you ask him. Talk to him about it. Unless you ask, how do you even know he’s gay?”

  My hand tightens around my phone and I hear it creak in protest. I sigh, “That’s just it, I don’t. But I think it would be pretty fucking unfair if I feel this way about him and he isn’t attracted to me the same way.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,” she tells me. “It happens to us girls all the time. We fall in love, or maybe it’s just lust, with a guy who has no reciprocation whatsoever.” I can tell she’s grumbling and remembering her last little fling.

  “Don’t sound so bitter,” I tease her with a little laugh.

  “I can’t help it. It comes with the territory of being a truly selfless person. Willing to give up everything for what? I’ve done it for years, Peacock, it’s made me bitter.”

  On one of our many nighttime phone calls, Jess confessed to me that she was always ready and willing to give men what they wanted, usually just a blow job. The men never reciprocated. They simply had their orgasm and rolled over to go to sleep, leaving her high and dry, but yet she’d still go back the next time they called on the hope that something more would happen. It never did.

  When she told me all of this, I felt awful for her, but I could easily understand what she meant, hell, I’ve had a few of those myself or been that way toward more than a few people. Needless to say, I apologized on behalf of dickhead men everywhere. We laughed it off, but I often wonder if she’s gotten over being a doormat.

  Remembering she had a date the other night, I ask her how it went.

  I hear her sigh before answering. “My vibrator was more entertaining than he was.”

  I snort, “That bad?” I raise my eyebrow at nothing, knowing she isn’t going to answer me. “Well, I would tell you that I’d find someone for you to hook up with, but they seem to be falling off the market faster than I can even mention your name,” I tell her.

  She giggles into the phone. “How is that going…you know, Dex and Raine?”

  “I wish I could tell you, but I haven’t seen them a whole lot, which may be your answer. Hell, they didn’t even come out with us tonight.”

  “She’s becoming more insistent,” Jess says to me. I don’t need further explanation. Jess has been keeping tabs on Sam for me, information that I’ve been feeding to Mills when he asks for it.

  “Are you still ignoring her?”

  “Yes, but she’s calling all the time. It got worse after that article came out.” She pauses briefly, “I don’t know what else to do.”

  I sigh into the phone as I rub my fingers across my forehead. “Nothing more you can do. She knows you have an inside track to the band and she is dying for any information you might have and that you will give to her.”

  “But I won’t.”

  “I know, love. I know. You don’t need to explain it to me, but that is what she’s after. Just do what you can to let it go.”

  “It’s getting really bad.” Her voice is interrupted by total silence on my end. I hear the phone shift. “Fuck me, that’s her.”

  “Ignore it. Does she know where you live?”

  “Mhmm and where I work.”

  “Is she a violent person? Would she do anything physical?” I ask her with the unexplainable urge to protect her, to protect my friend.

  “No, Peacock, I don’t think she would.”

  Jess and I finish talking, I let her go. I head back into the bar to find someone to take me back to the hotel. I’m tired and drinking no longer sounds appealing.

  I’ve barely crawled out of the shower and into bed when Calvin finally returns to the room. He doesn’t say much as he’s emptying out his pockets. From the tightness in his shoulders, I can tell that he’s stressing over something. It’s not hard to read a man you’ve roomed with for some time, not to mention the man that you have what feels like an unhealthy, unwanted attraction to. My infatuation with Calvin started years ago, long before 69 Bottles became the name it is today. Why we never managed to ask for separate rooms was beyond me. It started way back when we could usually only afford one or two rooms if we were traveling. The one room nights were hell on earth with Kyle on the floor, Dex and Talon in one bed and Calvin and I in another. I shudder at the memory. Then when we could finally afford two rooms, it was usually Dex, Mouse and I in one and Talon and Kyle in another. Huh, it’s a wonder they never hooked up before this.

  Once we got down to being able to afford three rooms, Talon usually got his own and Dex and Kyle would room together. When we had the chance, and with previous tours, Calvin and I still shared. Why we never separated was beyond me, and while I’d asked for it, Calvin would tell Mills or me it wasn’t necessary. I guess the little voice in my head took Cal wanting to share a room with me as a sign that maybe, one day, things might change between us.

  With his back to me he says, “I’m sorry about earlier. I lost my head.”

  I shrug it off like I do all the time. Sometimes ‘PMS’
comes to mind with him. His moods will shift unexpectedly and sometimes I feel eggshells follow him like dirt.

  Despite all that, the tone in his voice has my whole body humming with a need to reach out for him, to comfort him. Instead, I settle deeper into the bed I’m lying on. “I just want you to tell me what’s going on, but despite what I want from you, I’m not going to push you, Calvin, but you also need to be aware of the fact that no matter what, I’m here to listen, always. If it’s not me you want to talk to, let me find someone you can talk to, like Jess.”

  He snorts a humorless laugh. “She’ll just turn around and tell you.”

  I sigh. “No, we don’t work that way. We’re not a couple of gossip mongers, Cal, we don’t talk about stuff unless it affects one of us.”

  “Well, this might affect you, more than you know…” He leaves the thought hanging in the air before he walks out of my line of sight. What the hell is that supposed to mean? I don’t ask the question out loud. It feels like prying and the opposite of what I just said I wouldn’t do.

  I hear the bathroom door click shut.

  There is a newfound hope that wells inside me at his words… a hope I have no business feeling, a hope that I know will shatter me and keep me hanging and stop me from moving on. Jess is right, maybe I need to find it somewhere within myself to let it go, move on, attempt to move on at least. Once this tour is over and we’re not cooped up together, it might be easier.

  It’s with that thought that I drift off to sleep to the soothing sounds of the shower. The thought of him naked on the other side of a rather flimsy door brings back the loneliness as sleep takes me.

  AFTER my shower, before crawling into bed, I couldn’t stop myself from watching Eric sleep. The soft snores, the steady rhythm of his breathing, the warmth and comfort found in watching him sleep. Loving Eric from afar, that’s the way this has to go. It won’t be easy, but in the end it’s going to be much better, for him.

  I crawl into my bed facing him and click off the light. Plunging the room into darkness means I can no longer see him, but I can still hear him breathing softly. I shiver though I’m not cold. Loneliness creeps inside and I drift off to sleep.