Here’s what I want to believe: that the reason Gideon won’t share this bedroom and won’t mention my queer parents is because he’s an awkward, quiet guy, not because of sin or whatever. I want to believe that he skipped Christmas with his parents because he sees them for what they are. I want to believe that his little brother lives with him because Gideon is kind and open-hearted and offered his home when the kid needed somewhere to go, but I don’t know anything about the story. Maybe Gideon’s house is just closer to his job.
I just need to keep my head down and my mouth shut for a few more days until I can get out of here, and then I never have to worry about any of this again.
“It’s not an outhouse, it’s a composting toilet,” I’m telling Rick as I stand in the kitchen, watching twilight fall through the window. “It’s in the regular bathroom and everything, I guess we have to… empty it… every so often? Hopefully, I’ll be out of here before it’s my turn.”
“Wow, fancy,” Rick says. “It’s a wonder you want to go home at all.”
“The sink and tub have drains?” my dad asks, on their house’s other extension. “Where do the drains go?”
I glance down at the sink, like the drain in it will have that information written on it.
“The… ground?” I guess.
“I’m sure there’s a septic tank,” Rick informs my dad.
“Could just drain into the creek,” my dad says.
“They’d never plumb a residence that way.”
“It’s not a residence, it’s an emergency shelter,” my dad says. “Do you remember that place you and I went to the Poconos for—”
“First of all, that was your sister’s nephew’s hunting buddy’s off-grid hideout that I’m a hundred percent certain he had as some sort of doomsday prepper backup plan,” Rick says. “He didn’t exactly build it to code. The Forest Service has standards.”
“I don’t think it drains into the creek,” I offer, even though I’m not sure. Seems like it wouldn’t.
“Then who’s up there servicing the septic tank every fifteen years?” my dad asks.
“I imagine they hire someone,” I say, and my dad grumbles a little.
The two of them are still worried about me, and being the people they are, they express that worry via increasingly detailed questions about the infrastructure and logistics of where I’m staying. After I moved into my first Brooklyn apartment at twenty-three, Rick spent a whole weekend cleaning the traps under every sink and installing carbon monoxide detectors in every room. I can always tell how anxious my dad is feeling when he visits me based on how many toolboxes he brings along, just in case I need something.
Knowing all of this doesn’t make their questions about the plumbing here any less frustrating. I don’t know how it works, I just know that it does, as far as I can tell.
“Is it still snowing?” Rick asks, clearly changing the subject.
“A little, not much,” I tell him. “I think we’re in the clear for a couple—”
I break off when I hear the couch in the next room creak and my irritation spikes through the roof.
“Hold on,” I tell my parents, then cover the phone’s microphone. “I CAN HEAR YOU STANDING!” I shout, because Gideon is supposed to be sitting on the couch, reading his book, with his busted foot propped on a chair and wrapped in ice packs because I would like to leave this cabin someday soon, which means I need his ankle to operate a clutch.
He, however, seems absolutely fucking determined to put as much strain on it as he can. Earlier today I had to stand in the doorway and refuse to move so he wouldn’t go outside and clear the snow off the porch steps, which is the dumbest thing I can imagine doing with a sprained ankle.
Two seconds later Gideon appears in the doorway, jaw set, and gestures sarcastically at the bathroom.
I clear my throat and feel like an asshole.
“Sorry,” I say.
He limps across the corner of the kitchen and closes the door behind himself, and I go back to the phone.
“Sorry,” I say again.
“Was that Steve Wheeler?” my dad asks instantly. “How’s that going? Everything okay?”
“Totally fine,” I semi-lie.
When I get off the phone five minutes later, Gideon’s back in the other room, sitting on the couch next to the wood stove with his foot propped up, when I go to give Gideon his phone back. Mine’s not hooked up to the satellite doohickey, since in order to do that, I need to download something and in order to do that, I need to be hooked up to the satellite doohickey.
“Thanks,” I tell him. “Also, you’ve got a billion notifications, you should probably answer people.”
He glances down, frowns, and scrolls.
“How are your… parents?” he asks without looking up. It’s the first time he’s acknowledged that there’s two of them.
“They’re good.”
“Glad to hear it,” he says, then gestures at his foot, which is elevated and wrapped in ice packs, as per my protocol. “See?”
In a moment of saintly forbearance, I don’t point out that healing his ankle is also beneficial for him and that I’m hardly being an asshole by wanting him to be healthy. Gideon looks down at his phone, the screen off, like he’s thinking.
“They worried?” he asks, maybe the first time all day he’s initiated conversation.
“Yeah. You know,” I say. “Parents.”
Then he looks up at me, still fidgeting with the phone in his hand, and his expression is familiar and unreadable and god, this is all so weird and awkward, what am I even doing. Jesus.
“You heard the Steve Wheeler thing,” I admit. It’s not a question; the cabin is maybe five hundred square feet. He can hear everything.
“It’s fine,” he says.
“I didn’t want them to worry more, is all,” I explain. “They’re already kind of freaking out, and…”
“They’d worry more about me than a stranger they’ve never met?”
I don’t answer, just look away for a moment.
“Right,” Gideon says, and scrubs his hands over his face, muffling his voice. “Yeah. I get it. Parkway should be clear in a day or two and then you can leave.”
“Thanks,” I say, and walk back into the kitchen.
I stand there for about thirty seconds, feeling like shit, then walk back into the other room.
“I’m sorry you heard that,” I say, which is true. “I didn’t mean for you to.”
“Want me to pretend I didn’t?”
“Can you?”
“Sure,” he says, and leans forward to start messing with the ice packs around his ankle. “Of course. Done.”
I last about ten seconds.
“I didn’t say that because I think you’ll do anything, it was because they’re already worried that I’m out in the wilderness in a snowstorm and I didn’t see any reason to make it worse—”
“I said it was fine. We can stop talking about it.”
I feel like I might explode, or at least shout stop saying fine it’s not fine this is all very weird if you say you’re fine one more time I swear I’ll scream, but instead I say, “Sure,” and head back into the kitchen so I can pace around a little more, feeling frustrated and pent up and a little crazed. It doesn’t work.