Chapter 21

Origin of the Beasts

Laughter from outside won’t stop spilling into my bedroom. It’s ruining my staring at the abyss. What I stare at changes every few hours—the other day, it was the curtains. I saw a hot gardener outside those curtains once, and it ruined me. Yesterday, it was my jacket, slung over a rocking chair in the corner. The jacket is black vegan leather with a hand-stitched pumpkin across the back—its vines are identical to the ones Mama Bianchi carved into the entrance of Vero Roseto. I made that jacket. It got me into my Chicago design program.

It got my ex to notice me on the train when we were just strangers.

Every time I look at it, I don’t see me, I see my squandered promise.

Today, I stare at my grandma’s old Singer sewing machine on the writing desk by the window. She brought design into my life. She guided me, even if she didn’t always choose her words right about my gayness.

I need to get my hands sewing again. I need the tactile.

An odd heaviness, more powerful than gravity, pulls me deeper into my bed. I haven’t left it since that horrible breakfast days ago. After a while, Ro, Paul, and Ben stopped knocking and trying to coax me outside like I was a frightened cat. Now they leave trays of food outside my door like they would for guests, and as of yesterday, I started eating again. I only leave to use the bathroom, and everyone has correctly intuited that they aren’t to use that window of opportunity to corner me. Like Mama Bianchi, I occupy the house, but I am neither present nor corporeal.

I’m not alone, though. I’m here with my sublime terror, a terror which grows more powerful with every second I spend in this room, a terror of knowledge that I came to Vero Roseto to escape my problems, but that I’ve somehow become more lost than ever.

So lost I’m unable to see the road anymore.

Hilariously, this terror has one enemy, one chunk of Kryptonite that keeps it at bay: when I eat a sandwich. Ro’s paninis, stuffed with Grandma’s bread patties and a tangy smack of tomato, and suddenly the road becomes a bit more visible.

Why is a sandwich so powerful?

Either way, I’m grato. Today is better than yesterday. I try not to doom-scroll too much on Instagram. Eshana texted me, and I responded with some pleasant niceties—I’ve scared her enough this year, and she needs to be able to live her life without being on Grant Watch twenty-four seven.

After finishing the panini, I fix my hair, smooth my bedsheets, and open a Zoom link on my phone. The one good thing I did the day everything fell apart was email Dr. Patty. In my darkness, I was shocked she even remembered me. My low point triggers are always invisibility and self-worth. Who am I to be remembered? But in Dr. Patty’s infinite goodness, she welcomed me back without judgment and with (thank GOD) an opening in her schedule.

“Good afternoon, Grant,” Dr. Patty says on the video call. She’s in her seventies, white, with frizzing, wild silver curls. She looks like my grandmother did in her better years. She’s draped in sherbet-colored scarves like some daffy, beloved art teacher. Dr. Patricia Asp (call her Dr. Patty) brings the sunshine crashing into the storm clouds in my brain.

“Good afternoon,” I say back, already wiping a tear. Her presence is just that welcome. In the picture-in-picture window, I see my unshaven reflection and hiss like Dracula in a mirror. “I look awful, sorry.”

Dr. Patty chuckles amiably. “You are beautiful. Now. It sounds like we’ve got some catching up to do.” We spend most of the hour catching up on my summer: Vero Roseto’s problems, the high stakes of the Rose Festival, telling off A. C., and…Ben. At his name, she brightens. “Ben. The Ben? There? How do you feel about that?”

My smile fights against a swell of tears. “I missed him so much. And it’s been so nice, and we were getting better, but then…I don’t know what he wants from me. It’s making me feel so flooded, and I just want to relax around him, but I can’t. Maybe if we’d done this a few years ago, I’d be able to calm down, but it just feels like too much has happened. I can’t trust him. And I don’t know if that’s a him problem or a me problem, or both, but I just know that I can’t.” My lip quivers like a leaf weighted down by a spring rain. I can’t look up at Dr. Patty, who stays quiet. The soft crackle of the Zoom’s silence fills my room. “It doesn’t matter anyway. In a few weeks, the festival is gonna be over, and he’s gonna leave for Scotland. I don’t know where I’m going.”

“You’re not going to design school?” Dr. Patty asks, concerned but very gentle. “I know that was in your plan.”

I sniff loudly. “Yeah. Still is. I just…lost track of time.”

Stuck in the past is more like it.

“If it still is your plan,” she says, “I think sending some applications in would be a good way to take your mind off this Ben thing, don’t you? Maybe it’ll help you calm down enough to see him with more clarity. Two birds, one stone?”

Dr. Patty understands everything.

Brightness rushes into my chest at the possibility that I can organize myself out of this mess. It’s what I do best. Well, it’s what I did best, but I can get back there.

We set a time to talk again later in the week (there’s still so much more Ben to cover), and she renews my script for Lexapro. Brightened, but not repaired, I continue to camp out in the room. However, it stops becoming a prison and is more like a safe cocoon. I can’t open that door again until I’m sure I’m strong enough to fly out of here like a gorgeous monarch butterfly.

Two days pass. In that time, I stumble on a few design schools abroad, mainly to check how late I could submit a portfolio. Milan. Paris. London. All of them feel so…far. Not physical distance, but in the way they extend my grasp. I melted down in Chicago, am I really gonna go be a designer in Milan without self-destructing? Ro’s paninis won’t be able to find me there.

After sending off a few emails, I give up the hunt and return to my abyss staring.

The laughter and splashing from the pool outside reminds me I want to stay right where I am for a while. I’ve heard laughter and splashing in this room before—it’s a nostalgic sound—but I know it’s not my siblings and cousins outside. They’ve grown up. Those times are gone.

Everyone has moved on but me.

Not anymore.

I peel off my baggy gray shirt and let my chest breathe. In the floor-length mirror, the reflection of my chest confirms my brain is a liar: I’m still hot shit.

The Singer turns on with a startling rattle, and it rumbles against the old writing desk like knuckles. With two swift snips, I shear off my shirt’s stanky sleeves, and another few snip-snips removes the collar and most of the chest. Gradually, I feed thread and cloth into the Singer.

Rattle-rattle-rattle.

My grody shirt disappears inside its gears, but my hands remember exactly how to do this. I don’t think about Ben, or my exes, or how much I think I belong in the deepest, darkest dumpster forever; in fact, I don’t think at all. My hands do.

My eyes sharpen.

The room comes into full clarity.

And after a few minutes, the shirt exits the Singer as a fresh tank top with the biggest Italian Tits McGee plunging neckline I could manage. A smile slowly returns. Whatever I am, at least I’ll look hot.

The moment I shut off the Singer, a knock shakes my door. A thundering cop knock.

A spike of fear drives through my chest. Oh my God. Aunt Ro called doctors. I withdrew too much, scared her too badly, and she’s called people to help. Scrambling to the door in nothing but my pajama bottoms, I pull on my new tank and start pacing in place.

What if I just grabbed my stuff and ran? I can go back to my studio in Chicago and be a bummer there. I won’t get meals, but at least people will leave me alone.

“Grant, can you hear me?” Ben’s voice comes gently through the door.

My anxious pacing stops. “I’m fine, Ben.”

“Not what I asked. Can you hear me?”

“Obviously!”

“Grant, I don’t want to have this conversation through a door, but if you’re not gonna let me in, that’s what I’m gonna do, and everyone downstairs is gonna hear it.”

“Jesus Christ,” I grunt, yanking open the door. My agitation leaves me when I see how handsome Ben looks: no gardener work clothes, freshly showered, ruddy hair styled in a slick little bounce, and a hunter-green coat with a wool collar. And I look like a drowned rat with visible nips.

“Hey,” I say, not meeting his eyes. “You look like you’re going on a date.”

“Well, I’m not,” he says with a hint of anger. “Let me in?”

As soon as he’s inside, I lock the door. He stands stiffly, not taking a seat. I approach slowly, my back hunched in shame, and defensiveness comes pouring out: “Look, I’m really okay. Every once in a while, I get like this, and I just need to be alone for a few days and then I’m fine.” When he doesn’t respond, I confess, “I’m so sorry I yelled at you. There’s no excuse.”

He sighs, as if he wants to be angry but can’t. “How are you feeling now?”

“I’m fine, I told you.”

“You slammed this door so loudly, paintings fell down. Ro and I heard you through the door for hours. Talking to yourself. Crying.” Ben’s hard eyes soften, and he touches my elbow. The gentleness makes me flinch so hard my body spasms. “You’re saying this happens a lot? When you’re in the city…and alone?”

Humiliation burns my neck, cheeks, and ears. It’s everywhere. I can’t believe I let myself be seen like that, especially by Ro and Ben, who care about me but who—for different reasons—I don’t want knowing how intense I can get.

“I take care of myself okay,” I say, puffing my barely concealed chest.

Ben doesn’t blink. “I don’t think you do. You don’t have to feel this way.”

I nod, unable to look at him. “I called Dr. Patty, and she wrote a new script for Lexi.”

“Lexi?”

“Pro. Lexapro.” I roll my eyes. “Gay.”

“GAY.” He snorts. “Okay, great, I’m proud of you. When’s it ready for pickup?”

I pick at my nails. “Yesterday…”

“Then it’s ready!” Ben doesn’t drop his energy for a beat before tapping my shoulder—not affectionately, but to make sure he’s got my attention. “I know what that twink said to you. It’s over. It was never really on, but just know…” He makes a cutting motion across his throat. “I’m sorry that happened. You know I never would’ve allowed that if I was there, right?”

“I know. You’re a good guy, Ben. And I’m…not.” I wince back a stabbing pain in my chest. Guilt. “I brought it on. I said shit, lies, to make him not interested in going on your date.” I can’t stop shaking my head. “Movie villain behavior.”

Ben nods, restrained as ever. “I heard about that, too. Want to tell me what that was about?”

Scoffing, I throw up my arms. “You don’t know?”

He smirks. “I know, but I want to hear you say it. I think I’ve earned that.”

Looking into Ben’s eyes, while he looks this perfect and I look this goblin-esque, I mutter, “I was jealous, and I wanted to date you.”

Victorious, Ben thrusts both arms to the sky. “FINALLY, YOU ADMIT IT.”

“Don’t get smug!”

“How long have we known each other?”

“Ten years.”

“I have waited ten years to hear you admit this shit.”

I roll my eyes. “You have not been clocking my crush since we were eight.”

Chuckling, Ben grips his head. “Your problem is you think you suffer in silence, when in reality, every day with you—from back then to now—has been one big Italian opera. You have many talents, but hiding what you’re feeling isn’t one of them.”

I jab his chest. “Did you come up here to make me feel worse?”

“No.” He snatches my finger and holds it. He steps closer, until we’re inches away. “I have the day off, and I want you to come with me into town to meet someone for coffee. Not a date, an old friend. You owe me. I should be kicking your ass more about your snake behavior, but I think Demon Twink punished you more than enough. Shower up those tiddies.”

Ben flicks one of my highly visible nips, and it wakes me up.

All right, so he still wants to hang out with me. Good enough for now.

---

An hour later, I’ve scalded off my depression skin with a hot shower, dressed in Uncle Paul’s all-black server outfit (Ben insisted I’d want to look as good as possible), and driven into Valle with Ben to pick up my prescription and meet his old friend. The quaint village lies in the hollow between two massive forests. Everything is tailor-made for tourists and staycationers: bookshops, antique stores, fishing gear shops, and cafés. Everything you’d need to while away your hours in your rented cabins before it was time to return to the lake.

Ben parks outside Smalley’s Bistro, a cozy spot with exposed brick and even more exposed ductwork. Before exiting, he turns to me, anxiety tattooed on his face—a rarity for Ben.

“What?” I ask.

He licks his lips uncertainly before answering: “Just know I would’ve waited to do this until later if we didn’t have the Rose Festival to get back to.”

“Waited to do what?” I glance around. “Is this a hit? Are you gonna kill me?”

He smirks, confidence flowing back. “I’m not gonna kill you until I get paid through the summer. Meet me inside.”

Ben runs inside to meet our mystery guest, but before I follow him, I give myself a quick glance in the rearview mirror. Blemish-free, bouncy curls, dimples for days. I emerged from a three-day depression hole less than an hour ago, and I’m still gonna be the cutest one in the room.

Who else but me? I can do it all! Lowest lows, highest highs.

Okay, babe, well, we’re gonna see about that, says the Lexi bottle chilling in my pharmacy bag.

Yet from the moment I step inside the café, I realize yes, this is a hit.

Ben waits at a table next to a breathtakingly handsome boy who is eagerly awaiting my arrival. The short boy has light olive skin, accentuated by his Day-Glo yellow tank top, a swoop of jet-black hair, and a bright smile with two prominent front teeth like a chipmunk. A cutie I could recognize a mile away, even though the last time I saw him was five years ago. Unlike me and Ben, he’s barely grown an inch.

Nick Hutchinson.

Hutch.

Ben brought me to see Hutch, the boy who dumped me via my best friend by revealing he was dating him, all during my grandmother’s wake.

“Grant!” Hutch yelps, running to meet me.

I freeze like it’s a police raid. The little guy can only reach my chest as he wraps a hug around me. It’s brief but terrible. I’m being attacked by a terrier. “It’s been forever, oh my God!” Hutch gasps, his voice noticeably more fem than when we were younger. He pulls me to his table, where he’s got an extra to-go latte waiting.

While I glare daggers into Ben, who stays smugly quiet, an amped-up Hutch continues to mouth diarrhea about his life: “I’m moving to LA, can you believe?! I’ve got singing classes lined up, but this guy already messaged me saying he has a modeling job for me! I was like ‘WHAT? Okay, creep,’ but then I googled him and he’s totally legit, so I don’t know, I might do it? I just feel like I have to take every opportunity, you know? Gah, I’m blabbing.”

I chuckle uncomfortably. “How many lattes have you had?”

Laughing, Hutch grips my wrist. “Two!”

“Listen, Hutch—”

“Oh. It’s Nicholas.” Hutch’s sunny expression darkens, as if I’ve broken some serious etiquette by calling him the nickname he once demanded we adopt.

Ben and I exchange hard glances before I continue: “Nicholas. I—”

Hutch drums excitedly against my arm. “I cannot believe you’re back! We thought you were gone, gone, gone, big city, red carpets—I have been so inspired by you, by the way—and then I saw your video.” Hutch presses a hand to his heart. “I had no idea I had that kind of impact on you.”

Hellfire erupts behind my irises.

His impact on me? That was Hutch’s big takeaway from my “I convinced myself I could wish away my gayness, and it destroyed my mental health forever” video.

“Ben, why am I here?” I ask quietly.

“What?” Hutch asks, grinning as if he didn’t catch that.

“Nicholas, sit,” Ben says, waving for his attention. Hutch doesn’t oblige. We’re all standing around a table while he sips his iced latte and waits for Ben to say what’s on his mind. As do I. “I’m going to tell Grant how you and I got together in eighth grade.”

Hutch’s eyes widen in fear. “You said we weren’t gonna.”

“Yeah, well, now we’re gonna. Grant’s processing a lot and deserves the truth. Plus, wouldn’t you like to start your new LA life with a clean slate?”

Hutch can’t look at either of us. “My slate is clean.”

“Hutch.”

“Nicholas.”

“Sit!”

We both listen this time. The tension in the café thickens as Ben stares into Hutch’s soul. I don’t speak. I’m not even angry anymore. My curiosity is too high that there’s a previously unknown piece of the Ben–Hutch puzzle they’ve been keeping from me all this time.

Finally, Hutch rolls his eyes. “Whatever, it’s not a big deal. It’s ancient history. We were kids…” Then his eyes find mine. His smile drops. He must have seen some deeper wound in me that he wasn’t expecting.

Slowly, beneath the table, Ben’s hand slides onto my knee, and my heart finally slows. He looks at me, and in a rarity for him, there’s no smirk this time. No twinkle. Ben is looking at me with softness, vulnerability, and genuine affection. It’s more than my nerves can handle, but I don’t look away.

After all, Ben has been hinting this whole summer that I “got the story wrong” between us, and he wouldn’t have gone through all this trouble to bring Hutch back into our lives if there weren’t something new to tell. But what could I have missed the first time around?

“Grant,” Ben begins slowly, biting back a deep, quiet pain. “When you visited, you and Nicholas hung out—and eventually became boyfriends—but I already knew him from school. But you and me had gotten so close, it never felt like I was the third wheel.”

Hutch snorts. “Felt like I was the third wheel…”

“Shush.” And Hutch listens. I just stare at Ben, trying desperately to picture Dr. Patty’s warm, inviting face urging me to listen, to hear Ben out, not to listen to my inner demon telling me to cuss them both out and run back to Chicago. As Ben rubs my knee, he continues: “But each time you left, each time fall came around, it hurt. Hurt us both.” I glance at Hutch, who nods, seemingly against every fiber of his being to admit such a thing. I return to Ben, whose face is still vulnerable and open. “When you came back to Vero Roseto that last summer, and you started actually dating Nicholas, I got depressed. Things were really bad at home, like you know, but really, I was already dreading you leaving as soon as you came.”

“I dreaded it, too,” I admit, biting back the words And I’m dreading this current summer ending!

Ben sucks in a deep breath, a brave breath. I hold mine. This is it. “One night, you were busy with family, and Nicholas and I hung out…I told him how I was feeling about you leaving. After we talked for a while, he asked if we could make out, and we did.”

I squint with a twinge of frustration. “Okayyyy, but I know this already.”

“Oh, do you? Do you know everything?” Ben asks, somewhat snippily, before turning on Hutch. “And what did I say when you asked me to make out?”

“I was thirteen.” Hutch laughs. “Who knows who said what?”

But Ben does. Recalling the incident with brutal clarity, he leans across the table and whispers, “I asked, ‘What about Grant?’ And you said…” Ben waits for Hutch to say something—anything—but my original ex is clearly clueless or refusing to damn himself in front of me. So Ben completes the picture. “You said, and I quote, ‘Grant dumped me. It’s over.’ Then you said, very shadily, ‘Oh, he didn’t tell you? I thought he told you everything.’ ”

I spin on Hutch, my nails digging into the wicker chair. “You WHAT?”

“And then he stuck his tongue down my throat,” Ben finishes.

Forgetting my delicately coiffed hair, I grip my curls with both fists and try to process the unprocessable. Hutch lied to Ben about us being broken up to get with him, then basically forced Ben to break up with me for him.

Hutch can only sit there, sucking down his iced latte as if the faster he’s done, the faster he can scram out of here. “I really thought the three of us were just gonna catch up,” he says, texting someone else furiously. “Maybe hook up or something. Guess not.” He finally sets his phone down, his eyes genuinely vulnerable. “I lied! I was a horny kid! Okay? I’m sorry. I’m a different person now. Plus, you both ended up tall, so you got your revenge.”

The room vanishes. Everything disappears except me and my new knowledge. This whole time I thought Ben stole my summer boyfriend, just before I was going to break up with him for real and ask out Ben. This whole time…I’ve been hating Ben McKittrick, and he’s only ever been a friend. It was Hutch all along.

That’s what Ben wanted me to hear so badly.

Minutes later, with everyone out of the hanging out mood, I hug Hutch goodbye and sincerely wish him well on the West Coast. Strangely, my anger can’t and won’t attach to him. He’s right. We’re all different people now, and that drama feels so far away. So why do I feel it more intensely when it’s Ben? Because at the time, five years ago, I handled my disappointment abysmally. I didn’t ask questions. I didn’t give my best friend the benefit of the doubt. I made my assumptions, and then started roaring my lungs out at him at my grandma’s wake. I hurt his feelings as bad as I possibly could, and then refused to talk to him.

The problem is me.

Once Ben and I are alone in the parked car, I take his hand—not intimately, but as a friend. “I abandoned you, didn’t I?” I ask carefully.

He squeezes my hand, his jaw angrily set. “You did.”

“You’ve always had my back, haven’t you?”

“I have.”

“I really messed up.” I squeeze his hand. “It all went down that year. You, me, Hutch, your parents’ divorce, my grandparents. All of it.”

Ben nods heavily. “One bomb after another took us all out.” He wets his lips. For a moment, I think he means to kiss me—but he stays in the driver’s seat. “I know you’ve got demons, I know that. But I’m not one of them.”

My hand feels too weak to keep holding his, but I refuse to drop his first. Through a throbbing, swimming headache, I say, “I’m sorry. I hate myself.”

“I don’t want that.” Looking sick, Ben pulls my hand to his lips. It’s so loving and so nice, it burns my heart. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve any of the memories we’ve made this summer. It’s been up and down, but now that I know the truth, all I can think of is how much more fun we could’ve had if I hadn’t been so busy hating him for a lie.

“So, what do you want?” I ask.

Ben bites his lip, as if what he’s about to say requires inhuman courage. “I feel the same way you feel about me, always have.”

It’s what I’ve dreamed of hearing my whole life, but now that I’ve heard it, everything feels broken.

Ben calms himself with steady breaths and then looks at me squarely. “You’ve got Ben Rules, but I have some Grant Rules, okay? Grant Rule number one: You can’t think I’m your enemy. You can’t make bad assumptions about me. You tried to snake my date away from me instead of just owning up to what you felt and fucking asking me for what you wanted. That was a bad move. The only reason I’m not angrier with you is that you’ve kicked your own ass enough this week.”

Gathering a brave breath, I nod. “What’s Grant Rule number two?”

He smirks. “How ’bout you try mastering rule number one for a while first?”

My mouth opens, but no sound comes out. He’s right. All I can do is nod.

A few minutes later, we arrive back at Vero Roseto, but Ben idles the car outside the arched entrance with the carved rose vines. It’s his day off, and both of us need to process the last hour for a bit before we jump right back into fixing the rose garden. He leaves the car idling and walks me under the arch. The air is sweet with honeysuckle. The frog song in the river behind Valle Forest has never been more symphonic.

The lowering sun catches Ben’s auburn hair, and it’s more than fiery, it’s like the sunset itself.

“Thank you for not running out when you saw Hutch,” he says. “Thank you for hearing me out and believing me.”

“I’m sorry it took me so long,” I say.

He smiles sadly. “I knew you’d need him there to really believe the story.”

“No—” I reach for his hand, but he slides gently away.

“It’s okay, I don’t blame you. We’re rebuilding trust. It won’t be overnight.”

My hands drop to my sides. There’s no use denying it. It did help a lot to hear Hutch’s confession. Would I have believed Ben if it were just him telling the story? Probably, I’m not a monster, but the little voice in my head would’ve found it convenient that Hutch has been the villain all along, and poor, sweet bestie Ben was cruelly led astray.

We lost five years because of this lie. It’s almost too awful to comprehend.

“Today was a great first step, for you, me, and Lexi,” he says, taking my hand. “Because I needed all this truth out in the open before…”

I swallow hard. My hand goes limp in his. “Before what?”

Without warning, Ben McKittrick brings himself close, grips a handful of my curls, and does what I should have done five years ago in that wine cellar. He kisses me.

His kiss fizzes inside my head like freshly poured ginger ale. The taste is sweet, with a hint of the caramel bullshit he drank in the café.

Then it’s over. A quick kiss, not the prelude to a make-out session.

“That was a sample,” he says, winking. “Your aunt is losing it over this Rose Festival. We gave you your space because you had a rough one, but we’re four days behind, and we need you. Are you gonna help?”

I glide my tongue across my bottom lip, still tasting that bite of caramel.

“Depends,” I say.

“On what?” he asks.

“If I can kiss you again.”

Ben’s eyebrow arches as he returns to his car. “It’ll be more fun if I make you earn it.”

I hate him so much. But now, finally, for the right reasons.

As Ben drives away, I smile, realizing something else: He knew to drop me at the archway. He knows I like to run the gravelly path all the way up to the house. He knows me better than anyone. Supercharged with more strength than I’ve had in years, I take off toward Vero Roseto’s front porch like a jungle cat. I’ve never run faster.