The Way Back: A Way Home Novella Read online

  The Way Back

  A Way Home Novella

  May Archer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter One

  The house was lit up like a Christmas tree, shining like Sirius in the cold, dark night, and from every door and window came the teeth-rattling bass of some truly tragic early-2000s pop.

  "This was such a bad idea," Peter muttered to himself as he passed his childhood home and eased his Jetta into the one remaining space on the entire cul-de-sac. "Epically bad." He shoved the gearshift into park. "Really, criminally bad."

  If Drew were here, he'd wonder what demon had possessed his quiet, responsible executive assistant.

  If Peter's mother were here, she'd probably faint on the spot.

  But since Drew McMann was likely off doing Valentine's Day things with his boyfriend, Sebastian Seaver, and Peter's mother and father were down at their brand new residence just outside of Tampa, there wasn't a single sane individual around to bear witness as intelligent, responsible Peter Kelley did the stupidest, most foolish thing he'd done in years.

  Just a few friends, Jared had promised. Come on, Petey! One last party with the football squad for old times' sake. Mom and Dad are selling the house, bud! It's the end of an era, here.

  For any other twenty-eight-year-old, the era of high school football and throwing parties without parental supervision would have been long past, but not for Peter's big brother.

  Peter heaved himself out of the car, bleeped the locks because he wasn't taking any chances with this crowd, and marched back up the sidewalk like a man nearing the gallows. He barely recognized his old neighborhood tonight, and he was pretty sure Kingsman Court hadn't seen a ruckus like this since... well. Since the last party Jared had thrown, seven or eight years ago.

  Normally, Kingsman was the deadest of dead-end streets, located in the quietest neighborhood in Brookville. Peter remembered watching (avidly) out the window as Jared and his buddies played hardcore shirts-and-skins basketball right in the middle of the road, and the greatest safety risk had been for Peter himself since he'd nearly died of a heart attack every time Logan Oliviera's shorts had dipped too low.

  When the Kelleys had put the house on the market just after Thanksgiving, their realtor had nearly wet himself with delight. "Such a lovely street!" he'd cried. "Such well-kept homes! Such beautiful trees! Such. Incredible. Schools!"

  Peter wondered idly what he would make of the scene before him now.

  The Kelleys' stately Colonial was festooned with tiny purple and red Valentine's Day lights, which had clearly been hung by someone drunk and/or in a hurry, given how they were dipping and sagging crazily. The driveway was piled with cars that had been parked in the same inebriated, half-assed manner. The front door was thrown wide open to the freezing February night, and the snow-covered lawn seemed to be littered with the detritus of some odd Valentine's Day orgy Peter had been lucky enough to miss. Cardboard Cupids and soggy pink streamers were melting into the snowbanks next to a large, human-shaped depression in the snow. A single, white athletic sock lay stranded on the brick walkway.

  Charming. He could only imagine how a person could lose a single sock. In the night. In the snow. Every possible scenario included some kind of reckless behavior.

  "Behold the product of Brookville's incredible public schools," he sighed under his breath as he bent to retrieve it.

  "This is why you're here," he reminded himself firmly as he stared through the open door. "Because Jared is a man-child who can't be trusted, and his friends are even worse. Because you owe it to Mom and Dad to make sure the house is still standing when they come home for the closing on Friday."

  He grabbed the damp sock firmly in his fist, walked into the house, and closed the door behind him.

  Predictably, the scene inside was even worse. Like some 80s frat movie, but with 100% more Nickelback. People - actual chronological adults who presumably had jobs and maybe even children - were dancing on the furniture. One guy Peter didn't recognize was standing on the coffee table with his shirt pulled up, demonstrating how he could make his belly fat undulate in time to Rockstar.

  It was... strangely mesmerizing.

  While Peter stood there staring, a nearly-naked man appeared just inches in front of him, smiling toothily and positively reeking of alcohol.

  "Jesus Fucking Christ!" Peter said, stumbling back.

  "No! Haha! But close! I am Cupid, god of love," the glassy-eyed dude said, pressing a hand to his own heart. Then his eyes narrowed, and he thumped Peter's chest with his open palm so hard that Peter ended up plastered to the living room wall. "And you have just been whacked with Cupid's arrow!"

  "What the fuck?" Peter braced himself against the wall, eyes wide, as the electric zing of pain stole his breath.

  "Cupid's gonna messssss you uppppp!" the man cackled. He pulled Peter off the wall by his coat, then used his free hand to rub his knuckles into Peter's scalp.

  Nightmare.

  It was everything thin, scrawny, teenaged Peter had hated about high school all over again, and it paralyzed him for a second. But he wasn't that helpless nerd anymore.

  He took a giant step to the side and brought his other arm up and over, just as he'd learned in self-defense class. Peter drove his fist into Cupid's stomach, and the guy released him.

  Then, giggling like a fucking lunatic, the guy took off down the hall, wearing nothing but a pair of tighty-whities and one athletic sock.

  "Hey! Get back here!" Peter called angrily. "I have your..."

  But the guy was gone.

  And holy shit, his chest hurt. With the heel of his hand, he rubbed the spot just above his left pec - which was seriously going to bruise, because Peter was not built for roughness anywhere but the bedroom.

  Goddammit. He'd known this night would be shitty. He hadn't known he'd literally be attacked in his parents' living room. But sadly, this wasn't even the worst treatment he'd gotten from Jared's friends over the years.

  "Petey!" D'Andre Burke walked out of the kitchen carrying a red Solo cup, his grin as bright and infectious as when he'd been Brookville's All-State wide receiver. "You home on break? How's college going, bro?"

  "Wait, no! That's Li'l Petey?" Galen Pollett cried, rushing around D'Andre. His blue eyes were wide and couldn't seem to focus. "Dude, when'd you get so grown up?"

  Peter blinked. A thousand responses flitted through his head - that he was twenty-five and hadn't been in school for years, that his name was Peter, for the love of all that was holy in the universe, not Petey, never Petey, but... fuck it.

  "Gah!" He shook the fist still clutched around the athletic sock, pushed past them out of the living room, and ducked into the tiny bathroom under the stairs. He sank back against the closed door with a sigh and stuffed the sock in his coat pocket.

  God, his hair was a mess. He was a mess. That asshole of a Cupid had torn a button off his brand-new gray wool coat, and now he was going to have to go back out there and look for it.

  Or maybe he could just buy a new coat.

  And while he was at it, a new brother. One with decent friends.

  Hell, maybe a whole new identity. One that didn't cringe at the memories that surfaced every time he saw his brother's old friends.

  His boss seemed to have some pretty powerful connections in the FBI these days, so maybe Drew could get that rolling if Peter asked nicely...

  Peter snorted.

  Knowing Drew, he'd ask some pointed and pertinent questions that Peter had no desire to answer, like why Peter no longer had a boyfriend who'd be getting a new
identity along with him. And since Drew had finally gotten together with the love of his life, Sebastian Seaver, and their off-the-charts sexual tension had morphed into constant PDA that required Peter to invest in noise-cancelling headphones for the office, it would have been more than a little embarrassing to admit that just as Drew was finally getting his happily-ever-after, Peter's own year-long relationship with Arthur had circled the drain for the last time.

  Even worse, Drew would want to know exactly what memories Peter needed to escape. And the very idea of Drew - or anyone who knew him as competent, collected Peter Kelley - ever finding out what a love-sick schlub past-Peter had been was appalling. No one needed to know about the tween years he'd spent guzzling protein shakes and hoping he'd bulk up so he could play football like Jared; or all the times he'd kept quiet when Jared threw crazy parties, in exchange for being allowed to attend the parties himself; or all the years he'd lusted after Jared's football buddy from afar... and the one summer he'd actually believed that Logan Oliviera had maybe kinda sorta returned his feelings.

  He unbuttoned his coat and slid it from his shoulders. He looked better in just his sweater and jeans, anyway. More put-together. Older, maybe. The kind of person who could conceivably read Jared the riot act and clear the house out, then leave in time to get on to another party... instead of home to his empty apartment, his pint of dulce de leche gelato, and Supernatural reruns.

  He splashed water over his face and pushed some through his hair, finger-combing the nightmare Cupid had left him into something respectable.

  "You are not a kid anymore," he told the face in the mirror. "You don't moon around after guys who treat you like crap. You take shit from no one. These losers don't define you. The past doesn't define you."

  But he wasn't quite sure he believed it.

  Chapter Two

  The Lyft driver had taken a right off Spring Street onto Kingsman, and Logan had ended up in 2008. That was the only explanation he could muster for how he'd wound up back in the Kelleys' house, the scene of "legendary" teenage hijinks and so much teenage bullshit, at a party so ridiculously wild it was as though the intervening ten years hadn't happened at all.

  If this were a movie he was reviewing for HackCritic, he'd rate it somewhere below Hot Tub Time Machine - which at least had some originality going for it - and slightly above Old School, which was only funny when Will Ferrell was on-screen.

  Then again, he'd have to warn his readers that this movie was seriously politically incorrect, and highly, highly clichéd. Trigger warning for anyone who actually lived through 2008, as well as people who have no desire to remember the unmitigated assholes they were in high school.

  The way they'd used people.

  The way they'd betrayed people they maybe, actually, had loved.

  "Logan!" D'Andre said happily, walking into the kitchen where Logan had claimed himself a bar stool like Barney Gumble at Moe's Tavern in the Simpsons. He refused to leave this room, let alone mingle, after being physically assaulted by a guy dressed as Cupid an hour ago. "What is up, brother?"

  "Dee," Logan acknowledged, returning the man's enthusiastic embrace as though they hadn't had literally this same conversation the last time D'Andre had wandered in for a beer a few minutes ago.

  Oh, shit. Maybe he'd wandered into Groundhog Day.

  If Logan needed to make Andi McDowell fall for him in order to break the spell, he was seriously out of luck, though. He hadn't dated a girl since his freshman year of college.

  "Where have you been?" D demanded with the seriousness of the very drunk. "What have you been doing?"

  "Down in North Carolina," Logan told him, trying to make it sound like they hadn't had this conversation already, too. "Remember, my step-dad got a job coaching down near Charlotte, couple years after we graduated? And I went to UNC."

  "Oh, shit, yeah! Go Tarheels!" He held up his hand for a high-five.

  "Go Tarheels," Logan agreed, smacking D's palm.

  "And how's Coach George?"

  George McNamara, Logan's stepfather, had been the coach of the Brookville Lions for about ten years before leaving to take a job with an even more competitive high school team down in North Carolina. Real athletes, not pussies like you and your friends, as he'd informed Logan more than once.

  "Oh, you know. He's good. Same old."

  He took a deep drink of his beer. Good God, how long until he could go back to his hotel?

  "Good, good. You got yourself a wife yet?" D'Andre asked.

  Logan choked on his beer, but D didn't notice.

  "Me, I got married to Tiff, like, three years back. You 'member Tiff?"

  "Yeah, sure. Tiffany was good people."

  "She is," D'Andre agreed. "And we got two boys. Silas and Solomon." He made a face. "I didn't pick 'em out."

  Logan chuckled. "They're good names, though. Solid."

  "Yeah?" D seemed to consider this while swaying on his feet. "Okay, then. So, what about you? Got kids?"

  "Uh, nope. No kids. No wife." Logan took a deep breath. It had been a good long while since he'd had to really come out to anyone he'd known while he was still in the closet. He was openly gay back home in Raleigh, and he'd come out to his parents years ago. He hadn't really considered that he'd have to tell his old friends tonight, hadn't spared a thought for how they'd react.

  Honestly, he hadn't been thinking about them at all.

  But then again, there was a good chance he could tell D now, and the man would forget it entirely by tomorrow morning, if not by the time he needed his next beer.

  "Actually, I'm gay," Logan told him.

  D'Andre leaned against the counter and frowned, like this revelation required deep and complicated internal calculus to resolve. "So, you're saying... you bang dudes."

  "Mmmm... Yep." Or they banged him, more often than not. And there hadn't been banging of any kind going on for at least six months, since Alan had moved to Munich. He was pretty sure D'Andre could handle that level of TMI, though, no matter how alcohol-impaired he was.

  "Oooooh!" D's expression cleared. He slapped his palms together and grinned. "You know what? I'm gonna hook you up!"

  Okay, Logan definitely hadn't seen this reaction coming. "Oh! Wow. Uh, no. Totally not necessary. I'm only in town for two days and..."

  "Nah, nah, nah! You already know this dude! It's so totally perfect!" D'Andre crowed. "Where did the dude go off to?"

  He turned around in a circle, as though the person he was seeking might be hiding.

  Jesus, let it not be the stripped-down Cupid impersonator.

  "Seriously, D. That's nice, man, but I'm all set."

  D'Andre didn't hear him. Grabbing onto the counter, like all the turning had maybe made him a little dizzy, he yelled into the dining room. "Galen! G-man!"

  Galen Pollett's red head peered around the doorframe that separated the rooms. "Yo."

  "What happened to the little dude?" He put his hand up to his chest, as though miming someone who was maybe 5-foot-9.

  Amazingly, Galen seemed to know who he meant. He scowled. "I dunno. He got all pissy for no reason and ran off. He was holding a sock."

  The only one-socked dude Logan had encountered tonight was, indeed, the asshole pretending to be Cupid, who was lucky Logan had been too stunned to knock him upside the head as he so richly deserved after he'd punched Logan in the chest.

  "Definitely don't need an introduction, pal," Logan told D'Andre. "I'm good right here."

  D cocked his head to the side and smiled again. "Think you're lyin', Ollie." Logan smirked at the old nickname. "You look lonely to me."

  Logan shook his head. "Lonely and alone aren't the same thing, bud."

  "F'you say so." D shrugged. "But listen, if you see Li'l Petey, you tell him I said no disrespect, okay?"

  If he saw Petey? Logan sat up straighter. "Peter," he corrected. "His name's Peter, not Petey."

  "Yeah, I know, I know," D said waving his hand in the air. "Whatever. S'just a nickname, brothe
r. Sign of affection."

  But Logan knew better. To Peter, it had symbolized everything he'd tried so hard to be, but couldn't. Which, ironically, was what had made Logan fall for the guy in the first place.

  "Wait!" Logan held up a hand as he processed D's words. "You mean Peter is here? Here tonight?"

  D nodded.

  An odd something gripped Logan's chest - some love-child of anticipation and dread. The unlikely possibility of seeing Peter was what had made him say yes when he'd been invited to cover the retrospective at the Film Archive in Cambridge. It was what had caused him to cancel his plans to grab a drink with some other critics, when he'd happened to log onto Facebook and see that he'd been invited, along with the rest of the old team and maybe half of Brookville, as well, to the Kelleys' house.

  But now that it might actually happen, Logan's mouth went dry.

  How the hell did you apologize to someone for breaking someone's heart and walking away? He didn't have words for that.

  But then again, maybe the words didn't matter.

  After all, Logan didn't fool himself into thinking that Peter needed his apology. Even at eighteen, Peter had been the strongest, fiercest, most intelligent guy Logan had ever known, and considering Logan had already been twenty-one at the time, that was saying something. Apologizing was something Logan needed to do for his own benefit - to right a karmic wrong that had dogged him for years.

  It might help him sleep better at night. And it might make him stop looking for Peter's face in every guy he dated.

  "Where is he?" Logan asked, as D'Andre leaned heavily against the countertop and contemplated the beer in his cup.

  "Dunno, dude. Where's anyone?" D shook his head sadly at this profound, philosophical question. "Maybe ask Jare?"

  Logan fought for patience. Was there anything worse than being the sole sober person in a sea of drunk people? "And where's Jare?"

  D's face brightened. "Last I saw him, he was up in his parents' room, getting busy with Jackie and Tara."