Talker

grateful at the end of the ride.
    “Man, thanks for putting up with my mental diarrhea. You’re,
    like, best listener ever. Next time, I’l bring you an extra set of buds, and we can hear Placebo in stereo, right?”
    Tate always kept his promises, and Placebo became one of
    Brian’s favorite bands.
    So Brian had known Talker for about a year and a half when
    he suddenly got a glimpse into who Tate Walker real y was. It was
    like a window into a whole other world.
    Brian had lingered after practice that day. It was becoming
    painfully obvious that his shoulder would definitely not last for even
    three years, and he wanted to baby it for as long as possible to
    keep his scholarship. He’d listened to the other kids talking about
    jobs and decided he’d be up to his elbows in a restaurant job soon
    enough when track was gone, so he might as well stay as healthy
    as possible for as long as he could.
    So there he was in his tighty-whities and a plain gray T-shirt,
    icing his shoulder, when he heard Talker bawling to Dropkick
    Murphys at the top of his lungs—and doing a passable job of it,
    since the band tended toward Irish rap and they sang fast! Tate
    Talker | Amy Lane
    9
    must have thought he was completely alone, because as he
    rounded the corner, toweling his long stripe of hair with one hand
    and holding a towel wrapped around his waist with another, he was
    still singing—but he stopped abruptly and fel on his ass when he
    saw Brian there, stinking of Ben-G ay and rotating his shoulder
    gingerly.
    Brian regarded Tate with quiet surprise, and then he saw the
    scars.
    Talker hadn’t gotten the sleeve tattoo done yet, and Brian had
    long since stopped trying to look at his face tattoo like a gawker at a
    zoo. He knew that Tate wore long-sleeved shirts year round, in
    spite of the hundred-plus degree heat in Sacramento in the
    summer, or the fact that summer often stretched until O ctober. He
    even knew that the coach let Tate wear long-sleeved track-shirts,
    when the rest of the world was in a tank top. After a year and half of
    acquaintanceship, now Brian knew why.
    The original tattoo ended at the edge of his neck, and the
    scar—a mottled combination of old burn scars and skin grafts,
    extended down the entire right side of his body. Suddenly the
    random, original tattoo pattern made sense: tattooing over scar
    tissue was difficult and painful. The artist had simply followed the
    tissue pattern for the best effect. And since colors would bleed, the
    stark black made sense too. The entire tattoo was camouflage,
    hiding Tate’s scars in plain sight.
    The reason Tate was always the last one off the track and
    never showered with the rest of the team was obvious as wel .
    The look in Tate’s brown eyes was… heartbreaking. He
    scowled at Brian as he picked himself up with dignity, and an
    echoing silence fel over the two of them as Tate dared Brian to say
    something.
    Talker | Amy Lane
    10

    Brian wanted to say a lot. He wanted to say, “O h, I get it now,”
    because so much about Tate’s personality made sense. He also
    wanted to say, “Look, I don’t care about the scars—I’m not going to
    make fun of them, you don’t have to worry about me. I’m a good
    guy.” He really wanted to say “Holy shit, what happened!” but even
    he knew that was not good form.
    What he did say was, “O uch,” and he said it mildly, without a
    lot of drama. Brian never did real y go for drama—he’d been quiet
    and self-contained, even as a child.
    It was apparently the right thing to say. Tate shrugged and
    flopped the stripe of long hair out of his eyes. Without the ponytail
    or the spikes or the eyeliner, he looked vulnerable and young. The
    curve of his lip was sensual and full—a thing Brian hadn’t noticed
    until this particular moment.
    “Yeah, it hurt,” he said, as though the hurt didn’t matter. “I was
    a kid when it happened, you know?”
    Brian nodded. “How little?”
    Tate walked to his locker and started rooting around for
    clothes—camouflage jeans, combat boots, and a long-sleeved T-
    shirt, even though it was late May. “I was six. My mom fell asleep
    with a cigarette and a bottle of whiskey. The blanket I was sleeping
    on was soaked in it.”
    O uch indeed.
    “Your mom?”
    “Didn’t live.”
    “My folks too. C ar crash.”
    Tate made one of those twitches, the ones that seemed to
    literal y yank him from one thought or time or place to the real,
    physical here and now.