by Gregory Ashe
“Em—”
He shushed me. “Maybe not. You can figure it out later. But for now, anyway, you’re going to walk in there and tell him how you feel. And then you take it from there. Day by day.”
“Em, it could be with you. My life could be with you, and we could get on the bike right now, and I promise I’ll find a doctor, I promise, and—and I’ll get better. Just like you said. Only you’ve got to let me get on the bike with you. And we’ve got to go tonight, now.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
He released me and stepped back, and when I put out a hand to touch him, my fingers glanced across an invisible wall. The night had darkened. His lips peeled back; he probably meant it to be a smile, but it just looked like a dissection with the skin folded over. “You know why, tweaker. You were never what I really wanted. Fun to fuck around with, good for a lay. But I’ve got big things ahead. I’ve got a life, and what am I supposed to do? Take you home, introduce you to my parents—” His voice wobbled, and the struggle of controlling it showed on his face. “Tell them your mom likes to burn you and your dad smokes crystal meth and you’re a delinquent but you’re also the crazy kind of fuck that makes me keep coming back? Nah. No thanks.”
The words should have hurt. They should have lanced right through me. But his eyes were wrong, and his voice was wrong, and his smile was wrong, and his hands were shaking until he noticed and clamped them around his thighs.
“You don’t mean that. You don’t mean any of it. You just told me you loved me, and I love you, and I’ll do whatever you want. I’ll see a shrink. I’ll take meds. I’ll—”
“Tweaker.” He broke the syllables hard and stretched them out. “You don’t get it: I always get what I want. And I don’t want you.”
“You’re still lying. You’re still fucking lying. You don’t even know why you’re doing this, you don’t even know why, so you’re just saying shit to hurt me.” Something crazy flashed through my mind. Something totally batshit insane, but my mouth was moving before I could stop myself. “Em, if you think you don’t deserve me, or if you think you don’t deserve anybody, or if it’s anything stupid like that, you’ve got to get your head out of your ass and start thinking clearly. I love you—”
Pain crystallized in his face and then shattered and then everything was smooth and wiped clear. He was crying, just a little.
“I don’t deserve you? After all the times I’ve had to put up with you, all the times I’ve had to drag your ass out of trouble, all the nights I got jabbed by your raggedy toenails? Fuck that. I’m leaving because this, between us, this is a match and gasoline. It’s not good, Vie. I mean, it’s great. But it’s not good. Not for either of us.”
“It is good. You know it’s good. You know how it feels, how this feels between us. I know you do.”
“Yeah. I know how it feels. And that’s why I’m going now.”
I had one last weapon. One last chance. “What did you ask my mom for?”
Emmett froze. It took him a moment too long to answer. “I told you: I didn’t want to sit on the sidelines anymore. I wanted to be able to take care of myself.”
“That’s a lie. You’re lying to me again. What did you ask her for?”
“Goodbye, tweaker.”
“You asked her for a way to keep me safe.”
The only noise between us was the wind in a great emptiness.
Then he nodded.
“This isn’t keeping me safe, Em. You can’t keep me safe if you walk away. You can’t protect me if you leave.”
“Don’t you get it? Don’t you fucking understand? This is it. This is me protecting you. Protecting both of us, tweaker. This is the only way to keep you safe. And I’m going to do it even if it kills me.”
For a moment, as he walked backward, the only thing left of him was his face, half marked with whorls of scars, the other half the perfect beauty that had hit me like a telephone pole when I saw him the first time.
“Em, don’t go. Please don’t go. I need you.”
He looked like he might say something else, and his eyes weren’t dark anymore. They weren’t that fallaway blackness that left my stomach in the air. They were bright and liquid like the moon on the Bighorn River. All of the sudden I thought of the first night I had been in his bedroom, when he had played the guitar for me and I had watched the wind ruffle the rangegrass, and I could almost hear it again, the song he had played, and it sounded like every heartbreak in the universe played in the same chord.
Then the moment passed, and Emmett shook his head, and he trotted to the Ducati, and the engine roared to life, and when Emmett sped past me, the visor was down, and he was nothing but black leather and muscle crouched on the bike. And then he was red stars winking in the tunnel of my vision. And then he was gone.
THE SKY WAS A cupped hand of oil and sand. The April breeze picked up. Long stalks of rangegrass licked the insides of my legs as I climbed the berm, away from the road, my back to the road, my back to that puncture hole at the end of my vision where two red lights had extinguished. The grass had dried during the bright, sunny day, and the blades hissed between my fingers. I gathered handfuls of it at my waist. The granules of seed in the compact heads crumbled inside my palm, and I counted the upper windows on the Western Bighorn building until I thought I had found the right one. Then I folded my legs and sat, the seed pods bumping against my neck, the only sound the rush of tires on the road behind me.
Nightmares.
The window—if I had counted correctly, I reminded myself—didn’t look any different from the others. The hue and warmth of the glow were the same. The shape of the window was the same. The moth-colored shadows from the parking lot lights were the same.
Behind that window, Austin Miller was in bed. Awake? Asleep?
Awake.
Behind that window, Austin Miller was in bed. Awake. His short, preppy-boy hair sticking up, those big arms visible beneath the sleeves of the hospital gown, the bandage on his chest as bright as winter light, his knees knobbing the blanket across his legs.
I ripped a stalk of grass and then took it by the end and shredded it into thinner strips, following the grain lengthwise. Yes, Austin was right there. I could see him. I could reach out and touch him. The window was the same as every other damn window, but for a moment, it was like there was something else shining through. A warmth. A glimmer. Like turning black soil and finding gold flecked throughout.
The grass stained my fingers; the pungent greenness of it hung on my next breath. Austin was inside that room with the gold-flecked glow. He was there. I knew it like I knew I was breathing chlorophyll and dust and spores from crushed seed pods. Austin was in there, and what was he doing? It was like I had x-ray vision. It was like I could see through steel and plaster: Kaden stretched out in one of those shitty tubular chairs, his fingers threaded through Austin’s, that million-watt smile so close to Austin’s face that it was probably going to give him a damn sunburn. They were talking. They were flirting. They were kissing. They were fucking.
Everything was getting going again at the back of my head. That black wheel was spinning again. My heart was thumping again. My thoughts galloped again. Was that what I wanted to walk in on? Was that how I wanted this to go? I jiggle the chrome handle on the door, the latch doesn’t catch—just an accident, they didn’t shut it all the way—and I get to see Kaden’s bony ass bob up and down while he rides Austin. Was that the last memory I’d have of my boyfriend—of my ex-boyfriend, a chilly little voice reminded me?
I let the tattered strips of grass fall, and they lay like pick-up sticks across my legs. I scrubbed my green-stained fingers on my jeans. I planted my hands on the cold, wet ground, and I found a hard wad of old chewing gum and four cigarette butts and an empty can of hornet spray. Then I pushed myself up. I’d walk back to Vehpese. I’d crawl back if I had to.
But I couldn’t stop staring at that window. The exact same c
olor, the exact same light, the exact same shape as every other window on the whole fucking building. And why was I so sure that it was even his window? Why did I think that counting floors and rooms would put me at the right spot? What kind of messed up, idiotic thinking was that? What kind of—
It was still there, though: the flecks of gold, the summer warmth, the smell of leather and hard work and cedar and tobacco flakes dusting my fingers. There was still that feeling that I could see through stucco and steel and plaster.
And then I was touching his mind, not even meaning to, just brushing it, and I saw a rerun of Magnum, P.I. on the hospital TV and the crackle of a thought—that Tom Selleck had been hot, and the mustache was a big part of it—and then unfiltered shock as he recognized me.
Vie?
I slammed the connection shut.
I walked to the highway.
I held out my thumb.
Headlights fogged together in the distance, separating as they came toward me, slowed, stopped.
The station wagon was still red. The chrome letters, even with some missing, still spelled Lakewood. She was wearing the exact same suit as the day before only this one was in a shade of turquoise that probably hadn’t been manufactured since the 1950s, but she clutched the exact same purse in her lap as she stared out at me.
The engine rumbled softly. The exhaust was poison sweet.
“Do you want to get in?”
“I don’t know.”
“I won’t make you go to church.”
“I know.”
“If you’re coming out here every day to visit someone, maybe I should just plan on picking you up.” Her wrinkled face puckered into a smile. “I think God might be getting tired of scheduling these meetings.”
I didn’t think God had anything to do with it. Luck. Chance. The coincidences of a state that was mostly empty, and the added coincidences of being in a pocket of the state that was emptier than the rest.
A second set of headlights in the distance turned the dark to gray.
“We’d better get going.”
“Thanks.”
She coiled the strap of her purse around her wrist. She glanced at the oncoming headlights in the rearview mirror. She looked back at me. “We’d really better get going.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know.” And then I turned and walked back toward the hospital. Over my shoulder, I called, “Thanks, though.”
Headlights washed between my legs, turning the asphalt white, and then they were gone.
I was right about the door to Austin’s room: it was closed. I wrapped fingers around the handle, burying the chrome under my sweaty grip, and then breathed in the lemon-crisp air and stale coffee and when a nurse with huge curls of brown hair pinned up passed me, a whiff of bleach off her scrubs.
We’d really better get going.
I turned the handle. And I knocked.
“Come in.”
No bony ass. No Kaden at all, in fact. Austin’s face was white, his hair lank and dull, one hand curled into a fist over his chest, while the other hand clutched something at his side. He was working his thumb on it. A ballpoint pen, maybe. A nervous tic.
“Oh. Hey.”
“Hey.”
He swiped at his face, and his hand went right back into a fist at his chest. “I’m not really feeling good.”
“Ok. I’ll just—”
“No. I mean. I’d like you to stay. But I just—I might not be very good company.”
We watched each other. His thumb was still clicking.
“Will you sit down or something? You’re giving me a crick in the neck.”
So I sat.
Tom Selleck was still on TV. He was doing something with a filing cabinet. He had a hat pulled low on his forehead. His mustache did look pretty damn good.
“How are you feeling?” And then I blushed because it was such a dumb question.
Austin smiled, and the smile evaporated. “Not great.”
“It hurts?”
“They give me this thing.” He turned his hand, exposing a small plastic device with a button. “I press this, and it’s supposed to release more painkillers.”
“Supposed to?”
“I don’t know. It’s been ok most of the day, but the last few hours.” Sweat made his face glisten; it made the rings under his eyes uglier.
“Are you going to be ok?”
He smiled again, and it lasted a few more seconds this time before drying up. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you’d been stabbed in the fucking chest?” The words exploded out of me. “Jesus Christ, Austin. Jesus fucking Christ. You could have died. Did you think about that? We took our goddamn time driving over here. We were practically strolling. And you didn’t say one word. What the fuck was that about?”
“Yeah, well, I didn’t die, did I?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“The doctors said the knife barely punctured the lung. Barely. In fact, it didn’t even cut completely through at first, which was why I could—”
“What? Walk up a mountain, carry a child, and damn near get yourself killed by being stubborn?”
He shook his head. The purple under his eyes looked like the fucking rings of Saturn. “Why are you even here? I thought you’d be gone by now. Or is this your last stop? Did you just want to check in, make sure everybody was still breathing before you jumped on the back of Emmett’s bike and got out of town? Don’t look at me like that. You think you’re so mysterious, but you’re an open book, Vie. Kaden told me what you said when you came here. He told me you wanted him to tell me that it was better this way, better if you went somewhere else, better if I never talked to you again. That’s how you decided to send that message? By having Kaden tell me? Why didn’t you just put a knife in his hand and tell him to dig a little deeper while he was at it? You’re such a fucking coward sometimes. And now you’re here, and you’re yelling at me and—” He cut off with a sharp cry; the fist he held at the level of his chest flexed open and then spasmed shut, as though he were trying to chain something in place. The pain, I guessed. The pain that was running roughshod through him.
“You’re the one yelling,” I said, my voice harsh and low. “And you’re the one with a fucking hole in his lung, so you shouldn’t be yelling. You shouldn’t be getting excited. I never told Kaden to say that stuff to you, and I came here because I am still fucking in love with you. I was hoping maybe you were still in love with me. Now give me that fucking pain pump and let me see if I can get it to work.”
I pried his fingers off the plastic, studied it, jammed the button a few times, and glared at him.
The pasty color to his skin was worse. Sweat poured off him like a river. He stared straight ahead, like I wasn’t even there, and said, “They limit how much I can get out of it. So I can’t OD. It’s not broken, and you can’t fix it.”
“Aus—”
He shook his head; his fist spasmed again, and he grunted.
The next words I chose carefully. I was building a bridge. Or a ladder. Something rickety. Something that had a long fall under it. “You asked me what was wrong. With us. With me.” I had to take a long, slow breath; I was shaking so hard I was about to rattle to pieces. “It wasn’t us. It was me.”
“No. It was us. There was something fundamentally wrong with us.”
“Oh.” I ran both hands through my hair. I smoothed my jeans. My fingers left sweat prints on the chrome arms of the chair and I pushed myself to my feet.
“Did you listen to the rest of it?” He wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at Tom Selleck’s fucking mustache.
“What?”
He just gave a sharp shake of his chin.
“No,” I said. “I shouldn’t have listened to any of it. I know that. I knew that. And I’m sorry.”
“Do you still have it?”
My face was burning. “Yeah.”
“Well.”
It took me a minute to realize what he was saying. Then I dug through my backpack and found the cassette player. I rolled my thumb across the triangle on the play button. And then I pressed down.
“It’s just, sometimes I think it’d be so much easier if he weren’t here.” His voice sounded tinny over the cheap speaker, and Austin squeezed his eyes shut. The recording continued: “I know I’m dodging the question. You asked me about me. And the answer is, I’m . . . I’m having a hard time. Not just with coming out. And not just with . . . with the violence. With the bad things that have happened. I’m having a hard time figuring out who I am. It’s like, when I was dating Samantha, or, I mean, any girl, it made sense. I knew who I was. I was supposed to be tough, I was supposed to protect her, I was supposed to be the shoulder to cry on, I was supposed to fix the sink, I was supposed to play football and rope steer and—” A noise of frustration made the player rumble in my hand. “And with him, I know it’s different. I know it doesn’t have to be that way. But there’s this part of my brain that just keeps pushing me to take care of him, to be the guy, if that makes any sense. I know it’s stupid because he’s tough and he’s a guy and he could probably fix a sink better than I can. He’s so brave that sometimes I don’t think he even realizes anymore when he’s doing things nobody else would do. And that scares me.”
The therapist’s soft voice came on next. “Gender roles in a same-sex relationship can be difficult, but they’re also an opportunity to negotiate—”
“No.” On the recording, Austin blew out a wet breath. “That’s not what I’m trying to say. I just . . . I don’t know how to be me with him, not yet, so I’m just being this one part of me, and it’s . . . it’s claustrophobic. Like I’m back in the closet all over again.”
“There’s something I’d like you to try—” the therapist said.
“That’s enough,” Austin said. His eyes were still shut.