Center of Gravity

by Neve Wilder

  “Thank you for coming.” It was awkwardly formal and somehow indecisive all at once.

  “I told you to stop—”

  Before I could finish, he was against me, his fingers so tight around my shoulders they dug into the tender bits of muscle between the blades. It was a desperate sort of clench, the kind you used to keep yourself from falling, the kind I’d wanted to give somebody—anybody—when my own father died. I wrapped my arms around him, tucking his head into my shoulder, the ends of his hair tickling my jaw and chin. He smelled like shampoo and lost sleep, and I would have held him for hours if he’d wanted. His body shook with one great breath before he exhaled shakily against my neck and drew back.

  “Will you sit with me for a while?” His eyes were glossed with exhaustion and rimmed with pink.

  “For as long as you want.” My hands were slow to drop from his shoulders and release him.

  I greeted his father with a gentle kiss to his forehead, announcing myself before finding a chair to drag over next to Alex’s. We sat in silence, the nurse occasionally coming in to push some pain medication through the IV or check a reading. Alex’s mom delivered coffee and then sat with us.

  We talked into the night. They told me stories about Alex’s father, stories about their family that made them laugh and tear up. And at last, during a lull, I went out into the living room to lie down on the couch and rest, and to give them some privacy.

  Alex fit himself next to me sometime later and we dozed, my arm around his shoulders. Just before dawn broke, his mom came into the room and gently shook him awake.

  “Is it time?” He bolted upright, rubbing the heel of his hand to one eye.

  “I think it’s very close, honey. Would you rather just stay out here?”

  “No.” He pushed off the couch, insistent. “I want to be with him.”

  He glanced over at me, his eyes startlingly wide, and I reached out to land a light, reassuring touch against his hip. “I’ll be here.”

  It was too odd to just sit on the couch and wait while his father passed, so I went into the kitchen and searched for things to do. I put up what dishes were in the dishwasher and made a fresh pot of coffee, then wandered outside into the first fingers of dawn to look at the work in Alex’s garage.

  The door creaked on its hinges and the interior was cold, but when I flicked on the light switch, I forgot the temperature. I was floored.

  In the months since I’d seen him, he must have been working furiously. The garage was a chaos of bits and baubles. There were no actual sculptures or pieces in the garage, but tacked up along the back wall were large three by four foot photographs of them strung like a gallery exhibit, with Alex’s scribbles along the bottom. I walked down the line examining each, a paradoxically chaotic order and energy to each piece that came through even in two dimensions.

  On his worktable, a folder lay open with his thesis statement and a list of the pieces with an accompanying blurb. I flipped through each description, visually matching them to the proper piece. There was a large sparrow composed of CDs and raw metal welded into swooping wings, glue made of ash, studded with glittering dark brown glass. Sparrow was in honor of a lady whose son had overdosed. There were happier ones too, a dancing figure composed of bits of children’s toys melted and fashioned together in a kaleidoscope of color and shape.

  On the last page was a double helix of shining sheet metal that spun out into chaos at the top—bits of silver jewelry, a metal cast of a man’s hands, an etched profile that I recognized as my own, some of the civil war figurines I’d given him that his dad must have painted. A pair of women’s sunglasses, knots of a white linen shirt with buttons. It seemed almost intrusive to look at the blurb copy, which he must have still been working on, judging by the strike-throughs and messy notes.

  Alex Andrews: Still Points. The necklace my mother let me wear for weeks when I was five. I located the necklace in the photograph, a chunk of white that unspooled into beads over the length of the piece, climbing from base to tip.

  My father’s hands. The cast metal hands, appearing in different configurations over the length of the sculpture.

  White linen shirt, knotted. Alain. First clumsy attempt at love.

  Rob’s profile, a man who… and there the description ended mid-sentence, though noted in the margin was the portentous scrawl: Need to figure out how to wrap this up. What does he mean? I studied the piece again, then my profile, distracted by the preponderance of questions that little unfinished fragment brought up. A man who…what? A man who pissed me off, hurt me, wouldn’t listen? A man I fucked? A man who wouldn’t tell me what his favorite color was? All of the above? None?

  I closed the folder when I heard Alex come in and turned as he approached with a fading tell-tale redness to his eyes. His cheeks were blotched with color, his hair wild. When I searched his face, he nodded.

  “Don’t give me the whole ‘I’m sorry for your loss’ thing,” he said. “Not yet. Okay?”

  When he came closer, I opened my arms and pulled him against me. His fingers curled into my shirt and his tears seeped into the fabric at my shoulder. We stood just like that for a long while.

  “My senior thesis,” he said, finally drawing back to gaze at the photographs.

  “It’s unbelievable.” I couldn’t fathom the creativity it took to parse the intangible and give it physical representation. Alex was so much more than I’d allowed myself to think he was, and the pathos and intimacy that washed over me as I looked at the pieces he’d clearly put his soul into was breathtaking. I’d sold him short over and over.

  “You think so?” He wrinkled his nose as he examined my face. “It’s all junk. Literally.” The laughter that followed was humorless and self-deprecating.

  “No, it’s magnificent.” I pushed a chair in his direction and when he took it, I found one for myself and sat alongside him, sharing my cold last half cup of coffee with him while we stared at the photographs.

  “I didn’t know how to describe you. For the artist’s statement, I mean. I’ve written a million things and I keep starting over.”

  “A fool. That would work well enough.” I felt his gaze on the side of my face and turned to meet it. His lips twitched, never resolving into a full smile, but I could read the tacit agreement well enough.

  Another thing about death. It wasn’t so final for the ones left on the other side. There was a lot of waiting at the same time there was a lot of action. I left Alex long enough to let Winslow out, refresh his water, and assure him I hadn’t abandoned him, but quickly returned to Alex’s house. By late afternoon, Alex was wrecked. We’d remained at his house with the hospice nurse while Linda drove Lainey to her best friend’s house for the day. She’d been there when John passed, Linda having woken her as promised. She walked past me out the door, her eyes solemn and swollen, but lifted a hand to me as she went in a weary approximation of a wave. I gave her a tiny smile.

  “You need to sleep, Alex,” Linda said when she returned.

  Alex’s aunt was on the way, and John had already made the funeral arrangements, down to picking out his casket. He’d picked the cheapest option available, which had made Linda cry all over again when she told me.

  Alex shook his head. “I can’t.”

  She shot a strained look at me as if seeking support, so I laid a hand on his shoulder. “You do.”

  “I can’t. Not here.” His eyes darted over to me, then back to his mom. Then back to me again. “Could I…for a while? I can’t breathe in here.”

  We drove to my house in silence. It was a strange thing to think, my house. Summer had insisted that I not buy her out in any hurry, but that we split the profits of the rental and once I was more settled in my new job, I’d pay her out in installments unless I changed my mind.

  Winslow gave us his usual enthusiastic greeting and Alex dropped down to one knee out of habit, picking the dog up and burying his face in his fur. Then he reeled back abruptly, eyes widening. “What happene
d to his leg?”

  “He got hit by a car. The day of—the day Sean showed up, actually.” I winced at the memory and told Alex about it as I led him into the master bedroom and turned down the bed. He dropped onto the edge of it and when he leaned to untie his shoes, I brushed his hands away and knelt to do it for him, his eyes steady upon me, hardening as I finished the story.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” There was a weary harshness in his voice, as if his body wasn’t capable of the displeasure he wanted to muster.

  “Where in that conversation would I have fit that in?”

  Alex bit his lip and sighed, sinking back into the pillows. “I don’t know. But you should have told me.”

  “I should have told you,” I agreed, because it was the easiest thing to say. I should have told him a lot of things.

  I stood and pulled the covers around him, but he reached out and caught me by the wrist.

  “Stay.” His eyes implored me with a glossy gold gleam that I couldn’t deny. I kicked my shoes off and lay down beside him. Winslow trotted in to join us, wedging against Alex’s chest as he nestled his back against me.

  I fell asleep as soon as I closed my eyes. When I woke, I could tell by the rise and fall of his chest that Alex was awake, too. Winslow had abandoned us at some point. Twilight throttled the sun from the sky and we lay in the saturated darkness that lightened as street lamps came on and filtered through the curtains. I lay on my side, gaze tracing Alex’s profile.

  “I helped him pick out the suit for his burial,” he said, head tipping to the side so he could see me. “It was so fucking depressing and he kept trying to make jokes about it and I kept having to laugh because I knew he didn’t want me to cry. Because then he’d cry. I was so stressed about it. Isn’t that stupid? I keep thinking about it, going through his shirts and shoes, and him cracking stupid jokes.”

  I gave him a small smile. “It’s not stupid. When I was a kid, the thing that scared me the most was that something would happen to my parents. Then I got older and the fears became about other things and I kind of forgot about my parents. Because they were my parents, you know? In the back of your mind you know they’re going to die someday. And at the same time, it also never seems like a real possibility until it’s right in front of your face. Somehow I felt like…that by the time they died I’d be prepared. I’d be a ‘real’ adult and as such would know exactly how to handle it.” I paused for a one-handed air quote. “As if there’s a proper way to handle your parents dying, some sort of secret manual we get at the right time. But there’s never a right time. That’s the paradox.”

  I traced my fingers lightly over the bedspread, thinking of my mother in her last days and remembering sunlight, the scent of coffee. The ginger tea I’d make for us. “My mom was similar to your dad in a way. She had everything planned. I think it comforted her. The week before she died, she had her funeral outfit hanging on the outside of her closet, necklace on the hanger, shoes neatly laid out at the bottom and everything. She was afraid of dying for so long, and then she just wasn’t anymore. I don’t know what changed. She never said. But I distinctly remember sitting with her one day, and she looked over at that outfit and smiled. Maybe it was something about having crossed off everything on her list that she could cross off. Some kind of small victory over death. I don’t know. But she was at peace, and I guess that’s what mattered most. That peace.” I drew a long breath.

  “The truth is, part of me was relieved when my mom died. It sounds terrible, but she’d been hurting for a long time. And I was grateful that she finally seemed okay with things. And I was relieved, too, that my dad just dropped dead. It wasn’t drawn out and he didn’t suffer the same way my mom did.” None of the feelings made sense and yet they all did. That’s what I’d learned about death; it defied logic the same way love did.

  “Did you feel alone?” Alex’s fingers swept along the side of my thigh.

  “Very.”

  “Even with people around?”

  “Sometimes especially with people around.” I closed my hand over the top of his and brought it to my chest.

  “I want that peace,” he whispered.

  “It’ll come. I promise. Maybe not quickly and maybe not the way you think, but that feeling of being stuck in quicksand…you’ll stop sinking sometime.”

  “Thank you,” he said, rolling onto his side to face me.

  And instead of telling him to stop thanking me, I said, “You’re welcome.”

  He lifted his hand, drifting his fingers along my jaw and the underside of my lip, down the length of my neck where my Adam’s apple bobbed when I swallowed beneath the feather-light touch. My skin warmed where he spread his hand over my chest, and when he leaned in, my heart skipped a beat, every ounce of my being drawn to his.

  “Tell me to stop,” he said, lips a hair’s breadth from mine. I had a thousand reasons to say it and not one of them mattered. He needed me.

  “I can’t.” It was almost an apology, a minute shake of my head as his lips brushed over mine. My lips parted beneath the pressure of his and opened to his tongue, the taste of him so familiar, so long absent, so damn missed, that I let out a helpless groan.

  We undressed each other unhurriedly, each bit of fabric serenaded over the side of the bed with a flurry of kisses and tender touches, our hands remapping each other as if eager to rediscover what we’d forgotten since we’d been apart.

  Alex pushed me onto my back and I pulled him to me, his chest to mine, his hips rocking against me. Every brush of his lips to my throat, shoulders, and chest bloomed with delicious, mellow warmth. I arched into his touch, buried my hand in his hair, traced his jaw with my thumb until he turned to the side and sucked it into his mouth with a languid flick of his tongue that had me exhaling another plaintive moan.

  When he pushed up onto his elbows, I reached between us, took us both in my hand and stroked until we were both dripping and our breaths came in long, slow-dragging drafts.

  This was different, so different than our previous sexual encounters. There was no restlessness in our movements, no fiendish itch to take and be taken. Instead, it was some strange cocktail of desire and intimacy that I didn’t think I’d ever had with another man.

  Alex pushed into my hand and I found his mouth again, licking the plump shape of it, at that silver ring until he pulled back and gasped, “Rob.” It almost sounded like a question, and if it was, there was only one answer for me, only one thing I craved.

  “Yes,” I answered and, just so there was no doubt, added a whispered, “Please.”

  He kissed me again and nudged my legs wider. I made room for him, for the slide of his hands between us, and started to turn over when he stopped me with a hand to my shoulder and a quick shake of his head. “I want to see you.”

  It’d been so long since I’d felt the sting of another man inside me—the slow, pulsing burn as my body made room for him, and the way it spread from the base of my spine upward. Alex went in gentle increments, stopping to spit on his hand. I had no lube, because of course I hadn’t been planning on anything happening, but my body was relaxed, and when he was hilted inside me, his forehead dropped to mine, lips moving against mine as he whispered a reverent curse. He moved inside me in deep, languid thrusts that sent teetering waves of pleasure crashing through me.

  I slid my hand down his chest, brushing lightly at his nipples, stringing along the line of his ribs and traveling to the dip at the small of his back where I fanned my fingers wide over the cheek of his ass. I curled my nails into the firm flesh to urge him deeper inside me, angling until he hit that spot that made the world go white, until we were one connected, living machine. He gasped, and I tightened my legs around him.

  I kissed him again, tasting him, sucking at his lips while his hips found a smooth, steady rhythm. We rocked together, our bodies a metronome of desire, ticking pleasure back and forth between us with each thrust. Kisses deconstructed, losing shape under mounting pleasure and becoming wet
impressions of lips and tongues and the humid exchange of breath as we sipped at each other. I swallowed his ragged gasps and moans and gave him mine in return. We spoke, I think, but I couldn’t remember the words. They didn’t matter anyway, and when he reached a hand down to fist my cock, it took only one pump before I was spilling salty heat over his fingers.

  He kept me in his grasp, his other hand braced around the base of my neck where the stampede of my pulse hammered against the webbing between his finger and thumb. His breath streaked in hot, harsh pants across my jaw. “God, I can feel you. I can feel everything,” he moaned and then, with a hard thrust of his hips, he shattered inside me.

  28

  Alex

  My mom couldn’t hold it together at the burial, and I’d slipped into a numb daze, my body moving mechanically through actions, shaking hands of friends and strangers until my arm started to feel like just bone and skin on a hinge. By the twentieth tearful condolence I felt as if my mouth was going to slide off my face from trying to hold it in some version of welcoming sorrow like I’d seen in the movies and on TV. I had to do something, otherwise I’d just be standing there slack-jawed and flat, as waxen as my dad’s body in the coffin. It struck me as a weird compulsion, to feel like I should put on a certain face for other mourners even when it was my own dad I was grieving. I wondered if Rob had felt like that.

  I searched for him through the gathering as Mom broke out in a fresh wave of sobs. Her hand clenched around my elbow, each dig of her nails threatening to peel back my carefully constructed calm. I held Lainey’s hand in my other and it trembled as Mom quavered. I reached out and pulled Lainey into my side and she turned, burying her face against my ribs as she cried.