by TJ Baer
We watched him go, and after he’d passed out of sight around a curve in the trail, AJ turned to me with a blank look of shock on his face.
“What. The hell. Was that?”
I grinned and started down the trail, following the footprints Dad’s shoes had left in the earth. “Oh, nothing much. Just the impossible.”
“Uh-huh,” AJ said, stumbling after me like he’d forgotten how to move his legs. “Did you get Dad drunk or something?”
“Nope.”
“Drugs?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Then what the hell happened?”
I opened my mouth to explain, then realized it was impossible. “You know, you’re probably going to have to ask Dad. But I guess the most important thing to know is that for right now, everything’s okay.”
AJ gave me a doubtful glance. “Really?”
“Really.”
And, much to the astonishment of my internal pessimist, it was.
Dad, after a lengthy conversation with Mom and dissecting of nursing home costs, decided that there was no reason why Grandma couldn’t stay in her house and be cared for by a private nurse. The nurse would keep an eye on her and help out with chores and things, and because Grandma was so happy to be back in her house again, she barely complained at all about the sudden addition to her household. The woman they hired—Vivian—was a nice older lady with a friendly sarcasm about her, and this seemed to suit Grandma perfectly. They were bickering good-naturedly within minutes, and before very long, Vivian fit into Grandma’s life like she’d never been anywhere else. And while Grandma never talked about what she’d seen that day in the woods, there was a new, peaceful sort of happiness about her, and every now and then we’d find her sitting in her chair with her eyes closed, just smiling.
But all of that happened later, after AJ and I trekked back to Grandma’s house and found Dad out on the porch with a pack of root beer sitting next to him on the swing. The bottles were a bit dusty, having apparently been rescued from the depths of the pantry, and as AJ and I approached, Dad picked up two bottles and held them out to us.
AJ and I exchanged glances but accepted the bottles, and within a few moments, the three of us were standing there on the porch, drinking lukewarm root beer and watching the sun go down over the hill. In the distance, we could hear Thomas, Daphne, and Grandma making their way through the woods, Daphne and Thomas laughing together, Grandma occasionally inserting a sharp comment here or there. The air was cold and smelled like damp leaves, but there was also the faint scent of motor oil drifting to us from the garage, where Grandpa Jess had run a small automotive repair business for years and years.
And for just a second, I felt like maybe there were four of us standing there on the porch, four men drinking root beer and enjoying each other’s company and just generally takin’ it easy.
*
“I’m really, really sorry about this,” I said into the phone, “and I swear I’ll be home as soon as I can.”
Through the receiver, I heard David laugh softly. “Really, you don’t have to apologize. Your family comes first. Don’t worry about me; I can keep myself entertained for a few hours on my own.” There was a slight pause, and his voice was suddenly a bit lower and with a wonderful lilt of promise to it. “Just don’t keep me waiting too long.”
A tingle of anticipation ran through me, and because I was, after all, standing in the middle of my grandmother’s kitchen with the majority of my family just one room away, I did my best to sound as far from aroused as possible when I said, “O-Okay, I’ll see you later tonight, then.”
I could practically hear his grin through the phone. “See you then. Say hi to Thomas for me.”
With real regret, I ended the call and returned my cell to its usual place of honor in my jeans pocket.
“Was that David?”
I turned to find Thomas in the process of opening the refrigerator door. I hadn’t bothered to turn on the kitchen light, so the room was bathed in a grainy gray darkness as the light faded outside. The flash of golden light from the refrigerator nearly blinded me as a result, leaving a fun variety of big purple spots swimming through my vision for a few seconds.
“Yeah,” I said, blinking and waiting for the spots to fade. “He says hi.”
Thomas, having apparently found nothing of interest in the frosty depths, pushed the refrigerator door closed and stood there for a few seconds in the cool gray darkness.
“Can I…” He paused, took a breath, started again. “Can I talk to you about something?”
I studied his face as best I could in the dim light, wondering again just when he’d grown up and how I’d managed to miss it when it happened. “Yeah, of course,” I said easily. “What is it?”
Thomas threw a quick glance toward the kitchen doorway, beyond which waited a short hallway and, beyond that, the living room where there was light and sound and voices.
“Got it,” I said. “Wanna go out on the porch?”
A short time later, we were sitting side by side on the porch swing, staring out into the darkening yard and watching the occasional bat flit by overhead. The stars hadn’t quite come out yet, and there was a feeling of the world in transition—not quite evening, not quite night. It was oddly peaceful.
“You know,” Thomas said after a while, “I get really scared sometimes.”
Something inside me froze at the words, because suddenly I knew what this conversation was going to be about. I felt a hot rush of panic start to rise inside me—panic and fear and a mad desire to mumble some excuse and run like hell back into the house—but I forced it down. No. No. I would sit here and wait and let Thomas talk. It was the least I could do for him, right? Right.
My teeth clenched with the effort, but somehow I managed to sit there, silent and still, and wait for him to continue. After a few seconds, he did.
“You’d think I’d be used to it by now, but I’m not. Sometimes I wake up at night and it’s like I can’t breathe because I’m so scared. My heart just starts pounding and I can’t stop thinking about…about what’s gonna happen to me someday. I mean, yeah, I’m okay now, and maybe I’ll be okay for a long time…” He let out a quiet, shaking breath. “But someday, it’s really gonna happen. Someday I’m really gonna die.”
I squeezed my eyes shut, but of course it didn’t help. I saw it all over again, the images I tried to keep out. Thomas sick, dying, lying sunken and small in a hospital bed with tubes snaking out of him, that horrible antiseptic smell everywhere as we stood around his bed and watched him slowly fading away. He would be weak. Afraid. In pain. And there’d be absolutely nothing we could do to help him. Nothing. We’d just have to stay there and watch him as he died. And then there’d be no more picking him up before school, no more teasing him about girls, no more bizarre conversations about whatever flitted through his weird, wonderful head. There’d be nothing, no more Thomas, just an empty room and an empty bed and a cold, hollow ache in my chest—a hole in my life that nothing could ever, ever fill again. It didn’t matter that HIV was no longer a death sentence, that there was an excellent chance that he would even outlive me—all that mattered was the reminder that my little brother might die someday. Would die someday.
I felt myself start to shiver, and I could hear my heartbeat pounding in my ears, frantic and pained as I thought again about how wrong, how horrible, how fucking unfair…
“But you know what?”
Something in his voice pulled me back, and I opened my eyes to find him looking over at me and smiling. His eyes seemed darker than usual on the shadowy porch, and there was something warm and peaceful in his expression. “You know what?” he said again. “It’s gonna be okay.”
It took me a few seconds to find my voice. “It is?”
Thomas nodded, and the crooked little grin I was used to pulled at his lips. “Do you know what I saw up there, Jessie?”
He didn’t need to say where. I shook my head, unable to speak.
“There was this girl in my school last year who died. She got hit by a car. She wasn’t sick, there was nothing wrong with her, but she died, just like that. And before it happened, she wasn’t worrying about dying—she was just living her life and being a normal person. So I started thinking, why can’t I do that?”
Thomas touched my hand. His fingers were warm and strong, wrapping around mine and holding on tight.
“You can do it, too,” he said, and I realized that I was crying, had been crying for a while now without even realizing it. “You don’t have to worry about me all the time, Jessie. I’m gonna be okay. I’m gonna be fine.” He smiled again, squeezed my hand. “Just like Grandpa Jess.”
Something broke inside me then, and I started crying in earnest—rough, painful sobs that choked their way through me while hot tears stung my eyes and streaked down my face. I felt Thomas’s arms go tight around me, and in a weird reversal of roles, I found myself leaning against him, drawing strength from my strange, skinny little brother while at the same time marveling at the fact that he was strong; he wasn’t some weak little boy who needed to be protected. He was strong and capable and ready to go into the world on his own.
Was this how Dad felt? I found myself wondering. Realizing that people he thought of as kids had grown up, could live their own lives and make their own decisions? Could be there for him when he needed it?
After a long moment, Thomas let out a shaky breath and laid his head on my shoulder. “I love you, Jessie. You know that, right?”
“Jeez, as if we weren’t being sappy enough already,” I choked out, half laughing and half crying. “And of course I know.” I hugged him tighter, sniffling pathetically. “You know, too, right? You know that I…”
“I know.”
“Okay, good. Don’t forget it.”
“I won’t.”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
We broke apart, finally, but didn’t get up just yet, the porch swing swaying gently underneath us, the sounds of voices and laughter just audible from inside.
“This has been a weird, weird day,” I said, trying to wipe impressive amount of dampness from my face with my sleeve.
“Yeah,” Thomas agreed, sounding wistful. “Things’ll probably go back to being all normal and boring soon.”
I laughed. “With you around, things’ll never be normal or boring. I wouldn’t worry.”
Thomas replied to this with a high-wattage grin, and soon was on his feet with a little jump of pent up energy finally released. “Come on,” he said, dragging me to my feet. “Let’s get back inside. It’s freezing out here.”
I followed him to the door, but couldn’t help stopping just short of entering and looking out into the yard. Night had finally fallen, the gray light fading to a peaceful, inky black, and the sky was dotted with the perfect little pinpoints of hundreds of stars. I felt strangely awake and alive as I stood there, like I’d spent the majority of my life half-asleep and now had finally, finally woken up. I knew that the feelings wouldn’t last—they never did—but for right now, I could look at the world as it was and know that everything was going to be okay.
People died. Things ended. Hell, even I would die someday. But the scariest thing about dying was the fear of being alone, and in dying, I wouldn’t be. Every single person in the entire history of the world had died or would, and I would just be following them. And Grandpa Jess.
It was hard to think of him—strong, kind, smiling Grandpa Jess—and feel afraid.
So I didn’t. I smiled, took one last look at the velvety blue-black of the night sky, and followed Thomas into the house.
Chapter Twelve
David was waiting for me when I got home, curled up on my ugly green armchair with a paperback in his hands and a pair of black wire-framed glasses perched on his nose. When he caught sight of me, he set the book on the arm of the chair and got to his feet, and the smile on his face was so warm and welcoming that I felt like all my muscles had turned to happy little puddles of jelly.
“Hey,” he said softly.
“Hey,” I said.
Neither of us moved for a second, me standing in the doorway, him in the middle of the living room, and then he took a few long steps forward and put his hands on either side of my face, his fingers sliding into my hair. The kiss, when it came, was slow and deep and wonderful. I shivered and wrapped my arms around him, pressing my face into the warm, soft fabric of his sweater and breathing in the scent of him—clean and smelling faintly of coffee and light aftershave—and anything that had ever bothered me melted away into nothing.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“Mm,” I replied, though it came out more like a contented sigh than anything resembling speech. “Everything’s great.”
I felt him nod, and after a few more seconds, his arms tightened around me, pressing our bodies together so snugly that I could feel him breathing, feel the thud of his heart against my chest.
“Come on,” David said, his words a warm breath of air against my neck. “We have some unfinished business.”
We walked into the lamp-lit glow of the bedroom together, hand in hand, but when I started to move toward the bed, he stopped me.
“No,” he murmured, “just stand here. I want to look at you.”
And he did. He looked at me. First at my face, gazing into my eyes and tracing his fingers over my cheek, across my lips, down my chin. Then, slowly, he reached for the zipper of my sweatshirt and pulled it carefully down. I shivered as cold air stung my bare chest, but then suddenly David was there, kissing my neck, my collarbone, working his way down the middle of my chest, past my too-visible ribs and on to my untoned, too-white stomach. And for all that I was pale and imperfect and male, David kept kissing me and brushing his hands over my skin like he actually wanted to do it.
Because, I realized, he did.
I remembered, abruptly, our first night together, how I’d needed to stop things, and at that moment, I knew why.
All this time, something in the back of my mind had been sure that once he saw me like this—once he saw, without a doubt, that there was a guy here underneath the less-than-manly exterior—he wouldn’t want to be with me like this. Kissing and snuggling and getting the occasional hand-job was fine, but we were moving into the realms of unmistakably gay encounters here, and no matter how much I knew that David cared about me, I just hadn’t been able to picture him taking it this far, or wanting to.
But he did, didn’t he?
I couldn’t help smiling, and catching sight of the look on my face, David grinned too and set back to work with even greater attention—kissing my stomach, my chest, smoothing his hands over my bare back and licking long, searing lines over my skin. And then, finally, when I was breathing in helpless gasps and wondering how much longer I’d be able to stand it—or to keep standing, for that matter—he put his arms around my waist and lifted me, and suddenly I was lying on my back on the bed and he was pulling my jeans and boxer shorts down, past my waist, past my thighs, and off in a rush of cold air.
I heard my pants land on the floor with a soft, fabricky thud, and then David was lying on top of me, his lips pressing into mine and his hands sliding along my sides in warm, slow caresses.
“You know, you don’t have to do this,” I said quickly, feeling like I had to give him one last out, one last chance to run for it before crossing lines he could never uncross. It was getting increasingly difficult to concentrate, and I wanted very much to just shut up and let him kiss me some more, but instead I struggled onward. “If it feels wrong to you, then you sho
uldn’t…you don’t have to… I mean, I’ll understand if you can’t…”
He looked at me like I was crazy. “Jess, don’t you get it? It doesn’t matter to me if you’re a man or a woman or a…a squirrel…”
I choked out a laugh. “A squirrel?”
“The point is, man or woman or whatever, I want to be with you. Like this. Touching you, making you feel good. It has nothing to do with being gay or straight or whatever I am. You’re you, and that’s enough for me.”
And before I could find any words to answer, he was kissing my neck again, and then my chest, and then my stomach, his breath tickling against my skin, lower and lower… And then there was a warm, liquid heat between my legs and just like that, he took me into his mouth.
There were no words, no sounds but the harsh in and out of my own breathing and the increasingly desperate syllables that tried to break from my throat. It didn’t matter that he’d never done it before; the fact that he was doing it—that it was David there sliding his lips over me and circling and stroking with his tongue—made everything a hundred times more achingly, searingly bright. I reached shakily back to grab the headboard of the bed, while my other hand found its way into David’s hair, tangling jerkily in the silky brown strands, and through it all I still couldn’t believe that it was really him doing this to me, really David. David…
And then all too soon, it was ending—warm, bright, shaking, streaming—and for a small, perfect eternity I trembled in a rush of hot sensation with the warmth of David’s mouth still pressed around me, drawing everything out, all of me…
When it was over, I collapsed back on the bed and spent a few seconds just breathing, the air coming in in ragged gasps, my skin coated with sweat, my entire body shaking with an amazed, exhausted feeling of wonder—and what I was slowly beginning to realize was honest-to-goodness happiness.
I lay there and stared up at the ceiling and wondered how the pieces of my life had managed to fall so perfectly into place, and after a while, David dropped down beside me and wrapped his arms around me. We lay there for a long time with our arms and legs wrapped together in a cozy tangle, quiet and warm and not speaking.