The Falling Between Us

by Ash Parsons

  Livie never seems to have enough money.

  Even though after he got emancipated, he bought her a house and a car and an RV and a fancy high-rise condo at the beach. Even though he gives her a monthly allowance. Even though she could easily make her own way if she just tried.

  Joshua will listen, and he’ll give it to her, whatever she asks for. He’ll say, “Okay.” He might even smile, like he used to at first, when he was happy to give. When it didn’t feel like the only thing she ever wanted from him.

  But Joshua doesn’t say anything. The hand not holding the phone is gripped tight, fingers digging into the cushioned armrest like a claw.

  “Jesus. Stop, Mom,” Joshua says. “Just stop.”

  My heart jumps at the change to the script. The fact that that he’s reached a limit.

  “I’ll send you the money. Of course I will. Stop telling me why you need it. I don’t care why. You can just have it.”

  He’s silent again. And I don’t know what she could be saying now, because this is a new conversation, him telling her to stop.

  Joshua sits up suddenly, leaning forward in his chair. “I thought you said he was asleep.”

  Tyler.

  “Hell, yeah, put him on!”

  Livie—waking up Joshua’s kid brother, a deflection. A scramble to consolidate her position—perhaps feeling precarious that Joshua just told her off, quietly but definitively. Afraid she’s pushed him too far.

  “Tyler! How you doing, little brother?”

  I can hear a faded smile in Joshua’s voice.

  “You were asleep? Sorry—I really needed to talk to you.”

  Listening.

  I can picture Tyler—floppy blond hair falling into the same changeable hazel eyes as Joshua. But his eyes don’t brood, and he always wears an openhearted smile that comes from his and Joshua’s father, from when he was younger. You can see it in the only picture of him that Livie displays, the two of them at a high school dance, flowers on her wrist as they smile in front of a balloon arch. Ty’s already taller than me, tall like his brother, but I always think of him as a little pest, always tagging along.

  Joshua gets up and walks to the window again.

  He looks out into the darkness, listening to his brother over long distance. “Yeah, I wish you could come out here, too. It’s been a while since I seen you.”

  The slightest edge of Joshua’s accent creeps back into his voice when he talks to Ty. Only Ty. Something about talking to his little brother transports Joshua back to Marchant, to who he was before.

  Joshua listens, and the wistful smile returns.

  “Yeah, thanks. It’s going to be fine. You listen to me: don’t worry about it. Have fun being a kid. Have fun at that dance. Treat that girl proper.”

  Then he laughs at something Ty says.

  “Mostly proper, then.”

  Then he’s pinching his eyes, like he has a headache, or is trying not to cry.

  “I love you, too.” Joshua turns and looks at me. “Hey, Rox wants to talk to you.” He crosses to the bed. “Listen, I’m going to go. I got people waiting for me—but you have fun at the dance, okay?”

  Then without giving Tyler a chance to respond, he shoves the phone into my hand and walks out of the room, going to join the guys watching TV.

  Speed and Dan and Rick. None of them the person he really wants to see. Just the ones who are there.

  “Ty,” I say into the phone.

  “Hey, Rox.” Tyler’s voice is sleep-croaky. “Is everything okay? Joshua sounds weird.”

  “I don’t know.” It’s the truth. “He’s under a lot of pressure.”

  Also true.

  “Yeah, but that’s nothing new.”

  I sigh and lean back against the headboard. “It adds up.” Thinking about pressure, how it changes you. How it’s changed him. The way that pressure accumulates, stacking down on you. “It’s not always so fun being THE Joshua Blackbird . . . you know?”

  Pressure creates diamonds. I read that on a poster once.

  True enough. Pressure also warps steel.

  Pressure creates an earthquake.

  “Well, it’s cool you’re there for him,” Tyler says. “He’s lucky.”

  Is he? I think how empty Joshua looks. How tired we both are.

  “Hey, Roxy, are you . . . are you crying?” Tyler’s voice cracks, that pubescent squawk.

  God, he’s such a kid.

  “Ty, tell your mom, tell her she has to stop asking for money every damn time he calls. Okay? And tell her to call him for a change. Do it, Tyler.”

  “Okay, Roxy.”

  “And you should come out. Bring your date. Wouldn’t that be better than a dance? Just bring her to the show.”

  “I’d love to be there, but I’m not bringing a date to my brother’s concert. Not only is it gross, but if I even got to first base, I’d always wonder.”

  “Wonder what?”

  “If she really liked me. You know. Me.”

  I can’t help the laugh. “You already wonder that. It’s not like people don’t know who your brother is.”

  “Right.” He laughs too. “Well, I don’t want to be that guy.”

  You’re so not that guy, I think.

  “Good point,” I say. “Good to stay vigilant against that guy as much as you can. Given the circumstances.”

  Ty laughs. Then there’s an empty moment, a hiss of silence.

  “I guess I should go,” Ty says at last. “Take care of yourself.”

  “I will,” I answer. “You too.”

  We’ll all do our best to take care.

  7

  AERIALIST

  After I get off the phone, I go to the bedroom door and look out into the sitting room—see Dan and Rick, these guys I barely even know, lying collapsed, airless bags of skin and bone, watching the TV.

  Speed is sitting off to the side, watching Joshua more than the TV.

  Joshua sits outside on the balcony, visible through the mostly closed sliding glass door. He sits on the concrete, one long leg propped up, the other sprawled straight as he works on something before him.

  I walk silently over thick carpet to the balcony. Pull the door open and semiclosed again behind me.

  Joshua glances up for only a moment, then bends back down over his project.

  I sit next to him, feeling the cool of the concrete through the heavy fabric of my army fatigues.

  A small stack of papers sits on the balcony floor in front of Joshua. He’s rotating and folding a page, turning, pressing a line, folding, pressing another line, reversing the fold.

  Paper airplanes.

  “You need sleep, Shu,” I say.

  He darts a glance at me. “Not tired.” He picks up the paper plane, adjusts the wing flaps.

  “This is my third design. Remember making these? We’d watch those YouTube videos?”

  He pops up on his knees and hobbles over to the railing.

  It’s late. Nineteen floors below us, the pool is closed. The bar is closed, but the lights twinkle on, illuminated artificial warmth, a staged scene of all the luxuries that await.

  The lighted past, tracer trails of all the fun you had.

  Joshua takes aim and lets the airplane sail out into the night. It spins slowly, giant spiral loops as it falls and finally lands in the pool below.

  Another paper airplane is already taking on water in the pool, waterlogged wings unfurling, paper resigning itself to water.

  The third airplane lies on the pool deck, a perfect landing.

  I reach over and grab several pieces of paper. We sit in silence for a long time making airplanes, taking turns throwing them out into the cold night air.

  “Remember this one?” I say at last, holding up a paper cylinder with a double-folded front edge.
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  Joshua smiles, and it lifts something in me, like paper caught on a breeze.

  “Yes!” he says, and stands. He takes my hand and pulls me up.

  “It’s the best flier,” I say, holding it with my thumb and fingers spread into a wide cradle. “You wouldn’t think so, but it’s the best.”

  “Not an arrow. A cylinder,” Joshua agrees, nodding. He looks at me, his eyes sparkling. “Throw it!”

  I do, and the cylinder goes long, goes impossibly long, drifting in a smooth slide, nearly parallel to the ground below it. Then it hits the edge of the building, and a gust of wind sends it backward and down, circling.

  Down, down, down.

  It takes what feels like forever for the circle to land in the water.

  Joshua and I turn to each other, smiling like little kids. Joshua touches my hair. His fingers rub the end of a rough lock, and then his hand curls gently around the back of my head. His other hand lifts to my waist, and we’re kissing.

  It’s like flying and falling. Like breathing and holding a breath. My heart speeds up, quick drumming in my chest.

  His lips are a little chapped. Insistent, pressing against mine. Open in a question I know how to answer.

  Then he drops his head with his arms around me, and rests his forehead at the side of my neck, along the top of my collarbone, a familiar gesture. Like we are at the lake and he will next catch me to him, drip cold water onto my shoulders, lift me, and then drop me into the water, both of us laughing, pretending to fight.

  Like nothing has changed.

  His voice rises, muffled. “Remember the day we climbed on the gym roof and threw airplanes?”

  “Of course,” I say. I turn my head to press a light kiss into his hair.

  “I wish we could just go back.” His voice is soft with either shame or longing. I can’t tell without seeing his eyes.

  “Let’s go. I’ll buy the tickets. We can take a look at the houses you bought for everyone.”

  “That’s not going back. That’s not what . . . ” Joshua sighs, a deep defeat.

  “Tell me,” I urge, pressing my hands into the rigid muscles of his back.

  “I’m not good at all this,” Joshua says.

  It sounds like stage fright, uncharacteristic and new. Words rise to my lips before I can really process a response. The urge to reassure is that strong.

  “Says probably the most famous performer in the world,” I tease gently. “You can do it. You have before.”

  “What would you do, Rox?” Joshua asks. “If you could go anywhere. Do anything.”

  Confusion pulls my eyebrows together, even as I smile at him.

  “I’d stay with you. Duh.”

  Joshua closes his eyes like my answer hurts.

  “After that.” He shakes his head almost angrily. “You have to want something other than that. That’s not enough for you. That’s not all of who you are.”

  I shrug. “I don’t know. I don’t really think about it.”

  “Think about it now.”

  “Get my GED? Go to college, I guess?” I try to imagine it and fail.

  An image of Leitzel floats into my mind. Dangling from the top of the circus tent, spinning like an engine propeller.

  “I like history,” I say.

  Joshua takes a breath to say something.

  The sliding door hisses open. Artie stands there, glowering.

  Joshua and I instinctively break apart like a parent has walked in on us making out.

  “Would you like to explain to me,” Artie snaps, striding forward, “why the hell you are still awake at nearly dawn the day of what is arguably the most important performance of your career?”

  She’s wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt, canvas shoes still untied in her rush to get here. Her elbows jut as she props her fists on her hips.

  “How—” I start.

  “Imagine me, waking early to get a jump on this exceptionally busy and important day,” Artie interrupts. “Stepping out onto my balcony and seeing paper airplanes float down. Paper. Airplanes.”

  Joshua rests against the wall, blinking at us like he can’t make sense of her sudden appearance or her anger coloring the air.

  Then he starts to laugh softly. “Artie. Are you a Birdie?” He stands there, with his arms pulled against his stomach, weakly laughing.

  I glance back at Artie. For once she looks completely flummoxed.

  Then I notice her shirt. It’s official tour merchandise: a black T-shirt with the trademarked logo—outstretched gray-white bone wings, silver-lined, and Joshua’s name stenciled across, stitched into and out of and around like tattered feathers.

  “Your shirt,” I clue her in.

  Artie looks momentarily embarrassed. “I lost my Yale shirt last week. Merch table samples were in my room.”

  Joshua just stands there, laughing slightly.

  Artie gestures to me and Joshua, indicating that we should follow her through the living room, where Dan and Rick are asleep. Once inside the bedroom, Artie closes the door. Her cell is in her hand, and she’s rapid-fire texting already.

  Speed sits up from the bed, rubbing his eyes.

  “You can still get three or four hours,” Artie says to Joshua. “I’m going to get you a mild sleep aid.”

  Dr. Meadows. Of course. Three floors down.

  “I’m fine,” Joshua says.

  “You need to sleep.”

  Joshua slumps against the wall.

  “Sorry about that. I must’ve dozed off.” Speed stands and bends over the bed, brushing the coverlet straight.

  “It’s not a problem.” Joshua perches on the edge of the bed. “I like that you got comfortable.”

  We wait, me and Speed standing, Joshua sitting.

  After a moment, Speed flops into the armchair, frowning slightly at Joshua in concern. And I can see it in the drummer’s dark eyes, behind the tightly curling lashes, behind the worried assessment of Joshua’s wakefulness.

  Behind all that, the look that tells me everything I need to know, and why I know I can trust Speed even if I’m not sure about anyone else.

  Because Speed has never had a poker face when looking at Joshua. Never.

  And Joshua is so spun out, so depleted from every wringing thing, that he needs that pure, unrequited love. Joshua draws from it what he can, which makes the love a vampire sustenance, and it doesn’t matter if it’s fair to Speed. The intersection of Joshua’s need and Speed’s friendship and desire are tangled, connected like joint circulation across a shared limb.

  From the next room we can hear a blend of voices as Artie answers the suite door.

  A polite knock at the bedroom door. I open it, and Dr. Matt comes in, complete with a doctor’s bag, like he’s in a television show.

  “Hey,” he says, and he looks fresh, like he expected the call. Maybe he did. It isn’t the first.

  I don’t like him. Dr. Matthew Meadows, but he wants everyone to call him Dr. Matt, like we’re all buddies. He joined the tour permanently after Dallas. A small-eyed adult who hasn’t admitted how old he is and dresses that way.

  Dr. Meadows sits across from Joshua. He murmurs a few vague doctorly how are you feeling? questions and takes Joshua’s blood pressure.

  Then he cuts I’m being discreet eyes to Joshua, and clears his throat. “Ahem. Should we step into the bathroom for a private consultation?”

  Dr. Meadow’s specialty. The primary reason for his retainer. Medicine like magic in the bag, pick out the magic feather that will let you fly.

  Or come down to earth, cradled in forced sleep.

  Joshua sighs but stands, obediently following Dr. Meadows into the spacious bathroom.

  I walk to the bedroom windows and stare down at the pool bar.

  Paper airplanes sink into the tranquil water belo
w.

  Then it’s completely quiet. No murmurs, just silence and running water and more silence.

  The bathroom door opens, and Dr. Meadows comes out. He flashes a peace sign and a weak smile. “He should sleep now.”

  The word should hangs in my mind, vague like a picture drawn in sand. Should, as in he has no choice, really. The drug will knock him right out, I’m just saying “should” so that it sounds less drastic.

  We all pretend that it’s cool with us.

  That the grown-ups are drugging a kid.

  “Okeydokey.”

  Dr. Meadows knows when to leave, I’ll give him that.

  “I guess I’ll be going, too,” Speed says.

  “Don’t be stupid.” I smile weakly to cut the sting. “Let’s all just crash.”

  Speed nods and goes to the bed, starts taking extra pillows off and pulling down the covers. It’s a California king—there’s plenty of room. He sits on the side and jangles a leg, waiting.

  “Shu?” I call, my arms hugging tight across my stomach. After a moment he’s there, a hank of raven hair flopped across his eyes.

  “It’s time to sleep,” I say.

  Dimmed hazel-green eyes meet mine, a smile that twists like self-recrimination. “Nice work if you can get it.”

  Speed turns off the light on his side of the bed. He kicks off his shoes. “You just got hired, then.”

  Joshua laughs a little and shuffles across the room to the bed. He climbs on, moving like an old man with joints made of glass.

  Speed lies back, drapes an arm over his eyes. “Night.”

  I flick out the light in the bathroom and cross to my side of the bed. Joshua lies on his back in the middle, staring up at the ceiling.

  I climb in slow, trying not to disrupt the chemical peace.

  “What are you doing?” Joshua asks as I lie down. “Both of you. What are you doing here?”

  I realize it’s not the question of what we’re doing in the bed with him.

  He wants to know . . . what are you doing here—with me?

  “Whatever you need, man,” Speed says, but his voice is tired, the words a reflex. His fingers tap lightly against his own collarbones, his need to move, to vibrate, distilled to that one gesture.