What It Takes

by Jude Sierra

  °

  Andrew tries to let himself be carried on the wave of frantic need that carried them into this moment, so he won’t have to stop and think. But as soon as his skin is on Milo’s, with their shirts off and Milo sweat-damp and dream-spun under his hands, guilt crests faster than desire.

  “Is this—? Milo—”

  “Don’t ask.” Milo opens his mouth over Andrew’s and draws a wicked kiss, needful and dark, from him, then gasps when Andrew runs his hands down his back to cup him closer. Andrew knows the tone. It’s the no-nonsense tone. It’s the one he never questions, the one that never needs questioning.

  Milo’s fingers skim Andrew’s body. His touch is tentative and curious and thrilling. It’s also laced with pain. Not at his father’s loss, exactly, but because it’s an ending that means many things will change, most of all Milo. Milo has been gray mist since Andrew picked him up at the airport. He’s been fog, empty and lonely echoes.

  “You know I’ll always take care of you, right?” Andrew asks. He slides his foot up Milo’s calf and opens his legs so he can cradle Milo between them. The vulnerability of the words and his body set off an ache in Andrew’s core.

  “Andrew—” Milo’s words cut off when Andrew rolls up against him, one long line of sweet, hot skin and desire clearly transmitted through the state of his body. Andrew’s lips open over his again, dragging Milo into their heat and into the waves of devastating desire they let crash between them.

  ° ° °

  MILO WAKES alone, deep in the night. There’s a note on the pillow next to his head.

  Milo, meet me there

  Milo sighs and lies back, feeling the air, too cool, slipping over his naked torso. The barest light emanates from the small bedside lamp, he recognizes Andrew’s words written in his most careful handwriting: the lovely curled M a remnant of Andrew’s calligraphy-learning phase, the tiny dotted star trailing the end of the E. He used a ballpoint pen; when Milo traces his fingers over the words he can feel the barest edge where the tip dug into the thick paper of the note card.

  He checks his phone. It’s well past midnight, and, while he has no idea what time he fell into sleep, he has a pretty good idea that Andrew’s been gone for a while now. The sheets in the bed next to him carry no lingering warmth.

  Milo dresses carefully, rooting through his suitcase for something other than the suit currently wrinkling on the floor by the bed. He throws on a ratty hooded sweater unearthed from the catacombs of his closet, a maroon and yellow college sweater with a crackled logo and tattered hems. It’s worn through in spots, and he’ll be cold almost before he’s halfway there. He stops by the couch downstairs and grabs a throw blanket and a coat. The flashlight his father kept for power emergencies is where it always was, where it probably always will be.

  Milo will leave, but his mom never will, not as long as she can stay. And even without James in their house—or in the world—she’ll maintain everything as she’s been trained.

  Milo flicks on the buttery light of the flashlight as soon as he’s slipped out the back door. Frost-brittle leaves crunch under his feet, and from far off the ocean shushes the night. In the slight heat that rises through the neck of the sweatshirt is a scent—Andrew’s smell—one he hasn’t smelled on himself in years.

  Andrew’s woken him; his touch ripped Milo painfully into his body when he most needed the numbness. And it’s not the pain of his father’s death, but another pain, a deep-rooted pain he anticipates will strengthen and become more complex before he’s found his way back home.

  Light filters between the ill-fitted boards cobbling their fort together; it filters through the trees from afar, registering as a small twinkle until he comes close enough to see clearly. There’s a blanket over the open square that was the lookout window. Milo can’t help but think that nothing has changed, yet nothing is the same because he’s not the same boy who built this sanctuary and walked through the framed door into a world of make-believe Andrew could always craft so easily and vividly.

  Milo clears his throat before stepping in. Andrew is sitting with his legs curled in the far corner, huddled into a fleece blanket. A lantern casts light and shadows around the small room. It’s small enough that there’s not enough room to sit without bumping knees or feet.

  Andrew’s sleepy-eyed and mussed; he looks small under the blanket that envelops him.

  “How long have you been here?” Milo asks, keeping his voice low.

  “I don’t know,” Andrew whispers back. His lips tremble in the cold. Milo moves to get closer, but Andrew gestures him back. Milo settles back with a sigh.

  “It’s not that I don’t—” Andrew tips up a shoulder, and his face is rueful. “I thought we should talk.”

  Milo wraps himself in his own blanket, covers the lantern and knocks it over. Once he’s untangled and righted it, he’s temporarily blinded by the direct glare. He blinks; when he looks around he notices how much darker the walls are than he remembers.

  “Hey,” he says softly, nudging Andrew’s knee. “You painted.”

  Andrew looks up, and Milo can see him swallowing. “Yeah, I did.”

  “When?”

  “When I came home for the long weekend in October.” Andrew’s fingers trail down the wall. In the night, the walls look black except where the lantern reveals a deep blue. Above his head are scatters of light pricks and moons and planets.

  “Finding your way?” Milo jokes lightly. Andrew has always found his way by the stars, not using standard constellation maps, but his own visions.

  “Searching for Cygnus,” Andrew says. Milo’s not sure which one that is, only that the irony in his tone means something.

  They don’t say anything, letting the night settle over their tiny retreat like its own blanket. Milo lets this place, a place that was always theirs—one that they’ve outgrown—settle him. He dropped out of sleep heavily; that something’s missing feeling startled him until he realized it was Andrew. That disoriented him even more.

  He takes time, now, to look him over. That uneasy sense that they’ve both changed irrevocably in the months since September has dissipated. Andrew doesn’t look any different—he’s the boy Milo has always known. Well, man. They’re supposed to be men now, forging into adult lives away from school and their parents.

  “I can’t tell what I’m feeling,” Andrew says.

  “Yeah, I’m sort of there myself.”

  “It’s cold. This is dumb,” Andrew opens his blanket and arranges himself, inviting Milo to share his body heat. They shuffle and tangle until they’re perfectly fitted in a space a shade too small. This is the shape of my childhood, too tight around me. But Andrew makes it okay.

  “Are you okay?” Milo asks.

  “Of course I am.” There’s a tiny thread suggesting otherwise in the words, though.

  “How is this going to work?”

  Andrew’s fingers slide between Milo’s, tracing the beds of his fingernails and the palm of his hand. “I think you have to say goodbye.”

  “I didn’t mean home. I meant us.”

  Andrew’s shoulder shrugs under his head.

  “Andrew.” Milo presses his forehead into Andrew’s shoulder.

  “I’ve thought of this for so long, you know,” Andrew says.

  Milo nods. “Do you feel like I took advantage of that? Because I promise it wasn’t like that—”

  “I know,” Andrew says. Milo looks up and Andrew’s cheeks are wet, too. “I hope you don’t think I took advantage either?”

  “Of course not.”

  They are quiet. The dark presses against the walls outside the fort. The helplessness of thinking he’ll only ever amount to the shell his father made of him has lifted. Whether thanks to Andrew’s touch, or his unwavering support, he now dares to hope he’ll move on this time, from this life and his father.

  “I’ve been so afraid to love you,” Milo admits.

  “I’ve never been able to do anything else. That’s why I�
�ve never stayed with anyone else,” Andrew says. “And that’s fine. That’s just the way it was.”

  “You’ve loved me for years. Have you waited?”

  “Yes. But not like you think. Waited might not be the right word.” Andrew’s fingers curl and tighten around his. “Hoped without hoping.”

  “You have always deserved more.”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that.”

  “Don’t play this off, Andrew. I want you to have love, you know?” He doesn’t mean it to sound the way it does—he wants nothing more in the world than to be able to give him that love. He thinks of Andrew’s last words before their bodies took them beyond speech, promising to always take care of Milo. “Will I always only be the broken boy you worked so hard to keep together?”

  Andrew stiffens, and Milo searches for the right words. Andrew kisses his temple so softly it’s a whisper of touch.

  “I don’t know that I can love you best,” Milo says finally. “You deserve more than someone who has always been scared of letting himself be loved, or believing he’s worthy. I want so badly to be a different man.”

  “Nothing will ever feel like this for me,” Andrew says, voice so thick with tears it’s hard to understand him. “That was the best one-night stand of my life.” Andrew’s tone is playful, regardless of the tears. Despite the kiss, there’s a deep tension in Andrew’s body.

  “Is that what this is?”

  “I’ll always be Andrew from your past, won’t I? I’ll always be a part of that life, Milo.”

  “Why is that so bad? You were always the best part—”

  “Because you can go now. He’s gone. I want you to be better, Milo.”

  Milo swallows, because he wants to deny all of that, deny it as if he hasn’t been thinking something similar. After a silence they fill with shuddering breaths, Andrew speaks. Despite his own confusion, it’s clear what Andrew is saying, and it’s goodbye.

  “Will you make me a promise?” Andrew says, words thick with tears.

  “Yes, of course.” Milo turns so they are face to face.

  “Learn to believe it. Do everything you wanted to do that you were scared of before.”

  “Andrew.” Milo kisses him, inhales him and tucks this moment into his heart. “I wish I could have this with you.”

  “Do me a favor?” Andrew pulls back and takes a deep breath. He closes his eyes, nuzzles into Milo’s hands and wipes his face clear of tears. “Write them down. Every dream you have for the future. The things you always wanted to do. Bring them to the bonfire, tonight.”

  Milo searches Andrew’s eyes. “Only if you will, too.” He has no idea why Andrew wants this, but he’d do anything right now for him.

  ° ° °

  EVEN FOR Andrew, who loves winter, it’s colder than usual this December. Perhaps the coldest part is the mood that lingers in the air, in the planned goodbye to a father who never deserved such ceremony.

  They planned a bonfire for Milo’s last night, something they used to do as teenagers that was just for them, a special group of friends bonding. Tonight it’s to say goodbye. These friends and their families—Sarah and Ted and Lucy, over time, had come to know the secrets the Grahams hid. They all understood the rigid care James took to ensure no harm was great enough to bring trouble to his door, and that the only support they could offer was harbor and complicity, giving Milo as many spaces and moments as possible in which to be a teenager. This bonfire is worlds away from the false front of the wake.

  The only one to say that out loud is Ted, of course: This bonfire is meant as a fuck you. Milo would never say the words, but the idea was liberating.

  Now only Andrew and Milo know what kind of goodbye it really is. And Andrew was so strong when they said it before parting, going different directions in the deep dark of the forest. He holds himself together with the knowledge that it will be best for both of them. Milo can only love Andrew with shadows from the past shaping them. The conversation with Nat lingers in Andrew’s memory: The truth is he does want a future with someone, one in which he can have complete intimacy. He can’t imagine that with anyone but Milo, and despite the synchronicity of vulnerability, love and comfort they shared hours before in Milo’s room, he’s not sure he can picture that ever happening between them again. Too much stands between them.

  In this moment, with the shape of Milo’s body remembered in his fingertips, Milo’s heart finally so open for him, Andrew cannot fathom how he’ll ever move on. In his own bed, sheets bitter cool and neutral cup his body, curled tight around a too-huge grief. All the boys in this last year, flings and one-night stands, sweet ones who only lasted a few weeks, others easy to walk away from because they never matched his expectations—now, when he goes back to Brandeis, he’ll have to try for something else.

  He wakes the day of the bonfire, heads to the hardware store and buys a gallon of the most neutral paint he can find, a light taupe, and a wide brush.

  It’s almost impossible to see while he paints, he’s crying so hard, but he does it. He spends the day in the tiny space they once made to hide in. It takes three coats to cover the stars he painted with the hope that one day Milo would come back and find his way to him. He never thought it would be for goodbye, least of all a goodbye just as Milo woke up to him. Andrew knows his constellations, the names and colors of stars, but what he’d imagined for them was unique. He’d come here in October, picturing his body curled around Milo’s, and painted a map that might be all their own.

  When he’s finished there’s paint in his hair, his eyes are swollen and his body still feels nothing but pain. But it’s good. It’s the start. A start toward a new reality where he isn’t going to love Milo like this, as if Milo’s his Earth and he a lonely, constant satellite, cold and hopeless.

  ° ° °

  SARAH AND her new boyfriend, whose name Milo can’t remember, bring most of the firewood. She’s grown up in a way he completely missed in the last few years. When he came home, all he noticed was Andrew. Tonight Sarah’s hair is curled in tight corkscrews, shining in the firelight, and she wears makeup with a cat’s-eye effect.

  He hasn’t noticed and can’t remember so many things. How much is simple distance from this old life, and how much the impenetrable skin he brought back to Santuit with him in a naive attempt to get through without feeling anything? Going through the motions today, he’s had time to reflect and reject his foolish idea that he’ll go back to USC, take off his travel clothes and wash everything down a shower drain. Because here’s Andrew, doling out coffee and hot chocolate, doctoring it, with a smile and laugh, with liquor from a brown paper bag.

  Milo watches as Ted sets the wood alight. When the wind whips over the deserted chiaroscuro landscape of late dusk, he flips up the collar of his cashmere coat and huddles over a mug of Bailey’s-laced hot chocolate. The fire catches, burning oranges and yellows that mesmerize, and a glow spills onto the faces of his friends who had been fading into the dark. Milo lays the last of the wood himself and looks up across the pyramid—into the eyes of the man who has known him best his whole life. Who has loved him best, and whose love has kept him afloat in the years he thought he would drown in the big house his father kept.

  Andrew looks tired, and his eyes look the way they do when he’s been crying but is trying to hide it. No one else seems to notice, or at least they’re not saying anything. Milo has known Andrew in so many ways, but never so intimately as now. Andrew: slip-gentle skin over long bones, his thin but soft flesh giving easily under Milo’s fingers. Andrew, who was open and unashamed, comfortable with taking pleasure and with giving comfort and pleasure to him.

  “Here,” Andrew says when Milo comes to him. His hand holds a cream-colored piece of paper, folded in quarters.

  “Your list?” Milo asks. Andrew nods. His eyes are painfully direct on Milo’s. He searches his pocket and finds his own list, considerably more crumpled. “Are we reading them?”

  “If you want?” Andrew strays closer t
o the fire. “I’ll always remember mine. Will you?”

  “Mine or yours?”

  “Either,” Andrew says plainly. “I will. Both.” Andrew tries to smile; it’s an utter failure, but paints his lovely face so heartbreakingly that it’s nearly impossible not to reach out and touch his cheek. Andrew takes a small step away from Milo when he moves closer. With shaking fingers, he reads Milo’s list. The only change his face makes is a raised brow. When he’s finished, he looks at Milo. Milo opens Andrew’s list. He’s right. Even through the cramping panic in his chest, and the tears in his eyes, he knows he won’t forget Andrew’s dreams.

  They could be it for each other, in a perfect place. Milo couldn’t put Andrew’s name on his list, no matter how he ached for it. His name isn’t on Andrew’s. Andrew loves Milo who was and Milo strains so for the Milo to be; neither would chain him to the past through a list of wishes. Milo understands, although it hurts, that he’ll only hurt Andrew if they don’t walk away, because there’s nothing Milo won’t damage, given time.

  Andrew slots their fingers together and steps closer to the fire.

  “Please remember—”

  “I’ll never forget, Andrew,” Milo promises. Andrew’s head on his shoulder is a brief comfort; the scratch of his hair and his scent are wisps of sensation. Andrew carefully feeds Milo’s list to the fire, letting one corner catch before the flames and heat suck it into the vortex as black ash curls inward. Milo does the same and understands that they’re not walking away from dreams. They’re forging promises to make this choice the right one.

  °

  Long past nightfall, the logs burn themselves into collapse. Milo feels sunburned from the heat, but also cold. He’s had enough to drink to feel hazy, but not too much. He’s spent the night watching Andrew, watching sparks fly into the night, mentally cutting open the shell he’s been living in. Everything is starting to hurt, and when Milo thinks of how long it will hurt, and how much it will take to grow out of this, he wants nothing more than to close that shell again.