What It Takes

by Jude Sierra

  The sound of the door slamming behind him is a finality that takes out the last of his defenses. Weak-legged and trembling, he navigates the stairs down from Andrew’s apartment and then squints into the sunlight. His look is the epitome of the walk of shame: rumpled clothes, hair a mess, and what he thinks he caught sight of in Andrew’s hallway mirror: a small, high hickey under his chin. He pulls his shoes on without socks and walks to the beach to get his car, buzzing in the blank haze that follows blind anger and shock.

  He drives home on autopilot, then sits on the gravel by the rock wall in front of the house. His mom will be up, getting the Smiths lunch, chattering about what the town has to offer, giving advice on what they might be interested in seeing.

  Milo cannot face walking in there, not sex-smelling, with shattering devastation all over his face. He’s never been a man of words, not like Andrew. The way everything unraveled so fast he had no way to catch it is stunning; Andrew’s words were slippery fish, desperately escaping his dumb, fumbling fingers, throwing them both into what he realizes was an irrational argument, though threaded with truths he’s not ready to decipher.

  Everything Andrew accused him of doing, the held-in anger they both harbored for years, the lives they built that were only a fraction of what they could have made together: it’s all a shameful waste, but one he can’t see having gone any other way. He’s never realized how deeply he blames Andrew, or how much resentment he’s carried by placing the burden of responsibility on Andrew. He’s such a mess, battered by the whiplash of making love to Andrew with the hope of a future, to where they ended up by morning. He might be reeling, but Milo is still determined to fix this.

  He gets out of the car, looks into the fecund woods to his left, and dives in. At first he walks blindly, following the whims of his feet. It’s been a while since he’s wandered this way. He could get lost. But he won’t. Andrew taught him these woods. If he wants to pay attention, he’s certain he can get out.

  Despite everything—the months home coming to terms with what he’d originally seen as a prison sentence, the months in which he felt himself warming and accepting this town as his, as a place that could be a kind of home—he’s not come this way before.

  Dex and Andrew seemed such a unified presence. Milo had no wish to break that apart. When he left home years ago—for what he thought would be forever—he meant to ensure Andrew’s happiness.

  The sun at zenith above him, no helpful guide, dapples his skin like water skipping over stones. A tree fell long ago across the path he’s taking. It’s moss-covered, verdant and cinnamon brown, damp decay edging toward umber. The cicadas silence mid-note, reminding him that he’s the intruder. These woods have moved past him; it’s long since he’s been a part of this song.

  He veers right rather than climb over the log, then he’s in a clearing. It’s shadowed by enormous trees, but there’s a nice ten-foot area with only scrubby bushes and bare space. Across from him is the fort they built fifteen years before. Milo expected some decay, maybe a fallen-in ceiling and rot. Instead he finds it in good condition, with recent repairs he thinks must be Andrew’s.

  He knows that’s a far-fetched deduction; other kids must have found it and repaired it as they adopted it. He remembers the last time he was here, too tall and cramped in the space, saying a goodbye he never thought he would, wrenching his heart out for someone else’s future.

  High-handed, Andrew accused. Martyr, Milo said back. In the mire of his grief and fear, he’s always thought Andrew forced something on them he would never have done or agreed too given time to think it over. It took Andrew completely cutting him off almost a year later for Milo to face that he’d been hoping they could reconcile, admitting they’d been stupid—that he’d been stupid. But Andrew’s message seemed devastatingly clear, and Milo told himself that the last loving act of kindness he could extend was to respect what Andrew wanted.

  Milo ducks into the doorway. The last time he saw this place, Andrew had painted stars in a night sky across the ceiling.

  Now, he sees, anguish a crescendo clamoring inside, that the little room is covered in words. The walls are painted with layers of sloppy blacks and browns and, in places, a neutral, untouched tan. The words are stark white.

  He was

  then I

  But it was love spoken

  into ocean above empty sky

  useless and lost

  On the wall above the window frame:

  he touches me

  and it’s debilitating

  guilt you choke me with

  the longing for

  fingers fleeting in memory

  memory, a haunting

  And so small he can’t read without the use of his iPhone flashlight:

  I love I love I love

  linger will always take his shape

  °

  Milo almost falls asleep, he sits there so long. There’s no way to date these poems. In his dozing haze, Andrew’s words peal like thunder, reverberating inside his head.

  How should one unpack blame? They both martyred themselves in youthful idiocy. They both ruined something. But when he thinks of the life Andrew shared with him—travel and jobs, and learning to connect with an audience through words—could he have achieved any of that? While holding Milo’s hand through anxiety and fear for years?

  Each visit to a therapist, each time he talked himself through fear, learned to find that handle to hold onto inside himself, and the strength to be a better man: Milo knows he might never have done that with Andrew as his citadel of protection. Love—the kind that sprang from hope of being a different man, not some creature carrying that bag of rocks—could he have ever offered that to Andrew?

  The forgiveness he learned in these years, the drive to learn it, sprang from his deep need to be a complete person, to have dreams and to achieve them. Empty years also clamor in memory, though. He worked, driven by a dream for more that he has yet to find. He’s had relationships that never fit for long and a life he enjoyed, friends and fun and a job he likes well enough, but nothing completing.

  Home was a thought that trapped him in anxiety and fear when he boarded the plane to Boston. It nearly drowned him that first week. Then he saw Andrew. Was it Andrew alone who sought and nurtured a love for this place in him? Or was it he himself who caused it to bloom?

  He traces the words linger will always take his shape. Too true, for them both.

  The sudden clatter of feet through the forest brings him from the reverie with a snap. Andrew’s head pops in, then startles back so quickly with surprise that he hits his head on the low lintel.

  “Ow, fuck!” he cries. Milo tries to stand on lifeless legs and flops onto his hands.

  “Are you all right?” he calls.

  “Yeah, shit.” Andrew climbs in, awkward but careful, still rubbing the back of his head.

  “Let me see.” Milo leans forward to feel for a bump, but Andrew pulls away quickly and Milo drops his hand.

  “It’s fine,” Andrew’s voice is sharp, his eyes slanted with little warmth and a lot of anger. “What are you doing here?” He’s definitely angry.

  “Thinking,” Milo says simply.

  “I thought you’d forgotten about this place.” Andrew’s fingers rest on his knees, which he’s tucked up close. He’s wearing different clothes: a long, soft cotton shirt that drapes shapeless in blue. Distressed jeans that aren’t frayed for fashion, but from actual use. Comfort clothes.

  “No,” Milo says, then looks around. The ceiling is that beige that says nothing. “I wasn’t ready.”

  “Ha,” Andrew says, bitterly. Milo closes his eyes and tries to take apart the instinctive anger into something small and manageable. Put it into a box for discussion later, so he can feel the most important things. Things he’s layered over, things he didn’t think he could let himself feel, not when Dex seemed to be what Andrew needed.

  “Why that color?” He points up at the ceiling. Andrew’s eyes shimmer with i
mmediate tears.

  “After... that night,” Andrew says, wobbly with something he’s barely managing, “I knew it had to be erased. I had to learn to find a way without you. Those stars were part of a dream for us, and we broke that. I couldn’t stand to leave that dream behind with the constellations I made just for you, while I was still wishing for you.”

  “You were a wish, too,” Milo admits.

  “Don’t do that—” Andrew says, closing his eyes. “Don’t pretend it was close to what I felt. That you could understand what it was like to love someone like that. Someone who knew, but never could give it back.”

  “You’re right,” Milo says softly. Andrew’s breaths are ragged and loud; he wipes tears off his face with his sleeves, a no-nonsense movement. “But not because I didn’t love you.”

  “I think that might actually make it worse.”

  “I never wanted to hurt you. I can’t feel what you went through. But you don’t know what it felt like for me, either. I didn’t know how to love you without leaving.”

  “We could have learned,” Andrew says, sniffling. Crying always makes him congested.

  “You told me you didn’t want me to always be that boy. You said you thought it was for the best.”

  “I didn’t know—” Andrew starts, then takes a breath and modulates his voice.

  “Can you promise you wouldn’t have always loved me as that broken boy?”

  “I don’t know, okay?”

  “I did it for you, too. I’m angry that we said goodbye like we did, and you’re right that it was high-handed. But I’ve been sitting here for a while, thinking, and I think that…that that’s on both of us. So yeah, I’m pissed about the years we could have had,” Milo says, trying to choose his words. “But who I am now? I’m different. You are too; we can’t say what might have been, and we can’t erase our pasts. I’ve learned a lot. And one thing I learned… is that I want to stop wishing for a different past. I want to start looking forward.” He takes a deep breath, on the edge of a cliff with roiling water below. “Andrew,” he says softly and looks at Andrew as plainly and honestly as he can, “I could be better for you this time.”

  “This time? Is it that easy?” Andrew tilts his head. Milo can’t read his tone.

  “That love I had that I didn’t think I could trust, that I didn’t deserve? I—” Milo swallows. He wants to touch Andrew so much, his palms tingle with the memory of Andrew’s body in them. “I have that to give, now.”

  “Fuck,” Andrew says, then puts his head on his knees. His shoulders shake, but his tears are silent.

  “Andrew.” Milo scoots in, takes that chance and puts his hands on Andrew’s shoulders. “Please let me love you. Please give me the chance.”

  “I wished for this,” Andrew says, sobs breaking the air and Milo’s heart. “I wished and wished; I broke myself apart for you. For so long I was resigned to having you any way I could, because loving you was like breathing; it was what I needed.”

  “I couldn’t give it to you then,” Milo pleads, “not the way you deserved. You had so much beautiful love, and I was sure I would destroy you. I’m sorry about this afternoon. That I blamed you for it all.”

  “You did destroy me.” Andrew’s cheeks are blotched and wet and his lips are trembling. “I wasn’t exaggerating earlier, Milo. After I went back to school… there were days I didn’t leave my room. When I cried so much it came to a point it wasn’t physically possible any more. Nat and Damien would find me staring at walls. I didn’t eat; I couldn’t sleep. I barely went to class and I lost my job. I held onto hope for months. My friends finally staged an intervention.”

  “Andrew,” Milo says, helpless, self-recrimination lacing his breath and words, “I’m so sorr—”

  “It was kind, what they did,” Andrew continues without acknowledging Milo. “It was hard, but done with my best interests in mind. If I’d thought… if I had any hope that you really loved me—”

  “Andrew, how could you not know? I told you—”

  “You told me and left. You pulled me in and pushed me away for years, Milo.”

  “I know,” Milo says. “I didn’t mean to—I was so scared, all the time, and I didn’t know how to let myself be loved.”

  “Yeah well, I didn’t either.” Andrew looks up at the ceiling. “If I’m being honest with both of us, I don’t know that I could have trusted you even if you’d stayed, or I had.”

  Andrew looks at him then, finally. The only remnants of his tears are a dampness along his lashes and faint streaks down his cheeks.

  “I wouldn’t let myself be loved for years, Milo, because I didn’t know how to be loved without paying in the devotion I gave you.”

  Milo winces and pulls away. Said like that—baldly, words ugly but not without truth—brings him back to a time when he struggled daily with guilt that edged on self-hatred.

  “I’m not blaming you, exactly,” Andrew says. He puts his hand on Milo’s arm. “I know you loved me, the best way you could. But not the way I wanted. I guess it wasn’t healthy, for either of us.”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  Andrew takes a deep breath and folds his hands back on his knees. “I want to be angry with you right now. I don’t really know why, except that you make me feel like I’m seventeen again, and that hurts. I don’t want to say that maybe we were right, and I don’t want to admit that it was both our faults. I don’t want to wonder if I made a mistake when I made myself say goodbye. I tried it, really loving someone, with Dex. I don’t want to think that those years were a waste, or that I never really loved him. Because falling in love with him really was beautiful and I saw our future together clearly.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Milo says.

  “But then you were here, your beautiful stupid face and everything between us that never went away. I fooled myself into thinking what I’d severed was gone.”

  “I know. I felt that too,” Milo says, quietly, and takes a risk, kisses Andrew’s knee.

  “And I couldn’t help falling out of love with him, because no one is as bright as you, and I can’t think of anything that could eclipse what I have inside for you.”

  “Andrew,” Milo says helplessly.

  “Milo, please, please don’t hurt me.”

  “Come here.” Milo pulls him forward, so awkward and not really fitting on his lap. “Please give me a chance. Please let me love you.”

  “Milo, I don’t know.” Andrew buries his wet face in Milo’s neck.

  “I’ll love you every way you want. The ways you dreamt I could. The ways I wanted to be able to before. I’ll love you like the man I’ve become, not like that stupid boy who thought the world wanted to hurt and break him.”

  Andrew takes his face into his hands and forces Milo to look at him. “You always deserved every ounce of love. You were worthy of it.”

  “But I didn’t think so, then. And I do now.”

  Andrew shudders in Milo’s arms, then tilts into a tender kiss that Milo deepens into a drawn out plea with his body. It’s delicious and full when he feels Andrew unlock, when he feels the acquiescence and visceral yes exchanged between their bodies.

  °

  “What about this?” Andrew gestures toward the woods behind them and the beach before them. Their hands are clasped tightly between their bodies, hard, as if letting go would untether something incredibly fragile.

  “What? It’s a beautiful day.” Milo glances up at the ash gray sky, fascinated by the texture of the clouds, bubbling and lumpy.

  “It’s about to rain.”

  “I don’t care.” Milo stops them to drop kisses like the promise of those raindrops on Andrew’s lips.

  “But still.” Andrew pulls away with laughter spilling out.

  “Still?”

  “You can’t stay here and work,” Andrew says. “Where will you live?’

  “Anywhere you are,” Milo says simply, immediately.

  “I can’t do that,” Andrew says. “Keep you somew
here that will make you unhappy. You can’t work here.”

  “Andrew, I’m not unhappy here. And before you say it, it’s not only because of you.” Andrew leads them to the sand sits and pulls Milo down.

  “You know what I learned in the last few years about my past?”

  “That it sucked?” Andrew tries to joke.

  “Well, that too,” Milo says wryly. “But also that all that resentment and rage tied me down. They exhausted me, my shame and self-hatred and everything I couldn’t let go of.”

  “Your bag of rocks,” Andrew says, remembering the day when Milo had spoken of forgiveness.

  “Yeah.” Milo squeezes Andrew’s fingers where they are clasped again. “Well, a lot of those were his fucking rocks. I had to figure out how to let them go. Then I had to find my way inside me, and to reach that anxiety and anger that I thought were me.”

  “You amaze me,” Andrew says. “And it worked?”

  “And it’s a work in progress,” Milo admits. “Coming home set me back a little. But I had a handle. I had skills I learned. Every day, at first, I had to go for walks, had to force myself to look around and notice every detail, to focus my brain anywhere other than on what made me anxious or mad or overwhelmed. I came down to the beach and meditated.”

  “You really did become a hippy,” Andrew jokes. “You should write a self-help book.”

  Milo shoots him a fond look. “I think I’ll leave the writing to you.”

  “Well, if you insist.” Andrew’s smile is flirtatious and fond. “Without the balanced chakras, though.”

  Milo smiles, but continues his original train of thought. “You—it was...that was like really coming home. Coming home without the same need. I could really feel you, for the first time. Differently.”

  “Oh—” Andrew looks at the water and bites his lip.

  “But you had Dex, and I couldn’t take what you had found away from you.”

  “Milo—” Andrew says softly.

  “I’m sorry if I did.”

  “You didn’t, no. I felt like that too. Maybe it would have worked with him, but compared to this...Everything with you fits without trying...”