The Maple Effect

by Madeleine Cull

  When the sun broke, June apologized to Aaron. For what, he would never know.

  Angie made June promise to call her when he got home and exchanged numbers with Aaron so he could do the same. There was comfort in knowing she wanted Aaron to keep in touch with her, but he did wonder if, after everything, he would still have the strength. He hoped for her sake, he did. Aaron hugged her goodbye just as fiercely as she did him and thanked her for everything she’d given both June and him since they’d been together. There were more tears, of course, especially when Aaron promised her she was going to do perfectly at UCLA this fall.

  They drove to the airport in the only change of the clothes they had; nothing but silence and their hands clasped together between them. Aaron did not turn the radio on, nor put the top down or feel the sun on his face. He didn’t let himself think too much about his future, or what it would take to get over this. He didn’t think about being alone or being jobless or the weight of the conversation he would have to have with Arco once he told him he was coming home. He didn’t think about June dying.

  He thought instead, about how over the last several weeks, he’d seen nothing but life in the boy and hoped somehow it was true. June didn’t deserve to die, and if Aaron could take that burden away from him, he’d do it in a heartbeat.

  The airport in the town below the mountain was quiet and small, and June would have two layovers to get back to North Carolina. He slid a yellow credit card across the counter at the lady, stating he didn’t care, it was fine.

  Aaron knew it wasn’t.

  There wasn’t much else to say when it came to standing in an airport, staring at the security gates and wondering just where the time had gone. Aaron figured this was a moment most people probably went through once or twice in their lifetime. Maybe not under the same circumstances. Maybe not with their first real love or with the new version of themselves they’d only just come to know, but certainly with the same level of heartache and desperation.

  Aaron decided he wouldn’t regret a second of this summer for all the pain in the world. He wouldn’t trade June, all his daring ferocity and intense character, his stubbornness or his heart, for anything. Aaron had said it once before, and he’d say it again; June was worth it. Would always be worth it.

  He looked him deep in those Pacific blue eyes and finally managed to ask, “Am I ever going to see you again?”

  June’s lips twitched, his arms unraveling from around himself and falling on Aaron’s shoulders. He leaned up on his toes and kissed him, forcing what little left of the energy he had. Aaron focused on memorizing the taste, the feeling, and the way June always managed to make him come undone. He wrapped his arms around his back and didn’t care who saw the embrace. He was hopeful for a long moment, and then June pulled back slightly. Nose to nose, he could feel the trail of tears roll down June’s cheeks. Heard him whimper and felt him shake.

  “No,” he choked.

  And his heart was broken.

  Aaron reached into the back pocket of his shorts and pulled out the small, black and yellow disposable camera June had given him so long ago. He pressed it into June's hands. Held them there in his own between them, chest to chest for the last time.

  “I love you.”

  June pressed his face into his shoulder; silent. Trying not to weep.

  “It’s okay,” Aaron whispered. “I know you do too.”

  That goodbye was, and always would be, the hardest thing he’d ever have to do.

  19

  Only the Lonely Survive

  On June first, 2005 June sat outside his parents’ ranch-style home watching the first wave of cottonwood seeds float through the air. It was warm and windy; dust whirling up and moving frantically across the yard. Leaves twirled and spun like the inside of his head. Dizzying, careless thoughts lifting and falling with his every breath. June had an untouched cup of tea his mother handed him sitting on the wooden steps at his side, and a heavy black cloud hanging over his heart. He was suspended someplace between disgust and anguish.

  They called it remission. He called it hell.

  Eight months after June Crow returned to his sleepy, North Carolina hometown, he’d visited a doctor and been told of all the fucking things that could have happened to him, it was remission. The one thing he had absolutely refused to prepare for. Refused to think about and refused to acknowledge as a real possibility in his life.

  He’d heard it once before when he was a kid, but the cancer had still been there. It had just been smaller, less intrusive, and more manageable. At the time, he’d been ecstatic. Young and naïve and feeding off of his parents’ enthusiasm. He’d made the mistake of building up hope then, only to be broken hearted when his cancer came back. This time was different.

  June had yelled, he’d cried, he’d hit things. He’d startled his mother so badly she dragged him off to a shrink. Made him sit there in a stuffy office with a stranger until he could sort through his own tangled web of thoughts.

  Everyone he knew thought he should be happy—should rejoice for his second chance at life like it was handed to him on a silver platter by God himself. Like he was given some incredible gift. Like he’d asked for this to happen when in reality he’d only ever wished for it to be over. June had spent so much time waiting for his body to shut down, it seemed unfair to take that away from him now. The inevitable end was the only certain thing he’d had left.

  Truth be told, June didn’t know how to live with cancer, and he sure as fuck didn’t know how to live without it.

  Remission.

  The last ten months, June had fought with the idea his life could be anything more than just a fleeting, shattered memory. It took him a long time to mend the relationship he had with his parents, let alone the one he’d severely damaged with Angie. He hadn’t answered her calls until winter last year, almost a whole semester through her freshman year of college. And when he finally did, she’d wasted no time being furious with him. She knew he hadn’t died, but she’d lived with the doubt and uncertainty of when it would happen every single day. She’d been lost and broken. She’d blamed June for more misdoings than she’d ever had before.

  Apparently, just a few days after June had flown home last summer, Quail had shown up miraculously on the ice cream shop porch and was now living like a king with Ms. Delgado, keeping her happy as she kept him fat and loved. June had smiled when Angie told him that—one of the first real smiles that had returned to his face in a long, long time.

  There were a few good things. In the last year or so, June had gotten his job back at the ice-skating rink and helped teach a handful of children what it was like to strap skates to their feet and fall on their ass. He enjoyed their determination more than he thought he would. Relied on the discipline that came with keeping them safe to also keep him grounded. He felt like he was making a small difference; making up for the years of delinquent things he’d done around this town growing up. The newer generation didn’t judge him for his past—they simply appreciated him helping them with their future.

  He also started doing more art. Drawing and painting and taking a pottery class at the local college to keep his hands busy. He made a few, low-key friends that never asked him about the things that haunted him. June kept them at arm’s length but prided himself on letting them get that close to begin with. His therapist had told him it was a small step in the right direction even if it was a stumbling, painful one.

  June never once uttered Aaron’s name out loud. He never told his sisters that name or anything about the boy, although they’d asked him many times. He never let himself fall into the trap of searching for Aaron’s Myspace page or listening to My Chemical Romance in fear of breaking down into a hopeless, distraught mess. He never explained falling in love to his therapist. Never let anyone see that side of him.

  However, not a single day had gone by when June hadn’t pictured Aaron’s handsome face and felt his heart break all over again. He’d kept that disposable camera in the ni
ghtstand drawer next to his bed for almost a year, wondering, waiting, longing to be able to fix the mistakes he’d made. He still loved Aaron more than anything else in the entire world, but he’d thought contacting him would only end up hurting them more. Before remission, when all that would come of their relationship was more heartache, he’d vowed to carry the weight of longing all the way into his grave.

  June had laid in bed, sleepless and miserable for more nights than he could count; trying to figure out how to love himself (at least a little bit) before going back to Aaron. Something about that felt wrong, but he couldn’t understand why. He worried it was his own selfish demon sitting upon his shoulder, whispering for him to be reckless, careless, and zealous—a shadow of his old self.

  After he found out he would live, it took a month to work up the courage to reach out to—not Aaron—but his cousin, Arco. June had gotten the number from Angie, who miraculously still had it saved in her phone. He dialed it in the safety of his bedroom where no one could hear him. Arco had been livid; berating June for every second Aaron spent miserable and alone in the last year. Detailing the worst of June’s nightmares until he couldn’t take it anymore. June had cried. Hot tears of guilt and truth. He’d begged for forgiveness, and in the end, it was Arco who suggested June make up for his mistakes in the only way he knew how.

  Today June sat on his parents’ porch holding a slim envelope full of pictures that he’d gotten developed, but couldn’t find the strength to look at. His heart was beating a steady drum in his chest, and every time he made a move to slip his thumb under the seal his breath would catch in his throat, and he would feel himself teetering on the edge of something bigger. Something more like resignation and less like pain.

  June stayed there on the porch until a whirl of cottonwood hurled itself at his feet as if to tell him to shake it off, let it go, and then he found himself getting slowly to his feet. He looked back at his house, the empty spaces in the driveway where his mother and father typically parked, and then the sky. Clear, blue and dotted with puffy white clouds. The hills beyond their tiny town were the same shade of green as Aaron’s eyes on a summer day.

  He was going to go.

  “Arco, what are you doing!” Aaron whined. “I have a gig tonight. I can’t just go get coffee right now!”

  “Nonsense, you have plenty of time. Come on, let’s go. Go, go, go.”

  His cousin had him by his sleeve and was pulling him around their flat with a mischievous glint in his icy eyes. Things were disturbingly clean (Arco rarely took the time to move the stove away from the wall and scrub behind it, but he had this morning) and Aaron was growing more suspicious by the moment. He’d been taken to get a haircut yesterday, forced to buy himself a new pair of jeans and an expensive leather jacket, and told to be ready, all on the theory that this show tonight was supposedly going to be big. Arco had been adamant. His boyfriend, Brynn (which for the record, was a story neither here nor there) had made the journey by train from across town to meet up with them and join in on the preparation.

  None of it made any sense, but then again, when was the last time Aaron’s life had?

  He’d been on a rollercoaster for the last several months, playing local pubs and coffee shops all around Portland trying to make a name for himself. He’d been happy, he’d been sad, he’d been lonely, and he’d been broke, but most of all, he’d been trying to fill a deep void inside of himself. One so deep and so vast even music only just barely made a dent in.

  “Arco, please!” Aaron begged, yanking his arm back and turning away from the front door. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  Arco stopped, looked down at him with a knowing expression, and crossed his arms. “Sorry, Bud. I can’t.”

  “It’s a surprise.” Brynn came up behind him, picking at his nails and looking cheeky. “Don’t worry. You’re gonna love it.”

  Aaron hated surprises. He always had.

  “But…I have a gig…tonight…”

  “You’re just gonna have to trust me.”

  He did trust Arco. More than he trusted anyone else in the world. His stomach churned with the usual ball of anxiety it did when he was trying to dislodge something unpleasant from his mind, but he followed them out the door anyway. Down to the first floor of their apartment complex and straight into the rain. This time of year was usually rather hot and muggy, but it had ceased a few days ago to make way for a storm heading south out of Canada. His parents had called to warn him about it, and to send their best regards. They’d been talking a lot more lately.

  The coffee shop was a familiar place. Warm brown flooring and old brick walls with trendy artwork hanging on them. There was a counter full of cake dishes, and some shelves behind it had fresh-baked bagels in every variety. They made breakfast in the mornings and had live music in the evenings. It wasn’t the place Aaron was playing tonight, but it was one he’d played at so frequently lately, all the staff knew him by name.

  They greeted him with smiles as he walked through the doors with his two steadfast guides. Was ushered straight past the counter to a booth in the back where he couldn’t see out the windows. Arco placed his hand on his shoulder and made no move to sit down with him.

  “Can you please just—”

  “You’ll find out soon enough.” Brynn slipped his small hand into Arco’s much larger one. “Just stay here, okay?”

  “I’m supposed to sit here alone?” Aaron demanded.

  “You won’t be alone for long.” Arco cracked a smile as he was pulled away.

  Aaron watched them leave with a sinking, crippling fear in his gut.

  This was not happening to him. Hell no, he wasn’t ready for this! He’d told Arco for months now that he wasn’t willing to go on any shitty blind dates! He’d put his foot down and made him promise not to do this to him. Anger and disappointment bubbled up hot in his chest. He had a gig tonight, and this was their great idea? He should be home practicing his set right now.

  With a curse, Aaron slid himself out of the booth and stomped his way back through the restaurant. The lady behind the counter raised an eyebrow at him and opened her mouth to say something, but he didn’t hear her. He was going to punch Arco in the arm when he saw him again. He was going to give him some very choice words this time.

  Aaron flung the coffee shop door open, eyes set on his apartment across the street, and any signs his cousin might still be hanging around. He clenched his jaw hard, turned out the door, and crashed directly into some innocent bystander who’d been reaching for the handle.

  “Oh! I-I’m so sorry!” Aaron blinked down at his feet. Frustration turning quickly into embarrassment. He shoved his hands into his pockets and rolled back on his heels.

  “Excuse me…”

  The sound of his voice struck Aaron with the force of a truck barreling down the sidewalk.

  Aaron’s head snapped up, eyes blown wide and mouth hanging open in disbelief.

  It was a dream. He was dreaming for sure. That was the only explanation for Arco’s odd behavior and…and…

  “June,” he mouthed. His voice didn’t come, but his hands did. Back out of his jacket pockets and forward as if drawn by magnets. As if it was all a mirage.

  The boy—no—the man in front of him, was not the same young, reckless being he’d met over a year ago in Bass Lake, California. He was slightly taller; shoulders broadened with age and gentle, careful jawline now sculpted something stronger. He wore a pair of dark jeans, a black T-shirt, and shiny new aviators atop his head. His forearms looked a little more solid. His hands a little bigger where they held tight to a small envelope. The only thing that wasn’t altered by time was the way his blue eyes blazed potent and hot.

  “June,” Aaron repeated because there was nothing else he could say. There were a hundred things he wanted to say—some of them not very nice at all considering the turmoil he’d been put through since they last saw each other—but nothing else made its way out his throat.

  “I’m so sor
ry.”

  June’s fingers rose slowly, cautiously as if he were afraid he’d be electrocuted. They brushed lightly up the fresh leather hanging down the left side of Aaron’s chest; slipped beneath it and over the thin cotton of his red tank top. Aaron shivered; held his breath as June dragged the material down to reveal more than just the highest point of the tattoo sitting above his heart.

  It was a maple leaf. Not orange, but a bright summer green. He’d gotten it the day June left him, just a few hours into his drive home, and had ever since let it remain a delicate, bittersweet reminder of a time gone by.

  June shook his head, looking astounded or amazed or…something. Aaron couldn’t quite read it. His expressions were softer than he remembered, especially when his mouth turned up in a sad smile. He huffed a laugh. Shoulders sagging forward at first, and then his whole body.

  He threw his arms around Aaron. Dizzying, sweet relief washing over him. Drowning him. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, trying to understand how or where or why. Anything really; that might explain.

  When Aaron drew June in close, all the anger and chaos faded into forgiveness. He pressed his face into June’s neck, breathed in the familiar smell of him, and was whole.

  “I thought—”

  June shook his head. Stopped and then shook it again. Whatever Aaron had to say didn’t matter anyway. When he finally managed to pull back, there were tears like stars in his blue eyes.

  “I—I…couldn’t look at…” June tapped the envelope in his hands against Aaron’s stomach, voice wavering. “I couldn’t look at them alone.”

  Aaron sniffed, and then somehow, he laughed. He placed both his hands against the sides of June’s neck, looked him in the eyes, and leaned down to kiss him.

  It was like they’d never left.