by Seth King
“Happy Valentine’s Day, loser.”
I’m messing with the fire when Thomas returns. We must have enough wood in this living room for months’ worth of fires. Five or six logs are smokily trying to ignite when he walks in from outside, shaking the snow from his frozen outfit. The trees outside are so windswept, it looks like someone sprayed a frozen hose at everything – every possible surface is coated in a thick white layer of icy fluff.
“And to you,” I smile, trying not to be nervous. “Loser.”
He tosses something at me.
“What’s this?” I ask, taking the grocery bag.
“From Fred’s. Just a little something from our childhood. Let’s see if you remember.”
“Aw…”
In the bag I find marshmallows and graham crackers, no chocolate bars. I never liked it, so we’d make s’mores together, just without the Hershey bars. I had no idea he even remembered this, but I do have an idea that in order to buy this stuff, he had to walk downhill in a blizzard. I don’t know what to say.
“Shall I spark up the fire a little more?” I say instead.
“Surely, sir. Get that thing going. What am I going to get you, though?”
His eyes burn like coals. “I think you might be able to come up with something.”
Because my whole body is numb, I turn and start stoking the fire. Then I sit back and realize I really did get a Valentine’s Day, like I was halfway hoping. I’m cooped in a gorgeous condo as it snows outside and the fire crackles. I just had no earthly inkling my Valentine would ever be Thomas McPherson. Maybe I should thank Coach after all…
“God,” I say when it’s burning a little brighter.
“What?”
“I always hated Valentine’s Day. Until today, I guess. But it’s always like a megaphone in your face, reminding you that you’re single. At the end of the day it makes me feel…I don’t know, like there’s something wrong with me. For being alone.”
“You’re not alone. I’m here.”
“You know what I mean. Relationship-wise, I am alone. You’re here, but you’re not…you know. Here.”
“Wade James,” he says sternly. “I was always here. Maybe you just weren’t looking.”
Silence comes.
“You should love this day,” he says soon. “I think it’s great. It reminds us to be kids again.”
“I don’t think so. It just makes you want to be with someone. It should be the easiest thing, finding someone. Anyone can do it, according to all the movies. But I really haven’t, and it just makes me feel…broken.”
I feel a shift – he disengages from the conversation. “Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t care about today and never really have. Let’s make those s’mores and then hit up the Jacuzzi, okay?”
My breath hitches, because the Jacuzzi is totally isolated in a side building, and I know what will happen if we go there.
I also know I’m not going to say no, anyway.
Ten minutes later we’re half-submerged in the whirling water of the hotel’s Jacuzzi, passing a bottle of cheap wine between us. His skin is glowing almost fluorescently in the lights from the water.
“Alcohol and a hot tub. Maybe it really is Valentine’s Day,” he laughs.
“Hey,” I say. “Remember at high school graduation, when we didn’t even speak to each other the entire ceremony, and then for the entire after-party, too?”
“Of course. I just stood there glaring at you half the time.”
“Or you were flirting with Caitlin McGuiness,” I say.
“What? How do you even remember that?”
“Oh,” I say, catching myself. “Um…never mind.”
“And then,” he says soon, “when we were playing in the same volleyball game on the beach, and I hit you in the face with the ball?”
“I can still feel the sting.” I peer at him from the corner of my eyes. “Did you ever feel anything…romantic for me? Come on. I know you did.”
He exhales, his eyes dreamy. “Well. Once, when we were sleeping together, I woke up when we were sleeping in the same bed together. I’d had a wet dream, and my shorts were soaked. I ran home so you’d never know.”
“Wow. And speaking of that…”
He looks down. I slide out of my bathing suit, undone by the warm alcohol inside me. “Sorry, this thing is just so uncomfortable.”
He sips some of the wine. “It must be.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“What does that mean?” he asks.
“Well, your dick is so big, I’m sure things are tight quarters down there.”
“What? Yours isn’t miniscule, you know.”
“It’s not Texas-sized, like yours, either,”
“Well…why do you care?” he asks in a low voice. “Do you like it?”
“I didn’t go that far. I just said it was big. My mom’s SUV is huge, but that doesn’t make it a good car. It breaks down all the time, actually.”
He shakes his head. “Ugh, just give me some more booze before we fight again…”
As he drinks, I just stare into the bubbling water. “Did you miss me?” I ask soon, out of nowhere.
“What?”
“Did you miss me?”
“Yes,” he says quietly. “Did you miss me?”
“Oh, Thomas.”
“Yes?”
And my mind runs away from me. There are some truths that are so scary to put out there, your voice shakes as you send them. But tonight I will speak that truth, even if my voice shakes. Even if it makes this house of cards blow away in the winter winds. I have no other choice.
“I miss everything, Tata. I miss your ears. I miss the scar on your cheek from when you fell forward onto my front steps when we were nine. I miss the way you always knew what I was thinking, and then used it against me. I miss your ears. I miss us. But it doesn’t matter, because time washes away, and we’re already out at sea. It’s too late.”
He smiles at nothing for a while, but something in his eyes also looks guilty, too. Soon he frowns. “But…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Never mind. But…something else. Did you ever tell anyone? About…that night? I didn’t. Did you?”
“Nobody’s business,” I say, skirting the answer while not exactly lying, either.
“Ugh,” he sighs. “I can’t even trust this moment, because we’re just going to have each other in a choke hold in a few hours, anyway. Why do you think we’re like this? Why do we fight like this?”
“When were we not like this, though?” I ask. “The hookup didn’t change anything, just made it worse. We would battle over the video game control, what we would eat for dinner at sleepovers, who could jump the highest and run the fastest. We were like brothers who kind of hated each other, but secretly loved each other more. The love was just…really deep down. I fucking hate my own brother, but I would kill anyone who ever crossed him.”
“Interesting,” he says. “Cain and Abel, basically.”
“Um. Didn’t they kill each other in the end?”
“Yeah, but they were still brothers, so they did it lovingly. Duh.”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “I think it’s deeper. Do you think…?”
“What?”
“I don’t know. Something else always felt…weird between us. Sometimes you hated me, like, a lot. Too much, if you know what I mean.”
“And?”
“And my mom confessed that she only hates my dad so much, and battled it out in court with him for five years after they split up, because she’ll always love him. And she couldn’t handle the split. The opposite of love isn’t hatred. It’s indifference. Sometimes you would literally seethe around me.”
“So…I hate you because I love you? Listen to your accusations. Listen to this idiocy.”
I realize I’ve hit a nerve. I’ve come closer to accepting my bisexuality, but he hasn’t, and I’m pushing him.
“No, we-”
“You know
what?” he interrupts. “Fuck you for even suggesting that. You’re crazier than I thought you were. Downright delusional, actually.”
My pride gets the best of me. “Don’t call me crazy. I can still kick your ass, delusional or not.”
“Ha. I’d like to see you try.”
“Fuck you, too,” I say, and then, overwhelmed by his sudden rejection of me, I reach over and slap him in the face.
We both freeze. I am shocked by what I did, and even more shocked by the red welt that blooms on his face. He looks down at my hand, then for some reason smiles at me.
“Do it again.”
“What?”
“Slap me again.”
“Why?”
“Because I see all this anger you have for me. The hatred. It’s everywhere. Get it out. Just get it all out there, one more time. I’m a man. I can take it. Once and for all.”
I don’t want to. But his masochism is triggering something in me.
“Take this, then,” I say, slapping him again. I don’t know why, but I do it. He winces and smiles bigger. A tear forms in my eye, and my throat burns. “You know what?” I ask, an anger I’ve never felt before boiling in my stomach. “Fuck you, and take it again.”
I jump at him, and he ducks under his arms and curls into a ball as I pummel and punch.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” I grunt, hitting him wherever I can. I see a montage of all the years we spent apart, all the times I saw him five feet from me and had to pretend like it didn’t hurt. And I am furious. I am a geyser. And he is my target.
Before I know it, I am crying. Sobbing, actually. The past is catching up with me, and suddenly emotion is just pouring out. He isn’t even really reacting to my attack, just shielding himself, but when my sobs become louder he reaches out and closes his hands together behind my back. Immobilized, I sink my face into his neck and cry.
“I missed you so much,” I say as I cry.
“It’s okay,” he keeps saying. “Wade, it’s okay.”
I cry for all the years we lost.
I cry for all the time we spent hating each other.
But mostly, I cry for all the time we wasted.
“I’m so sorry,” I keep repeating, even though I don’t know what I’m sorry about. Not in a way I can verbalize, at least. “I’m so sorry.”
He just keeps patting me and rocking me, like I’m a baby. “I know, Wade. I know.”
Soon it’s dark outside. He must’ve held me for half an hour. In fact, that was such a display, I almost feel sober again. There’s nothing like a good cry, it seems, to clear your system of all the things you didn’t even know you were carrying with you.
“You okay?” he asks me.
“Ugh. Yes.”
“For real?”
“Yeah, I feel a lot better. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he says. “But let’s get changed. I have to go do something.”
“What? Where are you going?”
He smiles down at me. “I saw a piano in the rec center off the pool. So you know where I’m going. I’m going where I always go when I’m happy, when my soul wants to sing. You can meet me there, if you want.”
“Thomas – are you serious?”
But he smiles and leaves without answering.
9
It’s snowing so hard you can almost hear it hitting the ceiling and windows – a soft, gentle white noise that makes me feel as if my grandmother has tucked me into my warm childhood bed. But I hear the soft tones of the piano, even over the snow, as soon as I open the double doors into the cavernous pool building. I turn and slip into the common area, where he’s playing a sad song on the keys, accompanied by a glass of something clear-brown on the piano top.
Oh, Thomas…
In all our lives, he’s never let me watch him play piano – he said it was “his sacred thing,” and he’d clear his living room before banging away at those keys. This really feels significant – in eighteen years, he never allowed me to do this. And I know exactly what he is doing – he is revealing himself to me, showing this part he would never agree to show me before. His artsy side. His authentic side, the side he hides from the world as he acts like the sports star his father wants so badly to believe he is at heart.
Thomas’ shoulders sink into the melody, his body taken away by the very music it is creating, and I tilt my head a little and just watch the music getting made. In this light, with his piano notes fluttering and falling in the air like rose petals, he isn’t himself to me anymore – he is someone new, someone who glows. Maybe he always glowed. Maybe I always knew it. Maybe I just “hated” him because my soul knew what my brain was too afraid to even consider…
You know, I am no longer a little kid who believes in fairytale castle endings, and over the years Thomas and I have both made so many mistakes, I can’t even recall the list. But right here, right now, I know that although I no longer want anyone to save me, although I no longer want someone to sweep in and save me from the life I have built, I do want to run away with someone. Even for today. Maybe Thomas and I can run away tonight, to a land where we are still best friends, where we never turned our backs on each other out of fear and disgust and confusion.
A smile, a smile I didn’t even ask for, cracks my face in two. Something in me soars and sinks at the same time, a whoosh that sweeps everything else away and leaves me staring into the eyes of the truth. That’s when I finally admit it to myself. Underneath the crimson hatred I thought I felt for this man, there was a cold, hard, and terrifying fact: I was in love with him. That truth was just a shot of whiskey I was too afraid to swallow. But the fear is falling away, his love is filling in all these new cracks in me, and suddenly I am looking down at cloud tops, golden-pink in this new sunrise…
There are so many things I hate about Thomas McPherson, of course. I hate his arrogance, and how silent he can be when it really counts. I hate how he looks down at the floor when he walks, like nobody is even worth his time. I hate that he is beautiful. I hate that he haunts my dreams every night. I hate how I do not have a childhood memory that doesn’t contain him in it, and I hate how our lives are so intertwined it’s like he owns my past. I hate how loudly he eats his cereal. I hate that we wasted years of our lives despising each other when we could’ve just been loving each other instead.
Most of all, I hate how, no matter how hard I try, I don’t hate him at all. Hatefully, I love Thomas McPherson fiercely, without reservation, and forever. And I always did. At the end of the day, I will never be able to protect my heart from him.
He looks at me. I look back. And that’s all we do: just stare. This person knows everything I am, he knows of every big mistake I’ve ever made, and yet he still smiles at me like we are still those two little kids from Oleander Boulevard.
And it makes me think of something. To be seen, to have someone look at you for exactly what you are, and be okay with it anyway: this is heaven in real life. Here, where I am alone with my thoughts, I can’t run from the truth anymore. Something we said about Ernestine really hit home for me – I wasn’t running from him. I was running from myself. And I am so tired.
He pauses, and I can’t wait anymore. I walk to him. I lift the glass of whiskey to his mouth to give him a sip, then press my nose against his.
“I’m sorry for attacking you,” I whisper. “Again.”
He just raises a finger. “Shh. I need to know something.”
“Yes?”
“Do…you do you feel what I feel? This thing that’s just…filling the room?”
“Yes. I feel it, Thomas.”
Before I can object, he leans in and touches his lips to mine. I don’t even know what is happening, but my body explodes with need – I wrap my hands in his hair and press him to me, and he gasps and wraps his whole body against mine as we desperately kiss. Every moment, every day, every year, feels like it led up to this. Nothing I have ever done in my life has ever felt this perfect. Everything pointed us to this.
&n
bsp; “Back to the room, then?” he asks, his skin flushed and his eyes hungry. I nod.
And we are off.
10
Our clothes come off the second we close our front door. Grabbing and gasping, we tango into the bedroom. He collapses down next to me, his legs over mine, as I take my dick in my own hand. He opens his mouth and we start rolling our tongues against one another – I have no idea why, but this tongue-on-tongue contact is the single most erotic thing I have ever experienced. To have his body against me, his mouth touching mine, is a bizarre kind of ecstasy. It feels so wrong, so right. So dangerous, so perfect.
“Suck on my tongue,” I almost gasp as we roll around.
“What?”
“If this is the only night, I want to make it count. Which means I want to get dirty. Lay against me and lick my tongue. Suck on it.”
“Jesus, how did I never know how kinky you were?”
“Maybe because we weren’t dating? Give me your tongue.”
He obliges. We writhe and roll for a while, just touching and grabbing and moaning and whispering. I never knew I was missing out on this until now. We do things I never imagined doing with another guy, things I didn’t even know were possible. I always thought I’d be too afraid. But tonight, we are fearless together.
As he rubs my back during a lull in the action, my mind wanders. Being around him again is making me think. Something I never realized was how alone I always was. How alone I kept myself. I got hurt by the world, and so I started hiding from the hurt. I started to avoided the slightest hint of feeling, because feelings hurt you – that’s what they did. So I ducked my head into my shell. What was the point of dreams when the only ones that came at night were nightmares?
But here with him, I am starting to suspect I may have a break from the bad dreams tonight.
The fire dies in the living room – I can tell by the diminished glow on the walls. But nothing outside this room matters. He kisses my neck and then wraps me tighter, and I luxuriate in this thing I thought I would only ever feel in my fantasies.
But it’s not enough. I want more. I want everything.