Authors: Mimsy Hale
“Be serious.”
“No, Jakey. I don’t want it to be a one-time thing.”
Flashing a wicked smirk, Jake pulls himself on top of Aiden and places his hands on either side of his pillow. A glint of mischief in his eyes, he leans down to murmur against Aiden’s lips, “So what do you propose we do about that?”
Aiden surges upward to drag Jake into a deep kiss, shivering as Jake cups his jaw and lets out a breathy little hum. Without pulling away, he blindly reaches out to switch off the song he still has playing on a loop—he doesn’t want to hear it anymore. He just wants Jake.
4,171 miles
Day Thirty-five: Mississippi
“…Heading out west, you’ll find Denver and Phoenix—”
“Aiden,” Jake whines, cracking an eye and searching for Aiden’s face in the dim light.
“North to Billings, you might see Lansing, too,” Aiden continues, his voice coming softly from somewhere behind Jake. Limbs heavy, with what feels like Herculean effort, Jake manages to prop himself up enough to turn his head to face the other way, where Aiden is stretched out next to him on top of the covers. A wide smile stretches his full lips; Aiden links their hands, singing, “And don’t forget about the south, the joy of Clarksdale—”
“It’s Jackson, not Clarksdale,” Jake corrects him, voice raspy and still thick with sleep.
“I know. But we’re
in
Clarksdale, now,” Aiden says.
“We are? You drove the rest of the way?” Jake asks, stretching. Aiden shrugs. “What time is it?”
“Almost midnight,” Aiden says, and unlinks their hands to trace a fingertip along the line of Jake’s brow. “How’s your head?”
“Better. Remind me not to watch movies in the dark,” Jake answers, and buries his face in his pillow to stifle another yawn. He shivers pleasantly when Aiden’s hand drops to his neck, a sensation that he steels himself against chasing; it’s late, and they have plans.
“I’ve never noticed just how many freckles you have,” Aiden says absently, dotting them with his fingers, and Jake chuckles as he turns onto his side and tucks his arm under his head.
“Remember that time you stole your mom’s eyebrow pencil and drew them all over your face because you wanted us to be twins?”
“God, don’t remind me. I looked like I had a rash.”
“And then she went
white
when she saw you and started chasing you around with the thermometer,” Jake says, shaking with laughter. “I haven’t thought about that in
forever.”
“Thank heaven for small mercies. You used to give me hell about it,” Aiden says. “Anyway, Sleeping Beauty, time to get up. We don’t wanna be late.”
As Aiden starts to move away, Jake catches his hand and pulls him close to press their lips together in an impulsive, sweet kiss that feels somehow timeless, as if he’s known how Aiden kisses for far longer than three days.
Has it really only been three days?
Aiden sighs into the kiss, and a tension Jake didn’t even know was there drains from his muscles. Just before he climbs off the bed, he whispers, “Later.”
Jake rolls onto his back and lies there for a moment, listening to the sounds of Aiden moving around the RV. Music is playing, something with a dark, catchy, synthesized riff that Jake recognizes from the playlist Aiden brought back from London, and he almost starts to hum along until he catches himself. Shaking his head, he throws off the covers and walks around the bed to the small, mirrored closets set along the back wall of the bedroom. Out of the closet on the far left, he pulls a simple white T-shirt and a thick red and black plaid jacket. With a rueful smile at his own reflection, he plucks once at the front of his threadbare shirt—the one Aiden bought him for his twentieth birthday, charcoal black and bearing the slogan
Don’t need a permit for these guns,
with arrows pointing left and right—and pulls it over his head.
He catches Aiden watching him in the mirror, calls out, “Later, Casanova,” and carries on dressing himself, trying to put all thoughts of “later” out of his mind.
Sex with Aiden is… Well, it’s
sex
with
Aiden.
On the surface, at least—and that’s where Jake wants to keep it: nothing deeper, no hidden meaning underscoring every word and look and movement and absolutely no mentioning just how dangerous it is to do what they’re doing. He doesn’t want to examine too deeply, for instance, the pleasant buzz that pools in his limbs whenever he catches Aiden looking at him as if he hung the moon and hand-dotted the sky with stars. That verges way too closely on something he doesn’t want to be, something he’s never been to anyone. He’s the player, the quick fuck, the sure thing, and he likes it that way.
In his second year of college, he tried the whole relationship thing with a guy called Max whom he pursued for a while—and who
insisted
on dates first. Jake managed to stick it out for eleven months, having fallen hard and fast into something that was like love but which he never wanted to give himself over to fully. It would have been easy, but it would also have felt a little like dying; there was love from Max, but too much, like being smothered instead of wrapped up.
And then, after a week of fighting about Jake’s numerous shortcomings, Max decided to show Jake just how well he was meeting expectations. Jake showed up at Max’s apartment with his favorite white tulips and a promise to do better on his tongue only to find that Max had already found someone else.
The next day, Aiden received the email calling him to London for his internship, and Jake learned once and for all what he was really worth.
He wasn’t so vain that he thought Aiden’s leaving had anything to do with him, of course, but it seemed so very, very easy for Aiden to leave him behind—both on the day he left and during the course of their year apart.
Before that year, Jake took Aiden for granted. He knows it, and so does Aiden. Jake has always been content enough to spend time alone—he needs it more than anything, at times—but the memory of the crushing loneliness he felt with Aiden so far away keeps him grounded, and grateful to have him back. Jake has to hold onto their friendship at all costs, and push everything else into the corner of his mind where he keeps all the things he never wants to think about.
“Jake, are you—? Whoa. You look nothing like yourself,” Aiden says as he comes back into the bedroom, cutting short Jake’s melancholic reminiscences.
“That’s the point,” he replies shortly, appraising his appearance in the mirror before turning to Aiden. “We’re in the South, after all.”
“Yeah, but—” Aiden starts, but Jake cuts him off with a swift kiss.
“Are you gonna serenade me?” he asks, gesturing to the guitar slung across Aiden’s back.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Aiden says. “Come on.”
They’re parked just a short walk from the crossroads, but with the light chill riding the night breeze, Jake is grateful for his thick jacket.
“So what does ‘Jack Jones’ mean?” he asks after a minute or so.
“Huh?”
“It was one of the lyrics in that song you were listening to.”
“Oh! Uh… it’s Cockney rhyming slang for ‘on my own,’” Aiden explains after a moment. “It’s this sort of dialect, I guess, in London. But instead of making up new words for things, they just used other words instead. Like, instead of a cup of tea, they’d ask for a cup of ‘Rosie Lee.’”
“That seems kind of… ridiculous.”
“It is! God, I had the worst time trying to understand Tom when I first got over there.”
“Which one is Tom, again?”
“The one who wants to be a music supervisor.”
“With the double-jointed thumbs?” Jake asks, trying to sort the faceless names. He heard so many stories about Aiden’s friends from London over the summer that it was like being there and yet not, as though he knows them but never will—not until they each rise to the top of their respective fields, like everyone else who studies under Serafino.
“No, that’s Steve. He’s also the one who turned me on to that song.”
“Cinematographer, right?”
“Yep. He’s got nothing on you, though.”
Jake smiles down at his Chucks for a moment, letting the good feeling overtake his frustration surrounding ‘the whole London thing,’ as he refers to it—it still stings, even now—and capitalizes on the opportunity to change the subject. “As much as I love film, it’s kind of nice
not
to have to talk about it constantly. You know? Not having to dissect and deconstruct every single little detail.”
“Even though that’s exactly what we’ve done with every movie so far.”
“But we don’t
have
to. We don’t have term papers or projects riding on it anymore.”
“It’s just easy, right? Going at our own pace.”
“Another reason I’m happy we’re doing this.”
“But the main reason’s the sex, right?” Aiden asks, leaning over conspiratorially.
Jake smiles and ducks his head. A curious sense of modesty has been settling over him since Key West. “Of course.”
“Look, there it is!” Aiden says, pointing ahead to a fairly nondescript triangular traffic island at the intersection of Highways 61 and 49. Out of a clump of trees rises a large sign: an image of three guitars, their color drained under the orange of the streetlamps, above the legend
The Crossroads
. There are no cars on the roads, and save for the wind, it is silent.
“It’s like we’re the only two people in the world,” Jake thinks aloud.
Aiden gives him that look again, the one that electrifies Jake’s very blood, and pulls him across the street to stand beneath the sign. “So what would it take for you to make a deal with the devil?”
You,
Jake thinks, and mentally shakes himself.
Get it together, idiot.
“Right now? Probably taking a bath in a real bathtub. What about you?”
Without missing a beat, Aiden answers, “A box of Double Dip Crunch.”
“Really? I never tried it,” Jake says.
“It was only the greatest cereal the world has ever known,” Aiden says, and sighs heavily. “They had something similar in London, but it wasn’t the same.”
“Did you feel more at home there than you do here?” Jake asks, watching the way Aiden rubs his thumb along his forefinger. It’s something he only does when talking about London, something that gives him a distinctly dichotomous air, as if there are two separate versions of him: the one whose heart belongs to London, and the one whose heart belongs to this nomadic life and the search for home.
“I haven’t ever really felt at home anywhere,” Aiden says. “But I feel more at home this side of the ocean.”
Jake smiles wanly and buries his hands in his pockets with a shiver. “I believe you owe me a serenade, good sir.”
“And I believe I told
you
I wouldn’t dream of it,” Aiden replies, but he’s already swinging his guitar around and flexing his fingers. “How about some blues, since we’re here?”
“I don’t know; wouldn’t that be bad luck? It’s a good thing we’re not here on Halloween, with all the spirits walking the earth,” Jake says, casting an exaggeratedly spooked glance around.
Aiden simply smiles, pulls a guitar pick from his pocket, and begins to play Robert Johnson’s “Ramblin’ on My Mind.” He seems to settle into the song’s unusual rhythm almost effortlessly, and all at once, Jake can see the change that has taken place in him. It’s subtle; something in the way he’s held himself just a little taller these past couple of days.
Like he used to,
Jake thinks. There was so much tension in his stance when Aiden performed with The Cogs at The Cannery that he almost leaned forward over the edge of the stage; it was as though he was still trying to convince Jake to go, even though he’d long since agreed. Now, Aiden’s chin is tipped up, his shoulders are down and that old shine is back in his eyes. He’s just Aiden again.
As he sings, he circles Jake beneath a tree, pushing him against it; despite Jake’s small height advantage, Aiden seems disarmingly tall. Below the dark cover of the leaves, his eyes are nothing more than dark smudges, and yet Jake can feel them locked on his own. Aiden begins to strum more softly, and his voice drops to little more than a whisper.
A few seconds after Jake’s back hits the trunk of the tree, Aiden winds up the song and its last notes fade into the charged air between them. He’s breathing heavily, matching Jake exhalation for exhalation, and Jake reaches forward to gently push the guitar out of his hands. As easily as if they’ve been doing it for years, Aiden hooks his arms around Jake’s waist beneath the flannel of his jacket, and his cool hands find their way to the skin at the small of his back.
“How’s that for a serenade?”
Jake’s huff of laughter is far shakier than he’d like. “I don’t think you can serenade someone with the blues unless you’re Eric Clapton.”
Aiden inches closer and rocks forward to whisper into Jake’s ear, “I’ll sing you a love song if that’s what you really want.”
Caught between a spike of fear and wide-eyed eagerness, Jake forces a grin and asks, “And what would the Cockney rhyming slang for that be? ‘Rama lama ding dong’ or something?”
Aiden pulls back. His expression deadly serious, he says, “‘Turtle dove ding dong,’ actually.”
The tension breaks with an almost audible
snap
and Jake’s loud laugh rings through the empty roads surrounding them. “Ridiculous,” he says, and tips up Aiden’s chin to kiss him. Blistering heat seeps through Jake’s clothes, skin, flesh and muscle, all the way down to his bones.
4,590 miles
Day Thirty-six: Tennessee
“You’ve reached Alice Cooke. I’m currently unavailable, so please leave your name and number, and I’ll return your call as soon as possible.”
“Hey Mom, it’s me—”
“Sweetheart?”
Aiden smiles, sinks back into the couch and watches the world go by through the window opposite him. “Hi, Mom,” he says.
“Well, if it isn’t the prodigal son,” she says, and Aiden grins even wider. It’s been a week or so since they last spoke; any longer and she would have put out an AMBER Alert.