Authors: Mimsy Hale
Doesn’t she see that I can’t?
There are thousands of people in the arena, a sea of gray and red all screaming and cheering for whichever team they’ve come to support; the atmosphere is stifling, too much for Jake to stand. When the announcers finally declare halftime, he almost cheers. He’s up and out of his seat before he can think; he needs to find somewhere to be quiet, even for just a minute. Their seats are in the center of the row; the noise in his head is so loud that he doesn’t hear the insults people are probably tossing his way as he trips and stumbles and pushes past them, following signs that point toward the exit and then to the restrooms.
It’s time you figure out a way to let go of Dad.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he mutters, bursting into the restroom and closing the heavy door. It’s blessedly empty. He crosses to the sinks and runs the cold tap so he can splash some water on his face, his jaw, the back of his neck.
At last the heat starts to recede from his face and he can lift his head again. Feeling like every movie cliché ever, Jake regards himself in the mirror with his hands braced on either side of the sink. He can hear music playing outside, one of Charlie’s favorites from a time when there was always music in their house, before the pervasive silence that came when she sold all their dad’s old records and he wasn’t able to do a thing to stop it.
Something tugs at him, that same runaway-train sensation he’s been experiencing all day, and he suddenly aches to sing along with the song’s lyrics. Resisting the urge to open his mouth and sing is a thing at which Jake has become practiced—at least outside the confines of his room in an otherwise empty house. This time, however, he drops his gaze to the gleaming white porcelain of the sink and, without preface or preamble, begins to sing—shakily at first, but stronger with each note change.
Where he’d expect his throat to close, words soar. His mouth doesn’t go dry as the lyrics trip out. His breath doesn’t shorten; instead his ribcage expands to let in more air, as if it hadn’t always tightened whenever he heard so much as the opening notes to a song he liked. He sings—
sings!—
all the way through the chorus and the second verse, buoyed up and up, rising,
flying
over the notes and into the second chorus.
This
is what he’s been building toward. This is where his glorious runaway train has been taking him.
The door swings open. The music dies in Jake’s throat and he turns to see Aiden step inside, both of their jackets folded over his arm and concern plain on his face. He doesn’t speak, but keeps his eyes on Jake. Jake can almost feel them, like a touch of fingertips.
“I had to get out of there,” Jake finally offers with an aborted gesture toward the door. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Aiden says, closing the distance between them and kissing the side of his neck. Mouth still lingering there, he asks, “Feel like talking about it?”
Jake can almost feel the words print themselves on his skin in an invisible breath.
He drags his thoughts back to the moment. “There really isn’t much to talk about. Charlie wants us to sell the house and I don’t,” Jake says, thankful that Aiden knows him well enough to understand what he’s really saying.
Aiden’s arms go around him and Jake melts, the tension finally draining away. Without thinking, he says, “Let’s just stay like this forever.”
“In the restroom?”
“Like
this,
” he repeats, squeezing his arms around Aiden’s waist and pulling him closer. “I could stay like this forever.”
Aiden doesn’t respond, and in the silence that falls, Jake realizes what he’s just said, his treacherous heart getting the better of him yet again. He’s been trying to keep a better handle on himself, especially since Aiden’s confession in the club in Lexington—trying to reason that he’s only getting so attached because Aiden’s the only constant he has right now.
Clearing his throat, he steps back and tugs his shirt straight. It’s still too big around the shoulders, and Aiden laughs at the face he makes.
“Come on,” Aiden says. “Let’s head back.”
5,383 miles
Day Forty-
five: Michigan
His spirits high, Aiden turns this way and that, looking over his outfit in the mirror: tight black jeans that hug his ass and thighs, a simple, fitted black tank and the oversized red feather jacket Jake made especially for him. In the hopes of achieving a devil-may-care look, he has outlined his eyes in smudgy black eyeliner and styled his hair a little more messily than usual. He glances at himself one last time and decides that he’s met his objective; he looks good, and feels ready to get onstage and sing his heart out.
Aiden is calling his plan “The Reclamation Project.” He and Jake will go to The Alley Bar in Ann Arbor, where Hugh and April’s open-mic live karaoke band is playing, and somehow he will get Jake onstage to sing. He’s banking on the fact that Jake has never before backed down from a challenge, and hoping against hope that Jake won’t break that streak, even with something as contentious as his singing.
His plan has been forming ever since he caught Jake mouthing song lyrics as they readied for their night out in Lexington. It solidified even further when he heard Jake sing during halftime at the basketball game; Aiden had almost gone under, then, as a wave of fondness and excitement crashed over him. Following a brief text exchange with April, his plan has become ironclad.
Now, Jake stalks out of the bathroom, looking every inch the glam rock star in a plain white tank, skinny leather pants and a leather jacket with studded shoulders. He’s completed the look with an electric blue star framing his left eye and pink streaks in his hair. Aiden feels as if he’s had the air punched out of him, and all thoughts of The Reclamation Project are driven from his mind.
“What?” Jake asks.
“Happy Halloween, indeed,” Aiden says, gesturing toward Jake’s outfit. “I see what you mean about the pants paying for themselves.”
“Best money I ever spent,” Jake quips, sashaying as he moves closer. He tugs gently on the shoulders of Aiden’s jacket, smooths his palms down the front and asks, “This still fit okay?”
“Perfect. It’s perfect,” Aiden breathes, taken by how the blue makeup has brought out the depth in Jake’s green eyes.
“If only we didn’t have somewhere to be…” Jake trails off, scanning Aiden’s body from head to toe and shaking his head.
He and Jake are in considerably brighter moods than the past two days. Hurricane Sandy has been and gone. No major damage was sustained at either family home back in Brunswick, and Aiden received a text from his dad just before dinner to report that he and Fiona were safe and well, having gone to their cabin in Saint Mary.
“Well,” Aiden begins, ducking his head and looking up at Jake from beneath his lashes, “we’ve still got fifteen minutes.”
Jake raises an eyebrow, and his eyes land on Aiden’s mouth. “Excellent,” he murmurs, and pushes Aiden backward into the bedroom, kicking the door shut behind them.
Half an hour later,
as Aiden’s phone buzzes angrily in his pocket, they walk into the bar. It looks packed almost to capacity, with people crowded around tables decorated with black candles and along walls strung with cotton spider webs. Not a single person is dressed in everyday clothes; as Aiden scans the crowd, he counts four zombies, three mummies, a Captain America and an Iron Man, a Daisy Duke, a banana, five witches in various stages of undress and the Eleventh Doctor. The atmosphere thrums with the low undercurrent of a thrill that Aiden can only attribute to Halloween parties—something caught between loud fun and an irrational, suppressed fear.
“Elmo!” comes a croaky voice to his right, and Aiden grimaces.
“Hey, Flower,” he greets April, turning at the same moment Jake does. She seems to have made the most of her red hair, which is styled into curls that perfectly offset her skintight Black Widow costume.
“I’ve missed you guys so much!” she exclaims, and lets out a peal of laughter as Jake grabs her around the waist, picks her up and spins her around. Aiden feels a rush of excitement—at the very least, Jake’s good mood is promising.
“What
is up with your voice?” Jake asks.
April rolls her eyes and tucks her hair behind her ears. “I have fucking laryngitis, so I can’t sing. That’s why we’re so happy you came tonight, because we were wondering—”
“No,” Jake interrupts. “April, you
know
I don’t sing.”
“Honey, I gave up on you a
long
time ago,” she says, before turning to Aiden and shooting him a significant look. “Actually, we were hoping that you’d open for us. Remember the show at The Cannery when Will’s grandma was in the hospital?”
Aiden nods, smiling at the memory of that show. He had a blast performing with them, even more so than with The Cogs, and he can’t wait to get onstage with them again.
“Of course I’ll open for you,” he says. April grins and stands on tiptoe to kiss his cheek.
“Are you guys drinking?” she asks, nodding in the direction of the bar.
“Yeah, we’re parked right out back,” Jake says.
“Then the first round’s on me. You’re seriously saving my ass,” she says, folding a twenty-dollar bill between two fingers and holding it out over the bar. One of the bartenders—dressed all in red with a plastic pair of devil horns atop his spiky brown hair—is before her in an instant, and she orders three tequila shots.
While the bartender lines up the shots, Aiden asks, “So where are the guys?”
April rolls her eyes again and says, “Probably all smoking in the courtyard. I had to come
inside
just to get a minute of peace. Can you believe that?”
“What’s up?” Jake asks.
“Oh my
god,
it’s just… I love these guys, you know I do. But spending every goddamn day with them in a freaking bus is…” April trails off, shaking her head. She raises her glass to Aiden and Jake and downs the shot in one swallow without so much as a pull at the corners of her mouth. Aiden and Jake follow suit. “I mean, Will had to go home because of his grandma, so we’re down a singer anyway, and… okay, take today for example. Hugh has been up my ass about taking my fucking medication, which, I’ve been on birth control since I was fucking fifteen, okay? I know how to take a goddamn pill. Liam’s barely spoken to Ethan all week since he made some sort of joke about Green Day, I don’t even know what. Drake’s constantly pranking the both of them and now he’s trying to recruit the rest of us, and Marcie’s been freaking out all fucking day because the guys are trying to get her to sing tonight.”
Aiden lets out a low whistle and signals the bartender for another round. Jake’s face twists in sympathy.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Jake says, squeezing her arm.
“Just… I know you two have your magical rainbow connection or whatever, but
seriously.
How do you stand it?” April asks, eyes flicking between them.
Jake shoots Aiden a questioning look, and he shrugs in reply. They haven’t exactly discussed whether they’re going to tell anyone about their “arrangement,” and though he spilled the beans to his mom, telling one of their friends is an altogether different matter.
Their look must last a fraction too long, however, because April steps closer to them and scans their faces with wide eyes. A slow, satisfied Cheshire cat grin blossoms across her face, and as she leans back against the bar, she asks, “How long?”
“It, um… depends,” Aiden says, and looks to Jake for guidance.
“It happened in Philadelphia, and then again in Key West,” Jake says succinctly. “And practically every night since.”
April crosses her arms over her chest and announces, “Well firstly, there is no fucking way I’m having sex with
any
of them.”
“Not even Marcie?” Jake asks, nudging her side.
“Please. She’s not even out back home; I’m not about to make things even more complicated.”
“But you’ve liked her for so long—”
“And
secondly,
Jake Richard Valentine, since when am I not the first person you text when you add a new ass to the pile?”
“Maybe since the invention of your I-told-you-so dance?”
“Wait,” Aiden interjects, turning to April. “You said this would happen?”
“July fourth. I thought I was gonna have to get a fucking bucket, the amount you were drooling over each other,” April says.
Before Aiden has a chance to dwell too long on her words—or the way Jake ducks his head and avoids Aiden’s eyes—April checks her watch and nods toward the end of the bar, where the band’s equipment is set up on a small stage. “Come on, time for us to do our thing.”
Jake’s fingers coil around the back of Aiden’s neck and pull him close for a bruising kiss. He captures Aiden’s bottom lip between his teeth and pulls off slowly, then whispers into his mouth, “Break a leg, rock star.”
With a bitten-off groan, Aiden leaves Jake at the bar and follows April through the crowd. The rest of the band files in from the courtyard, and each member greets him with a hug or a smile as they rush to take the stage. Once all of them are in place, the lights dim and the noise in the bar dies down as all heads turn toward them.
Breathe,
Aiden reminds himself. He finds Jake’s face at the back of the crowd just as Ethan begins to play the introduction to their opening song, Robbie Williams’ “Let Me Entertain You,” and the lights come up.
“Ladies and gentlemen, zombies and ghouls,” he says over the synthesized piano, spreading his arms wide. “We are The One with the Band, and we’re thrilled to be here in Ann Arbor!
“We’re a live, open-mic karaoke band, and we’ll be opening and closing the show for you. You’ll find copies of the song list around the bar, and we’d love for you to get up here and rock out with us. So don’t be shy about putting your name down; just hand your slips to either me or Mystique here,” Aiden continues, gesturing to his right where Marcie stands ready at her own microphone, her trumpet by her side. “For now just sit back, relax and let us entertain you.”