Authors: Mimsy Hale
“So have I.”
Aiden takes a breath, his hands flat against Jake’s shoulder blades, their dance almost lost, and whispers, “I wish…”
“You wish what?” Jake prompts, leading him through a series of crossing, pivoting steps with their chests pressed tightly together and heads held high. When he doesn’t answer, Jake presses his forehead to Aiden’s temple and whispers, “Tell me.”
“I wish I’d told you about the dancing sooner,” Aiden says, exhaling, and nods to their rapt audience.
“That’s all?” Jake can’t help but ask.
When did I stop biting my tongue?
“That’s all,” Aiden says, and takes the lead once more, bending Jake back in one final dip to end their performance. The applause is enthusiastic, and in his peripheral vision, Jake can see Toby and Andrew’s infuriatingly knowing smiles. When he looks back up, Aiden is gazing down at him with eyes that remind him of harbor lights back home, guiding his way long after nightfall.
6,491 miles
Day Fifty-six: Missouri
It’s only when the nights’ shadows begin to extend that Aiden realizes that they’ve gone beyond the halfway point in their journey.
The sun noticeably rises later and sets earlier now, and he and Jake get used to long stretches of dark drive time, keeping the lights dimmed in the RV after sunset and leaving a pot of coffee brewing almost around the clock. Aiden’s mood is still bright, though—brighter even than when Jake finally gave in and kissed him that first time, his lips salted by the ocean air.
So much is changing. So much has
already
changed. But Aiden finds that for once, rather than chase down the new until he can hold it in his cupped palms and turn it this way and that, now he is content to pick up the new only when it has almost passed by without notice.
“What are you waiting for?” Toby had asked during their dance at the wedding. This was seemingly out of the blue until he continued, “I see what you guys are trying to do, and I respect that, but seriously, what you have is too special to just piss away like this. So what are you waiting for?”
Aiden had stepped back, needing to know that he could still bolt if he wanted to. But instead he composed himself, took up the dance once more and simply answered, “Him. I’m waiting for him.”
Now he glances over at Jake, asleep in the passenger seat, and smiles to himself. He’s been driving for hours; his body is stiff, and his eyes feel dry, but a pleasant sensation is growing in the back of his mind, like the slow awakening of a creature in hibernation—something about the approaching winter drawing it out rather than sending it into a deeper sleep. Aiden doesn’t know what it is, and usually the not knowing would drive him to distraction; but not now.
Jake jerks upright in the passenger seat; his body goes rigid and his hand flattens against the window. Aiden winces in sympathy as Jake rubs his eyes and relaxes back into his seat with a shudder.
“Bad dream?” he asks.
“It was like—” Jake begins in a sleep-choked rasp and stops to clear his throat. “It was like some weird version of
The Hunger Games,
but with congressmen. You were there for some reason. And there was
so much blood.”
“Ugh,” Aiden says. He suppresses a shiver and turns his attention to the GPS. “Well, we’re almost there.”
Jake grabs the GPS from its holder, studies it intently for a moment and then programs something into it. When he returns it to the dashboard, the Kathy Bates sound-alike whose voice they still haven’t bothered to change instructs,
“In half a mile, turn left onto Legion Road.”
In answer to Aiden’s questioning look, Jake says, “You’ll see.”
When they pull up outside The Dam Bait Shop, the headlights cast the faded wooden storefront in a harsh shade of yellow. Aiden gives Jake a sidelong glance and asks, “Are you sure this is where we’re meant to be?”
“Yes,” Jake says, offering no further explanation.
“But it’s a bait shop.”
“Yes, Captain Obvious, it’s a bait shop.”
“So… what are we doing here? Are you taking me on a romantic fishing adventure or something?”
“There’s no such thing as a romantic fishing adventure, Dan,” Jake says with a sigh. Turning in his seat, he gestures toward the bait shop and explains, “This is where Dad brought me when I was seven. After Mom.”
“Is that why you wanted to come here instead of Joplin?” Aiden asks gently, reaching over to intertwine their fingers.
Jake looks at their joined hands and glances out the windshield once again, his brow furrowed. “Let’s go,” he says, exhaling and giving Aiden’s hand a single, light squeeze.
They drive on quietly. Aiden merges back onto US-54 and pulls into River View RV Park ten minutes later. The night is quiet, the air a little damp from the afternoon’s thunderstorm. While Jake stays still in passenger seat, looking lost in his own thoughts, Aiden makes quick work of getting them signed in and around to their parking spot.
After retrieving two blankets from the hall closet, Aiden shrugs into his thick Bowdoin hoodie and grabs Jake’s sweater from the back of the couch. Jake is in the process of stretching out his arms and legs when Aiden approaches him, and as he takes in the blankets, he raises an eyebrow at Aiden in question.
“Grab your phone and meet me on the roof,” Aiden says, shoving the sweater into Jake’s hands and turning on his heel.
“The roof?” he hears Jake ask, but the door closes behind him with a deep click before he can answer. Instead, he makes his way to the back of the RV, tosses the blankets over his shoulder and climbs the ladder. The metal is cold under his hands, and the night carries a chill breeze that makes him grateful for the hoodie.
He spreads out the blankets and sits down; he only has to wait thirty seconds or so before he hears Jake gasp in the sudden cold. Aiden grins down at him from his vantage point.
“Are you crazy?” Jake grumbles, craning his head back. “It’s fucking freezing.”
“The RV walls are high and hard to climb,” Aiden challenges him, remembering childhood nights when it was all he could do to get Jake into Matt’s long-abandoned tree house.
In the little slices of moonlight cutting through the clouds overhead, Aiden can see Jake work his jaw for a moment before moving around to the ladder and replying, “Stony limits cannot hold
me
out.” When Jake has climbed high enough to see over the top of the RV, he grabs Aiden’s wrist, pulls Aiden toward him and whispers against his lips, “Or dorks like you, apparently.”
Something twists and swoops in Aiden’s gut as he kisses Jake, parts his lips and tastes peppermint. It happens at the oddest of moments, this sensation of being suspended, weightless and timeless in a world grown quiet save for their matching heartbeats. When he pulls back, he sees faint tremors in the cotton of Jake’s fitted T-shirt that betray the racing heart beneath.
“Come on, sweetheart,” Aiden says, scooting back to make room.
With a grace in his long limbs that Aiden often envies, Jake pulls himself up onto the roof and arranges himself between Aiden’s legs, sitting with his back pressed comfortably against Aiden’s chest. Aiden shakes out the second blanket and wraps it around them both. His breath comes out in barely visible puffs of white.
“So are you going to tell me what we’re doing up here?” Jake asks.
Aiden doesn’t answer for a moment. He takes Jake’s phone and, as he scrolls through his extensive library, counters, “Are
you
going to tell me what’s up?”
Just as Aiden finds the song he’s looking for—“Swingset Chain” by Loquat, a mellow acoustic track with a dreamy, reminiscent quality that has been a staple of theirs for years—Jake exhales heavily and pulls a cigarette from the pack clutched in his hand. He lights up and draws deeply, pulls Aiden’s arms snug around his waist and shrugs a little. “Just a few more ghosts to exorcise,” he says, and drops his head back onto Aiden’s shoulder. “Do you remember when Dad came to get me and Charlie that April in 1998?”
“When you’d been staying at my place?” At Jake’s nod, Aiden adds, “Of course I remember.”
“Well, this is where he brought us. Lake Ozark,” Jake says. “The drive down was so… I was so
pissed
at him for leaving for three months and then just coming and taking us away like we’d been at your house for a sleepover or something. Charlie was so happy you’d think all of her Christmases and birthdays happened at once, but I barely spoke to him until we got to that stupid bait shop.
“We were looking at the fishing poles, and he was talking to us about them, you know, telling us which ones were better,” Jake says, pausing to take another deep drag from his cigarette and flicking the ash over the side of the RV. “And then he just looked down at me and said, ‘So which one do you want, Jakey?’ And suddenly it was like, ‘Oh. I still actually have my Dad. I didn’t lose him
and
Mom.’”
“You came back different,” Aiden says quietly, pressing his lips to the hollow of Jake’s neck.
“It was the first time in three months that I didn’t feel like I’d lost everyone.”
“You always had me.”
“You with your Band-Aids,” Jake reminds him, elbow gently nudging his stomach.
With an almost startling clarity, the image of a seven-year-old Jake screaming at the sky appears in Aiden’s mind’s eye. When William gave him the news about his mother, Jake bolted from the house, Aiden at his heels because he knew exactly what Jake was thinking: Simba’s dad talked to him from up in the sky, so Jake’s mommy would too, right?
“Dan, why isn’t she up there?” Jake demanded, but there was nothing that Aiden could think of to say. What
could
he have said that would have made it all better? It wasn’t like that time Jake fell off his bike in the front yard and his knee got all bloody. There was nothing to clean up or put one of his cool dinosaur Band-Aids on.
The first time Aiden saw Jake again after the funeral, however, he took one of those Band-Aids and stuck it onto Jake’s shirt right over his heart. He did it every time Jake got sad until they were thirteen.
“Why did you stop doing that, by the way?” Jake asks, as if reading his mind. “It always cheered me up, no matter how crappy I felt.”
“Are you feeling crappy right now? Because we have Band-Aids, you know. They’re just the regular kind, but—”
Jake twists around and kisses him firmly. His eyes sparkle in the moonlight when he pulls back. “No. Right now, I’m happy.”
Aiden wants to ask,
Is it because of me? Are you happy with me, will you let me keep making you happy? Will you trust me with your heart if I promise that you can?
Instead, he shrugs it off and says, “Me too.”
“Good,” Jake says. “So what
are
we doing up here?”
“We’re going to listen to a little music,” Aiden begins. “We’re going to huddle for warmth like the penguins do, and then we’re going to make cocoa, because I don’t know about you, but I’m completely over coffee right now. And then maybe we could watch our movie. Or we could have sex. Your choice.”
Jake laughs; the sound is melodic yet too loud in the stillness of the night. “Is ‘all of the above’ an option?”
“Always. Why? Do you want to go inside already?”
Jakes one last drag of his cigarette and tosses it over the side. He tugs the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands and settles back against Aiden. “Maybe in a little bit. It’s nice up here.”
“I do have good ideas sometimes.”
“Those Band-Aids were the best idea you ever had, you know.”
“I wanted to take care of you.”
“You always have.”
6,830 miles
Day Fifty-nine: Arkansas
“Just got a text from April,” Aiden murmurs from the passenger seat. “She wants to know what songs we want to do solo for the gig this Saturday.”
“Must be the text I just got, too,” Jake replies, having felt his phone vibrate against his leg a moment ago. “What did you choose?”
“It’s a surprise.”
“Did she send over those two new ones yet?”
Aiden nods and taps a response. “Yeah, I just got the email. How crazy is it that they’re writing their own stuff now?”
“Well, the only one they’ve written is the one she wants to close the show with,” Jake corrects him. “The other one she sent is a We Are Scientists song. But yeah, it’s crazy. I mean, they’ve
never
been serious like this before. In fact…”
“What?”
Scratching absently at his jaw, Jake considers his words. “When we talked yesterday, April kept mentioning Alaska being the last big show, and then she was saying that not everyone is joining in on writing the new material. I don’t know, it just, it got me thinking.”
“Thinking what?”
“I think they might break up after this tour. Or, if they don’t break up, a few of them will start a new band,” Jake says. He sits forward in his seat, resting his forearms on the steering wheel, and as he glances out of the windshield and catches sight of the blue and white sign declaring,
Welcome to Arkansas, The Natural State,
he says, “All right, we’re in Arkansas. Crank it.”
He catches Aiden’s affectionate smile in his peripheral vision, and within moments Johnny Cash’s distinctive throaty voice is pouring from the speakers. Aiden taps his thumb and drums his fingers against his thigh, singing along quietly and harmonizing to Johnny’s timeless vocals.
“Why didn’t you go into music?” Jake asks, and lowers the volume.
Aiden looks thoughtful for a moment. “A lot of reasons. I mean, you know I love film and directing.”
“Right, but you love music just as much, if not more. And you’re just as good at that.”
“I don’t know, I guess… it was Dad’s thing, you know? He had his lawyer band, no matter how lame they were. I kind of wanted to distance myself from all that, and you were doing film, too.”
“Don’t tell me you took film just because I was taking it,” Jake says, shooting him a look.
“Narcissist,” Aiden teases. Jake sticks out his tongue in response. “Wouldn’t it have been weird, though? Doing different things after growing up doing everything together?”