Authors: Mimsy Hale
“I…” he trails off, not knowing where to take the rest of the sentence. Would he really have been able to leave Jake behind again? Would he have found the strength to go another three and a half months—probably much longer, given his lack of desire to ever set foot in Maine again—without his hurricane of a best friend, this immutable kindred spirit who tears him apart and puts him back together in a better combination? He’s never even had to think about it before; when he first brought up the idea of the road trip, there was no doubt in his mind that Jake would be with him.
“You don’t get rid of me that easily, Valentine,” he finally says, trying for nonchalance. Jake huffs a humorless laugh and crosses his arms over his chest.
“Aiden, be serious. What if I’d said no? Would I have lost you for good this time?”
“Is that why you said yes?”
“You know it’s not,” Jake says evenly. He lets out a heavy sigh and drops his arms. “I’m sorry. It’s just… it’s been a really long day, and I’m terrible with goodbyes. It got me thinking.”
“Never a good idea,” Aiden jokes, and holds out his hand. “Come on. We’ve got a fire pit and s’mores waiting.”
“Always with the damn s’mores,” Jake mutters, climbing the steps and taking Aiden’s hand in a fleeting squeeze.
When the yawning young clerk has signed them in and assigned them Site Sixty-nine—much to Jake’s amusement—they make the short drive around the winding track that runs through the park and pull into their space with a renewed buzz of energy. Aiden leaves Jake pulling supplies from the refrigerator to go out to the fire pit, though it becomes abundantly clear when he gets outside that a campfire is not in the cards. Everything is still too damp from the rain that drove them off the back deck last night.
He’s still standing forlornly by the pit when Jake steps out of the RV, arms laden with a cooler and plates.
“You’re quite the Boy Scout, I see,” he quips, bending down and making a show of warming his hands over the nonexistent flames.
“Should’ve gotten you another sarcasm shirt,” Aiden grumbles. “It’s too damp; I don’t think this is gonna happen tonight. Next stop?”
“Next stop. I’m tired anyway, and we have a movie to watch.”
With a passing, dejected glance at the fire pit, Aiden follows him back inside. Fifteen minutes later they are both sitting on the bed in T-shirts and shorts, sucking the color from slices of honeydew melon.
“It’s no campfire, but it’s pretty damn perfect,” Jake murmurs, chasing a trail of juice down his wrist with his tongue. Aiden swallows, averts his eyes and hits the space bar on his laptop to play the movie.
They watch in silence as the feather curls its way down to where Forrest Gump sits on the bus bench.
“I wouldn’t have,” Aiden says quietly, just as Forrest finishes delivering the classic line about life being like a box of chocolates. Jake questions him with a single look. “I wouldn’t have left without you.”
Jake smiles and curls his fingers around Aiden’s in that way that only ever feels right when he does it. Aiden leans sideways to rest his head on Jake’s shoulder, and settles in for the duration.
50.5 miles
Day One: New Hampshire
The next morning, after waking up to Aiden moving quietly around the bedroom, getting dressed for a run, Jake retrieves his yoga mat from the narrow closet and unrolls it in front of the couch in the living area. With his favorite feel-good playlist floating from the speakers, he warms up gradually, easing into the familiar stretches of his usual routine. He tries to clear his mind and sink into the peace of repetitive extended breathing, but Aiden’s affirmation from last night is still weighing heavily on him, calling up memories that he’s been examining for the better part of the last three months: Aiden bowing to his grandfather’s coffin; Jake’s fingers rubbing the crook of Aiden’s elbow as they left the church; the words Aiden said as they sat with their backs to the trunk of the cherry tree in Aiden’s backyard, ties loosened and shirt sleeves rolled up in the midafternoon June heat.
“Let’s go somewhere. No, wait, let’s go
everywhere.
He left me the RV, so let’s use it. Take a road trip with me. It’ll be great; when we get to each state we can watch a movie that was filmed there, we can film our own stuff along the way, maybe even make a documentary…
what do you think? Will you come with me?”
Jake was systematically shredding a still-damp tissue in his lap when Aiden suggested it, and he wasn’t surprised. Aiden was always looking for some place to call home—he had spent their last year of college across the Atlantic interning under Oscar-winning director Dmitri Serafino—but the fact that he came up with the idea a mere six days after returning to Maine threw Jake for a loop, so much so that he found himself agreeing with barely a thought.
And now here he is on his last morning in Maine, waiting for Aiden to return and act as arrow to his compass. As he transitions from Standing Half Forward Bend into Firefly Pose, the exertion causing sweat to bead at his temples, Jake wonders if it’s a smart decision to put so much in Aiden’s nomadic hands. Maybe some part of him still needs convincing after all, never mind that they’re already almost past the point of no return.
No,
he thinks, exhaling to a count of five.
I’m here, and I’m doing this.
He moves smoothly back into Standing Half Forward before switching through to Downward-Facing Dog, relaxing into the stretch in his back and thighs. He had forgotten how much he enjoys this.
“Well, that’s quite a view.”
Jake twists to the side, looking back past his own legs to where Aiden stands just inside the door, thick strands of hair sticking damply to his forehead and the front of his heather gray Bowdoin tee dark with sweat. Jake hums noncommittally, but wiggles from side to side all the same. “I work hard for this ass.”
“I know you do,” Aiden says as he edges past. Jake sinks and pulls back into Upward-Facing Dog. “But you’re really working out to Bowie?”
“I’ll have you know that this song is a classic, and Bowie is one of the true artists of our time.”
“Our parents’ time, maybe,” Aiden replies, leaning against the kitchen counter and draining the contents of his blue CamelBak. “Since when did you start doing yoga again, anyway?”
“It was a slow summer,” Jake says, releasing the pose and moving to stand. He was almost finished, and the quiet is broken.
“Didn’t look that slow the day I got back from London.”
Jake glares through the rising heat in his cheeks, incensed at how efficiently Aiden can make him blush. He bends to pick up his mat and says, “I think you mean the day you started cramping my style again.”
“Come on, Jake. You must already have been pretty hard up if you finally gave in to Pickup Line Guy,” Aiden continues, stretching his arms out over his head with a satisfied smirk. Jake pauses halfway through rolling up the mat, watching the muscles shift beneath Aiden’s skin, and feels it all over again: the tug, tug, tug of dull want that has lain mostly dormant somewhere in the bottom of his gut since Aiden came home. Every single day since, Jake has asked himself how one person could change so much in the space of a year.
Aiden was always cute, but he never bothered to do anything with his thick hair, his rich brown eyes were always hidden behind a pair of thick glasses, and his last growth spurt left him gangly. He went off to London still wearing band T-shirts and jeans that looked too big for him. Now his hair is artfully and messily upswept; most days he wears contacts. He has filled out with defined muscle, where before there was flesh and bone; and while the clothes are the same, for the most part, they no longer hang from him.
“What was it that finally did it for you?” Aiden continues. “Was it the library card one?”
“Sorry, what—”
“What about, ‘People call me whatshisname, but you can call me tonight?’”
“Ade, we’ve had this conversation a million times already. Can you just drop it? And his name is Dylan,” Jake says hotly, tucking his mat under his arm, all thoughts of wanting Aiden gone. Really, it was just that Dylan happened to be at the same Pride parade and the same post-parade party. Somehow, dancing morphed into staying out all night, into breakfast at Brunswick Diner, into finding themselves stretched out on Jake’s bed as early morning summer sun filtered through the drapes. “It’s not like I got to finish the job anyway, what with you barging in on us.”
“Handjob or blowjob?”
“Do you know the difference, or should I draw you a diagram?”
“Of course I know the difference, Jake.”
“You know, if I’m as ‘hard up’ as you say, practical demonstrations are always fun…”
Aiden finally raises his hands in surrender. “Fine, fine, you win!”
“Good,” Jake says. “Now go take a shower; I can smell you from here.”
Aiden salutes him with a wink, and soon enough Jake is left alone in the living area, a smile quirking the corners of his mouth as Aiden’s singing carries over the shower.
It’s noon before
they drive into Hampton, and Jake has been watching the shadows ahead of the RV grow shorter as the sun shines ever brighter just above them. The windows are rolled down, and the fuzzy black dice hanging from the mirror swing back and forth in the cool breeze that whips through the cab. Jake reclines in the driver’s seat, one hand on the steering wheel as he smokes with the other, and Aiden’s seat is tipped as far back as it can go; his crossed ankles rest on the dashboard while he hums along to the radio.
Jake’s lips curve into an easy, involuntary smile as he gets rid of his cigarette and runs his fingers back through his hair. Behind his sunglasses, his eyes flick toward the GPS, even though he and Aiden took enough trips to Hampton Beach as kids that he could drive this route in his sleep. It feels good to finally be out of Maine; until they crossed the state line, it seemed they were simply gone for the evening, visiting friends in the next town over. His lingering apprehension notwithstanding, he has to admit that leaving home behind for a while is probably going to be a good thing—he’s twenty-two years old now, and a college graduate aspiring to work in the film industry. He would have needed to relocate no matter what.
“We’re almost there,” Aiden says absently, reaching into the spacious glove compartment to pull out Jake’s folder. “Everything’s in state order, right?”
“Are you questioning my organizational skills?”
“Never,” Aiden answers with a chuckle. He flips past the first few pages of the thick blue folder that Jake stuffed full with printouts and reservations until he finds the one for their two-day spot on the waterfront at Hampton Beach State Park. “I can’t believe it’s been so long since we were last here. Remember? With those ridiculous sandwiches you tried to make?”
“That was a good day,” Jake says, nodding as he recalls the smell of burning bread and the smoke alarm beeping for what felt like hours after his disastrous first attempt at croque-monsieur. “Seven years, though.”
“I know; it’s insane.”
Jake pushes his sunglasses back up his nose and returns both hands to the steering wheel. “The paperwork’s all there, right?”
“Looks like,” Aiden replies, pulling the sheet of paper from its plastic pocket and scanning it as Jake guides the RV along Ocean Boulevard. “Meet you down there?”
“Sure.”
Aiden closes the passenger side door behind him, and Jake eyes the camcorder he left on his seat before he pulls back out onto the main road. An old Stereophonics song plays on the radio, light and thrumming, what Jake calls “driving music.” Jake opens his mouth to sing along, but instantly his throat constricts. He feels as if his tongue has swollen to twice its size and now lies thick and useless in his mouth, just as it does every time he tries to sing—except in his room while the house is empty. He shakes himself, stuffing memories of singing “The Dishes Song” with his mom back into a box and mentally taping it haphazardly shut. He sets his jaw, flexes his fingers around the steering wheel and drives on.
On this mid-September Monday the RV park is all but deserted, and the never-quite-silent beach is tranquil. He pulls into their reserved site, cuts the engine, sinks back into his seat and breathes in the familiar scent of Hampton Beach saltwater. The first lungful—uncoupled with the smell of his mother’s perfume—always makes him ache, the hollow cut deep into his chest growing infinitesimally wider for a second that never fails to feel like falling. He finds himself absently rubbing the dip at the base of his neck, the chain of his Saint Christopher catching on his fingertips. He pulls it from where it lies beneath the collar of his fitted black T-shirt and studies it closely, resting the disc in his palm so that it catches the light. The design is simple: a smooth silver circle bordering an engraving of a man with a walking stick carrying a child on his back, nothing overtly religious or spiritual about it.
Jake feels ashamed for having been so surprised to receive such a thoughtful gift from Aiden. Over the course of their year apart, a number of the little things that Aiden had always done for him had become assimilated into Jake’s own routine; by the time Aiden returned, Jake had begun to take his sorely won independence for granted. After the first three months of Skype calls and emails that went unanswered for days, Jake’s sense of self-preservation kicked in and he simply learned how to be alone without being lonely.
And then Aiden came home, sadness over the reason for his return weighing on him like a boulder and the slightest London affectation in his voice. He came home, and suddenly there was Aztec couscous again, and a blanket covering Jake when he started awake at two a.m., having fallen asleep halfway through the movie they were watching, and the DVDs on his shelf were back in alphabetical order. Suddenly struck dumb with the fear that he needed Aiden much more than he’d thought before their symbiotic relationship was stripped away from him, Jake barely knew what to do with himself.
With a sigh, he tucks the pendant beneath his collar once more, unbuckles his seat belt and grabs the camcorder from the passenger seat. He takes it to the small diner-style table at the far end of the couch, sits in one of the high-backed, flock print chairs, plugs the camcorder into Aiden’s laptop and starts to scroll through the footage Aiden has been shooting.