Authors: Mimsy Hale
When they get back to the RV, Jake disappears into the bedroom and returns clutching a thin white envelope.
Past a weathered pavilion hung with white lights, the edge of the campground is a low cliff overlooking a gorge. They walk there in silence, holding hands.
They’re both dressed in dark colors; the envelope stands out in stark relief, and the moon is bright above them. The wind is strong, and the elevation makes Aiden feel as if he’s only filling his lungs halfway. He looks up at the impossible stars—they seem close enough to touch.
He sounds hesitant and stilted when he asks, “What does it say?”
“Too much, probably,” Jake says, sounding distant. The envelope is in his right hand, which is also curled around the cold metal guardrail; it crumples as his grip tightens, and the wind roars in Aiden’s ears. “Everything I’ve never… it’s four fucking pages.”
“It’s okay. You don’t have to tell me,” he says, pressing his hand into the small of Jake’s back.
“I came out to him,” Jake says. “In the letter. I still don’t know how he’d feel about it. Whether he’d be supportive or not… if he’d be proud of me.”
“I think he’ll probably end up with your boy one day, you know,” he hears William say, and as he loiters outside the living room door, Aiden’s breathing stops for a second.
“I think you’re right. Wouldn’t that be something?” Alice says.
William clears his throat. “Has he come out to you and George yet?”
“Not yet, but it’s only a matter of time. For Jake, too. They’re both working up to it; I can tell.”
“Just wait, they’ll end up doing it on the same day.”
As the memory comes rushing back, long misplaced, yet brighter than the stars above their heads, Aiden closes his eyes. “He knew. I overheard him talking to Mom one day, and he knew.”
Even with his eyes closed, Aiden can feel Jake’s gaze on him, knows the exact measure of shock that is widening his eyes and dropping his jaw. “You never told me,” Jake says.
“I’m telling you now.” Aiden opens his eyes and turns toward him, thumbing over his cheek. “And he
was
proud of you, Jake.”
“Thank you.” The words shudder out of him like a sob. He takes the envelope in both hands and rips it in two, then four, again and again until it’s nothing but handfuls of scraps covered in fragments of Jake’s crooked handwriting. His eyes are screwed shut. Aiden’s heart races. As Jake lets out a long, slow breath and throws the pieces into the wind, Aiden thinks he hears him whisper, “Bye, Dad.”
The wind dies down as if all the air has just been sucked from the world. Jake is breathing rapidly, in through the nose and out through the mouth. His hands shake as he lowers them to the guardrail.
“Jakey?” Aiden ventures, motioning weakly toward him; Jake looks at him for a split second that makes Aiden’s chest clench painfully, and then takes off faster than Aiden can register, running back down the hill and off into the darkness. “Jake, wait!”
Aiden follows as quickly as he can, and the frigid night air burns his throat and lungs as he vaults over the low fence bordering the campground. He sees Jake silhouetted by the pavilion lights; blood rushes in Aiden’s ears and he wants to stop, to lean over and empty the contents of his stomach onto the ground at the sight of the tears he saw in Jake’s eyes.
Aiden watches Jake stumble up the steps to the pavilion and crumple to his knees as if in slow motion, hunched over and barely holding himself up, his body wracked with sobs. Aiden feels as though he’s suffocating. Guilt roils in the pit of his stomach—he used to wish that Jake would break down like this and purge himself, but gave up hoping long ago. Now, Jake is a volcano, stone undone by heat and sorrow.
Just as he did fifteen years ago, twenty-five hundred miles away under a January midnight sky, he circles in front of Jake and stands there. He’s breathing razor blades, and he hates himself for not knowing what to do. Jake’s sobs intensify until he sounds like a wounded animal, until he’s barely getting air, and Aiden falls to his knees, cups Jake’s jaw and forces his head up.
“Look at me,” he says. “Sweetheart, look at me. I need you to breathe.”
It’s been fifteen years, but Aiden still recognizes the wrenching shade of green Jake’s irises turn when he cries. It’s somewhere between lime and pistachio, the color of sun-bleached grass.
“Get away from me,” Jake says, staring him straight in the eye for a moment of stone cold resolve before his face crumples and he manages to get to his feet and wrap his arms around his middle.
“Jake, I’m
sorry,
he—”
“Shut up, just shut up, please
stop talking,
I can’t—”
Standing, Aiden moves closer and tries again. “Jake, it’s okay. It’s
okay,
I understand, you don’t have to—”
“Don’t,” Jake says, his voice ragged. “Don’t say you
understand.”
“I lost someone, too,” Aiden gently reminds him. “Of course I understand.”
“No, you
don’t.
And don’t think that just because I finally let you fuck me, it means you know every fucking thing about me,” Jake spits, looking him in the eye. The words hit Aiden like a slap in the face and he breaks eye contact. His gaze lands on Jake’s right hand, where he works his thumb back and forth over the crease of his index finger.
“That’s not fair,” Aiden says in a small voice, shaking his head and chancing a glance back up.
“Oh, okay, let’s talk about
fair,
shall we?” Jake says, rounding on him with fire in his eyes. “It’s not
fair
that he got taken away from me just like
that,
like he wasn’t my whole world. It’s not
fair
that the first thing I think of when anyone says his name is those two fucking cops at my front door in their dumb-ass anoraks.
It’s not fair
that I have to carry around this huge, gaping hole in my chest when some days it feels like it’s all I can do to put one foot in front of the other. Sometimes it feels like I’m
bleeding
him, Aiden. Do you
understand
that?”
Aiden wraps Jake up in his arms. Jake struggles, but Aiden only tightens his hold until he finally goes lax, still trembling and sobbing.
“I’m here. I’m here; I’m not going anywhere,” he whispers, not knowing what else to do. Jake’s knees buckle under the weight of his grief, and Aiden doesn’t know how to help other than sink to the floor with him.
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Jake pulls away, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand and looking miserably at the floor. “Aiden, I’m… I’m so sorry. For what I said before, and… all of this,” he says, shaking his head and blinking back more tears. His hand falls to his lap, his thumb rubbing over his index finger again.
“You’re not Catholic,” Aiden blurts.
“What?” Jake asks.
“The whole guilt thing isn’t hereditary, you know,” Aiden jokes weakly, gesturing to Jake’s hand and adding, “Plus, you look like my grandma at church.”
Blinking, Jake looks down at his hand as if he doesn’t even realize what he’s been doing. “Mom had this rosary that I used to hold. After,” he explains. He flexes his fingers and sniffs harshly, something in his face shuttering.
“You don’t need to wear the mask around me. You know that, right?” Aiden asks.
Jake lets out a hollow laugh. “Are you my therapist now? You took
one
psych class, remember?” he says, but there’s no venom behind the words.
“Come on,” Aiden says, tugging him to his feet. “Come on back to me.”
“I didn’t…” Jake stops, and looks at Aiden almost sheepishly. “Okay.”
A chill sweeps over them as the wind picks up again, but Aiden doesn’t hurry their short walk back to the RV. The moonlight picks out the tears still rolling down Jake’s face, and it isn’t until they’re back inside and passing the bathroom that Aiden realizes one small thing that he can do.
He kisses Jake’s hair and nudges him toward the bedroom, and then ducks into the bathroom and rifles through the cabinets until he finds what he needs.
When Aiden enters the room, Jake’s shoes are on the floor but he’s otherwise still dressed and sitting on the bed with his arms wrapped around his knees. Aiden slowly climbs onto the bed next to him and waits until he unfolds before peeling open the Band-Aid and sticking it onto Jake’s shirt, right over his heart. Jake blinks down at it for five long seconds. And then he pitches forward into Aiden’s arms as his sobs turn frantic once more.
Aiden can feel the tears seep through his thin shirt and onto his skin; it’s as if Jake is made of tears, as if he’s been saving them all up for this one night when Aiden can finally reach up, catch him as he tumbles down and hold him together. His chest hurts with the sensation of being needed; it spreads through him and fills him up. And in this moment, with Jake’s fingers tightening in the cotton of Aiden’s shirt as he cries himself out, Aiden realizes that he doesn’t need to be some knight in shining armor, riding in to save the day and make everything better. He needs to be the oak tree in their place at Thomas Point Beach, the pillar of strength rooted to the earth. He needs to be the anchor, the tether, the reason to come back and endure.
When Jake finally falls asleep, Aiden tucks him under the covers and breathes deeply as Jake curls into his usual position. Something about his face has changed; the lines in his forehead are gradually easing out. He looks younger, more at peace… beautiful.
Pulling the door closed behind him in the hope that Jake will just continue to sleep, he makes his way through to the living area with every intention of spending the night on the couch. But then the magnets on the refrigerator catch his eye. Most of them are left over from his grandfather’s many road trips; Aiden lets his fingers drift over one in particular, Arizona-shaped and proudly proclaiming in silver and teal,
The Grand Canyon State.
After the briefest pause, he grabs a bottle of iced coffee from the fridge, pulls the magnet from the door and takes both items with him to the cab. He switches on the radio and the GPS, puts his seat belt on and starts the engine.
He knows exactly where he’s going.
12,000 miles
Day Eighty-five: Arizona
Jake wakes up with his breath stinging his raw throat and his eyes still full with the bittersweet ache of catharsis. He’s wearing yesterday’s clothes, and his face feels like a puffy mess. There’s also the matter of Aiden sitting on the edge of the bed, gently pushing back Jake’s hair and looking as though he hasn’t slept all night.
“Morning,” he says, a smile tugging at his mouth.
“Morning,” Jake rasps. He shifts under the covers. “What time is it?”
“After seven,” Aiden says. “How’d you sleep?”
Jake stretches his arms and blinks. He feels
rested.
“Better than I have in years, actually. You?”
“I haven’t slept yet,” Aiden says, his hand dropping and tracing the line of Jake’s jaw. “There was something I had to do.”
“And it took you nine hours?”
“Eight, actually.”
“You didn’t go out and get lost, did you?”
“No. But I did drink way too much coffee.”
“Well, that’s nothing new,” Jake says, suppressing a yawn and momentarily letting his eyes close. “I’m guessing I’m awake for a reason?”
“Put on the warmest clothes you own,” Aiden says, removing his hand, “and meet me at the door in five minutes.”
“What’s going on?” Jake asks, sitting up and catching Aiden’s wrist as he stands to leave.
“You’ll see,” Aiden sing-songs, his voice cracking with fatigue. With an exaggerated wink, he ducks out of the bedroom, and Jake is left alone.
He stays still for a moment more, stretching out into the warmth of the sheets and listening to the air settle. He feels as if his heart has been cracked open, but instead of wanting to claw himself back together and patch up his fault lines, he wants… Aiden. He wants him openly, honestly, and completely—almost as if Aiden has passed some test neither of them were aware had been set.
Jake glances down at the front of his shirt, peels off the Band-Aid and sticks it directly onto the skin over his heart.
He dresses quickly and simply in thick, charcoal gray jeans, a white shirt and a soft wool sweater, finished with a black scarf and gloves. He’s feeling somehow rebellious, as if he needs to be contained—kinetic energy thrums beneath his skin, and the muted colors help ground him. Avoiding his reflection, since his hair is probably an unmitigated disaster, he heads out to meet Aiden, who is bundled up in his pea coat and waiting—as promised—by the door.
The RV is shrouded in darkness, all of the blinds drawn and the lights switched off. It carries the same atmosphere as their teenage “runaway” nights did, when Jake stayed over at Aiden’s house and they snuck out for bike rides up to Coffin Pond long after dark.
“Come here,” Aiden murmurs. He holds out a hand; the other loosely holds his scarf.
“You’re starting to freak me out,” Jake says as he approaches. “Seriously, what’s going on?”
“Can I blindfold you?”
“I—what?”
Grinning sheepishly, Aiden holds up the scarf. “There’s something I want to show you, but I don’t want you to see it ‘til we get there. It’s only a couple minutes’ walk.”
“We’re not in Santa Fe anymore, are we?”
Aiden bites his lip and shakes his head. “Nope.”
Jake regards him for a moment before stepping forward and letting Aiden blindfold him. And then, as if it’s the easiest thing in the world, Jake lets himself be led: down the steps and out the door; along smooth ground that gives away nothing; then down a gradual incline that leads to an uneven set of winding steps.
The world around him is nearly silent; only the occasional bird sings a dawn song to accompany them. Jake is grateful that there seems to be no one else around while Aiden patiently guides him down the steps. Jake’s arm occasionally flails for purchase where there is none to be found.
“How much far—” Jake begins, but stops short when he feels a railing press against his waist. He reaches out and feels the metal beneath his free hand. “Aiden?”