Two Boys Kissing (18 page)

Believe us. We know this.

Avery wonders why Ryan is looking at him out of the corner of his eye, why Ryan would rather watch him than watch the road. Even when friends look at Avery, a small part of him still worries they are looking for flaws, irregularities. In this, Avery isn’t all that different from anyone else. We all worry that looking
at
is really looking
for
.

Finally, Avery can’t stand it. The look. Then a knowing smile. Then another look.

“What?” he asks.

This only makes Ryan smile more. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t usually like people. So when I do, part of me is really amused and the other part refuses to believe it’s happening.”

Maybe this is why we like watching you so much. Everything is still new to you. We are long past the experience, although we witness new things all the time. But you. New is not just a fact. New can be an emotion.

“What are we doing?” Avery asks. It is not meant as an existential question. He just wants to know what they’re doing next.

“I figured we’d start with pancakes. Do you want pancakes?”

“It’s hard to imagine a scenario where someone would say no to pancakes.”

So they go to the pancake house. Because it’s a small town, Avery notices Ryan checking out who else is inside before committing to a table.

“Looking for anyone in particular?”

Ryan smiles again. “No. Just habit, I guess.”

“How many people are in your high school?”

“About two hundred. You?”

“Eighty.”

“You must stick out. I mean, with the pink hair and all.”

“I bet you blend right in.”

“Trying to blend in would be like being put through a blender. I abstain.”

Avery finds this funny. “What did you just say?”

“I said, ‘I abstain.’ ”

“Is that what you say when the popular kids try to get you to hang out with them? ‘I’m sorry, but I abstain from blending in. There are just too many perks to being a wallflower.’ ”

“Yup. That’s precisely what I say. But do they stop? No. The popular kids keep bugging me. Calling. Texting. Showing up on my doorstep. Begging like dogs. I’m embarrassed for them.”

“I know
precisely
how you feel.”

To emphasize his point, Avery squeezes Ryan’s hand. It’s such an openly lame excuse to touch him, and both of them smile in acknowledgment of this.

“Part of you is amused,” Avery says. “And part of you doesn’t believe this is happening.”

Ryan nods. “And in the Pancake Century Diner, of all places.”

“Well,” Avery says, “it
is
the Pancake Century, after all.”

The waitress comes to take their order. Each of them thinks about pulling his hand away, but neither of them does.

Craig thinks of pancakes. He thinks of warm maple syrup and blueberries and butter melting. He thinks of the savory smoke of bacon on his tongue. A glass of cold orange juice. He tries to conjure their taste, but taste is elusive when it comes to memory. So instead he has to rely on his memory of how they look. How they smell. How happy they make him.

He focuses back on Harry. Harry, who is fading. Craig feels awful for thinking it, but the thought is there: If they don’t make it now, it will probably be because of Harry. Craig’s texted over his shoulder, asked him if he’s okay, and Harry keeps saying he is, keeps saying now that he’s cooled down, he’s back on track. But Craig can feel the lie throughout Harry’s body, can touch the tight muscles, can notice all the small movements Harry is making to keep himself upright, to keep himself going.

And I was never the stronger one
. Craig allows himself to say it, if only to himself. All through their relationship, Harry was the one in charge, Harry was the one who gave them direction. This wasn’t because Harry was smarter or even better at it than Craig was; it just meant more to him, to be in control. And Craig didn’t really care, so he ceded it away. He liked not being responsible all the time.

Complacency. Craig realizes now that this was complacency. One of the reasons he liked the sound of Harry’s voice was because it meant he didn’t have to use his own. But eventually this strategy backfired. Eventually Harry realized what was happening, and didn’t feel right about it. He wanted Craig to fight a little more, but by the time Craig started fighting for them to stay together, he had already lost.

Now he’s fighting for something different, something that feels more elemental. He’s fighting to stay standing. He’s fighting to go without food, without a bathroom. He’s fighting to keep his lips on Harry’s for seven more hours. And he’s fighting to help Harry do all of these things as well.

It’s one of the secrets of strength: We’re so much more likely to find it in the service of others than we are to find it in service to ourselves. We have no idea why this is. It’s not just the mother who lifts the car to free her child, or the guy who shields his girlfriend when the gunman starts to fire. Those are extremes, brave extremes, which life rarely calls on us to offer. No, it is the less extreme strength—a strength that is not so much situational as it is constitutional—that we will find in order to give. How often did we see this, as we were dying? How many soft-spoken lovers turned into fierce watchdogs over our care? How many reticent parents shed that reticence to be there with us? Not all. Certainly, not everyone showed strength. Some supposedly strong people in our lives showed that their strength was actually made of straw. But so many held us up in ways they would not have held themselves. They saw us through, even as their worlds crumbled through their fingers. They kept fighting, even after we were gone. Or especially because we were gone. They kept fighting for us.

We are gone, and maybe our spirits are gone, too, as the ones who knew us stop remembering us so often, or come to join us. But the spirit of that strength—it carries through. It is there for
the taking. You just have to reach for it and find it, as Craig is doing now. He would never grasp at it for himself, not in this way. But for Harry, he will.

Cooper, meanwhile, refuses to grasp. He refuses to hold. He refuses to feel.

We watch him letting go, but we will not let go of him.

He is driving without realizing he is driving. He knows there is a destination out there for him, and he is working his way toward it. In the meantime, he is taking the empty census of people who love him. He is not afraid of hurting anyone, because he doesn’t think anyone cares about him enough to be hurt. Surely, they will go through the motions. They will have their tears once he’s left. But underneath that performance of sadness, he feels their relief. They don’t want him to come back, so he won’t.

Love, he thinks, is a lie that people tell each other in order to make the world bearable. He is not up for the lie anymore. And nobody is going to lie to him like that, anyway. He’s not even worth a lie.

We want him to take a census of the future. We want him to consider that love does make the world bearable, but that does not make it a lie. We want him to see the time when he will feel it, truly feel it, for the first time. But the future is something he is no longer considering.

In his mind, the future is a theory that has already been proven false.

What a powerful word,
future
. Of all the abstractions we can articulate to ourselves, of all the concepts we have that other animals do not, how extraordinary the ability to consider a time that’s never been experienced. And how tragic not to consider it. It galls us, we with such a limited future, to see someone brush it aside as meaningless, when it has an endless capacity for meaning, and an endless number of meanings that can be found within it.

Sing us that old refrain.

The feed of the two boys kissing stays on in the background as Neil and Peter play video games in Neil’s room. Peter senses something is not quite right with Neil—his heart doesn’t seem into the game, and it’s the game he brought over a few days ago, desperate to make it to level thirty-two by the end of the week. Peter is afraid it’s still about the stupid text he got from Simon, or about something else that’s them-related. So he doesn’t say anything, because he knows Neil will bring
it up when he’s ready to bring it up. Maybe it isn’t anything at all.

For his part, Neil doesn’t understand why he isn’t talking to Peter, why he’s killing Russian assassins instead of telling Peter that his world has shifted. He’s waiting for Peter to ask him what’s happened, because he thinks it’s clear something’s happened, and why should he always have to be the one to point it out?

Peter pauses the game.

“Are you hungry?” he asks.

“Not really” is Neil’s reply.

“Thirsty?”

“No.”

“Do you want to do something else?”

“Do
you
want to do something else?”

“Are you in the throes of constipation?”

Neil is not in the mood for this. “No.”

“Pregnant?”

“No.”

“Sick of this game?”

“Which game?”

“The one you’re playing.”

“Which one am I playing?”

“The one on the screen right now.
Balkan Bloodbath 12
.”

“Oh. No. I’m fine.”

Here’s where Peter should say it.
What’s going on?

But instead he unpauses the game.

“If you’re fine,” he says, “I’m fine.”

They continue to play.

Ryan hasn’t had to spend much time thinking about where to take Avery next, because already they are running out of cool places in Kindling. If they’re not on the river or at Aunt Caitlin’s or in the Pancake Century Diner, there are very few places worth exploring. The Kindling Café is the one that’s left, but that’s where everyone is. He wants Avery to meet his friends, but not yet. He still wants them to be alone together, with no one watching, no one even noticing. This is Ryan’s relationship to this town: He doesn’t really want to leave any marks, and he wants Kindling to leave as few marks as possible on him. He knows he’s been defined by this town. And, of course, the more he’s tried to resist definition, the more they’ve defined him. But this—this time with Avery—needs to exist outside definition. Or, at the very least, he and Avery need to get a chance to define it themselves.