by Trisky
"Brian..." And I see your face relax into a relieved smile and I don't give a shit what excuse my mouth comes out with, I know this is where I'm supposed to be. "Come in."
"I thought I'd come see how the other half lives." I try to look surprised at the large room, separated by just one kitchen counter and absolutely nothing else, like this is the first time I've ever been here, but he's so happy I don't think he would notice or care if it wasn't. He doesn't really have much, by way of furniture, his bed from home, a couch and a couple of end tables from his mother's basement, a couple of chairs and a small desk with his computer on it.
"You brought me a pizza?" He laughs, a lush sound to my welcoming ears. I forgot I was holding the thing.
"I figured you wouldn't have anything to eat in this rat trap." I shove the box at him, and he grabs it like he hasn't eaten in days.
"You figured right. I'd offer you something, but I know you don't drink anything with carbonation and no alcohol, after sundown." He offers me a slice of pizza, and I accept with minimum fuss, much to his surprise, and mine. "What are you doing trolling around here, instead of Babylon on a Saturday night?"
His smile descends into a frown as the realization of how ridiculous the question is occurs to him. Where else would I be? "Mikey threatened to have everyone singing Happy Birthday to me when I walked in. I figured everyone celebrating my birth was enough humiliation for one week."
"I thought you only celebrated achievement." He gives me a wry stare.
"And look at how embarrassing it is, when you celebrate everything but."
"I would have gotten you something, but I didn't think I'd see you."
"I'm sure I can think of a way for you to make up for it." I wave my slice of pizza, letting the cheese dangle off the end and slurp it up with my tongue, which fascinates him.
"I'm not tying anything to my balls again! Or untying anything from anyone else's, for that matter."
So the hustler was a slight miscalculation, wasn't my first and won't be my last, but the condom balloons were pretty fun, as I recall. "You're just afraid I'll tie the knot so tight again, we'll need the scissors to get it off. I remember the look on your face when you saw me coming at you with them."
"Do you blame me? You weren't exactly sober." He pats his balls, silently reassuring them, that he won't let me near them with any sharp objects and shaky hands again. "Besides I wouldn't have been the only one missing out, if you had slipped."
"You mean I could have been rid of you with one snip? Why didn't you tell me that before?"
"A sadomasochistic streak?"
"Yours or mine?"
"I don't know, whose turn is it to play the victim?"
"That's just so four weeks ago." We both ease into a comfortable chuckle. I forget how quick he is, sometimes, everything has just felt like slow motion for so long.
"So what do you think of my humble abode?" He looks around, he doesn't have far to go, you turn your head left you see one half, turn right, you see the other half.
"Humble is a good word."
"It could have been worse you know." I arch an eyebrow in doubt, I don't see how. "Emmett offered to help me decorate. He wanted to hang a gold lam shower curtain and these neon frilly things on the window." He grimaces. I can relate.
"How did you talk him out of it?"
"I told him I was going for a stark, blank look, like one of my canvases. He told me I should listen to my artistic genius, but if I ever changed my mind..." Not bloody likely. "He was so disappointed when he saw what I finally bought, but he did tell me it complemented my color scheme perfectly."
"I hope you included a can of Raid." For that I get a flip of the bird, was it something I said?
"I bought a new washcloth," which he proudly dispenses from a Big Q bag, "and a new set of sheets. My old ones were a little, uh... used."
"All by yourself? I'm impressed. But I think Emmett had the right idea to start, white is the wrong color for sheets." He fondles the plastic package and the sound runs right up my spine, who buys sheets with the price stamped on the packaging? "Do they even have a thread count?"
"They're just sheets!"
"You're gonna regret those." He shrugs me off, ripping open the package, discarding it haphazardly in the general direction of the garbage can. I bend and throw it away. "These are all wrong. First of all you'll be washing them every other day when you spill something all over them, they're gonna itch like hell and you bought king size sheets for a full size bed."
He strips his bed of his old sheets, totally ignoring my sound advice. "The only thing I plan on spilling on them, should blend right in," he looks over his shoulder back at me "and they're not flannel, so they won't itch, and I'll just tuck the extra sheet under the bed. What's the big deal?"
I bite my thumbnail, trying not to reach out and rearrange the mess he's creating of making the bed, but I'm not very good with impulse reaction. "Move, go sit, or make yourself useful." I grab the sheet from his hand, and the slightest feel of them almost gives me hives. He just gives me a bewildered look, and moves out of my way. "Grab the other end and watch how I fold." I show him the correct way, expecting him to follow suit, but he's all thumbs and it's just easier if I do it myself. He gladly steps aside and lets me finish. At least it looks presentable, but it's such a poor choice, I have to shake my head. He'll learn on his own, presentable on the surface doesn't hold a candle to quality, sometimes investing a little more is worth the long term benefits.
"They were on sale, maybe I'll go get another package," he teases.
"Don't even think about it."
He snorts and makes himself comfortable on the end of the bed. "They're just sheets Brian, just sheets."
I sit cautiously next to him. "I'll remind you of that after you've slept with them for a few days."
We sit quietly for a moment, looking anywhere but at each other. We both know why I'm here and neither one of us wants to broach the subject. I'd like to think I'm the noble one, taking his mind off things, occupying him with meaningless conversation, but the truth is I probably needed the distraction just as much as he did, and getting high enough to pass out just didn't rank up there as a pleasant way to the pass the time. It only exacerbates the problem, because I just focus on forgetting and the more I try to forget, the harder the focus becomes, like now. I'm doing it again. Shit. There was no way I was ever really going to leave him here by himself, once he called, was there?
"I'm sorry Brian." He sounds so defeated, so tired of having to apologize. That's exactly why sorry is such a waste of time, because once you start, you'll never stop, there will always be some way you disappoint someone, no matter how many sorry's they collect. But I'm glad he at least acknowledges it.
"I'm not the one who has to live with these cheap things."
"I'm not talking about the sheets."
"I know." I leave my words just hanging there, between us, and his face tenses up, his fingers manipulating the threadbare cotton beneath him, and it's the only thing I can focus on, how his fingers circle around and back and forth in the same pattern, over and over. "Where is Lancelot this evening?" He looks like he's playing a fucking concerto, and I have to avert my eyes.
"He's probably practicing. I don't really know. I didn't really want him to be around me tonight."
"Trouble in paradise?"
"If this is paradise, I'll take my chances on hell." Something leaps in my chest, the same feeling I had when I heard his message, and I'm riveted to his form, once again. "Walking out only made it worse. God, I made such a mess out of everything." He buries his head in his hands, and I exhale a breath of relief, and watch my hand move towards his neck and retreat before it connects.
"Yeah you did." Well now that that's out in the open. "You weren't the only one."
"I just wanted something Brian, any little thing I could hold onto for once."
I pinch the bridge of my nose, trying to ease away the tension between my temples. "Why didn't you just ask?" I'm aware of his face lifting out of his hands peering over at me, and I hear the crack in his voice, and my chest tightens.
"Look where it got us the last time. I couldn't ask you for something like that again." He doesn't even try to hide his tears, like he usually does, and all I can hear is a whimper and busy sounds from the street, an ambulance siren, cars passing, I'm not sure.
"You don't remember any of it, do you?" I rub the skin of my eyelids raw.
"I remember gold balloons on the ceiling, and thinking it was a really sophomoric choice," he manages a bit of mirth, between choking gasps, "and the bat coming at my head, but not connecting and you calling me. And that's it. That's all I see. The next thing I remember is waking up and thinking I was floating on the ceiling with the balloons, that that was heaven, just floating in a sea of gold, and it didn't bother me."
"You thought you were dead when you woke up?" My voice is so faint, I can barely hear myself.
He sniffles and takes a few deep breaths, trying to collect himself. "I never told anybody that."
"Why not?"
"I didn't think anybody would want to hear how comfortable I was thinking I was dead, that maybe it was better there. Nobody really wanted to hear anything I had to say, they just wanted me to get back to normal. You wanted me to go back to normal."
I turn and look at him, slack jawed my throat constricted and eyesight blurry, seeing two of him, "I'm listening now."
"It just got easier you know? Not saying anything. I just let everyone assume what they wanted, because I couldn't look at them. Look at you, and lie, and that's what you all wanted me to do. Pretend like I remembered, pretend everything was okay, pretend it never happened, so I just said nothing and figured it wasn't really lying if I just kept quiet, and it went away, just like everyone wanted it to. So why not stay quiet about everything, make all the bad things go away?" He gives the floor a rueful glance. "Jokes on me, huh?"
I feel dizzy, like my body is moving, though I'm perfectly still, like I'm spinning him around on some long ago faraway dance floor that maybe never existed. Maybe I imagined it, and he's the one with the right idea, black it all out and go back to my life. Go back to that hotel door, and walk in the other direction, or maybe go all the way back to the night I met him, and just get into my car and drive off, never noticing him. Twist and shape my entire fucking life to my liking. But I'm cursed with a steel trap for a memory, forever sealed in my head. I remember looking around and seeing those balloons before I walked in, and they were so fucking tacky, but what high school prom isn't? Who the fuck was I to be there? And now all I see is him floating on the ceiling above my head, out of my reach, dripping in blood and my stomach grips in some intense struggle to keep from bursting out of my skin. What would really be worse, never having met him to begin with or watching him bleed to death because I did?
"I'm sorry Justin."
He nods his head in acknowledgment, in acceptance, and I don't really know what I expected him to do, spit at me, push me away, pretend I didn't exist, I just know I didn't expect him to slide his hand, over mine, weave his fingers between my own, massage my palm, with the same rhythm of his cotton concerto, and I certainly didn't expect myself to let him, but it's such an odd and calming sensation, like he's pricking my veins, and tangling them in his hand, wrapping and worming his way under my skin. And I think is this how someone knows they're still really alive, and it's not some hazy illusion? The ability to feel things? Is that how he knew he was alive after all, because he could feel pain when he got his bearings and the drugs wore off. Maybe it's how he convinced himself he was alive this entire time. Find some way to feel something, anything other than totally numb, and floating out of his body.
I look at his hand in mine, and the deep concentration of his tightly shut eyes, and I pull my hand away but pull his arm toward my chest, feel his skin slide across my shirt and his head rest right on my shoulder, and I hold it there. Just hold it and brush my fingertips under his chin and kiss the crown of his head, feel his hair in my mouth, thankful that it's whole and dry, and blood isn't dripping through my hands or soaking my shirt.
I pull him with me, kicking my shoes off, and he does the same, and I sink into the cool, crisp cotton, but he doesn't let go, he can't, he needs to feel my body, hear my heart beating in his ear, so he just lays, right on top of me, as if I'm the mattress, and I let him, wrap my arms around his back and hold as tightly as my grip will allow, scared that he might just float away if I let go.
I stare at the ceiling, willing my eyes to stay open until I no longer see his face in a cloud of gold balloons above me, but I can feel them drifting closed, feel my chest rise and fall with the weight of his body, sound asleep on top of me.
And as they close, all I see are fields of gold.