December twenty-third. It was a Thursday. I didn’t notice him when I came in. I didn’t notice him until my fifth beer.
I was in from Boston, not accustomed to the warmth of an Arizona night and wearing a long-sleeve henley that I was sweating in. Growing up, it always felt so cold on those winter nights. I had no recollection of the winters at Mountain Home. All I knew until I was eighteen were the streets paved with asphalt that emitted a mirage in the summertime and the saguaro against the red rocks of our Tucson suburb. Dad got transferred to Davis Monthan when I was six, found that my mom was more stable like the weather was in Tucson, and took a job with a contractor working on his beloved A-10 Warthogs.
This was the only bar I could walk to without the threat of losing my way back. It was a straight shot up the main road. It was funny how the streets I’d grown up on became stranger with every passing year as new buildings rose and new streets were cut from the desert. And I had to walk. If I didn’t take the time to get shit out of my head, I’d knock back shots until I could feel the stars. I’ve always been introspective. Not the introspective art kid that sits in the corner and watches the conversations around him at a party—that was Jake. I was the introspective kid that ran twice my distance at a track meet because I zoned out. My coach tried to get my attention. Didn’t work.
The bar was bathed in a caramel sort of glow that was soothing to the ache in my head that had been persistent since leaving Boston that morning. I was surprised the hair of the dog didn’t take care of it. I’d found that there was a window in which that worked. Past that window, you were just screwed. I was contemplating the amber glow when an uproar of applause caught my attention.
There were tables scattered that made up a restaurant portion of this bar, but everyone knew it was a bar before it was a restaurant. These people didn’t know that. Glasses raised, they clinked, smiles broad and laughter loud. And he sat at the end of the table with a bitch by his side. And she had a rock on her hand—a huge fucking rock. I made sure it was the left hand before I got upset. Jake met my eyes, looking no different than he had the last time I saw him. Still had that stupid quiff he’d had in high school. But he looked good, he looked happy. I don’t know what passed in those three seconds that his eyes were on mine. I know my heart displaced my stomach, heavy like the sinking Titanic.
I turned around and ordered a double vodka. Rails. Who the fuck has an engagement party on Thursday? When Friday is Christmas Eve, it makes a little more sense. Jake and I had probably just barely missed each other at the airport. He never stayed in Arizona longer than he had to. I glanced back over my shoulder. Laurel Garner was looking at her son with adoration. I almost snorted. She’d never looked at that son with anything but disdain. But he knew the perfect way to appease her.
I knocked my vodka back and politely asked for another. The bartender looked me up and down, but decided not to make an issue. I’d walked. The only concern was me walking into moving traffic which would’ve been done on my own volition as opposed to as a result of the effects of the alcohol. Every logical thought I had in my life left my brain as I sat there. There was no voice of reason telling me to just leave. The devil was on my shoulder, but as usual, the angel had called in sick. And maybe I had a little bit of my mother’s affliction. And maybe it was acting up that night. I wanted to talk to him. So I was going to wait, I was going to toss looks in his direction until I caught his wandering eyes again, and I’d nod for him to head outside. And he’d do it, because he did everything I wanted him to, no matter how reluctantly.
It took me fifteen minutes. He was making a point of avoiding my gaze. He could feel it on him. I still believed there was an invisible thread. There were few people that thread connected me to anymore. For some it was loosely wrapped, around me usually. But Jake’s thread was wound tight, squeezing at my throat until I couldn’t breathe. And this was eight years after we broke up. There had been relapses in those eight years, though. That’s what you had to call them: relapses. They kept it tight.
I got up and headed to the bathroom, where I knew the hallway led to the parking lot in the back of the joint. Smoke break. It was innocent. And he’d know I’d gone for one. He didn’t know I didn’t smoke anymore.
After a few minutes of waiting, deflated against the stuccoed building, the door opened. I half-expected to see that family with the adult child leaving with their boxes of takeout, but instead, what the other half of me expected to see walked out. He glanced around, sweeping the parking lot before his eyes reached me, directly to his left. The same side that bitch wore that rock on.
He looked at me, mouth opening to speak. But nothing came out, and instead he fumbled in his pocket and produced a pack of Marlboro Reds. He removed one wordlessly and lit it with the lighter that was stashed in the pack before tossing me the pack, lighter weighing it down. I took my own cigarette. I didn’t smoke often.
“So, who is she?” I asked, exhaling a thick cloud of blue-grey into the clear night air.
“My fiancée,” he said through gritted teeth that only parted to accept the cigarette.
I scoffed, moving my body comically as though this gesture took all of me. “That’s funny,” I said sarcastically. “Since you’re the biggest faggot I’ve ever met.”
I could see his jaw flexing the way it did when he was angered. The light of the streetlamps was unforgiving and unflattering, a harsh white that dragged down his face darkening the pits his eyes filled. “I was confused.”
I rocked back and forth on my feet, pretending to be shocked by this revelation. “Yeah, you sure seemed confused.”
He took a drag and remained calm, but it lasted for only a split second. Smoke came from his nose in a frenzied exhalation as he threw his fist into the stucco, leaving a kiss of blood on the beige. “What was I supposed to do?” he asked, voice raised.
“You love her?”
He shrugged. “Yeah.”
“But you can’t get it up for her.”
“We’re waiting for marriage.”
“Seems like that’s coming up, huh?”
He nodded, looking away at a parked car as he raised the cigarette to his lips once more. He flicked ash as he exhaled. “Yeah.”
“What are you gonna do?”
He shrugged, the complete weight of his actions apparent on his shoulders. “Your opinion on this doesn’t matter to me at all.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.” I was sure it did.
He leaned against the wall and took a few drags, relishing the silence that was pregnant with tension. “I hate you,” he said without conviction. “I fucking hate you.” He threw his cigarette into the parking lot and went back through the door before my alcohol-addled mind could think of a retort.
I followed him when I was sure he’d be gone and paid my tab at the bar and headed out. I was right, his family lingered but him and the girl were gone. I could sleep easier knowing he wasn’t getting any that night.
The night did have a bit of a chill to it by the time I reached my neighborhood. At the end of my street, I came to a figurative crossroads as I gazed longingly down the street at Bryan’s house. Things hadn’t been the same since that manic episode I’d had in the spring of 2012. The one that got me diagnosed as bipolar. Before that it was all just depression. There were periods of instability, but who’s going to tell a depressed person that they shouldn’t be that happy? My dad had suspicions that he locked away because of denial. I should’ve known something was wrong when my mom said her baby was just like her. It was meant as a compliment, but it wasn’t really one when you broke it down.
I found my legs carrying me to Bryan’s. The thread with him was unraveled at his end, but on my end it was still tight, making the blood pool up in my finger. He’d been my friend since my first day of the first grade. He was the only one who would talk to me. His reception of me had been the opposite of my reception of Jake when he’d arrived at our high school. Sixteen and making me question my sexuality, I don’t know who he thought he was. I glanced down at my high-top sneakers. I’d been wearing them that day. I had another pair now, but there was something nostalgic about wearing my old sneakers around my old stomping ground. And Bryan’s house certainly was my stomping ground. Was. I raised my fist to knock on the door, but realized the frayed wires no longer hung out of the doorbell socket so I punched the bell. I bounced on the concrete porch to keep myself warm as I waited for Mrs. Espinosa to answer the door as she always did. Then she’d ask me if I was hungry or thirsty and I’d say no and go out to the garage where Bryan was always hanging out.
But she didn’t answer. It was that bleach blonde angel we’d gone to high school with. She asked me to the winter formal the year I met Jake. I rejected her. It was awkward. But she wasn’t bleached anymore, she had this dark brown hair you could take a bite out of. Or maybe I was just hungry. It was the color of dark chocolate, the really dark kind that’s almost hard to stomach. The kind my dad likes. As I locked eyes with Luna, I realized I hadn’t seen her in four years. Since Gabe was born, really. I noticed an annoyance forming on her face as she registered me. “Is Bryan here?” There was a slur to my words.
She scoffed. “It’s almost eleven, and you woke Gabe. So thanks.”
I looked at her hopefully.
“Go home and sober up. I’ll get Bry to text you.” She wouldn’t, I knew as I walked backwards off the porch which was a risky move for a man in my state of inebriation.
As I walked back towards my house, only seven down from the corner that Bryan’s house stood on, a mid-size car whipped up the street. I noticed it again as it slowed alongside me. Great. I’m gonna get kidnapped and murdered. Perfect end to a perfect night. But the window rolled down and it was a familiar face in an impeccably clean rental car. “Can we talk?” Jake asked.
I kept walking, content to drag out what we both knew was going to happen. I couldn’t maintain the ruse long enough to get him pleading. I felt a sense of weakness as I got into the car. He was listening to The Front Bottoms on the car’s Bluetooth. Their album In Sickness and In Flames had come out the year before. It was the height of the pandemic. That was still going on, but precautions in Arizona were measly.
“I haven’t listened to this album yet,” I remarked as he reached the end of the street.
“Really? I think you’d like it.”
I scoffed and looked out the window, my jaw suspended for a moment as I thought of the words to say. “You don’t know what I’d like.”
“That’s fair.”
We didn’t speak again until he’d pulled off on a road that took us to one of our old spots. He’d fucked me up against the tree once. You have to get creative when you’re in high school. It was too hot for car sex. “Are we going to the spot?”
He nodded. “Only place I know.”
Only place you know where no one will see you. He always was concerned about that, being seen. He pulled in and left the car on, the music now having shuffled to a different album. This one I’d heard. “Vacation Town.” I hated that song in the moment. He missed the hours in the morning and her in the morning hours, I missed something I now felt like I never really had.
“Why didn’t you tell me about her?” I asked, looking straight ahead.
He shrugged. “We haven’t talked since March.”
“That’s your fault.”
He nodded, looking down at his lap. The song’s relevance wasn’t lost on him either. “I know.”
“So you started dating her after that?”
Shaking his head, he sucked in his lower lip in a display of shame. “No.”
“Then when?”
“January.” He exhaled through his nose. “Twenty-first.”
“So it hasn’t even been eleven months.”
He shook his head. “Nope.” His lips popped with the word.
“Fast.”
“When you know, you know.” The way he spoke was very matter-of-fact. There was no strong emotion propping up the words.
I got out of the car and slammed the door harder than I’d intended. Sometimes my anger had a way of expressing itself without my consent. I heard his door close but kept my eyes focused on Sagittarius in the sky. I could make out the legs, the extended arm. I still didn’t know how they got a half-man half-horse from this cluster of stars. “What’s her name?” I asked, my voice cutting through the crisp silence of the night.
He was looking up at the stars, no doubt with the same marvel he always did. Jake hadn’t really seen stars until he moved to Arizona and I brought him to the spot at night. We were seventeen. That was the first night drive I’d had after getting my license. “Alice.”
I walked down to where the brook babbled by. In the dark, I nearly slipped. The vast expanse of water had an island in the middle of it that we’d wade to during the day. There was a hike here we used to do, my parents and I. Times like that grew scarce once I hit middle school and Mom fell away. Her departure felt like a photo of two being ripped to separate the pair. I heard rocks slide as he slipped. I knew he would regain his footing, so I didn’t turn around. I also thought I might’ve laughed if he really fell. The light of the moon wasn’t enough for me to find rocks to toss and part of me was afraid my fingers would enclose a tarantula or a snake. “She’s pretty,” I said as I perused the rocks anyways.
“Thanks,” he said. He sat on a rock by the water, likely wetting the tips of his shoes. I wondered if they were the maroon ones he always wore. He must’ve been on his third pair.
“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.” Jake was attractive, it didn’t surprise me that he could get a girl like her. She must’ve been naive as hell. Pretty people sometimes are. Jake wasn’t; he always expected the worst of people. He had these brown eyes that held depths. Nessie could swim in those eyes and you wouldn’t know. His jawline was sharp, as was his nose, not much mass on the tip of that nose. He had full lips, just enough that they were there and not a spectacle. His brow constantly furrowed. His eyebrows were not too thick, not too thin. Like many things about him, they were just right. They had a nice shape to them too. I supposed mine did too. My mom was always jealous of my eyebrows. She didn’t know where I got them, since my dad’s were bushy and black. She joked they’d brought home the wrong baby. He was thin too. It was less attractive when you saw how thin he really was. He had chiseled abs, thighs from running. He kept up with it after high school. I didn’t. You could still loop your hand around my wrist though. He shivered in only a T-shirt. The moon glistened on his chestnut hair that looked black in the darkness.
“I’m sorry for whatever I’ve done to you.”
I scoffed and kicked rocks. “You don’t even know what you did.”
“And you do?”
It occurred to me that I didn’t. Talking to Jake was sometimes like talking to someone living in my head. Like I said, invisible thread. “You stopped talking to me. We had a good friendship.”
It was his turn to scoff. “I was lying to you.”
I glanced to him, knowing what he meant but sensing there was more to it.
“The night I called you in the hospital, I was driving back home from meeting her parents.”
I remembered that night. Stupidly, I’d had hope. It was just the kind of hope you get when someone saves your life. That airy feeling that accompanies the daze of knowing someone cares enough for you to save you. “Why did you even answer my call?”
“Which one?”
“That night. The night I was on the bridge.”
He shrugged and made circles in the dust with his shoe. “Curious what you wanted.”
“You saved my life.”
He shrugged again. “You wouldn’t have jumped.”
I steeled at the accusation.
“You were too drunk,” he went on. “You wouldn’t have been able to get over the railing.”
I looked him up and down, observing the anxious revolutions of his leg as he made those circles. “You think it was for attention.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t say that. I just said you wouldn’t do it.”
I stayed quiet, finding it hard to not be offended.
“I know when you’re serious about something, Con.”
“Fuck you, don’t call me Con.”
“—nor.”
“Fuck you.” I crossed my arms over my chest.
“But I knew you took pills. That’s why I called.”
“Of course you knew, I fucking told you.”
He shook his head, eyes venturing to the corners of their sockets to glimpse me. “No, you didn’t.”
“Then how’d you know.”
“Because it was like the first time you did. You were slurring, but you were talking fast. You don’t talk fast when you’ve only been drinking. You were fucking terrified.”
I recalled what I could of the night. I was. “And you still stopped talking to me.”
“It fizzled out. You know that.”
I supposed it had, and the alcohol was making me tired. I didn’t have a fight in me anymore. “Why did you pick me up tonight?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. I was willing to bet he was cold. “Nostalgia, I guess.”
I took my seat on a rock about five feet from his and rested my elbows on my knees. “You’re not over me.”
His gaze was fixed on the tree on the other bank. The one we’d fucked against. “I’ve been over you. Which one of us goes home to someone at night?”
You do. He was baiting me. “Take me home,” I muttered.
It wasn’t love with her, I knew as we headed back towards civilization. That didn’t stop me from taking note of all the behaviors of a man in love. He wasn’t overly defensive about how he felt. When Jake lied about something, it was obvious. Maybe he was a better liar than I remembered. Or maybe he was just in love. One explanation seemed more logical than the other as I recalled the squirming he did when he told a lie.
“Have you done it again?” he asked as we turned onto the main drag of the small suburb of Clearwater.
“What?”
“Tried to kill yourself.”
“Not since then.”
“Good.” I closed my eyes, that headache still plaguing me. “I want you here.”
“You don’t even talk to me,” I said softly.
“Doesn’t mean I want you dead.”
“Shut up.”
He opened his mouth to speak but ultimately obeyed my command.
“Can you turn off this fucking music?” I snapped as the intro to a particularly gutting song started.
In a swift motion, switched off the radio. I could still hear the song in my head. I’d heard that song in my head for a year after he left. He’d say it was mutual.
He whipped around the cul-de-sac and came up in front of my house, slamming on the brakes at the end of the driveway. “I’ll see you around,” he said as a pleasantry.
“No, you won’t,” I grumbled as I got out of the car. Walking backwards up my driveway, I raised a middle finger towards him before turning on a heel and going the rest of the way. He made sure I got inside before I heard the car start off down the street.
It all hit me as I closed the door and locked it, taking a moment to lean against it. Dad was on the sofa with a book, the same one he’d been reading when I left. “Good book?” I asked.
He nodded, flipping it over as if he hadn’t recalled what he was reading.
“What is it?”
“Devil in the White City by Erik Larson.”
“What’s it about?” I asked. I didn’t care, but I could feel myself being eaten alive as I stood there against the door.
“World’s fair, H.H. Holmes, the guy who shot Chicago’s mayor.”
“Interesting.” Sounded like something Jake would enjoy.
“You can read it when I’m done.” He was almost done. “Sit down, you’re being weird.”
I supposed I was and wandered over to the chair, where I fell and was enveloped by the gaping leather mouth.
“You drunk?”
I nodded. “I tried to go to Bryan’s but Luna told me to fuck off.”
“Gabe probably gets them up bright and early.”
I nodded, gazing to the lamp. My mom had thrifted it. Dad really liked the one that was there before, but he acquiesced, as he always did for her. “I saw Jake. At the bar.”
Although I wasn’t looking in his direction, I could see the raise of his eyebrows. “Really? How’s he doing?”
I sighed through my nose, resting the weight of my head against a single finger. “Engaged.”
The word hung in the air, suspended on a tightrope. Dad leaned forward and stroked his beard, mostly salt by then. “I’m surprised, with his mother.”
“To a woman.”
“Oh.”
“Says he was confused.”
Dad was at a loss for words, which didn’t happen often. He was like me, or I was like him. He had an answer for everything. He had to with all the things my mom threw at him. “I’m so sorry, Connor.”
I shrugged and glanced at him, as though eye contact would legitimize my statement. “I don’t care.”