Like a cliché, I wake up to the sound of an alarm clock.
It's an annoying noise, the classic beep beep beep that makes the fact that you have to wake up a million times worse. Theo groans at the sound and nuzzles his chin into my neck, wrapping his hand further around my stomach and holding me closer like a teddy bear. Which is great and all, but the alarm is still alarming.
"You gonna turn that off?" I mumble, tapping the fingers wrapped around my midsection. He laughs, lightly touching my skin with his breath.
"Fuck that. Fuck school."
"It's annoying."
"Do it yourself."
"I don't know where your phone is!"
"Then suffer, bitch."
Muttering angrily, and smiling, I yank the pillow out from underneath our heads and use it to cover my ear. Theo mumbles curses
under his breath and digs around for his phone. The blaring stops a moment later and I give him back half of it.
We're being incredibly stupid and domestic and I'm so happy, so I'm not going to push him about the school thing. Much.
"You gotta go to school, Theodore."
"Fuck that."
"Theo."
"Fuck. That."
"You have exams in a few months. You need to go to school."
"Fuck exams, they can afford to miss me for two days."
Two days. Deadline. Two more nights. Then it's over.
I give in and Theo gets to stay off school. I feel irresponsible, but he seems pretty set on it and I don't have it in my heart to argue. Plus, I'd be lying if I said it didn't make me happy.
When Georgia sees us walking downstairs and Theo's not in his uniform, she just sighs and mutters something about me being a bad influence. Theo looks a little ashamed, but it's not enough to stop him pouring us both gigantic bowls of cereal and taking his sweet time to eat his (I tip mine back into the packet when he's not looking.)
It's raining lightly, so Theo hands me a coat and I shove my feet into a pair of waterproof boots before we head outside. The wind is a refreshing smack to the face and I close my eyes to take it all in, remembering how I did so over a month ago, the day I met Theo. I feel like I've changed a lot since then, both through myself and because of him, which surprises me when I take a second to think about it. I haven't had the chance to change for years.
I glance over at him, now, and the urge to do something crazy is extremely potent. (I don't think he would stop me. I think he knows. I don't think he would stop me at all.)
"You want to walk to the bridge?" Theo asks, yelling so he can be heard over the wind. I nod, momentarily forgetting my impossible thoughts, and follow him through the field.
We slide through the sod and eventually meet up with the water, following it downstream until we come across an old stone bridge that has probably been here longer than I have. Tress line it, oaks bending over the water like they want to gaze at their own reflections, and I have an idea. I can't stop myself from smiling as I kneel and pick up two sticks, one long and thin and the other short and thick. I hand the thin one to Theo and jog up to the bridge, looking behind me so I can see his expression as he follows. He's staring his stick, one eyebrow raised.
"Is this the game where you chuck them in the river?"
"The very same."
Theo sighs but he's smiling. We stand in the center of the bridge, facing upstream, and toss the little twigs into the water. Then we rush madly to the other side and lean over to watch them bob through the water. Naturally, my wins.
"Loser," I say, grinning. When I look at him, I realize he's staring at me silently. I don't think he even heard me. When I look at him, he flushes and shoots his gaze back to the stream below us.
"What are you thinking about?"
He shrugs. The rain increases in volume, and he wipes some of the drops away from underneath his curls. "Just things."
I want to ask what. I don't, because no matter how much I like holding him and being with him and just him in general, something is still broken.
The rain, hitting the stone wall of the bridge, is the only sound. The rain and the wind and the sway and groan of the trees.
"Why aren't you scared of this height?" Theo asks, breaking the silence.
I step back automatically, even though he's right: even though we're a ways up from the water, I'm not scared.
"It's not that high."
Theo digs his hand around in his pocket and it resurfaces holding an old boiled sweet, which he tosses over the edge. It falls for a good few seconds before hitting the water, not making a sound through the rain.
"Not much lower than my roof."
So I tell him half of it. "It's just buildings."
"Why?"
I don't reply.
"...Is it something to do with how you died?"
"Can I take you somewhere?" I asked instead of answering him.
I glance over at him, and he frowns, then nods. He pushes away from the wall and walks over to me, shoving some of his sopping hair back into his hood.
"Anywhere.
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It's just a test. I must try.
I don't know how to get there from Theo's house, so we take a bus that goes past the school. I sit by the window and press my fingers against the glass, tapping them in a furious pattern while Theo sits next to me and watches.
We get off before the school comes into sight. I don't think either of us want to see that place.
I know how to get there from here because I've been thinking about going for decades. In the decades spent sleepless and alone in the place where I died, the place that had become my home, I thought of my real one.
I don't think it'll let me near. It hasn't before, at least. And God knows I've tried.
And they won't be there. Mother and Father and the baby are as dead as me, dead and buried in the same graveyard as me and the same as Theo's mother. But the place was lived in by them and even if nobody alive remembers them there's still a part of this world that they touched.
Theo follows me and I can tell he's burning with questions. He doesn't ask them and I don't answer, which I'm grateful for. But when
I hold my hand out - not for him but at them at once, catching the rain in my glittering palms - he takes the left one. He glances at me, giving me a chance to push away again. Because that fear is still there, just like it is in me.
And I'm scared and I perhaps don't want this near my childhood home, where I grew up and where my father, mother and I buried secrets. But I want him and I want his safety and his touch, so I let him hold me and I hold him back.
He hides our intertwined fingers in our sleeves and sides and shoulders. Because he knows the world well enough to know that the world wants these kinds of things to be hidden.
We walk along streets consisting of similar houses with the same orange bricks and same grey roofs that replaced the grey and brown I grew up with. Different, but also the same.
I always imagined myself walking here alone, if I ever could. Not with anybody, not with Theo, and certainly not with my hand in his.
But here I am, and I'm glad it's this way.
And then I realized we're here, stood in front of the place that was once mine. My home, the one with the white front door (it's bright yellow now) where I grew up playing football in the streets with people, I called friends and threw sticks in the creek and where Oliver, a childhood companion of mine who laughed when he stepped on snails, chased a cat into the street and was very nearly hit by a car.
The creek is there, on my right. Where my dad drowned Rona, my little dog, after her bite wound got infected and the bills that were pushed through the letterbox changed from black ink to red.
I stand still in front of my house. Number 15. I try to touch the gate with the hand that isn't linked with Theo's but it holds me back; it let me go, let me return to him, let me come close enough to the house to look at it with my own two eyes, but somehow it still holds me.
Besides, there are people living here now. Bushes that will hold roses in spring line the path and the fences that were grey in my lifetime are replaced, now shiny and white. Maybe it's lived in by a couple moving in together for the first time, or two parents and their
little kid, or maybe one of the people going to the school Theo's supposed to be in right now. Maybe another kid plays in this garden and meets up with friends and goes to church to listen to the same hymns and cries every time he hears a snail crunch under another kid's shoe.
I don't know. This isn't my place anymore. All connections I had to my home died with me and my family.
I know I'm crying when I turn back to Theo. Unanswered questions hang from his slightly open mouth but he drops them all along with my hand when he steps forward and hugs me. I hold his skinny frame against me and wipe my eyes on his damp jacket, breathing in the scent of his soaked clothing and just letting myself be comforted.
I let him lead me away by my hand and back to the bus stop. When we get back to his house, I take off my shoes and place them neatly by the door and hang up my coat before I head upstairs. I walk into Theo's room without thinking about what I'm doing and crawl into his bed. I hide under the covers and sob silently into his pillow, just so I can get it all out before he comes looking for me.
The low buzz of their conversation from downstairs is surprisingly soothing and gives me time to push all of my emotions out. By the time Theo breaks away from Georgia and comes up to find me, I've wiped all my tears on his pillow and turned it over so he won't know.
He walks into his room slowly, like he's the guest here instead of me, and sits beside me near the top. Droplets of water fall from his
hair as he reaches out a hesitant hand and pushes his fingers through my fringe.
It's something my mother used to do. His touch is so soft and full of care that I nearly start crying again. But I don't. I let myself be comforted, even though I don't deserve it, and I think about how much him returning all these little gestures means to me.
I'm glad I got to go home. I feel whole now, somehow, more complete than I have in decades.
But it gives me stupid, stupid hope. Because going somewhere I haven't been able to before implies that things are changing, just like
Theo said. Implies that things are changing enough for me to hold on for good.
But they won't. They haven't for forty-five years and they aren't going to start now.
We watch the sunset on Friday night while sitting on the roof of one of his cars. When I get into his bed with him afterwards, it feels like a desperate thing.
I know we're both thinking that it'll be the last one, the last time I'll lie in the same bed as him. The last time I'll feel his skin on my skin, the way his body lies against mine like it's made to, the texture of his hair in my fingers and the hesitance of the way our hands find each other in the sheets.
He wraps around me like he's trying to keep every part of me together. He cries into my hair and I hold his hand as tight as I can.
He drifts off - he's only human, after all, and I'm still not quite that - but I stay awake as the moon makes its way across the sky. When he falls asleep I wriggle out of his grasp a little and turn around.
Hesitant at first, terrified that I'll wake him, I run my fingers along his face. I trace his thick eyebrows and his high cheekbones and his thin lips as lightly as I can and touch the mole under his eye and the faint freckles, just taking in every inch of him.
I want to lean forward and kiss the skin between his eyebrows. But I don't. Because I'm afraid: afraid of what it is and what I am and what I feel and what it all means.
He's asleep and peaceful and so beautiful and he's given me this time, time that's been snatched away from me again and again and again by people who don't know they're doing it. And when he's gone and apart from me and hurting me without knowing it, I'll be grateful. Not for the pain, but I'll be grateful for moments like this, even though the memory of them will be utter agony and I'll hate myself for going so far and not going further.
I let myself fall asleep at dawn, just so I can wake up beside him one last time.
He does that thing again where he jumps awake and immediately stretches. This time, thankfully, I'm not in the firing line.
We lie there for a few minutes. He strokes my hair absently.
Then he says: "I want to show you something."
I sit up slowly and rub my eyes as he pushes the covers aside and steps out of bed, having to lean over my body to do so. Then he walks, barefoot, towards his wardrobe and emerges a few seconds later holding a canvas to his chest.
"Prepare to see me naked," he jokes.
Then he closes his eyes and shoves the canvas forward, accidentally hitting my chest.
I turn it over, slowly, and look at it.
It's nothing special artistically. Just me, poorly shaded and with my eyes drawn a bit too far apart. But everything's detailed and so carefully done, like he'd seen every part of me as he painted it. I understand what he meant about baring his soul. Because, through this, I see how he was looking at me, and through that how he looks at the world.
"Theo," I say quietly.
He opens his eyes and I rest the painting against the wall, smiling at him. Then I gesture with my head for him to sit opposite me, which he does.
I reach out and gently take his wrists in my palms, turning them to the ceiling and running the pads of my thumbs across the soft, vulnerable veins. I think of how easily skin breaks and rips and tears and hope, irrationally, that his will stay whole forever.
Slowly, like I'm a wild animal that might scare into fleeing, Theo rests his forehead against mine. His hair tickles my skin. I close my eyes, hoping he's brave like I can't be.
"You're gay," he says quietly, but with no room for refutation.
I say nothing in response. I don't think I can speak.
"It's all okay, Evan." He takes my hands and I let him link my fingers with mine. "I know you're scared. But you don't have to be afraid."
Your lips are inches from mine, Theo. I'm terrified.
I open my eyes when, from downstairs, I hear a key turn in a lock and a door creak open. We jump apart. I look into Theo's eyes, which are boring into me and wide with fear and sadness.
His dad's home.
Our time is up.