14. Peter
14
Peter
R ocky road was basically the best thing ever, with fluffy marshmallow and chunks of chocolate that melted on my tongue. Not quite the best thing—that was having Everett back—but pretty darn good.
That first day, we spent kind of quiet and sleepy, watching movies and snacking. For one reason or another, we were both exhausted, but for the first time maybe ever, I didn’t feel like I needed to shove that feeling down and pretend that everything was great. It was great, but it was also okay for us to just be exhausted together, to do nothing more than flop around and talk and put on another movie when we didn’t feel like talking anymore.
There was a lot to talk about. It turned out Everett had gone to school for a long time. Now, he worked in marketing, and I’d thought of that as, well, selling wares at a stall at a local market or something, but when I said that he’d laughed—not at me, the way Will often did, though.
He’d shaken his head and said he’d never really thought about it like that, but I wasn’t wrong. It was just on a bigger scale. He tried to get people to see the value in things, to want to buy them, but it wasn’t just a market stall. It was everyone everywhere, and from the way cities looked in movies, there were a lot of people out there to convince.
I loved the idea of it, Everett out there swaying the masses with his creativity, but I was weirdly jealous too. They’d gotten to keep him all those years and?—
And, well, he’d gotten to be out there in the whole world. What was I, against hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people? My life was small. I’d never influenced anybody, unless you counted making the lost kids feel better when something bad happened, which was hardly ever.
All of this was so, so great, and also, I was so scared that it couldn’t last. I didn’t know what to do with the whole big world, and Everett moved masses of people just by sharing his art with them.
They’d all gotten to see it, and I hadn’t, and that made me want to cry again except that I’d cried way too much in the past couple days and I couldn’t anymore. So in the late afternoon, I’d asked him to show me some of his work.
It was clever and funny, sometimes surprisingly understated, and I was—I was so proud of him. He pulled out his computer—after telling me what a computer was and how the internet worked, which sounded like another thing that was way too big for me—and showed me commercials and brand logos and all kinds of things.
When he’d taken his sketchbook out into the forest to draw, I’d never thought his art would end up in videos and on shelves and everywhere . I just hadn’t thought about it. He’d been so good, but I hadn’t thought about a whole big world out there waiting for him.
When it was time for bed, I was still thinking about it, so I didn’t notice his awkward shuffle until we were standing in the hallway. “There’s the guest room...” he said, frowning at the door of his parents’ old room. “Do you want to sleep there tonight?”
I bit my lip. “Can’t I stay with you?”
“Yeah, Peter. If you want to, you definitely can. But you can have your own space too. I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”
I smiled at him and nodded. “Do you...want your own space?”
He shook his head. “You can stay with me if you want.”
We both slept in his bed, each wrapped up in our own blanket, and it was nice to be there with him. I could wake up in the middle of the night and reach out and Everett was there . My Everett.
For a few days, we went on like that. Sometimes, Everett would try and fix something in the house, or call around looking for a contractor or an electrician or a plumber, but mostly, we just spent time together.
It worked out pretty well that I was his size, though I didn’t know if that was just luck or magic. I wanted to be like Everett, have everything he had and bring just as much to the table.
In the end, I mostly borrowed his clothes, but he didn’t mind sharing.
And showers were really, really nice. I’d forgotten those too.
Mostly, I was getting used to everything and we were falling back into being best friends. There was something niggling in the back of my mind, but I didn’t want to think about it too hard, so I kept pushing it away, and everything was great.
I didn’t even think about it when I came into the kitchen to Everett putting out all the stuff to make tacos, which he said I’d love, and I kissed him. It’d just felt normal. He worked hard and made all this for us and—and it felt right. I was happy and I wanted to show him. Wasn’t a kiss the best way to do that?
But then, Everett put his hands on my shoulders and eased me back, his eyes conflicted.
“Is it okay if we don’t do that for now?” he asked, sounding so gentle that my first impulse was to assure him everything was fine.
“Yeah. Of course.”
It only took another second for it to start hurting, and I didn’t know why. Sure, I wanted to kiss Everett. It felt nice. But I definitely didn’t want him to do anything he didn’t want to do, and it only took a second’s thought for me to realize that if we never kissed again, that’d be okay. I wanted to be with him, but that didn’t have to look any particular way.
So why was I so sad all the sudden?
Something heavy was spreading through my body, making me feel wrong and lost all over again, and it couldn’t just be because I wasn’t getting exactly what I wanted. Right then, I had so much—I had Everett back in my life, and he was all I’d wanted for so long.
My thoughts swirled until they all came together in some kind of order.
It was...because we’d kissed before, and it’d felt like hope burning in my heart. Hope and excitement and anticipation and all the good things that came with growing up.
Then he’d left, and I’d lost all that. I’d been stuck. I hadn’t fit in with the lost kids anymore, and I hadn’t had anyone else.
That whole trajectory, that whole world of possibility, had shriveled up, while Everett had gone out into the world and lived a whole life without me.
Someone had stolen my whole life, a thousand sweet moments and wonderful chances and— oh god .
“Peter, are you okay?”
I blinked at him, my eyelids fluttering. “Yeah. Um, can I ask...why no kissing?”
Everett’s front teeth pressed into his lip. “It’s just...a couple days ago you were a kid. I don’t want to, I don’t know, take advantage or move too fast or—I feel like we still have some stuff to work out before we can talk about that kind of relationship.”
“Oh.”
“But if it’s really important to you?—”
He reached for me, and I jerked back, and I didn’t know why because that was the last thing I ever wanted to do. If he touched me right then, though, I was going to crumble.
And he was only doing it because—because he felt sorry for me.
Because something terrible had happened to me, and I’d never even realized it.
“It’s not about kissing you,” I said, my voice catching on a sob I couldn’t let out. “I mean, I like that. Kissing you feels like flying. It—It made me feel warm and safe and—and...” Wanted , was what I couldn’t say out loud, because if he didn’t want me around, I didn’t know what I’d do. I didn’t have anything, anyone, else.
But that wasn’t Everett’s job to fix, I just...wanted him to be there. Only now, that niggling feeling in the back of my head grew three times its size, rushing out until I knew?—
I was too much.
My breath shook when I inhaled, and I looked up at Everett. “It’s not about kissing. It’s that I missed everything . I wanted to try everything with you, but you got to go out there and you did it all without me. And that’s how it’s supposed to happen, I think, but I’m not—I’m not what I was supposed to be. Everett, I wanted to grow up with you and try new things and learn stuff. I want to be like you—someone incredible that the whole world gets to see, not somebody everyone forgot. And now I’m so behind and I’ll never catch up and everything I want to try with you is stuff you’ve already done or that—that you don’t feel right doing with me, and you shouldn’t have to do it all over again, but I don’t know how to do it alone. I don’t want to do any of it without you, but I’m lost .”
Everett was staring at me, his eyes wide and shining.
I closed my own so tight the dark started to look red around the edges.
“You’re not lost anymore, Peter, and you’re not alone.”
All I could do was shake my head. It wasn’t the same and he knew it. He’d grown up like he was supposed to. He had a life .
“Can I hug you?” he whispered.
I shook my head harder. “It’ll make me cry. I don’t want to cry.”
“Okay.”
We stood there, and I couldn’t tell if I was tense and frozen or about to shake out of my skin, but after a minute or two, I forced myself to take a few deep breaths and open my eyes. The world was only a little swimmy.
“I—I think I want to take a walk.” That’s what I did when the forest got too much and I was sad. I walked until I felt better.
Maybe it’d work this time too.
“Can I come with you?”
I shook my head again. “I want to be alone for a little bit. Just—save some tacos for me for later? They smell really good.”
“I will,” he promised.
“Thanks,” I whispered back, then I slipped out the back door into the dark.