Chapter 12 #2
He looks bashful and eats another one, his eyes flicking away and his cheeks flushing pink. His dimples make a cameo. I am completely fascinated.
He places the packet down and wipes his hands on his jeans. “I should stop...”
My breath hitches. “Please don’t,” I say. “It’s literally my favorite activity.”
Austen shakes his head. “Too nervous.” He grabs another chip, and holds it up to me. “You have one.”
I eat it out of his hand. He laughs and grabs a few more, so I eat them too.
He gets another one and I hold his wrist as I chomp on his offering.
Then I lick a little salt off his extended fingers as he watches my face.
I suck one, then both of his fingers, then his thumb. When I am done he looks at his hand.
“I don’t know how you do that,” he says. “If anyone else I barely knew did that I’d be having a seizure on the floor, but you somehow bypass my defenses. Like a kind of magnetism my body has that pulls it that makes me feel possessed. It makes my whole body tingle.”
“Maybe you like it?”
“Nope,” he says. “I hate that my body never does what I tell it to. You’re actually the one person I really should be bothered by.”
I hold a chip up to him and he snaps it from my fingers. His glassy eyes are looking into mine. He crunches the chip and is content. He swallows and wipes his mouth with his damp sleeve.
My need for control is at a fever pitch. I make a little whimper of pain.
“You are driving me so insane,” I tell him. “You have no idea.”
He raises an eyebrow. “But isn’t that the most erotic part?”
It feels like the right moment. I hook my pinkie finger on his.
He doesn’t pull away, he’s letting me get closer and closer.
Oh shit. He looks at my lips then my eyes.
Jesus, he’s biting his lip. He wants me to kiss him.
I fixate on his mouth. He lifts his face to mine and I reach for his collar.
The smoke-stop door down the hallway creaks open, and it fucks my fucking shit up and the spell is fucking broken and Austen fucking shifts away from me FUCK.
That motherfucker Kai and the Stupid Fucking Backwards Hat walks towards us, and whispers loud enough for it to echo in the empty fucking hallway.
“Wow—you guys are so blazed right now!” he says. “The girls have made a giant three-pronged joint. It’s so fucking cool. I call it Sea King’s Fork—you know, like Ariel’s dad? We’re going to that garden in the back of the hotel bar at midnight to smoke that bad boy. You guys should come!”
“Count me in,” Austen says, after a breath.
“I’m down,” I agree.
“Oh shit—this thing is broken!” Kai says, looking at all the packets of food still at the bottom of the vending machine. “Fuck yeah!” He scoops up all our snacks and throws a couple chocolate bars at us. “I’ma bring these to the girls’ rooms. See you soon.”
Kai leaves with our snacks.
“You were going to kiss me,” I say.
“Nuh-uh,” Austen says.
“Ya-huh. My hands are shaking,” I hold my palms up. “My body already knows you and needs you, desperately. How is that even possible?”
Austen giggles. “Crazy.”
He gets up and goes to the vending machine.
“Come back,” I say, “We can try again.”
“Try what?” he asks.
He scratches his chest under his top and I see his ripped stomach.
Brad-Pitt-Fight-Club abs. Torture. His body is always covered, neck to foot, like his brother, but underneath the long sleeves he’s built like a god.
I want to kiss him just above his belly-button.
Then below it. He selects two colas and gives one to me.
I’m very thirsty so the syrupy drink feels good going down.
I pour in some vodka from my flask, and do the same for Austen.
“You keep trying to deny it, and it could fuck up your life, your future.”
“What life?” Austen asks. “What future?”
Then it’s quiet. I look at my trembling hands, and remember the last time they shook this bad. It storms into my mind like a deluge. I start talking out of nowhere.
“I’ve been in a firefight too, and my town was bombed when I was younger,” I say. “I saw a lot of death.”
“Bombed in a war?”
“Yeah. I’m a refugee.”
“Is your family alive?” Austen asks.
“My sister’s with me. My parents survived, but we got separated. I haven’t heard from them in a while.”
“Shit,” he says, and looks in my eyes. “How are you doing?”
“How am I doing?” I frown. “That’s not the usual question people ask me.”
“Sorry.”
“No, you’re the first person to not ask me where I’m from, which side, which war.”
He shrugs. “All wars suck.”
With that, he takes my breath away.
“I love you,” I say.
“I know,” he laughs. “In a gay way.”
“Not just in a... I love that you said that. I’m doing good. And it’s okay, you can ask me which war.”
He shakes his head. “I couldn’t take it if it was the Balkans.”
“Well,” I point to my top. “I did buy the t-shirt...”
“Oh God,” he looks stricken. “That didn’t occur to me.”
I reach into the back pocket and hand him a small booklet inside my wallet that looks just like a passport.
He opens it and sees a photo of me as a little kid looking back at him.
He breaks into a smile and looks back to compare me to my younger self.
He begins to leaf through the pages and stops on one with a stamp that says ‘?sterreich’. Austria.
“This is the passport you escaped on?”
“I escaped on it, but it’s not a passport; Laibach made them. It was an art project thing. My dad got me and my sister one and they ended up coming in handy. That’s why I’m always wearing Laibach shirts. When I said they saved my life, I don’t mean some emo shit. I mean they saved my fucking life.”
“That’s amazing,” he says, and curves the photo page to see the light catch the embossed logo, fascinated. “It looks so real.”
“They saved thousands of people.” I shrug. “So yeah, Sarajevo and all that.”
“I think I just found my favorite band,” Austen says.
“I think we have the same one.”
He looks off into the distance for a while, then covers his eyes.
“Of course you’re from Yugoslavia.”
“Is that so bad?”
Austen makes a frustrated, guttural sound. “I promised myself if I ever met any of those kids, I’d look after them, be their friend.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Fuck off.”
“It’s so sweet. You going to keep that promise to little Austen?”
He scoffs. “Christ. I need to call a priest to drive you out.”
“You can’t get rid of me. We’re part of each other; I feel it.”
“No we’re not. Me and my dickhead brother are a part of each other. You and I are strangers.”
“He’s not a dickhead; he’s just a little messed up.”
He smiles involuntarily again, and I feel my heart flutter.
“Maybe being so charming wouldn’t work as well, if you weren’t so good looking.”
I’m confused. “You think I’m attractive and my charms are working?”
Austen snorts with laughter. “I just feel bad about our situation. You deserve to seduce someone. Anyone except me, that is.”
“I’ll survive,” I shrug. “I’ll try not to hit on you again, if you don’t want?”
“Thanks, because I’ll have to crack your head open if you do.”
“Your threat seems a little empty, but please don’t do that. You love me, so it would hurt you just as much.”
Austen shifts uncomfortably. “So... you left when NATO bombed?”
“Yeah.”
“You must have been ten or eleven?”
“Yep.”
“I watched it on the television for years, but when the bombing started, I’d watch the jets fly over all Summer...”
“Me too.”
“You could see them so high in the sky when...”
“When the sky was really blue.”
“Yeah,” Austen says.
We look over the balcony. On the street two floors below, a rough crowd of revelers are getting into an argument.
“We’re way too stoned for this conversation.”
“We’d never have it otherwise. You can’t ignore things when you’re stoned. Everything you’re running from appears the moment you’re finally relaxed to demand your attention. Things that are important that you don't want to think about usually.”
“I’m only fighting to ignore one particular thing,” Austen sighs. “Fight of my life and I’m losing completely.”
“What are you trying to run from?” I ask.
“You.”
Time stops as we watch one another.
“You know, I actually get it,” I tell him.
“I get that it’s not a question of whether you want me or not.
You just don’t want to pull me into your problems. I can tell they’re big ones.
You were gonna ask me out one time, then disappear to Australia, and hopefully never see me again.
The thing is, I usually roll like that too.
I’m right there with my own bullshit, and mine is really bad, believe me.
Your brother might slit my throat? My brother might slit yours.
You got some baggage? I have a whole lot too. ”
“Maybe my problems aren’t as big as yours,” Austen shrugs, “but you don’t know, they could be bigger. Maybe it’s too much for you, for anybody.”
“My father gave me up to a scary Russian when I was twelve to be a dancing monkey and I have post-traumatic stress disorder from watching members of my family being blown up in front of me, amongst other things. Big enough for you?”
“Okay yeah,” Austen sighs. “Our problems actually compliment each other quite nicely, then.”
I laugh. “But we don’t have to be each other’s person. Don’t have to commit. We can be all cloak-and-daggers. That’s usually the gay way anyway. And you don’t have to make up your mind now. I’ll never stop chasing.”
“Where I’m going after this, you can’t chase me there.”
“What if I just asked you for this vacation then?” I suggest. “I’ll promise to never talk to you again. Maybe we try just once. Only once?”
“You’re not doing this because I’m wealthy, are you?”
“I am wealthy!” I laugh. “My adoptive parents are freaking loaded, and they like to show it. You’re disowned too, and running out of cash, so it looks like I’m the sugar daddy here.”
“What about the terrible, horrific, heartbreak thing?”
“You mean the tarot cards? I’m already having the heartbreak!”