Chapter 10 Bad August
CHAPTER TEN
BAD AUGUST
FIRST THING
August isn’t home. I’ve knocked, and he’s not home. And I still haven’t learned how to pick locks, despite my recent and best efforts. So I guess I’ll just stand here.
I guess I’ll just stand here and lean against his wall, and look nonchalant as fuck for whenever he arrives. Put a leg half up. Yeah, I think that looks casual.
Or would it be more casual to go watch from behind that tree across the street and just ‘happen’ to arrive at the same time he returns? Does waiting here seem too desperate?
Who am I kidding? I am desperate.
I thought about him all night, and this is probably way too early in the day for any sort of decency, no matter how casual I try to appear.
I should find something to do with my hands. In or out of pockets? In looks staged, surely.
Before I can overthink my obviously completely relaxed and dispassionate stance a little more, I hear movement from the main building of the property, detached from his flat. That landlady of his talking, saying goodbye.
Then August’s voice, warm and soft. He’s laughing, and I swear to god, he’s like sunshine.
She’s so loud. His usually gentle voice rises to try to meet hers in some light and amiable argument. Then he says goodbye, and he’s fast on the stairs. So fast he catches me with my mouth hanging open, failing in every attempt to appear calm and carefree.
When he sees me, he stops halfway down the flight. “August?”
Damn, he looks good. My mind has been places, all those long and lonely hours since I last saw him. Now he’s here, and I don’t understand how he can actually look better than yesterday. Does this man have some kind of secret beauty potion? Why, no matter what I do, do I never look that good?
But I should speak. Like a normal person who isn’t weirdly obsessed with himself. “I just arrived. I wasn’t waiting.”
“Oh. Good.” He seems as stunned to see me as I am to see him.
He wasn’t expecting me so early, I guess. Damn.
He trots down the rest of the stairs, then opens his sweet lips to speak, but the sound’s drowned out by his landlady. “August!”
His pretty eyes double in size, and all I get is a whispered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Hide!” His key’s in the lock, he shoves me in and slams the door with himself on the other side.
I’d much rather he were on this side, with me, but on the other hand, I’m in his apartment. Finally. I’d been trying to get in here for days to do some recon, but I’m very shit at breaking and entering as it goes. Guess it was the right move to just say hi, after all.
His apartment is not what I was expecting. It’s small, low-ceilinged, and like a nineteen-seventies fever dream of yellow and brown and orange, from the wallpaper to the linoleum floor to the popcorn ceiling. It should be awful. But it’s somehow… not.
He’s got all the old furniture in warm wooden tones, and a low orange velvet couch.
The place is just a studio, one room, but the bedroom area is separated from the rest by a bookshelf.
That’s made up of large wooden cubes, and you can see right through, except where it’s packed tight with vinyl.
He has so many records. Hundreds of records.
I run my finger along the spines, trying to get a sense of him.
Echo and the Bunnymen, Diana Ross, Poison, Lesley Gore, Bon Jovi, The Ramones, The Pogues, Def Leppard, Colette, The Animals…
It’s so much, and it’s incredibly eclectic.
He has a record player on a shelf in the middle, dust-free. I can imagine him lying on that bed, listening to all of this.
I wonder what he thinks about.
I move a little to the left to see which record he last put on. That’s when I see the photograph.
My parents. His parents. Our parents.
My hand’s on my heart, the place where the broken glass pierced our skin.
This August is the only one who knows. Of all the Augusts I’ve met, he’s the only one I know who bears this scar.
The door handle clicks, and I all but jump away from that picture. Then I’m standing in the middle of the room, perfectly awkward, when I’d tried so hard earlier to look nonchalant. His door closes, and he’s looking at me, and all I can say is, “I brought Coke.”
His eyes follow the awkward raise of my arm, the plastic bag crinkling out a disconcerting noise. “Breakfast Coke?”
Of course breakfast Coke. “Yes?”
“Okay. Thank you.” He walks over to take it from me, and he’s not quite making eye contact like he did yesterday. He seems kind of nervous. I thought he might be beginning to like me… Maybe not… Maybe I came on too strong after all.
Bad idea to make that phone call.
Now he’s putting the Coke in the fridge, and what the hell is he doing?
“Sorry if I’m here too early.” I’m aware I’ve deepened my voice, still aiming for that cool and removed aspect to cover the fact that my insides are reeling. “You normally go for your run earlier.”
“How long were you stalking me again?” He says it on a smile, with a bit of a laugh. Then, he hits the button on the kettle.
Is he just going to ignore my Coke? “Sorry. I just wanted to see if you were… safe. If you were like me.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
My nervous laugh splits the air. “It’s hard to tell with these things. I can see now we’re pretty similar.”
My eyes flit to the photograph despite my best intentions. He follows them. His expression tightens.
That’s not going to be easy. It’s one thing to work through a tragedy by yourself—to choose what you do and don’t say to other people.
But now there’s someone on the inside. Someone who remembers the accident.
Someone who remembers being told the news.
Someone who cried when you cried, who hurt when you hurt, through the months and months of recovery.
We have a strange bond that neither of us asked for.
That’s why I called him last night. I want him to be able to tell me to go. He doesn’t have any idea yet how deep this could cut.
Neither do I, I suppose.
He wrestles his face to neutral. “Do you have any siblings?”
“No. You?”
It’s loaded when he says, “No.”
“Aunts? Uncles? Cousins?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
It’s just us. I can feel that loneliness. I can feel it from his heart to mine, aching in the place we were both cut open fourteen years ago.
I’m in the hospital, waking up, seeing those worried faces of strangers for the first time. Knowing they were about to say something awful.
August starts searching through his cupboard. He could just pick any mug. I wonder if he’s buying time. His hands are shaking. So are mine. I force them deep into my pockets. “You like a lot of music.”
The tinkle of the cups as he pulls their handles together is soothing. A touch of homeliness, a change of pace. “Yeah. I… It was kind of my whole life for a while.”
Coming across a little green glass bowl full of guitar picks on the bookshelf, “You were in a band?”
“No.” He sighs when he notices what I’m looking at. “I should probably get rid of those. They’re just… part of that whole thing.”
Yet he doesn’t take them away. Instead, he grabs a jam jar full of tea bags. I think he is actually going to ignore my Coke.
“Were you born here?” he asks, dropping the bags into the cups.
“Yep. You?”
“Yeah. What’s your middle name?”
“Romeo.”
“Romeo.” He laughs properly for the first time since he came in. “What were they thinking?”
“We’ll never know.” I say it lightly, but it’s a truth I’ve come to accept. I hope he has too.
Then it’s, “Favourite colour?”
“Don’t have one.”
“Neither.”
“Favourite food?”
“That… there’s this… zucchini thing?”
“With the yoghurt?”
“Yeah! I love that.”
“I love that so much! You know, I’d almost forgotten it. It’s been so long.”
“It’s wonderful, isn’t it? I still make it now and then.”
“I don’t even know what it’s called.”
“Neither do I.” He’s chuckling like this is inevitable, all our similarities. But the wonderful, terrible thing is, there was only the most fleeting chance of this happening. And our similarities have to run out soon.
Still, I find myself caught up in his easy excitement, replying, “Favourite movie?”
“There are too many. Terminator?”
“Aliens?”
“Princess Bride?”
“All of it.”
“All of it. We could have the best movie night.”
“I doubt we’d ever argue about what to pick.”
“We could even make the zucchini thing.” When he says that, I know he must be joking—some flippant remark hinting at the ridiculousness of a situation like ours.
But I want it. I want so badly one night of cooking, and sitting, and talking.
It’s a weird mix of nostalgia and misery so palpable I can almost touch it.
People do that. There are people who just put on a movie together and enjoy simple comforts. People who aren’t like me. Who aren’t destined to be alone, for all eternity.
I hadn’t even realised I’d failed to form a reply until he clicks a finger and says, “Desperately Seeking Susan!”
“Sorry?”
“That’s it. That’s my favourite movie.”
Such odd words all strung together until some distant memory of a dull and deeply forgettable movie surfaces. An awful movie. And there it is, our first major difference. And an appalling one too.
But not wanting the easy flow of conversation to ebb away, I ask, “Sycamore Street?”
“Yes!” he replies with a bright smile, and I’m glad I didn’t say anything horrible about his weird favourite movie. “I lived there until I was seven. Then it was McLaughlin Grove?”
My own smile pulls at the corners of my lips. “Then Shakespeare Crescent?”
“Then…” Both our smiles fade fast.
“Foster care.”
“Yep.” His head dips, and maybe it’s too soon, but he rips the tea bags out and throws them in the sink, eventually reflecting, “All those schools.”
“Yeah. There were a lot of them.”
The spoon clinks gently in the cup as he stirs. “Then why are we so different if we have all that in common?”