Chapter 15
SICKDAY
The concept of an alarm clock had always grated on Oscar. In general, the entire idea of waking up at a time set by obligation didn’t sit well with him. And in most cases, his body had rejected the notion by refusing to take into account any of the shrill ringing that might ensue.
That morning, though, with his nerves as open as his bleeding heart, Oscar was startled awake by the first beep of Aaron’s alarm, shuttling him from the warm snuggle of the bed they now shared on more nights than not and straight to his bedroom floor, grasping at the brick Aaron called a phone to turn it off.
Aaron had lines on his face from the deep slumber he’d settled into after Oscar had put him to bed.
His hands were wrapped around the edge of the blanket, which was far too thin for the cold that had started to set in during the evenings.
He mumbled his displeasure as he started to shift into wakefulness.
“Go back to sleep,” Oscar murmured, crouching down by the bed and brushing his short bangs with his fingers. “You’re not going to work today. Who do I have to text to call you in sick?”
“I can’t,” Aaron groaned, “I have the makeup stand today.”
Oscar huffed through his nose, and it was strong enough to ruffle Aaron’s bangs, for one of his eyes to flick open, his lips to twitch.
“Someone feels very strongly about this,” he said. And Oscar would write an entire paper about his opposition if it meant he could see a fraction of a smile on Aaron’s face again. “I’ll try to call.”
His fingers tapped on the nightstand, swift spidery movements, grasping at air until he found his phone in Oscar’s hand. In the minute that followed, Oscar learned that a yawn could be beautiful if performed by a mouth such as Aaron’s, a mouth Oscar wanted to kiss.
“H-hi,” Aaron said, half sitting up as someone on the other end answered. “It’s Aaron, the temp guy. Aaron Thake. I’m just calling to say I’m not feeling well today and to ask whether I could—”
Aaron’s mouth straightened, eyebrows dropping as the other person spoke. Oscar made out a sorry.
“I do. I understand it’s short notice. I’m sorry.
” He paused, nose scrunching up. “Maybe I can…” Oscar widened his eyes at him, shaking his head.
“Is there anything…” Aaron gnawed on his lower lip.
Oscar wanted to be the tooth biting on it, to be the lip.
“I’m sorry. I don’t have a replacement. I don’t work with a reserve. ”
Oscar watched Aaron’s face fall completely as the person on the other end of the line dealt the blow.
But he wasn’t about to let him just sit there and take it.
Oscar hadn’t spent his entire childhood and most of his teenage years battling the likes of Marjorie Peters just so he could let his boyfriend go to work for eight straight hours where he’d have to smile at people and show off products while his mind lingered on his sick mother.
If Oscar wanted to do something, he would have to do it now. Aaron’s shoulders were dropping an inch a second, his resignation setting in like a virus, and Oscar would be damned if anything else tried to dim those beautiful eyes.
As the brainwave hit him, Oscar wrapped a hand around Aaron’s wrist, startling him into looking up. He pointed at himself, nodding when Aaron shook his head.
Please, Oscar mouthed.
Aaron hesitated, the person on the other end of the line still speaking. She sounded exasperated, as though he’d asked for anything other than basic human empathy.
“I…I might have someone,” he said, the moment she let him get a word in.
Oscar didn’t make out anything she said after that; he couldn’t, even if Aaron had put her on speaker, because all he could focus on was the relief that eased Aaron’s shoulders, that settled the blue of his eyes, like an ocean after the storm, the sea on those early mornings with Papa and Lina, the three of them splashing around to the backdrop of an empty beach.
Oscar wanted to collect Aaron’s grief like pebbles and carry it around in his pockets, bear some of its weight.
He was still kneeling on the floor beside the bed when Aaron hung up and put his phone face down on the bedside table.
“You don’t have to do this, Spike,” he murmured, brushing Oscar’s cheek with his thumb. His eyebrows curved low, mouth pinching. “It’s a long day of standing, and you have to get your gaming hours in before semester starts tomorrow. It’s your last day off before school.”
Oscar leaned in, unpinching Aaron’s pursed lips with a slow chaste kiss. They were like butter, Aaron’s lips—soft and smooth and tender.
“Yesterday was rough,” Oscar said. “I’ll make you a nice, fancy coffee and then you can sit in bed all day with Luigi and knit. And when you get bored, you can go out and play video games or watch Schitt’s Creek. I’ll bring dinner.”
Oscar didn’t make space for Aaron to complain.
As much as he despised an early morning, Oscar loved Aaron more.
So it wasn’t that hard to drag himself into a pair of black jeans, a T-shirt, and a hoodie, and it wasn’t a task to tame his hair and brush his teeth.
A quarter of an hour later, Luigi had a full bowl of dry food and Aaron had his coffee, a pair of knitting needles, and one of the many balls of yarn he’d left running around Oscar’s apartment over the weeks.
“Call Tobe and Marta. Invite them over for board games next weekend. I want to meet them. We can have Joe and Anna over, too, if you want. Make a night of it, hmm?” Oscar bent down to kiss him on top of his head.
“Are you sure?” Aaron asked. His eyes were clear of sleep now, but there was something so tender still about his gaze. It took Oscar back to before the surgery, to the fear creeping through the cracks of Aaron’s laughs as he made jokes about something that scared him.
“Positive,” Oscar replied, pulling back. “I’ll be home straight after work.”
“Okay.”
Aaron’s smile was a thing of Gemma’s, a beautiful reminder that he was her son and a painful souvenir of something Aaron was losing bit by bit.
Oscar would do anything to slow his crumbling, to put the light back in his eyes.
If asked how many men it would take to screw a lightbulb behind that sky blue gaze, Oscar would say one, because he would do whatever it might take to achieve it.
For now, he would replace Aaron at work and give him a day to recover from their visit to the care home.
It was a short bus ride that took him in the opposite direction of the cathedral.
Oscar got off two corners away from the pedestrian shopping street where the new makeup store was celebrating its launch.
He felt like a toad among princes in his bargain bin hoodie and jeans that had gone soft from being washed so many times, but Oscar supposed nobody would be looking at him much.
Not with all the shiny items waiting to be set up on the stall he was supposed to man.
Beautiful Things sat right in the middle of the longest street in their quaint shopping district, yet another thing that had been tainted for Oscar by his mother.
He remembered her dragging him from shop to shop as a young teenager, piling skirts and dresses and form-fitting jeans into his arms as she pushed him into dressing rooms. He remembered their fights when he refused to try anything on.
Oscar remembered being kicked out of a shop once because he and his mother had raised their voices too high.
Despite there being no love lost between him and makeup, he was glad this new shop had taken the place of another where he’d once been forced to put on a dress for the wedding of a relative.
He was happy that place had been gutted from the inside out to make way for the sleek modern counters, behind which were gorgeous women with faces like dolls and hair slicked back into high ponytails.
Oscar knocked on the clear glass door and one of the women approached, a tight smile on her face as she eyed him.
“I’m not sure the shirt will fit. You said you were a small.”
Wow, is your name Marjorie, too?
“I’m the replacement,” Oscar said, lacing each word with cold dry bitterness. “I ate the other guy.”
The woman ran her ponytail through her hand and nodded, unimpressed, jutting her chin at a white door just behind the cash counter, where Oscar supposed he was meant to go change. He wondered how she’d react if she found out how true-adjacent his statement was.
Oscar wouldn’t stay long enough to find out.
In a flash, he was out of his own hoodie and top and in the black branded one they had prepared for Aaron to wear outside.
It was a tight fit, but Oscar no longer had to worry too much about that.
He didn’t mind his soft belly anymore. It meant food on the table every night and kebabs from the corner store.
It meant gummy bears in the pantry and ingredients to make Papa’s cookies whenever he wanted.
Besides, Oscar was no longer at war with his upper body. Or with his body much at all.
Outside, the same woman showed him the bags of samples they’d prepared behind the stall for him to set up and show off and then she left.
Desperately wishing he could wear his earphones and listen to something while he worked, Oscar put up the display and imagined this was one of those late summer afternoons with Papa, sitting his dolls in a pretty row so he could play teacher.
Because he’d never much liked the idea of being their mother.
So Papa would sit with Oscar’s dolls and listen to him prattle on about the latest thing he’d learned at school.
His mother hadn’t liked it when Papa had allowed Oscar to cut his favorite doll’s hair so she would match him. She’d taken it away, told Oscar he didn’t deserve to have such pretty dolls if he wanted to uglify himself.