Chapter 17 #2
By the time Oscar got round to summer, he was out the door, a jacket on his back and his earbuds in, Mitski playing an entirely different tune that reminded him he was a temporary thing, making him pray to a moon that had not yet risen in his sky so early in the afternoon, making him wish that someone, something, somehow would tell Aaron that he loved him. That he didn’t want to lose him.
Oscar didn’t want to go to sleep without a goodnight kiss.
Aaron was watching David and Moira fold in the cheese when Oscar came back. Their eyes met across the room. It felt almost ceremonious when the door clicked shut behind him, and Oscar was sure Aaron had heard his lump of spit go down as he swallowed.
“I wondered where you were.” Aaron pushed up his glasses, scrunching his nose.
“I needed to go get some things,” Oscar said, mouth twisting to the side uncomfortably.
He peeked into his bag, moving forward a step that felt like a thousand.
Luigi eyed him curiously, curled up still next to Aaron, whose fingers were gently rubbing the soft fur between his ears. “I thought you’d enjoy this.”
Aaron stopped petting Luigi when Oscar passed him the ball of colorful yarn he’d bought, autumn colors mixing in a bright blend Oscar could imagine him weaving into something beautiful.
“And these,” Oscar said before Aaron could respond, pulling out the mini sunflowers he’d picked up from Paulie’s and pressing them into Aaron’s free hand. “There’s more yarn in the bag. And the coffee beans you’ve been looking at. I’ll take those to the kitchen. Here.”
Oscar pulled the artisanal bag of coffee out and put the paper bag down on the couch next to Luigi, darting around the sofa and into the kitchen, where he started brewing a fresh pot.
Dinner would be special, too. He’d make Aaron the fried rice he liked, and he’d drown it in enough soy sauce to turn it nearly black, just how Aaron preferred.
Oscar could take the salt if it made Aaron happy.
He would take anything if it made Aaron smile.
He would do anything to know that Aaron loved him anyway.
Moira was already presenting herself to Ronnie’s friends when Oscar plated the rice, and Aaron had finished the mug Oscar had taken to the coffee table a good two hours before, but there had been no words between them.
The Nemean Lion and the many-headed Hydra were nothing to the labor it took for a child unable to survive December from the sheer anticipation of a Christmas present to force himself into quiet patience, so to call this amicable silence a Herculean task was to diminish it.
Oscar brought Aaron his plate of rice to the couch, set down his glass of iced soda, and slid the salt and pepper shakers his way, counting every action to stop himself from spouting all the apologies he’d lined up throughout the afternoon and early evening.
He brushed a thumb over Luigi’s back where he loafed on the arm of the couch and made to go back to the kitchen.
“Where’s yours?” Aaron asked, twisting his neck to look at him.
The eye contact flipped the mains on somewhere inside Oscar, whirring his anxious organs to life.
He choked on air as he searched for the simple words that would convey his decision to give Aaron as much space as he needed without going into a long-winded and unnecessary explanation about all the lessons he’d learned from pressing his mother on and on until her lid came off.
Oscar didn’t want Aaron’s lid to come off again.
Not that he was too happy about this quiet simmer.
He’d never been too good with uncertainty.
“We always have dinner in front of the TV,” Aaron said.
He set his plate down on the coffee table and stood.
Oscar’s heart stuttered, and even though his apartment was a small, quaint thing, the distance felt entirely too long while Aaron crossed to him.
Whether he was going to fall into a raging fit or kiss him, Oscar wasn’t sure, but his assessment would have been inaccurate in either case.
Aaron met his eyes again briefly as he passed him, shaking his head, and then he walked straight to the kitchen counter and picked up Oscar’s plate and fork.
“Get your diet soda,” he said, turning back to the couch.
Oscar followed with his head bowed and his stomach lumped so far up in his throat that he wasn’t even sure he could have any of the rice. Still, he sat beside Aaron, blessing the chance to feel the brush of his fingers as he passed him the plate.
The rice went down like gravel, scratching Oscar’s throat on its way, settling in his stomach like concrete.
The TV droned on, but Oscar couldn’t imagine laughing at Moira’s blunders and Alexis Rose’s expressions when sitting next to him was Aaron.
The sounds of his tongue as he chewed and slurped and smacked his lips around the fork were the song of a lifetime, the slipping soundtrack of a film that felt close to its end.
It was the receding tide, shrinking away from shore, and Oscar wanted more than anything to chase it.
Barefoot and naked, he would slip into the water and let it claim him.
His ankles would be anchors, dragging him down to the seabed of Aaron, and Oscar would become a merman, grow gills and a tail so he could live in him forever.
“Please stay.”
Oscar’s whisper rolled over the forkful of rice hovering in front of his mouth, cooling it with the frost of the implication.
Quiet as it came, Aaron caught it. He lowered his plate in Oscar’s peripheral vision, head turning, and after giving himself three seconds of pretend normalcy, Oscar turned as well.
Aaron wasn’t the seabed; he was the sky. As Oscar’s gaze dug into his, his lungs filled with air and allowed him to breathe. If Oscar had been drowning before, then Aaron’s face pulled him from the deep and gave him life again.
“Why would you say something like that?” Aaron frowned. Brown stains filled the flaky gaps in his chapped lips from the soy sauce and Oscar had never wanted to kiss anything more. Anyone. “Do you see me going anywhere?”
“I’m not like this. Not normally.” Oscar set his plate down on the coffee table, reaching out with both hands and grasping air as he tried to explain himself with every single one of his body parts. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please tell me what to do so you can stop being angry with me.”
“Spike…”
Oscar’s heart lifted like a cloud, soft as Aaron’s voice when he spoke the sweeter of Oscar’s two names. And Aaron, too, was soft, entirely soft as he abandoned his own plate and reached for Oscar’s hands, thumbs rubbing his skin.
“I’m upset. We were arguing. But it doesn’t mean I’m angry with you or that I’m going to leave. I’m not going anywhere, okay?” Aaron shook his head, dipping his chin so he could look directly into Oscar’s eyes. “I’m not angry anymore.”
Oscar wished he was the kind of person who could take something like that and run with it, someone who could take the reassurance and hold it in his chest without crumbling.
He wished he could become the teenager who stood steady as a rock when he faced off with his mother, never flinching or faltering in the face of her stubbornness.
But Oscar wasn’t that person, not anymore, and not with Aaron.
Not with his Aaron.
Oscar’s face crumpled, and Aaron was a blur, sky melting into rain in front of Oscar’s face, a puddle of sweetness that wrapped itself around him and brought him to its chest. Oscar buried his head in the dip of Aaron’s throat and didn’t cringe as his back shook, didn’t feel shame as he sobbed out an entire day’s worth of anxiety while Aaron stroked his hair and cupped the back of his head.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, baby,” Aaron murmured, bending down to kiss his soft washed hair. “What you did sucked, but I shouldn’t have frozen you out all day long.”
“I promise I’m not going to become your father,” Oscar said.
The sound of snot dragging itself up his nose was disgusting.
On any other occasion, Oscar would have poked fun at it, called himself a man of Bedrock, but he wasn’t in the mood for it.
This wasn’t a bagful of trauma he could laugh away.
This was his life, his future sitting in front of him, and for the duration of a day, Oscar had believed he might lose it.
“I promise you, I will never touch another drop. Never.”
“Hey, we all lose control sometimes. It’s not the end of the world.
” Aaron cupped Oscar’s chin, rubbing away his tears with his other hand.
“The problem is when it becomes a habit. We’ve been together how long now, and you’ve never done this.
I’m sorry. I lashed out because I was worried about work, and I just…
I don’t like to think about my dad. I don’t feel safe when I remember what he could be like.
I don’t want to wake up one morning to shouting and banging and breaking plates. I was scared.”
“I would never do that.” Oscar shook his head. “I understand. I understand why you reacted that way. I…”
Oscar sniffled, leaning back to face Aaron completely.
He curled his leg beneath his body, the fried rice sitting forgotten on the coffee table.
By now, the ice in his soda had melted, and there would be a ring beneath the glass, but Oscar’s furniture was no family heirloom.
Nothing in his apartment had belonged to him before he’d moved here.
Oscar’s childhood treasures sat in his mother’s home, in the shrine to a daughter that had never been.
“Look at how I reacted.”
“Reacted? To what?” Aaron frowned, leaning deeper into the cushions. He pulled his knee into his chest. Oscar could spend a lifetime sitting on his couch talking about difficult things across from Aaron in sweatpants. “Did something happen?”
“Yeah,” Oscar replied. “Something did.”