Chapter 22 #2
“Boo…can I hug you?” Oscar hadn’t needed to ask this in a while, but for the first time in months, he wasn’t sure.
Suddenly, Aaron seemed like a street cat in a corner, frightened and skittish, and the last thing Oscar wanted was for him to flee.
Not like this. Not with his shoulders shaking as they were.
But Aaron nodded. And Oscar wasted no time scooting over and wrapping his arms around him. He pulled him in, and Aaron fell into his shoulder, his crying turning audible, soft weeping shifting into sobbing, arms crossing over his knees.
Every sound that pushed out of him was a shard of glass that cut through Oscar, running jagged scars across his heart as it broke over and over again without a shred of comprehension.
Please explain, he wanted to say, but couldn’t.
Because how could he expect Aaron to talk when he was so distraught?
Instead, Oscar pressed kisses to the top of Aaron’s head, his soft fluffy hair he’d come to think of as more red than brown now, for all his claims of catfishing.
And Oscar labored not to cry as well, because seeing Aaron like this did things to him.
“That’s how it started,” Aaron mumbled, wiping his nose with the back of his hand.
He looked up, his face red and his eyes bloodshot and puffy.
Aaron took off his glasses and set them down on the arm of the couch, rubbing the bridge of his nose where he’d pressed them a little too hard.
When his gaze finally settled on Oscar’s, it was clear that nothing good was going to come out of his mouth.
“With my mom. Before she fell. It was isolated outbursts none of us noticed, abandoning all her hobbies, all of this.”
“But…”
“It’s called early-onset for a reason, Oscar.” Aaron’s mouth began to wobble again and then he buried his head between his knees and carried on with his crying.
Oscar’s breastbone was a caterpillar bursting through its chrysalis, a butterfly captured in darkness, flapping its wings bat-like in the vampiric cave where it was trapped.
Fuck, he needed to throw up. But throwing up would solve nobody’s problems and certainly not this one that had suddenly fallen into his world like a boulder, a fruit tree splat in the middle of paradise.
“Get tested,” Oscar said. “We’ll get you tested. Is there a test? How do we find out?”
Aaron looked up, frowning. He rubbed his eyes and cheeks, sniffling, his voice thick with tears still, gaze bright with what looked like anger. “It’s complicated,” he said.
“It isn’t complicated. If they found out what she had, then there must be a way to know. Sitting here won’t give you answers.” Oscar brushed Aaron’s bangs out of his forehead. “Boo…we need to know, don’t we?”
“What difference does it make?” Aaron asked. He groaned, leaning back. By the time he’d settled against the couch cushion, his groan had turned into a whine. “Why the fuck would I want to know when there is no cure for it? Nothing to slow it down?”
“Because you need to know,” Oscar replied. “Because you’re still worrying about it anyway, and there’s no use in worrying about something we don’t even know is there!”
He didn’t like that he’d raised his voice a little.
He didn’t like that in the midst of Aaron’s wreckage, he felt like he was the one with his forehead bleeding out behind the airbag.
He wasn’t owed this. This wasn’t about him.
But Oscar had only healed so much and there were years of therapy left before he could truly call himself a decent person who didn’t lose it after five minutes of human conversation.
“I need to know, or you need to know?” Aaron asked. He groaned again, leaping off the couch in one swift motion, arms swinging out. “That’s it, isn’t it? You need to know.”
“So what if I do? Don’t I get to find out, too? Does it mean nothing to you that I love you?” Oscar clamped his lips shut, which was more than he could say for his fifteen-year-old self, but still not good enough.
“I’m going to say something I regret if I stay here,” Aaron said, shaking his head.
He rubbed his face with both hands, running them into his hair and gripping hard enough that Oscar wanted to jump across the room and pull his fingers out, hold them in his grasp until Aaron calmed down.
But from the way he was shaking, Oscar imagined that if he did that, Aaron would explode.
So he didn’t. Oscar sat and watched him melt down in front of him, this man of pure sunshine thawing in the frost.
“Fuck it. I’m going to bed.”
“Go then,” Oscar said. He hadn’t meant to sound as snappy as he did. When the door slammed shut behind Aaron, Oscar’s heart broke.
He sat on the couch with Aaron’s warm coffee and his cold hot chocolate for a good long while before he decided to lie down and get some sleep, but Oscar barely closed his eyes. All night long, he could hear Aaron crying in their bed.
And all Oscar wanted to do was go to him.
But Aaron hadn’t invited him to join, so Oscar didn’t, and instead, he joined him in his tears and wept into their couch while the cat mewed between him and the door and tried to understand.