Chapter 12 #2
His entire life existed in a city fifteen hundred miles from any ocean. If I walked into Dr. Voss's program in two years, I walked out of his life. He'd try to make it work. Heath would fully commit, refusing to give up even when it hurt. Hard to knock over.
I knew what distance did to things that needed proximity to survive.
I picked up a rock. Dark, smooth, the size of my palm. The underside was rougher, pocked by years of tidal abrasion. Two surfaces.
I put it in my jacket pocket.
The plan I'd devised at nineteen had assumed I'd want nothing in the present tense. It assumed wanting lived safely in the future, always at least two years away. Then Heath walked into the present.
A wave hit the shelf hard enough to send spray across my shoes.
I stayed until the light shifted from white to gold. Then I stood, checked the rock in my pocket, and walked back to the car.
***
O'Hare was my gateway back into Chicago, gray carpet and recycled air. I grabbed my bag off the carousel and turned toward the exit.
Heath was leaning against a pillar near the doors.
Hands in his jacket pockets. Hood up against the cold bleeding through the automatic doors. His nose was red.
He hadn't told me he was coming.
"I'm your ride," he said. "If anybody asks."
"Nobody's asking."
"Good. The real answer is more complicated, and I don't have a prepared statement."
His car sat on level three. He popped the trunk, put my bag in, and closed it.
The car smelled like his apartment: coffee and radiator heat. A receipt sat in the cupholder. Chicken thighs. Onions. Black beans. Bananas. The staples of a man who fed himself on a budget.
We merged onto the Kennedy. A billboard for the Ironhawks' home stand loomed ahead of us. Rook's face, thirty feet tall, expression flat. Someone had tagged the lower corner with a spray-painted heart. Rook would hate that.
Heath changed lanes. "How was it?" he asked.
"Good. Warm."
"You look less tired."
"I slept."
"That's allowed during breaks."
He pulled up in front of my building. Double-parked, hazards on. The car idled.
"Kieran." He stared ahead through the windshield. Both hands firmly on the wheel. "What was in California?"
I couldn't lie. Heath had driven to O'Hare without being asked. He'd carried my bag.
"I went for grad school stuff," I said.
His hands didn't move on the wheel. His breathing didn't change.
"And?"
"It's real. The programs are what they say they are. The work is what I want."
"That means you're leaving."
It was a flat statement. Taking inventory like when he told me about his father's injury and the medications. His left thumb moved once against the steering wheel, a small unconscious stroke, and then went still. I'd seen that tell before. After bad goals.
The hazards clicked.
"I don't know anymore," I said.
Heath looked at me, and then he nodded once.
"I'm making soup," he said. "If you're hungry."
"I think I need to go home tonight."
His jaw tensed, and his eyes returned to looking ahead.
"Okay," he said.
"I need to think."
"I know. You don't have to explain."
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out the rock.
Dark. Smooth on one side. Rough on the other. I set it on the center console.
"Proof I went outside," I said.
He picked it up. Turned it in his fingers the way he turned the pipe cleaner figure.
"Good rock," he said.
"It has two sides."
"Most rocks do."
He put it in his pocket.
I grabbed my bag from the trunk. Walked around to the driver's window. He'd rolled it down an inch.
"Thank you for the ride," I said.
"Anytime."
He pulled away. I watched until the car disappeared, then stood on the sidewalk with the cold pressing in.
My condo was exactly as I'd left it. I set my bag by the door.
My phone buzzed.
Heath: Good rock. It's on the coffee table.
Below the message was a photo. The rock sitting next to the pipe cleaner figure. One leaning forward, permanently mid-stride. The other still, shaped by forces that took millennia to leave their mark.
The rock was gone from my pocket. The only physical evidence of California was sitting in an apartment next to a pipe cleaner hockey player built by a man named Pickle.
I stood at the east window. Twelve stories up. Lake Michigan was blackness stretching toward the horizon. I pressed my forehead against the glass. My breath fogged a circle that shrank as soon as I pulled back.
The grad school applications were on my laptop. Three browser tabs. Scripps. University of Miami. URI.
Two years. The number used to feel like a countdown. Now it was a measurement of how long I'd have Heath before one of us disappeared.
On the bookshelf, the photo of Ansel and me sat where it always sat. My face half-obscured by fogged glass, the beluga tilted toward the camera with mild curiosity.
I thought about Ansel. How I'd stood at his window months ago and said I'm gay. How nothing changed. The water stayed the same.
Then I remembered what I'd said in the car.
I don't know anymore.
I'd never said that about anything.
The plan that had sustained me since nineteen was still sound. Still logical. Still the only future where I became someone I'd chosen instead of what was offered me.
But it no longer felt like freedom.
Heath was here in Chicago. Standing in net-front traffic with his blade flat. Sending money home from a paycheck already spoken for. Setting the rock I gave him next to one of his most valued objects.
I couldn't take him with me. His life was here. And I couldn't pretend I hadn't seen the alternative. I'd sat in a lecture hall and felt what choosing tasted like. That didn't go away just because I flew home.
I sat on my couch and considered both futures, understanding I could only live in one.
I don't know wasn't failure. It was the most honest thing I'd said in years.