20
B lake awoke to the hum of his phone’s alarm.
Without bothering to open his eyes, he cast his arm out to search the floor for it, surprised when his hand hit a solid surface.
Sitting up, he blinked around at his surroundings, recalling that he and Marin had crashed at Celeste’s place the night before.
He shut his alarm off, rolling over to face his bed partner.
Marin stirred beside him, peeking out from beneath the hood of the sheet and smiling up at Blake, almost shy.
“Good morning,” he whispered.
Blake smiled and tugged the sheet off of Marin’s head, gathering Marin’s chin in his fingertips and leaning down towards him.
Marin allowed himself to be eased back into the blankets, their mouths slotting together.
He sighed into the kiss before pulling away to squint up at Blake, eyes filled with affection.
“Morning,” Blake replied with a smile, dropping another kiss to Marin’s mouth. “You feeling better?”
Marin nodded into the kiss, pulling away for a moment to reply: “Much.” But still, his eyes welled with apologetic sorrow and he glanced away, embarassed. “Again, I’m so sorry about what happened—”
“Don’t be. You have nothing to apologize for.” Blake shook his head. Cupping Marin’s cheek, he pressed a delicate kiss to his forehead. “I’m just glad you’re doing all right.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the clock on the cottage wall—he didn’t remember what he’d set his alarm for. It was already eight thirty in the morning.
He turned his head back to gaze down at Marin, who was idly tracing a hickey on the corner of his neck, eyes scrunched up in contentment.
“What did you want to get up to today?” Marin asked, curling his leg around Blake’s calf.
“Up to you,” Blake said, pressing an additional kiss to Marin’s nose. “We can do whatever you’d like.”
Marin took a moment to look thoughtful before a devious smile twitched up the side of his mouth. He reached out with both arms, lacing his hands around Blake’s neck.
“Well, I wouldn’t mind some more kisses,” he mused before grimacing, shamefaced. “Now that I’m out of the water, I probably won’t pull a Dracula.”
“If that’s what you want, I have no complaints,” Blake told Marin, who grinned and kissed his cheek. “But I really wanted to do something special with you.”
“How is spending time with you not special?” Marin returned, dragging his hands down Blake’s biceps. Blake ducked his head, emitting a sheepish laugh.
“Thanks,” he said. “But I wanted to know if there was anything you had your heart set on for…?”
For one of your last days alive , went unsaid, but Blake felt that it was more than clearly implied. However, he refused to let himself dwell on it, instead focusing his energy on Marin’s response.
“I… I wanted to try to remember more about that girl,” Marin admitted, squeezing Blake’s arms. “I only remember a few things about her, so I don’t know what I could do to jog my memory, but…” he trailed off pointedly, looking grief-stricken.
“What did you say her nickname was?” Blake asked, furrowing his brow.
“Hm?” Marin turned to him with a small frown. “Peanut. Why?”
“I wonder…” Blake mused, grasping for his phone. He opened Instagram first, clicking the bar and typing in “peanut Marin”. “A lot of people use their childhood nicknames as their Instagram usernames and Marin is technically a surname, so—”
As Blake scrolled through the results, a user photo gave him pause: it was a photo of the exact sculpture that he had shown to Marin the night before, taken from a slightly different angle. Beside the photo was the username peanutMarin84, the subtitle a simple name: Jessica.
“No way,” Blake whispered, clicking the username. Beside him, Marin turned his hand palm-up, gripping Blake’s.
The biography was simple enough: Jessica – 38 – Mom – Wife – Art Dealer.
Below was a link to a professional account, and after that were only three posts: one detailing an art exhibition at the San Francisco Japan Center with previews Thursday night, the next of a pair of smiling women and their bright-eyed children standing in front of the Disneyland castle, and the third was of a misshapen brown lump of fabric worn to nearly nothing.
Fingers trembling, Blake clicked on the third.
“ Found this going through storage. Miss you Jelly.” Read the caption.
“Does this look familiar?” Blake handed the phone over to Marin, who stared down at it in disbelief.
“That’s… that’s the Scooby Doo doll I made,” Marin said softly, tracing the edges of the toy with his fingernail. He scrolled up through the posts, pausing at the family picture.
Now that Blake was able to get a better look, he was immediately struck by the mischievous expression of the woman on the left.
But the similarity to Marin was also there in the shape of her jaw, the lilt in her smile, the impish way that her nose scrunched when she grinned at the camera.
One arm was wrapped around the woman at her side, the other held captive in the grip of the boy standing in front of her—and Blake could see the familiarity there, too.
There was a certain way that he had positioned his body, with his face half-tucked behind his mother’s arm, that struck him as distinctly Marin-esque.
“Jessica…” Marin said quietly, bringing the phone closer to his face.
“Do you remember her?” Blake asked, hopeful that the image had triggered some sort of memory—this woman was almost undoubtedly related to him, be she a cousin or a sister.
“I…” Marin furrowed his brow. “When I recalled her, I couldn’t see much of a face—it was blurry, like an impressionist painting. It only made sense from far away, I couldn’t point out any distinct features, but…”
He rubbed his fingertip over the image, looking pained. His brows drew together, lower lip beginning to quiver. “The person I remember is a little girl. A teenager. I think this woman is the same person, but so changed from an image I can hardly remember. It’s her, but it’s not her. I…”
“We should contact her,” Blake suggested, squeezing Marin’s hand. “There’s a way to message her on here.”
Hands gentle, he reached for the phone and Marin allowed it to fall into his grip. Blake clicked the ‘message’ function, unhappy to see that Jessica only accepted DMs from friends. He sent a quick request before clicking on her professional profile, which unfortunately had the same caveat.
“It looks like she’s going to be in San Francisco for an art exhibition this weekend, though,” Blake said, pulling up a linked website to check the details. “There’s still tickets available for the preview tomorrow night, I’ll reserve those right now.”
“What about transportation?” Marin asked, looking equal measures of apprehensive and excited.
“We can take the Amtrack,” he told Marin, but then frowned in realization. “I don’t feel comfortable leaving my bike at the train station though, so we might have to Uber over.”
“I know Celeste has a car. Maybe they could drop us off?” Marin suggested.
“No idea. Hopefully they’ll feel better by then. I imagine they’ll still be really hung over and upset about the fight they had with Ryan.” Blake took the moment to compose a quick text to them.
“ Morning, how are you feeling? ”
To Blake’s surprise, Celeste’s response was immediate: “ Alive-ish. I’m in the den if you need anything.”
“Sounds like they’re awake, at least. That being said, we should probably head back to my place soon,” Blake told Marin. “Did you want to get showered here, or…?”
“Mm, I should rinse off real quick,” Marin said, throwing back the covers of the guest bed.
“Go ahead, I’ll check up on Celeste,” Blake told him, sending a group text to Noel and Matt. Blake was unsurprised that there was no reply—knowing Matt, he’d be asleep until two in the afternoon as long as he didn’t have anything planned that day.
Blake grabbed the rest of his clothes off of the floor and dressed, relieved that his boxers had dried overnight. Opening the French doors, he stepped out into the expansive backyard.
Even in the depths of a California summer, the brief walk to the house was cool in the early morning. Still scrubbing sleep from his eyes, Blake mourned the loss of the warm bed and even warmer boyfriend.
He paused in his step, staring at the empty air in front of him, seeing nothing. The morning song of the finches was a thousand miles away.
“Boyfriend, huh?” he said to himself. A smile tried to tug at the corner of his lips, but it felt unearned.
They held hands, they kissed, and—due to the unique circumstances they were in—they even lived together.
Marin had even agreed when Ryan had told him that they made a cute couple.
Oddly enough, the most damning evidence was that he’d used a pet name for Marin without even thinking.
It felt weird to ask Marin out at this point—it was like they had started dating without even realizing it. But also, some juvenile, fearful part of him—the part that had been rejected from several foster families, that had been abandoned by his father—began to whisper in his ear:
Sure, you can grant his wish—you can even get him to the place he died. But do you really think you’re worthy enough to save him? To be loved by him?
Blake’s ugly thoughts were interrupted by a gentle “wuff” from beside his right ankle. He glanced down to find Kerby sitting politely at his feet, tail wagging.
“Hey there,” Blake greeted him, crouching down to offer a little scratch to his chin. “Let’s go find your parent, huh? I have a feeling they might need some cheering up.”
Blake found Celeste curled up on the couch with Bonbon under approximately two hundred blankets.
They were playing a retro platformer on the Nintendo Switch while wearing a pair of wraparound shades.
Empty Gatorade bottles and tear-and-snot-stained tissues littered the floor all around them.
Kerby jumped up on the couch beside them, picking out a cozy spot to cuddle up.