SULLIVAN #2
“Not exactly.” I frown back down at the phone. “I guess it’s complicated.”
“He’s not the one...” She makes a limp gesture at the cast I have resting on the table.
“Mom, no. I told you. I was hiking—it was a disaster. What person could have possibly done all this to me?” I wave my good hand around my face as if for emphasis but really to keep her from looking at my forearms where traces of bruises from Quinn’s unforgiving grip still linger.
I need to pull down my sleeve, but I also need to be subtle about it.
“I just mean he’s not really in a position to be in a relationship, and that’s why I can’t say he’s my boyfriend, but we are friends, and we are close, and he’s a really good person.
He’s like—the greatest person of all time, maybe. ”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” I say quietly, a soft smile forming genuinely on my mouth.
“But nothing’s gonna come of it. It can’t really.
We’ll probably just stay friends. I just wanted to let you know that I’m—I’m gay, because one of these days I might want to bring a guy home for Christmas, too, and I didn’t want to blindside you.
You’re okay with it?” My words come out in a rush.
She blinks through them, too. “Of course. I’m not some small-minded hick. I can fly a pride flag if I—”
“Please don’t do that.” I reach over and put my hand on hers. “I mean, I appreciate your enthusiasm, but advertising it really isn’t necessary.”
“I wouldn’t be advertising you,” she argues. “Just my own beliefs.”
I sigh. “You’re right, Mom. You can fly whatever flag you want.”
She gives me a satisfied smile and takes another sip of wine. “Damn right I can.”
The car drop-off lacks any fanfare whatsoever because Knight’s mom is waiting in her Lexus while Knight hands me the keys. She recognizes me from the games, though, and while she looks concerned at my appearance, she gives me a smile and a wave, flashing me the hand signal for the football team.
It involves two hands to make, so I give her a wave instead.
“Tomorrow night,” Knight says. “You have plans?”
“Um. It’s Christmas?”
“Yeah, I know that, but we’re always all done by the afternoon nap, so I was just asking.”
His Christmas day sounds a lot like ours. “No, I don’t have plans.”
“Wanna hang out?”
I nod. I was planning to go see my dad, but I can do that in the afternoon.
“I’ll text you with a time and place. Keep your phone handy.”
With that, he trots back to his mom’s car and gives me a wave goodbye.
I watch them drive away until I feel my mother’s presence behind me. “Was that Knight Winters?”
“Yeah.”
“Cute,” she says.
“He’s too young for you,” I say without turning around. And too gay. And he’s mine.
“I don’t follow sports, but even I heard he won the Heisman trophy this year.”
“Yeah? Who told you that?”
“Will’s a fan.”
“Good old Will.”
She snorts behind me. “Good old Will. Also, hometown boy makes good.”
Maybe someone will say that about me someday, too.
I go back into the house and sit back down with Emma.
She and I decided to do a puzzle today since my mom won’t let me help with anything—another thing that’s different about this visit.
The puzzle is five hundred pieces, and it’s a small town Christmas scene of—haha—a main street with a bookshop, a cafe, and a five and dime store.
There’s a town Christmas tree and snow falling, and, of course, the suggestion of Santa in the sky.
My fourteen-year old sister still believes in Santa, which I find incredible.
She’s fervent about it, too. It’s the way some people believe in Jesus, which makes me believe that she’s had to defend her faith in him more than once.
My personal project for the day is to be in the moment. If memories rise up, I push them down, reacquaint myself with the next part of the puzzle I’d like to solve, or ask my sister a question about her friends.
If the past threatens to flood my senses, I get up, go to the bathroom, splash some water on my face and tell myself, this is water. This is cold. This is real. This is now. You are free.
If the sound of a pot clattering in the kitchen reminds me too much of the banging on the door, then I’ll switch songs on the bluetooth to a different, better Christmas song and sing along with it, thinking about what the words mean until the chills disappear from my arms.
I’m fine.
Mom makes a roast for Christmas Eve dinner alongside scalloped potatoes and fresh green beans. There’s a bread pudding for dessert which is so rich, it puts me into a coma and has me wanting to text Deandre and ask for forgiveness, but I don’t want to interrupt his brief time with his family.
I jolt awake sometime in the middle of the night covered in sweat with the sound of my wrist popping echoing in my ear—the smell of Quinn’s hot, vodka breath on my neck and in my face making me gag.
I jump out of bed and walk to the window in my bedroom.
After struggling to open it with one hand, I inhale the cold, fresh air.
For a long, still moment, I watch the light snowfall beneath a perfect full moon.
I never noticed the way snow sparkles, and I have a deep urge to go walking in it.
Maybe to the lake house. Maybe into the lake.
No.
I don’t want that anymore.
I’m fine. I’m free. I get to see Knight later. It’s Christmas.
My dad doesn’t look good, but the trailer does.
Even Davy looks decent. His teeth look almost normal.
He’s over in the tiny, narrow kitchen cooking something that doesn’t smell half bad while my dad and I sit on parallel couches facing each other.
“There’s a little stutter in my heart,” he tells me.
“Meaning what?”
“What’d they call it, ba—Davy?”
“Atrial fibrillation,” Davy says.
Immediately I google it. Apparently it’s a common thing, but it increases the chance of heart attack and stroke by a lot. “Are you seeing a doctor?”
“You bet.” He jabs his thumb in the roommate’s direction. “He’s uh…got me on his insurance, so I’m seeing the best cardiologist in town.”
That man has health insurance?
“And are they doing anything about it?”
Davy speaks up. “He’s taking a blood thinner, but I’m trying to convince him to do the damn surgery. Maybe you can talk some sense into him.”
“There’s a surgery?” Terror spikes at the thought.
“Yeah, it’s called a, uh…”
“Ablation, Jesus Christ, Mike. Do you even listen when we go?”
“Don’t seem to need to.” My dad gives me a sly grin and a wink. “Anyway, it’s under consideration. Not a big fan of the blood thinners. They make me bruise so easy. That’s why the hands. I’m always bumping into things in here.”
“Are you losing your balance?” I ask, one concern after another flicking through my brain like a PowerPoint.
“Nah. Hey, enough about me. Other than this mess of a hike you took, how’s the music coming? What are you working on?”
The first piece that comes to mind is the one I’ll never hear again, my work of brilliance meant to make Adrian feel like I was far, far too good for him. My hubris all summed up in a six minute nocturne. “I wrote a string quartet this past semester,” I say instead. “Want to hear it?”
My dad gives me a proud grin. “I’d love to hear it.”
Within the first thirty seconds, he makes his boyfriend stop what he’s doing and join him on the couch. He pats the other man’s thigh and nods toward me. “That’s my boy.”
I start to cry.
I cry off and on for the rest of the afternoon, and just when I think I’m okay, I think of the phone call I’ll get one day, maybe from Davy, that confirms yes, this was the last time I’ll ever see my father.
When Knight texts me just after the sun goes down and tells me to meet him at the lake house at eight, to just use the driveway and not attempt to walk through the woods, I make myself get my shit together.
I take a shower, holding my cast outside the spray of water and doing my best with the rest of me.
Wanting to refocus on what’s in front of me instead of what’s behind me, I’m relieved to see that the bruises on my face aren’t quite so blatant anymore.
The cut on my lip is all but healed. Just a dark pink line where a couple of days ago it was dark and scabby.
The bruises on my arms are virtually invisible. A few wins. Merry Christmas to me.
There’s an orangish glow coming from the front windows of the lake house when I arrive. Some of the boards in the steps to the porch have been replaced, leaving me able to walk up without fear of falling through them. The porch itself is clean, too. No cobwebs or layer of dust. He must have swept.
I knock because the place doesn’t feel like mine anymore. Not like this.
Knight answers the door looking so perfect it almost makes my legs give out.
He’s beaming. His dark eyes are sparkling like gems, and his hair is a perfect shag around his gorgeous face.
He’s dressed his big body in a skin-hugging zip-up fleece and has on what I think are new black joggers.
I’m wearing new clothes, too. Gifts from my mom.
A gray henley that I almost couldn’t fit over my cast and jeans, which are the same size as the ones she got me last year, but I fill out much better now.
Because it’s snowing, I’m also in my new black coat that’s more about function than fashion.
“Merry Christmas,” Knight says.
“Merry Christmas.”
With that, he opens the door wider, and I see what he’s done here. The tree, the lights, the decorations, and I hear the music. Tchaikovsky. The Nutcracker.
The shape of dreams come true.