Chapter Text
Three Years Earlier
Mid-August
Thomas doesn't let himself cry until he’s left the state.
Gally–Gally was supposed to be his forever. They were made for each other, and that would come with challenges but they would work through it.
And Gally had the nerve to break up with him three days before he left for college!
It's better than waiting until he got there, yeah, but it’s still a dick move.
All of that bull about ‘not being able to do long-distance’ when they haven't even tried.
If Thomas had any time to spare, he'd storm back to Gally’s and make him explain himself.
He knows Gally would never forgive himself if Thomas lost a full ride scholarship for him–he'd said as much in his break-up speech.
So when he calms down, he starts his car back up (the junker that Gally helped him fix up, good as new), and keeps driving.
He just wishes it felt a little less like running.
Thomas parks in his assigned spot and tries not to remember touring the campus with Gally. They'd agreed that it was beautiful.
Thomas’s dorm is close to their favorite spot: The University Grove. Every year, the graduating classes get to plant a symbolic sapling. There are trees of all ages in there, and it’s more like a small forest than a grove at this point.
He doesn't let himself look at it as he moves himself into his dorm. He got lucky, for a freshman, or maybe they just treat full-ride students well. He’s got his own bedroom, though he shares a tiny kitchen, living room, and bathroom with three other people.
“We're doing Rock, Paper, Scissors for rooms.” A girl with dark hair says as soon as he walks in. “I'm Brenda, that's Teresa next to me, and you must be either Thomas or Alby.”
“Thomas.” He offers, then sets down the box he'd brought up to play.
Alby’s their RA, it turns out, and he looks like he’s regretting signing up for the job.
Alby, because he's supposed to be keeping them out of trouble, can't join some of Brenda’s more wild plans–though Thomas suspects that Teresa is the mastermind for some of them–but when they go study in the Grove or take the university bus downtown for dinner or fro-yo, he'll come along.
It's on one of these fro-yo outings that Brenda asks about his string.
“Maybe I should have said something sooner, but you didn’t bring it up and I didn't know if maybe you hadn't met them yet.”
“You can see other people's strings.” Thomas guesses. He's caught Brenda glancing at his wrist now and then. “We grew up together. It didn’t really develop all that much until middle school, but it’s been there as long as I can remember.”
He tells them a little more about it, about Gally, but Thomas can’t talk about him for long. It still hurts, the pain not soothed by stolen shirts and happy memories.
And he knows what they’ll say when he tells them what happened. It’s not how he wants them to think of Gally.
Thomas wants to be petty about it, but he can’t. Gally’s still his, the string proves it. It hasn’t faded or knotted up at all yet. He can tell when Gally is happy (rarely), sad, and just about everything else, even if he can’t figure out names for some of them. He can’t be there to cheer him up or share his joy.
They text, but it’s nothing like they used to do. Thomas isn’t about to call Gally when he doesn’t know what he’s going to say.
“Hey, Thomas, you should come home with me for the term break. It’s just me and Jorge, otherwise.” Brenda invites him like it’s easy. He texts Gally and Newt and Frypan to see if they have any holiday plans, then checks his phone every hour for two days until he realizes that Gally’s not going to ask him to come home to him this year.
That’s fine.
Brenda doesn’t ask him about the knot in the string, but she stays close to him after he tells her that he’d be happy to join her and Jorge.
It’s stupid, and he knows that Brenda would tell him so, but he calls Gally on Christmas Eve. He’d never done anything for the holidays before he and Gally started dating–he hadn’t really had anyone to learn traditions and stories from. Not until his grandma saw him in one of Gally’s mom’s friend’s pictures, and came to find him.
Thomas had known that his dad was running from something before he died, but he hadn’t thought that it was kidnapping charges.
Gally doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer on Christmas, either. He doesn’t even send a text.
No happy holidays, not to ask how his final exams went, nothing.
Thomas goes outside to scream, and when he won’t stop playing the same sad Christmas song over and over for days, Brenda and Jorge don’t say anything. They include him in their activities anyway. Sledding becomes learning how to snowboard, which becomes falling on his face more times than he cares to count. But he figures it out.
He reroutes the pictures Jorge took to Frypan and Alby instead of Gally–Brenda’s already sent Teresa a dozen of him face-down in the snow.
They don’t make him talk about it until it’s almost summer.
“You’ve got seven knots in your string, Thomas.” Brenda says. “What happened?”
“What keeps happening?” Teresa corrects. “You’ve turned down every date offer you’ve gotten for whoever is on the other end of that string.” Most of them come from one guy in his classes–he’s nice enough, and he’s caught Thomas staring at his arms an embarrassing amount of times. There’s been a few girls and a couple of other guys, but they’re not the ones Thomas tells Teresa and Brenda about.
“You don’t talk about him.”
“He never visits or calls.”
“You came home with me because you didn’t want to be around him or he didn’t want you around.” Brenda takes his hands, unusually gentle for her. “I’ve seen enough of them to know that the strings of fate aren’t everything, Thomas.”
“At first, I didn’t want to taint your opinions of him before you’d met him.”
“It’s too late for that.” Teresa says. “It’s been nine months and he’s nowhere to be found, and you’re still heartbroken about it like it happened yesterday.”
Has he been that obvious?
“He is–was, I guess–all I have. We weren’t friends, at first, but we learned how to be friends and then how to be more. He taught me how to celebrate the holidays and brought me home to his parents. His grandmother taught me how to knit. We liked being around each other all the time. If we went out separately with friends, we’d end up leaving with a little gift. It’s just how we worked.
“When I got scared, or thought that we weren’t gonna make it, tried to run–he’d chase me, those times when he wasn’t already five steps ahead and waiting. We would talk it out and work through it. Being tied didn’t make us perfect. It couldn’t even make us like each other, at first. We had to do that on our own.”
“Your string is… really strong. You worked hard to figure things out, didn’t you?” Brenda asks.
“We did. And I thought everything was going to be fine–Gally was going to do some night classes while working to figure out if he wanted to go to college. Maybe shadow a few of the tradesworkers to see if he was interested in that. And I was accepted here with a full ride. We’d have to be apart for months at a time, but we knew we wanted different things when it came to education and that was fine. Until it wasn’t, three days before I left.”
“He dumped you.” Teresa’s voice is flat.
“No, he broke up with me. Because he didn’t want me to risk my scholarship at all, was one reason. Then he said he didn’t think we could handle a long-distance relationship. We hadn’t even tried one yet, and he was deciding it was over already. I’d already packed up most of what I had in his room already, so it wasn’t hard to finish. Stole a few of his shirts on the way out, and didn’t let myself cry until I crossed the state line.”
“You’re not going back there this summer.” Brenda tells him. “You’re coming with one of us.”
“He might still come.” Thomas says. “We’ve been texting, the whole time, and we’ve talked about going on a road trip. He’s the one who brought it up.”
“And even if he does show up, you’re not going anywhere. He didn’t answer you on Christmas, Thomas. You’ve got a knotted string on your end, and maybe his end, too. I don’t know. He’s too far away to tell.” Brenda says.
“Why don't we take a road trip instead?” Teresa suggests.
“Girl, your parents barely let you out of the house to come here.”
“Doesn’t Jorge have that RV he's fixing up? We could help with that and then go on a trip. I'll deal with my parents, Brenda.”
Brenda grabs her phone. “Let me check with Jorge before we make any plans. Other than him, Thomas, do you really want to go back?”
There are friends he'd like to see–friends who would understand if he said he wouldn't be able to do it this year. Some of them would probably even be willing to meet up somewhere, if it came to that. It's not like he really has any family in town to visit.
“I guess not.”
“Then you're coming with one of us for sure, roadtrip pending.”
Jorge is more than willing to teach them the ins and outs of refinishing and RV. By the end of June, Jorge comes around back a few times a day to check it all over, with only a few pointers here and there.
When it's road-trip ready, Thomas sends pictures of it to Chuck, who asks when they’re coming to pick him up, Newt, and Fry–Brenda takes his phone before he can send anything to Gally.
They don’t really have a plan in place; they’re just going to drive around and see what interests them until they have to go back to school.
At least, that’s the plan until they run into Newt and Sonya Tucson.
“Been having fun out there?” Newt asks him one night after the girls have gone to sleep.
“Yeah. I think Brenda and Teresa have something planned for the beginning of term, but they won’t tell me what it is.”
“I bet they’ll get Sonya in on it, too.”
“How’s everyone, back home?” Thomas doesn’t ask what he really wants to ask, because he doesn’t know if he can handle hearing that Gally’s moved on.
“Frypan’s finally got a location for his storefront, and he’s roped the lot of us into helping set it up. Chuck won’t stop bloody talking about how he’s going to live in a van when he’s done with high school.”
“He did ask me when we were coming to pick him up.”
“Reckon you’ll come back for breaks this year?”
“I don’t know yet. If Brenda has anything to say about it, I won’t be.”
“What happened, Tommy? Gally won’t say much except that it’s better for you this way. I don’t think you believe that.”
“I don’t. He–” Newt will go back and see them all, tell them what Thomas said. “I don’t like to talk about it. Don’t stop being his friend, Newt, he needs people around him. Even if he pretends he doesn’t.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
After seeing the Grand Canyon, they move on from Arizona and start heading back east, this time with Sonya in tow. They meet up with some of Teresa’s old friends on the way–Sonya hits it off with them and Thomas is surprised they’re able to get her to leave.
“Get all that wanderlust out before the new school year?” Jorge isn’t phased by their extra passenger.
“Most of it!” Brenda calls from the back of the RV. “Might have to do it again next summer to keep ourselves sated.”
“Don’t plan on me having another RV to fix up.” Jorge laughs.
“I think we’ll be okay with this one.” Teresa smiles. “Hey, can we take it to school?”
“No, they won’t allow it on campus.” Thomas says. “We’ll have to take our cars. Wait, Sonya, do you know who you’re rooming with yet?”
“No. It’s not fair that I can’t just join you, you’ve got an empty room.”
“We don’t, actually. Not anymore.” Brenda says. “There’s a kid who needs a room, apparently. Name is Aris.”
Teresa and Thomas share a glance.
“You know, it’s not often that I’m the voice of reason here. No, you can’t prank him.”
They’ll get her in on it eventually.
They get along fine with Aris; he’s a quiet kid. Alby had been quiet, too, but in a different way. More commanding.
He’s still in their building, but he’s lucky enough to get a room to himself this year. Perks of being an R.A., maybe.
“Thomas, this year we’re getting you a makeover.” Teresa says. “Nothing crazy, just a new haircut and some new clothes.”
“I get no say in this, I’m guessing.”
“No, you do,” Brenda says. “I want you to pick the worst haircut you can think of, and then we don’t have to do this.”
“You’re just lucky that I needed a haircut anyway. I’ll pick something different this time, without your input.”
“Fair enough.” Teresa agrees. Aris looks between the three of them.
“Do I want to know what’s going on with you?”
“No.” They all answer at once, in the same deadpan tone.
The guy who asked him out last year is in a couple of his classes this year, and–okay. Thomas knows it’s not healthy to keep pining after Gally like this, not when Gally barely answers him anymore. Thomas knows from Frypan and Newt that he’s been busy helping with Frypan’s storefront, but it’s been going on longer than that. Since the end of summer.
Since around the time Newt would have gotten home, and probably told Gally he saw Thomas. Showed them all pictures, or something.
He doesn’t have to ask Brenda to know that there are more knots on his side of the string. He can see them. It’s still bright, but Thomas doesn’t know how much that means to him now.
So he says yes to the study date, and the guy–Minho–doesn’t seem to mind that Thomas doesn’t want to do anything other than study dates.
Sonya is the one who finds out first, and that’s only because one of her roommates sees them together in the library. It’s nothing incriminating, and if Sonya hadn’t gotten the full rundown plus some from Teresa and Brenda during their trip, it wouldn’t be a big deal.
Unfortunately, she did. She ‘sneaks by’ their table to see for herself, snapping a picture on the way. It goes right to Brenda and Teresa, maybe Newt, too, if the way his phone starts blowing up says anything.
“Little sister?” Minho asks, when Thomas glares at her and tries to shoo her away.
“Friend’s little sister. She tagged along on the road trip with us after we ran into them. Right now, she’s just annoying, and also telling everyone we know about this.”
“Sounds like a little sister to me.”
“Do you have any?”
“Little cousins. My mom and her sister built their parents’ dream house for them before either of them got married, and it’s big enough to fit both of our families. If they were old enough for college, they’d send pictures back to their mom every time they saw me.”
“We’d find you some decent disguises.”
“What, you know a place?”
“Yeah, I can show you. Maybe Saturday?”
“It’s a date.” Minho smirks, but only for a second before it softens into a smile. “This isn’t a ruse to stare at my arms more, is it?”
“If I wanted to do that, I’d take you on a gym date.” Thomas fires back.
“We could do that, too. If you wanted.”
And they do. And they go to the museum downtown, and the half-empty mall to walk around and talk without their friends spying on them.
After the third time of dropping off two extra coffees to one of their dorms (Brenda, Teresa, and even Aris always seem to know when to ask if they have extra) because they both wanted to surprise each other, Minho just starts picking him up at the dorm with coffee or hot chocolate or some other treat, ten or fifteen or twenty minutes before they're supposed to leave.
It's the sort of thing he and Gally used to do for each other, though it died off in their senior year of high school.
He hardly looks at their string anymore, unless it’s wrapped itself high up on his arm.
Minho doesn't ask if he has a string, and Thomas forbids Brenda from telling him if Minho does.
Maybe the strings aren't everything, like Thomas always thought they were.
The holidays are hard. It’s not as surprising as Thomas would like it to be. Minho is going home, and Thomas can’t follow. Not yet, not when he hasn’t met any of Minho’s family.
He thinks about Gally again.
He doesn’t call him this year, not in the least because Teresa and Brenda are good at keeping his phone away from him. Jorge even helps, sometimes, and Thomas has to wonder what Brenda’s told him.
He and Minho don’t call every day, because Brenda actually likes the snow and keeps dragging them outside to snowboard.
“I shouldn’t have suggested an igloo, even as a joke.” He tells Minho one night. “Brenda made us sleep out there last night.”
“It’s a survival skill, Thomas.”
“Yes, because I’m going to have a shovel and a bucket to shape the snow when I’m caught in a snowstorm.”
“You’d figure it out.”
“I hope so. I don’t want to freeze to death before I can even meet your cousins.”
“You could meet them next week, if you want. My aunt and uncle are taking them on a winter road trip, and they want to see where I go to school so they’re stopping by for a few days before classes start again.”
“Yeah, we can do that.” It's not as much pressure as meeting his parents, but Thomas knows that whatever happens will get back to Minho’s parents. So yes, he’s worried.
He’d already known Gally’s family when they started dating. He’s never done this before.
“If you get along with my cousins, you’ll be fine.” Minho tells him.
Thomas mostly thinks he gets lucky. He’s wearing a t-shirt with asteroids on it when they meet–he’d asked Minho if he should be more formal and had gotten laughed at–and Minho’s cousins are big fans of space, apparently.
Thomas knows enough facts to keep them busy and impress Minho’s aunt and uncle, even though he pretty much just introduces himself to them.
“That went well.” None of Minho’s roommates are back yet, so they’ve got his dorm to themselves.
“Says you. ”
“They’re not going to shut up about you for weeks.”
“I barely even talked to your aunt and uncle, though.”
“They were happy enough not being the ones answering every space question for once. I talked about you too, when I was at home. And they heard some of my end of our calls. You don’t have to do much to leave a good impression.”
Thomas hadn’t thought about that. “I guess it’s a good thing I told Jorge about you, then. He said that if you want to come on our summer road trip this year, he has to approve you.”
They don’t know that it’s even happening–Sonya wants to come, too, and she’ll probably bring Harriet. If Minho comes, it’ll be a lot tighter than it was last year.
They’ll figure it out. Thomas knows that Jorge won’t really stop them from bringing Minho if he wants to come along–but for some reason, it’s kind of nice to hear that Jorge wants to meet Minho to ‘vet’ him.
It's not really a surprise, because Sonya is terrible at keeping secrets, but Minho takes him for a belated Valentine's dinner–easier to get a reservation, and Thomas doesn’t really like being in crowds anyway.
(He doesn't think he's ever told Minho that–he might have just noticed during one of their dates.)
It's their fanciest date yet, but they both enjoyed their stay-in date more. They'd managed to kick Teresa, Brenda, and Aris out of the dorm for the night, cooking their favorite meals together and falling asleep in Thomas’s bed. Thomas doesn’t even want to know how many people have the pictures Brenda and Teresa took.
Thomas isn’t proud of it, how distracted he is during their next few dates. His string is getting more and more knotted, and it’s starting to fade a little.
He's never felt this way for anyone but Gally, and that took years to develop. Aren't they moving a little fast?
When he gets caught up in his head, when it starts looking like he’s going to run, Minho doesn't try to stop him the way Gally always did with new activities and gifts.
Some of the running is literal, not just mental–Minho joins him for that, too. When their schedules match up, anyway.
When Thomas tries to draw away, to pull back, so that what's happening with Gally doesn’t happen again, Minho lets him go a few feet, following the whole time.
“You have a string.” It’s not the question Minho wants to ask. Maybe has wanted to ask for a while.
Does your string change things for us?
It’s the question Thomas has been trying to run away from.
“I do. He’s back in our hometown. He broke up with me when I started school, said he didn’t think we could do long distance.” Thomas still doesn’t think that’s true. “We hadn’t even tried yet, so I think it was a little early to call it.” It doesn’t sting as much anymore. Not the way it did a year ago, or even six months ago.
“I’d say so.”
“We text, sometimes. A lot less now.”
“I’m not worried about you leaving me for him, Thomas. I’m worried about you . You probably don’t realize it, but you tug at the string all the time. Like it’s wrapped around your arm.”
“It is. And–” It feels wrong to tell Minho this, but Gally isn’t around to know.
Strings aren’t exact mirrors of each other–they fade together, yes, but the knots can be different. Thomas has done a little (okay, a lot) of research on it since he noticed his string dimming.
“It’s knotted. Brenda might have noticed before me, actually–last year was my first Christmas without him, my first Chanukah without him, too, and he’s the one who taught me to celebrate any holidays. I asked if he had any plans, and he didn’t even invite me to come stay over break. They’ve been forming ever since.”
“And this year, it’s–”
“Thomas, you don’t have to tell me all of this if you don’t want to.”
“I do want to.” Thomas swallows before he keeps going. “It’s fading. I think it’s only going to get worse. When I first moved here, I dreaded the day it would start fading. Knots can be worked out, or so they say. But fading can’t usually be fixed. I’m resigned to it, now. He was everything I had for years, and now he doesn’t even answer my calls.”
Minho doesn’t say anything for a minute.
“I don’t have a string. My parents do, but they each go to different people. They told me that a lot, growing up. That our strings can be good guides, but they don’t have to define us. If not for their strings, they wouldn’t have met. I don’t know who their strings go to, if they’re family friends or if they parted ways a long time ago, but I know how happy my parents are. I know we’re still in college. That doesn’t have to be us. But maybe it could be.”
“I think I’d like that.” Thomas ignores the string ‘tightening’ on his arm. It can’t actually harm him, so it’s not a concern.
After that conversation–Sonya says they finally ‘defined the relationship’; Brenda says they got their out of their asses–it feels more real. It had been real before, of course, but now it’s more serious.
Thomas gets to know Minho’s friends a little more. Zart and Clint don’t seem like the type of guys Minho would be friends with, at first glance, but they’re fun. He doesn’t get to meet Winston in person, but he’s around for a few video calls.
“Is he coming with us or not?” Brenda asks him, mid-way through their spring term. “Jorge’s not gonna say no to Minho, he knows Minho already.”
“How?”
“Minho and I went to elementary school together before he moved. In good weather it’s not a bad drive, so sometimes we’d meet in the middle for play dates.”
“I feel like you could have said something about this sooner.”
“I thought Minho had told you!”
“You’re the one who wanted me to go on a date with him, and you didn’t pull the ‘he’s my childhood friend, so I know you’ll like him’ card?”
“I wanted you to figure that out for yourself.”
“Sure, Brenda.”
“Six people is going to be a very tight fit. We might actually have to try and find another RV.”
“I think we can make it work.” If they park in the right spots, they can expand the sides for more sleeping room. It’s not like they haven’t shared beds before.
Thomas and Minho’s museum dates and walks around campus turn into study picnics in the Grove, and dinner dates turn into quizzing each other over their kitchen tables as the term comes to an end.
They don’t actually go to see Alby walk for graduation–it’s a four-hour event two days before final exams, it’s a miracle Alby went and he’s the one graduating–but they go out to lunch the next day. It’s probably the first time Alby and Minho have talked for more than a few minutes, but he doesn’t realize that until after.
“Think we’ll run into more of your friends on our road trip this summer?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Because when I was talking to Alby, I realized that I know all of your uni friends, but I don’t know anyone else.”
“We might see Newt. He’s Sonya’s older brother, I didn’t even know she was coming here until we ran into them last summer. Frypan’s been busy. He’s never been open in the summer before. I don’t think anyone will be able to convince him to leave.”
“That’s a shame.”
Minho doesn’t ask about Gally, and he doesn’t try to convince Thomas to go back.
Thomas… he probably could. He could handle it, now. Seeing Gally. Talking to him.
But his summer is already planned out. He’s not going to ask to change their plans, especially when he knows how Brenda and Teresa feel about Gally.
It’s unfair, since they’ve never met him, but they’re never going to listen to Thomas when he says that.
They’ve got more time to travel this summer, since they’re only spending a week doing maintenance on the RV. They’re going east instead of west.
“Passports?”
“We’ve got them all, Teresa.” Brenda rubs her back. “We’ll get into Canada.”
“We might have a few more people this year, but we have done this before.” Thomas points out. Last year they hadn’t needed passports–Thomas hadn’t even had one last year–but they’d thought of going to Canada early enough to get them.
Thomas is just glad it didn’t actually take six months. Maybe their post office is just fast, or something.
They visit a lot more places than last summer, partly because of the extra two weeks they have, mostly because they’re only staying for two or three days.
Sleeping with six people in the RV isn’t the most comfortable, but they make it work.
“I never thought I’d be so glad to go camping.” Minho whispers to him. “I hated sleeping in tents as a kid.”
“At least it’s not our night tomorrow.” At first, they’d all been pretty excited about the tent and sleeping outside, almost fighting over it.
But it’s not much bigger than the space they have in the RV, it’s way less comfortable, and sound travels through the tent a little too well.
“Are you ready to go back to school?” Thomas asks. He’s not quite ready to go to sleep yet.
“I think so, yeah. This is fun, but at least there we can go on dates alone.” Minho yawns at the end of his sentence.
“We’ve had a few out here, too.” The haunted tour was probably Thomas’s favorite. It’s not like he needs an excuse to hold Minho’s hand these days. The jumpscare was a good reason to throw himself onto Minho’s back and get a piggyback ride for a little while, though.
“Minho,” Thomas has been thinking a lot this summer, while they’ve been driving. “I think–I think I want to go back this winter.”
“You do?”
“I think it’s time I talk to Gally in person. I want to ask him to cut the string.” It’s fading more, now, and Thomas can’t get it to stop wrapping around his arm. It’s gotten him a few looks, and he’s been asked a couple of times if he's okay.
Brenda hasn’t asked him about it, but he’s pretty sure that she can see more of it than he can–he’s already decided that he’s never going to ask how far the knots go.
“Want me to come with you?”
“Do you think it’s true that they can rebind cut or faded strings?” Cutting strings of fate isn’t common; Thomas has been doing his research, but he hasn’t found nearly as much as he’d like.
“I wouldn’t know.” Minho’s quiet for a few minutes. “We can figure it out together. The library might have some books on it.”
“Or maybe we can find someone who would be able to tell us about it.”
“When we’re back at school.”
“I think I can wait that long.” Minho kisses him. “It’s too warm to cuddle right now.”
“It’s never too warm for cuddling.”
“You’re just always freezing. Go to sleep, please.”
Many conversations and much research later, Thomas and Minho find a string-shearer nearby who is willing to meet with them and explain the process.
“What are you thinking?” Minho asks as they walk back to campus. It’ll be about an hour, on foot. This morning, that was fine. Now? Thomas isn’t sure he’ll make it back.
“I don’t know.” It’s not that he doesn’t want to do it. He does. He just wasn’t expecting the process to be so involved. “It’s good to know that they could bind us, if we wanted it.” Thomas knows he does. But he also doesn’t think he could take this again, if something happened with him and Minho.
“We don’t have to. There are plenty of people without strings.”
“I know. The connection is kind of nice, though.” Not that he gets anything from Gally, these days. He hasn’t in a long time. “I want to go through with the shearing. There’s a string-shearer back in town.”
“Do you still want Gally to agree first?” The man they’d talked to hadn't seemed to like that. Thomas knows it’s not common–people rarely get their fate strings cut unless their partner is dead or abusive. Especially when they’ve been fated as long as Thomas and Gally have. You don’t just cut them because things fizzled out.
Maybe if they’d gotten their string later, it would have worked out. Or maybe he and Gally had been the soulmates they’d needed at that time in their lives, and once they grew into their own skins a little, they outgrew the string. Thomas hasn’t heard of that happening, but it’s not like people like to admit it when they get their strings cut.
“Yeah, I do. Even if we’re not together anymore, he was still pretty much everything to me for a long time.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then I guess we just wait for it to fade. I don’t know if we could have ourselves tied to each other after that, though.”
“What’s the bond like?” Minho asks. “I’ve read about it, a little. Is it really like the books say?”
“Depends on what books you’re reading. Anything fiction always plays it up. It’s mostly little waves of emotion here and there, and only when it’s really strong. At least, that’s always how it’s been for me and Gally. I haven’t gotten anything from his end in a while. The knots and the fading kind of block it.”
“So we wouldn’t be able to cheat on exams, then?”
“No, nothing like that.” Thomas laughs. “Not that they would be able to catch us, if we could.”
“Sonya, are you going back to town for the holidays?”
“Looking for a driver, are you?” Sonya says. “Yeah, I am. Have you talked to Newt yet? Or Gally?”
“Minho would be coming with us. Newt said it’s alright if we stay with him. I haven’t decided if I’m going to tell Gally that we’re coming yet.”
“How long has it been since you’ve talked to him?”
“Face-to-face? Three days before I came out here. Over text?” Thomas does have to pull up their message history for that one. “A couple of months. We’ve never managed a phone call.” Not for lack of trying.
“Do you still miss him?”
Thomas has to think about that one for a minute. “I do. Not in the way I did before. I used to miss him all the time. Mostly because I was convinced we could still fix things. But then he wasn’t answering my calls and we stopped texting, and I stopped missing him constantly.
“I think what I really miss now is who we were, then, and who we could have been if things hadn’t happened the way they did.”
“If he hadn’t gotten scared, you mean.”
“I don’t know if that’s the right word for it.” Thomas has thought it himself, though. Mostly in that first year after the break up. Before he started dating Minho.
“This time next year, we’ll be graduating.” Minho tells him. “Or you will. I might still fail a class or two.”
“No, you won’t.” Thomas rolls his eyes. “Self-deprecation isn’t a good look on you.”
“I swear, my parents have already started planning a party.”
“I didn’t think people did graduation parties for college.”
“I’m pretty sure my parents just like hosting. Especially if it means getting the family together.”
“And they don’t mind that you’re not going back this year?”
They’d talked about it, but they won’t have time to drive to Newt’s, meet Gally and the string-shearer–assuming Gally agrees– and drive back to Minho’s before they have to go back to school. Having three drivers will cut their time down a little, but they can’t be in two places at once.
“Okay, rules for the drive.” Sonya announces as she takes the driver’s seat. “No making out in the backseat while I drive. In fact, one of you needs to be in the passenger seat to navigate at all times. I pick the music at all times, because this is my car and my phone is already connected. And you have to share all the snacks.”
“I didn’t think you’d be interested in Thomas, Sonya.” Minho’s smirking, Thomas can hear it.
“You know that’s not what I meant, Min, don’t be an ass.”
“How long are we thinking for shifts?”
“Just until you can’t anymore. Night shifts will probably be shorter, because headlights are terrible.”
It’s a lot more fun than the last time Thomas drove these roads–they haven’t gotten anywhere close on their road trips and he knows that’s on purpose. No matter how curious they are about where he grew up, his friends weren’t going to make him go back before he was ready to.
“Want me to come in with you?” Thomas has been staring at Frypan’s sign– Fry’s Fondue –for a good five minutes.
“What if he’s not there?” Thomas knows from Newt that Gally hasn’t moved out of the apartment they shared. He can handle a neutral place, but he doesn’t want to have this conversation in the kitchen they used to share.
“Then we come back another day.” Thomas already knows that one of the string-shearers–Mary–is only a few blocks away. They haven’t met her yet, and maybe they won’t. It all depends on what Gally says.
“I’ve got to give these to him, anyway.” Brenda and Teresa had thought he was crazy, making gifts for the family of his ex who barely even spoke to him anymore, but Thomas had loved being part of their family. So he’d made them, and then never sent them.
“I’m serious, I’ll come in with you.”
“I know you are. I think I need to talk to him alone.”
Gally’s at the counter, working some dough, talking to Frypan. Thomas doesn’t catch the first few words over the song, one he’s spent less time listening to recently.
“I don’t know why you’re so insistent that we should talk.”
Thomas doesn’t know where the courage to speak comes from. Maybe it’s anger, simmered for so long that it's almost changed states. Maybe it’s grief, burning his hands as he tries to stir. “Because we should. You’re looking well, Gally.”
His hair’s gotten darker again. His eyes haven’t changed, but Thomas hadn’t expected them to.
“So are you.” Gally doesn’t seem to know what to say, and Thomas can’t blame him. He doesn’t know what to say, either. He should have written something down.
The silence almost makes it too easy. Frypan nods to him and heads to the back, but Thomas is sure that he can still hear everything.
“I was hoping you’d call, that first Christmas.” He doesn’t dare get any closer to the counter. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if he does.
“I called you, and you didn’t pick up–I hoped you would answer when you woke up.” And then he’d kept waiting, until Gally texted him instead of calling back. Thomas hadn’t called him again. Their time zones aren’t that different.
“I didn’t know how to celebrate Christmas without you. I have gifts for you that I never sent.” Thomas raises them halfway. “I hoped that maybe, when the semester ended, you’d tell me that you would meet me halfway and we could do a summer roadtrip like we always talked about. When I texted you about it, you blew me off.”
Gally doesn’t try and say anything, though Thomas can see that he knows what he’s talking about.
“I made friends and wanted to tell them all about you, but I wasn’t sure if I could do that anymore.” It had been hard , not talking about Gally. “And when they got it out of me, they dragged me around town for a new haircut, some new clothes. Said I wasn’t going to forget about you if I kept wearing your t-shirts to bed.”
Thomas is never going to tell Brenda and Teresa how right they were about that.
“I didn’t want to forget about you, not then. Even though it had been over a year. Since we still had the string, I thought we would be okay.
“I don't know what you feel, or why you really broke up with me, but I know the string's been fading. I can barely see it, some days. It’s… not why I came back. You know, if you had asked me stay, begged me to come back, I would have. We're tied together, we were so in love in high school that we made our friends sick.” They’d been voted in for senior superlatives. Their teachers had told them that they had something special.
“Thomas, I'm sorry. I–” Whatever it is that’s getting him through this won’t hold with interruptions.
“Please, Gally, not now.” Thomas steps to the counter, setting down his bag as a barrier. Gally won’t reach over the counter to get to him anyway. In another life, they’ve kissed over this countertop.
For once, a thought like that doesn’t make him sad, or angry. He’s numb, and a little guilty for thinking about kissing Gally while Minho’s right outside the door.
“Everything in here is yours, my friends told me I should burn it but I didn't want to get rid of anything that you'd touched. There are gifts for you, too, and for your parents and grandma. I never figured out how to knit the way she does, but I hope she'll like it anyway.
“You've probably figured this out by now, but I've met someone. Someone… who runs in with me when I need to figure something out. It took me a long time to realize that you weren't going to come and find me, that you didn't want to go back to the way things were. That's okay, Gally, but we both need to stop clinging to our red string of fate.”
As he says it, Thomas realizes how true it is. He doesn’t have to worry about leaving Minho behind. He just has to adjust his pace sometimes, so that they can keep moving together. And it works. Better than anything he and Gally had.
That does make him sad. Because if they’d given it a chance and had grown together instead of apart, he and Gally could be happy. Now, they might never speak to each other again.
“You came here to ask me to get it cut.” Gally says, and Thomas winces at his tone. He’s more upset by it than Thomas thought he would be.
If he’d wanted to reach out, he could have. Thomas tried, and it hadn’t worked.
“Yes.” There’s nothing else he can say.
“You could have cut it at school. You don’t need me there.”
“Gally, you were a big part of my life for a long time, even before we could see our strings. You taught me that all holidays, big or small, were supposed to be fun. When I met my grandma and celebrated Chanukah for the first time, you were right by my side. You researched with me, visited three synagogues with me so I could learn as much as possible without leaving the state. You arranged your family's holiday plans the next year so we could celebrate both.
You were the most important person in my world. If you don't want to cut it, I won't. We can let it fade.” Thomas will. Brenda… if Thomas comes back with his string still attached, then they’re going to have to stop her from hunting Gally down and forcing him to agree.
Thomas knows what the string looks like, now. It’s bad. Brenda sometimes looks at it like she wants to cut it herself.
“No, I’ll go with you.” Gally doesn’t want to, that much is very clear. He’s never been good at hiding what he’s feeling.
“Thank you.” Thomas sighs. It will just make things easier, in the long run. “Do you want to make an appointment, or should we try a walk-in place?” Mary does either, so Thomas isn’t bothered.
“How long are you here for?”
“You’re not changing my mind, Gally.”
“I wasn’t going to try. I–When works for you?”
“We could go right now. If Fry’s around, you could bring him.” Thankfully, Frypan takes that for the cue it is. Thomas has heard that string-shearing can be painful. If it is, he wants Gally to have someone there. Someone who isn’t him.
“Do you have anyone to come with you?” Gally asks.
“He’s outside. I wanted to do this by myself.”
“I’m available now. Sorry, I didn’t hear all of it.”
“That’s fine.” Thomas waves it off. It’s not like he couldn’t have asked Gally to go somewhere more private. “I’m sure we’ve got plenty of people wondering what’s going on, anyway. There’s a reputable string-shearer a few blocks away.”
“You did your research.” Yes, Gally, he had. Months of it. It’s not like he’s cutting their string lightly.
“I wanted to be prepared if you said yes. They take walk-ins.” He gives the address to Fry–Gally doesn’t really seem like he’s functioning right now. Thomas had kind of thought he’d have more anger about this. They’ve both got tempers, after all.
“Thanks, Thomas. It’s good to see you again.”
“You, too. I’ve missed everyone here.” Being in town again has only made him realize how much. He and Frypan catch up a little, but Thomas doesn’t want to stay long, and he thinks Frypan can tell.
Minho doesn’t ask right away, and Thomas could kiss him for it.
“He and Fry are going to meet us there in half an hour. We could get started on the paperwork.”
“I still don’t get why there’s paperwork for this.” Minho puts an arm over his shoulders as they walk. “They say it’s a liability issue but if only one person goes to get their string cut, why would that matter?”
“You can ask when we get there.”
There’s no one else there when they walk in–it’s a small place, lit only by lamplight.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone today.” Mary studies them for a minute. “Unless you’re that couple…”
Well, it makes sense that string-shearers would talk to each other. “Probably.” Thomas swallows. “We’re here to start the paperwork, we have someone else coming in about fifteen minutes, now.”
Thomas doesn’t really have to do much paperwork–it’s mostly just signing his name in a couple of places to say that he’s read it and he understands what string-shearing is. Gally will do the same when he gets here, probably. Or maybe she only needs one of them to sign.
Gally barely skims the papers, signing quickly, before Mary takes them to the back room.
“It’s rare that I have both people here at once.” Mary’s looking at Gally as she says it; she might know him.
“We’ve been fading for a while.” Thomas says. “But I didn’t want to get our string cut without talking to him.” For the first time today, he glances at where their string ties around Gally’s wrist. It’s loose around his wrist.
“I need to hear your reasons for cutting the string. Technically, only one of you has to speak.” Mary’s probably recording this somehow. It would have been in the paperwork, but Thomas can’t remember what it said anymore.
“I can go.” Thomas can barely hear Gally.
“Thomas, even before we really knew what the strings meant, I was watching you. You refused to stop asking questions and wouldn’t play like the rest of us on the playground and it drove me mad. I loved you when we started dating, and I love you now, despite the distance between us. Distance I created. I wasn’t going to let you ruin your chances at a full ride scholarship for me, but I didn’t want to tell you that. I was scared that seeing what else was out there would make you resent me for tying you down, holding you back, so I didn’t even try. I broke up with you and said it was because I didn’t think we could handle long-distance, when I know we would have made it work. We could have marked dates on our shared calendar and video-called each other to eat dinner together. I thought about you every day, but I was too proud to ask you to come back, or to ask to come to you. I thought you’d be home for the holidays, and we could talk. But you didn’t come back that year, or the next. And then our string started fading and I realized that I was never getting you back.”
Thomas has known all of this. Most of it, he figured out on his own. Because Gally wouldn’t talk to him.
Thomas wasn’t going to address it further–he hadn’t planned on giving any grand speeches or being petty–but he knows it’s his turn, now.
“You were all I had.” Thomas answers. “You were all I had here, for the longest time. One of the only people who would listen to me. And then, as soon as I was going somewhere else, you gave up on us. Instead of trying something hard. Before, if I ran when something got to be too much, you’d be waiting on the other side, and we’d figure it out. Then I had to learn how it felt to run from you. And I wanted to die.
“You were all I had, and you made it sound so easy, so logical, when you broke up with me. I remember thinking ‘this is all wrong, I’m supposed to be the logical one’, before telling myself that I was not going to cry over this around you. You would have comforted me, and I would have hit you for it. It took so long for my friends to convince me that I didn’t need to run back to you when I had someone who was matching my stride. That’s why I want our strings cut. I could wait for them to fade, but for me this is just one more reminder of the boy who diced his eggs before they even made it into the basket.” There’s silence for a minute. Thomas leans into Minho.
“I think I’ve heard enough. Are you ready?” Thomas nods, and Gally must, too, but Thomas isn’t looking at him right now. Mary takes their string in hand, and Thomas sees what Brenda must have been seeing all this time.
It’s worse than he thought. Knots all along the length of it, though none of them have made it onto the loop around Gally’s wrist.
Mary cuts the string, pulling it away from Gally first before unwinding the length on Thomas’s arm.
“You’re all done here.” Thomas tunes her out while she’s talking to Gally, happy to stay in a bubble with Minho for a few minutes.
“–good indication of a strong bond.” Thomas doesn’t catch the first part of her sentence, but he doesn’t think he needs it repeated.
“You’re saying that we can be tied to each other?” Minho asks. They hadn’t asked her earlier.
“Yes, but not immediately. Sometimes a new string will form on its own–we don’t know how that works. I don’t weave strings, or repair them. You’d have to go to someone else.” Mary’s face is stern. “I’d wait a few months. I don’t know any weavers around here.”
“Why don’t you do both?” Thomas doesn’t catch himself in time.
“Because cutting a string that’s going to fade or fall off anyway doesn’t do any harm. You can’t weave a new string out of nothing. You could keep this, if you think you can find a weaver before it fades.”
“No, I don’t want that.” Thomas shakes his head. Mary sees them out.
“That’s why the guy at school was so cagey about it.”
“Must be. I don’t know why I didn’t think about that sooner.” Maybe they’ll form a string, maybe they won’t. Thomas doesn’t know what Mary saw.
They don’t have anywhere to go, except for Newt’s. Newt and Sonya know why they’re here, but Thomas doesn’t think he’s ready to see anyone other than Minho quite yet.
“Got any good spots to show me?”
“A few. Maybe we can get some hot chocolate.”
“Mary did say you might feel cold, after.” Minho uses it as an excuse to put his jacket over Thomas’s shoulders.
“Have you been watching movies with Brenda again?”
“You don’t have proof of anything. Brenda? I don’t even know her.”
Watching Minho laugh, Thomas realizes that he doesn’t need the jacket to stay warm. Not with Minho around.
“Thank you for somehow teaching him to make at least one meal.” Thomas doesn’t bother to pretend he didn’t hear Newt’s ‘whisper’ across the table.
“That’s not on Minho, that’s on Alby, actually. Our roommate freshman year.” He’s pretty sure he’s told Newt about Alby before, but it can’t hurt to explain again. “None of us could cook anything more than pasta, and he taught us a couple of meals each so that we wouldn’t spend all of our money on takeout and stupidly expensive on-campus food.”
“That’s why the three of you rotate cooking like you do, isn’t it?” Sonya squints at him. “I think you got played.”
“Probably. But I’ve never heard you complain when we feed you.”
“Now you’re gonna make me learn how to cook, aren’t you?”
“I’m not the one you should be worried about.” Sonya and Minho take the dishes when they’re done eating.
“I don’t want to be the overprotective older brother, but I still want to ask.”
“She’s doing fine. I’m sure that if she comes home for break next year, Harriet will be with her.”
“What will you be doing?”
“Well, it’ll be right after graduation. I’m applying for internships now, but I don’t know where I’m going to end up.” He and Minho want to stay close, if they can, but it might not happen yet. “I’ll probably go home with Minho for the holidays, though.”
“Think you’ve got enough energy for a get-together with everyone tomorrow?”
“Who’s everyone ?” They’ve always had different definitions of the word in this context.
“You know who it is. Fry, Chuck, he’s bloody tall now, Zart, Winston, Ben, Gally. A few others, if they can make it.”
“I think I can handle it.” He’d stuck to Frypan, Gally, and Newt most of the time. Chuck had been annoying at first, tagging along to everything, but Thomas had warmed up to him eventually. And so had everyone else, even if it was hard to get Gally to admit it.
As nice as it is to see his old friends again, Thomas finds himself missing Jorge, Brenda, and Teresa more than he thought he would.
He can’t think of a time he and Gally have stood in a room together and not spoken once. Frypan and Minho are the only ones who know the whole of it. Everyone else figures it out once they see him with Minho or decides that they can ask questions later.
Thomas doesn’t think he’s going to give them a chance to ask anything. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to them, he just doesn’t want to talk to them about this .
It’s hard enough as it is.
“Think we can convince Sonya to leave a day early?” He asks Minho, voice low.
“I think she’s gearing up to come ask us the same thing.”
“Thomas, please tell me we can leave tomorrow morning.”
“Why?” She’s too flushed for him to not tease her about it a little. “Did something happen?”
“No, I just–” She glances down at her phone. “Come on, guys, please?”
“Maybe I want to talk to Chuck a little more.” He does, but Chuck’s got a phone now. He’s finally growing up.
And over the phone, Thomas doesn’t have to think about how Chuck is taller than he is now.
“Harriet’s gonna be back a day early, too. Come on, I’ll even drive most of it.”
“We’re not gonna make you do that.” Minho pats her shoulder. “We were gonna ask the same thing, actually. It’s been nice, meeting everyone here, but I think we’re just ready to get back to our people.”
“You can say that again.” Sonya mutters. “I’ll let Newt know when everyone leaves.”
Their drive back seems to go much faster than the trip there, but Thomas isn’t sure if that’s because he’s relieved to leave everything behind him, or if he’s excited to get back to school and their routine.
“What are you thinking about now?” Brenda and Teresa won’t be back until tomorrow, so he and Minho have their dorm to themselves.
“Newt asked what I’m going to do for the holidays next year.”
“Come home with me.” Minho says. “My aunt and uncle like you, my cousins think you’re the coolest person they’ve met because you told them a bunch of facts, and my parents will like you, too. You make me happy.”
“And after that?”
“Stay. I know we’ve been trying to figure out what we’re going to do for work after this, but you can stay. For as long as you want.”
It’s all Thomas wants to hear. Minho probably would have said it earlier, if Thomas had been ready to listen to it.
He might have run, before. But Brenda and Teresa have stayed, and Jorge invites him over for breaks before Brenda can bring it up. Sonya grew up with him, and she’s still around.
Minho waited a year for Thomas to agree to a date. Now, he’s done the one thing that a sixteen year old Thomas would never believe he would do–cut his string of fate.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll stay.”
Minho smiles at him, slow. “I think we still have some candles from the last time we tried to plan a romantic dinner.”
“I’ll order the food.”
They take their last road trip that summer, staying with Jorge for two weeks before going to meet Minho’s family. His cousins are a little bigger now, and Thomas is officially replaced as ‘the coolest person ever’ when they meet the girls.
Minho’s right–his parents like Thomas right away, unless they’re hiding former acting careers. They end up staying longer than planned.
“You’re sure you’re okay with not visiting all of the places we planned on seeing?”
“Tom, this is a ‘greatest hits’ road trip, we’re only going to places we’ve been before. Well, and our hometowns. We can afford to miss a few.” Teresa reassures him, flipping through their trip notebook.
Harriet wants to see where Sonya grew up, and Thomas knows that Brenda and Teresa are curious, too.
“If Gally’s working, you can’t be mean to him.” Thomas warns them when they stop in front of Fry’s Fondue . “We’re past that.”
They don’t stay long–there’s not much to see–and when they leave, Thomas knows that he’s only going back for weddings and funerals.
Thomas only goes to graduation because Minho promises to sit next to him and they bring notecards to study from while everyone else walks. Brenda laughs at them for it, but she ends up studying, too.
Teresa, Brenda, and Harriet take the end seats in their row–Jorge, Sonya, and Minho’s parents are in the crowd somewhere.
It takes forever. No one falls off of the stage, though some of them had definitely been drinking earlier in the day.
Three and a half years, and he’s done already. He’s got an internship–paid, because he refused to even apply for unpaid internships–lined up through the end of summer and hopefully after that, they’ll hire him full time.
He and Minho are happy. Brenda and Teresa both plan to propose over the holidays, and despite all of their friends knowing about it, they still think they’re the only one with such plans.
Thomas doesn’t know if he ever could have been happy, if he’d stayed in his hometown. Not happy in the way he is now. Not with everything that happened there before he even graduated high school.
He thinks that he’ll be able to manage happiness anywhere else.
Thomas looks at Minho, muttering the names and discoveries of microbiologists, and knows that he won’t even have to try that hard.