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“I don’t think you’re listening to me.”
Remus looks up. Blinks. “I am,” he says, two or three beats too late. “Really.”
It is summer in the city, and it is oppressively hot. They have found the most secluded park there is—overgrown, strewn with cigarette butts, tucked in behind the bodega on Ninety-Fourth. Here the only onlookers carry their entire lives on their backs.
“You’re not looking at me.”
“I don’t have to be looking at you to listen to you.”
Sirius pokes Remus’s shoulder. They are lying on their backs, one of Sirius’s legs thrown over Remus’s, and a bit of gravel is digging into Remus’s shoulder. Somewhere a bass-jacked stereo is blasting, so that every one of Remus’s sun-dulled thoughts comes in a pulse of sound. “I’m going away,” Sirius says. He has already said it.
“I know that,” Remus says.
“You’re not acting like you know it.”
A woman goes by with a disposable coffee cup and a Razor scooter. Her ankles are tough and scarred; she spits at Sirius as she skirts their outstretched bodies. Remus turns his face into Sirius’s chest, and Sirius scoots away, propping himself on his elbows. “Sit up,” he says.
Remus sits up. He is sweating.
Sirius takes him by the shoulders and shakes him, once, very gently. “I’m going away,” he says, for the third time. And then he waits.
“Okay,” Remus says finally.
Sirius’s face is smeared with sweat. “Goddammit,” he says. It is a nearly placid sentiment. “Don’t you get it?”
“You’re going away,” Remus says.
“Yes.”
Remus turns his face away, into the sun. He is sunburned; he can already feel it creeping up his cheeks. He watches a man open an eighth-story window. The music grows louder. It doesn’t seem possible that the calm, white-haired man could be the source of it.
“Remus,” Sirius says, and Remus looks at him. Some of the sweat isn’t sweat. He reaches out and touches Sirius’s jaw and feels the dampness there, curiously. He draws his hand away and puts it to his own lips. “You’re supposed to be angry,” Sirius says.
“Angry?”
“You’re supposed to be sad.” Sirius closes his hand around Remus’s wrist. His grip there is so familiar as to sting. “This won’t be our park anymore.”
Remus says nothing.
“And the corner by the bakery won’t be our corner anymore.”
“We can write,” Remus says, struck. “Text, I mean.”
“I don’t want to text,” Sirius says. “I want you.”
Theirs is a summer-born arrangement. They were both bored and lonely; they found each other in the streets, wandering in cutoffs and sun-damaged shirts. They had coffee for the novelty of it, realized they hated coffee, had scones and sodas instead. Outside the bakery, they crunched their paper bags and talked.
Remus found the park. Sirius made the first move. They lay on their backs, finding shapes in the clouds. They had both, by silent agreement, left their phones at home. Sirius said he could see a tree, and then a hunchback, and Remus said he thought there was a more politically correct term for hunchback. Sirius turned on his side. He was raw-boned without his shirt. There were funny scars across his back and midriff that Remus now knows by heart. You’re weird, he said, and he kissed Remus, very softly, in a way Remus had never been kissed before.
At home, Remus puts aloe on his sunburn, which travels in an odd striped pattern from his face down to the muscles of his abdomen. His mother asks him how Sirius is. He tells her that Sirius is okay. “He might be moving,” he says, off-handedly.
His mother’s face changes. “Moving?”
“Moving,” Remus says. Moving sounds a hell of a lot nicer than going away. He turns away from his mother and goes back into the bathroom, shutting the door. His phone lies face-up beside the sink. talk to me, Sirius says. He hates capital letters almost as much as he hates homophobes. Remus picks up the phone and calls him.
“I’m going to have a party,” Sirius says. “My mom wants me to.”
“Am I invited?” Remus says.
“Of course you’re invited. Only it’ll probably be awful, and I want to give you the chance to say no.”
“I’ll come,” Remus says. “I’ll bring something.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Well, you’ll probably hate it.”
“Where are you?” Sirius says. “Your voice sounds funny.”
“In the bathroom.”
“Are you crying?”
“No.”
Sirius’s voice is hurt. “That’s right. You don’t cry.”
“I tried to,” Remus tells him. He’s not sure why it feels like the right thing to say.
“Really?”
“Yeah. I don’t know why I can’t. I’m sorry.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Sirius says. He makes a funny noise, deep in his throat. Then he says, briskly, “The party is this Saturday. It’s at my apartment.”
“I’ll see you there,” Remus says.
He brings his mother. She hates Sirius’s parents in exactly the same way Remus does, but she is much better about hiding it. She wears a lipsticked smile and carries a box of cookies for Sirius.
Remus carries a small book. He feels self-conscious about it, but he supposes it’s better than flowers.
The apartment is beautiful; there’s nothing in the world to dislike about it. Remus remembers as much from the few other times he’s been here. Sirius is wearing a suit with a pocket square that complements his tie. Remus compliments him on the color. Sirius says thank you, and asks if he can take Remus’s mother’s shawl.
When the pleasantries have been exchanged, they all move into the living room, where Walburga and Orion flank the fireplace. Remus’s mother goes to them immediately. Her smile is so convincing that even Remus is fooled. He turns to Sirius amid the crowd of prep-school boys.
“You brought me something,” Sirius says, looking at the book.
“Yeah. For later.”
Sirius smiles sadly. “We can go out to the park, maybe. After this is over.”
Remus is too hot. He is wearing his nicest gray suit, with a black-and-purple tie, and it is just slightly too small for him. He puts the book on a table, where there are hor d’oeuvres and bottles of wine. “Maybe,” he says. He is guessing that it will be too late. His mother doesn’t like to have him out in the city after dark. “I think you should go talk to everyone else.”
“You can come with me,” Sirius says.
“I’m going to get a drink,” Remus says. He does not delude himself that he belongs among Sirius’s school friends. He takes a quick look around, then reaches for Sirius’s hand and squeezes it. He is shy about initiating contact with Sirius; shyer still about doing it in public. He goes to get a drink, and a waiter with a bowtie gives him a mocktail with a little umbrella in it.
“Sirius didn’t want to tell you,” Walburga says.
She is standing right behind Remus. She has scared him. He takes a large swig of his mocktail and tries to pretend like he didn’t just jump half out of his skin.
“He didn’t,” she says, almost defensively.
“I know.”
“He likes you.”
Remus fixes his gaze on the picture of a bosomy, naked woman that hangs on the wall before him. Then he turns around, giving Walburga his blandest smile.
“You two have gotten awfully close this summer.”
“Yes,” Remus says. This, at least, is true.
“Sometimes…” Walburga sips her wine, considers it. Her eyes are predatory, and Remus thinks of the scars on Sirius’s body. “Sometimes it isn’t healthy. Friendships aren’t meant to be volatile, you know. They’re meant to mature.”
“Is there a problem?” Remus’s mother says, from behind Walburga. Her tone is light. Her expression is not.
“None at all,” Walburga says.
Remus waits until Sirius goes to the bathroom, and then he follows him, holding his empty glass and the book. The party continues without them. Girls are dancing in their bright, flowery dresses. The window is open and the whole apartment smells of city summer: hot cement and ice cream and the cool, uneasy wash of an unwelcome sunset.
The bathroom is lavish. They lock themselves in. Sirius sits on the edge of the tub, with his feet flat on the floor, and Remus stands between his knees. He puts his glass down on the sink.
“I don’t think she’ll let me go out,” Sirius says. “After the party.”
“She was talking to me.”
Sirius stiffens. “I saw. What did she say?”
“That we’re not healthy. Too fast. We’re not right.”
“If only she knew…” Sirius takes the book from Remus’s hand. His gray eyes are sort of happy, sort of sad. “Did you make this?”
“I had some help.”
Sirius opens it. There are photos, and underneath the photos there are phrases and clippings and doodles. He stops on the page where he and Remus are dancing in Remus’s living room. The space around the photo is filled with lyrics to the song they were dancing to. They are red-eyed from the camera and their mouths are almost touching, but not quite. Sirius wanted to use the self-timer to get a picture of them kissing. The one photo they managed, though, looked sloppy and posed. This one is better. They look happy; they look like they’ll have to be pried off each other at the end of the night.
“There’s a letter at the back,” Remus says. “I don’t want you to read it yet.”
Sirius closes the book and puts it on the ground. Then he grabs Remus’s wrists and tugs him close. They have been in the bathroom far longer than is acceptable, but Sirius holds Remus against him anyway, one hand at the small of his back. He puts his lips to Remus’s ear.
“Really?” Remus says. He is shaking.
“Really,” Sirius says.
There is another man, much later, sitting in a crowded bar. He has laugh-lines beside his eyes, and he tells Remus that he didn’t realize he was queer for years and years. He dated all kinds of girls, he says. His voice is still lifted by a laugh when he asks Remus his story.
Remus tells him about Sirius. The pain has dulled to a kind of quiet, sentimental hurt; he knows enough to understand that it is only a leftover scar in his heart. Nearly healed.
“Did you love him?” the man asks.
It is far too personal a question, but Remus considers it anyway.
“Just infatuation,” he says, finally, and he smiles an easy, practiced smile. “Summer in the city does all kinds of things to you."