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By the time Giorno was lighting the last candle the first ones had already gone out. Seventy-five of them, red, blue and yellow, and packed so tightly together that the wicks had started converging into one giant flame. It was casting long, wavering shadows across the room. Mista was sitting in front of the cake, rubbing his hands together in childish anticipation of soon getting to blow them out.
Giorno, bending his arm in an awkward angle to not get burned, finally managed to light the last one. “Okay, that’s it,” he said as he pushed the flaming cake towards Mista. “Now quickly, blow them out. They’re melting!”
Mista leaned over the cake, his face ablaze in the darkened room. In the candlelight his gray hair had taken on a slightly orange tint, and deep shadows were pooling between his wrinkles, exaggerating them. He took a deep breath, making his chest puff out, and then he blew. But even using all his accessory muscles and wheezing towards the end, he still had to repeat the process – once, twice, three times – before getting them all out. Giorno was laughing at his failed attempts, clapping and cheering him on.
As the last candle flickered out, the room was instantly plunged into darkness. Their noses filled with the acrid smoke from the blown-out wicks and the smell of candle wax melting. Mista’s stand came out hollering and whooping, six sets of tiny hands clapping in excitement as they zipped around Mista and Giorno’s heads.
“Happy birthday,” Giorno said, and they met over the cake in a clumsy, tentative kiss, because night-vision wasn’t what it had used to be, and they were unable to see each other in the dark. “Here’s to seventy-five more.”
While Giorno went to flip on the lightswitch, Mista started picking off the candles, one by one, trying to scoop off the melted wax as he did. Lately his hands had started trembling, only a slight tremor like when you had had too much coffee to drink; not enough to cause alarm, but enough to turn something as easy as picking off candles from a cake into something annoying.
Beneath all the candles the words “Happy Birthday Guido” were spelled out, and there were six little yellow-icing pistols dancing around the letters. Like every year for the past forty years, Giorno had bought the cake from the little bakery that lay nestled between the post office and the bookstore.
The bakery was a long-standing institution in their neighborhood; Giorno and Mista knew the baker by name, had watched his children grow up and get married, had then seen the children have children of their own. The baker had asked, Signore, do you wish to have the little devils on the cake this year too? And Giorno had answered that yes, he very much wanted the little devils this year, as every year. The baker knew them well enough by now to do six devils, numbered one through seven, skipping number four.
It was all a little silly, the cake, the candles, the royal icing pistols, but both Giorno and Mista still loved things like that, traditional things, things both of them had missed when growing up.
“What flavor did you get? Coconut?”
Mista asked this while dragging his finger through the icing. He licked the icing off his finger, smacking his lips trying to figure out this year’s flavor combination.
Giorno nodded. “Vanilla cake, coconut frosting, passionfruit curd.”
“Coconut!” the pistols yelled.” Passionfruit curd!”
They dove towards the cake like tiny fighter jets and went to work, picking off greedy chunks of it, to stuff their faces with.
“Hey, hey, hey! Stop it!” Mista scolded them, bushy eyebrows knitting together in annoyance. “You’re ruining it! Oh my god... No.5, that’s not even cake. You’re eating candle wax!”
“But it’s good, I like it.”
“No, it’s not good. I can taste it too you know. It’s disgusting. Just... just stop it!”
But No.5 kept stuffing its face with cake topped with melted candle wax. No.3, who imagined itself to be Mista’s favorite, and as such responsible for keeping the others in line, clonked No.5 over the head, which promptly sent No.5 into a fit of hysterical crying.
Mista impatiently shooed all the pistols away, saying, “Come on guys, not on my birthday. Please, just behave for one day. Just one day!” As if today, after decades of scolding, would be the day they finally started listening.
Giorno was so used to the pistols misbehaving that their little squabble barely registered. He was cutting the cake, plating up a moderately sized piece for Mista and a rather large piece for himself. He looked at Mista over the rim of his glasses.
“So, birthday boy, what did you wish for?”
Every year Giorno would ask Mista this same question, and every year, Mista would give him the same answer:
“Gio, if I tell you, my wish won’t come true.”
“Oh, come on, you can tell me. You know I won’t tell another soul.”
“And you know that I can’t. You don’t mess with birthday wishes.”
“At least you could give me a hint?”
“Nope. Not saying one word.”
To that, Giorno shrugged his shoulders, like he was suddenly extremely disinterested.
“Fine, don’t tell me then,” he said.
Still feigning indifference, he picked up the plates and handed Mista one. Giorno didn’t really want to know, this was just something that they did. One of those small, seemingly meaningless rituals that existed between two people that had been together for very long. Inside jokes. Traditions. Banter. Silly everyday things that no one really knew how they had started, or why they were being perpetuated, only that they were important because they were shared between the two, connecting them.
“I know what you’re doing,” Mista said, humorously waving a finger in Giorno’s face. “But it won’t work. I’m still not telling you.”
“Fine.”
“I’m happy you’re fine with it,” Mista said and kissed Giorno’s wrinkled cheek. “’Cause I’m not telling.”
Carrying with them the plates, they moved to the small glass-enclosed porch that overlooked the backyard. Giorno walked with a slight limp these days; his hip had started acting up lately, and always after a period of sitting still the first steps would be stiff and aching. He grunted slightly when he sat down, because bending at the hip also hurt.
It was December, but the sun had been out all day and warmed the porch to a pleasant temperature. During the summers the eastern windows were almost completely covered by the pink climbing roses that Giorno had planted when they first moved here. The lush greenery and flowers provided much needed shade in the summer, but right now they were nothing more than skeletal branches, snaking their way up the trellises, allowing the sunlight to flood in.
Sitting here you got the sense of summer, at least as long as you had your back turned to the barren garden, where the trees had shed all their leaves and the beds of perennials had all withered down, lying dormant in wait for spring.
Giorno had poured them two glasses of homemade limoncello to go with the cake. The drink had a shade of yellow so intense it was like liquid sunlight in their glasses.
Mista looked at Giorno over the edge of his glass. Giorno's hair now white and not as full as it had been back in the day, but still long, today worn in a messy bun. His shoulders a little more slanted, his entire frame a little shrunken, thinned out. He was wearing a pair of stylish, black-rimmed glasses on his wrinkled face, and behind the glasses his blue-green eyes were just as vibrant as ever. This was the man Mista had spent a lifetime with, the only real thing in his life, the only person he had truly loved.
“Salute,” Mista said, raising his glass to Giorno’s.
“Salute! Happy birthday, old man.”
This would be the full extent of their birthday celebration today – a slice of cake and a small glass of limoncello.
For Mista’s first twenty-fifth birthday they had rented a restaurant and invited so many people over that afterwards they joked about how every single person they had ever met had to have been there. A messy, wet party that had lasted long into the morning hours. And after everyone had left, Giorno and Mista had ended up having sex on one of the tables, amongst empty wineglasses and toppled-over bottles of beer. The table had collapsed under the weight of them, but something as inconsequential as that had not stopped them from finishing.
Their days of fucking on tables until the tables collapsed seemed so far away now. They usually went to bed at a reasonable hour, three glasses of wine and they would be unsteady on their feet. Yesterday they had been invited out to dinner. They didn’t have a lot of close friends these days, and most of the ones they did have were grandparents and living that kind of life. But a handful of their closest friends had been there, a few neighbors, a couple of old co-workers.
The dinner had been a quiet affair. It was both a celebration of Mista’s birthday and a going-away party for the two: a month earlier Giorno and Mista had announced to their friends that they had sold their house. It was time for them to move to something smaller, they had said, something a bit more manageable. The better part of the dinner had been spent reminiscing about the past, sharing memories, and when the group had parted ways, it had been with everyone wishing them luck in their new home and making them promise to come back and visit soon.
Giorno and Mista had promised they would be back next spring, or sometime during summer at the latest, knowing full well that they would never see any of those people ever again.
“I got you something,” Giorno said, putting down his fork next to his empty plate. “I know, I know, we said no gifts, but I couldn’t help myself.”
He reached into a bag standing under the table to produce a brightly wrapped gift. Behind wrinkled eyelids, Mista’s eyes lit up with childlike wonderment.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Well, open it and find out!”
With age had not come patience; Mista hastily tore open the wrapping, and underneath the brightly colored paper and neat bow – Giorno had taken great care wrapping the gift – Mista found a photo album.
“I found the pictures when I was cleaning the cellar the other day,” Giorno said. “We never look at them, all these memories just stuffed away in a box, forgotten.”
Mista carefully flipped through the pages that were a chronicle of their life together. Everyday moments that he had forgotten existed suddenly springing to life, so vivid that he could almost see the pictures moving. Next to each photograph Giorno had written, in his neat hand, a memory from when they had been taken.
"Start from the beginning,” Giorno said, turning the album to the first page.
“God, would you look at us!”
There were Giorno and Mista, sixteen and eighteen years old, hair blowing in the wind, the ocean wild and roiling at their backs. An old polaroid picture where the colors had become faded and distorted; it was the first picture taken of the two of them together, from that brief period of time before they were a couple. Just two kids hopelessly infatuated with one another, sitting together on a bench on a particularly windy day, squinting against the sun. Mista was laughing, he had his arm around Giorno’s shoulders, and Giorno sat next to him looking very stiff, looking very uncomfortable with an expression very much like fear in his eyes. Next to the polaroid Giorno had written:
I can still remember the rush of excitement when you put your arm around me. Like diving off a cliff into unknown waters, I was thrilled and terrified at the same time. I felt like running away, I didn’t want you to ever let go.
Mista laughed, then the laugh tapered off into a wheezing, wistful kind of sob. He pinched the bridge of his nose, sniffling. This was only the first picture, but already the tears were coming; if Mista used to be a sap before, old age had not made his heart any harder.
“I can’t believe how young we were,” Mista said. He ghosted a finger over the faces in the picture. “We were babies!”
“Look at your hair,” Giorno said.
“I know!” Mista made a pained face. “You don’t have to remind me that I’m going bald.”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that. And you’re not going bald.” Giorno said this in a tired way that indicated they had had this conversation a thousand times already. “I meant the color. Sometimes I forget it used to be so intensely dark.”
“But it is thinning, right?”
Mista ran his fingers through his hair, gray and kept short and neat by regular visits to the barbers. Seventy-five years old today but still very preoccupied with his appearance. In celebration of this special day, he was wearing a garish, floral print silk shirt that Giorno insisted had to have been bought ironically, while Mista maintained it made him look unironically hot.
It was Mista’s favorite shirt, and as always it was worn with a generous amount of buttons undone and an equally generous amount of wiry-gray chest hairs peeking out through the gap. The sleeves were rolled up over his arms that were still surprisingly muscular, tan skin covered by a fine coat of that same wiry-gray hair that adorned his chest. Around his neck he wore the gold chain with the crucifix that had been a gift from Giorno a Christmas many years ago.
"You sure it's not thinning?" Mista asked, once again running his hands through his hair.
You could tell they had both been handsome in their day, but it was an irrefutable fact that their beauty was now a thing of the past, and Giorno felt they were old enough to not be concerned about these things. Of course there was still attraction between them, but of a different kind these days. It was a deeper connection that could not be bothered by something as shallow and superficial as looks. But to humor him, Giorno placed his hands on either side of Mista’s head, bending it forward so he could pretend to thoroughly inspect the scalp.
“Maybe a little,” Giorno said, rubbing a finger against Mista’s scalp. “Right here, where your swirl is. But I don’t understand why you’re so concerned about your hair thinning. In a couple of hours, it’s not going to be a problem any longer.”
Mista looked up and they shared the sly smile of a couple of co-conspirators. Right. Mista kept forgetting. Even after all these years of living with their stands, sometimes the things they could do still seemed unbelievable to him.
They continued flipping through the pages of the photo album. Mista stopped to point to a younger version of himself wearing that red- and blue hat that he had worn until it had been so frayed and washed out it had literally fallen apart during a stand battle.
"I can't believe you let me run around with that thing for years!"
"What do you mean, let you? I loved that hat, you were so cute in it, so serious and grim. You know, I fell in love with you in that hat.”
"God, that arrow. It was literally a big penis pointing at my mouth!"
Giorno laughed. "Maybe your subconscious was trying to tell you something?"
Mista only rolled his eyes in response. He turned to the next page in the album.
“Oh, wow, I don’t even remember this one!”
Mista had stopped at a picture of the two of them in bed, wearing nothing but a white blanket sloppily draped over their naked bodies. Giorno had both his arms around Mista’s shoulders, holding the camera in the air above them. This was the year Giorno had decided to cut his hair short and Mista had decided to grow his out. Mista was laughing with his forehead against Giorno’s shoulder, his soft, black curls flowing out over his chest, over the pillow.
“God! We look like the cover of some cheap erotic novel,” Mista said, snorting a laugh.
“I don’t know about cheap. We look classy.”
“That hair! I swear...” Mista cut himself off, letting out another huff of a laugh, shaking his head at the picture. “Passione – Dangerous Love.”
“Passione – Shots in the Dark,“ Giorno suggested.
“Passione – Bedfellas.”
They chuckled like mischievous schoolchildren.
Mista kept turning the pages. Another picture, snapped not long after Giorno’s thirtieth birthday. They were on vacation, skiing in the alps. A blush sitting high on Giorno’s cheeks, making his pale skin look even paler. This was the first time they had ever gone skiing, their first time seeing snow, at least snow like that. Real snow, thick and pillowy, hanging heavy off the tree branches.
I remember you were trying to make snowballs, but the snow was too powdery, and it just kept falling apart. You tried and tried until your fingers had turned red, and when I took your hands in mine, they were cold like ice.
“We should go skiing again,” Giorno said. “It’s been too long.”
“Maybe next year? And this time maybe I’ll teach you how to snowboard.”
Giorno hummed. “Yes, why not.”
The last picture in the album was taken this year, sometime during the summer. Old men with gray hair and wrinkles, hard muscles now gone soft, and thin lips pulled even thinner by their smiles. Old men, but still as much in love as the young boys had been in the first picture. Mista with his arm around Giorno’s waist, and Giorno leaning into the hug like this was the only place he truly belonged.
All these years together and I still feel a rush of excitement when you put your arms around me. Still that feeling of diving off a cliff, but now I trust the waters to receive me with gentle arms, warm and comforting.
Mista swallowed hard. He was wiping away tears. He kissed Giorno’s hand. “Thank you. I love it so much.”
“I wasn’t sure what to get you, but this seemed fitting.” Giorno smiled, and a myriad of new, tiny wrinkles appeared around his eyes. “You can’t have new beginnings without saying goodbye to the old.”
After the cake, they walked through the house that they had lived in for nearly four decades. Under his left arm, closest to his heart, Mista was holding the photo album that was a celebration of this first life they had shared. He could feel the weight of it as they went from room to room, saying their goodbyes.
In the living room, stacked against the walls, were rows of moving-boxes where all the books, photographs and the countless little nick-nacks that made a home a home had been packed away. The living room furniture had been moved into one corner, all the mirrors were wrapped up in packing paper and layers of bubble wrap. It was the excitement of the day when they had first moved in, now being played in somber reverse.
They walked up the stairs and into their bedroom where everything had already been packed away, and they sat on the bed, looking out over the room that had been picked barren.
The wardrobes and dressers had all been emptied, the carpet rolled up, all the plants in the windowsills gathered into boxes standing in one corner. A stack of Giorno’s designer sweaters lay on top of a chair – he had yet to decide if he wanted to take them with him or not. Over the years, Giorno’s sense of fashion had swerved into the more muted lane; still well-made and expensive, but not showy like in his youth. This new beginning would require him to find a new style, he realized, perhaps something with more color, more flair? Definitely something more youthful.
“So, this is it,” Mista said, placing his hand on Giorno’s knee, squeezing gently.
“This is it.”
Yes, this was it. Today was not only a celebration of Mista’s birthday, but also a goodbye to the life they had built here together. They had prepared for this day for a long time, but now that the day was here, Giorno was suddenly unsure if he was ready. He ran a wrinkled hand over his hair – hair that had long since turned white and recently started thinning – and he thought: where did the years go?
In a blink they had flashed by.
It seemed like yesterday he had been a teenager, walking into that restaurant, so young and full of life, with a dream like a flame burning in his heart. Mista, sitting at that table, still a stranger. Giorno remembered their first awkward moments together: holding hands, sharing a first kiss, sharing a bed for the first time. All his firsts, with Mista.
Mista squeezed Giono’s knee again, with little more intent this time. “Giorno, are you okay? You’re quiet.”
Giorno took Mista’s hand in his. Decades of holding that hand, of watching that hand grow old, and now Giorno wondered: would it still be Mista’s hand, after the change? Would it still feel familiar when he reached for it in the dark, needing comfort? He moved closer, to rest his cheek against Mista’s shoulder.
“I’ve wanted nothing but you,” Giorno said, almost wistfully. “All my life, all I ever wanted was you.”
“You do have me. All of me, you know that. Giorno, are you sure you’re okay?”
“I’m sorry. I’m just feeling a little bit nostalgic.” Giorno placed his hand on Mista’s chest, feeling coarse hair and the golden crucifix beneath his fingers. “I just don’t want to say goodbye quite yet.”
Mista paused to look at Giorno. He could tell Giorno was worried, and even though in Mista’s own mind there was no doubts about what they were about to do, he did understand and respect Giorno’s hesitation.
“We could wait,” Mista offered. “We could do this next year. I don’t mind waiting a little longer, if that’s what you want.”
“This is what we agreed on,” Giorno said.
“It is. But you can still change your mind. I’m not going to make you do something you don’t want to do, just ‘cause we decided on it ages ago.”
“No, no, we’re doing this today.” Giorno nodded, to reassure both Mista and himself. “This year is as good as the next, I’m just dragging my feet. You know how I am with change.”
“Yes, I know.”
They shared a small, knowing smile. The irony was not lost on either of them, that the boy who had once wanted to overthrow the king of the Italian underworld and change the destiny of an entire city, would grow up to be an old man afraid of change.
“But what about you?” Giorno asked. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
But he really didn’t need to ask; there was nothing wistful or melancholic about Mista, only eagerness. In Mista’s mind there was no hesitation whatsoever, he wanted this.
“Yeah, I’m ready,” Mista said. “More than ready.”
“All right,” Giorno said. “Then it’s settled.”
In Gold Experience they had found the fountain of youth. The first thirty years or so after they had left Naples, Giorno and Mista had used the stand to keep rejuvenating themselves. Healing every wound and scratch, fixing every little ailment. Never growing a day older than twenty-five. It had been a marvel at first, to see the years pass by and people around them grow older while the two of them remained exactly the same. They had felt invincible, like gods.
But with enough repetition even marvelous things eventually turned routine. Never growing older meant they had to keep moving. A new town, new friends, new jobs every seven years or so. A rootless existence, yet despite the constant change there was a curious monotony to it, too. A restlessness settling in, a boredom so dense and numbing that they could see their lives stretching out before them like a desert, from here on to eternity.
So, when they had moved to this town almost forty years ago, they had made the decision to put down roots here, to find some meaning, to make a life for themselves, and only move on once they had grown old enough.
And now they had grown old enough. Mista’s seventy-fifth birthday, counted from the last time Gold Experience had rejuvenated them, this was the year they had agreed upon for the change.
“So we’re really doing it?” Mista asked. “No second thoughts?”
“We’re doing it.”
“You’re really sure you want this?”
“I’m sure.”
Giorno looked at his husband, sitting on the bed in that awful shirt with too many buttons undone, his dark eyes shining with anticipation. Giorno smiled; beneath the image of this Mista he could see all the other versions of him, arranged chronologically like the pages of the photo album. Giorno had loved them all, but he had loved this version of Mista the most, and he knew he would miss him the most, too. The wrinkles, the creaky voice, the bushy gray eyebrows that would move animatedly whenever Mista laughed.
Giorno kissed Mista’s hand, this version of Mista’s hand – littered with sunspots, and skin thin and wrinkled, an old man’s hands – for the last time in a long while.
“I love you,” Giorno said.
“I love you too. And don’t worry, this isn’t goodbye, this isn’t the end of anything. In fact, it’s the opposite of an end, it’s a reboot, a new beginning. And you’ll see this version of me again, you’ll just have to wait another forty-five years or so.”
Giorno smiled at this version of Mista for the last time. “What did we decide on?” he asked. “Twenty-six? Twenty-seven?”
“Twenty-seven,” Mista said. “It was a good year for both of us.”
Giorno nodded. He wasn’t ready, but this was as ready as he would ever be. He gave Mista one last, lingering kiss, and then he called out his stand.
“Gold Experience!”
The stand manifested, tall and slender, shimmering in gold, and it placed its hands gently on Mista’s chest. Giorno could feel Mista’s heart beating through the hands of Gold Experience, could feel the way Mista’s breathing was getting heavier. Mista was looking up at him, nothing but complete trust in his eyes.
When Gold Experience healed someone, the process was usually quick, but this, not only making someone younger but so much younger, this took time, and it was painful. Mista grunted and clutched the mattress; something like liquid fire rushing through his veins.
“Nothing is wrong,” Giorno said softly, soothing him. “It’s working. And it will soon be over. Just a little while longer.”
It was a pain like nothing Mista had ever experienced before, and he gritted his teeth, bracing himself against it. He could feel things twisting and turning inside, Giorno’s power crackling through him, changing him. And when he thought he wouldn’t be able to bear another second more of it, the pain was gone in an instant, just like that. Mista slumped forward, leaning against his knees, gasping from the sudden relief.
“It’s done,” Giorno said. His voice was trembling, he had to press a hand over his mouth, taken aback by the results. He had not been prepared.
Mista was breathing hard, head heavy and pounding like a hangover. He saw in Giorno’s face a mixture of shock and amazement, and he looked down at his hands, where there were no more sunspots, no longer gray hairs sprouting from the knuckles, and where his skin was soft and supple again. He clenched his hands into fists, then unclenched them, over and over, like he wanted to make sure it really was his hands.
“It really worked?”
"It really worked.”
Mista sprung out of bed – he could spring up now! – to go stand in front of the mirror.
“Giorno!” He touched his face, leaning in really close, pulling at his cheeks, his lips, his ears. It was unbelievable, he was stunned. Even his voice seemed unfamiliar to him, in the same way it would feel hearing yourself speaking on camera. “I’m young! God, look at me! Can you believe it?”
Giorno only nodded, not knowing what to say. No, he could not believe it. He looked at himself next to the younger version of Mista, and it was such an odd thing to see that his mind had a difficult time making sense of it.
The clothes were fitting Mista’s new body badly. The pants sat too high in the waist, the shirt too tight around the shoulders. Mista’s gray hair had sloughed off in a semi-circle on the mattress where he had been sitting, and there was a fine silvery coat of hair dusted across his shoulders, down his neck, over his face. The grays had all been replaced by a full head of dark curls.
“Here, let me...”
Giorno tried brushing off the hairs from Mista’s face, but Mista was busy doing squats in front of the mirror, punching air in rapid succession, kicking at the heads of imaginary foes. He couldn’t get enough of moving his new muscles. A marvel, to suddenly be strong and limber again!
“Giorno, I can bend my back without that cracking sound! Listen!”
He bent forward, then side to side, then as far back as he could. He smiled, happy as a child. Giorno smiled back, glad that Mista was enjoying himself, but the whole thing was making him uneasy. That thing that Mista did with his hands when he spoke, the way he was standing with his shoulders slightly hunched, and his smile – an old man’s smile – it all seemed very much out of place in this young body.
Mista wiped his hands over his face, brushing off the gray hairs that were starting to itch, blowing air violently through his nose to get out the hairs that had made their way into his nostrils.
“Come here,” he said, grinning wide. “I want to celebrate!”
He motioned for Giorno to come to him, and Giorno, understanding what Mista wanted, took half a step back, putting his hands out like a shield in front on him.
“What?” Mista asked, a little bit hurt. “You don’t want to kiss me?”
“No, not right now.”
Giorno took another step back but Mista followed and placed his hands on Giorno’s hips.
“Why not?” Mista asked.
“It’s going to feel weird.”
“How is it weird? Giorno, I kissed you just a moment ago. I’ve kissed you a thousand time. Ten thousand times. What’s changed?”
“Really? What’s changed?”
Giorno shook his head. Twenty-seven years old! Mista was just a child! Giorno was almost three times his age, and it felt borderline criminal kissing someone that young! But when Mista wrapped his arms around his waist, nestling his nose in the crook of his neck, Giorno allowed himself to be pulled close.
“Close your eyes,” Mista said.
“Mista...”
“Just close your eyes.”
Reluctantly, Giorno did as Mista asked him to. With his eyes closed it did feel a lot easier, leaning into the embrace. Mista’s strong arms around him, firm hands on the small of his back, Mista’s hips pressed against his. It felt both familiar and strange.
Giorno ran his hands through Mista’s hair, not brittle and dry, but glossy-soft like it had been before.
“I remember this,” Giorno said, and it did feel vaguely familiar, a faded memory like the photographs he had found in their cellar. He grabbed a handful of Mista’s hair. “My hands remember this.”
And then Giorno allowed himself to be kissed.
It was just as strange as he had imagined it would be. Mista smelled different, tasted different, his lips were soft, his skin under Giorno’s hands smooth and soft. It was like kissing someone completely new. But despite his hesitation, Giorno knew there was no turning back now, and still entwined, his lips pressed against Mista’s lips, Giorno silently called out his stand.
“Giorno?”
Mista had opened his eyes and now he was blinking in confusion. The hair was the first thing Mista noticed, then the eyes. He grabbed Giorno by the shoulders, holding him out at arm's length to fully take him in. Giorno was young again, blond hair shining, smiling that playful smile that had pierced Mista’s heart like an arrow all those years ago. And it still did.
“Giorno! Look at you!”
Mista rocked back on his heels with incredulous laughter, he was overwhelmed, didn’t know how to react. He couldn’t stop looking at Giorno, whose beauty was like the sun, radiant and blinding. He had forgotten how Giorno took his breath away.
“It feels odd,” Giorno said, holding his hands up and looking at them as though they were diseased. “Are these really my hands?”
Mista grabbed Giorno’s hands and kissed them. “Yes, these are your hands. Your beautiful hands.”
“I don’t know,” Giorno said. He wanted to be infected with Mista’s unbridled enthusiasm, but he just couldn’t shake that feeling of unease. “It’s uncanny.”
“Well, I do know. And this is good, Giorno. It’s perfect! You’re perfect!” Mista was speaking very quickly and very excitedly. “You just need to get used to it. And maybe you should give yourself a little more time than half a minute to adjust to things.”
While Giorno went to inspect himself in the mirror, Mista took his shirt off. He rubbed his hands vigorously over his chest to get the gray hairs off; they had been replaced by a thinner coat of black. He looked down at his new body, frowning, patting at the belly that was a little soft, a little flabby, and nowhere near the defined abs he had sported back when he had been young.
“You couldn’t have given me a little muscle definition?” he complained.
“Sorry, doesn’t work like that.” Giorno looked at him through the mirror. “Remember, you used to live in the gym? Six-packs aren’t genetic.”
Mista sucked his gut in and flexed his biceps. Giorno laughed, but he cut himself off quickly, uncomfortable all of a sudden – it felt odd, laughing with this new voice that had a clear, vibrant timbre that made him sound like a kid.
“Let’s kiss again,” Mista said, motioning for Giorno to come to him.
This time Giorno didn’t hesitate, and the kiss felt more comfortable, more familiar. Mista was right, Giorno thought, he just needed to give it some more time. He would get used to this the same way he had once gotten used to his graying hair, his arthritic hip, his bad back.
The kiss was deepening, and Mista was running his hands up and down Giorno’s back, pressing himself closer. Giorno opened his eyes to see the two of them reflected in the mirror, young and beautiful again. He understood what Mista’s lingering touches meant, and he was tempted, he had to admit. His body was reacting very favorably to Mista’s hands, he had almost forgotten what it felt like, being dipped in desire so strong that it clouded his mind.
He would have liked giving in to this feeling, but he placed his hands on top of Mista’s hands to gently stop them from moving. It felt wrong, the thought of having sex in this house as these new versions of themselves. As far as Giorno was concerned, they had already made love a last time in this bed a week ago, and that was the memory he wanted to carry with him as they left this place.
“We’ll have plenty of time in our new home,” he said. “It’s only a six hour drive to get there. Five and a half if I break a few traffic rules.”
Mista grinned, and he looked so much like his younger self that it struck Giorno like a bolt of lightning.
“What are we waiting for,” Mista said, “let’s get going!”
The car was parked out back where there were no nosy neighbors to accidentally walk by or peek out their windows to see two strange young men sitting in the car that belonged to the Giovanna’s.
The sun set early in December; it was barely afternoon and already the garden was dark around them. Giorno and Mista had decided to drive a day ahead of the moving company, to wait in their new home for their belongings to arrive. In the trunk were some things to tide them over until tomorrow: some toiletries, a change of clothes, an air mattress, a couple of blankets and pillows. In his lap, Mista gingerly held the photo album.
This day had been coming for so long, but they had been sitting in their car for nearly thirty minutes now, neither of them ready to drive off. Giorno placed his hands on the steering wheel. He looked at them, then at Mista, shaking his head in disbelief; it still startled him every time, catching glimpses of these new bodies. Mista was still wearing his favorite shirt, and Giorno had to admit, looking unironically hot in it. Giorno’s glasses rested on the dashboard, he was so used to needing them for driving that he didn’t feel comfortable to get rid of them quite yet.
So many memories made in this place. The days had slipped by, one by one. Some days had been filled to the brim and overflowing, others had been empty. Parties, barbecues in their backyard, rainy days spent in bed with nothing to do. Days of fighting. Days of making up. They all seemed equally important now, in hindsight.
“So, are we ready then?” Mista asked.
“Ready,” Giorno confirmed.
He wasn’t, not really, but they had overcome so much together, so much pain and loss, and Giorno knew he would get over this loss too. This was nothing more than a bump in their long road, they would get past it as long as they walked together. He turned the ignition, and the car sputtered to life.
The headlights illuminated the backyard; the climbing roses, the toolshed, the fig trees Giorno had lovingly planted twenty years earlier. Giorno could feel his heart swell in his chest as the lights swept over the house. He turned on the radio, turning up the volume a little too loud, perhaps hoping the noise would dampen his emotions.
He took the car down their narrow driveway, taking great care not to hit the gate posts on his way out. Both the car and the posts already bore the evidence of years of Giorno’s reckless driving. He almost managed to get through unscathed this time. Almost. Just when he thought they were in the clear, the left-side post screeched against the car.
“Do they ever come true, your birthday wishes?” Giorno asked as the car turned down into the street.
“They do. Every year.”
Giorno gave him a sly look. “Next year, could you maybe wish for a car that's a little easier to maneuver?”
Mista laughed. “I promise, I’ll consider it.”
Mista’s birthday wishes, they had started as a joke a long time ago. Nineteen years old, his first birthday together with Giorno, Mista had made a wish while blowing out that one candle stuck in the cupcake Giorno had bought for him. And then when the wish had actually come true, Mista’s superstitious mind had whirred into motion. Even though the logical part of him knew that birthday wishes held no real power, that other part of him – the part that still avoided the number four and fretted every time a black cat crossed his path – that side of him was afraid something bad would happen if he ever stopped making his wish. Why risk it, he figured.
The car drove down the street, past the neighbors’ houses, past their church, past the bakery where Giorno had bought the cake just this morning. Just as they had known when they had left Naples, they knew they could not return here, not for a long time. Not before everyone they had known was gone, and the risk of being recognized had gone with them. This was goodbye, and just like Naples, even this town would fade until it was nothing more than a haze of disjointed little memories.
Tomorrow, they would unpack their boxes in their new home, and settle in. They would find another bakery, a new church, and eventually they would make new friends. Giorno would plant new trees in their garden, and Mista would keep making his birthday wishes, the same wish every year until his very last.
Taking in a deep breath, making his wish just as the last candle flickered out. To spend another year with Giorno.