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“You’re coming with me.”
Nolan doesn’t feel very represented in this conversation. This proposal was stupid to begin with.
So, Travis was in town, and got caught up with everyone and their cousin’s dog, like he does. At the bait and tackle shop, some family friend of Travis’s back in the day commented on how tall Travis had grown, how he hasn't’ changed from his personable talkativeness, and how he’d certainly get a warm welcome at the Rikeston Annual Banquet and Sock Hop.
Nolan chalked it up as another one of the ever-popular churchy get-togethers where the word of the Christian god is assumed to be omnipresent in the heart of each attendee. It’s something Nolan’s parents would have dragged him to--if his hometown had an equivalent--until he destroyed his already tattered reputation. The anxiety of that fact welled up inside of Nolan at Travis’s mention of the invitation, not because he had a bounty on his head in Travis’s neck of the woods, but because anyone could attend. All you need to get in is a love for the Lord and a hunting rifle back at home, and Nolan had just one of those boxes checked. It felt like he’d gotten every Christian within a ten-mile radius (considering the big ears and mouths of the old ladies at the basement salons) mad at him.
“What did I do to deserve that?” Nolan asks. He sets his mug on the kitchen counter, caring to listen to Travis’s response, though his eyes express nothing close to enthusiasm.
“Why? Do you think it’s a punishment?” Travis narrows his eyes, trying to guess what’s making Nolan so hesitant. He knows he was kicked out--shunned, even--but not to the extent where a community an area code away dreamed of his head on a platter. “I want you to come because going alone would be weird. I don’t want to go just to spend five minutes talking to people who haven’t seen me since I was in the fifth grade.”
“Considering what a chore it is to go to an antique store with you, I’d think that’d be your cup of tea,” Nolan mumbles, which earns another, less inquisitive glare from Travis.
“Come on, I’m not that bad.
“If it’s any reassurance, I’ll hang around you the whole time. I’m about as much of a stranger as you are.”
“What if someone knows me? They’ll probably do a little more than sneer-”
“Do you know who I am, Nol?” Travis doesn’t expect an answer. “If anyone brings it up, say the word, and I’m taking them out back.”
Nolan’s expression gives Travis nothing to work with. It forces him to ask if Nolan is agreeing to go.
“Sure.”
_
Dragging Nolan to any public place is an accomplishment. He’ll go anywhere he’s obligated to appear at--the grocery store, for example--but he doesn’t socialize for pleasure. The last thing he’d like to do is mingle. He ends up giving himself a headache from clenching his jaw and keeping his eyes in one place. And when he does manage to hold a conversation with someone that isn’t Travis, it’s lopsided. He contributes little to nothing useful. Nolan doesn’t even look in people’s eyes, just at their foreheads or the wall behind them.
He doesn’t accredit the absence of his consciousness to what happened. He likes to believe he’s capable of trust, to a certain extent. Just not so far that people look into him further than who Travis is to him (more than a friend, he’s not sure what, but he trusts him to cut his hair and make him breakfast and… For now, a friend. A close friend.) They don’t need to know he and Travis do things with each other that’d make Nolan’s parents even happier to have locked them out of their hearts. Every time someone looks at Nolan the wrong way while he’s getting gas, his first suspicion is that they’ll multiply and charge. Nolan has to suppress thoughts of what his highschool friends dreamed of doing to them when they’d heard what’d happened.
_
“Tie my tie for me?”
Travis looks in the mirror to see Nolan in the doorway, sheepish, rosy, and uncomfortable to be dressed up.
“Do you seriously not know how?”
Nolan’s eyes drift to the ceiling and back down. “No. I’m asking because I’d like to share a tender moment. I know you can’t resist.” He pulls the tie out from under his collar and spins it around in one hand while approaching a smirking Travis, expecting his confiscation of it. Travis turns himself away from the mirror to face Nolan, taking notice of his messy, crunchy attempt at slicking his hair back. His incompetence is endearing, at least.
“Okay, smartass,” Travis says, looping Nolan’s tie back through his collar. “I’ll clean you up.”
“Like you’d help. You look like a young Colonel Sanders.”
“At least I can tie a freaking tie, Nolan. I grew up on a farm.”
Just like that, it’s done. What took Nolan a few minutes of unsuccessful fumbling, took Travis a couple quips.
For once, the corners of Nolan’s lips are upturned, and though his smile is quiet, it screams at Travis. Before he can think any better, he kisses Nolan for the second time, maybe the amount of times Nolan has genuinely smiled in his lifetime. He keeps it short this time, but his point is the same. It’s okay, you will be okay, it’s fine. We both have no idea what we’re doing. You look good .
“You look good.” He vocalizes that, searching for signs of life like he’s finally understood how Nolan is a dead deer in the woods: innocent eyes, missing heart and intestines.
“Thanks.” Nolan’s still smiling. “Let’s get this over with.”
_
It’s about as bad as Nolan predicted. He has no appetite to allow him to pick over the buffet that seems to attract every other guest like a magnet. He doesn’t laugh when he suggests to Travis that the potatoes are drugged. Travis pretends he doesn’t hear it.
“You sure you want nothing ?” He asks Nolan, more concerned about him starving to death than anything. A headache caused by socialization and hunger is incurable. Nolan nods, unnerved.
They hook pinkies under the blond booth table, its finish matching the hard benches on each side. Their high backs dig into the shoulder blades, though Nolan’s attachment prevents discomfort until the guy from the bait and tackle shop steps over to greet Travis. Nolan recoils, letting go of Travis’s hand quickly and pressing his back against the solid wood. It’s not ergonomic, and neither is the conversation Travis is involved in.
“Is this your pretty lady?” the man asks, and Nolan has to hold his breath to keep from choking on air. He can feel his flushed cheeks get redder and redder, like he’s a cartoon character about to explode.
“No,” Travis laughs. Thank god. “This is my friend, Nolan. Nol, meet Don.”
Nolan forces a handshake, internally begging that his grip didn’t read as limp compared to Don’s vice-like fingers. He’s friendly enough, Nolan thinks, though he can finally breathe one Don has excused himself. Travis raises his eyebrows, silently asking Nolan what he thought.
“Wants to break everyone’s hand, I guess.” Nolan watches a group of strangers walk past their table before returning to Travis’s touch.
The steel guitar whines like the weak supports holding Nolan's will to exist in place. Each couple on the dance floor sways and twists like fraying rope. Nolan sees red, a match. It’d ignite the fibers and set the roof ablaze. The fire trucks would arrive only to cool the embers and charred remains of all this life. Nolan would be the only one unscathed, already a walking skeleton. He smells like smoke without so much as setting the hypothetical blaze, unconditional destruction created from Nolan’s fingertips. In his imagination, he holds Travis’s melted hand. There is no running from arson that takes even love.
“You sure you want nothing?” Travis asks. Nolan has already given him a solid ‘no’, but Travis likes to believe Nolan’s cynicism grows weaker when he’s around. “The food’ll be gone by the time you’re hungry.”
The lineup at the buffet table is akin to the trail of people that precedes communion. Nolan’s skin itches, but when he looks at his arm, he sees no rash. It must be the heavy antique perfume radiating from the necks of every woman in attendance, or the dull gleam of their mother’s pearls. It’s the only fine jewelry they all own, much like Nolan’s shirt is the only thing he owns that resembles a look for a night out. The creases are the same from when he was a sixteen-year-old in a pew, failing to tune out the pastor’s annual sermon about God hatin’ homos.
Nolan wonders if anyone here knows the devil is in their midst.
He looks into Travis’s dark eyes. They’re more stern than ever before, though the furrow of his brow reads as concern. Travis cares about him. Nolan wishes he wouldn’t.
With a sigh, Travis comes back with a plate for one.
_
A girl is what ultimately kills them both. Her looks aren't distinctive from the rest of the attendees, though what does it matter? They’re all raccoons trying their hardest at looking dolled up, Nolan and Travis included.
“What’s your name, bashful?”
It takes way too long for Nolan to notice she’s sauntered up to their table, let alone that she’s speaking to him. He holds on a beat, expecting Travis to respond, only to realize it’s all him. He jolts, not expecting so much as a lengthy glance in his direction tonight.
“You can stick with Bashful,” Nolan finally responds. The girl snickers.
“Like one of them dwarves? You’re funny.
“Dance with me.”
Well, so much for subtlety, and so much for Nolan’s relatively painless night. He takes one wide-eyed glance at Travis, then at the girl, then back at Travis. Both men are equally as shocked at the proposal, leaving the girl to stand there in wait as Nolan dreams up a haphazard excuse with the telepathic assistance of Travis.
“Sorry, I, uh, I can’t. Two left feet.”
“I seen it,” Travis adds. “Worst dancer by a long shot. You’re not getting wooed, just embarrassed. What a clown.”
Travis didn’t have to rub it in.
“Aw, c’mon,” the girl persists, “you’re just saying that. You can tell me I’m ugly, Bashful, that’s quite alright.”
The way the girl bats her eyelashes--so endless and false, like the glass eyes of a doll--is enough for Nolan to end it. The steel guitar is ringing in his ears, mocking the situation like it knows every conflict coursing through Nolan’s system. It’s a slow song he doesn’t recognize, but it’s enough for him to think of Travis, to want him instead.
The room smells too pure and sweet, and all Nolan has known is evil. From skipping school, to kissing boys, and everything in between. He can’t look this girl in the eye and agree to be with her. As much as he wishes to fit in the world that resists him, Nolan can’t find a reason to anymore. If they’ll crush him, beat him to a bloody pulp, hunt him for sport and cut off his antlers as a trophy, so be it. He ran away all those years ago to be his goddamn self.
“Sorry Miss, but I’m taken.”
_
Their truck is silent during the drive back into the forest, where their house waits at the end of a gravel drive. It’s too early for crickets, but the moths are abundant around the lights they’d kept on, and the night birds compensate for the lack of noise. It’s easy for the rolled up windows to block out. The night breeze has been frigid as of late.
When they get inside, the warm light does its best to soothe. Travis asks Nolan again if he wants anything to eat, since he hadn't touched anything in the hours they were away. And again, Nolan responds with nothing.
Nolan reaches towards Travis without physically acting, and calls for him without saying a word. Travis acts on his instinct, going to the slumped over figure on the couch with a loose tie and messy hair.
“Was it worth it?” he asks. “Getting dressed up?”
Nolan shakes his head. “Remind me to never go to one of those again.”
“Oh, come on. You’re the one who made it miserable for yourself.”
“No.”
“‘No’? What was the worst part, then, if it was so awful?”
“I couldn’t dance with you.”
_
Music bubbles from the record player like it’s played by an underwater band. Travis and Nolan don’t seem to mind. The space of hardwood between the living room and the kitchen is the perfect size for a dance to a secondhand beat.
Turns out, what Nolan told the girl at the sock hop was true: he is terrible at dancing. He shuffles his feet as they do a low-effort waltz, one hand in Travis’s and the other on his waist. It’s odd, holding a man like a woman, but Travis fits perfectly in his grasp. Travis, on the other hand, lets Nolan’s toes trample his for the sake of the moment. Nolan mutters too many apologies for Travis to count.
It is here that Nolan can breathe. It is here that Nolan is unafraid.