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I loved Chase.
I loved his golden hair and the sun in his skin. I loved the naive reverence that he poured into every part of his life. I loved the little freckle he had on his collarbone and the silly things he doodled on his hands. I loved the way he looked when he laughed.
I did not like to see him sad.
But he was sad tonight.
It was strange and a little scary because it was a countenance that he wore so rarely. He was someone so constantly all sunshine and smiles, expressive hands, tiny, whispered shreds of comfort when it was dark in his room and dark in my mind. Selfless. Optimistic. Caring for me instead of the other way around.
It was the existence of such a pattern that turned it into a mask.
Crisp September. Nearing my birthday. The part of the year where, rather than fighting over who got to control the calendar, summer and autumn both quietly stepped back and waited for someone else to decide. His freckled cousin had packed his bags and gone back to his college some days ago, holding a smile for Chase, but weary again when they hugged. I could tell he was anxious to reenter the adult world. And with Deacon gone I could tell Chase was lonely. He was also afraid, because his mother was still ill.
Stable. Blessfully, relievingly stable. We got enough narratonin to manage that.
But not better.
Better seemed so far away,
And as Deacon left, so did other friends, people Chase had gone to high school with, people he called and visited all the time. He hugged childhood friends goodbye and watched proudly as they traded both their greetings and their indefinite farewells with his boyfriend. He sat on the front of his house, on the stairs of a creaky, creaky wooden porch, and squinted through the dust made from their car tires as they peeled away towards a brighter future.
Summer receded. Autumn tentatively stepped forward, all but not hasty to take the stage.
Leaves started to drift from the trees, who never really intended to let them go, but had been holding them so tight for so long they did not even feel it when their fists relaxed.
The summer shops closed up their fronts, were foreclosed or cleared out for other temporaries. Stores, as we passed them, covered their mannequins’ fun, colored wear with grey and brown, so that us humans might camouflage in with our dying surroundings.
It was, of course, not the leaves that brought Chase this sort of sorrow.
It was the leaving.
The cheerful departure of nearly everything in his life he sought comfort in.
The phone calls and social media posts as the college terms started. Each one striking him heavy, heavy, heavy in his chest. Because he was not there. He was still here.
He was still happy. It was difficult for him not to be. He smiled, he laughed, he chatted away to me as he fed the chickens and worked on the shed, and I fulfilled my role of something to look at while he did. It was not a weary life for him, this tranquility.
But he was not a tranquil person.
And it was those evenings on the porch, where all the distractions during the day faded, that goaded him into silence.
And the leaves from the trees rattled on into the distance, ghosting the asphalt roads, like they, too, had a future that was waiting.
I had not seen a real sky as many times in my life as felt strictly necessary for human consumption. The storybook skies were no different in visage, of course, but you knew they were false. And the shelves in Ex Libris were tall, their rafters soaring, and there was no need to leave the library when you could find the world within its musty pages.
Sometimes Ralph would mow the lawn while Chase and I sat on the porch and enjoyed the sunset, nervously prodding at the strings of a relationship, neither entirely sure how to fully compose a song. Fingers through hair, maybe, or idle conversation about idle things. Not quite sure how to go further but desperately yearning for closeness. But the world was marching steadily on to the end of the calendar year, and the lawn grew slower now, no longer the cheery, soft green of summer, but something more prickly and full of nettles. So Ralph was not mowing as much. He instead spent his nights in the commerce hall down in town center, parading his luck at bingo to the town’s old folk.
Chase and I were alone at the house now.
Alone was exciting.
But to Chase, lately alone was just sad.
He was finishing up a shower now, so I had gone to the porch alone. I watched his chickens flit around the yard, pecking at seeds and trying to make the best of the dying grass. I watched the sun paint gentle streaks over the horizon. There were clouds building there. The sun hid their darkness but I could tell they were thunderheads, and that tonight would be a stormy night, full of loud cracks and flashes.
Which gave Chase and I an excuse to sleep in the same bed.
So I wasn’t complaining.
It was nice to sit here. I still did not feel entirely safe, because I knew they were still out there, still out there, but even freedom this fragile was an incomprehensible joy. To sit and relax and watch the sun.
I tugged at my sleeves. Chase had taken me to a mall the other day. He had told me to prepare myself to see, in his words, “the LAMEST mall on this side of the Mississippi”. Of course, I had nothing to compare it to, so I had no qualms about the place. And they had pretzels, which were a pleasant surprise about the world. We went to several stores, and he had a bit of money saved up from babysitting his neighbor that he practically forced upon me to get some new clothes.
I felt very bad about taking his money. I had amassed his financial situation quickly after I started staying with him. But he was so selfless, and adamant that I get some new clothes, and in the end I thought it a better kindness to appease him this time than to draw out the problem every time there was something to be bought or wanted in the future.
Getting new clothes was… nice. I had been wearing his cousin’s before then, and in addition to being gangly, Deacon had a drawer full of some of the nerdiest, itchiest clothes I ever thought to imagine. He was gracious enough to allow me to keep some of them, so that I could cut holes in the appropriate places and even try to dye them purple (and fail, making a horrible mess in the kitchen, which we had to clean up before Ralph came back). But they were not lasting.
The shirt I was wearing now, Chase had picked out for me. It was a green flannel shirt, which I wore over a black T-shirt to warm myself from the occasional, teasing bite of an unanticipated wind. I felt a little floppier in it than I wanted, but Chase said I looked good in green, and his eyes clung to me when I wore it so I wore it a lot.
He should almost be done now, I thought, looking up at the house to where I knew his bedroom window was. Sure enough, there was a slight sputter in the sprinklers just then, only enough that I knew he had turned off the water.
I smiled. I was sitting in a tranquil scene, but it would be greatly improved by his golden hair and his beautiful smile.
My beautiful boy.
Five minutes later, the door to the porch creaked open. He walked across the porch—he was wearing no socks and the one shirt he had allowed me to pick out for him at the mall instead, a blue shirt that was cropped at the waist and with a ridiculous saying on it. He reached where I was sitting on the steps and sat down next to me.
His movements were slow. His head fell almost instantly upon my shoulder, and he nestled his jaw into the crook of my neck, looking out as the chickens squawked and bobbed around the yard.
We sat there for a long moment. He turned a piece of wheatgrass over in his fingers. I enjoyed the tickle of his hair on my neck.
I was waiting for him to talk, because he usually did. Sure enough, after a long time of silence, he finally mumbled—in a voice uncharacteristically meek—“I reached out to the contracter today.”
My heart soared. He had been waffling over the website of a musical agent for several days now, alternating between telling me he was about to do it like I was the one telling him no, and moaning into his pillow that he was never going to do it and that the contractor already hated him.
“When did you do that? Just now?”
“No, this morning.”
I was still silent, waiting for him to expand—this was Chase, my Chase, he always expanded when given the chance—but, strangely, he did not say anything else.
“Well, I’m very proud of you, you indecisive little moron,” I teased him, turning around and putting my arms around his waist, leaning a little so that I was leaned forward and he was forced back, causing him to have to grab tightly to my sleeves to keep from falling. Usually this made him shriek with giggles. I kept my face close to his, enjoying the proximity, trying to get him flustered.
He cracked a smile, but it was a bare one, missing a definite layer of geniality. “Nothing like a compliment and an insult in the same sentence to remind me who I’m talking to,” he said.
“Shhh. It’s practically a pet name at this point.” I kissed his nose.
He smiled and looked past me, towards the ground, as I resettled us into a stable position. I think he meant to have a moment of reflection, to turn over that nice moment in his mind, but his thoughts clearly started to stray again, because his eyes unfocused and the smile started to slip from his face like water.
The clouds on the horizon felt heavier, suddenly. The sunshine on his face was dimmer.
I reached out and combed both my fingers through his hair, which was still a little damp from his shower, like I could caress the worry out of his brain. “Are you tired?” I asked, because tired—when it had to apply to me, so many nights—was much easier than all those other swirling emotions, the exhaustion and the stress and the hopelessness, the nothing and everything that just ate you up from the inside.
I did not want these things for Chase. But I reasoned they happened to all humans, and he was not invincible to sadness, no matter how brightly he shone.
His eyelids drifted closed at the softness of my fingers, the gentle tugs on his scalp and I rubbed his hair between my fingers. “Mmm,” he hummed, then, “Y-yeah… a little bit…”
“What would you like to do? Go inside? Have chocolate? Be held?”
He opened his eyes a fraction of an inch to smile at me. “Buddy,” he said, and I smiled at the nickname he still used for me sometimes, “having chocolate is your go-to cheer-up activity. And you ate the last gluten free one the day we bought it, remember?”
I chewed on my lip, trying to shoo away the sheepishness, because it was an expression I found did not suit my features. “Tsk, even so,” I said. “Everything is better with chocolate.”
He laughed… and then faded again.
Yes, he needs something, at the very least. I do not want my beautiful light to dim.
“The bitey-bugs will be out soon,” I said, waving my hand to look at the sky, where clouds of gnats could be seen milling over the old wood of his horse’s arena. “We should go inside, if you would like that. I will… make you something to eat.” I will find a way to bring back your light today.
He smiled, and he allowed me to nudge him to his feet. I put both arms around his shoulders to march him inside. Just because I could. The house had gotten dark as the sun set, so I started to turn on lights, but he turned them off. I was curious but did not fight him.
“What do you want?” I asked, opening the cupboards and flicking through them. “Ramen? Popcorn? I actually know how to use a microwave now, you should applaud me.”
He put his hands together once and then instead let them wander around my sides, connecting at my navel, hugging me tightly and burying his face into my back like I was a pillow. “Mmm,” he managed.
“No, we’re all out of that. Are you even hungry?”
“Not really… don’t wanna put food in my mouth right now, too much effort…”
I smiled and ran my fingers along his knuckles. “Mmm, okay. We don’t have to eat. Hey, maybe we could watch a movie in bed? Your laptop is still charged, isn’t it? Milo and Otis?”
“I don’t know what your attachment is to Milo and Otis but I think I’d go insane if you forced me to watch that movie one more time,” Chase said into my shirt.
“Hmm… fair enough. Now, get your ass over here so I can carry you upstairs.”
He brushed his teeth first; I prepared for bed second. Shouldering the flannel off, changing into a loose black tank top. I stopped for a minute to caress my throat in the mirror.
The marks were still there.
Faint. Chase had promised they would fade.
They had better.
I turned away from the mirror and reached to comb my hair, trying to clear my memory of chains and bondage, of a prison far away from the sky and the sun.
“Did we say goodnight to the keys?” I asked, reentering the room. Chase was lying on his side on his bed, hugging his body pillow to his chest. I wrinkled my nose at the smug little Alistair face winking up at me, all high and mighty that my boyfriend had his face buried into his cleavage instead of mine.
“I talked to them a lil after I showered,” Chase said, his voice muffled by Alastair’s linen pecs. “They’re all good.”
I stood at the end of the bed, watching him. He looked… so sad.
“Lights on or off?”
“Mmm… could you get the fairy lights…?”
Obediently, I fiddled with the switches until the only lights that were on were the warm string lights lining his ceiling. He had put them up perhaps a month ago, after Silver found a picture in a magazine and would not stop hiding it under his pillow until he did it. It was… nice. Comforting, a nice middle-ground, and somehow more intimate.
I sat down next to him.
“Hey,” I said, rubbing one hand up his back.
“Hey,” he said into Alastair’s boobs.
We were silent for some time. The silence was comfortable, but I was also worried about him.
“So…” I said finally, throwing darts at balloons for things to say, “You reached out to the contractor? Has he responded yet?”
“No, not yet,” Chase said, rolling over. I let my hand drift from his back to his forehead, stroking hair away from his face. He sighed and closed his eyes. His eyelashes were clinging together. His voice was a little husky when he spoke. “I, um, only emailed him a few hours ago, so… he’s busy…”
“Right, that makes sense. And it’s technically the weekend, so he may not be in office.”
“Yeah… technically,” Chase said. I could hear the surliness in his voice, and knew what it meant—weekends had no real definition for us now, with him out of school.
I continued to stroke his hair as he gave the posters on his ceiling his best glower. “That’s a big step,” I said. “Just wait until he hears your audition. He’ll adore you.”
“No, he won’t,” Chase said.
“Chase…”
“He’s gonna say, ‘what the hell is this squeaky kid doing, get it off the screen’,” he expanded.
“No, little idiot. No he’s not.”
“What was I thinking?” He implored, and now the tears fully welled up, no longer able to be hidden; my heart ached and clenched as they dripped slowly down his face, running into the corners of his mouth. “It’s not gonna mean anything. It never does. It never goes to any end…”
“That’s not true. The dance contest—”
“Yeah, well, anyone’s gonna scout my talent next to Simon. Dude dances like a pile of ducks. Doesn’t change the fact that the scout ghosted me the day after.”
“That’s on him. He should have followed up on his commitments.”
“No, he just changed his mind.” Chase stuck out his bottom lip, pouting at the ceiling. Another bitter tear rolled down his face and dripped onto his shirt.
“I don’t appreciate my boyfriend talking bad about himself,” I said, poking him on the cheek. “And if he is going to do so, he should at least have his head in my lap while he does.”
He didn’t laugh or crack a smile, too absorbed in his own sadness, but he did let me wiggle behind him and maneuver his head onto my lap.
“Hey, there,” I said, tracing the topography of his features. “You have no idea what will happen, or what this guy will say. Don’t sell yourself short. Pun intended.”
“I’m not ,” he said, still looking past me at the ceiling. “I’m just being real. That’s what I never do, and I should. Be real.” He shifted onto his side so that his left shoulder was pressing into my lap instead, and put his arms around my waist, nuzzling his face into my stomach. I tried to breathe deeply so that the rise and fall of my abdomen could bring him comfort. “I’m never going to become even a tiny, who-cares singer,” Chase mumbled. “And I’m never getting out of Sugar Springs.”
I continued to rub his shoulders. The leaves of the trees rattled against the house as the wind picked up a little.
“Never say never,” I said. “Sugar Springs is a whole lot easier to get out of than a cult, you know. If we can do that, we can do anything, huh?”
“Yeah, uh huh,” Chase said. “Sure, I can—I can storm Ex Libris, save you and the keys, no problem. Easy. But I’ve got the whole other thing, the life I’m supposed to be living , and I’m just sitting watching it go by, not even through a window, through a screen, and I’m wasting it, and I… I can’t do it… it’s just all going by and we’re supposed to be going on with our lives and I’m supposed to be chasing my dreams but something went wrong and it just never happened. And I never started. And I’m sitting on my ass watching everyone become accountants and lawyers while I’m here ‘cause I dreamed big and fell short.”
I wondered how many kisses it would take to chase his dejection away.
“I—I mean,” he said, and now he was choked up again, “I know there’s all the stuff out of my control, the money and my mom, but if I had just settled , and been sensible and all that other stuff Dave gets on me about… if I had just gotten a job over the summer bagging groceries… if I had thought about it sooner… if I had put in either more or less effort…”
“More or less?”
“Yeah—‘cause what I’m doing right now? I’ve done a lot for it but I could be doing better. And I set a goal and I came up short but maybe I could reach it if I tried hard enough, and… I am, but I’m not, there’s always more… I spent a week stressing out over an email, for crying out loud… and I could either do that and have that or I could just not try at all. And not try to be… different, or special. And just do what everyone else does where they live a normal life and find a 9-5 and drift along and somehow manage to find their fulfillment along the way.” He started to hold me tighter. Fingers digging into my back. “I just want extremes. I want all or nothing sometimes, you know? But it’s all that middle stuff, the uncertainty, the wishy-washiness… it hurts…”
I wiped the corner of his eye as tears started flowing harder.
“My dad always told me to try my best… never settle… and look at me! I’m just sitting here, I’m nineteen years old, spending my days feeding horses and taking in the newspaper, and I said what I was going to do and then I just got lazy and I never did it! I never got it! I tried and I try but the time just keeps going on without me! I get so tired sometimes of being… of being me, and not Chase Hollow, the Chase Hollow you’re supposed to see, the one who talks in the motivational cereal commercials about all the hardship he got over to chase his dreams…”
Heart aching, I eased myself down a little so that he was lying between my legs and on my chest. “I am never tired of you,” I said earnestly.
He didn’t answer.
“It hurts tonight,” I whispered, combing back his hair and tilting up his chin to face me with two fingers. “The seasons changing and everyone leaving and the grieving and the fear for the future. Not being able to see the end of it, just walking blindly. Feeling like there’s nothing here for you.” I brushed my lips against his forehead. “But I am here for you.”
“I know, but—”
“I know. I know. It doesn’t make it better. And if you need to take a minute and be sad then you can do that. But I am here to coddle you and give you comfort and kisses and hold you until you fall asleep, and maybe things will be better in the morning, not all of it, but there won’t be a tint on your eyes anymore blocking out the sun.”
He sighed and nestled into my neck, one hand lying laxly on my chest. “I do want… to be comfortable…” He mumbled.
“So be comfortable. Be loved. Remember everything that you’ve done.” I pulled his face closer to mine. “Do you need me to kiss you to sleep?”
He laughed—oh, thank Goodness, he was laughing. “I’m not going to fall asleep if I’ve got you kissing me, jerk,” he said.
“Mmmm, want me to try anyway?”
“What, are you saying you’re so boring to make out with that any partner falls asleep in your arms?”
“Hmm, something like that. At the very least I’ll give you something to dream about.”
He sighed, but I was holding his cheeks with one hand, so it sent out the air in a narrow pffft that blew my bangs around. “Fiiiine,” he said, like this was a great inconvenience. “I guess you can kiss me. A little. If it makes you happy.”
I smiled and leaned in.
There was another thing. Another thing I loved about Chase.
It was how his lips felt.
Soft and gentle and warm and beautiful.
The breath of his nose on my cheek and the weight of his body on my chest and the tiny humming sounds he made when my lips connected with his. I started to count, teasingly, like I was counting sheep between kisses, and he started to giggle, and our teeth clicked together—and then I kissed the rest of his face, the corner of his eyes where the skin was still salty from tears, the connection between his jaw and his ear, his cheekbone, his forehead. I flipped us over so that we were on our sides, connected firmly by tangled arms, and scooted him against the wall—tenting him between the wall and the comforter and my arms, so that was he was nestled in, so that he could feel safe, feel… something a little bit different than alone.
The wind grew louder, a chill settling over the fields as the storm blew in—but we were warm here, and our backs were turned from the windows. Thunder rumbled and lightning flashed… it was not important. If anything it filled the silence, filled the air. Breathed life into the landscape withering with season’s change.
As he was falling asleep, some time later, I tried to encourage the mercy of sweet dreams… I did something I had never done before, and started to half hum, half sing him to sleep.
I didn’t know many songs, so I just sang without direction. About how much I loved him. About how the storm was going to clear. About how capable he was.
When I finished this conglomerate of a song, he spoke.
“Maybe you should be the musician instead of me.”
And then he started to sob.
And I held him very close until it died away.
And outside the window, the leaves thrashed, then quieted, as a blanket came over the landscape.
And I sat there, and did all I could, which was to wait for the storm to clear.
For it would.
As was the nature of every tempest.