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Steve is pretty sure the entire thing is his fault. He absently wipes his hand across his forehead, turns left onto Main Street, aiming for the path he knows leads to the woods.
They’ve been dating for three months now. And it’s—-it’s been good. It’s… he really fucking likes Eddie. He knows he does. Sometimes, at least.
Robin says he has shitty taste. She says he likes anything with a pulse. That’s not true.
The truth is he likes anyone stupid enough to like him in return. Because at the very bottom of everything, he knows there’s not much there to like.
Empty like a vase. That’s the truth. That’s what everyone thinks.
It’s his fault. He’s the root of their problems. He keeps comparing Eddie to other men. Eddie makes a face when Steve asks if they can watch Casablanca, immediately shooting him down, and Steve shrinks into himself and thinks of Tommy. And the way that Tommy had never given a shit what Steve wanted to watch, just as long as it made him happy. Or Steve tries to pour over those big ass Lord of the Rings books, hoping to glean some kind of insight into his boyfriend’s psyche, only for the words to blur and rearrange themselves on the page the way they always did. The next day he’ll be sitting on Eddie’s couch, feeling so fucking stupid when Eddie begins to make fun of him for not even being able to read a kid’s book. And then, like a shot to the back of the head he remembers the way Billy patiently explained all the references to Mordor and Hobbits and Elves as they appeared in the Zeppelin he would blast in Steve’s bedroom at all hours.
Eddie told him to stop complaining, rough hand touching his bad shoulder just a bit too hard, and Steve remembered spitting out blood the night Billy broke that plate over his head. Eddie laughed in his face because he forgot how to do long division for a minute and Steve remembered Tommy sneering at him, telling him he was too stupid to ever amount to anything.
As time went on, and the gleam of having someone in his life who wanted to spend time with him wore off, Eddie began to feel more and more like a bad echo of the men he had loved and lost, and less like a living person. In turn Steve had withdrawn. Stopped suggesting they do things. Stopped giving his input in conversations. Just went through the motions of what a relationship might look like. One good thing about all of this was that he finally understood how Nancy felt towards the end. It really was all bullshit. And it wasn’t a one way street. He knew that for Eddie, Steve amounted to little more than a hard willing body and an empty brain.
The lyrics of the demo kept repeating on a loop like a slap in the face.
Pretty as a picture
Empty like a vase
Pull her hair and turn away her face.
They weren’t even good lyrics, is the thing. If Eddie was going to humiliate him, the least he could do was make sure the song was actually fucking good. Steve ran a red light, and focused more intently on the road. The way the black of the sky blended into the black of the pavement. No beginning and no end. Just a wash of endless color. It was Steve’s fault, because it was the truth. If he ever had anything inside of him resembling a human heart it had been given away a long time ago. Dead and buried with an empty casket or driven out of state to U of M on a baseball scholarship. Either way, he couldn’t ever hope to get it back.
He stopped the car, idling at the cemetery. It didn’t feel menacing. Not in the way a cemetery should feel. He sat, unable to move. He brought a hand to his forehead and eyes and it came away wet. Why was his hand wet? He didn’t cry.
Eddie cried. Eddie cried a lot. Eddie had cried just an hour ago when Steve said they were through.
“Why? Just tell me what I did wrong and I’ll fix it!”
Steve couldn’t even begin to explain. But he felt he owed it to both of them to try.
“The song Eddie. “The Vase.” I know you think I’m an idiot—“
“No I don’t!”
Eddie was clawing at his own hair, tears overflowing. All Steve felt was pity. And disgust. And the afterimage of Billy crying, his back a mess of bruises, asking Steve, “Why won’t he love me? Why? I’d do anything.”
And a worse after image of Steve, age fourteen, on his own roof, Tommy and Carol watching in horror. Tommy begging him to come down.
“Stevie! Whatever you need, please. But don’t. Just climb down. We love you!”
Those were only two times Steve could remember crying past the age of eight. Both times were out of frustration. He knew he couldn’t help Billy. And he knew he couldn’t die and leave Tommy behind. Both times he had been trapped.
This… the situation didn’t feel like it warranted tears at all.
“You hate the things I like. You don’t want to spend time with me unless it’s for sex. Your friends hate me. I mean, Eddie. This was never going to work.”
He had left after that, lancing pain behind his eye, thinking that he could have been in California right now learning how to surf. Or Ann Arbor throwing pitches, doing something he enjoyed. If only he hadn’t ruined it all. If only he had been stronger. Every time, he ruined it.
He opened then closed the car door. Put on an old mixtape. A really old one. Back when Tommy and Carol were so sure he would disappear again and were trying desperately to keep him alive.
Levon Helm’s voice started echoing through the confines of the BMW. He turned onto the main road and kept driving, faster and faster.
“I pulled into Nazareth, feeling half past dead.”
Steve opened his mouth and began to sing along without meaning to,
“Take a load off Fanny, and you can put the load right on me.”
He’d leave. Tomorrow he’d leave this town. Tomorrow he’d finally call back Boston University’s admissions office and talk to them about his as of now decision to defer his acceptance. There was nothing keeping him here, not really.
He began to grin, tapping on the steering wheel,
“My bag is sinkin’ low, and I do believe it’s time!”
He breathed out a sigh of relief. He might be empty. He might be nothing except a holding place for the lost memories everyone else discarded. He might be the stupidest motherfucker who ever lived. But really, who fucking cared?