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They were still just under an hour out, when Art grabbed Patrick’s hand, rested lazily on the gear shift.
“Dude.” Both of them were tired from the late nights that came with the end of the school year and the early mornings that came with driving home, or whatever counted at that, and they had been quiet. The primary sound floating around the stuffy interior of Patrick’s car was the Green Day CD he had fed into the radio while still back at the Academy and then looped over and over again. It dwindled, as he twisted the knob on his dashboard. “If you wanted me to crash the car, we should have done that before we drove nine hours.”
The joke twisted sour when Patrick glanced to the side, taking in the serious expression on Art’s face. Eyes dark and heavy, lips pressed together. He had sunburnt his nose during practice the other day, and the slash of angry red across his face did little to soften his features, all pressed together like this. Patrick knew that look. He’d been seeing it across the dorm room since they were eleven.
“Hey.” This time, it was Patrick who reached across to bump the back of his knuckles lightly against Art’s knee. “What are you thinking about?”
One of Art’s teeth was pressed against his lower lip, small and pearly. “I need to tell you something,” he said, and there was a forcefulness in his voice that made Patrick’s stomach twist. It wasn’t forceful like Art was mad at him; no, this too was familiar. The way that Art sounded when he lost a match. Failed a test. A breakup with a girl who hardly meant anything anyway. A different tone from anger at Patrick, even from just annoyance at Patrick, and much more common.
A different twist, suddenly, to the silence that had emitted from the passenger seat for most of their drive, only getting worse as the hours went on and on. Suddenly, something felt burnt and toxic. Patrick longed for the ability to move his clumsy limbs, to not be trapped between the steering wheel and the gas pedal. He wasn’t one to overthink like that. But a million things ran through his mind. She doesn’t want you there. I don’t want you there. You’re a bad influence, Patrick, and everyone knows it. The sort of stupid shit that he normally didn’t let occupy his head. The summer heat, the late setting sun. It always made him start feeling weird. Thinking weird. His own useless counterpart to Art’s useless worry.
“Is it that you need to piss?” Patrick asked, and his voice was casual. He only wavered on piss a little bit, something that would have been more embarrassing if Art was listening to anything that he was saying. Patrick scratched at the itchy stubble prickling against his jawline. Maybe, he should have shaved before they left. He imagined the smooth curve of Art’s cheek, hot under his thumb as he rubbed aquaphor on his sunburn a few days earlier, and he swallowed.
“Please don’t be mad at me.” Patrick knew all of the motions that Art’s body made and what all of them meant, but it was hard in a cramped car. Art’s one knee was pulled up, foot balanced on the empty cup holder in the door, probably, leaving scuff marks that Patrick wasn’t going to clean and Art probably wouldn’t either. His knuckles, pale with the twist of his hand rested on his knee, tapped against it. “Shit. I don’t even know how to say this. My grandmother thinks we’re dating?”
For Art, that was remarkably quick to the point. Patrick’s ears were ringing a bit. The sound of guitar and drums and Billie Joe Armstrong’s voice, replaced with something high and sharp. “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Art’s voice was doing that thing it did when he was embarrassed, and Patrick knew that if he wasn’t keeping his eyes intently on the road, he would see that his face was flushed miserable red well beyond just too much sun on a tennis court. “You know how things have been with her, lately. I tried to correct her, but…” He trailed off.
The thing was, Patrick did fucking know. They didn’t talk about it, because they weren’t like that and, more importantly, because Art didn’t want to. But Patrick saw the pink tint to his eyes, heard him on the phone answering the same questions over and over again on the increasingly infrequent occasions that his grandmother called. It wasn’t anything major, but Patrick knew that Art’s grandmother was getting older. And Art did too. Her memory wasn’t what it had been when Art was still small. Fuck, it wasn’t what it had been when she and Patrick had first met. He knew, really, that it had been hard for Art when she couldn’t take care of the house anymore while he was gone for the school year and moved into a retirement home back in the fall. But that was different than whatever this was.
“Hey, it’s, like, fine.” Patrick’s voice cut through the scream of his blood in his ears. “You know that I could never disappoint Grandma Donaldson. Shit, I bet she was thrilled; she always liked me better than you. Probably glad that I’ve got a shot of marrying into the family.” His pitch was off. Flat. Patrick had done choir for a few months, you know. Back when he was small and his mother had still lived under some delusion that her children were going to be raised to be regular church attendees, something that even she wasn’t anymore. He wasn’t raised Catholic, not like Art, but his parents had enjoyed the concept of nice, Methodist children. The key on the piano, over and over and over again. And Patrick failing to rise to match it. He wasn’t like this. Not with the girls at the academy, not with the boys he met traveling over the summers when he was younger and his parents still brought him along. Not with Art. He had the upper hand – he always had the upper hand. He wasn’t supposed to be the one with the inner turmoil. He was the one guiding Art’s touch. Always had been.
Art sighed. Patrick imagined the calluses permanently worn into the back of his ankles from his tennis shoes and dryer worn socks. Relief. His eyes flickered to the right, just for a second. It was displayed cleanly across Art’s face. The absence of tension. “She was, actually. She kept telling me how happy she was. She’s –” Art’s voice twisted. “You don’t have to, like, I don’t know. Kiss me or anything weird. I just didn’t want you to be shocked if she said something. Everything I’ve read – it’s easier to just agree with her, you know? If it makes her happy.”
Patrick stiffened at the emphasis Art put on kiss me. He bit down something stupid. He bit down a lot of stupid, and maybe that was all that was in him, because he couldn’t find anything else to say. He reached for the volume dial, again, and he turned it back up to muffle the empty space.
I've been waiting a long time for this moment to come, I'm destined for anything at all.
The drum of his knuckle against Art’s knee slowed to match the beat of the song, and so did Patrick’s heart beat in his ears. Back in sync. Patrick swallowed down everything in him that would send them spiraling out of it again, and it only made him feel a little nauseous. Only a little fucked up.
-
Patrick hadn’t tagged along with Art over spring break, still grounded from his car over stealing some of his father’s expensive wine on Christmas Eve, but they had talked on the phone a lot. Art had told him about the big brick walls over the apartment building his grandmother now resided in, the old man that always hung around the door reading his newspaper – he had greeted Art like an old friend and given Patrick a curious look. That one was probably on Patrick; he had never been particularly comfortable around old people. The smell of death, or whatever, you know? The slow elevator, and the narrow hallway with blue and white carpet that took them to his grandmother’s door. It was a big difference from pulling into her cracked driveway, parking under the tree that he and Art had tried futilely to climb when they were younger and it was Patrick’s parents driving them up from school.
But when Art’s grandmother opened the door, it was familiar again. The pictures hanging on the wall behind her had watched Patrick break and push Art into breaking about a million rules over the years. Farther back, it was like she had just picked up her old living room and deposited it into a decades younger space.
“Come here, honey.” She immediately pulled Art into a hug with the force of someone half her age. “You’ve gotten so tall!” He absolutely had not grown since the last time she saw him, but neither of them corrected her. “And skinny. I tell you every semester; they don’t feed you boys enough at that school for all of the running around they have you doing.”
Patrick smirked. Art’s ears turned pink. “Hi, Nana. It’s good to see you.”
“And you.” Art’s grandmother released her grandson from her grip and turned to Patrick. “Is that a hole in your shirt? I know your mother raised you better than that.”
A questionable statement, but Patrick gladly moved to hug her anyway. “Come on, Mrs. Donaldson, you know that they keep us prisoner down there. I got this hole climbing over the fence around the tennis court so that I could get your grandson up to see you.”
“He’s lying,” Art butted in as the three of them stepped out of the hallway and into the small apartment. “He tripped over his own feet and his shirt got caught on the edge of the net when he went down.”
“Now, Arthur.” Patrick mouthed Art’s full name dramatically as his grandmother turned away from them to lock the door, and Art scowled back. “Don’t tease your boyfriend like that.”
If both of them froze for a second at the term, well. At least Art’s grandmother didn’t notice.
Art’s grandmother had soup boiling on the stove, and Patrick set the table while Art helped her finish up in the kitchen. He tried his best to tune out the low sound of their voices, the way Art’s laugh caught on the slow stream of air tumbling lazily from the vent. Patrick knew that they were talking about him. He knew what Art’s voice sounded like when he was talking about him and, furthermore, what he sounded like when he was lying. For the person who always got them caught doing things that they weren’t supposed to, Art had fallen into being fairly good at it. He could just tell, because he knew Art the way that nobody else did. The way he knew himself.
Patrick tried not to let himself think about what that might have meant. He was easy to lie about. This was easy to lie about. He pressed his eyebrows together, and he straightened the silverware a little bit aggressively. The knife clanged against a plate, and the voices in the kitchen silenced. It was just a second, before Art emerged with a plate of sliced bread.
Despite Patrick’s surprise casting as Art’s fucking boyfriend, dinner with Nana Donaldson was always nice. She was funny, quick humored, even if she asked them three different times how finals went and Art clutched his spoon a little bit tighter with each repetition. Patrick brushed his ankle against his under the table, and he relaxed a little. Patrick bit back a bitter smirk.
After the soup was gone and Art and Patrick had done the dishes in the sink, they settled in the living room for a few hours to chat and be fed chocolate chip cookies, until the sun was setting over the Virginia mountains, Art’s grandmother was starting to yawn, and it was time for them to go find a hotel.
“We’ll be back tomorrow to take you out for lunch,” Art told his grandmother, bending down to be pulled into another crushing hug. “That Italian place downtown you like, okay?”
When it was Patrick’s turn, her grip was no weaker. He could smell the perfume she wore, that grandma scent that made him think of dried flowers and many many school breaks spent sleeping in her spare bedroom.
“You make him happy,” she said, voice soft next to his ear. “I can tell.”
Patrick’s stomach twisted. There were no words. He had always been a good liar, the better out of the two of them, but there was nothing that he could say now that wouldn’t ring false. Another fucking sour note. He forced a smile, and he hugged her back. He could feel Art’s eyes like knuckles, pressed against his back, his lungs, his shoulders.