Chapter Text
Ari POV:
It was a Wednesday afternoon, not that the days of the week mattered during summer. Despite this, it didn’t feel like a Wednesday.
Dante was in my room. I’d picked him up an hour previous and we drove around a little in my pickup. It was nice. Dante loved the cool breeze in his hair when we had the windows down… I think I loved it too. Or.. I liked it. Love is a strong word.
I feel like Dante taught me how strong words are through his books of poems or whatnot.. but they can also be pretty useless. I think this because despite all the things I’ve said to him, Dante still loves me… weird.
Anyway, we were sitting on my bed. Kissing. We did that a lot now. Until Legs came in and interrupted us. She pawed at my leg, hinting that she wanted to go on a walk. I rolled my eyes.
“Alright alright.. I’ll be out soon”.
“Hey Ari?”
“Yeah?”
“Is it okay if I stay here?”
“Weird request.. but sure.”
I don’t know why Dante couldn’t just go with us.. maybe he was tired. I don’t know, but either way I didn’t fight him on it.
The weather was fine. Not too hot, not too cold. I slowly began to pick up my pace, running along with Legs.
~~~~~~
Dante POV:
About five minutes into being alone, I kind of regretted not going with him. Now I was left alone with my thoughts while in my lover’s bedroom. Many thoughts crossed my mind while I scanned his room, they paused though as I saw a notebook on his dresser. It was black and had a single food sticker on it. Me being as curious as I am, I picked it up.
I ran my finger along the coils as I thought about opening it. I knew this was an invasion of privacy, but for some reason, there was still a voice at the back of my head telling me to. I’d pretty much known everything about Ari anyway, I even knew parts he didn’t quite know about himself yet. Mysteries he had yet to discover.
Though his handwriting could use a lot of work, I was able to decipher it pretty well. As I flipped through the flimsy pages, I landed on an entry from just a week ago.
~~~
I think I’ve found another mystery of the universe. Gender. It’s been something I’ve thought about, but I think I just now realised how weird it is. Also how weird it is that people care so much about boys kissing boys. Dante likes kissing boys. I like kissing boys. I like kissing Dante. It would be no different if he was a girl. If he had a..
Never mind.
~~~
I giggled a bit at the last part. “Oh silly Ari” I thought. I flipped the page to the next entry. It was from yesterday.
~~~
I keep trying to remember that being a teenager isn’t forever. The ecotone the ecotone the ecotone… I wish someone could just push me into manhood. Why does everything feel like so much more of a drag when you’re 16?
~~~
I felt sympathetic as I continued to read. I understood exactly how he was feeling.. I’d just never talked to him about it. Just as I was about to put the book back though, he was back.
Shit.
He saw I read it.
“What the fuck, Dante!” He shouted, grabbing the book out of my hand with immense force. I just flinched and backed up onto the bed.
~~~
Ari POV:
I swear I could feel steam coming out of my ears. I was mad, but then I saw Dante’s face. His dilated pupils and trembling lips made him look like a stray puppy. I calmed down after that.
“Why? Why were you reading that?”
“I don’t know…”
“You? Dante Quintana? You don’t know? Isn’t your whole thing knowing?”
“Sometimes humans do things on instinct. And no.. I don’t know everything.”
“Well you should know not to invade people's privacy at least!”
“I’m sorry,” Dante repeated. “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry”.
“What did I tell you about saying that?”
“It’s true.. can we just talk?”
“About what?”
“About your feelings”.
I froze at where I was in the room. I never liked doing that… talking about my feelings… but I guess loving Dante requires doing some self improvement. I sighed a very loud sigh and sat on the bed.
“How much did you read?”
“The last two entries,” he said.
“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath.
I wondered what he thought of me. Did he think of me any differently now? I mean I sure saw him differently after seeing he read through it. Dante sat up straight on the bed, moving closer to me. I instinctively flinched as I felt his shoulder brush mine.
“I never noticed how similar we’ve been thinking,” Dante said.
“What do you mean?”
“The stuff you wrote about.. I’ve been thinking about it too”.
“It’s weird, isn’t it? Being 16.”
“It isn’t any better than 15 I can tell you that”.
I laughed. I couldn’t tell if he said that to be funny but either way I laughed, and Dante laughed too. Everything felt okay for a while. Everything felt okay when Dante was laughing.
“You won’t do that again though, right?” I interrupted our laughing session.
“No, Ari.. I won’t. But promise me one thing”.
“Yeah?”
“I want your honesty”.
I nodded wordlessly, and that was enough to make Dante smile that innocent smile of his.
~~~
Later that day, Dante had the random idea to take me to the record store.
“Not a bad idea”. I happily obliged.
Record stores always intimidated me. Maybe it’s because most of the workers looked really cool and like they knew about music and I just felt inadequate. Dante was with me though, so it should be fine… right?
Dante was flipping through the records, his fingers ever so gentle. He was very adamant on why vinyl is better than my “shitty cassettes” ever since I met him. Back then I thought he was being a pretentious asshole, now I found it endearing.
I watched him intently. I couldn’t help but wonder how those same fingers delicately handling those records would feel tracing their way around my body. That’s another thing I haven’t told Dante about. I just turned away and tried to forget about those thoughts. Those thoughts that made me have the sudden urge to take a shower. To clean myself.
I went over to where the cassettes were. A huge rack of them stood along with sections in alphabetical order similar to how the vinyls were stored.
“What are you gonna get?” Dante asked. He was awfully close to me. A part of me was scared the cashier watching over us somehow knew.
“Don’t know”.
“You know what I think you should do, Ari?”
“What?”
“Pick out a random tape you’ve never heard of before and listen to it. Like I don’t know.. something that intrigues you”. Dante sounded excited when he said this. Like he loved the idea of me finding new things. I guess I did too because I smiled an awful lot as I started to look through the cassettes. I landed on one in the “R” section that caught my eye.
It had a blue cover.. or maybe more purple.. I don’t know. The picture was of four guys on a roof. One of the guys was rubbing his eye and had scraggly hair. It sure did intrigue me.
“The Replacements, Let It Be.. from 1984” I read the sticker on the side of the tape.
“Let it be.. like the Beatles song?”
“I guess so”
“Are you gonna get it?”
“I guess so,” I repeated. Dante laughed.
~~~
When we got home, I asked Dante if he wanted to listen to the tape with me. He nodded.
We decided to go drive out in the desert that night and listen to it on my car stereo. When we got to our spot, I put it in and took out the lyric sheet inside.
I was expecting the songs to be a lot heavier, but no. There was parts that were, like the song “Gary’s Got a Boner” (the title gave us a good chuckle). It was charming. It made us smile.
We were getting to the end of it when a song called “Sixteen Blue” came on. This time I was concentrating on the lyrics more than ever before.
“Drive yourself up the wall. No one hears, no one calls. It’s a boring state, it’s a useless wait.. I know…”
For some reason, I felt a pit grow in my stomach as I looked up to the night sky with Dante. Letting whoever the man singing was’ words fill my ears (I later learned his name is Paul Westerberg from reading the insert).
“Brag about things you don’t understand. A girl and a woman, a boy and a man. Everything’s sexually vague. Now you wonder to yourself if you might be gay.”
We both looked at each other when he sang this. Like we both realised how much this song reflected our own situation. Even more so when the chorus came.
“Your age is the hardest age.. everything drags and drags. One day baby.. maybe help you through. Sixteen blue.”
It was so strange how the things I wrote about pretty much reflected the song exactly. Almost like I wished this song into the universe. Except this song was made 4 years previous.
“Trying to figure out, they wonder what next you'll pull. You don't understand anything sexual.. I don't understand. Tell my friends I'm doing fine”.
By this point, Dante and I were laying on the roof of the truck. Well Dante was sitting, swinging his feet to the music. Everything made sense at that moment. It might sound cheesy but.. that song made me feel less alone.
The next few weeks I spent listening to that cassette almost every day. I decided to do some research on this mystery band at the library. I read every possible magazine interview, review, anything I could get my hands on. That day I understood what people meant when they said music is their therapy. Even if everything still drags and drags, I at least know, according to Paul Westerberg, it gets better.
I also noticed kissing Dante after that felt a lot sweeter. The sweetness was in knowing that we weren’t fighting this battle alone. And loving each other meant understanding our own struggles. I may have not discovered the mystery of Dante Quintana quite yet, but I have discovered the mystery of empathy.