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A pigeon lies on the sidewalk, still and empty-eyed. Beautiful rainbow coloured wings spread. It must have hit a wall headfirst and then dropped from the sky. Dead on impact.
Tommy crouches to take a closer look, but his mother calls his name, her voice trembling.
“Don’t touch it, it might have been sick. Let’s go home,” she says, holding Tommy's hand too tightly as she pulls him away from the bird.
“Where does the pigeon go?” Tommy asks.
His mother glances down at him, frowning. “What?”
“Where does it go? The pigeon? Now that it’s dead? Does it go to paradise?”
“... Of course.”
Says his mother. His mother, always silent and serious. His mother, looking at the pictures of airplanes he shows her and listening to his excited rambling, but seeing and hearing nothing, her gaze wandering off into the distance, her smile as brittle and fragile as a rose’s petals in early autumn.
Tommy can’t find her where she goes. She leaves for good in a dark winter night. And maybe, it really was an accident. Maybe she did lose control of her car, maybe she didn’t see the edge of the cliff until it was too late. Maybe.
Tommy will never know for sure.
He only knows that the house is even quieter now until his father returns from work and finds a reason to yell.
“You see what happens, boy?” He says, one day, sullenly staring at the half-empty bottle in his hand. “People make promises, and then they leave.”
They leave. Friends, neighbours, and pets, and relatives.
But Tommy’s father stays. It’s Tommy who walks out wordlessly in the middle of the night, not looking back once. For a long time, he’s always the one who leaves. But he only makes promises twice, and then never again.
“You will be okay,” Tommy promises Mark in a desert, while he’s on his knees in the sand, pressing on a wound that bleeds too fast, blinking through the thick smoke rising up from the broken helicopter. He ignores the blood dripping into his eye. Ignores the ache in his shoulder. All that matters is - “You will be okay. You will go home. You will see your family again. Just … Don’t close your eyes. Keep looking at me.”
Mark played the guitar. Tommy loved to listen. Under a sky filled with stars and slow music, this place almost seemed beautiful. But it’s not paradise.
Mark will never play his guitar again. It is sent to his family.
And Tommy leaves.
“Tell me the truth,” Abby says, after they fought because she claims they’re barely talking anymore, and she doesn’t believe it’s because of his draining job. She wants to know what's wrong. Wants to know why he feels so distant. She's worried. And she wants to know if she can do something. To help.
She can’t.
“I will,” Tommy promises, taking her hand and kissing the back of it. Gently. “I will always be honest with you.”
He isn’t.
Not that night. Not
the next. Not for the next few months. Not until their relationship hits a wall and drops to the ground like the helicopter in the desert. Or … Like the pigeon many years ago.
The worst is that Abby doesn't want to hate him, no matter what he says. She just looks at him with this too-calm disappointment in her eyes he can't look at, and tells him she really thought that they were close enough to tell each other the truth before it could lead to this kind of pain.
Tommy leaves. He doesn’t make any promises anymore.
Everything good comes to an end. And people leave.
Tommy gets used to the ache in his heart that creates a new hollow space for another memory.
A boy, weak from blood loss but still awake enough to smile and tell Tommy that he loves helicopters. Tommy tells him he can be a pilot once he grows up. The boy dies minutes into the flight.
A man, good with smiles and words, good with making promises, good with telling Tommy what he wants and doesn’t want. He makes it easy to follow rules and scripts, but when Tommy doesn’t, when he reveals that he’s not as confident as he may seem, the man backs away. It’s nothing personal, of course. It’s just preferences. Tommy looks … Well. He doesn’t look like someone who would need to be coddled. The man says. And leaves.
Tommy’s old rescue cat, closing her tired eyes on the vet’s table and sighing softly, while he’s running his fingers through her coarse hair for the last time. And leaves.
It’s probably too late to meet someone like Evan. Someone who stays. Someone who doesn’t give up.
Evan stays.
He watches Tommy leave.
And still. Still, he kisses Tommy between the bar and the house as if he needs Tommy’s lips like he needs air.
“Stay,” Evan says, voice quiet and soft in the fading darkness of almost-dawn, body half-lifted from the mattress on the ground. Tommy does.
“Stay,” Evan says, clinging to Bobby’s cap, his eyes red from crying and body leaner from not eating. Tommy does.
Evan needs. And Tommy stays to give him what he needs. He holds Evan in bed, feeling him shake. He makes breakfast, urging Evan to eat. He shares funny and nice memories of Bobby with Evan to chase away the sharp sting of sorrow. He stays. Ready to leave.
It’s been too long. His heart flutters, startled. Scared of the hope that managed to seep into the aching spaces in his heart.
“Stay,” Evan says.
“I don’t know how to do this,” Tommy admits.
Evan is silent for a minute. Then, he says, “I don’t think anyone knows how to do it. Maybe you just have to do what feels right.”
Tommy thinks that this moment feels pretty right. Sitting on the beach together, shoulders touching and just watching the waves, listening to their even rhythm. So he stays. And then he stays some more. Until he doesn’t think about leaving anymore.
Maybe sometimes, he wonders, birds that drop, grow their wings back, and learn to fly again.