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Tia Pepa called her brother. Eddie called the funeral home. Pepa called the lawyer who held her mother’s will. Eddie called Abuela’s priest. In between, they paused to pray, finding God in the press of hand between hand between hand.
Eddie wasn’t so sure about an almighty in the sky, but he could feel God, consciously, for the first time in his life. A presence. A love in the pocket between two aching hearts. If he trained his mind towards it, he could almost feel the warm press of Abuela’s palm against his chest.
They spend the whole morning making calls. Death is busy for the living.
“Eddito,” his Tia said softly after a while. “Have you told your Buck? He would want to know.”
He hadn’t. He could’ve called him, asked him to keep an eye on Chris. Asked him to keep an eye on Eddie. But he hadn’t. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt the phantom sensation of rust beneath his nails. Chris was old enough to occupy himself, monitor himself, seek help when he was drowning. That’s what Eddie told himself. Better for Chris to distract himself with video games and glowing screens.
“Call him,” Pepa urged.
Eddie nodded. He stood from the table, legs aching from stillness. They’d both made all their calls from right next to each other, but this one felt different.
“Hey, Eds! What’s up?”
“I—” Eddie clapped a hand over his face, swallowed down a tidal wave. “Um. Abuela. She-she passed in her sleep last night.”
For a moment there was silence, before, “Oh, Eddie.”
And Eddie’s crying. He tried to keep his sobs quiet, tried not to let them be heard.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry,” Buck said over and over again. Eddie found it strangely soothing. “Does Chris know?”
“Yeah,” Eddie choked out past riptides. “He was there when I found out.”
“Okay. I’m coming over. Stay put.”
He ached and ached and ached. “I’m not at home. I’m at Abuela’s.”
“No worries. See you soon.”
“Buck. You don’t have t—”
“See you soon.”
Eddie had always tried to do everything he was supposed to do, put his faith into everything he was supposed to, even as he resented a god felt only in the lack-of.
As a kid, he’d always hoped that one day it would just click, that he’d get it, have the come-to-Jesus moment. The people in the pews every Sunday felt something. God was real to them. Surely surely. Surely they weren’t lying to themselves. One day he’d stand in front of his peers and bear his testimony: the boy who was blind but now can see. The boy who was dead but is now alive through Christ who lives in him. He’d always hoped, praying to the empty space. Always trying to do the right thing.
He'd stepped up at his father’s directive, been the man of the house, patching scraped knees and holes in walls, watching his sisters grow, father by proxy. He’d found a girl to love, tried to hold her close. Married her when he got her pregnant. Provided for her, even as he felt inadequate. He’d never been good enough for her – he’d known that – so he took a page from his father’s book and loved from a distance. Became a lack.
He'd tried so hard to do right, to be right, scrabbling at the dirt, trying to hold on.
He’d tried, maybe, to tell himself who he was; when he’d hot-wire his mom’s car just to ride around town with a boy, no licence between them. He couldn’t remember the boy’s face, but he’d been beautiful. He’d made Eddie laugh.
Maybe that had been a confession of sorts, unspoken words hanging in the cab of a car instead of a dusty booth. It didn’t matter if he confessed. God wasn’t there to hear his screams that he was sick, that he was wrong, as he’d stuffed himself into a cell formed by the religion of his parents, tying himself to the bed, watching as each concerned look and pointed comment jammed the door more tightly shut.
He’d been a dead boy walking for a long time.
“Eddie,” Buck gasped, as he stepped through the door. Eddie wanted to fall into him, be surrounded by him. He held himself upright.
“I’m okay, Buck.”
“No, you’re not,” Buck said, hand of compassion reaching to squeeze Eddie’s shoulder. “And that’s okay. You’re not alone this time.”
Eddie nodded stiffly. “Thank you for coming,” he said, as though he were already at the wake.
Pepa stepped through the doorway. “Evancito.” Buck folded her into a hug, rocking her back and forth. Eddie ached. He rattled his chains and ached. A tear fell down his cheek and he let it.
Buck let Pepa pull away first. He was always like that, so generous with his love. Eddie regretted every time he’d called Buck selfish. His selfishness only ever spoke to his need for love reciprocated. Pepa patted Buck’s cheek, eyes shining like the world from a distance.
“Thank you for coming.” The way she said thank you sounded so much more earnest than Eddie could manage. Like a person who knew how to be. “You are so good to my boys.” She patted his face once more, pulling back. “I’ll go put on some tea.”
“How’s Chris?” Buck asked, moving closer to Eddie, but not too close, like he could sense the mildewed walls of Eddie’s cell. His face was so open, so full of honest concern. Eddie wanted to hide from it. Instead, he nodded, pressed a hand to his heart.
“He says he saw her last night. She spoke to him in his room.”
Buck’s brow furrowed. “Oh. And you—”
“I believe him.”
“Okay.” They could hear the clatter of cups from the kitchen, the tink of teaspoons in the sugar dish, the vacuum-seal sound of the fridge door. “Can I see him?”
Eddie led him to the room Chris had set up camp with his Switch. When Chris turned his face, it was like the sun being poured out on them.
“Buck!” he said, more subdued than normal. Mournful.
Buck got down low, as he always did, wrapped his arms around Chris and made sure not to be the first to let go. Eddie felt the embrace as a phantom wrapped warmly around him.
His jaw felt stiff, spasming, the taste of copper on his tongue, dusty cathedral air filling his nose. He ached.
Eddie had dreams, from time to time, that recalled the night when the heavens cracked open to strike Buck from the sky. Eddie could picture it so clearly - like the rebounding cracks of electricity that had thrown him from the truck had seared it into his memory - Buck hanging from the sky, arms reaching out like an angel descending, like a man on a cross dying for his sins.
Eddie would divest himself of all earthly possessions, would kneel in the dirt and beg day and night, if it meant three minutes and seventeen seconds was the closest Buck ever got to death.
Eddie was no acolyte and Buck was no martyr. But there was something to him, a light he carried in his warm hands, in his bleeding heart, like if Eddie cracked him open, he would be blinded by it. Eddie had felt the lack of it as he straddled the gurney, pumping life back into him.
Do better, he’d screamed. He would roll the stone away himself if it came to it.
Numbness had created a home in every part of his body, chased away only by the heat of a tea cup clutched too tightly, and the press of Buck’s knee against his.
They had been sitting quietly, Buck oh so patient. Eddie had seen from the corner of his eye, Buck’s mouth twitch as though about to speak before stuffing it down. Absently, he’d counted each instance. He knew Buck struggled with inaction — could feel the trapped energy vibrating through him — and appreciated him all the more for it. He would never be able to put that to words.
He broke, finally. Eddie felt his relief.
“What can I do?”
There was an ugly, snappish voice in Eddie’s head, the one that came out when he was at his lowest. It’s not about you or your constant need to feel important. He’d always been good at hurting the people he loved with his words. He was sure there was something to that a therapist would sink their teeth into. At least he didn’t have to be the one being hurt.
He didn’t let that voice out this time. Buck wanted to help, honestly and genuinely, because he loved Chris and Eddie, and Eddie knew that deep down.
Instead, he shrugged. “Nothing, I guess.”
“Nothing?”
Eddie couldn’t bear to turn his face to look at the bleeding heart Buck held in extended hand, so he spoke to the wall of his Abuela’s living room, almost a whisper, pressing his knee harder against Buck’s. “Just this is enough.” He cleared his throat pulling his knee back into his own space. Buck’s followed. “Pepa and I have done as much as we can at this point to organise logistics. Pepa needs to call more family members. I should call my sisters, even if my folks have already told them.”
Buck checked his watch. “Have you had lunch?”
Eddie shook his head. He hadn’t even thought about it.
“I’ll cook something. I’m sure Chris and Pepa are hungry by now, too.”
The numbness under his sternum crackled and shivered. Phone in hand, he followed Buck into the kitchen.
“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been two weeks since my last confession.” He avoided it when he could, 16 and resentful. The smell of incense and camphor made him nauseous. “I…borrowed…my mom’s car without asking.”
I looked into the face of a boy and saw something closer to God than I’ve ever felt in here.
“What else, child?”
“I was selfish,” he offered. “I wouldn’t share my favourite book with my little sister because I knew she would ruin it.” I knew she would see the notes left in the margin by—
“I was dishonest.” I wanted to hold his face in my hands and— “And I argued with my father.” He caught me sneaking back into the house.
The priest made a low humming sound. Eddie felt no god, but he picked up a brick and added it to the already towering wall forming around him, deciding on his own penance before the priest could get a word in.
Buck made soup, somehow knowing that the food would need to fit between the small gaps left in his stomach by stones of grief. He made garlic bread too, but Eddie didn’t take any. Chris did.
They sat around the table, all four of them. When they joined hands for grace, heads tipped down, he felt their shared sadness, but the love too.
What is love, if not a sign of God’s presence?
For the first time, the amen that left his lips felt true. Lifting his face, he met Buck’s eyes across the table. With a start, he realised that this was the first time all day he’d looked Buck full in the face. He couldn’t look away.
Pepa held on to Buck’s hand and squeezed it. “Thank you for making this wonderful food, mi niño.”
Their gaze broke, as Buck turned his head to smile sadly at Pepa. “It was the least I could do, Tia.”
“Oh, you are too modest. In times like these, having someone around to take care of you is so important, isn’t it Eddito? I swear I could’ve gone all day without even thinking to eat. You are such a treasure to this family.”
Buck ducked his head, and squeezed her hand back. “Thank you.”
“Let me clear the dishes,” Eddie said when they finished eating. Chris had already returned to his Switch and Eddie simply didn’t care about how much screen time he was getting today.
“No, Eddie. I—”
“Please.” He needed to do something productive.
“Buck, would you help me grab things down from the top of Mamá’s closet?” Pepa interrupted.
"Of course,” Buck said, with one last lingering look at Eddie.
His conversations with his sisters had been hard. Sophia had known already. She was devastated — of course she was — but unshakeable nonetheless. She had always been this way: stubborn, composed. Eddie admired it and was frustrated by it in equal measure, but as a child he had always relied on her imperturbability to prop up his own confidence.
“What can I do to help?” she’d asked.
“Would - um - would you be willing to take care of mum and dad on the day of the funeral?” Sophia had always been their favourite, so practical and seemingly unemotional. Ambitious. Everything they’d wanted from their son that he’d failed to give them.
“Okay.”
Eddie breathed out. “Thank you. We’ve set the date a week from today.”
“We’ll be there.”
Eddie put the left over soup in a container in the refrigerator. He’d make sure Pepa took it home with her. She wouldn’t have Buck hovering over her making sure she was eating decent meals.
Adriana hadn’t known. She had a habit of screening calls from their parents. Eddie couldn’t blame her. Texts of please call us when you can bore no weight to her.
“What?” He could hear the tears gathering at the back of her throat.
“I’m sorry, Adri.”
“Fuck.”
Eddie appreciated that about Adriana. Never afraid to say what she meant.
She cried and Eddie cried with her, Buck’s watchful gaze flicking over his shoulder as he stirred the soup pot.
They arranged for Adriana to stay with them while everyone visited California for the funeral.
Perhaps it would’ve made sense to hold the funeral in Texas, but Abuela had wanted to be buried by the church she’d been attending for the last few decades. Pepa had brooked no arguments when Helena had tried to argue the relative merits of a funeral in Texas. Eddie was quietly grateful. Texas was a wound, still weeping.
Eddie scrubbed harder at a piece of onion that had stuck to the lip of the pot and cooked on as the soup had simmered.
He stacked the dishes to dry.
Eddie’s friends were kinda shit, but at least he had friends. He hated their macho bullshit - it made him recoil into himself, but that was just how teenage boys acted. He tried to just get along.
But then he’d met her on the lake’s summer shore. Shannon. She’d been dazzling. Magnetic. They talked for hours on that first day and it made him realise he’d never truly had a friend. There was something holy to it.
When school returned on wings of Fall, they would sequester themselves under the bleachers. Talking or reading or just staring at the cracks of sky through the metal seats above. She would rest her chin on his shoulder so that their eyes were seeing the same thing at the same time.
People said things about it of course. Eddie and Shannon kissing in a tree.
He didn’t care much what they said. He had a real and true friend. Inside jokes and passed notes and homework on their bedroom floors.
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
She kissed him there on her bedroom floor. He kissed her back, because that’s what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to want her.
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.
The baby came first.
Pepa’s quiet voice wound its way down the hallway as Eddie drew closer. “You are a good man, Evancito. I am so glad that my nephew has you.”
“I’m glad to have him,” Buck said. “I was a mess when he was away.”
“You love him,” Pepa said. Statement, not question.
“He’s my best friend.”
Pepa tsked. “You love him.”
Buck didn’t say anything. At least nothing loud enough to carry. Eddie tried to picture his face, tried to decipher the meaning in the silence.
“Have patience,” Pepa said lowly. “He will find his way to you. I am sure of it.”
What does that mean? he wanted to scream. The door of his cell creaked dangerously, his mouth tasted metallic again. She spoke of him like he was lost in the wilderness. He couldn’t deny that his path had been winding, a drunken wayfinder under a cloudy sky, but he wasn’t lost. Was he? Buck was his best friend. Buck was right in front of him. There was no way to be found.
Eddie went to check on Chris.
Eddie did everything he was supposed to, but this was his rebellion. His ears still ringing with the dressing down his father had delivered him, he took the car out again.
The boy’s name had been Matthew, Eddie could remember now. For so long, he’d tried not to remember.
They rode around town together, laughing, singing along to the radio, hands out the window to catch the wind.
He drove them into an empty patch of desert, where the lights weren’t blinding, and their parents’ voices didn’t reach. They looked into the sky. They didn’t know any constellations so they discovered their own at the ends of their pointed fingers.
Between them on the bench seat, their hands drew closer and closer without acknowledgement, eyes fixed heaven-ward, until their pinkies touch. A single spot of warmth. A black hole, all the matter in the galaxy being sucked to a single point.
They never said anything to each other about it.
Buck drove home behind them. When he let himself dwell in the fact of Buck’s departure from their home, Eddie could almost hear the creak of chains pulling against a metal frame. It was better, of course, for Buck to have his own space, his own life. It was for the best, even if it felt like yet another loss.
For all the people he’d lost — his unit, his wife, his captain, his abuela — he didn’t think he could survive the loss of Buck. He could feel them - almost. Their presence. Like the veil was thinning. The crackle of the radio in his ear, a chin on his shoulder, a warm voice of reason, a hand pressed to his heart. He could swear they were all screaming at him. But maybe that was the wind whistling through their rolled-down windows.
Buck had made them dinner and parcelled the leftovers into Pepa’s car. It was well after dark now, and Chris was falling asleep in the passenger seat.
In some ways, Eddie longed for the days when Chris would pretend the stilling of the car in the driveway hadn’t woken him up, and he’d let his father carry him inside and tuck him into bed. Even so, he wouldn’t turn back the clock. He respected the hell out of his kid and the young man he was growing into; proud and stubborn and strong and sweet. Somehow he’d survived every bad thing.
Chris groaned when they pulled into the driveway, rubbing at his eyes. Buck pulled in behind them.
“Don’t forget to brush your teeth before you crash,” Eddie said as they climbed out of the car. He waited patiently as Chris gathered his crutches. He locked the car and handed Chris his keys.
“I know.”
“I’m just gonna say goodnight to Buck and I’ll come check on you.”
"He’s not staying?”
“I can’t ask him to do that.” Eddie looked to Buck’s car. He was on the phone to someone.
Chris looked too. “I don’t think you need to.”
He recognised the voice on the line as he stepped up towards the jeep. Pepa. “You’re so sweet to check on me. I promise I’m home safe.”
“Call me if you need anything.”
“I will.”
Buck climbed out of his car, looking a little sheepish.
“You called my tia to make sure she made it home safe?”
“Yeah?”
Eddie wrapped him in a hug. He let his chin find its home between Buck’s shoulder and his neck. Buck didn’t let go until Eddie did.
“Thank you for today, Buck. I—Thank you.” The light from street lamps reached gently down to rest its fingers in his curls. Eddie’s fingers itched.
“Of course.” He considered Eddie for a moment, eyes like a search light. “Can I make you a tea?”
“You don’t have to.”
“I want to.”
“Okay.”
The warmth of the tea suffusing his whole body, Eddie felt a kind of peace, sitting beside Buck on the couch.
Buck got up eventually, retrieving blankets from the cupboard so he could make up the couch. Eddie was brave for once, wrapped in the love of Pepa, Chris. Buck. He asked for what he wanted this time.
“Don’t make up the couch,” he said, despite how his voice stretched taut, close to breaking, ringing with the sound of metal straining against metal. “Stay with me? Please? I don’t wanna be alone tonight.”
Buck paused, stack of blankets sandwiched between his broad hands. “Oh,” he breathed. “Of course. Anything, man.”
They climbed into bed, Eddie in his pyjamas, Buck stripped down to his boxer briefs. Staring at the ceiling together, Eddie counted their breaths, feeling the shift as they fell into step.
They’d both called this room their own at one time. It felt more like home to Eddie now that it had been Buck’s too.
The crackle of the radio in his ear, a chin on his shoulder, a warm voice of reason, a hand pressed to his heart.
He felt them all. He felt love for them, even with nowhere to put it. Maybe that was God. A god. Maybe that was holy.
He turned his face to watch Buck’s in profile: the slope of his nose, the curve of his cheeks, the fullness of his mouth. Buck turned his face to look at Eddie and smiled, something small and true. It felt like a door, old and creaking with the weight of a god he’d never known, being ripped off its hinges. It felt like a hand reaching in to rid him of rusted chains.
Eddie trembled, clutching at the sheets to try to still his hands.
“Hey,” Buck said, reaching out to cover Eddie’s hands with his, to draw him closer, to wrap himself around Eddie like Eddie had been aching for and not allowing himself. “Hey. It’s okay. I’ve got you.”
Buck held him as he cried.
The crackle of the radio in his ear, a chin on his shoulder, a warm voice of reason, a hand pressed to his heart. Arms holding him fast.
They fall asleep tangled together.
Morning comes creeping through their window, generous sun splaying itself across the bed, resting itself in the peaks and valleys of Buck’s body.
They lay like nesting dolls, Eddie’s knees tucked in behind Buck’s, heads resting on the same pillow. A kind of intimacy Eddie had never truly known. Tentative fingers reached out to trace the precious curve of Buck’s spine, counting the vertebrae like a rosary, whispering prayers.
This was not a thing friends did. He didn’t stop, emboldened by the breeze on his face - a cracked open cell.
“Morning,” Buck said, all gravel and heavy with sleep.
“Morning.” He continued counting until Buck turned over to look at him, bringing with him the sun.
“How did you sleep?”
“Better than I have in a long time.” He was letting himself this time.
“Good.”
Eddie reached out to brush a curl off Buck’s forehead. Because he wanted to. “Stay here.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Eddie.”
Eddie let the hand drop to Buck’s cheek, to hold his face like something dear. In the crinkle between Buck’s eyebrows, the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips, the halo of frizz, he could see God. “Stay here. With me. With us. Don’t unpack your boxes.”
Turning his face, Buck pressed a kiss, delicate and deliberate, to the palm of Eddie’s hand and smiled. It was an arm outstretched to pull him out, to pull him into the light, back from the dead.