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The doorbell rings at 6 pm on the dot.
Chris does a double take from his phone to the door and back again. If the time weren’t staring him in the face, he wouldn’t believe it. He might’ve slumped onto the couch to wait five minutes ago, but he was sure he’d be doing that for another ten, at least. He’d have put money on it.
Apparently, he’d have lost.
“You’re early,” Chris remarks as he opens the front door.
Josh stands on the porch, a wine bottle in his hand and a grin on his face. The grin takes a slight dip at Chris’s greeting. “I’m on time.”
“Which for you is early. And did you seriously just ring my doorbell?”
“Can’t you just say hello?”
“Hello,” Chris amends. “Did you seriously just ring my doorbell?”
“Hello,” Josh replies. “I’ve rung your doorbell loads of times.”
“In elementary school, maybe.”
“Yeah, well, if you didn’t want me to start letting myself in, you shouldn’t have told me you have a spare key lying around. And if you didn’t like me letting myself in, then you definitely shouldn’t have turned it into a fun little game.”
“If it’s so fun, then why aren’t you playing it?” Chris wonders.
It’s as much a challenge as it is a question, and Josh wants to rise to it. Chris can see the gleam in his green eyes, the subtle sharpening of his smile as he coos, “Aww, are you disappointed?”
Chris’s wistful sigh is only half feigned. “I mean, I did find a pretty good hiding spot…”
Josh’s gaze darts across the darkened lawn. After careful consideration of his options, he says, “It’s not buried under the yoga gnome, is it?”
“It’s not amateur hour, is it?” Chris scoffs. He makes a mental note to move the key later. All that digging for nothing.
Luckily for him, Josh decides their little game isn’t as fun when the door’s already open. “Next time,” he promises. His attention shifts from the yard to the house. “Are you gonna let me in or what?”
“I dunno,” Chris muses, leaning against the doorframe. “I was thinking we could just stand here and ask each other questions all night.”
“Tempting, but I’ll pass.” Josh pushes into Chris’s house, then pushes the bottle of wine into Chris’s hands. “Take this.”
As Josh works his shoes off, Chris examines the bottle. For all the alcohol he’s imbibed—most of it in Josh’s presence—he doesn’t know anything about brands or labels. He just takes what he’s offered, and he doesn’t ask too many questions.
This stuff sure looks fancy, though. Of course, Josh could’ve nabbed it from his parents’ vast wine cellar, another locked door he’s learned to slip past. Or his stubborn independent streak could’ve sent him to the store on his own. As he’s said to Chris on many an occasion: Why have a fake ID if you don’t use it?
“How much did this cost?” Chris ventures to ask.
“Don’t-worry-about-it dollars,” Josh replies.
Chris frowns. “That’s a confusing amount.”
Josh straightens, and Chris distracts himself from the probably-out-of-his-price-range wine by giving his boyfriend an overdue once-over. Josh’s curls have been tamed somewhat, and his jeans have not a rip or fray. He’s paired them with a gray plaid, unbuttoned to show off just how very plain his white T-shirt is.
By anyone else’s standards, it’s a perfectly average outfit. By Josh’s standards…
“You look good, bro,” Chris says. “I’m gonna be honest, though: I was fully expecting the asbestos shirt.”
“Truth for truth: I seriously thought about it.”
Even if Chris expected a plain T-shirt, he wouldn’t have expected this one. White is far afield from Josh’s usual color scheme, even further than the forest green he so recently sported. “I don’t mean to be dramatic, but like…where did you even find that?”
“Back of my closet,” Josh says without a hint of sheepishness. “Along with my cardboard cutout of Freddy Krueger, my teeth jar, and my old— Good evening, Ms. Hartley!”
Chris turns to find his mom standing at the top of the short set of stairs that leads up from the front door. He didn’t hear her come down the hall, which means he’s either deeply unobservant or she was trying to creep past without disrupting them. If it was the latter, she barely took a step into view before Josh caught her.
“Good evening, Josh,” Chris’s mom says with no small amount of mirth.
It sails past Josh, who snatches the wine from Chris with a hissed, “Gimme that.” He bounds up the steps and presents the bottle to Chris’s mom as though he’s bestowing one of the crown jewels. “For you.”
She accepts the gift with a practiced smile, giving nothing away, not even when she glances at the label. She’s grown accustomed to Washington extravagance, even if she isn’t entirely comfortable with it. “This is very thoughtful, Josh. Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” Josh replies. “Thank you for inviting me.”
Chris is accustomed to Washington extravagance too, but he definitely isn’t accustomed to such manners. He’s never heard Josh talk like this. He didn’t know Josh was capable of talking like this. An Invasion of the Body Snatchers joke comes to mind, but Chris tucks it away for later, tuning back into the conversation as his mom says, “I hope you don’t mind leftovers?”
She gestures to the kitchen. The plentiful remains of yesterday’s Thanksgiving dinner rest on the counter, warm and waiting. Steam wafts into the air, carrying with it a delicious aroma that makes Chris’s stomach rumble eagerly.
“Not at all,” Josh assures her. From the hall, a door creaks open, and he adds a smooth, if preemptive, “Good evening, Mr. O’Brien.”
Chris’s dad may have been a last-minute addition to the short list of dinner guests, but Chris was determined not to spring another surprise on his boyfriend. He fired off a text this morning, and Josh responded with his typically inscrutable ok, leaving Chris with no sense of tone or feeling. If Josh cared any which way about the presence of Chris’s dad, he wasn’t letting it show.
The man in question emerges from the hall. He strikes a formidable figure, standing just over six feet with broad shoulders to match. Before he moved to Nevada—before the divorce—most of Chris’s childhood friends found him intimidating, even frightening. His taciturn manner didn’t help things.
None of it deterred Josh, who once informed him that he’d be a great Michael Myers, and had he ever considered volunteering at a haunted house? They’d probably love to have him.
“Hey, Josh,” Chris’s dad says, then quirks a brow at Chris. It’s an expression that Chris is, for once, able to read loud and clear. This the same kid?
Chris takes the opportunity to head up the stairs himself. “Be nice,” he whispers as he brushes past.
His dad blows their cover in a second flat, filling the air with deep laughter. “Did I say a damn thing?”
***
It occurs to Chris, as he takes his first bite of stuffing, just how calm he is. Calm is a state he rarely finds himself in, and he assumed an official Dinner With the Parents featuring his first-ever partner would be one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of his life.
It’s been some time since his dad was in the picture with any sort of regularity, but the four of them have gathered around this table on many occasions. This one feels no different. It feels, if anything, comfortingly familiar.
Chris is beginning to wonder if the same can’t be said for Josh, who doesn’t know how to respond to a simple offer of wine. He shifts in his seat like he’s been called on in class and isn’t sure of the right answer.
“Is this a trick question?”
Chris’s mom shakes her head. As though she can sense her ex-husband running the numbers to calculate Josh’s age, she makes a firm declaration: “My house, my rules, and I say a supervised glass of wine at the dinner table is just fine.”
“Well, in that case, sure,” Josh agrees. Chris’s mom pours him about half of what he would’ve poured for himself, but he accepts it with another polite, “Thank you.”
She turns to Chris next, and he shrugs a shoulder. “Why not?”
It isn’t the first time his mom has offered him wine at a family function, but it’s the first time he’s accepted. Not out of any desire to pretend he abstains from alcohol—his mom’s not clueless—but because he knows she buys the cheap stuff.
Cheap beer, Chris can stomach. Cheap wine, he’s not so sure.
All signs point to this wine being far from cheap, though. Which means it must be good, right?
Wrong. It smells alright, but it tastes like sour grape juice. The familiar burn of alcohol only makes things worse, lowering it from sour grape juice to sour grape juice someone left in the hot sun.
“Oh, that’s awful,” Chris says, his face pinching. “No offense, bro.”
Josh looks briefly disappointed—until Chris leans over and dumps the remainder of his wine into Josh’s glass.
“None taken,” Josh chirps. Clutching the stem like a lifeline, he tips his glass back.
And back.
And back.
Chris clears his throat, and Josh freezes like a dog caught with something in his mouth. Quickly—instinctively—he dips his head forward and spits some of the wine back into the glass. Chris has to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing.
Josh sets his glass deliberately aside and channels his energy into conversation instead. He asks about Mr. O’Brien’s woodworking projects and Ms. Hartley’s book club. In exchange, he answers questions about school and family and hobbies mostly honestly. An onlooker would think Josh at ease, in control. But Chris is learning to see through the cracks in the mask, and he notices things his parents don’t: that Josh’s grin is a touch too stiff, his grip on his fork a bit too tight, his words flowing faster than usual.
Chris never been in this position before, at ease while Josh roils with nerves. As Chris reaches for a bread roll, he lays his free hand on Josh’s thigh, a small token of reassurance. Relax. Everything’s fine. You’re doing fine.
Josh’s muscles tense. His leg twitches up like a bull trying to shake its rider, and Chris retracts his hand. Concerned, he tries to catch Josh’s eye, but Josh looks determinedly ahead. Nothing crosses his face; the only indication that anything happened is a slight hitch in his breath, masked with a feigned cough and another unusually polite, “Excuse me.”
Chris spends the rest of the meal with one eye on his plate and one on Josh, waiting for him to settle. If Chris can’t comfort him directly—which is fair enough; Chris’s parents are in close proximity, even if they can’t see through the table—then he has no choice but to let the evening reveal itself to be unthreatening.
As plates are cleaned and conversation ebbs, Josh’s wine—hardly touched after the initial gulp—remains the only thing unfinished. Sensing the clock ticking down to zero, Josh reaches for the glass. His hand bumps against it, unsettles it, and in the stretched-out second that follows, Chris watches a storm of emotions kick up on Josh’s face. Guilt and dread and a terrible certainty, like the glass of wine was doomed to fall. Like it was an inevitability.
Josh snatches the glass before a single drop is spilled, and time catches up to itself, a rubber band snapping back. His expression floods with surprise and relief and a hint of wonder, and for the first time since he sat down at the table, he meets Chris’s gaze.
Chris wheezes a laugh. Josh releases a trapped breath, and with it, two words: “Got it.”
***
“Okay, I’ve held you boys captive long enough. Go,” Chris’s mom implores. “Be free. I will be eating pie at”—she glances at the oven clock—“8:30. You can join me. You can not join me. But that’s what I’ll be doing, and that’s when I’ll be doing it. Sound good?”
“8:30,” Chris repeats, already setting an alarm on his watch.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” Josh agrees, even though he can’t seem to leave the table fast enough. He gathers everyone’s plates into a neat stack and, ignoring the protests of Chris’s parents, carries them to the sink. “I think I’m gonna get some air first, if that’s alright.”
Sensing Josh’s urgency, Chris stands. “Me too. Thanks for the food, Mom.”
“Sure thing, hon.”
His dad crosses his arms over his chest, unsubtle as ever.
“And thanks for buying the bread, Dad,” Chris adds with a roll of his eyes.
Of course, his dad can’t let it go there. He starts talking about what a shitshow the store was, how he had to fight tooth and nail for that loaf of bread. In the midst of his lament, the screen door snaps shut, and Chris tries not to flinch.
“Sorry, I meant thanks for your bravery and service,” he amends, too quick for the snark to really land. “We’ll be back in a bit.”
With that, he hastens out the front door.
This deep into November, the sun is a fleeting visitor. It’s been hours since it left them to the company of the moon, and Chris chases away the evening darkness with a quick flick of the porch light. In its warm glow stands Josh, shoulders slumped like he’s just unburdened himself of a heavy weight, and out of his pocket come two items: a crumpled pack of cigarettes and a lighter.
“Whoa, is that what I think it is?” asks Chris.
“A cigarette?” Josh says as he shakes one out of the pack.
“Very funny.”
Chris waits patiently as Josh lights up. He doesn’t like this ritual, and he doesn’t respect it, but he stays quiet and still until Josh motions for him to come closer. Hannah does this all the time in the woods surrounding the lodge, beckoning people over to admire whatever insect she’s managed to befriend this time. If Chris didn’t know better, he’d swear she could communicate with the things.
Josh has no such talent, but the lighter resting in the curve of his palm brings as much delight as a fuzzy caterpillar. The base bears some black, but it’s mostly streaks of cartoonish red flame. The kind of design you’d see on the car of someone going through a serious midlife crisis.
“God, you thought you were so fucking cool,” Chris chuckles.
“Yeah, yeah,” Josh mumbles around the cigarette. He exhales a stream of smoke. “I still think I’m cool, actually. I’m just right this time.”
“Even with that back in your possession?”
“It’s ironic now, so yeah.” Josh buries the relic of his early teenage years in his pocket alongside the pack. “Can we go for a walk?”
“Right now?”
“No, next month,” Josh says dryly. “Yeah, right now.”
Chris glances down his darkened street. His horror-trained brain tells him this is how slashers start, but Josh has been brimming with nervous energy since he sat down at the kitchen table, and Chris would much rather Josh take a few laps around the block than chain-smoke half that pack of cigarettes.
“Alright,” Chris agrees. He pops his head back into the house to let his parents know about the change of plans, and after Josh assures them both that he won’t let Chris get murdered on his watch, they begin their after-dinner tour of the neighborhood.
Like many other things in their lives, Washington family Thanksgivings are far more extravagant than humble Hartley affairs. As they walk, Josh shares a healthy dose of extended family drama, some of which he admits to stirring up himself. Under a streetlight, he shows off his nails, painted autumnal red to match Hannah’s and Beth’s. Then he pulls out his phone and flicks through photos the three of them took in their mandatory fancy attire.
He caps it off with a viewing of an unscripted video where the siblings are clearly trying to take advantage of the dress code to do some kind of mafia skit, but Hannah can’t stop laughing long enough to finish a sentence. Her giggles are infectious, even filtered through a screen. By the end of the video, Chris and Josh are laughing just as hard as her.
After Josh has run out of holiday stories and burned his cigarette down to the filter, they head back to Chris’s house. The porch light is still on, a beacon in the dark. Josh follows it, and Chris follows him. Josh leads them not to the door, but to the bench swing on the front lawn. He collapses into it, boneless.
Chris takes a seat next to him, careful to keep an inch or two of space between them. He pushes off the ground and lets the momentum carry the swing back and forth and back again. A steady rhythm. It’d be soothing, if not for the persistent squeak of the hinges. The sound sets Chris’s teeth on edge.
“I don’t know how my mom reads out here with that,” he remarks when he manages to unclench his jaw. She spends hours out here, devouring book after book. Chris has tried to make use of the swing on a few occasions—most of them at his mother’s urging—but something always drives him away. The heat prickles his skin, or the buzz of a bee triggers his flight instinct, and he’s driven back into the safety of the house.
“Mm,” Josh replies. His classic distracted response, even more noncommittal than this morning’s ok. He drops his head back. The sunshade blocks his view of the night sky, but he hardly seems to notice. His expression is clouded, his gaze faraway. He may as well be in another galaxy entirely.
Chris suffers through more silence—and more squeak-squeak-squeaks—before taking another shot at conversation. “That went well,” he tries.
Josh responds in much the same manner as before, and Chris probes a little deeper. “You don’t think so?” he asks.
“No, I do,” Josh says. A real word at last. Three, even.
“Were you nervous?”
Josh scoffs. “Only up half the night.”
Chris had a feeling. More than a feeling, but the confirmation still pains him. He puts a stop to the swing’s rocking; he seriously can’t think with that noise. “Jeez, dude. I expected some jitters, but I didn’t think it’d be that bad.”
“Just kept thinking about stuff going wrong. Like saying dumb shit, or not knowing what to say, or—”
“Spilling a glass of wine?”
Josh lifts his head to study Chris. “Yeah,” he admits. “Like spilling a glass of wine.”
“Okay, so what if you did?” Chris challenges. “You looked like the world was gonna end in there, but I’ll tell you what would’ve happened: You spill the wine. You apologize—or, y’know, say ‘oops’ or whatever. We clean it up. Maybe toss the tablecloth, but chances are it came from Walmart, so not exactly a family heirloom. And then we move on. It’s an accident, Josh, not an apocalypse.”
Josh’s expression sours at that, the way Chris’s did when he took his first and last sip of the wine in question. Chris doesn’t know what he could’ve said wrong, but it’s obvious his little speech didn’t make Josh feel better. It might’ve even made him feel worse.
“Am I wrong?” Chris asks, a tinge of desperation in his voice.
“Obviously not, dude,” Josh says with a roll of his eyes. “You’re right. That’s exactly what would’ve happened.”
“But…you don’t feel better,” Chris says. A statement, not a question.
“Of course not,” Josh snaps. He hauls himself to his feet, his restless energy kicking back in with a vengeance. He paces back and forth in a tight loop as he talks. “So the dinner goes fine. Good, even. Great, tick that box. But if not the dinner, then what? Then when? When do things stop being good? Because it’s gotta happen sometime. Maybe it’s now. Maybe it’s later. Maybe it’s even way later. But this’ll fall apart eventually. Right?”
Josh comes to an abrupt stop. He looks at Chris like the world itself is on the brink of destruction, and Chris’s words are the only thing that can save it. His eyes beg, plead, and Chris wants more than anything to tell Josh what he needs to hear. The words are right there on his tongue, ready and waiting. Of course not. Everything will be fine. We’ll be fine.
“I don’t know,” Chris says.
The betrayal is swift and brutal. Josh flinches from it, from Chris. Then he does what he always does when he feels threatened: he bites back, quick and sharp.
“Sorry, did I miss a memo? You’re still my boyfriend, aren’t you? I thought you were supposed to make me feel better.”
“I want to. Seriously, Josh, I do. But I’m not gonna lie to you either. I have no idea what’s going to happen. I can’t see the future, and even if I could, there’s probably, like, a million different futures, all totally possible.” In the palm of his left hand, Chris presents one option. “We could break up tomorrow.” In the palm of his right hand, an alternative. “We could stay together for the rest of our lives.” He raises both palms to the sky—to the vast, unknowable expanse above and beyond. “A fuckin’ meteor could hit the Earth and we all go the way of the dinosaurs. Anything could happen.”
Josh crosses his arms. “Well, that last one seems unlikely.”
“Unlikely, sure,” Chris agrees. “But not impossible.”
Josh kicks the dirt, petulant and childlike. “I’m not worried about a meteor, Chris. I’m worried about me.”
“Oh, because you’re the center of the universe?”
“Exactly,” Josh deadpans. He drops back onto the swing. “Let me put it like this: Statistically, we have a thirty percent chance of making it past a year. One year.”
“Says who?”
“I dunno. The Internet.”
“Jesus, Josh, were you Googling?”
“Well, I sure as shit wasn’t sleeping.”
“Oh my God, no wonder you’re freaking out! This is, like, the relationship equivalent of looking up your medical symptoms. Half the Internet says you’re probably fine, and the other half says you’re gonna drop dead in a week. And most of the time—”
“Hey, can I finish?” Josh interjects. “I gathered a lot of statistics at two am last night, and I wanna share them with you. Besides, you’re a nerd. You love numbers. I can’t believe you’re fuckin’ complaining about me giving you numbers.”
Chris swallows the rest of his argument. He won’t refute being a nerd or liking numbers; those are both, for better or worse, true. He just doesn’t care for these particular numbers. But he suspects Josh needs to share them far more than Chris needs to hear them, so he gestures for Josh to continue.
“Thank you,” Josh says. Snide, sarcastic, and admittedly more familiar than the sickly sweet thanks he’s been handing out like candy. “Alright, so we’ve got a thirty percent chance of making it to a year. Say we do. Then we gotta consider the distance thing. We’re not completely long distance, but we’re not not long distance either. So for the two and a half years between our one-year mark and graduation, our chances of survival are forty percent. And even if we make it through all of that—even if we get fucking married—that number only goes up to fifty. Think about that, man. All that time and effort, and it’s a coin flip whether we end up like your parents.”
“Divorced?” Chris sputters. “Josh, we’ve been together less than two months!”
Josh’s head sinks into his hands. “I know,” he moans.
“And—okay, I can’t believe I’m asking you this right now, but—do you even want marriage? Like, in general?”
“I don’t know! I haven’t thought about it!”
“But you’ve thought about our apparently inevitable divorce?”
“Yes.” Josh comes back up for air. “It’s just—there’s so much shit we can’t control, so much shit working against us as it is. Add me to the equation—me, of all fucking people—and it’s like…well, there’s the other fifty percent.”
“You account for a whole fifty percent?” Chris asks. “You alone?”
“What, you don’t agree?”
For once, Chris is happy to contradict his future-maybe-ex-husband. “No. No, I don’t.”
“That’s very sweet, bro, but remember who you’re talking to. Three months ago, we had no problems, and then I made a problem. Spun it out of absolutely fucking nothing and let our friendship rot.”
“We did have a problem, though,” Chris argues. “A pretty big one, actually, which is that we couldn’t talk to each other about anything that really mattered. I’m not saying we’re grade-A communicators now, but at least we’re working on it.”
“I guess,” Josh mumbles.
“And you gotta give me some credit here too, man. Yeah, you started ghosting me, but I let you. If you hadn’t invited me to visit, I probably would’ve let you disappear on me.”
Josh mumbles something else, too quiet for Chris to hear.
“What?” Chris asks.
“I said I only invited you ’cause I got drunk.”
Silence. Then, again: “What?”
“I’d just gotten back from a party,” Josh explains. “I don’t even remember whose. Doesn’t matter. Damien was still out, and I was lonely and miserable and—like I said—drunk. That’s when I asked you to visit.”
Chris reaches back into his memory, to the night Josh broke the crushing silence between them. It’s true that the text came in late, that it may have had a typo or two. But Josh always texted at strange hours, and he was known to send messages without the most thorough editing. Chris didn’t think twice about it, especially in the state he was in. A starving man isn’t going to investigate the ingredients of a meal. He’s just going to eat it.
“By the time I sobered up, you’d already agreed, so I let it lie,” Josh continues. “But if I hadn’t gotten that drunk on that particular night, then…well, it’s like you said. I probably would’ve disappeared on you. It was easy to tell myself I was giving you space, but I think I was trying to disappear on you.”
If, if, if. They’re running in circles, chasing ifs.
“Why?” asks Chris. He’s determined to dig up the roots of Josh’s anxieties, even if they’re stuck here all night. “I mean, people fade out all the time, and I know you had your insecurities. But if you still wanted to be friends—”
“Safe to say I wanted a little more than that, Cochise.”
“My point stands though, dude. If you wanted me around—at all, in any capacity—then why would you try to push me away? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Because it…” Josh’s words run dry. He tries again. “It’s like…”
He falls into a deeper quiet, and Chris gets the swing rocking, back and forth and back again. Squeak-squeak-squeak. It breaks Josh’s concentration, and he laughs.
“Take your time,” Chris says, grinning. “I can wait.”
For a moment, he does just that. But only a moment.
“Can you seriously think with that noise?” he asks.
Josh snorts. “I’ve learned to think with you yakking in my ear, so yeah.” At length, he adds, “Remember how I got my license, like, six months late?”
It’s not what Chris expects him to say. Then again, it so rarely is. Josh is many things, but predictable isn’t one of them.
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Wait, you seriously didn’t think that was weird?”
“No?” Much like Josh’s invitation text, the delay in acquiring his driver’s license didn’t seem unusual. It still doesn’t. “Don’t take this the wrong way, bro, but you’re not the most punctual guy. I figured—”
“Excuse me, I showed up right on time tonight. If I’m being totally honest with you, I showed up eight minutes early. Sat in the car until six on the dot.”
“For real?” Chris asks.
“Yup. Just me ’n Skelly, hangin’ out in the Jeep. He’s really offended he didn’t get an invite, by the way. Like, he gets it, but he’s probably crying behind those tinted windows as we speak.”
“Well, my deepest apologies to the both of you. Let me rephrase: You’re not usually the most punctual guy, so I figured you were just—”
“Being lazy?” Josh suggests.
“Wow. Such offense at ‘always late,’ but you offer ‘being lazy’ yourself.”
“I’ve been known to laze from time to time,” Josh admits.
“For the record,” Chris states, “the rest of that sentence—not that you seem especially interested in hearing it—was ‘prioritizing other things.’”
“Sure it was.”
“And even if that weren’t the case, everyone was begging you to get your license. Stringing them along for a while seemed like a very…Josh thing to do.”
“That’s what I played it off as, but that’s not what it was,” Josh says. “I wanted my license too. I mean, my parents had already given me the Jeep, and I knew they wouldn’t give a shit about curfew or passengers or any of that. I’d have total freedom.
“But there was all this pressure. Most of you wouldn’t turn sixteen for another year, so I was everyone’s ticket out, and they made sure I knew it. I’m not blaming them or anything, but anyway—I took the driver’s test on my sixteenth birthday. Like, first thing. And I failed.”
“Shit,” Chris breathes.
“Yeah.”
“A lot of people fail their first time, though. Honestly, it’s a miracle I didn’t—”
“Chris, I failed on purpose.”
“Oh.” The word drops from Chris’s mouth, a blunt, useless thing.
“I didn’t plan it before I got in the car,” Josh hastens to add. “That’d be a waste of my time, and like I said, I wanted the license. I wanted it so bad that I couldn’t stop thinking about all the things that might stop me from getting it. And the whole time I was driving, I was just…waiting for something to happen. It felt like something had to. Like it was an inevitability. And I got so tired of waiting—so fucking sick with dread—that I ran a stop sign.”
Despite himself, Chris hisses, “Fuck, Josh.” Josh is here and whole, so obviously things didn’t end in disaster, but the thought is enough to make Chris’s stomach turn.
“Relax, there weren’t any oncoming cars. I don’t have a death wish. Least not all the time—and even if I did, I wouldn’t take a random driving instructor down with me. But cars or no cars, it was an instant fail. Maybe I should’ve been upset or disappointed or even angry with myself. Instead I just felt…relief. Like, immediate, overwhelming relief. Failing because I wasn’t good enough would’ve been fucking humiliating, but letting myself fail…doing it on purpose…that felt a hell of a lot better.”
The pieces come together in Chris’s mind, forming a clear picture at last. “So…you think you’re going to drive our relationship through a metaphorical stop sign?”
Josh slumps against him. “More like off a metaphorical cliff.”
“Oh, dude,” Chris murmurs. He wraps an arm around Josh’s shoulder, and Josh tucks himself into Chris’s side. He brings with him the acrid scent of cigarette smoke—and beneath that, noticeably stronger cologne than usual. Chris files the observation away for future teasing. “Obviously I’m not interested in bullshitting you, so I’ll admit that’s…not the healthiest pattern of behavior.” A sharp exhale from Josh. “That said, it might be an impulse of yours, but it’s not your only impulse. You retook your driver’s test. You asked me to come visit you. You caught the wineglass.”
“That last one was an accident,” Josh swears. “Cross my heart.”
“I know, I’m just saying—if you really wanted tonight to go sideways, then maybe you would’ve…let it go sideways. Literally. And I think you’re forgetting that this relationship is a two-person gig. I’m invested in its success too.”
“You mean like you’re gonna stop me?”
“Well, it depends. If you really want out, then no. But if it seems like you’re driving us toward a cliff ’cause you figure we’ll crash anyway, then…yeah. I won’t bar the door or anything, but I am gonna talk to you about it. I stood by last time, and that was a mistake. I don’t plan to repeat it.”
“I don’t want to repeat it,” Josh says, and he sounds exhausted in a way no sleep can remedy. Exhausted in a way Chris knows he’ll never be able to truly understand.
He squeezes Josh’s shoulder. “That’s a good start. And look, even if we don’t win the relationship lottery, I… Where I stand—right here, right now—it’s really hard to imagine my life without you. A million futures and all, but I got a glimpse of that one, and I wasn’t a fan. I’d like to think I shut the door on it. Not saying it’s impossible, but it’s definitely—”
“Unlikely?” Josh offers.
“Highly unlikely. Slimmer chance than the meteor.”
“Hmm,” Josh muses. He takes a moment to consider this, then tips his face up and says, decisively: “I like those odds.”
“Me too.”
Chris lets Josh close the distance, lets Josh bring their lips together. The blend of wine and nicotine isn’t half as pleasant as last weekend’s strawberry sweetness, but Chris invites it just the same. Kisses Josh with conviction, if not certainty.
“What is that, by the way?” Josh wonders as he pulls away.
“A…kiss?” Chris replies. Suddenly he’s much less sure of himself. “Is this a trick question?”
“I mean numbers-wise. Nine hundred and what?”
“Oh fuck, dude, I dunno. I thought you were keeping track.”
“I was,” Josh says, quick as a whip. “And…then I wasn’t.”
Chris sighs. “Guess we have to start over."
“Shit. I guess so.” Josh steals a second kiss, but something pulls him away quick, makes him worry his bottom lip between his teeth. “Question, actually. Would the prospect of a thousand kisses—”
“Nine hundred ninety-seven.”
“Right, right. Let me rephrase: Would the prospect of nine hundred ninety-seven kisses be more appealing if I didn’t taste like nicotine all the time?”
This seems like a trick question, but Chris knows he isn’t getting out of it without an answer. After an achingly long pause, he says, “Perhaps.”
Josh snickers. “How diplomatic.”
“Yeah, I should’ve run against Mike in high school. Would’ve beat him no problem.”
“Mmm, just like you would’ve beaten Em for valedictorian if you studied a little harder.”
Chris lays a hand on his chest. “Ouch. Straight for the heart.”
“That was more about your head, actually,” Josh says. Then, after what seems like very little consideration, he throws out an offer. “Alright, so why don’t we call it a New Year’s resolution?”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously.”
Chris arches a brow. “You’ve been thinking about this,” he says. A statement, not a question.
“I don’t think about anything, Cochise. It’s how I sleep so well at night.”
Chris chuckles. He leans in and presses their foreheads together. “Are we ever gonna get through a serious conversation without joking?”
“Fuck,” Josh breathes, “I hope not.”
Chris can’t be sure who closes the distance, who brings their lips together. Between kisses—sweet, if not tasty—he says, “You’re counting, right?”
Josh hums against his mouth, dangerously noncommittal.
“Hey, maybe you should count up this time,” Chris advises. “Might be easier if you start with smaller numbers.”
With a bark of laughter from Josh, they break apart. “Are we ever gonna get through nine hundred and—shit—wait, I got this—nine hundred ninety-four kisses if we keep stopping to make fun of each other?”
“See, you seem like you’re tripping on the big numbers. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, bro, not everyone’s built for that.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Josh says, still laughing.
Chris shakes his head. “Not going anywhere. Besides, we should probably hit ten before we go back inside. Since we have to play catch-up and all.”
“And you think I’m the one who can’t settle for just one.”
“Just being practical,” Chris argues. “Not like anyone’s looking.”
“Well, besides the yoga gnome. And the skeleton.”
Chris shrugs. “Doesn’t change my mind.”
“Damn. You’re bold, Hartley.”
“Y’know, I think that’s the first nice thing you’ve—”
Before he can finish his sentence, Josh reels him back in. Between longer, deeper kisses, Josh counts aloud. Up this time. “Eight...nine...”
Chris’s watch goes off.
“Why does this keep fucking happening to us,” Josh hisses. He pushes Chris away. “I thought you turned that heart thing off.”
“I did.”
“Then why the hell is it doing that?”
“Because it’s pie time,” Chris explains. He holds up his watch, and it echoes him in all caps: PIE TIME.
Josh smirks. “Ah. Serious business, I see.”
“Very serious,” Chris agrees. “Now come have pie with me. Then we can watch a movie in my room, and you can stay over.”
“What kind of pie?”
“Apple.”
“What movie?”
Now this is definitely a trick question. “Your choice, bro.”
Josh’s smile is wide and toothy. “Sold.”
“I’m not having sex with you, though.”
“Wait, what?”
“You already said sold,” Chris points out. “No take-backs.”
“Hold on, when did I say anything about sex?” Josh asks. “Maybe I don’t want to have sex with you. Maybe I just want to eat apple pie and watch Addams Family Values—”
“Jeez, you work fast.”
“—and fall asleep in your creaky old bed. Maybe that’s exactly what I want to do tonight.”
“Good,” says Chris, “’cause that’s all we’re doing. No offense, but you clearly have trouble staying quiet. I let it go in the dorms because I don’t make eye contact with the guys on your floor anyway, but I can’t risk it with my parents. I’d have to leave the house. Like, permanently. And I’m too broke to afford an apartment.”
“Fine, but I’m taking one of your shirts when I leave.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less, Josh.”
They seal the deal with their tenth and final kiss. Chris stands, and when Josh follows suit, the swing protests one last time. Squeak-squeak-squeak.
“I’m fixing that,” Chris decides on the spot. “Before I go back to school, I’m fixing that.”
Josh slips his hand inside Chris’s. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t need to. Chris is thinking the same thing: that a week together seemed an infinitely long time before it started, and now it’s nearly over. Not too long after pie and a movie and eight hours of PG sleep in Chris’s creaky old bed, they’ll be apart again, separated until the end of the semester. It’s only temporary, but it still sucks. It absolutely, unequivocally sucks.
Chris gives Josh’s hand a squeeze. “Gonna be alright?”
“Yeah,” Josh says. With conviction, if not certainty. “It’s not the end of the world.”