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When he gets into the car and lets out the longest sigh of the day, he understands that he isn’t only physically tired. His body has hurt his whole life; perhaps bad posture, or the collateral damage of carrying inside it a head that overthinks everything before doing it—not out of a habit of perfection, but out of fear of failure.
The cold in Ohio has never seemed like a threat to him the way it does to everyone in Columbus; there is something about feeling his bones frozen and his muscles tense that feels pleasant. And he has never felt more inspired than when the snow-covered streets seem like a reflection of how he has always felt inside. He becomes more meticulous with the lyrics he writes, although, contradictorily, they come out of him the way sweat seeps out in summer; without restraint, and perfectly ordered as if that were the sole purpose of his being.
The streets lose their horizon in the thick fog that refuses to be pierced by car lights. Traffic turns into chaos. He turns up the volume on the radio, adjusting his back against the seat after long minutes without being able to move even a meter. He closes his eyes and rubs his temples, debating whether he prefers to go back home or stay there in his silence, where he feels much calmer, with the only battle he never has to win because it is constant: the one inside his mind.
A car behind him snaps him out of his thoughts with the sound of a horn. Then he starts moving and takes a narrow street to avoid more traffic. The music stops, and then the first piano chord makes him freeze for a second—and in that simple second his entire life flashes before his eyes: Josh’s smile, which he can never imagine without the shrill laughter that follows it. People pressing against them, pushing them into strangers’ bodies, and his hand always gripping his hoodie so as not to get lost in the crowd.
The darkness; people singing.
«Do you think this is how people feel when they come to see us?»
«How?»
«Excited… and like they need to pee»
He had never laughed as much as he did after he met Josh. When he used to listen to sermons at church that spoke about caresses for the wounded soul, he always thought they referred to those moments in life when family and friends proved they were there no matter what. But that night, playing with those who used to be members of his band, Josh had been supporting him without even knowing him. And he had been there at the exact moment things were about to break, helping him hold them together with his arms without even being asked.
And from then on he only knew how to crack, but never to break, because Josh would never allow it.
And sometimes he thought he wasn’t giving Josh what Josh gave him. That he was a difficult man to be with; always carrying an intermittent ache inside; with difficult moments when the injuries seemed easier to eradicate if the one dead was his whole body. He knew Josh carried emptiness and wounds inside that did not heal either, and even so he had always known how to ignore everything on his shoulders whenever it was time to help him out of the hole he himself had fallen into, without self-pity.
His thumbs tapped the steering wheel to the rhythm of the percussion, but his mind would not leave that night when he realized his body could not contain so much; that it was overflowing from him like a sea diving downward. He had never felt his heartbeat move so much against the order he worked so hard to keep under control.
«I swear you’re going to love them… live they’re something else»
But for him they had already been something else since the first day Josh played them in his car. It surprised him that he liked such calm music, when he had always expressed himself through the stridency and agitation of sound. He paid attention to the lyrics, too much for what he usually did when listening to new music. He had done it to see if through them he could know more about Josh, even though he thought by then he already knew everything about him.
And he would listen to Josh sing, something he didn’t do with anyone except those he trusted purely. And he liked to boast that he was one of those people. He felt honored.
Maybe Josh didn’t think of it that way, but for him it became a band that was only his. Theirs. Like a silent pact, a sense of belonging. Possession. It was the way he found to feel him close during that season when Josh moved to Los Angeles and he stayed alone in Ohio. Life had ways of reminding him that, no matter the distance, he would always carry Josh inside him; like a lucky keychain, like an invisible locket. He would hear the song on the radio, or in convenience stores. Or coming out of a random car on the street.
When the lights went out and the chord echoed through the auditorium, he wasn’t the only one who felt his heart beating hard: everyone screamed, even Josh, who looked at him with a huge smile. A smile he read perfectly as “our song.” Music always made him dissolve into a liquid state he could never put into words; it made him unfold from his own body and become a river flowing in tranquility. But now he could feel physical, real pain. He had to press his chest as if the sensation came from there, and he realized he was only paying attention to Josh’s voice singing loudly, never stopping smiling.
His face changed color under the lights his skin reflected; his eyes closed at parts that reached deeper. Watching him was like committing to memory, of how he wanted to remember Josh for the rest of his life. Without paying attention, but somehow knowing that both of them were only thinking about each other.
Now years had passed, collecting their toll. His body older and more tired. Sometimes he looked at himself in the mirror and missed who he used to be, until he remembered that now he was calmer, much more mature in many things. He no longer asked for explanations, nor did he let fear invade his head all the time. Everything he had learned with Josh left marks on his bones, like small fossils where he had been touched with tenderness and not with the intention to hurt.
He still thought he would never be able to love someone as much as he had managed to love Josh. Not only because loving him had destroyed all the order he had been raised with—by upbringing, religion, and education—but because of the way things had unfolded, so natural and so careful; so unplanned, so stretched over time that he had not even surprised himself when he declared himself in love with him. Because he had already been in love with the friendship they had; with looking at him and knowing that in him he not only had the good part of being friends, but the bad and the uncomfortable too, and even so he was not capable of thinking that at any point in his life he would rather go through what he had gone through with someone else rather than Josh.
And even having decided they did not want to continue what they had; even if ending it had also permanently lacerated an internal part of his body, he could not stop loving him and he knew Josh had not been able to stop loving him either. He knew it by the way silences meant more than the absence of sound; because glances saw deeper inside the body. Like two puzzle pieces that fit perfectly even if they belong to another landscape. The love hadn't left, it had simply changed meaning.
«I’ve never felt you this close to me before»
The moment those words sounded even outside his head, he understands why loving has always seemed painful to him, and it is because he knew how to turn something beautiful into melancholy. It was part of him, of how the empty streets of his head were shaped. Of how he preferred to look from the outside rather than get involved, because doing it from a distance made him think far fewer times than when he had to put his body and heart in contact with someone else’s. And despite that, he only knew how to act out of love, he only knew how to be devoted to that emotion. It was the axis of his life even if sometimes it weighed more than he himself could lift.
This time it moved him toward the most, and at the same time least, thought-out decision of his life. He responded to his body as if it did not belong to him, but as if it were the only one that was right. He knew the way to his house the way he knew the lines on the palms of his own hands. He used to spend so much time with him that sometimes the scent would cling to his clothes as if it didn't want to let him go. Sometimes he even imagined what would have become of them if they had ever made their plan of living together real. They would have been the joke of paparazzi and fans. Of their families. Now he thought of it as the worst idea they could have had.
He made sure the house had at least one light on. As soon as he parked, he heard Jim barking, appearing at one window, then disappearing to appear at another. His whole body trembled, but he blamed it on the cold, as if he could outsmart his own head. He blew on his hands to warm them a little before turning off the car, leaving it in a silence that made his thoughts and doubts sound louder. The certainty that Josh would not throw him out if he asked to stay, but the doubt of how he would react if he told him everything he had been thinking that made him decide to stand on his doorstep at such improper hours.
When he opened the door, his cheeks froze, but he decided to hurry his movements before he could regret it. He put one leg out, then the other. Closed the car door. The distance to the house was short, but it felt eternal, as if his steps were going backward instead of forward. Jim began to whine when he recognized him. His chest tightened, making it hard to breathe, each warm exhale visible against the cold street air.
He rang the doorbell. And the hallway light projected beneath the door, casting a dark shadow under his feet. He heard Josh’s voice calming Jim, and he had never felt so nervous hearing him speak. Never. Not in the most intimate moments, nor the least affectionate ones.
His hands were sweating despite the cold that left them numb. And it felt like an eternity until the halo of light blinded him for long seconds, until he could recognize within all that brightness Josh’s silhouette cut into shadow. He blinked a couple of times and then his eyes could distinguish his features; first the eyes that lit up with joy upon seeing him, and then that smile that curved downward, the one different from the one that curved upward. This one more timid, less excited. Surely because he didn’t expect him at that hour, and because not giving notice might seem like an indication of bad news.
And by then, he did not know whether for Josh it would be bad news what he wanted to tear from his chest; as if his clothes burned down to the skin; to the bones. To the blood.
“What are you doing here?” was his greeting, while holding his dog by the collar so he wouldn’t go greet him, considering he had never liked animals much, even though Jim was almost like a son to Josh.
But he fell short of words. He opened his mouth, then closed it. His voice would not leave his throat, muted by the fear he had, and the emotions waging an awkward battle inside him. Josh let him in, and the warmth of his house embraced him. The smell of freshly brewed coffee made him imagine him about to go to bed, as he always did: with his cup with more milk than coffee, and some book he still hadn’t finished due to lack of time and an always full schedule. That almost made him smile, although the corner of his lips failed in the attempt to hold it steady.
“Everything okay, Ty?” His hand squeezed one of his arms, sending a charge through his whole body. His eyes searched for Josh’s slanted ones, which already looked worried at his lack of voice. So he forced himself to speak, less afraid that things would go wrong, because he was convinced that no matter his answer, there was no room in Josh for a feeling of superiority over him. He knew he would not judge him, that he would not stop loving him as he already did and had shown for more than ten years.
“I love you,” he whispered, first looking at the floor, as if testing the sound of his voice. After hearing himself and realizing his body had not failed him, he found the courage to look him in the eyes and repeat it, almost smiling in relief; almost sighing as if he had just taken a great weight off his back. “I love you.”
Josh smiled, tilting his head, a little confused.
“I was thinking about you on my way home… I was thinking about us, but more about you. Or more about me when I’m with you.” He put his hands in his pockets, not knowing what to do with them, as if they were extra on his body, as if the only thing extending from his chest outward were Josh’s body; his eyes looking at him without judgment, only in the way they had always known how: with love. “I’ve never considered myself a completely happy person, even having the life I have; but every night I go to bed and right after the darkness absorbs my space, I’m grateful that everything I’m living, I’ve been living by your side…”
“The cold is really getting to you, Tyler,” he teased him, but with a voice full of tenderness, almost maternal, caring. He shook his head, and felt the tic in his eyes when he thought he wasn’t explaining himself enough.
“But I mean everything, Josh.” He looked at him, trying to project the seriousness of his words. “I’m still in love with you. I’m incapable of imagining a life in which you’re not in it. I’m getting old, and I was so afraid of finding myself close to forty without something I could assign as my purpose in life… and when I met you I realized how fast I wanted to run until you stopped me.”
He touched his chest, trying to contain the emotion he felt. Not only because he was being honest after years, but because he didn't feel ashamed of doing it out loud. He felt proud to love, and not to let it exist only within his own limits.
“I’m getting sensitive,” he whispered, blinking hard so no tear would try to escape. Josh laughed softly. “The point is… I was listening to our song, and I know God isn’t paying that much attention to everyone as to have given me a sign to come see you. But I also know I remember you in it; in every chord and note; and in every minute I only think about how happy you were among so many people and that right at that moment I confessed to myself that I love you.”
Josh’s smile did not leave, calm, kind. It didn't show his teeth, but he could see in the shine of his eyes that it was honest. The silence between them did not feel suffocating, although a bit tense at first. Josh took a step toward him and pulled his hands from his pockets, squeezing his fingers.
“So cold.” They both laughed, although Tyler’s was more of a nervous sigh. He lifted one of his hands to his lips and kissed his fingers loudly, as he used to before, never taking his eyes off him, as in a devotion that at the same time seemed like submission. And that language took Tyler years back in a single second. It was the nonverbal answer confirming what Josh had not yet said. “My boy…”
Tyler smiled; eyes shining with tears. Lips trembling, unable to stay firm. He had to lower his head, trying to hide his face. Josh let go of his hands to cradle his face.
“Don’t cry,” he whispered. Tyler inhaled loudly, forcing himself not to let out a sob that might seem exaggerated. Josh wrapped him in his arms, tight, tight, and kissed his temple over and over, making loud smacking sounds, one hand stroking the little hair sticking out from his black beanie. “I love you too, with the same intensity I’ve always loved you. With the same devotion and admiration.”
Tyler’s arms tightened around him as well; he rubbed his damp cheek against Josh’s chest, who pressed the back of his neck to pull him closer, as if he wanted to tuck him inside his ribcage. He kissed his head again and then rested his cheek there, closing his eyes tightly. Tyler sighed deeply, his heart stabbing loudly, his breathing uneven.
“Let me see you,” he said after minutes entwined in an embrace that restructured everything inside him. Josh could squeeze him tighter and instead of breaking him it would only help him stand firmer. He took his cheeks and lifted his face. Josh’s eyes looked at him, as they used to in those years: analyzing every inch of his face; his eyes, his brows; his forehead, nose and lips. His thumbs like windshield wipers on his cheeks. And a small smile that kept growing, stretching the corners of his lips, until his already slanted eyes narrowed into a line of long lashes.
He wondered if the maturity of his face meant something different to Josh; if the expression lines were visible at first sight and under that light that blurred many flaws. But whenever he thought Josh might have a single judgmental thought inside him, he encountered a slap that reminded him that God had not placed just any human being as his favorite person in life, but someone who reminded him why he still had a religion after so many years of doubting it. The confirmation that on earth there existed a nature that reflected what was in heaven.
«Beautiful»
Josh mouthed it without voicing it, and Tyler’s lips pressed together as he received the compliment like a lash to the heart. Real pain, but caused by pure love. His eyes filled again, and when he tried to squeeze them shut so the gesture would not turn into one of anguish, Josh kissed his forehead and hugged him tight again, laughing softly at him.