String Boys, page 25
Oh, it made so much sense.
“I think you’re really smart,” Seth said helplessly. “Turn left here.” He hated to go left—the waves were crashing just yards away, giant and wild and fierce. But they only had to go a block, up a hill, and the house loomed, a modern structure with a wraparound porch and two stories. If Seth was not mistaken, you could stand out on the second story porch from the bedroom he’d told his dad he and Kelly would be sleeping in. You could look out over the hill and to the sea.
The minivan was already there, and Kelly whistled lowly.
“This… this looks like something special,” he said. “You doing that band at night—that was to pay for this?”
“Yeah.” Seth couldn’t stop smiling at it. It was beautiful and romantic and… and big. Like what squeezed out from his chest every night. “It’s….” He bit his lip, embarrassed. “I could never have afforded it in the summer. It’s… you know. Off-season. It’s gonna be cold, but at least there’s no snow. Kids can’t swim—”
“You don’t know these kids.” Kelly laughed. “And they can play in the sand and go to the aquarium—”
“And go shopping and go to the pier and see the seals.” Seth had done all these things with Amara’s family. “It’s… I mean, it’s only a little colder here in the winter. I….” He knew his entire heart was in his face, radiating from his eyes right now, but he couldn’t help it. “I wanted to make your life beautiful,” he said simply.
Kelly’s eyes darkened. “You always have.” He pulled Seth into a kiss that was… warmer and less horny than their last one. Seth responded, letting it fill him, and they pulled away from this one with some control.
“Want to go see how they like it?”
Kelly nodded and rubbed his thumb on Seth’s bruised lip. “What’ll we tell them about this?” he asked.
Seth shrugged. He really hadn’t thought that far. “How about I ran into a pole?”
“How about you got jumped by two rednecks because you were playing at a dive bar,” Kelly said, brooking no bullshit. “Please, mijo. My family has been hurt by so many lies right now. The truth is a much better story.”
Seth nodded soberly. “I understand. I just didn’t want anyone to worry, you know?”
“Yeah, well, the one thing I’ve learned this past year? It’s that worry means love.”
SETH SPENT the entire rest of the day surrounded by women. There was Linda, who was still as much a mom as ever, and Lily and Lulu—who still insisted on wearing the same clothes, even though it got easier to tell them apart every day—but they were partway to grown, because they were in junior high. Agnes, in the sixth grade, was just as sassy as her older sisters, and tiny Chloe seemed to light up when Seth was close enough to actually touch.
It was nice, having girls around. He’d forgotten how much he’d loved to play with them. Lily and Lulu seemed to be having a competition, telling him about school and how they were both in science and math classes, and everybody expected them to like poetry, but Agnes liked poetry so they didn’t see why they had to. Agnes kept trying to hang on his arm—the one not carrying the baby—because she was impressed by how strong he looked.
Linda kept throwing him frustrated looks that spoke dire things about the conversation that would happen after dinner was ready while Chloe just clung, whimpering, because her favorite human was finally under her hands.
For about an hour, the happy chaos was enough to keep the questions at bay.
Then they all sat down to spaghetti and meat sauce and salad—something Linda could make special that Seth and his father had managed to screw up on a regular basis—and Linda surprised him by reaching out to either side of her and making the kids take hands. Seth grabbed Kelly’s, but he had Chloe on his knee, so Lily took her hand on one side and Seth’s dad’s on the other.
“Are we praying?” Kelly asked.
“I’m giving thanks,” she said simply. “The last two years—they’ve been rough.” Her voice grew thick. “Really rough. And sometimes in the rough times, you think you’re all alone.”
Kelly grunted. “Yeah.”
“We’re not alone,” she said, looking Kelly in the eyes.
He smiled crookedly. “I got your back, Mommy.”
“And we’ve got yours,” Craig said softly.
She swallowed and nodded. “And that’s why we’re holding hands. I’m as pissed at God as anybody, but I’ve got to give thanks for everyone at this table.”
Seth squeezed Kelly’s hand and was relieved to feel the squeeze back.
“Thank you,” Craig said softly.
“Good.” Linda released everybody’s hand. “So, Seth, now that we’re thankful for this lovely gift, what in the hell happened to your face?”
Seth tried to contain a smirk. “I was born,” he said. “Dad, can you dish up some spaghetti for Chloe? Chop it into little bites. I’ll eat when she’s done.”
“I will beat you!” Kelly muttered. “Jesus!”
Seth glared. “I was walking across a parking lot with a friend, and we got jumped,” he said. “They were trying to rob us, but we fought back.”
Kelly snorted softly.
“What? I told the truth!”
“And I saw his face. It wasn’t as bad as yours!”
“You can fight?” Lulu asked, fascinated. “How do you fight? Your hands aren’t beat up at all!”
“Elbows,” Seth said. “Feet. I still run.”
“Cool,” Agnes breathed. Her mother glared at her, and her grin back, through a round face so much like Kelly’s, took Seth’s breath away.
“Was this at Bridgford?” Craig asked, pulling his attention away.
Kelly sent him a meaningful look.
“No. I, uh, sort of got a playing gig at, uh, a place.”
Linda and Craig were looking at each other with twin expressions of exasperation on their faces.
“A place,” Linda said, raising her eyebrow at Seth’s father.
“A place,” Craig repeated. “He very clearly said a place. He said ‘a gig,’ and he said ‘a place.’”
“A place can mean many things.” She nodded as though pondering.
“A place can be a planetarium,” Craig agreed.
“It can be a small stage at a riverfront café,” she mused.
Craig looked directly at Seth until Seth started to squirm. “It could be a strip club.”
Seth swallowed. “It could be a country-western bar?” He smiled ingratiatingly, but his father’s grimace told him that this option wasn’t any better than strip club. “I made….” He resisted the impulse to look at Linda and Kelly and whisper. “I made some money,” he finally said. “It, uh… you know. Money is good.”
Linda blinked slowly and then looked from Seth to Craig.
Seth was sort of relieved when his father looked away from her, his ears turning red.
She didn’t yell, though. Her eyes got bright and shiny, and she looked around at her daughters, her granddaughter, her son, and chewed her full lower lip. “I don’t suppose you’d stop doing this if I asked,” she said after a moment.
“I just started to talk to my drummer,” he said plaintively, and Kelly snorted.
“Is it interfering with your classes?” Craig asked. “I can work more overtime—”
“Please?” Until that moment, that word, Seth hadn’t realized how much this meant to him. “Everybody….” He looked at Kelly, and his throat grew tight. He had to look away. “This is my way to help. Please?” There was more. Everybody telling him he had to go out and play. That his music was his way out, his way up. All the work people had done, going to his concerts, giving up time to see him. When did he give back? When did they get something out of it?
This was his turn.
His father looked at him helplessly.
“He said please,” Linda said, amused and impressed at once.
“He did.” Craig twisted his mouth. “You’re nineteen, you know. It’s not like I could stop you.”
Seth let out a humorless little chuff of air. Of course they could stop him. All they had to do was beg him not to. Tell him why he shouldn’t. But he was helping. This once. He was giving back.
“That’s it?” Kelly asked, like he’d been holding his breath and this was his chance to breathe. “You’re going to let him?”
“You object?” Craig asked, and Seth kicked Kelly under the table.
Kelly gave him a look that said he kicked like a noodle and he’d have to do better. “Of course I object. He got beat up. They tried to rob him—”
“Only because we made extra that night.” Seth nodded. “It was Christmas. People wanted Christmas songs. Can we eat now?”
“Seth! Your face—”
“I thought you liked my face?” He kept his eyes wide as he said it, and he saw Kelly’s own eyes narrow in suspicion.
“You are doing that on purpose.”
“Doing what?” He only knew a little bit what Kelly was talking about, but if it let him keep playing gigs and making money, he would cheerfully pretend he had no idea for longer.
“Just….” Kelly suddenly deflated. “You could get hurt,” he muttered. “I have to know you’re out there—you know that? Like… like the stars. Like if they go out, I couldn’t wake up in the morning.”
“But I’m not a star,” Seth said reasonably. “I’m a real person. I need to have a place to meet you.”
“In fucking Sacramento?” Kelly cried out, and Seth knew what he was thinking, about their little apartments, about his job selling used clothes, about his brother, pounding the door drunk.
“Everyone I love is there,” he said simply. “Chloe, sweetheart, are you going to eat that or wear it?”
Chloe smeared some more pasta over her face and chewed on her fist to get the rest of the flavor out. “Mmf!”
Seth kissed the back of her head. “Agnes, are you getting your name on a plaque at the school this year?” The graduates from the grade school got awards like the Socrates Award and the Aristotle Award and the Hercules Award. The Cruz children had monopolized the plaques—Kelly had gotten the Socrates Award for thinking outside the box, and so had Lily. Lulu had gotten the Aristotle Award for being the best all-around student, and Matty… Matty had gotten the Hercules Award for citizenship.
“We don’t know until the end of the year,” Agnes said smugly. “But since I challenged the teacher on the reading assignment because I felt like it represented people of color badly and as cruel stereotypes, I think I might have a shot at the Socrates award.”
Everybody at the table stared, and Agnes grinned back. Once again, Seth was forcibly reminded of Kelly at this age—but Seth missed the bubbles. Looking sideways at Kelly, Seth wondered if Kelly would ever bubble over like that again.
“You really said that?” Kelly asked, as though shaking himself out of a dream.
“Yes. The textbook is old, but you know much of that industry is controlled by a small group of people in Texas anyway, right?”
A slow smile crept over Kelly’s face.
“Really?”
“Oh yes.” Agnes reached for another piece of sourdough bread and spread some butter on it. “Lulu did that report on it last year.”
“You remembered!” Lulu crowed. “I’m only a little good at English,” she said soberly. “I was really proud of that.”
The smile grew, like the creeping part had only been distance—like a whale seemed to get bigger slowly because it was coming from a long way away.
“Think we might see whales?” Lily asked suddenly, and it was like Kelly’s freaky genius sisters suddenly became little kids again.
“Oh my God!” “That would be great!” “I’d love to!”
And all three of them turned shiny eyes to Seth, who didn’t want to break their hearts. “You should ask the people at the aquarium tomorrow,” he said. “They would know.”
“You guys are coming, right?” Agnes asked, and Seth opened his mouth to say “Yes! Of course! I’d crawl through broken glass for you guys, just to prove to your brother I love you!”
“The next day, mija,” Linda said gently. She fixed Seth and Kelly with a kind glance. “The boys need to talk.”
They groaned, but in a way that told him they’d get over the disappointment. And to Seth’s immediate confusion, he felt Kelly’s hand, warm like the sun, spreading over the knee that wasn’t bobbing under Chloe.
“That’s right,” Kelly said, his voice so very earnest. “Talk.”
THAT NIGHT, they all played Monopoly until the girls started falling asleep between their turns. Seth had given Chloe her bath in the kitchen sink after dinner, blowing bubbles at her like he used to do for Agnes and playing in the water. She laughed and splashed and giggled, and when she was clean and dry, she fell asleep in his arms as he rolled the dice to move his game piece—the shoe—around.
Craig took her with him as he went to bed.
“No,” Linda said softly. “She’s—”
“I put the porta crib in my room,” he told her. “You and Kelly get a full night’s sleep tonight.” His eyes darted to Kelly and Seth and back again, and his face flushed. “If they want one.”
Linda’s eyes grew bright and shiny, and before she shuttled the girls off to their room, she bent and kissed the boys on the cheek, Kelly first.
When she got to Seth, she flicked his bruised cheek lightly. “If this happens again,” she said softly, “you and me, we’re going to have a different conversation.”
Seth nodded soberly. “About manatees instead of whales,” he said.
Her eyes narrowed, just like Kelly’s. “Sure, Seth. That’s what we’ll talk about.”
“Good. I like manatees.”
She muttered to herself and walked away, and Seth shook out his arms and stretched. He’d been holding the baby for hours.
“Night, boys,” Craig said over his shoulder.
“Night, Dad!”
“Night, Mr. Arnold!”
And then they were alone.
“You are infuriating,” Kelly told him. “You know that, right?”
Seth just smiled and stood up before holding out his hand. “C’mere. I want to show you something.”
“You don’t need a come-on, you know that, right?”
Seth just chuckled and pulled him through the house to the sliding glass door that led out to the porch. They were both wearing T-shirts and no shoes, and Seth knew they couldn’t stay out long, but as he tugged Kelly outside and shut the door behind him, he heard Kelly gasp.
This was worth it.
A fog had rolled up while they were eating, blanketing the whole world in mystery. It had rolled out since, blown away to the sea, and all that was left before them was…
Everything.
Stars burned cold overhead, shifting in time to the music of the universe, and the sea roiled beneath them in an endless hush.
“Wow,” Kelly whispered.
Seth pulled him tight, his back to Seth’s front, and held on.
“The world is so big.” Kelly’s voice—troubled, worried—pinged in Seth’s chest, a plaintive note that wouldn’t stop ringing.
“See those two stars?” Seth had taken astronomy this year—his first college science class, actually.
“Yeah?”
“They only look like stars from here.”
“What are they really?”
“Suns. Twin suns. They revolve around each other, each one carrying their own planets that revolve around them. But they’re tied together. Like gravity. And there may seem to be all this space around them, but they’re really the beating heart of their own solar system. Only they know. They know that their other half is out there.”
“But… do they ever get to be the same sun?”
Seth tightened his grip. “Not in astronomy. But humans aren’t stars, baby. Because we’re here. And I’m touching you. And that’s not going away.”
Kelly turned in his arms then and raised his briny face to Seth’s and his shaking hands to Seth’s cheeks. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.
Seth lowered his head and took Kelly’s mouth, his kisses, as Seth’s own, starting their own thermal detonation. Body heat boiled between them, and Kelly moaned, kissing harder. Seth wrapped his arms around his shoulders, bending so he could slide his hands down the back of Kelly’s jeans.
Kelly stiffened and pulled away.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Kelly—”
Kelly shook his head and placed his fingers over Seth’s mouth. “Bed.” His smile was jagged and bright and dark, like stars. “I want to touch you when I’m warm.”
Seth nodded and allowed himself to be pulled back to the house, into the warmth.
They undressed in the dark, both of them leaving their clothes in careful piles on their luggage, and then slid into the bed in their underwear, their chilled hands and feet making giggly contact with their warm places. Finally, Seth took Kelly’s hands and tucked them under his arms, shuddering as the cold threatened to overwhelm him.
Kelly shuddered too, and as they warmed up together, he scooched closer, until he was firmly in Seth’s arms.
Then Seth could talk.
“Did you… you know…?”
“No.” Kelly kissed his chest. “I didn’t get afraid. I just… I wanted this. You wanted beautiful for me. I just wanted you.”
“We got both,” Seth said happily.
Kelly’s low chuckle warmed him. “You are feeling very smug, aren’t you?”
“Mm….”
Kelly found his mouth in the dark, and it was like those moments on his father’s couch again. Long and slow, slow and deep. Mouth, lips, tongue, teeth, every stroke, every thrust, every foray a new and exciting combination. Seth’s nerves lit up, crackling with energy, with wanting, and Kelly whined, pulling away.
“This was not well thought out,” he panted.
“How thin are the—”
