The Holiday Trap, page 32
Greta’s twin was staring at her, the betrayal clear on her face.
“I’ll miss you so much,” she said. And before Greta could reply, she quietly went upstairs. Greta’s heart broke a little bit more.
“Dad?”
She was hoping that he might give her his blessing. That he might understand. Her father just said, “You’ll need to give her some time.” Then he followed her mom to the pantry.
***
The last time she’d left her parents’ house three weeks before, she had been defeated and furious. Now, she was sad. Sad that her parents hadn’t heard her the way she wanted. Sad that she hadn’t left with their blessing. Sad that Adelaide wasn’t on her side. But sad wasn’t the same as defeated. For as heartbroken as she was, she knew she’d done what she had to do to be true to herself. And that? That felt really damn good.
Thinking hard about what had just happened, she arrived on her own front stoop before she knew it.
“I’m home, babies!” Greta announced to her plants as the door closed behind her. Then she saw unfamiliar boots and remembered that she didn’t live here right now. “Oh, shit, shit!”
She debated backing out the door and closing it behind her. She could go to Ash’s and crash on his couch. Hell, maybe Truman wasn’t even in and hadn’t heard her.
“Um, Greta?”
The first thing she noticed about Truman was that he was adorable. The second thing she noticed was that he looked awful—puffy eyes, a reddened nose, and lips bitten red.
“I am so sorry,” Greta said. “Would you believe that I somehow forgot that our entire house swap had happened in the aftermath of a massive fight-slash-processing-session with my family?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks. ’Cause that’s what happened. Anyway, I just need to crash for the night, and it’s awesome to meet you, but since I’m totally unannounced, I can go to Ash’s. Sorry I disturbed you.”
Greta hadn’t thought it was possible, but at the mention of Ash, Truman’s face became even sadder.
“No, no, that’s okay,” he said. “You should stay here. It’s your house.”
He began bustling around, picking things up, and Greta kicked off her boots.
“Hey, stop.” She pushed him down on the couch. “What’s wrong?”
Truman closed his eyes and bit his lip, shaking his head like he could banish the problem. “It’s pathetic,” he said.
“Oh, I assure you, no matter what’s going on I will sympathize. I just left my mother crying in a pantry.”
The tiniest bit of interest peeked through his misery.
“So what’s up with you? I know we don’t actually know each other, but I feel like we do, so do you want to skip the small talk and just be friends? I could really use the distraction, to be honest.”
Truman looked up at her with brown eyes full of tears.
“I fell in love with Ash, and he doesn’t want me to stay.”
The tears spilled over, and Truman squeezed his eyes shut.
“Oh my god, that’s amazing!”
Truman’s eyes flew open.
“Sorry, no. That’s horrible. No. I just meant Ash is so great, and he deserves to have someone awesome fall in love with him.”
Truman snorted. “Yeah, lucky him. And I offered to stay here with him. But what kind of total chump uproots their whole life to move thousands of miles away after knowing someone for three weeks? So obviously he told me to get lost.”
Greta pursed her lips. “Erm. Well…”
And Greta told Truman about her own love affair with Carys and with New Orleans.
“And you haven’t told her yet?”
“That I love her? No. But she knew I was coming back, so…”
“She probably knows,” Truman concluded. “You’re very…um…easy to read.”
“Am I?”
Truman’s smile was gentle. “Very. It’s nice.”
“Oh. Cool. Anyway, my point is that you’re not a chump.”
“Or maybe we both are,” Truman offered.
“I choose to reject that interpretation,” Greta said, and Truman almost laughed. But something was still niggling at her. “Okay, tell me what happened with Ash, because honestly, you seem like someone he’d totally adore.”
Truman told her the sweetest story of kindness and help and love and care, and Greta’s heart was full for her friend who had had such a tough life.
“Then he said he couldn’t see me anymore because it’d hurt too much when I left. But when I offered to stay…” Truman’s voice caught. “He said no.”
“That’s exactly what he said? He told you no?”
Truman threw himself back on the couch cushions.
“No, he’s a sweetheart, so he was nice about it. He said he didn’t want me to do that just for him and that he didn’t feel like he had anything to give me.”
Greta rolled her eyes. That sounded like Ash. “And you let him get away with that?”
Truman looked up.
“You mean as opposed to looking the man I fell for in the face and being like, ‘no, I demand that you give me things you don’t have after I move somewhere you don’t want me’? Um, yeah.”
Greta shook her head. “No, as opposed to, like, asking him what he meant and talking about it.”
“I tried to get him to talk about it, and he said he couldn’t. Then he basically begged me to leave him alone, so I did.”
“Listen, I’m not trying to do Ramona levels of witchy meddling here—P.S., has she been sending you strangely cryptic texts that, like, come true?”
“Yes!”
“Freak. Anyway, I’ve known Ash a long time. If he said he doesn’t feel like he has anything to give you, it means he’s scared that what he has to offer isn’t enough for you, not that he won’t give you anything. You need to talk to him.”
She held up her phone.
“Um.” Truman’s expression was nervous, but he was nodding.
“I’ll just tell him to come over, shall I?”
“Ugggghhhh,” Truman groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Fine.”
Greta dialed. “Ash Sundahl, I am at my house right now, and I demand your presence! That’s right, I said demand, because I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning, and I must hug you.”
She hung up. Truman let out a breath of relief.
“He’ll come over, and we’ll talk about this,” Greta said.
A buzz ran through her. She felt powerful.
“Did you know,” she confided manically to Truman, “that you don’t have to accept whatever happens to you?! That you have power over your life?!”
“Some people do,” Truman mumbled. “I gotta take a shower before he gets here. I don’t want him seeing me like this.”
“I think some eye drops and an ice pack might serve you better.” Greta grabbed the former from the bathroom and set Truman to making the latter by wrapping crushed ice in a towel that she applied to his eyes.
Twenty minutes later, she got a text from Ash that said Omw.
Chapter 28
Truman
Before Greta burst through the door, Truman had been chatting with Germaine and Charlotte. He’d gotten as far as telling them what Ash said about not wanting him to uproot his whole life for him when Charlotte had dumped a wall of text. Often, when Charlotte wall-of-texted, it was simply because she’d switched to using voice-to-text, but sometimes—and this was one of those times—it was because she believed so fully in her opinion that she had to let you know right away. She was, it must be said, right approximately 93 percent of the time, by Truman’s calculations. So he’d grudgingly read:
Truman I love you immensely which is why I need to tell you that you MUST not tuck your tail between your legs and slink away! (Too late. How had she known?) You have always wanted a partner—like a full-on, share everything, we-are-a-team PARTNER. The dickwads you’ve dated haven’t wanted that, so you’ve sanded off the corners of your desire until it’s a damn circle. Sphere. Whatever. And NOW, Ash doesn’t believe you want that because he can’t imagine someone wanting that, but you DO WANT IT SO YOU HAVE TO TELL HIM! You rock so hard but sometimes you are your own worst enemy and I want to SHAKE YOU because you’re INFURIATING but I do love you. Goodbye.
Okay, so she might also have been using voice-to-text.
Truman hadn’t had a moment to think about it because of the aforementioned bursting in, but now, as he sat on Greta’s couch with his head back and an ice pack over his eyes, as she walked around greeting her plants, he went over it again. He could see why Ash would think he would only be moving here because he did what other people wanted. He had, after all, done literally that. And he could see that Ash would suspect it in this instance, given the whole only knowing one another for three weeks thing.
But…but the part that he had to find a way to tell Ash was the other part. The wanting him part. The wanting to be with him all the time part. The wanting to be involved in all aspects of his life part. But in a partner-y way, not a stalker-y or savior-y way. The…the love part.
The doorbell rang, and Truman snatched the ice pack off his eyes, prayed it had done its job, and shoved it under the cushion. He heard Greta’s jubilant exclamation as she launched herself into a hug and cringed, because he knew so well, so intimately, what it felt like to be wrapped up in Ash’s arms.
Fuck.
“Where’s Truman?” Ash asked. Then, “Oh, Truman.”
Ash put a hand to his hair, changed his mind, and tugged on his sweater, changed his mind, and stuck his hands in his armpits, hugging himself. He looked exquisitely uncomfortable.
“Hi,” he said.
Truman’s hi stuck in his throat so only a gurgle came out. It was no more mortifying than anything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, so Truman just sat there, resigned to awfulness.
“I’m not gonna say this is an intervention,” Greta said, “but I fear some deep miscommunication is going on, and I want to help.”
She sat on the chair facing the couch and gestured Ash onto the couch beside Truman. Truman scrambled to the other side to make room. He could feel the air between them charge.
“It’s so ridiculous,” Greta said. “I feel like I’m just now learning how fucked up my approach to my whole damn life has been, and now I’m, like, a little bit high on the potential for freedom and self-determination, so forgive me if I sound like a total joke.” She turned to Truman. “But I can’t help but feel like you and I are on these parallel journeys, where we have inverse issues. I’ve spent all this time trying to live up to other people’s expectations and resenting them because I wanted to do my own thing. And you seem like you’ve spent your time being perfectly happy living by other people’s desires because you feel like you can’t ever have what you want.”
Truman cringed at the accuracy of the description.
“Too harsh?” she said.
“Nah. Just true,” Truman said.
He refused to look at Ash even though he was desperate to see his face.
“And, Ash, we’ve known each other basically forever, so I feel at least partly justified in saying that your thing is that you think no one will ever want to share a life with you because you think your life sucks. But it seems like maybe Truman doesn’t think your life sucks. Soooo… Discuss?”
“I don’t think your life sucks! I love it here. It’s so peaceful and genuine, and I love Thorn and—and—” Truman broke off before he blurted out And I love you! because, ya know, mortification.
When Truman managed to get up the courage to look at Ash, he was shaking his head.
“You don’t get it,” Ash said, voice thick. “My mom. It’s like, every night, I’m there to make dinner, eat with her, get her settled, and by the time I get home, after that and working at the shop all day, I’m exhausted. And that’s just how it is for…forever. I don’t know. And I knew that when I came back here.”
He sounded utterly resigned, the same way he had all those times they’d talked about the way the shop wasn’t profitable. But Truman was a problem solver by trade and by inclination, and he refused to believe that Ash was consigned to things the way they were forever if he didn’t want to be. Certainly there were problems that had no good solutions, but Truman didn’t think this was one of them.
He didn’t think it was really the time. After all, they were discussing why Ash didn’t think he should move here. But also…if that was Ash’s only reason, surely it was relevant? And what was the worst that could happen? Ash would want him to move here even less?
“What’s the biggest reason you have that routine with your mom?” Truman asked. It was always the first question he asked to make sure he understood a situation.
“She gets confused in the evenings a lot. And having me there helps because I’m familiar. It’s a routine. Plus she’s not great about remembering to eat, so, dinner.”
“Okay, so it helps her to have consistency and someone to share the evenings with. Someone familiar.”
Ash nodded. He was twisting the bottom of his baby-blue sweater in his fingers, pulling the stitches to their breaking point.
“Could it be someone who wasn’t you?”
“I can’t afford to pay anyone. I looked into it before I moved back, but it’s out of my price range.”
“But hypothetically, it could be.”
Ash frowned. “It could be if it was someone she knew. Someone consistent. Hypothetically”
“Okay, I have an idea. You know those people your mom invited to coffee?”
Ash nodded.
“She’s friendly. She likes people. People like her.”
Ash nodded again.
“What if she got housemates? Like, I know most of the older people are already set up. But Carla Muskee was talking about someone’s son who’s a painter, and I know those two kids who had coffee with your mom are young and probably have limited income. What if you found, like, two younger people who need super cheap accommodations, would be jazzed about having dinner together every night to share the cost and the company, and could be consistent people in your mom’s life that would make her feel grounded and secure.”
The silence was palpable. Ash looked utterly blank, and for a moment, Truman regretted saying anything. Then, he saw tears at the corners of Ash’s eyes, and Ash tried to blink them away. Clearly overcome, Ash’s tears came faster and faster.
Truman wanted to launch himself into Ash’s arms and stroke his hair, his cheeks, his back. Hold him until he cried every tear he had in him and then could speak.
What actually happened, as he reached out a hand to squeeze Ash’s shoulder, was that something horribly wet and cold grabbed his ass, and Truman squeezed and jumped up.
“What the hell?” Greta said. “Are you okay?”
In the time it took Truman to get both feet on the floor, he realized what had happened.
“Yeah, uh, ice pack melt situation. Sorry. I’ll…um…”
He wiped at the wet spot, but that just succeeded in more of the freezing wet spot coming in contact with his butt.
He looked over at Ash and saw that the tears were now streaming down his face.
“Oh, god, Ash, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
Then he realized that Ash was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak.
“Hmph,” Truman said and held his wet sweats away from him. “I’ll be right back.”
In the bedroom, he stripped out of his wet clothes and rummaged around for dry ones. As he was pulling on the new sweats, there was a knock on the door.
“Yeah?”
Ash slipped inside.
“Are you okay?” they both said at the same time.
Truman said, “Fine,” and Ash nodded and said, “Yeah.”
Ash sank onto Truman’s bed and patted the spot beside him. “Do you really think there are people who I could trust who might wanna live with my mom?” he asked.
“Yeah. If that opportunity came up when I was in the situation of needing super cheap accommodations, I absolutely would’ve jumped on it. I watched this documentary about an experimental housing initiative that they tried in Sweden—or maybe the Netherlands? Shit, I don’t remember. God, I’m such an American monster. Anyway.”
Ash was smiling slightly and reached out a hand to tentatively stroke Truman’s back. Truman smiled his encouragement.
“Anyway, it was about this idea called intergenerational living where students who needed cheap housing got housed in a retirement facility, and in exchange for the rent cut, they had to give five or ten hours a week being ‘good neighbors,’ which really just meant, like, hanging out and helping the older residents work their computers or paint their nails or serve food or whatever. But what they found out was that it was this amazing boon for everyone involved. The elderly residents who were often lonely and felt cut off from outside life suddenly felt like they were much more connected and felt younger. The younger residents felt like they learned amazing life lessons from the elderly and got to have friends with totally different life experiences. Before they knew it, everyone wanted to make the change permanent. And now it’s sprung up all over the world because it’s so mutually beneficial.”
Truman felt himself getting choked up remembering the stories in the documentary.
“This one guy in his early twenties didn’t have any family support because he wanted to be a dancer, and he made friends with this woman in her eighties who had been a dancer when she was young, and they became—” Truman broke off to avoid crying and laughed at himself. “They became best friends, and she was his biggest support system and he showed her contemporary dance videos on YouTube. Oh god, I can’t believe I’m crying over dance videos.” He laughed and wiped tears from his eyes. “Anyway, the point is that I bet there are a lot of people out there who would be super into the idea, and it would help them out just as much as it would help your mom.”
“I’ll miss you so much,” she said. And before Greta could reply, she quietly went upstairs. Greta’s heart broke a little bit more.
“Dad?”
She was hoping that he might give her his blessing. That he might understand. Her father just said, “You’ll need to give her some time.” Then he followed her mom to the pantry.
***
The last time she’d left her parents’ house three weeks before, she had been defeated and furious. Now, she was sad. Sad that her parents hadn’t heard her the way she wanted. Sad that she hadn’t left with their blessing. Sad that Adelaide wasn’t on her side. But sad wasn’t the same as defeated. For as heartbroken as she was, she knew she’d done what she had to do to be true to herself. And that? That felt really damn good.
Thinking hard about what had just happened, she arrived on her own front stoop before she knew it.
“I’m home, babies!” Greta announced to her plants as the door closed behind her. Then she saw unfamiliar boots and remembered that she didn’t live here right now. “Oh, shit, shit!”
She debated backing out the door and closing it behind her. She could go to Ash’s and crash on his couch. Hell, maybe Truman wasn’t even in and hadn’t heard her.
“Um, Greta?”
The first thing she noticed about Truman was that he was adorable. The second thing she noticed was that he looked awful—puffy eyes, a reddened nose, and lips bitten red.
“I am so sorry,” Greta said. “Would you believe that I somehow forgot that our entire house swap had happened in the aftermath of a massive fight-slash-processing-session with my family?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Well. Thanks. ’Cause that’s what happened. Anyway, I just need to crash for the night, and it’s awesome to meet you, but since I’m totally unannounced, I can go to Ash’s. Sorry I disturbed you.”
Greta hadn’t thought it was possible, but at the mention of Ash, Truman’s face became even sadder.
“No, no, that’s okay,” he said. “You should stay here. It’s your house.”
He began bustling around, picking things up, and Greta kicked off her boots.
“Hey, stop.” She pushed him down on the couch. “What’s wrong?”
Truman closed his eyes and bit his lip, shaking his head like he could banish the problem. “It’s pathetic,” he said.
“Oh, I assure you, no matter what’s going on I will sympathize. I just left my mother crying in a pantry.”
The tiniest bit of interest peeked through his misery.
“So what’s up with you? I know we don’t actually know each other, but I feel like we do, so do you want to skip the small talk and just be friends? I could really use the distraction, to be honest.”
Truman looked up at her with brown eyes full of tears.
“I fell in love with Ash, and he doesn’t want me to stay.”
The tears spilled over, and Truman squeezed his eyes shut.
“Oh my god, that’s amazing!”
Truman’s eyes flew open.
“Sorry, no. That’s horrible. No. I just meant Ash is so great, and he deserves to have someone awesome fall in love with him.”
Truman snorted. “Yeah, lucky him. And I offered to stay here with him. But what kind of total chump uproots their whole life to move thousands of miles away after knowing someone for three weeks? So obviously he told me to get lost.”
Greta pursed her lips. “Erm. Well…”
And Greta told Truman about her own love affair with Carys and with New Orleans.
“And you haven’t told her yet?”
“That I love her? No. But she knew I was coming back, so…”
“She probably knows,” Truman concluded. “You’re very…um…easy to read.”
“Am I?”
Truman’s smile was gentle. “Very. It’s nice.”
“Oh. Cool. Anyway, my point is that you’re not a chump.”
“Or maybe we both are,” Truman offered.
“I choose to reject that interpretation,” Greta said, and Truman almost laughed. But something was still niggling at her. “Okay, tell me what happened with Ash, because honestly, you seem like someone he’d totally adore.”
Truman told her the sweetest story of kindness and help and love and care, and Greta’s heart was full for her friend who had had such a tough life.
“Then he said he couldn’t see me anymore because it’d hurt too much when I left. But when I offered to stay…” Truman’s voice caught. “He said no.”
“That’s exactly what he said? He told you no?”
Truman threw himself back on the couch cushions.
“No, he’s a sweetheart, so he was nice about it. He said he didn’t want me to do that just for him and that he didn’t feel like he had anything to give me.”
Greta rolled her eyes. That sounded like Ash. “And you let him get away with that?”
Truman looked up.
“You mean as opposed to looking the man I fell for in the face and being like, ‘no, I demand that you give me things you don’t have after I move somewhere you don’t want me’? Um, yeah.”
Greta shook her head. “No, as opposed to, like, asking him what he meant and talking about it.”
“I tried to get him to talk about it, and he said he couldn’t. Then he basically begged me to leave him alone, so I did.”
“Listen, I’m not trying to do Ramona levels of witchy meddling here—P.S., has she been sending you strangely cryptic texts that, like, come true?”
“Yes!”
“Freak. Anyway, I’ve known Ash a long time. If he said he doesn’t feel like he has anything to give you, it means he’s scared that what he has to offer isn’t enough for you, not that he won’t give you anything. You need to talk to him.”
She held up her phone.
“Um.” Truman’s expression was nervous, but he was nodding.
“I’ll just tell him to come over, shall I?”
“Ugggghhhh,” Truman groaned, burying his face in his hands. “Fine.”
Greta dialed. “Ash Sundahl, I am at my house right now, and I demand your presence! That’s right, I said demand, because I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning, and I must hug you.”
She hung up. Truman let out a breath of relief.
“He’ll come over, and we’ll talk about this,” Greta said.
A buzz ran through her. She felt powerful.
“Did you know,” she confided manically to Truman, “that you don’t have to accept whatever happens to you?! That you have power over your life?!”
“Some people do,” Truman mumbled. “I gotta take a shower before he gets here. I don’t want him seeing me like this.”
“I think some eye drops and an ice pack might serve you better.” Greta grabbed the former from the bathroom and set Truman to making the latter by wrapping crushed ice in a towel that she applied to his eyes.
Twenty minutes later, she got a text from Ash that said Omw.
Chapter 28
Truman
Before Greta burst through the door, Truman had been chatting with Germaine and Charlotte. He’d gotten as far as telling them what Ash said about not wanting him to uproot his whole life for him when Charlotte had dumped a wall of text. Often, when Charlotte wall-of-texted, it was simply because she’d switched to using voice-to-text, but sometimes—and this was one of those times—it was because she believed so fully in her opinion that she had to let you know right away. She was, it must be said, right approximately 93 percent of the time, by Truman’s calculations. So he’d grudgingly read:
Truman I love you immensely which is why I need to tell you that you MUST not tuck your tail between your legs and slink away! (Too late. How had she known?) You have always wanted a partner—like a full-on, share everything, we-are-a-team PARTNER. The dickwads you’ve dated haven’t wanted that, so you’ve sanded off the corners of your desire until it’s a damn circle. Sphere. Whatever. And NOW, Ash doesn’t believe you want that because he can’t imagine someone wanting that, but you DO WANT IT SO YOU HAVE TO TELL HIM! You rock so hard but sometimes you are your own worst enemy and I want to SHAKE YOU because you’re INFURIATING but I do love you. Goodbye.
Okay, so she might also have been using voice-to-text.
Truman hadn’t had a moment to think about it because of the aforementioned bursting in, but now, as he sat on Greta’s couch with his head back and an ice pack over his eyes, as she walked around greeting her plants, he went over it again. He could see why Ash would think he would only be moving here because he did what other people wanted. He had, after all, done literally that. And he could see that Ash would suspect it in this instance, given the whole only knowing one another for three weeks thing.
But…but the part that he had to find a way to tell Ash was the other part. The wanting him part. The wanting to be with him all the time part. The wanting to be involved in all aspects of his life part. But in a partner-y way, not a stalker-y or savior-y way. The…the love part.
The doorbell rang, and Truman snatched the ice pack off his eyes, prayed it had done its job, and shoved it under the cushion. He heard Greta’s jubilant exclamation as she launched herself into a hug and cringed, because he knew so well, so intimately, what it felt like to be wrapped up in Ash’s arms.
Fuck.
“Where’s Truman?” Ash asked. Then, “Oh, Truman.”
Ash put a hand to his hair, changed his mind, and tugged on his sweater, changed his mind, and stuck his hands in his armpits, hugging himself. He looked exquisitely uncomfortable.
“Hi,” he said.
Truman’s hi stuck in his throat so only a gurgle came out. It was no more mortifying than anything else that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, so Truman just sat there, resigned to awfulness.
“I’m not gonna say this is an intervention,” Greta said, “but I fear some deep miscommunication is going on, and I want to help.”
She sat on the chair facing the couch and gestured Ash onto the couch beside Truman. Truman scrambled to the other side to make room. He could feel the air between them charge.
“It’s so ridiculous,” Greta said. “I feel like I’m just now learning how fucked up my approach to my whole damn life has been, and now I’m, like, a little bit high on the potential for freedom and self-determination, so forgive me if I sound like a total joke.” She turned to Truman. “But I can’t help but feel like you and I are on these parallel journeys, where we have inverse issues. I’ve spent all this time trying to live up to other people’s expectations and resenting them because I wanted to do my own thing. And you seem like you’ve spent your time being perfectly happy living by other people’s desires because you feel like you can’t ever have what you want.”
Truman cringed at the accuracy of the description.
“Too harsh?” she said.
“Nah. Just true,” Truman said.
He refused to look at Ash even though he was desperate to see his face.
“And, Ash, we’ve known each other basically forever, so I feel at least partly justified in saying that your thing is that you think no one will ever want to share a life with you because you think your life sucks. But it seems like maybe Truman doesn’t think your life sucks. Soooo… Discuss?”
“I don’t think your life sucks! I love it here. It’s so peaceful and genuine, and I love Thorn and—and—” Truman broke off before he blurted out And I love you! because, ya know, mortification.
When Truman managed to get up the courage to look at Ash, he was shaking his head.
“You don’t get it,” Ash said, voice thick. “My mom. It’s like, every night, I’m there to make dinner, eat with her, get her settled, and by the time I get home, after that and working at the shop all day, I’m exhausted. And that’s just how it is for…forever. I don’t know. And I knew that when I came back here.”
He sounded utterly resigned, the same way he had all those times they’d talked about the way the shop wasn’t profitable. But Truman was a problem solver by trade and by inclination, and he refused to believe that Ash was consigned to things the way they were forever if he didn’t want to be. Certainly there were problems that had no good solutions, but Truman didn’t think this was one of them.
He didn’t think it was really the time. After all, they were discussing why Ash didn’t think he should move here. But also…if that was Ash’s only reason, surely it was relevant? And what was the worst that could happen? Ash would want him to move here even less?
“What’s the biggest reason you have that routine with your mom?” Truman asked. It was always the first question he asked to make sure he understood a situation.
“She gets confused in the evenings a lot. And having me there helps because I’m familiar. It’s a routine. Plus she’s not great about remembering to eat, so, dinner.”
“Okay, so it helps her to have consistency and someone to share the evenings with. Someone familiar.”
Ash nodded. He was twisting the bottom of his baby-blue sweater in his fingers, pulling the stitches to their breaking point.
“Could it be someone who wasn’t you?”
“I can’t afford to pay anyone. I looked into it before I moved back, but it’s out of my price range.”
“But hypothetically, it could be.”
Ash frowned. “It could be if it was someone she knew. Someone consistent. Hypothetically”
“Okay, I have an idea. You know those people your mom invited to coffee?”
Ash nodded.
“She’s friendly. She likes people. People like her.”
Ash nodded again.
“What if she got housemates? Like, I know most of the older people are already set up. But Carla Muskee was talking about someone’s son who’s a painter, and I know those two kids who had coffee with your mom are young and probably have limited income. What if you found, like, two younger people who need super cheap accommodations, would be jazzed about having dinner together every night to share the cost and the company, and could be consistent people in your mom’s life that would make her feel grounded and secure.”
The silence was palpable. Ash looked utterly blank, and for a moment, Truman regretted saying anything. Then, he saw tears at the corners of Ash’s eyes, and Ash tried to blink them away. Clearly overcome, Ash’s tears came faster and faster.
Truman wanted to launch himself into Ash’s arms and stroke his hair, his cheeks, his back. Hold him until he cried every tear he had in him and then could speak.
What actually happened, as he reached out a hand to squeeze Ash’s shoulder, was that something horribly wet and cold grabbed his ass, and Truman squeezed and jumped up.
“What the hell?” Greta said. “Are you okay?”
In the time it took Truman to get both feet on the floor, he realized what had happened.
“Yeah, uh, ice pack melt situation. Sorry. I’ll…um…”
He wiped at the wet spot, but that just succeeded in more of the freezing wet spot coming in contact with his butt.
He looked over at Ash and saw that the tears were now streaming down his face.
“Oh, god, Ash, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
Then he realized that Ash was laughing so hard he couldn’t speak.
“Hmph,” Truman said and held his wet sweats away from him. “I’ll be right back.”
In the bedroom, he stripped out of his wet clothes and rummaged around for dry ones. As he was pulling on the new sweats, there was a knock on the door.
“Yeah?”
Ash slipped inside.
“Are you okay?” they both said at the same time.
Truman said, “Fine,” and Ash nodded and said, “Yeah.”
Ash sank onto Truman’s bed and patted the spot beside him. “Do you really think there are people who I could trust who might wanna live with my mom?” he asked.
“Yeah. If that opportunity came up when I was in the situation of needing super cheap accommodations, I absolutely would’ve jumped on it. I watched this documentary about an experimental housing initiative that they tried in Sweden—or maybe the Netherlands? Shit, I don’t remember. God, I’m such an American monster. Anyway.”
Ash was smiling slightly and reached out a hand to tentatively stroke Truman’s back. Truman smiled his encouragement.
“Anyway, it was about this idea called intergenerational living where students who needed cheap housing got housed in a retirement facility, and in exchange for the rent cut, they had to give five or ten hours a week being ‘good neighbors,’ which really just meant, like, hanging out and helping the older residents work their computers or paint their nails or serve food or whatever. But what they found out was that it was this amazing boon for everyone involved. The elderly residents who were often lonely and felt cut off from outside life suddenly felt like they were much more connected and felt younger. The younger residents felt like they learned amazing life lessons from the elderly and got to have friends with totally different life experiences. Before they knew it, everyone wanted to make the change permanent. And now it’s sprung up all over the world because it’s so mutually beneficial.”
Truman felt himself getting choked up remembering the stories in the documentary.
“This one guy in his early twenties didn’t have any family support because he wanted to be a dancer, and he made friends with this woman in her eighties who had been a dancer when she was young, and they became—” Truman broke off to avoid crying and laughed at himself. “They became best friends, and she was his biggest support system and he showed her contemporary dance videos on YouTube. Oh god, I can’t believe I’m crying over dance videos.” He laughed and wiped tears from his eyes. “Anyway, the point is that I bet there are a lot of people out there who would be super into the idea, and it would help them out just as much as it would help your mom.”
