“Why today, Theo?”
“The photo Wade took of us yesterday,” Theo says.
It hits me that I hadn’t once thought of Wade during today’s adventure. We’re a three-dude squad, but I don’t seem to get too anxious of the oddness versus evenness battle there, maybe because we always seem to make it work: it’s the universe’s one exception. Like yesterday afternoon, at Theo’s place we played a Super Smash Bros. tournament—Theo and I versus Wade and the computer, teams forged by drawing names from Wade’s fitted cap. It was close because Wade’s really good with Bowser and the computer level was at its highest, but Theo and I won with Captain Falcon and Zelda. We stood up, victorious, and hugged each other as if we had just won a war against aliens or, even more fitting as of ten minutes ago, a war against the zombie pirates.
Wade had us pose. Theo and I faked our best serious faces, but we failed and cracked up.
“I saw us together and thought enough was enough. I’ve wanted to be with you for a while now. Wade’s pic made it a little more unbearable not to be with you,” Theo says.
“I feel the same way, I guess,” I say. “What now? How do we lock this down? Probably a kiss or something, but I’m not in the mood.” I trip over the last part because, honestly, it’s a lie. I decide I’m swearing off lying because telling the truth can bring this kind of happiness, the kind that opens infinite alternate universes. I just really wish I had a piece of gum, but Wade is our squad’s gum guy. “Maybe a handshake?”
We shake hands, and neither of us lets go.
“This is cool, but weird,” I say.
“Very cool, very weird,” Theo says. “But I think we fit, right?”
“No doubt, Theo.”
I can’t wait to see what happens next.
TODAY
Monday, November 20th, 2016
The alarm clock finally shuts up after ten minutes, but my parents’ threats to pop my door open keep coming. Last time they did this, I lost my privacy for two months until my dad finally replaced the lock.
I don’t think I ever told you about that; it was after we broke up.
“Griffin!”
“Ten more minutes!” I shout.
“You said that an hour ago,” Mom says.
“Six times,” Dad adds. “Get dressed.”
“I’ll be out in ten minutes,” I say. “I promise.”
The last time I wore a black suit was for your cousin Allen’s wedding on Long Island. It was a couple of months after we’d finally started dating, and it was our first formal party, too, if we don’t count your sister’s baptism. To my relief, Wade—back when we were still close with him—was wrong when he said all gay weddings are like Katy Perry concerts. (I don’t think my anxiety could’ve handled dancing with you for the first time under strobe lights.) When I saw the white roses in the manor’s sunroom, I began looking ahead to the day I’d get to wear a black suit as I stood across from you, my hands in yours, ready to say, “You’re damn right I do.” I didn’t know it then, but that was the last time I’d wear a black suit, ever. I’m definitely not dressing up in one now.
I’m going to the funeral as is—okay, not completely as is, because showing up in these thermal pants might offend your grandmother. But I’m not taking off the green hoodie you gave me the afternoon we lost our virginity. I’ve been wearing it for the past two days—more, exactly fifty hours, though time has been bleeding in places. I wish I never washed the damn hoodie now that you’re gone. It no longer smells like your grandmother’s old flower shop; it doesn’t have the dirt stains from all the times we spent at the park. It’s like you’ve been erased.
I grab two of the four magnetic gryphons you got me two Christmases ago and fix them to the hoodie, one on my collarbone and the other on my heart. It’s like the blue one is chasing the green one through the sky.
I stare at the clock, waiting for the next even minute—9:26—and get out of bed. I step directly onto last night’s dinner, forgetting I had abandoned the plate down on the floor while I stared up at the ceiling, thinking about all the questions I’m too scared to ask you. But hey, if there’s one bright side to your dying, it’s that you aren’t around to tell me things I don’t like hearing.
I’m sorry. That was a dickhead thing to say. I need a condom for my mouth.
As much as I would like to go sit in the bathtub and let the shower rain down on me, I’ve got to get out of this room. I check the clock on my open laptop and leave once it switches from 9:31 to 9:32.
The hallway is lined with photographs in the cheap frames my aunt gave us last Christmas—the kind of present my mother dismisses as not thoughtful, but since she’s so nice, she puts them up anyway. She still drinks out of the Yoda mug you bought her two years ago, no occasion at all, just because. You’re always going to be a presence for my parents, even if now they can’t see your history on our walls.
I’m hoarding all the photographs and their cheap frames in my room. There are blank spots as I pass: the one of us sitting in your childhood living room on Columbus Avenue, putting together a puzzle of the Empire State Building; us at sixteen/fifteen, you wrapping your arms around my waist after some joke from Wade about boys not being able to hug other boys; you smiling at me from across another park bench as I toasted to my parents’ anniversary last year; and my favorites—side-by-side in the same frame—the first was taken by Wade, a blank-faced photo of us doing our damn best to keep our smiles in but failing. The second is of us holding each other and smiling after we came out to our parents at Denise’s birthday party.