“I hope you’re happy,” she said, her voice a knife laced in drops of deadly belladonna, dripping bitter and flat.
“I am,” Oscar replied, his lips curving up as he slid his feet back into his shoes. His mother’s nostrils flared.
And it was hard for a child to hate a living parent when there was a dead one, but Oscar had a life of practice, too many nights of tears praying to a god he didn’t believe in forhis mother to say just once she loved him, too many faint white lines on his skin. So it was easier to turn and go than it would have been for somebody else. A time before, Oscar would have said that he must be an awful person.
But Oscar wasn’t awful.
Oscar had been hurt, and for a long time he’d carried that burden on his hunched shoulders, packed it all up in boxes that were taking space in the attic of his mind.
As Oscar glanced at the gate he was swiftly approaching at the end of the path, he glimpsed the flowers already beginning to bloom in the neighbors’ garden, the greening of the branches as new leaves began to bud. Maybe it was time for a bit of spring cleaning. Oscar needed to make space for new things now, new burdens he would gladly share, and as the baggage scattered on the air above his mother’s lawn and the gate clicked shut behind him, Oscar smiled to himself.
And he didn’t look back.
When Oscar’s parents paid the deposit on their wedding venue, people laughed. They told them they were crazy to spend money on something like that when the world was about to end. But in the summer of the year 2000, Oscar’s mother wore her white dress, defying all the odds, and Oscar remembered playing back their wedding video over and over, winding back to the part where everyone was dancing to “Mambo No. 5.”
Even as a child, Oscar had imagined one day looking like Papa. He’d looked so handsome in his tacky white suit, his messy hair so much like Oscar’s. He’d been so young.
When Aaron’s key turned in the lock at half past five, Oscar was stirring pasta sauce and humming the opening toLou Bega’s famous song, thinking about Papa and the part where he spun Grandma around on the dance floor, her purple sequin dress straight out of Old Hollywood on her much younger body.
“Hey!” Aaron’s smile was the summer of the year 2000, a ray of light on the seabed.
“Hi…” Despite the pasta sauce simmering on the stove, the apartment smelled like Aaron’s favorite Summer Breeze detergent from when Oscar had washed and changed their sheets and the blanket that was now spread over their couch. The floor was spotless, the furniture dusted, and there was a fresh bunch of sunflowers on the coffee table, Aaron’s mug warmer wiped down and waiting for his after-dinner cup.
“You’ve been busy…” Aaron hung his tote bag on the hook by the door and bent down to lift Luigi, pressing kisses to his face over and over again and letting him down only after a sufficient number of mews and protests.
Oscar swallowed his fear and turned off the stove.
He might not have known exactly where he was going orwhyearlier that day, but his heart was set, and his mind made up, and if Aaron was a ray of sunlight on the seabed, Oscar wanted to be the water refracting him in rainbow splendor.
“That smells delicious! Why’d you turn it off? You haven’t even set the water to boil.” Aaron frowned, mouth pinching in the center as he pushed his glasses up and pressed them to the space between his eyebrows with the tip of his finger.
“We can eat later. I want to talk to you,” Oscar said.
His body felt lighter than it ever had before, the spring in his step lifting him off the ground like anti-gravity. If kid Timothée Chalamet was in the cornfield, then Oscar was grown up Matthew McConaughey, and he was flying up to space, each stride bringing him closer to the sun.
“It’ll ruin the sauce! We can talk while you cook, baby,” Aaron replied, shaking his head.
“Fuck the sauce.”
Oscar took Aaron’s hands as he arrived in front of him, yanking him close, pressing their lips together in a sweeping kiss that had been building inside him the entire day. When he pulled away, Aaron’s eyes were fixed on him, lined with curiosity.
“Okay, I know we can’t afford to fuck the sauce right now,” Oscar said sheepishly. “I’ll scrape it off the bottom and eat the crunchy bits if I have to. I can live off chickpeas and beans and oat cookies for a few months, Aaron.”
“That’s debatable, Spike, but fine. What do you want to talk about?”
Aaron brushed Oscar’s face, and despite his eagerness, Oscar lingered there for a moment, relishing his touch, living in it, drawing the energy his mother had tried to siphon from him, the way she had his entire life growing up. But no more.
Her time to dance was over, and it was his turn now, luck and genes and history be damned.
Aaron’s eyes were still fixed ahead when Oscar dropped to the floor, his knee cracking as it met the wood. By the time he registered the motion and looked down, Oscar had pulled the golden band out of his pocket and was holding it up in the air between them.
“Marry me,” he said.
Oscar would never have believed these words coming out of his mouth just a year before. He’d always imagined that if he ever got married, it would be years after he met his person, years into living with them, years and years and years. But “Mambo No. 5” was playing over in his head, and every name Lou Bega said had been replaced byAaron Aaron Aaron.
“I mean it. Will you marry me?”
“Spike, where is this coming from? You’re being crazy right now. Since when—” Aaron looked down at him, flabbergasted, eyes darting from Oscar’s face to the plain scratchedring in his grip, the same that had cooled the heat on his face after so many tantrums, the same that had stroked his cut hair every time Papa had fixed it, the same that had glinted underneath the bathroom lights as Papa pressed toilet paper to his wrist, catching sunlight on the sidewalk from his nightmares.
