Page 76 of Icarus

“I should,” he said into the dark. “It’s been long enough that it’s started to feel like lying and I don’t want it to anymore. I came straight here from rehab. Things got out of control.”

“What was it for?”

“Opioids,” Helios confessed immediately. “For about a year. Then methadone treatment for a year after that. Then I relapsed. I had been six months sober.”

It felt like a stone had landed in Icarus’s chest, and he fought the desire to jolt them out of this comfortable position so he could sit up and face Helios properly.

“What happened?” he asked carefully.

Helios shivered. “Partying at first. It’s . . . when your friends are doing things . . . after a while, living that way becomes normal. It’s worse if you’re responsible with it. It takes people a long time to notice something is wrong if you’re showing up to school, keeping up with your grades, keeping up with dance, working out. But my mom noticed. Eventually. And it stopped.

“I lost a few friends who didn’t like that I wasn’t partying much anymore. Who thought I was abandoning them. But after methadone treatment, things were looking up. I felt like I was in control of my life again. Then, I had a friend come in from out of town. Someone I was really close to back in the bad days, and I thought . . . I don’t know. I missed him.”

Helios sighed. He let go of Icarus’s wrist so he could wrap his arm around his own stomach.

“We got coffee and coffee turned into lunch, and lunch turned into dinner, and dinner turned into drinks, and drinks turned into clubbing, and then things got out of control again. It was only one night.

“Then I woke up and I was in a house I’d never been to, surrounded by people I didn’t know, and he was dead next to me. And I was dying too. And I was fucked up and I was scared. So, I called my mom.”

Helios sat up. He pushed his hand through his hair and rubbed his eyes. Icarus sat up too and shifted until they were pressed together, knee to knee.

“There were . . . police involved. I was in the hospital for days. His mom, Roger’s mom, came there and screamed at me like I was the one who did it to him. Even though I had been clean and Roger was in active addiction—but I couldn’t even blame her. I was too busy sweating and hurting and feeling guilty and ashamed. It felt disgusting—I was disgusting.”

“You’re not disgusting,” Icarus interrupted.

“I was. Icarus, you weren’t there,” Helios said.

Icarus stayed quiet.

“Anyway, when I’d finally sweated everything out, my mom showed up with my dad to check me out of the hospital and back into rehab for a week. Since the police were involved, and I’m a minor, she had to have him come and sign some paperwork. I hadn’t seen him in almost ten years . . .”

“When he finally arrived, he . . . hit me. Then, he told me what was about to happen to me and then dropped me off at rehab. The day I was discharged, he sent escorts to pick me up and fly me here. I just remember my mom standing next to him in the hospital crying and crying.”

Helios stopped talking and stared up at the ceiling.

“I’ve always been a disappointment.”

Icarus couldn’t say that Helios wasn’t, he couldn’t say it was going to be okay because he didn’t know if it would be, he didn’t have a paragraph of loving words that he’d rehearsed the way Helios did. He only had the truth.

“I want you anyway.”

Then, softer, “I’ll want you still, all the same.”

Helios sobbed and threw his hands down in his lap.

“Do you even understand what that means?” he spat.

Icarus didn’t know the particulars. But he didn’t like the way Helios was talking about himself.

“Stop being mean to yourself. You just lost a friend and you’re basically in jail. This entire day has been extremely stressful and we’re learning way too much about each other way too quickly. But that’s fine. If we have to do a speed run getting to know each other that’s fine. I don’t think you’re disgusting. I just think something really bad happened to you, and you’re dealing with it, and you’re trying your best. Are you trying your best?”

“Yeah, but—” Helios started.

Icarus shook his head. “There’s nothing more than that, then. The only thing we can do is try our fucking best and pray that it’s good enough for everyone around us. This is good enough for me. In the future, if something happens, we’ll figure it out. But right now, this is fine. It’s fine.”

Helios was quiet. He rubbed his face again.

“Hey, hey, look at me,” Icarus said. “Do you have any more horrible secrets to spring on me, because we have about two hours before midnight and if we’re trying to do this all today I’m going to need a cigarette or something. Do you have wings? Is your favorite food licorice? Do you have a foot fetish?”