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Ethan
Balancing an extra-large mug of chai tea in one hand, I flop onto the couch and dive into one of my favorite activities—organizing. I attack my notebook with highlighters and sticky tabs and savor the joy of taking excessive notes as I work out a variety of possible class schedules from a glossy course catalog. I’m being way over-the-top for a vet tech program, but I think I’ve earned the right to make a big deal out of it.
I sit back and study the living room that is just starting to feel like home after three weeks in our new south Seattle apartment. I savor the peace and quiet, how clean everything is—if you ignore the swimsuits hanging over every fucking piece of furniture.
Until keys rattle in the front door.
A fluffy white missile rockets through the hall and takes a flying leap into my chest. Rio mercilessly tramples my lap, my stomach, my balls in his mission to lick every inch of my face as quickly as possible. I thought it might take him a few months to get used to a new continent, but the little fucker immediately seized his place at the top of the apartment’s chain of command, pushing me to the bottom. He pretends not to hear me when I tell him to get down, because Victor doesn’t make him doanything.
A moment later, Mom appears in the doorway and waves, her smile glowing. I throw Rio off and wrap her in a rib-crushing hug that makes her squirm and giggle. I never realized how much she worried about me, how hard she pushed herself to be independent so as not to burden me. Now that the weight has been lifted off her, she looks hopeful and calm. Happy.
The first three nights after she moved into her facility, I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t even close my eyes. Victor sat on the couch with my head in his lap, streaming episode after episode ofThe Bacheloretteand coaxing me into arguments about which of the guys were secretly gay. Every time he felt me tense up, he’d pause the show and rub my back, whisper in my ear that she was going to be ok.
On the third night, he told me she was so fucking proud of me and I started crying, hot tears running down my cheek and onto his legs. He curled around me, put his forehead to mine, called me his soft boy. Next thing I knew, I woke up five hours later and he hadn’t moved at all, just watched me sleep. He could barely walk when he got up.
“Do tamales sound good for dinner?” Mom hefts a grocery bag with corn husks sticking out of the top.
“Of course they do. He’ll eat anything.” Victor squirms past us and starts shoveling all my tidy papers off the coffee table in messy armloads. He flourishes the puzzle I bought Mom in Italy, then dumps it out. Settling cross-legged on the floor, he starts probing through pieces with one finger. “Edges first, right, June?”
I love the way she smiles at him, how he grins back. They’re completely obsessed with each other, and I think they’re helping each other in ways I never could.
Mom heads into the kitchen with Rio bouncing on his hind feet behind her. Losing interest after three pieces, Victor jumps up and climbs on the couch, standing balanced on the cushions. He stares at me with those gorgeous eyes, dressed in one of my biggest t-shirts and a pair of tight running shorts, my Raiders hat crooked on his head, his bare feet sporting a flip-flop tan. His head cocks slightly, the corner of his mouth twitching into a smile as he watches me admiring him.
He holds out his arms. When I come to the back of the couch, he grabs my head and pulls it against his warm stomach. I nuzzle him and hug his ass, cup it in my hands because it’s what he’s setting me up to do and I’ll never turn down an opportunity. “Did you smoke today?” I ask, muffled.
In answer, he smacks his gum loudly. “If I had, I wouldn’t be bouncing off the walls, would I?”
He takes my face in his hands and tips it up to look at him, running his thumb over my lips. “I looked at everything,” he says quietly. “Talked to the staff. They’re really nice. They said she hasn’t panicked, and her new meds are looking good.” I’m really struggling with going to her facility, so he’s been taking care of things, picking her up and bringing her here almost every day until I’m ready.
I run my hands up his warm sides, under his shirt. “Thank you.”
“And to think,” he murmurs, bending down until our noses are almost touching, “you once told me I was the high maintenance one.”
He parts my lips gently with that dirty, bratty mouth that can somehow push back the darkness and erase all the ways I don’t feel like I’m good enough. Stepping over the back of the couch until I’m holding him in my arms, he wraps his legs tight around my hips. Even though we’re supposed to be helping Mom, neither of us can stop as he tips his head sideways and pulls my tongue into his mouth, tastes it, drinks it down, plays with it.
Eventually, he relaxes his legs and I let him slide to the floor. He hates when his face gets flushed, but I’m obsessed with it. “Come on. June’s gonna teach us to wrap these corn things.”
He weaves his fingers through mine and tows me into the kitchen, stumbling over Rio.
There are shadows in his eyes. I catch them when he’s not paying attention. Sometimes I find him just standing there, looking at nothing. Some nights he nudges me awake and I roll on top of him, letting him feel my weight until his breathing slows.
But every single time life gets to be too much for me, I turn around and he’s already there, waiting to hold me or fuck with me until I laugh or drag me to bed. When I’m the one waking him up at night, he sits against the headboard and spreads his legs so I can cuddle with my back to his chest. He rests his face in my hair and whispers all kinds of things, nonsense and truths too deep for words.
Sometimes I remember them the next morning, sometimes I don’t, and sometimes the pieces come to me in dreams.
He’s all the things that drive me crazy and all the things that lead me home.
Victor
I have a home. A real one, with no hiding places. It’s just a two-bedroom apartment, but it’s mine.
I have a home. I have a dog I love more than life itself. And I have a man who’s pretty good too. He’s everywhere, surrounding me all the time, even when he’s gone to his vet classes. Everything smells like him, the air warm like his skin, and I can get any of his shirts out of the laundry whenever I want, not just the one I picked out.
He doesn’t mind that I still spend a lot of time sleeping and eat him out of house and home. He says I have a lot of catching up to do. I try to make up for it by cooking him all the recipes June is teaching me.
I know I did good when he eats his whole plate and gets seconds or even thirds. When it’s burned to hell and has too much salt, we just shrug it off and order takeout. Because here, even when I fuck up, it’s not a big deal. No one’s waiting to hurt me.
I don’t always know what to do with myself, besides swim in the apartment pool and visit June. Now that Alek and I testified, Coach is going to prison. My dad is deep in a fucking legal nightmare without Gray to help him. The ghosts are gone, but I have a hard time remembering not to look for them.
