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Avery reaches out for Ryan’s free hand. “Not all dates have to be fun. Not at this point. We have other priorities now.”
“Like?”
“Like, real.”
“Well, this will definitely count as real.”
Avery is relieved when there aren’t any cars in the driveway or the garage. When they get out of the truck, Ryan shoulders the duffel bag but doesn’t go to open the garage door. Avery can see him taking that pause, steeling himself from the inside.
Avery reaches out his hand, but instead of the whole hand, he offers his index and middle fingers, pressed together. Ryan looks at him quizzically.
“Double digits,” Avery explains.
Mission accomplished: Ryan has steeled himself, but not so much that he’s lost access to his heart. He offers his fingers, and the two of them link. Like that, they enter the house.
The first impression the house makes on Avery is one of smell: As soon as they walk in, they’re greeted by a scent that’s much more an approximation of pine than pine itself. The pine of cleaning, not of nature. This fits the decor, which is very orderly. It almost feels to Avery like a series of those rooms you see in museums, where the furniture is correct to the period, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s ever sat in it. In this case, the period could be thirty years ago, or maybe sixty. If it weren’t for the flatness of the TV in the den or the lack of cords on the phones, there’d be no sense of the current century.
Ryan lets go of Avery’s fingers, scratches his head as he looks around.
“I don’t think I need anything from these rooms,” he says. “Just my bedroom. All my stuff is pretty much there. Which is pretty weird, when you think about it. I guess I didn’t trust it to be anywhere else.”
This statement makes Avery sad, down to his core. But he doesn’t say anything. He’s here to listen, not to comment. Not unless he’s asked. He’s figured out that much.
Ryan’s bedroom door is closed. When he sees this, he says, “That’s strange.” And when he opens it, he goes, “Jesus!” Avery is expecting to look in and see it’s been trashed. But instead it’s…neat. Right-angles-no-clutter neat. From Ryan’s reaction, Avery is guessing this is not the room’s regular state.
“They couldn’t leave it alone,” Ryan says. “Seriously. I bet that’s the first thing she did after I left—made the bed, cleared away all signs of me.”
There are still plenty of signs of him, Avery thinks. But he can see how it might not feel that way. All the old toys are arranged with military precision, the shirts folded beyond recognition. There are a few posters on the walls—an Ansel Adams tree, a Scott Pilgrim. But the white walls create large gaps between them, as if there’d be too much trouble if they congregated close.
“Okay,” Ryan says. “Let’s do this.” He takes the duffel from his shoulder and hands Avery two boxes of trash bags from inside. “I’ll tell you whether something should go in a green bag or a black bag, okay? Let’s start with the clothes.”
Not “my” clothes, Avery notices.Theclothes.
Avery is sentimental about his clothes. There are some shirts of his that might as well have their own names, since what Avery feels toward them is almost like friendship. They’ve been through a lot together, good and bad. Some shirts marked his elevation into the person he was meant to be. Even some shirts from his earlier life, the ones he didn’t give away once he made clear to his parents what he wanted to wear and what he didn’t want to wear—he has an attachment to them even if he’ll never wear them again.
Ryan doesn’t seem to have any such attachments. He goes through his drawers like he’s operating a weed whacker. He takes out each shirt, barely looks at it, and says either “green bag” or “black bag.” Quickly enough, Avery realizes black meanskeepand green meanstrash. (One or two also end up in the duffel, but Avery’s not sure whatthatmeans.) Sometimes Ryan will hold up a shirt to see if it still fits. But mostly he judges them without unfolding them. Same with his shorts. Socks. Underwear.
It’s definitely going quicker than Avery expected. And Ryan doesn’t even seem to find it weird that he’s handing over his old underwear to his new boyfriend.
I guess he’s comfortable with me,Avery thinks. And also he thinks,Ryan is throwing too many things away.
Avery wishes they were stopping to talk about some of the clothes. Maybe Ryan would offer him a shirt or two. He’s seen a couple that went in the green bags that he’d totally wear. But at the same time, he wouldn’t want to wear something Ryan never wants to see again.
Once the drawers are empty, Ryan turns to the closet. Or, more accurately, he turns against the closet, pulling shirts and pants off their hangers as if they were toilet paper some prankster had thrown in a tree. Some are clearly too small for him now—this is a childhood cleanup that has waited years to occur. When Ryan green-bags a fiendishly soft flannel, Avery risks a “Hey, this would probably fit me.” At first, he doesn’t think Ryan hears him…but then Ryan shrugs, says Avery can take it if he really wants it. Avery puts it aside. Ryan green-bags another nine or ten shirts in a frenzy. Avery remembers what those frenzies were like, when panic would wind his nerves tighter and tighter. He didn’t take it out on his clothes, but he did take it out on himself and the people around him, because it felt like if they didn’t see him exactly right at that moment, if he didn’t show himself as exactly right at that moment, then he’d never get anything he wanted.
Ryan stops. Stares at the near-empty space he’s created.
Avery waits.
“What am I doing?” Ryan asks.
Avery waits some more.
Ryan turns. Whatever has been fueling him is running low.
“I thought I’d keep what I wanted to keep and get rid of the rest. Leave no trace. But now that doesn’t feel right, either. It feels like I’m taking everything out on my room, and my room didn’t do anything to deserve that, you know? So what do I do?”
“You stop.”
