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“Oh.” I swallowed down my stalled amusement in favor of watching and enjoying the sound of his. I placed the remaining beers on the wide arm of the chair as he settled.
“It was either laugh or punch something,” he said, using the heel of his dusty palm to wipe his eyes. “Shit,” he hissed, blinking rapidly.
“Here, let me,” I said, using the end of my sleeve to wipe the dust away. “Better?”
“Yeah,” he said, blinking a few more times to be sure.
“It’s your first time trying in decades, maybe more. Give yourself a break and some credit. Watch a few videos online or sign up for a class,” I suggested.
His eyes brightened like a light bulb had flicked on in his brain. “Be right back.” He drained the rest of his beer, taking the empty bottle with him as he maneuvered around the fallen table to enter the house, returning minutes later carrying a large box.
“What’s that?” I asked, standing to haul the broken table out of the way so he could rest the box on the ground in front of his seat.
“An old box of junk I had stored. I came across it while searching for something else and brought it with me. I haven’t looked inside since… God, since Gloria left.” He tore the lid open, rummaging through its contents in search of something.
“What are you looking for?” I leaned forward to snoop inside.
“I took notes whenever I got the chance to help Paul,” he said distractedly. “And even when I wasn’t helping him, I’d ask tons of questions and jot down his answers. Sometimes he’d even hold on to the book and add to it for me. It’s gotta be in here somewhere.”
I’d been about to ask if Paul was Gloria’s husband when Franky snatched a tattered notebook out of the box in triumph. He flipped through the stiff, creaking pages, complaining about the faded ink.
“I think this can still be useful.” He brought the book so close it practically touched his lashes as he tried to make out the aged penmanship. My curiosity detoured to the photo he hadn’t noticed floating from between the book’s pages to land gracefully near my foot. I scooted to the edge of my seat to pick it up, gaze flying over the image.
Franky was easy to spot. He lacked the pounds of muscle he had now, and his facial hair hadn’t grown in yet, but he had that mad-at-the-world expression I’d come to know him for.
He sat on a freshly mowed lawn that seemed to roll on for miles behind him, his arms wrapped around his bent legs as he stared broodingly into the camera. A boy who looked no older than ten kneeled beside him holding an action figure, and a man and woman stood behind them, their arms linked, heads touching.Maybe Gloria and Paul?
What really caught my eye was the blonde boy standing off to the side like he’d opted out of being in the picture. Whoever snapped the photo had done a bad job of keeping him outside of the shot, though.
He seemed closer to Franky’s age. Both in their mid-teens, if I had to guess.
I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and as Franky shuffled through the pages of his notebook, clueless to the piece of his past I currently dissected, I racked my brain to understand why I couldn’t turn away.
Eventually, I worked out what had captivated me about the seemingly innocent photo. It was the way he stared down at Franky when he thought no one was looking, unaware he’d be a part of the moment being captured.Longing.The pained look on his face was longing.
“Franky,” I said. He stopped what he was doing when he saw the picture I held up. “Is this Theo?”
He took the photo from me, scanning it as if he’d never seen it before, or like he’d forgotten about its existence. “Yes,” he said, sitting back slowly. I watched his eyes, watched the way they grew distant beneath his lashes, the way they seemed to shrink—or wither like the wildflowers in my meadow.
Regret.
“Why was he looking at you like that?”
“Like what?” he asked quietly, his finger tracing Theo.
“Like he misses you, when you’re only a few feet away.”
The corners of his mouth tipped downward, and his brows met in the middle. “This was taken after my father broke the news to us. By the time I’d gotten the film developed, they were gone. I told myself he was upset. That he was hurt that we couldn’t be friends anymore.”
“Youtoldyourself?” I asked, focusing on that part of his explanation, because what we told ourselves wasn’t often the truth, and we knew it.
“We were young,” he said. “What else could it have been?”
That’s what I wanted to know. I didn’t push, because I couldn’t afford to be wrong, but if my suspicions about Theo were correct, could it also mean the longing went both ways?
I decided to let him in on something about myself I never hid, but that I hadn’t outright told him yet. Maybe I could be a source of inspiration. Maybe there was nothing to inspire. Still, it felt like the time and the perfect opening.
“Would it surprise you, or bother you, to find out that I’m bi-sexual?” I asked, as we both gazed thoughtfully into the fire.
