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I should’ve guessed. In the second month of the year, he was here with you. In the second-to-last month of the year, he’s here with me. I will never wrap my head around how a single moment can keep throwing our lives around. I feel like a rock being skipped through the ocean—pain, relief, pain again, relief again, eventually destined to sink.
“Did Theo do his troll impression when you guys went through the tunnels here?” I ask.
“Not here in New York, but he did back home. We have these tunnels that start at the side, go beneath the street, and take you up to the beach,” Jackson says.
If I remember right, the troll impressions started because of your mother. She’d pick you and Wade up from elementary school—before I was in the picture—and when it was nice out, she’d walk you both through the park and tell you stories about the trolls that live on the bridges and in the tunnels in the park, threatening to eat children that ran away from home. I’m really surprised you weren’t more of a fantasy-genre fan, considering your mom’s imagination.
“I can take you down the path Theo would’ve taken you,” I say. “But I won’t do the voices. I suck at the voices.”
“I’d like that,” Jackson says. “I know Theo really wanted me to ‘meet’ the New York trolls, but we had to meet up with my friends one night and we never got around to it.”
I don’t like that he bummed you out, that he disappointed you. I don’t like that you saw such a future with him that you were okay with that disappointment, that there would be more time for you two. I don’t like that he trusted this future with you, either. I don’t like how threatened he still makes me feel. I don’t like how unfair I am to him. I don’t like that I’m likely bumming you out with my jealousy. I don’t like that I’m disappointing you with my nonsense.
I shake all of this off. There’s no point getting upset with you for sharing your childhood with Jackson.
I walk into the park and Jackson follows. It’s a good chance to get some air, and for me to clear it. “I’m sorry I ditched the other day. I thought being in Theo’s room again would feel like being in a museum, but I couldn’t get it out of my head that he’s dead.”
“More mausoleum than museum, right?”
“Exactly.”
I’m weirdly self-conscious about the mounds of dirty snow and scattered trash. It must seem ugly to someone who lives in the land of beaches and perpetual sun, of seagulls and dolphins. It’s like a guest has showed up to my home uninvited, without giving me a chance to clean my room. I’ve felt this way before, even without Jackson by my side. In January and February, right before you and Jackson came here, I thought I was suffering from seasonal affective disorder like the rest of New York. Maybe I was a little—it was find-a-way-to-put-two-coats-on brutal weather here—but mostly it was knowing you were happy and undisturbed in a sunny place, in a different time zone, likely throwing back a smoothie, with someone who wasn’t me.
“I want to keep it real with you, Jackson,” I tell that someone now. I hope he believes the unbelievable thing I have to say, because it’s one hundred percent true. “I don’t hate you. I thought I did, seriously. But I only hated your relationship with Theo. I didn’t think you were going to be someone he actually brought back to New York to meet his family and friends.” I consider stopping at one of these benches, even though they’re wet from melted snow, but if Jackson doesn’t sit beside me I’ll be forced to face him during this confession. “I hate that you also have history with Theo. And I hate that you were building a future with him.”
I can’t tell you the last time I’ve been this honest.
You’re my favorite human ever, but I really, really can’t tell you, Theo.
Jackson stops walking. “You know I don’t hate you either, right?”
I stop too, but I don’t face him. I look everywhere but at him, counting: eight bars on the sewer grate; six piles of dead, crusty leaves that make the shape of a frown; two lit lampposts (I make a mental note to myself to find a second broken lamppost to account for the broken one up ahead); two adults approaching . . . and I’m guessing they aren’t in the midst of the impossible situation Jackson and I are now miraculously confronting—maybe even embracing.
“You wanted Theo to stop talking to me.” I don’t mean it as an accusation. This is a legit conversation, guy to guy, broken heart to broken heart. It doesn’t do me any good to make everything a showdown; it doesn’t make me a winner.
“Well, I hated your history with Theo, too,” Jackson confesses. “I hated how often your relationship with him made me question if we would actually survive. You know, I wasn’t actually supposed to come with him to New York in February. My mom’s birthday was the day before, and we always spend it together. Breakfast at her favorite diner, then a movie, then back to the diner for lunch, then another movie, then back to the diner for dinner, then another movie, then back to the diner for milkshakes, and finally a movie at home.”
I almost interrupt to tell him how much I appreciate his mother’s symmetry—four movies, four trips to the diner—but shut up and let him go on. I never once got the impression he wasn’t always a part of your visit home.
“But I blew her off because I knew Theo would be here and that he would see you.” Jackson lowers his head. Now I look at him. “It’s the whole out of sight, out of mind business. I swore if I didn’t take that trip with him, it was a sure bet Theo would call me and tell me you two were getting back together.”
I’m ready to turn away when he catches my eye.
“I thought maybe next year Theo would be able to join me and my mom for the celebration.” He shrugs, which I know he doesn’t mean as a dismissal. He’s doing that thing I’ve done before where I try to shrink my own feelings, try to make my problems sound smaller to others because sometimes people just don’t get it. But I do, and he should know that.
The first troll tunnel is just ahead. We continue standing there.
We don’t hate each other. We shouldn’t hate each other’s histories, either.
I can’t shake away all of those feelings. Not immediately, at least. I doubt Jackson can either, especially here in Central Park, where I’m acting as a guide on a tour you should be leading. Our situation is like some rigged card game, and the hand the universe laid out for us is made entirely of jesters; we’re some cosmic joke. But maybe we don’t have to fold so easily. Maybe we can keep playing the game and make kings of ourselves, in spite of it all.
I step to Jackson, look him in his strained eyes, one still redder than the other because of that popped vessel. I hug the hell out of him. I hug him for him, because he knows firsthand how love and heartbreak can turn someone crazy and suspicious. I hug him for you, so you’ll be proud of me for doing the right thing instead of turning my back on him like I did the other night. I hug him for myself because his brutal honesty is somehow saving me from feeling worthless and defeated. I hug him for all of us because we’re no longer forces battling against one another.
“We’re finally doing something right,” I say, taking a step away from him.
“Too bad we couldn’t be this mature when he was alive,” Jackson says. “Maybe we would’ve gotten there eventually.”
I nod. “I hate that we complicated his life the way we did . . . and I hate that maybe it would’ve gotten to a point where Theo would’ve felt forced to say goodbye to me or you—or even both of us since we couldn’t get along.”
