WHATEVER WE HAVE LOCKED UP
Brady kisses me at a Christmas party, and it’s stupid but I kiss him back. We’re in somebody else’s house, this girl I used to know in high school, who I honest-to-God forgot that he knew, too. There are these silver streams of tinsel hanging down off every flat surface, trailing from the ceiling, getting caught in our hair. I mean to say something—an excuse, maybe, for why I don’t follow everyone else outside for a quick, tipsy snowball fight before the sun goes down, or an apology for, I don’t know, being here where we can somehow end up the only two people in this garish room. What are the odds? I want to say, and smile sheepishly while I’m doing it. I want to sink into the deep purple couch and stare at all the popsicle-stick ornaments on the lopsided wire tree, maybe together, and ask him how he’s been, how his holidays are treating him, how it feels to be out from behind the shadows of the bar where he works. Like we’re just old friends or coworkers—a little awkward, not expecting to run into each other here, but not awful or tense or important.
I open my mouth to speak, but whatever I’m going to say gets trapped at the tip of my tongue when his fists bunch themselves in my collar, forced back behind my teeth when his knuckles push against my collarbone to back me up towards the wall, swallowed back down when his eyes catch mine and then glance, meaningful, towards the water-stained ceiling. Pinned up above our heads is this messy bunch of green leaves and white berries, all tied together with a thin red ribbon: mistletoe.
Christ, this is so stupid. It’s convenient, too, like we’re in one of those cheesy TV romcoms that my sister likes to watch, except there’s a not a lot that’s romantic about his flash of a frown or my ugly, itchy sweater, and there’s not a lot that’s funny about using a festive-but-browning plant as a way out of talking about what we’re doing, what we’re about to do, the tense mile-wide space that was between us just seconds ago.
But I let him kiss me anyway, and I let myself kiss him back.
His left hand wraps itself up around the back of my neck and it’s too easy to let him pull me closer, too easy, after two years, to close my eyes and let muscle memory take over. It’s the best I can do to keep my hands to myself, pulling at the hem of his t-shirt and nothing more. I’m not thinking about all of the places where they could be instead. I’m not thinking about the cords of muscles in his back or the pale scar on his shoulder blade or the surprising softness of his dark hair. I’m not thinking about what his face might look like right now, or what it means that he’s kissing me first, or what we’re going to be able to say to each other the next time we see each other and we’re both supposed to be doing our jobs. I’m really not thinking about all the partygoers bursting back in through the front door, letting out low whistles and celebratory whistles, clapping each of us on the back and laughing not because of whatever’s in our pants but because of who I am and who he is. I’m trying not to think at all.
He pulls away and, with one hand on my chest, pushes me back, putting space between us. He swallows hard enough that I can see his Adam’s apple bobbing in his throat. He shoves his hands back in his pockets and frowns for what feels like a full minute, or forever, before he says anything.
“Don’t think this changes anything, Artie,” he says. Something about the whole thing makes me queasy, turns my breath sour at the back of my throat. I don’t know what I expected—I don’t know what I ever expect when it comes to Brady, no matter how plainly he speaks. He’s glancing toward the door but I get the feeling that, this time, he’s waiting for me to respond, to acknowledge, to affirm that whatever just happened means nothing after all. And maybe it doesn’t.
“Change?” I’m speaking without thinking, and there’s a laugh clawing its way out of my throat even though there’s nothing to laugh about, “I didn’t think things ever changed.”
Maybe that’s true. Maybe we’re still just two, slightly-older teenage boys who only know how to talk to each other with hands and hips, who only make a mess of things if we try any other kind of communication. Maybe he’s still cold and unreachable, and maybe I’m still attributing too much meaning to the flicker of disappointment in his eyes, and maybe there’s nothing new or different about either of us.
There’s a big crowd out by the stage now, like fifty people all clapping to the beat of Truman’s drums, stomping to the low thrum of Amie’s bass, chanting muddled syllables trying to match the rise and fall of my voice. Most of them didn’t come out to see us, I don’t think; they’re here because it’s New Year’s Eve and they wanted to get a little drunk, or a lot drunk, and because they wanted to have a room full of new friends to shout the countdown with. Us being here is just a surprise bonus.
They’re laughing with their whole bodies, the girls tossing their damp, sweaty hair back over their shoulders every few moments, the guys cheering every time Amie hits a note they can’t reach. Close to the stage, right by the amps, is this middle-aged guy who looks just like one of my balding uncles, nodding his shiny head to the beat, swaying on his feet, and tapping one hand against his thigh, a soft smile spread over his features in quiet bliss. Back behind the bar, I can see Brady, perpetual scowl painted across his features. His heavy-lidded eyes are cast down towards the glass he’s holding in one hand and carefully drying with a cloth held in the other.
The whole crowd is pretending together that they know our lyrics, even though Amie just came up with these last week, even though they probably won’t even remember the band’s name tomorrow. The steam of their breath rises in one big cloud and fogs up the lights, the windows.
Ten minutes ago we had them all doing this call-and-response thing: I would call out the words, then Amie would answer me, and then me again, and then Amie, this time with the full backing of that whole, noisy crowd. There’s something about being caught up in all this sound all at once that usually makes it easy to forget about the rest of my body. At least, I always end up feeling like the only parts of me left behind are my tongue, my vocal chords, my eardrums—only the stuff made for the music. Like everything else floats off with the steam, at least for a minute.
Tonight, though, something isn’t happening the same way it usually does. Maybe it’s the holiday, or the glare of the spotlight in my eyes, or the way, every time I move my gaze from the crowd, I can’t hope but notice the way that, even in the warm, dim light behind the bar, Brady still kind of glows. My lungs and my heart and my stomach stay heavy in my ribcage.
When the song ends, whatever parts had rushed out of me with the sound suddenly flow back in, my mouth like the drain on a bath tub, all the liquid “me” being sucked back down with a gurgle. Which is gross, and uncomfortable when I start to think about it too much, and leaves me with this feeling like my whole chest is too full.
I cup my hand over the microphone and turn to Amie, hair damp with sweat and falling into my eyes when I move. “I’m gonna take five,” I say, and it almost hurts to speak. She must hear it, too, because when she takes the mic and my spot, she casts me a crooked smile instead of the glare she would have on any other night.
“This one’s called ‘Artie Rosmerta is a No-Good Punk,’” she says to the crowd, and I know her fingers are finding the chords without her even needing to look down.
I loop a scarf around my sticky neck and go to stand out by the street, lean up against an empty bike rack and breathe into my hands to keep my face warm. I keep thinking: now’s the time for some kind of divine intervention, something to shock out whatever weight is settling in my gut. Now’s the time for a fire engine to go screaming past, or a limousine to come sliding up on the sidewalk next to me.
Maybe just a phonecall—just my sister, Vie, calling from home, surrounded by all the pictures she has of all three of us triplets. “We’re coming by,” she’d say. She and Luc, our brother, would be here in minutes, drag me back into the bar by my elbows, shoving me back onto the stage with a too-enthusiastic pat on the back. If I were to look down into the crowd, Vie would be there grinning, and Luc would be nodding along, straight-faced but approving. If I came back down they’d be there to meet me, Vie stretching to put an arm over my shoulder.
“Happy New Year,” she’d grin, and I wouldn’t have time to think about the migraine forming in between my eyebrows, or the way my breath is starting to come up in rattles, or Brady’s fingers, gentle on the rim of each glass he picks up. Like every other New Year, we’d ring it in together—preferably at the top of our lungs, preferably with a flush spreading over each of our cheekbones, preferably at our own table, away from the crowd and the bar.
But they’re not here tonight—Luc is off training to work with big cats at some sanctuary, Vie is out with her new boyfriend and his dog, hiking or ice-skating or something, and I’m here, watching my breath form clouds in the cool air and trying to work up the spine to sidle back inside.
The next time someone drives past, it’s not a firefighter or a celebrity but a cab driver, speeding by, bearing down on his horn, and yelling something I’m probably lucky not to catch over the ringing in my ears.
The first time I dragged Brady into the janitor’s closet at the end of a passing period, it wasn’t because I wanted to borrow his Chem notes or have a lengthy chat about the conflicting emotions I was starting to feel every time I saw his jaw clench and his eyes narrow when he was working on stoichiometry. I was sixteen and had just resolved to grab him by the sleeve and pull him after me, shut the door behind us and wait, just for a second, until I couldn’t hear anyone else’s footsteps going past.
“Artie,” was all he said, and I think it was the first time I heard him use my name outside of class. There was a question in his eyes that I didn’t know how to answer except by pressing my lips to his, hoping that that would be explanation enough.
I had kissed girls before—quick and easy, just a peck and a hug before we went our separate ways for class. That was what it was supposed to be like: soft, speedy, simple. But this time once I started I didn’t know when was a good time to stop, especially not when, somehow, miraculously, he was kissing me back.
I remember pulling away and running a hand through my hair, suddenly hot in the face, embarrassed by the way he was looking at me with his brow furrowed, embarrassed by the way he didn’t say anything at all. “Sorry,” I remember saying, mumbling, and then I was the first to leave.
Even after that we never really talked that much—or at least he didn’t, his voice trapped up behind pursed lips and a scowling brow. At the beginning it was fine because I didn’t want to not really—not second or the fifth or the tenth time that I pulled him into the closet, and not even when he first pulled me in instead. It was fine with me if neither of us wanted so much as to say the other’s name when we were forced to work together in group projects, or when we ditched class to dip behind the shed behind the soccer fields, a stolen joint gifted to me by my sister tucked between my lips, or when, just once, he left this ugly, purple mark at the base of my neck and then we both just went to sleep, and I snuck him out of the dorm the next morning with an elaborate ruse involving a fire alarm and false reports of a goat that Vie had devised for a prank that she was furious at me for using without her, and not even for a good reason that she could see.
For a little while, I wanted to believe that if we didn’t talk then other people wouldn’t either. It wasn’t like anyone I knew would suddenly stop seeing me the same—not like Amie or Vie or Luc would stop talking to me, or wrinkle their nose at the sight of me, not like I would be kicked out of school or like my parents would have anything to say other than something cheesy like Thanks for trusting us enough to tell us, son. We’re so proud to have such a brave kid.
I just wasn’t brave. Even knowing that things would be probably be fine, I couldn’t fight the way that my hands shook when I thought about telling Luc when it was just the two of us, alone in the dark of our dorm. I couldn’t stomach the thought of just letting it slip to Vie over midnight snacks. I couldn’t even think about dropping a hint to Amie without feeling dizzy.
But I don’t think he cared either, at least at first, and probably not later. He didn’t like for other people to be in his business, to talk to him, to ask him questions. A lot of the time, I don’t think he liked me either, but that just made it easier for both of us not to tell. I thought if we could keep it up then I would be fine—no emotional attachment either way, and no eyes on me that I didn’t draw there myself.
I guess after a couple weeks of being so close to someone that you’re inhaling what they’re exhaling, so close that you know just the way that their bones fit best with yours, so close that you know what, exactly, makes a hitch of breath in their throat—I guess at that point a lot of people would want to know that someone in more ways just one body on another. We’d be out on the soccer field at three in the morning and his lips would be swollen—mine, too, would start to sting around the edges—and his hair would make a dark cloud over his already stormy face, and for some reason I would want to tell him everything. I would tell him about Vie’s big plans to make all of us rich and move away somewhere where the beach was made of sand instead of rocks. About Luc’s new cleats, which he’d accidentally used to track mud and dirt all over the school and caused a maintenance mayhem. About Amie’s vitriolic hatred of cats, how she’d threatened never to speak to me again if I ever seriously thought to sneak one in. About the way that I’d just learned to tune a guitar not by ear but by eye—how if you held down the fifth fret and pressed down one string, then released it, the string above it would vibrate, too, if it was in tune. How this worked because the two strings would be operating at the same frequency, on the same wavelength.
He would sigh, sometimes. He would roll his eyes often. He’d say something like, “Artie, I wish I could explain exactly how much I don’t care,” but maybe a little nicer than that at first. Then the conversation would be over, if he was lucky and I wasn’t in the mood to protest. It could last through a two-hour-long argument, three days of ignoring each other, and two minutes of make-up-whatever, if he wasn’t.
When I come back in, my throat is starting to get sore and the weight of my chest isn’t any lighter. I know I should work my way back to the stage with a handful of apologies and a face lit with a sheepish grin. I should be taking back the microphone, belting out—I don’t know, something celebratory, maybe some Queen? I never memorize our set lists anymore. They’re most there for show and, we keep hoping, for some fan to steal off the stage and bring to us to sign at the end of our gigs. So far that’s only happened once, and it wasn’t a fan but Vie, who pinned it up on her wall and then wrote the band a pretty thorough but completely unnecessary critique of our song titles. I still haven’t decided whether she’s keeping it for sentimentality or irony. Maybe a little bit of both.
Instead of weaving my way back through the crowd, I seat myself on the edge of one of the bar seats and watch the way the light catches on Amie’s curls, on her lips, on her nails shaped into talons. I’ve never seen the stage from this side before—usually we get her, set up, do the set, pack up, leave. Most of the time we send Tru with our thanks, and to get our percentage, before we all spill out onto the streets in separate directions, headed home or at least elsewhere. It’s not that I’m ungrateful—it means the world to have a stable gig, one that, somehow, Amie arranged so that we don’t have to pay a cover fee but are actually making some kind of money, at least when people show up like tonight. But I’m still tempted each time to make up an excuse—I’m sick or it’s a family emergency, Luc’s being held captive by one of the tigers, who is holding his head in its huge jaws or maybe I’ll go back and study Business after all. But I’m never that sick, and Luc hasn’t even started working with the animals yet, and there’s no heart, no melody, no tune but monotony to Business.
Besides that, it doesn’t feel like there’s much of a point in trying to avoid Brady anymore—unless he’s right and I’m still afraid to catch his eye in public, still afraid that one day he’s going to look up and see that when I’m crooning love songs to Jennies and Sarahs and Emmas, when I’m trying hard to focus my attention somewhere else, anywhere else, I’m still really only looking at him. I know he won’t see me because he always forces his eyes down, down into the oak of the bar and away from mine. But, unless he’s right, maybe I’m not afraid of him noticing anymore.
He’s so pale that his thin wrists look blue even from the other end of the bar, and if I really squint I can make out the slight bulge of a vein that snakes its way from his wrist up his forearm, then disappears into the flesh of his bicep and under the black fabric of the t-shirt he’s wearing. He looks taller every time I see him, though, and stronger—like he and his body have finally come to terms with each other, no longer lanky he used to be. The only thing about him that seems out of place is his cheery nametag, one of those HELLO! My name is type of things that doesn’t suit the look on his face or the deep shadows of the bar. That’s temporary, though—two weeks ago Amie stole his actual badge from the coat hanger when he stepped out for a break. I hope for his sake that they’re getting him a replacement.
Finally, he makes his way over, reluctance all over his stride and in the set of his shoulders, in the flat tone of his voice. “Aren’t you supposed to be up there?” He asks. He motions with his chin toward the stage, where Amie is belting some song that Tru wrote—something poppy dedicated to his sisters, all four of them, with their matching, pin-straight black hair and pale moon faces and entirely separate personalities. Amie, to her credit, hasn’t even glanced my way once—maybe because she’s stating to get annoyed, maybe because she’s enjoying her time in the spotlight, a place that suits her well. Brady sets the glass he’s holding down none too gently, the glass ringing against the bar.
“Aren’t you supposed to be asking if there’s anything I’d like to drink?” I shoot back. His icy eyes harden underneath his lashes and he picks up another glass with the hand that isn’t holding the cloth.
“Fine,” he says. “Is there anything you’d like to drink?”
“Not really. I’ve already downed three bottles of water in the past hour and I think Amie might kill me if I have to take a piss break in the middle of the set.” I smile my best shit-eating grin. His hands are working without his eyes needing to look, speeding through dirty glasses now. His fingers are long, like the fingers of a piano player, but I know for a fact that he’s never played an instrument in his life, because I used to ask him, because once I tried to convince him to let me teach him at least “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and all he did was mumble his disinterest in response.
“Is that not what you’re doing right now,” he says more than he asks, his voice still deadpan, his eyes focused on the crowd over my left shoulder.
This isn’t how I expect our reunion, or whatever, to go. I always thought if we made it to this point that maybe there would be explosions of rage, or passionate apologies, or heartfelt confessions—from one of us, from me to him, from both of us. Something different, something new that didn’t let us just dodge around two years of almost and then three years of nothing, not a word or a glance or anything at all. I never expected him to be the first to break the silence—but I guess that still hasn’t happened, really, anyway.
My heart, is racing like the wings of a hummingbird behind the birdcage of my ribs. I can’t speak for his—he’s always steadier than I am, so maybe for him it’s just. Nothing. I don’t know what I want—to scream or to make a scene or to just keep talking until this stuttering in my chest stops.
“Not really,” is all I say, and I’m still smiling, and I’m starting to feel a little sick.
“Oh,” he says, and he still hasn’t looked at me, except for his first question. His hands have run out of glasses to wash so he taps his knuckles impatiently against the wood of the bar. “Is there anything else you want, or?”
I don’t know how to answer that. I don’t know what I want or why I haven’t gotten back up, to pee or to get back on stage or even just to have an excuse to get out of his presence. Well. I guess I don’t really want out of his presence, exactly, but I don’t want to be in it like this, either—this uncomfortable, evasive space that we’ve always been good at creating. I don’t need to know him as well as I do to know that he doesn’t want to be here, either, would probably rather my stupid band never walked through these doors. I wonder if he tried to change his schedule around our appearances, if he cared enough to try and avoid this just a little bit longer. I wonder if he knows that I check the bartenders’ schedule on our way out the back every week.
“Let’s, just,” I pause, and he looks at me then, looking about as expectant as he ever has, one eyebrow raised just enough that it changes his expression completely. I’m the first to look away now, my eyes catching on the clock above his head on the wall—two minutes to the New Year, two minutes to the New Me, or so I’m supposed to believe, though beneath his gaze I feel a lot like the same teenager who couldn’t tell his own triplets his biggest secrets, whose best friend still only barely knows them, who spent the first three weeks after graduation in bed, who used to count in the back of his head every eye that was on his back and hope to God that every one of them was friendly.
“Let’s just,” I start again. His brow furrows this time, and it almost looks like he has something of his own to say, but if he does, he doesn’t say it. “Let’s just, uh, wait for the countdown? Don’t you have some sparkling juice or anything?”
“I thought you said you didn’t want anything,” he says, sounding bored again, but he’s already reaching for two of the glasses he’s just cleaned.
I always thought that he would be the one to leave, to give up—stop answering my text messages completely, stop acknowledging me in the hallways, stop wanting to put in the effort or the time. I felt like it must have been exhausting for him, trying to keep up with the way my mouth moved when I got to talking, trying to navigate the boundaries that neither of us either actually established. I thought that it would have been easier for him if he just went back to ignoring me, to pretending as though he didn’t know my name or anything else about me, to sitting sullen and alone in all of the classes that we had together. I’m still not sure why he didn’t.
But I guess I got tired first. Tired of feeling people’s eyes on my back, even when there were none; tired of trying to constantly keep secret something that seemed like it wasn’t going anywhere. Tired of trying to make it go somewhere. Tired of arguing and of talking and of being tired. Tired of feeling like I was either missing something or fucking something up. Tired of feeling like I was getting eaten up by this big, gray space without boundaries or rules or obligations, but which I wanted to give everything to, anyway.
I didn’t want closure or time to think about it or space to be on my own again. I just wanted out. And I thought it would be easier on him, too, if it didn’t come with any kind of explosions or climax or hurt egos.
I don’t know what happened. I don’t know why I thought that what I was going to do was the easiest way to do it, or the kindest. Maybe I just didn’t want to think about it.
When I left I just left. We didn’t talk or see each other, at least not alone, after that.
Brady hands me a glass of something purple and fizzing. “We only have grape,” he explains, and shrugs, then looks to the stage, where Amie has started the countdown and Tru is giving the crowd a drumroll. He seems older, all of a sudden, calmer—relaxed in his own skin, watching from behind the safety of the bar.
“Hey, I start, but I realize I don’t know what I’m going to say. HE looks at me with eyebrows raised, frown firmly in place.
I want to say something that’ll blow him away, something poetic or revelatory or special. I want to tell him this time that I’m sorry; sorry that what we have all boils down to stunted conversations and unsteady feet, shaking knees and kisses up against a stranger’s brick wall. Sorry that I fucked up, sorry that I ruined it, sorry I got scared and restless and impatient. Sorry that I didn’t call him, sorry that I pretended not to have memorized his face, sorry for the one time I ran into his kid brother at the grocery store and couldn’t stop staring because, for a full minute, I thought it was him.
I want to tell him I love him, or did, but maybe that’s just the mood talking—or maybe I’d mean it, but maybe now’s not the time to say it, and it’d be dangerous either way. I could say I missed him, could say I miss him, could say something like Come home with me and let me show you what my life looks like now, even though it’s not all that different from the last time he saw it up close, just a little less cluttered.
But all of that—the apologies and the adoration and the invitation—seems like it belongs someplace else, sometime in the past, or maybe sometime in the future. It just doesn’t belong here, not now, not with the whole crowd screaming and people blowing those party favor kazoos and kissing each other sloppily on the mouth. Maybe for now it’s best that he’s on that side of the bar and I’m on this one, because I think about that, too—leaning across the bar and planting one right on his scowling face— but the last time we tried that didn’t end up very celebratory, bogged me down until Christmas Day, had Vie nudging me in the ribs and asking Hey, champ, what’s the matter?
He’s still waiting, even though the ball has dropped and people are calling for their tabs, grinning at each other, swaying on the spot and leaning into each other’s shoulders. I still don’t know what to say but I think I can make a start.
“Happy New Year,” I say, and I raise my glass towards his.
