She’s so loud. His usually gentle voice rises to try to meet hers in some light and amiable argument. Then he says goodbye, and he’s fast on the stairs. So fast he catches me with my mouth hanging open, failing in every attempt to appear calm and carefree.
When he sees me, he stops halfway down the flight. “August?”
Damn, he looks good. My mind hasbeenplaces, all those long and lonely hours since I last saw him. Now he’s here, and I don’t understand how he can actually lookbetterthan yesterday. Does this man have some kind of secret beauty potion? Why, no matter what I do, do I never look that good?
But I should speak. Like a normal person who isn’t weirdly obsessed with himself. “I just arrived. I wasn’t waiting.”
“Oh. Good.” He seems as stunned to see me as I am to see him.
He wasn’t expecting me so early, I guess. Damn.
He trots down the rest of the stairs, then opens his sweet lips to speak, but the sound’s drowned out by his landlady. “August!”
His pretty eyes double in size, and all I get is a whispered, “Fuck, fuck, fuck! Hide!” His key’s in the lock, he shoves me in and slams the door with himself on the other side.
I’d much rather he were on this side, with me, but on the other hand, I’m in his apartment. Finally. I’d been trying to get in here for days to do some recon, but I’m very shit at breaking and entering as it goes. Guess it was the right move to just say hi, after all.
His apartment is not what I was expecting. It’s small, low-ceilinged, and like a nineteen-seventies fever dream of yellow and brown and orange, from the wallpaper to the linoleum floor to the popcorn ceiling. It should be awful. But it’s somehow… not.
He’s got all the old furniture in warm wooden tones, and a low orange velvet couch. The place is just a studio, one room, but the bedroom area is separated from the rest by a bookshelf. That’s made up of large wooden cubes, and you can see right through, except where it’s packed tight with vinyl. He has so many records. Hundreds of records. I run my finger along the spines, trying to get a sense of him. Echo and the Bunnymen, Diana Ross, Poison, Lesley Gore, Bon Jovi, The Ramones, The Pogues, Def Leppard, Colette, The Animals… It’s so much, and it’s incredibly eclectic.
He has a record player on a shelf in the middle, dust-free. I can imagine him lying on that bed, listening to all of this.
I wonder what he thinks about.
I move a little to the left to see which record he last put on. That’s when I see the photograph.
My parents. His parents.Ourparents.
My hand’s on my heart, the place where the broken glass pierced our skin.
This August is the only one who knows. Of all the Augusts I’ve met, he’s the only one I know who bears this scar.
The door handle clicks, and I all but jump away from that picture. Then I’m standing in the middle of the room, perfectly awkward, when I’d tried so hard earlier to look nonchalant. His door closes, and he’s looking at me, and all I can say is, “I brought Coke.”
His eyes follow the awkward raise of my arm, the plastic bag crinkling out a disconcerting noise. “Breakfast Coke?”
Of course breakfast Coke.“Yes?”
“Okay. Thank you.” He walks over to take it from me, and he’s not quite making eye contact like he did yesterday. He seems kind of nervous. I thought he might be beginning to like me… Maybe not… Maybe I came on too strong after all.
Bad idea to make that phone call.
Now he’s putting the Coke in the fridge, and what the hell is he doing?
“Sorry if I’m here too early.” I’m aware I’ve deepened my voice, still aiming for that cool and removed aspect to cover the fact that my insides are reeling. “You normally go for your run earlier.”
“How long were you stalking me again?” He says it on a smile, with a bit of a laugh. Then, he hits the button on the kettle.
Is he just going to ignore my Coke? “Sorry. I just wanted to see if you were… safe. If you were like me.”
“Did you think I wouldn’t be?”
My nervous laugh splits the air. “It’s hard to tell with these things. I can see now we’re pretty similar.”
My eyes flit to the photograph despite my best intentions. He follows them. His expression tightens.
That’s not going to be easy. It’s one thing to work through a tragedy by yourself—to choose what you do and don’t say to other people. But now there’s someone on the inside. Someone who remembers the accident. Someone who remembers being told the news. Someone who cried when you cried, who hurt when you hurt, through the months and months of recovery.
