EIGHT
THE SONG OF REALITY
SEBASTIAN
Alex didn’t lookat me when we disposed of all the evidence of what we had done, nor when we got dressed again. The smell of sex still lingered in the air.
“Want me to pop open the window?” I asked.
“Sure,” Alex replied, struggling to fasten the button on his pants.
I slipped into my shirt, took the three steps to the window, and opened it a crack. My fingers ran through my hair, trying to straighten it, but it was tricky without a mirror.
“Does my hair look okay?”
He peeked up from his fly and took me in with wide eyes. Then his face softened. “Like nothing ever happened.”
We held each other’s gaze and exchanged a quick, knowing smile. No matter how hard we tried to maintain appearances for everyone else,weknew the truth. And we’d both carry this secret like a treasure.
“How about me?” Alex ran his hands over his shirt and straightened his back. He tucked his hair behind his ears, smiling as if he were about to have his picture taken. His shirt was a little wrinkled in the front, but not enough to draw attention.
“Like nothing ever happened,” I quoted him.
Alex nodded and rolled his shoulders as if he was preparing for a fight before stepping to the door. “Operation Air Matress is ready to go.”
That was the one thing we had to do: set up a second bed. As much as I would have liked to just share his for the night, we needed to put on a little show for everyone else, so no one would notice what happened. Neither of us said it, but we were both wary of the questions that would follow if anyone found out.
He pressed his ear to the door, listening for a few seconds, then opened it and casually walked out. I stuck my head into the hallway and glanced left and right to see if anyone was around, then realized how suspicious that would look if anyone had actually been out there.
Before I could overthink it, I stepped out into the hallway and followed Alex upstairs to the third floor.
The attic—which wasn’t really an attic but an unfinished, spare room we used for storage—was next to my parents’ bedroom. Their door was closed, but light shone through the gap beneath.
While I slowed my pace, Alex moved ahead without a care. He flicked on the light in the attic and let out a sigh at the sight of a thousand boxes and junk covered with tarps. His eyes wandered over a shelf on the left, while mine fell on three boxes in the back that had “Devin” written in bold letters across them.
Out of curiosity, I trudged over. The top of the uppermost box was just loosely placed on, and when I lifted it, a wooden frame stared up at me. It was a picture of Dad and me, grinning at the camera. Dad was sitting on a boulder, while I stood next to him with my hand on his shoulder. A cloudy mountain range lay behind us, indistinct and blurred. Yet, I knew right away where this had been taken. This picture of us on top of Mount Mitchell, the highest peak on the Appalachian Trail, used to hang on thewall above my desk when I still lived here. We took it on my eighteenth birthday, but I didn’t get to look at it for long because only three months later, I moved out.
“There it is,” Alex announced, hoisting a rolled-up bag onto the floor. “I don’t remember the air mattress beingthatheavy, though.” He laughed, but it died off quickly when he looked at me. “What did you find?”
I held the frame up. “My dad and I on my eighteenth birthday.”
Alex left the mattress alone and shuffled over to take a look.
“We used to go hiking a lot,” I explained. Since we lived in “the heart” of the Appalachian Mountains, as the old town sign still claims, we had made it our unspoken goal to hike through all of it.
“Looks like you had a fun day,” Alex said, leaning closer.
“It was super strenuous.” My fingers trailed along the frame. “Dad cursed so much during the last mile. But once we were at the top, he’d already forgotten all about it and acted like it had been a breeze.”
“Well, at least now we know you were cute back then, too.” Alex looked at me, then back at the photo. “Yep, Itotallywould’ve dated you if we’d known each other back then.”
“As if. Have you seen all the pimples I had?”
“Weallhad them. No need to be embarrassed.” He pulled his head back and walked over to the air mattress.
I stared after him for a moment, then took another look at the picture and put it back in the box. As fun as that day had been, the times when my dad and I could easily spend hours walking together were long gone—although I had to admit my view of him had changed a little today. Thanks to the video Alex had shown me, I now knew he still had a more relaxed side, too. We just weren’t at a point where he could show it to me again.
“Don’t want to take the picture with you?” Alex asked. He lifted the mattress bag and shuffled toward the door, his fingers hovering over the light switch.
