“I didn’t mean to spoil your night with your friends. And not your dinner, either,” he said.
He’d always been so terrible at apologizing when he upset his mother. She’d always called him rude and proud and thankless. But since then, Oscar had learned that these were qualities he’d honed forher. Because Oscar said sorry to the door when he bumped into it and cleaned up every spill in every coffee shop he went to. He left a tip and let other people pass ahead of him when he was getting on the bus. And he could apologize to Aaron without blinking.
“You couldn’t spoil anything if you tried.” Aaron shook his head. “Spike, you were so upset on the phone. What the hell happened?”
Spike.
Oscar wished he could sit in the car with Papa and cry about Ryan. Maybe they could hate him together. Papa had never really hated anyone, but Oscar knew he wouldn’t have liked someone like Ryan for Lina.
“It was awful.” Oscar’s mumble came out pathetic, and maybe a few years earlier, he’d have shuttered and followed it with awell, anyway, but in his mind’s eye, he could imagine Christina shaking her head at him, tutting until he shared.
And Aaron sat in front of him with those wide blue eyes and an open heart, soft fingers wrapped around a cup of coffee at half past ten at night, ready to listen.
So Oscar spilled.
And for the first time since they’d met, he watched Aaron transform, his features clenching, chiseling his softness into hewn marble, hard and cold.
Hot. The burning fires of his rage pierced through Oscar and bolstered him, an anvil on which the sword of Oscar’s righteous anger could be forged.
“I’d knock his teeth out if I met him,” Aaron said.
His coffee was finished now, Oscar’s tea too, and they were munching on white-bellied crocodile gummies from one of the packs Aaron had brought.
“You really don’t strike me as the violent type,” Oscar replied.
He thought about the way his throat would scratch every time he yelled at his mother, how he’d sometimes had to fight himself not to slam a cupboard shut on her hand. Christina had told him these could be intrusive thoughts and that he’d done a good job fighting them. After a few years of therapy, she’d admitted she would have probably shut his mother’shand in a cupboard, then added, “off the record, of course,” as though Oscar was a journalist who would report her to Marjorie Peters, Class A Bitch.
“I’m not,” Aaron replied. “But I’d knock Ryan’s teeth out if I met him.”
“I don’t like the way he is around Lina, either.” Oscar shrugged. They hadn’t talked about their families the last time they’d met. He remembered Aaron saying he didn’t really talk to them before their surgery, so Oscar hadn’t brought it up. “But, anyway.”
He dove in for another gummy, but it seemed Aaron had the same idea. Their fingers caught in the mouth of the bag, twitching, and Oscar could look at nothing but Aaron’s freckled knuckles, hovering.
What felt like a decade later, Oscar pulled his hand out, and Aaron dove in, pulling out a gummy. He pressed it into Oscar’s hand. It tasted better than all the others, like a gift, and Oscar looked up and found Aaron’s gaze while he chewed.
“Luigi’s okay on his own?” Aaron asked, voice softening.
“I was supposed to sleep in Lina’s dorm. He’s all set,” Oscar replied, barely whispering.
Aaron nodded, reaching for a green crocodile. He cut into it with his teeth, splitting it in two, and chewed.
“You’ve had a long day. Do you want to watch me beat the fuck out of this stupid level on my game?” Aaron asked.
“I would like nothing more,” Oscar said.
For a moment, they were standing outside a coffee shop, on the precipice of a goodbye that hadn’t happened, and as Aaron settled against his headboard with his red handheld console and his glasses back on, Oscar hoped it never would.
He sat beside him, hissing and gasping and laughing a little every time the little character fell to his dramatic death or made a leap that was too ambitious.
“It’s giving me anxiety each time he dies like that, I swear,” Oscar said.
“Then let’s do something else. You’ve had enough anxiety for the day, I’d wager.”
Aaron switched to a building game before Oscar could complain. He’d never played this one before, and it was mesmerizing to watch Aaron’s nimble fingers put together the colorful building blocks and turn them into something beautiful. Just like he’d done with his blanket.
“I could watch this forever,” Oscar mumbled.
“You can if you want to,” Aaron mumbled back. He turned his head, resting his cheek against the headboard. “Sleep over?”
