17
SOW RECKLESS, REAP REGRET
Oscar was a construction site, and someone had decided to jackhammer through his skull, pounding pounding pounding relentlessly. His body was a plank, stiff and aching. He groaned, his eyes unsticking as the lull of sleep began to dissipate, making way for the scent of his own apartment.
Luigi’s whiskers tickled as he leapt onto the arm of the couch and leaned in to sniff Oscar’s face. It was his black velvety fur Oscar saw first when his vision settled.
Oscar groaned, the temperature in his body rising—an all-consuming wave that crashed against his stomach, pulling him from the couch and across the living room. He crashed knees-first on the tile just in time to stick his head in the toilet and vomit yellow.
The sound of running water startled him. In his panic, he hadn’t even heard Aaron coming in, hadn’t sensed his presence anywhere, but here he was, hand reaching into the shower, testing the temperature, eyes fixed on the tile ahead.
“Hey,” Oscar croaked.
“A shower will make you feel better. Brush your teeth andthen come out and have something to eat.” Aaron turned to go.
“Hey, wait.” Oscar ignored the pounding in his head and pressed his hand flat on the toilet seat, pushing himself up to stand. “Aaron, wait.”
“I have to get back, Oscar,” Aaron said, whirling to face him.
Maybe Oscar had slept right through autumn, because the ocean of Aaron’s eyes had turned to frost, and it cut him.
“Back where?” Oscar murmured.
“Back to the kitchen. You have class today, remember?” Aaron crossed his arms, eyes darting away. “Please. Take a shower and brush your teeth. I don’t like the smell.”
Sorrytasted like bile and acid as it climbed into Oscar’s mouth, felt cold as it scraped the ridges of his teeth, sounded like nothing but air as he tried and failed to say it.
A moment later, he was alone and the door was clicking shut behind Aaron, muffling Luigi’s inquisitive mew.
The water was lukewarm when Oscar stepped in, but he needed it cold. Oscar needed to slip into the glacier water that had been Aaron’s gaze, to drown in the depths of the disappointment he’d spied in his expression. He contained a yelp as cold spray hit his back, drenching his hair and weighing it down nearly to his collarbones.
He wasn’t sure how long he stood there but his skin was raw from scrubbing when he finally emerged, his hair green-apple-scented and his mouth as minty as the After Eights Grandma kept in her kitchen drawer.
Freshly dressed in the clean clothes Aaron must have set out for him while he was asleep, Oscar came out to the scent of toasted bread. He wondered if his cheeks were as red as the tinge of color in Aaron’s hair when it caught the sunlight as he crossed the kitchen.
“Eat,” Aaron said, sitting down in front of Oscar’s silentlaptop with his earbuds in and leaving him with a plate of buttered toast.
“Thank you.” Oscar cleared his throat and took a sip of water. “I—there’s something I need to tell you.”
“If it’s that you got me fired, I already know. The agency called this morning to let me know they won’t be placing me anywhere again,” Aaron said, taking out an earbud.
It cut worse than the razor blades in Oscar’s parents’ bathroom, almost as bad as the nib of a fountain pen signing the death certificate of a perfectly healthy man.
“I’ll call them. I’ll explain,” Oscar said, fumbling around with his toast. He shook his head. Aaron couldn’t have been fired over an altercation between Oscar and his mother.
“I’d rather you explained why you started typing out a message, then thought it might be better to get drunk off your ass and ignore all my calls and texts. I’d rather know how you ended up being carried home by your sister and a stranger from a bar. It’s not exactly how I thought I’d be meeting your family, Oscar.” Aaron crossed his arms, leaning back into the bench.
“It was just a lapse,” Oscar said, shaking his head, “I don’t normally?—”
“You’d better not.” Aaron’s nostrils flared, and Oscar could look at nothing but his freckles, rising and falling with each deep breath. “My father was a fucking drunk, and I’m not about to become my mother.”
There was the sixteen-wheeler Oscar had yearned for the previous day. He’d imagined himself a pancake then, but now he felt no better than roadkill, no better than a piece of shit flattened by a shoe that had stepped on him without meaning to, curling its nose at the sight. Better to have sidestepped him altogether.
“I—” Oscar started to say.
“I can’t believe I said that,” Aaronmurmured. He traced a circle with his thumb over his lip. Oscar imagined that in Aaron’s head, this was a cassette tape and Aaron’s thumb was the pencil, desperate to rewind it, to unspill his confession.
“You didn’t mean it like that,” Oscar replied. He slid his hand across the distance between them, turning his palm up, but Aaron didn’t accept the invitation.
