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You’re folding and unfolding the corner of your vaccination card, bending that small piece of cardstock with your name hastily written across the front, along with today’s date—which you have to keep checking every minute on the minute to make sure is correct—when you say to Josh, “I think there’s something I gotta tell you.”
And you know how rotten that sounds, gumming up the plaque on your teeth, gluing everything inside you shut, so you stumble over your words some more—“I mean, like, there is something I gotta tell you. There ain’t no… no thinking about it—and it’s not, it’s not, like, bad.”
Josh shoves his car keys into his hoodie pocket. “What? You change your mind and you don’t wanna be Pfizer buddies with me anymore?”
He taps his own card resting in his lap—pristine in its condition, unlike yours, all curled in on itself around the edges. Straightening it across your thighs proves pointless when you end up forcing more creases into it. A news article flashed across your phone screen this morning, saying it may not actually be smart to laminate your vaccination card, in the chance of adding booster shots to it, too. You don’t know why that made you want to die a little inside; you knew boosters would be expected. It’s just that—maybe you thought all of this wouldn’t last this long.
And you know Josh senses that, somehow, because he’s reaching across the central console to squeeze your knee. He shakes it. Even behind his mask, you see him smile.
“What’s going on in that head of yours?”
“Nothing,” you say, biting the inside of your bottom lip as you close your mouth. The bite, it doesn’t hurt. Nothing could hurt like Josh pulling his hand away from you, like sinking, drowning.
“Whatever it is,” Josh says, “I bet it’s pretty awesome.” Then, “Come on. We can go inside now.” And then, “Do you want to hold hands?”
“That’s gay,” you reply, but you’re the one linking your pinky finger with his as soon as you’re able.
*
This high-school-turned-vaccination-clinic is busier now than it was three weeks ago. It’s rowdier, more commotion and laughter. You spot a group of men elbowing each other, discussing summer barbecues and playing pool at the bar. Their straight backs, confident shoulders—they all breed sincerity, a feeling that you wish to marvel if it did not eat up your stomach.
At the table upon entry, you and Josh grab ink pens and questionnaire health packets to fill out while waiting in line. Although this is only your second time here, you check the boxes as if this were any other part of your routine.
“Like this,” Josh says, and you eye him with your pen twirling between your fingers as he leads you through deep-breathing techniques. Your lungs expanding, that stretch in your gut, is familiar to you.
“Okay.” You sign your name. “Okay.”
Before your first appointment, you borrowed the ebook version of Klara and the Sun from the library, assuming the line inside the clinic would be agonizing. As you tap to the book now, you find you have only gotten as far as page five. All that waiting, you thought you were here for ages, but now you wonder if you occupied your mind for that much longer, staring at your phone and not comprehending the words across your screen. And you think this is true; you have to start the book over from the beginning.
There is just enough space between you and Josh that when he turns to look over the heads of the people in front of him, his sleeve catches the back of your hand, where you hold your phone to your face. Static lives in his clothes, you hear, crackling like fire—how cliché, you think, scrolling on your phone, pretending you’re literate and not in love with this foolish man in front of you.
For good measure, you kick the back of Josh’s knee. And when he has to balance himself on the ugly white painted-over brick wall, you know he can see the smile on your face, no matter your mask.
But it’s over in an instant, as soon as you shuffle forward in line. You remember the car ride over here, when you sprinted from your front porch and had to stop yourself from falling into his arms. You had to ease yourself into even riding in the car together, months ago, double masks and a container of baby wipes as a totem between the two of you—but the prospect of hugging him, touching him—you tripped up, you forgot, and you wish it weren’t so easy to hate yourself.
So, you lift your leg to swing at the back of Josh’s knee again. This time, though, this time, Josh catches your heel, catches your eye. When he winks, you know it’s over, you know he has all the strength to flip you on your head and rattle away all the cobwebs up there; yet, he drops your foot, catches it again, his hand around your ankle now. His palm, callused as it is, rubs warm through your sock. Your toes wiggle in your shoes, though he can’t see that.
“Do you mind?” You show Josh your phone. “I’m reading.”
He drops your foot. He says, “You still with me?”
And that’s the question, isn’t it? Whatever that means—it’s the question you’ve been witnessing dodge all the cobwebs up there in your head. A loaded inquiry, you believe it will be a simple one enough, in the end, if only you can figure out the right words—and that’s cliché, too—everything will be a cliché today, starting with that aborted run into Josh’s arms and ending with—ending with what?
You pull at the collar of your flannel shirt, tuck your chin into it. Josh, you feel his eyes on you, waiting for you to answer him. The more seconds that tick by, the more you bore your own eyes to your phone, concentrating on the story of an artificial friend infatuated with the sun, the more Josh must know your answer is no answer at all.
You wonder if this disappoints him.
He tugs your beanie farther down over your ears, and you are now the one who has to balance yourself on the ugly brick wall.
And Josh laughs—and you laugh—and you forget all about what you wanted to tell Josh in the car, at least for a moment—and that’s a lovely moment, really, you standing there with your best friend, giggling as though you two are barring the secret to the universe from the others in this vaccination line. You can’t see them fully, their faces are a blur, but you don’t mind that, not now, not when you’re standing there with your best friend, secure in your relationship, in him—and maybe in yourself.
*
Your nurse asks about the symptoms you experienced with the first dose. Shifting on the hard plastic chair, you tell her, “Oh,” as you recall how you spent that first weekend in your basement. You kept to your chair, your left arm dangling to the floor as it became more and more useless. Fatigue swiped your muscles, gnawed them, and stretched them into pretzels. You couldn’t even bother turning on a light as your computer monitor slowly turned yellow as the night returned once more.
“I was just cold, arm pain, y’know—nothing big.”
You can’t watch her rip open the flimsy alcohol swab. It is dangerous. You stare at the back of Josh’s head ahead of you. This is also dangerous.
“Don’t take anything until about six hours after this,” the nurse says, scooting closer to you. Her chair screeches against the gymnasium floor. “Oh, look at that tattoo.”
You wait for her to add anything else, maybe even discuss her own religion—a comfort zone, in ways, to nod along to strangers who share the same name tearing up their throats in dark places.
She’s quiet, though, humming, as she braces her hand on your upper arm. The nitrile of her gloves feels wrong against your skin, almost heavy. Her humming is strange, beating in time with the old AC unit overhead. “Perfect place for a tattoo,” she says, that hum in her voice dripping to a melt. “It’s like a target; I’ll go right in the middle of it. Relax for me, okay, hun? Hang your arm like you’re a zombie.”
Josh is already standing up, already fixing his shirt sleeve and pulling his hoodie into place, already pivoting to look at you. While that pinch takes over your arm, Josh forms a heart with his index finger and thumb, then disappears into the next room to wait the recommended fifteen minutes.
“There you go!” your nurse announces. She strokes on a bandage, gives your hand a pat. “How are you feeling?” She turns to her table, cleaning up, but all her attention is on you. Behind her glasses, her eyes are dinner plates, brown, a little wet around the edges—allergies.
“Good,” you say. You breathe in, hold it, breathe out. “Really good.” You think you’re telling the truth. It feels like the truth in there, mixed in with the deep breathing and the heat creeping up your neck.
Another nurse stops you before you can find Josh in the waiting room. She’s at a table by the doorway, two small wicker baskets in front of her, one full of stickers, the other buttons. “Hi! Do you want one? Which one would you like?” Against the edges of each of the baskets, her nails click. They’re a pastel-blue color, eggshell.
It doesn’t matter which one you get. You point at the basket nearest you. The nurse plucks out a button and hands it to you. Once in your palm, your thumb passes across the matte front. I Got My COVID-19 Vaccine!
You struggle to spot Josh at first in the waiting room. There are no longer easy signals for you to fixate upon, no vibrant hair, no exciting clothing; you and Josh have dulled in more than one way over the past year, for better or for worse—you can’t tell yet.
But you find him. You always find him.
After you sit down in an even harder plastic chair, you show Josh your button. No words, he taps the front of his hoodie, his button pinned on, big and bright and pink.
Without asking, he takes your button and secures it to the pocket of your flannel. His touch lingers. He could take your heart. He already has.
*
You and Josh march in the single-file line from the building, your pinkies wrapped together again, he leading, you following. Outside, it’s warmer, the sun running from the clouds. Before you know it, Josh removes his hoodie, says, “Gotta take it off now because I know I’m not gonna be able to do it later.” He manages to keep up with you, walking next to you, as he fumbles with his button and moves it to his t-shirt, placing it off to the left side, above the text across his chest—PHENOMENAL WOMAN, in black.
You swallow.
“So,” he says, “feeling okay so far?”
“So far.”
“Yeah. Me, too.”
You’re back to holding Josh’s pinky on the rest of the trek to his car. It’s an inconspicuous gesture. If someone looked your way, it could be passed off as nothing. Your clothes, your hair—you could pass as someone who is not quite a man and maybe even not quite a woman, if the sun hits you the right way. That feels safe, oddly enough—and you’re breathing deeply again, feeling that heat on the back of your neck again. And Josh’s shirt—
You wait to speak until you and Josh are inside the car, all buckled in and the air blowing on your faces. “Do you remember what I said, once, about vessels?”
“Vessels…,” Josh muses. “Vessels, vessels, vessels—why does that sound so familiar to me? Isn’t that, like, an album or something?”
You pull your beanie from your head, tossing it on the dash. Beneath your fingers, your hair feels oily, soft in some places. You braid it. Like Josh’s hoodie removal, you do this before your arm hurts too much, just to get it out of your face.
It all seems ridiculous to you—your hair mostly, and you expect Josh to laugh when you whirl around with those antennas.
He’s on his phone, on the Genius lyrics website, illuminating the entry for your band’s album Vessel. His thumb hovers over the screen, unmoving. You can’t pinpoint the expression in his eyes. If there was no mask on his face, you think you would still struggle. If there was no mask on his face, if you weren’t in this situation—would you be in this situation?
You watch him lock his phone without indulging further. “I’ll read it later,” he says, for reassurance. His smile, again—you see it in his eyes. What’s in your eyes? you wonder, as Josh’s own fade to a deeper shade. What does he see when he looks at you?
He’s fidgeting with his phone, turning it around in his hands. “I meant it,” he says, “when I said that whatever you got going on up there in your head; I still bet it’s pretty awesome.”
You break eye contact, have to look out the window. You catch eyes with other eager young adults, hopping on their feet as they bound toward the high school. With the windows rolled up and the AC cranked up, you can hear them yelling, yelling, yelling.
“Thank you,” you say to your reflection.
He drives you home, holding your thigh like he did when you two were younger and had bigger dreams and empty pockets.
*
You came out on your daughter’s birthday—to your daughter—and you suspect your wife, too, if she happened to overhear on the baby monitor.
It was just the two of you in your daughter’s bedroom, stretched out on the fuzzy carpet. She was kicking her feet in the air, her socks orange in the glow of her lamp. The sun hadn’t reached the horizon, but you were nocturnal at this point in your life, and you were terrified of the idea that she would be there right along with you.
Were you going to do anything about it? No.
You were on your back, and she was on hers, and you said aloud, “I don’t think I’m a guy.”
And your daughter understood what you meant, turning her face to look at you. The way she furrowed her brows, you thought she looked exactly like you. Or did you look like her?
She flung her hand in your face, busted your nose with her knuckles. It was what you needed.
And now, you’re lying on the floor of her bedroom, her next to you, the sun falling to begin the first night of your anticipated side effects from the vaccine, and you say aloud, “Is it okay if I still don’t have it all figured out?”
And she pops your nose again. You need this, too.
*
Three weeks ago, you told yourself the side effects weren’t going to be that bad. That’s why you went downstairs, to your basement and your music. You know better this time.
The six-hour mark has passed. You down Tylenol with Red Bull, then wash down the Red Bull with water. A metallic aftertaste rests at the back of your throat. You read online that this is a side effect, not just for this vaccine but others, as well. Still, you swallow more water.
And since you know better this time, you crawl into your bed. Your wife is already there, watching a crocheting video, something too far above your understanding. You struggle to grasp sewing at times, always watching Josh in wonder whenever he patched your clothing on the tour bus.
You perch on the edge of the bed, undoing the braids in your hair. You let your hair hang over your eyes as you rub dry shampoo into your roots with your right hand. Your left arm hangs loosely by your side, mindful of the exertion it would take and careful not to agitate it.
“Do you want me to do that for you?” your wife asks. “Is that okay?”
“Y-yeah, that’s—that’s okay.”
She has a gentler hand, a method you haven’t perfected. She stands in front of you, using her brush to work the shampoo through your hair. It isn’t much, but it’s better than nothing.
Pulling your hair back into a loose bun with one hand, she loops it in place with a scrunchie she made herself. “We should try to do the Curly Girl Method with your hair. Scrunch it a little. Diffuse. I see lots of potential here.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She kisses your eyebrows.
Josh has already texted you, asking for updates an hour or two ago. You hadn’t heard your phone go off, though this is not the first time you’ve left him hanging for hours. He knows your cycles of isolation. He knows you aren’t doing this to hurt him, not intentionally. He knows you.
You list your symptoms, some obscure, some not—cold chills, slight headache, arm pain, a deep yearning to run in the woods barefoot
Oh, he says, i think i’m feeling that too
You curl on your stomach, hugging your pillow. Last time, sleeping was difficult, being in a chair aside; you needed to prop your arm at an angle in order to avoid pain. You slowly begin to do the same, situating the pillows and folding up the corner of the blanket, until you register the pain is not as intense. You test lying down, adopting the form you take in your regular slumber; and when you find it doesn’t hurt—and what pain is there is tolerable—relief surges through your body. It’s like melatonin, more violent.
how ya doing, spooky baby?
tired, he replies. so tired
we can sleep for years
You chew on your lip.
i feel like we should be able to shake really hard and shed our skin, you say. and then we would be okay
will we look different after we shed that skin?
i think we’ll be the same people
A minute passes, two. Josh is typing and typing, and finally, he says, sleep good tonight. in your bed. you deserve that much.
Before you can let him know you are, indeed, already in your bed, Josh sends, if it helps you, imagine i’m there with you. we don’t have to talk. we can talk if you want. we can talk about vessels. and we can talk about how i think your vessel has the best craftsmanship i’ve ever seen
Your mouth, dry, tacky—everything drains from your body. Your phone screen can’t detect your body heat. It’s gone. It’s all gone. You’re shivering, shaking out of your skin like you wanted, and your wife rests her palm in the middle of your back, steadying you. When you blink, you feel tears.
She speaks your name. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” you say. “Nothing. I’m just—I’m cold.” That’s it. That’s it.
She procures extra blankets from the closet, draping them over you. Then, in a moment of realization, she claps her hands and dives beneath the bed. “Here—you can use this.” On her return, standing on her knees in front of you, a glimpse of a dust bunny on her forehead, she presents a heating pad to you. It’s coiled into a ball with the cord serving as a makeshift bow.
You brush away the dust and take it.
“Now, baby,” she starts, getting up from the floor and moving back around to her side of the bed, “you’re not supposed to lay right on top of it.”
But you do anyway, cranking the heat on high and wrapping your arms around the device.
She rubs small circles into your back. All in a row, she drums her fingers along your spine. Each tap rattles your bones, setting those cold chills deeper in your skin, like a rash. You’ll have to check if you have a rash tomorrow. Tomorrow, if you can, you might even take a bath.
But now—
You close your eyes.
*
You want to dream.
You want to experience the worlds you attribute to your nightmares, the worlds you’ve sought to make tangible with your music. In your fatigued state after your first shot, you had dreams of your basement furniture floating all around you, too far out of your control. You tried to grab for your Amiibos, the skull you swear you never talk to—but they grazed your hands and spun in their new orbit. Every attempt at grabbing what you couldn’t hold sent jolts of electricity throughout your body, jerking you awake—just long enough to manifest frustration deep in your neck, a sensation that disappeared slower than you would like.
Your phone says it’s seven in the morning, which confuses you. You have woken to birds chirping and no present aches in your body. You have slept soundly, and this terrifies you.
So, for today, for as long as you can, and even when you cannot handle it a moment longer, you emerge from the nest of your bed and sit downstairs.
Sitting down here, on the middle cushion of the sofa, you feel like a stranger. You wonder if it’s your clothing, maybe your skin itself. You pick at it, along your jawline, your stubble there rubbing your fingers in ways that have always perplexed you; it doesn’t hurt, and it isn’t good—it’s just something that is.
Like with the picture frames in the halls, on shelves in the bedrooms, you, too, see these aspects as their naturally occurring state of being. Although you can’t recognize yourself in them anymore, you see the value in these stepping stones that allowed you to become who you are now. Like the seasons, almost, cycles of change—you must endure them.
You’re dressed in layers, baggy fabric that allows breathing room and warmth for those cold chills that stab at your sides at odd periods. You look down at your chest. Your hands curl into fists.
When you left your room, your wife was still fighting for those final stretches of sleep. The baby monitor on your nightstand caught the soothing breaths of your daughter’s slumber. Your phone, charging next to the monitor, still displayed Josh’s last message—your vessel has the best craftsmanship i’ve ever seen
You are safe. In this room, by yourself, with all the reassurances you need, you are safe.
In this room, in the middle of this large couch, your elbows dig into your knees, and you—you cry.
You call this feeling catharsis; other words escape you. How else would you label this sudden experience of peace, if not catharsis? Sitting by yourself, in your body, in your mind—you have been at war with yourself ever since you were a kid. Comfort was few and far between. What did that even mean?
And then, you met Josh. What did that mean?
The world continues to spin.
*
After night rears its head, you take a bath.
Your wife told you she’ll be awake if you need any help, but you hear her snoring from the cracked bedroom door. If you lean forward just enough, you can see her on your side of the bed, hogging all the blankets and stealing your pillow. She was like that when she had her vaccine last month—sleeping it off, needing you to hold her as her body went through the cold chills. She emerged reborn. As you prepare your bath in bubbles and sensitive smells, you hope you will experience the same.
Above your head, your phone buzzes along the sink counter. You grab it without needing to look who it is, but you still look, just to see his name and have it rush through your goosebumps and acne scars. This rush deepens once you notice it’s a video call. And you have to accept it.
“Hey.” You lean your phone against a rubber duck, making sure it won’t slip into the tub at any sudden jostle. While the bathtub continues to fill, you lay your head on the edge of the tub, turning to your phone screen—and Josh.
Josh is in bed, all bundled up with only his face visible, much like how you looked the night before. “Hey,” he says, a little begrudgingly, as he scans you. “Feeling okay?”
“Arm still hurts.” You try to raise it. You get it about halfway up your torso, higher than you could do after your first dose. “Other than that, I slept a lot. I don’t feel bad, but I also don’t feel good.”
He sees right through you. “Do you want to talk about it?”
You point at him. “Close your eyes.”
Of course, he doesn’t. He watches you twist the knobs on the tub, watches you undress, watches you climb into the tub and disappear under the water.
Beneath all sound, you work your hands over your face, through your hair; and when you resurface, your hair in your face, Josh says, “There you are”—heavy and slow, his voice thick with something you wish you didn’t know.
“It’s fine,” you say, wrapping the strands of your hair around your fingers. “We don’t have to talk. Do you want to talk?”
“I think you want to talk, but you don’t want to admit that, so you’re trying to make it seem like it’s me who wants to talk.”
You twirl your hair, push it behind your ears. “I don’t think that’s right, but—hey—if that’s your way of trying to make yourself feel better, then we can talk.”
He flips over dramatically, erupting into a laugh that cracks like thunder through your phone’s speakers. “Okay, okay—if you want to play that game—”
“There are no games being played here, man.”
“We don’t have to talk,” he reminds you. “I called because—I don’t know—I thought you might want some company. I thought… you’d be aching like me, and we could be aching together.” When he shrugs, his shoulders go up to his ears, and you catch him wincing as he holds on to his bicep. His teeth are so white.
You swipe your tongue over your lips. “I guess you could say I’m aching like you.” Eye contact is hard, so you don’t maintain it, even though you know he isn’t looking at you straight on. You don’t feel his eyes on you. Like you, he’s nervous, dancing on that narrow line of desperation.
“Josh,” you say, continuing to avert your eyes, “I can’t wait until we can be together again, like safe. There’s just—I miss you a lot.” You think the temperature of the water rivals your own. Your skin is hot, red to the touch. You bring an armful of bubbles closer to your chest.
Josh smiles when he says, “What would you do if I was there with you right now?”
“Please,” you whisper. “Please. How can you be in the mood?”
“I’m looking at you.”
You want to hang up. You want to laugh. You want to sink into this water and never breathe again. You want to kiss him.
You say, “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
Your screen goes black. You peer at your reflection, that waterlogged entity falling headfirst all over again.
*
Dreams avoid you. Maybe this is good.
You sleep throughout the weekend, sprinkle in hours where you snack and read your library book. You don’t work on music.
You relax. You don’t need to, not when you feel this stable, but you do it anyway.
This recovery, this need for weight all over your body—that’s an excuse. You take it. You must take it. You have two weeks to go until you are fully vaccinated, and then—and then—
You can touch him without guilt.
*
He brings up boundaries, plans. “What are you comfortable doing?”
Restaurants are shaky; any place inhabited by people who don’t care about others’ well-being is out of the question. Going out in public will be okay as long as you two wear masks.
“What about if we were in my car? Would that be okay, if we weren’t wearing masks and just in my car?”
You think for a moment, and maybe this moment lasts too long, for he’s adding, “We can have the windows down and the AC on and everything like that.”
You’re video-chatting with him again, sitting at the kitchen table, your phone propped up across from you, like he’s there with you, having a meal together.
“I think that would be okay, but—”
“Yeah?”
You give a small one-shoulder shrug. “Wouldn’t it be rude if we had the windows down while we’re kissin’ and stuff? What if someone sees?”
He stares at you, then slowly places his head in his hands. He doesn’t remove them for quite some time.
And then, he does, and he looks at you, and you look at him, and you say, “I’d be cool with anything as long as you’re there with me. We don’t have to do anything special.”
“I know, but—”
“I know.” Every time you look at him, your heart threatens to leap from your chest. It hurts. Your ribs might crack trying to contain it. This is what happens when you love him.
*
And this is cliché: you don’t realize two weeks have passed until you hear his soft voice behind you.
You’re sitting on the stairs of your back porch, basking in the sun, wearing shorts and a collared shirt full of stripes. You’re in your element, a book across your lap; and when you hear his voice, you swear you think your blood freezes midstream. Fight or flight—you hate the way you react, twisting around to make sure your ears haven’t deceived you.
But he’s there—suddenly shy, with his hands to his chest. He’s a safe distance away, his mask twisting around his fingers, just in case. Under the canopy of the clouds, you spot the rigid line across the bridge of his nose, the telltale tan from the mask itself. Josh is paler than you. You spend more time inside than him.
But he’s there—and you know why adrenaline pumps through your veins; although he is a safe distance away, it is still too close for you—you are unable to properly run and leap into his arms.
“Hi,” he says, raising a hand to wave at you. “How, uh, how are you?”
“Fine,” you say, “and I mean that.” You sacrifice eye contact for looking down at your book. These days, you haven’t needed a bookmark, not when you’ve been devouring these volumes in one sitting. And if you had to put it down, it was only for a minute; you carry the book around with you anyway, your index finger tucked between the pages to keep your spot. You toy with this idea here, shutting the book, finger in the pages.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says.
“You didn’t scare me. I just thought… I thought I was alone.” Then, you ask, “How are you doing?” and turn your head to look at him, shutting your book on your fingers.
“I’m fine. Yeah. It’s good.” The smile on his face is easy, his eyes crinkling at the edges. “Hey, um—d’ya mind if I sit with you? I can put on my mask if—”
“No, you’re good. It’s okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Yeah. Is it okay with you if I don’t—?”
“Yeah, definitely.”
Josh pockets his mask before lowering down to the porch steps. Space lives between your thigh and his, room for a third person, you think, and that thought makes you sticky. You have to peel the pages from your skin when you go to open your book again. You don’t want to, don’t want to distract yourself anymore, and Josh—
Josh points at the book. “What’s that?”
Instead of going the sarcastic route, you flash the cover in his direction. “Never Let Me Go,” you say. “I finished reading Klara and the Sun, and that messed me up. So, I’m reading this because I, like, I guess I like hurting myself.”
Josh scoots closer, an inch—just enough. “What’s it about?”
“Spoilers, man.”
You smile, and he smiles, too.
“Okay,” you say. “Basically, there’s these kids, and they grow up and get told they’re special, but they grow up and…” You raise a hand to rub at the back of your neck. “They grow up and realize they aren’t actually special because they’re actually, like, clones or whatever, y’know? They’re just there for their organs. And that’s it.”
“Wow.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“No! I meant—no, like, I’m trying to process it. Sorry.” He’s bashful, ducking his head, but when he looks at you and sees that smile still on your face, he breaches that personal bubble for the first time to nudge his elbow into your side. “You’re an ass.”
“You love me,” you say, hating the way your voice catches on your teeth. And Josh, you know he can hear it, can pick out every single infliction and flaw in your voice and decipher what they mean.
He holds out his hand to you, palm up to the sky. “Yeah,” he says. “I love you.”
You flick the corner of the book cover, curling a bit from years of being passed between community hands and bookshelves. You look at Josh’s hand, his curling fingers. It would be so easy to take his hand and flow into the rest; however, the punch in your gut—there’s nothing easy about that.
This isn’t the first time you’ve been nervous in your life, but it feels like this is the first time you’ve been nervous around Josh. Even that first night together, when you two hung out and talked all night and didn’t sleep—you weren’t nervous. How could you be nervous around someone whose heart always beats in time with yours?
But you’re nervous now, like this is a first date with a cute boy you couldn’t believe actually thought you were cool. You’re glancing at Josh, looking out to the woods surrounding your backyard. You weren’t lying when you told Josh you thought you were alone. No one can find you out here, save for the deer. That morning, your wife told you she was going to go out for the day, take your daughter with her. You were alone.
Josh is here. He has his hand out.
“C’mon,” you say, taking his hand and standing. You’re stumbling a bit, going down the stairs, and you know it’s because of your nerves. You try to feel grounded, your bare feet on the grass, and Josh does what he can to help you along the way. He kicks off his shoes on the way down. He knows what to do.
You run, and he runs—hand in hand.
And you aren’t as young as you used to be, but with him by your side, laughing at the top of his lungs, it’s close enough.
These trees are obstacles and guideposts, resting places and a delicate home. You push him into the trunk of a large pine tree, crowd in close to his body. You ask him, “Is this okay?” And he nods, and you nod, and you hug him—you hug him so tight and so hard; and he does the very same.
The sun forgot to follow you. It’s left a nip in the spring air, biting your forearms as you pet the hair at the nape of Josh’s neck, soft curls, a little oily at the roots. Josh’s own hands are in your hair, cradling the back of your head. Chest-to-chest, you breathe, deep breaths, just like he taught you.
“Who am I to you?” you say, absent at first, more to yourself, in your head, than anything. Then, shaking your head, you speak up, swallow your fears. “When you look at me, what do you see?” You’re careful selecting your words, the connotations of which may influence Josh’s response. You pull away to look at him, your hands on his shoulders, his hands on yours.
He pauses for a moment, studying you. “When I look at you, I see you. I see… I see a person who’s lost in their head and would rather stay in there and bring everybody they love with them instead of facing what’s out there.”
You drag your fingers down his arms. “So, you see a person?”
“I see a person.”
You place your hand on the side of his neck. “Is this okay?”
His pulse flutters, buzzing like a bumblebee. “Y-yeah. I mean—” He clears his throat, drops his voice to sound more masculine. “This is okay.”
Your hand stays there, your thumb running along his jawline. Slowly, your other hand joins in this stroking, both of your thumbs now meeting at Josh’s chin as you trace this part of him. The buzzing beneath your hands disappears, replaces itself with warmth. He is comfortable, and soon, you are, too, holding Josh there in your hands, Josh staring at you like he has absolutely no thoughts in his head.
Slowly, so slowly, you and he go down as a unit, lying on your sides among the spongy grass of these woods. After he nods his head and lets you know this is okay, you lean forward and feel that buzz against your lips.
His sigh, that small gasp of air that rushes past your ear—it sends you forward, your hands on his sides, your mouth on that dip below his ear. His own hands, strong things along your lithe frame, along your lower back, pull you in. You’re so close, so far away—
And when he eases you from his neck to press his mouth to yours, you think all is right in the world. You’re with him, and he is with you—and how good it tastes to have him with you, like sea salt after a day on the beach.
He peels you apart, layer by layer—and oh, how good that feels: his teeth on your collar bones, his tongue over your nipples, his lips on your stomach. You want him to open you up, leave you bleeding, and he will, you think; he will do exactly that.
Him kissing you, you kissing him—there was a part of you, a part you tried to ignore, that agonized over this moment.
Would you remember where to place your hands, your mouth?
Would he remember to be gentle at first, then rough when you asked?
Would you remember how to catch your breath? Would he remember how to catch his?
Would everything be just like it’s supposed to be?
Yes.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
And as you’re coming down, as he’s coming down with you, sweating and panting and sore in all the right places, you bring your face into his neck, sling your arm over his chest, and say, “Use different pronouns for me—like, in a sentence.”
He’s deliberate in forcing you away from his neck, out of hiding. He’s even deliberate in helping you sit across from him, naked, criss-cross applesauce, your hair a mess and his not much better.
“Tyler is my best friend,” Josh starts. “I would go with them anywhere. They’re one of the best songwriters I know. The world is a better place with them in it. I love them very much.”
Your neck, you know it’s red hot. Your whole skin—you feel like all your veins are exposed to him, ready to be rearranged—but you remember what Josh said, how your vessel has the best craftsmanship he has ever seen, and you—
Josh continues, his hands skidding across the twigs and the flowers to grab your calves. “Tyler is my best friend,” he says. “I would go with her anywhere. She’s one of the best songwriters I know. The world is a better place with her in it. I love her very much.”
He taps your ankle bones. “Nothing has to change. If you’re scared of things changing, they don’t have to change. You control how this goes—and we can go slow. It doesn’t have to happen all at once.”
Growing out your hair, you think that was the first step. Allowing yourself to be seen like this, by someone other than your immediate family, that was the second step. The third? Is there a third?
You lay your hands over Josh’s. You squeeze your thanks, and he squeezes right back.
“C’mon,” you say. “Let’s go take a bath.”
*
You do it without thinking.
In the moment, it is natural for you to log onto Twitter and place “they/she/he” in your bio, and it is natural for you to tweet out a screenshot of that quote of yours attributed to Vessel. No caption—you don’t need a caption.
Those are your words. That’s all you’ll ever need.