Page 36

Liam

Kim was sitting in her office when Liam tapped his knuckles on the door. She looked up from a stack of deposit slips and put them down on the desk when she saw it was him.

“He lives,” she announced.

Liam slumped against the doorframe, sheepish. “Hi, Kim.”

“ ‘Hi, Kim,’ ” she mimicked in an unflattering intonation. “He comes in here after dropping off the face of the planet and says ‘hi Kim.’ Hi yourself, Liam. Get in here and sit down.”

Somehow, he couldn’t help but smile as he dropped into the metal folding chair across from her. “I sent a text,” he defended weakly.

“You might as well have left a ransom note made of magazine clippings, as cryptic as that text was.” She was making light because it was Kim, but Liam had known her long enough to recognize the genuine concern. He had really worried her.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really am. Things have been... It’s been a strange few months.”

“I’ve noticed,” she said. “What made your absence all the more concerning was the way you walked around here like a zombie your last few shifts. It’s hard to tell where your head’s been at.”

“I know,” he said. “Did I mention I’m sorry?” He was trying to get better about saying that less often, but in this conversation, apologies felt warranted.

“You did,” she said. “But I’m less interested in hearing how sorry you are, and more interested in hearing how you’re doing.”

I don’t think I’ve gotten a full night’s sleep in weeks.

I’m in a mild amount of credit card debt.

I miss my best friend.

“I’m. . . getting better,” he said. “Am I fired?”

“Of course you aren’t fired,” she scoffed. “We’re short-staffed as it is. Trust me, you’re clocking in immediately after this conversation.”

Liam huffed a laugh.

“In all seriousness, if you need to take some time off, you need to tell me,” she said. “We can work something out.”

“God, no,” he said immediately. “If anything, I’d like to pick up more hours. Please.”

“What, so I can watch you run yourself into the ground for another few months?”

“I’ll have the availability this time,” he assured her. Then, after taking a breath, he said, “I’ve decided to take the spring semester off.”

It was strange to say out loud. Watching the registration date come and go without lifting a finger had been a nerve-wracking choice, but an intentional one. It was the first deviation from the monotonous path he had coasted since high school, and the first real step toward committing himself to the future he wanted.

Kim raised an eyebrow. “You’re not dropping out, are you?”

“No,” he said. “I want to get serious about art school. If I want to get to New York in the fall, I’ll need to save up as much as I can.”

A rare, earnest smile spread across Kim’s mouth. “Now that’s a plan I can get behind.”

Returning to work was a jolt of whiplash. He likened it to the feeling of being immersed in a long book and being forced to reckon with the reality of life when he closed the cover. Except this time, it was his life with Jonah that had been the real thing, and now he was forced back into this two-dimensional world. The monotony of being inside the diner—of tending to unkind patrons and listening to petty gossip in the kitchen—was like trudging through wet concrete .

There was an hour left in his shift when the chime on the door signaled a new customer. Liam turned to greet them, but the words never made it out.

Ben met his eyes from across the room. Without acknowledging him, Liam turned on his heel and beelined for the kitchen.

“Liam, wait,” Ben said before he could make it.

Against his better judgment, Liam stopped.

He hadn’t seen Ben since the night of the derailed Christmas dinner. Liam was not particularly eager to revisit that memory. Especially now, in the middle of his workplace, where he was trying very hard to keep some semblance of his life together.

“Will this be for here or to go?” Liam forced a well-practiced customer service smile.

Ben leveled him with an annoyed look. “Liam, please. I want to talk to you.”

“I’m afraid you’ll need to order something or leave,” he said, as coldly as he could manage. “Otherwise, this is called loitering.”

For a second, it almost looked like he had won the battle, but Ben crushed his dreams, as he stepped forward and pulled out one of the stools along the bar. “Fine,” he said, taking his seat. “One black coffee, please.”

Liam’s smile wiped clean from his face. The customer service voice dropped. “Ben, this is my job. You can’t just come here and corner me into talking to you. ”

“You wouldn’t answer your phone,” Ben said. “I was worried.”

“I’ve been busy.” Liam dipped behind the counter, getting to work on the sham of an order. He turned back to Ben with the steaming mug, but didn’t set it down. “Over there.” He motioned with his head to an empty booth. “I’m not having this conversation where everyone can hear.”

Ben conceded, looking relieved. Liam followed, calling over his shoulder to Kim at the register. “Taking a fifteen.”

Alone in their booth, Ben was suddenly quiet.

Liam stared at him expectantly. “In case you missed that,” he nudged, “I only have fifteen minutes.”

Ben took a sip of the coffee, wincing as the heat met his lips. “I know,” he said after another long moment. “I’m just... trying to figure out where to start.”

Liam’s defensiveness began to lose some of its bite. He nodded, once, giving him a second to gather his thoughts. Finally, Ben nudged the coffee slightly away from him, meeting Liam’s eyes.

“What happened?” he asked, a little exasperated. “At dinner, I mean. I’ve never seen you like that. Not anywhere close to it, really. I’m not saying Nathan didn’t have it coming,” he added quickly, apparently unwilling to lose Liam’s momentary good graces. “I’m sure I could think of a dozen reasons off the top of my head he had a good punch coming his way, but... ”

But , indeed.

It was Liam’s turn for silence. He picked up a discarded straw wrapper that the busboy left behind and began picking it into tiny pieces.

“Liam—”

“I’m not...ignoring you,” he said. “I guess I don’t know where to begin either.”

It suddenly occurred to him that maybe Ben had reached out to his mother, or to Nathan himself, for answers. And while he doubted Ben would have gotten a straight answer from either of them, it would have been nice to know where he stood.

“How much do you know?” he asked.

“Only that Nathan showed up at Christmas dinner looking like that, and not twenty minutes later you’re flipping tables and throwing punches. I’m assuming there might be some correlation there, but—” he tossed up his hands, “—please, feel free to fill the gaps for me.”

Liam let out a long, slow breath, flattening his palms on the table.

“I assume you recall my birthday,” he said, carefully measuring his words. “And the unwelcome idea of a gift you both chipped in on.”

Recognition flickered in Ben’s expression just before it was replaced by something like discomfort. He shifted in his seat, the sticky vinyl creaking beneath his weight. “It was Nathan’s idea,” he said .

“Yeah, that’s not...Look, I’ve been seeing him,” Liam blurted, probably a little too loudly. He shrank down into his seat. “Sort of,” he amended softly.

Ben’s eyes widened. “What? Really?”

Under the table, Liam’s hands curled into fists. He opened his mouth, and then a thought occurred to him: in telling this part of the story and exposing Nathan for the monster that he was, Liam would also be outing him. Out of everyone in their immediate circle of friends and family, Liam was confident no one suspected it. Surely exposing Nathan would come to a shock to everyone, and definitely to Ben.

Then he remembered what Jonah had said to him at the hospital, about how he couldn’t bring himself to press charges against Nathan for what he had done. How Jonah was forced to choose between his own mental well-being and a shot at seeking even a sliver of justice. Suddenly Liam’s moral ambiguity didn’t feel quite so hazy. The rage cut straight through the mist and made him see that he wasn’t outing Nathan as a gay man, he was outing him as a predator.

“Nathan hurt him,” Liam said simply. He heard the gravel in his own voice and willed himself not to start crying here. Not now. “He saw us out together a few weeks ago. He probably suspected something was going on, and that’s what he was goading me about at dinner, but...” He swallowed back his disgust. “The point is, he tried to take advantage when Jonah was in a vulnerable position. ”

Ben was quiet for a long time. Liam wasn’t looking at him, but for an anxious moment he thought maybe he had lost him. Like maybe he was going to side with Nathan after all, or tell Liam he was lying, or maybe blame him for keeping such close proximity to a dangerous situation. But to his surprise, Ben sat forward, placing a heavy hand on Liam’s forearm.

“Liam,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“I know that,” Liam muttered, treading carefully around the rare display of emotion.

“Is your friend...Or your, um,” Ben seemed to struggle a bit with the verbiage, “Boyfriend or whatever? Is he alright?”

Liam had to press his knuckles against his leg for a few seconds.

“Bit of a loaded question,” he said. “But he’s safe now. He got out of the situation he was in.”

“That’s good.” Ben nodded.

And it was. It was good. Liam’s world might have been temporarily reduced to picking up the pieces of himself that broke along the way of seeing Jonah off, but it was a good thing that he was home now. He had to believe that.

“I’m sorry, Liam.”

“You said.”

“No.” Ben shook his head, frustration peeking through his expression. “I mean, I think the apology I owe you probably goes a lot further back than all this. I haven’t been a good friend to you. A good friend never would have set you up for something like that on your birthday when I knew you weren’t comfortable with it. It’s none of my business if you wanted to like... be a virgin ‘til marriage or whatever.”

Well, this was quickly going off the rails.

“Benjamin.”

“Sorry,” he said, and it sounded like he actually meant it. “For real, though. You’ve always been a good friend to me, and I should have been better at showing that I care about you, too.”

Before Liam could fully lose his cool in the face of that unexpected emotional onslaught, the kitchen window bell rang—repeatedly, loudly, and pointedly.

Liam sighed. “I gotta get back before I am well and truly fired,” he said, sliding out of the booth and onto his feet. “Look, I appreciate you checking in after... everything. Coffee’s on the house.”

Ben nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets once he slid out of the booth as well.

“So,” he said, rocking onto his heels. “It feels like we should, like, hug or something.”

Liam raised a brow. “Do you want to hug me, Ben?”

“Not, like. . . in a gay way.”

Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Instead of a hug, Liam opted for a pat on the arm. “We’ll work up to it,” he said.

He walked over to the window and delivered the line of plates to their respective tables, but the rest of his shift was knocked off-balance by the strange gravity of his conversation with Ben .

When he finally had another moment to breathe, he collapsed back against the wall behind the kitchen door and checked his phone.

There was a text from Jonah; a reply to the thread they both tended to throughout the day.

Got your book in the mail. I’ll start reading tonight. Thanks.

Liam smiled. Before he could finish typing his reply, another text buzzed into the thread.

I miss you.

His first shift back was a short one, and it didn’t bring in an abundance of tips, but there was something satisfying about working with a goal on the horizon.

When he got home, Liam changed out of his work clothes and collapsed into the swivel chair at his desk. It was still difficult, weeks later, to look around his room without seeing the impression Jonah had left behind.

For once, that might work in his favor.

He sat back and scanned the art-covered walls, remembering the care Jonah had taken to study each individual panel on his self-guided tour of Liam’s past. At the time, it had been a mortifying ordeal to reveal himself like that, to be seen at close range. Now, he was able to look at his art through someone else’s eyes, and for a moment, he could glimpse the potential that Jonah saw in him .

Liam used his legs to pull the chair toward one of his oldest drawings, the one Jonah had pointed out the night he was there. Carefully, he plucked it off the wall, trying not to chip the paint with the years-old tape. He set the drawing down on his desk like it was an ancient artifact. In the story of his own life, he supposed it was.

For as long as he could remember, Liam had only ever felt a vague sense of sadness when he thought of his childhood self—for the tough years of adolescence ahead of him and the deep yearning for friendship and belonging that he could never quite find.

Now, looking down at the depiction of his own childlike face, at the desperate way he held onto his friends, as if he knew, even then, that they weren’t his to keep, Liam felt something like hope amidst the melancholy.

The three little boys in the picture and the bond between them no longer existed, reshaped entirely by the people around them, by societal expectations, and by each other. It was something Liam couldn’t have back, and something that hadn’t been his for a long time.

He was only just coming to terms with the idea that he had never been the dead weight in that friendship. Liam had always deserved better, and now he knew what better looked like.

He set the drawing to the side and cast another long look around the room. There was plenty there to work with, and time to make more. Applications for the fall semester were due at the end of February. Liam had a checklist of his top four programs in New York pinned to the corkboard above his desk, and a renewed determination to make that little kid in the drawing proud.