Page 39

LIAM

On the morning of Liam’s twenty-third birthday, he took the downtown train from Fordham University to 28th Street in Manhattan. He slung several large portfolio cases over his shoulder and trudged west, toward the Hudson River.

The space was part of an old industrial building, sectioned off for short-term rentals. Because of its distance from the train lines, it was one of the cheaper options, which also meant it was small. But Liam didn’t need a lot of space, and even if his forehead was beaded with sweat from the long walk, nothing could dampen his good mood.

He shook hands with the venue coordinator, handed over the second half of the deposit, and then the space was his.

Once he was alone, he took a moment to just walk the perimeter, scraping his fingertips along the worn brick interior. The age of the place was apparent. There were divots here and there, little chunks that had been chipped away over time, and the wood floorboards creaked underfoot with every step.

It was perfect.

Liam dropped his bags in the corner and retrieved his phone and a Bluetooth speaker, scrolling until he found the playlist he had made for the occasion. Title: “Baby’s First Art Show.”

When the music started to play, he folded into a crouch and began pulling the canvases carefully from their bags.

The setup took him about an hour. It was in his nature to be indecisive, so he went through several rounds of arranging and rearranging every piece around the room until they fit just right. The paintings told a story, and that story just so happened to be one of the most important chapters of Liam’s life. He felt duty-bound to tell it in exactly the right way.

Over the course of the hour, it became increasingly difficult to ignore the swell of nerves in his stomach. More than once, he had to ward off the compulsion to walk his paintings to the river’s edge and throw them in, where they would never have to be viewed by the public eye—or one set of eyes in particular.

In the end, rationality won out. When the final canvas was displayed, he stepped back into the center of the room and spun in a slow circle, taking everything in.

For a moment, he was rendered breathless. Not by the paintings themselves, which he had stared into the face of for the better part of a year, but by the culmination of all of them, here, in this place, where he had dreamed of standing for so long. Nearly two years to the date since the idea had been born.

Over a year in the city, and Liam still wore the rose-colored glasses he’d had on the day he’d arrived. Something people never told you about watching your dreams come true was how surreal it would feel most of the time. Sometimes it was hard to believe he was actually here, but it was in the quiet moments, like this one, that he could believe he’d made it.

JONAH

New York had never been Jonah’s dream.

But then, his future had always been something of a faceless monster; just fragments of ideas that refused to take shape.

He had gone from a lifetime of molding himself into a persona that would please his parents, directly into a place where any concept of a future at all wavered, even on the best days. Moving here had not been the result of years of dreaming and pining, like it had been for Liam, but the product of desperation. It was a place with a singular anchor to offer him safety, and Jonah had grabbed onto it with both hands.

He hadn’t come here seeking a dream. He had come seeking refuge .

In time, though, he had found himself folded into the city’s anonymous masses as if he belonged there.

A couple months in, Ellis got Jonah his first job. An old buddy of his who worked construction on Long Island was looking for day workers to demolish a house. Ellis was antsy after his abrupt departure from work, and Jonah needed to learn how to function like a person again, so he’d agreed to give it a try.

It had been ninety degrees on their first day, with the kind of humidity that had Jonah’s shirt clinging to his back before they even arrived on site. He had a bagged lunch in his fist, a too-big pair of Ellis’s steel-toed boots on his feet, and no clue what he was doing.

The guys on the crew were loud. Their fingers were thick and calloused from years of wear as they gripped Jonah’s hand, and he felt himself squeezing back firmly, strangely motivated to make a good impression.

His first task was to tear down a wall that separated two small bedrooms. Ellis grabbed a couple of large hammers from the kit and handed one to Jonah. The surprising weight of it pulled his arm down.

“You want the first strike?” Ellis asked.

“Anywhere?” Jonah asked.

“The wall would be ideal.”

Jonah fixed him with a flat expression and Ellis smirked back at him.

“Go nuts, kid. ”

Jonah tested the weight of it in his hand, shifting it from one to the other and swinging it up to shoulder height. He took a deep breath and let it out, narrowing in on a spot on the wall where two long scratches in the paint happened to intersect. X marks the spot, he thought.

In the moments before he swung, he felt a tingle in his arms, running up into the muscles of his shoulders; a burst of adrenaline that ached for release. He stared at the center of the X on the wall and saw a flash of the faces that kept him up at night—Shepard’s, Dominic’s, his father’s.

Then he struck.

As the hammer crashed through drywall, Jonah let out a grunt that was half exertion, half rage. Before he could let himself think, he pulled back the hammer and slammed it into the wall again.

“How did that feel?” Ellis asked when Jonah stopped to catch his breath.

Despite himself, despite the sweat that clung to his eyelashes, his thumping heartbeat, and the ache that was already starting to pulsate in his shoulders, Jonah found that he was smiling.

“Fucking incredible.”

That night in bed, after a long shower, he could still feel his pulse in his arms and legs as the endorphins settled, the weight of the day pressing him down into the mattress. It was a silent epiphany, as he stared up at the ceiling. It was the first time in recent memory that Jonah had felt strong in his own body .

If Chicago was the place where Jonah had learned how to survive, New York was where he learned how to live.

On the weekends and odd evenings, he began volunteering at a meal center downtown. It was partly to fill his time, never letting his hands sit idle for too long, and partly to prove to himself that he could.

At first, he worried that there would be too much negative association between his volunteer work and the work he had done under Shepard’s Fold, but he refused to let that prevent him from doing good in the world.

That time in his life had been so lonely, so void of light in his memory. It couldn’t have been more different than Jonah’s experience in New York.

When he worked his shifts, he found himself making connections with the people who came through the line. He would sit with them and eat, sometimes, after the last meal was served, rotating through the regulars until he knew most of the crowd on a first-name basis.

Jonah listened to their stories and, in time, learned to share pieces of his own. When he did, he wasn’t met with pity or judgment, but a respect he seldom felt worthy of. It was hard to feel alone in a community like that.

It was during one such dinner shift in early October, well over a year since he first touched down in New York, that he encountered a ghost from his past.

Jonah was on drink duty, pouring gallon jugs of apple juice into Styrofoam cups at the end of the line .

“Do you have coffee?” a man asked, his head hung low and shadowed by the too-big hood thrown over his head.

“Self-serve, over there,” Jonah directed him to the far wall.

But as the man looked up to thank him, the meeting of their eyes forced Jonah’s world to a screeching halt.

The first thing Jonah noticed, bizarrely, was that most of his piercings were gone. The only one that remained was the curve of silver that hung from his septum, capped with two round bulbs. Looking at it, Jonah could still feel the way it had brushed against his skin when they kissed.

“Dominic,” he whispered.

It didn’t feel real that he could be standing there now, states away, a lifetime away from the last time they had seen each other.

Dominic went still, his eyes widening. He stared for a few moments, a deer in headlights.

“It’s Jonah,” Jonah supplied numbly. “Prince.”

“I know.” Dominic shook his head, a rapid, jerky movement. He took a step back, tucking his hands into his pockets. “I should go,” he said, and pivoted on his heel.

“Wait,” Jonah heard himself say.

With what appeared to be some effort, Dominic turned back but didn’t respond. Jonah’s tongue was plastered to the roof of his mouth, but he forced himself to speak.

“You came here for coffee,” he said. “You should take some. Are you hungry?”

He saw the internal struggle in the expression Dominic tried to tuck away, and for a moment Jonah was sure he would turn and disappear back into the streets. But instead, he said, “Yeah. Okay.”

Jonah watched him from his spot on the line as Dominic received a plate of spaghetti and buttered bread, then grabbed a coffee and sat at one of the tables, alone. When the crowd began to thin, Jonah stepped out from behind his station and approached.

“Do you mind if I sit?” he asked.

Dominic didn’t look up, but he paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. He gave the barest motion of a nod that Jonah decided to take as approval.

He could admit to second-guessing himself once they were seated across from each other. Jonah still couldn’t quite process that it really was Dominic in front of him, let alone begin to traverse the minefield of history that lay between them.

For his part, Dominic seemed just as clueless, which was unnerving on its own. In the short time he had known Dominic, which had felt like a small pocket of eternity in the moment, he had never seen him be anything less than one-hundred percent confident.

Right up until the last phone call Jonah had shared with him. But that was the last thing to be thinking of if he wanted this to remain civil.

“How long have you been in New York?” Jonah was the first to breach the silence.

“Couple months,” Dominic muttered between sips.

“Why here? ”

He shrugged. “Wanted something new. Tried Detroit. Then Philly for a while. Hopped a bus here.” Then, after a moment, “What about you?”

“About a year and a half,” Jonah replied.

“What do you do?” There was genuine interest behind the question, which Jonah didn’t know how to take.

“I’m in school.”

Finally, Dominic looked up. The lines and dark circles around his eyes made him look older than he was. “School?”

“Yep,” he said. “I’m studying to be a teacher.”

Dominic looked at him long enough to have Jonah squirming. “You’re a good person, aren’t you?”

Jonah’s first instinct—just past the surprise—was to bristle.

“I guess the bar is pretty low.” The sudden clip in Jonah’s tone startled both of them, but at least it drained the final remnants of pretense.

Maybe this had been a really terrible idea.

Dominic seemed to agree, because he was already scooting toward the edge of the table. “I should go,” he said.

“Wait,” Jonah said, reaching out just enough for his fingers to brush Dominic’s wrist. He pulled back quickly. “I’m sorry. Please stay and finish your meal.”

He must have really been hungry, because he settled back into his seat and endured the blistering tension between them.

After a few bites, Dominic began to fidget. “I...” he started, then stopped, snapping his mouth shut and shaking his head before beginning again. “I know it wasn’t right, disappearing on you like I did.”

The anger Jonah had kept buried for so long rose effortlessly to the surface. As much as he would have liked to sit there with a cool head and pretend that he had made peace with his past, that he was above it all now, that would have been a lie.

He couldn’t count how many sleepless nights he had spent imagining all the ways their paths might cross again, and what Dominic would say to him. If he would grovel and beg for his forgiveness. If he would be harsh and cold and unrepentant. None of the scenarios in his head had landed them quite where they were now.

The man across from him ran a hand through his overgrown hair, and Jonah resented the fact that he could still feel the phantom texture between his fingers.

“You knew what would happen, didn’t you?” Jonah asked quietly. “When you gave me his number, you knew you were throwing me to the wolves. That’s why you disappeared.”

Something changed in Dominic’s expression. “I was eighteen when I met Shepard,” he said. “It’s true, what I told you about my parents. I never met my dad, and my mom...” He paused, snorting out a dark laugh. “She’s so strung out she wouldn’t recognize me if I was standing right in front of her. I started running for her dealer, just trying to keep the lights on, but I got caught. My public defender knew about his program and got them to cut me a deal. ”

“Are you trying to make me feel sorry for you?” Jonah’s voice was dangerously close to breaking.

“No, I don’t want your pity,” Dominic said. “I’m trying to tell you that, yes, I knew what happened when I was under Shepard’s roof, and yes, I knew that he would probably take an interest in you, too. I still thought it was better than you winding up in a jail cell.”

“If you were so confident in your charitable decision, why did you take off running?”

“You think it would have been easy to get into that fancy New York college of yours if you were carrying around a criminal record?”

“He almost killed me.” It came out louder than Jonah expected, drawing the eyes of a few curious tables near them. Jonah raked his fingers through his hair, which he had taken such pride in growing out since his time in Chicago. “He almost killed me,” he repeated, softer.

Dominic curled in on himself. “I’m sorry, Jonah.”

“I’m not interested in your apology.”

Dominic looked up at him through bloodshot eyes. “That's all I have for you,” he said. “I don’t have anything else to give.”

Every furious bone in Jonah’s body wanted to kick him while he was down, but he forced himself to breathe through the anger. To remember to be the person that he was now, and not the frightened boy he used to be .

“Can you just tell me this?” Jonah asked. “Did you ever really care about me? Was it ever real to you?” Because it was real to me.

Dominic looked down at his untouched plate of food. “I know it doesn’t matter now,” he said. “But I did care about you. I was never any good at caring about people, though.”

Jonah didn’t know how to respond. The sudden threat of tears made him feel like the sliver of control he had over this conversation was slipping from his grasp, and he needed to step back.

Jonah cleared his throat. “You should finish your dinner.”

Something like disappointment flashed across Dominic’s face, but he seemed to pick up on the cue that the conversation was over. What was done was done. There was no going back, and the only forward for each of them did not involve the input of the other.

Jonah stood to leave.

“Thank you,” Dom said. “For the food.”

Jonah nearly gave into the urge to reach out and touch him; to feel the cold skin of his arm, to feel some solid proof that any of this surreal encounter had been real. But he thought better of it, dropping his hand.

“Take care of yourself, Dominic.”

In the back kitchen, Jonah removed his apron and hung it on the door. He grabbed onto the counter as the adrenaline caught up to him, using it to keep himself upright. He closed his eyes and counted his breaths until they began to level out. Then, he stood up straight and combed through his hair with his fingers. He went over to the sink and splashed some cold water onto his face, and he slid on his jacket before stepping out into the cold.

He had an art show to get to.

The wind coming in off the Hudson chapped Jonah’s lips as he turned the corner. The address was a brick building, clearly repurposed from a time when the neighborhood still clung to its industrial roots. Light from the windows spilled out onto the sidewalk, illuminating a cluster of students gathered outside, smoking. Among them, he caught a flash of red hair.

He spotted Liam before Liam spotted him, and Jonah allowed himself a few precious moments to admire him in his element.

The cold had turned the tips of his ears and nose bright pink, and he was laughing at something his friend said. In the half-light cast across his face, he looked radiant with joy, and the sight was enough to dampen everything that had come before this moment to background noise.

When Liam finally saw him, he passed the cigarette sheepishly and stepped out of the circle to meet him halfway.

“It was only a couple of drags, I swear,” he blurted in lieu of a greeting. “Give me a break, I’m shitting myself here.”

Smoking had been a habit Liam picked up—and mostly dropped—in his first semester of art school. He only ever reverted back to it when his nerves were higher than usual. Of all occasions, his very first art show seemed worthy of a pass.

“People are going to love it,” Jonah promised.

“You haven’t even seen it yet.”

“And I’ve been very patient,” Jonah teased, then leaned in to plant a kiss on his cheek. “Happy birthday,” he whispered, close to Liam’s ear.

Liam caught his hand and reined him back in for a proper kiss. His lips were cold and tasted faintly of cigarette smoke and chapstick.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Liam said. When he pulled back, he studied Jonah’s expression. “Is everything okay?” he asked, running a thumb under Jonah’s eye where the skin was still blotched pink. He’d hoped the cold would have covered for him. “How was your shift?”

That was a conversation better suited for another time, another place. Not on the sidewalk outside of one of the biggest events of Liam’s life. Jonah could use some time to process it on his own first, anyway.

Tonight, Dominic Harris had no place in his life.

“I’m good,” Jonah replied honestly.

“You’re sure?”

“I am. Now, no more about me. I’m here to see some art.”

A slow smile warmed Liam’s face, but when Jonah took a step toward the door, he stopped him with a soft touch.

“Wait,” Liam said. “I just want to say... if you hate it, it’s fine. If it’s too much, if it’s... you know? You can leave. I’ll set them on fire or throw them in the Hudson. Whatever you want.”

Jonah had to fight to keep the smile off his face. Some things never changed, and his boyfriend’s propensity to ramble when nervous was one of them.

Liam had told him about the project eight months prior, said that it was something that had been simmering on the backburner since a few weeks after they’d first met. And while Liam had kept the paintings themselves under lock and key, he had taken care to get Jonah’s explicit consent on the subject matter long before it ever reached the concept of a public showing.

It was sweet that he worried about him, even now, but Jonah knew there was nothing to worry about. Not with Liam.

Jonah grabbed his hand, slipping his fingers between Liam’s. “I want to see it,” he said.

Liam’s face cycled through several emotions before landing on something resolute. He squeezed Jonah’s hand in return, then tugged him forward.

As soon as they cleared the doorway, parting the small gathering of patrons sipping complimentary champagne, Jonah’s feet stilled beneath him.

All around them, propped on wooden easels and hung from aged brick walls, was a collection of painted rooms captured on canvas .

Not just rooms. Hotel rooms, specifically, defined by the matching sets of beds, always with a wired telephone and table lamp between them.

The rooms were painted in vivid realism, but in each one of them were the cartoonish outlines of two figures in a myriad of positions: sitting on opposite beds, perched in the window, lying on the floor. In each of them, the figures seemed to glow, brilliant and stark against the muted backdrops. The brightest things in the room.

In one of the paintings, there was an empty champagne bottle on the nightstand. In another, a spread of textbooks and paper across the bed. In each successive painting, the two outlines drew closer and closer in proximity, until the last one, where their figures tangled together into one unending, messy line on the bed.

Jonah’s eyes found the stark black lettering printed above the collection.

“‘A Series of Rooms,’” he read aloud.

“What do we think?” Liam asked. “Should I start tossing them off the pier, or can they stay?”

Jonah could feel Liam’s gaze on the side of his face, but he couldn’t tear his eyes away from the gallery of lived snapshots before him.

I love it, he wanted to say.

I love you, he thought, but the words weren’t big enough to fill the feeling.

“Yeah,” was the breathless response that made it to the surface. “They can stay.”