Page 88 of String Boys

I’ll stop for takeout. How many?

“Dinner with my dad?” Seth asked, and Kelly nodded.

“Yeah. Let me text Mom.”

Seth’s phone buzzed again.

I’ll bring some for upstairs.

Seth laughed a little. “Tell her Dad’s bringing dinner.”

Kelly laughed too and texted, and the rest of the evening went like that. Quiet. Like normal. Like tomorrow they couldn’t be saying goodbye to Xavier Cruz, one of the best men Seth had ever known.

Like tomorrow, Seth wouldn’t be walking away from the boy he loved and leaving him to grow up alone. Like they wouldn’t be breaking all the promises of hope they’d made to each other’s hearts since the day Seth had looked at him sleeping and fallen in love.

It had to be normal, Seth figured. Anything bigger than normal would destroy them, pound them into dust, break them into a thousand pieces.

They couldn’t do this in a thousand pieces. Someday, Kelly would be free. Someday, Seth would be able to take him away to whatever world awaited.

Someday they would be together.

If they were going to make it to someday, they had to be whole today.

It was the only way this would work.

May to November

SETH’S DADgave the eulogy, and when Kelly’s uncle Beto from El Paso asked, “Who the hell is that guy?” under his breath, Kelly realized hecouldbe an asshole to family.

“That guy held us together these last two years, you prick! He was my dad’s best friend, and he’s the one who fucking stepped up and helped us plan, so shut your fucking piehole.”

Uncle Beto had the nerve to look affronted, but Kelly remembered his mother killing herself to make big batches of cookies to send to Beto and his family for Christmas every year and getting bupkiss in return, not even a Christmas card of his perfect kids all going to Ivy League schools and shit.

Jesus, his mom, at least, deserved a gift certificate to Starbucks or something.

Kelly gave zero shits about Beto and Cherise Cruz.

His useless fucking brother was standing in his goddamned wedding suit, looking wrecked and sobbing constantly through the service. He’d gotten rehab and probation, with a day off for the service, because apparently the legal system was that fucking random, but Kelly gave zero fucks about him or his absent wife either.

Seth stood quietly next to him, his hair buzzed super short, thanks to his dad’s clippers that morning. He was watching his father say goodbye with features made older by grief.

Kelly should let him go.

He should.

God, he wasn’t eighteen yet, and he’d been broken twice, and twice Seth had been there to pick up the pieces and to tell him he’d be there, whenever Kelly needed.

Kelly should tell him to go out into the world and forget about him, and forget about Sacramento, and get a big job and take his father with him into the wide world, because if anybody deserved a vacation at the beach, it was Craig Arnold.

But he wouldn’t.

He wouldn’t and he knew it.

He’d been all talk the day before, about Seth needing him. Seth had bought it, eyes huge, pupils blown from orgasm, body offered up like a sacrament, a blessing to all of Kelly’s brokenness, and Kelly had taken Seth into his being like wine and bread.

Kelly knew the truth.

Seth’s father was comfort.