Between the Stars and Sky (12 page)

*   *   *

“WHAT NOW?” SEAN ASKED.

Miles shrugged. He focused on the sky directly above the lake where the moon and stars were beginning to poke through the blackness. “I thought you would know.”

“Me?” Sean questioned, his voice filled with an easy kind of panic that happened when the heart beat too fast or too slow. “Why would I know anything about dating?”

Miles felt his lips pull into a smirk. “We’re dating?”

Crimson lit Sean’s face. “What? No. No. I don’t think so. We just had dinner. No way. I mean, are we?”

“I don’t know. We haven’t even kissed yet.”

Sean’s mouth moved without words. The sounds of crickets filled the night around him, though he was sure his heartbeat was louder. Until he whispered, “Do you want to?”

“Kiss or-”

“Both.”

Miles grinned and scooted closer to Sean and, even though sand and water were starting to dampen his shorts, he felt heat rise the closer he moved. “I want to.”

“So.”

A smile. “So.”

They were so close now. Bodies touching. Hands brushing together. Miles could almost feel Sean’s heart beating louder than his own, and he knew he wanted to be closer still. Ever closer.

Without waiting, Miles leaned his head towards Sean and closed his eyes.

“Wait!” Sean shouted.

“What?” Miles said as his eyes popped open, frustrated and afraid and confused. “Do you not want to? We don’t have to. I’m sorry.”

“No,” Sean said. “It’s not that. It’s just... Tell me a secret. A secret only I know.”

“Why?”

Sean paused and the light from the moon seemed to cut between them. “Because I want to know I mean something to you, Miles. This... this is something to me. You’re something. And I want to know I’m something to you too.”

“A secret?”

“A secret.”

“Okay.” Miles turned and faced the lake, thinking about his life and what he might be able to tell Sean. The very fact that he didn’t have a secret he wanted to share made Miles feel horrible, useless. Not good enough for a boy like Sean. And just as his thoughts began to spiral into a dark and deep oblivion of superficial words, drinks, laughs, and drugs, he thought of a secret no one else knew. No one would ever know. No one but Sean. And then, only then, Miles wondered if he could be someone different. If this one secret, this one little fact about him, could be the seed he needed to grow.

He whispered, “I read. A lot. At night.”

“Yeah?” Sean said, matching the tone Miles had as though words meant more. Immediately, Miles valued that about Sean - how much he cared about words and people.

Sean reminded Miles of Jackson.

“Yes,” Miles told him. He was a secret reader. At night, when he wasn’t drunk or high, he would turn off his bedroom light, pull the covers over his head, turn on a flashlight, and read.

It reminded him of being a child.

And being a child reminded him of being Miles.

The Miles he liked, at least.

So Miles would read all night until the break of day and, sometimes, even then he would not stop. “I read instead of sleep. It’s the only time I feel at home, like I can be myself. No one knows. No one cares.”

“That’s your secret?”

“Yes.”

“Now I know.” Sean moved closer to Miles and grabbed his hand. “And I care.”

Miles breathed books like air. Touched them like they were life. Held them like they were death.

And maybe they were.

But not tonight.

Tonight, Miles had Sean.

And tonight, Sean was his book.

*   *   *

EVEN THE MOON WAS dark, the stars gone.

The only light was Miles and Sean, together. They were wrapped in a blanket, warm and safe. And somehow, in a perfect way, it was as though the two had always been together.

Then-

“Why are you friends with them?” Sean asked, his words rising and falling with his chest. The wind a steady breeze against them, between them even through the blanket.

Miles shrugged. “We’ve always been friends. I guess I don’t know what it’s like to not have them.”

“She calls you a bitch, Miles. A bitch. A fucking whore. I’ve heard her. Friends don’t say things like that to people they care about.”

Miles let out a snort. “You sound like Jackson.”

“Who?” Sean asked, his voice a pitch higher than normal in a quiet surge of jealousy.

“My friend. A guy I used to know. He used to stay in Huntington in the summers before he left.” A pause, a quick beat. “He doesn’t visit anymore. But when he did he used to tell me I was too good for my friends. I was different with him.”

“Different how?”

“Like I am with you, I think.”

“And you like how you are with me?”

Miles did not answer.

Instead, he pulled Sean against him and hugged him with both arms. His lips found Sean’s forehead and planted a kiss there. Together, they held each other.

They were together.

And that was the answer.

“Jackson sounds like a good guy,” Sean told him.

“He is.”

“You still talk to him?”

Miles was quiet for a moment. “Not really.”

“You should.”

“You think?”

“I think so. Maybe he’s afraid to talk to you. People are afraid of silly things, sometimes. And you should drop Jessica.”

“It’s not that easy.”

“Yes it is, Miles. Everything is as easy or hard as you make it. Think about that. Think about what you want and who you are and who you should be.”

“And just go for it?”

Sean nodded. “Go for it.”

All his life Miles heard people tell him who he was-

who he shouldn’t be.

Conservative people with conservative hearts and minds would mutter liberal things about the way he loved and lived his life, and how he was wrong. Rumors told him his heart was somehow ignorant of love and how it should be, and that if he loved anyone less than who they approved he was incorrect. He had always known who he was, but even so, being told you are less than what you should be the majority of your life weighs heavily on the soul.

Both Miles and Sean lived their lives in fear of words. In fear of the power words held over the acceptance of their lived, their love. Day after day, the boys stepped into a world that either accepted them, or didn’t. And even then, when they were accepted with open arms, they were rarely treated normally.

There was nothing normal about acceptance; it is, after all, a word that sits very close to tolerance. And neither of those sleeps with normal.

But with Sean, Miles did not care - not about who he was before. With Sean, Miles wanted to be someone worth loving, worth remembering the way he wanted Sean to remember him.

“I think there’s no such thing as a fairy tale,” Miles told Sean, his voice steady and still. He didn’t know where he was going with these words, but he felt he needed to say them the same. Felt like he needed to tell more secrets, more stories. “Love exists, sure, but nothing like it is in the stories. No Prince Charming. That’s not realistic.”

“Who told you that?” Sean asked him, a hint of a smile gathering about the edges of his lips.

“What do you mean?”

“Who told you what real was? Who told you what defined love, what made a fairy tale true and not true?”

“They’re just things we all know, Sean.”

“Things we believe in and don’t. But you know what? I believe in fairy tales and Prince Charmings. I believe in love that is so powerful and romantic it takes your breath away and keeps you alive at once. You know why? Because when you take away all those fairy tale stories, strip them down, you’re left with the message that love is work. Love is a commitment. Love is strong and true and worth fighting for. And if those things are only found in fairy tales then I’m not sure what this life is supposed to be about, Miles. Because with you? With you I believe in magic because every time I look into your eyes I see the man you want to be for me, and I remember the man I want to be for you. That’s magic. That’s love, maybe.” Sean felt himself sink deeper into his state of anger and frustration built on the lies people told about love. “I tried not looking, Miles. I tried to do what people said, tried to stop looking for love so that it would find me instead. Because love finds you when you least expect it, when you’re not searching for it. That’s what they say. But what people forget is that in order for love to find you, someone has to be searching. Someone
has
to find you.”

They were not in love. Not yet. But close. Even in the short time they had known each other, the past moments missed between them began to grow infinitely romantic so all they knew was how much they wanted love. Because love was hope, and hope they had. And in the dark, Sean traced the sky on Miles’ chest, outlined the shape of the moon on his stomach. Each finger drew a different path to Miles’ heart; one thousand of them, until there was no way Sean could ever get lost.

*   *   *

ONE YEAR PASSED IN the form of one day, slipping so slowly and so quickly time seemed to stop and start as it wanted, without reason or rhyme or rule.

It didn’t matter.

Nothing did.

As dawn broke open the sky, Miles opened his eyes anew. He felt the morning in his throat, felt the possibility in his chest. Mostly, he felt Sean curled up beside him. Bodies together. Hearts almost touching. Hands intertwined.

That close, Miles wasn’t sure what life was without Sean. Because there and then, he was so lost to Sean he was found, and Miles didn’t want to be anywhere else.

There, he was.

He. Just. Was.

Finally.

*   *   *

LATER, WHEN HE LOOKED back on the day he began to fall in love with Sean, Miles wouldn’t remember exactly why he did. Sure, Miles loved Sean’s eyes, his smile. The way he said words and phrases like they surprised him. His innocence and his darkness, the same. His laugh. But exactly why Miles began loving Sean was a mystery.

Or, maybe it was like fate; one day Miles was out of love, the next he was deep within it. Maybe love wasn’t so much about choices or values or reasons, but about letting yourself go enough to let someone in.

No matter, Miles loved Sean.

And their love began that day.

The day Miles let himself go,

so he could let Sean in.

*   *   *

BETWEEN THE DAY AND NIGHT, when Miles was beginning to let sleep take over, he wondered about Jackson.

What was he doing?

What was he thinking?

What did he miss?

And, most of all, Miles wondered if Jackson would ever come back to Huntington. If his best friend would ever face his demons like he so encouraged Miles to do.

If they would be friends again.

No, Miles thought. That wasn’t exactly right. Miles and Jackson were still friends, and would be until the end of their lives, but best friends? Miles wasn’t so sure. But he was sure Jackson would be proud of him now, of the person he became when he was with Sean.

Not
for
Sean.

Not
for
anyone.

But
because
of everyone, because of Jackson, Miles had grown into someone else entirely in the space of an infinite moment. And he would never take that back.

*   *   *

“I DON’T KNOW IF I can do this.”

“Do what?” Miles asked.

“This,” Sean said, his hand moving furiously between them as though he was trying to fill the air with wind. “Us. I don’t think I do us anymore, Miles. It’s so... It’s too much around here.”

The world exploded. “What do you mean?”

Sean’s eyes were wet, panicked. “People look at us like we’re freaks. Don’t you see it? I can’t even look my mother in the eye anymore. She looks at me like I’m some son she never wanted. And I can’t even breathe. I can’t even... I don’t understand. I don’t feel like myself anymore.”

“You don’t feel like yourself with me?” Miles asked, his words falling like stars into the sea. Every single beat of his sentence blew into the air and splashed emotion up. He didn’t want Sean to leave him, feel this way. He didn’t know what to say to make it better.

“I do,” Sean said. “But I don’t. I do and then I see the way everyone looks at me and I don’t want to be looked at like that. I don’t. Even your friends look at us like we’re something less than human!”

“Then don’t look at them.”

“That’s impossible!”