He’s drawn a boy with life in his eyes. Green eyes, the color of spring grass. A slight grin on his face. And the weirdest part: handsome. I stare and stare until the picture blurs. I say, “Wow,” and he says nothing back, just lets me stare.
I’m staring at a drawing of a boy who is an actual being, like a … substantial person. Someone who makes choices and does stuff in the world. That’s all I can say about that, because it’s so weird to me. That I’ve never seen that in me before.
I hug him then, and I say, “Thanks. You’re a freakin’ amazing artist.”
He whispers the words right into my ear. “Thank you.”
And it’s like we float into his bed and lie down next to each other, which feels like a little bit of heaven.
We talk about my wives, and Max says he loved how they were right there with me when I texted them about Lydia. They must have come over in like two seconds, and Pam brought me a Ziploc baggie of yellow candy hearts, because she knows those are my favorites, and Kayla showed me the unsolicited lewd photo Shaun from Chess Club had sent her that made her decide to ghost him, and neither of them tried to dress Dorcas without her consent, and mostly they just loved on me, which was exactly what I needed. It was so weird to have them in Max’s house, draped across his mom’s gray fabric couch and love seat like they belonged there. One thing Max doesn’t know is that when he left for a bit, I actually talked to them about how I sometimes wish they didn’t Gay Best Friend me all the time, and how it would be okay to be serious sometimes too. And then Pam hugged the orange throw pillow to her chest and was like, “I’ll stop if you stop calling me one of your wives.”
That hit me right between the eyes. I had never even thought of that before, and I started to get all “Oh my God, I’m so sorry,” and she smiled, and shook her head, like, It’s fine, just saying, and we didn’t have to have a big, dramatic scene, which I guess is step one of me not playing the role of their Gay Best Friend (GBF), and them not playing the part of my Two Sassy Wives (TSW). So yeah. I guess that’s progress. That maybe not everything has to be a joke, just because it started that way. It was kinda amazing.
And then my thoughts turn to my mom, and when Max senses that I’ve gone dark, he hugs me tight, and I willingly roll into his chest and let him hold me and put his strength into me, and I wonder if I’ll ever be able to give him half as much as he’s given me.
“I sometimes think we’re like space dust,” he says as my head is cradled in his chest.
“Like our problems are small, all things considered?”
“What?”
“I remember you said that once. That our problems don’t amount to much.”
Max is silent for a bit. “Wow,” he says. “You really listen, don’t you? No. I mean, yeah, but I guess I’m saying what you said with your poem. Like that’s why we fit together so well. We were once particles of space dust, connected to each other, and then the Big Bang. And now all these millennia later, we’ve found each other. And Betts and Zay-Rod and Pam and Kayla. They were close by too, and now we’ve all found each other again.”
“Like space dust?”
“Like space dust.”
“Okay,” I say. “I like that.”
His mom sticks her head in the room and tells us she’s going to church. She’s all dressed up in a pretty, light blue skirt and yellow blouse. “You boys behave now,” she says, smiling, and Max says, “You too,” which makes her smile wide and wink.
We’re quiet for a while. A truck rolls by outside. I’m thinking about how we need to find jobs. And also about how lucky I am to know Max. He’s the best person I’ve ever met, and for some ridiculous reason, he’s chosen me.
“It is pretty incredible,” Max says again, shaking his head. “How a month ago I barely knew you, and now you’re, like, here.”
“It’s just the music of what happens,” I say.
“It’s the what?”
“The Seamus Heaney poem, remember?”
“Oh yeah.”
“My dad used to tell me this story. It’s where that phrase came from in the poem. A story about the legend of Finn MacCool. He was this mythical Irish warrior. He challenged all these brilliant men to come up with the most beautiful sound in the world. One guy said it was a young girl laughing. Another said the bellowing of a stag. A third said the sound of a sword against a shield. No, Finn MacCool said. It’s the music of what happens.”
Max screws up his face at me. “What the hell does that mean?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “My dad liked the story. And I guess I like the phrase. ‘The music of what happens.’ It’s maybe the stuff of life. Birds singing. Babies crying.”
Max stretches his arms above him and then cradles his head in his hands. He says, “To me, it’s maybe more like ‘music’ meaning ‘harmony.’ The harmoniousness of what happens.”
“Everything happens for a reason, eh?”
Max shrugs. “If that’s true, somebody up there has a hell of a sense of humor.”
“It’s beautiful, though. Your idea.”
“You think?”
I say, “I think there’s something really cool about the idea of sitting back and listening to what happens in the world, rather than fretting over it and trying to fix it. After all, if it’s what happens, it’s what happens. Right? I can’t make what happens not happen.”
“Unless that’s part of the plan.”
“You’re really smart.”
“You’re really cute,” Max says, and I blush like crazy. “You’re also really interesting. I liked that about you right away. You say interesting things.”
“Thanks,” I say, and I’m thinking, Man, I could get used to this thing where I don’t think I’m a total piece of shit all the time.
Max and I talk about tomorrow, when I’m supposed to go see my mom, who is in in-patient treatment in Phoenix. To be honest? I don’t want to. It’s not that I don’t love my mom; I’m just not ready, you know? He says he’ll help me pack up my things at my house, and I can’t even really talk about that yet. It’s the only house I’ve ever known, and it’s where my dad was, and it’s where my mom was, and I feel a little like an orphan here, which is something I don’t want to tell Max or his mom, because I’m so glad they’ve taken me in. I like it here too. I just don’t know if it will ever feel like home. If anything ever will, again.
Then we talk more about the rape. His counselor and what she said about the healing process. How when trust is violated, it’s like you’re left with an empty piggy bank. Building trust again, she said, is like putting big, fat nickels into the slot. They clank against the bottom, and that sound is jarring. But in order to heal, you have to keep adding those nickels, and soon enough, there will be coins to cushion the nickel’s fall and make the sound not so grating.
I tell him that I don’t mind the clank, and that I’ll make sure I always remember that he’ll hear a jarring sound even if I hear nothing. And I tell him that he can always tell me, and I will always hold him when he feels that way, and I will never judge him, and I will give him all the time and space he needs until the bank fills up again.
He doesn’t respond to that, but I can tell the words mean something to him by the way he pauses and looks away after I say them.
Instead he tells me how his friends have been cool. I like those guys. I don’t want to spend a lot of time with them without Max around, but that’s more my thing than theirs. People just make me nervous, I guess. Maybe if I got used to them. After all, Max made me nervous once too. Man did he ever.
“But what about when there’s no beauty in what happens?” Max asks after a long, languid silence. “When ugly things happen? What does ‘the music of what happens’ mean when it comes up against, you know. Bad things.”