Tag pulled off his shirt and mopped at his face while helping himself to a bowl of my cereal and a huge glass of my orange juice. He sat down at my kitchen table like we were an old married couple and dug in without further comment on the picture I’d spent half the night creating.
Tag was better at friendship than I was. I rarely went downstairs to his place. I never ate his food or threw my sweaty clothes on his floor. But I was grateful that he did. I was grateful he came to me, and I never complained about the missing food or paintings or the random dirty sock that wasn’t mine. If it wasn’t for Tag making himself at home in my life, we wouldn’t be friends. I just didn’t know how, and he seemed to understand.
I finished my own bowl of cereal and pushed it away, my gaze wandering back to the easel.
“Why is she blonde?” Tag asked.
I felt my brow furrow and I shrugged at Tag. “Why not?”
“Well, the boy . . . he’s dark. I just wondered why you made her blonde,” Tag said reasonably, shoving another huge spoonful into his mouth.
“I’m dark . . . and my mother was blonde,” I responded matter-of-factly.
Tag stopped, his spoon paused in mid-air. I watched as a Cheerio made a desperate dive for freedom, plopping back in the bowl, safe for another few seconds.
“You never told me that.”
“I didn’t?”
“No. I know your mom left you in the laundromat. I know your life was shit growing up. I know you went and lived with your grandma before she died. I know her death messed you up pretty good, which is where I come in.” He winked. “I know you’ve always been able to see stuff other people can’t. And I know you can paint.”
My life in a nutshell.
Tag continued. “But I didn’t know your mom was blonde. Not that it matters. But you’re so dark, so I just assumed . . .”
“Yeah.”
“So . . . is the picture of you and your mom? Wasn’t she a small-town girl?”
“No. I mean . . . yeah. She was a small-town girl. A small-town white girl.” I emphasized white this time, just so we were clear. “But no. The picture is of Eli and his mother. But I don’t think it’s what he wanted.”
“The hills. The sunset. It kind of reminds me of Sanpete. Sanpete was beautiful when I wasn’t hung-over.”
“Levan too.”
I stared at the painting, the child and his mother on a horse named Calico, the woman tall and lean in the saddle, her blonde hair just a pale suggestion against the more vivid pinks and reds of the setting sun.
“She looks like Georgia,” I mused. The woman in my painting looked like Georgia from the back. I felt a sudden sinking in my chest and I stood, walking toward the picture, a picture I’d created in desperation, setting a stage and filling it with characters from my own head. Not from Eli’s head. It had nothing to do with Georgia. But my heart pounded and my breaths grew shallow.
“She looks like Georgia, Tag.” I said it again, louder, and I heard the panic in my voice.
“Georgia. The girl you never got over?”
“What?”
“Oh, come on, man!” Tag groaned, half-laughing. “I’ve known you for a long time. And in that time you’ve never been interested in a single woman. Not one. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were in love with me.”
“I saw her last Friday. I saw her at the hospital.” I couldn’t even argue with him. I felt sick, and my hands were shaking so much that I interlocked my fingers and hung them around my neck to hide the tremors.
Tag seemed as stunned as I had been. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“I saw her. And she saw me. And . . . and now, I’m seeing this little kid.” I took off running for my bedroom with Tag on my heels and terror thrumming through my veins like I’d just been injected with something toxic.
I pulled my old backpack down off my closet shelf and started ripping things out of it. My passport, a grease pencil, a stray peanut, a coin purse with random currencies that had never been cashed in.
“Where is it?” I raged, unzipping pockets and rifling through every compartment of the old bag, like an addict searching for a pill.
“What are you looking for?” Tag stood back and watched me tear my closet apart with equal parts fascination and concern.
“The letter. The letter! Georgia wrote me a letter when I was at Montlake. And I never opened it. But I kept it! It was here!”
“You put it in one of those tubes in Venice,” Tag answered easily, and sat down on my bed, his elbows braced on his knees, watching me come unglued.
“How the hell do you know that?”
“Because you dragged that envelope around forever. You’ll be lucky if it’s still in one piece.”
I was already digging deeper in my closet, pulling out tubes of rolled art that I’d picked up in my travels and then never took the time to frame or display. We’d sent stuff to Tag’s father from all over the world, and he stuck it in a spare room. When we’d settled in, he’d brought it to us. Four years of travels and purchases, and the loot had filled the back of his horse trailer. We’d promptly deposited it all in a storage unit, not especially interested in going through it all. Fortunately, the tube Tag was referring to should still be somewhere in my closet, because he was right. I’d kept it with me, dragging it around like a prized locket that I never even opened. Maybe because it had never been opened, it never seemed right to set it aside.
“It was in a small—” Tag started.
“Did you read it?” I shouted, digging frantically.
“No. I didn’t. But I wanted to. I thought about it.”
I found the tube I was sure it was in and pulled off the lid with my teeth, sinking to my knees as I shook out the contents like a kid on Christmas. I had put the letter back in an envelope when I left Montlake to protect it, and it slid out agreeably and landed in my lap. And like that kid on Christmas, who has just opened something he can’t decide if he likes, I just stared at it.
“It looks the same as it always has, every other time you’ve sat and stared at it,” Tag drawled.
I nodded.
“Do you need me to read it?” he said, a little more kindly.
“I’m an asshole, Tag. You know that right? I was an asshole then, with Georgia, and I haven’t changed a whole lot.”