Renn had almost kissed me. Almost. He’d seen the conflict. My fear. I didn’t regret our near miss because that raw feeling of arousal I’d had—however brief—was a token of what could be, in time. Silence existed between us again, claiming the things we could not speak of. Henri. Renn’s father. Our almost-kiss lingered in the space for a few moments, but eventually, the silence claimed it too.
DECEMBER 31, 2013
Henri was slippinga tan button-down over his perfectly gym-honed torso when the doorbell rang. We weren’t expecting guests, so I walked to the living room ready to redirect someone to one of the neighboring apartments.
I wasn’t prepared for the handful of confetti thrown in my face as soon as I opened the door.
“Surprise! Happy New Year, doll!” Another handful, again right in my face.
“What the hell?” I stammered and spat out stray bits of paper as I struggled to reconcile the sight in front of me.
Zach stood on my doorstep grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. He leaned on a small rolling luggage bag with a stars-and-moon pattern. I recognized it. I remembered when he’d found it in the little charity thrift store in the strip mall across the street from the bar. Hal’s. Just thinking of California had a lump forming in my throat.
“Zach. Oh my God…What are you doing here?”
His grin died as he registered my face. Confronted with the burst of my friend’s brightness, I couldn’t stop the moisture from gathering in my eyes, and I reached out to make sure he wasn’t a mirage as the tears escaped. Zach gathered me up in familiar arms and I buried my face in his shoulder. He embraced me fiercely, placing a hand on my head.
“Don’t cry, doll. I’m here now.” He whispered the last part solemnly in my ear. Then he stiffened. Henri had come out of the bedroom.
“What the hell…Zach?” It had been a few years since they’d been in the same room, and to say they weren’t each other’s biggest fans would be a colossal understatement. “What the fuck are you doing here?”
Zach pulled away from me and walked over to Henri, arm outstretched in greeting. “Nice to see you too, man.” Zach had completed a minor degree in passive-aggressive sarcasm masquerading as polite manners.
Henri shook his hand grudgingly. “Seriously, why are you here? Sadie didn’t say anything. We have plans for tonight. You can’t just expect us to drop everything.”
“Henri! Don’t be so rude. I didn’t know. It’s a wonderful surprise.” Henri squinted his eyes at me, clearly displeased by my admonishment. There had been a time when he’d hidden his nature from Zach, showing him the same charming face the rest of the world saw. As it became clear Zach’s loyalty would always be to me, Henri had abandoned the effort. Over the years, he’d succeeded in fraying the bonds of our friendship. But Zach standing in my living room was proof of its ultimate durability. And as I continued to lean heavily into my best friend, I could only thank God for that.
“Sorry to interrupt your plans. I hope I didn’t intrude on anything important. I wanted to surprise my best friend for the holiday.” Zach tried to keep a cheerful tone, but I could see his pulse thudding in his neck. Henri, meanwhile, became engrossed by whatever text messages had just come through his phone and turned his back on us.
When I asked my boyfriend a minute later if he wanted to hang out with me and Zach before meeting his work friends, Henri acted like I’d asked if he wanted to drink bleach. He kept looking down at his phone, the constant barrage of incoming messages clearly bothering him. He had one of those twenty-four-seven jobs, so lots of texts weren’t unusual, but he seemed particularly annoyed by whatever he was seeing. I didn’t care. I was grateful they were distracting him, since it meant he was too busy to sulk about Zach’s sudden appearance.
Henri pointed his finger at his device, indicating he needed to deal with whatever situation was happening. He took the phone into the bedroom, gripping it aggressively as he frantically texted, seeming relieved when Zach and I headed to the bar early for some best friend time.
CHAPTER
Six
December 21, 2014
After our almost-kiss,which we both seemed content to pretend hadn’t happened—or at least pretend that Renn had been going for a chaste back-of-the-hand kiss the whole time—I busied myself at the mirror looking at the progress on the tattoo. A lot of the shading was complete, the detail on the busted-through chains particularly popping. And even though the air had been so thick mere minutes ago, the heaviness didn’t linger, quickly surrendering itself to the natural ease that had always existed between Renn and me. He spoke again after a few minutes.
“Thank you, Sadie, for listening. About my dad. It’s been four years and sometimes it seems much longer, but then there are still days it feels fresh. I guess that’s why I never had anyone else fill in that tattoo. It would be too final.”
He put on his gloves and arm coverings, motioning that I could lie back down.
I positioned myself the way I knew worked best, hooking my leg in an L shape. “In some ways, it has to be comforting that you have a piece of him on your body, right?”
“That’s usually how I see it. Except it’s also a marker of how young he died. He was only thirty-nine.” I tried to wrap my head around the fact that Renn’s dad was only five years older than I was now when he passed away. “The tat on my calf is a constant reminder of my dad’s unfinished life.”
Renn seemed inclined to end the conversation there, but between what he’d shared and the intensity of our almost-kiss, I couldn’t help but want to give him something more.
I hadn’t given him the goriest details about Boston, the embarrassing specifics about how Henri had forced my hand. And I hadn’t been able to kiss him, to bring myself to take that step, despite my body aching to. But I could give him something else.
“Hey, Renn.” He paused in the process of rubbing cream into my thigh and raised an eyebrow. “There’s really not a good way to talk about this, and it feels weird to just say it out of nowhere, but then it feels worse to keep it to myself now that you’ve told me about your dad.”
“Okay...” He stopped what he was doing and his jaw ticked. “I’m listening.”
“Look, not to just blurt it out, but I want you to know that I understand at least a little of what you feel because my parents are also gone…passed away. They died when I was a kid. Normally, I wouldn’t just bust out with that, but…since you told me about your dad. And it’s not like there’s a way it was going to come up naturally or casually. So…there it is.”