Cynthia was waiting for him at the baggage claim, carousel five, which as always made Jared think of painted horses. Walking toward her, he felt like he was riding one. There was a candy-striped pole running down through his middle, through his stomach, rising with excitement then falling with dread. When their eyes met, he walked toward her faster, not quite jogging but wondering if he should. It seemed the proper thing to do, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Neither could his suitcase, whose left wheel got caught on a ragged seam of airport carpet. He had to pause briefly to dislodge it, and in that short space of time Cynthia had closed the gap between them, no theatrical running necessary.
“Yass, bitch! You made it!” She stood by while Jared fixed his suitcase. “Jesus, Jear-Bear, leave that thing alone and come here.”
The hug that followed was awkward and sincere. Smiles and bumped joints. When they pulled apart, Jared saw her for the first time in years. She was a blonde now, platinum. But that was to be expected; gay men in her shoes bleached their hair all the time. What surprised him was the red flannel she wore tied around her waist. He recognized it instantly as one of Peter’s. The white deodorant rings under the armholes. Cynthia must have noticed him staring, because she smiled forcefully and said:
“It’s mine, don’t worry. I’m not that crazy ex. Hell, I’m barely an ex at all. Still getting used to it, actually.”
Jared wanted to hug her again, but he worried something would be lost in the repetition. Authenticity, mainly, though he wondered how much of that there was between them now, how much could be communicated over text. He wasn’t always the best at responding. Still, he was genuinely appreciative for their bi-monthly-ish check-ins, the ones that fizzled out with a string of pink hearts and a corporate-sounding pledge to FaceTime someday soon. They might not talk often, but what was frequency compared to history? Compared to midnight drives through open desert, shuttling him away from his secrets? And so when Cynthia called him the other night, not pre-arranged but out of the blue, Jared thrilled at the fact that they could still do this sort of thing, call each other in a crisis at 11:43 on a Thursday. Yes, they could still drop everything to support each other. And yes, he had to remind himself, crawling out of bed at six o’clock that morning, he still wanted to.
“Hey,” he said. “Look at me. You don’t have to get used to anything. You’re still the same person you were before. You’re still the baddest bitch in the West—or at least West Phoenix.”
There was a shy laugh on both sides, tentative yet warm. It was good to see her laugh, but it was even better to see his bag on the carousel, steadily lurching toward them. He stepped past her so he could grab it. Only after the Velcro straps were perfectly creased did he turn around, determined to shake his nerves.
“Let’s go get drunk.” Cynthia looked at him in surprise. “Tonight,” he added. “In Tucson. It’ll be just like old times. Only this time you’ll be single.”
Jared felt a clutch in his throat as he said it. He braced himself for the impact, but as it turned out, there was none. Cynthia answered with a shriek, giddy and exultant. He felt a rush of relief, cool and quiet as the A/C blowing through her hunter-green 4Runner, his bags nestled comfortably in the backseat.
###
Jared met Cynthia in college. A frat house. Sigma Sigma Something. A warm night in October, probably Homecoming, but he’d never cared much for sports. They were standing on the peeling front porch, breathing heavy. Jared because he’d missed the bus by four minutes and had to walk, then run, then walk again when he reached Greek row, knowing too well how his hips tended to swing, how his arms crimped effeminately at his sides. Cynthia because she’d been arguing with a drunk frat dude in the doorway, and he was wearing one of those tank tops with deep slits down the sides, musk streaming freely from his armpits. He kept demanding that she give him a kiss. Price of admission, or so he claimed. “Tell me that one more time,” Jared overheard her saying, “and I’ll have you admitted to the hospital, how about that?” Jared knew immediately that he wanted to be her friend. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have had the courage to do what he did next. He stepped forward, slipping his arm around her waist, and explained that Cynthia was already taken, but she had two single friends on the way who would have no problem paying.
The lie worked. The frat dude, either stepping aside or swaying drunkenly out of their way, let them pass. Cynthia turned to look at Jared. At first she looked repulsed, but something in her quickly softened. It happened like that often with straight women, once they registered his gayness. It sometimes scared him how quickly they could tell. Especially back then, before his parents knew. But in that moment Jared was simply grateful to have an ally.
They tumbled into the party, bumping breasts and chests and sugary rims of plastic cups. In the silence before the bass drop, Cynthia shouted thank you, and Jared waved goodbye. They forged their separate ways through the crowd, only to run into each other again in the hallway, the one that led to the frat boys’ bedrooms. “Wait, are you here for—” Cynthia started to ask, and Jared said, “Are you?” They both laughed, but Jared laughed the loudest, from discomfort. Cynthia handed him her phone.
“Let me get your number.” When Jared said nothing, she nudged him playfully on the shoulder. “Hoes before bros, am I right?”
She knocked loudly on the door in front of them, and suddenly there was no time for hesitation. Jared typed in his number. Not ten seconds later she was gone, barging abruptly into the room. That was what Jared loved most about her: where others would wait in the hallway, Cynthia walked right in. Being around her made Jared feel brave. Sometimes in a way that bordered on stupid, like that time they walked out of QuikTrip with six hot dogs stuffed in her purse. But it felt nice to take a break from thinking, from calculating. To stop standing outside his own life.
###
They got out of the airport ahead of rush hour, speeding efficiently down the I-10.
“Sure you don’t want to stop by your parents’?” Cynthia said. “We’re coming up on their exit.”
“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t you drive into that ditch over there? It’ll be twice as deep and half as dusty.”
“You’re horrible,” she said, grinning widely over the steering wheel. “They can’t be that bad. Did you even tell them you were here?”
As a matter of fact, he hadn’t. He’d booked his flight from New York last minute, while Cynthia was crying on the phone. He simply hadn’t had the time. But if he was being honest, he hadn’t had the inclination either, felt a sense of dread even thinking of it now.
“No, I didn’t tell them. Must have slipped my mind.”
They took the exit anyway. Jared shot Cynthia a look.
“Total Wine,” she said. “Relax.”
She parked the car and got out. Jared froze with his hand on his seatbelt.
“Shit, my ID’s still with my luggage. Do you mind?” he said. “I’ll Venmo you.”
“Fine with me, but just know I charge extra for shipping and handling.”
Jared laughed and watched her leave. She grabbed a basket at the entrance, only to swap it for a cart seconds later. As the automatic doors shut behind her, she looked over her shoulder and shrugged. Jared shook his head, smiling. Before Cynthia, all his friends had been the type to go in with a list and leave with everything on it. Nothing less, nothing more. Cynthia was the first friend who made him dare to want more, to take risks. To be himself, even if that meant being a disappointment to others. That was why Jared couldn’t understand her decision to stay in Arizona, to stay with Peter, to opt for the simple suburban life his parents had. Even now he could picture them sitting at home, his mom at her craft table, his dad at his computer, and the both of them suddenly raising their heads, alert to his proximity. There was something instinctual, almost canine about the way they related to him. A wag of the tail, a call on the phone, all friendliness and no substance. The only way to be truly good. He wanted to show them he could be bad, to call them and say he was in town but he wouldn’t be coming to visit. His reason? He just didn’t feel like it. His agenda? The gay one, the one they didn’t care to understand.
When he felt his face getting hot, he had to remind himself that none of this mattered. This trip was about Cynthia, and Peter, or the absence of Peter, and no matter how he felt he had to honor that. He had to because they were friends, because she was walking out of the store, because now she was back in the car, telling him all the things she had bought. By four p.m. they were on the road, the trunk jangling with booze. “Music to my ears,” said Jared. “A symphony,” said Cynthia. And for a while after that there was nothing more to say.
###
When Jared came out to his parents, he came out to roaring silence. Later he would learn that this wasn’t unusual, that it was a common response in these situations. But at the time he had been expecting something more. When he didn’t get it—whatever it was—he wondered if he’d made a mistake. He’d been on the fence about telling them to begin with, but Cynthia had encouraged it. She was shopping for lingerie on Instagram, adding tidbits of advice as she added items to her shopping cart.
“How will they ever really know you if you don’t? If they love you, they’ll accept you, and if they don’t, they won’t. Obviously that will totally suck, but at least you’ll know the truth. And you know what they say—knowledge is power.”
They were hanging out in Peter’s room, Cynthia perched on his unmade bed, Jared sitting cross-legged on the floor. They were just down the hall from where they’d met a few months ago. “Can you believe it?” said Cynthia, whenever she told people the story. “If I hadn’t gone to that stupid party, I never would have met Peter’s Big, and he never would have introduced us. And obviously I wouldn’t have met this queer. Two boys, one stone.” Jared used to cringe every time she said that, the word “queer” skipping a little too lightly off her lips, but gradually he’d begun to warm to it; it felt nice to be included. Bizarrely, now that she and Peter were officially dating, he was included more than ever.
“Mi casa es su casa,” Peter had told them the first time Cynthia brought Jared over. He was running late to Spanish class, stuffing loose papers into his empty backpack. On his way out the door, he looked back at Jared and smiled. “Just don’t throw any fiestas without me.” Initially Jared was hesitant, unsure whether Peter was really comfortable with him being there, but Cynthia reassured him.
“It’s fine, he knows you’re gay. And before you freak out, no, I didn’t tell him. He figured it out by himself. You know, for a straight guy, Peter is really perceptive.”
She started listing all the little things Peter had noticed lately: the new bra she bought, her astrology-themed notebook, the way she’d started parting her hair. Talking about Peter was her new favorite pastime, especially on the long drives back from Phoenix. Midway through breaks and holiday weekends, Cynthia was the one Jared could call for a ride, for a lifeline, an escape from the charade he had to play at home. If that meant listening to her talk about her and Peter’s sex life, so be it. It made him happy to see her so excited, if also a little jealous. He wondered if he would ever fall in love like that, if he would ever find someone to drone on about for hours. Cynthia must have noticed his thoughts wandering, because she put down her phone and reached for his hand. “I know you’re scared, but it’s gonna be fine, trust me. I’ve had other gay friends.”
Jared had wanted to ask what happened to them, the way she spoke of them like they were dolls. Old ones she used to play with, got tired of, and threw away. He hoped he would never become one of them. And he hoped telling his parents wouldn’t be a mistake. But at the end of the day, he trusted her, and by the end of the night his parents knew.
When he told them they had simply stared. His father looked up from his plate. His mother set down her wine. On their faces was a particular look of surprise, of recognition pulled back like a tent flap in the woods, reluctant to admit the small-bladdered camper gone to relieve himself in the night. It was a look that said, why couldn’t you wait till morning? It was a look that said, how much did you have to drink? And underneath the mess of things it said, the hard tidy center of what it didn’t: why do you have needs at all? It was a question written in the lines around their mouths, faint tracery of wind through dry taupe grass. A flat scrubland of a question, some unkind corner of Texas or Wyoming, places Jared had never visited, didn’t need to. He was used to the quiet of those landscapes. Back then it was all he craved: the reluctance of relatives to ask about girlfriends, the brief eye contact with handsome strangers, the seconds of static at the end of the porno, when shame would have its way with him in the darkness of his room. He saved up that quiet like money, compounding disinterest over time, becoming flatter and dryer, but also safer and broader, a slow, strategic terraforming of self. Until one day he ran out of mountains to level, valleys to fill, inner seas to shore up against themselves. Alone in that not-quite desert of his not-quite own making, a strange wind had rattled through him. It rattled then it whistled then it shrieked. To muffle the sound, he’d started telling people. A couple friends at first, then a few more, but no one he was too scared to lose. Pretty soon the only ones left were the two people sitting in front of him, saying nothing, just steadily working their jaws.
In Jared’s memory, that night had ended there. It couldn’t have, of course. There must have been questions, and tears, and brittle well-meaning hugs. Cynthia had been right; the night wasn’t a catastrophe. To celebrate, she and Peter threw him a party—no, a fiesta, Peter insisted—in his room the following weekend. They had Taco Bell chalupas and Jose Cuervo margaritas, and when they were too full and drunk to function, they passed out on Peter’s bed. Normally Jared didn’t dream when he was drunk, but that night he woke up in a sweat between them, ears ringing with the sound of chewing mouths. Unable to fall back asleep, he slipped out of bed and walked home.
###
About a half-hour from Tucson, Jared booked them a room. The Saguaro Motel, on the outskirts of town, one queen bed and no sleeper sofa, so she’d better find a guy to go home with. Cynthia laughed when he said this, but he was dead serious. Tonight was for her, after all. “A night to remember,” he said, “but also a night to forget.” Jared checked them in with his arms full of liquor, ignoring the desk clerk’s judging looks. If he thought they were going to trash their room, there was no need; the room was ugly enough on its own. The walls were the color of manilla file folders, tinging their pregame with a weirdly business-like aura. Every sip felt like a punch in his timecard, every shot a promotion: buzzed to tipsy, tipsy to drunk, and drunk to the beige-and-white tiled bathroom, where he stood hunched over the sink, trying his best to hold it all in. He splashed cold water on his face. The tiles ceased to swim, became stable and boring once more. He would be all right, he decided, and walked out to Cynthia calling an Uber.
“Two minutes,” she said. “Let’s fucking go!”
She catapulted another shot of peach vodka. When she pushed the glass toward Jared, he waved it away.
“Oof, no thanks. That last one almost killed me.”
“Oh my God. We’ve got to get you out of New York ASAP. Being that close to Broadway is turning you into a drama queen.” Laughing, Cynthia tossed her hair over one shoulder. “I can do regular gays, but theater gays is where I draw the line.”
She took back her glass and refilled it, downing it like it was water. Jared’s head began to swim again, but this time not from the liquor. His tolerance for jokes like that was lower than it used to be, and so, he was starting to think, was his tolerance for her. He took another shot to banish the feeling. Shivering, he waited for the warmth to return to his body. When it didn’t, he pulled Cynthia close and hugged her.
“You’re a messy bitch, you know that?” he said.
“You’re my best friend.”
Suddenly it was she who was hugging him, though neither one of them had moved. Through the shallows of his drunkenness, a deep-sea trench of sobriety: she wasn’t his. He was hers, but she wasn’t his. He heard a ding on Cynthia’s phone. Their Uber was waiting outside. Cynthia grabbed her purse and headed for the door. Jared lingered behind.
“I think I’d better go to the bathroom again. But I’ll meet you downstairs.”
“Damn, since when were you such a lightweight? Kidding, kidding! Honestly, good call. It says our driver’s in a Beemer, so please, no accidents.”
This helpful advice dispensed with, Cynthia ducked outside, leaving Jared standing there alone. It was a classic Cynthia exit; the same one she’d used at the party where they met years ago.
###
When Cynthia had shut the door the night, Jared was left in an empty hallway, with nowhere to turn but his phone. He swiped to the frat guy’s most recent DM, the guy he had come there to see in the first place. Last door on the right, there’d be a BMW sticker by the doorknob. At first he thought that was a typo. Where did one even get a BMW sticker? But before he could ponder it further, he was there—it was there—a paper shield defending what? “Party Saturday,” the text read, “u can come then, no one will kno.” How original, thought Jared. Hiding in plain sight. But annoyed as he was, he was here, at the door, no more or less hidden than the man on the other side. No more or less powerless to say no.
When Jared turned the knob, the sticker bubbled in the middle, the blue and white quadrants folding in and out like one of those paper fortune tellers. He stood still for a moment, noticing. It felt important to do that in a stranger’s room. Everything felt important, consequential: the distance he kept between his body and the door, the force with which he exhaled, how fast he turned around, and how did his butt look doing it? Probably not like much; the room was painfully dim, a hangnail of light through bent blinds.
As Jared’s eyes adjusted, several green spots danced across his vision. He moved slowly toward the center of the room. The green spots stayed where they were. Secretly he wished they would stay, wished there was more light to see them by. Then suddenly there was—a quick slash of it in the corner, on the bed. A man was lying there. He must have been there the whole time, under the covers, and now that he threw them back he glowed, naked and pale and rather good looking, but still not the source of the light. For that, Jared had to look down, under the bed. Amid piles of clothes and shoes lying sideways he saw a ten-gallon fish tank filled with shattered glass. Beer glass, chunky and green. In some places it was broken into shards, in others crushed nearly to dust, but the feeble light from the window passed through it all, illuminating the tank from within.
As the man beckoned him toward the bed, Jared hesitated. He wanted so badly to ask about the glass. It felt like a necessary foreplay, less grueling than the kind these things usually involved. He wanted to ask if they could just sit, right there on the floor. Maybe they could fuck there too. And after—there was always an after, no matter how hastily he tried to leave, or was asked to—maybe after they could keep sitting there, saying nothing, and because the party outside was so loud and the room was so dim, somehow it wouldn’t be awkward. It would all fit together, for once.
They fucked. Not on the floor but the bed, not beside the tank but directly above it. Jared found this extremely erotic. He came fast, much sooner than the guy did, which worked out fine because it left him free to just lie there, imagining the glass below. He’d never seen anything like it. Was it some kind of art project? Something clever and post-modern? Maybe it was environmental, an illustration of the countless years it takes glass to decompose in the landfill. Or maybe the guy was just a slob, too lazy to take out the trash. Either way, any way, Jared didn’t really want to know. Somehow it was enough that all these things were possible. It was enough, Jared thought as the guy finished and rolled over. It was enough.
###
In the line outside the club, Cynthia was already dancing. She was half-crouched against the red velvet ropes, bumping both fists to the music. Jared tried to shield her with his body. The two bouncers up front were staring, whispering to each other. Too drunk to let in, they seemed to be asking, or just another white girl on a Friday night? Jared held his breath as they checked her ID. After a pause, bouncer number one waved her through, smirking at bouncer number two as she passed. Just another white girl, apparently.
The main floor of the club was packed, people flowing between islands of bars and a long, raised reef of black leather couches: the VIP section. As they headed toward the dance floor, Cynthia kept craning her neck to look back. Annoyed, Jared followed her gaze to the last table on the left, where a tall, handsome man was staring down at her. He had a floral silk shirt with two buttons undone and a jawline that could cut cocaine.
“We can try to get a table if you want,” Jared said. Cynthia’s face was blank when she turned to look at him, then suddenly comprehending.
“Nah, not worth it. Come on!”
She pulled him onto the dance floor, into the marsh of heat and sweat and swaying reed-like bodies. The music was bad but they danced to it anyway, Cynthia throwing her ass with no regard for the people behind her, Jared gingerly jerking his arms, looking to others for inspiration, or salvation. There was always a little of that while dancing, but tonight he felt acutely self-conscious. And soon he realized why: someone was watching. The guy from VIP.
His shirt was open by one button lower, revealing a lean, hairless stomach with a suggestion of abs in the purple-tinted light. He was dancing a few feet behind Cynthia, moving closer and closer, one lazy hip lean at a time. Now he was directly behind her. As far as Jared could tell, they hadn’t touched, but Cynthia suddenly became aware of him. Her eyes flicked open, her hair fell back from her face, and her hips began to churn with more rhythm than she’d shown all night. Jared felt like a third wheel again, the way he’d often felt when she was with Peter. He knew he ought to move over, but a sharp gravity in his gut made him stay. He twisted his hips to escape it, but he ended up dancing like she was, grazing the guy’s phone, keys, zipper against his ass. He could feel Cynthia’s too, the side of it, pressed tight against her black tube dress. But soon even that fell away, or he pushed it—really he couldn’t tell. And soon the phone and keys were gone too, and there was nothing but Cynthia’s elbow shoving him backward.
“What the fuck, Jared? What do you think you’re doing?”
Jared’s vision wobbled and then refocused. The dancers around them were staring. But the guy from VIP was nowhere in sight.
“I was dancing,” said Jared, “to the beat.” Something in his forehead throbbed. “But I guess you wouldn’t know much about that. If you did, maybe your little boyfriend wouldn’t have run away.”
He realized he was shouting. But only because he had to, in order to be heard. Not because he was angry. No, not angry, just a little upset. But when he saw Cynthia’s face, he knew his shouts had carried more than volume. She grabbed him by the elbow.
“Outside. Now. Before they kick us out.”
She took him into the alley on the side of the club, broken glass crunching beneath their shoes. There was a slight breeze, and when it hit Jared’s skin he felt relief and panic, one right after the other. Relief because the air was cool, panic because it cleared his head, revealing how drunk he really was. Jared let his head fall back against the bricks.
“I’m sorry, OK? I was just trying to protect you. Don’t look at me like that—” he said, even though his eyes were closed. “I don’t mean in some macho straight dude way. I mean, like, emotionally.” Jared swallowed thickly. “That guy looked a lot like Peter.”
The lie was flimsy—and he knew it. But it still felt more solid than the ribbon of nausea threading through his stomach.
“I don’t give a fuck what he looked like. I don’t know why you do either. Were you trying to fuck him, Jared? Should I have asked him to whip out his dick for you to measure, see if it’s good enough for me? You’re sick.”
“I think I am.”
“What?”
“I think I’m gonna be sick—”
Jared’s stomach did a corkscrew, drilling down through him until he fell to his knees. At the last second, he caught himself, one hand planted on the littered pavement. Not two inches away, in the gap between his fingers, was a rash of broken glass. It could have come from anywhere—any number of broken bottles, any number of parties or people. But in Jared’s head, now churning faster and faster with each moment, he felt certain it was the same glass from the fish tank.
As he vomited onto the pavement, Jared aimed for the cracks. It seemed less disgusting that way, having some kind of a target. When the cracks overflowed, he took a second to breathe. Then he vomited three more times. The orange-pink froth slid down the handicapped ramp slowly, finally merging with the orange-pink rubber pad. Hunched over and gasping, he felt Cynthia’s hand on his shoulder.
“All right?” She thrust something squishy and cold into his hand. “Here. I grabbed a water from the bar.”
Jared unscrewed the cap, took a single flavorless sip.
“Thanks,” he said, “I feel better.”
“Me too.”
Jared tilted his head to look at her.
“About earlier, I mean. I know you were just trying to help. You didn’t—” a bitter laugh shot out of her, “let’s be clear. But I know you were trying,” she said, her voice softening, “to help.”
Jared took another sip of water, hoping it would cool the heat that was rising to his face. How could she claim to know what he was trying to do, when he didn’t even know the answer himself? Why he’d ruined her shot at sex, at healing, at making stupid, necessary mistakes? It wasn’t fair. All those times she’d been there for him, and he couldn’t let her have one moment for herself. All those times they’d sat on the floor in Peter’s room, and Jared’s eyes had stayed glued to the door, the one with that stupid sticker by the handle, remembering the way it bubbled the first night he entered. All those times he’d sat with his back against the bed, because he couldn’t bear to look behind him and see the tank of glass underneath it. All those times he could have told Cynthia what had happened that night. Deep down, he wondered if a part of her already knew. The same part of her that kept reaching out to him, desperate for a companion in her own relationship, in that desert of her own making. She expected Jared to drive her through it, the same way she’d done for him, all the unspoken truths passing them by in a blur. Yes, a part of her must have known, but that didn’t mean she knew the whole thing. She didn’t know that for Jared there was more to that hookup than sex. She may have known about the glass under the bed, may have complained about it to Peter a hundred times over. But she didn’t know about the way each shard twisted the light’s perfect spectrum, remaking it in its own broken image, its own sickly color. How it was all the more beautiful because of it. She didn’t know because Jared never told her, and he realized then that he never would.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m so sorry.” He kept repeating it until tears cut his eyes, until she hugged him and told him to stop. “Come on now, you’re dehydrated enough already.” Jared did as he was told. He did the only thing left to do: drink his water that tasted like nothing while Cynthia booked them an Uber back to the motel.
###
At the front door the following day, Jared’s mother held him at arm’s length.
“You look good!” She ran her eyes over him again, as if to make sure. “Like you haven’t changed.”
She hugged him right there in the doorway. The top of her head smelled like lilacs and hairspray, vaguely sweet and flammable.“I wish you would have told us you were coming. Oh shoot, where’s Dad? I think I saw him putting some bratwurst on the grill. I just hope it’s enough for three.”
“It’ll be fine,” said Jared, more to himself than to her. On the two-hour drive back from Tucson, he and Cynthia had said almost nothing. Unspoken was her invitation to spend the rest of his trip with her, and equally unspoken was Jared’s resolve to do anything but. He thought briefly of booking a hotel, but aside from the needless expense, he knew that would only remind him of Tucson. What he needed was a place with no connection to the present, a place where he existed only in the past. And so this time, when they came up on his parents’ exit, Jared told Cynthia to pull off. When she dropped him off in their driveway, he told her he’d let her know about hanging out later. No pressure, she said, I understand. And for the first time since he arrived, it seemed like she actually did.
The back door slid open. Jared’s dad wandered in from outside.
“Hey, who let him in here? What is this, some kind of halfway house?”
Jared smiled obligingly while his dad pulled him in for a hug.
“He still hasn’t told us why he’s here.” Jared’s mom squeezed his shoulders. “Not that we aren’t thrilled to see you, of course.”
“What’s there to tell? He missed his old man, that’s all. Flew clear across the country to see me—who else?”
Indulging smiles all around, a moment of silence for the joke to dissipate.
“Actually, I came to visit Cynthia. Peter just broke up with her.”
“Wait. He dumped her?” said his dad. “That’s crazy. Beautiful girl like that. I wonder if he’s, you know—”
“Greg!”
Jared’s mother looked piercingly at his father. Jared waited a beat, then laughed.
“Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t. Doesn’t really matter anymore.”
Jared’s dad nodded emphatically, like he was trying to shake something loose.
“Well, either way, we’re glad to see you.” His dad squinted at something just above Jared’s head. “And just so you know, if you ever want to bring a guy around, we’d love to see him too. As long as he’s better than what’s-his-name. Than Peter.”
Now it was Jared’s turn to nod. He felt a ghost of the old wind again, howling and hollowing him through. But somewhere in the midst of all that, a rustling of love. Next: a scuffling of chairs, his parents rising—singly, haltingly—to take him by the shoulders. They had hugged him that night, he remembered, and he had hugged them back, and their interlocked arms had formed a sweet and tentative structure, the wood frame of a house under construction. A house he wondered if they would ever finish.
“Hungry?” said his dad. Before Jared could answer, his mom was pulling him toward the back door. “You’d better hurry and get out there,” she said. “You’re going to miss the sunset.”
While she went back in for plates, Jared sat with his dad on the patio, their chairs angled resolutely toward the mountains.
“See many sunsets like this in New York?”
“No, not like this.” Jared smiled sadly. “Not with all the tall buildings.”
Jared’s dad nodded his head thoughtfully, as if this were a profound observation.
“I wonder if there’s a way to get on one of the rooftops.”
Jared thought of all the brick lofts in Williamsburg, the string lights and expensive drinks. Places Cynthia would die to go to, places his parents would die before they ever went to see. He thought of all the mountains and mountains in between, how their hard outlines were already turning fuzzy.
Jared shrugged.
“Got to know somebody.”