The Cranberry Hush: A Novel (30 page)

“I do have limits. I can’t be with
you
, Griffin. Your limits are mine.”

“I know.” He said it hard, harsh. “But we’ve tried it now.
We’ve tried it. I love you but when I kiss you I feel nothing.”

“How is that
possible
?”

“It just is, Vince. It’s just the way I’m wired. You need to
believe it.”

“I never have. Griff— I always thought that if only I
could kiss you or something, everything would fall into place for you.”

“That’s what I was hoping too.”

“OK.”

“It didn’t happen.”

“... OK. I know.”

“So you need to quit pining for me. And I need to quit
trying
to pine for you. But I know
something now: I’m done agonizing about finding this soulmate I’ve been looking
so hard for, because you know what? It’s found, Vince. It’s
you
.”

“Me. And what does that mean for us?”

He was quiet for a little while, watching the waves. Maybe
those were tears on his cheeks; maybe it was just the salt air stinging his eyes.
“It means we have some adventures ahead of us. It means the post-college void
is a lot less scary.”

“OK.”

“It means everyone else can get a second look now that we
don’t have to worry about finding the One anymore.”

I stood up, wiped his footprint off my leg. “And you’re OK
with that? With everyone else only ever being second place? With marrying
someone who only gets the silver medal?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I am. Actually it sounds really
nice. It sounds really easy. It’s so much less pressure. Silver can be pretty
great,” he added. “Silver is a happy color.”

And with that, he reached out and touched the flaking white
paint on the side of the lighthouse, smiled, and started walking in the
direction of the car.

As we walked back along the beach the lighthouse light came
on behind us, making the sound of a meteor entering the atmosphere. Ahead of us
our two long shadows stretched across the sand, intermingling, but never quite
becoming one.

We said very little on our drive back from
Provincetown, but it was a different, easier silence than a lot of the silences
we’d shared in the past. It was there not because we were avoiding something,
but rather because we’d said everything there was to say.

He drove slow and looked around, taking in the sites of Cape
Cod as they passed by, the clam shacks and mini-golf places, sometimes with a
little smile on his face. He looked unburdened now.

Still my lips felt different where his had been and I knew
they probably always would. Every so often, when he wasn’t looking, I’d touch
them, experimentally, with my fingers, reminding myself of the feel of his
mouth against mine, reminding myself that I was now and would forever be a
person Griffin Dean had kissed—had
wanted
to kiss, had cared enough about to kiss. It had not done the things I’d always
expected such a kiss would do. It hadn’t changed Griff. But it changed me. It
brought with it an end, as well as the knowledge that I was not pitiful; I was
not some silly fag pining for an oblivious straightboy all these years. It had
been mutual all along. Different, yes, but mutual. That knowledge felt like a
gift. Like a deep breath to end years of gasping.

“I’m sure going to be doing a lot of driving in the next
week or so,” he said.

“Yeah.” I didn’t like to imagine him on the road again. I
wanted time to see what could become of this new us. “You are.”

“I need to get my shit packed tonight.”

“I’ll help you.”

“We’ll get drunk.”

“Deal.”

And

F R I D A Y

Morning light shined in through the gap in my
bedroom curtains and around me the edges of the bed loomed empty and cold. I
pulled my arms and legs together in the middle under the sheets and blankets and
squeezed my eyes shut tight against the growing sunlight, listening to the
sounds of Griff moving around my house—savoring them. Every once in a
while the front door would open and close.

I should be up, I knew, should be helping him pack his car,
but I couldn’t quite get myself out of bed.

I’d barely slept. All through the night I’d been debating in
my mind, weighing pros and cons of something I’d felt in the air for days,
maybe from the first glimpse of his snowy silhouette coming up my street. I
wanted to ask him to stay. To live here. Now that I knew about the silver
medal, about the happy color, I thought being roommates again would work. I
knew he’d say yes, too, would jump at the chance to stay. And that’s what kept
me from asking. If we ever lived together again it needed to be the best option
for both of us, not just a defensive huddle against the post-college void. It wasn’t
quite time. I knew there were still things he needed to do.

So instead I imagined into the future, to when the time was
right, to when the post-college void was conquered. I imagined him affixing a
small satellite dish to the sand-colored siding of my house while I watched
from the starfish-spotted kiddie pool in the back yard.
Is this straight?
he would ask, and then with a smirk he would ask
what I knew about being straight.

I imagined him painting his bedroom and the paint spilling
over into the hall and the living room until my entire house was brightened and
made new. The living room would be painted the exhilaration of the year’s first
snow, the kitchen the color of high-fiving an old friend.

I imagined him at last unleashing his inheritance and buying
Golden Age from Simon when Patti finally convinced him to move to Nantucket. I
imagined Griff and me as partners there.
There’s
enough superheroes in here already
, he would say.
We need some spaceships!

I imagined him, five summers later, leaving my house to
start a family in a nearby house of his own, with the beautiful sister of our
young customer Abe.

I imagined him at my wedding, proudly toasting me and my
beloved. Afterward he would jump in a pile of snow in his tux and emerge with a
snowball, which he’d bite into and chew. I imagined him pressing his cold lips
against my cheek.
Slushy-flavored kisses
for my Vince
, he would say. I would laugh and wipe it away and tell him he
couldn’t do that anymore, I was a married man now.
I can always do that
, he would tell me. And of course he’d be
right.

I imagined far forward, past weddings and births and
anniversaries and funerals. Past failure and success, past happiness and pain,
past all the colors of a lifetime, of two lifetimes. I imagined Griff and me as
old men, our arthritic fingers hooked through the green links of a fence,
watching youthful, middle-aged women play tennis.

All of that would come in time, all of those things, just
like how I imagined them. But now—now there was a knock on my bedroom
door, and Griff was there.

“Vince?” The door squeaked open a few inches and he
peered in. “You awake?”

“Yup.” I leaned up on my elbow. “Just daydreaming.”

He opened the door the rest of the way and leaned in, one
hand still on the knob. “I’m about ready to hit the road.” He jerked a thumb
behind him.

“Like now?”

“Car’s running.”

“OK. Let me put some clothes on.”

It was cold out, sunny but cold. I blew into my
hands and rubbed them together, clamped them under my armpits. Beneath my shoes
the purple shells of my driveway crunched amid ice and snow. Griff closed the
passenger-side door after stowing his backpack on the front seat. In the back
were the boxes of stuff we liberated from Beth’s. Exhaust poured from the
humming car like breath.

“It’s freezing out,” I said. “Where’s your jacket?”

“Bah. Too bulky for driving. It’s in there somewhere.” He
came around, dragging his hand across the hood. “Can you believe I’m really
doing this?”

“Sure I can.”

He had a glad smile. “I’ve wanted to drive cross-country ever
since we did that little road trip during college. Almost did it a few times.
Now here I am.”

“Now here you are. Actually doing it.”

More serious now, he said, “I’m glad I came, Vince.”

“Me too.”

I grabbed him and hugged him, hard, because I could. There
was something about him, some part of him now, that was mine. I could let him
be mine, because there was a part of him, however wishful, that wanted it that
way too.

“Oh, I almost forgot.” He reached back and pulled a key from
his pocket. “Here’s this back.”

“Keep it,” I said, pushing his hand away. “I like to know
you have it, for if you ever need it. I expect you to need it.”

“But you might want to give it to Zane.”

“I can make another one for Zane.”

He nodded, smiled, put the key back in his pocket. “So then
I’m off.”

“You’re off. Do you know where you’re headed?”

“I have a pretty good idea, yeah.”

“You’ll figure it out,” I told him. “Write me?”

“Of course.”

“Maybe I’ll start saving up for a computer. So we can do
email.”

“Haha! Vince! You’re evolving.”

“Shut up.”

“You shut up.” He pulled open the door and stood with one
leg in the car. He was looking at my house.

“Hey Griff?” When he looked over I straightened up a little,
looked down at my hands; it felt like I should’ve been holding a pair of folded
glasses—a disguise I no longer needed. “There’s something I want to tell
you.”

“Sure.”

“When you kissed me? It was the best I’ve ever had.”

He blushed a little and looked down at the car seat.

“And I’ll never forget it.”

He nodded, pursed his lips. “You don’t have to forget it.
You also don’t have to wonder anymore. Neither do I.”

I knew now that at the lighthouse we went as far as we could
ever go, Griff and me. Like a pendulum, we’d been to both extremes, from years
of nothing to sixteen seconds of everything. And now we were coming back to the
middle, at last finding the place where we hung without force.

He got in the car and closed the door. The window went down.
“I used up the last of the milk this morning.”

“I’ll get more.”

He winked. The window went up.

He backed out of my driveway onto the narrow street, waved
at me, and drove away.

I stood watching the empty street for a while,
until I became aware that it had been too long, and then I went and sat down on
the porch.

And in my arms and my chest I could still feel Griff against
me.

Could still feel his arms, which were thinner than I’d
expected they would feel; could still feel his shoulder blades, which were
sharper—he was in fact skinnier than I always imagined him. In reality he
smelled like deodorant and Johnson’s baby shampoo and jeans that needed a wash.
In real life his cheeks were rough, his hair soft. That’s what he felt like—that’s
what he was. The final hug lasted. I could remember. And maybe remembering was
letting go.

I sat for a while longer until something in the yard caught
my eye, something that had been buried by the storm and now was emerging. It
was blue and shiny—my Shuster mug. I walked over and picked it up, then
went back in the house to call Zane.

E P I L O G U E

Five months later

Zane smelled good, warm and like sleep, and when at
last I pulled myself out of bed, I stood beside it for a minute, watching him
sleep in the silver morning light. Watching him sleep was like watching Griff
pump gasoline, like watching Melanie brush her teeth.

Often when I was with Zane I thought of Melanie, of her
painting in my room, of her lilac smell and the freckles across her chest. I
thought of Andy too, of the way he laughed that night in the tent, wrapping his
sleeping bag around his dripping body to keep Farley away. And of course I
thought of Griff, of those mornings last winter when I woke up with him beside
me, his joshua tree moving with his breath. I have learned, though, that
memories aren’t things that have to pile up and overwhelm you. They’re just
colors, like Griff’s colors, that shade all the new things you feel.

Zane opened his eyes, closed them again. I pulled on a
t-shirt and stepped into some flip-flops.

According to the radio it was supposed to hit ninety today.
The sun was bright already—it streamed into the kitchen and lit up the
hall and it sparkled against the shiny aluminum frame of a backpack that lay on
my living room floor.

When I saw it I gasped and I turned on my heels, nearly
tripping out of my flip-flops, and went to the spare bedroom, which I
discovered was no longer spare, and which I knew then would not be spare again
for years to come. Griff was on the bed he’d bought during the winter, on top
of the covers, face-down and fully clothed, as though he’d come out of the sky
and crash-landed here.

“What!” I exclaimed.

He rolled over, rubbed his eyes, groaned, shaded them from
the golden sunlight that flooded through the window. Then he grinned. “I
would’ve called first,” he said, “if you had a phone.”

“I have a phone,” I said, and tackled him.

SPECIAL THANKS

To Chris, my love, for being my gold. To Maggie
Locher for her endless encouragement and for letting me ramble to her about
Vince and Griff for the past million years. To Tom Hardej for his editorial
prowess and for slaying the dragon that was this book’s synopsis. To Heather
Allison, of course. To Aaron Tieger for his support. To my brother Jake for his
graphic design advice. To all my awesome readers for all their wonderful
messages. And most of all to my parents for, among other things, sending me to
Emerson, where all the magic happened.