What It Takes (11 page)

“I miss some things. I miss my mom’s cooking,” Andrew says, glossing over the silence.

“Yeah, me too.”

“Obviously, I miss you,” Andrew says more quietly. He shifts a little closer; the heat from his body and the sound of his voice are comforting. “But I don’t miss you being here, because that was hard for you. I’ll never miss you being in pain.”

Milo closes his eyes when they start to burn. “Andrew,” he says helplessly.

“That’s why I’ll always be okay with missing you,” Andrew whispers. “Because it’s better than the alternative.”

“He’s gone.”

“Is he?” Andrew asks. “Here?” His hand covers Milo’s chest and his thumb moves rhythmically back and forth. Milo covers it with his hand. Andrew,
oh god
, how is he always just right?

“Maybe one day,” Milo says. “God, I h-hope—” Milo’s face crumples and he starts to cry, thinking of all the years he’s struggled, and how he feels as if it’s all still inside, a poison he doesn’t have an antidote for . Andrew is right; he’s not free yet.

“Milo.” Andrew shifts forward, closing the space between them. “I’m sorry about the texts.” For all their quiet, Andrew’s words pierce Milo more sharply than anything he’s felt in the last week.

“I’m—” Milo bites his lip and takes a breath and rushes through the confession. “I’m sorry about that night. I’m sorry I’ve always been so scared. You deserve so much more.”

Andrew holds him tighter, his smell overpowers Milo, and against his cheek Andrew’s skin is a soft welcome. Home is here, wrapped up with this man. He can’t help but press a small kiss to the skin of his neck, then the jut of his jaw where stubble has started to roughen it, before taking Andrew’s parted lips with his own. Milo’s kissing him for the love they’ve been in, for the desire and longing he’s denied himself. Even the idea of letting another person this close has scared Milo for as long as he can remember. Andrew is the safest person in his whole world, the only one he can ever imagine himself really wanting.

He kisses Andrew’s cheeks and nose and mouth, all slippery with his tears. But by the time he works his way back to Andrew’s mouth, all he hears is Andrew whispering his name, shocked and gasping. Milo works his lips over that gasp, captures Andrew’s mouth in a kiss that’s familiar despite the fact that they’ve only done this twice in four years.

“Milo, what—” Andrew breaks away. His fingers are twisted into the fabric of his shirt.

“I love you,” Milo says, knowing no words can really express what’s happening inside him right now. “I love you and I’ve missed you and I want you.” He looks away and takes a breath before meeting Andrew’s eyes. “I’ve never done this. I want to give you this.”

“God,
oh
—” Andrew kisses him then, quick, light kisses Milo wants to chase. “I love you too. Please say this isn’t just for me, though.”

“No, no.” Milo shakes his head. “I didn’t mean it like that—I’m so—”

“Don’t apologize.” Andrew winds his leg between Milo’s and rolls them over. “Just kiss me right now, please.”

Andrew kisses him so hard, desperate and a little dirty, and all heat and passion. Milo races to catch up but can’t and so submits, gives what Andrew is seeking, lets Andrew’s mouth and touch take him somewhere safe and new and full of feelings he’s never let himself have.

“Do you have—”

“Here,” Milo says, fumbling for the half forgotten lube in his bedside drawer.

It’s very dark and very quiet. Milo isn’t sure what impulse makes Andrew shut off the tiny light, but he doesn’t say anything. In the dark, everything can be Andrew. In the dark, Milo can let Andrew erase the last of his borders.

Andrew settles them so that Milo is on top of him. His fingers find the buttons of Milo’s shirt so easily, as if this is a dance they’ve done a thousand times before. Milo’s fingers feel clumsy and unsure, but Andrew catches them, kisses them and helps guide them. The only sound in the room is the whisk of cloth as they pull shirts off, and the near silent flump as they hit the floor. Andrew toes his shoes off, and they clatter to the floor. Milo breathes carefully and helps Andrew with his pants. Andrew handles the lube with ease, and then his hands squeeze Milo’s hips hard when he pulls them together. His skin against Milo’s feels heartbreakingly intimate. He wonders if his door is locked, and then Andrew’s lips brush his again, and again, and Milo stops thinking.

°

Andrew tries to let himself be carried on the wave of frantic need that carried them into this moment, so he won’t have to stop and think. But as soon as his skin is on Milo’s, with their shirts off and Milo sweat-damp and dream-spun under his hands, guilt crests faster than desire.

“Is this—? Milo—”

“Don’t ask.” Milo opens his mouth over Andrew’s and draws a wicked kiss, needful and dark, from him, then gasps when Andrew runs his hands down his back to cup him closer. Andrew knows the tone. It’s the no-nonsense tone. It’s the one he never questions, the one that never needs questioning.

Milo’s fingers skim Andrew’s body. His touch is tentative and curious and thrilling. It’s also laced with pain. Not at his father’s loss, exactly, but because it’s an ending that means many things will change, most of all Milo. Milo has been gray mist since Andrew picked him up at the airport. He’s been fog, empty and lonely echoes.

“You know I’ll always take care of you, right?” Andrew asks. He slides his foot up Milo’s calf and opens his legs so he can cradle Milo between them. The vulnerability of the words and his body set off an ache in Andrew’s core.

“Andrew—” Milo’s words cut off when Andrew rolls up against him, one long line of sweet, hot skin and desire clearly transmitted through the state of his body. Andrew’s lips open over his again, dragging Milo into their heat and into the waves of devastating desire they let crash between them.

° ° °

Milo wakes
alone, deep in the night. There’s a note on the pillow next to his head.

Milo,
meet me there

Milo sighs and lies back, feeling the air, too cool, slipping over his naked torso. The barest light emanates from the small bedside lamp, he recognizes Andrew’s words written in his most careful handwriting: the lovely curled M a remnant of Andrew’s calligraphy-learning phase, the tiny dotted star trailing the end of the E. He used a ballpoint pen; when Milo traces his fingers over the words he can feel the barest edge where the tip dug into the thick paper of the note card.

He checks his phone. It’s well past midnight, and, while he has no idea what time he fell into sleep, he has a pretty good idea that Andrew’s been gone for a while now. The sheets in the bed next to him carry no lingering warmth.

Milo dresses carefully, rooting through his suitcase for something other than the suit currently wrinkling on the floor by the bed. He throws on a ratty hooded sweater unearthed from the catacombs of his closet, a maroon and yellow college sweater with a crackled logo and tattered hems. It’s worn through in spots, and he’ll be cold almost before he’s halfway there. He stops by the couch downstairs and grabs a throw blanket and a coat. The flashlight his father kept for power emergencies is where it always was, where it probably always will be.

Milo will leave, but his mom never will, not as long as she can stay. And even without James in their house—or in the world—she’ll maintain everything as she’s been trained.

Milo flicks on the buttery light of the flashlight as soon as he’s slipped out the back door. Frost-brittle leaves crunch under his feet, and from far off the ocean shushes the night. In the slight heat that rises through the neck of the sweatshirt is a scent—Andrew’s smell—one he hasn’t smelled on himself in years.

Andrew’s woken him; his touch ripped Milo painfully into his body when he most needed the numbness. And it’s not the pain of his father’s death, but another pain, a deep-rooted pain he anticipates will strengthen and become more complex before he’s found his way back home.

Light filters between the ill-fitted boards cobbling their fort together; it filters through the trees from afar, registering as a small twinkle until he comes close enough to see clearly. There’s a blanket over the open square that was the lookout window. Milo can’t help but think that nothing has changed, yet nothing is the same because he’s not the same boy who built this sanctuary and walked through the framed door into a world of make-believe Andrew could always craft so easily and vividly.

Milo clears his throat before stepping in. Andrew is sitting with his legs curled in the far corner, huddled into a fleece blanket. A lantern casts light and shadows around the small room. It’s small enough that there’s not enough room to sit without bumping knees or feet.

Andrew’s sleepy-eyed and mussed; he looks small under the blanket that envelops him.

“How long have you been here?” Milo asks, keeping his voice low.

“I don’t know,” Andrew whispers back. His lips tremble in the cold. Milo moves to get closer, but Andrew gestures him back. Milo settles back with a sigh.

“It’s not that I don’t—” Andrew tips up a shoulder, and his face is rueful. “I thought we should talk.”

Milo wraps himself in his own blanket, covers the lantern and knocks it over. Once he’s untangled and righted it, he’s temporarily blinded by the direct glare. He blinks; when he looks around he notices how much darker the walls are than he remembers.

“Hey,” he says softly, nudging Andrew’s knee. “You painted.”

Andrew looks up, and Milo can see him swallowing. “Yeah, I did.”

“When?”

“When I came home for the long weekend in October.” Andrew’s fingers trail down the wall. In the night, the walls look black except where the lantern reveals a deep blue. Above his head are scatters of light pricks and moons and planets.

“Finding your way?” Milo jokes lightly. Andrew has always found his way by the stars, not using standard constellation maps, but his own visions.

“Searching for Cygnus,” Andrew says. Milo’s not sure which one that is, only that the irony in his tone means something.

They don’t say anything, letting the night settle over their tiny retreat like its own blanket. Milo lets this place, a place that was always theirs—one that they’ve outgrown—settle him. He dropped out of sleep heavily; that
something’s missing
feeling startled him until he realized it was Andrew. That disoriented him even more.

He takes time, now, to look him over. That uneasy sense that they’ve both changed irrevocably in the months since September has dissipated. Andrew doesn’t look any different—he’s the boy Milo has always known. Well, man. They’re supposed to be men now, forging into adult lives away from school and their parents.

“I can’t tell what I’m feeling,” Andrew says.

“Yeah, I’m sort of there myself.”

“It’s cold. This is dumb,” Andrew opens his blanket and arranges himself, inviting Milo to share his body heat. They shuffle and tangle until they’re perfectly fitted in a space a shade too small.
This is the shape of my childhood, too tight around me
. But Andrew makes it okay.

“Are you okay?” Milo asks.

“Of course I am.” There’s a tiny thread suggesting otherwise in the words, though.

“How is this going to work?”

Andrew’s fingers slide between Milo’s, tracing the beds of his fingernails and the palm of his hand. “I think you have to say goodbye.”

“I didn’t mean home. I meant us.”

Andrew’s shoulder shrugs under his head.

“
Andrew
.” Milo presses his forehead into Andrew’s shoulder.

“I’ve thought of this for so long, you know,” Andrew says.

Milo nods. “Do you feel like I took advantage of that? Because I promise it wasn’t like that—”

“I know,” Andrew says. Milo looks up and Andrew’s cheeks are wet, too. “I hope you don’t think I took advantage either?”

“Of course not.”

They are quiet. The dark presses against the walls outside the fort. The helplessness of thinking he’ll only ever amount to the shell his father made of him has lifted. Whether thanks to Andrew’s touch, or his unwavering support, he now dares to hope he’ll move on this time, from this life and his father.

“I’ve been so afraid to love you,” Milo admits.

“I’ve never been able to do anything else. That’s why I’ve never stayed with anyone else,” Andrew says. “And that’s fine. That’s just the way it was.”

“You’ve loved me for years. Have you waited?”

“Yes. But not like you think. Waited might not be the right word.” Andrew’s fingers curl and tighten around his. “Hoped without hoping.”

“You have always deserved more.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that.”

“Don’t play this off, Andrew. I want you to have love, you know?” He doesn’t mean it to sound the way it does—he wants nothing more in the world than to be able to give him that love. He thinks of Andrew’s last words before their bodies took them beyond speech, promising to always take care of Milo. “Will I always only be the broken boy you worked so hard to keep together?”

Andrew stiffens, and Milo searches for the right words. Andrew kisses his temple so softly it’s a whisper of touch.

“I don’t know that I can love you best,” Milo says finally. “You deserve more than someone who has always been scared of letting himself be loved, or believing he’s worthy. I want so badly to be a different man.”

“Nothing will ever feel like this for me,” Andrew says, voice so thick with tears it’s hard to understand him. “That was the best one-night stand of my life.” Andrew’s tone is playful, regardless of the tears. Despite the kiss, there’s a deep tension in Andrew’s body.

“Is that what this is?”

“I’ll always be Andrew from your past, won’t I? I’ll always be a part of that life, Milo.”

“Why is that so bad? You were always the best part—”

“Because you can go now. He’s gone. I want you to be better, Milo.”

Milo swallows, because he wants to deny all of that, deny it as if he hasn’t been thinking something similar. After a silence they fill with shuddering breaths, Andrew speaks. Despite his own confusion, it’s clear what Andrew is saying, and it’s goodbye.