Meet Me in the Blue (Hemlock Harbor, #1)

by A.M. Johnson

“I don’t make friends easily.” His throat moved slow as he swallowed. “Get picked on a lot ‘cause I’m skinny and read a lot. Mom tries to make me drink this chalky chocolate crap. Said it will help me gain weight. But I don’t see why I gotta change. The boys who are mean should have to change.” “I like to read,” I said, and he looked at me. “But I’m not as skinny as you.” His laugh was loud, and it made me laugh too. A few seconds passed and his smile started to fall. “The boys at school are mean?” “Sometimes.” “That sucks.” “I don’t let it bother me… much. It can be lonely, I guess.” My fingertips tingled like I’d sat on them too long, and I reached for his hand. Rook looked down at our tangled fingers, his lopsided grin appearing again as I said, “Guess we’ll both be loners… together.”

“Then this will be our blue hour, Rook.” His smile spread wide as he turned to look at me. “This will always be our time.”

I wished it was as easy as gay or straight. What if being alone was my happily ever after? Would that be so bad?

The sun had started to set, the overcast sky nothing new, but today the clouds, and their gray fingers, dove into the pines, made everything seem heavier.

THE FAMILIAR WORDS CUT through the thick fog inside my head, and I wiped at my eyes, at the wet skin of my cheeks. It had always been our thing. This place. This spot. This hour. Where the world and all the doubt inside my head had been the quietest. I didn’t turn right away, gathering myself and working a small smile onto my lips. I was a lot of things, a shitty friend, a terrible son, a failed photographer, but I’d be damned if I was ready to admit it to anyone. Especially to him. Especially Rook. He was good and whole, and I was a hot mess express. I never wanted him to look at me the way my parents did sometimes, with sad eyes that wished. Wished for me to get my shit together, wished for me to settle down, wished for me to come home.

Time had no space here. It never did.

We stared at each other. Each of us cataloging all the little things, all the modifications the years had added, ignoring the bigger picture. I didn’t know how to begin again.

The heat of his body was a heavy weight. I’d always gravitated toward it. Toward him, and it took every ounce of self-preservation I had not to lean into him. Things were different. Time had passed. Rook wasn’t mine to lean into anymore. Even if that hug earlier had been everything I’d needed, I knew it was just Rook being Rook, offering me a stable surface to find my footing.

He’s straight, Nora. He’s just a friend. He’s not into me like that. I can’t keep hoping. He loves you. He’s waiting. He’s confused. He’s here. He’s yours.

“DO YOU EVER THINK about dying?” Luka asked, his head in my lap as usual, and I opened my eyes to stare down at him. “What do you mean?” Luka laughed but it didn’t sound right. It was heavier somehow. Heavy like the humidity clinging to our skin. The rain poured against the roof of our run-down fort, seeping its way into the cotton of my t-shirt where I rested my back against the wall. “I don’t know,” he said, his fingers busy picking at the hem of his hooded jacket. “I wonder what it would be like sometimes. Wonder if it would be easier than living. Like white clouds and rainbows all the fucking time.”

Survive. “You’re freaking me out. Why are you thinking about dying?” His nose wrinkled. “I’m not. Not really. Not like that. I just wonder sometimes. How it will all play out in the great beyond,” he said the last two words in a deeper, more dramatic tone. “If the shit we worry about will even matter in the afterlife.”

I turned and grabbed two more beers out of the fridge, terrified of what he was about to say. Terrified he was right. Terrified the hole in my chest would never be filled, because I didn’t think Luka could ever love me the way I needed him to.

“We tried everything. And I feel good about that. Stage four liver cancer, kid. I got more years than most.” “I wasted time. I should have come home.” “Maybe. Maybe not. I got to visit you in Los Angeles.” Dad attempted to waggle his brows, a lopsided smirk on his lips. “Got to see the Hollywood sign. Got to see you in your element.” “It’s not enough.” “It has to be, Luka. This is what we have. And maybe I shouldn’t have told you to stay. I hid a lot from you. I guess I hoped it would get better.”

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I love you, Luka. I love how passionate you are, how even though you weren’t here, you were. All the photos you sent, every time I’d hear the joy in your voice about something you were working on… it helped. It was better than the treatment. You and Nora are different. She hovers like a helicopter. It’s her way. It makes her feel necessary. But you… you’re like the sun, I can feel you from millions of miles away.” He let go of my wrists and I threaded our hands together. My lashes were wet, my eyes stinging as he continued. “I just want you to be happy. I want you to be you, and I’m sorry if I ever pressured you to be something you’re not.”

“I’m proud of you,” he said after he caught his breath. “I always have been. My only wish is that you could be proud of yourself too.”

But I was a broken record, and I couldn’t fix the mistakes I’d made. I could only try and do better.

I didn’t think it was possible to laugh and cry at the same time. But there I was, in the middle of the sidewalk, falling apart, with an arm full of pastries and ex-Marines.

We searched each other’s expression, a quiet sort of armistice between us, breathing itself into our lungs, filling all those regretful spaces inside us with something more. Are we okay? We will be. We had to be. I wanted him back. I wanted to be done. Death had a way of making anger feel petty. What was five years of misunderstanding to a lifetime ready to be buried?

“I am. It’s exhausting, fighting, being angry. I’d rather work things out as we go than have this… cloud hanging over us. I don’t want to ignore it, Luka, but I don’t want to give it too much power either.”

“The point to this entire story is that love isn’t easy. Love is sacrifice, son. It hurts, it’s messy, and shit, it will tear you up. At the risk of sounding like one of those greeting cards your sister loves to torture us with, I have to say it’s worth it. Love is worth every single hurt it gives. It’s worth it because it’s fucking living, and you deserve to live it.”

I needed something to remember, something tangible, something to stop my own seams from tearing open one by one. I needed to be his roots, his refuge. His pain had always been my pain. Every breaking sob, every heaving breath belonged to me, belonged to us. I kissed his forehead and wiped his cheeks with my thumbs. I held him close and told him he never had to let go. I told him I was here, right here, and I wasn’t going anywhere. I told him how much I loved him, how much I loved his father, his family, how much he meant to me.

I’d gone so long without understanding how it could be, treading water in a gray and empty sea, getting momentary glimpses of light, but nothing I could ever grab ahold of, nothing I ever wanted. And then Luka. Luka, whom I’d known and loved, he broke through all the gray and showed me how amazing touch could feel, how a kiss was supposed to taste, how losing yourself and letting go wasn’t a perfunctory obligation, but vivid fireworks in a clear sky.

It put into perspective how fleeting everything could be. One minute you’re making meatloaf, and the next you’re planning your own funeral.

“It’s hard preparing for death. I don’t think anyone is ever really ready, but at least we had some sort of warning. I sometimes wish he would have died suddenly, like a heart attack or something, instead of suffering as long as he did. He’s not in pain anymore, and I have to remember that, even if my pain hasn’t yet passed.”

It’s felt lonely for a long time, and maybe it’s too fast, and with all that has happened this past week, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. But I liked falling asleep next to you, having you here with me, and then spending those nights with you at your parents’ house. Coming home alone again, it didn’t feel right. The house was too quiet. I haven’t slept more than a few hours a night. Worried about today and you, and selfishly, worried I wouldn’t be able to fill this vacancy in my chest without you. I’ve missed you for too long, and maybe I’m scared you’ll leave again without your dad as an anchor. I don’t want to miss you anymore. I want you here,”

“I’m not leaving. Not again. This is my home.” Those three sentences, the truth of the words resonated in the air, in my chest. This was my home. “I’ve never loved anyone the way I love that man. He’s been my everything. My whole life is wrapped up in him. He knows me. Every moment I’ve breathed has belonged to him, to us, in some way or another. I messed up. I tried to cut him out of my life, but it was like cutting out half of my heart. I was barely surviving in California. I love him. And I appreciate you protecting him, but you don’t have to anymore. Because I will.”

But I was in my head now, with every I love you, every touch and kiss Luka and I had shared since he’d come home, and there wasn’t a fiber in my body that didn’t yearn for it. Yearn for him and a future I couldn’t fathom without him.

My hands traced the curve of his spine, and I was a thousand dandelion seeds drifting away in the summer heat of his skin.

This is what I’d always wanted, this delicate intimacy, these everyday moments where we couldn’t stop touching each other. And there didn’t have to be an ending. I could be like this, with him, hands on skin, and how was your day, and lips that tasted like sweet mint, and never feel unsatisfied. We’d fallen in love sometime between then and now, between the pages of our youth and climbing trees and the touch of his hand in mine and the heartache of missing each other. We’d found a way to this, to these familiar days and nights, and I couldn’t be happier.

It was like everything about this town had turned me upside down. I was Alice, staring through the looking glass, hoping to find a way home. Ever since I was a kid, I’d thought I wanted to live in a big city. I’d thought I’d never be able to have the life I wanted trapped in the confines of my dad’s shadow. I’d thought moving away would be the key to my happiness. But I’d left, and tried to live that life, and suffocated inside my poor choices, inside the memories of this place. I didn’t allow myself to see, to see how every cobblestone and tree branch and the craggy cliff sides had been written inside me and inside Rook. Hemlock Harbor was a part of us, it was a vital organ, attached to our hearts and lungs, and if we left this place, left its memories to fade, then Rook and I would fade along with it. I was sure of it. This wasn’t a panic attack, or an overreaction. I could feel it, slipping away, and we hadn’t even left yet. I wanted a life with Rook, in a place where we had history, more than the inflated childhood dreams I’d clung to because I’d been afraid. Afraid I’d never have what I really wanted. What I thought I’d never deserved.