Another Day With You
One.
Friday, 2010
The dog is dead.
Frank shuts his eyes for a moment, registering this, and when he opens them, the dog is still dead.
At first glance, he isn’t sure exactly what he is looking at.
He stands there, in the damp blue early morning, eyes sunken into a hangover-pink, cratered dark eye sockets--a short, slumping, pathetic-looking creature in his boyfriend’s too large pajama pants The newspaper has since dropped from his grip, once he stopped dead in his tracks in the journey from the mailbox to the front door, unable to look away from its body that is just there. Splayed out, unnaturally bent, unmoving, in their driveway.
When he blinks, he can feel the minute motions of his eyelids, sore and heavy, as his brain swims. He struggles to recollect exactly what had happened, remember clearly how he had somehow gotten from work to the grocery store to home the night before, and end up with his dog dead somewhere in between all that. Yet all he can come up with are smaller parts, blurry details - picking out bottles of wine, vodka, wandering alone in the supermarket at one in the morning, his red grocery basket thudding silently against his thigh, bottles clinking; driving home in a radio-less silence, pulling into the driveway, motion sensor light above the garage doors flashing on, blinding him, and, inexplicably, unusually, a sudden thud, a feeling like going over a speed bump, pulling into the garage anyway, only slightly drunk, he was sure of this, but too much to care. He made his way up the stairs, positive that he was in bed, waking up the next morning on the kitchen floor, in the dark, alone, clutching an emptied vodka bottle, feeling like he had lost time.
Now the dog seems to be mocking him, suddenly so visibly dead against the black pavement in the silent early morning. Frank’s glare shoots between the dog and the house, a certain mixed sensation of dread, shame, horror settling in his stomach like ice and nails. He blinks, his face slack with that subtle emptiness, that sort of quiet despair that had been carved into his features over time, and shuffles quietly before covering his eyes with his hand, unable to look anymore.
It takes him roughly an hour to hide her. His eyes brimming with tears, gruff grunts of frustration eventually melting into struggled quiet sobs as everything he does turns into a blurry, choppy haze--blue tarp tugged out from the storage underneath the deck, the tarp thrown over her corpse, and the slow, painful struggle of half-carrying, half-dragging the German Shepherd that has at least half of Frank’s weight, all the way back to the moist darkness underneath the deck, tucking her away. The tarp crinkles loudly in the morning quiet all the while, and Frank cringes suddenly hyperaware of all of the noise he is making, suddenly wanting nothing more than to crawl underneath the deck and curl up like a crumpled weed, hiding in the darkness beside her.
Wiping at his face with the back of his hands and leaving dirt streaks on his face, he feels warm droplets dangle on the edge of his jaw line before he wipes them away with a quick, firm swipe, staggering up from the dewy grass, mud covering his hands and knees, before dragging himself back into the sleepy silence of his home.
In the very early morning, before the sun can melt and leak through the windows, a subtle shadow drapes over everything he passes by, as each step on the staircase lets out a creak that feels extremely loud, that only he can hear. Passing by a mirror framed on the wall near other frames, other portraits, Polaroids of their life, he glances at himself only for a moment, seeing what looks like a man who has just crawled out of a lake, before his eyes flash away, unable to look for more than a fleeting glance.
Creaking their door open, standing in the doorway in the silence of a sleeping neighborhood and house, he sees a mound of tangled black hair, half of a drooling, unconscious face, and a hand bent awkwardly outward from beneath the thick comforter. Frank watches him, his spine rising and falling with his breath, before his eyes quickly fall to the floor, creeping back into bed, having no other place to go. He falls into the vine tangle of sheets, limbs, and comforter, not knowing what to do next.
He lays on the bed amongst all of the house’s stillness, eyes fixated on the white ceiling, only vaguely aware of the hand coming to life, creeping towards him, touching him, mindlessly. Frank finds himself shifting towards it, cocooning himself into the shared tangle of blanket, moving towards the face, laying close so their noses nearly touch. He finds himself staring at the subtlest freckles on his nose, the length of his eyelashes, trying to remember if he’d ever noticed these things before.
“Are you just…getting home now?” Gerard mutters, nearly whispered in his half-sleep state, eyes kept closed. His lips squirm before he suddenly grimaces, scrunching up his features into a nose-pinching, unconscious movement, struggling to wake up.
Frank blinks and turns onto his back, quiet in response, feeling the hand touch his neck, unconscious connection. Turning his head more to the side, he feels Gerard’s finger settle on his neck, resting there, warm skin on skin, before the picture propped on the nightstand on his side of the bed catches his eye. In the early morning silence, he stares at his own face smiling back. A laminated snapshot of Gerard head next to his, their heads and some of their shoulders floating in the darkness of the flash of a disposable camera, Gerard biting his earlobe, noses scrunched in mid-laughter, forever frozen in that moment, this badly-timed snapshot of their awkwardness.
“No,” he responds hoarsely. He listens to Gerard’s breathing, slow and already returning to sleep. Watching Gerard’s face, Frank observes his unusual softness, a rare moment of quiet, total lack of cold water tension between them. Underneath the blanket, he lifts his foot, slides his legs in between Gerard‘s, feels their legs interweave. His eyes begin to fall shut, swaying involuntarily back to into sleep, and says nothing else, flinching when their ankle bones knock uncomfortably together.
When he peels his eyes back open, the warm skin feeling is gone, the bed emptied, leaving him completely, utterly alone.
He lays in bed, lolling his head to the side to see out the window, looking up at a patches of blue sky slowly disappearing behind a cloudiness.
“You wanna get up soon?” Gerard’s voice is suddenly somewhere, before Frank’s head perks up, seeing the fleeting glance of Gerard briskly appearing in their bedroom doorway before walking away again. He can hear shuffling, barefoot footsteps on the new wood floor, before he appears in the doorway again, finally back inside, awkwardly carrying a laundry basket before dropping it onto the floor at the foot of the bed. “We need to think about doing that paperwork soon…Like, today, hopefully.”
Frank’s head falls back onto the pillow, after a beat, with a certain exhaustion beginning to overcast in his mind. He closes his eyes tightly and his brain aches, a thumping pain inside of his skull, as he can hear Gerard’s footsteps fade away again, down the stairs. He remembers now, tiredly, scrambled pieces of shit he tried to put into the back of his mind; both of them still at the kitchen table at one in the morning, every night for the past week, hunched over, miserable, pens held like daggers, missing, wanting the days where they could just crawl into bed, quietly fuck, and then go to sleep.
He moves like a zombie, oozing out of bed, slumping, hair ratty, standing there, only somewhat conscious. Below him, he can hear noises of every morning, footsteps, cabinet doors creaking, yawning open, dishes clinking, the constant drizzle of the coffeemaker, footsteps thumping back up the stairs, another door creaking open, a quiet muffle. “Okay, time to get up. Breakfast time, wake-up time.”
“ ‘M’not hungry,” a small voice mumbles back. “Don’t want breakfast now.”
“Okay, well, we’re gonna get up, anyway,” Gerard’s indifferent voice mutters back, before two sets of footsteps disappear, awkward, slow and out of sync, down to the staircase again.
He waits until the footsteps disappear completely before he silently, subtly creeps over to the closet, sliding open the accordion doors in the slow, noiseless fashion he’s mastered, before taking quick glances over his shoulder, through the hair falling over his face. His head continues to swim as he hears the noises downstairs continue, a sort of distant, unspoken, deeply buried half-hatred towards both Gerard and himself prickling in his lungs.
He takes another fast glance over his shoulder before reaching quickly upward, burying his hands into the hanging shelf of folded towels, washcloths, pillow sheets, feeling across the uncomfortable fabrics, digging inside, desperate quickness to get in and get out, nails raking across material until his knuckle knocks against the hard glass he is looking for. Gripping it instantly, he digs the bottle out, messily unscrewing the top, his mind racing, fingers scrambling, before taking a deep but quick swig, a single half of a mouthful of vodka, burning all the way down before falling in his stomach, allowing the prickling in his chest to settle as well.
His breathing calms as he stands there, silently recapping the bottle and returning it to the pile in which he’d buried it in. In the muted white-design of their bedroom, he feels his mind calm, satisfied, sighing. All is well.
Everything is a collage of noises, movement, routine, blending painfully before Frank’s tired eyes, upon arriving in the kitchen. He leans against the doorframe, an ache forming in what feels like his entire body, thumping like a heartbeat beneath his muscles. He can see a blur of Gerard moving back and forth, opening things, setting things up, always cleaning, always where he needs to be, always re-fixing the consistently fucked-up.
“Ca’I have juice instead, please?”
Frank’s eyes trail Gerard before glimpsing at the littler body at the table, sat up on her knees with her cheek resting, bored or disappointed, in her palm, pudgy baby fingers of her other hand futzing with the spoon in the bowl set out in front of her.
“No, no, just eat what you have already, okay?” Frank hears Gerard say back, whizzing past Frank’s field of vision again, to open up more cabinets.
“What’s wrong with juice?” Frank murmurs, following Gerard with his eyes for a moment, before finding a place at the table, next to her. He casually takes her spoon and gives himself a small bite of oatmeal, tasting soggy Quaker instant with dinosaur marshmallows.
“Nothing’s wrong with juice,” Gerard mutters back, throwing together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with trained, quick hands, reminding Frank of one of those master chef shows on the Food Network, making up exotic meals with elaborate hand movements and flamboyant pan tosses. “She’s just late…again.”
Frank steals a sip from her plastic green cup of milk, setting it back down in front of her before nudging the oatmeal bowl closer in some pathetic attempt to get her to eat it, hearing the again echo in his mind. He searches Gerard’s tone for that secret bitterness, a kind of punishing reminder, but decides to let it go for the time being.
“Lucy, come on, we’re gonna be late again, you wanna be late again?” Gerard says, brushing the top of her raggedy head with his palm as he collects together a lunch for her, tossing a sandwich, juice box, baggie of crackers, a cheese stick all into her Little Mermaid lunch bag.
“No…?”
“Then eat your breakfast, already, let‘s go.” Gerard says back, agitated.
Lucy is a good kid, this much Frank had determined. Or, at least, he figured any kid who actually found enjoyment in going to school, must have been a good kid. And being late once had made her upset, had made her cry and worry about getting in trouble with the teacher, working under the delusion that being late for kindergarten meant that all your friends would ostracize you. She takes on a worried tone, suddenly thinking she is in danger of being late again, and digs her fingers into her oatmeal, carefully picking out a slimy neon green dinosaur Frank could only recognize as ‘the long-neck kind’ from The Land Before Time. She licks the marshmallow off of her fingers, as Frank absentmindedly finds himself digging out a dinosaur as well, popping it into his mouth, tasting a few wet, sugar-coated oats, artificial sweetness.
“Don’t, please,” Gerard says above them, suddenly towering over them both, snatching the bowl away from them both.
“Don’t what?” Frank questions dully, glimpsing outside through the window above the sink.
“I’m not finished!” Lucy protests, twisting awkwardly in her chair to follow Gerard to the sink with her concerned gaze.
“No eating like animals at the table,” Gerard answers, sloshing the bowl under the faucet, letting the spoon clatter loudly into the bottom of the sink. “Remember? If you can’t eat with a spoon, you don’t eat all.” He suddenly shuts the water off and turned his head to Frank “I‘m talking to you, too, you know.”
Frank makes a subtle “well, fuck you” movement with his shoulders and eyebrow, glancing over at Lucy who is still turned strangely in her chair, tugging absently at one of her carefully made up pigtails. He reaches over to pat her hand, lightly swatting it away from her hair before bringing both hands over to try and fix her hair again.
“Frank, have you seen the dog?”
Frank comes to a slow stop, feeling soft still-baby hair between his fingertips, the vodka bubbling sickly in his stomach, a cold, dizzying sweat suddenly breaking out on his forehead. Gerard stands at the sink, turned at the waist, looking directly at him with an odd, glaring confusion.
“I don‘t…” Frank opens his mouth to say something, staring in on Lucy’s face turning towards his, oblivious, soft-skinned, unformed eye sockets simply staring back.
“She‘s not in the house, I haven‘t seen her all morning,” Gerard goes on behind him, zipping up the lunch bag.
“I don’t know, I don’t…I didn’t see him…Her, I mean, I haven’t…” He struggles loosely to make a coherent sentence, letting go of Lucy’s hair while she half-crawls half-slides out of her seat, trekking up to Gerard to collect her lunch bag.
“I haven’t seen her since…yesterday, I think,” Frank finally says, his voice turned to a quiet mutter, unable to make eye contact with Lucy for some reason. For a minute that feels far too long to Frank, the kitchen is finally, completely quiet, as Gerard’s quietly scornful gaze stays on Frank’s drooped head, before turning to look out the window.
“Fuck,” he hisses in a low whisper, looking out at the lawn with that irritable concern in his eyes, as Lucy runs off into the hall, pitter-pattering.
“What‘s wrong with Susie?” Lucy asks up to the both of them, coming back, clutching a baby doll by the top of its skull.
Frank’s eyes shoot to the wall, staring hard, his fingers pushing into the surface of the table, his jaw clenching.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetie, just…go get your backpack, go get in the car,” Gerard tells her, taking her shoulder and turning her towards the direction of the front door in front of the stairwell, where her purple backpack is slung over the railing.
“Did she run away?” Lucy asks, simply turning back, oblivious, keeping her spot, her voice starting to descend into a vaguely sobbing worry, that subtle tremble of her lower lip beginning. Frank feels a burning sensation in his stomach, a sort of personified shame he can feel in his throat, behind his eyes.
“No, no, no, it’s okay, she just…she’s just gone for a little while,” Gerard adds in quickly, crouching down to a Lucy level, tucking her hair behind her ears. Frank’s eyes find the window again, and he watches as the sky gradually turns to a full overcast, dampening a dull gray over everything in sight.
“See, dogs,…dogs do that sometimes, they run away sometimes, but they come back, you know? They get hungry and then they come back for food. And I’m sure she misses us, too. Susie’ll come back eventually, okay?” Frank hears Gerard’s voice behind him on the floor, suddenly in that softer tone Frank didn’t think Gerard even knew he had before they had Lucy.
Frank takes the green plastic cup and pours the rest of the milk out into the sink, rinsing it out before sticking it into the top rack of the dishwasher, readjusting coffee mugs and wine glasses, puttering, keeping his eyes on the window, never looking down at them.
“We’ll go out looking for her after school, okay?” Gerard finishes, finally standing up, Lucy now hitched to his hip before he treks into the entrance hall, shrugging Lucy’s backpack onto his own opposite shoulder.
The sound of the front door creaking, whining open seems to wash a sense of relief over him, hearing them step outside, the distant sound of the car doors opening and slamming shut. Routine sounds. Going to school, to work, starting the day-sounds. Slumping over the counter, he finds himself burying his face in his hands, thinking of the color of the tarp, wondering, worrying how visible it is. Closing his eyes, he breaths into his palms, feeling that vague sensation in his throat, that kind of creeping desire to cry. On the other side of his hands, he can hear Gerard’s presence, returning to the kitchen, the swooshing sounds of his jacket sleeves pulling over his arms.
“Don‘t forget--three o‘clock,” he hears Gerard say suddenly in a familiar harried tone. Sliding his palms down to uncover his eyes, Frank watches as Gerard rakes a hand through his forever disheveled hair, scratching at his scalp, that constant, subtle bitterness flashing in the motion of his eyes. Frank’s eyes skitter away to the window again, unable to look at him, at this silent barrier between them.
“What…” Frank begins lowly, nervous, unconsciously hiding his face behind his hands, hiding from him. He tries to remember past discussions, things he has to do, has to go to, but his brain twists painfully, slow and stupid, vodka-damp. “…What’s at three…again?”
Gerard stops moving, stands in the doorway to the entrance hall, facing away from him. Frank sees his head turn ever so slight, over his shoulder, never making eye contact.
“She gets out at three? You have to pick her up at three. Remember?” Gerard says slowly, lightly. But even the lightness of it, the tone of it all, is enough. Frank can feel the hollowness inside of him, in his rib cage, can hear it in his voice. “I told you…yesterday.” He voice drops to a hurtful near-whisper, and Frank can feel his heart drain at the sound of it.
Frank stares at the back of his unkempt head before covering his eyes with his hands again, nodding from behind his palms.
“Remember?” Gerard repeats, not bothering to turn and see Frank’s nodding.
“No, yeah,” Frank lies, enunciating, taking his hands away. “No, I remember, yeah, um…” His voice trails off as his head turns, trying to look understanding, awake. He stands up from the table, slowly walking over to the key rack on the wall near the phone, where his stethoscope is hung. He unravels it from the rack and drapes it over the back of his neck, looking at the wall, both of them looking away.
“I’ll be there,” Frank says, nodding again. “I’ll…I’ll try to remember.”
“Okay,” Gerard responds lightly, and Frank can hear the rustling of the material of his jacket again. “They just don’t like them to be there past four…So just, you know…” His voice trails away into quietness, as his eyes shit towards the window, never looking at him. “Just don‘t forget.”
“Yeah, no, I’ll be there, I’ll…I’ll get out by then,” Frank continues in a low tone, cutting him, desperate to make him stop. “I’ll, um…”
Both of their voices trail off, turning the kitchen into a quiet cave, with the only sounds coming from the outside through the open front door, crickets chirping, cars passing by. Frank can feel the hotness in his cheeks, burning, a simmering embarrassment that makes him want to smack Gerard, punch him, shove him down a flight of stairs. He only forgot once before. Only once. They stay quiet.
“And remember, bring her straight to Mikey’s, ” Gerard says finally, pausing, falling into a brief silence. “At six…She’s staying over.”
“No, yeah, I know, I remember” Frank says quietly, eyes fixed to the counter. His fingers curl around the stainless steel edge of the sink, his stomach wringing like a wet washcloth, feeling like he is going to spew out his insides.
“So, I guess…yeah. Mikey’s,” Gerard murmurs, with half-hearted finality, shrugging absentmindedly.
“Yeah,” Frank responds weakly, walking into the living room and digging out scrubs from a laundry basket of folded clean clothes. In the living room he stays, crouched down over the laundry basket, fingering the pocket of the scrub pants, not wanting to look up. He waits for a shift, some sort of movement, Gerard to come over and kiss him goodbye, even if only on the cheek, wanting it more than expecting it. He hears the shutting of the front door instead, the starting of the car engine, the gravelly sound of the car pulling away, no kiss.
Alone in the house, free from watchful eyes, Frank stands in the kitchen in his scrubs, tilting a bottle of vodka into his travel mug of coffee, watering it down, hiding it inside--his morning headache dulling tool. He stands, watching the vaguely blue patch underneath the deck through the window, Hearing the flask empty, he clasps the travel mug closed, taking a hold of his messenger bag, car keys, sunglasses, the usual checklist, leaving the house, trying to forget the bright blue neon shade so visible amongst the dirt.
Frank drives to work, driving stiffly, cautiously, sunglasses shielding his eyes despite the lack of sun. Inside of his exam room, fluorescent tubes shoot a sickening shade of light into his retinas, blinding him. Squinting painfully, he forces smiles, running his stethoscope across the underside of beagle laid out in front of him.
“How long has been acting like this?” Frank asks the woman shifting uncomfortably in the chair on the other side of the room.
“Oh, well,” she twists, crosses her legs, fiddles with her thumbs in a certain nervousness, unable to look away from her pet. “A couple of days…? He just…stopped eating.”
Frank nods, sympathetic, calm, understanding. He writes down on his clipboard, plucking the stethoscope earplugs out to rest on his neck like a piece of jewelry. He wheels around the room, shuffling through papers, needles, tools.
“Is he going to be okay?” the woman finally asks, leaning forward to reach out for the animal. Frank stares down at his clipboard, peering up at them out of the corner of his eye. She rubs the dog’s skull, behind his ears, pets his back. His eyes fall downward back towards the clipboard, the papers, but stop at the dog’s face before they can get there. An eerily human expression of misery stares back through black eyes, furry eye sockets, and Frank falls silent.
Susie, he thinks, suddenly, repetitively, obsessively. I‘m sorry. I‘m sorry. I‘m sorry. I‘m sorry.
“Is he?” the woman asks again, insistent. Frank’s gaze flits over to her glare before his head falls back down to the clipboard, unable to look anymore.
“He’ll be alright,” is all he can croak out.
The tiled floor digs into his knees as he clasps the edge of the toilet bowl in the bathroom at the end of the day, alone, eyes slammed shut, feeling the bile rising in his throat. He vomits promptly, his stomach twisting and curling, hearing through the ringing in his ears, the disgusting sound of it splashing into the toilet water, the smell of it rising upward into his face. He coughs a watery cough, spit stringing from his lips, acidic taste on his gums. He grips the porcelain, feeling another wave of nausea hit, gagging and dry-heaving, thinking in some strange afterthought, that he also needs to pee.
He breaths deeply, gasps, and swallows all at once, stuck on the floor, the porcelain still gripped in his palms. He closes his eyes, smelling it, wanting to throw up again, before he smacks a hand up at the flush handle, weakly pushing it down. His hands falls back down onto his thigh, as he feels the weight of the flask still hidden deeply in his pants pocket. He palms the outer material, feeling the metal, breathing unevenly in the silence of the bathroom. The pockets are layered, though, one pocket sewn below another, and without looking, he reaches into the wrong pocket without realizing it.
Feeling a small piece of paper instead of the flask, he opens his eyes, unsure of what he is holding. His head dips down as he pulls out a small square, flipping it in his fingers briefly, before realizing that it is a crumpled, long lost, drug store-developed photo.
Frank and Gerard’s faces look back, smiling, strangely discolored. The photo curls hopelessly at the edges, white veins of glossy photo paper wrinkles scratching across their faces, and Frank struggles to remember how the photo got there. How long ago he slipped it into that pocket, forgot about it, and how many times he unknowingly put it through the wash. Why he kept it, carried it around with him, he can‘t even begin to remember. He fingers the photo, flipping it around, stopping when he notices writing on the back, blue pen hopelessly smudged, run, turned into an unintentional watercolor painting.
new years 12/31/03 ...don‘t forget to….
He can just barely make it out, some words running completely, a small bit missing. He finds himself staring at it, blankly confused. It feels stupid, something mushy and embarrassing from years ago that’s not even relevant anymore, but he can’t look away.
Finding his watch out of the corner of his eye, he blinks, glimpsing at it, noticing the time. Without thinking, he crumples the photo up again, hissing swears to himself, stuffing it back into his pocket, staggering quickly, rushed, awkwardly off the floor, out of the bathroom.
He drives towards the elementary school, feeling his heart against his rib cage. His eyes whip back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror, suddenly full of panic, dread, looking at his own sunken reddened gaze. He speeds through town, hating every other person on the road-- “Asshole, Cunt, Faggot, Shithead getouttamyway, Hey fuck you too, motherfucker!”-- jerking the steering wheel, parking crookedly. He fidgets, adjusting and re-adjusting his sunglasses, digging, burying through his messenger bag for his eye drops. In the rearview mirror he clumsily applies them, stretching and clamping his eyelids open, craning his head back, feeling the droplets trickle down his cheek bones when his hand shakes and he misses, fake tears dribbling downward. He falls out of the driver’s side door, feeling his scrub pants loose on his hips, always too big for him, before walking through the front doors, perking up, nothing is wrong.
He speed walks, rushing, keeping his head down, through the empty hallways, feeling like he is going to vomit again. The halls are empty, eerily quiet, and dim with the lights shutting off, janitors strolling by behind him, teachers walking out, shutting their doors behind them, shuffling papers, going home. His stomach squeezes and he begins to irrationally panic, hating everything and himself. He rushes past little lockers for little children, tacked up crayon drawings, What I Read This Summer, One Thing I’d Change About The World to Make It Better, the paper sticker alphabet lining the walls into infinity. His eyes dart around, looking for Lucy’s teacher’s name written somewhere, careful not to look into the classrooms through the windows on the doors, bizarrely paranoid about people seeing him. He zooms past doors, feeling completely lost and frustrated, until he suddenly, inexplicably hears his name amongst the kingdom of children.
“Mr. Iero?” A disembodied voice calls out to him, and he spins around, flustered, seeing a head peeking out from a quiet classroom door.
Lucy appears slowly at the guy’s feet, tugging nervously at the hem of her shirt, looking like an abandoned, traumatized orphan. Her backpack slumps on her shoulders and her teacher quickly reaches down to adjust the straps, zipping up the pockets she forgot to close herself. Frank stares at him for a moment, fixing the little things Frank knows he’s perfectly capable of fixing himself, and hates him instantly. He forces a grin, bolting forward, and grabs her, hugging her, freakishly desperate to get her out of the teacher’s grip.
“Hey, you,” he says lightly, and holds her to his chest, her legs dangling, squirming to get a grip around him. Her hair falls into his face, and she grins against his cheek. He feels the warmth of her face on his own, the fruit and flower scent of her kids’ shampoo, and when a jumble of hair accidentally tangles into his mouth, he’s not sure if it’s hers or his own.
“Where were you?” she mumbles upset, slowly recovering from her worry. She dislodges her head from his neck, her hand unknowingly gripping his chin and mouth.
“We really don’t like to keep the kids here past four,” Frank hears the teacher behind Lucy’s head. He keeps his eyes on Lucy, refusing to look at him for more than a second, noticing that fleeting look of contempt, sensing his judgment.
“I know, I know,” Frank says into Lucy’s palm , tired and fake, maneuvering her backpack off of her shoulders and swinging it onto his own, juggling her on his hips. His eyes find a clock above the door--four-forty-five, and he bites his lip, glaring, before quickly looking away. “I’m really sorry,” he sighs. Go fuck yourself, he thinks. “It’s just, you know--work.” He makes a vague waving gesture with his hand before lightly taking Lucy’s hand away from his mouth, their fingers curling into each other.
“Right,” the teacher says flatly, unconvinced but nodding his head anyway. Frank looks at him again and realizes it is the same teacher from the last time. When he forgot completely, drove home to an empty house, woke up from a two hour long nap with Gerard’s face in his own, yelling, “Where the hell is Lucy?!” Frank wonders if the teacher also hates Gerard, or plays favorites instead. Without thinking, Frank briefly unclasps a hand from his grip on Lucy’s back, to flip the teacher off, returning the favor. The teacher’s eyes flare widely his eyebrows furrowing, annoyed, disturbed, shocked. Frank sneers at him with Lucy’s head turned, oblivious, before walking away, just barely hearing the bitter, muttered, “Prick,” behind him.
Frank ignores it and lugs Lucy down the halls, back out to the car. Frank hates the teacher and the teacher hates Frank, and he simply does not give a shit anymore.
He drives to Mikey’s house in silence, glimpsing back at Lucy in the rearview mirror every once in a while. He keeps the radio off, half in fear of waking her up, half wanting, needing the silence, to be alone with his thoughts. By the time he is over the Goethels Bridge, Lucy’s constant hum-singing, Mary Had A Little Lamb, the Sesame Street theme song, starts to drawl out into a sleepy incoherence. Her head slumps against the seatbelts, fast asleep, and he drives stiffly, slowly, feeling his stomach churn.
He breathes out his nose, concentrating on the road, on steering, desperate and tempted to hit the brakes, roll down the window and throw up onto the road. He squirms, unable to keep still, flexing his hand and taking his grip off the steering wheel, feeling sweat on his palms, on his lips. He catches himself in the rearview mirror and his glance glares away, feeling sweaty, ratty, ugly, worthless, and unable to do anything about it. He wants to take a bath, a brief warm shower to make himself feel human. He contemplates, wondering if he could shower at Mikey’s, wonders if this is socially acceptable or weird. He knows he won’t actually shower because he hates showering in other people’s houses, and he hates Gerard’s family.
A feeling like tacks being punctured into his stomach wall prickles inside of him, feeling the desire or desperate need to escape. He fantasizes instantly, picturing himself slamming on the brakes, pulling over. He imagines running out of the car, leaving Lucy there on the side of the road, Gerard already at Mikey’s house, everyone oblivious, abandoning them both, running into the woods to never return.
He drives to Mikey’s house in Queens instead, with Gerard’s silhouette waiting for him on the small porch. Frank gets out of the car, and they watch each other, wordlessly, their bodies turning into inky blues in the descending dusk. He turns around, not wanting to look at him anymore, and opens the backseat door, unlatching Lucy from her car seat. As he unbuckles her, struggling, always feeling like the car seat is some complex security system built for the military, he can hear Gerard’s footsteps becoming louder and louder.
“It’s seven,” is all Gerard says, his entire body suddenly, abnormally close to Frank’s, his voice closer to him than it’s been in months. Frank knows, though. He’s an hour late. He blinks, never turning around to face him, hitching Lucy to his hip, before swerving to the house and walking away without a word. Halfway to the porch, Lucy begins to squirm, wanting out, fighting him, and he sets her down on the ground, too tired to fight back. She sprints off into the house by herself, squealing for Mikey, and Alicia’s voice squeals back from inside the warmth of the house.
Frank continues towards the noise, dragging himself forward until a firm hand on his shoulder, sternly clasping his collar bone stops him in his tracks. He shuts his eyes, feeling his brain throb, and for the first time ever, is desperate to get into their house, if only to have a drink, to get away from his touch.
“What?” he says wearily, almost hissing, hostile. He turns unwillingly, chasing the tug of his shoulder and stares hard at the dark neighborhood over Gerard’s shoulder, at the ground. He listens for Gerard’s voice, his inevitable argument, that spurting poison, dumping of freezing cold water over his head, but hears nothing.
Their eyes find each other, even in the darkness, and Frank looks at him, blankly confused. Gerard’s lips part to say something, the look in his eyes wanting a fight, but closes his mouth, suddenly lost for words. In the black dusk of the front yard, they stand in their silence, confused at each other, at themselves, unsure of what they are supposed to do now.
“What?” Frank repeats again his voice weaker. He shifts uncomfortably under Gerard’s surprisingly firm grip, before he is suddenly full of lead, hardened and tired. Sickened by it, Frank finds his hand quickly wrapping around Gerard’s wrists, yanking it off, shoving him away.
“Fuck off,” he mutters, turning towards the house and marching away, with no more words left in him.
He huffs into the house, suddenly wanting to punch walls. He thinks of the teacher again, despising him, of Gerard, of everyone, disgusted by them all. He feels a rage creeping below his skin, but the moment he steps into the house, that yellow warmth of a lit house alive in the night, he freezes, self-conscious, totally isolated in his anger, paranoid, silent.
“Hey, you,” Alicia says, holding plates, swerving around the kitchen table to come right up to him, leaving a kiss on his cheek. He stands still in the kitchen, feeling lost and out of place. Alicia and Mikey stand with their backs to him at the counter, finishing dinner for themselves and for Lucy, their arms touching, working as a team. Frank stares at their backs, their murmuring heads, the fleeting glimpses of their turned faces, smiles on the side views of their lips, failing to understand it all. Lucy patters aimlessly on the floor, sucking on a spoon.
“I love spaghetti,” she says jovially, pointlessly, bouncing on her heels.
“You know what? Me too,” Mikey says down to her.
Frank blinks, taking it all in. He doesn’t understand it and fears it, not knowing how else to feel. He wonders if Mikey and Alicia cook together every night, if their house is always this bright, warm, clean, welcoming. Their plates are matching colors, wine glasses set out for the grown-ups, decorative towels hanging pointlessly on drawer handles. The kitchen is full of the smell of spices, marinara, hot pots, cooking heat, Criminal Minds on the television in the next room over, playing to an empty living room. He wonders, secretly, if it is all a façade, if they only act like this when other people are around--In his bitterness, he hopes this is the case.
He shuffles around pointlessly, unsure of what to do with himself. Lucy is here, at the right place--he managed to accomplish this task with almost no fail. But he has never done this before, the dropping off, he has no idea when he is supposed to turn around and go back home.
Behind him, he hears the front door shut, quiet footsteps patting the carpet, and suddenly Gerard is behind him, so close to him, but never touching. Frank refuses to look behind him, refuses to look him in the eye. He can feel Gerard glaring at the back of his head, and he suppresses the urge, the fantasy, to turn around and scream like an animal, right into his face.
“Where’s her things?” Gerard says lowly, flatly, and Frank stares, concentrated, at the wall.
Frank’s eyes shoot back over to Lucy, his eyes moving only, and his stomach drops. There a sort of boiling to simmering of noise at this as Mikey and Alicia turn around to look at him, everyone‘s eyes on him, a humiliation staring contest. Frank looks away from them, at Lucy. He has gotten her here, but somehow forgot utterly to run back to their house, grab her everything--pink sleepover bag, toothbrush, blanket, stuffed turtle, read-to-sleep book, pajamas, clothes. She stands in the kitchen without any resources, unequipped.
“Oh,” Frank says softly, petrified. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t have to turn around to look Gerard in the eye to see, feel, the gaze of disgust burning into the back of his skull.
“Well, we have extra toothbrushes,” Alicia says, finally, perking up.
“She can just sleep in her clothes,” Mikey suggests, shrugging. “We’ll put them through the wash tomorrow.”
Frank blinks, stuck in a state of loving them and hating them all at once. He watches them turn their backs to the counter and he feels like a failure, seeing this. When he forgets, they remember. When he fucks up, they fix it. They don’t have any children and they are better parents than Frank and Gerard ever were--They have dinner already made before Frank and Gerard are even through the front door.
He stays silent, feeling Gerard burn cigarette holes into the back of his neck with his eyes.
“You forgot all of that,” Gerard whispers flatly, quietly, so only Frank can hear. Lucy stands behind Mikey and Alicia’s legs, hugging their knees, snuggling into their hands as they lower down to rustle her hair. Frank blinks, unable to look away from Lucy and unable to look Gerard in the eye. Lucy grins and pulls her shirt up and out, turning it into a makeshift tutu, before spinning around the kitchen clumsily, suddenly a ballerina. He stares at Mikey, trying to understand it. What is Mikey doing that he isn’t? Lucy loves seeing Mikey, so much sometimes that Frank wonders if she loves them more than she loves Gerard and himself. Frank is oblivious, desperate to know what he is doing wrong, and what Mikey has done to buy all of her love.
“Let’s just go,” he hears Gerard finally mutter tiredly, turning towards the door. “Okay, we’re leaving,” he calls into the kitchen as he walks away.
“Okay, say goodbye, Lucy,” Frank hears Alicia‘s voice behind him, Alicia taking Lucy’s shoulders and turning her towards the archway into the kitchen where Frank stands. “You’re not gonna see them until Monday.”
Before Frank can register anything, Lucy is already running towards him, throwing herself at him, tossing her hands over his shoulders. He grunts unintentionally, umph, somewhat knocked in the stomach, scoops her up, holding her butt, burying his face into her arm, smelling her skin.
“Bye, Dad,” she grins, muffling into his ear and hair. He feels her little fingers tangle into small curls of the ends of his hair, twiddling.
“I love you, Lucille,” he says, his voice strained, squeezing her tighter. He holds her like this for a moment, without realizing, holding her as tight as he can, trying to prove something. He listens for her back, her “I love you, too,” but instead, she fights, struggling to suddenly get out of his grip. He sets her down, biting his tongue, feeling his heart fall, staring at a wall, as she runs over to Gerard. Gerard grunts as well, getting hit in the chest as she dives into him, already kneeling, ready to catch her.
“Bye, Daddy,” she squeaks into his collar bone.
“Bye, baby,” Gerard sighs back, hitching her onto his hip a bit. She leans over the hold of his forearm, pushing against his chest, before taking his face, gripping his jaw, squeezing his cheeks with both hands.
“You wanna gimme a kiss?” he asks lightly, muffled by her grip on his face. She nods and then leans forward, planting a kiss on his lips, Gerard making a stupid muah sound effect as he pulls away. Instantly, she squirms for him too, until he sets her down, letting her run back to Mikey, the good, caring parents she’s never had.
Frank finds himself staring at them again, still struggling to grasp it, hating it. He doesn’t understand how Mikey and Alicia can coexist and not want to kill each other. How they have managed this build this kind of effortless, symbiotic peace, and Frank feels like his skin is falling apart at the seams.
The sound of the front door creaking back open and Gerard’s steps disappearing back out into the dusk causes him to suddenly wake up, turn around and walk straight out as if he has walked into a conversation he was not supposed to hear.
In the darkness, the door shuts behind him, locking them out, allowing them to leave and go back home, free of responsibility and alone with each other. Frank strides across their front lawn back to his car, feeling strangely misplaced, oddly brain damaged. A fluttering sensations flits in his stomach as he gnaws at his lower lip, dreading that taste, that acrid wet feeling of everything coming back up, of getting sick and having to feel all of it. He fingers his car keys in his baggy scrub pocket, staring at the dark ground, unable to look at Gerard, jangling the keys around mindlessly, stuttering, nervous, before he is grabbed.
Gerard’s hand grasping his wrist catches him off guard, makes him jump, as fingers squeeze around his bones, shockingly rough. Frank’s head snaps back up at him, a feeling of fire in his chest, wanting to fight out, snap at him, pull his hair out.
”What?” Frank suddenly snaps, his hiss ripping through the black night. He finds Gerard’s glare, the nighttime blue tinge of the whites of his eyes, and automatically fights, adrenaline spiking through his veins, desperately trying to tug his arm out of Gerard’s grip, yanking, scratching, jerking.
“Gimme the keys, Frank,” Gerard commands, grumbling, straining against Frank’s tugging. Their hands smack at each other, scratching, desperate fingers gnawing at each other, all in some strange, pathetic cat fight of a battle.
“What the fuck?--No,” Frank sputters, yanking the keys out of Gerard’s curling fingers and spinning around, curling over as if to shield Gerard away from them with his entire body. He feels Gerard above him, on him, their bodies shoving against each other.
“Frank, you’re not driving--”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you--I’m not even drunk, what‘s wrong with you--Fuck off,” Frank grits, writhing against Gerard’s reaches and quick, stabbing grabs at the keys, pushing against each other, their legs knocking, kicking at each other, wrestling. He hides the keys away in his enclosed fist holding his fists to his chest, protecting them, guarding them, quickly, jumpily, turning away from Gerard’s spidery hands, bizarrely desperate and full of rage.
He fights it for as long as he can before a firm hand is on his shoulder, clawing into his flesh, biting through him, shooting strange bolts of burning through his muscles, yanking him around with a certain forcefulness. Before Frank can see what is going on, Gerard is suddenly in his face, towering over him, shoving him around, before Gerard’s hand grabs at his fists, his fingernails digging into the tops of Frank’s hands, prying his fingers open, ripping the keys out of his grip with a violent wrenching that pulses back to Frank, shoving him down.
Frank’s stomach curls as he stutters backwards, tripping over his own legs, before he thumps onto the ground with a impact that punches him out, pulls the air from his lungs. His spine aches from the hit as he squeezes his eyes shut, squirming, filling with the urge to kick at Gerard’s legs, to maul him to ribbons and shreds, to make him hurt. The moment he tries to shift, stand up, move his back, however, an ache shoots up his bones, keeping him still and stiff. He flinches and feels a groan in his chest, an escaping of a whine, tears springing behind his eyes, inexplicably, uncontrollably.
A groan escapes his lips, fighting back a gasping sob, the pain in his spine bruising him into a sadness that swells underneath his ribs.
“Shit,” Gerard whispers in a small, exhausted, muttered tone, standing above Frank, gazing down at him with a pair of solemn, gloomy eyes. He finds himself burying his face in his hands, rubbing away at his skin, sighing. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, defeated, letting his hands fall slack to his sides.
Frank releases another crying groan, coughing involuntarily at the burn in his shoulder blades, piercing through his muscles, stabbing his chest.
“You pushed me,” Frank spits vehemently, shocked, his face squeezing, wrinkling into disgust. “You fucking hit me.”
“I’m sorry,” Gerard repeats, stressfully, as Frank can see his body looming, moving above him, bending towards him. “You know I didn’t mean to, come one--I‘m sorry.”
“…No…” Frank mutters, not sure why he said anything, before he is turning away from Gerard, instinctively shifting and rolling away from his looming arms, desperate to get away from him, to shun him out.
“No, c’mon,” Gerard mutters softly, digging his arms underneath Frank’s back, gathering Frank towards him, trying to pick him up.
“No, get away,” Frank grimaces, squirming and tugging out of Gerard‘s grasp, randomly, loudly spitting and gagging grass out of his mouth. He feels Gerard’s arms encasing him, trapping him, pulling him into a sort of bizarre hug before he is yanked forcefully to his feet, his knees weak and falling out underneath him.
“C’mon, let‘s just--c‘mon,” is all Gerard can whisper as he stuffs the keys into his jeans pocket, silently victorious, lugging Frank back towards the car.
“Fucking prick,” Frank spits bitterly, feeling the ache in his back and the pain in his ribs.
“I said I was sorry,” he hears Gerard mutter shakily as they awkwardly stumble over each other’s feet, Gerard trying to keep a hold on Frank while opening the car door at the same time, while avoiding stumbling over their tangling legs.
“I’m not drunk,” Frank says before he firmly, finally pushes himself out of Gerard’s imprisonment, and thumping his palms into Gerard‘s chest, shoving him backwards.. He steps back, looking Gerard in the eye, glaring into him, his fingers curling into tight fists. He find Gerard’s glare shooting back at him, a silent, tight-lipped, contemptuous gaze.
“Can you please just get in the fucking car?” Gerard murmurs lowly through gritted teeth, flinching while his feet shift to find balance.
“Fuck you,” Frank spits back violently, and a match lights, burns, and flares inside of him, jolting into his arms and forcing another quick shoving hit into Gerard’s chest, spontaneous electric volts running through his veins. He hears Gerard grunt, stutter backwards, squeeze his face in a caged pain, keeping silent in repressed rage, breathing heavily through his nose.
“Frank,” Gerard starts quietly, scarily soft, and Frank’s skin crawls.
“You followed me here,” Frank gasps, suddenly feeling his heart beat oddly underneath his collar bones, his throat swelling, a burning, wet sensation forming behind his eyeballs. “You fucking followed me here--you piece of shit.”
“We need to fucking talk,” he hears Gerard whisper harshly amidst the jangling of the car keys, squished inside of Gerard’s forming fist, and his stomach twists into cold, wet, painful knot.
“You’re a fucking psychopath,” Frank nearly shouts, declaring, straight into Gerard’s face. “I can’t believe you’d fucking follow me here--I got her here--What, you think I couldn’t do it? You think I can’t do anything? What the fuck’s your problem?!”
He vaguely sees Gerard’s expression close up, tightening, turning to silence, letting out a sigh through his nose. He waits for Gerard to say something again, something stupid, a pathetic attempt to be rational and sane, but instead he watches as Gerard’s eyes slowly open, his features slackened, before he promptly brushes past Frank, finding his way into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut. A quiet, blunt fuck you, too.
Frank stands in the darkness, staring hard at Mikey’s house, the yellow squares of light through the living room windows glaring into his retinas. The emphysemic noise of the engine wheezing to life--of Gerard starting Frank’s car--rakes inside of Frank’s brain, reminding him of his failure. He stares into the night, refusing to look back at the silhouette of Gerard’s head staring back at him, glaring, waiting. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the silhouette shifting, sliding forward, an arm reaching out towards him, the click of the passenger side door’s lock unlocking, the electric slide of the window rolling down.
“Just get in…” Gerard mutters softly, tiredly, and it is enough. Frank slowly shuts his eyes, feeling the burning in his eyes elevate. Gerard has the keys, Gerard is in the driver’s seat--accusing and speaking volumes without ever opening his mouth.
Frank turns silently, opening the door, shuffling into the seat, jerkily slamming the door shut beside himself, staring hard at the car floor. He hears the constant grumble of the car beneath him, behind the sound of the key chains swaying and tinkling in the ignition, the sound of their breathing. They sit in their stewing silence, unmoving, sifting. Frank finds the image of Mikey’s house in the side view mirror and stares into it, watching the yellow squares of living room lights, the vague shapes of furniture, their familiar faces bobbing in and out of the windows. He glares into their life through distant panes of glass, hating it, wanting it.
They sit in their car, alone with each other, in danger of each other.
“Can’t believe you’d fucking follow me here,” Frank’s harsh whisper grates through the silence, through his gritted teeth, his darkened eyes stuck on the window, facing away from Gerard. The sounds of Gerard shifting, silent in response, moving around, palming the steering wheel, purposeless, uncomfortable motions, makes Frank’s skin crawl.
“You never trusted me,” Frank breaths shakily, his irises quivering. In the darkness, a faint blue light from radio screen, the glow-in-the-dark volume and tuning buttons, emit onto their paled skin, painting them in shades of bruises.
Gerard’s breathing, a long soft sigh through his nose as he tightly shuts his lips, impales Frank’s ears, so loud amongst their stillness. He waits for that shaking response, the quiet, calm, yet bitter argument, but hears nothing. The feeling of the car tugging forward suddenly shakes him somewhat, and Frank stirs, watching Mikey’s house shrink and shutter into the distance as Gerard drives them away without a word.
The black and blue motion blur of tree shadows against the night sky, headlights zooming past them down the highway and streetlamps flitting like dragonflies over their shoulders, hazes past Frank’s view as he keeps his gaze stuck out the window, unable to look at Gerard anymore.
They drive past the same lights, buildings, sights, across the same bridges that they’ve been through together one million times before, apathetically glancing down a the floor, having since forgotten any magic that they might have found there once. Frank’s eyes shoot to the floor when he thinks he hears the subtlest sound of clinking, glass tinkling against each other--liquor bottles hidden in a crate on the backseat floor for weeks. His eyes flicker at Gerard, wondering if Gerard hears the noise as well, irrelevantly panicking, but the sudden flash of Gerard’s face, a streetlamp tossing a quick splash of disappearing white over his skin before he drives past it--his eyes sunken, cemented to the windshield, thumbprint bruises of bags underneath them--A forlorn hue visible in his eyelids that Frank used to think was beautiful, different, artistic, that is now just sad to look at.
The slow turns back into their neighborhood cause Frank to lower in his seat, slowly feeling his lungs fill with an unusual sense of dread. There is a silence in the car while turning back into their driveway that neither of them think they will ever get used to. Usually Lucy is with them, behind them in the backseat, but in that moment, it is just the two of them, and they have no idea how to live with each other. Frank closes his eyes, silently smelling the air, smelling the subtle unique Gerard scent that he’s picked up on after all these years--like a smell that only a dog could sense.
Gerard pulls into their driveway and shuts Frank’s car off, knocking them both down with a cement-heavy silence. Frank feels his stomach churn, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, his toes curling, sensing the screaming, the biting, the crying, even before it all comes crashing down. His gaze flutters over to Gerard, watching him sit there, staring at the steering wheel, at his own fingers clenched around the leather, his eyes own steel-fixed downward. The silence between them chokes them both like suffocating, ensnaring vines, until they both snap and have to move.
They get out of the car in a synchronization they didn’t plan, both quietly, promptly opening their doors, hopping down onto the blacktop, and shutting the doors behind them. Frank stands on the pavement, grateful for the large mass of an entire car separating them, keeping them from contact, and listens to Gerard shuffling, walking away, back up onto their porch.
Frank trails behind him, nowhere else to go. He looks up at their house, dark squares of lightless windows and empty rooms of meaningless furniture like a dollhouse gathering dust, hating the house. He nearly turns around upon seeing it, tempted to spin on his heels and begin sprinting down the street. He imagines himself running away, escaping, but has no idea where he’d go. To his parent’s house? To his only friend Bob’s house? On a train to Vermont? He imagines walking into the ocean until his head disappears.
The wood of the porch creaks underneath his steps until he stops. Only one step up, he can’t bring himself to go any further, can’t bring himself to go back inside. Inside they will have to face each other, they won’t have any choice--the walls will force them together like cellmates in prison. He thinks of their bedroom, their bed, themselves, facing away from each other, facing the walls. He thinks of the silence between them, neither of them talking, touching, but neither of them honestly sleeping.
He falls onto the steps, unable to stand, propping his knees up and burying his face into his hands. He can feel it in his chest, suddenly, the tiredness that has been coming and going for the past couple of months, years maybe, the exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix. Behind him, he can hear the familiar click of a lighter, the flaring of flame, lips clamping around a cigarette, sucking, sighing out tired smoke. He shifts and watches Gerard on the porch beside him, smoking and dragging himself across the wood. His cigarette pack is stuffed cleverly into the back pocket of his jeans, hidden away from everyone’s eyes, except for Frank.
He buries his face back into his hands upon seeing it, wanting to fall into a hole. Then, before he can sense it, see it coming, it comes at him like a punch in the chest, knocking him out. His throat squeezes, his face contorting, as his eyes fill with hot puddles. He slaps a hand over his eyes, and a sob escapes him before he can fight it. And before he can realize what he is doing, it overcomes him, a silhouette of grief out of nowhere, and he is sobbing quietly into his hands and knees, shaking on the steps, crying over everything and nothing.
For a long moment, Frank hears nothing but silence behind him, even the shuffling noises, the smoking sounds have ceased. He can sense Gerard’s stare, that empty glare, but doesn’t bother to turn around to see it. In his fantasy, Gerard walks over to him, stubs out his cigarette, puts a hand on his back, pulls him inward. When he blinks back to reality, the slow, awkward steps backward, the pauses, footsteps going back into the house, is all he hears. He cries, hearing one final pause, before a long, drawn-out sigh preludes the creaking and clacking shut of the front door, disappearing into the house, leaving Frank by himself, shaking on the steps.
The silence behind him is enough to shove him further, sobbing quietly, harshly into his palms and wrists, the abandonment. It is enough, he thinks. He knows what the silence means, the sense of finality behind it, the screaming, shaking, belittling anger behind it. He imagines himself running away again, leaving Gerard forever. He imagines himself away from Gerard, everything they’d built coming to a brutal, collapsing demolition.
He has no idea if what he has between himself and Gerard is love anymore. He has no idea what he and Gerard have anymore.
He only knows that whatever fragments they have left don’t have much left to live for.
The dog is dead.
Frank shuts his eyes for a moment, registering this, and when he opens them, the dog is still dead.
At first glance, he isn’t sure exactly what he is looking at.
He stands there, in the damp blue early morning, eyes sunken into a hangover-pink, cratered dark eye sockets--a short, slumping, pathetic-looking creature in his boyfriend’s too large pajama pants The newspaper has since dropped from his grip, once he stopped dead in his tracks in the journey from the mailbox to the front door, unable to look away from its body that is just there. Splayed out, unnaturally bent, unmoving, in their driveway.
When he blinks, he can feel the minute motions of his eyelids, sore and heavy, as his brain swims. He struggles to recollect exactly what had happened, remember clearly how he had somehow gotten from work to the grocery store to home the night before, and end up with his dog dead somewhere in between all that. Yet all he can come up with are smaller parts, blurry details - picking out bottles of wine, vodka, wandering alone in the supermarket at one in the morning, his red grocery basket thudding silently against his thigh, bottles clinking; driving home in a radio-less silence, pulling into the driveway, motion sensor light above the garage doors flashing on, blinding him, and, inexplicably, unusually, a sudden thud, a feeling like going over a speed bump, pulling into the garage anyway, only slightly drunk, he was sure of this, but too much to care. He made his way up the stairs, positive that he was in bed, waking up the next morning on the kitchen floor, in the dark, alone, clutching an emptied vodka bottle, feeling like he had lost time.
Now the dog seems to be mocking him, suddenly so visibly dead against the black pavement in the silent early morning. Frank’s glare shoots between the dog and the house, a certain mixed sensation of dread, shame, horror settling in his stomach like ice and nails. He blinks, his face slack with that subtle emptiness, that sort of quiet despair that had been carved into his features over time, and shuffles quietly before covering his eyes with his hand, unable to look anymore.
It takes him roughly an hour to hide her. His eyes brimming with tears, gruff grunts of frustration eventually melting into struggled quiet sobs as everything he does turns into a blurry, choppy haze--blue tarp tugged out from the storage underneath the deck, the tarp thrown over her corpse, and the slow, painful struggle of half-carrying, half-dragging the German Shepherd that has at least half of Frank’s weight, all the way back to the moist darkness underneath the deck, tucking her away. The tarp crinkles loudly in the morning quiet all the while, and Frank cringes suddenly hyperaware of all of the noise he is making, suddenly wanting nothing more than to crawl underneath the deck and curl up like a crumpled weed, hiding in the darkness beside her.
Wiping at his face with the back of his hands and leaving dirt streaks on his face, he feels warm droplets dangle on the edge of his jaw line before he wipes them away with a quick, firm swipe, staggering up from the dewy grass, mud covering his hands and knees, before dragging himself back into the sleepy silence of his home.
In the very early morning, before the sun can melt and leak through the windows, a subtle shadow drapes over everything he passes by, as each step on the staircase lets out a creak that feels extremely loud, that only he can hear. Passing by a mirror framed on the wall near other frames, other portraits, Polaroids of their life, he glances at himself only for a moment, seeing what looks like a man who has just crawled out of a lake, before his eyes flash away, unable to look for more than a fleeting glance.
Creaking their door open, standing in the doorway in the silence of a sleeping neighborhood and house, he sees a mound of tangled black hair, half of a drooling, unconscious face, and a hand bent awkwardly outward from beneath the thick comforter. Frank watches him, his spine rising and falling with his breath, before his eyes quickly fall to the floor, creeping back into bed, having no other place to go. He falls into the vine tangle of sheets, limbs, and comforter, not knowing what to do next.
He lays on the bed amongst all of the house’s stillness, eyes fixated on the white ceiling, only vaguely aware of the hand coming to life, creeping towards him, touching him, mindlessly. Frank finds himself shifting towards it, cocooning himself into the shared tangle of blanket, moving towards the face, laying close so their noses nearly touch. He finds himself staring at the subtlest freckles on his nose, the length of his eyelashes, trying to remember if he’d ever noticed these things before.
“Are you just…getting home now?” Gerard mutters, nearly whispered in his half-sleep state, eyes kept closed. His lips squirm before he suddenly grimaces, scrunching up his features into a nose-pinching, unconscious movement, struggling to wake up.
Frank blinks and turns onto his back, quiet in response, feeling the hand touch his neck, unconscious connection. Turning his head more to the side, he feels Gerard’s finger settle on his neck, resting there, warm skin on skin, before the picture propped on the nightstand on his side of the bed catches his eye. In the early morning silence, he stares at his own face smiling back. A laminated snapshot of Gerard head next to his, their heads and some of their shoulders floating in the darkness of the flash of a disposable camera, Gerard biting his earlobe, noses scrunched in mid-laughter, forever frozen in that moment, this badly-timed snapshot of their awkwardness.
“No,” he responds hoarsely. He listens to Gerard’s breathing, slow and already returning to sleep. Watching Gerard’s face, Frank observes his unusual softness, a rare moment of quiet, total lack of cold water tension between them. Underneath the blanket, he lifts his foot, slides his legs in between Gerard‘s, feels their legs interweave. His eyes begin to fall shut, swaying involuntarily back to into sleep, and says nothing else, flinching when their ankle bones knock uncomfortably together.
When he peels his eyes back open, the warm skin feeling is gone, the bed emptied, leaving him completely, utterly alone.
He lays in bed, lolling his head to the side to see out the window, looking up at a patches of blue sky slowly disappearing behind a cloudiness.
“You wanna get up soon?” Gerard’s voice is suddenly somewhere, before Frank’s head perks up, seeing the fleeting glance of Gerard briskly appearing in their bedroom doorway before walking away again. He can hear shuffling, barefoot footsteps on the new wood floor, before he appears in the doorway again, finally back inside, awkwardly carrying a laundry basket before dropping it onto the floor at the foot of the bed. “We need to think about doing that paperwork soon…Like, today, hopefully.”
Frank’s head falls back onto the pillow, after a beat, with a certain exhaustion beginning to overcast in his mind. He closes his eyes tightly and his brain aches, a thumping pain inside of his skull, as he can hear Gerard’s footsteps fade away again, down the stairs. He remembers now, tiredly, scrambled pieces of shit he tried to put into the back of his mind; both of them still at the kitchen table at one in the morning, every night for the past week, hunched over, miserable, pens held like daggers, missing, wanting the days where they could just crawl into bed, quietly fuck, and then go to sleep.
He moves like a zombie, oozing out of bed, slumping, hair ratty, standing there, only somewhat conscious. Below him, he can hear noises of every morning, footsteps, cabinet doors creaking, yawning open, dishes clinking, the constant drizzle of the coffeemaker, footsteps thumping back up the stairs, another door creaking open, a quiet muffle. “Okay, time to get up. Breakfast time, wake-up time.”
“ ‘M’not hungry,” a small voice mumbles back. “Don’t want breakfast now.”
“Okay, well, we’re gonna get up, anyway,” Gerard’s indifferent voice mutters back, before two sets of footsteps disappear, awkward, slow and out of sync, down to the staircase again.
He waits until the footsteps disappear completely before he silently, subtly creeps over to the closet, sliding open the accordion doors in the slow, noiseless fashion he’s mastered, before taking quick glances over his shoulder, through the hair falling over his face. His head continues to swim as he hears the noises downstairs continue, a sort of distant, unspoken, deeply buried half-hatred towards both Gerard and himself prickling in his lungs.
He takes another fast glance over his shoulder before reaching quickly upward, burying his hands into the hanging shelf of folded towels, washcloths, pillow sheets, feeling across the uncomfortable fabrics, digging inside, desperate quickness to get in and get out, nails raking across material until his knuckle knocks against the hard glass he is looking for. Gripping it instantly, he digs the bottle out, messily unscrewing the top, his mind racing, fingers scrambling, before taking a deep but quick swig, a single half of a mouthful of vodka, burning all the way down before falling in his stomach, allowing the prickling in his chest to settle as well.
His breathing calms as he stands there, silently recapping the bottle and returning it to the pile in which he’d buried it in. In the muted white-design of their bedroom, he feels his mind calm, satisfied, sighing. All is well.
Everything is a collage of noises, movement, routine, blending painfully before Frank’s tired eyes, upon arriving in the kitchen. He leans against the doorframe, an ache forming in what feels like his entire body, thumping like a heartbeat beneath his muscles. He can see a blur of Gerard moving back and forth, opening things, setting things up, always cleaning, always where he needs to be, always re-fixing the consistently fucked-up.
“Ca’I have juice instead, please?”
Frank’s eyes trail Gerard before glimpsing at the littler body at the table, sat up on her knees with her cheek resting, bored or disappointed, in her palm, pudgy baby fingers of her other hand futzing with the spoon in the bowl set out in front of her.
“No, no, just eat what you have already, okay?” Frank hears Gerard say back, whizzing past Frank’s field of vision again, to open up more cabinets.
“What’s wrong with juice?” Frank murmurs, following Gerard with his eyes for a moment, before finding a place at the table, next to her. He casually takes her spoon and gives himself a small bite of oatmeal, tasting soggy Quaker instant with dinosaur marshmallows.
“Nothing’s wrong with juice,” Gerard mutters back, throwing together a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with trained, quick hands, reminding Frank of one of those master chef shows on the Food Network, making up exotic meals with elaborate hand movements and flamboyant pan tosses. “She’s just late…again.”
Frank steals a sip from her plastic green cup of milk, setting it back down in front of her before nudging the oatmeal bowl closer in some pathetic attempt to get her to eat it, hearing the again echo in his mind. He searches Gerard’s tone for that secret bitterness, a kind of punishing reminder, but decides to let it go for the time being.
“Lucy, come on, we’re gonna be late again, you wanna be late again?” Gerard says, brushing the top of her raggedy head with his palm as he collects together a lunch for her, tossing a sandwich, juice box, baggie of crackers, a cheese stick all into her Little Mermaid lunch bag.
“No…?”
“Then eat your breakfast, already, let‘s go.” Gerard says back, agitated.
Lucy is a good kid, this much Frank had determined. Or, at least, he figured any kid who actually found enjoyment in going to school, must have been a good kid. And being late once had made her upset, had made her cry and worry about getting in trouble with the teacher, working under the delusion that being late for kindergarten meant that all your friends would ostracize you. She takes on a worried tone, suddenly thinking she is in danger of being late again, and digs her fingers into her oatmeal, carefully picking out a slimy neon green dinosaur Frank could only recognize as ‘the long-neck kind’ from The Land Before Time. She licks the marshmallow off of her fingers, as Frank absentmindedly finds himself digging out a dinosaur as well, popping it into his mouth, tasting a few wet, sugar-coated oats, artificial sweetness.
“Don’t, please,” Gerard says above them, suddenly towering over them both, snatching the bowl away from them both.
“Don’t what?” Frank questions dully, glimpsing outside through the window above the sink.
“I’m not finished!” Lucy protests, twisting awkwardly in her chair to follow Gerard to the sink with her concerned gaze.
“No eating like animals at the table,” Gerard answers, sloshing the bowl under the faucet, letting the spoon clatter loudly into the bottom of the sink. “Remember? If you can’t eat with a spoon, you don’t eat all.” He suddenly shuts the water off and turned his head to Frank “I‘m talking to you, too, you know.”
Frank makes a subtle “well, fuck you” movement with his shoulders and eyebrow, glancing over at Lucy who is still turned strangely in her chair, tugging absently at one of her carefully made up pigtails. He reaches over to pat her hand, lightly swatting it away from her hair before bringing both hands over to try and fix her hair again.
“Frank, have you seen the dog?”
Frank comes to a slow stop, feeling soft still-baby hair between his fingertips, the vodka bubbling sickly in his stomach, a cold, dizzying sweat suddenly breaking out on his forehead. Gerard stands at the sink, turned at the waist, looking directly at him with an odd, glaring confusion.
“I don‘t…” Frank opens his mouth to say something, staring in on Lucy’s face turning towards his, oblivious, soft-skinned, unformed eye sockets simply staring back.
“She‘s not in the house, I haven‘t seen her all morning,” Gerard goes on behind him, zipping up the lunch bag.
“I don’t know, I don’t…I didn’t see him…Her, I mean, I haven’t…” He struggles loosely to make a coherent sentence, letting go of Lucy’s hair while she half-crawls half-slides out of her seat, trekking up to Gerard to collect her lunch bag.
“I haven’t seen her since…yesterday, I think,” Frank finally says, his voice turned to a quiet mutter, unable to make eye contact with Lucy for some reason. For a minute that feels far too long to Frank, the kitchen is finally, completely quiet, as Gerard’s quietly scornful gaze stays on Frank’s drooped head, before turning to look out the window.
“Fuck,” he hisses in a low whisper, looking out at the lawn with that irritable concern in his eyes, as Lucy runs off into the hall, pitter-pattering.
“What‘s wrong with Susie?” Lucy asks up to the both of them, coming back, clutching a baby doll by the top of its skull.
Frank’s eyes shoot to the wall, staring hard, his fingers pushing into the surface of the table, his jaw clenching.
“Nothing’s wrong, sweetie, just…go get your backpack, go get in the car,” Gerard tells her, taking her shoulder and turning her towards the direction of the front door in front of the stairwell, where her purple backpack is slung over the railing.
“Did she run away?” Lucy asks, simply turning back, oblivious, keeping her spot, her voice starting to descend into a vaguely sobbing worry, that subtle tremble of her lower lip beginning. Frank feels a burning sensation in his stomach, a sort of personified shame he can feel in his throat, behind his eyes.
“No, no, no, it’s okay, she just…she’s just gone for a little while,” Gerard adds in quickly, crouching down to a Lucy level, tucking her hair behind her ears. Frank’s eyes find the window again, and he watches as the sky gradually turns to a full overcast, dampening a dull gray over everything in sight.
“See, dogs,…dogs do that sometimes, they run away sometimes, but they come back, you know? They get hungry and then they come back for food. And I’m sure she misses us, too. Susie’ll come back eventually, okay?” Frank hears Gerard’s voice behind him on the floor, suddenly in that softer tone Frank didn’t think Gerard even knew he had before they had Lucy.
Frank takes the green plastic cup and pours the rest of the milk out into the sink, rinsing it out before sticking it into the top rack of the dishwasher, readjusting coffee mugs and wine glasses, puttering, keeping his eyes on the window, never looking down at them.
“We’ll go out looking for her after school, okay?” Gerard finishes, finally standing up, Lucy now hitched to his hip before he treks into the entrance hall, shrugging Lucy’s backpack onto his own opposite shoulder.
The sound of the front door creaking, whining open seems to wash a sense of relief over him, hearing them step outside, the distant sound of the car doors opening and slamming shut. Routine sounds. Going to school, to work, starting the day-sounds. Slumping over the counter, he finds himself burying his face in his hands, thinking of the color of the tarp, wondering, worrying how visible it is. Closing his eyes, he breaths into his palms, feeling that vague sensation in his throat, that kind of creeping desire to cry. On the other side of his hands, he can hear Gerard’s presence, returning to the kitchen, the swooshing sounds of his jacket sleeves pulling over his arms.
“Don‘t forget--three o‘clock,” he hears Gerard say suddenly in a familiar harried tone. Sliding his palms down to uncover his eyes, Frank watches as Gerard rakes a hand through his forever disheveled hair, scratching at his scalp, that constant, subtle bitterness flashing in the motion of his eyes. Frank’s eyes skitter away to the window again, unable to look at him, at this silent barrier between them.
“What…” Frank begins lowly, nervous, unconsciously hiding his face behind his hands, hiding from him. He tries to remember past discussions, things he has to do, has to go to, but his brain twists painfully, slow and stupid, vodka-damp. “…What’s at three…again?”
Gerard stops moving, stands in the doorway to the entrance hall, facing away from him. Frank sees his head turn ever so slight, over his shoulder, never making eye contact.
“She gets out at three? You have to pick her up at three. Remember?” Gerard says slowly, lightly. But even the lightness of it, the tone of it all, is enough. Frank can feel the hollowness inside of him, in his rib cage, can hear it in his voice. “I told you…yesterday.” He voice drops to a hurtful near-whisper, and Frank can feel his heart drain at the sound of it.
Frank stares at the back of his unkempt head before covering his eyes with his hands again, nodding from behind his palms.
“Remember?” Gerard repeats, not bothering to turn and see Frank’s nodding.
“No, yeah,” Frank lies, enunciating, taking his hands away. “No, I remember, yeah, um…” His voice trails off as his head turns, trying to look understanding, awake. He stands up from the table, slowly walking over to the key rack on the wall near the phone, where his stethoscope is hung. He unravels it from the rack and drapes it over the back of his neck, looking at the wall, both of them looking away.
“I’ll be there,” Frank says, nodding again. “I’ll…I’ll try to remember.”
“Okay,” Gerard responds lightly, and Frank can hear the rustling of the material of his jacket again. “They just don’t like them to be there past four…So just, you know…” His voice trails away into quietness, as his eyes shit towards the window, never looking at him. “Just don‘t forget.”
“Yeah, no, I’ll be there, I’ll…I’ll get out by then,” Frank continues in a low tone, cutting him, desperate to make him stop. “I’ll, um…”
Both of their voices trail off, turning the kitchen into a quiet cave, with the only sounds coming from the outside through the open front door, crickets chirping, cars passing by. Frank can feel the hotness in his cheeks, burning, a simmering embarrassment that makes him want to smack Gerard, punch him, shove him down a flight of stairs. He only forgot once before. Only once. They stay quiet.
“And remember, bring her straight to Mikey’s, ” Gerard says finally, pausing, falling into a brief silence. “At six…She’s staying over.”
“No, yeah, I know, I remember” Frank says quietly, eyes fixed to the counter. His fingers curl around the stainless steel edge of the sink, his stomach wringing like a wet washcloth, feeling like he is going to spew out his insides.
“So, I guess…yeah. Mikey’s,” Gerard murmurs, with half-hearted finality, shrugging absentmindedly.
“Yeah,” Frank responds weakly, walking into the living room and digging out scrubs from a laundry basket of folded clean clothes. In the living room he stays, crouched down over the laundry basket, fingering the pocket of the scrub pants, not wanting to look up. He waits for a shift, some sort of movement, Gerard to come over and kiss him goodbye, even if only on the cheek, wanting it more than expecting it. He hears the shutting of the front door instead, the starting of the car engine, the gravelly sound of the car pulling away, no kiss.
Alone in the house, free from watchful eyes, Frank stands in the kitchen in his scrubs, tilting a bottle of vodka into his travel mug of coffee, watering it down, hiding it inside--his morning headache dulling tool. He stands, watching the vaguely blue patch underneath the deck through the window, Hearing the flask empty, he clasps the travel mug closed, taking a hold of his messenger bag, car keys, sunglasses, the usual checklist, leaving the house, trying to forget the bright blue neon shade so visible amongst the dirt.
Frank drives to work, driving stiffly, cautiously, sunglasses shielding his eyes despite the lack of sun. Inside of his exam room, fluorescent tubes shoot a sickening shade of light into his retinas, blinding him. Squinting painfully, he forces smiles, running his stethoscope across the underside of beagle laid out in front of him.
“How long has been acting like this?” Frank asks the woman shifting uncomfortably in the chair on the other side of the room.
“Oh, well,” she twists, crosses her legs, fiddles with her thumbs in a certain nervousness, unable to look away from her pet. “A couple of days…? He just…stopped eating.”
Frank nods, sympathetic, calm, understanding. He writes down on his clipboard, plucking the stethoscope earplugs out to rest on his neck like a piece of jewelry. He wheels around the room, shuffling through papers, needles, tools.
“Is he going to be okay?” the woman finally asks, leaning forward to reach out for the animal. Frank stares down at his clipboard, peering up at them out of the corner of his eye. She rubs the dog’s skull, behind his ears, pets his back. His eyes fall downward back towards the clipboard, the papers, but stop at the dog’s face before they can get there. An eerily human expression of misery stares back through black eyes, furry eye sockets, and Frank falls silent.
Susie, he thinks, suddenly, repetitively, obsessively. I‘m sorry. I‘m sorry. I‘m sorry. I‘m sorry.
“Is he?” the woman asks again, insistent. Frank’s gaze flits over to her glare before his head falls back down to the clipboard, unable to look anymore.
“He’ll be alright,” is all he can croak out.
The tiled floor digs into his knees as he clasps the edge of the toilet bowl in the bathroom at the end of the day, alone, eyes slammed shut, feeling the bile rising in his throat. He vomits promptly, his stomach twisting and curling, hearing through the ringing in his ears, the disgusting sound of it splashing into the toilet water, the smell of it rising upward into his face. He coughs a watery cough, spit stringing from his lips, acidic taste on his gums. He grips the porcelain, feeling another wave of nausea hit, gagging and dry-heaving, thinking in some strange afterthought, that he also needs to pee.
He breaths deeply, gasps, and swallows all at once, stuck on the floor, the porcelain still gripped in his palms. He closes his eyes, smelling it, wanting to throw up again, before he smacks a hand up at the flush handle, weakly pushing it down. His hands falls back down onto his thigh, as he feels the weight of the flask still hidden deeply in his pants pocket. He palms the outer material, feeling the metal, breathing unevenly in the silence of the bathroom. The pockets are layered, though, one pocket sewn below another, and without looking, he reaches into the wrong pocket without realizing it.
Feeling a small piece of paper instead of the flask, he opens his eyes, unsure of what he is holding. His head dips down as he pulls out a small square, flipping it in his fingers briefly, before realizing that it is a crumpled, long lost, drug store-developed photo.
Frank and Gerard’s faces look back, smiling, strangely discolored. The photo curls hopelessly at the edges, white veins of glossy photo paper wrinkles scratching across their faces, and Frank struggles to remember how the photo got there. How long ago he slipped it into that pocket, forgot about it, and how many times he unknowingly put it through the wash. Why he kept it, carried it around with him, he can‘t even begin to remember. He fingers the photo, flipping it around, stopping when he notices writing on the back, blue pen hopelessly smudged, run, turned into an unintentional watercolor painting.
new years 12/31/03 ...don‘t forget to….
He can just barely make it out, some words running completely, a small bit missing. He finds himself staring at it, blankly confused. It feels stupid, something mushy and embarrassing from years ago that’s not even relevant anymore, but he can’t look away.
Finding his watch out of the corner of his eye, he blinks, glimpsing at it, noticing the time. Without thinking, he crumples the photo up again, hissing swears to himself, stuffing it back into his pocket, staggering quickly, rushed, awkwardly off the floor, out of the bathroom.
He drives towards the elementary school, feeling his heart against his rib cage. His eyes whip back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror, suddenly full of panic, dread, looking at his own sunken reddened gaze. He speeds through town, hating every other person on the road-- “Asshole, Cunt, Faggot, Shithead getouttamyway, Hey fuck you too, motherfucker!”-- jerking the steering wheel, parking crookedly. He fidgets, adjusting and re-adjusting his sunglasses, digging, burying through his messenger bag for his eye drops. In the rearview mirror he clumsily applies them, stretching and clamping his eyelids open, craning his head back, feeling the droplets trickle down his cheek bones when his hand shakes and he misses, fake tears dribbling downward. He falls out of the driver’s side door, feeling his scrub pants loose on his hips, always too big for him, before walking through the front doors, perking up, nothing is wrong.
He speed walks, rushing, keeping his head down, through the empty hallways, feeling like he is going to vomit again. The halls are empty, eerily quiet, and dim with the lights shutting off, janitors strolling by behind him, teachers walking out, shutting their doors behind them, shuffling papers, going home. His stomach squeezes and he begins to irrationally panic, hating everything and himself. He rushes past little lockers for little children, tacked up crayon drawings, What I Read This Summer, One Thing I’d Change About The World to Make It Better, the paper sticker alphabet lining the walls into infinity. His eyes dart around, looking for Lucy’s teacher’s name written somewhere, careful not to look into the classrooms through the windows on the doors, bizarrely paranoid about people seeing him. He zooms past doors, feeling completely lost and frustrated, until he suddenly, inexplicably hears his name amongst the kingdom of children.
“Mr. Iero?” A disembodied voice calls out to him, and he spins around, flustered, seeing a head peeking out from a quiet classroom door.
Lucy appears slowly at the guy’s feet, tugging nervously at the hem of her shirt, looking like an abandoned, traumatized orphan. Her backpack slumps on her shoulders and her teacher quickly reaches down to adjust the straps, zipping up the pockets she forgot to close herself. Frank stares at him for a moment, fixing the little things Frank knows he’s perfectly capable of fixing himself, and hates him instantly. He forces a grin, bolting forward, and grabs her, hugging her, freakishly desperate to get her out of the teacher’s grip.
“Hey, you,” he says lightly, and holds her to his chest, her legs dangling, squirming to get a grip around him. Her hair falls into his face, and she grins against his cheek. He feels the warmth of her face on his own, the fruit and flower scent of her kids’ shampoo, and when a jumble of hair accidentally tangles into his mouth, he’s not sure if it’s hers or his own.
“Where were you?” she mumbles upset, slowly recovering from her worry. She dislodges her head from his neck, her hand unknowingly gripping his chin and mouth.
“We really don’t like to keep the kids here past four,” Frank hears the teacher behind Lucy’s head. He keeps his eyes on Lucy, refusing to look at him for more than a second, noticing that fleeting look of contempt, sensing his judgment.
“I know, I know,” Frank says into Lucy’s palm , tired and fake, maneuvering her backpack off of her shoulders and swinging it onto his own, juggling her on his hips. His eyes find a clock above the door--four-forty-five, and he bites his lip, glaring, before quickly looking away. “I’m really sorry,” he sighs. Go fuck yourself, he thinks. “It’s just, you know--work.” He makes a vague waving gesture with his hand before lightly taking Lucy’s hand away from his mouth, their fingers curling into each other.
“Right,” the teacher says flatly, unconvinced but nodding his head anyway. Frank looks at him again and realizes it is the same teacher from the last time. When he forgot completely, drove home to an empty house, woke up from a two hour long nap with Gerard’s face in his own, yelling, “Where the hell is Lucy?!” Frank wonders if the teacher also hates Gerard, or plays favorites instead. Without thinking, Frank briefly unclasps a hand from his grip on Lucy’s back, to flip the teacher off, returning the favor. The teacher’s eyes flare widely his eyebrows furrowing, annoyed, disturbed, shocked. Frank sneers at him with Lucy’s head turned, oblivious, before walking away, just barely hearing the bitter, muttered, “Prick,” behind him.
Frank ignores it and lugs Lucy down the halls, back out to the car. Frank hates the teacher and the teacher hates Frank, and he simply does not give a shit anymore.
He drives to Mikey’s house in silence, glimpsing back at Lucy in the rearview mirror every once in a while. He keeps the radio off, half in fear of waking her up, half wanting, needing the silence, to be alone with his thoughts. By the time he is over the Goethels Bridge, Lucy’s constant hum-singing, Mary Had A Little Lamb, the Sesame Street theme song, starts to drawl out into a sleepy incoherence. Her head slumps against the seatbelts, fast asleep, and he drives stiffly, slowly, feeling his stomach churn.
He breathes out his nose, concentrating on the road, on steering, desperate and tempted to hit the brakes, roll down the window and throw up onto the road. He squirms, unable to keep still, flexing his hand and taking his grip off the steering wheel, feeling sweat on his palms, on his lips. He catches himself in the rearview mirror and his glance glares away, feeling sweaty, ratty, ugly, worthless, and unable to do anything about it. He wants to take a bath, a brief warm shower to make himself feel human. He contemplates, wondering if he could shower at Mikey’s, wonders if this is socially acceptable or weird. He knows he won’t actually shower because he hates showering in other people’s houses, and he hates Gerard’s family.
A feeling like tacks being punctured into his stomach wall prickles inside of him, feeling the desire or desperate need to escape. He fantasizes instantly, picturing himself slamming on the brakes, pulling over. He imagines running out of the car, leaving Lucy there on the side of the road, Gerard already at Mikey’s house, everyone oblivious, abandoning them both, running into the woods to never return.
He drives to Mikey’s house in Queens instead, with Gerard’s silhouette waiting for him on the small porch. Frank gets out of the car, and they watch each other, wordlessly, their bodies turning into inky blues in the descending dusk. He turns around, not wanting to look at him anymore, and opens the backseat door, unlatching Lucy from her car seat. As he unbuckles her, struggling, always feeling like the car seat is some complex security system built for the military, he can hear Gerard’s footsteps becoming louder and louder.
“It’s seven,” is all Gerard says, his entire body suddenly, abnormally close to Frank’s, his voice closer to him than it’s been in months. Frank knows, though. He’s an hour late. He blinks, never turning around to face him, hitching Lucy to his hip, before swerving to the house and walking away without a word. Halfway to the porch, Lucy begins to squirm, wanting out, fighting him, and he sets her down on the ground, too tired to fight back. She sprints off into the house by herself, squealing for Mikey, and Alicia’s voice squeals back from inside the warmth of the house.
Frank continues towards the noise, dragging himself forward until a firm hand on his shoulder, sternly clasping his collar bone stops him in his tracks. He shuts his eyes, feeling his brain throb, and for the first time ever, is desperate to get into their house, if only to have a drink, to get away from his touch.
“What?” he says wearily, almost hissing, hostile. He turns unwillingly, chasing the tug of his shoulder and stares hard at the dark neighborhood over Gerard’s shoulder, at the ground. He listens for Gerard’s voice, his inevitable argument, that spurting poison, dumping of freezing cold water over his head, but hears nothing.
Their eyes find each other, even in the darkness, and Frank looks at him, blankly confused. Gerard’s lips part to say something, the look in his eyes wanting a fight, but closes his mouth, suddenly lost for words. In the black dusk of the front yard, they stand in their silence, confused at each other, at themselves, unsure of what they are supposed to do now.
“What?” Frank repeats again his voice weaker. He shifts uncomfortably under Gerard’s surprisingly firm grip, before he is suddenly full of lead, hardened and tired. Sickened by it, Frank finds his hand quickly wrapping around Gerard’s wrists, yanking it off, shoving him away.
“Fuck off,” he mutters, turning towards the house and marching away, with no more words left in him.
He huffs into the house, suddenly wanting to punch walls. He thinks of the teacher again, despising him, of Gerard, of everyone, disgusted by them all. He feels a rage creeping below his skin, but the moment he steps into the house, that yellow warmth of a lit house alive in the night, he freezes, self-conscious, totally isolated in his anger, paranoid, silent.
“Hey, you,” Alicia says, holding plates, swerving around the kitchen table to come right up to him, leaving a kiss on his cheek. He stands still in the kitchen, feeling lost and out of place. Alicia and Mikey stand with their backs to him at the counter, finishing dinner for themselves and for Lucy, their arms touching, working as a team. Frank stares at their backs, their murmuring heads, the fleeting glimpses of their turned faces, smiles on the side views of their lips, failing to understand it all. Lucy patters aimlessly on the floor, sucking on a spoon.
“I love spaghetti,” she says jovially, pointlessly, bouncing on her heels.
“You know what? Me too,” Mikey says down to her.
Frank blinks, taking it all in. He doesn’t understand it and fears it, not knowing how else to feel. He wonders if Mikey and Alicia cook together every night, if their house is always this bright, warm, clean, welcoming. Their plates are matching colors, wine glasses set out for the grown-ups, decorative towels hanging pointlessly on drawer handles. The kitchen is full of the smell of spices, marinara, hot pots, cooking heat, Criminal Minds on the television in the next room over, playing to an empty living room. He wonders, secretly, if it is all a façade, if they only act like this when other people are around--In his bitterness, he hopes this is the case.
He shuffles around pointlessly, unsure of what to do with himself. Lucy is here, at the right place--he managed to accomplish this task with almost no fail. But he has never done this before, the dropping off, he has no idea when he is supposed to turn around and go back home.
Behind him, he hears the front door shut, quiet footsteps patting the carpet, and suddenly Gerard is behind him, so close to him, but never touching. Frank refuses to look behind him, refuses to look him in the eye. He can feel Gerard glaring at the back of his head, and he suppresses the urge, the fantasy, to turn around and scream like an animal, right into his face.
“Where’s her things?” Gerard says lowly, flatly, and Frank stares, concentrated, at the wall.
Frank’s eyes shoot back over to Lucy, his eyes moving only, and his stomach drops. There a sort of boiling to simmering of noise at this as Mikey and Alicia turn around to look at him, everyone‘s eyes on him, a humiliation staring contest. Frank looks away from them, at Lucy. He has gotten her here, but somehow forgot utterly to run back to their house, grab her everything--pink sleepover bag, toothbrush, blanket, stuffed turtle, read-to-sleep book, pajamas, clothes. She stands in the kitchen without any resources, unequipped.
“Oh,” Frank says softly, petrified. “Yeah.”
He doesn’t have to turn around to look Gerard in the eye to see, feel, the gaze of disgust burning into the back of his skull.
“Well, we have extra toothbrushes,” Alicia says, finally, perking up.
“She can just sleep in her clothes,” Mikey suggests, shrugging. “We’ll put them through the wash tomorrow.”
Frank blinks, stuck in a state of loving them and hating them all at once. He watches them turn their backs to the counter and he feels like a failure, seeing this. When he forgets, they remember. When he fucks up, they fix it. They don’t have any children and they are better parents than Frank and Gerard ever were--They have dinner already made before Frank and Gerard are even through the front door.
He stays silent, feeling Gerard burn cigarette holes into the back of his neck with his eyes.
“You forgot all of that,” Gerard whispers flatly, quietly, so only Frank can hear. Lucy stands behind Mikey and Alicia’s legs, hugging their knees, snuggling into their hands as they lower down to rustle her hair. Frank blinks, unable to look away from Lucy and unable to look Gerard in the eye. Lucy grins and pulls her shirt up and out, turning it into a makeshift tutu, before spinning around the kitchen clumsily, suddenly a ballerina. He stares at Mikey, trying to understand it. What is Mikey doing that he isn’t? Lucy loves seeing Mikey, so much sometimes that Frank wonders if she loves them more than she loves Gerard and himself. Frank is oblivious, desperate to know what he is doing wrong, and what Mikey has done to buy all of her love.
“Let’s just go,” he hears Gerard finally mutter tiredly, turning towards the door. “Okay, we’re leaving,” he calls into the kitchen as he walks away.
“Okay, say goodbye, Lucy,” Frank hears Alicia‘s voice behind him, Alicia taking Lucy’s shoulders and turning her towards the archway into the kitchen where Frank stands. “You’re not gonna see them until Monday.”
Before Frank can register anything, Lucy is already running towards him, throwing herself at him, tossing her hands over his shoulders. He grunts unintentionally, umph, somewhat knocked in the stomach, scoops her up, holding her butt, burying his face into her arm, smelling her skin.
“Bye, Dad,” she grins, muffling into his ear and hair. He feels her little fingers tangle into small curls of the ends of his hair, twiddling.
“I love you, Lucille,” he says, his voice strained, squeezing her tighter. He holds her like this for a moment, without realizing, holding her as tight as he can, trying to prove something. He listens for her back, her “I love you, too,” but instead, she fights, struggling to suddenly get out of his grip. He sets her down, biting his tongue, feeling his heart fall, staring at a wall, as she runs over to Gerard. Gerard grunts as well, getting hit in the chest as she dives into him, already kneeling, ready to catch her.
“Bye, Daddy,” she squeaks into his collar bone.
“Bye, baby,” Gerard sighs back, hitching her onto his hip a bit. She leans over the hold of his forearm, pushing against his chest, before taking his face, gripping his jaw, squeezing his cheeks with both hands.
“You wanna gimme a kiss?” he asks lightly, muffled by her grip on his face. She nods and then leans forward, planting a kiss on his lips, Gerard making a stupid muah sound effect as he pulls away. Instantly, she squirms for him too, until he sets her down, letting her run back to Mikey, the good, caring parents she’s never had.
Frank finds himself staring at them again, still struggling to grasp it, hating it. He doesn’t understand how Mikey and Alicia can coexist and not want to kill each other. How they have managed this build this kind of effortless, symbiotic peace, and Frank feels like his skin is falling apart at the seams.
The sound of the front door creaking back open and Gerard’s steps disappearing back out into the dusk causes him to suddenly wake up, turn around and walk straight out as if he has walked into a conversation he was not supposed to hear.
In the darkness, the door shuts behind him, locking them out, allowing them to leave and go back home, free of responsibility and alone with each other. Frank strides across their front lawn back to his car, feeling strangely misplaced, oddly brain damaged. A fluttering sensations flits in his stomach as he gnaws at his lower lip, dreading that taste, that acrid wet feeling of everything coming back up, of getting sick and having to feel all of it. He fingers his car keys in his baggy scrub pocket, staring at the dark ground, unable to look at Gerard, jangling the keys around mindlessly, stuttering, nervous, before he is grabbed.
Gerard’s hand grasping his wrist catches him off guard, makes him jump, as fingers squeeze around his bones, shockingly rough. Frank’s head snaps back up at him, a feeling of fire in his chest, wanting to fight out, snap at him, pull his hair out.
”What?” Frank suddenly snaps, his hiss ripping through the black night. He finds Gerard’s glare, the nighttime blue tinge of the whites of his eyes, and automatically fights, adrenaline spiking through his veins, desperately trying to tug his arm out of Gerard’s grip, yanking, scratching, jerking.
“Gimme the keys, Frank,” Gerard commands, grumbling, straining against Frank’s tugging. Their hands smack at each other, scratching, desperate fingers gnawing at each other, all in some strange, pathetic cat fight of a battle.
“What the fuck?--No,” Frank sputters, yanking the keys out of Gerard’s curling fingers and spinning around, curling over as if to shield Gerard away from them with his entire body. He feels Gerard above him, on him, their bodies shoving against each other.
“Frank, you’re not driving--”
“What the fuck’s wrong with you--I’m not even drunk, what‘s wrong with you--Fuck off,” Frank grits, writhing against Gerard’s reaches and quick, stabbing grabs at the keys, pushing against each other, their legs knocking, kicking at each other, wrestling. He hides the keys away in his enclosed fist holding his fists to his chest, protecting them, guarding them, quickly, jumpily, turning away from Gerard’s spidery hands, bizarrely desperate and full of rage.
He fights it for as long as he can before a firm hand is on his shoulder, clawing into his flesh, biting through him, shooting strange bolts of burning through his muscles, yanking him around with a certain forcefulness. Before Frank can see what is going on, Gerard is suddenly in his face, towering over him, shoving him around, before Gerard’s hand grabs at his fists, his fingernails digging into the tops of Frank’s hands, prying his fingers open, ripping the keys out of his grip with a violent wrenching that pulses back to Frank, shoving him down.
Frank’s stomach curls as he stutters backwards, tripping over his own legs, before he thumps onto the ground with a impact that punches him out, pulls the air from his lungs. His spine aches from the hit as he squeezes his eyes shut, squirming, filling with the urge to kick at Gerard’s legs, to maul him to ribbons and shreds, to make him hurt. The moment he tries to shift, stand up, move his back, however, an ache shoots up his bones, keeping him still and stiff. He flinches and feels a groan in his chest, an escaping of a whine, tears springing behind his eyes, inexplicably, uncontrollably.
A groan escapes his lips, fighting back a gasping sob, the pain in his spine bruising him into a sadness that swells underneath his ribs.
“Shit,” Gerard whispers in a small, exhausted, muttered tone, standing above Frank, gazing down at him with a pair of solemn, gloomy eyes. He finds himself burying his face in his hands, rubbing away at his skin, sighing. “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, defeated, letting his hands fall slack to his sides.
Frank releases another crying groan, coughing involuntarily at the burn in his shoulder blades, piercing through his muscles, stabbing his chest.
“You pushed me,” Frank spits vehemently, shocked, his face squeezing, wrinkling into disgust. “You fucking hit me.”
“I’m sorry,” Gerard repeats, stressfully, as Frank can see his body looming, moving above him, bending towards him. “You know I didn’t mean to, come one--I‘m sorry.”
“…No…” Frank mutters, not sure why he said anything, before he is turning away from Gerard, instinctively shifting and rolling away from his looming arms, desperate to get away from him, to shun him out.
“No, c’mon,” Gerard mutters softly, digging his arms underneath Frank’s back, gathering Frank towards him, trying to pick him up.
“No, get away,” Frank grimaces, squirming and tugging out of Gerard‘s grasp, randomly, loudly spitting and gagging grass out of his mouth. He feels Gerard’s arms encasing him, trapping him, pulling him into a sort of bizarre hug before he is yanked forcefully to his feet, his knees weak and falling out underneath him.
“C’mon, let‘s just--c‘mon,” is all Gerard can whisper as he stuffs the keys into his jeans pocket, silently victorious, lugging Frank back towards the car.
“Fucking prick,” Frank spits bitterly, feeling the ache in his back and the pain in his ribs.
“I said I was sorry,” he hears Gerard mutter shakily as they awkwardly stumble over each other’s feet, Gerard trying to keep a hold on Frank while opening the car door at the same time, while avoiding stumbling over their tangling legs.
“I’m not drunk,” Frank says before he firmly, finally pushes himself out of Gerard’s imprisonment, and thumping his palms into Gerard‘s chest, shoving him backwards.. He steps back, looking Gerard in the eye, glaring into him, his fingers curling into tight fists. He find Gerard’s glare shooting back at him, a silent, tight-lipped, contemptuous gaze.
“Can you please just get in the fucking car?” Gerard murmurs lowly through gritted teeth, flinching while his feet shift to find balance.
“Fuck you,” Frank spits back violently, and a match lights, burns, and flares inside of him, jolting into his arms and forcing another quick shoving hit into Gerard’s chest, spontaneous electric volts running through his veins. He hears Gerard grunt, stutter backwards, squeeze his face in a caged pain, keeping silent in repressed rage, breathing heavily through his nose.
“Frank,” Gerard starts quietly, scarily soft, and Frank’s skin crawls.
“You followed me here,” Frank gasps, suddenly feeling his heart beat oddly underneath his collar bones, his throat swelling, a burning, wet sensation forming behind his eyeballs. “You fucking followed me here--you piece of shit.”
“We need to fucking talk,” he hears Gerard whisper harshly amidst the jangling of the car keys, squished inside of Gerard’s forming fist, and his stomach twists into cold, wet, painful knot.
“You’re a fucking psychopath,” Frank nearly shouts, declaring, straight into Gerard’s face. “I can’t believe you’d fucking follow me here--I got her here--What, you think I couldn’t do it? You think I can’t do anything? What the fuck’s your problem?!”
He vaguely sees Gerard’s expression close up, tightening, turning to silence, letting out a sigh through his nose. He waits for Gerard to say something again, something stupid, a pathetic attempt to be rational and sane, but instead he watches as Gerard’s eyes slowly open, his features slackened, before he promptly brushes past Frank, finding his way into the driver’s seat, slamming the door shut. A quiet, blunt fuck you, too.
Frank stands in the darkness, staring hard at Mikey’s house, the yellow squares of light through the living room windows glaring into his retinas. The emphysemic noise of the engine wheezing to life--of Gerard starting Frank’s car--rakes inside of Frank’s brain, reminding him of his failure. He stares into the night, refusing to look back at the silhouette of Gerard’s head staring back at him, glaring, waiting. Out of the corner of his eye, he can see the silhouette shifting, sliding forward, an arm reaching out towards him, the click of the passenger side door’s lock unlocking, the electric slide of the window rolling down.
“Just get in…” Gerard mutters softly, tiredly, and it is enough. Frank slowly shuts his eyes, feeling the burning in his eyes elevate. Gerard has the keys, Gerard is in the driver’s seat--accusing and speaking volumes without ever opening his mouth.
Frank turns silently, opening the door, shuffling into the seat, jerkily slamming the door shut beside himself, staring hard at the car floor. He hears the constant grumble of the car beneath him, behind the sound of the key chains swaying and tinkling in the ignition, the sound of their breathing. They sit in their stewing silence, unmoving, sifting. Frank finds the image of Mikey’s house in the side view mirror and stares into it, watching the yellow squares of living room lights, the vague shapes of furniture, their familiar faces bobbing in and out of the windows. He glares into their life through distant panes of glass, hating it, wanting it.
They sit in their car, alone with each other, in danger of each other.
“Can’t believe you’d fucking follow me here,” Frank’s harsh whisper grates through the silence, through his gritted teeth, his darkened eyes stuck on the window, facing away from Gerard. The sounds of Gerard shifting, silent in response, moving around, palming the steering wheel, purposeless, uncomfortable motions, makes Frank’s skin crawl.
“You never trusted me,” Frank breaths shakily, his irises quivering. In the darkness, a faint blue light from radio screen, the glow-in-the-dark volume and tuning buttons, emit onto their paled skin, painting them in shades of bruises.
Gerard’s breathing, a long soft sigh through his nose as he tightly shuts his lips, impales Frank’s ears, so loud amongst their stillness. He waits for that shaking response, the quiet, calm, yet bitter argument, but hears nothing. The feeling of the car tugging forward suddenly shakes him somewhat, and Frank stirs, watching Mikey’s house shrink and shutter into the distance as Gerard drives them away without a word.
The black and blue motion blur of tree shadows against the night sky, headlights zooming past them down the highway and streetlamps flitting like dragonflies over their shoulders, hazes past Frank’s view as he keeps his gaze stuck out the window, unable to look at Gerard anymore.
They drive past the same lights, buildings, sights, across the same bridges that they’ve been through together one million times before, apathetically glancing down a the floor, having since forgotten any magic that they might have found there once. Frank’s eyes shoot to the floor when he thinks he hears the subtlest sound of clinking, glass tinkling against each other--liquor bottles hidden in a crate on the backseat floor for weeks. His eyes flicker at Gerard, wondering if Gerard hears the noise as well, irrelevantly panicking, but the sudden flash of Gerard’s face, a streetlamp tossing a quick splash of disappearing white over his skin before he drives past it--his eyes sunken, cemented to the windshield, thumbprint bruises of bags underneath them--A forlorn hue visible in his eyelids that Frank used to think was beautiful, different, artistic, that is now just sad to look at.
The slow turns back into their neighborhood cause Frank to lower in his seat, slowly feeling his lungs fill with an unusual sense of dread. There is a silence in the car while turning back into their driveway that neither of them think they will ever get used to. Usually Lucy is with them, behind them in the backseat, but in that moment, it is just the two of them, and they have no idea how to live with each other. Frank closes his eyes, silently smelling the air, smelling the subtle unique Gerard scent that he’s picked up on after all these years--like a smell that only a dog could sense.
Gerard pulls into their driveway and shuts Frank’s car off, knocking them both down with a cement-heavy silence. Frank feels his stomach churn, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling, his toes curling, sensing the screaming, the biting, the crying, even before it all comes crashing down. His gaze flutters over to Gerard, watching him sit there, staring at the steering wheel, at his own fingers clenched around the leather, his eyes own steel-fixed downward. The silence between them chokes them both like suffocating, ensnaring vines, until they both snap and have to move.
They get out of the car in a synchronization they didn’t plan, both quietly, promptly opening their doors, hopping down onto the blacktop, and shutting the doors behind them. Frank stands on the pavement, grateful for the large mass of an entire car separating them, keeping them from contact, and listens to Gerard shuffling, walking away, back up onto their porch.
Frank trails behind him, nowhere else to go. He looks up at their house, dark squares of lightless windows and empty rooms of meaningless furniture like a dollhouse gathering dust, hating the house. He nearly turns around upon seeing it, tempted to spin on his heels and begin sprinting down the street. He imagines himself running away, escaping, but has no idea where he’d go. To his parent’s house? To his only friend Bob’s house? On a train to Vermont? He imagines walking into the ocean until his head disappears.
The wood of the porch creaks underneath his steps until he stops. Only one step up, he can’t bring himself to go any further, can’t bring himself to go back inside. Inside they will have to face each other, they won’t have any choice--the walls will force them together like cellmates in prison. He thinks of their bedroom, their bed, themselves, facing away from each other, facing the walls. He thinks of the silence between them, neither of them talking, touching, but neither of them honestly sleeping.
He falls onto the steps, unable to stand, propping his knees up and burying his face into his hands. He can feel it in his chest, suddenly, the tiredness that has been coming and going for the past couple of months, years maybe, the exhaustion that sleep couldn’t fix. Behind him, he can hear the familiar click of a lighter, the flaring of flame, lips clamping around a cigarette, sucking, sighing out tired smoke. He shifts and watches Gerard on the porch beside him, smoking and dragging himself across the wood. His cigarette pack is stuffed cleverly into the back pocket of his jeans, hidden away from everyone’s eyes, except for Frank.
He buries his face back into his hands upon seeing it, wanting to fall into a hole. Then, before he can sense it, see it coming, it comes at him like a punch in the chest, knocking him out. His throat squeezes, his face contorting, as his eyes fill with hot puddles. He slaps a hand over his eyes, and a sob escapes him before he can fight it. And before he can realize what he is doing, it overcomes him, a silhouette of grief out of nowhere, and he is sobbing quietly into his hands and knees, shaking on the steps, crying over everything and nothing.
For a long moment, Frank hears nothing but silence behind him, even the shuffling noises, the smoking sounds have ceased. He can sense Gerard’s stare, that empty glare, but doesn’t bother to turn around to see it. In his fantasy, Gerard walks over to him, stubs out his cigarette, puts a hand on his back, pulls him inward. When he blinks back to reality, the slow, awkward steps backward, the pauses, footsteps going back into the house, is all he hears. He cries, hearing one final pause, before a long, drawn-out sigh preludes the creaking and clacking shut of the front door, disappearing into the house, leaving Frank by himself, shaking on the steps.
The silence behind him is enough to shove him further, sobbing quietly, harshly into his palms and wrists, the abandonment. It is enough, he thinks. He knows what the silence means, the sense of finality behind it, the screaming, shaking, belittling anger behind it. He imagines himself running away again, leaving Gerard forever. He imagines himself away from Gerard, everything they’d built coming to a brutal, collapsing demolition.
He has no idea if what he has between himself and Gerard is love anymore. He has no idea what he and Gerard have anymore.
He only knows that whatever fragments they have left don’t have much left to live for.