Freedom in Falling Page 18

  "All right."

  When Noah turned around West was gone. Where he'd stood was nothing. He'd even closed the door behind him.

  That was what finally broke Noah. A closed door. Closed meant gone. Closed meant over. Done. Finished. Alone.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Picassiette

  So that was it.

  The door didn't reopen and spit West back into his life. Noah waited, just to be sure. The door stayed shut. The space West had filled remained empty.

  Noah wanted to cry. His eyes burned with the need, but for once they didn't fall. Maybe all those years spent trying to hold them in, to give no sign that harsh words were hitting home, had finally managed to disconnect his tear ducts and he would never have to worry about it again. But he really wanted to cry this time. It would be bracing.

  His whole body thrummed with electricity and since he couldn't cry he paced, circling, circling, moving like he was caught in a whirlpool.

  Now what? All that work, gone. All that work, wasted. He could use it, West had signed the release, they had a written agreement and he hadn't taken that with him when he walked out, he'd even give his blessing after a fashion, but Noah couldn't imagine touching any of those prints again without getting burned. He couldn't imagine hanging them on a wall and faking a smile while a room full of people um-ed and oh-ed over his life torn open. A room of false Wests when he couldn't have the real one. That would be torture. He couldn't do it. Wouldn't.

  He would have to start over. Again.

  The space in his chest where he was meant to feel things, the space where there should be a heart beating to keep him alive, that space was empty. It was a black hole that pulled and pulled and what the fuck was he supposed to do?

  Everything was gone.

  He'd opened the door so many times, just to be sure West wasn't on the other side of it. Each time his heart surged. And each time it plummeted just as fast. No West. Once, the steps he heard on the stairs were the tenant a few doors down. She stopped and stared up at him. Noah slammed the door and went back to pacing.

  Outside the sun dropped lower, disappearing behind the skyline, and he got no closer to a solution.

  He didn't remember if he locked the studio door on his way out, but that mattered less than being anywhere else than the place where everything had fallen apart. Even the cold biting into his fingers wasn't enough to make him turn back and check.

  LIAM'S TOWNHOUSE IN the 'burbs was on the kind of quiet street that made Noah twitchy. It reminded him too much of his parents' house. That quiet idyllic heteronormative suburban lifestyle that had always felt like slowly smothering beneath lawn care and kitschy garden decorations, mirrored gazing balls throwing back distorted reflections that made him feel like a fairytale monster. But he'd spent hours trying to sleep in his apartment before giving up, getting back in the car and driving. He hadn't known where he was going until he got there, the sunrise peering in his windshield as he killed the engine.

  It was seven a.m. on a school day which meant Liam wouldn't be home for hours. Noah hadn't planned this well, or at all. But he couldn't stay home and he couldn't go the studio or the gallery. He couldn't go to the coffee shop. Every option had the possibility of West. If anyone said his name, Noah might actually break in half. He was already so brittle he was one chip away from complete breakdown.

  Liam's stoop was cold when he sat on it, stretching his legs out over the steps to gather as much winter sun as he could. Maybe he fell asleep. The next thing he knew, the door was open and he was lying on his back, looking up into his brother's face.

  "No school today?" Noah asked.

  "No school. I took the day off." Liam reached around him to collect the newspaper sitting on the stoop beside Noah. It hadn't been there when he first sat down. The initial surprise on his brother's face had vanished, replaced with a thoughtful frown. Liam held out a hand to hoist him to his feet. "You coming in?"

  Noah let himself be lifted.

  "You want to talk about—"

  "No."

  Liam nodded and installed Noah on the couch. "When was the last time you ate?"

  "I don't want to eat."

  "Humor me."

  "Did you hear the joke about paper?" he asked in a flat voice.

  Liam still huffed out a short laugh as though Noah had finished the punchline. He set a bowl of cereal in Noah's hands. "Eat that."

  The bowl was full almost to the top and his stomach turned over in protest at the thought of eating any of it. He stabbed at the Cheerios with the spoon, forcing them beneath the milk again and again. Take that, you gritty little fuckers. "Your cereal sucks."

  "You're welcome." Liam dropped onto the couch beside him and hooked an elbow on the back. His jaw was dark with new stubble and he was dressed in jeans and a grey henley. His hair hung in dark ringlets on his forehead. Noah was so used to seeing him in his teacher clothes that he'd forgotten he must own other things. He hadn't seen this version of his brother in months.

  The movie started while Noah was still forcing cereal into his face, chewing and swallowing mechanically. The opening notes of Beauty and the Beast filled the room. Liam took the empty bowl from his hands and set it aside. Noah slithered deeper into the couch, burrowing into the cushions with his shoulders pulled up around his ears. A blanket found its way around him. He didn't even realize he was crying until Liam patted his head. Noah landed hard against his brother's side and stayed there, an echo of every past heartbreak going all the way back to Jimmy Turner in the sixth grade who didn't like him because he was too much. It had been a different couch then, a different blanket, but still Liam's shoulder and still the same movie. He'd been living the same day over and over again forever.

  "You ready to talk?" Liam's voice was hushed as the credits finally rolled. He set a box of tissues on the coffee table where Noah could reach them. "What happened?"

  Fresh pain stabbed Noah in the heart. For a long time he couldn't breathe, his throat stopped up with the need for something he couldn't have. Not West. Not just him. It was deeper than that. The need to finally belong—somewhere, anywhere. To finally do this shit right. Why was he always getting everything so fucking wrong? He'd tied his hopes to the wrong balloon again even though he should have known better. So maybe it was his fault that it had burst again. Just once he wanted to Goldilocks his way through one fucking time instead of coming out wrong.

  His voice was a croak, too close to a sob. "I won't be needing that plus one for the wedding after all."

  "Ah."

  "I thought things were going well." He pulled a tissue and started shredding it. "But I was wrong. He backed out on me. I'm too much and he can't be seen with me."

  Liam stilled. "Did he say that?"

  "Not in those exact words but close enough. He might as well have."

  "What did he say exactly?"

  "I don't know. I can't remember. He couldn't deal with it right now." His voice had gone flat again, but every syllable still cut like glass.

  "Is he out?"

  "Fuck if I know. I thought he was, but he never talked about it. He barely talked to me. But he didn't seem to mind the public displays all that much. We just fit. Together. I thought maybe even—" He stopped, hands filling in all the shapes of things he couldn't put into words. Some of them hurt too much to say when he hadn't even gotten to say them to West. Now he never would. "I thought things were going well."

  Liam sighed. That was always a bad sign. It meant he was about to say something Noah wouldn't like. Liam pulled him back down onto the couch when he tried to get away. "I'm sorry, Noah. I really am. I want you to be happy. You deserve that. But, do you want to know what I really think?"

  "No." A pause. "Yes."

  "I respect the hell out of how you put yourself out there. You want to do something and you go after it. Your relationships are like that too. But not everyone can keep up and you need to understand that. They can't throw themselves into experience and damn the consequen
ces. Maybe he was one of them. And if that's the case maybe it's better that this happened now. Before you got any deeper."

  "Then he should have fucking said so," Noah shouted, lashing out with one foot, shoving the coffee table so hard his cereal bowl jumped.

  Liam reached out to steady the bowl and sat back, watching him with all that endless patience. "You done?"

  "No. No, I'm not fucking done. Don't you take his side." Noah leapt up so he could pace again. His whole body was quivering like a storm and he couldn't stop that either. He could only hold on and keep moving. If he kept moving nothing could touch him.

  "I'm not taking his side. I'm saying that maybe you should talk to him. Calmly."

  "Fuck that. Just fucking—fuck." He circled faster. "I never asked him to out himself. I would have done whatever he wanted if he'd only asked, but he knew who I was before we started. And I thought he understood. I thought he wanted the same things. I thought he wanted me. All of me. Not just the fun parts but everything."

  He went cold as he finally let out the worry he'd been holding so tightly to. Everything had been fine until that night. Maybe he was the Scooby-Doo villain all along. Always too much. And West dying to get away from him. Using any excuse to push him away. The timing wasn't right. He knew that. He knew it. But it was so close and West had been so cold. The puzzle pieces fit together well enough that they might as well be the right ones. His throat closed up. "What's so wrong with how I am? Someone please just tell me and I'll fix it. I can fix it."

  Liam picked him up and pushed him back onto the couch. "There's nothing wrong with you, Noah."

  He wished he could believe that. Liam didn't lie to him even when Noah wished he would. But he was too tired to fight anymore. Every time he tried, he saw West's face right before he'd left him.

  Those lips really were cruel. He'd known it all along.

  HE WOKE UP HOURS LATER, face down on the couch, feeling like he'd been run over by a steamroller in a cartoon. Someone should come and fill him back up with a bicycle pump.

  He flopped over onto his back, kicking off the blanket Liam had tucked around him. The room was dark, the only light filtering in from the streetlight outside and a night light plugged into the outlet in the kitchen. It must be past midnight. It had that kind of feel. The house was quiet save for the quiet hum of the fridge in the kitchen and the tick of time passing. Honey slow. Everything had felt too fast earlier. The whole world had been whirling so fast it could spin him off into oblivion. Now it was slow. Almost dirge-like.

  He was tired.

  He couldn't remember the last time he had felt this tired.

  Crying and an anxiety attack were good for one thing. He was completely wrung out, all excess emotion squeezed out, and his thoughts ran smooth again. It was better than a factory reset.

  Liam had left a box of animal crackers on the coffee table for him along with a glass of water. The water was room temperature so it must have been there a while waiting for him. Noah ate and drank. His jaw moved up and down as he chewed. His throat hurt when he swallowed.

  Liam didn't eat animal crackers. He bought them just for Noah, a routine they'd started years ago, the origins lost to his poor memory. But it never failed. When Noah was in need, his brother and a box of cookies would be there to comfort him. He turned the box over to look for the expiration date printed on the side. It was months away still. Just once he would like to outlive a box of animal crackers. That didn't seem so much to ask. He snorted and bit the head off a monkey.

  And slowly, slowly, slowly his wheels began to turn again.

  LIAM TIPTOED INTO THE living room, towel still wrapped around his shoulders to catch the drips from his damp hair, and ground to a halt when he spotted Noah, awake and alert. "What are you doing up? It's 5am. I didn't think you knew five o'clock existed."

  "I couldn't sleep anymore. I made coffee." Noah pointed towards the kitchen in case Liam had forgotten where his own coffeemaker lived. "And I stole some of your paper, I hope you don't mind."

  "Help yourself." Liam rounded the couch to see what he was working on.

  So far it was a mess. Papers were scattered in little heaps all over the coffee table, some of them bearing coffee rings from when Noah had spilled earlier. Sketches in ballpoint pen splashed across some, scribbles and notes connecting things together, blocking out others, a banner of NOs in aggressive block letters running through one sketch that he'd torn off and tossed away. Liam slid a paper from beneath the others and held it up. He squinted. Replaced it.

  "What is it going to be?"

  Noah splayed his hands over the piles, the lines unreadable to his fingertips though he knew every line he had drawn. "I got an idea for a way to redo my show." He fanned the papers further apart, rearranging them into an order that, for the moment, only made sense to him. "I think I can do it in time. Rig a few things up. It might be a little raw. I don't have the time for polish or the..." He knocked on his head. "Brain. My head hurts."

  "You need something for it?"

  "I already took. It's just tension. It's starting to come back, but the plan helps. It makes me feel like I'm not sitting around with my head up my ass."

  He scrubbed a hand through his hair and reached for his coffee cup again. The coffee helped him think. It kept his mind from wandering too far into the weeds. Exhaustion buzzed at the edge of his senses, but now overlaying it was a little excitement. It was different than working with West. Then it had felt like flying. The two of them egging each other on. Free. Fearless. He missed that surety, but this was good too. He could work with this, the need to be doing, to turn the pain still edging every minute like gold leaf on Bible pages into something usable.

  If he didn't fuck it all up.

  Liam was still eyeing all the papers with a wrinkle between his eyebrows and a pensive downturn to his mouth. "I know you can do it."

  Noah nodded. He clung onto his eagerness with both hands. The hurt was still too fresh and it made it too easy to sink back beneath the surface. He wasn't sure how many more times he could go under before he stopped wanting to come back up for air. If there was a limit he didn't want to find it.

  The work would help.

  The work always helped.

  Except when it didn't.

  "I have to get ready for work, but you can stay here for the day if you want. You didn't even raid my fridge yet."

  Noah shook his head. "I need to get back. I have work later. I think. What day is it?"

  "Thursday."

  "Then work. And I have arrangements to make. Things to break and duct tape back together."

  Liam nodded as though that was a perfectly normal statement. From Noah it mostly was. "Okay. Call me later if you need any help. Actually, call me even if you don't need help. Just call. You can explain all your big plans to me. I like hearing about what you're working on."

  "Yeah."

  Liam lingered a minute longer while they looked over the sketches. Then he gave Noah's shoulder a squeeze. "Love you. You know that, right?"

  "Yeah. I love you too." Noah looked up at his brother. This time he didn't have to fake his return smile.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Dawn

  Noah had a lot of work. Too much for one show.

  The last few weeks had been a blur of activity and clicking shutters and now he felt like he'd woken up in one of those fairy tales with the little elves that made shoes while the cobbler slept. Except his elves had taken his camera and made a fucking mess in his apartment. He barely remembered the series of photos he'd taken on a long exposure, tracking his circuit around the studio as he paced. His hands were blurs, his face turned away from the camera so that it was left a pale streak, eyeless, mouthless. A void. Tension written in every hazy line. He pulled a few prospects from the pile and set them aside, face down, so he wouldn't have to see them anymore.

  "Moving on," he muttered as he sorted and reshuffled the other pictures, choosing snapshots of his life over the last few weeks l
ike they weren't chips off his broken heart.

  He was still unfucking the mess hours later when the alarm went off to remind him to get ready for work. And it was still there when he returned from his shift. He'd half hoped that his show might solve itself while he was gone.

  With a sigh, he got back to the task of separating photos into piles of usable and possible and no. Working helped to keep him pointed forward. Creating. It made everything else more manageable. Living. Breathing. Breathing was still the hardest part. Some nights it felt impossible.

  But dawn was its own justification. There were so many colors in it, some that he had forgotten even existed. Shades of pink and blue and orange and gold all clashing and searing to his tired eyes. Every sunrise was beautiful no matter how ugly the night had been. He hadn't appreciated them enough. So he started taking a photo each morning to commemorate it, printing each and marking out the date in the corner with a grease pencil before he did anything else. Before long he had a stack. His tower of days. He had managed them all. He didn't even know how.

  "What's that?" Liam asked when he stopped by to bring coffee and found Noah flipping through the photos.

  Noah raised his eyebrows.

  His brother leaned on the arm of the couch to look over his shoulder. "You hardly ever work in color. At least not from what you've shown me."

  "Dawn doesn't look the same in black and white. Not that the colors ever come out quite right on paper either." He spread the photos out for Liam to view. There were at least two dozen now.

  Liam waited for permission before he picked a photo from the collection and held it up for a closer look. "Where did you take them?"

  "By the bed. Mostly. I take them right when I wake up."