Just edited. Now finished. I hope people are able to see the prompt word somewhere in there. Just a hope. The title is a song by AAR.
You can lose so many things in so little time. A shot in the silence of the woods, echoing out to where they were seated: around a small fire they hoped no one would see. We're dealing with age old themes here. Their names were Jack and Franco. One was a boat and one was the ocean and the tension between them proved a storm too strong to calm, let's just get it all out. So they did. They tried.
"You told 'im, right? You told your old man?" Jack asked, sitting on the ground, looking at the ground, concentrating on the dusty dirt clearing they settled on and pretending it wasn't such a big deal. They had a truck and they had some blankets, but not much else. After all, they weren't planning on staying for very long, just one night. Could be the last night.
They'd been friends for years, together through band members and girlfriends and try-outs and divorces and everything friends should stick through together. At one point, something just clicked. Maybe it had been there ever since, maybe not. The way Franco likes to tell it, he woke up one day with Jack, little Jack, best friend boyhood friend Jack, in his passenger seat and he knew then that something had changed. The air he breathed tasted different, but a good different.
He kicked a rock around. "You know I can't do that. He'd kill me, literally. You know he keeps his shotguns on the wall in the receiving room. He's got some stashed in the study. I know he keeps somethin' under the bed. You've seen him go hunting. He wouldn't hesitate!" He pursed his lips. "It'd break his heart. And then he'd break me."
Jack always knew. He knew from the very start that Franco was special. He liked to call him Frankie -- it was just more liquid. They were always parallel: travelling together in the same direction but never quite meeting. Until one day, they did. A point somewhere shifted on their ever-expanding plane, and eventually, they collided. And it was beautiful. His lips, he remembered with such clarity. What are we doing? That question was never answered. There were many more collisions after that.
"We need to tell people."
"No, we don't. No one ever has to know."
Jack sighed, "I really don't get why we can't. It wouldn't be so bad. This has been on for awhile. We're off to college in the fall. We won't have to sit here and take all this small town crap anymore!"
The other boy, the blonder bluer-eyed boy, sat next to him on the dirt. "I can't. I mean, us, this, like you said we'll be gone. It'll be fine." It was strange acknowledging it, that there was in fact something between them. It was strange, though they'd spent many a night kissing in the back of Frankie's truck parked by a cliff off a road no one passed. "And don't make me choose, please."
To this Jack smiled. "Because you'd choose me." Confident, the little fucker.
"Yeah," he paused, "I'd choose you." Another gun shot rippled through the silence and again, the sound ripples found them. That time, they craned their necks, their noses accidentally brushing. They stood up and got in the truck. "Do you think someone's out there? It's too late for hunting."
"Are they here for us?" Jesus. This town, their town was small, but it wasn't notorious for shooting down queer folk. It wasn't that type of place. Then again, there hadn't really been many queer folk to shoot down. "This is crazy. Why would they be here for us." Panic. "Back me up here."
Through a series of events easier left unsaid than explained, they found themselves on the road, running from Franco's father, who was a not-so-closeted homophobe, confirmed. "Christ, I mean I knew he was crazy but he's gone off the deep end. This is ridiculous!" Sharp turn.
"How did he even find out?"
"It's a little irrelevant now, don't you think! In any case," oh shit a speed bump, "I'm sorry. After all, he is my dad." They drove, and they drove for awhile. It might've been nice to say they drove off a cliff somewhere and died a horrible flaming death. I would get my word prompt and you would get your ending and they would have each other, but that's not how it happened. Though it would be easier for everyone involved if it were.
They drove out of the city limits and Franco's father stopped there. The moon was high and full enough that they didn't really need any street lights to see each other. His dad stepped out of the car and so Franco followed suit. Jack turned in the passenger seat, anxious and nervous and more than half sure that his best friend was going to die. And he was going to watch as it happened. And it terrified him. But he had already fallen in love and gotten this far, and really, if he survived that, he supposed he could survive this too.
"Dad, what the fuck are you doing!"
His father, lowering the gun now, "I should be asking you the same thing! What are you doing running off with Jack over there? God, how long did you think you could keep it from me!" He tuned things out for awhile, out of both shock and relief. It could've been worse, he thought. You have exactly 10 seconds to get out of my sight or I'll shoot you both between the eyes and bring you back strapped to my hood like the animals that you are! For fuck's sake, you'd think I raised you better than this, boy! And with Jack! I always thought you were real friends! You're sinning against God! You're sinning against me! And you're spitting in the face of nature! Instead, what they got was, "So help me God. Okay," sigh, "Come back for your things in the morning. You ain't no son of mine no more." The scary thing was that after all the shouting, his dad crossed the boundary to hug him, and he could swear, there were tears in his eyes. And he thought that his dad didn't have to do this, really, if it meant that much.
Back in the truck now, "Well, my dad knows. And he wants me gone." The air tasted different again, he still didn't quite know if he liked it.
There was some silence, "We can't really say we're surprised, right? I'm sorry. I really am." That was met by silence, still. It was just a little hard to swallow: losing everything you've ever known. "Hey, maybe we could go get an apartment by the beach or something. I know you've never seen the ocean or not at least since you were a kid." Nothing, again. Because in the rearview, he saw glimpses of what it was like, what life was like, and he realized that it would never be that way again. And his family, his friends, just, all of it. It was just a little difficult to, um, cope. "Can I do anything?"
And then Jack, there was Jack, sitting there with the confused-sympathetic look on his face, his hair all volume and tousled and wrecked from stress and wind and running away. How exactly do you end up falling for your best friend? When does it happen? When did this happen? But there they were, apart from everything they once knew and this wide expanse ahead, this daunting promise of a future. "You can stay with me," he muttered, not looking at anything in particular, just staring straight.
Jack smiled, and thank God for that smile. "That was always the plan."
He wasn't the only one who was leaving home and leaving family and leaving memories. Everything became external, vastly displaced, and like, like the past was elsewhere. Then again, the past was always elsewhere. "Can you talk again?"
"Still a little shell-shocked. How are you so cool about all this? You know we can never go back, right? You know that."
And Jack, bless his soul. He always knew what to say. "You remember when we were nine, well, I was nine and you were ten and we were playing something with some of the kids on your street and I'd just keep sticking with you. I was your cover. And do you know how many times I died in that game?" A little smile from the blondie in the driver's seat. "Every. Goddamned. Time. And I knew I was going go die. I knew it every time we started over, but I kept covering for you. It didn't really matter that I lost. I would follow you anywhere, as long as you wanted me. It's been ten years since and it's just as true as ever."
He did. That could-be-the-last-night turned into finally-the-first-night. He followed that blond-haired blue-eyed mess of a boy to school in the fall, to an apartment by the sea, to a life in the true free relentless world. He followed that boy straight into an ocean, free diving into something from which he hoped never to surface.
And that boy was grateful each and everyday for selflessness and love and Jack.
day 6: flame
