Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83394 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 417(@200wpm)___ 334(@250wpm)___ 278(@300wpm)
He didn’t speak, just closed the door and stepped out of his shoes. He hadn’t even taken the time to put on socks, I noticed, only a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.
Like all those times when we were young, when I’d sneak into his room, he came to the bed, set something on the nightstand, but didn’t lie on the floor the way I used to in the beginning; instead, he crawled right onto the bed with me.
He didn’t hesitate, and I needed that. In that moment it was as if time hadn’t separated us, as if the past hadn’t changed us. We were Jojo and Gage, two boys who loved recklessly and optimistically and beautifully.
He wrapped his arms around me, pulled me close the way I’d done to him too many times to count. My face nuzzled his chest. God, he still smelled the same—fresh air and apples and cinnamon. He was warm. Flesh and blood. Alive. My Jojo.
I cried.
“Shh. It’s okay. I’m here.”
That was all he said, every few minutes, every time I needed to hear it, until my tears dried up.
“What happened?” he finally asked, but didn’t move, didn’t pull away, just kept running his hand up and down my back, then to my hair.
“Nightmare. I have them a lot, but this was different. It felt so real. It was that night, but we weren’t in your room. It was just this vast, empty darkness. You were…you were calling to me, and I couldn’t find you. You needed me, and I wasn’t there.” The way I hadn’t been there for years. “When I found you, you were huddled in a ball. Your father was standing over you, ready to hurt you. I did what I did before, only as soon as the bat connected, it was you. I killed you.”
It took him a moment to reply, and when he did, his voice was thick, hoarse with emotion. “You didn’t kill me.”
“I did. I killed both of us that day.”
“No. You didn’t. You tried to save me because I was weak. Because I couldn’t do it myself. I put you in that position.”
I pushed up on my elbows. Did he really think that? Was that really how Jojo saw it? “No. He attacked you. We were sleeping. I was the one who grabbed a bat. I was the one who made a stupid decision. I could have done anything else.”
“But you didn’t. You did your best to take care of me when I needed you.”
“I—”
“We’re never going to see this the same way.”
He was right. “Don’t go.”
Joey sighed. “I’m not going anywhere. I couldn’t walk away from you if I wanted to.”
No, he couldn’t, could he? The thing was, I’d always been the same. Always had been and always would be, and for whatever reason, no matter what had happened, Joey was the same with me. “I got tears and snot all over your shirt.”
He lifted up, pulled it off, then lay down again. “Do you like working construction?”
“In some ways, yeah. I like working on cars better, but both make me feel accomplished.”
“Yeah, I feel it too when I’m working on a car. When I fix something or make it run when it didn’t run before.”
“Do you still like the stars?”
“Yeah. Sometimes I…sometimes I’d look out at them at night and tell myself you were looking at the same ones.”
Christ, this man. He tied me in knots and always would. “I was.”
“Probably. We’re weird like that.”
I smiled against him.
We lay there and talked.
Eventually we changed positions, me on my back and Joey’s head on my chest.
Words, stories, our time while separated flowing from our mouths and into each other, making me a part of his last few years and him a part of mine.
At one point, he got up to use the bathroom. When he came back, he lay across the foot of the bed, but I didn’t let it deter me. I moved so my head was on his stomach, my body perpendicular to his, my feet on the pillows.
Joey reached for me, his arm across my chest. My fingers danced over his left biceps, my other arm reaching up to touch his side. The tips of Joey’s fingers rested in my armpit, and we lay like that, just…stared, watched, connected.
“Did you have anyone?” he asked. “Anyone to care about or be there for you?”
“Yes, for a little while.” I wanted to share Herbert with him, wanted to share everything with him. “He was in for murder. He did it, but he was great.” My chest ached as I remembered him. “He took me under his wing, made sure I wasn’t too soft and didn’t get taken advantage of. He made it easier, helped me survive. And he read with me. He listened about you.”
Joey pulled in a deep breath. “You told him about us?”