They arrived back at Cushman Row tired. Stef popped them each a beer and Jav put on ESPN. They watched a little of the EUFA qualifying rounds but soon they were both nodding off.
“We’re sleeping together,” Jav said.
“Funny how it happens.”
Jav yawned big. “I didn’t sleep much last night,” he said. “In a good way.”
“Same.” Stef clicked off the TV, got up and headed toward his bedroom. “Anyway,” he called back. “Isn’t siesta some kind of Latin American tradition?”
“It’s an institution.”
Stef came back out with two pillows. He tossed one to Jav and lay down along the long side of the couch. His feet to Jav, who lay on his stomach with his head in the corner.
A shared inhale and exhale.
Everything in the room exchanged glances.
What’s going on?
I don’t know.
What do we do now?
Sleep.
Seriously? We’re actually taking a nap now?
“Hey,” Jav said.
“Mm?”
“Put your head down here.”
Stef pivoted around, putting his pillow kitty-corner to Jav’s now.
“I’m not usually so boring a date,” Jav said. “I’m just really tired.”
“I get it.” Propped on an elbow, Stef reached to set his hand on Jav’s back. He glided up Jav’s spine and Jav sighed.
“Feels nice.”
All the way up between shoulder blades and the topmost bumps of vertebrae, then Stef’s fingers dug into Jav’s hair. Jav sighed again, then reached a hand behind to grab hold of his T-shirt collar and pull it off.
Stef rose up on an elbow. At the base of Jav’s neck, the word Trueblood was tattooed in black ink, along with a set of coordinates.
“What’s Trueblood?”
“My sad story. Which I’ll tell you someday.”
“All right.” He ran his palm down Jav’s spine, then up again.
“I like how your rings feel on me,” Jav said, the words slurry. “Was thinking about it on the bridge.”
“Go to sleep.” Stef’s mind was blurring at the edges. His hand on Jav’s back, he fell quickly under and didn’t dream.
It wasn’t a long snooze. He woke and watched Jav sleep for a long time, staring at the tattoo on his broad back. Noiselessly, he reached for his phone and looked up the coordinates on the internet. They were for Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
The name made his eyebrows furrow, a bell of memory ringing from far away. He slid off the couch and pattered on socked feet to the laptop on his desk.
Shanksville is a borough in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, approximately 75 miles southeast from Pittsburgh. Shanksville came to international attention during the September 11 attacks when United Airlines Flight 93 bound for San Francisco crashed in adjacent Stonycreek Township…
“Shit,” he said slowly.
Heart thumping, he typed “Flight 93 manifest” into the search box and soon a list of names was before him.
Rothenberg, Mark David, 52, Scotch Plains, NJ
Snyder, Christine Ann, 32, Kailua, HI
Talignani, John, 74, Staten Island, NY
Trueblood, Philip, 31, Bronx, NY
Wainio, Honor Elizabeth, 27, Baltimore, MD
“Hey,” Jav said, sitting up, his hair mashed flat on one side.
“Hey.”
“Holy crap, how long was I out?”
“It’s twenty forty-two,” Stef said. “New York seceded. We changed everything.”
Jav smiled, stretching. “What are you doing?”
“Snooping.”
“Snooping who?”
“You.”
Jav gave a disgusted grunt as he walked over. “It’s those damn nudes, isn’t it?”
“No. Nothing fun like that.”
“What, my rap sheet?” Jav pulled on his T-shirt, then peered over Stef’s shoulder. “Ah,” he said. “You found my sad story.” He leaned his butt against the desk, crossing his bare feet.
“Sorry.” Stef felt a little miserable. “I don’t know why I did it sneakily instead of just asking you.”
“It’s fine,” Jav said, shrugging. “It’s not something I talk about a lot. I don’t really know how.”
“Were you with him?”
“We were going to talk about it when he got back from California,” Jav said. “We’d hung out the entire summer in a weird holding pattern. Me being quasi-closeted and him not being able to get a bead on me or what I was about. But gradually, I opened the door a little and he got a little braver. And we had this one…”
“Night?”
Jav shook his head and his smile was fragile. “Twenty minutes? Maybe? This little pocket of time where we were kissing in my kitchen and I leaned into it. Leaned into myself and into my life and thought, Yeah, this is it. This is something I am and something I want. I was feeling his skin and tasting his mouth and pushing up against him and grinding down hard. It was everything I wanted. I was right on the edge of my life. He said, ‘When I get back, we’re having a conversation about this.’”
“Oh, man,” Stef murmured, running fingertips along his brow.
“He left to go home and pack. He called me from Newark the next morning. Checking to see if I was all right.”
“Were you?”
“I was. Everything about me felt right. Thinking about me with him felt more than right.” Jav motioned to the computer screen. “The rest is American history.”
Stef slowly nodded, staring at the names on the manifest, all the lives and love stories cut short. “I’m really sorry.”
“It was a bad day,” Jav said.
They were quiet a while. Quiet, but close.
“I like you so fucking much,” Stef said. He’d never in his life said such a thing to a man.
“I like you, too,” Jav said, as if the words were bubbles on his tongue. He jerked his head toward the couch. “For what it’s worth, that was some of the best sleep I’ve had in a while.”
“What do you want to do tonight?”
“Sleep with you.”
Stef smiled. Heart thumping hard in his chest, he reached to touch the ship’s wheel inked on Jav’s forearm. “All right.”