8
Coffee. That’s what we do now. We have coffee together, we go out to dinner and we go to couple’s therapy. And it’s not so bad, even if it does set Rocco off humming Coffee & TV and I always end up with that anthropomorphic milk carton waddling through my mind for hours afterwards.
Only today he looks kind of gray and tired, his eyelids thicker and the white in his hair more plentiful. I’m ashamed to find myself furtively checking out his arms, but the only thing that’s new is a fresh tattoo, still scabbed, on the scarred inside of his forearm. One word in blackletter – resurgam. Like him I know enough of my old church Latin to translate – I will rise again.
He scrunches up his nose at the biscotti and shunts them onto my plate. Eager for a reaction I pick one up and try to feed it to him, but he’s pissy and tries to play it off by being all Italian about it. “No, Daniel. They roast the fuck out of the almonds here.”
I set down the cookie and brush his hair back behind his ear. “Baby, what’s wrong?”
Despite his sadness it delights me to have a reason to treat him with tenderness. I’ve started calling him ‘baby’ since we stopped having sex, trying to express with words the things I’m used to showing him with my hands and my body. I call him my love, my darling, mo chuisle – the last a Sheridan Le Fanu artifact dusted off by my grandmother. My pulse. The beat of my heart.
“I’m okay,” he says, taking my hand and kissing it. “I’m just remembering how much I hate Seattle weather. I’ve spent summers in fucking England that were less rainy than this.”
“My poor sweetheart. What can we do to make you happy?”
His smile is a pale imitation of his usual lecherous grin, but it’s still him. He leans close and kisses me – no tongue, but with some heat behind it. “I wish you could come to LA,” he says. “We could get some sun on our skins. Go skinny dipping in the pool.”
“You always used to talk about skinny dipping up at Lost Lake,” I say, smiling at the memory. “I used to think you were so daring. So European.”
He warms, his smile creasing the corners of his eyes. “It’s good for the soul,” he says. “There’s nothing so calming or refreshing. I remember I used to come back from tours wanting to kill all three of my closest friends because I was so sick of the sight of them. Nothing tests your affection for people more than going to coast to coast in a tour bus listening to one another fart for months on end. Then I’d get home to my little post-war house in the Hills and it would be so quiet. The space would feel like a luxury. And I always did the same thing every time I came home. I’d set down my bags and take off my clothes and jump straight in the pool. Just float around naked in the water for a while. Remember what it was like to be human.”
“You still have that place?” I ask. I can’t help but think of the tabloid photos, of the car Matt drunk drove into the swimming pool when he was trying to take Rocco to the hospital. “With all the…memories?”
“Jesus Christ, Daniel – what am I supposed to do? Let my fucking smack habit poison even my memories of the good times, too?” He catches himself and shakes his head. “I’m sorry, hon. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
“No, it’s okay,” I say, although I’m taken aback at how sudden that was. I know he has bad days, but this is up close and personal.
He reaches out and kisses me in apology. “No, it’s not okay. I’m sorry. I’m just…” He sighs, his hand on the nape of my neck, his forehead pressed against mine. “I’m just so fucking bored of talking about recovery. About heroin. It’s already stolen so much of my time and I resent it for every new second it steals.”
“Rocco, it’s okay. I understand.”
He releases his grip on my neck, his hand sliding all the way down my arm. Our fingers twine once more. We hold hands a lot these days. “I know you do,” he says. “And I’m so grateful for your understanding, but please can we talk about something else? Mountains, lilacs, color schemes – the cat. There’s a thing. I never did ask you why you named your cat Rerun.”
“Because she kept coming back around. She was a stray, you see.”
Rocco gives me a look of pure pity. “I think that may be the Daddest joke in the world.”
“You asked. I answered.”
“I did,” he says, still laughing. “God, that’s terrible. And how are Mallory and Irvine, by the way?”
“Stalled,” I say, crunching on one of the spurned biscotti. “My brain just refuses to engage lately. It’s like I have sympathetic hypoxia or something.”
“Sympathetic what now?”
“Hypoxia. Oxygen starvation. It’s an unavoidable effect of altitude.”
Rocco settles his elbows on the table. “Is it horrible?”
“Extremely.”
“Cool. Tell me more.”
“Really? I was trying to explain Mallory’s motivations for climbing Everest to you and your eyes just glazed over, but once I get to the ways a person can die–”
“–I’m there,” says Rocco, leaning closer. “Don’t kid yourself, Daniel. I’m there. All your listeners are there. You can talk about bravery and testing the limits of human endurance until you’re blue in the face, but we’re really listening because we want to hear about the moment Douglas Mawson realized the sole of his frostbitten foot was hanging off.”
“Okay,” I say. “But if I tell you now then I’ll be spoiling the…uh…the money shot, won’t I? Wouldn’t you rather wait for the podcast?”
He narrows his eyes. “Do you really want to talk to me about delayed gratification? Considering our situation and all?”
“Point.”
“I should fucking well think so. Now tell me horrible stories about people dying on mountains.” He glances at his phone. “And get into it, because we only have forty minutes before we have to go talk about our feelings. Again.”
“You were the one who suggested couples therapy.”
“I know. I was hoping it would be a compromise where we could work through things and still continue to have sex with each other, but…well. You saw how that turned out.”
“I like it,” I say, unable to resist teasing him.
“Like what?”
“This. Not having sex. When we’re not fucking we’re kind of warm and fuzzy with each other. Romantic. It’s a cute change of pace from pulling your hair and ordering you to lick come off my fingers.”
Rocco gives me a blistering look and leans close, whispering directly into my ear. “Start talking about mountains now,” he says. “Before I do something that will definitely get us barred from this coffee shop.”
“Okay,” I say, laughing as our feet bump deliberately beneath the table. “High altitude, defined as anything above 8000 feet above sea level, has a dramatic effect on the human body. Your heart and lungs have to work harder to harvest oxygen from the thin air, and the effort required of your cardiopulmonary system is so great that even essential services like your digestive system are forced to take a backseat. You lose fat much more rapidly, although unfortunately you also lose muscle. Your body basically starts consuming itself.”
“Gross,” says Rocco. “Yet fascinating. Go on.”
“You can acclimatize to those levels, but above about 16,000 feet you start feeling those more extreme effects – weight loss, headaches, sluggish digestion, breathlessness and insomnia. Your blood becomes thicker as your bone marrow produces extra red cells. At these kinds of heights you become at risk for a condition called HAPE – high altitude pulmonary edema – where the lungs fill with fluid and you drown, unless you can get down to sea level. Or there’s HACE – high altitude cerebral edema…”
“…which is the same giddy thrill ride except with your brain, I’m guessing?” says Rocco, properly absorbed now.
“You got it. For reference, Mallory and Irvine’s base camp was at around 16,499 feet, and the effects of altitude get more extreme the higher you go, especially when you get up into the Death Zone.”
“Oh. The Death Zone. That sounds like a nice place. I wonder what happens up there?”
“All kinds of fun and frolics. You know how I once said climbing Everest these days was like waiting in line for Disneyland while dying? That wasn’t hyperbole. You’re hypoxic. Your brain and body are literally dying while you’re that high – over about 23,000 feet. Even with supplemental oxygen you’re risking permanent brain damage if you stay up there too long.”
Rocco stares at me. “So why do it?” he says. “And yes, I do realize the irony of me asking that question. But why would you risk it? Hillary and Tenzing ticked the thing off, for God’s sake.”
“The view? And bragging rights, obviously. Although it’s not really a braggable mountain these days, what with the fixed lines and ladders and people being short roped up to the summit.”
“So why do so many people still die up there?”
“It goes back to what I said,” I say. “Lack of oxygen. There’s so little of it in the air that even with supplemental gas you’re functioning at the mental level of a dense child. And the most dangerous part is that you feel great. Oxygen deprivation can produce a feeling of sublime confidence and euphoria, so there’s no warning. It’s not like when you’re down at 16,000 feet and you start coughing up foaming blood – then you know something’s wrong, but not all the way up at the summit. You’re walking on sunshine up there, and that’s how the fatal mistakes happen. It can be something as small as sitting down for a break when you’re supposed to keep moving, because every second you spend up there you’re dying. You’re losing more brain cells.” I snap my fingers. “Fsst – just like that. Just fizzing out as you sit there. The effort of moving in such thin air is unbelievable. Every step feels like a marathon. If you sit down the odds are you might not have the strength to get back up again, and it’s not like your friends can do anything to help you, because they’re dying, too. They’ve got to get back down the mountain.”
“Before their brains die?”
“Or they freeze to death. It’s cold up there, Rocco. We’re talking frostbite in seconds. And then there’s the dehydration. You can’t stay that high for long, not without terrible consequences.”
He leans on his elbow, and looks way too happy for someone who has just been listening to me describe death at 29,000 feet. “This,” he says. “This is what I love.”
“Horrible stories of death and maiming?”
“I come for the death and maiming, stay for the enthusiasm,” he says, reaching out to stroke my hair. “Seriously, your podcast kept me sane all that time I was down in Santa Fe.” He leans close, nuzzling the edge of my ear. “Only now I can’t hear your voice anymore without getting turned on.” I shiver, baring my neck to him. I know we’re in public but these days we snatch our thrills where we can.
“It’s different,” Rocco whispers. “Now that I know what you sound like with my dick inside you.”
“Stop it.” I smile and kiss him. A polite public kiss with no tongue. “We said we’d be good, remember?”
He sits back and gathers up his things with a crooked, smutty smile. “Oh, honey – we are better than good. If we were any better we’d be illegal.”
“I’m not sure what we did in the parking garage wasn’t.”
Rocco laughs. “Okay,” he says. “Let’s go say nice things about our feelings and pretend we’re not thinking about how much we’d rather be having sex.” He winds an arm around my waist as we walk out of the door. “Did I mention my hotel room has a king size bed?”
“Several times, yes.”
*
Claudia gives us homework assignments. One time we had to go off and write down all the non-sexual things we loved about one another. Our next assignment was to spend a day without calling, texting or seeing each other, which went fine, until he failed to call when the twenty-four hours was up.
It’s now closer to thirty-six and I’m starting to get genuinely scared. He hasn’t answered any of my calls or texts and now I’m standing at the hotel desk being treated like a groupie by a blank faced receptionist.
“I’m sorry,” she drones, for the hundredth time. “But Mr. Ponti specifically asked not to be disturbed and since I’m unable to reach him–”
“–he’s probably hanging from the back of the bathroom door,” I say, voicing just one of the horror scenarios that have been rampaging through my head since he stopped picking up the phone. The last time I saw him he’d been subdued, and before that he was snappy. “You know he has a history of substance abuse, right?”
“Of course, but–”
“–but nothing. Please just tell me which room he’s in. His life could be at risk right now.”
She stares back at me with cold, dead shark eyes. “I’m sorry. I can’t do that.”
God, why didn’t he give me the room number? No, I know why he didn’t: because it would be too much like temptation. He didn’t want me finding my way up there and breaking the rules. “Please,” I say, trying not to scream or throw things. “Please just call his room again.”
She sighs and lifts the phone, but I don’t hold out much hope. What next? Do I call Claudia and ask for her help? Surely if he’s avoiding my calls for whatever reasons he’ll answer hers, assuming…oh Christ.
I feel sick. I’m so fucking scared. What if he’s relapsed? What if he’s not answering the phone because he’s lying on the floor right now, cold and gray-skinned and long gone?
Wait. There’s someone on the end of the line. My heart leaps. “Hey,” says Shark-Eyes. “This is Heidi from Reception. Sorry to bother you, but there’s someone here to see you…what did you say your name was?”
“Daniel Macallan.”
“…yeah. Daniel Macallan. Yeah. Okay.”
“Was that him?”
“Room Four-Eight-Three,” she says, and hits the security door. I almost dive through it in my haste, then hit the elevator and ascend, murmuring to myself as I go – “Come on, come on, come on.” If only I could have heard his voice on the phone, but never mind. Just have to find the room in this maze of identical corridors.
Finally I’m there. I’m about to knock, but as I go to do so I realize the door is unlocked anyway. I push it slowly, my heart once again skittering with fear. The room smells stale and it’s dark, blackout curtains fully drawn across one window. It looks like there’s a balcony door beyond a set of regular drapes, and the thin grayish light that filters through these is the only light in the room. I can just make out the sharp angle of Rocco’s shoulder; he’s lying on his side in the huge bed, his back to the door.
“Rocco? Baby?”
There are crumpled cigarette packets on a side table. An empty vodka bottle on its side. He was never explicitly forbidden from drinking, but he never did it because he was worried about what they called cross-addiction, where you trade your previous addiction in for a new one. A different substance or a new obsession. Codependency can be a form of cross-addiction, but I’m not worried about that right now.
I hurry around the bed, my eyes growing accustomed to the dark. Rocco’s skin feels cold to the touch and there’s a split second of unimaginable pain until I see his eyes move in the gloom. I want to see his pupils, but it’s too dark, and my stomach is still in freefall from touching him and finding him cold.
“Oh my God, Rocco. What happened? Are you okay? Please tell me you didn’t use?”
“No.” His voice is just a croak. I find the switch for the bedside lamp and turn it on. His eyes look like stones, his lids too heavy.
“Are you sure?” I ask. “You didn’t use?”
Rocco shakes his head very slowly. “No,” he says. When he speaks it sounds like every word is an effort. “I just really, really want to.”
I exhale, relieved in spite of his pain, because I recognize this. Claudia talked about the possibility of depression, and I’ve been here. Perhaps not to the depths Rocco has reached right now, but I know how it feels. You think you’re maintaining and then all at once it hits you, and you’re like a puppet whose strings have been cut.
“Okay.” I reach out and touch his hair. It feels greasy and his breath is sour. “I’m here. I love you.” Fat tears ooze from his eyes, but he doesn’t move. It’s like he’s been squashed flat to the mattress with the weight of his sadness. “I’m going to take care of you.”
I kiss him and get up to open the drapes in front of the door. The balcony is covered in cigarette butts. Rocco blinks at the light but doesn’t move, leaking tears from the sides of his eyes. I go into the bathroom to turn on the water, and I want to trust him – I really do – but I find myself performing a quick inspection anyway. Not even sure what I’m looking for, but I’m guessing a needle, a lighter, a burned up spoon.
But there’s nothing. If he’s coming down from something, I have no idea what it is.
When I go back into the bedroom he’s sat up, his arms wrapped around his bare knees. He’s always been lean but right now he looks bony, as if he’s been possessed by the ghost of the man who used to be, that gaunt heroin skeleton the tabloids used to adore. The worse he looked, the more they sold.
“I’m going to run you a bath,” I say, joining him on the bed. “You’re going to feel much more human when you’re clean and fresh. Just like when you take off all your clothes and jump in the pool, remember?”
He looks up at me and his eyes overflow again. The lashes are wet spikes, the lids so delicate and fine-veined that I’m reminded of something unborn, a bird embryo bent inside the confines of its shell. “I’m a mess,” he says, and even the act of speaking seems to pull the corners of his mouth further downwards.
I kiss his cracked lips, as if that will make them smile again. “No, baby. You’re just really sad right now. Your brain chemistry is all fucked up.”
It takes him a long moment to speak again. “I can’t…” he says, and that’s all.
“Can’t what? What can’t you do?”
“Anything.”
He’s really deep in this, whatever it is. I think of that cigarette-strewn balcony again and my stomach turns over. I didn’t go out there. I think if I’d seen the drop below I would have panicked, and he doesn’t need that right now. He needs me to be gentle with him. “Rocco, listen to me, and tell me the truth. Have you thought about hurting yourself in any way?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t have the energy,” he says.
When the tub is full I lead him into the bathroom. He blinks at the light but once more I take the chance to inspect him, for needle marks or razor cuts or any other evidence of self-harm. Again, there’s nothing, but his body feels totally different from that of the light, energetic lover who used to take me between the sheets and whisper to me about the nature of joy. He’s all shoulder blades and hip bones and his body seems like a bag of bones he no longer inhabits.
He sits in the water, hunched over his knees once more. As I reach for the washcloth he looks up. “Get in with me,” he says.
I shouldn’t even be here, never mind being naked with him, but how can I say no to him when he’s like this?
“Rocco…”
“Please, Daniel. Do I look like I’m in any shape to fuck?”
All the same, there’s a flicker of life in his eyes as he watches me strip. I get in behind him, spreading my legs so he can lean back against my chest. He settles there gratefully and I put my arms around him, relieved beyond measure that I can do something that might help pull him out of this hole.
I kiss his hard, wet shoulder. “Is that good?”
“Yes. You feel alive.”
“I am.” I put my hand over his heart the way I have a hundred times before, lining my fingertips up with those of his tattoo. “And so are you.”
I wash his hair for him, rubbing deep into his scalp the way he likes it. I’ve done this for him before in the shower, but I’ve never shaved him before. I have to turn around in the tub for that and it’s a puzzle to get our legs to fit in a way that lets me get close enough to do it. It feels weird, trying to learn the contours of another man’s face on the fly, and as I draw the razor over his throat I’m conscious of those old, white scars and snatches of his more unsettling lyrics.
Yes, I always knew he had this in him, but it’s another thing to see it. What idiots we’ve been, too high on each other’s fumes to remember that the good times wouldn’t last forever.
He says he’s going to call Claudia, and I breathe a little easier, because if he’s talking to her then he’s taking this seriously. But then he wants to smoke while he’s talking to her and it’s all I can do not to start screaming at him not to go out on that balcony. In my mind’s eye I keep seeing him sitting on the rail, taking one last look at me and then falling backwards into space. I stall him by making him put on slippers so that he doesn’t walk on all that ash in his bare feet, then I pray silently that he stays away from the rail.
Rocco sits down on a lounge chair and I take up a post on the end of the bed. As long as I can see his feet he’s okay. I won’t intervene. I won’t panic. I won’t make this any harder for him than it already is. He’s so fragile right now.
I try not to listen to his conversation, but it seems one-sided, like she’s doing the talking and he’s simply answering questions – “Yeah, no…I think so.” When he ends the call he clears his throat, as if giving me a cue, and I pounce, relieved to join him on the balcony. I want him off it as soon as possible, but he lights another cigarette.
“I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop,” I say, automatically. “I just wanted to be close by.”
“Worried I was going to take a swan dive?”
“Don’t say things like that, Rocco. I know you used to hurt yourself.”
He sighs. “Don’t worry about it. I’m too numb for that. Right now I’d be okay with not existing, but suicide feels like way too much effort.”
One of the flimsy white hotel slippers slides off the end of his toes and falls onto the concrete among the burned out cigarette ends. His toes are long, like his fingers, and he’s turned his foot into a joke at his own expense. A girl in the clinic in Santa Fe showed him the monarch butterflies on her own feet and said it had been healing for her, getting something beautiful tattooed over the scars of old injection sites. So Rocco took her up on her suggestion, but came back from the tattooist with a morgue tag tattooed on his foot.
“I don’t think she enjoyed my sense of humor,” he said.
I take a seat beside him and rest my hand on his ankle. I can just make out the writing. Cause of Death – Banana peel. I’m not sure I enjoy it, either. At least, not right now.
“What set this off?” I have to ask, even though I don’t want to. “Do you know?”
Rocco breathes out smoke into the darkening sky. “Nope. Just dropped on me all at once.”
“Like a serac.”
“Like a what?”
“A serac. It’s a mountaineering thing. That’s what they call these gigantic overhanging chunks of frozen snow. They can get to the size of entire office blocks and shear away from the mountain with no warning, and if one does…”
He nods slowly. “Lights out.”
“Yeah.”
I stroke the underside of his calf, but there’s no response, the opposite of the time when I said I didn’t know where to start kissing him and he started pointing out places – “Here. Here. And here.” The inside of his elbow, his collarbone, the back of his neck, the hot, satin valley between the very top of his thigh and the root of his cock. It seems foolish now, like the worst kind of recklessness.
“Did I do this?” I ask, because I have to.
“Do what?”
“Did I give you this…this height to fall from?”
He looks lost. “Don’t ask me questions like that right now, Daniel.”
“No, of course not,” I say, immediately feeling like an asshole. My eyes sting. “I’m sorry.”
He stubs out the cigarette and takes my hand. “Just…hold my hand. Be with me. And please don’t cry.”
I quickly wipe my eyes with the back of my arm. “I’m sorry. I just hate seeing you this way. I wish there was something I could do.”
“There isn’t. Every now and again my brain craps out and decides it’s not going to let me experience happiness for a while.”
“Because of the heroin?”
He shakes his head. “Not totally. Major Depressive Disorder – that’s the official line. I got diagnosed years ago, just after my marriage fell apart.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Oh yeah. ‘I’m an addict, I’ll probably always be an addict and, oh, by the way, my brain didn’t work all that normally before I fucked it up with heroin, so…yeah.’ Does that kind of thing turn you on?”
“It’s not just about that. You know I love you.”
He strokes the inside of my wrist. “I do know,” he says. “But that’s all I can do right now. Know what you mean to me. I can’t feel it. It’s like all the nerves that let me feel love or joy have been severed.”
Rocco shivers. His hair is still damp. “Come inside,” I say. “You’ll catch cold.”
“Will you stay with me tonight? Not for sex. I just want to hold you. Feel you breathing.”
“Try and keep me away.”
When Claudia arrives she sends me down to the hotel bar so they can talk, and I hang out drinking cranberry and lime and narrowly resisting the urge to toss a couple of double vodkas down my throat. Anything to kill the doubts. I always thought I knew Rocco. How could I not know someone who’s been in my life and my brother’s life since I was twelve years old?
But I don’t. Not the way I thought I did. And I was never in love with him, not if the way I’m in love with him now is any kind of high water mark. Right now I would sell my soul to the devil if I thought for a second that it would make him smile again.
Claudia joins me at the bar, and I know by the set of her jaw that she’s not happy with me. I’m not happy with me, either, but I suspect it’s for a different reason.
“I gave him something to help him sleep,” she says, and right away it’s a challenge. She’s knocked him out so I can’t fuck him and fuck him up any more than I have already.
“Good. He needs it.” I stare her down. “I’m staying with him tonight. Just in case he…does something.”
“All right,” she says. “He should be out for the next few hours, anyway, but you do whatever you think is best.”
The accusation in her voice is clear and I can’t ignore it any longer. “I didn’t do this to him,” I say. “We didn’t fight. I’m careful with him. I would never do anything to hurt him.”
Claudia gathers up her purse. She doesn’t come back at me, but she doesn’t have to. She’s a psychiatrist, after all, an expert in making people face themselves. And she’s done it again, because my guilt hangs in the air like the smell of a rancid belch.
“I’ve suggested to Rocco that he goes back down to New Mexico,” she says. “For some…reinforcement.”
“Right,” I say, unable to stop bristling. “So when do you want me to break up with him?”
“Well, not now, obviously.” She softens a little, now that the cards are on the table. “Daniel, I understand that you love him, but I think all along you’ve known that you might not be what he needs right now.”
“You think we’re codependent? Is that it?”
She sighs, her lip-gloss gleaming in the lights from the bar. “I don’t know. For what it’s worth I think you could be good for him, but I’m talking about years down the line here, not in three months time. You know Rocco – he goes all in with everything he does, including you.”
My throat aches. “So you do think this is my fault?”
“It’s complicated,” she says, which I think is her way of saying I’m not helping.
I go back up to the room where Rocco is sleeping, a thin figure lost in the middle of that huge bed. I’ve lost count of the times I lay awake at night wanting to be here with him, the two of us naked on this forbidden expanse of white linen, drunk on the relief of finally surrendering to desire.
Not like this. He’s out for the count. I undress and slip in beside him, but he doesn’t stir. The big bed feels like a no-man’s land yawning between us, but I’m grateful for the distance and the pill Claudia fed him before she left. At least now he can’t feel my sobs vibrating through the mattress.
Sometime before dawn the bathroom light wakes me. I listen to him peeing and look up. He moves like a zombie, not like my lover at all. His shoulders slump and his dick hangs limp. He catches my eye and sighs. “Shit. Did I wake you?”
“I don’t mind.”
“Can I turn on the light? I want to look at you.”
I reach out to switch on the bedside light and lie back. Rocco pulls the covers away from my body and already I know I’m going to say yes to anything he asks. Because I’m part of the problem, after all. He crawls up over me and wraps his fingers around my sleep erection, but when he lowers himself to embrace me I can feel that he’s still soft. He kisses me on my closed mouth and looks at me like I’m something he no longer understands.
“I wish I could make love to you,” he says. “But I’m just too fucking sad.”
“It’s okay.” I plunge my hands into his hair and hold him tight with my thighs. “You just hit a little bump in the road is all.”
He nods, buries his face in my shoulder and breathes deeply, like he’s trying to catch a whiff of some pheromone that might help set his brain back to rights. “I think I’m going to go back to Santa Fe,” he says.
“I think you should. Get some sun on your skin. It’ll do you good.”
When he looks up again he’s crying, the same soft, leaky tears as before. “You’re so sweet. Why do you put up with me?”
“Because I love you,” I say, and lap up the tears. “And because I know you can be happy again. You wait. One day you’ll wake up with the sun streaming through your windows and it will feel better. Maybe not all that great all at once, but just enough to give you hope. And when you feel that you’re going to rise, Rocco. You will. I know you will.”