Why was he listening to Sinatra? He should be throwing things or sulking in a corner of the couch with a tub of Coconuts for Caramel Core. Drinking. Surely he should be drinking. Instead, Frank was sitting at the desk in his Jersey City apartment, oblivious to the glorious view of the Manhattan skyline at sunset, wondering if he should read a proposal from Brian fucking Kenway. And listening to the song Tom had sung, just two words at first, then the rest of it as they lay in the dark, thinking about sex and sleep.
Since when was Tom the sort of man who sang?
Frank slapped his laptop closed, cutting Sinatra off mid-croon, and spun his chair around. The red-gold vista of buildings across the river blurred into a rippled reflection until the window ended and wall began. The chair stopped, and he was facing his favorite of Tom’s photographs: Boulder Field. The eighteen-acre enigma of Hickory Run State Park.
He remembered hiking out there when they were kids, both of them wondering aloud at how all those rocks had gotten there. What they were for. Tom taking pictures that, to Frank, all seemed the same. Rocks, big and small, in varying colors of stone. When he’d first seen the photo featured on Tom’s website, the stark, otherworldly landscape called to him, as a memory and another enigma. Did Tom think about him when he went out there? Did the picture contain a message? Or was the field simply representative of Tom? Stone. Immovable. Broken?
Frank had searched for patterns in the light, the shadow, and the rocks themselves. He’d pondered the significance of the one tree at the far corner. The slim band of slate-colored sky.
A harsh buzz interrupted his latest attempt to solve the puzzle. Frank pushed out of his chair and crossed to the panel mounted on the wall by the door, depressing the Talk button as he glanced at the fuzzy little video screen. His finger slipped off the button and he watched, dumbly, as Tom’s mouth moved, making no sound.
He pushed the button again. “Tom?”
“Frank.”
“What are you doing here?”
“Delivering something I should have sent a long, long time ago.”
Frank shook his head. No. Nope. No way. It was too late for this. Yesterday, Tom had walked away from him one too many times. Opening his door now would only invite eighteen acres of rocks to spread across his living-room floor, and he was so fucking tired of trying to pick them up.
“Go home, Tom.”
“Please let me in.”
“Why? So you can tell me why I should renovate the lodge?”
“I don’t give a shit about the lodge.”
Then why had he never left? Frowning, Frank stabbed the button again. “Then why are you here?”
“For you, Frank. I’m here for you.”
Frank’s heart performed ill-advised calisthenics in his chest. He believed in love. Despite having his heart broken before he grew proper chest hair, he still believed it could happen. Not for him, maybe. But for every lord and lady in the sometimes ridiculous, always worthwhile romances he read.
He’d lived his life hoping for a moment like this. For a man to be on his doorstep, heart in hand.
He’d never dared to hope it might be Tom.
His doorbell rang. What the actual . . .? Frank stared dumbly at his finger, which was still pressing the door release, the buzz of it hissing through the speaker. “Traitor.” Scowling, Frank turned to survey his apartment, looking for . . . somewhere to hide. “Dear God.”
The doorbell sounded again. Then Tom knocked.
“Go home, Tom!”
“For fuck’s sake,” echoed through the door.
Frank hauled the door open and pulled Tom inside. Then he found himself scanning the apartment again, still looking for somewhere to hide. This was too real. Tom was in his space.
Trembling, Frank took a step back.
Tom held up his hands. “Frankie. Fuck.” He rubbed at his face and tugged his hair. Panted slightly, as though he’d taken the stairs to the top floor. “Okay, hold on.” Reaching into a pocket, he extracted a sheet of paper, then set about unfolding it, smoothing the creases against his denim-clad thigh. “I spent all night writing this. Please let me read it, and then if you want me to go, I’ll go.”
“What is it?”
Tom’s throat moved as he apparently swallowed with difficulty. “My confession.”
His what?
Tom lifted the sheet. “Dear Frank.”
“You started a confession with ‘Dear Frank’?”
“Are you going to let me read this or not?”
Frank motioned for him to continue.
“Dear Frank, I . . .” His eyebrows crooked together. “Hold on, I scratched out a lot up here.”
Frank repressed a sigh.
“Okay. Here goes. Dear Frank, I made a terrible mistake thirty-two years ago—”
“Don’t you mean thirty years?”
Tom glanced up. “No,” he said softly. “I mean the day we sat on your bed and told each other we liked looking at boys.” He glanced back down at his sheet. “I told you we couldn’t be together, ever, and at the time I thought I was being selfless. Heroic, even. I thought I was saving you from a joyless future.” He scanned downward, sighed, and started reading again. “I was being selfish. Because I knew, even then, before then, that I couldn’t keep you, even though that was what I wanted most in the world. To be with you every day. To spend my whole life with you. But I knew I’d never amount to much, and so I figured I’d do the brave thing and let you go.” He looked up. “Or push you away.”
“Tom—”
“Let me finish.” Tom studied his paper again, then his hand fall to his side, the sheet rustling gently against his leg. “I wanted to tell you I’d made a mistake, from the day after until the day you kissed me. But I couldn’t figure out how to go with you, do all we’d planned, and the last thing I wanted to do was ask you to stay. Or hold you back.”
The paper crumpled as Tom curled his fingers around it.
“No, that’s a lie. Fuck. I was afraid, Frank. I kept telling myself I let you go, but the truth is, I pushed you away because I was afraid you’d leave me. I knew you’d have to go. For college and then after. To live the life you’d always planned. I couldn’t go with you, and I didn’t want to be left behind, so I . . . Goddamn it. I didn’t mean to punch you. I don’t know why I did that, except I was scared and angry and that kiss was everything, Frankie. I’d wanted you for so long and then for you to do that on the last night. To kiss me right before you went away. You broke my fucking heart with that kiss, and I hated you for it and I hated that I had to let you go.”
“We made those plans together,” Frank all but whispered.
“What?”
“This life you thought you had to let me go and lead. It was supposed to be our life. Benjamin and Franklin, remember?” Frank had no idea how he could say this so calmly. Inside, his voice tripped over the uneven beat of his heart, and he was reasonably sure his legs were going to give out at any moment.
“You must have known I couldn’t go.” Tom sounded as though he was barely holding himself together.
“I didn’t. Call me a fool, but I never thought for one second that we might not go together.” Not until that night. He’d known college would be a separate journey for both of them, but after that? They’d meet up, tuck their respective degrees into the back of the notebook carrying their final itinerary, and set off.
Had he really been that naïve?
Testing one knee and finding it less than stable, Frank gestured toward the interior of his apartment. It was basically one large room. One very large room with a couple of bathrooms and bedrooms attached. As he crossed the seemingly endless space to the couch, Frank wondered why he’d chosen to live in such an expansive place.
Tom remained by the door. Fitting. He’d said his piece. “You can disappear now,” Frank said. “Don’t mind me.” I’m old and I need to sit. God, his chest hurt. Why did this hurt so much?
“I’m not finished.”
Half turning, Frank eyed the crumpled paper clutched to the side of Tom’s leg and raised a single eyebrow. Tom looked down and retrieved his . . . letter. Tom had written him a letter. Finally. After ignoring every one Frank had sent that first year, he’d finally replied. And the awful thing was . . . Frank already knew everything Tom had just said. Deep down, he’d always known.
Frank sank onto the couch and Tom appeared in front of him. Dropped to his knees, wincing, then settling at the edge of the thick rug. “Can I read the rest?”
“I can’t imagine what else there is to say. You were afraid and you pushed me away. Done and done.”
“That’s . . .” Tom’s chin dipped. “Should I just go?”
“It’s what you do best, isn’t it?”
“Fair point and I deserved that, but there’s more. There’s . . . I thought there might be an ‘us.’”
I thought so too.
Tom scanned his letter, then crumpled it again. Sucked in air and let go a rush of words. “I didn’t tell you I was out of money and hope and all that shit because I didn’t want you to feel obligated. I didn’t want you to think I was using you to keep my job, or for a place to live. I know I went about everything the wrong way, but I really, really didn’t want you to think that what was happening between us was a convenience thing. I just wanted to love you, Frank. I wanted you back, and I wanted you in my life, and it was a dream come true to have you there, talking about a future for us, and I didn’t want to . . . I didn’t . . .”
His chin dipped lower and he took a long, but curiously shallow-sounding breath.
Frank wanted to lean forward, but held himself back with a force of will he hadn’t suspected he had. Well, unless he counted the stubbornness that had kept him from visiting the Pocono Mountains for twenty-nine years too long.
Were they both a field of rocks?
Tom looked up. “I was embarrassed and scared. Again. I’ve been running on ice for the past six months. I’ve lost two houses, Frank. I bought one for my mom in that neighborhood across the creek. Where we used to live. I thought it would make her happy to live in a nice house on top of the crappy place where we used to be. And it did, for maybe a year. Then I found out she’d borrowed against the house and that she was not only drinking, but pushing all kinds of shit into her veins.”
A bitter expression rippled across Tom’s delicate features.
“The house was a mess. I had to put her in care. Then clean the place up and sell it at a loss. Then I had to sell my house to keep paying her bills. I don’t have anything left, Frank, and I didn’t know how to tell you that. I’m a bad bet. I always have been and probably always will be. But, God, you were there, and it was like you still loved me and I wanted that. I wanted it so much.”
Though sympathy overlapped the pool in his heart for all of Tom’s struggles, a small part of Frank lay in reserve. A dry patch, perhaps, that asked, What about me? He wanted with every fiber of his being to pull Tom into his arms and tell him they would be okay. But could he fix everything that was wrong? This wasn’t about a kiss gone awry thirty years before. This . . . This was so much more.
God, this was so much more, and Frank had never considered himself strong. Harder emotions were not his purview. He was a marshmallow covered in chocolate.
Giving up any pretense of remaining dry and untouched, Frank allowed the flood. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
He pulled Tom up off the floor and onto his lap, and Tom leaned into him, shuddering.
They stayed that way for a long, long time. Breathing. Existing together in a warm, moist bubble of tears held in check and something that felt an awful lot like regret. Questions finally began to filter through, big and little and in varying shades of stone. Frank almost asked the most obscure: What does it mean? He meant the photo above them and suspected Tom would know what he was talking about, because wasn’t that how it had always been?
Except for this.
Except for their feelings.
He asked a different question. Half a question. Whispered it over Tom’s ear. “Do you . . .”
Tom looked up, his face both tragic and beautiful. “Do I want you to come back? Yes. Do I love you? More than you could possibly ever understand.”
“Will you . . .” God, what was wrong with him?
“Frankie,” Tom murmured.
Frank swallowed. Tried again. “You wrote me a letter.”
Tom nodded. “It sucked, but I finally wrote you a letter. And delivered it.”
“Tom . . .” Emotion choked him. Frank forced his way past it. “I’m sorry.” The weight in his lap shifted as Tom stiffened. Frank shook his head. “I didn’t see it. I . . . I didn’t see it. I should have come back for you. I should have taken you with me. I didn’t know I was supposed to be the knight. I . . . God. I spent all this time waiting for you, when you were . . .”
“Don’t say that. You spent your life doing amazing things. As you were meant to do. We were kids. We didn’t know how to do shit.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’m the sorry one. I let my pride get in the way of everything.”
“No, you were being loyal.”
“I was being a self-righteous fucking prick.”
“Not self-righteous. Never that. Tom, why didn’t you . . . You could have asked Robert for help.”
“I did. Now and again. But he had problems enough of his own.”
Frank felt his spine straighten. He put his hand between them, flattening his palm over Tom’s heart. “Ask me.”
“Ask what?”
“Ask me to help you.”
“What? No.”
“If we’re going to do this, if we’re going to pick up that old notebook, even in the most metaphorical sense, then we’re going to do it as equal partners.”
“We’ll never be equal, Frank.”
“If that’s how you really feel, then we’ll never work.”
“What do I have to give?”
“Yourself, Tom. God, how can you not see that? Your passion, your drive, your need to make others happy, to care for people, to give them what they want. Your years of service to a house that always was home to everyone who visited it. Your friendship. Your love.”
“Love doesn’t pay bills.”
“Tom, love has paid your bills all your life. Your love for your mother.”
Tom shifted in his lap, a backward shuffle. Then he closed his eyes. “I . . .” The twist of his features was awful to watch. Worse than tears. Far, far more terrible than listening to his confession, his letter. As Frank watched, Tom fought with himself. Became a solid and lonely pillar, and trembled until he should come apart. He hissed and ground his teeth. He shifted backward twice, as though considering flight.
Then he turned and faced Frank and pushed the words out past what had to be a tight throat. “I need help.”
Frank nodded.
Tom swallowed. “Help me, Frankie. Help me put it all back together.”
Frank pulled him close. Back into his arms. Tucked a hand behind his soft, dark hair and hugged him. “Always, Tommy. Always. Never going to leave you alone again.”