Entry tags:

fic, nba slash, the light in our eyes

"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 3.
"The Light in Our Eyes" Part 3.

For warnings, etc. See part 1. There is also a part 2.



it’s a cold world, and i can never go numb




Steve’s a bitch for not warning Allen before he moves in. But, okay, so’s Melo for not having the courage to say anything for the past year. It’s easier to blame Steve, though; Allen’s fragile enough without having to deal with this.

So they (Eddie and Melo) decide to lie. To hide. Just for a while. (And you know what happens to best laid plans.)

Steve drops Allen off and Eddie, Melo and Tia all meet him at the door.

“Hey,” Allen says, slow and quiet, and then, “Hey,” when he sees Tia, dropping down to eye level with her. “Baby girl,” he says, and she touches his cheek (sunken, thin-skinned) tentatively.

“Dad?” she asks, and Melo grabs Eddie, tugging him into the kitchen; he can’t watch this.

They collect a couple of beers and a Dr. Pepper for Tia and then make it back into the living room where Allen and Tia are still sitting on the floor, talking about the earrings that Melo bought for her last week at the same pawn shop he bought Brendon’s guitar.

“Good to see you,” Allen says, reaching for Melo and pulling him down into a hug. “The real thing,” he runs his hand up and down Melo’s back. “You’re so damn tall. I couldn’t tell -- couldn’t really see -- not from behind the glass.”

Back of the neck, jaw hinges, temples -- they all hurt suddenly as Melo tries not to cry. Allen smells like childhood to him: old smoke, Cool Water stuck to his collar (it’s an old shirt, the cologne’s had years to sink in), and sun.

“Mm,” is all Melo can say, disoriented by hugging Allen because Melo’s looming and then enveloping him, and that’s backward, because Allen’s supposed to be bigger and stronger.

“Just like old times,” JR says from the doorway, and Melo can tell from where he is, that JR’s pretty fucked up -- rolling, maybe. “Except for --”

Eddie jumps and Melo jerks away from Allen at the same time but they don’t get to JR before he finishes: “ -- Eddie fucking your boy -- ow, bitch,” he says, just as Eddie tackles him.

“Eddie --” Allen starts, looks at Tia. “What?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says, “Um.”

Allen gets up and grabs his bag. “I don’t even -- no. Just. Where do I sleep?”

*

Which is the worst of it, actually. Allen doesn’t talk about it, at first. Not until he catches Melo and Eddie kissing on the floor with a bottle of vanilla vodka between them. And it’s late, three-ish; the time of night where you have to make the decision to either sleep or wait for dawn. An edgy, between, time. Melo’s jittery from coke and loud music; chilly in the cold of the apartment after the heat of the club. He just wants to come down (to come) and get his muscles to quit going into spasms every time he takes a deep breath.

“How long?” Allen asks, sitting on the ottoman in front of them and grabbing the bottle.

“Year,” Eddie says.

“Since I was seventeen,” Melo says, defensive.

Melo’s favorite Jadakiss album is playing softly and Allen is sitting with his back to the big windows so Melo can’t see his eyes.

“I knew,” Allen says. “About you.” He tips the bottle toward Melo. “Since forever.” He stretches his legs out, forcing Eddie and Melo apart by a few more inches. “So, I asked Steve to look out for you.” He sighs, dramatic. It feels to Melo like he’s trying to hold on to his temper. “Didn’t see this coming, though.”

He takes another drink and then stands up, looking out of the window -- out over the glowing Denver cityscape. When he turns back, he runs a hand through the white lines on the coffee table. “Wanted something more for you than this.“ Then, turning: “Thought you’d make it out,” he finishes, fading into the dark of the hallway.

Out of where? Melo wonders. He is out; he left Sun Valley a year ago and he hasn’t been back.

Eddie kisses his neck and then his shoulder, biting gently on the still-tender skin where his newest tattoo is.

*

Painting and sketching seem to be the things that hold Allen together. He doesn’t go out with Eddie and Melo and JR. “If I got caught with you guys and all the shit you’ve got on you?” he shakes his head.

The art thing isn’t that odd. Melo remembers the old sketches -- Allen’s been drawing since the afternoon they met. And he sold a few prints in jail, sketches he did from memory of places and people around Sun Valley, and then some of his other inmates. The thing is, they were really good, and Chauncey -- of all people -- helped Allen to sell them.

Melo can’t stop himself from rooting through Allen’s things, spending hours with his sketches, trying to figure this new Allen out through the images he creates.

One sketch, particularly, catches his eye. It’s him, leaning on the old Caddy, with a bandanna holding his braids back and a gun held loosely, pointing down, in his left hand. The look on his face is old and angry and distant; the way he stands is almost liquid; like if he moved, he would stagger and fall.

“This never happened,” Melo finally points out, showing it to Allen while he’s sitting on the balcony. “That’s not my gun.”

“No,” Allen says, eyes closed against the sun. “Just how I saw you in my head sometimes.”

He’s quiet so long, Melo thinks he may be asleep, but he cracks one eye and says, “It’s my gun,” before getting up and going in.

They could live comfortably off of Eddie’s salary, all of them, but Melo still deals on the side and Allen takes comissions for his work. “Neo-Contempory Urban Expressionism” someone calls it, and Melo promptly forgets the label. There’s a lot of steel, chrome, glass and guys with mean faces and vague, shadowed eyes. Until Chauncey comes up with a new buyer, someone who bought some of Al’s early stuff from a T-Wolves’ charity auction.

“Some French guy,” Allen tells Melo. “Bought something with you and JR --” he shrugs. “The two of you playing ball.”

There’s something bugging Allen, though, Melo can’t place it. He’s taken odd commissions before. Even some for gay buyers that like Allen’s perspective on the male form. “He wants something specific,” Allen finally says, hands smeared with charcoal, looking through one eye at his sketchpad.

“And?” Melo asks.

“Sexy,” Allen says. “With you and someone white.”

Eddie hears that and laughs, “Festishist.”

“Something,” Allen nods and draws a few sweeping lines. “So, um,” an arm starts to take shape. “You wanna model for me? You both? ‘Cause,” the sinuous curves of a waist appear. (It’s a woman, Melo thinks, enthralled.) “ ‘Cause,” he keeps going, “I can draw a lot from memory, but I can’t usually draw what I’ve never seen, y’know?”

Melo nods. Makes sense.

“It’s a big commission and I can pay you,” Allen uses his finger to shade in the hollows of hipbones.

“Whatever,” Melo says, and Eddie smiles.

*

It only works late at night. That three-ish time. In between going to bed and getting up. Between fucking and fucking up. It’s only when the moon is low and full over the mountains, spilling stark grey and yellow shadows into the apartment, that Allen feels comfortable enough to try to draw Melo and Eddie.

Furniture has to be rearranged so that they can spread out -- shirtless and barefoot -- on the floor.

“Just sit,” Allen tells them. “Closer.” And then, “Closer,” as he leans back against the ottoman with the sketchpad between his knees. “So,” he says, after a minute, not looking up, “do -- whatever. Slowly.”

And Eddie turns and kisses Melo, laughing a little to himself, and Melo lets himself be pushed back -- slowly -- until he’s on his back. He’s loose and tired, sore too, but sober, able to focus on Eddie and block Allen out.

“Stay,” Allen says, and they do, just making out on the floor, until Allen says, “Yeah, no. You need to -- move? Touch? But not like that.”

Move, and Melo does. Knowing he can be more sexy than clumsy when he wants to be, but telling himself that he’s absolutely not trying to move a little more fluidly than usual, keep his voice a little lower, and flex his muscles a little harder. He’s not trying to show Allen anything -- not trying to accomplish anything but art with the way he rubs his hands up Eddie’s back or the way he pushes up off of the floor and rolls his body with Eddie’s.

“You have -- “ Allen starts and stops. Paper rustles, tears and then, “I mean,” he says. “You look alike.” He’s talking to himself, but he sounds surprised. “I see you. Both.” More rustling. “Apart -- all the time and you’re big, tall. So -- stop, a minute.”

They hold still and Melo feels twitchy all over. “Just,” Allen’s backed up, it sounds like, to get perspective, maybe, and he sounds preoccupied. “Lay down. Like, over him, I mean, Eddie.”

Under Eddie, Melo feels a degree of relief, like he’s out of the spotlight and the show’s over. Not like it was a show, or anything, just that Allen was looking at him and now he’s mostly covered by Eddie and that’s hot, temperature-wise, and comforting. Until Eddie starts to whisper to him, ask him why he’s so hard (because Eddie’s not really; just mildly interested), if he’s an exhibitionist, or does he just want to show Allen how much he’s really grown up?

“Fuck you,” Melo says, and Allen tells them not to fight, that the anger is showing in the lines of their bodies and he doesn’t want that right now. Later, though. Maybe.

Melo hears Allen shifting around and then he’s there. “Need you to move again,” he says. “Like this,” pulling Eddie back and then over. “On your arm.” So Eddie’s propped up on one hand, and, “This hand here,” touching Melo’s hip with his other.

“And you,” Allen says, grabbing Melo’s legs, “like this,” pulling until Eddie is between them, and Allen’s sliding his hand down and inside Melo’s right thigh. “I mean,” he leaves his hand where it is, his fingers drumming on the tendon, “this is how you --?”

Nodding, Eddie shoves forward with his hips, miming fucking, and catching Allen’s hand between them. “Sometimes,” Eddie says. “Sometimes the other way.” Melo misses what Allen says, because he’s trying to swivel his hips out from under Eddie’s and away from Allen.

“Clothes off?” Eddie asks, calm, holding Melo in place while Melo panics, staring up and out of the big doors.

Allen blows out a quick breath and then sits back up again. “Uh, yeah,” Then, “Shit,” quietly, frustrated and tired sounding.

Eddie strips and then waits for Melo who’s moving, slowly, before bending back over him, blocking Melo’s vision, his hair falling in Melo’s eyes.

A second later he shifts sideways and Melo has to blink the starlight away. Nothing happens for the longest time -- long enough for the pressure to build and for the urge to stretch his legs to become almost unbearable -- and then Allen kisses him. Hard. He tastes like all the alcohol Melo hasn’t had tonight, and his thumb pushes brutally into the hinge of Melo’s jaw.

His other hand, and Eddie’s, are between Melo’s legs, touching and squeezing and stroking until Melo’s knees fall open and he turns his face away from Allen’s, letting Allen’s teeth slide along his cheek and catch on his ear and then his neck.

When he was six years old he would fall asleep on Allen’s thin chest, fingers knotted in the extra fabric of Allen’s too big shirt. He’d wake up with a cramp in his neck, wheezing, from the smoke that lingered in Allen’s hair and on his skin.

When he was a little older, he wrestled with Eddie -- fighting the loneliness and the shame and the anger out. They’d roll on the ground, pressed hard against each other, while Melo bit and kicked and grabbed. He still has the scars from where Eddie hit back.

Now, Allen’s sucking on his chest and working Melo’s cock while Eddie licks his balls, his hair trailing over and between Melo’s thighs.

Melo comes like that, before they do can anything else to him.

*

“Maybe this -- “ he rolls so he can breathe. “Wasn’t, y’know?”

“Whatever,” Eddie says, glancing at his watch, tilting his wrist until the gold catches the light and the band glitters. “Gotta go. Flying to LA in the morning.”

He sits back into the dark, looks at Allen and Melo, and then gets up and walks off.

*

Allen sits up and rubs at his forehead, looking dizzy and drunk and Melo sits up with him, thinking that he doesn’t have a lot experience with this, the awkward aftermath shit and that the lack probably has to do with not having a lot of sex with people he doesn’t want to hurt, or, he guesses, with people that don’t want to hurt him.

It’s like a crossroads, or a turning point or a rite of passage. Something. Melo can’t put his finger on it, but there’s a significance that he’s missing right now. Something’s been redefined (ruined?) with the three of them.

“I should -- “ he says, leaning toward the hall and starting to get up.

“Don’t.” Allen says, and he sounds angry as he reaches for Melo’s braids, pulling him back down. “Just … do this.”

*

Honestly, Allen doesn’t have a huge cock, but Melo feels like he’s choking the whole time he has it in his mouth.

*

Four nights later, on a night without a moon, Allen sketches while Eddie presses Melo face first into the carpet, pinning his hands over his head and kissing the back of his neck.

It feels contrived and Melo’s arms ache and cramp; his wrists have bracelets of bruises the next morning and Allen pretends not to notice.

“Going out tonight,” he says, looking past Melo, just to the right of his head. “You should come with us. I mean,” and he shifts his weight from one bare foot to the other. “With the girls and me. And JR.”

“Girls,” Melo repeats, popping the joint in his thumb.

“Mmm,” Allen says, studying the ground now. “Y’know.”

“Yeah,” Melo says. “Fuck you.”

*

There’s nothing left.

Eddie’s there and gone for most of the rest of the season, and Melo doesn’t bother to keep track, but he’s shocked at how much he misses him -- like, his head hurts and he can’t stop chewing the gum Eddie keeps in the ashtray of his Mercedes. It’s watermelon Trident, and Melo chews it until his jaws click.

Allen’s never around either, but if he is, he ignores Melo, even through Melo’s obsessive gum smacking

The summer drags. The dog days linger through August and September, and Melo almost forgets that he’s another year older; nineteen doesn’t feel any different than eighteen. He’s still a little too tall and little too thin and maybe a little lost outside of Sun Valley.

When basketball season gets closer, Allen starts to notice Melo again and they play together at the gym where it seems like Allen hates Melo more and more with every shot. He doesn’t hide his bitterness anymore or his disappointment in both of them. He tells Melo to quit dealing and get a fucking job, and Melo, for the first time since he was five years old, starts to tune Allen out.

Chauncey gets traded to the Pistons, and when they come to play the Nuggets in November, it’s just like old times: Chauncey and Allen and JR and Melo, only instead of drinking in the little house that Tuwanna still lives in on 11th and Federal, they’re all drinking at Crave first, and then Club Sutra, where none of them fit in and the tension crawls up and down Melo’s spine even as he gets high in the club’s private VIP bathroom.

“You,” Chauncey tells Melo, shoving him with his shoulder, “should go to junior college. Play ball. Fix this shit,” he shouts over the music, and looking at Allen who’s shaking his head.

“Can’t do it,” Allen says. “Too big. Too slow,” he shrugs and glances at Melo. “No point now.”

Blinking back the hurt and chewing on another piece of gum, Melo lets them fade into the crowd and away from him, shouting and pushing at each other and everyone around them, Allen getting obnoxious and angry to cover his resentment of Chauncey.

It all happens -- when it does -- on the periphery of Melo’s vision, just outside his line of sight. He can hear voices raised above the music, the sound of glass breaking, and then -- for a second -- everything is quiet.

Allen and JR are standing by the door, in a crowd, and Chauncey’s slipping toward Melo and the backdoor.

“Caron,” Chauncey whispers to Melo, and then he’s gone, bodyguards too.

The coke hits when the realization does (oh shit, Caron,) and Melo twitches. He’s frozen, looking at the mirrors over the distant bar, waiting.

Waiting. And --

There. The cracksnap of a gunshot. Yelling -- like white noise, rolling through the club. And another two shots.

fear in the eyes; say I’m never going to run



Rehab is white walls and silences; loose clothes and loose lips. People with bruises under their eyes and nails chewed to the quick spill their guts to nodding, smiling therapists twice a day. Melo feels stripped and light and disconnected. Saying he’s adrift is something only someone like Brendon can get away with, so Melo doesn’t. But there is a sense -- while he sits in soft, grey sweats and a white undershirt -- that he’s lost his anchor; whether that’s his own clothes, his heavy chains, the drugs, or even Eddie, he’s not sure.

The compulsion to talk is exhausting to resist. Even the bad therapists like Dr. Karl have perfected the trick of sitting and waiting and breathing while Melo and the others sit and sweat and shake and then finally start to babble to fill the void.

This is how Melo realizes that he has secrets. There are things that he’s ashamed of; there are things that he wants kind of desperately to keep to himself. He chews on the inside of his mouth while guys like Ruben (asshole, Melo thinks, over and over) talk about how they hit their wives and sleep with strippers.

*

“Not your problem?”

It takes a second to realize that someone is talking directly to him (an orderly -- a familiar one?), and another second for Melo to decide if he wants to talk back.

“What?” Melo asks, slowing down, waiting for the orderly to catch up.

“Beating your girlfriend?”

“No,” Melo shakes his head and reads the orderly’s nametag. Raja, right. The guy who sat up with him the night Eddie admitted him.

Raja shrugs and tilts his head down the hall. “Going to work out?”

“Yeah.”

“Want company?”

“Don’t care,” Melo says, honestly, and keeps walking.

*

“It’s just that--” Raja starts again when Melo’s spotting him on the bench. “It’s easier if you have someone waiting for you, right? Wanting you to get better?”

“So?”

“So, do you have someone waiting?”

“Maybe,” Melo shrugs.

“A girl?” Raja asks and then sits up, shaking his head. “Or what?”

Frustrated, tired and dizzy from all the different people trying to get into his head and all the chemicals leaking out, Melo drops the weights with a clang and snaps, “Or what.” He’s not used to hiding, but he’s never come out either.

“I’m gay,” he says, rubbing at his forehead with his shirt and then tying it around his head and heading for the basketball court.

There’s no one else playing this late and Raja’s still two feet behind him.

“And?” he asks.

Melo picks up a ball and presses between his hands. “And because I am,” he throws the ball hard in Raja’s direction and Raja just dodges it, “someone’s dead.”

Raja leans against the wall and traps the ball under his heel. “How does that work?”

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Melo settles on, not knowing how to explain Allen and not willing to, certain of his guilt, though; clinging to it now, tearing at its raw edges.

“Did you love him?”

Melo grabs a different ball and shoots his fifteen footer. It rims out and he lets it go.

“Yeah. In a way.”

*

The last thing Raja asks him before he gets out on his own again (no, not on his own; never alone, always with JR or Tuwanna or Steve or Brendon or Eddie), “In what way?”

There are moments -- rarely -- in life when you have the chance to be completely honest with someone because you’ll never see them again (in a cab, on a plane, in a hospital); so, Melo tells Raja, “I can‘t live without him,” (with what I am) and means it absolutely.

*

The second time he goes into rehab it’s because the judge tells him he has to. The facility isn’t nearly as nice and the therapists aren’t as patient. They don’t get into Melo’s head and he doesn’t have to fight the urge to tell them that he’s into dick and that coke makes it easier to swallow.

He doesn’t want to die anymore, but he’s still not sure how to live either.

*

Chicago, if anything, is more depressing than Denver in the winter. After four years, Melo feels a little like the wind’s leeched something important out of him, but at the same time, the humidity is settling in on him and rotting him from the outside in.

Eddie’s spent three mediocre seasons with the Fire and Melo’s not sorry, (“I mean it,” he keeps saying,) that he came with him. The way Eddie asked him to come to Chicago -- when he was half-conscious and lying in his own vomit on a December night, late in 2002 -- it was as if Eddie was asking something else.

At least that’s the way Melo remembers it.

*

Melo’s been clean for two years and class is just about to get out and he’ll take the train to their apartment. It’s his last English class (he only needs two), before he can start focusing on his business major; he’ll be lucky if he makes a C in it, and Eddie’s no help. “I don’t speak English,” he tells Melo, in all seriousness, and then talks dirty to him gently in Spanish the rest of the night.

Melo’s minoring in Spanish.

Eddie’s tired from training when Melo gets home and Melo tries to be encouraging. It works better when he’s high, and so he smokes a bowl and then they eat together while Eddie talks about Spring. Their place is a lot smaller than the penthouse in Denver, but housing costs are a little higher in Chicago and Eddie isn’t making as much anymore. Melo doesn’t really care; it’s not the projects and that’s important, still.

His phone vibrates while they’re watching tape of one of last season’s games, and Eddie waves Melo off, stretching out on the couch when Melo gets up, letting his hair (longer than ever, but naturally dark and curling at the ends) hang over the arm.

It’s Brendon (of all the people to find in Chicago), reminding Melo that he’s supposed to come and see Brendon’s band play tonight, seriously. Because they’re awesome, and Melo will hate them, but Brendon appreciates the irony in that.

And Melo, who’s stuck between a silent Eddie in a cold apartment and a venue full of tiny, tiny kids that will think he’s the bouncer, appreciates the irony too, and goes.

*

He hates Brendon’s band and the band that’s playing with them, but Brendon’s still using the green guitar, and wearing too much make-up. He’s like a fucking circus act, all by himself, but it fits and Melo feels a little jealous.

“Did you ever fall in love?” Brendon wants to know after the show, cramming Melo backstage with him and smirking at his guitarist.

“No,” Melo tells him.

“Liar,” Brendon says, and threatens to sing a song about him.

*

Sleeping with Brendon feels wrong this time, and Melo’s surprised. He’s sure -- damn sure -- that he’s less happy than he was four and a half years ago, that he’s nothing more to Eddie than his roommate (has he ever been?). But he can’t focus on the feeling of Brendon’s hair on his cheek or the sting of his teeth on his chest. He can’t lose himself -- not like Brendon loses it when he buries his hands until they disappear in the masses of Melo’s braids and winds himself around him.

Melo goes home smelling like Brendon -- with makeup smeared on his shirt -- and he showers before getting in bed with Eddie, who’s not stupid, but he doesn’t say anything,

*

To make up for the Brendon thing, Melo goes to the Fire’s season opener against Dallas and wears Eddie’s jersey. He’s eating a hot dog with extra mustard and drinking a Corona when Eddie goes down.

The heat is awful and the hot dog isn’t very good, Melo thinks, waiting for Eddie to stand up. His seat’s comfortable and if he’s not careful, he might fall asleep -- he did get in on a late flight. When he glances from his beer back to the pitch, and Eddie’s still not up, he puts his beer down. When Eddie gets helped off of the field another minute later, Melo calmly gets up, tosses his beer in the trash, finds the nearest bathroom, and throws up everything he’s eaten in the last twenty-four hours.

*

“It’s the ACL,” Eddie tells Melo back at his hotel. They have the curtains drawn against the setting Texas sun, and the air running quietly in the background.

“Surgery?” Melo asks, proud of himself for holding it together so well and not, y’know, either losing the power of speech, OD’ing on his own stash of coke, or just locking himself in a public bathroom and refusing to come out.

“As soon as we get back,” Eddie says.

“To Denver?” Melo asks.

“To Chicago,” Eddie says, looking at him curiously.

Melo smiles at him and nods. He knew that. He remembers now.

*

Going to rehab for a third time isn’t really an option for Melo. He looks at it as a three strikes kind of thing. If you can’t get clean on your first two tries, then you’re not going to. So even though the need is there (finding oblivion, losing himself), he gets Brendon (who is oddly supportive) to take him to a meeting and he gets over it.

Summer school keeps Melo busy (he’s never told anyone that the last thing Allen ever told him was to quit dealing and get a job). That and taking care of Eddie, whose brother’s come up from Chihuahua. Melo met Rico once years ago when Eddie graduated from CU with his degree in sociology and then again when he signed with the Galaxy. He’s never been sure if Rico knows about Eddie and him and is cool with it, or if he’s just an easygoing guy. Either way, he’s a good cook, and Melo takes full advantage of that, even if Eddie doesn’t.

“Make him eat,” Melo tells Rico as he hovers over him, breathing in the steam coming off of the tostadas Rico’s making.

“He’ll eat when he’s hungry,” Rico says, reaching around Melo for the cilantro. “And he’ll get hungry again,” he tells Melo with a smirk and a kiss on the cheek. “Trust me, Carmelito.”

“Wait -- “ Melo says, stealing a bite of chicken. “I didn’t mean that.”

“Mmm,” Rico says, and smacks Melo’s hand.

It gets Melo thinking, though, while he watches Eddie work out, his hair pulled back in the same kind of half pony tail he used to wear, sweating and yelling at Rico.

Maybe he did mean that.

*

No matter how much work Eddie does, though, the Fire aren’t impressed. His age, combined with the severity of the injury put him in a delicate situation with them regarding the renegotiation of his salary and playing time, and in the end (after talking to Melo) he leaves Chicago and goes back to Denver for a coaching job with the Rapids.

Melo transfers to Metro State and Eddie buys a house in the suburbs, well away from downtown.

There are boxes that Melo won’t touch, and Eddie doesn’t ask him to. They move from storage unit to storage unit and Melo promises himself that someday, if Tia asks, she can have them. The worst part of that long November when he was nineteen wasn’t really JR’s indictment for manslaughter (Eddie and Melo were gone by the time he was convicted), or the funeral (because Melo was too high to remember more than quickly melting snowflakes on his black suit and the fact that Tuwanna had shaved her head); instead, it was the mundane stuff. Melo was supposed to settle Allen’s estate, with Steve’s help, and that’s what finally broke him: sorting through the years of letters and emails that Allen saved from when he was in prison, boxing up his high school and college basketball awards and jerseys, and organizing what seemed like endless sketches.

A few of the pieces had buyers and Melo had to track them down -- even Diaw -- the guy who commissioned Allen’s last work. He added a bonus to the commission and all of the money went into a trust for Tia that Steve set up, and that according to him, she refuses to touch.

Melo knows how she feels.

*

The night they move in, Melo turns the music up loud and corners Eddie -- pressing him up and back against the wall of their bedroom.

Eddie tugs Melo’s head to him and kisses him. And it’s been forever. Longer.

He can’t keep still when Eddie’s hands slide under his shirt, skimming his skin, touching him deeper than the surface.

“Glad to be back?” Eddie asks.

And Melo shrugs, “Dunno. Maybe.”







i shoot for the stars



Melo makes a game out of scaring people on the light rail. If he can get them to leave before their stop, he wins. It’s all in the look; it’s just a matter of staring back. And he does get a lot of looks, as tall and as broad as he is now, braids past his shoulder blades.

A look is the first thing he tries on Tia when he gets home, finds her there, and the house literally torn apart. She’s not intimidated, though.

“Where is it?“ she asks, sitting in the middle of a pile of clothes.

“What?” Melo asks, edging around her.

“Your stash,” she says, twisting one of Eddie’s shirts in her hands.

She’s got to be fourteen or even fifteen now and Melo can see Allen’s ghost in her, around her eyes and in the way she tilts her head. The difference is in the weight she’s gained; it doesn’t sit well on her frame and she looks desperately uncomfortable.

“There is none, baby girl,” he says, quietly, still keeping his distance.

“Fucker,” she spits out. “I’ll call the cops, see if they can’t find it.”

“Do it,” he tells her, sliding down the wall and crouching at her level. “How did you find us?”

“JR,” she says, and the fabric of Eddie’s shirt tears. “You’ve been to see him, what, all of three times since you’ve been back?”

“Maybe,” Melo says, waiting for the rest.

“Eddie let me in on his way out. Told me to wait for you.” She pushes herself up and sways a little on her feet.

Melo looks, and then looks again and reevaluates everything, suddenly feeling more out of his depth than he has since her dad died.

“I hate you,” she says, snuffling into the back of her hand and looking at the mess on the floor.

“Yeah,” he says, kneeling up so that he’s about a head shorter than she is. “Okay.”

*

He convinces her to stay and then cleans the house because he doesn’t know what else to do. He tries to call her mom, but Tuwanna doesn’t answer her phone and Melo figures that if Tia wanted Tuwanna’s help -- or, if Tuwanna wanted to help Tia -- Tia wouldn’t be crashed out in the guest bedroom wearing one of Eddie’s old Galaxy jerseys, crying sliently to herself.

“At least you’re not sick,” he tells her in the morning while she eats a bowl of oatmeal with him and Eddie.

“I was. That only happens in the beginning, most times,” she says, drawing a diamond in the spilled sugar.

“Oh,” Melo says, kicking at Eddie, grasping at straws.

“Do you have a doctor?” Eddie asks, twisting his hair up into a spiky knot before he starts to clear off the table. “A boyfriend?”

“Yes,” she says, and then, “no.”

“When are you -- I mean,” Melo hesitates. “When does it -- ?”

“Come out?” she actually smiles a little and Eddie laughs. “A month, maybe.” She stands up and does her dizzy looking thing again before blinking it off.

*

Kiyan is premature, sick and addicted. Melo stares at him through a glass window, wondering if this is his fault too, watching him wave his little arms aimlessly as he breathes through a tube. It seems like Melo’s always on the outside looking in on the most important people in his life. He can never get close to them, touch them, tell them something secret. When he goes to see JR, there’s nothing left of the guy who used to race him for popsicle sticks -- not even in the distorted cracks and holes in the edges of the screen they talk through. When JR presses his fist to the barrier that separates them, there are tattoos on his knuckles that Melo can’t read and doesn’t want to.

For about ten minutes one night Melo started to believe, with all of his heart, that Kiyan was his, and that with a little persuasion, Tia would just leave the baby with him and Eddie. When he asked Eddie though, manic and shaky with the idea, Eddie just squinted at him (almost a glare), and said, “Jesus. Let him go.”

Obviously he wasn’t talking about Kiyan.

*

Tuwanna sits next to Melo in the nursery and he can barely see her, she’s so faded and dull. She’s never let her hair grow back and her face seems skeletal under the buzzing, fluorescent lights.

“When he’s ready,” she says, cocking her head at Kiyan, “I’ll take him home with me. To Virginia,” she clarifies. “Tell Tia that I did that, if you see her.”

Melo nods. He doubts that he will. She took off as soon as she could get up -- hours after Kiyan was born -- and Melo has a feeling that she won’t ever be back. She wasn’t lying when she said that she hated him.

*

With Tuwanna and Tia gone, Melo spends his time in the gym or on schoolwork and Eddie slips into a bright, but inconsistent afterthought. Melo assumes -- hopes -- that Allen’s ghost will follow his daughter and his grandson, but it seems that with them gone, Melo struggles even more with the memories (he sees Allen everywhere and nowhere) and the guilt. It’s shocking, but Melo hates the house in Aurora more than he hated the apartment in Chicago. The mountains are just a purple haze to the West and the prairie stretches out forever in every other direction. All the houses look the same and no one looks like Melo.

He’s twenty-five and tired.

Michelle’s living in Birmingham now with her husband and they have a daughter that Melo’s never seen. He wonders if he’d hate the South, or if the heat might somehow sweat him clean once and for all.

He’s looking up plane fares when Eddie gets home early and stands behind him, rubbing his shoulders. His hands are cold. “Why don’t you come with me tomorrow?” he asks, rubbing his thumbs up and down Melo’s neck when Melo drops his head. “Work out in our gym, hang out, whatever.”

“How are you going to get me into your gym?” Melo wants to know, clicking on fares to Chicago, just for fun; although, the last time Brendon texted him he’d been back in Vegas.

“Spouses and partners can use it,” Eddie says, tugging on Melo’s braids and moving over to the fridge.

It takes a second, but Melo gets it.

“Oh?” he says, shutting his laptop and watching Eddie crack open a beer.

“Mmm,” Eddie nods. “It’s just --” he hitches himself up on the counter. “We’ve been living together for, like, seven years and so, y’know.” He shrugs. “Seems like, sometimes, you’ve never not been here.”

“Yeah,” Melo says. “I know.” He stands up, spotting a silver strand in the hair Eddie has down and loose. “I know,” he repeats.

*

There isn’t a time of day or night when DIA isn’t busy, and Melo has to take a crowded shuttle (shoulder to shoulder with businessmen; briefcases jabbing the back of his legs) to his concourse before he can shuffle through security to Gate B17 to wait for his flight (which is late) to Alabama. He doesn’t call his sister; he figures she’s busy and if he can’t manage to make his own way now, he never will.

Common’s Finding Forever is playing on his iPod, blocking out the steady, monotonous reminders from airport security not to leave baggage unattended and the hoarse, hopeless crying of little kids up past their bedtime.

He sits, legs sprawled out, taking up four seats in a long row, while he replaces all the jewelry he had to take off to get past the metal detectors. The ring on his left hand is just another cold piece of gold that feels like it’s always been there. It’s silly, kind of, to need something to show the sort of commitment he’s made to Eddie now (always -- not seven years, eleven years, now, since Allen and Steve gave up and left Eddie to take Melo’s punches and his tears.) Eddie brought it up, though, laughing and blaming it on his age and soft, sentimentality, but Melo went along with it, bought them himself, and he has a picture of he and Eddie wearing them and looking painfully awkward about it stored in his phone so he can show Michelle. He wants her to know, to see.

When he dozes off, his dreams (sitting on warm asphalt, eating something sweet and sticky) are in a mix of English and Spanish. He doesn’t dream about Allen. He doesn’t even think about him.



END