Page 49 of Considering Us

“Not at all. Nasty, right?”

“Totally.” It was getting dark, and I had an early flight with Heath out of Boston. “I better go,” I said. “I’ll be gone for a few days. I need to go out to LA with David.”

“Clippers game. Should be good. I’ll try to watch it.”

“I’ll be home the next night. His mom is able to meet him in Denver.”

“Have fun.”

“It’s hectic and a lot of work and not much sleep, but getting the chance to see him play is always great,” I said, shifting on my feet back and forth. I found myself looking down more than I was looking up, and I felt it.He knew.

“You’re taking the paramedic with you, aren’t you?” he asked quietly.

“I am,” I replied and cleared my throat. “Okay, I really need to pack. The food should be all right with me gone. Marnie’s following my menu.” I started walking away, not knowing what else to say, until he interrupted me.

“You know, when I was making that CD for you in London, I put the best songs on it that we listened to that night,” he said.

“It was a lot of songs,” I squeaked out.

“It was. So, I had to cull it. I picked out the most fitting ones.”

“Oasis. ‘Don’t Look Back in Anger.’”

“You knew that already. Counting Crows, too.”

“Which one? We listened to a few, I think. ‘Anna Begins’?”

“Definitely. And Guster. ‘Rocketship.’”

I closed my eyes, feeling the nonexistent music for a moment. “2007. But those were older songs, even for then.”

“It was our soundtrack.”

“I need to go, Kyle,” I said. I turned from him again and then turned back, giving him an awkward and unexpected hug. Even outside in the snow, there was such a difference in him compared to Heath. Heath smelled exactly like you expected him to—the pine-scented deodorant, maybe Old Spice, a touch of hair gel, some fairly neutral aftershave. Clean, manly, strong. Kyle was more of a mess. Sweat from running late to class or taking his goalie through reps at practice, coffee that he had guzzled all day and perhaps spilled on himself, cookies from the crumbs still stuck to his clothes. Cookies that I had made. “I’ll see you in a few days,” I grunted, pulling myself away and running back to Wentworth.

...

The last time I traveled with anyone was in 2007 when I flew back to Boston from Washington DC with the students from my semester there. I hadn’t connected particularly well with anyone from Norwell in my program and had spent much of my time shadowing event planners and cooks across the executive branch of the U.S. government. I remember sitting next to a guy on the plane who was droning on and on about how he wanted to be a lobbyist for the EPA after college, and I ended up crafting a makeshift whiskey sour with Jim Beam, two lemon wedges, and a sugar packet on the forty-five-minute flight as a coping mechanism.

Now, I found myself about to take off from Boston with Heath sitting next to me. The plane was still parked on the taxiway at Logan, but he had his earbuds in, and his eyes were already closed. It was early; he had picked me up at five in the morning for a seven-thirty departure. Still, I felt antsy; I wasn’t used to anyone else accompanying me on these trips to support David. And I couldn’t help but think how different it would be if Kyle was sitting next to me in row fourteen. He would likely be talking my ear off—even at this early hour—probably telling me a story about which president was the first to fly in an airplane.I need to remember to ask him who it was, I thought. I couldn’t shake him, even as we raced down the runway and ascended into the sky. As we broke through the clouds, Heath started snoring.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” the flight attendant asked me twenty minutes later once we had reached a safe cruising altitude.

“Jim Beam, two lemon wedges, sugar packet,” I recited. “I know it’s early.” I gestured to the snoring man next to me.

“Oh, I get it,” she said. “No judgment. I have one of those at home.” She swiped my credit card and handed me the ingredients for my concoction. “You think he wants anything?”

“Nah,” I answered. “I bet he’s okay.”

Almost seven hours later, we began our descent into LAX. I had watched two movies plus a holiday cookie-baking television show through the airline’s entertainment system, as well as drank two more of my weird cocktails. Heath’s body shook a few times, and he opened his eyes. “Hey,” he said with a yawn.

“Good afternoon,” I said. “We’ll be on the ground in ten minutes or so.”

He smacked his lips a few times. “You got any water?”

“Here,” I said, handing him a bottle from my bag. He had barely said anything at all throughout the day so far, but he was annoying the shit out of me.

“What do we do when we get there? Go to the beach?”

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