Page 107 of Torch Songs

“HOW BADis it?” Tad had brought fruit salad, and he sat on the bed cross-legged with the bowl in his hand. Guthrie was leaning against the headboard, wishing he didn’t have to eat.

“It hurts,” he said. “Can’t lie. He says awful shit, and I can either scream awful shit back or take it.” He thought of the day before, screaming Butch’s littleness, the nothingness of his life into the old man’s dying face. “Either way, it makes a body… less. Less of a person. There’s no winning.”

Tad leaned forward, his hand on Guthrie’s ankle, the skin-to-skin contact reassuring at the same time it burned. “What you’re doing is so important,” he whispered. “There’s no way he can make you ‘less.’ Don’t think that way. It’s bigger than the awfulness of the person you’re caring for—remember that.”

SO MEANINGFUL—and painful and embarrassing. Guthrie didn’t want to talk about it to anybody but Tad. But hedidwant to talk aboutTad. Was it normal to fall in love like this, where even the person’s flaws seemed like sunshine? Where the smell behind his neck could be an aphrodisiac and a sedative at the same time? Where the crinkles at the corners of his eyes seemed like a promise of growing old together? Where the thought of letting this person down made your hands shake?

Guthrie had been in love once before, but he hadn’t had a chance to find out. He’d tried a couple of times since, and those had ended, mostly because Guthrie’s life was always in a state of flux, of wandering, of upheaval. But he and Tad had faced more than flux, wandering, and upheaval, and somehow, some way, he’d fought harder to remain by Tad’s side.

Did that mean it was real love, the kind that stuck? He wasn’t just working on one dream here, he was working on two—was that allowed? Could he make that recording date with Seth and still have Tad waiting for him with open arms? Did a man like him get the things he wanted most in the world?

Thosewere the things he wanted to talk to Olivia about. They were the kinds of things he was pretty sure Tad talked to Chris about (although he suspected they discussed diet, fiber content, and bathroom schedules a lot more, because they were stuck in a car together a lot.)

But he wasn’t stupid, and he tried not to be selfish. The girl wasin laborat herfather’s wedding. He kept an eye on her while the dads said their vows, feeling a sunshine burn behind his eyes.

“I get to go through life with a friend, a partner, somebody who gets me, somebody who laughs with me, and somebody who won’t leave when things get rough. I know that because we’ve been through the rough, and baby, you’re still here.”

Larx was the one who said the words, but Aaron’s weren’t any worse.

“I thought the sun had gone down on love a long time ago—I’d planned to live my entire life in a sort of perpetual twilight, where I knew what love was but I knew I’d never see it again. And then one day I looked up and you were running on the damned road, which was a death trap, and I realized the sun wasn’t gone. It had dipped behind the trees for a bit, but suddenly there it was, right in front of me, and we had a ways to go before night.”

Gah! All that poetry from two guys with the most mundane jobs in the world. Guthrie wanted to cry. He’d worked his entire life to be a musician, to be a poet, but apparently nothing made you spout the good stuff like getting your heart broken… and then falling in love.

“And there you go,” said Yoshi, obviously proud of himself and happy—and then staring anxiously at Olivia, whose even breathing was not all that loud but had the attention of the entire assembly. “By the power vested in Eamon Mills and me by the internet gods and a very helpful website, we have both seen our best friends married, and hopefully they will only be fifty percent as worrisome as they were before.”

“Amen,” Eamon intoned. “May the groom kiss the groom, and then may everybody clear a path so Olivia’s husband can get her to the first family-mobile so she can deliver the grandbaby of the grooms in a hospital and not the front seat.”

There was some general laughter, and then Elton stood, Olivia gripping his forearm tensely, and Olivia took unsteady steps down the aisle. Suddenly her knees almost buckled, and Larx was there to help Elton catch her. Without missing a beat, Aaron was there as well, lifting her up in his arms and bearing toward the vehicles at speed. As the little party hurried forward, Guthrie was shocked to hear Elton call his name.

“What?” he asked, standing and setting his guitar in its case. He’d been prepared to play the recessional, although he’d been pretty sure this was going to be how the ceremony ended the whole time.

“She wants you and me!” Elton called. “Please!”

“Me?” Guthrie asked, horrified. The girl had a wholetroopof family literallycarrying her to her carand she wantedhim?

“Nobodywho’s changed my diaper,” Olivia panted. “Nobodywho borrows my Tampax. Andnobodywho’s going to give me shit about seeing my hoochie stretched to the end of fucking days!”

Elton must have nudged her as they cleared the aisle and approached the driveway, where a Subaru Forester was one of the last vehicles parked.

“Except my husband,” she corrected, her voice breaking. “Guthrie, please!”

Guthrie was already hurrying down the aisle, pausing where Tad and April were sitting to give Tad the truck keys. “I’ll call ya,” he said, kissing him on the cheek.

“This is a surprise,” Tad said dryly.

“My only qualification is I don’t borrow her Tampax,” Guthrie replied. “Don’t be too impressed.”

“She only said that so I’d be forced to entertain at the wedding,” said her sister as she hurried up the aisle. “Now move it. We’re all terrified of her at this stage, and you should be too!”

Guthrie gave Tad a beleaguered look and started jogging for the cars.

IT TURNEDout there was some method to Olivia’s madness, although Elton was the one who filled Guthrie in on it as he was driving at averypracticed speed on the winding roads toward the already-alerted hospital. There were eighty people in Larx and Aaron’s front yard, and a reception at Aaron’s place in anhour, after pictures. Olivia had originally told everybody that if she went into labor during the wedding—Ha-ha! Like that was going to happen, right?—she’d leave the place with Elton and give birth quietly, without stealing any of the people from the party. It wasn’t fair, she’d argued. All of the plans they’d made, everything it took to get two incredibly busy men to have their own public wedding—and it had to be public, because they were pillars of the damned community and their family and friends werenotgoing to let them slink off and marry like they had something to be embarrassed about—and they needed to be there. So even though Christiana and Larx had planned to be there for the birth on any other day, onthisday, Larx needed to go be the star of the show.

But Olivia still wanted a friend there. And Guthrie had learned over the last couple of months that her stepsister’s assessment was damned accurate. Olivia had a huge heart, and she was warm and kind and joyful. But that huge heart was guarded, and her warmth was banked in reserve for the people she trusted, and for some reason, she and Guthrie clicked.

It was, as she’d texted numerous times, as random and as chancy as falling in love. The heart wanted what it wanted when it came to friends and lovers, and she wanted Guthrie there to hold her hand when Elton was busy being the man of the house.

As Guthrie had sent her his poetry and lyrics, he’d realized that yeah, he had a friend, and he didn’t want to shake her.

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