Page 81 of A Series of Rooms
Ben nodded, stuffing his hands into his pockets once he slid out of the booth as well.
“So,” he said, rocking onto his heels. “It feels like we should, like, hug or something.”
Liam raised a brow. “Do you want to hug me, Ben?”
“Not, like. . . in a gay way.”
Well, Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Instead of a hug, Liam opted for a pat on the arm. “We’ll work up to it,” he said.
He walked over to the window and delivered the line of plates to their respective tables, but the rest of his shift was knocked off-balance by the strange gravity of his conversation with Ben.
When he finally had another moment to breathe, he collapsed back against the wall behind the kitchen door and checked his phone.
There was a text from Jonah; a reply to the thread they both tended to throughout the day.
Got your book in the mail. I’ll start reading tonight. Thanks.
Liam smiled. Before he could finish typing his reply, another text buzzed into the thread.
I miss you.
His first shift back was a short one, and it didn’t bring in an abundance of tips, but there was something satisfying about working with a goal on the horizon.
When he got home, Liam changed out of his work clothes and collapsed into the swivel chair at his desk. It was still difficult, weeks later, to look around his room without seeing the impression Jonah had left behind.
For once, that might work in his favor.
He sat back and scanned the art-covered walls, remembering the care Jonah had taken to study each individual panel on his self-guided tour of Liam’s past. At the time, it had been a mortifying ordeal to reveal himself like that, to be seen at close range. Now, he was able to look at his art through someone else’s eyes, and for a moment, he could glimpse the potential that Jonah saw in him.
Liam used his legs to pull the chair toward one of his oldest drawings, the one Jonah had pointed out the night he was there. Carefully, he plucked it off the wall, trying not to chip the paint with the years-old tape. He set the drawing down on his desk like it was an ancient artifact. In the story of his own life, he supposed it was.
For as long as he could remember, Liam had only ever felt a vague sense of sadness when he thought of his childhood self—for the tough years of adolescence ahead of him and the deep yearning for friendship and belonging that he could never quite find.
Now, looking down at the depiction of his own childlike face, at the desperate way he held onto his friends, as if he knew, even then, that they weren’t his to keep, Liam felt something like hope amidst the melancholy.
The three little boys in the picture and the bond between them no longer existed, reshaped entirely by the people around them, by societal expectations, and by each other. It was something Liam couldn’t have back, and something that hadn’t been his for a long time.
He was only just coming to terms with the idea that he had never been the dead weight in that friendship. Liam had always deserved better, and now he knew whatbetterlooked like.
He set the drawing to the side and cast another long look around the room. There was plenty there to work with, and time to make more. Applications for the fall semester were due at the end of February. Liam had a checklist of his topfour programs in New York pinned to the corkboard above his desk, and a renewed determination to make that little kid in the drawing proud.
CHAPTER 37
Jonah
MARCH
It was cold when Jonah stepped outside a little past two in the morning. His thin cotton pants didn’t hold up against the punishing chill, but he welcomed the bite. Tonight, the cold was the whole point.
He had spent hours turning over in bed, long past the time the rest of his family had fallen quiet behind their closed doors. The air inside his old bedroom was too warm. The street outside his window was too quiet. The comforter was too soft, too big, too clean. This endless state of half-awakeness he had been trapped in for weeks was eating him alive. Even true unconsciousness failed him as a means of escape, either evading him entirely or plaguing him with images of half-formed memories that left his skin crawling for days. He didn’t have a preference for either.
It was that gnawing feeling that propelled him out of bed tonight, shucking off the bedspread and clambering to his feet.
He had just stood there for a moment, in the dark, in the middle of his room. His fingers had twisted into the hair on either side of his head—when had it grown?—pulling tight, tight, until the sting of his scalp blurred his vision with tears. He squeezed his eyes shut and wondered, not for the first time, if he was going out of his mind.
Outside, he thought. Just needed some air. Just needed some room to breathe.
