Chapter Text
Last year’s wishes are this year’s apologies
Every last time I come home
I take my last chance
To burn a bridge or two
Only to keep myself this sick in the head
’Cause I know how the words get you (off)
We’re the new face of failure
Prettier and younger, but not any better off
Bulletproof loneliness at best, at best
Me and you, setting in a honeymoon
If I woke up next to you
~ I'm Like A Lawyer With The Way I'm Always Trying To Get You Off, Fall Out Boy
Kenny does come home with them. He asks Maman if she’s sure several times, then calls his mother to tell her he isn’t coming with her, and Papa buys him a plane ticket over Kenny’s protest that he can afford it now.
“You’re a young man starting out on a new path,” Papa tells him. “You’ll need your money. Let us do this for you.”
So Kenny packs up his things and says goodbye to his coach, who hugs him tightly and tells him not to let his mother talk him into going back on his decision.
“He doesn’t seem very worried about being out of a job,” Jack remarks.
“Tom? He’s got other clients, you know,” says Kenny. Jack hadn’t. “He could tell my heart wasn’t in it anymore. We agreed that I’d do the Olympics and then we’d be done.”
And then they’re all on a plane to Montréal.
Jack worries that Kenny won’t have enough things with him, but has it pointed out to him that all of them packed enough clothes and things to last several weeks, and of course Kenny has his skates and his bronze medal.
“I’ll go back for my other trophies eventually,” he says, shrugging. “It’s not like she’ll get rid of them.” He moves into their second spare bedroom without fanfare and almost immediately cuts off his hair.
Jack catches him at it the first morning back, sitting on the bathroom sink, half his long blond hair flowing over his shoulder and half lying in a pile in the sink, the golden locks looking strange and alien divorced from a head.
“Can you get the back?” asks Kenny, spotting him in the mirror.
“I’ll probably be bad at it,” says Jack, but he takes the scissors and helps take the remaining hair from ‘short but girly’ to ‘messy but boyish.’ “You know, you could have gone to a barber,” he points out, but he isn’t surprised, somehow, that Kenny wanted to do it himself. He watches him scoop up the pile of hair and unceremoniously stuff it in the garbage before turning a beautiful, wicked smile on Jack. Jack has to kiss it, so he does. Kenny jumps a little but kisses him back, threading his hands through Jack’s hair.
“We’re still doing this, then?” he asks when they break apart. Jack frowns.
“Um, yes? Do you not want to?”
“I want to,” says Kenny, and kisses him again, short and hungry. “I just wasn’t sure. We met under pretty-clearly-a-hookup circumstances, and now I live with you, maybe you don’t want a…” He trails off and waves a hand to indicate himself.
“Boyfriend?” finishes Jack. Kenny blinks.
“…Yeah,” he says, quiet suddenly.
Jack shrugs. “I hadn’t really thought that far ahead,” he admits. “I just want to keep doing this.” Kenny grins at him again and tugs him back down for more kisses.
Jack takes him to bed that night. The sex is still amazing. Kenny flushes beautifully, sweat beading on his forehead as Jack teases him, and Jack wants to lick every inch of him, so he does.
They make a token effort not to let Jack’s parents catch them in the same bed, and they do a lot of laundry and leave Jack’s window open and keep the PDA to a minimum, but they don’t try too hard to keep it a secret. Kenny goes back to his own bed a lot of nights, but sometimes the sex is devastatingly intimate, with passionate kisses and pulled hair, but also gentle touches with shaking hands and voices that sound like they’re about to break, sex that makes Jack think of that Torah verse about become one flesh.
Those nights, they cling to each other until morning.
Kenny wants to get a job. It makes a certain amount of sense, Jack decides. He probably doesn’t want to be dependent on the Zimmermanns forever.
But he can’t, because, as Papa explains, he’s an American citizen and would need a work visa.
“Wait,” says Kenny, “That means I can’t just stay, right? I told the border people I was just here for the Olympics.”
“You’re fine for the next six months,” says Papa. “Five and a half, maybe. After that, you’ll have to sort something out or go back to the States.”
So Kenny researches living in Canada and asks questions like “Does the Olympics count as Canadian work experience?” and “Wait, do you have to be able to speak French?” and Jack tries not to think too hard about his dual citizenship.
They go to the mall and walk hand-in-hand, stopping for ice cream and to peer in the windows of the stores. Kenny complains about the music—some pop artist—and Jack just watches him and enjoys the soaring feeling in his chest.
One day, Kenny drags Jack into a tattoo parlor.
“I want, like, a garden,” he tells the artist, leaning over the counter on his elbows. He pitches his voice lower than usual, and Jack almost asks him why. “Like, sleeves of gardens.”
“That’ll be multiple sittings,” says the guy. “And it’ll be expensive.”
They agree on part of a design that Kenny can get today, and that he can afford.
“Name for the order?” says the artist.
“Kent Parson.”
Jack notices his parents look at each other nervously when Kenny comes home showing off his tattoo, but he doesn’t ask.
“Why a tattoo?” he asks Kenny curiously when they’re alone.
“I’ve wanted one for a long time,” says Kent. “And I saw the shop and figured, there’s no one stopping me now.”
Jack wakes up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and catches Kent stifling sobs in the other bedroom. “What’s wrong?” he murmurs, coming to sit on the bed beside the trembling lump.
“I can’t do the circuit anymore,” gasps Kenny. “Not with a tattoo. I can’t go back.”
“You don’t want to go back,” says Jack. “You quit.”
“Fuck you, you don’t understand.”
That stings.
“What’s there to understand? Make up your mind. Do you want to do the circuit or not?”
“Get out,” says Kent, and shoves at him. Jack storms back to his own room in a huff.
“I don’t understand,” he complains to his mother, after she pries the reason for his grumpiness out of him the next day. “He quit. He fired his coach and walked out on his mother, and now he’s upset because he can’t change his mind? He knew that when he got the tattoo, why did he get it if he was going to throw a fit about it?”
“It’s not always that easy, Jack,” says Maman gently. “People grieve when they shut the door on a big part of their life, even when they know it’s time. How would you like it if you hit your head and lost your peripheral vision, and you couldn’t ever play in the NHL?”
“I already can’t ever play in the NHL,” growls Jack, even though he knows it isn’t true. And then, because his mother is giving him that pitying look he hates, “That’s a very specific example.”
She laughs. “It’s from a movie. Cutting Edge. You should ask Kenny if he’s seen it.”
Kenny has seen Cutting Edge, and when he finds out that Jack hasn’t, he bounds down to ask Maman if they have a copy, and then he drags Jack to sit in front of the television and watch it.
In Jack’s opinion, there’s too much figure skating and not enough hockey, but he doesn’t hate it. Kent clearly adores it, speaking lines along with the characters and staring at the screen avidly, but when Jack comments on it, he affects a casual shrug.
“It’s okay, I guess.”
It’s only afterward that Jack realizes that they never resolved their fight.
Kent kisses him softly, sweetly that night, and Jack holds him like something precious, because he is. Kent touches him like he’s worshiping at an altar, and Jack touches him back the same way and marvels that this beautiful, spellbinding creature wants him back.
Jack catches Kent layering sports bras and thinks, That can’t be healthy. He looks it up, and it isn’t, so he does a little research and buys Kent a gift card to a store that sells binders, because he doesn’t want to guess the measurements and there’s no way to take them without Kent asking why. Kent tears up and tells Jack he doesn’t want charity in the same breath as thanking him over and over.
Kent drags him into a little restaurant/bar called the Tucan, reads the menu, and tells the waitress, “Quisiera las tres pupusas, por favor, de queso, y un Pepsi.”
“For here or to go?” she asks, and Kenny’s face falls.
“For here,” he answers, and his voice is still thick with the accent.
“And for you?” she asks Jack.
“Uh, I’ll have the same,” says Jack, and hopes it was the right decision. Kenny drags him to a table, shoulders slumped in dejection.
“I hate it when they do that,” he says quietly. “It’s my language too, why won’t anybody let me speak it?” Jack’s heart aches for him.
“Your language?” he asks, because he isn’t anywhere near qualified to answer the question.
“My mom’s name is Parson now because of my stepdad and it was Jackson when she was competing, before she got married, but it was Gina Vasquez in between, my dad was Andreas Vasquez Arenas and I was a fucking idiot who decided to stop speaking Spanish in kindergarten and lost almost all of it before he died and I couldn’t change my mind. I started trying to learn it back when I was sixteen,” says Kenny to the table, glaring down at his folded arms. “And now I don’t know if no one will speak it back to me because I’m white or because I haven’t gotten the sentence exactly right, even though I have a native fucking accent, or close enough.”
“You aren’t white, though, right? You’re passing,” says Jack.
“What’s the difference?” says Kenny, shrugging. “Race isn’t a real biological thing, right, it’s just a way of talking about the boxes people put you in when they see you, and what specific kind of shit happens because of that. Literally nobody looks at me and thinks Mexican.”
Jack has no answer for that, so he just nudges his foot against Kenny’s.
Later, he asks, “Was that a date?”
Kenny startles. “I just wanted lunch,” he says. “But it can be a date if you want.”
All of a sudden, Jack wants that.
“Then it was a date,” he says. “We should do it again sometime.”
“Yeah?”
Jack shrugs. “That’s what couples do, right?”
“Can we go skating?” Kent asks one day over breakfast. Jack startles. He hasn’t been on the ice since…crisse, since the Memorial Cup? That doesn’t seem right. But he racks his brain and he can’t think of anything else. That’s months he hasn’t been on the ice. The last time that happened, Jack was probably a year old. What if he’s forgotten how? What if he’s a terrible player now, rusty beyond what practice can fix?
The more he thinks about it, the more his hands start to shake and the tiny knot of fear in the back of his head grows.
“You okay?” asks Kenny, staring at him.
“Fine,” grits out Jack from between clenched teeth. Crisse, does he hate that question now.
“You don’t look fine.”
“It’s none of your fucking business,” snaps Jack, standing up from the table and stalking away.
“Fuck you,” snaps Kent in return, but Jack can hear him following. “Don’t shut me out.” Jack walks into his own bedroom and shuts the door behind himself, but Kent opens it again, walks in, shuts it behind him, and slams Jack into the bed. Jack sits down in surprise, and Kent climbs into his lap and seizes him by the shirt collar. And kisses him, forcefully and angrily, biting down on Jack’s lip when he kisses back.
It’s the first time they solve an argument with sex, but it won’t be the last.
“You can’t tell me you don’t miss the ice,” says Kenny, when they’re lying beside each other, sated and sweaty. Jack waits for his anxiety to kick in, but he’s still too high on the endorphins and it doesn’t come.
And he does, he finds, when he lets himself think about it. There’s nothing like skating: the bite of the blades into the ice, the speed, the effortlessness in every pivot and swerve.
“Whatever,” he says instead. Kenny smirks at him like he thinks he’s won.
The next morning, Kenny blows him, drawing it out, taking Jack to the edge and then backing off, over and over until Jack is squirming, desperate for release.
“Come on,” he mutters, trying to keep his voice down for his parents. “Let me come.”
“Kay,” says Kent, and sucks hard. And then he wraps his hand around the base of Jack’s cock, making him writhe.
“Kent, what the fuck, crisse de calice,” says Jack. Or perhaps whimpers.
“Take me skating today,” says Kent.
“What?”
“Promise you’ll take me skating, and I’ll let you come.”
“Fine, fuck, I promise,” says Jack, and Kenny takes him over the edge. Jack thinks maybe he comes harder than he ever has.
“Cool,” says Kenny, flopping beside him. “Half an hour enough time for you to recover and get ready to go?”
“Huh?”
“We’re going skating. You promised.”
“Fuck you,” Jack says without heat.
“Maybe later,” says Kenny cheerfully, and bounds out of bed.
“You can’t wear a binder while skating, you know.”
Kenny rolls his eyes. “I know. I’ll just wear my jacket.” He pulls out the top half of the tracksuit he’d worn at the Olympics. His breasts aren’t big, and the jacket mostly hides them.
The rink is free except for skate rental, and they have their own skates, so they go straight past the lobby and into the rink. The cold hits Jack’s face like a caress and he inhales deeply.
They don’t talk while they lace up their skates. A little boy stares.
“Mama, why do they take so long to tie their skates?” he asks loudly.
“When you get this big, there’s a lot of laces,” Kent calls back. “And when you’re as good at skating as we are, you want it really tight.”
“How good are you?” asks the boy.
“I’ll show you,” says Kent. “Give me a minute.”
He steps on the ice and glides into some footwork Jack recognizes from his long program, then begins a tight spin that he sits down into and straightens back up. People back up and give him room. Jack steps on the ice after him and glances over to see the little boy’s face. It’s priceless.
“Can you do a jump?” the boy asks.
“Yup,” says Kent. “There’s not enough space, though. Lots of people here.”
“EVERYBODY MAKE ROOM,” bellows the child. “HE’S GONNA DO A JUMP.”
Kent starts laughing, burying his face in one hand. But people are moving off to the sides, gathering like an eager audience. “Okay, okay, give me a minute! I can’t do it completely cold!” He loops the rink a few times, gathering speed, and soon everyone is watching. He skates toward center ice, faster and faster, then flings himself up and around, snapping out a tight spin before landing in an arabesque. The rink explodes with applause.
Jack realizes with a start that he’s on an ice rink and absolutely nobody is paying attention to him.
Kent’s audience loses interest quickly enough, and Jack joins him, weaving through people, and oh, the snic of skates against ice is like music. The lack of friction beneath the blades is the closest Jack will ever get to flying. It’s as though the ice is singing to him, welcome back, you’ve been gone so long.
He’s not certain about hockey, but skating? Jack will never give up skating, as long as he can. Never again.
Kenny grins at him as if he knows what Jack is thinking, and his smile is blinding. Jack takes his hand, and they skate together, lost in the crowd on the ice as though they were any other couple.
Kent is talking to Maman across the room when he goes red as a tomato, all at once. Jack’s curiosity is piqued.
“What was that about?” he asks when Kent gets back. Kent’s blush, which had started to fade, comes back in full force.
“She asked me if I needed birth control,” he mutters. Now it’s Jack’s face that’s burning.
“We use condoms.”
“Condoms break.” Kent shrugs. “Anyway, it’s fine, I have an IUD. Not that you’re allowed to go bare.”
Jack doesn’t know what that means, and decides he doesn’t need to. Kent’s not going to get pregnant, that’s the important part.
Kent gets the next part of his tattoo done.
“You’re going to run out of sponsorship money,” says Jack.
“Do something for yourself for once in your life, Jack,” snaps Kent.
He doesn’t mean anything by it, but the directive stays with Jack. Do something for yourself for once in your life.
He thinks about going back to hockey.
He thinks about never going back to hockey.
He watches Kent stare at the list of occupations that Canada will sponsor a work visa for and list the classes he took in high school over and over. Listens to him wonder whether Tim Horton’s will ask for work authorization, and if they’ll have him deported if they find out he doesn’t have any.
A little less than a month after Kent comes to live with them, he comes out of the bathroom moody and sullen, and pushes past Jack to whisper to Maman, who takes him upstairs. When he comes back, he sits at the kitchen table with his arms wrapped around his middle, and Maman hands him two Advil and a glass of water. Kenny downs them, but doesn’t look at Jack.
“I can’t get hormone therapy when I don’t live here, can I?” he asks dully.
“No, hon,” says Maman, smiling sadly. “I very much doubt that.”
“I wish Jack showed half as much interest in working as you do, Kent,” says Papa once. Jack tosses the book he’s reading to the side and storms upstairs.
When Kent comes up, he’s still mad.
“Go away.”
“No. What’s wrong with you?”
“I’d be fine if you’d stop fucking talking about work,” snaps Jack. “Congratulations, my parents like you better.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they should,” says Kenny, and shuts the door hard while Jack is busy reeling.
Later, he finds Jack sitting on the floor, shaking, and sits next to him.
They still don’t talk about it.
Kent goes back for his third sitting. Flowers and vines cover both arms, ending in a sprinkling of leaves at the backs of his hands and on his shoulders. Jack doesn’t say anything, but Kent still glares at him, daring him to.
“Have you thought about applying to college?” Maman asks them both over dinner.
“I don’t have transcripts or anything,” says Kenny. “I was homeschooled.”
“Really?” Jack…hadn’t known that.
“You can’t figure skate at that level and go to school, Jack,” says Kent, staring at him. “Did you go to school in Juniors?”
“Of course. We took work with us when we had to travel.”
“Obviously you weren’t on the ice thirty hours a week,” says Kent, shaking his head. “Homeschool takes up a lot less time because you don’t have to go to lecture and then study the material, you just study the material.”
“Plenty of homeschooled kids go to college,” interrupts Maman. “There are ways, if you want to. That’s a way to stay in Canada, though you’d have to wait a year.”
“You could play hockey in college,” Kent reminds Jack, who is busy stewing over the thought that Kent got more ice time than he did growing up.
“Oh, yes. My alma mater had a division one hockey team,” says Maman. “Terrors of the school. No social skills. But they went to the Frozen Four several times when I was there.”
“Were you really on the ice thirty hours a week?”
“Twenty-five on average, but who’s counting?”
Playoffs start. Jack doesn’t watch.
Kent’s mother calls.
Really, Jack thinks, they should have expected that. But somehow he’d been imagining Kent’s mother as out of the picture.
“My name is Kent,” Kent snaps at her, pacing the room. Jack perches on an armchair and tries to fill in the other end of the conversation.
“I’m not going back. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, Mom.” A breath. “I cut off my hair and got a tattoo and I’m going to go on testosterone as soon as I can.” He winces and pulls the phone away from his ear for a moment while Gina Parson shouts audibly.
He’s quiet for a moment, then, “I have a place to stay.” Another pause. “I miss you too.” Jack startles. He does? “I’m your son. Sooner you accept that, sooner I’ll talk to you. You’re using up my minutes. Bye.” He hangs up on her. “On an international call, too,” he says to Jack. “I don’t think I even have minutes for that. Whatever, she’s still getting the bill.”
Jack holds out his arms and Kent goes to him. Jack wraps him in a hug, trying to engulf him, to surround him and keep out anything trying to hurt him.
Jack’s parents are out one evening when Kenny jumps him in the kitchen, just turns him around and kisses him like he’s dying, then unbuttons Jack’s jeans.
“Calisse,” says Jack. Kent passes him a condom, then shucks off his own sweatpants.
“Shouldn’t we go upstairs?” says Jack.
“No one’s gonna catch us,” says Kent. “Do me here.”
“Here?”
“Scared, Zimms?”
“Zimms?”
“I hear an echo,” chirps Kent. “C’mon, Jack, fuck me on the floor.”
“Why? There’s a very comfortable bed just upstairs. Two of them, even.”
“Because we can, dumbass.”
So Jack does. It’s hard and uncomfortable, but the thrill is undeniably there.
“Admit it, I have the best ideas,” hisses Kent, and bites him.
“Crisse, I love you,” says Jack, and comes.
When he’s down from the high, Kent isn’t touching himself, or relaxing into the sated puddle that means he’s come. He’s just staring at Jack.
“What?”
“Did you mean that?”
“What?” Then he remembers. “Oh. Fuck.”
“Yeah, I thought so,” says Kent, and his eyes skitter away, which is maybe what makes Jack blurt out,
“Yeah. I did.”
Kent’s eyes lock on his. They’re a bluish grey today, Jack thinks. Then Kent starts laughing. Stung, Jack pulls out and ties up the condom.
“What?”
“I can’t believe you told me you love me while balls deep inside me on your kitchen floor,” says Kent, and, okay, that is pretty funny. Jack’s lips twitch in spite of himself.
Kent waits until they’re in the shower to say, “By the way, I love you too, moron,” and flicks water in Jack’s eyes.
“I found a job for you, Jack!” says Papa one day in May, tossing a brochure at him. Jack catches it, turns it right way round, and unfolds it.
“Hockey camp?”
“Yes, summer camp. They need coaches.”
”Robert,” says Maman. Papa looks like a chastised dog not sure what it’s done wrong.
“Yes, mon canard?”
Maman marches him upstairs.
“They do know I’m not going to break if they mention hockey in front of me, right?” says Jack, staring up after them.
“I think your mom’s just worried because this is like, a job,” says Kenny, reading over his shoulder. “Not just watching a game. Damn. Think they have a figure skating camp, too? Not that it matters when I can’t fuckin’ work.”
Jack has a crazy idea.
“So,” says the camp director. “You’re Jack Zimmermann.”
Jack swallows down his discomfort. “Yes, sir.”
“Well, I already know you know how to play hockey, son. Top draft prospect. To be honest, I’d love to have a high draft prospect coach here. My hesitation is that these are kids.”
“Sir?” Is he asking if Jack is good with kids? Jack isn’t amazing with kids, but he thinks he can work with them on hockey.
The director sighs. “Son, ordinarily I’d consider it none of my business. But the rumor is you’re a drug addict. So. Are you someone I can have around children?”
Oh.
“It was prescription medication, I’m on something different now, and I’ve been through a course of rehab,” Jack says shortly. “I can pass any screening you want.”
The director nods. “I need to run a background check anyway, it’s the law when working with children,” he says. “It’ll turn up if you’re lying. So, provisionally on that coming back clean, you’ve got the job if you want it.”
“I have, euh, a request,” says Jack carefully.
“I’m listening.”
“I have a friend who wants to learn hockey, but he doesn’t really have the money to take classes,” says Jack. “And I don’t think he’ll take charity. But I’m willing to take his tuition out of my pay. I mean, I’m willing to not get paid.”
“A friend your age?” says the director, frowning.
“Yeah, he’s a little old for the class, but he was a competitive figure skater as of a couple weeks ago,” says Jack, shrugging self-consciously. “So I thought he could like, kind of TA? Help with the skating part and learn the hockey part.”
The director shrugs. “No skin off my nose. Bring him around for orientation.”
“Kent Parson,” says Kenny, shaking the director’s hand, and Jack feels a flush of pride.
The group is about fifteen kids between nine and twelve who are just learning to skate. None of them know or care who Jack is, or at least they don’t let on if they do.
Jack has to tell himself more than a few times that these are kids, they aren’t going to be amazing, don’t be too hard on them but nobody else has to tell him that except for Kent once, so he calls that progress.
One of the kids, Bryan, is something of a spitfire and he wants to do everything almost before Jack finishes explaining it. He spends a lot of time falling on his face, but it doesn’t seem to discourage him. Jack rotates them through, making them take turns playing the goalie. Another kid, Stanley, really likes it in the net, and gets the biggest grin on his face every time he makes a save. After three days of putting up with Stanley’s pout every time Jack rotates him out of the net, Jack identifies another two kids who seem to like it, and divides the group into defense and offense groups. The three goalies take turns in the net, the other two practicing offense while they wait patiently for their turn, and Jack stops asking the other kids to do it. Everybody is noticeably happier with this arrangement. Even Stanley stops pouting now that his turn comes much more often.
Kent moves seamlessly between lining up with the kids when Jack is teaching stick-handling and breaking off to work one-on-one with kids who are afraid of falling. He moves like a dancer, and he makes Jack’s mouth dry.
“I can’t believe my skates aren’t falling apart,” he tells Jack after two weeks. “Boots don’t last this long. It’s June. I haven’t replaced them since January.”
“They do when you’re not putting that much stress on them,” says Jack.
“Sounds like a bad metaphor,” says Kent.
The Blackhawks beat the Flyers for the Stanley Cup. Jack only knows because his father is thrilled.
He goes to work and teaches his kids how to do (and defend against) a wraparound. Bryan pulls it off beautifully, flipping the puck under Stanley’s glove and screeching loudly when he realizes he’s scored. Stanley’s mouth drops open.
“Again!” he demands.
Jack grins all the way back home.
Kent’s mother calls again. Jack sits in the armchair and waits.
“Are you ready to be less transphobic?” Kent asks bluntly. Perhaps thirty seconds pass. “You can call me Kenny. That’s okay.” Beat. “Yeah, I know.” Another ten seconds or so. “I’m helping teach this hockey camp for kids. I can’t just abandon them. But after that’s over.” Jack’s stomach drops. “Yeah, okay. Love you too. Bye.”
“You’re leaving?” Jack blurts out.
“My six months is up in August,” Kenny says flatly. “My mother’s willing to try. It’s the best option.”
Jack hasn’t forgotten that Kenny can’t stay, exactly. It just doesn’t seem real. Kenny walks over and takes his hands, and Jack feels like something in his chest rips.
“Come with me,” says Kenny softly. Jack blinks and stares up at him. His eyes are the palest green.
“I—” Jack stops.
Do something for yourself for once.
“Okay.”
Jack’s parents look very alarmed when he tells them he’s going with Kenny.
Maman starts a sentence and cuts herself off several times.
“Jack,” Papa says finally, “You can’t just up and move to the States without a plan.”
“I can get a job,” Jack says. “I have citizenship.”
“And do you have a place to stay? Is Mrs. Parson expecting you?”
“We’ll work it out, calisse,” says Jack.
“No, don’t you swear at me, Jack, I’m your father and I’m concerned that you’re making a reckless decision.”
“So what!” says Jack. “At least it’s my decision and not yours!”
Papa looks as though he’s been slapped.
Everything is stilted in the Zimmermann household after that. Jack has a series of anxiety attacks, locked in the bathroom where no one can see, and doesn’t think about how they’re coming more and more often.
Jack doesn’t apologize. Papa doesn’t speak to him if he doesn’t have to.
Jack kisses Kenny’s tattoos, tracing the vines with his tongue. Kenny shivers and lets him.
“You should get one,” he breathes.
Jack, unlike Kenny, both has money to spend and is making more, even if it is only a pittance after Kenny’s tuition.
And, Jack can’t lie, Kenny’s sleeves are hot as fuck, and they’ve grown on him more and more since he got them.
“What should I get?”
“I dunno. Whatever you want.”
“Why did you want a garden?”
Kenny pulls his arms back and rolls away from Jack.
“Why?” Jack presses.
“I don’t know. It’s like, a living thing. Growing. Reminds me that I still can.”
Jack wants something that means he doesn’t have to be the thing he was raised to be.
He finds a stanza of poetry in French that he likes. It’s Parisian French, but he decides that’s okay. He gets it written in script over his bicep.
Des humains suffrages,
Des communs élans
Là tu te dégages
Et voles selon.
His mother starts crying when she sees it.
Camp ends. Most of the kids hug them both goodbye. Bryan and Stanley cling extra tightly, and Jack hugs them back.
Camp ends, and Kent gets on a plane to New York. Jack goes with him. They take a cab so Jack doesn’t have to ask his parents to drive them.
Gina Parson startles when she sees Kent at the airport.
“Oh my word,” she says weakly. “You weren’t kidding.” Kent shoves his hands in his pockets and looks uncomfortable. Gina turns to look at Jack. “Jack Zimmermann,” she says. “What a surprise.”
“Hi,” says Jack.
“He’s my boyfriend,” says Kent, and takes Jack’s hand in front of the world.
“You might have warned me,” says Gina. Jack thinks she might have a point.
“Are you just visiting, then?” she says in the car. “Only, one doesn’t bring their boyfriend home to move in.”
“I’m going to find a job,” Jack volunteers. “I won’t be in your hair for long.”
“You say that like it’s easy,” she says.
Mr. Parson is reading the newspaper when they get home. He spots Kent and Jack overtop of it, and his eyebrows shoot up.
“Ben, this is Jack Zimmermann,” says Gina. “Kenny’s boyfriend. Apparently.”
Mr. Parson just stares at them, eyes flitting over Kenny’s tattooed arms and choppy hair, then scanning Jack from head to toe. Then he takes a breath, says, “Welcome home, Kenny,” and disappears behind the paper again as though it’s all just too much to deal with tonight.
The Parsons don’t have a spare room, so Jack sleeps in Kent’s bed. Which he was going to do anyway, but it’s nice not to feel like he has to sneak around.
They’re all set to go job hunting the next day, except Kent realizes they don’t have resumes. So they stay in and do that instead, poring over examples on the internet.
On the advice of Mr. Parson, they hit the street, walking into businesses and handing out resumes. The local coffee shop takes copies, but never calls. The same is true of half a dozen fast food restaurants. Other places won’t even take one, telling them there are no vacancies.
“I guess we don’t have enough experience?” says Jack, staring at a resume.
“Nobody wants to hire a kid who looks like a teenage delinquent,” says Gina bluntly. A cold chill passes over Jack. Kenny stands up and storms to their room, slamming the door behind him. Jack’s breath starts catching in his throat, and he rides the attack out alone.
“I shouldn’t have let you talk me into this,” Jack says later, staring at the lines of text on his arm.
“Oh, yeah, blame me,” spits Kent. “All my fault. It was your fucking decision.”
“You encouraged me—”
“You’re a grown-ass adult! You don’t get to pawn your shitty decision making off on me!”
“Oh, now you’re willing to admit it was a shitty decision, you with your three-part full sleeve shit going on.”
“My sleeves were not a shitty decision!”
“You just said—”
“I don’t regret it! So what if people think I’m a delinquent? At least I’m not perfect, beautiful McKenzie Parson anymore.”
Jack nearly, nearly says You’ll always be perfect, beautiful McKenzie Parson, just to make it hurt as badly as he can, but he makes himself shut his mouth.
He hears Kent crying in the middle of the night, but he doesn’t comfort him.
Kent wakes him up by kissing him, hard. The air is sharp and pointed, and the sex is rough and angry, and they’re the only two people in the world. Kent glares at Jack even as he rides him. Jack bunches his shirt in his fists so he doesn’t whiten his knuckles in Kenny’s skin.
They wear long sleeves when they go out. Jack doesn’t know if he’s imagining that people are friendlier.
“Why is this so fucking difficult,” Jack complains.
“Now you get it,” grumbles Kent from beside him on the bed. “Frustrating, isn’t it? Relying on someone else’s family for bed and board because you can’t get hired?”
“I’ll get hired,” says Jack stubbornly. “I’m an American citizen.”
“So what.” Kent stares up at the ceiling.
“So it’s actually legal to hire me. I’m not delusional.”
“Fuck off! I am not delusional!”
“No, you just think you can drop your success in the trash, run away to Canada, and make something of yourself.” Jack knows he’s being cruel, but he can’t seem to make himself stop. He sits up instead and turns away.
“As opposed to you? Couldn’t fucking handle the pressure of yours? You had everything handed to you on a plate and you torched it!”
“I have an anxiety disorder!” yells Jack, standing up and stalking away. “I didn’t choose that!” He hears Kenny stand up behind him.
“Stop kidding yourself! You’ll never be worth anything!” It hits like a hard check, and Jack lashes out in turn.
“Neither will you!”
They stop and stare at each other, chests heaving. There are tears running down Kenny’s cheeks, and he swipes his hand over his face.
“I think you should go home,” says Kenny finally, and he won’t look at Jack. Jack’s heart drops to his stomach.
“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” he says quietly.
He doesn’t say are we breaking up because he’s afraid of the answer.
He texts his mother so he doesn’t have to hear her voice.
Can I come home?
She responds within minutes.
Oh honey. Of course. Please.