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Andrew is not a sentimental person. That part of him died a long time ago. In between foster homes, in the ratty backpack he was allowed to keep, he collected “nice” things for himself. A rock with a hole through the center, a leaf that he pressed and dried, small origami cranes and flowers, chipped glass beads and scratched lenses of sunglasses, a snowglobe with a crack running through the glass. They were in no way nice , but they were his.
He threw it out after he moved into the Spear’s house. Cass didn’t really give him a choice. She had gotten him a new backpack for school and had told him that change was a part of life. She didn’t know of the various treasures he had collected, blips of happiness in a storm of apathy and rage.
While he watched his backpack get compacted on a trip to the dump with Cass, he let go of any sentimentality that lingered in him, sticking to his gut like pink gum on the sidewalk.
Nicky, however, more than made up for Andrew’s apathy. He was constantly taking pictures and saving concert tickets, crying at movies he’d seen a thousand times and singing along to love songs with a dopey look on his face, his mind thousands of miles away, in Stuttgart.
That was another thing. The music. If Nicky was home, the radio was on, the station matching Nicky’s mood. Of course, his taste was abhorrent, but it was a good indicator of how cold Andrew could afford to be.
After three months of listening to nothing but the radio’s latest hits, Andrew went to the mall and bought the cheapest, shittiest MP3 player he could find. He spent all night semi-legally downloading music from every genre that interested him, then spent the next two nights trying to find something that stuck.
It took hours of scrolling through forums and putting up with some truly fucking awful music until Andrew was able to find at least something to occupy him. Electronic beats with caustic words spit over them streamed out of his headphones whenever he didn’t have the energy to listen to anyone. It was the music he played in the car, the same lengthy playlist that received constant revision.
There were more playlists, though. On lighter nights, where Andrew could focus on the moonlight coming through his blinds rather than the shadows in the corners of the room, Andrew let himself float, tethered only by the wire trailing from his ears to his hand. On those nights, he indulged in soft guitar and softer voices, boys singing about other boys in a way that didn’t make Andrew feel like he wanted to carve himself up. On those nights, Andrew drifted in a realm of possibility, a realm where he could have those gentle touches, he could be known and seen as anything but a monster. But the nights ended. The drugs came, and Andrew once again stripped his heart of any sentimentality that he could have once held.
And then Neil Josten ran through that locker room into Andrew’s waiting racquet and fucked it all up again. Because Neil was interesting. He was a rabbit ready to bolt but he held his ground and ripped Riko a new one in front of no fewer than five cameras. He was fluent in four languages and conversational in another seven, but he’d never seen a Disney movie (much to Matt and Nicky’s chagrin). He was a complete and utter contradiction.
And Andrew got attached. At first he told himself that he only paid attention to Neil because he was close to Kevin, but it soon became more than that. After all, Andrew wasn’t blind. Neil was disarmingly pretty and could interpret his stony silences with more ease than his own flesh and blood, and for the first time in a very long time, Andrew wanted. And then, by some fluke of the universe, he had Neil.
Neil may have been a mistake, but Andrew handing his MP3 player to him wasn’t.
It went like this.
They were in the Maserati, not old enough to be rid of the new-car smell but not new enough to feel foreign. It was a bad night for Neil, a night where he was afraid to fall asleep and just wanted to run. So they went for a drive. In a split-second decision that was the culmination of a year and a half of therapy and working on letting people in, Andrew fished his MP3 player out of his pocket and tossed it into Neil’s lap. He could feel Neil’s stare burning into him, a question hanging in the air. Andrew gripped the wheel tighter.
“Staring.” I trust you with this part of me.
“Do you want me to put something on?” I know. Where’s the line?
“Whatever.” I’m not sure.
Over the rumble of the engine, Andrew could hear Neil clicking through his playlists. There were dozens now, some hours long, some no longer than twenty minutes. He had three mixes for sparring with Renee and even more mixes for driving, and he could hear Neil skip through them, assessing the songs and the moods. Finally, he paused.
“This one’s titled pipe dream. Is that good?” I need to know if it’s a yes.
“Whatever.” Ah, there was that itchy feeling along his scalp. What was that quote Bee liked? “If we want the rewards of being loved we have to submit to the mortifying ordeal of being known.” Ah, yes. That one. Andrew had told her that he didn’t need to be loved, but wasn’t what he was doing the textbook definition of it? Baring the most intimate parts of yourself, the secrets you hid until the early hours of the morning, putting it all in plain view with the trust that the other won’t tear it down?
“Okay.” Neil pressed play. The music filtering on didn’t sound low quality because of the speakers, it was how the song was supposed to be. Andrew leaned forward and turned it up as Neil curled up in his seat, eyes on Andrew. He risked a glance over. Neil looked soft and sated, eyes half-closed as he pulled the sleeves of his sweatshirt over his hands. This was Neil at his core. Not a mouthy, Exy-obsessed idiot, not a runaway, just a tired nineteen-year-old needing time away from the nightmares. In this moment, Neil was attainable and for a fleeting second, Andrew allowed himself to imagine a reality in which he could have Neil like this forever. Just the two of them, together in the car, listening to music with no other pressure than to exist.
Andrew kept driving in silence. He knew this song better than he knew himself, most days. It originated on his late-night playlists, the ones where he was untouched by trauma and pain, the ones where he was free to imagine a world where he grew old and gray with someone. In a moment of weakness, he had put it onto the playlist that he’d stupidly made for Neil. This was his soul laid bare, hopes and dreams he could never think of articulating.
The song surged, and Andrew pressed down on the gas, focusing on the rumble of the engine and not on Neil’s eyes, filled with understanding as he listened intently to the lyrics. The Maserati was his to control. He had trusted Neil with the music, exposed the soft part of him that he kept locked inside concentric safes of knives and hateful glares.
The song came down from the crescendo, the moment ended.
“I like that one.” Fuck, Andrew shouldn’t have felt so relieved to hear Neil’s approval. Of course, Neil didn’t just like the song. He knew what it meant to Andrew, and it was Neil’s roundabout way of saying “it’s okay. You’re allowed to want this.”
Instead, Andrew put up a hand. “It’s not over. Keep listening.” They weren’t even at the part that gave Andrew chills every time he listened to it.
And then, they were. On some dingy back road, Andrew pulled over. He cut the engine, leaned his seat back, and closed his eyes, letting the repeating words wash over him, letting it drain the desperation he felt gnawing away at his bones. He couldn’t look at Neil. It would be just like the song said, looking at the sun and forgetting how much it hurt.
The song ended as all things do. Andrew waited for the next track to come on, but it never did. He sat for a few moments, then cracked an eye open, gauging Neil’s reaction. He was holding the MP3 player loosely in his grip, his eyes looking to a place miles away. Fucking finally, he opened his mouth.
“Andrew, is this-” how you feel?
“Shut up.” Yes.
Neil was looking at him like he held the secrets of the universe. It made Andrew’s skin crawl. He didn’t deserve to be looked at like that. People like him weren’t cherished. They were tossed away, tucked into the corners so everyone else could get their happy endings.
“-drew.” Oh. His eyes flicked up to Neil’s face, seeing the earnestness of his eyes, the soft curl of his lips in a smile (not the twisted, cruel smile of his father. His own smile, soft and innocent and warm). “Yes or no?”
Andrew sat up, leaning towards him. When he got close enough to feel Neil’s breath, calm and even, across his face, he whispered, “Yes.”
Neil’s hands came to hold Andrew’s face, his thumbs stroking over his cheekbones. When their lips met, it was uncharacteristically gentle. Andrew had kissed a lot of people in his life, but the tenderness of this kiss was almost too much. Almost.
Neil kept his mouth firmly closed, pressing chaste kisses first to Andrew’s lips, then his nose, his forehead, his cheeks. He pulled away, eyes still closed, and rested his forehead against Andrew’s, sighing gently. Taking a deep breath, he pulled away, rubbing at his eyes and fighting off a yawn.
“We can go home now. If you want.” Andrew hadn’t cured Neil of his nightmares, just prolonged the inevitable crash by a few hours. At least he would be able to fall asleep for an hour or two. Beggars couldn’t be choosers.
Andrew pulled his seat upright, turned the car back on, took a second to bask in the purring of the engine by his feet, and drove them back to Fox Tower.
If somewhere along the way, his pinkie became tangled with Neil’s while his hand rested on the gearshift, he didn’t mention it.
-_-
The pipe dream playlist grew and grew. Songs that brought bright red hair and fierce blue eyes into Andrew’s mind went on there, songs that Neil offhandedly mentioned enjoying, songs that made Andrew feel like someone was spying on him and Neil, spinning their lives into lyrics. The playlist had started at around an hour, but now it was well over three. Neil would put it on shuffle when they went on drives on their own, but Andrew privately ordered and re-ordered the songs into something just right, listening to it in order. It was a grounding method Bee had taught him, keeping things predictable so when he didn’t know what to do with himself he wouldn’t have to deal with the unpredictability of the shuffle button.
Generally, things were on an up.
It was illogical of Andrew to assume they’d stay that way.
The entire bus ride to Binghamton, something was off with Neil. Normally, he’d sit up front with the upperclassmen and discuss strategy for the game, allowing his Exy-obsessed brain to run wild while Andrew curled up in the back of the bus and let the time slip through his fingers as song after song played in his earbuds. But today, Neil was off. Andrew was just settling in with one of his many bus ride playlists, prepared to zone out for another four hours, when Neil slid into the seat in front of him, turning around and pillowing his chin on top of his arms on the back of the seat.
The way Neil looked at Andrew made him want to vomit. Neil looked at him like he was worth something, like he was deserving of care and softness and a happy ending that he could never have. Neil opened his mouth and Andrew pulled one earbud out.
“Stop.” I’m not worth this. Don’t fucking delude me, Neil.
“I’m not doing anything.” And oh, there was the Neil that Andrew knew. Contradictory, egging Andrew on to get him out of his head. Asshole. He didn’t even know he was looking at Andrew like that.
“I told you not to look at me like that.” Don’t look at me like I’m worthy. We both know that’s another one of your lies.
Neil’s brow crinkled just slightly in confusion, but he smoothly shifted topics and Andrew turned down the volume on his MP3 player, settling in to let Neil talk.
When he kissed Neil on the bus, in a more public place than they had ever been, Andrew was infuriated by the softness he poured into the kiss.
Neil promised Andrew anything in exchange for shutting down the goal that night. Andrew stayed silent, for once afraid that the words would claw their way out of his throat if he said anything at all. Anything he tried to say would turn into stay, stay, don’t leave me like everyone else has, let me have this for as long as we both want it. But he said nothing. Neil, infuriating as ever, let him hold on to that promise.
Andrew didn’t care for Exy, but he cared about Kevin and was reckoning with the fact that he cared about Neil. So, he shut down the goal. He pointed out to the backliners where they were lacking, what they couldn’t see, just because a small, selfish part of him wanted to see Kevin and Neil happy. Bee would tell him something like “wanting others to thrive because it makes you feel good by extension isn’t selfish,” but Bee wasn’t there to say anything. Oh, well, just another thing to talk about in their sessions.
Andrew was in the shower when Neil got back from press duty and waiting with the rest of the Foxes (and their new security guards, who Andrew was distrustful of on principle) when Neil walked into the hall. The other Foxes were preoccupied with their aching limbs and adrenaline from their win to notice how Neil’s eyes widened and he flinched against the wall. He watched as Neil shook his head in response to the guard to Andrew’s left moving just slightly. His hands, constantly moving, shifting clothing and fidgeting with keys, were eerily still, unnaturally pushed out.
Nicky cracked a joke about how they had thought Neil drowned in the shower, but Andrew could barely hear over the blood rushing in his ears. Something was very, very wrong. Even when facing Riko, Neil hadn’t been this visibly afraid. The problem was Andrew knew that fear in Neil’s eyes. It had settled in his own when he was seven years old and lasted until he figured out how to push everything away. This wasn’t Neil, this wasn’t Abram, this was Nathaniel, shrinking back into himself, delusional in thinking that if he was quiet, if he didn’t cause problems, his father wouldn’t lay a hand on him.
Andrew’s feet brought him across the room before he could even think about getting close to Neil. He hoped his silence said everything. Our deal is off, but I still have your back. Tell me Neil, who do I have to fight? Who do I have to burn down to convince you to stay?
Neil just smiled, a sad smile, looking at Andrew like he was the reason the light from the stars made it to Earth’s surface. Andrew felt like he was being unzipped, everything inside him, good and bad, spilling out for Neil to see. And yet, Neil didn’t move.
“Thank you.” No. Neil didn’t waste his words on meaningless gratitude. His actions served that purpose. “You were amazing.” No. Neil knew better to praise Andrew on anything Exy-related if he didn’t want to be threatened with a knife. Combined with the softness of the day, Andrew finally pieced it together. It was a goodbye. One that Neil was resigned to, one that he’d accepted. No. They just needed to make it to the bus, to the hotel, back to Palmetto. Andrew would fight tooth and nail to make it happen.
Once they got outside, it was clear that Andrew couldn’t do much. He already had to keep tabs on Kevin, Nicky, and Aaron. Plus, Neil had ended up further away in the line from him. The air was heavy with the stench of cheap alcohol and sweat and Andrew could feel a riot coming in the same way he could watch a thunderstorm roll in.
A bottle came out of nowhere and Andrew watched as it knocked Aaron in the shoulder. In no time at all, everything escalated, the two crowds crushing together with the Foxes trapped in the middle, and it was all Andrew could do to keep his family in his line of sight, trusting Renee to make sure the upperclassmen were alright. Kevin grabbed the back of his shirt and he used his two free hands to lock onto Aaron and Nicky. An elbow came out of nowhere, catching him in his browbone and Andrew simply ducked his head, pushing through the crowd, his sole focus on making it to the bus. Just make it to the bus. One foot in front of the other.
Andrew didn’t release his death grip on his family until they were on the bus, doors closed. The mob of people was still seething around them, so they wouldn’t be able to leave for at least another half hour, maybe more if the campus pigs proved to be as useless as Andrew believed. So they just had to stay in the bus and regroup.
Aaron, Nicky, and Kevin looked alright, if not a bit battered and bruised, but the crazed fans knew Andrew’s reputation well enough to not even think about touching what was his. Dan had a bruise blooming on her cheekbone, and Matt looked like he’d been put through a woodchipper, crying as Dan pressed ice packs to his hands. Allison looked fiercely defiant, a dark splotch over one of her eyes surely turning into a nasty looking shiner and she was rubbing at her bicep, but her chin was still haughtily turned up. Renee, stoic as ever, gratefully accepted a brace from Abby and an ice pack for her own eye. And Neil - where was Neil?
Andrew was on his feet in a fraction of a second, heading for the doors to get Neil back when Wymack planted himself in the aisle.
“No you don’t, Minyard. Neil will get back to us. I’m not risking you going back out there.”
“Fuck you.” Andrew didn’t care how vitriolic he sounded, hardly noticed the upperclassmen shrink into themselves at his animalistic growl, only fucking cared about finding Neil.
But Wymack was right. Neil wouldn’t want Andrew to risk getting hurt just to find him, and in Andrew’s humble opinion, if he got beat up he would be less equipped to slap the shit out of Neil for being so fucking dumb once he was found.
So Andrew went back to the back of the bus, sat down, and glared out the window at the crowds, like his stare alone could make them dissipate.
While he glared at the writhing mass of people trying to get out of the parking lot, Andrew began to think. Really, it was better than threatening Wymack with a knife to get the team out of the bus to look for Neil, so it was the only real option. So he began to mull over what Neil had told him in the locker room. Thank you. You were amazing. How was Andrew amazing? What did Neil think was so amazing about Andrew? He was damaged goods, the package on the shelf that no one in their right mind would ever pick with the dozens of other, better options right next to him. But Neil picked Andrew. Why? Out of pity? No, Neil didn’t do pity, he was cold and calculating, understanding at best and completely insensitive at worst. You were amazing. At Exy? Andrew knew he was objectively good at it, but it came down to above-average hand-eye coordination and a fierce determination to prove cocky assholes wrong. So no, not Exy. But the look, the look Neil had given him. If Andrew believed in the concept of hope, he would have hoped that the look Neil gave him was one of adoration, of utter softness and vulnerability.
If nothing else, it was Neil saying goodbye. Not by choice, Andrew knew. He had convinced Neil to stay until the end of the year, and besides, Andrew knew when Neil was feeling like a rabbit. That look, back in the locker room, that was Neil backed into a corner, all escape routes covered.
It hurt too much to think about, so Andrew didn’t. Instead, he did what he knew how to do best; he let his eyes glaze over and his brain check out. At some point, he mentally sped through Twelfth Night, but just as he reached the end of Act One, he felt someone sit down on the edge of the seat.
It was Renee. For once, she didn’t look serene. Her face was stony, her eyes cold. She was on a mission. Still, her voice was gentle.
“Andrew,” she said, “We should be good to head out and look for Neil now.”
Before she was done speaking, Andrew was up, pushing past her to get out of the bus. Kevin followed, but when Aaron made to stand up, Andrew shoved him back down. “No.”
The ground outside the bus was littered with broken bottles, upended coolers, and crumpled cans. The parking lot was eerily empty.
Wymack had followed Andrew off the bus, and with him came Renee and Allison. Nicky had likely followed Aaron’s lead and stayed on the bus, and Matt needed Dan’s attention, as well as Abby’s. Wymack leaned against the side of the bus, acting as an extra layer of security to keep people from getting in or out. He was spinning the keys on his keyring, one of his nervous tics that Andrew had picked up. At least Andrew wasn’t the only one on edge not knowing where Neil was.
“Alright, go find Neil. Use the buddy system, Renee and Allison, Andrew and Kevin. I’m not losing another fucking Fox tonight,” Wymack said, shifting uncomfortably. “Andrew, if you find him, promise me that you won’t stab him.”
Andrew simply raised an eyebrow.
“At least wait until you’re near Abby so you don’t end up killing him,” Wymack sighed. “Keep your phones on. Now go, get Neil.”
With that, Andrew turned and grabbed Kevin by the wrist, dragging him back towards the stadium, where he knew Neil would hide, among the bushes and in the divots of the wall. While Kevin called out for Neil, Andrew scanned the area, looking for any sign of Neil at all. They passed four gates leading into the stadium before Andrew saw anything.
And there it was. Neil’s bag, around his racquet. Two things that Neil would never leave behind. Neil hadn’t run, he had been taken, and Andrew didn’t know which one was worse.
In his haste to get over to the bag, Andrew let go of Kevin and broke into a sprint. He crashed to the ground next to Neil’s bag and frantically started digging through the pockets. In one of the outer mesh pockets, he found Neil’s phone and flipped it open. Besides his texts to the Foxes, there was an incoming call from an hour ago, with a 410 area code. That wasn’t enough. Neil had to have been hiding something. In the deleted section, Andrew found it. The same phone number, same 410 area code, sending a number every day. Today, March ninth, had a zero. A fucking countdown. Andrew clicked through it furiously, until he reached the end. Forty-eight days. Neil had been getting a countdown for forty-fucking-eight days and hadn’t bothered to tell Andrew.
Kevin was hovering at his shoulder now, and he could hear Renee and Allison making their way over. Well, at least he was following Wymack’s orders by not killing Neil.
Andrew jumped at Kevin before he even knew what he was doing, running him up against a wall and jumping to secure his hands around Kevin’s throat. “What the fuck do you know, Day,” he growled.
Kevin squeaked, his hands clawing at Andrew’s as they cut off his windpipe. Andrew just pressed harder. “You are going to tell me everything you fucking know about Neil or I am going to gut you like a fish. Are we clear?” Poor Neil, all his hard work of making Andrew out to be something more human flushed away. This was as close as Andrew had ever been to truly being feral, and he wasn’t about to let the upperclassmen forget how dangerous he was.
Kevin just let out a pathetic whine. Andrew felt Renee’s hand on one of his shoulders, another hand that must have been Allison’s on his other shoulder, and someone (probably Wymack) pulling at the collar of his shirt. He just dug in tighter. “Are. We. Fucking. Clear.” Kevin nodded, and Andrew let himself squeeze just a bit tighter, until Renee delivered a swift punch to his kidney, forcing him to double over and let go. Kevin slumped against the fence, Allison immediately going to check him over.
Andrew turned around and was immediately faced with a furious Wymack. “What the fuck, Minyard?” Neil could probably hear Wymack chewing Andrew out, with how irritated he was. “When I said to not stab Neil, I didn’t mean that it was open season on everyone else! What the fuck were you thinking?”
Andrew just shoved past Wymack. “Kevin dearest will explain once he gets his voice back,” he called over his shoulder. “He’s been hiding things about Neil for a good long while.”
On his way back to the bus, Andrew grabbed Neil’s duffle and racquet and brought them to the back row, then moved closer to the front of the bus, where he waited for Kevin to show up and grow a spine.
And grow a spine he did. As Kevin kept talking about what he knew about Neil, Andrew felt his anger at Neil building while his rage towards Kevin ebbed away. Compiled with what Andrew knew about Neil’s past, there was no denying that Neil was easily just as fucked up as Andrew, if not more. And now Neil was gone, taken by his father’s people if the Baltimore area code in his phone and the countdown meant anything. Neil was probably dead.
Abby offered to drive back to Palmetto, but that was unanimously vetoed by the team, who believed that they should stay in Binghamton on the off chance that Neil would magically show up. Andrew was indifferent. He wasn’t going to sleep tonight, anyway. Not with Neil gone, with Neil probably dead, with the only person to ever see the ugliest parts of Andrew’s past and present and react with cool understanding.
They bared their scars to each other, let themselves be known, and what did Andrew get? A trampled bag and a countdown that he didn’t know about until it was too late.
Eventually, Kevin stopped talking, partially because he was hoarse from Andrew nearly crushing his windpipe, partly because he didn’t know everything about Neil. No one did, not even Andrew. The one person with all of the stories, all of the truths, was probably somewhere in Baltimore, getting ripped to shreds by the people he had taken so much care to run from.
Abby started trying to find a hotel to stay in while Wymack began calling all the emergency rooms in the area, on the off chance that Neil would’ve ended up there. Kevin’s storytime clearly over, Andrew retreated to the back of the bus, lying down on the seat and snatching his MP3 and earbuds out of his bag.
He clicked through his playlists, immediately skipping the ones he had designed to ground himself. Andrew didn’t need grounding, he was perfectly mentally present and therein lay the problem.
After aimlessly scrolling through his list a few times, he settled on one of his longer playlists that he had made while sitting in the stands of the court, pissed at Neil for dragging him out to supervise his and Kevin’s night practice. It was titled run, rabbit, run. How appropriate.
It was a mixed bag of songs. There were fast-paced beats with scathing words about being left behind, slow, melancholy lyrics wishing for an alternate universe in which to exist where everything hurt a little less. There were the songs that for no reason at all reminded Andrew that Neil was temporary, and Andrew let himself wallow. Bee had encouraged him to start accepting his emotions and letting himself stew in them, so he was finally following her advice. Every song was cathartic to Andrew, a way to let himself slice away at the affection he still felt for Neil.
But it wasn’t working. Every song just made it hurt more. Trying to cut off his attraction to Neil just made him realize how desperately he needed Neil in his life. Andrew grit his teeth and continued to let himself hurt for another hour or so, until he was too tired of the aching in his jaw. He paused and found a different playlist, one to calm him down. That worked for a while, but then he needed to switch again. He couldn’t stay constant, couldn’t stay stable. Stability meant that he would have peace of mind and his thoughts would immediately go to Neil.
Andrew paused his music again and completely abandoned his playlists. Normally he used the playlists to control where his mind went, with some albums sucking him into rabbit holes of intentionally-ignored emotion. But now? Andrew needed someone else’s narrative, someone else’s life. Being himself was too much.
Andrew scrolled through the albums he had downloaded, dismissing almost all of them until he found the right one. Someone else’s story, a mirror to his own.
A twin fantasy. How ironic. All the things he was never allowed to keep, never allowed to protect, wrapped up in a tidy package with a neat little bow.
He clicked play.
The album started off quiet, but only for a few seconds. It flew through falling for someone and losing them, ripping yourself to shreds and then finding a false sense of peace that came back to bite you in the ass just when you thought it was over.
Andrew let himself drift in it, let himself remember in technicolor the moments he spent with Neil, moments of anger and understanding and as close as Andrew had gotten to happy in a long, long time. The memories from when he was on the drugs were hazy, too-bright and just out of focus, but the sounds and feelings were clear all the same.
The lyrics were filled with cracking voices and repeating lyrics, interspersed with long instrumental segments, but Andrew didn’t mind. This was his music from high school, back when even the concept of having something like he had with Neil was a pipe dream in itself. This was the music that didn’t leave his room at night, but somehow, Andrew was listening to it on the back of the bus, as his team began to grieve a person they’d never truly known.
They weren’t paying attention to Andrew. They never really did, unless he was a threat. So Andrew reminisced, and he too mourned what Neil had given him. A feeling of being known, a feeling of being worthy, the ability to think about the future like it wasn’t some hazy dreamscape.
Every kiss and touch and truth Neil let him have was cast in bronze in Andrew’s mind, free to be analyzed and relived at a moment’s notice. So he did, and he ached.
He was so caught up in reliving Neil that he didn’t even notice the album was nearing a close until he heard the opening lyrics of the last song. And there he was, back in the Maserati with Neil, cutting himself down to the core and trusting Neil to not run, to not hide, to not fight back.
Andrew hadn’t cried in years. Even over Thanksgiving, even in Easthaven, through it all, he hadn’t shed a single tear. But remembering that night in the Maserati split him to the core, sending lightning through his nerve endings and threatening to undo him once and for all.
Andrew didn’t press pause. He listened, he relished in the pure feeling that he had and silently thanked Neil for at least giving him a taste of what could have been.
And then the crescendo was over. And there Neil was, saying how he liked the song even though it wasn’t over. And there Neil was, saying that he wanted Andrew, with all his baggage and strings attached.
This is the end of the song, and it is just a song.
This is a version of me and you that can exist outside of everything else, and if it is just a fantasy, then anything can happen from here.
The contract is up.
The names have been changed.
So pour one out, whoever you are.
These are only lyrics now.
There was someone standing at the end of Andrew’s seat. He blinked his eyes open, squinting a little to see who it was.
Renee. She looked like she was about to cry. Something had happened. Andrew hoped it was a miracle, but with the Foxes’ luck, probably not. As casually as he was capable of, Andrew pulled himself upright and took out one of his earbuds.
Renee smoothed her hands over the front of her skirt. “Neil’s alive. The FBI found him and took him to a hospital.”
Lightning, all over again.
“Where.” If Andrew was any more sensible, he would have berated himself for how desperate he sounded, but this was Renee and Andrew didn’t have to begin to reconcile with the fact that Neil was gone.
“Baltimore. Wymack’s already getting us on the way.”
Andrew’s shoulders sagged, the adrenaline of the game and the riot and losing Neil finally wearing off. Renee, never one to use too many words, turned to walk back to the front of the bus, and Andrew slipped his earbud back in.
For once, his eidetic memory had failed him. Maybe shock did that. Regardless, he was side-swept by the end of the song, the very song he had told Neil wasn’t over yet. What a cruel trick.
When I come back you’ll still be here.
When I come back you’ll still be here.
When I come back you’ll still be here.
Andrew was getting Neil back and refused to let him go another time. Anything could happen from here, and it wouldn’t be one of Andrew’s elaborately constructed daydreams. It would be real.
When you come back I’ll still be here.