100 Days (22 page)

“So, Mister Big Director, what would we film here?” Jake asks, glancing across at Aiden.

“Well, I know you mentioned the post-apocalypse thing earlier, but… couldn’t this place make for the ultimate feel-good movie?”

“Are you joking?”

“Not at all. Think about it,” Aiden says, gesturing around the hall and turning to face Jake. “Couple of architects discover this place and decide they should restore it to its former glory?”

“Okay, I could get on board with that,” Jake concedes. Wood creaks above his head in the breeze that whips through the exposed interior, and he keeps talking to stave off the sensation of a ghost at his back. “So who are these architects? And why are they in
Gary,
of all places?”

“The location doesn’t matter; they could be anywhere. What matters is this place. Don’t you remember when we went down to Biddeford to explore that abandoned nursing home?”

“I don’t follow.”

“You said that you’d always thought about buying some old, abandoned place and restoring it,” Aiden says.

Jake stops in his tracks and blinks at Aiden, his brow furrowed. Though it takes him a second, he
does
remember.

Both seventeen, they had wandered through that old nursing home for hours, scouring the place for something quirky or interesting to take home. The only thing they found worth taking, the place having undoubtedly already been picked apart by other urban explorers, was a vaguely creepy wooden marionette that Aiden insisted was probably valuable. It wasn’t, not even a little bit, and after a series of somewhat spooky but ultimately—in Jake’s opinion—explicable events, they ended up ritualistically burning it at one of their friend Josh’s Hellraiser Bonfires.

As they climbed back out of the first floor window of the nursing home, Jake had told Aiden what he’d been thinking for the past hour: “Wouldn’t it be cool to restore this place, or make it into something different? I’ve always thought about doing it. It’s kind of sad that it’s just empty, don’t you think?”

Now, Jake shakes his head. “
How
do you remember that stuff? I’m the one who’s supposed to be good with details.”

Aiden shrugs and crouches to examine something on the floor. Jake tries to distract himself in a similar way, but this is another moment, in a lengthening series of moments, that brings into startling focus exactly how damaging what they’ve started could prove to be. Jake has been letting himself get carried away, giving in too often to the need to glut himself on the touching and kissing and intimacy, and he’s beginning to forget how to rein himself in. The worst part is that he’s also losing the will to care.

“I’ve gotta get some life into this place,” he sings to break the tension, and it still strikes him how unfamiliar his own voice sounds.

“Been livin’ here too long, at too slow a pace,” Aiden responds, smiling as he stands and turns to cross the expansive floor.

“I’ll wake up tomorrow just the same as today.”

“But tomorrow will be different, ‘cause that’s when I’ll say…”

By the time they meet in the middle, Jake mirrors Aiden’s warm smile; they’re somewhere they aren’t supposed to be, and a frisson of rebellion races the length of his spine as they sing in unison, “This could be new, could be new, it could be all brand new. Just open your eyes and you’ll see it, too.”

“That song is the
worst,”
Aiden groans. “Can you believe I actually wrote that crap?”

Laughing giddily, Jake takes Aiden’s arms and wraps them around his own waist. “So tell me more about these architects.”

“Well, I figure one of them is kind of down and out, you know? One last job before he gives up and becomes a professor, or something.”

“And the other?”

“Young prodigy, obviously. Fresh out of college and answers the other guy’s ad for a collaborator.”

“So they clash from the beginning, but against
all
odds, end up com­plement­ing one another?”

“Hey, they’re clichés for a reason,” Aiden says with an easy grin. “If you think about it, that’s sort of like us, with how many times we’ve argued about film techniques. And somehow everything we worked on together turned out great.”

“That’s because we’re a very special, and very rare, breed of awesome,” Jake says.

“Come on, there’s more to it than that.”

“Well, sure there is. We’ve been best friends since before we could tie our shoelaces. Everything had to dovetail at some point, right?”

“Of course, but that’s not…” Aiden trails off and drops his gaze, unwraps his arms from Jake’s waist and takes his hands instead. Jake waits, rubs his thumbs over Aiden’s knuckles, and thinks,
Don’t say it, Dan. Don’t say it, please don’t say it.

And then Aiden looks up at him with so much fondness and torture in his expression that Jake hears a click in the back of his mind, feels himself splinter and begin to peel apart like damp wood, because… he’s in love with Aiden.

Jake Valentine is in love with Aiden Calloway.

The moment hangs, silently suspended between them, disturbed dust motes floating around, and it takes everything Jake has not to reel back from it. He bites his lip and looks away, lacking the trust that he will not prostrate himself at Aiden’s feet and make declarations and promises he could never possibly keep; as soon as he even tries, all of what is good and right between them will be dashed, he’s sure of it.
This
is why he should have repeated to himself over and over,
What happens on the road trip stays on the road trip.

Carefully, keeping his face as neutral as possible, Jake opens his mouth. He’s cut off by a sharp crack overhead, and he and Aiden both look up just in time to see a thick wooden roof beam break off the ceiling and fall straight down toward them.

He’s knocked sideways and lands heavily on the floor, pain flaring sharply along his ribs. He lies still for a moment, listening to the echo of the deep, resounding thud the beam left behind. When he finally breathes out, blood rushing in his ears as his heart pounds, his exhalation disturbs the dust.

Aiden groans somewhere behind him, and Jake staggers to his feet, clutch­ing his side as he stumbles to where Aiden lies on the other side of the beam. Pain is etched into every line on Aiden’s face and his eyes are screwed shut as he cradles his arm to his chest. Jake’s hands tremble as he cups Aiden’s face.

“’m fine,” Aiden mumbles before Jake can say anything. “It just glanced off me, I’m fine.”

“Jesus,” Jake breathes. He drops his forehead to rest against Aiden’s and twists to press a kiss to his lips, his heart stuttering when Aiden takes one of Jake’s hands in his own.

“Are you okay?” Aiden asks, pulling back to search Jake’s face, turning it this way and that.

“I’m okay, Super-Dan,” Jake replies with an almost hysterical giggle, and then the reality hits him all at once—what if Aiden had been a second too late, or if neither of them had noticed at all. “You just… you just saved our lives.”

Adrenalin courses through his veins. Aiden leans to kiss him again, the pres­sure fierce and almost too much. “Are—you sure—you’re okay?” Aiden asks him between kisses.

He doesn’t answer right away, suddenly feeling as far from okay as possible. He’s never felt more powerless. Finally he nods, wriggles out of Aiden’s grasp and pulls him to his feet. Aiden takes Jake’s hand in his own and intertwines their fingers with a gentle squeeze, and Jake flashes on that same hand sliding across a tabletop in Provincetown.

This time, Jake doesn’t refuse; on the contrary, he holds on for dear life.

Jake is back
in the old train station, but he can’t remember how he got there. The interior looks completely different, still a husk, but as if it’s been used recently. The grout between the white brick tiles on the lower half of the walls has turned gray and brown; the wood of the benches is worn and faded. The beige flooring is cracked and raised in places, and in the upper corners of the room, black mold mottles the walls. The ceiling is stained, but intact.

He expects to feel a sense of trepidation and foreboding, but all he feels is an overwhelming sadness that this place has been forgotten. Aiden’s grip on his hand is tight, though Jake can’t recall if it’s been there from the start or if it has only just appeared. He runs the fingers of his free hand along the backs of the benches, pressing into the dust at intervals and leaving behind fingerprints.

They turn toward the padlocked door, the floor before it free of debris, and walk in a beam of sunlight that pours in from behind them. Jake’s shadow stretches in front of him, but Aiden’s is cast to the side.

“I brought you something,” Aiden says, his voice hushed, and they stop in the middle of the aisle as Jake turns to face him. Out of his pocket, Aiden draws an old-fashioned brass barrel key and presses it into Jake’s palm. “Don’t be gone too long, sweetheart.”

Before Jake can ask what he means, Aiden softly kisses his jaw, and is gone.

Jake weighs the key in his hand, trying to learn the measure and balance of it. While old-fashioned in design, not a single mark tarnishes the brass. A knocking begins, which sounds as though it’s coming from behind the paneled door; Jake strides toward it, fumbling to fit the key in the lock as the knocking grows louder and more insistent.

Silence falls suddenly; the only sound that slices it apart is the ominous creak of the door swinging wide open. The closet beyond is darkened, the air inside thick with age, its only contents a small, dainty music box on the floor in the center of the room. The box is of a simple design: almost square, about six inches wide and four inches deep, the dark wooden lid inlaid with a crescent moon, two stars and two musical notes. Slowly, Jake winds the silver handle and opens the lid. Inside, a pearlescent ballerina turns in circles to the somber, despondent tune of “The Scientist” by Coldplay. All at once, Jake thinks of a kiss that never was, that should have been, that would have canceled out all other kisses.

Lying on the bottom of the music box is a single train ticket, printed with Chicago as the destination. Carefully tucking the still open music box into the crook of his elbow, he pulls out the ticket and studies it, thinking,
I know what’s in Chicago.

Stepping out of the closet and toward the window in the waiting room, Jake sees a train beginning to pull out of the station. He rushes outside into blazing sunlight; an electronic screen suspended from the corrugated iron shelter tells him that the train is bound for Chicago.

“You missed it,” Aiden says, appearing at his elbow.

“I missed it,” Jake repeats.

“There’ll be another one,” Aiden says, an easy confidence in his tone, and suddenly he’s sitting on a bench and patting the seat next to him.

“But isn’t this where I’m supposed to be?” Jake asks as he sits down, perch­ing the music box on his knees. Aiden’s smile is even brighter than the sunshine that lights up the platform. He settles his arm around Jake’s shoulders.

“You’ll come back, sweetheart. You always do,” he says, tilting Jake’s face toward his. “I know you’ll always be waiting for me.”

“But what do I do until then?” Jake asks, imploring, even as Aiden closes the gap between them. Aiden smiles as their lips brush, and—

Jake wakes up, jerking upright with a gasp, wondering where he is. His phone is beeping, and after shutting it off, he sinks back against his pillows, scrubbing a hand through his messy hair. There’s a cold, empty space in the bed next to him, and he glances over to find a note on Aiden’s pillow that reads,
Cupboards empty, went out in search of breakfast and ice packs. Back soon.

It’s too hot, and Jake unceremoniously throws off the sheets tangled around his legs. He clambers out of bed, grabs his phone and stumbles to the closet for his yoga mat. Humming absently under his breath, finding solace in the simple pleasure of
finally
being free to let the music flow out of him, he spreads out the mat in the living area and begins his warmup stretches.

The dream preys on his mind even as he tries to push it away.
I never remember my dreams. Why this one?
It’s as if he had been gazing at a surrealist painting, trying to discern the meaning behind it, and someone had come striding up to him and hit him over the head with it. He can still hear “The Scientist” playing, as clearly as if the music box were sitting right before him, and as he stumbles over an easy stretch that he could normally perform in his sleep, he growls in frustration.

It’s the seven-year-old memory that he tries not to let surface too often lest it swallow him whole; the memory of what happened the day his father died, before Jake knew that anything was amiss.

Aiden was wearing those canary-yellow pants of his that Jake outwardly professed to abhor but secretly loved on him, particularly against the deep blue of his favorite comforter. Jake’s dad was working out on the boats; with the thunder rumbling outside and rain pounding heavily, Jake thought he would probably be home early. When the words on the tip of his tongue finally became too urgent to hold back anymore, Jake threw down his pen in the middle of their Coldplay-soundtracked study session. In a tremulous voice, Jake confessed his deepest, darkest secret: “Dan, I think… no, I
know…
I’m gay.”

After trading Jake’s confession for his own, Aiden tilted Jake’s entire world­view by shyly asking, “Would you… I mean, since we’re both… we could make out, if you want.”

Eyes wide, face flaming, Jake asked, “What?!”

“Kidding! I was totally kidding,” Aiden said, sitting up straight and grab­bing Jake’s hands. There was a pause, and Jake couldn’t help looking at Aiden’s mouth, blushing even harder when he thought about all the times he’d gotten off think­ing about his best friend. “Unless…”

“Unless what?” Jake whispered.

“Would you… I mean, can I?”

Without letting himself think about what it might mean, Jake nodded. Aiden moved closer, his tongue darting out to wet his lips as he leaned in. Jake’s heart began to race; he was about to get his
first kiss,
from none other than his best friend in the whole world… and just as his eyes fluttered closed, he heard a knock on the front door.