He looks down at a small, smooth rock sitting between us, his dark brown eyebrows creased in thought. His angular face is clean-shaven as usual. “I know you hate me right now, but you have to let me say a few things.”
His voice is quiet and I knew one of us would have to speak eventually, but he startles me all the same. I don’t dare look at him again but I don’t get up and walk away, either, so I guess that’s enough for him to go on.
“First of all, I want to be with you. I do.” He pauses, then continues in the same low, even voice. “But you could be going away soon.”
I force myself to look down at the soft caramel leather of my boots as I say, “Who told you that?”
I see him shrug out of the corner of my eye. “Phil.”
Matter-of-fact, like I should have known. And I should have. But he asked me to keep his secret from Phil; why is it okay that they get to talk about me?
“Why didn’t you tell me?” He blinks up at the colorless winter sky, the clouds that cover Ashland Hills like the world’s most depressing blanket. Then he flicks ash from his clove on the other side of him, away from me. “Phil made it sound like a pretty big deal.”
“I guess I didn’t think you were interested.” And I’m not sure summer programs will even be an option for me. I’m not halfway done with my cigarette, but I blow out one last puff, stub it out, and toss it into the Coffee & Jam paper cup a few feet away. It’s a fresh ashtray. Half full of someone’s coffee from this morning and a couple of butts from people who sat here before us.
“You listen to me talk about music.” He pulls on the end of his hair.
“That’s different. Music helps us keep rhythm . . . It gives us structure and helps tell the story. You don’t need ballet to perform.”
“So? I still like seeing you dance to what I’m playing. You make my music better.”
Neither of us utters a word after that, not until he says, “Theo.” He sighs out my name with his sweet-smelling smoke and all I want to do is put my head on his shoulder. Listen to him say my name for the rest of the afternoon. “And second—”
“Second?” I manage to croak out, even though his hand is on my arm now and I don’t even know what we were talking about in the first place.
“Yes.” He leans his head close to mine and his breath is warm on my ear. “The second thing is that I think about you all the time.”
I shiver from the way his words tickle my skin, from the familiar scent of him, but I don’t respond.
He clears his throat, leans back so we’re no longer close enough to kiss, so his back is flat against the fence. “Phil also told me about the trial . . . that you have to testify. And I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say, so nonchalant I doubt it would be convincing to anyone, let alone Hosea. I wish I hadn’t been so quick to toss out my cigarette. I need something to do with my hands so they won’t look so nervous, so Hosea won’t know that I’m not fine at all.
He stretches his legs in front of him, lazily crossing them at the ankles. “I had to testify once.”
I’m not sure I heard him correctly, and when I try to read his face it’s completely devoid of expression. He passes his clove to me and I look at it for a long moment before I put my lips where his lips have been, like a secondhand kiss. Our fingers touch as I hand it back to him, linger for several seconds too long.
“My grandma . . . she took my mom to court because they said she wasn’t competent enough to take care of me.”
“Why?” I make a point to sound gentle.
“She has an anxiety disorder.” He pauses to drag one last time, the end of the clove burning red but muted under the ash. “Agoraphobia . . . She can’t leave the house or deal with crowds. Not without having an attack.”
I stare at his boots for a while. “When did you figure it out?”
He puts out the clove and bends his fingers back and forth. Looks down at the ground as he says, “A long time before I told anyone. I thought . . . that I could handle things for us. But I was a kid. I couldn’t drive or make money. She had boyfriends sometimes but they never stuck around.”
“They made you testify against her.” It’s a statement, not a question, and it sits between us like a boulder. Hosea moved here in the middle of his freshman year, so he was even younger than me when he had to tell a judge that his mother wasn’t capable of taking care of him.
“I did it,” he says in this small voice that makes me want to cry. “My Grams made it seem like there was no other choice. And I guess I knew . . . things were getting pretty bad. My mom would spend all day in bed and I’d go to sleep without dinner because I felt like shit begging her to go to the store. Or asking for money we didn’t have.” He taps his fingers against the cold, hard ground. “But my mom is a good person. Maybe other people couldn’t see it, but she did her best. And I knew she really thought she would get better someday . . . that things would be normal.”
I study his profile. The slope of his nose from the side, the edges of his turned-down mouth. “Can’t you go visit her?”
“She’s living with a friend and she’s getting better, but the visits make me feel like shit, you know?” He shoves his hands into his pockets as he looks at the school building in the distance. “She cries and begs me not to leave her, and I can’t—I don’t want to make her feel any worse than she already does, so it’s better to just stay away. Call every once in a while. I send her recordings of my music sometimes.”
“I’m sorry.” I crumble a dried leaf in my palm, scatter the bits over the ground like ashes.
“Grams did what she thought was the right thing, but I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive her.” He rubs his nose with the back of his hand. The tip of it is pink from the cool air, and it makes me think of him as a little boy.
“It’s not fair, what she made you do,” I say.
I hate thinking about him up on the stand, confessing all the ways his mother had failed him. But even more, I hate to think of him hungry and trapped in a house with someone so helpless. And it’s selfish to think this, but I never would have met Hosea if his grandmother hadn’t insisted on a better life for him.
I want to comfort him. Hold his hand or put my arm around him or something. But I don’t.
He shrugs. “It is what it is. I’m not a kid anymore. I can go back someday if I want to. It’s fine.”
“But it’s not.” I brace my fingers against the ground, stop them from touching his arm. “I’m really sorry, Hosea.”
He takes in a breath and he lets it out and he doesn’t look at me, but he says, “Thanks.” Then, “I didn’t mean to turn this into a pity party. I just wanted to say that I know what the trial stuff is like and testifying is shitty. And I know you’re not cool with me right now, but if you need to talk to someone who’s been through it, well—I’m here.”
He doesn’t know how complicated it really is, so of course he thinks it’ll be okay.
“Hosea?” I turn my body toward him.
I want him. Despite the fact that he’ll hate me if he finds out who I really am. Despite the fact that everyone I know will hate me.
Maybe that’s all the more reason to be with him. Maybe I should seize the moment while I can. Everything could change in two months. I could lose ballet, my friends, everyone’s respect. I could be stuck here in this town for another year, with people who only think about one thing when they see me. Being with Hosea is one of the few things that make me happy. I know the risks and I’m still not deterred, so that must be a sign.