“Movie night!”
Robbie flings himself across Henry’s sofa like a starfish, long limbs hanging off the back and sides. Bea rolls her eyes and shoves him over. “Make room.”
Henry plucks the bag from the microwave, bouncing it from hand to hand to avoid the steam. He dumps the popcorn into the bowl.
“What’s the movie?” he asks, rounding the counter.
“The Shining.”
Henry groans. He’s never been a fan of scary movies, but Robbie loves a reason to scream, treats the whole thing like another kind of performance, and it’s his week to choose.
“It’s Halloween!” defends Robbie.
“It’s the twenty-third,” says Henry, but Robbie treats holidays the way he treats birthdays, stretching them from days into weeks, and sometimes into seasons.
“Costume roll call,” says Bea.
Dressing up, he thinks, is just like watching cartoons, something you enjoyed as a kid, before it passes through the no man’s land of teen angst, the ironic age of early twenties. And then somehow, miraculously, it crosses back into the realm of the genuine, the nostalgic. A place reserved for wonder.
Robbie strikes a pose from the sofa. “Ziggy Stardust,” he says, which makes sense. He’s spent the last several years working through Bowie’s various incarnations. Last year it was the Thin White Duke.
Bea announces she’s going as the Dread Pirate Roberts, pun intended, and Robbie reaches out and picks up a camera from Henry’s coffee table, a vintage Nikon currently playing the part of paperweight. He cranes his head back, and peers at Henry through the viewfinder upside down.
“What about you?”
Henry’s always loved Halloween—not the scary part, just the excuse to change, be someone else. Robbie says he should have just become an actor, that they get to play dress-up all year round, but the thought of living life onstage makes him queasy. He’s been Freddie Mercury, and the Mad Hatter, Tuxedo Mask, and the Joker.
But right now, he already feels like somebody else.
“I’m already in costume,” he says, gesturing at his usual black jeans, his narrow shirt. “Can’t you tell who I am?”
“Peter Parker?” ventures Bea. “A bookseller?”
“Harry Potter having a quarter-life crisis?” Henry laughs and shakes his head.
Bea narrows her eyes. “You haven’t picked anything yet, have you?” “No,” he admits, “but I will.”
Robbie is still fiddling with the camera. He turns it around, purses his lips, and snaps a photo. The camera gives a hollow click. There’s no film. Bea plucks it from his hands.
“Why don’t you take more photos?” she asks. “You’re really good.” Henry shrugs, unsure if she means it. “Maybe in another life,” he says,
handing each of them a beer.
“You still could, you know,” she says. “It’s not too late.”
Maybe, but if he started now, would the photos stand on their own, judged good or bad on their own merits? Or would each and every picture carry his wish forward? Would every person see the picture they wanted to see, instead of the one he made? Would he ever trust them if they did?
The movie starts, and Robbie insists on turning out all the lights, the three of them crammed together on the couch. They force Robbie to leave the bowl of popcorn on the table so he can’t throw it at the first scary moment, so Henry doesn’t have to pick up kernels after they’re gone, and he spends the next hour averting his eyes every time the score whines in warning.
When the boy rolls his tricycle down the hall, Bea mutters, “Nope, nope, nope,” and Robbie sits forward, leaning into the scare, and Henry buries his face in his shoulder. The twin girls appear, hand in hand, and Robbie grabs Henry’s leg.
And when the moment passes, a lull in the fear, Robbie’s hand is still resting on his thigh. And it’s like a broken cup coming back together, the shattered edges lining up just right—which is, of course, wrong.
Henry gets up, taking the empty popcorn bowl and heading for the kitchen.
Robbie swings his leg up over the back of the sofa. “I’ll help.”
“It’s popcorn,” Henry says over his shoulder as he rounds the corner. He tears the plastic wrapper off, shakes the pouch. “I’m pretty sure I just put the bag in the microwave and press the button.”
“You always let it go too long,” says Robbie, right behind him.
Henry tosses the pouch into the microwave and swings the door shut. He presses Start, turns back toward the door. “So now you’re the popcorn poli
—”
He doesn’t get a chance to finish before Robbie’s mouth is on his. Henry sucks in a breath, surprised by the sudden kiss, but Robbie doesn’t break away. He presses him back into the counter, hips into hips, fingers sliding along his jaw as the kiss deepens.
And this, this is better than all the other nights.
This is better than the attention of a hundred strangers. This is the difference between a hotel bed and home.
Robbie is hard against him, and Henry’s chest aches with want, and it would be so easy, to fall back into this, to return to the familiar warmth of his kiss, his body, the simple comfort of something real.
But that’s the problem.
It was real. They were real. But like everything in Henry’s life, it ended.
Failed.
He breaks the kiss as the first kernels begin to pop.
“I’ve been waiting weeks to do that,” whispers Robbie, his cheeks flushed, his eyes fever bright. But they’re not clear. Fog winds through them, clouding the vivid blue.
Henry lets out a shuddering breath, rubs his own eyes beneath his glasses.
The popcorn rattles and pops, and Henry pulls Robbie into the hall, away from Bea and the horror movie score, and Robbie starts toward him again, thinking it’s an invitation, but Henry puts his hand out, holding him back. “This is a mistake.”
“No, it’s not,” says Robbie. “I love you. I always have.”
And it sounds so honest, so real, Henry has to squeeze his eyes shut to focus. “Then why did you break up with me?”
“What? I don’t know. You were different, we weren’t a fit.” “How?” presses Henry.
“You didn’t know what you wanted.”
“I wanted you. I wanted you to be happy.”
Robbie shakes his head. “It can’t just be about the other person. You have to be someone, too. You have to know who you are. Back then, you didn’t.” He smiles. “But now you do.”
But that’s just it.
He doesn’t.
Henry has no idea who he is, and now, neither does anyone else. He just feels lost. But this is the one road he won’t take.
He and Robbie were friends before they were more, friends again for years after Robbie called it off, when Henry was still in love with him, and now it’s reversed, and Robbie’s going to have to find a way to move on, or at least, find a way to smooth in love into love, the way Henry had done when it was him.
“How long does it take to make popcorn?” shouts Bea.
A singed smell wafts from microwave, and Henry pushes past Robbie into the kitchen, hits the Stop button, pulls the bag out.
But he’s too late.
The popcorn is irretrievably burned.
