The Grand Tour, Part II
The Grand Tour, Part II
They head out early to visit the Château d'If, a prison island in the bay, the one from Count of Monte Cristo. Nick’s embarrassed that he tried to read the book and found it so boring he had to stop after a hundred pages, but less embarrassed when he realizes that most of the other kids aren’t even talking about the book anyway; they’ve just confused it with Man in the Iron Mask and are discussing the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in it. And anyway, he’s got more difficult things to deal with right now, like keeping Joe standing upright and making sure he’s not puking over the side of the boat.
“Why did I do this?” Joe says mournfully, rubbing his hands over his face. “Why? It was such terrible wine.”
“Because you’re an idiot.” Nick touches the back of Joe’s neck in what he hopes is a sympathetic way, runs his fingers up into Joe’s hair, which is messier than Nick’s ever seen it.
Joe groans miserably. “Never get drunk on bad red wine,” he mumbles, leaning toward Nick’s hand.
“I have no intention of ever getting drunk at all.”
“That’s good too.” Joe looks at him, his eyes red and watery. Nick feels bad for him, at the same time that he kind of just wants to yell and shake him and tell him that he’s making terrible choices. Feeling bad wins out in the end, and he sits next to Joe on the deck for the rest of the tour, lets Joe rest his head on Nick’s shoulder and moan. David comes by and ask if Joe’s okay, but Nick’s pretty sure he was one of the people involved in the bad red wine incident, so Nick just tells him Joe’s fine and glares at him until he goes away.
“You should come out with us tonight,” Joe suggests, and Nick isn’t sure how Joe can think about that when he’s still in physical pain from last night, but he just makes a little “maybe” noise and looks out into the water.
The bar is crowded and noisy, and as soon as Nick gets in the door, he wants to leave again. There are a bunch of old guys arguing loudly at the bar, and all the tables are full of groups of kids a few years older than they are yelling and laughing. Joe grabs his wrist and squeezes. “I can see you thinking about bailing,” Joe says, “and it is so not happening. I will tie you to a chair until you start having fun.”
“As much fun as you had with your terrible wine hangover?” Nick asks.
Joe grins, apparently completely recovered. “Even more fun than my wine hangover.” He pinches the back of Nick’s hand. “Come on, Nick. We’re gonna have a great time tonight. Look, your girlfriend’s here. It’s already a better night than last night, see?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Nick grumbles. He looks over at Selena, who’s sitting at the end of the bar, kicking her heels against a barstool and talking to Bridgit. She’s got something in her hand that definitely looks like a glass of wine, and Nick feels lame and immature and angry because he wants to give his speech on the evils of alcohol and feel righteously indignant, but he also wants Selena to think he’s cool and charming and not completely lame. Nick’s always kind of scoffed at peer pressure, but mostly it didn’t involve pretty girls with glasses in their hands who make him feel awkward just by existing. He hesitates, but ends up being pushed into the bar anyway by the next flood of people through the door. Joe drags Nick to the end of the bar, and Selena’s seen him and said, “Hey! You came,” in a happy way before Nick can figure out what he should do.
“Hey,” he says more quietly than he means to, and Joe starts talking over him before he can say anything else, asking who else is here, what’s going on, what time the band is supposed to start. Joe seems really excited for a real live band in a cheap neighborhood bar in Marseille, more excited than Nick can totally explain until he finds out they cover classic rock songs. Which apparently fills Joe with as much glee as it fills Nick with dread. Because there are just so many ways that could go wrong.
“What are you drinking?” Nick asks Selena eventually, eyeing the pink stuff in her glass and thinking about Joe swearing and moaning about terrible red wine last night. He doesn’t want Selena to feel like that, wouldn’t wish that on anyone, really.
“Kir. Crème de cassis and champagne,” she says, and Nick has no idea what crème de cassis is, but it smells fruity. “It’s nice. You want to try some?”
She holds out her glass, and it’s so much easier to say yes than no, his fingers brushing hers on the slim stem of the glass as he takes it. Nick takes a tiny, tiny sip, holding it on his tongue for a little while before swallowing. It’s sweet, almost cloying, and bubbly underneath. Nick feels the rush of it, even though one sip can’t possibly have any biological effect. Just the act of holding a drink in a French bar makes him feel reckless and excited and scared. “A little too sweet for me,” he says nonchalantly, handing it back. Selena smiles and takes another sip.
“Maybe it’s just too girly for you.”
Just then Joe, who’s been off harassing someone else for the last few minutes, comes up behind him and smacks Nick on the butt. Nick makes a startled noise that luckily gets lost in everything else going on in the bar (at least he hopes it does). “Nicholas Jerry Jonas,” says Joe, “are you drinking? Don’t you know how dangerous that stuff is? Why I should take you over my knee right now and knock some sense into you. Goodness gracious.”
Nick elbows Joe in the ribs, maybe a little harder than necessary. “Will you shut up already?” he says, and Joe just laughs and takes another swig of his beer, something with a German label Nick can’t quite make out.
“Do you want the rest of this?” Joe asks. “If you’re gonna try it out it might as well be something good.” Nick feels this sudden surge of anger, because what right does Joe have to put him in that position, to make him turn it down in front of Selena?
“Do you realize how much sugar there is in most beer?” Nick asks acidly. “Aren’t you the one who said I needed to watch my levels better?”
Joe holds up his hands, one of them still clutching the beer, a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I just figured it would be better than whatever Selena’s pink stuff is. No offense.” She toasts him to show she doesn’t care. “But I bet there are things with less sugar. We can ask. I’m buying!”
Everything that comes out of Joe’s mouth is just making it worse right now, so Nick agrees to ask. He figures his French is limited enough, and Joe’s is non-existent enough that even if they ask the question in a mostly grammatical way, it’s probably not going to make any sense to an actual French person. But fortunately for Joe and more unfortunately for Nick, the bartender they talk to lived in New York for a couple of years, speaks flawless English, and has a diabetic friend with a lot of opinions on this very subject.
“He likes pastis best,” says the bartender. “But you must drink it the right way. You want to try?”
“He so does,” says Joe before Nick can politely decline. A minute later he’s got a little glass full of cloudy liquid in front of him, and a bigger glass of what is obviously water. The bartender explains what to do, and Nick sniffs experimentally at the little glass.
“What does it taste like?” Selena asks curiously, looking at it.
“Anise,” says the bartender and it sounds so much like “anus” that Joe practically doubles over laughing before the bartender clarifies. “Like licorice. It may perhaps be a, acquired taste? Is that what I mean to say?”
Nick takes the tiniest sip from the smaller glass and makes a face, wagging his tongue around to try and get rid of the taste. “I think that is what you mean to say,” Nick coughs. He gulps down some water, and when he offers Selena a taste of his pastis and she thinks it’s vile too, he feels totally justified in not drinking any more of it.
Except then Joe drinks it instead, mixing it with the water like the bartender shows them, and Joe’s already on his second beer. All this before the band has even gotten up to play, which Joe says is really what they’re here for.
It’s unfortunate that the band is terrible. It’s several middle-aged guys, who Nick thinks should undoubtedly have better things to do with their time than torture the poor people of this bar with a rendition of “Whole Lotta Love” that makes Nick want to cover his ears. He doesn’t even care that much about Zeppelin, but he doesn’t really want to stick around someplace hot and crowded with a drink he doesn’t like, for the sake of hearing a painfully clumsy version of a song he already knows. When they start in on Springsteen, Nick’s afraid he’s actually going to cry for how wrong it is. He starts looking for a graceful way out.
Selena touches his arm halfway through “Born in the U. S. A.” which is probably supposed to be ironic, but mostly it’s just horrifying. And loud. “Do you want to go?” she asks in his ear, and her breath smells sweet from her drink, which she’s been working on for forty-five minutes now.
Nick nods, and she downs the rest of her drink in one gulp. Nick finds Joe standing with David, leaning in close and apparently ignoring the band that he had been so excited to see in the first place. He says goodbye, and Joe’s cheerful, but he doesn’t seem to care much about that either.
“I don’t usually drink,” Selena tells him outside. “I just wanted to try it, and Bridgit said that stuff was good, which it was. But I don’t want you to think I do it all the time.”
Nick nods in what he hopes is a cool way, like he’s not really bothered one way or another. “I’m glad it was good. I just can’t really, you know, being diabetic.” The words hang awkwardly, and Nick wishes he hadn’t said anything because if Selena was listening to the whole stupid conversation at the bar she already knows, and if she wasn’t, she doesn’t care.
“I sort of figured you didn’t drink because you didn’t drink,” she says, a little too insightfully, and when she looks over at him from under her bangs her cheeks are flushed pink, but her eyes are clear. “The diabetes thing is just easier to explain.”
Nick purses his lips. “Maybe.” There’s a burst of laughter from the opening door of another restaurant in the block, and Nick catches scattered words as a stylish-looking couple slip past them on the sidewalk. Accents in Marseille are harder for Nick to figure out, different from Paris, different from Quebec where they went last summer and Nick spent the whole time trying to decipher the road signs, preparing for high school French.
“It’s beautiful here,” Selena says, and she’s right of course. It’s an old street, tall buildings looming over them, and you can’t see all the chipped paint and cracked plaster in the purpley light of dusk. Even if you could, it probably wouldn’t seem so bad. They round the corner, back onto the street where the hostel is, and the road slopes down to the harbor, like most of the roads do, spokes in a wheel with the Mediterranean at its center.
Nick thinks about taking her hand, not so far a distance to reach across, how perfect it would be to be walking down the street in Marseille holding a beautiful girl’s hand in the moonlight. But Selena slips her arm through his before he’s gotten farther than speculating. And that’s just as good, brings her close enough in that the flare of her skirt brushes his legs as she walks. Nick steals sideways glances at her as they walk, and she’s smiling every time he looks, that little smile that says she knows a secret, that something great is happening in her head and she’s holding tight to it. He wishes it was more than a block to the hostel because there’s no way he can find out what she’s thinking in that distance. And he wants to know. He’s so curious about her he could probably spend all night walking with her. But he won’t say that. Just like he won’t admit that he’s never even been on a date, that at home he’s so consumed with extracurriculars and special classes that he barely sees Joe some days (next year he won’t see Joe at all).
When they step inside the front door of the hostel, Selena lets go of his arm, lets her elbow slip free of his. “Thanks for walking back with me,” she says. Nick is acutely aware of the tacky lobby around them, with its shabby Middle Eastern tapestries and potted palm trees, the clerk at the desk eating a sandwich and glancing over at them. Nick wonders if maybe Selena’s going to invite him back up to her room, and he’s weighing the pros and cons of that when she kisses him on the cheek.
Nick wishes he could stamp his foot and say, “No fair! I wasn’t ready!” because by the time he’s focused on the feeling of her lips on his cheek, they’re already gone. Soft. Warm. Dry.
Selena grins. “Night, Nick,” she says, and he can’t help the way his eyes follow her as she makes her way up the stairs. He also can’t help the little spike of jealousy when he sees the desk clerk’s eyes also following her up the stairs too. Nick takes the opportunity to ask a few random and distracting questions about the city, just to keep him occupied until Selena’s all the way upstairs. The desk clerk hems and haws and may even say something worth hearing, but Nick’s not really listening at all. He’s thinking about Selena who kissed him, and about how much he wants to tell Joe, who’s still out there somewhere, being deafened by the horrible band and probably drinking too much, even though tonight he should know better.
Nick goes through his bedtime routine slowly, so he won’t have to be just lying in bed awake waiting for Joe to get back, but even he can only spend so long brushing and re-brushing his teeth before his gums start to bleed. So then there he is in bed, minutes stretching out long, starting to wonder if he would have time to jerk off before Joe reappears. He’s barely got a hand in his shorts when he hears Joe at the door, not scrabbling this time, just carefully, purposefully opening it, as though doing so is difficult and complex. Or maybe he’s just trying to be quiet for Nick’s sake, but Nick’s not feeling charitable right now.
He leans into the room and Nick waves in the dark to show he’s awake. “Hey,” says Joe, and his voice sounds husky and tired. Nick wonders whether Joe stayed to hear the rest of the band’s set, whether his voice is hoarse from drunkenly cheering them on.
Joe sits down heavily on his bed and starts untying his shoes. This also seems to take longer than usual, and Nick almost offers to help, but Joe’s so eerily quiet that it throws Nick off. Joe should be talking a mile a minute right now, recounting everything that happened to him tonight, turning simple events into stories and describing things so that Nick finally has to laugh along with him. That’s how this is supposed to work. But Joe just takes off his shoes and then strips off his pants without saying a word. Nick lies there awkwardly, knowing Joe knows he’s not asleep, knowing he can’t fake it now.
Joe goes to the bathroom in just his boxers and a t-shirt, toothbrush dangling from his hand. Nick watches him leave, and is sitting up waiting for him in the light of his portable reading lamp when Joe gets back.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, and Joe looks startled, caught off guard, and as his eyes widen Nick can see how red they are. Like Joe’s been crying, but that’s too weird to even contemplate.
Joe’s smile seems genuine. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m just distracted.”
He’s got his back turned when Nick asks, “By what?” and he tenses. Nick sees the angle of his shoulders change, and there’s a long pause before he answers.
“You have to swear you won’t tell anyone. Not anyone on the trip, not Kevin, not Mom and Dad.”
Nick’s heart is beating too fast. What if Joe’s murdered someone? What if he stole a car in a drunken haze and crashed it into a tree? But he looks both excited and uninjured, like it isn’t something bad at all. Nick nods okay.
“Kill the light,” says Joe, and Nick snaps off the booklight. Until his eyes adjust, it’s almost black, shades drawn low against the streetlights and the passing cars. He can hear the rustle of Joe getting into bed a few feet away, the pull of the springs as he settles down. “I hooked up with David,” Joe tells him, in the quiet darkness.
“What does that mean?” Nick asks, because just the words “hooked up” are this whole world he knows he doesn’t understand, this huge category of things he hasn’t done. Let alone with a guy, which is so much farther outside his experience. He thinks about the day Joe got his promise ring, how they had a quiet little ceremony and went out to dinner to celebrate, and Joe looked so proud and couldn’t stop touching it. He thinks how excited he was, thinking he could tell Joe that Selena kissed him on the cheek and walked with her arm in his. That seems like nothing now.
“We made out. And I gave him a blowjob.” Nick’s stomach roils. He can’t tell if he’s disgusted or jealous or just plain angry. Nick’s always felt himself under the weight of other people’s expectations, like there are lines he can’t cross, but more and more it seems as though Joe doesn’t feel that way. He just does whatever he wants and doesn’t even think about it. Nick swallows back a flood of angry words, waits for Joe to say more. “It was fun,” Joe adds quietly. And that’s it. Like that’s really all there is to say.
Nick must make some kind of noise then, without really thinking about it. He’s trying so hard to hold back the mental images. He doesn’t want to think about Joe doing that, not to David, but all the same it’s too easy to picture David kissing his brother, Joe’s mouth opening for him. Joe’s bed rustles, and when Nick opens his eyes, Joe has turned on his side and is looking at him.
“Your head’s going to explode any second, isn’t it?” Joe says gently, like it’s almost a joke, like Nick’s the one being unreasonable here.
“You had sex, Joe,” Nick bites out, anger breaking through, “with some guy you’ve known for a week. And you expect me to just say, ‘Yeah, Joe, awesome! Great job!’”
“I guess not,” Joe replies, too easily. And how can this be easier for him than it is for Nick? Joe’s the one doing something crazy and wrong and just. Crazy.
“Is this the first time?” Somehow it’s really important, that if Joe was going to do something like this that he tell Nick about it, that if nothing else he’s at least honest. All that time they were sharing a bed Joe wasn’t hiding this. But the way Joe hesitates tells Nick exactly what he didn’t want to know. He shuts his eyes again.
“It’s not,” Joe tells him. “I mean, it was with David, but not in general.”
Nick folds his hands together to stop them shaking. He sees all these faceless men, Joe on his knees for them. Every time Joe’s come home late, every time he’s said he was staying after at school, maybe he was doing this instead. “So this is like, a hobby for you? Performing oral sex on strangers?”
“Nick, come on, please. Don’t be like this. You know me. You know it’s not like that.”
“I don’t know anything at all right now. You didn’t tell me anything.”
“Then let’s start with, ‘I’m gay.’” Joe leans up on one elbow. “Would you be okay with just that?”
Nick knows gay people. He had a part in the school musical. He did tech for the fall play. Even stereotypes about theater kids have some truth behind them. It makes him uncomfortable when he thinks too hard about it, when he imagines Lucas, who was the lead in West Side Story, kissing his boyfriend. And he knows Mom and Dad and the church wouldn’t approve. But he has to be practical about it. And practically, it doesn’t seem to hurt anyone. “Yeah, that would be okay.”
“And see? I didn’t know that.”
“You could have asked. I’m your brother. You could have trusted me.”
“Would you still have shared a bed with me?”
Nick’s stomach clenches up as he remembers the things he thought about when he was jerking off yesterday, confusing images of Joe clouding up his head, making him feel guilty but also making him come. The part of him that hated that wants to say, “No,” but not like Joe would think he means it. It’s not Joe who’s a threat here. “I would have,” Nick says, even though there’s this other part of him, the part that knows how dangerous that is and doesn’t care, that just wants and wants and isn’t interested in consequences. “I know you wouldn’t do anything to me,” he adds.
Joe looks at him for a long time, and Nick doesn’t know what that means, staring into the dark between their beds and not knowing what Joe sees in his face. “I didn’t know if you’d freak out,” Joe tells him. “I should have told you anyway.”
“And about the guys who weren’t David?”
“It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t a lot. It was just a couple of times. I wanted to know. I wanted to be sure this was what I wanted, and who I was.”
“Then what’s the point of wearing your ring, if you’re just going to have sex in order to find yourself, or whatever?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it would mean to take it off. And I haven’t done that much.”
“What’s not that much, Joe? If this is not that much, I’m not sure I want to know what more there is.”
“I won’t tell you. But I haven’t done it.” Nick doesn’t let himself imagine, because he thinks he could, he thinks there are so many things he could imagine Joe doing, to faceless men, to Nick himself. It’s that that makes it so hard. That he wants those things, that there’s this little spark in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about it.
“You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry.” Joe licks his lips. “I’m really sorry, Nicky. You deserved to know.”
“I did.” Nick tries to sound indignant, but it’s hard when he feels so confused.
“Goodnight,” Joe says after a while, and he rolls over onto his back and shuts his eyes. Nick tries to sleep too, but all he can think about are Joe’s hands and his mouth, the softness of his lips, the way his voice sounded when he came back from the bar. Not hoarse from yelling. Hoarse from David Henrie’s dick.
“What is it like?” Nick asks after a while, quiet enough that if Joe’s already asleep he probably won’t hear.
But Joe’s not asleep. He doesn’t ask what Nick’s talking about either. “It’s good. It’s weird at first, and you have to watch out for using your teeth, but after you get into a rhythm, it’s just. I like it. It feels good, in your mouth, and it doesn’t taste as bad as people say.”
Nick wrinkles his nose at that, but at the same time he can feel his dick fattening up in his shorts at the image of Joe’s mouth opening to let him in, Joe’s tongue on his skin, Joe swallowing when he comes. Nick shifts uncomfortably, pretending to scratch his belly as he adjusts himself. He can’t let Joe see. More than ever now, he can’t let Joe know how screwed up his head is, how his dick perks up to all the wrong things. It would be easier if he were just gay, as hard as that would be in other ways, if at least he thought about guys instead of just thinking about Joe.
Nick doesn’t realize how bad it will be until he sees David during their breakfast of bread and jam in the hostel kitchen. He wants to strangle him or punch him or throw him off a pier, maybe all three at once, and it just gets so much worse when he comes over to talk to Joe, all friendly smiles and enthusiasm. Nick is being a jerk and he knows it, but he just stands at Joe’s side glaring sullenly at David during their whole conversation. Selena hasn’t come down yet, and there’s nothing to distract his attention. Not that anything could, necessarily. There’s a guy standing right here who’s had his dick in Joe’s mouth and Nick needs to check him out.
Until, that is, Joe gets sick of him hanging around not saying anything and making David look increasingly jumpy. “Hey, Nick, don’t you owe Kevin an email or something?” he asks pointedly. And Nick doesn’t, but he takes the hint before he has to do violence to David for existing.
Nick goes to the little computer lab at the back of the lobby, but both computers are occupied, so he stands in the doorway and tries to get his feelings under control. Many people have sex, he reasons, and very few of them need saving from the people they do it with. Whatever Nick wants to do to David, it’s really without cause. Joe is just having a nice breakfast conversation with someone he likes, maybe a lot, although it’s hard to tell with Joe. But no matter how many times Nick tells himself that, it doesn’t seem to stick.
By the time they leave to take a van up to Notre Dame de la Garde, a church overlooking the city, Nick feels nauseous and miserable every time he so much as hears David’s voice. And it’s hard not to hear it when he, Joe, and David are crowded into one row in the van, and Joe and David suddenly seem to have everything in the world in common. Nick wonders if you shouldn’t have found all that stuff out before you give someone head, but he can’t say anything about it.
When they get to the parking lot of the church, after a drive up a narrow winding road that seemed like it might dead end into a building at any second, they still have two flights of stairs to climb. “Bet you can’t get up there as fast as I can,” Nick says, knowing how Joe can’t resist a challenge.
They take up off the steps, practically flying, the rest of the city falling even farther away behind them. It’s exhausting but worth it, because at the top of the stairs it’s just him and Joe practically on top of the world, grinning and winded. Nick was two stairs ahead at the end, and it’s not much, but it’s enough to declare victory. Joe pats him on the back, and the sweat gathering between Nick’s shoulders sticks his t-shirt to his skin.
Everyone else looks really far away down the stairs, and Joe doesn’t move away, his hand lingering at the back of Nick’s neck. Nick looks at him, and it must be the rush of running so fast that makes Nick’s eyes catch on Joe’s mouth, makes him think all these things he’s never thought except lying in bed at night. He finds himself swaying closer, and it’s not so different from how he sometimes leans into Joe in crowds, but it feels different. He imagines kissing Joe, right here on the sunny stone walkway outside a church, feeling Joe’s mouth open just for him, tasting Joe’s breath. His heartbeat is so loud in his ears, and it’s not just from running.
Joe presses a bottle of water into his hand. “You okay?” he asks, squeezing the back of Nick’s neck.
Nick nods hurriedly, ducking out of Joe’s reach and gulping down some of the water. “Fine. Triumphant.”
Joe rolls his eyes. “I could have won if I wanted. I just didn’t want to make you cry or anything. I know how defeat stings.”
There’s a stone railing, and behind it rocks and sea. The water looks very blue, deep, dark blue, not like those cruise commercials he sees on TV. Nick follows the course of a sailboat, then a big cargo ship farther out. The view is amazing, the ocean stretching off to a hazy horizon, the swoop of the valley at his back, mountains rising up beyond. Marseille connects France to the rest of the world, he read in a brochure in the tourist center on the Canebière, the street they’d walked down from the train station. (David had made a joke about cans of beer and just about everyone had laughed. Nick resents him for it even more in hindsight.)
The first of the others from their group reach the top of the stairs. He waits for Joe to walk over to David. Nick is already planning how he’ll talk to Selena, what he’ll say, when he realizes Joe hasn’t moved; he’s still standing at the railing with Nick, looking out at the city and the water. Their shoulders are nearly touching, and other people are filing up around them, looking down and exclaiming, but for right this second Joe’s just here with him.
“Come along, everyone,” Mrs. Davis calls out, and they follow her into the church.
It’s dim and cool compared to the day outside, and it takes a second for Nick’s eyes to adjust as they come through the turnstile. There are people hunched over in prayer in the first few pews, candles burning on the altar, and he’s sorry for the loud, disrespectful whispers of the people behind him because it really feels like a place of worship. The one time he’d gone to Catholic church back home with his Sunday school class he’d felt uncomfortable and unprepared, everyone going through a whole set of motions Nick had never learned. But Notre Dame de la Garde is just about the most peaceful place he’s ever been.
The walls are covered with paintings, almost haphazard, frames of different sizes slotted in next to each other, and as he looks more closely he realizes that while some of them are religious images, some of them aren’t. There are ships at sea, and landscapes, and portraits of people in old-fashioned clothes, like the whole world is attending the church. Joe’s hand curls around his, and Joe tugs a little, reminding Nick they have to move away from the door.
Joe could stop holding his hand any time, let him go to wander the church on his own like everyone else is doing. But Joe doesn’t let go, fingers loose around Nick’s so Nick could break free if he wanted. But he doesn’t really want to. So he holds on, squeezing to tell Joe it’s okay, smiling as Joe squeezes back. An older woman walking past gives them a suspicious sidelong look, and Nick wonders what she sees when she looks at them, if she can tell that they’re brothers and that makes it okay. Mostly okay.
Joe doesn’t go out that night. At all. They have dinner in a cavernous Moroccan restaurant near the oldest part of town, scoops of couscous and meat and vegetables that Nick mixes together as he eats them, everything a delicious jumble of new flavors. And then they come back to the hostel, and Nick keeps expecting Joe to say, “There’s this bar up the street,” or maybe even, “David asked if I would go for a walk with him” (Did you go for walks with a guy after you’ve had his dick in your mouth, or is walking sort of beside the point after that?). But Joe’s just sitting in their room, reading a book and chewing his thumbnail in the way he does when he’s thinking hard. Nick tries to read, too, but Joe just being there, so quiet and calm, is unbelievably distracting.
“Aren’t you going out?” Nick says eventually, and it comes out sort of sharp.
Joe raises his eyebrows. “Did you need the room for something?”
“No. I just thought you’d have somewhere to be.”
“Giving blowjobs out by the docks to all the sailors coming home from sea?” Joe asks archly.
Nick tosses his pillow at him. “Stop it, Joe. That’s gross.” Nick doesn’t think about it. He can’t, because it won’t be gross enough if he thinks about it. “I thought maybe you’d want to see David.”
“Right. You looked like you were trying to kill David with your brain today. I was a little worried that if anyone could do it, it would be you.”
“Shut up.”
“Seriously, if there was any brain that powerful in the world, it would be yours.”
“That’s not an explanation, Joe. Do you even like David? I haven’t seen you spending a lot of time with him.”
Joe swings his feet over the side of the bed, leans forward like whatever he’s going to say is really urgent, and Nick feels sick to his stomach, because what if Joe’s about to say that he and David are in love and they’re going to stay in France and get one of those civil union things they have here. “Nick, I’m serious about the killing him with your brain thing. You looked sick every time he was nearby. Was I supposed to just let you commit murder in this strange foreign land?”
“I wouldn’t have killed him,” Nick replies, and he doesn’t have another pillow to throw now.
“Then you would have fainted and fallen off a cliff. That’s no good either.” Joe looks at him, daring Nick to argue, because it’s obvious that whether or not Nick would have actually fainted is beside the point.
“So you wanted to be with him, and instead you felt like you had to hang out with me instead because I was being a jerk?”
Joe gets up, sits on the edge of Nick’s bed, which is so narrow Nick has to scoot over against the wall for him to fit. “You don’t get it,” Joe says, quieter now. “I want to hang out with you more than I want to hang out with anyone else. I’m here because I want to hang out with you more than I want to hang out with anyone else.”
“But you could have gone out.”
“I mean I’m in France because of you.” Joe’s voice is quiet and confidential. Nick remembers Joe’s hand folded around his in the church today, the warmth of his palm, the squeeze of his fingers. He thinks about Joe asleep with his head on Nick’s shoulder on the plane. He thinks about Joe singing with him on the train, leaning into him and grinning. And something breaks inside Nick, something fragile and necessary, a barrier that seemed so real and permanent a minute ago, and all of sudden it’s just gone. He leans up and kisses Joe, gently, at the corner of his mouth, off-center enough that he could claim it wasn’t meant like that. He used to kiss Joe all the time when he was little sticky, messy kisses that didn’t mean anything except that he loved his big brother more than he had words for. In some way, that’s still the case.
Joe starts, tenses and draws back, and Nick has his mouth open, ready to spill out some not quite true explanation when Joe catches his mouth again and kisses him fully. Nick’s heart feels like it’s going to beat its way out of his chest. Joe fits his lips to Nick’s, makes them match up just right, and Nick shivers. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s leaning on his hands, so he can’t put his arms around Joe or anything, but Joe doesn’t have that problem.
He wraps his arms around Nick’s back, pulling him upright, pulling him in closer. His lips part, and the kiss gets wetter, more confusing, better. Joe’s tongue flickers against Nick’s lower lip, and Nick opens his mouth, letting Joe show him what to do, what comes next. With Joe holding him up, Nick has his hands free to tangle in Joe’s hair, pulling tight to keep his fingers from shaking. Joe’s tongue feels weird in his mouth at first, licking at his, moving around in slow, wet pushes. But then he gets the rhythm of it, and it’s like the way a harmony comes together, where suddenly they’re moving in sync and everything feels like it was meant to be this way. Joe’s hands push up under his shirt, fingers spreading against his skin, so hot all of a sudden. He makes a little noise, and Joe shudders and pulls back.
Nick’s eyes slit open and Joe’s looking at him with wide, startled eyes, and his mouth is wet, and his hair is sticking up in the back where Nick’s fingers have kneaded into it. He made Joe look like that, and all he wants is to do it some more. Joe’s fingers slide up his back, right along the furrow of his spine, and Nick makes another little noise, and this one is a whimper. He licks his lips and they taste like Joe’s spit, and he can see Joe watching the path of his tongue. Joe looks like he’s about to say something, and Nick can’t let him do that because the minute they start talking again, it’ll be different and there will be consequences, and really, all Nick wants to do is kiss his brother some more, and keep from thinking about it for as long as possible.
He grabs the back of Joe’s neck and hauls him in for another kiss, doesn’t give Joe a choice. Joe holds him tight and goes with it for a minute before he breaks away again, kissing the corners of Nick’s mouth, his cheeks, the sharp angle of his jaw. And as he presses all those nipping little kisses, moving in a way Nick can’t predict, he’s also turning, climbing up onto the bed, straddling Nick’s lap. And they’re both just in their boxers, and there’s a sheet over Nick’s lap, but he can still feel the hot pressure of Joe’s dick, as hard as his is, and so close. So close. It’s more than he expected, and he almost pulls away, but he doesn’t, lets Joe’s weight come down on top of him, the angle changing until it’s right again, Joe’s mouth fitting his, Joe bending into his arms.
Joe fists a hand in Nick’s hair, and Joe’s had his hands in Nick’s hair so many times before, and this is totally different, Joe’s fingers wrapping through his curls, Joe pulling Nick’s head back in order to kiss him more deeply. Joe’s hips shift a little, and Nick gasps at the sudden pressure, at the way Joe’s dick presses against his. He could touch it, right there hot and fat between them, but instead he settles his hands on Joe’s hips, more neutral territory, fingers spreading against the top of Joe’s butt. Joe’s still kissing him, just kissing him, not making a move to do anything else either. And it’s better than anything else in the world, kissing Joe until he’s dizzy and breathless and turned on and not too sure which way is up.
When they stop, it’s going to be weird. It’s going to be confusing and everything might be broken forever and they’re going to be three thousand miles from home when it happens. But for right now, everything’s perfect.
Dear Nick,
I haven’t heard from you in a couple of days, and I’m running out of stories to tell the kids in my cabin about France, so you really need to write to me. I would be the most boring camp counselor ever without you. Also, mom and dad are going to start to worry. Everything is good here. We’ve been going swimming a lot, and I made the best birdhouse ever yesterday. It’s pink. I gave it to a boy whose birdhouse fell apart though, so you won’t get to see it.
Write back!!!
Love,
Kevin
Nick stares at the blinking cursor and has no idea what to say. It’s been hard enough to look everyone on the trip in the eye, act perfectly normal around Joe, as if he doesn’t spend every waking moment thinking about Joe’s mouth, the way Joe pressed him down into the bed last night, lying on top of him so their hips matched up in this promise of more. He didn’t touch Joe’s dick, but when he thinks about it, he wants to. He’s barely looked at anything in the museums they’ve been wandering through this morning, and he hasn’t looked at his Marseille tourism guide even once. For once he’s beyond grateful that no one’s watching him too closely.
Dear Kevin,
Marseille is really great. We’ve tried new food, and we went on a boat tour and to some museums. The city’s really old, like Avignon, so some of the buildings date back centuries and centuries. It’s really great.
Love,
Nick
He realizes he’s said “really great” twice after he hits send, but by then, it’s too late. Kevin won’t notice. No one will. But in Nick’s head it’s a sign of how distracted he is, how his mind is someplace else today. He stares at the sent message for a minute before logging out of his email. No one knows. No one is scrutinizing Nick’s actions except for Nick. And Joe is acting so normal in spite of everything that it’s almost scary. He was laughing and chatting and tugging Nick’s sleeve to get him to look at things in museums all day, just like it was a normal school field trip and not the day after he made out with his brother. Nick doesn’t know how he does it, and he could ask now, Joe waiting in their room while Nick finishes his email, but Joe is waiting in their room. Alone. Maybe wearing very little clothing and already knowing exactly what Nick will want when he gets there. Which would be good, because Nick has basically no idea.
It’s everything he hopes for and more when he opens the door, Joe clicking it shut and pinning him against it, every movement slow and deliberate enough that Nick could say stop anytime. But he doesn’t, even though his palms are sweaty and he doesn’t know what to do except find Joe’s mouth with his. Joe guides him, pressing him back into the door, pushing him up on his toes to kiss him at a different angle, letting their lips brush soft and slow before sliding his tongue into Nick’s mouth. His hands cradle Nick’s hips, pulling him up and forward until Nick is on the verge of losing his balance. He can feel Joe’s dick, a solid weight against his, and he pushes into it a little, making Joe groan.
Joe’s wearing boxers and a t-shirt, which would be totally normal except that right now it feels insubstantial, the fabric too thin a barrier between Nick and all of Joe’s skin, skin he’s barely even thought about before now. Nick’s still in his jeans, with a button-down layered over his t-shirt, and it’s awkward, Joe pressed up close and warm against all of his clothes.
“Is it okay if I…” Joe begins to say, stumbling halfway through the sentence. “Do you want to take off your clothes?” Joe asks this time, and Nick bites his lip, considering. It wouldn’t be so hard if it just happened, if Joe didn’t ask him and make him think about it. But that wouldn’t be Joe.
“I don’t know,” says Nick shyly, honestly. “I don’t know anything.”
“I wish I had a tape recorder. No one’s ever going to hear Nick Jonas say that again.” Nick’s face burns with embarrassment, and Joe leans in to nuzzle at his cheek. “Sorry. Did that kill the mood?”
Nick shakes his head. “Who thinks you’re funny?” he asks. “Anyone?”
Joe doesn’t try for a comeback, just starts kissing Nick’s neck, making him gasp, making him forget that Joe just called him a know-it-all. His whole body responds when Joe kisses down behind his ear, mouths a tingling line down the side of Nick’s neck. He hadn’t known neck kissing would be a thing, that it would make him spread his legs wider and squirm. “You still have to say if you want these off,” Joe tells him, running his hands up under Nick’s t-shirt, up his back and down again.
“Yeah,” Nick says. “Okay.”
Joe knows how to take off someone else’s clothes with easy efficiency, and a part of Nick wants to ask where Joe learned to work free someone else’s buttons without looking. But not right now. Right now it’s just him and Joe, like it’s supposed to be. He shivers when Joe gets Nick’s t-shirt off him, when Joe’s looking at his skin all hungry and close.
“If I bite you here, it won’t show,” Joe tells him, before sucking at the taut skin at the corner of Nick’s collarbone. Nick doesn’t tell him no, even though he never thought he’d want any of those little marks on his skin. Joe sounds so sure, sounds like he wants it so much. And Nick wants Joe to want it, to feel as sick and crazy and desperate as he does. Joe’s teeth graze against his skin, and Nick stutters out a moan, a choked hesitant little sound because he can hardly even breathe with Joe’s mouth on him.
Joe pulls back, tugs down the tab of Nick’s zipper and flicks open the button. Nick’s boxers tent out over his hard dick, and now Joe can see it, see everything. Or almost everything. He touches the tip of Nick’s dick through the cloth, the spot where it’s already damp. Then Joe’s fingers circle and twist a little, boxers rubbing funny against Nick’s sensitive skin.
“Let me suck you,” Joe says, and it goes up at the end like a question, the most painfully hot question in the whole world. Nick opens his eyes, looks long and hard at Joe’s mouth, all wet and red, just like he imagined it would be. He shouldn’t want Joe to do that, especially not when he knows where Joe’s mouth was two days ago. Joe shouldn’t want to do it either. But everything is twisted around and turned on its head already.
He rubs his fingers along Joe’s cheek. “Yeah,” he says, looking at Joe’s face, meeting Joe’s eyes squarely for the first time.
“I’m gonna take such good care of you, Nicky,” Joe tells him, and then he’s on his knees, tugging at Nick’s boxers, so eager Nick forgots how to breathe. His fingers clutch at Nick’s thighs and his lips touch the head of Nick’s dick, closed like a first kiss, warm and tentative. And Nick already feels like he’s going to shake apart from it.
When Joe’s lips open and he takes the head in his mouth, all that soft, wet heat around Nick’s dick, it’s more than obvious he knows what he’s doing. Nick’s breath comes out in little wheezes, and he digs his fingers into Joe’s shoulder, trying not to embarrass himself by coming too fast. But Joe’s mouth taking him in, holding him, it’s not like anything he’s ever felt before. Nick smacks the back of his head on the door as he comes, hips bucking in a way he can’t control. And Joe just takes it, swallowing him whole, licking at Nick’s dick until it starts to go soft.
“Is your head okay?” Joe says, standing up, his voice wobbly and low. He nuzzles at Nick’s cheek, and Nick can smell himself on Joe’s breath, which is weird and sort of gross, and then he’s kissing Joe anyway, tasting his own come and not caring. He doesn’t answer Joe’s question, couldn’t find his voice right now if he tried.
Joe’s dick bumps against Nick’s thigh, hot and thick, and Nick reaches down to touch, cupping it in his palm through the sticky fabric of Joe’s boxers. Joe cradles the back of Nick’s head and kisses him harder as Nick slides his hand into Joe’s underwear and gets a grip on his dick for the first time. It’s hot in his sweaty hand, and Nick shifts around a little until he finds an angle that makes Joe groan in the back of his throat. He feels out the length of it, rubs his thumb across the damp head.
Joe comes almost as fast as Nick did, which makes him feel a little better. “That’s just round one,” Joe tells him, as Nick wipes his dripping fingers on Joe’s shorts. Nick’s heartbeat kicks up again. They don’t sleep for hours.
Dear Kevin,
Stayed up too late last night, but today we’re going to Nice, so that’s nice (haha). We’re going to hang out on the beach and rub elbows with the rich and famous. I’ll bring sunscreen, don’t worry. Two days until we go back to Paris and then home. It’s crazy. Gotta go.
Love,
Nick
They spend the day on the Riviera. The sun is really bright, and David swears he sees Johnny Depp at a restaurant they pass, but all Nick really notices is Joe’s shirtless body on the beach. He’s heard there are nude beaches in France, and he’s glad they didn’t go to one of those. Just Joe without his shirt, the browning glow of his skin, the way the water drips down his chest, is nearly more than Nick can handle.
He keeps his own clothes on, wading and splashing at the edge of the water. Selena teases him for being shy, but she doesn’t know about the little bruise on his shoulder, the bite mark above his left nipple. He couldn’t explain them, not a chance, and that’s unsettling. But every time Joe looks at him, grins and blows kisses from out in the water, Nick’s nagging regrets recede like waves, and he can’t help laughing.
Joe buys a new pair of aviators after he steps on his sunglasses on the beach, and he spends the afternoon admiring himself in shop windows. “Still funny-looking,” says Nick cheerily as Joe tousles his damp hair outside a bakery.
“Whatever,” Joe replies. “It’s your genetic makeup you’re insulting there.” He throws an arm around Nick’s shoulders, and Nick knows Joe would do that no matter what, but it still makes him look nervously around before he relaxes into Joe’s side.
Dear Kevin,
Joe got sunburned on the beach yesterday, and he didn’t realize it until we got back to Marseille. Riding on the train to Paris with him is going to be really fun if he keeps complaining at the top of his lungs. You know how Joe is. But other than that, Nice was great. Crowded with lots of tourists even more lost than us. But great.
Love,
Nick
Nick rubs lotion across the bright red streak spanning Joe’s shoulders, Joe groaning and hissing and generally making a lot of unnecessary noise. He’s sprawled on his front on the narrow hostel bed, Nick hunched awkwardly over him.
“Shut up, you big baby,” Nick tells him, palming the lotion up over the curves of Joe’s shoulders, Joe’s skin smooth and hot under his hands. He drags his slippery fingers down over the crests of Joe’s shoulder blades, cups his hands around Joe’s ribs and feels Joe sigh into the pillow. He’s nowhere near Joe’s sunburn now, but he doesn’t want to stop. He squeezes more lotion onto his hands, rubbing it in, learning the shape of muscle and bone, Joe’s whole body relaxing for him.
“Lower,” Joe says, and Nick hands slide obediently down his sides. Nick’s dick is perking up, the tip practically brushing Joe’s thigh as he leans in to work his way down Joe’s back. He bites his lip, wondering what happens next.
“Lower,” Joe says again, and Nick falters. His hands are at the waist of Joe’s boxers.
“Joe, that’s your butt.”
Joe turns his head a little more, looks at Nick from the corner of his eye. “Yeah,” he agrees, licking his lips. “Remember that night with David, when I told you there was more stuff you could do with a guy, and you said you didn’t want to know? Do you want to know now?”
Nick has a vague, uneasy sense what Joe means, but he nods.
Joe shoves his boxers down as far as he can without getting up. With one hand he reaches back and spreads himself open, touches with one finger to show Nick just what he means. Nick swallows. He’s grossed out and turned on and a little bit scared because he’s never thought about anything like that. His hand is still slippery with lotion, and he wonders if that’s part of the point. He puts his fingers down where Joe’s have just been, touches soft, hot skin and feels the slight give of Joe’s hole.
“Why?” Nick asks, stroking a little as Joe bites his lip.
“It feels good,” Joe says, wiggling back towards Nick’s fingers. “That’s why people do sex stuff. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Nick pushes a little with his fingers. “You want me to?”
“I really want you to.”
Nick shuts his eyes and starts to work his first finger into Joe, twisting and pressing, his dick still twitching heavy and full as Joe moans under him. “That really feels good?” Nick asks incredulously, moving his finger in and out a little, testing.
“Faster,” Joe says, and he tilts his hips up, opens up a little more around Nick’s finger. “And like, maybe more than one.”
It’s more weird than hot until Joe starts rocking back onto Nick’s fingers, making quiet, bitten-off noises as Nick moves inside him. He watches the flex of the muscles in Joe’s back, leans down to kiss Joe’s shoulders just below the patch of his sunburn.
“God,” Joe whispers, rubbing his face against the pillow. “Nick. It’s so good.”
Nick feels dizzy and hot all over, just watching Joe open up around his fingers. He rubs helplessly at his hard dick. “Do you want me to… anything?”
Joe cranes around to look at him, meets his eyes for a long moment. “Want you to fuck me.”
Nick hates that word usually, the sharp sound of it, but right now it just makes his belly squirm with heat. “How?” he asks.
Joe shows him, a lotion-slick hand wrapping Nick’s dick, stroking slowly. Joe’s talking to him in a low voice, saying all these hot, confusing things, things Nick didn’t think would ever apply to his life. When Nick rubs his dick down between Joe’s cheeks, Joe says, “Do it,” and Nick pushes into him all slow and uncertain. It’s better than blowjobs, better than anything should be, Joe so hot and tight, shuddering back into him. Nick nuzzles his face into the curve of Joe’s neck, and he can feel Joe moaning under his lips.
Nick can’t help the way his hips pump forward, the desperate little noises he can hear coming from his own mouth. His hands are on Joe’s hips, probably holding too tight, and Nick can’t do anything but ride it out. Joe says his name, reaches up to tug at Nick’s hair, pulling him down into a panting, sideways kiss. Nick can’t help it. He comes so hard he forgets to breathe, collapsing onto Joe’s back.
Joe yelps, and Nick rolls sideways to avoid lying on his sunburn. His dick tugs out of Joe’s butt, and that’s its own kind of painful. He lies at the edge of the bed, staring up at the ceiling, his whole body buzzing with heat and confusion. Joe kisses him gently, pulling him back toward the middle of the bed, kneading his fingers into Nick’s stomach.
Nick can count the hours until they fly home, and he has to shove down a whole mess of feelings about that, stay here in this moment with Joe, close his eyes and kiss Joe for all he’s worth.
Dear Kevin,
Today when we got to Paris, we went back to the same hostel we started at, and then we headed straight to Notre Dame de Paris. Took lots of pictures. I can’t believe we leave tomorrow. There’s so much more to do here. I don’t feel like the trip can be over yet, even though I know it has to end. Looking forward to seeing you.
Love,
Nick
Notre Dame is huge. They just stand in front of it for a while, craning up to look at the bell tower until Nick starts to feel dizzy and cross-eyed. “It’s beautiful,” says Selena, and he nods solemnly. It is.
The two of them haven’t talked much in the last few days, and he wishes he could give her a reason for that. But the only good thing he can do for her right now is not lead her on. He dawdles, looking at the flying buttresses, until she walks away to reclaim her place in the line for the door.
Inside the sanctuary everything echoes strangely, and Nick lets Joe take his hand as they follow the crowd through the cathedral. There’s so much beautiful sculpture and stained glass, stone saints and intricately carved pillars and the giant rose window hanging over all of it. Nick looks at the tiled floor and feels suddenly, overwhelmingly guilty. He’s in a church, even if it’s a church that’s treated like a museum, and he’s holding hands with his brother like he’s a normal, sane, good person. But he’s not. He can’t lie to himself or justify it at all, not with Jesus and Mary and all those saints staring at him. He had sex with his brother last night, and that’s not something any normal, sane, good person would do. He doesn’t deserve to be in this church or any other right now.
Nick has to pull Joe sideways and stop because he’s shaking too hard to keep walking. He hopes everyone else thinks it’s a diabetic thing, but Joe’s face says he knows better. “We can’t do this at home,” Nick says urgently, his voice coming out strangled and small. “We have to stop now, before it gets worse.”
Joe doesn’t say anything. His face is blank, not like Joe at all. He pulls Nick into a quick hug and then lets him go. Like Nick’s just cut the string on a balloon. Nick leans against the wall, feeling cold and sick as he watches Joe walk away. Joe’s not making a scene or arguing or cracking a joke to make things feel easier. He’s just walking away. And that’s probably the most heartbreaking thing of all. Some part of Nick, not even a small part, wanted Joe to argue with him.
Nick doesn’t cry, but he feels like it. He goes and sits by himself until he’s tracked the rest of the group around the cathedral and back to the door. He doesn’t want to lose them, but he doesn’t want to talk to them either.
Dear Nick,
I bet you’re going to be so cool and grown up now that you’ve been to Europe. Drinking coffee out of tiny cups and wearing berets and everything. I wonder if we’ll even recognize you at the airport.
Love,
Kevin
“I’m sorry,” says Joe. They’re packing up their stuff, preparing to leave for the airport early the next morning. It’s the first thing Joe’s said to him in hours, and it makes Nick ache in the pit of his stomach.
“Me too,” he replies, tucking his sneakers into the inner pocket of his suitcase.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” He can feel Joe’s eyes on him, or maybe that’s his imagination, but he won’t turn around to find out.
“Me too.”
“But I don’t regret that it did. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
Nick rolls his dirty clothes into a compact bundle and shoves them to one end. He’s going to have to do the laundry himself when they get home. He can’t let Mom see his underwear all covered in come. He doesn’t know what to say to Joe, so he keeps quiet.
“I get why you don’t want to do it at home, but I.” Joe stops, and there’s the high, tearing sound of him zipping his suitcase closed. “Never mind.”
Nick still doesn’t say anything. There’s a lump in his throat that feels too big to talk around anyway.
“You’re still my brother,” Joe offers finally, and Nick nods.
“You’re still my brother, too.” It doesn’t help. He doesn’t know if anything possibly could help, until Joe’s arms slide around his waist, pulling him into a hug from behind. It feels so good, and Nick closes his eyes and leans back into it, lets Joe hold him and hold him up. Then he turns his head, tilts his chin up so it’s obvious what he’s offering, and Joe kisses him, slow and sad.
This is a goodbye kiss, Nick tells himself, but that just makes it harder to stop. Because then it’s really over. That’s really it, and he’ll never have this again. He turns in Joe’s arms to kiss him more fully.
Dear Kevin,
At the airport. Plane should be on time. See you soon.
Love,
Nick
He sits with Selena on the plane, and they do crossword puzzles and make fun of the in-flight movie, and every once in a while the tightness in Nick’s chest eases and he manages to forget about Joe, one row back and across the aisle. But it never lasts. He keeps looking back, like Lot’s wife at the destruction of Sodom. He can’t help it. And every time he looks, Joe’s looking too, smiling a little too big or a little too small to be real. By the time he and Selena exchange email addresses during their final descent into Philadelphia, Nick’s worn out in a way that has nothing to do with eight hours on a plane.
He almost wishes Kevin was right, that any of this had made him as unrecognizable on the outside as he feels on the inside. But when Mom and Kevin and Frankie spot him and Joe at the international arrivals gate, they grin and wave and yell like everything’s just the same as always. Joe bumps his shoulder against Nick’s in a way that would seem friendly if it weren’t so final. “Home,” Joe says, and Nick forces his face into a smile.
Epilogue
Dear Joe,
It’s so quiet without you in the house. It feels really weird. I hope classes are going okay. I’m sure you’re meeting a lot of nice people. School starts here next week. I got an email from Selena. She’s coming to New York this weekend. I think I might go see her in the city.
I miss you already. A lot.
Love,
Nick
Dear Nick,
College is great. I really like my acting class, and my roommate started hooking up with this girl one floor down, so it’s almost like having a single most nights. I hope you had fun with Selena. You should come visit. I miss you too. A lot.
Love,
Joe
Dear Joe,
Seeing Selena was fun. I think we’re going to be friends for a long time. And school’s going okay so far, even though it’s weird without you.
I’d like to come visit you. Maybe it would be like it was in France, when we were in the hostel in Marseille. I’d like it to be like that. I really would.
Love,
Nick
Dear Nick,
I’d like that too. I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.
Love,
Joe
~fin~
Masterpost & Soundtrack
They head out early to visit the Château d'If, a prison island in the bay, the one from Count of Monte Cristo. Nick’s embarrassed that he tried to read the book and found it so boring he had to stop after a hundred pages, but less embarrassed when he realizes that most of the other kids aren’t even talking about the book anyway; they’ve just confused it with Man in the Iron Mask and are discussing the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in it. And anyway, he’s got more difficult things to deal with right now, like keeping Joe standing upright and making sure he’s not puking over the side of the boat.
“Why did I do this?” Joe says mournfully, rubbing his hands over his face. “Why? It was such terrible wine.”
“Because you’re an idiot.” Nick touches the back of Joe’s neck in what he hopes is a sympathetic way, runs his fingers up into Joe’s hair, which is messier than Nick’s ever seen it.
Joe groans miserably. “Never get drunk on bad red wine,” he mumbles, leaning toward Nick’s hand.
“I have no intention of ever getting drunk at all.”
“That’s good too.” Joe looks at him, his eyes red and watery. Nick feels bad for him, at the same time that he kind of just wants to yell and shake him and tell him that he’s making terrible choices. Feeling bad wins out in the end, and he sits next to Joe on the deck for the rest of the tour, lets Joe rest his head on Nick’s shoulder and moan. David comes by and ask if Joe’s okay, but Nick’s pretty sure he was one of the people involved in the bad red wine incident, so Nick just tells him Joe’s fine and glares at him until he goes away.
“You should come out with us tonight,” Joe suggests, and Nick isn’t sure how Joe can think about that when he’s still in physical pain from last night, but he just makes a little “maybe” noise and looks out into the water.
The bar is crowded and noisy, and as soon as Nick gets in the door, he wants to leave again. There are a bunch of old guys arguing loudly at the bar, and all the tables are full of groups of kids a few years older than they are yelling and laughing. Joe grabs his wrist and squeezes. “I can see you thinking about bailing,” Joe says, “and it is so not happening. I will tie you to a chair until you start having fun.”
“As much fun as you had with your terrible wine hangover?” Nick asks.
Joe grins, apparently completely recovered. “Even more fun than my wine hangover.” He pinches the back of Nick’s hand. “Come on, Nick. We’re gonna have a great time tonight. Look, your girlfriend’s here. It’s already a better night than last night, see?”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” Nick grumbles. He looks over at Selena, who’s sitting at the end of the bar, kicking her heels against a barstool and talking to Bridgit. She’s got something in her hand that definitely looks like a glass of wine, and Nick feels lame and immature and angry because he wants to give his speech on the evils of alcohol and feel righteously indignant, but he also wants Selena to think he’s cool and charming and not completely lame. Nick’s always kind of scoffed at peer pressure, but mostly it didn’t involve pretty girls with glasses in their hands who make him feel awkward just by existing. He hesitates, but ends up being pushed into the bar anyway by the next flood of people through the door. Joe drags Nick to the end of the bar, and Selena’s seen him and said, “Hey! You came,” in a happy way before Nick can figure out what he should do.
“Hey,” he says more quietly than he means to, and Joe starts talking over him before he can say anything else, asking who else is here, what’s going on, what time the band is supposed to start. Joe seems really excited for a real live band in a cheap neighborhood bar in Marseille, more excited than Nick can totally explain until he finds out they cover classic rock songs. Which apparently fills Joe with as much glee as it fills Nick with dread. Because there are just so many ways that could go wrong.
“What are you drinking?” Nick asks Selena eventually, eyeing the pink stuff in her glass and thinking about Joe swearing and moaning about terrible red wine last night. He doesn’t want Selena to feel like that, wouldn’t wish that on anyone, really.
“Kir. Crème de cassis and champagne,” she says, and Nick has no idea what crème de cassis is, but it smells fruity. “It’s nice. You want to try some?”
She holds out her glass, and it’s so much easier to say yes than no, his fingers brushing hers on the slim stem of the glass as he takes it. Nick takes a tiny, tiny sip, holding it on his tongue for a little while before swallowing. It’s sweet, almost cloying, and bubbly underneath. Nick feels the rush of it, even though one sip can’t possibly have any biological effect. Just the act of holding a drink in a French bar makes him feel reckless and excited and scared. “A little too sweet for me,” he says nonchalantly, handing it back. Selena smiles and takes another sip.
“Maybe it’s just too girly for you.”
Just then Joe, who’s been off harassing someone else for the last few minutes, comes up behind him and smacks Nick on the butt. Nick makes a startled noise that luckily gets lost in everything else going on in the bar (at least he hopes it does). “Nicholas Jerry Jonas,” says Joe, “are you drinking? Don’t you know how dangerous that stuff is? Why I should take you over my knee right now and knock some sense into you. Goodness gracious.”
Nick elbows Joe in the ribs, maybe a little harder than necessary. “Will you shut up already?” he says, and Joe just laughs and takes another swig of his beer, something with a German label Nick can’t quite make out.
“Do you want the rest of this?” Joe asks. “If you’re gonna try it out it might as well be something good.” Nick feels this sudden surge of anger, because what right does Joe have to put him in that position, to make him turn it down in front of Selena?
“Do you realize how much sugar there is in most beer?” Nick asks acidly. “Aren’t you the one who said I needed to watch my levels better?”
Joe holds up his hands, one of them still clutching the beer, a gesture of surrender. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I just figured it would be better than whatever Selena’s pink stuff is. No offense.” She toasts him to show she doesn’t care. “But I bet there are things with less sugar. We can ask. I’m buying!”
Everything that comes out of Joe’s mouth is just making it worse right now, so Nick agrees to ask. He figures his French is limited enough, and Joe’s is non-existent enough that even if they ask the question in a mostly grammatical way, it’s probably not going to make any sense to an actual French person. But fortunately for Joe and more unfortunately for Nick, the bartender they talk to lived in New York for a couple of years, speaks flawless English, and has a diabetic friend with a lot of opinions on this very subject.
“He likes pastis best,” says the bartender. “But you must drink it the right way. You want to try?”
“He so does,” says Joe before Nick can politely decline. A minute later he’s got a little glass full of cloudy liquid in front of him, and a bigger glass of what is obviously water. The bartender explains what to do, and Nick sniffs experimentally at the little glass.
“What does it taste like?” Selena asks curiously, looking at it.
“Anise,” says the bartender and it sounds so much like “anus” that Joe practically doubles over laughing before the bartender clarifies. “Like licorice. It may perhaps be a, acquired taste? Is that what I mean to say?”
Nick takes the tiniest sip from the smaller glass and makes a face, wagging his tongue around to try and get rid of the taste. “I think that is what you mean to say,” Nick coughs. He gulps down some water, and when he offers Selena a taste of his pastis and she thinks it’s vile too, he feels totally justified in not drinking any more of it.
Except then Joe drinks it instead, mixing it with the water like the bartender shows them, and Joe’s already on his second beer. All this before the band has even gotten up to play, which Joe says is really what they’re here for.
It’s unfortunate that the band is terrible. It’s several middle-aged guys, who Nick thinks should undoubtedly have better things to do with their time than torture the poor people of this bar with a rendition of “Whole Lotta Love” that makes Nick want to cover his ears. He doesn’t even care that much about Zeppelin, but he doesn’t really want to stick around someplace hot and crowded with a drink he doesn’t like, for the sake of hearing a painfully clumsy version of a song he already knows. When they start in on Springsteen, Nick’s afraid he’s actually going to cry for how wrong it is. He starts looking for a graceful way out.
Selena touches his arm halfway through “Born in the U. S. A.” which is probably supposed to be ironic, but mostly it’s just horrifying. And loud. “Do you want to go?” she asks in his ear, and her breath smells sweet from her drink, which she’s been working on for forty-five minutes now.
Nick nods, and she downs the rest of her drink in one gulp. Nick finds Joe standing with David, leaning in close and apparently ignoring the band that he had been so excited to see in the first place. He says goodbye, and Joe’s cheerful, but he doesn’t seem to care much about that either.
“I don’t usually drink,” Selena tells him outside. “I just wanted to try it, and Bridgit said that stuff was good, which it was. But I don’t want you to think I do it all the time.”
Nick nods in what he hopes is a cool way, like he’s not really bothered one way or another. “I’m glad it was good. I just can’t really, you know, being diabetic.” The words hang awkwardly, and Nick wishes he hadn’t said anything because if Selena was listening to the whole stupid conversation at the bar she already knows, and if she wasn’t, she doesn’t care.
“I sort of figured you didn’t drink because you didn’t drink,” she says, a little too insightfully, and when she looks over at him from under her bangs her cheeks are flushed pink, but her eyes are clear. “The diabetes thing is just easier to explain.”
Nick purses his lips. “Maybe.” There’s a burst of laughter from the opening door of another restaurant in the block, and Nick catches scattered words as a stylish-looking couple slip past them on the sidewalk. Accents in Marseille are harder for Nick to figure out, different from Paris, different from Quebec where they went last summer and Nick spent the whole time trying to decipher the road signs, preparing for high school French.
“It’s beautiful here,” Selena says, and she’s right of course. It’s an old street, tall buildings looming over them, and you can’t see all the chipped paint and cracked plaster in the purpley light of dusk. Even if you could, it probably wouldn’t seem so bad. They round the corner, back onto the street where the hostel is, and the road slopes down to the harbor, like most of the roads do, spokes in a wheel with the Mediterranean at its center.
Nick thinks about taking her hand, not so far a distance to reach across, how perfect it would be to be walking down the street in Marseille holding a beautiful girl’s hand in the moonlight. But Selena slips her arm through his before he’s gotten farther than speculating. And that’s just as good, brings her close enough in that the flare of her skirt brushes his legs as she walks. Nick steals sideways glances at her as they walk, and she’s smiling every time he looks, that little smile that says she knows a secret, that something great is happening in her head and she’s holding tight to it. He wishes it was more than a block to the hostel because there’s no way he can find out what she’s thinking in that distance. And he wants to know. He’s so curious about her he could probably spend all night walking with her. But he won’t say that. Just like he won’t admit that he’s never even been on a date, that at home he’s so consumed with extracurriculars and special classes that he barely sees Joe some days (next year he won’t see Joe at all).
When they step inside the front door of the hostel, Selena lets go of his arm, lets her elbow slip free of his. “Thanks for walking back with me,” she says. Nick is acutely aware of the tacky lobby around them, with its shabby Middle Eastern tapestries and potted palm trees, the clerk at the desk eating a sandwich and glancing over at them. Nick wonders if maybe Selena’s going to invite him back up to her room, and he’s weighing the pros and cons of that when she kisses him on the cheek.
Nick wishes he could stamp his foot and say, “No fair! I wasn’t ready!” because by the time he’s focused on the feeling of her lips on his cheek, they’re already gone. Soft. Warm. Dry.
Selena grins. “Night, Nick,” she says, and he can’t help the way his eyes follow her as she makes her way up the stairs. He also can’t help the little spike of jealousy when he sees the desk clerk’s eyes also following her up the stairs too. Nick takes the opportunity to ask a few random and distracting questions about the city, just to keep him occupied until Selena’s all the way upstairs. The desk clerk hems and haws and may even say something worth hearing, but Nick’s not really listening at all. He’s thinking about Selena who kissed him, and about how much he wants to tell Joe, who’s still out there somewhere, being deafened by the horrible band and probably drinking too much, even though tonight he should know better.
Nick goes through his bedtime routine slowly, so he won’t have to be just lying in bed awake waiting for Joe to get back, but even he can only spend so long brushing and re-brushing his teeth before his gums start to bleed. So then there he is in bed, minutes stretching out long, starting to wonder if he would have time to jerk off before Joe reappears. He’s barely got a hand in his shorts when he hears Joe at the door, not scrabbling this time, just carefully, purposefully opening it, as though doing so is difficult and complex. Or maybe he’s just trying to be quiet for Nick’s sake, but Nick’s not feeling charitable right now.
He leans into the room and Nick waves in the dark to show he’s awake. “Hey,” says Joe, and his voice sounds husky and tired. Nick wonders whether Joe stayed to hear the rest of the band’s set, whether his voice is hoarse from drunkenly cheering them on.
Joe sits down heavily on his bed and starts untying his shoes. This also seems to take longer than usual, and Nick almost offers to help, but Joe’s so eerily quiet that it throws Nick off. Joe should be talking a mile a minute right now, recounting everything that happened to him tonight, turning simple events into stories and describing things so that Nick finally has to laugh along with him. That’s how this is supposed to work. But Joe just takes off his shoes and then strips off his pants without saying a word. Nick lies there awkwardly, knowing Joe knows he’s not asleep, knowing he can’t fake it now.
Joe goes to the bathroom in just his boxers and a t-shirt, toothbrush dangling from his hand. Nick watches him leave, and is sitting up waiting for him in the light of his portable reading lamp when Joe gets back.
“Is everything okay?” he asks, and Joe looks startled, caught off guard, and as his eyes widen Nick can see how red they are. Like Joe’s been crying, but that’s too weird to even contemplate.
Joe’s smile seems genuine. “Yeah, everything’s fine. I’m just distracted.”
He’s got his back turned when Nick asks, “By what?” and he tenses. Nick sees the angle of his shoulders change, and there’s a long pause before he answers.
“You have to swear you won’t tell anyone. Not anyone on the trip, not Kevin, not Mom and Dad.”
Nick’s heart is beating too fast. What if Joe’s murdered someone? What if he stole a car in a drunken haze and crashed it into a tree? But he looks both excited and uninjured, like it isn’t something bad at all. Nick nods okay.
“Kill the light,” says Joe, and Nick snaps off the booklight. Until his eyes adjust, it’s almost black, shades drawn low against the streetlights and the passing cars. He can hear the rustle of Joe getting into bed a few feet away, the pull of the springs as he settles down. “I hooked up with David,” Joe tells him, in the quiet darkness.
“What does that mean?” Nick asks, because just the words “hooked up” are this whole world he knows he doesn’t understand, this huge category of things he hasn’t done. Let alone with a guy, which is so much farther outside his experience. He thinks about the day Joe got his promise ring, how they had a quiet little ceremony and went out to dinner to celebrate, and Joe looked so proud and couldn’t stop touching it. He thinks how excited he was, thinking he could tell Joe that Selena kissed him on the cheek and walked with her arm in his. That seems like nothing now.
“We made out. And I gave him a blowjob.” Nick’s stomach roils. He can’t tell if he’s disgusted or jealous or just plain angry. Nick’s always felt himself under the weight of other people’s expectations, like there are lines he can’t cross, but more and more it seems as though Joe doesn’t feel that way. He just does whatever he wants and doesn’t even think about it. Nick swallows back a flood of angry words, waits for Joe to say more. “It was fun,” Joe adds quietly. And that’s it. Like that’s really all there is to say.
Nick must make some kind of noise then, without really thinking about it. He’s trying so hard to hold back the mental images. He doesn’t want to think about Joe doing that, not to David, but all the same it’s too easy to picture David kissing his brother, Joe’s mouth opening for him. Joe’s bed rustles, and when Nick opens his eyes, Joe has turned on his side and is looking at him.
“Your head’s going to explode any second, isn’t it?” Joe says gently, like it’s almost a joke, like Nick’s the one being unreasonable here.
“You had sex, Joe,” Nick bites out, anger breaking through, “with some guy you’ve known for a week. And you expect me to just say, ‘Yeah, Joe, awesome! Great job!’”
“I guess not,” Joe replies, too easily. And how can this be easier for him than it is for Nick? Joe’s the one doing something crazy and wrong and just. Crazy.
“Is this the first time?” Somehow it’s really important, that if Joe was going to do something like this that he tell Nick about it, that if nothing else he’s at least honest. All that time they were sharing a bed Joe wasn’t hiding this. But the way Joe hesitates tells Nick exactly what he didn’t want to know. He shuts his eyes again.
“It’s not,” Joe tells him. “I mean, it was with David, but not in general.”
Nick folds his hands together to stop them shaking. He sees all these faceless men, Joe on his knees for them. Every time Joe’s come home late, every time he’s said he was staying after at school, maybe he was doing this instead. “So this is like, a hobby for you? Performing oral sex on strangers?”
“Nick, come on, please. Don’t be like this. You know me. You know it’s not like that.”
“I don’t know anything at all right now. You didn’t tell me anything.”
“Then let’s start with, ‘I’m gay.’” Joe leans up on one elbow. “Would you be okay with just that?”
Nick knows gay people. He had a part in the school musical. He did tech for the fall play. Even stereotypes about theater kids have some truth behind them. It makes him uncomfortable when he thinks too hard about it, when he imagines Lucas, who was the lead in West Side Story, kissing his boyfriend. And he knows Mom and Dad and the church wouldn’t approve. But he has to be practical about it. And practically, it doesn’t seem to hurt anyone. “Yeah, that would be okay.”
“And see? I didn’t know that.”
“You could have asked. I’m your brother. You could have trusted me.”
“Would you still have shared a bed with me?”
Nick’s stomach clenches up as he remembers the things he thought about when he was jerking off yesterday, confusing images of Joe clouding up his head, making him feel guilty but also making him come. The part of him that hated that wants to say, “No,” but not like Joe would think he means it. It’s not Joe who’s a threat here. “I would have,” Nick says, even though there’s this other part of him, the part that knows how dangerous that is and doesn’t care, that just wants and wants and isn’t interested in consequences. “I know you wouldn’t do anything to me,” he adds.
Joe looks at him for a long time, and Nick doesn’t know what that means, staring into the dark between their beds and not knowing what Joe sees in his face. “I didn’t know if you’d freak out,” Joe tells him. “I should have told you anyway.”
“And about the guys who weren’t David?”
“It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t a lot. It was just a couple of times. I wanted to know. I wanted to be sure this was what I wanted, and who I was.”
“Then what’s the point of wearing your ring, if you’re just going to have sex in order to find yourself, or whatever?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it would mean to take it off. And I haven’t done that much.”
“What’s not that much, Joe? If this is not that much, I’m not sure I want to know what more there is.”
“I won’t tell you. But I haven’t done it.” Nick doesn’t let himself imagine, because he thinks he could, he thinks there are so many things he could imagine Joe doing, to faceless men, to Nick himself. It’s that that makes it so hard. That he wants those things, that there’s this little spark in the pit of his stomach when he thinks about it.
“You should have told me.”
“I’m sorry.” Joe licks his lips. “I’m really sorry, Nicky. You deserved to know.”
“I did.” Nick tries to sound indignant, but it’s hard when he feels so confused.
“Goodnight,” Joe says after a while, and he rolls over onto his back and shuts his eyes. Nick tries to sleep too, but all he can think about are Joe’s hands and his mouth, the softness of his lips, the way his voice sounded when he came back from the bar. Not hoarse from yelling. Hoarse from David Henrie’s dick.
“What is it like?” Nick asks after a while, quiet enough that if Joe’s already asleep he probably won’t hear.
But Joe’s not asleep. He doesn’t ask what Nick’s talking about either. “It’s good. It’s weird at first, and you have to watch out for using your teeth, but after you get into a rhythm, it’s just. I like it. It feels good, in your mouth, and it doesn’t taste as bad as people say.”
Nick wrinkles his nose at that, but at the same time he can feel his dick fattening up in his shorts at the image of Joe’s mouth opening to let him in, Joe’s tongue on his skin, Joe swallowing when he comes. Nick shifts uncomfortably, pretending to scratch his belly as he adjusts himself. He can’t let Joe see. More than ever now, he can’t let Joe know how screwed up his head is, how his dick perks up to all the wrong things. It would be easier if he were just gay, as hard as that would be in other ways, if at least he thought about guys instead of just thinking about Joe.
Nick doesn’t realize how bad it will be until he sees David during their breakfast of bread and jam in the hostel kitchen. He wants to strangle him or punch him or throw him off a pier, maybe all three at once, and it just gets so much worse when he comes over to talk to Joe, all friendly smiles and enthusiasm. Nick is being a jerk and he knows it, but he just stands at Joe’s side glaring sullenly at David during their whole conversation. Selena hasn’t come down yet, and there’s nothing to distract his attention. Not that anything could, necessarily. There’s a guy standing right here who’s had his dick in Joe’s mouth and Nick needs to check him out.
Until, that is, Joe gets sick of him hanging around not saying anything and making David look increasingly jumpy. “Hey, Nick, don’t you owe Kevin an email or something?” he asks pointedly. And Nick doesn’t, but he takes the hint before he has to do violence to David for existing.
Nick goes to the little computer lab at the back of the lobby, but both computers are occupied, so he stands in the doorway and tries to get his feelings under control. Many people have sex, he reasons, and very few of them need saving from the people they do it with. Whatever Nick wants to do to David, it’s really without cause. Joe is just having a nice breakfast conversation with someone he likes, maybe a lot, although it’s hard to tell with Joe. But no matter how many times Nick tells himself that, it doesn’t seem to stick.
By the time they leave to take a van up to Notre Dame de la Garde, a church overlooking the city, Nick feels nauseous and miserable every time he so much as hears David’s voice. And it’s hard not to hear it when he, Joe, and David are crowded into one row in the van, and Joe and David suddenly seem to have everything in the world in common. Nick wonders if you shouldn’t have found all that stuff out before you give someone head, but he can’t say anything about it.
When they get to the parking lot of the church, after a drive up a narrow winding road that seemed like it might dead end into a building at any second, they still have two flights of stairs to climb. “Bet you can’t get up there as fast as I can,” Nick says, knowing how Joe can’t resist a challenge.
They take up off the steps, practically flying, the rest of the city falling even farther away behind them. It’s exhausting but worth it, because at the top of the stairs it’s just him and Joe practically on top of the world, grinning and winded. Nick was two stairs ahead at the end, and it’s not much, but it’s enough to declare victory. Joe pats him on the back, and the sweat gathering between Nick’s shoulders sticks his t-shirt to his skin.
Everyone else looks really far away down the stairs, and Joe doesn’t move away, his hand lingering at the back of Nick’s neck. Nick looks at him, and it must be the rush of running so fast that makes Nick’s eyes catch on Joe’s mouth, makes him think all these things he’s never thought except lying in bed at night. He finds himself swaying closer, and it’s not so different from how he sometimes leans into Joe in crowds, but it feels different. He imagines kissing Joe, right here on the sunny stone walkway outside a church, feeling Joe’s mouth open just for him, tasting Joe’s breath. His heartbeat is so loud in his ears, and it’s not just from running.
Joe presses a bottle of water into his hand. “You okay?” he asks, squeezing the back of Nick’s neck.
Nick nods hurriedly, ducking out of Joe’s reach and gulping down some of the water. “Fine. Triumphant.”
Joe rolls his eyes. “I could have won if I wanted. I just didn’t want to make you cry or anything. I know how defeat stings.”
There’s a stone railing, and behind it rocks and sea. The water looks very blue, deep, dark blue, not like those cruise commercials he sees on TV. Nick follows the course of a sailboat, then a big cargo ship farther out. The view is amazing, the ocean stretching off to a hazy horizon, the swoop of the valley at his back, mountains rising up beyond. Marseille connects France to the rest of the world, he read in a brochure in the tourist center on the Canebière, the street they’d walked down from the train station. (David had made a joke about cans of beer and just about everyone had laughed. Nick resents him for it even more in hindsight.)
The first of the others from their group reach the top of the stairs. He waits for Joe to walk over to David. Nick is already planning how he’ll talk to Selena, what he’ll say, when he realizes Joe hasn’t moved; he’s still standing at the railing with Nick, looking out at the city and the water. Their shoulders are nearly touching, and other people are filing up around them, looking down and exclaiming, but for right this second Joe’s just here with him.
“Come along, everyone,” Mrs. Davis calls out, and they follow her into the church.
It’s dim and cool compared to the day outside, and it takes a second for Nick’s eyes to adjust as they come through the turnstile. There are people hunched over in prayer in the first few pews, candles burning on the altar, and he’s sorry for the loud, disrespectful whispers of the people behind him because it really feels like a place of worship. The one time he’d gone to Catholic church back home with his Sunday school class he’d felt uncomfortable and unprepared, everyone going through a whole set of motions Nick had never learned. But Notre Dame de la Garde is just about the most peaceful place he’s ever been.
The walls are covered with paintings, almost haphazard, frames of different sizes slotted in next to each other, and as he looks more closely he realizes that while some of them are religious images, some of them aren’t. There are ships at sea, and landscapes, and portraits of people in old-fashioned clothes, like the whole world is attending the church. Joe’s hand curls around his, and Joe tugs a little, reminding Nick they have to move away from the door.
Joe could stop holding his hand any time, let him go to wander the church on his own like everyone else is doing. But Joe doesn’t let go, fingers loose around Nick’s so Nick could break free if he wanted. But he doesn’t really want to. So he holds on, squeezing to tell Joe it’s okay, smiling as Joe squeezes back. An older woman walking past gives them a suspicious sidelong look, and Nick wonders what she sees when she looks at them, if she can tell that they’re brothers and that makes it okay. Mostly okay.
Joe doesn’t go out that night. At all. They have dinner in a cavernous Moroccan restaurant near the oldest part of town, scoops of couscous and meat and vegetables that Nick mixes together as he eats them, everything a delicious jumble of new flavors. And then they come back to the hostel, and Nick keeps expecting Joe to say, “There’s this bar up the street,” or maybe even, “David asked if I would go for a walk with him” (Did you go for walks with a guy after you’ve had his dick in your mouth, or is walking sort of beside the point after that?). But Joe’s just sitting in their room, reading a book and chewing his thumbnail in the way he does when he’s thinking hard. Nick tries to read, too, but Joe just being there, so quiet and calm, is unbelievably distracting.
“Aren’t you going out?” Nick says eventually, and it comes out sort of sharp.
Joe raises his eyebrows. “Did you need the room for something?”
“No. I just thought you’d have somewhere to be.”
“Giving blowjobs out by the docks to all the sailors coming home from sea?” Joe asks archly.
Nick tosses his pillow at him. “Stop it, Joe. That’s gross.” Nick doesn’t think about it. He can’t, because it won’t be gross enough if he thinks about it. “I thought maybe you’d want to see David.”
“Right. You looked like you were trying to kill David with your brain today. I was a little worried that if anyone could do it, it would be you.”
“Shut up.”
“Seriously, if there was any brain that powerful in the world, it would be yours.”
“That’s not an explanation, Joe. Do you even like David? I haven’t seen you spending a lot of time with him.”
Joe swings his feet over the side of the bed, leans forward like whatever he’s going to say is really urgent, and Nick feels sick to his stomach, because what if Joe’s about to say that he and David are in love and they’re going to stay in France and get one of those civil union things they have here. “Nick, I’m serious about the killing him with your brain thing. You looked sick every time he was nearby. Was I supposed to just let you commit murder in this strange foreign land?”
“I wouldn’t have killed him,” Nick replies, and he doesn’t have another pillow to throw now.
“Then you would have fainted and fallen off a cliff. That’s no good either.” Joe looks at him, daring Nick to argue, because it’s obvious that whether or not Nick would have actually fainted is beside the point.
“So you wanted to be with him, and instead you felt like you had to hang out with me instead because I was being a jerk?”
Joe gets up, sits on the edge of Nick’s bed, which is so narrow Nick has to scoot over against the wall for him to fit. “You don’t get it,” Joe says, quieter now. “I want to hang out with you more than I want to hang out with anyone else. I’m here because I want to hang out with you more than I want to hang out with anyone else.”
“But you could have gone out.”
“I mean I’m in France because of you.” Joe’s voice is quiet and confidential. Nick remembers Joe’s hand folded around his in the church today, the warmth of his palm, the squeeze of his fingers. He thinks about Joe asleep with his head on Nick’s shoulder on the plane. He thinks about Joe singing with him on the train, leaning into him and grinning. And something breaks inside Nick, something fragile and necessary, a barrier that seemed so real and permanent a minute ago, and all of sudden it’s just gone. He leans up and kisses Joe, gently, at the corner of his mouth, off-center enough that he could claim it wasn’t meant like that. He used to kiss Joe all the time when he was little sticky, messy kisses that didn’t mean anything except that he loved his big brother more than he had words for. In some way, that’s still the case.
Joe starts, tenses and draws back, and Nick has his mouth open, ready to spill out some not quite true explanation when Joe catches his mouth again and kisses him fully. Nick’s heart feels like it’s going to beat its way out of his chest. Joe fits his lips to Nick’s, makes them match up just right, and Nick shivers. He doesn’t know what to do. He’s leaning on his hands, so he can’t put his arms around Joe or anything, but Joe doesn’t have that problem.
He wraps his arms around Nick’s back, pulling him upright, pulling him in closer. His lips part, and the kiss gets wetter, more confusing, better. Joe’s tongue flickers against Nick’s lower lip, and Nick opens his mouth, letting Joe show him what to do, what comes next. With Joe holding him up, Nick has his hands free to tangle in Joe’s hair, pulling tight to keep his fingers from shaking. Joe’s tongue feels weird in his mouth at first, licking at his, moving around in slow, wet pushes. But then he gets the rhythm of it, and it’s like the way a harmony comes together, where suddenly they’re moving in sync and everything feels like it was meant to be this way. Joe’s hands push up under his shirt, fingers spreading against his skin, so hot all of a sudden. He makes a little noise, and Joe shudders and pulls back.
Nick’s eyes slit open and Joe’s looking at him with wide, startled eyes, and his mouth is wet, and his hair is sticking up in the back where Nick’s fingers have kneaded into it. He made Joe look like that, and all he wants is to do it some more. Joe’s fingers slide up his back, right along the furrow of his spine, and Nick makes another little noise, and this one is a whimper. He licks his lips and they taste like Joe’s spit, and he can see Joe watching the path of his tongue. Joe looks like he’s about to say something, and Nick can’t let him do that because the minute they start talking again, it’ll be different and there will be consequences, and really, all Nick wants to do is kiss his brother some more, and keep from thinking about it for as long as possible.
He grabs the back of Joe’s neck and hauls him in for another kiss, doesn’t give Joe a choice. Joe holds him tight and goes with it for a minute before he breaks away again, kissing the corners of Nick’s mouth, his cheeks, the sharp angle of his jaw. And as he presses all those nipping little kisses, moving in a way Nick can’t predict, he’s also turning, climbing up onto the bed, straddling Nick’s lap. And they’re both just in their boxers, and there’s a sheet over Nick’s lap, but he can still feel the hot pressure of Joe’s dick, as hard as his is, and so close. So close. It’s more than he expected, and he almost pulls away, but he doesn’t, lets Joe’s weight come down on top of him, the angle changing until it’s right again, Joe’s mouth fitting his, Joe bending into his arms.
Joe fists a hand in Nick’s hair, and Joe’s had his hands in Nick’s hair so many times before, and this is totally different, Joe’s fingers wrapping through his curls, Joe pulling Nick’s head back in order to kiss him more deeply. Joe’s hips shift a little, and Nick gasps at the sudden pressure, at the way Joe’s dick presses against his. He could touch it, right there hot and fat between them, but instead he settles his hands on Joe’s hips, more neutral territory, fingers spreading against the top of Joe’s butt. Joe’s still kissing him, just kissing him, not making a move to do anything else either. And it’s better than anything else in the world, kissing Joe until he’s dizzy and breathless and turned on and not too sure which way is up.
When they stop, it’s going to be weird. It’s going to be confusing and everything might be broken forever and they’re going to be three thousand miles from home when it happens. But for right now, everything’s perfect.
Dear Nick,
I haven’t heard from you in a couple of days, and I’m running out of stories to tell the kids in my cabin about France, so you really need to write to me. I would be the most boring camp counselor ever without you. Also, mom and dad are going to start to worry. Everything is good here. We’ve been going swimming a lot, and I made the best birdhouse ever yesterday. It’s pink. I gave it to a boy whose birdhouse fell apart though, so you won’t get to see it.
Write back!!!
Love,
Kevin
Nick stares at the blinking cursor and has no idea what to say. It’s been hard enough to look everyone on the trip in the eye, act perfectly normal around Joe, as if he doesn’t spend every waking moment thinking about Joe’s mouth, the way Joe pressed him down into the bed last night, lying on top of him so their hips matched up in this promise of more. He didn’t touch Joe’s dick, but when he thinks about it, he wants to. He’s barely looked at anything in the museums they’ve been wandering through this morning, and he hasn’t looked at his Marseille tourism guide even once. For once he’s beyond grateful that no one’s watching him too closely.
Dear Kevin,
Marseille is really great. We’ve tried new food, and we went on a boat tour and to some museums. The city’s really old, like Avignon, so some of the buildings date back centuries and centuries. It’s really great.
Love,
Nick
He realizes he’s said “really great” twice after he hits send, but by then, it’s too late. Kevin won’t notice. No one will. But in Nick’s head it’s a sign of how distracted he is, how his mind is someplace else today. He stares at the sent message for a minute before logging out of his email. No one knows. No one is scrutinizing Nick’s actions except for Nick. And Joe is acting so normal in spite of everything that it’s almost scary. He was laughing and chatting and tugging Nick’s sleeve to get him to look at things in museums all day, just like it was a normal school field trip and not the day after he made out with his brother. Nick doesn’t know how he does it, and he could ask now, Joe waiting in their room while Nick finishes his email, but Joe is waiting in their room. Alone. Maybe wearing very little clothing and already knowing exactly what Nick will want when he gets there. Which would be good, because Nick has basically no idea.
It’s everything he hopes for and more when he opens the door, Joe clicking it shut and pinning him against it, every movement slow and deliberate enough that Nick could say stop anytime. But he doesn’t, even though his palms are sweaty and he doesn’t know what to do except find Joe’s mouth with his. Joe guides him, pressing him back into the door, pushing him up on his toes to kiss him at a different angle, letting their lips brush soft and slow before sliding his tongue into Nick’s mouth. His hands cradle Nick’s hips, pulling him up and forward until Nick is on the verge of losing his balance. He can feel Joe’s dick, a solid weight against his, and he pushes into it a little, making Joe groan.
Joe’s wearing boxers and a t-shirt, which would be totally normal except that right now it feels insubstantial, the fabric too thin a barrier between Nick and all of Joe’s skin, skin he’s barely even thought about before now. Nick’s still in his jeans, with a button-down layered over his t-shirt, and it’s awkward, Joe pressed up close and warm against all of his clothes.
“Is it okay if I…” Joe begins to say, stumbling halfway through the sentence. “Do you want to take off your clothes?” Joe asks this time, and Nick bites his lip, considering. It wouldn’t be so hard if it just happened, if Joe didn’t ask him and make him think about it. But that wouldn’t be Joe.
“I don’t know,” says Nick shyly, honestly. “I don’t know anything.”
“I wish I had a tape recorder. No one’s ever going to hear Nick Jonas say that again.” Nick’s face burns with embarrassment, and Joe leans in to nuzzle at his cheek. “Sorry. Did that kill the mood?”
Nick shakes his head. “Who thinks you’re funny?” he asks. “Anyone?”
Joe doesn’t try for a comeback, just starts kissing Nick’s neck, making him gasp, making him forget that Joe just called him a know-it-all. His whole body responds when Joe kisses down behind his ear, mouths a tingling line down the side of Nick’s neck. He hadn’t known neck kissing would be a thing, that it would make him spread his legs wider and squirm. “You still have to say if you want these off,” Joe tells him, running his hands up under Nick’s t-shirt, up his back and down again.
“Yeah,” Nick says. “Okay.”
Joe knows how to take off someone else’s clothes with easy efficiency, and a part of Nick wants to ask where Joe learned to work free someone else’s buttons without looking. But not right now. Right now it’s just him and Joe, like it’s supposed to be. He shivers when Joe gets Nick’s t-shirt off him, when Joe’s looking at his skin all hungry and close.
“If I bite you here, it won’t show,” Joe tells him, before sucking at the taut skin at the corner of Nick’s collarbone. Nick doesn’t tell him no, even though he never thought he’d want any of those little marks on his skin. Joe sounds so sure, sounds like he wants it so much. And Nick wants Joe to want it, to feel as sick and crazy and desperate as he does. Joe’s teeth graze against his skin, and Nick stutters out a moan, a choked hesitant little sound because he can hardly even breathe with Joe’s mouth on him.
Joe pulls back, tugs down the tab of Nick’s zipper and flicks open the button. Nick’s boxers tent out over his hard dick, and now Joe can see it, see everything. Or almost everything. He touches the tip of Nick’s dick through the cloth, the spot where it’s already damp. Then Joe’s fingers circle and twist a little, boxers rubbing funny against Nick’s sensitive skin.
“Let me suck you,” Joe says, and it goes up at the end like a question, the most painfully hot question in the whole world. Nick opens his eyes, looks long and hard at Joe’s mouth, all wet and red, just like he imagined it would be. He shouldn’t want Joe to do that, especially not when he knows where Joe’s mouth was two days ago. Joe shouldn’t want to do it either. But everything is twisted around and turned on its head already.
He rubs his fingers along Joe’s cheek. “Yeah,” he says, looking at Joe’s face, meeting Joe’s eyes squarely for the first time.
“I’m gonna take such good care of you, Nicky,” Joe tells him, and then he’s on his knees, tugging at Nick’s boxers, so eager Nick forgots how to breathe. His fingers clutch at Nick’s thighs and his lips touch the head of Nick’s dick, closed like a first kiss, warm and tentative. And Nick already feels like he’s going to shake apart from it.
When Joe’s lips open and he takes the head in his mouth, all that soft, wet heat around Nick’s dick, it’s more than obvious he knows what he’s doing. Nick’s breath comes out in little wheezes, and he digs his fingers into Joe’s shoulder, trying not to embarrass himself by coming too fast. But Joe’s mouth taking him in, holding him, it’s not like anything he’s ever felt before. Nick smacks the back of his head on the door as he comes, hips bucking in a way he can’t control. And Joe just takes it, swallowing him whole, licking at Nick’s dick until it starts to go soft.
“Is your head okay?” Joe says, standing up, his voice wobbly and low. He nuzzles at Nick’s cheek, and Nick can smell himself on Joe’s breath, which is weird and sort of gross, and then he’s kissing Joe anyway, tasting his own come and not caring. He doesn’t answer Joe’s question, couldn’t find his voice right now if he tried.
Joe’s dick bumps against Nick’s thigh, hot and thick, and Nick reaches down to touch, cupping it in his palm through the sticky fabric of Joe’s boxers. Joe cradles the back of Nick’s head and kisses him harder as Nick slides his hand into Joe’s underwear and gets a grip on his dick for the first time. It’s hot in his sweaty hand, and Nick shifts around a little until he finds an angle that makes Joe groan in the back of his throat. He feels out the length of it, rubs his thumb across the damp head.
Joe comes almost as fast as Nick did, which makes him feel a little better. “That’s just round one,” Joe tells him, as Nick wipes his dripping fingers on Joe’s shorts. Nick’s heartbeat kicks up again. They don’t sleep for hours.
Dear Kevin,
Stayed up too late last night, but today we’re going to Nice, so that’s nice (haha). We’re going to hang out on the beach and rub elbows with the rich and famous. I’ll bring sunscreen, don’t worry. Two days until we go back to Paris and then home. It’s crazy. Gotta go.
Love,
Nick
They spend the day on the Riviera. The sun is really bright, and David swears he sees Johnny Depp at a restaurant they pass, but all Nick really notices is Joe’s shirtless body on the beach. He’s heard there are nude beaches in France, and he’s glad they didn’t go to one of those. Just Joe without his shirt, the browning glow of his skin, the way the water drips down his chest, is nearly more than Nick can handle.
He keeps his own clothes on, wading and splashing at the edge of the water. Selena teases him for being shy, but she doesn’t know about the little bruise on his shoulder, the bite mark above his left nipple. He couldn’t explain them, not a chance, and that’s unsettling. But every time Joe looks at him, grins and blows kisses from out in the water, Nick’s nagging regrets recede like waves, and he can’t help laughing.
Joe buys a new pair of aviators after he steps on his sunglasses on the beach, and he spends the afternoon admiring himself in shop windows. “Still funny-looking,” says Nick cheerily as Joe tousles his damp hair outside a bakery.
“Whatever,” Joe replies. “It’s your genetic makeup you’re insulting there.” He throws an arm around Nick’s shoulders, and Nick knows Joe would do that no matter what, but it still makes him look nervously around before he relaxes into Joe’s side.
Dear Kevin,
Joe got sunburned on the beach yesterday, and he didn’t realize it until we got back to Marseille. Riding on the train to Paris with him is going to be really fun if he keeps complaining at the top of his lungs. You know how Joe is. But other than that, Nice was great. Crowded with lots of tourists even more lost than us. But great.
Love,
Nick
Nick rubs lotion across the bright red streak spanning Joe’s shoulders, Joe groaning and hissing and generally making a lot of unnecessary noise. He’s sprawled on his front on the narrow hostel bed, Nick hunched awkwardly over him.
“Shut up, you big baby,” Nick tells him, palming the lotion up over the curves of Joe’s shoulders, Joe’s skin smooth and hot under his hands. He drags his slippery fingers down over the crests of Joe’s shoulder blades, cups his hands around Joe’s ribs and feels Joe sigh into the pillow. He’s nowhere near Joe’s sunburn now, but he doesn’t want to stop. He squeezes more lotion onto his hands, rubbing it in, learning the shape of muscle and bone, Joe’s whole body relaxing for him.
“Lower,” Joe says, and Nick hands slide obediently down his sides. Nick’s dick is perking up, the tip practically brushing Joe’s thigh as he leans in to work his way down Joe’s back. He bites his lip, wondering what happens next.
“Lower,” Joe says again, and Nick falters. His hands are at the waist of Joe’s boxers.
“Joe, that’s your butt.”
Joe turns his head a little more, looks at Nick from the corner of his eye. “Yeah,” he agrees, licking his lips. “Remember that night with David, when I told you there was more stuff you could do with a guy, and you said you didn’t want to know? Do you want to know now?”
Nick has a vague, uneasy sense what Joe means, but he nods.
Joe shoves his boxers down as far as he can without getting up. With one hand he reaches back and spreads himself open, touches with one finger to show Nick just what he means. Nick swallows. He’s grossed out and turned on and a little bit scared because he’s never thought about anything like that. His hand is still slippery with lotion, and he wonders if that’s part of the point. He puts his fingers down where Joe’s have just been, touches soft, hot skin and feels the slight give of Joe’s hole.
“Why?” Nick asks, stroking a little as Joe bites his lip.
“It feels good,” Joe says, wiggling back towards Nick’s fingers. “That’s why people do sex stuff. But you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Nick pushes a little with his fingers. “You want me to?”
“I really want you to.”
Nick shuts his eyes and starts to work his first finger into Joe, twisting and pressing, his dick still twitching heavy and full as Joe moans under him. “That really feels good?” Nick asks incredulously, moving his finger in and out a little, testing.
“Faster,” Joe says, and he tilts his hips up, opens up a little more around Nick’s finger. “And like, maybe more than one.”
It’s more weird than hot until Joe starts rocking back onto Nick’s fingers, making quiet, bitten-off noises as Nick moves inside him. He watches the flex of the muscles in Joe’s back, leans down to kiss Joe’s shoulders just below the patch of his sunburn.
“God,” Joe whispers, rubbing his face against the pillow. “Nick. It’s so good.”
Nick feels dizzy and hot all over, just watching Joe open up around his fingers. He rubs helplessly at his hard dick. “Do you want me to… anything?”
Joe cranes around to look at him, meets his eyes for a long moment. “Want you to fuck me.”
Nick hates that word usually, the sharp sound of it, but right now it just makes his belly squirm with heat. “How?” he asks.
Joe shows him, a lotion-slick hand wrapping Nick’s dick, stroking slowly. Joe’s talking to him in a low voice, saying all these hot, confusing things, things Nick didn’t think would ever apply to his life. When Nick rubs his dick down between Joe’s cheeks, Joe says, “Do it,” and Nick pushes into him all slow and uncertain. It’s better than blowjobs, better than anything should be, Joe so hot and tight, shuddering back into him. Nick nuzzles his face into the curve of Joe’s neck, and he can feel Joe moaning under his lips.
Nick can’t help the way his hips pump forward, the desperate little noises he can hear coming from his own mouth. His hands are on Joe’s hips, probably holding too tight, and Nick can’t do anything but ride it out. Joe says his name, reaches up to tug at Nick’s hair, pulling him down into a panting, sideways kiss. Nick can’t help it. He comes so hard he forgets to breathe, collapsing onto Joe’s back.
Joe yelps, and Nick rolls sideways to avoid lying on his sunburn. His dick tugs out of Joe’s butt, and that’s its own kind of painful. He lies at the edge of the bed, staring up at the ceiling, his whole body buzzing with heat and confusion. Joe kisses him gently, pulling him back toward the middle of the bed, kneading his fingers into Nick’s stomach.
Nick can count the hours until they fly home, and he has to shove down a whole mess of feelings about that, stay here in this moment with Joe, close his eyes and kiss Joe for all he’s worth.
Dear Kevin,
Today when we got to Paris, we went back to the same hostel we started at, and then we headed straight to Notre Dame de Paris. Took lots of pictures. I can’t believe we leave tomorrow. There’s so much more to do here. I don’t feel like the trip can be over yet, even though I know it has to end. Looking forward to seeing you.
Love,
Nick
Notre Dame is huge. They just stand in front of it for a while, craning up to look at the bell tower until Nick starts to feel dizzy and cross-eyed. “It’s beautiful,” says Selena, and he nods solemnly. It is.
The two of them haven’t talked much in the last few days, and he wishes he could give her a reason for that. But the only good thing he can do for her right now is not lead her on. He dawdles, looking at the flying buttresses, until she walks away to reclaim her place in the line for the door.
Inside the sanctuary everything echoes strangely, and Nick lets Joe take his hand as they follow the crowd through the cathedral. There’s so much beautiful sculpture and stained glass, stone saints and intricately carved pillars and the giant rose window hanging over all of it. Nick looks at the tiled floor and feels suddenly, overwhelmingly guilty. He’s in a church, even if it’s a church that’s treated like a museum, and he’s holding hands with his brother like he’s a normal, sane, good person. But he’s not. He can’t lie to himself or justify it at all, not with Jesus and Mary and all those saints staring at him. He had sex with his brother last night, and that’s not something any normal, sane, good person would do. He doesn’t deserve to be in this church or any other right now.
Nick has to pull Joe sideways and stop because he’s shaking too hard to keep walking. He hopes everyone else thinks it’s a diabetic thing, but Joe’s face says he knows better. “We can’t do this at home,” Nick says urgently, his voice coming out strangled and small. “We have to stop now, before it gets worse.”
Joe doesn’t say anything. His face is blank, not like Joe at all. He pulls Nick into a quick hug and then lets him go. Like Nick’s just cut the string on a balloon. Nick leans against the wall, feeling cold and sick as he watches Joe walk away. Joe’s not making a scene or arguing or cracking a joke to make things feel easier. He’s just walking away. And that’s probably the most heartbreaking thing of all. Some part of Nick, not even a small part, wanted Joe to argue with him.
Nick doesn’t cry, but he feels like it. He goes and sits by himself until he’s tracked the rest of the group around the cathedral and back to the door. He doesn’t want to lose them, but he doesn’t want to talk to them either.
Dear Nick,
I bet you’re going to be so cool and grown up now that you’ve been to Europe. Drinking coffee out of tiny cups and wearing berets and everything. I wonder if we’ll even recognize you at the airport.
Love,
Kevin
“I’m sorry,” says Joe. They’re packing up their stuff, preparing to leave for the airport early the next morning. It’s the first thing Joe’s said to him in hours, and it makes Nick ache in the pit of his stomach.
“Me too,” he replies, tucking his sneakers into the inner pocket of his suitcase.
“I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” He can feel Joe’s eyes on him, or maybe that’s his imagination, but he won’t turn around to find out.
“Me too.”
“But I don’t regret that it did. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
Nick rolls his dirty clothes into a compact bundle and shoves them to one end. He’s going to have to do the laundry himself when they get home. He can’t let Mom see his underwear all covered in come. He doesn’t know what to say to Joe, so he keeps quiet.
“I get why you don’t want to do it at home, but I.” Joe stops, and there’s the high, tearing sound of him zipping his suitcase closed. “Never mind.”
Nick still doesn’t say anything. There’s a lump in his throat that feels too big to talk around anyway.
“You’re still my brother,” Joe offers finally, and Nick nods.
“You’re still my brother, too.” It doesn’t help. He doesn’t know if anything possibly could help, until Joe’s arms slide around his waist, pulling him into a hug from behind. It feels so good, and Nick closes his eyes and leans back into it, lets Joe hold him and hold him up. Then he turns his head, tilts his chin up so it’s obvious what he’s offering, and Joe kisses him, slow and sad.
This is a goodbye kiss, Nick tells himself, but that just makes it harder to stop. Because then it’s really over. That’s really it, and he’ll never have this again. He turns in Joe’s arms to kiss him more fully.
Dear Kevin,
At the airport. Plane should be on time. See you soon.
Love,
Nick
He sits with Selena on the plane, and they do crossword puzzles and make fun of the in-flight movie, and every once in a while the tightness in Nick’s chest eases and he manages to forget about Joe, one row back and across the aisle. But it never lasts. He keeps looking back, like Lot’s wife at the destruction of Sodom. He can’t help it. And every time he looks, Joe’s looking too, smiling a little too big or a little too small to be real. By the time he and Selena exchange email addresses during their final descent into Philadelphia, Nick’s worn out in a way that has nothing to do with eight hours on a plane.
He almost wishes Kevin was right, that any of this had made him as unrecognizable on the outside as he feels on the inside. But when Mom and Kevin and Frankie spot him and Joe at the international arrivals gate, they grin and wave and yell like everything’s just the same as always. Joe bumps his shoulder against Nick’s in a way that would seem friendly if it weren’t so final. “Home,” Joe says, and Nick forces his face into a smile.
Epilogue
Dear Joe,
It’s so quiet without you in the house. It feels really weird. I hope classes are going okay. I’m sure you’re meeting a lot of nice people. School starts here next week. I got an email from Selena. She’s coming to New York this weekend. I think I might go see her in the city.
I miss you already. A lot.
Love,
Nick
Dear Nick,
College is great. I really like my acting class, and my roommate started hooking up with this girl one floor down, so it’s almost like having a single most nights. I hope you had fun with Selena. You should come visit. I miss you too. A lot.
Love,
Joe
Dear Joe,
Seeing Selena was fun. I think we’re going to be friends for a long time. And school’s going okay so far, even though it’s weird without you.
I’d like to come visit you. Maybe it would be like it was in France, when we were in the hostel in Marseille. I’d like it to be like that. I really would.
Love,
Nick
Dear Nick,
I’d like that too. I’ll be here whenever you’re ready.
Love,
Joe
~fin~
Masterpost & Soundtrack