which is why he keeps coming around

[candle_beck]

Table of Contents

Pictures courtesy bradausmus12





The Rest of Your Life
By Candle Beck

Part the Eighth: Off the Map

(taught you how to lie)

In Palm Springs, it’s lush and green-bright even in November, and Eric Chavez and Amber Tarpy play golf, swim in the electric-blue pool, watch the sun fall into the ocean from their hotel balcony, and on the third day, Eric gets down on his knees like a good boy, lays his head in her lap and asks her to marry him.

His stomach’s a wreck and his heart’s not much better, but he’s pretty sure this is what he wants. He’s got to make a choice, stake a claim, this is clear, and he can’t imagine the world in which he and Eric Munson would be able to survive each other.

It’s been three weeks since they started sleeping together again, Chavez wearing out his tires on the memorized drive to Munson’s Los Angeles house, and there’s something cruel and glass-scarred between them now. It’s not enough for Chavez to have gone crazy and heartless, it’s not enough for Munson to be reduced to a whore, an afterthought, the one who Chavez leaves behind before the sun comes up. There’s a lot more damage for them to do to each other, and it’s their new game, baseball’s replacement, who will end up the more hurt.

They don’t talk all that much and they spend most of their time in bed, and Chavez thinks of it like an addiction, get your fix and get on with your day. There are moments when he loves Eric Munson so much he almost can’t take it, but then Munson takes his mouth away and whispers meanly, “I can taste her on you,” and Chavez pulls his hair too hard, snarling and twisting his fingers between Munson’s lips so that he’ll shut the fuck up.

He can’t stay away. And Munson never denies him. When they fall asleep, they forget to be mad at each other, vine-armed and their legs tangled, heavy dead-weight heads and calmly beating hearts. Like little boys unselfconsciously knitted together in the backseat of a car, a long road trip, mouths open and faces unlined. Like two young men not ashamed of each other, enough faith to get through this.

When Chavez slips away before dawn, he kisses Munson on the forehead or the chin or the shoulder, but Munson never wakes up for that.

They’re no good for each other. Maybe they never have been, maybe this was all just a bad idea that they’ve been unable to shake loose, and it’s been four years. Sometimes Eric Chavez, at his most selfish, curses Jesse DiMartino for dying, pushing them over the edge. That fucking ghost is responsible for all of this, and he hopes Jesse’s in hell, though if ever there was a soul in heaven, it’s Jesse DiMartino.

He prays, he asks for guidance. He’s just a perfect Christian now, a sinner and bound for nothing clean, nothing easy. Nothing cool. Thinking all the time about temptation and the breakdown of love in his heart. His knees hurt. He uses every name for God that he’s ever been taught, and hears nothing in response. He starts looking for signs, or mysterious ways, but all he finds is a bad moon and another night in Los Angeles.

He can put gold on Amber Tarpy’s finger and she’ll be his. Eric Munson might be in love with him, but they can’t tell anyone and can barely tell each other and he can never have any part of Munson that matters, no real hold, nothing on paper, nothing down in the record. They swapped their imperfect hearts like baseball cards, and that only made it worse.

He’s got the ring in his sock. The diamond is knifing into the skin of his ankle, but there’s no blood yet, or at least not that he can feel.

Amber Tarpy laughs, and Eric is unimaginably thankful to hear her breath hitch, and she tells him, “Yes, of course, yes.”

His face splits in a grin and he fishes the ring out of his sock, slides it onto her finger. He holds her hand in his for a moment, staring down at it. He thinks, ‘this is the hand of the woman I’m going to marry.’ Pretty thin-fingered girl’s hand, the diamond brilliant and kaleidoscoping in the light.

For awhile, he feels like he did the right thing. The only thing.

He crawls out of their Palm Springs hotel room bed at four in the morning, carefully sliding his new fiancée out of his arms, and she hums in her sleep, doesn’t stir. He’s gotten very good at this.

He sits in the hallway in sweatpants and nothing else, and calls Eric Munson.

The cell phone on Munson’s dresser rings seven times, then goes to voicemail. There’s a click of a pause, and then it starts ringing again. The cycle is repeated five times, and Eric Munson is waking up slowly, surfacing into irritation. The ringing is briefly a part of his dream, something about apple-red fire alarms in a school hallway, hiding under his third-grade desk with his hands laced together on the back of his neck, practicing for an earthquake.

Then he wakes up all the way, jolts into a half-sitting position and he’s close enough to the edge of the bed that he falls off, landing in a bleary, pissed-off pile of sheets and pillows.

He gets over to his dresser and doesn’t even bother looking at the display before he answers it and says, “You son of a bitch, Chavvy, did you lose your fucking watch?”

Munce is about to continue in that vein, more creative and colorful curses polished in his ever-clearing mind, but then Chavez says fast, rushing it out, “We’re getting married.”

Munce blinks. “We are?” He’s pretty sure that’s illegal in this state.

Chavez hyena-laughs, slashing off abruptly with a harsh inhale. “Me and Amber, dude. I . . . I asked her, and she said yes.”

Munson’s head suddenly empties, and he collapses back. His legs are still tied up in the sheets, he can’t get free. He thinks, ‘huh, this must be shock.’ It’s cold and itchy on his skin, like dry ice, and his stomach aches.

“Y-you, ah . . .” he stops, clears his throat. “Don’t fuck with me, Eric.”

But no, no matter how bad things have gotten between them, Chavez wouldn’t lie, not about that. Eric Munson knows that, but he can still have that two-second interval in which he can foolishly believe that it’s just Chavez being an asshole, fucking around, cutting deep, it’s not real.

Two seconds.

“No . . . no,” Chavez says, sounding ripped to the core. “It’s true, man. I . . . gave her a ring. I got down on my knees. I did everything right.”

The stuff Munson wishes with all his heart he was brave enough to say out loud:

You’re too young to get married.

Fuck your ten percent, you like guys more than you like girls.

You’ve only known her for two months.

You’re supposed to be in love with me.

But they’re best friends. This Munson has to forcefully remind himself of, before and after everything else, they’re just best friends, and Munson is amazed to find himself saying sincerely, “Congratulations.”

“Munce,” Chavez breathes out, but Munson interrupts him before he can say anything more.

“Because you love her, right? You really do, she’s not just, you know, a hobby?”

“Yes I love her,” Chavez snaps. “She’s not a fucking hobby.”

Munson lets his eyes shut. He feels the prediction of a headache, the tension in his sinuses, the high-altitude anesthetized drift of his tangible mind. “Then congratulations,” he whispers.

Chavez listens to Munson not saying anything for awhile, then spills out, a shade off panicked, “I had to, Munson. I love her, I had to do it. It doesn’t mean I don’t . . . it’s not that you’re . . . I love her, and I could do this for her.”

It’s unspoken in the corners of that, couldn’t do this for you, Munson, nothing like a promise.

“You just,” Munson begins, rolling his head back and forth on the carpet trying to get it to even out. “You, really, you need to stop talking now. Don’t tell me why.”

Chavez falls quiet, and Munson wishes he was still asleep, dreaming about earthquake drills.

“I want you to meet her, Eric,” Chavez eventually says hoarsely. Munson’s eyes snap open and glare widely at the ceiling. “I don’t want to marry anybody that you don’t think is okay.”

“Jesus Christ,” Munson manages. “How the fuck am I supposed to give an unbiased opinion of your fucking girlfriend?”

Chavez shrugs, his shoulder bumping the phone against his chin and riffing static. “You’ll know if she’s good for me. You always know what’s good for me.”

There’s a spike of steely pain in Munson’s stomach, and his voice is strangled as he says, “I . . . I have to go. I’m sorry, I can’t . . . I don’t want to talk to you anymore.”

“Munson!” Chavez cries. “C’mon, man.”

Munce shakes his head, and his vision is netting, splitting into laced veins. “Just . . . call me in a couple of days, okay? Before midnight, preferably. Give me a little bit of time.”

“’Kay,” Chavez says, sounding small. “I . . . I love you, all right?”

Munson hangs up, his hands shaking, and his arms, and his legs, his whole body, chattering, unloosed, and it’s a long time before he can convince himself that Eric Chavez isn’t trying to drive him insane just so that he’ll have some company.

*

(i don’t want any part of your good side)

To his profound and eternal surprise, crazy fucking world man, Eric Munson finds himself actually liking Amber Tarpy.

The three of them go out to dinner, halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles, and Munce is fully prepared to loathe her on sight, which he almost does, but then she slants him a rolled-eyes smile as Chavez is trying to be a big shot with the host, exasperated and affectionate, practically like looking in a mirror.

Munson and Amber are exchanging Eric stories before their drinks arrive, that time Eric threw his glove to try and knock the ball off the roof and his glove got stuck too, so naturally he took off his shoe and threw that up there to keep all the other junk company, that time Eric sang a little song on my parents’ answering machine because he thought it was my private line, and Chavez, nervous and betrayed, scowls at them, but laughs when they do.

Munson can see what Chavez sees in her. She’s pretty and small and nothing like a guy. Chavvy acts like a dork, drumming his spoon and fork on her arm, and she bats him away, smiling. She makes off-hand time-release jokes where thirty seconds later Munson suddenly realizes, hey, that was pretty fucking funny. She’s got those eyes. Munson can picture little brown-eyed kids, girls with hair like spilled black paint, boys born with the ability to guard the line against doubles.

After they drop her off, and Chavez is driving Munson back to USC, Chavez keeps glancing anxiously at him, until Munce says evenly, “She’s a good kid.”

Chavez, his hands white-knuckled on the wheel, sags back in his seat slightly. “Yeah?”

Munson nods, looking at Chavez’s hands. On the back of the left one, in the delta of flat skin between the index finger’s tendon and the bone of the thumb, there’s a reminder written in blue letters: ‘3 days.’ Munson wants to ask what that means, but he doesn’t.

“She’s real sweet. Funny. Nice.” He shrugs, feeling wiped out. “She’s the kind of girl you marry.”

The highway lights scroll by, and Chavez says, his eyes on the road, “Thanks for coming out tonight. Means a lot.”

Munson doesn’t answer. They go another few miles, drinking the highway down under the wheels.

When the silence is broken, Munson thinks for a moment that Chavez turned on the radio while he wasn’t paying attention, and then realizes that that’s him talking, coming from far away like an echo:

“Are you gonna do this right?”

Chavez jumps, startled, and his hands strangle tighter around the wheel, squeaking on the leather. “Do what right?”

Munson pushes his fingers into the car door, twiddling with the handle, his thumb sliding on the waxed metal. “Getting married. Are you gonna stop fucking around?”

Chavez’s gaze is fixed on the dashed white line, and he says defensively, “I don’t fuck around that much.”

Munson snorts. He’s never brought it up before, but he knows that he’s not the only one Chavez fucks on the side, he’s just the most important. He smells other men on his best friend sometimes, different shades of lipstick on the insides of his wrists, nail scratches at the small of his back.

He’s pretty sure Chavez is still just running away from something, trying to prove that neither Munson nor Amber Tarpy really mean that much to him, but he doesn’t think it’s working.

“It’s not like fucking around just a little is okay, dude,” he tells him, feeling like this should be someone else’s job, to remind Chavez of the basics of this, though he’s the best friend, it’s definitely his ups. “If you’re gonna do this, you should do it all the way.”

“Says the guy who’s never had a long-term relationship,” Chavez says bitterly.

Munson looks at him angrily. “I had one once, motherfucker,” he answers, and Chavez at least has the good grace to flush at that.

They’re quiet again, another ten miles behind them. Then Chavez says gingerly, “If . . . if I don’t fuck around with anybody else . . . are we . . . I mean, this still doesn’t. Count. Right?”

Munson folds his fingers around the door handle. He stares out at the nighted desert. He thinks about a lifetime of being a secret, being ashamed. He thinks about an eloquent ring on Chavez’s left hand, Eric Chavez all grown up and Eric Munson still nineteen years old and hopelessly in love with his best friend.

“It’s going to have to end sometime,” Munson says, not really believing it.

Eric Chavez reaches across the console, touches his hand to Munson’s leg, his elbow, his shoulder. “But not yet, right?” he whispers.

Munson looks for another world out in the wasteland, the place where he would be able to get away from this. He thinks about a tropical storm in San Diego and wet ground under his back, Chavez holding his hands down above his head.

“Not yet,” Munson answers. He’s feeling so weak and stupid that he could just fucking cry.

“Look,” Chavez says, and then stops, rubs his eyes. He’s leaning his arm on the steering wheel hard, and Munce keeps waiting for the car to veer under the pressure. “You just. You don’t understand. You don’t know what it’s like. I’m-I’m trying to have a real life.”

Munson looks at him with hurt surprise. “And what the fuck am I doing? Rehearsing a play?”

The line of Chavez’s jaw pulls, clenching his teeth and the car picks up a few miles per hour. Chavez still thinks he can outrun fucking anything. “I’m trying to be a fucking adult, Munson.”

“I’m two months older than you!” Munson shouts, and then feels stupid, to be the first one to raise his voice, to show his hand like that.

“You’re a kid and you’re living a fucking dream. You’ve never even had a real job,” Chavez says with his mouth all twisted up.

Munson stares at him in shock, everything’s coming out now, isn’t it, jesus. He isn’t ready for this. He wants some time to prepare, something. He wants to say, wait hang on, time out, gimme a minute. “You. You’ve never had one either. You call getting paid to play baseball a fucking job?”

“It’s more of a job than college ball, and you know it. You, it’s. Just a game for you.”

Munson shakes his head quickly, something cracking in his neck. His hands are in fists on his knees. “I’m not in Little League, Eric, for fuck’s sake. I’m on the best college team in the country.”

Chavez sneers. “Yeah, and the fucking Devil Rays could beat you without even playing their outfield.”

“Dude, fuck you and fuck the Devil Rays, they could not. We’re.” Munson jerks his head to the side, almost hitting the window. “I shouldn’t have to defend my team to you. And if this is what you’re gonna be like after one motherfucking month in the bigs, I don’t think I wanna know you once you become a star,” Munson says, and it’s weird because it’s still not even a question, that Eric Chavez will be a star, that Munson will be left behind, again and again, not even a question.

“Well, fucking keep it up, man, and you won’t have to know me.” Chavez hasn’t looked over at him in a long time, the road in his eyes, all black and tar-hot.

Munson doesn’t answer for a moment, squeezing his hands compulsively, nails biting into his palm. He breathes carefully and tries to get himself under control.

“You’re being an asshole. You’re not like this. You even. You said in Arlington that it wasn’t like this, and. You can’t take it back.”

He chances a look and Chavez is stiffly held, the muscles in his arms strung and his ears colored the way they get when he’s seriously pissed off. Munson pushes his fist hard against his leg and says with his voice tense, “Listen, get married, keep fucking around with me, I don’t fucking care. But don’t be like this. Don’t use her as an excuse to, to. To say this. You wanna end things with me, grow some fucking balls and do it yourself, don’t try to, don’t-”

Munson cuts himself off, because he’s not really sure what point he’s trying to make. It was important and on the tip of his tongue and now it’s gone, he can’t remember what it was, just that it was very important. He puts his hands up over his eyes, pressing the heels down. He wishes they’d never started talking. Wishes none of this had ever happened.

“My life isn’t a motherfucking game, man. You more than anyone should know how hard it is to get a good draft.”

Eric Chavez laughs, so far from his real laugh it almost hurts to hear it. “Dude, the only thing I ever had to do to get a good draft was show up and play better than you did. Which, trust me, was not some giant fucking accomplishment. When you get to the majors, you’ll see, you’ll fucking learn where you really fall. Oh, but excuse the fuck out of me. Shoulda said if you get to the majors.”

Munson doesn’t say anything for a very long time. He just. He can’t. He takes his hands down and looks at them for awhile, same hands as always, same scars, everything. He can feel Chavez watching him, but he doesn’t look back.

Munson swallows, and says quietly, “Pull the car over.”

Chavez’s hands wrench on the wheel. He tries to laugh it off, but it doesn’t work. “What?”

Munson shakes his head, still staring down, his calm motionless profile against the black of the window. “Pull over.”

Chavez’s mouth opens, then shuts with a click. He presses down, makes the car go faster. “Don’t be a fucking drama queen. I’m not leaving you on the side of the road, all right? So just knock it off.”

“Eric.” Munson ticks his fingers out, folds them back in again. “Please, would you please let me out.”

It’s the please that does it, without a doubt. Because Munson should be swearing and screaming and pounding his hands on the dash, but he’s not. He’s got his perfect company manners, even now, he’s such a good guy.

And Eric Chavez drifts the car over onto the shoulder, and watches his best friend step out. Munson stands there with his back to the highway, his hands in his pockets. The wind is hard and pulls Munson’s collar up against his neck. His shoulders are fallen; he looks. Frail. Tired.

Chavez shouts even though all the doors and windows are closed and there’s no way Munson can hear it:

“Fine, fuck you, get fucking killed!” and takes off, saying over and over again to himself, “stupid motherfucker, fucking stupid fuck, you’re gonna get killed out there, you stupid motherfucker,” and it’s probably five miles before he realizes he’s crying.

It’s another two miles before he whips the wheel and throws the car into a wide U-turn with the wheels screeching on the pavement and Chavez can’t see a thing, not a goddamn thing.

It’s cold on the side of the highway and Munson remembers sadly that his coat is in the backseat of Chavez’s car. He’s trying his best not to think about anything, though, and not hear anything in his head.

The headlights come at him and he squints his eyes almost all the way shut. He’s shivering pretty badly now, feeling like everything inside him is trying to break free. When he hears the car that passed roughly turning behind him, he knows it’s Chavez come back to save him from the desert, and Munson bites down on the inside of his cheek, fists his hands in his pockets.

Chavez pulls up behind him and falls out of the car. Munson keeps walking, in the broad wash of the headlights, and it’s so dark out here, the headlights are almost tangible, something you could pick up and take home with you.

“Munce,” Chavez yells, but not nearly loud enough, and runs to him. He gets his hands on Munson’s back and Munson jerks away, hard enough to pull Chavez off balance, drag him to his knees, which is where he should be, really, a moment like this, headlights in the desert on the side of the highway. The gravel tears through his pants, draws blood on his knees and that hurts a lot, but it’s the off-season so he doesn’t have to worry about it.

Chavez holds onto the hem of Munson’s shirt, ripping it out of his belt. His face is tilted up and he’s never felt like this before, like he’s about to die, a last chance like this.

“I didn’t mean it,” he says desperately, and Munson’s shirt is pulled taut in his hands, Munson still straining away from him. “None of that is true, Munce, I promise it’s not. We’re the same, you know that. I know that too, swear to god I do. Please, I didn’t mean it, I’m so fucking sorry, please man.”

Munson bows his head. He takes his hands out of his pockets and forces his fists open. He turns and looks down at Eric Chavez on his knees, face all clean with tears and his eyes huge and bloodshot. Chavez believes every word of it, Munson knows, everything he said in the car and everything he’s saying now. Faith in contradictions and Eric Chavez can make this kind of sense.

“I’m sorry,” Chavez whispers, his hands in Munson’s belt now, clinging to him. “I. I’m just really fucking scared, man. I can’t do anything right, and. Please. I don’t know what to do. You gotta tell me.”

Munson shakes his head. His throat is tight and he wants to put his hands on Chavez’s shoulders, wants to keep him down. “I’m tired of figuring things out for you. It’s. Not my fucking job to make sure you’re doing the right thing.”

Chavez’s hands pull down and Munson’s legs give out and he falls too. So they’re there together on the side of the road, and this is one of those moments in a life.

Chavez gets his arms around Munson, gets his face pressed against Munson’s neck. “You’re the right thing, okay. You’ve always been. Just. Don’t leave me alone right now, all right?”

Munson gives up. He’s got no other choice. He wraps his arms around his best friend and holds onto him, pushes his hands into Chavez’s hair and hides his eyes. Eric Munson forgives him, again, some more, and says “shh,” and makes up words, and Eric Chavez is under his hands strong and clutching so tight Munson will have bruises on his back, the shape of spread fingers.

It’s a moment in a life, spot-lit and frozen and they won’t be able to forget it, no matter how hard they try.

It’s a few days later when it occurs to Eric Munson that, for all the high drama and brilliance of that moment on the side of the highway, it didn’t change a motherfucking thing.

*

(bet your life)

They go to Las Vegas a few weeks later, after Eric Chavez finally turns twenty-one. Munson brings his girlfriend Jennifer, an All-America volleyball player, mainly just to show Chavez that he’s got a life outside of waiting for Chavez to drive to Los Angeles. They lose a bunch of money in the slot machines and then win it all back betting on the number three on the roulette wheel, Chavez crowing and flicking red-white chips at Munson across the green felt.

They stay in a suite, two bedrooms and a big sprawled living room with a bank of windows overlooking the Strip, because Eric Chavez is still rich and only gonna get richer.

Way past midnight, when he can’t sleep, Eric Munson stands at the window and stares at the epileptic neon until his eyes blur, and he’s not surprised when Chavez steps behind him, runs his fingers down Munson’s back and turns him around to kiss him, both of them tasting like women and black vodka. One girlfriend and one fiancée sleep easily behind the walls, and Eric Chavez sucks Munson off with his hands spread out on the glass, fog sinking away from his fingers.

They don’t look each other in the eye the next morning, and when they separate at LAX, Jennifer tells him happily, “You and Eric are so cute together,” and for an instant Munson is terrified that he’s going to hit her.

And pretty soon after that, Eric Chavez goes to Washington D.C. and meets the president. It’s a whole thing about being an All-Star both on and off the field, a bunch of young major leaguers making some kind of promise to be good examples and role models, community-minded, responsible public citizen and all that. Eric Chavez isn’t really paying attention. And when he calls Munson, he doesn’t say much about the fabled silver-haired charm of Bill Clinton or the press of history on the East Coast, he just says astounded like a kid, “it’s snowing, Munce, it’s beautiful.”

Chavez has never seen snow before. It turns out there are actually a number of things that Eric Munson has done that Eric Chavez hasn’t, like sled down a hill on a piece of cardboard and his face getting all cut by ice chips, and go to Europe, and watch the sun come up from the roof of a hotel in Tokyo, and lie back on a beach during a meteor shower with his eyes half-closed and the sky falling down on him. Eric Chavez has taken the field in a major league baseball game, though. It’s this incredible ace up his sleeve. It trumps everything.

Munson gets a strange foreboding sense sometimes, like an hourglass turned over in his mind, time running out. The baseball season is veering towards them like its brakes have been cut. Eric Chavez will be the youngest starter in an Oakland A’s uniform since Rickey Henderson, campaigning for Rookie of the Year, and the 1999 amateur draft is six months away.

Nothing is ever gonna be the same and Munson can’t figure out why that scares him so much. Because it’s not like things are good now. Munson, he never lied, it’s true that he used to think that if he just had Eric Chavez, any way, then that would be enough and he’d be grateful. He never imagined something like this, the way it is between them now.

He pushes Chavez onto his stomach and slides his hand into Chavez’s hair, which Chavez is growing longer because Amber Tarpy thinks he’ll look good like that. Munson bares his teeth and presses Chavez’s face down. Thinks about how Chavez can’t breathe, gets jealous of the mattress for having Chavez’s teeth and mouth, and presses down harder, the base of Chavez’s skull and the cup of Munson’s palm, Chavez’s back arched.

Munson licks all the way down Chavez’s spine, and he forgets if this is Los Angeles or San Diego, whose bed, whose window open for the breeze, whose hands ragged in the sheets and whose hair in whose mouth.

Whose life they’re ruining right now.

*

(graffiti)

In late February, a few days before spring training starts, they’re asleep in Munson’s bed at three o’clock in the afternoon. Chavez has to be back for dinner with Amber after she gets out of class, but they had a few hours, and now they’re sleeping them off.

Chavez’s face is against Munson’s side, snuffling into his ribs, and Munson has got one arm stretched down Chavez’s back, hand splayed, the other tossed out like litter, grasping weakly at the air. There’s a patch of sunlight, but it’s on the other side of the room.

A car backfires on the street, a violent dream, once is a backfire, twice is gunshots, and Eric Chavez stirs.

He wakes up and he’s happy.

He’s all the time now, as guilty as a Catholic, wanting Amber Tarpy when he’s in Los Angeles, dying for Eric Munson when he’s with his fiancée. He finds pretty strangers to scour their hands through his hair and press him back against brick walls, he’s numb and manic and in agony, and he doesn’t know what any of this means. He wants the season to start so that there will be something other than this, something with clearly defined rules and a certainty about who wins and loses. He can’t give either of them up, he’s scared to death of trying.

There’s something like panic and exhilaration, this fine fucking line splintered in his mind. Where nothing is a pure emotion because everything is caught up with everything else. Amber Tarpy’s eyes and Eric Munson’s hands. The soft place under Amber Tarpy’s belly button, and the forced press of Eric Munson’s ribs against his mouth. The way Eric Munson’s voice sometimes gets high and reedy like a girl’s when he’s about to come, and the way, when Amber Tarpy is shocked into laughing hard, she sounds like a teenaged boy.

There’s history and there’s the future, the ring on Amber Tarpy’s finger, Munson’s USC baseball card in Chavez’s wallet. His whole life and he can’t tell his fear from his devotion, can’t tell anything for sure.

But now it’s the middle of the afternoon and he wakes up in Eric Munson’s bed and he’s happy. Nothing else to make it complicated or less than it is, just. Happy.

He grabs hold of it, all his strength, and tries to hang on. It’s been so long. He’s still half-asleep and he thinks, ‘I fell in love with my best friend, I’m so lucky.’ He kisses Munson’s side, the bend of his ribcage. Munson’s hand skeets on his back, sliding a bit and then coming to a stop, another good place.

Eric Chavez is feeling invincible, optimistic for the first time in months, the first time since that moment on the side of the highway when everything fell apart and nothing got solved. Maybe even for the first time since Palm Springs, when he was so sure he was doing the right thing and wouldn’t have to feel like this anymore.

He wants to do something stupid and romantic, all the things he’s never been allowed. He stretches carefully over Munson, not wanting to disturb him, and gets the pen off the nightstand.

He moves slowly, Munson murmuring and rocking once, twice, settling down again. He knows how Munson’s breathing quickens when he’s waking up, and Munson is deep deep in a dream right now, his eyelids twitching.

Chavez tugs down the side of Munson’s boxers, just far enough to reveal a triangle of pale hip, hairless just to the edge of where everything gets interesting. The pen cap between his lips, Eric Chavez gently writes his name is small capital letters on Eric Munson’s skin, upside down so that Munson will be able to read it when he looks down.

He blows lightly to dry the ink, and Munson’s mouth curves up in a drowsy smile. He pulls the waistband of Munson’s boxers back up, hiding it away, and lies back down, for this moment at peace, for this moment in the only place he wants to be.

He leaves before Munce wakes up, and it takes Munson four days of scrubbing with industrial lava soap and not fucking his girlfriend before he can get Eric Chavez’s name off his body, and by that time Chavez is already in Arizona.

(end part eight)

*

part nine