“It’s hopeless.”
Jake turned to David, giving him as much attention as being elbow-deep in the engine bay of a Firebird would allow. “What, the Bird? I mean sure, we don’t have the five hundred dollars between the two of us for the carburetor but that doesn’t mean it’s hopeless.”
David sighed and rolled his eyes, turning to face away from Jake and out into the sleepy suburban street. It was relatively temperate for a summer day and the box fan placed just outside of the garage pointing in was doing a lot of heavy lifting. Despite the fan's best efforts, it was still uncomfortably warm, and Jake could see the beads of sweat coating David’s forehead. “No, no, the Bird is fine. We’ll get it running eventually. I just…” David pinched the bridge of his nose, squeezing his eyes shut. “I dunno, man. We’re almost seniors and all my college prospects are gonna take me out of town and I just—”
Jake was at his friend's side, a comforting hand on his shoulder before he could even think. In hindsight, he could’ve at least cleaned the grease off first. “Listen. Doesn’t matter where you end up, okay? Because no matter what, we’re still gonna be friends.” David was doing his best to look at anything other than Jake, his pale skin tinted with a bright red.
David rubbed his arm idly, eyes still fixed firmly on the middle distance. “I know, I know. It doesn’t always work out like that, is all.” David turned to face Jake finally, fear of losing his best friend writ large across his face.
It was Jake’s turn to look away, the deep dark green of David’s eyes almost too much to bear. “We’re gonna make it work. I promise.”
“Did you have to choose today for this?” David protested, kicking the dusty ground of the junkyard lot. It was the hottest day in July so far, one of the last few weeks they had to spend together before David left for Cornell.
“Yes, yes I did. This is my one day off this week and I’m gonna make the most of it.” Jake was distracted, scanning the rows and rows of decrepit cars for anything of value. David knew they weren’t going to find anything. They never had, in all the years they’d spent working on the Firebird. Everything else was replaced and ready to run but the carburetor. It was their white whale, their holy grail, their… David shook his head, surrendering his train of thought to the oppressive summer air.
“Well, while you scamper around in rusted cars like a madman, I am going to do something about this heat.” David pulled his shirt off and stuffed it into his drawstring bag. It was just as much sweat as cotton at this point and he’d rather suffer the sun's rays than sweat through another tee.
Jake turned to face him, his eyes widening at the sight for just a moment. “C’mon, man. Put your shirt back on please.”
“Why?” David sidled up to Jake, leaning against the gutted carcass of an old Ford Windstar. “You afraid they’re gonna have to take down the Sports Illustrated calendar you got hanging up in the shop?”
To his credit, Jake put on the most outraged face he could. “Why I never! I’ll have you know the ladies are a token of good luck and I don’t take kindly to hearing them disparaged.”
They shared a chuckle at this, David relenting and letting Jake pass him as they continued walking down the aisle. “All I’m saying is a lumberjack calendar would probably be more your speed. Or maybe a calendar with a bunch of nuns, if you’re gonna get so scared of a little skin.”
“Is this just a clever ploy to see me shirtless? Cus that’s what it sounds like,” Jake pointed an accusatory finger at David before pulling his shirt off in kind, stretching out in the sun. “Let it be said that I never back down from a challenge.”
Freedom. That’s what this felt like. That’s what he needed. Jake tapped the clutch and shifted down, the Mustang responding immediately with a viscerally satisfying roar and the torque to match. The freedom of the open road, the freedom to do almost a hundred in your dad's car while you and your best friend whooped and hollered. The freedom to exist under no one else's eyes but his.
He was lucky his dad trusted him enough to go on joyrides like this. He was lucky David was level-headed enough to not yell at him to slow down, to not balk as he soared past a side street cops typically liked to hang out at. He was lucky to be here, the wind whipping through his hair as V8 under the hood devoured miles of asphalt.
It was with great reluctance that he began to decelerate, their destination rapidly approaching. It was a small park a good hour outside of town. The only people who bothered to visit it were typically cycling or nature enthusiasts. It was vast, easily the largest park in the county. Far enough away that the average family didn’t have time to make the drive and big enough that anyone who wanted to hide could do so easily.
Jake thought about that as he pulled in, the gravel crunching underneath the wide tires of the Mustang. He thought about hiding, about disappearing in plain sight, about never being seen again.
“I still cannot believe your dad lets you drive this thing.” David was sitting on the hood, kicking at the rocks idly.
“He says I need to learn to drive a boat like that before the Firebird is back up and running,” Jake spun the key ring around his index finger, ambling towards the park entrance. “I don’t think they’re comparable at all but if it means I get to drive a sports car, I’m not gonna complain.”
David fell beside him, the two of them walking in step for a while. Everything was quiet between them as they walked further into the dense forest. Jake wasn’t really sure why he wanted to drive out here so badly. Sure, the road was perfect for getting to the kind of speeds he wanted, but why stop? Why not drive forever, or at least until he ran out of gas? They could be out of state within a few hours at the pace they were making. Fifty bucks into the tank and another state gone. There was enough leg room to sleep, he figured, and on a really nice night you could leave the top down and look at the stars.
“D’you ever think about running away?”
David didn’t respond at first. He just looked up at the canopy, at the dappled light filtering through the leaves. “Every so often, yeah. If we kept driving we could’ve been half way out of state by now.”
Jake nodded, his hands balled into fists in the pockets of his jeans. “I used to dream about running away every so often as a kid, y’know. Usually just cause I did something stupid and got punished for it. Kid shit,” Jake set his jaw and David stayed silent. “In my mind I always made it alone somehow. Now? When I think about running away, it’s always with you.”
He rolled his shoulders, trying to work some of the tension out of his body. That’s what this whole day was supposed to be; a chance to let go and live a little. To stop worrying so much. Here he was, talking himself into a hole again. David still said nothing. “You should stay.”
Finally David spoke, a simple sentence that would hang heavy in the air even when the mood broke and they started chatting and joking. Even on the ride home, going an easy eighty as the sun set behind them. Even as Jake was lying in bed, unable to sleep. “You know I can’t.”
This was it. David wasn’t ready for it but it was here and real and demanded that he be there too. He didn’t want to be but that went without saying. No one really wanted to say goodbye to the only world they ever knew. No one really wanted to hug their friends for what may be the last time, to hug their parents for what may be the last time. No one wanted to turn and see the town they grew up in disappear beneath them as a plane took off into the sky.
Still, it had to happen. He was going to make it happen because if he didn’t then decades of effort would be wasted. He worked hard to get into Cornell. He worked hard to appear normal. He worked hard to keep the worst parts of himself hidden from his friends and family. His family found out eventually, of course. You could only hide being gay for so long. You could only hide in your room while your parents fought each other for your life for so long.
You could only hide from your best friend for so long. David had hoped it would be forever. A small part of him hoped that he would be able to get out before Jake got hurt, before Jake got swallowed up the same sick feeling that currently plagued him. Hope only counted for so much, apparently, as he came face to face with the only other soul in the airport besides the workers at the counter.
“David.” Jake’s eyes were puffy and red, his face a screwed up mess of emotion. He had been crying. Over him? There were better reasons to cry.
“Jake. What the hell are you doing here?” David wanted to cry too. Jake was worth crying over. Jake was worth losing his dad's respect over. Jake was worth leaving his whole life behind for.
“I couldn’t let you go without saying goodbye. A proper goodbye, between friends,” Jake was trying to steady his breathing, trying to be strong. He took a step forward, sucking in deep shaky breaths. “We are friends, right?”
David couldn’t take it any longer. He closed the distance between them in an instant, wrapping his arms around his friend. Within a moment he was sobbing into Jake’s chest, face pressed against his pajama shirt. The entire world crashed down around him and for a moment it was just the two of them, two scared and lonely children in a world that they no longer understood. That moment passed and David regained his composure, staring desperately into his friends eyes. “I’d like to be better than that, if you’d let me.”
They kissed, more out of reflex than anything else, and within the hour David was gone.
Jake was a heavy sleeper. Always had been. It was even more so the case now that he worked full time, sleep proving to be a far more valuable resource than he ever could’ve anticipated. So it was that he hardly stirred when the garage door of his parent’s home opened, the hum of the motor muffled by the layers of drywall. It did set the gears of his brain spinning, however. Gears that would continue to spin quietly, soothed by the blanket of his subconscious for several hours as he drifted back to sleep.
It wasn’t until he heard the clatter of a wrench on concrete that he finally realized something was amiss.
He shot up in bed, eyes wide. There was someone digging around in his garage. His parents' garage. He was just housesitting while they were on vacation. He crept out of his room carefully, first opting to grab the shotgun his dad kept locked in the safe in his parent’s room. Jake slid a shell into the chamber, the heft of the gun weighing heavy on his mind as he walked slowly to the garage.
He reached the door, steadying his breath. He opened it with one hand, the door swinging outward into the poorly illuminated garage. Somebody had set up a phone to serve as a lamp by the looks of it, the flashlight cutting a bright white cone out of the stale air and bathing everything in a pale light. “Hello? Who’s there?”
“Jake? Oh holy shit that’s a shotgun,” The intruder froze, holding their hands in the air. They were obscured partially by the open hood of the Firebird, but their face was perfectly visible in the light. David? “It’s me, David. Should’ve called first, huh?”
“What the hell are you doing in my garage at… Whatever hour this is?” It was only now that Jake realized he was still pointing a loaded firearm at an old friend, opting to switch the safety back on and lower it to the ground.
David shrugged sheepishly, gently lowering the hood of the Firebird. “I can tell you, if you get me a glass of water.”
Jake nodded, resting the shotgun against the wall. “Come on in. Take a seat at the kitchen table while I grab you a glass.”
Jake was still trying to shake off the sleepiness, much less come to terms with the fact that a friend who he hadn’t talked to in years had just appeared in his garage. He seemed so unfazed by it all, as if one of the last things they shared before David left wasn’t a kiss. As if Jake hadn’t spent the past five years struggling with that. As if coming to terms with being gay wasn’t one of the most painful things he’d ever done.
It was worse than breaking a few ribs. It was worse than every concussion he ever got. It was worse even than that time he lost a finger to a bench saw and had to have it reattached at the ER. It wasn’t the kind of pain some Percocet and a week off work could fix. It was a lot deeper, a lot more real than that. It was realizing that every man he met between that kiss and now was just a mimic, a pale imitation when compared to the real thing.
“Here’s your water. Now tell me what you’re doing here.” Jake wished he could be kinder but the tautness in his chest refused to allow him any room for compassion in the moment.
“I… Missed you. That's all. The city wasn’t what I thought it would be. It wasn’t right for me, y’know?” Jake met David’s eyes and there was something in them that seemed to say not like how you were right for me. “So I moved back here. Been living with my cousin AJ for a few months now. Been meaning to drop by and say hello but I could never find it in me. Been meaning, too, to give you this.”
David pulled out a hunk of metal wrapped in paper towel from his bag, setting it on the table between them. It was a carburetor for an ‘84 Pontiac Firebird, carefully cleaned and ready to be attached. Jake took it in his hands, feeling the weight of over half a decade in that simple piece of machinery. “Where did you find this?”
“From someone in upstate New York. It was a barn find and the guy was just scrapping the whole thing to feed into his Firebird. I was lucky, watched Craigslist enough, and snapped it up as soon as I could.” David chuckled and it was only now that Jake was appreciating everything that had changed about him since they last saw each other. David was a little taller now, broader at the chest and shoulders and skinnier at the waist. He was sharply dressed, even with grease stains on his hands, and had an air of academia about him. David’s voice, quiet as a mouse, shook Jake out of his reverie. “I never stopped looking for it, y’know.”
“Yeah. Me neither.” Jake turned the piece of metal over in his hands one more time before setting it down again. “I’m glad one of us found it, at least.”
Jake wasn’t expecting David to reach his hand out across the table, squeezing it tight. He wasn’t expecting to look up and see David with his eyes full of tears. He especially wasn’t expecting what he heard next. “I’ve got a lot to apologize for, Jake. If you’d let me, I’d like a chance to make it up to you.”
Jake nodded emphatically, feeling tears of his own start to fall as he squeezed David’s hand as tight as he could. “I’d like that. I’d like that a lot.”
