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Matt doesn’t call before he flies two thousand seven hundred and eighty-nine miles across the country and knocks on Ben’s door twice with his knuckles. Ben’s pretty sure it’s because in Boston, there was no hey man, I’m not busy, wanna hit Harvard Square later, yeah sure, because they were never busy, and they were never apart. In Boston, there was no call-ahead.
Matt doesn’t call before he flies three thousand miles across the country and there’s a knock on Ben’s apartment door and it’s two in the morning and Ben would never have heard it anyway if it weren’t for how fucking hard this prick bangs on that thing, fucking gut-punching this door like it fucked his sister. Who the fuck doesn’t buzz up first? Ben’s wondering, and he opens the door and it’s Matt and after three thousand miles and no phone calls for eight months the first thing he thinks is Of course.
“I’ve got something,” Matt says, and he waves a thick stack of white paper in Ben’s face, green messenger bag tossed over his left shoulder. “It’s good,” and he steps inside.
When Ben was like fifteen Matt used to drive him around pretty much everywhere, because he was two years older and Ben hated the train. Sometimes they’d walk places, too, but mostly Matt liked to drive, because it made him feel older, more independent, and at seventeen years old that’s exactly what he wanted. Pretty much the only thing he’d kept around from his childhood was Ben.
They’d go to the Tasty or they’d get hot dogs at a stand by Harvard Square and they’d just fucking drive around, late into the night; cops didn’t care, especially not Southie cops. They weren’t hurting anyone, just a couple of dumbass kids in Red Sox caps smoking cigarettes on school bleachers or speeding through a drive-thru at one AM. This was the way of things—why fuck with that?
It was like one-thirty or something and dark as hell one night in late August and they were sitting on the curb outside the back of a Wendy’s, smoking cigarettes and wolfing down quarter-pounders. Matt’s feet made scraping noises in the gravel while he shifted them, sat a little closer.
“You know what I’m signed up for next semester?” he said—he had that look on his face he gets when he’s planned something out way in advance but isn’t telling yet, and around a pretty big mouthful of fries Ben went, “What.”
“Acting,” Matt said. “Acting I.” He brought a cigarette to his lips, breathed it out deep into the night air, clearer in the dark. He reached into the container for a fuckton of fries, shoved them into his mouth haphazardly. “You’re taking it too.”
“Fuck you,” Ben told him, spraying ketchup so Matt shoved his shoulder and he shoved back, rustling up the fabric of his baseball jersey, thick, red and white. “Fuck you, man, you don’t run my fucking life,” but he was laughing, and the cigarette stuck out of the corner of his lips.
“You’d never do it if I didn’t make you,” Matt said, flicked Ben’s hand away from the fries he didn’t pay a cent for. “But I know you fucking want to.”
Ben blew smoke in his face. “You’re an asshole.”
Behind them the night shifters took the trash out to the dumpster, and ash dripped to the pavement by their feet, and Matt’s toe nudged Ben’s, just a little.
In the morning Ben wakes up to pale yellow sunlight and light wind rustling his white curtains with his neck fucking aching at a crooked angle. He’s sprawled out on the empty floorboards in front of his TV and there are papers strewn all over him, papercuts all over his hands. Matt’s foot is nudging his cheek.
“Get up,” Matt commands. “It’s Saturday.”
Ben sits up and his body fucking screams in agony, hips, legs, back, head. “Jesus,” he says—his mouth tastes like shit. “If it’s Saturday why the fuck am I getting up?”
Matt leans down, hands him a coffee already made. “We’ve got work to do.” Ben takes a sip; winces. “Yeah, there’s gin in that,” Matt says.
“Fuck.”
Matt falls into the couch cushions. “I’m experiencing similar sentiments.”
Ben waves his hand, sips more coffee. “Fuck you, why are you talking like that.” He wags his finger: “Harvard has changed you, ya feckin’ Barnie.”
“L.A. definitely hasn’t done the same for you.”
“That’s ’cause I’ve got Boston,” Ben says solemnly, and he pounds his heart twice with his right fist, “right here.”
Matt rolls his eyes, lifts up his hips and digs in his pockets for cigarettes. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve fuckin’ heard it all before.” He lights up, and Ben stares into his coffee. Smiles because a bit of that godawful accent is starting to creep back into Matt’s voice.
“This is a no-smoking building,” Ben says, and Matt hands him a cigarette.
“Get up here.”
Ben drags himself onto the couch, Matt hoisting him up by his forearms. They’re close, Matt’s face filling up Ben’s vision as he lights up Ben’s cigarette with the red lighter he’s had since he was fourteen. Ben’s pretty sure it was a Christmas present from his grandpa.
Ben leans back, pulls the cigarette out of his mouth and exhales. Sets his black mug on the coffee table. Matt leans over and opens the tiny window, ratty curtains billowing over the wind. It’s a shitty apartment, one bedroom big enough for a twin-size bed and a kitchen attached to the living room space. The TV’s tiny, too—Ben found it in the dumpster out behind an appliance store when he was out drunk with a couple of friends one time. College and a career as a struggling actor make you poor.
“So,” Matt says, and he leans into the armrest with the cigarette in his mouth, lets his legs part over the edge. “What do you think.”
Ben snorts. “I think you’re ridiculous.”
An eye-roll. “I know that, asshoe, but what do you think of the script.”
Ben reaches for the lighter Matt set on the couch cushion and fiddles with it, flame, then no flame. He looks up through half-lidded eyes. “It’s only the first act,” he says, tentative.
“I know,” says Matt.
Ben nods, slow, and breathes out long. “All right,” he tells Matt, and looks at him. “I think you’re ridiculous.”
Matt smiles with half his lips.
Ben’s first paying acting gig was in a commercial for a local car dealership owned by this guy Teddy McLean. He landed it as a prize for winning his junior high’s schoolwide spelling bee in the seventh grade, and Teddy’s fat hands were clammy on his shoulders as he said his one line, “For a lean, mean, fightin’ machine, why don’t ya come on down to Teddy McLean’s!” The rhyming slogan was also part of a contest at the junior high, which Patrick Mallory won. Ben remembers thinking Matty could’ve done a lot better had he still been there.
He was thirteen and he went over to Matt’s house after school, sat on those wooden stools by the kitchen counter going, “Matt, Jesus Matt, you won’t believe how much they paid me just to say some stupid line.” It was Matt’s idea to open up a joint bank account with all their combined savings thus far for the sole purpose of funding train trips to New York for auditions. Any money they made from local commercials here or there went right back into the train fund, which was to be used only for train trips for auditions. They never really thought that one through.
It was on the night before Ben’s graduation from Rindge & Latin when he and Matt were sitting on the hood of the beat-up Volkswagon sharing a drive-thru Mountain Dew and a last hamburger that Matt, who’s built his whole thing at Harvard around drama and acting and playwrighting, Matt reminds him of the reason for that bank account. “We were only in it for the money, man, remember?”
Ben laughs then, and leans back. “What a couple of fucking loons,” he chokes out. “We thought we had it made, man. Acting?” He puffed out a breath, psh. “Piece of cake. So easy making money that way. It’s a fuckin’ laugh.”
“It’s your fault, you know,” Matt says. “That I’m a struggling actor to begin with.”
Ben snorts, and Mountain Dew comes out his nose. He ignores it. “Fuck that, man, you’re the one who made me do it. I was happy with my one fuckin’ Teddy McLean gig, paid me like fifty bucks. I was happy with Teddy McLean and his clammy pedophile hands. You just had to make it more than that.”
“Yeah, my bad,” Matt says, his shoulders hunched over and his mouth full. He’s got cigarettes in his back pocket, and Ben reaches over, pulls for them. Matt flinches only slightly. “I’m the only asshole at Harvard still hanging out with fucking high school kids, anyway.”
Ben throws the Marlboros at him, and Matt swears. “Ah-ah,” Ben corrects— “Kid, not kids. You’re not that cool.”
Matt frowns. “Yeah?” he goes. “Who the fuck says so?”
“Matt, you’ve got like no friends.” Matt laughs. “No, sorry, that’s a lie, you’ve got one friend, and he’s not even a high school graduate.”
Matt’s got the lighter in his hands before the cigarette’s even touched Ben’s lips; he smiles. He never fumbles with that thing, and never burns his fingers. Ben’s lit up in no time, and his finger claw at Matt’s, coil around the callouses on Matt’s fingers as he tugs the lighter from his hands. It’s dark out, and the flame is bright. Ben flicks it on and off.
“Besides,” Ben says, and his sigh is deep, relieved with the first drag loosening him up. He flicks ash onto Matt’s arm, and Matt flicks it back. “I’ll be out of your hands in no time anyway. Kickin’ it out West. I’ll probably be a fucking vegan the next time I see you.”
Matt’s laugh is an eye-rolling chuckle. “No you fucking won’t.”
“Yeah?” Ben goes. “Why not?”
“Because you love bacon, asshole.”
“That’s true,” Ben concedes, and he curves his hands around the butt of his cig, the wind toying with the cherry end.
Matt leans back against the front window, relaxing finally. He’s got a cigarette in his mouth and he turns to Ben, waiting. Ben’s fingers slip over the spark wheel once, twice, but the third time he’s got it steady. Matt breathes in, sighs, and settles back, grabbing for his lighter.
“I’m gonna miss your sorry ass,” he mumbles, his eyes closed.
“Yeah, yeah,” Ben says, and he shifts a little closer so his shoulder’s next to Matt’s, their sides and their legs touching just barely, the skid of synthetics and denim. Matt’s got his jacket on, and his favorite cap. The coat was Ben’s until he grew out of it. “I’ve fuckin’ heard it all before.”
They go out to lunch at this fancy outdoor café that neither of them can really afford, the kind of West Coast new age shit they don’t have back in Boston. Matt orders coffee and Ben almost orders a green tea but stops himself, orders orange juice instead, Matt eyeing him amusedly all the while. They start off with the small stuff, moms and sisters and high school girlfriends. They don’t talk about the movie.
“Remember your first two years of high school?” Ben asks, nonchalant, while he’s ripping his bread into tiny pieces and dipping it in vinegar. He doesn’t even go for the fucking olive oil; he knows Matt hates that about him.
“I recall them, yeah,” Matt laughs.
Ben nods once. “Those were terrible, huh,” he deadpans, and Matt starts laughing, the open-mouthed heh heh heh he pulls with crinkled eyes.
“Which part?” Matt presses. “Like, the awkwardness? Or the teasing? Or—mother of God—the height?”
“Don’t act like any of that has changed, bro. Especially not the height. Don’t act like any of that has changed.”
“All right, all right, I get it.”
Ben clears his throat, scratches his nose, chews out of the corner of his mouth, shifts in his seat so his arm’s over the back of his chair. “No actually though, I was referring to the part where I wasn’t there yet.”
“What, in high school?”
“Yeah.”
“For my first two years?”
“Yeah,” Ben smirks, “so you had like no friends.”
“I swear to God,” Matt’s shaking his head while he pours more coffee, a brief thank you to the waiter, who he always remembers to thank while Ben sometimes forgets: “you were like the only thing that made me cool. That and the fact that I deluded you into thinking I was cool.”
“What the fuck was I thinking,” Ben wonders, stealing some of Matt’s coffee. He sips from the tiny white teacup and looks around the neighborhood, eyes scanning. It’d be kind of a beautiful day out if it weren’t L.A. The sun is out and the air is warm and Matt’s face is pale, East Coast rainy Massachusetts pale, but his eyes are clear and blue and his smile is wide, his scrawny ass wiggling in his black fancy chair. Kid never could keep still.
“I was always terrified you would wake up one day and be like, whoa there, hold up a second—this asshole’s a fuckin’ idiot,” Matt laughs. “Then who the fuck knows where I’d be?”
“Mm,” Ben nods, “I was blinded by the infinite wisdom you possessed by being two years older than me.”
“Yeah, that helped.” Matt bounces in his seat, taps his foot under the table and laughs. “You know, when you were a freshman and I was a Junior, girls still used to ask me about you? I’d go out on a date with some chick and she’d be like, ‘You’re friends with Ben, right? The freshman?’ Jesus, man . . .”
“If it weren’t for their desperation to somehow get at this you’d probably still be a virgin,” Ben wags his finger. “So you’re welcome.”
Matt shrugs, pulls a face. “No kidding, man. You were hot.”
“Am,” Ben clears his throat. “Am hot.”
“Right, sorry,” Matt waves a hand, then mutters theatrically, “Asshole.”
Ben laughs, and Matt steals the coffee back and sips it, looking away for a second. He’s got the same way of scanning that Ben has, watching couples and mothers and waiters at lightning speed, listening for little snippets of conversation, called the contractor the other day, shit like that. Matt can pick that up.
“That was the one thing I never had to push you into,” Matt says suddenly, turning back to look at Ben, who’s staring. “Girls were your whole scene when we were kids, not mine. I never had a high school girlfriend like you did.”
Ben shrugs. “Except Skylar, remember?”
Matt looks up, his face suddenly serious. “Obviously, yeah.”
Ben puffs out his cheeks blowing out a breath, pulls out the stack of papers from his bag. “Let me ask you something . . . ”
The summer after Ben graduated high school and before he went away to Occidental they worked construction for this guy Paul Mangianello, and except for a few other kids from Southie schools they were the youngest workers there. The older guys, Mikey, Tommy, the whole shebang, kind of took them under their wing, taught them how things went in the construction world. How to shape up a slab of mortar with a spitball, how to get the fuck down from a limb, how to effectively wolf-whistle at a broad passing on the street. The Harvard chicks blush and shuffle past super quick, their heads bent down. The Southie girls yell like fucking dogs, “ ’Ey, feck you, fuckin’ jackass!” and they almost always flip you the bird. As a construction worker, you tend to like the Southie girls better.
Ben got way better at the heckling thing than Matt because Matt was sort of shy of being too loud in front of a lot of people and Ben was better at getting laughs anyway. He and Matt were eating lunch out on an outpost, swinging their legs and chewing tobacco ol’ Mikey had given them and this girl in high heels and a little black dress walks by on the pavement down below. Ben spits out his chew, fast. “Hey sweetheart!” he says, heavy on the accent. She looks around. “Hey sweetheart, up here!”
The lady looks up, gaze connecting with the two of them sitting up there. “Whatsit?” she goes, a Southie, then.
“What’re you all dressed up for, baby?” Ben calls at her, and Matt’s got a mouthful of ham sandwich and tobacco and his face is covered in dirt, his shoulder sticking sweat to Ben’s arm. He smirks a little but won’t make eye contact, rubs more soot onto his nose with his dirty sleeve. Ben grins.
“I got a date, that’s what!” she’s shouting, and Ben’s quick on the uptake, yells back, “A date with me?” and the guys laugh. Mikey nudges Ben’s back with his boot and Ben turns around.
“Come off it, Benny.”
“Nah, nah, I got this. You want a date with me?” He glances out of the corner of his eye at Matt, who’s chewing real slow and trying not to smile.
“I wouldn’t mind one, no,” she’s grinning from across the street, her hands on her hips, and the guys laugh again.
“Why don’t you come on over here and give me your number?” Ben suggests, and that’s when Matt laughs, the sheer ridiculousness of it. It’s cold and the sky’s gray, Matt’s breath is visible in the air. Ben slaps him hard on the back, his big blue coat, and heads down to ground level.
The girl’s already got her pen out when he gets down there and she reaches for Ben’s hand. “You’re not from around here, are you,” she says, and her red lips curl as she writes her name, Maggie.
Ben squares his shoulders, defensive. “I’m from Cambridge,” he tells her.
She finishes off the last digit and straightens up, letting go his hand. “Right,” she smirks, tilting her red head. “That’s what I said.”
Matt’s already working again when Ben climbs back up. “You’ve got no shame,” he laughs, his back bent over a pile of wood.
The sun’s going cold over the city skyline and Ben holds out his hand, covered in dirt and sweat and blue smudged ink. Matt looks at it like he doesn’t understand what it’s doing there and then stares up at Ben. “I got her number,” Ben smirks. “How do you like them apples.”
Matt stiffens unexpectedly. “What about Cheyenne?” he says, and Ben’s smile slides off his face immediately. He drops his hand.
“What about Cheyenne, man?” Tense.
Matt shrugs; doesn’t want to get involved, never does. “I don’t know, I just thought . . . I guess I just thought you were in one of the on-again phases of your on-again off-again right now.”
Ben blinks, stands stock still. Matt’s not looking at him, is bent halfway over hacking away at his pile of lumber, separating the boards into long and short, long and short. It’s getting dark, blue-gray-black in the sky, and the air is full of cigarette smoke and smog and the fumes from that Chinese place down on the corner, the guys are turning the jackhammer on and off and moving like ants all around them. Ben steps closer.
He’s in Matt’s personal space now and he can tell Matt’s surprised, looks up at Ben towering over him with wide eyes and pink cheeks. Startled by the sudden closeness of Ben’s face and Ben’s stare and Ben’s steady breathing; Ben doesn’t even have to raise his voice, he talks easy and quiet and low, not breaking from Matt’s eyes.
“And that’s what you’re worried about?” he says, not a hint of humor in his voice, just blank-faced intensity powered by rage; the dirt on Matt’s nose from before is still there, and his bottom lip hangs open only far enough to see two teeth and a tip of tongue, red, wet. Ben moves closer, and Matt’s breath is a sharp intake—“Cheyenne?”
Matt doesn’t say anything. It’s a moment that speaks for a lot of years and a lot of cigarettes and a lot of late nights and a lot of drunk days and a lot of small beds and a lot of cold floors and a long summer and a short day and a tall kid hovering in Matt’s personal space, you said it, you said it, you said it.
Somebody yells get back to work, you pansies, and the moment’s over, and so are the years, and so is the summer.
Ben flips on the light and tosses the keys on the table on their way back in, late, late, late that night.
“ . . . and that’s why you gotta keep the scene, man. Word for word, I’m not kidding you.”
“Come on, Ben . . . ”
Matt laughs, trailing in behind Ben, limbs and eyes droopy with laughter and alcohol. He lifts his arms up, a what’re-you-gonna-do gesture, and Ben saunters into the kitchen for a couple of beers. “Believe it or not, I didn’t show it to you just for you to tell me everything’s fucking flawless exactly the way it is,” Matt calls after Ben, whose hands are fumbly on the white handle of the refrigerator, dark in the kitchen and light in the living room. He bumped into a table on his way in here.
“Yeah?” he shouts back, finding the handle and the beers and his feet coming back out into the light. “Then why the fuck did you show me?”
Matt turns around and his face is dead straight. “Because,” he says. “I want you to write it with me.”
Ben stops walking. His face is frozen. Matt doesn’t say anything at all; just waits there expectantly.
Ben’s supposed to say something. Isn’t he.
“M-me?” he stutters, stupidly, pointing a finger to his chest with the hand holding up two Budweisers. “You want me to write it with you?”
Matt throws his hands up, lets them fall back down to slap onto his thighs. “No, fucker, I came for long walks on the beach holding hands, why the fuck else do you think I’m here.”
Ben clears his throat, shifts his feet, tries to assemble his face into something other than pure dumbfounded shock. “I barely see you for like three years and you—you skip out on graduating from fuckin’ Harvard, you fly across the country from Boston to L.A., show up at my apartment at two in the fuckin’ morning and ask me to write a movie with you? Is that—Matt—is that what’s happening?”
“No,” Matt corrects him, waving a finger. “I’m asking you to write a good movie with me.”
“Oh, well, Jesus, now I’m in.”
“You are?”
“Fucking—no, I’m not, Matt!” Ben waves his arms and the slippery bottles slide from one of his hands onto the floor. He starts to pick them up and Matt goes leave it, so he does. “I’m not a writer, I’m a struggling actor,” he says.
“Neither am I,” Matt shrugs, “so am I.”
Ben opens his mouth and starts to say something more, then shuts it. His hands go to his hips and he sighs, exasperated. “Why did you pick me?” he asks, quieter. “To write this movie with you.”
Matt gets that half-smile on his face and almost laughs, looks a little bit confused. “Are you serious?” he says, and Ben doesn’t answer. The smile fades, and Matt throws the pages so they hit the coffee table, hard. He points at them, jerky, with his finger. “This is why I fucking picked you, Ben,” he says, and it’s not funny, and he’s not laughing, and the shitty yellow lightbulb above his head is flickering and he looks red and tired and so full of conviction beneath it, his old jacket and his mop of hair and his finger, pointing, that fucking itch he’s always got. “Because for fuck’s sake, Ben, you’re Chuckie.” He lets his hand fall and his voice gets quieter. “You’re Chuckie.”
Ben’s still got one beer in his hand but he steps closer, frowning slightly and staring at Matt until he starts to squirm under the scrutiny, those old ticks: scratching at the back of his neck, shoving his hands into his pockets, rocking on his heels. Finally he breaks—“Fucking what, Ben, what the fuck is it.”
Ben smiles, slow. “You missed my sorry ass, didn’t you.”
Matt’s already got a cigarette out and is lighting up, his hands shaking with relief as he turns around and reaches for the pages, Good Will Hunting. “You bet your sorry ass I did.”
The night before Ben leaves for Occidental Mikey taps him on the shoulder and Ben turns around, wipes sweat off his forehead with his arm. “Go home early tonight,” Mikey tells him, an oddly gentle smile. “You’ve got an early flight tomorrow, and I don’t wanna get in the way of the fucking lunatic shit you’ll get yourself into tonight.” Ben makes some excuses, Mikey keeps on smiling, waves his arm. “Go on, go on,” and Ben shrugs, “I mean, if that’s what you want, man,” and throws down his shovel.
Beside him Matt’s still digging away, sweating and breathing heavy as fuck—Ben’s heard the older guys say the Barnies always work the hardest, try to prove they know how to sweat and bleed when they really don’t. They don’t know Matt.
Mikey whistles, “Hey asshole,” and Matt looks up, covered in mud. “That means you, too. Wouldn’t want to break apart the lovebirds on their last night together,” and the whole crew laughs. Matt cracks a smile.
“Hate to say no to an early out,” he shrugs, dropping his shovel and yanking off his gloves. “So I won’t.”
Mikey pats Ben’s shoulder on his way out, looks him in the eye. “See you later, kid,” and the others too, an entire friendly gauntlet of painfully hard slaps on the shoulder. He’s lucky to get out of there only slightly bruised.
They walk out into the night and Matt’s bouncing, kicking with energy, whistling and humming and swinging his arms around. Ben’s laughing just looking at him. Pulling up to the car, Matt tosses him the keys.
“You’re driving, kid.”
Ben stops shorts, holding the keys into the roof of the car. “Whoa,” he says. “That’s a first.”
“Yeah, and it’s a last too, you sad fuck. Get in the car.”
Ben slides into the driver’s seat—it feels strange. He’s sitting there in absolute silence just taking in the ripped-up wheel and the dirty floor and the old smell of Matt’s car for one last time until Matt breaks in. “Well? The fuck are we goin’?”
Ben looks at him glassy-eyed, then clears his throat and starts up the car. “Mickey D’s, I guess.”
“You serious, man?” Matt laughs, banging the dashboard with his hands. “Your last fucking night in Boston and you wanna spend it doing exactly what you do every other night in Boston?”
Ben grins. “Yeah, I do. If I wanted something different I’d fucking kick you out.”
“Of a moving vehicle?”
“Even better.”
“Nice.” Matt rolls down the window and sticks his arm out while Ben gets the car rolling, closes his eyes. It’s not a warm day and the sun is almost setting anyway but he lets the biting wind cut against his face and hair, and Ben watches him out of the corner of his eye.
Matt opens his eyes and looks over. “You know what you should try?”
“What?”
“For a little variety on this night of nights.”
“What?”
“Just to, you know, shake it up.”
“What?”
“Order something different off the menu.”
Ben barks a laugh, hangs a left. “That’s asking a lot, kid.”
“Hey, don’t get cocky just ’cause I let you drive, man—you don’t get to call me kid.”
Ben snorts. “Because you’re all of two years older than me?”
Matt shrugs: “Don’t trivialize those two years, man: I’m a mature adult.”
“You’re also five-ten.”
“We can’t all be fucking giants, Ben. Six-four is not average.”
“Hey man, whatever you need to tell yourself to make yourself feel better.”
“You missed the turn, asshole, this is why I don’t let you drive.”
“I’m just pulling into the, like, the other little—”
“You gotta make a U-ey up here, fuckin’ turn—turn around the block and—”
“See here, what you’ve just told me to do, Matt, what you’ve just told me to do is known as illegal.”
“So are the two packs of beers in the trunk in combination with your age, but I don’t hear you complaining about that.”
Ben shrugged and turned left on red, to no shortage of honking from his fellow drivers. “I object. I object to the two packs of beers in the trunk.”
Matt made a face and lifted his arms. “Come on, man, I’ll be twenty-one in October.”
“You’ve been saying that since you were fifteen.”
“And the applicability of the phrase has only increased with age.”
Marty at the drive-thru knows them pretty well by now—when Matt leans over the driver’s seat to forcefully stick his head out the window (his elbow caging Ben’s chin and his right hand falling between Ben’s thighs on the seat) “Yeah, um, he’ll have the—” Marty goes, “Matt?” and laughs, “You don’t need to tell me what Ben wants, I got it.”
“You really have no idea how to be original, do you,” Matt laughs as Ben surges up to the window.
“I don’t need original,” and Ben rolls his eyes. “That’s what I’ve got you for.”
They’re up late writing and drinking. Writing mainly, but with a heavy emphasis on drinking and a side of smoking. They burn through a whole pack in the first two hours and then they have to go out to the 7/11 three blocks down for more, positively shaking with thoughts and words and ideas as they walk. Matt’s all gold and black beneath the city streetlamps, rubbing his hands together in the cold while his cheeks turn red, ruddy. He’s got on his big blue coat and he has to walk fast to keep up, those short little legs of his, bumps into telephone poles plagued with band flyers and splinters, knocks over recycling bins filled with glass bottles. Ben says, how do you like them apples, and Matt’s face lights up like he’s flipped a switch, and Ben can’t believe he almost forgot he could do that, could flip that switch at any time with just a joke or a clever comeback. Or less often, with a few soft words leaned down close to Matt’s ear, this glimpse of genuine feeling at grandmas’ funerals or missed auditions or parents’ divorces. Anything to make him crack a smile.
They’re tumbling and bouncing down the hallway on the fourth floor, Ben’s digging for his keys in his pocket and Matt keeps ruffling his hair so Ben grins, says, “Doesn’t feel any different, does it?”
Matt drags his hand down the wall, breathing heavy, grinning back. “What doesn’t?”
“Nothin’,” Ben shrugs, stopping by the door and struggling to fit the key in the lock. “I’m just sayin’, like . . . it’s just exactly like the last time I saw you, that’s all.”
Matt freezes, stock-still. Ben can feel his steady eyes and sense his stillness and he quits jiggling the key in the lock, looks up. Matt’s staring at him, red-cheeked and silent and tense. Ben shifts his feet.
“I didn’t—”
“Yeah,” Matt says, and waves his hand, no big deal. He smiles, and the tension dissipates. “I know you didn’t.’
Matt says, “We might as well head back to my place. It’s not like you’re getting any sleep tonight anyway.”
“Your place?” Ben snorts. “Is that really what you call it? Your tiny, disgusting dorm room?”
“Hey, you can fuckin’ shut your mouth, at least I managed a single.”
Ben shrugs. “Touché.”
Matt’s dorm at Harvard is small but the bed is huge, takes up most of the space. He bought it for himself as a present for his high school graduation, and Ben had said, ‘Big bed for a tiny man,’ and Matt had shoved him, ‘Fuck you, man!’ He’s got a bedside table with a lamp and a bunch of old papers and shit, and books and clothes line the floor. There’s a desk in the corner which mostly acts as a post on which to drape smelly jerseys and muddy socks. The computer is on the floor plugged into the wall. Matt always writes laying down on his stomach on the carpet, usually eating, chugging coffee, or smoking while he’s at it. Or all three.
Matt opens the door and Ben flicks on the light, tosses his duffel bag to the floor on top of a pile of folded laundry. Matt goes over to the bedside table, slides open the drawer, and drops his keys in. Ben looks around; there’s a lot here to document.
“Hey, man, remember this?” he says, and he picks up a bright green jersey which had been peeking out from just under the bed. “Celtics, number thirty-three,” he reads off the back. “Larry Bird. Remember who we got this from?”
Matt tries to remember, taking his coat off and his wallet out. “Nah, I don’t . . . I don’t know.”
“This was Casey’s, remember?”
“Oh yeah . . . !” Matt recalls, pressing a hand to his forehead. “Didn’t we—” he starts to chuckle slightly “—didn’t we like dupe him out of it?”
“Yeah, my Uncle Freddie gave it to him for his like tenth birthday or something, and you decided we had to have that shit. You were such a dick, man, like fifteen years old and duping some kid out of his favorite Celtics jersey, God.”
“And I roped you into it, too, didn’t I.”
“Yeah, fuck, you said we’d share it, remember?” Matt nods, smiling sideways. “That was around the time of the divorce, too, so you were all on about ‘joint custody.’ We’d have joint custody of the jersey, you’d get it Monday through Friday and I’d have it weekends.”
“And I planned all this while it still belonged to a helpless ten-year-old.”
“You know what we gave him for it?” Ben prods, bouncing down on the bed on the side Matt’s standing by.
“What?”
“No, guess.”
“I don’t know.”
“Just guess.”
“I don’t know!”
Ben opens his mouth. “A half a pack of Starburst and a bouncy ball.”
Matt puts his head in his hand, wheezes pitifully. “Oh my god, no . . .”
“You ate the first half in front of him and made moaning noises to make him think they were like fuckin’ angel Starbursts.”
“No!”
“Yes.”
“God, I am evil.”
“You made me buy the Starburst, too.”
“No, you made that part up.”
“That’s true,” Ben smirked. “But you could’ve.”
A moment of silence falls and Matt turns around to throw a couple more things on the table while Ben looks at the back of his head, the blond hair curved around his ears and the freckles on his neck, big and brown and creased over the careful lines in his skin. The way his cross necklace fits all metal and gold around his neck, even though he’s not a Catholic, even though he’s still not sure what he believes and he’s said so to Ben sometimes late at night when it’s dark and they’re talking deep, the way he wears it just because. And when Matt turns around Ben’s there, towering, his face close.
His breathing feels heavy and he steps closer, his head bowed and his eyes low—Matt doesn’t step away, just stands there looking dumbstruck and red. Ben reaches up, coils his finger round the cross on Matt’s neck.
“You’ve had this for forever,” he whispers, like Matty wouldn’t know.
“I know.”
“I won’t see you anymore.”
“I know.”
Ben’s fingers let go of the cross and he slides his hand around to the back of Matt’s neck, squeezes his eyes shut, presses his forehead to Matt’s. He can feel the warm sweat and heat and blood pulsing against his hand, the golden thread of Matt’s necklace stuck between two of his fingers. Matt’s looking up at him.
“You’ve gotta say something,” Ben whispers, barely there, his slammed-shut eyes casting webs of red and green and blue against his skull. “You’ve gotta say something just this once, Matty.” Matt gulps, and Ben shakes with a sigh, digs his fingernails into Matt’s neck and moves—Matt’s head hits the wall. “Matt.”
Matt’s heart is pounding. Ben can feel it.
“I’m worried.”
“What are you worried about.”
“Fuck. Ben.” Ben opens his eyes, and Matt’s gaze is there, automatic. His eyes are blue, his hand is shaking up by Ben’s head, lands on Ben’s shoulder, trembles.
“What are you worried about.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Why.”
“Fuck.” Matt bites his lip and blood comes out. Ben curves his hand harder round Matt’s neck, pushes against his forehead so hard it starts to hurt. Matt skids against the wall, and they move sideways.
“Because . . . ”
“Why.”
“Because I won’t see you anymore.”
As soon as he says it Ben’s not sure if he really wanted to hear it or not. He closes his eyes again. “Yeah.”
“You’ll be gone.”
“Yeah.”
“You’ll be gone, and I’ll . . . fuck . . . this was the one thing—you were the one thing . . . I had left, that was the same.”
“Stop.”
“The one thing that was the same. And now it’ll all be different.”
“Shut up,” Ben says, and he breathes in hard, slams his other hand against Matt’s chest and it falls, empty, to his waist.
“You’re fucking leaving me, man. You’re fucking leaving. All this, fuckin’, all this is gone tomorrow, Ben, it’s—”
“Shut up—”
“The jersey, the—the fuckin’—McDonald’s—this, you . . . you’re gone tomorrow.”
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up,” Ben says, and his eyes fly open wide, and he breathes heavy, and he digs his fingers hard into the skin of Matt’s hip. “Just shut up.”
Matt shuts up. Ben kisses him, tastes blood on the tip of his tongue.
For the second morning in the row, Ben wakes up to Matt’s foot. This time, it’s kicking him in the face from the opposite side of the couch, and when he opens his eyes and sees Matt’s devious grin there and says “I’m gonna fuckin’ kill you, man,” Matt shifts onto his stomach in two seconds flat and kisses Ben hard on the mouth, all teeth and bruised lips and dry blood.
“Fuck,” says Ben. “Fuck, you weren’t supposed to . . . ”
“I know.”
Outside the open windows with the breeze rolling in Ben can hear a bus honk its horn, and a siren start up in the distance. Matt is squeezed next to him on the inside of the couch with one arm across Ben’s chest.
“Is this because I said,” Ben starts to ask, “that this was exactly like the last time I saw you? Because I didn’t mean—”
“I know you didn’t.”
“And I don’t know what . . . ” He trails off, sighs. Feels Matt’s body rise with the abdominal breath he takes. “We were scared. We were kids.”
“We’re kids now,” Matt says, and shrugs as best he can in the confined space. “And I don’t know about you, but I’m terrified.”
Ben smiles. “I’m fucking losing my shit,” he admits, and laughs, and it feels good. “Like, I can hardly breathe.” He turns his head sideways, so his face is infinitely closer to Matt’s; Matt’s mussed hair, Matt’s blue eyes, Matt’s chapped lips. “But I’m excited too,” he whispers, like it’s a secret, which it is. “I feel like we’ve got something good going here.”
“Yeah,” Matt whispers, the words brushing against Ben’s lips, just about to kiss him. “I feel like we do too.”