“And so do the guys.”
“They do.”
He said, “I… I’m scared. That it’s not real. That I’m still in the cave with him. That he’s taking from me, making me see what I want to see in my secret heart just to keep me docile.”
This was a gift. A dark one, to be sure, but a gift all the same. He rarely talked about what happened with him and Livingstone
in the year they were gone. I didn’t want to push too hard, but I thought he needed to get it out. “Is that what it was? Like a dream?”
He nodded. “Hazy. The edges were blurred. You were there. Ghost. Haunting me. I wished you were real. Always.”
“I am,” I told him roughly. “I swear it. Listen, Gavin. Listen.”
He turned around. I raised his hands to my chest, settling them above my heart.
He was in awe of me. I wanted more than anything to deserve it.
I said, “Thump, thump, thump.”
And oh, how he smiled. “Thump, thump, thump.”
He kissed me.
It felt green.
He laughed when I pinched his bare hip. “Good?”
“Better,” he said. He pulled his pink work shirt over his shoulders, fumbling with the buttons on the front. He batted my hands away when I tried to help. He got it eventually. “How do I look?”
Five letters were stitched in black across his chest.
Gavin.
I looked in the mirror to see the reflection of his back. My eyes widened at the name. “Is that…?”
“Gordo’s idea,” he said. “She doesn’t know.”
Meaning my mother. “Why?”
He said, “Because it’s who we are.”
When we arrived at the garage, a crowd had gathered, filling the streets. Excitement filled the air, and people were laughing as they milled about. A ribbon stretched across the front doors of the garage. Someone had found a pair of comically oversize scissors, and as the mayor of Green Creek, I was expected to give a speech about reunification and prosperity and blah, blah, blah. I didn’t care about that. I only had eyes for my mother.
She seemed surprised when Gordo took her by the hand, pulling her toward the front of the garage. The people cheered, her pack the loudest of them all, and she blushed as she ducked her head. “What’s this?” she asked.
Gordo said, “I love you.”
She touched his cheek. “I know. I love you too.”
He took a deep breath. “Do you trust me?”
“Always.”
He led her to the sign above the garage. It was covered with a tarp, a long rope dangling onto the ground. He told her she should be the one to pull the tarp down.
She looked at him for a long moment before nodding. She pulled the rope as hard as she could. The tarp slid off the new sign and fluttered toward the ground.
Silence fell over Green Creek as we waited.