There were other gays at Marymount. The odds were in my favor that I wasn’t alone, but no one would out themselves in such a small town.
Except me. I was already an outsider, because of where I come from, so why hide anything else as if that would help?
“I sneak into Wind House sometimes,” she whispers.
I blink. The funeral home?
“Why?” I ask.
She’s quiet for a moment and then says, “To watch, at first.”
Thunder rolls overhead, the rain growing harder on the windows, and we both lie on our sides, eye to eye.
“When Henry…” She swallows. “When he died, my parents called the funeral director and let them know which hospital to pick him up at,” she tells me, keeping her voice just between us. “My mother was shattered, and Mrs. Gates held her hand and said, “‘I will be very careful with him.’”
Mrs. Gates is the funeral director. It’s a hard enough job, I can’t imagine having to prepare children for burial.
“She puts people back together,” Clay tells me. “She’s started to teach me how to put people back together.”
I stare at her, barely able to see her face in the darkness, but I keep listening, because I don’t think anyone else knows this.
“I needed to know what happens when we’re gone,” she says. “That night, I just couldn’t get it out of my head. How he was alone.”
The kid was only ten.
“They wouldn’t think that he was cold or scared,” she continued, “so I went to him. Broke the basement window and climbed through and stayed with him.”
I tuck my hands under my cheek, and she does the same, taking her time.
“Mrs. Gates found me the next morning.” I watch her. “Asleep against the wall outside his locker. She tried to send me home. Almost called my parents, but I refused to leave. I wanted to see. I needed to see what happens after we die. Where my brother went.”
I’ll bet she put up a fight. No one says no to Clay. I almost smile, imagining the tantrum she probably threw. She was only fourteen.
“She was so frantic.” I hear the amusement in Clay’s voice. “She didn’t know what to do. My parents would’ve killed her if they’d ever found out that she let me watch.” She paused and then continued. “Johnny Caesar came in that morning. You remember him?”
A local rock star about seven or eight years older than us. Made a couple of albums with a small label who screwed him out of rights and royalties, but he got out from under it. Got a big record deal and was about to hit it big. Become a worldwide superstar.
“She didn’t want to get in trouble, but I needed to know and she understood,” Clay says. “I stood back, way back, and watched her embalm him. Wash him. Patch up the gashes from his car wreck. The track marks on his arms and how gaunt his face had become. She cut his hair. Put makeup on him. Dressed him.”
I was at that funeral. He was a friend of Army’s.
“He looked alive again,” she goes on, lightning flashing across her skin. She put him back together so he could be remembered how I’m sure he wanted to be. He looked nineteen again, with his whole life ahead of him. Before life tore him apart.”
My mom probably wishes she was remembered differently. Or better. I’m not sure it would’ve been a comfort, seeing her dressed in her best at a funeral, even if we could’ve afforded one, but people don’t deserve to be remembered for how they died.
“She wouldn’t let me watch her prepare my brother, of course, but after Henry was buried, I…” She hesitated. “I started coming back. I’ve gone back again and again—helping, learning—because every time her phone rings, someone needs her. Someone is looking for guidance and comfort, and I need to be reminded that life is short. I don’t know what happens when we die…” Her breathing shakes, and I inch in closer. “But I do know life is too short. There is no tomorrow. This is all there is.”
“This is all there is,” I repeat.
And I reach out and touch her face. Clay. I smooth out the lines of worry and anger. The fighting and the hurt. I wipe away her tears with my thumb, feeling her warm skin and how she’s the softest thing I’ve ever touched.
“Livvy,” she whimpers, squirming against me.
“Clay.”
She leans into it and exhales, her warm breath wafting over my mouth, and slowly slides her arm around my waist, pulling me in close.
“I’m scared,” she murmurs.
“Me too.”
I still don’t trust her. I know this is a mistake.
But fuck, I need to feel her once. All of her. Just once. Fuck it.
I want to feel her come undone.
She bites my bottom lip between her teeth, and I gasp, feeling it all over my body, and I slip my hand down inside her sleep shorts and inside her panties, shivering when I feel the bare skin between her legs.