wishbones and lottery tickets
countup
10:58 pm
Street is definitely drunker than he intended to get, and he’s having difficulty detaching himself from Zito’s side. They’re out on the balcony with Zito’s L.A. friends, who are passing a joint, and Zito’s arm is around Street’s shoulders, making him feel light-headed and giddy, chosen.
“Your teammates are weird,” one of Zito’s friends says. Ted, Street thinks. Or Tim. Or Todd. Or, possibly, Zachary.
“Not my teammates anymore,” Zito answers, wind cutting in from the bay and making him shiver against Street. Street is not cold, warmed by liquor and other things.
“Your former teammates are weird,” the guy with a T name amends. “That guy Dan was talking to me? I didn’t hear him use a single verb.”
“Yeah, well. Life like we got, half the year, motherfuckers are in each other’s pockets all the damn time. We’ve developed a shorthand.” He shifts his arm, scratchy coat fabric on the back of Street’s neck. “Also, I like the way you’re talking about this with Huston right fucking here.”
Street looks up at the sound of his name, blinking. The guy with a T name shrugs, taking a hit on the joint, his eyes scrunched and red.
“The kid doesn’t care, he’s cool. You’re cool, Huston, right?”
Street nods emphatically, feeling like a freshman snuck into a senior party. Zito snorts and takes the joint, blowing across the halloween orange tip of it. Smoke weaves into Street’s eyes, making them water, blurring Zito as he inhales. Street can feel Zito’s chest expanding against his arm. He’s not really cool, he knows, but he’d like to be. Maybe if someone offers him the joint, he’ll even have some, fog himself up on the inside.
“Danny’s a little weird,” Street says, trying it out, though Danny has never been anything but perfect to him, all tall and funny and lending him DVDs. Zito starts laughing immediately, coughing out clouds of smoke, and Street grins until it hurts, hopping slightly in place. It’s easy to brush aside the small curl of shame in his stomach, with Zito laughing so hard. The other guys are snickering, mostly at Zito, but maybe a little because Street said something funny, too.
One of Zito’s friends has his hand hooked in another’s belt, Street notices, and he’s grateful for the dim light as his face heats. Weirdly disappointed, to find that this little crisis of his is not at all unique. It’s not a crisis, he reminds himself patiently. He’s really very excited about the whole thing.
“Which, who’s the one you were telling me about?” one of them, very likely named Jake, asks Zito. Street feels him go taut and still, rubs his elbow as comfortingly as he can on Zito’s side.
Zito narrows his eyes, takes another hit. The thick smell will linger on his skin, Street thinks, maybe it’ll even have a taste. He’s staring at Zito without bothering to hide it, protected by the height of the city around him and the solid metal under his feet.
“Don’t know who you mean,” Zito says, odd tightness in his voice.
“Sure, sure you do. Like, last year, I guess, when we were at that Valley party and you were really really drunk, couldn’t shut up about him. Your boy, you were all crazy about him. You said he was the best reason for breathing, remember?”
Zito says sharply, “Jake,” and Street says like an echo, very small, “What?”
Jake looks surprised, flinching a bit. He looks at Zito, then at Street, then back at Zito. “Fuck, dude, you didn’t tell me it was a secret.”
Zito snarls, the line of his cheekbone standing out starkly and the jay still burning in his hand. The red airplane warning lights on a building opposite tuck under his chin and bleed into him, making him look like his throat’s been cut.
“Goddamn it,” Zito starts, but then Street slams his elbow into Zito’s stomach, not realizing he was gonna do that until it’s done, and Zito is gasping. His L.A. friends are watching them like a particularly good car wreck, eyes big and round.
“What?” Street says more forcefully, and he’s shaking.
Twisted up, pressing his fist into his stomach with the jay sticking out like an antennae between his fingers, Zito gives Street a desperate look of regret, and says weakly, “Guys, could you?”
His friends file silently back inside. Street moves out from under Zito’s arm, clutching his elbows. The city rakes upwards, daggers and syringes, the lights and colors smearing and Street is reeling drunk, his head spinning.
“Who?” he asks, praying that Zito will say Mulder, Hudson, someone long gone. Someone not inside the penthouse right now.
Zito breathes out slowly and drags on the jay, the orange flaring onto his face. Street can’t look at him, the marks under his heavy half-lidded eyes and the wrench of Zito’s laughter sometimes. Zito had come after him so quickly and so directly, pressing against Street in that elevator, watching him all the time. He’d been so obvious, as the season ran itself down, his wide hand on Street’s back, biting Street’s lip in Detroit and swelling it up, everyone teasing him about groupies for days, and Street blushing, pushing his tongue into the cut, liking the taste of it and the way Zito stared.
“Look, it doesn’t matter.”
Street snatches a furious look at him, gripping the cold iron on the rail. Out from under Zito’s arm, it’s cold as hell up here. “Then it shouldn’t make any difference if I know.”
Zito winces, sucking in smoke, his cheeks hollowed. He sighs, and his face is almost completely obscured by smoke, and he says, “Chavez.”
Street shakes his head automatically, his palms going numb. “But he’s married.”
“He wasn’t always. We. We go back kinda far.”
“Further than any of us,” Street whispers to himself. Zito’s head snaps up, and Street looks away, swallowing thickly. Eric Chavez, handsome and steady and cracking inside jokes with Zito, smiling clean when Zito laughed, half a dozen years’ headstart and Zito’s gone now, Street will never catch up. “Was it for real?”
Sucking in his cheek, Zito fiddles with the jay. “Yeah.”
A string of pops, homemade fireworks, rattles from the south, far away like everything else. The drunk keeps surprising Street, as he helplessly pictures it, Chavez’s dark eyes and Zito’s long arms, his stomach coiling, feeling like his blood is vibrating. He fears the distance separating them from the sidewalk, the wind pushing at the hotel and making it sway, and Street’s head is all screwed up, muscles in his back pinched.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“Yeah, because you’re taking it really well.”
“Shut up,” Street says, fast and very much unlike him, seeing the mild stoned shock on Zito’s face and kicking it aside. “You, how could you not tell me?”
Zito tries the jay again, clearly his way of avoiding the issue, but it’s burned down too far and singes his lip, his fingers. He hisses in pain and flicks it away. “Fuck. It was ending. It. It’s ended.”
Street looks down over the rail, long long way down, blood-vessel cars the size of coins, the breath and heart of the night, terrible to do this to him now, to ruin the whole year like none of it meant anything.
“When?”
Sighing, Zito comes to stand beside him, but doesn’t touch him, closing his hands on the rail and mirroring Street’s position. His lowered profile is bruised and sad. “Two weeks ago.”
Street’s eyes swell, and he shakes his head again, digging his teeth into his lip. His balance swims and nearly deserts him, clinging to the rail with all of his power, listing forward.
“Son of a bitch,” Street says under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut. He was going to give up everything for this. It was supposed to be the only thing from now on.
“Huston, don’t-” Zito tries to touch his shoulder, and Street yanks away, his face ablaze.
“You get the fuck away from me. Just. Stay the fuck away.”
He sees Zito’s face collapse and something goes badly wrong in his chest, and he spins, staggers into the light and heat and sound of the penthouse, fifty-eight stories high and falling.
*
11:26 pm
Zito focuses on a party in another hotel, across the street, yellow windows and blue light and pretty laughing people wearing strings of shiny plastic beads and coned paper hats. He’d like to be over there, in a room full of strangers, with music that he doesn’t know and inexpensive liquor. He feels fucking awful.
Chavez had been angry at him for months; that’s what Zito remembers. He’d put his hand on Chavez’s back in the clubhouse, bring oranges to his hotel room, have a beer waiting for him when Chavez met him at a bar, and none of it had worked. Chavez kept pulling away and picking fights, all through the summer, the early fall.
Zito knew that Chavez was building up to leaving him for a long time before it happened. Something about Zito’s approaching free agency, something about Chavez’s son, who had learned to speak, called Zito by name. Chavez’s reasons weren’t really clear, but it didn’t matter. It was killing Zito. He did what he could, stretching his patience, offering Chavez everything, but it still hurt Chavez to look at him.
It was difficult to play like that, Chavez ever at his back, haunting third and scowling at him from under the brim of his cap, blocky shadows and rough dirt on his hands. Impossible to sleep or breathe properly, Zito’s life transformed into this crooked black-and-white thing, a joke.
And sometimes, when Chavez was pissed off at him, wouldn’t return his calls and made his back into a wall, sometimes seeing Street had been enough to put the color back in the world. Kind of an awful thing, because the rest of the time, Zito had known exactly what he was doing with Street, wasting time, distracting himself from what Chavez was doing to him.
Street was way too good for him, something Zito couldn’t quite shake, and he was so surprised all the time. Zito had wandered around for awhile after the season was over, not wanting his life to stay the way it was, different skylines and bodies of water. He ended up in Orlando and New York and finally Austin, drinking beer under the bridge, watching bats whip into the night like black rain, fooling around Street’s bed, feeling like he’d made it someplace good at last.
Zito had known exactly what he was doing. He can’t remember ever hearing Street curse like that before.
The sliding glass door squeals a bit as it’s pushed open, and Zito locks his palms on the rail as Chavez says behind him, “Well.”
Breaking a little bit, Zito crumples down, resting his forehead on the rail. It’s almost frozen, a clear red line that he can feel digging through his skin, into bone.
“Leave me alone.”
There’s a pause, and then Chavez clears his throat. “I don’t know, man. He came in like something was chasing him.”
“Please, just.” Zito stops. He can’t believe what he’s done.
“Don’t worry. Rich and Bobby are taking care of him. He’ll see the new year in, by god.”
“Eric, please,” Zito says helplessly, familiar anger in Chavez’s voice, running over him like water.
“I’m just, how fucking impressive, dude. Five minutes alone with you and he’s wrecked like nothing I’ve ever seen. That’s got to be a record.”
Zito wrenches up, turns to face Chavez with his numb hands trembling. “I’m asking you, please, please don’t do this to me.”
But Chavez’s expression is drunk-bright and near homicidal, slack mouth and the lines of arms drawn tight. He’s backlit from inside, the city shining in his eyes.
“What’d you do to him?”
“I. Nothing. It was nothing.” Say something often enough and it comes true, Zito thinks, and I don’t love you anymore, I never did. He wants to say it so badly.
“Obviously.” Chavez sneers. “You just, like, existed, and somehow he got the wrong idea, right?”
“He got the right idea,” Zito says without thinking. “He found out about you.”
Chavez goes very still. He’s not wearing his jacket, the wind flicking hard at his clean white shirt and making him shiver involuntarily, but in all other ways he’s motionless.
“You didn’t,” he says slowly. Zito ducks his head and grips the rail behind him so tight he can feel the metal seeping through his skin, poisoning his blood. “You did not tell him about me.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Zito remembers Chavez rolling him over once and pushing the pillow off his head, several years ago, looking surprised to find them in bed together again, Chavez telling him, it’s dangerous because you make me want to tell everyone I know, like, people on the street and my mom and, god.
“I didn’t,” he manages. “Not really. Someone said something and I just. I confirmed it.”
Chavez’s skin is turning gray, he must be freezing. He’s staring at Zito with his eyes flat and black and astonished, like Zito just tried to kill him.
“Why the fuck would you do that?” Chavez almost screams, and Zito flinches, too off-balance for this.
“Half the team knows,” he argues weakly.
“Yeah, the half that’s known us for longer than two fucking years.”
That’s not at all true, but Zito doesn’t see how it matters, anyway. They didn’t bother keeping it much of a secret because they didn’t have time for that. And it seemed incredibly unimportant, when Chavez was the single greatest thing that had ever happened to him, a shred of light in his life. Zito didn’t know how to hide that, it beat out of him like air.
“He’s not gonna tell or anything,” Zito says.
“How the fuck do you know? You’ve broken his heart, man, why wouldn’t he try and take us down?”
“Because he’s not like that! Jesus, Eric, listen to yourself. He’s on the team.”
Chavez laughs without joy. “He’s on my team. And now I get to see him all fucking teary and hating me for the next decade. You fucking asshole.”
Zito pulls a hand through his hair, feeling bits of paint and rust flake off. He wishes more than anything that Chavez hadn’t broken up with him; even at their worst, Chavez never looked at him like he wanted to hear what Zito might sound like screaming on a fifty-eight story fall.
“I can’t believe you,” Chavez hisses. “You leave, you’re supposed to stay gone. We’re supposed to clean up your fucking mess? What the fuck is the matter with you?”
Zito bites the inside of his cheeks savagely, stupid and high and drunk, his mind running jagged. “I didn’t know he was. I didn’t think he’d care that much,” he says, very much aware that that’s a lie.
Chavez knows too, staring at Zito in disbelief. Zito fixes his gaze on his own reflection in the glass door, superimposed over the colorful shift of the party. He can’t see Street; Rich and Bobby must have tucked him away in the kitchen or one of the bedrooms. Zito tries to make out his eyes in the refection, Chavez a dark blur in his peripheral vision.
“You didn’t think he’d care that much?” Chavez echoes, his voice cracking. Zito grabs the rail again, his elbow popping.
“We barely even did anything,” he protests without much faith that it will work. “He’s overreacting.”
“Oh, like I was?”
Zito flinches again, feeling like his chest is being cracked open from the inside. He did say that to Chavez, so long ago it’s weighted like granite in his mind. He’d kissed Chavez for the first time, holding Chavez’s face in his hands and feeling the rough skin of his cheekbones soften and give, and Chavez had gaped at him, stricken, before shoving him away. They’d fought so bad that night, mean as boys, because all Zito wanted was to put his mouth on every taut salty inch of Chavez, but Chavez had known even then that it would mean more than that.
Chavez wraps his arms around himself, hunching his shoulders and trembling. Zito blinks at him, his thoughts stuttering.
“Are, are you cold, man?”
Sparing him a hateful look, Chavez digs his fingers into his arms and replies, “Of course I’m cold. It’s twenty fucking degrees up here.”
“It’s not really,” Zito says stupidly. “It’s just the wind factor.”
“Whatever.”
Zito hesitates, looking at the tight pale skin of Chavez’s neck where it dips under his collar, and then strips off his jacket, the sleeve catching for a moment on his wristwatch. He holds it out to Chavez, hooking an arm across his stomach as the wind cuts in immediately, wicked and flashing down his spine.
Chavez looks at the jacket, then up at Zito, thin and suspicious. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. You’re cold. I’m wearing layers.”
Chavez is about to refuse, as stubborn a motherfucker as has ever graced Zito’s presence, but his teeth are almost chattering, and he swipes the jacket from Zito’s hand, muttering, “This doesn’t change anything.”
Zito lets his weight rest back against the rail, sighing, exhausted and kicked around and now pretty fucking cold. “Did you plan on yelling at me for much longer, or can we go inside now?”
“I haven’t even started,” Chavez tells him sharply, pulling the sleeves over his hands and glaring at him. “Did you really think a kid like that would be all casual about fucking a guy?
Shaking his head, Zito thinks of how Street had held onto his shoulders when Zito kissed him for the first time in the elevator, shiny glassy eyes and wet mouth open in shock, his grip strong enough to fuse through Zito’s shirt. How Street had lifted his face to Zito’s unconsciously, carefully licked across Zito’s lower lip, the two of them reflected forever in the mirrored walls.
“He was okay with it,” Zito says uncertainly.
“You just assume that. Just like you assumed it with me. Meanwhile, he’s all fucked up on the inside and thinking you’re this perfect guy who’s never gonna hurt him.”
Zito pushes his tongue up behind his teeth, seeing the color return to Chavez’s face. “Who are you talking about right now?”
Chavez tears his head to the side, balling his hands into the pockets of Zito’s jacket and scowling out over the city, the corner of his mouth pinched. “Both of us. Exactly what you did to me, you’re doing to him.”
“Bullshit,” Zito says too fast, but then decides that he likes it: angry is good, better than the alternative. “I never did anything bad to you. I let you get fucking married-”
“Let me-” Chavez starts to shout, outraged, and Zito cuts him off.
“Maybe I sleep around, but I never stood up and swore to love someone else for the rest of my life, you fucker.” Chavez’s eyes get huge and betrayed, but Zito’s gone now, adrenaline red and fast through him. “You think you can just tear into me like I’m the only one who’s fucked up here? I wasn’t the one who wanted this. You left me, in case you forgot. You’d been leaving me for half the fucking season, what the fuck was I supposed to do?”
“I left you because you weren’t gonna stay,” Chavez says, looking startlingly young in Zito’s too-big jacket.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Zito shoots back, the wind catching his voice and carrying it off. “Billy didn’t offer me anything.”
“You mean he didn’t offer you a hundred million dollars, which was a real shock.”
“Fuck you.” Zito doesn’t like the mean curl of Chavez’s lip, the sick shame that has lived in his stomach ever since he signed that goddamn contract. “I didn’t take that deal because of the money.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me, Barry, why else would you have?”
“Because I didn’t want to leave!” Zito yells, and it stuns him, driving him back against the rail. Chavez’s face falls open, his eyes wild and his shoulders dropping. Covering his face with his hands, Zito makes a small moan. “Jesus Christ, man, I never wanted to leave.”
It’s awful. Seven years in Oakland, come down to nothing like this. Zito remembers seeing Chavez running across the outfield sometime in his rookie year, the sun killing bright and crashing into the scoreboard, transforming it into a rectangle of pure white, and Chavez was a small black speck as his vision filtered in and out, something that he keeps in the back of his mind like his phone number.
It has to be rare, finding and recognizing happiness as uncomplicated as what they had, at least at the beginning. Having Eric Chavez nearby had cured all of Zito’s trouble, or anyway, outfitted him with a different form of it, something sweet and hard-edged. Zito had fallen in love for the first time ever in Oakland. It was the lowest kind of tragedy, having to give that up.
“Dude,” Chavez says softly, finally not mad anymore. His shoes scrape the stone as he approaches, lays his fingers down on the backs of Zito’s wrists. “What were you thinking? You’re never gonna see us.”
Zito shakes his head, pressing his lips together. “I wasn’t thinking. I just. I couldn’t stand the idea. And I know why you left me, it was so obvious, man. I thought maybe. If I was still. Even if it was only sometimes, maybe you could-”
“Hey.” Chavez tugs his hands down, but Zito keeps his eyes shut, ashamed. “You on the other side of the country was never the problem. You on another team was the problem. Any other team. ”
“Why?” Zito whispers, cold everywhere but the press of Chavez’s hands around his wrists.
“You know why. Here, look at me.” Something brushed across Zito’s eyelids, and he opened them reluctantly, Eric Chavez dark and solemn and still as good-looking as Zito can easily stand, poorly trying to smile at him. “You remember that time in Baltimore?”
Of course Zito remembers. He remembers almost everything, which is probably some kind of curse.
In Baltimore, four or five years ago, they’d gotten caught out in the rain on their way back from some club. They’d taken cover in a bus shelter, for hours as the sky poured down on them. Past midnight, the world had closed down, the rain too thick to see more than a yard or two. It had been a flood; they’d be washed clean, Chavez said, slurring a little bit, and kissed Zito against the plastic wall, his hands sinking wet fingerprints into Zito’s stomach. Chavez had said against his mouth, “I fucking love this,” and Zito knew what he meant, felt himself break open like dawn. It was the best night.
“That’s the kind of thing that’ll never happen if we’re not on the same team,” Chavez tells him gently.
Zito lifts his hands and wraps them around Chavez’s shoulders. He touches their foreheads together and says, “But it doesn’t change anything. I’m still in love with you.”
“I know.” Chavez sighs, his breath warm on Zito’s mouth. “It’s really not fair at all.”
Zito almost laughs, something choked in his throat. He slides his arms around Chavez’s shoulders and hugs him tight, burying his face in Chavez’s neck. Chavez hugs him back, the bends of his elbows tucked against Zito’s ribs, and Zito wants to cry at how familiar their fit is.
“Guys?”
Zito tries to jerk away, his mind whirring, but Chavez keeps hold of him, not turning. “What?”
Sneaking a look, Zito sees Rich standing in the doorway, and relaxes incrementally, narrowing his eyes. Richie clears his throat, gaze fixed solidly somewhere to the right of them.
“We’re going up onto the roof for the fireworks.”
“Fuck,” Zito says, time and place clicking back in. “What time is it?”
Harden grins. “Six minutes to midnight. We’ll be up there, okay?” He disappears away from the balcony, and Zito realizes that Chavez is trembling slightly in his arms.
He leans back and pushes his fingers across the silver patch on Chavez’s eyebrow, down his face. Chavez closes his eyes. “Fireworks,” he says quietly.
“Yeah,” Zito replies, not wanting to take his hands off Chavez, though he knows the day is fast approaching when he’ll have no choice.
“Well. Come on, then.” Chavez draws out of Zito’s arms and smooths down his hair, folds back the sleeves of Zito’s jacket. Zito follows him inside, feeling like the walls of his chest have been scraped clean. The sudden light is devastating, shrinking his pupils down to nothing.
The penthouse is deserted, bottles and paper plates and assorted debris all over the carpet, a city after a war. There’s still music, throbbing from the speakers, bizarre and unsettling without people to listen to it. Chavez has got Zito’s hand in his own, a lifeline.
Zito lets Chavez pull him into the stairwell, his head slowly clearing, and then stops him, hooking a hand in his belt. Chavez glances back at him, his expression strained and scared.
“So what are we going to do?” Zito asks, his voice thick. “The situation seems irreparable.”
Exhaling, Chavez taps his thumb on Zito’s knuckle. “It is.”
“That’s. That’s terrible, dude.” Zito swallows, picturing the life ahead of him all gray and small, crippled and playing for money not love. He feels like he’s going to be sick.
“Listen,” Chavez says, and pulls him up on the step, their knees bumping. He folds his hand around Zito’s hip when Zito totters, and keeps him steady. “Whatever else happened. No matter what you did, or what I did. I wouldn’t trade you for anything. We had six years. It was enough.”
And he leans in and kisses Zito then, his face cold and his mouth fiercely warm, and Zito presses against him, his balance wavering. Chavez’s hands are on his hips and Zito’s arms are back around his shoulders, and Zito pulls away for a breath, feeling Chavez’s forehead come to rest on his cheek. Zito shuts his eyes against the pain, unable to believe how badly Chavez just lied to him.
*
11:57pm
Chavez and Zito come spilling out of the roof door, into the skyline. The city busts open before them, gold and blue light washing the rooftop better than the sun. The party is louder up here than it was in the penthouse, whooping and hollering and hanging off each other’s shoulders.
Street sees them emerge, sees Chavez wearing Zito’s coat, and turns his back, his eyes hot. He can’t think of a worse way to start the year.
It’s so stupid, Street thinks desolately, fighting for his anger to return. How could he have thought that they’d both fall so fast, that Zito would want him as much as he wanted Zito?
Harden had kept telling him, in the kitchen as Street was staring at the floor and struggling not to cry, his hands woven over his stomach, Harden kept saying, “He’s just some guy, he’s gone now, you don’t have to worry about it anymore.”
Harden means well, but he isn’t helping. Street thinks that he’d prefer to have Zito around even if it’s just to hate him. He shoves his hands in his pockets and gouges his nails into his legs through the thin fabric. The party rushes and rails around him, Street as still as an island.
Zito materializes at Street’s shoulder, and Street stiffens, his shoulders rising protectively. He stares out at the twisting lighthouse on Alcatraz, biting his tongue.
“Hey,” Zito says low. Street doesn’t answer, crazy falling sensation in his stomach. “I just wanted to say. Before midnight, I wanted to make sure you knew that I’m sorry.”
Street glances at him involuntarily, cloudy and drunk and not certain that Zito’s not fucking with him. Zito’s watching him with wide earnest eyes, and Street clenches his hands in his pockets, hardening his jaw.
“It’s been kind of a bad time for me,” Zito continues, barely over the wind and the catcalls at their backs. They’re at the very edge of the roof, unguarded. “Not an excuse, just. I know I fucked up with you, and I. I’m just really sorry, man.”
Street counts the seconds between the flash of the lighthouse beam, midnight crashing down on them like sky. He doesn’t want to start the year like this; it’ll never end.
“It’s okay,” Street says in a whisper, but he can tell that Zito heard him by how he tenses. It’ll be years before Street’s over him, he knows for sure. Zito got inside him and set mines all through Street, in unexpected places, wired to random memories and scents and tastes. Street just wants Zito to leave him alone. “Not the finest moment for either of us, I guess.”
Zito’s silent for a second, and Street eyes him helplessly, the wind wrecking Zito’s hair, the trace of his profile against the gleaming buildings. Zito angles his face down, the flat sudden drop of the building all the way to the sidewalk.
“I probably would have been crazy about you,” Zito says sadly. “You would have been really good for me. He just got here first.”
Street is stunned, because Zito sounds like he regrets the loss as much as Street does. Street licks his teeth nervously, and carefully puts his hand on Zito’s shoulder, feeling it give slightly. Zito looks so tired.
“Don’t worry about it, man,” Street tells him, the words tough and sticking in his throat. “It’s just some stuff that happened last year, that’s all.”
Zito’s mouth warps, but he moves closer to Street, cautiously hooking a finger in his belt loop. Street realizes he’s holding his breath, and lets it out in a stream of white air. He can feel a tooth of wind sneaking into his shirt, making him shiver, and Zito’s strange dark eyes catch the city light, holding it fast.
Behind them, Bobby starts shouting out a countdown, the others joining in, voices echoing high and joyful.
Chavez slides up on Zito’s other side, and Street watches in amazement as Chavez takes Zito’s hand and laces their fingers, wondering how he ever missed this. Zito sets his thumb down on Street’s hip, just above his belt, a current through the three of them, there on the edge of the roof.
Street doesn’t want to pray for a better year, because this one was almost perfect, to ask for more seems dangerous. Keep us together somehow, after all and after everything. He’s shaking so hard, waiting for the fireworks, frozen and suspended against the night sky, and three.
Two.
One.
THE END
Endnotes: This is, for those who are interested, a fairly accurate reenactment of my New Year’s. Not the penthouse suite, of course, but break-up drama and the rooftop, absolutely.
Also! As a special treat. This is the train of thought dealie that I wrote down the night of that party, after the idea fell in fully formed, or, at least, was ripped directly from real life:
This New Year’s, with me and [friend 1] and [friend 2]. Zito and Chavez, two weeks after they tried to end it, when they were still spending every other day going home together. Breaking up amid the last party of the year, four days after Zito signed with the Giants. Zito’s taken up with Street in the meantime, just three kisses and a blowjob, but enough to do bad things to Street. Zito for years now, god knows, since the very beginning, has been something very much like Chavez’s mistress, always there to remind Chavez that not everybody married as young as he did, both times. Danny Haren putting darling Noah on the phone with Zito, I told him you’d fix all the things that he’s doing wrong. Roof for the fireworks, Chavez and Zito fighting, over in a corner without a rail where everybody pretended not to hear them, somebody’s portable iPod speakers low on the crushed gravel, howling greetings across the stone grid of the city-other parties, other rooftops. New Year’s gives you this kind of power. Perspective from various directions. If you decided to stay because of things other than money, that is totally on you and I won’t take any responsibility. Made you no promises and that was supposed to be the fucking point. Don’t fucking pretend like that you and I are any less than you and her. We’re married in every way that counts. You didn’t tell me? You keep kissing me. You. You did that other thing too. It’s called a blowjob, dude. Shut the hell up, you never told me. It wasn’t. It was ending. It has ended. It has no fucking bearing on you and me. Everybody is drunk. Street finds Zito on the balcony, bent double with his face buried in his folded arms, frozen metal on his mouth. At the end, it’s just so, so over. Street lost in this, something so serious in his simple life, wants to put his hands on Zito’s back. Street saying to him, hand fisted on Zito’s hip, “Fuck it, this changes nothing,” because it seems like what Zito really really needs to hear, and kisses him, because Street is godawful drunk, and wants him so much he forgets that he has him. All Zito can think is that Street is one of those things he has saved until free agency, something that Zito would suddenly be able to afford.