To the Dogs or Whoever - Part III

[snooter]

He got the skull tattoo on his neck when Andy went home for Thanksgiving that first year. He wasn't sure why it made him feel better; something to do with showing Andy that he couldn't count on Sid not to change while he was gone. It felt like armor. But Andy loved it, because Andy loves most of the stupid, pointless shit Sid does, at least in small doses. Every time Andy returned to find more tattoos, he would smile a little less enthusiastically, and finally he just stopped commenting on them.

The tattoo shop people are great. They always are. Sid continues ranting about bartenders, but catches himself before he can start talking about his father. He wants this to be a wholly positive experience. It's only the second time ever that he's walked into a tattoo parlor knowing exactly what he wants.

He falls asleep in the chair. The guy who inked him says it's a good thing he's not driving, laughs, and gives him water. Sid is bleary when he wakes up, kind of confused. The new tattoo gets a bandage, he pays with his credit card, and he's out the door. Before he can make it across the parking lot the lights of the tattoo shop go out behind him.

It's late. There's a cold, post-rainstorm wind blowing down the empty streets. He's got to find a liquor store that's open, even if he has to walk all the way into the city. Or maybe a bar would sell him a bottle. It's an emergency, after all. He's yawning, stumbling in his steps. He can feel the headache that will pound between his temples in a few hours, now just a distant ache at the back of his skull. He wants to get in bed with Andy, to climb through Andy's window, and it feels like an even better plan than getting the tattoo, but he ends up at the wrong house. This was Andy's old house, now with unfamiliar cars in the driveway and a sailboat mailbox. Which means, well. Sid looks to the left.

There are no cars in the driveway. His father usually parked in the garage, unless he was too drunk to figure out how to work the opener. The house is dark, the lawn overgrown. The mail box is hanging open, and the recycling bin is on its side in the front yard, caked with mud. Sid can feel his father in that house, sleeping it off. He sits down in the middle of the road.

The headache stays perched at the back of his skull, waiting. His vision tunnels; wind seems to blow through his ears, in one and out the other. He waits to know what he wants to do. His father might be afraid of him if he saw him now. Sid has thought about that. He was a pretty big guy, but Sid is bigger now. Sid used to have grand plans for what he would do if the old man ever gave Andy a hard time when he was over at the house. He knew they were fucking; there were comments made to Sid, but they were easy enough to ignore. If he had said anything to Andy - threatened him or teased him or even looked at him wrong - Sid would have killed him. That was the plan, anyway. He's glad he never had to find out what he really would or wouldn't have done.

His father never said anything to Andy because he didn't care. Andy could have been a fifty-year-old man Sid brought up into his bedroom after middle school: his father would have kept his eyes on the television. If he was bored, he'd pick on Sid, mostly about the garbage collecting job. His father was in the Air Force before Sid's mother died. He was a fucking pilot. Trusted with billion dollar equipment. Broke the sound barrier. Keep looking at me like you're better than me, you little shit. You're picking up people's trash. Doing God knows what with that limp-wristed kid. It's good your mother's not here. You'd break her fucking heart.

He knows he'd turn into his father if he lost Andy. He knows he'd be worse.

He's so dazed that he thinks the headlights are the sunrise. He starts to get up, but his body suddenly weighs about six hundred pounds, and the van is driving around him anyway, slow enough to make him wonder if the driver is going to stop and ask him if he's alright. He really hopes not.

The driver doesn't ask him if he's alright. She just puts the window down and stares at him, the van idling. It's Andy's mother.

They watch each other for awhile. Sid is too drunk and tired to know what to expect. He tries to get up again, and this time it works.

"How'd you know I'd be here?" he asks. His voice is full of cobwebs, like he hasn't spoken in days, which is weird, because he's pretty sure he told everyone he met tonight his whole life story.

"Just a guess," she says.

"Andy worried about me or something?"

"Andy's asleep. He doesn't know you left." Her thumbs tap the steering wheel, and she studies him, her mouth quirking just like Andy's does when he's trying not to show how annoyed he is. "Getting in or not?" she says.

He climbs into the passenger seat, buckling himself in place and staring straight ahead as they pull away from his father's house. If he'd sobered up completely his heart would be slamming with embarrassment, but he's still pretty wasted and everything inside him is just sluggish and sore. He waits for Andy's mother to say something, to impart some wisdom or judgment or forgiveness, but she only drives, doesn't speak. By the time they reach a 24-hour gas station he expects to be asked to get out of the car, given a twenty dollar bill and told to find his way back to L.A. She fills up the tank and heads into the convenience store. Sid checks the clock on the van's dash while she's in there: almost half past four in the morning. His new tattoo stings, and his headache has arrived, tightening his temples until they feel like they're screwed into his head. When Andy's mother reemerges she has two cups of coffee.

"Thanks," Sid says when she hands one to him. She nods and drinks from her own cup before starting the van again. Sid is glad to leave the neon bright glare of the gas station pumps, the van sliding back into darkness.

"There was this tree," Sid says, because she's still not talking. "In my backyard. I didn't want to see my father or anything. I wanted to see if the tree was still alive. They only live twenty years, so it's gotta be dead. I guess I just couldn't make myself look."

Still, she doesn't say anything. He drinks the coffee, burning his tongue. What do you want from me? he wants to shout. What the fuck did you expect?

"Your father was part of the reason we moved," she says, finally, when they're sitting at a red light.

"Yeah? Can't blame you. Was I the other part?"

"I remember that night he got arrested," she says. Sid looks up at her, but she's staring out the windshield. The light turns green and she doesn't pull ahead. There's nobody else on the road.

"I broke into your house that night," Sid says. "Sort of. Climbed in through Andy's window."

"I know you did," she says.

He's surprised. "Andy told you?" He thought that was still their secret.

"No. I knew that night. I knew you were in there with him."

"What? How?"

She closes her eyes and shakes her head. The light turns red again, reflecting off the hood of the van.

"A mother knows what goes on in her own house," she says. "I remember being conflicted. I knew you must be scared, and I felt for you, I did, but I thought, 'I could get in trouble here. Or Andy could be hurt by this.' So I went to his bedroom door to collect you. I was going to bring you over - I don't know. To the police, I guess. But you were crying - I heard you crying, and I heard Andy trying to calm you down. Telling you it was going to be okay. I couldn't take you over there, back to that nightmare. I thought, 'I'll deal with it in the morning.' But you were gone in the morning, and Andy didn't say a word about it. I think I convinced myself that I'd dreamed it. Your father got released, and you were still over there, with your fireworks, whatever - I thought, well, there's nothing I can do."

"Except move away," Sid says. It's not like he's got any right to be angry about that. He remembers the day it happened. He had some kind of crazy nightmare about toys coming to life.

"Alright, well, that wasn't the only reason we moved," she says. "But, yes, it was part of it - you were part of it. The way Andy -" She stops there, makes a frustrated noise and finally pulls forward, though the light is red again. "I fell in love with my ex-husband when I was very young," she says. She's driving a little faster than necessary. "Very young. And Andy is a lot like me."

"And I'm like him?" Sid says. "Your ex?"

"No," Andy's mother says, and she laughs. Sid isn't sure if he should be offended or take that as a compliment. "He was a liar. I don't think you're one of those."

Sid considers it. No, he's not a liar. If anything he's too honest. It gets him in trouble more often than not.

"He's very charming, Andy's father," she says. "He was captain of the basketball team. I was a cheerleader. Et cetera. I got pregnant with Andy when I was twenty. We got married, he cheated on me, we broke up, got back together, he cheated on me again, this time while I was pregnant with Molly. His family had money, and I got accused of being a gold digger when I asked for alimony. My parents weren't happy with me, wanted me to stay with him rather than try to raise the kids by myself. He was never much of a father, anyway. So no, I don't think you're anything like him." She pulls to a stop again, this time on the side of the road, and looks at him. "I don't think you're anything like your own father, either."

"You're wrong," Sid says. "I'm mean like him. And I'm a fuck up, more importantly."

"You indulge in your self pity," she says. "Maybe you have that in common with him. But I think that's all."

Sid laughs angrily and looks out the window. Self pity, right. Like he hasn't earned a little bit of that. He chews the inside of his cheek, feeling eight years old, but not like the orphan boy who's taking shelter while he can. Andy's mother has never been willing to treat him like that weather-beaten kid.

"I'm sure you can understand why I worry about Andy," she says. "It might seem like it's the other way around sometimes, I know you moved out to California for him, but he's really built his whole life around you."

"I'll never leave him," Sid says. He feels the new tattoo searing his skin like the needle is burning it into him all over again. "I won't."

She stares out the windshield for awhile, her wrists flopped over the steering wheel. He watches her for a response until he starts to feel uncomfortable, and turns to look out the window instead.

"I'm the one who'll get trashed," he says. "Bet you a million fucking dollars."

"You think Andy would trash you?" She sounds so offended on Andy's behalf that Sid laughs.

"Not on purpose," he says. "He'll just get tired of me. I mean, you know - he'll grow out of me. I won't look that impressive when he's thirty and making buckets of cash, when everyone else he knows is smart and successful, and then there's me, and everyone's like, 'how do you even know that guy with the tattoos?' And he'd have to tell them, you know. Boy next door. Charity case."

"You underestimate yourself," she says.

"Jesus. That's what Andy always tells me."

"Well, you should listen to him. He's pretty smart."

Sid picks at his coffee cup, pulling apart the heat safe sleeve. A car passes them on the road, and they both look up like startled rabbits. It's quarter past five in the morning now, city commuters starting to leave for work.

"You want some advice?" Andy's mother asks.

"Sure." Strangely, it's true. He actually wants some advice, maybe for the first time in his life.

"Don't be so afraid to see a dead tree," she says. Sid snorts. He expected something about getting his GED, or reaching for his dreams, or trusting Andy to love him forever.

"Okay," he says. "But it's definitely dead. They only live twenty years."

"Says who?"

"The internet."

She rolls her eyes, and Sid laughs, looking down at his coffee cup again. This is his favorite time of day: just before dawn. Usually he's leaving work, headed home to Andy.

"First of all," Andy's mother says. "You're barely twenty years old yourself, so not every tree you've known has been around that long. And, more importantly, symbols aren't oracles. You can interpret something however you like, but that doesn't determine your fate. Am I starting to sound like I've had too much caffeine?"

"A little, yeah."

"Fun fact," she says, pulling back onto the road. "I have to be at work in three hours."

"What do you do?" Sid asks, and she laughs, loud and authentic.

"Andy never told you?"

"Maybe, but. I don't know, I guess I forgot. Sorry."

"I'm a lawyer," she says. "In the midst of getting pregnant and cheated on and divorced, I was also going to law school."

"Damn."

"Indeed." She gives a look, that Don't underestimate yourself look that he knows well from years of getting it from Andy, and he shakes his head.

"I need to see about getting some health insurance," he says. "I don't want Andy listing me as a dependent when he's rich."

"You're so sure Andy is going to be rich," she says.

"What, you think I'm wrong?"

"No, I just think it's cute, how much faith you have in him." She reaches over to pat Sid's knee. Something about the gesture makes him think of his own mother, a vague memory of sitting in the backseat and seeing her reach over to touch his father's shoulder while he drove.

Back at the house, Sid sits at the kitchen table, his hangover starting to swoop in, full force. Andy's mother sets a bowl of Frosted Mini Wheats in front of him and he eats it while she stands at the sink, spooning yogurt from a big tub.

"I'm not gonna see him," Sid says, dragging his spoon through the last of the sugary milk. "My dad. I don't mean ever. Just, not now."

"That seems smart," Andy's mother says. She touches the back of Sid's head as she passes behind him to put the yogurt away. "That would be a little much for one week. Us and him."

"You guys aren't so bad."

"Well. Thanks."

Sid gets up and rinses out his bowl. Outside, the sky is starting glow blue. He's so tired that his eyes are burning, and his legs feel noodle-like. A strong wind could probably knock him over. He heads for the couch, wondering how long he'll be able to sleep before Molly bounds through on her way to school and makes him renew his promise to take her to Pizza Planet.

"Will you go check on Andy for me?" Andy's mother calls before he can get there. "His fever had gone done before I left, but, well. Can't hurt to make sure he's okay, right?"

"Right." Sid could kiss her feet for the excuse to get in bed with Andy. She smiles at him like she's well aware. He gets up the stairs in about three heartbeats, noodle legs and all.

Andy's room is dark, the laptop making aquarium sounds on his desk. Andy is just as Sid usually finds him at this hour: on his stomach in bed, pillow hugged to his chest. Sid steps out of his shoes and yanks off his jeans, leaving his t-shirt and boxers on. Normally he would be naked, and so would Andy, and that first contact would make Sid moan and Andy sigh. Even now, through their clothes, Sid almost whimpers for how good it feels to slide down against the heat of Andy's back.

"Hey," Andy says, his voice muffled and gravelly. "What time is it?"

"I don't know, six?" Sid reaches up to touch Andy's forehead. It's warm, but not boiling. "You on the verge of death in here?"

"Mom gave me NyQuil," Andy says, sighing. "Slept pretty good. How was the couch?"

"Nn. I'll tell you later. C'mere."

Sid rolls Andy onto his side, against his chest. Andy is squirmy and surprisingly hard against Sid's leg, which makes him laugh. They grind together lazily, and Sid winces when his new tattoo drags against Andy's chest. This is another reason Sid always gets them when Andy is out of town: no painful sex during the recovery period.

"What's wrong?" Andy asks. He touches Sid's chest and frowns when he feels the bandage under his shirt. "You hurt yourself?"

"Uh. Ha. Kind of. I got a tattoo."

Andy stares, blinks. Sid raises his eyebrows, trying, for the first time in his life, to look cute.

"Are you joking?" Andy says. "When?"

"Last night. It's a long story. Look -"

"Last night?" Andy pushes Sid's t-shirt up and goes for the bandage with the determination of someone who is checking a cell phone screen for evidence that they're being cheated on. Sid's heart pounds, right underneath the tattoo. He'll have to explain it, but he's not sure he can, not properly. He watches Andy's face, his attempt to figure out what it is.

"A leaf," Sid says. "It's stupid, I know, I was drunk, I just -"

Andy looks up at him, his eyes wet. Sid didn't think he'd take it this badly. It's a small tattoo, barely bigger than the skull on his neck, a little purple leaf. Andy won't be able to see it in this light, but his name is written across it in black, just barely visible against the dark purple.

"Andy," Sid says, soft, because Andy is crying, really actually crying over this. "I'm sorry, I -"

Andy kisses him, hard, pushing a choppy breath into Sid's mouth. Sid is so taken off guard that he feels like he's been punched, then Andy's tongue finds his and he kisses him back, both of their mouths soaking wet for it. Sid tries to think of the last time they kissed like this - forty-eight hours ago? He rolls on top of Andy, who is still holding Sid's face with both hands, tears slipping down his cheeks.

"The purple tree," Andy says, his voice shaking. "From your backyard."

"Yeah," Sid says. His voice is all fucked up, too, but it's not like he's going to cry, Jesus Christ, no way. "They only live for twenty years. You have to - you have to plan for that, okay? Garden-wise."

"What are you talking about?" Andy asks, laughing, and Sid can't remember him ever looking better than he does right now, wet-faced and grinning, his hair a mess on the pillow. Sid doesn't really know what he's talking about, so he doesn't answer, just kisses him. Andy tastes like cherry NyQuil, liquid sleep.

"You've got coffee breath," Andy says, pulling back to give him a disbelieving smile. Sid never drinks the stuff.

"Your mom bought it for me," he says.

"Bought it for you? Jesus, what all did I miss while I was in my NyQuil coma?"

"A lot. I'll tell you, you know, after."

"After," Andy says, nodding. He arches when Sid kisses his neck, his hands pushing up through the spikes of Sid's hair. Sid's heart is beating hard under the purple leaf, and he can feel it all the way down to the head of his dick, like his heartbeat is egging him on, telling him how badly he needs this and how good it's going to feel, getting it.

"I dreamed about you," Andy says, his legs wrapping around Sid's back. "I dreamed you came in through the window."

"I did," Sid says, pushing the words into Andy's mouth, and Andy kisses him, doesn't make him explain.

They leave their shirts on, kicking their boxers to the end of the bed. Andy has an ancient bottle of wanking lotion in the top drawer of his bedside table, and he laughs when Sid teases him for it, his lips on Andy's neck.

"You ever jerk off to me, back when you lived here?" Sid asks. Andy snorts.

"Uh," he says. "No comment."

Sid sits up on his knees to slick himself, thinking about how zealously he used to jerk off to Andy, before he even knew anything about sex. He would just think about the way Andy's skin smelled when he was lying in the dirt under that picnic table, under Sid, staring up at him like, What are you going to do to me next?. After he'd come, Sid's fantasies would get so soft: Andy panting and tired and cuddled in his arms. Relieved, saved, clutching at him.

It feels like they haven't fucked in two months, and the way Andy's eyes flood with astonishment makes Sid afraid that he'll come in thirty seconds like a sixteen-year-old. He sinks in balls deep and buries his face against Andy's neck, thinking about their first time, how easy it was, Andy like a present that was left on Sid's doorstep, Sid almost afraid he was on candid camera, because things that good didn't happen to people like him. Afterward, they were all punchy and smug, ragging on each other for the faces they'd made. Sid fed Andy Twizzlers, and it became a thing, having Twizzlers nearby after sex, pressing them to Andy's lips. Funny, the random details that become sacred.

"Jesus, yeah," Andy says, and he arches like a porn star, his neck exposed for Sid's teeth. He gasps when Sid bites at him, just gently, just a tease, and moans when Sid starts fucking him hard.

"Gonna have to gag you," Sid says, panting, grinning. Andy laughs, his eyes pinched shut, his whole body tipped toward Sid's, everything on offer.

"Gag me, okay, gag me," he says, gasping between every word. "Oh, but - fuck yeah, right there - don't stop."

He makes Sid feel like he's doing important art, every time. It adds a dimension to coming that Sid likes to think few people have known. When Andy goes off Sid has to bury his head in the pillow to conceal his groan, because God there's nothing better than the way Andy's eyebrows knit like he's worried he won't survive how good he feels. Sid is like two seconds behind him, and it's only been a few days, but it feels like remembering how to breathe, that relief.

Andy pets him, and Sid pants, the new tattoo on fire against Andy's chest, fucking blazing. It feels good, adding a weird and amazing layer to the winding-down of his orgasm, his dick still buried in Andy, their chests still heaving against each other. Sid lifts himself up onto his elbows with some effort, and rubs his nose against Andy's, 'cause he knows Andy likes that, and 'cause he kind of likes it, too.

"So tell me everything," Andy says. Sid pulls out, flops onto his side, and tells him: everything.

Toward the end, he actually falls asleep, possibly in mid-sentence. Andy is kissing his face, stroking his side, coaxing it out of him. Andy is a fucking magician when it comes to getting the truth out of Sid, or anything out of him, everything. Sid would resent that if Andy didn't take such good care of his secrets, keeping them in jeweled boxes and using them for nothing more than the occasional skin-stripping look of understanding. Sid dreams about fish, possibly is one, slippery brothers sliding against him. He's amazed that he can breathe underwater, that doing so is so incredibly easy.

He wakes up alone, disoriented and hungover. He can smell Andy but can't see him. He buries his nose in the sheets and remembers: they're at the Temple of Andy, the origin, and Sid has not yet been destroyed as an infidel. His dick is out, leaking on Andy's bedsheets, and he feels stupidly proud as he lopes across the room toward their bags - their bags, containing a mixture of Andy's clothes and his, the shirts and socks that live together in the same drawers at home. He fishes out a clean pair of boxers, steps back into his jeans and heads into the hallway, the quiet of the house making him optimistic.

Downstairs, at the stove, Andy is making pancakes. His mother is at work, his sister at school. Sid glues himself to Andy's back, sucks in the smell of his neck and laughs when Andy does, because it's a joke, it's gotta be, how good they've had it.

"Is it healing properly?" Andy asks. "Your tattoo?"

"Yeah," Sid says, his hands sliding down to Andy's hipbones, which are on this top ten list when it comes to Andy's body. "Healing just fine."

"I'm making pancakes," Andy says.

"I can see that."

"You need Advil or something?"

"Uh," Sid says. "Yes. Hey."

"Hey?"

"Last night was kind of - not terrible, but, um. Something close to that. And then there was you, so." Sid isn't going to actually say thank you, but he wants Andy to hear it.

"And then there was you," Andy says. Sid can feel his smile against his cheek. "Okay, yeah. I know."

"You know?"

"I do."

They eat pancakes, their feet tangled up underneath the kitchen table. There is no glass pitcher of orange juice, but there is orange juice, from a regular plastic bottle. After breakfast Andy puts the dishes in the sink and they retire to the couch.

"This is like, the only Monday I've ever spent with you," Andy says, his body flexing toward Sid's until he's basically in Sid's lap. "The only one I've spent like this, anyway. In my boxers, no place to be."

"No place to be," Sid says understanding that this means everything, and that it wouldn't mean anything if this was true for very long. Oh, the ways to earn happiness: his father hated them, found them unfair. Without Andy, Sid would agree, but in the meantime the world seems completely just. What does it mean: the love of Sid's life is here on earth, and the love of his father's isn't. Well, here Sid is anyway, motherless and alive. He likes to think that he'd give his own son credit for that, if such a person were possible.

Sid sleeps again while Andy watches TV, and around noon they cram into the too-small hall shower together. They get out, towel each other off in Andy's room, and Andy checks his email while Sid dresses. Sid can hear him getting gchats.

"That lemon tree still alive?" Sid asks.

"I think it'd be kind of rude to ask," Andy says.

"Oh, Jesus, well. Wouldn't want to be rude to Greg."

"He's really jealous of you, okay?" Andy says, turning from the computer. Sid snorts.

"Yeah, no shit. And you say I'm crazy when I say he wants to fuck you?"

"No, no," Andy says. "He's not jealous of you for having me, I mean he's jealous of you, of me having you. He wants a Sid."

"What the hell?" Sid says, laughing. "Stop talking shit."

"I'm serious!" Andy says. He's beaming, and Sid shouldn't have gotten dressed, 'cause he's probably going to have to fuck Andy again. He looks too good sitting there at his desk in nothing but his towel.

"Greg wouldn't know what to do with me," Sid says.

"Well, he doesn't want you specifically - I'd kick his ass if I thought he did - but, you know, he's lonely, and he wishes he had an awesome boyfriend who he's known forever, and who looks like he could throw a guy through a window, and who, you know. Moved to California for him."

"Goddamn," Sid says, because he might have to actually like Greg, if that's how he sees him.

"See?" Andy says. "You don't know everything." Somehow this smugness only makes him look better, so Sid steals his towel and lifts him out of his chair. Andy laughs and lets himself be carried to the bed.

"I still can't believe I'm getting ravaged here, of all places," Andy says, dropping back to look at the glow in the dark stars on the ceiling as Sid unbuttons his jeans. "I played with tinker toys in this room, dude."

There's a dirty joke in there somewhere, but Andy looks so sincerely wistful that Sid won't let himself make it.

"Well," he says, shoving his jeans and boxers down. "I'll ravage you nice and slow, if that'll make you feel better."

Andy looks up at him and nods, his pupils fattening like the very suggestion has hypnotized him.

Eventually, they leave the bed. Andy wants to walk around the old neighborhood, and though it makes Sid a little nervous - so many ghosts, and stupid memories of picking up the trash at the end of every driveway - he does it, for Andy.

"I know the kid who lives here," Andy says, stopping in front of a house with fat stone pillars on its porch. "I gave her a bunch of my old toys before I left her college - her mom was my day care teacher a million years ago."

"What, you want to say hi or something?" Sid asks, his tone communicating how enthusiastic he'd be about that idea. Andy shakes his head.

"No," he says, looking a little dazed. "Just - it's funny. There was this one - this toy my dad gave me. She still has it, I guess."

"The cowboy thing?" Sid says, suppressing a groan. Andy was weirdly sentimental about it when they were kids, and Sid always figured there was a dad-related reason. Sid had found the thing kind of creepy, especially after that one weird dream. Andy looks at him and grins.

"Man," he says. "Sometimes it's like I forget - you really were around for everything."

"Yeah," Sid says. He takes Andy's elbow and pulls him along, away from the house with the pillars. "That was me, the whole time."

Back at the house, Andy pulls out old home video tapes and they sit on the couch watching them, Sid pulling Andy closer and closer as he remembers Andy the way he was, the boy who made the sky seem a little brighter whenever he came through the loose plank in the fence. That's a talent Andy still has, and Sid is pretty sure it's his eyes. They really bring out the blue in the sky.

Molly comes home around three, dramatic complaints about the horrors of high school bursting from her before she's all the way through the door. Andy's mother doesn't get home until six thirty, and she immediately asks about Andy's cold, how's his throat feeling, has he taken his temperature today?

"I'm fine, Mom," Andy says. "I feel a lot better." He's still on the couch, under Sid's arm. Molly is at Sid's other side, showing him videos on her phone.

"Stay right there," Andy's mother says, stepping back. "I'm gonna get my camera."

"No," Molly says, touching her pony tail. "My hair looks stupid."

"Stay right there!" her mother calls, undeterred.

"I guess you can tell by the eight million home videos that she's obsessed with capturing precious moments," Andy says.

Sid laughs. He's a precious moment? Part of one, anyway? Hard to believe. He does his best not to look threatening when he smiles for the camera.

They go to Pizza Planet for dinner, and Sid can't believe how stupidly satisfying it feels to put his credit card in the token machine and get as many of them as he wants. He used to know a way to rig the thing so that it would just spit tokens until it needed a refill; he used to be such a good thief. He used to always feel like the world owed him one.

"I got a Buzz Lightyear out of this thing once," he tells Molly when they're playing the alien claw machine.

"Seriously?" she says. "Out of this thing?"

"Yeah," he says. "It was buried under all the aliens. I don't know what happened to it, actually."

"Are you telling the Buzz Lightyear t-shirt story?" Andy asks, appearing over their shoulders to watch Molly work the claw.

"No," Sid says. "Totally different story. Did you steal a Buzz Lightyear out of my yard when we were kids?"

"What? No! I had my own. Remember?"

"I've heard the Buzz Lightyear t-shirt story," Molly says. "It's like my second favorite Sid story."

"Jesus," Sid says, his face actually getting hot.

"What's your favorite?" Andy asks.

"Are you kidding?" she says, turning to gape at him. "The one where he drives to California with you at the last minute. Of course!"

"I told Molly about you moving out with me there before I told my Mom," Andy says, and he's blushing now, too. "So. I mean, I had to tell someone. All those stories."

Sid kisses him between his eyes, right in the middle of Pizza Planet. What's anybody here going to do about it? They own this place, anyway. He walks back to the table, where Andy's mother is looking at her camera, scrolling through more pictures she's taken tonight.

"Do you have any pictures of your mother?" she asks.

"Uh huh," he says. He digs for his wallet. "One." He takes it out and shows her: he's two years old, laughing in his mother's lap.

"She was really beautiful," Andy's mother says.

"I know."

He puts it away, and laughs to himself when sees the other ancient relic that still lives in there, at the back of his wallet: the tag he cut off of Andy's Buzz Lightyear t-shirt. He remembers being twelve years old, no idea why he couldn't just throw it away. The air-punching Buzz Lightyear insignia is almost completely worn off, from years of Sid digging the tag out and rubbing its silky material between his fingers, thinking about Andy.

"What's that?" Andy's mother asks.

"This, uh. T-shirt tag. It was Andy's."

"Ah, the infamous t-shirt incident," she says, smiling. "I remember him coming home with that shirt inside out, that story - I thought, oh, God. Here we go again."

"Hadn't gotten rid of me," Sid says.

"I think that was when I knew you'd be around for awhile," she says, nodding.

Sid grins out at Andy and Molly, who are celebrating a successful claw grab. He's starting to get that impression, too, but it still feels good to hear it out loud, from Andy's other most important person. He's gonna be around for awhile.

//the end//

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