GRAPHICS. because this is how i "write" these days...
He paused at the door to Danny’s room. He hadn’t been inside yet; it had been Tilda who had rummaged through the drawers in search of Danny’s nice black suit, while he lay prone on the floor of his own room, crying until his eyes burned. The brass doorknob was freezing against his palm, and for a heartbeat it seemed that he could see his breath in the air-but that was ridiculous. It was June, and the air was heavy with muggy humidity, even with the air conditioner running.
Several minutes later, he pulled his hand away from the door. No, he couldn’t go inside. Not yet. He couldn’t bear to look at Danny’s rumpled bed and think that his cousin would never again flop onto it with a shrill squeak of springs. He couldn’t glance through Danny’s comics and book shelves, look at all of the posters he’d tacked to the walls, the photos framed on his desk. He couldn’t take stock of his best friend’s life and touch everything he’d left behind.
Not yet.
Instead, Robbie turned slowly and shuffled into his room across the hall, purposefully looking blindly past the Polaroid snapshots pinned to the corkboard over his computer. He ignored the nice suit and tie his mother had set out on his chair and crawled into his bed, pulling the duvet up to his chin and tucking his hands beneath his pillow.
His mother meant well. He knew this, and even appreciated her fumbling efforts at comfort. But Matilda Beechum was a mother who couldn’t be maternal if a gun was pressed to her temple. She loved and supported and protected, but she couldn’t comfort. She couldn’t be soft and yielding, when she had lived a life full of sharp edges and angles. Robbie supposed it came from being the eldest child and having to take on adult responsibilities when his grandparents died; from a lifetime spent struggling to raise a mentally ill and unpredictable sister who refused to take her medication; from being devoted to a career that demanded cutthroat sensibilities, firm resolve and decisiveness. He appreciated everything she had done and overcome, and he loved her. But she couldn’t understand. That was impossible.
How could she understand? Danny was a part of him, and had been since that first summer they spent together. He’d never been just a cousin, just a friend-he was better than a brother, and more like a soul mate. Together they were better than they ever could have been apart. They had shared more than blood and time, thoughts or dreams. Now that he was gone… It was as if the one left behind was only half-alive. His heart took twice as long to beat. He was breathing with only one lung. Robbie thought he now knew what it felt like to lose a spouse, because if there had ever been the perfect partner for him, it was Danny.
The therapist his mother wanted him to see-Richard? Was that his name? Robbie couldn’t help but think of him as Dick-would probably say that such feelings were unhealthy. No doubt experts would say he had had an unwholesome relationship with his cousin, that he was obsessed. There would probably be hurtful accusations and questions; but at least he wasn’t stuck in denial. Danny was the most important person in his life, the only person he’d ever been truly himself with, and they had shared too much to be anything but real partners.
The pain in his chest deepened until he wondered if he was actually feeling his heart rupturing. That would be poetic-dying of a heart attack the day of Danny’s funeral. How very fucking overwrought of him. If Danny could see him, he’d tell him to stop the Agony Aunt routine and grow a pair. The thought almost made him smile, and that made the pain abate, even if only slightly. Robbie sighed and threw back the bedsheets, sitting up to cover his face with shaking hands.
“I’m sorry I fucked up, Danny,” Robbie murmured.
“What did you fuck up?”
It took a minute for Robbie to realize he hadn’t imagined the voice. That it hadn’t been the imaginary Danny in his head speaking. Slowly, slowly, he lowered his hands and looked up…