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“Please,” Anthony said. He swallowed hard, grabbed Steven’s hand hard, fell to his knees hard. “Please stay. Please. Don’t leave me, please.” He didn’t want to cry, but he felt the burning in his eyes, the thickness in his throat.
Steven mirrored Anthony’s position, kneeling so they were around the same height. “I have to go. You know I have to.”
“Steven, don’t leave. Fuck what they say, fuck all of them. Stay with me, we can, shit, we can run. We’ll flee the goddamn country if we have to. Just don’t go,” Anthony pleaded, and the tears were finally spilling over. Steven couldn’t leave. What if something happened to him? Anthony couldn’t live without him, he knew it.
Steven’s expression softened and he reached out, infinitely tender, cupping Anthony’s jaw and wiping away his tears with a thumb. Anthony turned his face into Steven’s hand, kissing whatever bit of skin he could. “I’m sorry, Anthony. I love you, but this is something I have to do.”
Anthony bit his lip hard against the noise that tried to escape, squeezed his eyes shut against another wave of tears. Struck with a sudden idea, his eyes flew open again and he held onto Steven harder, hope bubbling in his chest. “I’ll go with you. I can enlist, we can-”
“What about your shop?” Steven interrupted. “What about your mother? If something happens to you, who’ll take care of all that stuff? If something happens to you, what will happen to me? You have a choice, Anthony, and I can’t let you make the wrong one just because I have to go fight in this war.”
Anthony’s lips pressed together tightly. He knew Steven was right, but he didn’t like it. He lifted a hand to press over Steven’s, press them hand to hand to cheek. “You’ll write me as much as you can,” he said. “I’ll write you back. Promise me you’ll write.”
Steven nodded. “Of course I’ll write to you. I promise.”
“One more thing, just…Promise me,” Anthony’s voice broke and he swallowed again. “Promise me you’ll come back. Promise me you’ll come home.”
“I promise. A thousand times I promise,” Steven said. He kissed Anthony, lingering and gentle and filled with a palpable sadness. “Now you. You promise me that I’ll have a home to come back to.”
Anthony pulled their joined hands off his cheek, pressed them to his chest over his heart. “Suburbs, white picket fence, two-point-five kids. The whole nine yards.”
Steven nodded, then again. He kissed Anthony, then again, and when they broke apart it felt like a goodbye, like it was the last time. “I’ll come home,” he said. “I’ll come back to you.”
Then Steven was gone, and Anthony was left with the blood pumping through his veins and the ache in his chest.
- - -
The newscaster sounded jubilant, his smile wide and bright. “The war’s over! The peace treaty was signed Tuesday morning and our troops are coming back home.”
Anthony pressed his fingers to his lips, closed his eyes and sent up a prayer to someone he hadn’t spoken to in a long time. It was over. Steven was coming home.
It was early, way too early, when the plane landed. Anthony was practically vibrating out of his skin with the force of his excitement. Finally, after these months of waiting, Steven was going to be back with him again.
Men and women came pouring out of the plane, joining with their families in tearful reunions, kids clinging to legs or being swept up into embraces, breathless kisses and glowing smiles. Anthony didn’t see Steven yet.
Anthony waited as people filed out with their luggage and their families in tow. Some soldiers left the plane and didn’t have anyone to go running to. Anthony still didn’t see Steven. His heart was in his throat and he was prematurely choking on grief but the fact that he didn’t see Steven was a bad sign.
A boy, because that’s what he was, stood alone in army fatigues. He was trying to make it seem like he wasn’t looking around, but Anthony knew that no one had come for him. The boy spotted him staring and turned pink, glancing quickly away before suddenly snapping his gaze back with recognition in his eyes. The boy started towards Anthony.
“Hey,” the boy said when he was close enough. “Um, this might sound weird, but is your name Anthony?”
Surprised, Anthony just nodded.
The boy nodded back, then stared at him in silence for a few seconds. He suddenly twitched like he’d remembered something and reached out a hand to shake. “Oh, I’m John. I, uh,” he stopped, frowning, “I served with Steven.”
Anthony latched onto that, gripping John’s hand tighter. “Steven? Do you know where he is?”
John’s eyes went wide. “They didn’t tell you?”
Anthony blinked, dread sinking in. “What? Who didn’t…Who didn’t tell me what?”
John looked extremely uncomfortable, and incredibly sad. “He, um. He didn’t make it. He’s…” John couldn’t meet Anthony’s eyes. “He’s dead. I’m sorry.”
Numbness settled over Anthony. He heard the words, heard John’s consolations, but it didn’t seem real to him. He distantly knew he was walking away without so much as a thank you or goodbye, but he just kept walking until he was in his car. Then he drove, past his apartment complex, past the city limits, out to a scenic spot on a cliff overlooking the sea. There was a tree, there, and he put his hand on it, over the carved “S + A” that they’d done when they were younger. Lifetimes younger, it seemed to Anthony.
Anthony stared at the letters until his eyes blurred and he realized he was crying. He reached up to brush away his tears, but his hand went to his hair instead. He fell on his ass, his chest heaving with breaths that weren’t enough, raking his hands through his hair and trying not to shake too badly, failing at that.
“Fuck,” he said, then again. He leaned, letting himself tip over so that his forearms were braced on the ground and his fingers were curled into a patch of grass. “Fuck,” he said again, more vehement. He slammed a palm on the ground hard enough to send burning, tingling shockwaves up his arm. “FUCK!” Anthony screamed into the dirt, sobbing hard enough to hurt. He let himself yell out his sorrow, cursing and crying and wanting nothing more than to jump off the cliff and be dashed against the rocks below.
When he was able to, he sat with his back against the tree, still crying, but not as much. There was snot and spit all over the lower half of his face, which he carelessly wiped off with the collar of his shirt. His face felt puffy, his chest felt achy, and he just wanted to go to his mother and let her comfort him. He stared off over the ocean, towards the rising sun, and felt trapped. When he’d been here in the past he’d felt free, like he could sprout wings and take off across the endless sea. Now his wings were clipped and he was plummeting, like that old myth about Icarus. Anthony’d flown to close to the sun, and he’d been burned.
It was almost noon by the time Anthony had collected himself enough to slide back into his car and drive home. He put the picture of Steven on his nightstand face-down and sprawled on his bed, falling eventually into a dreamless sleep.
It didn’t stop hurting. Anthony had been told time and again that only time would heal his wounds, but even when years had passed it was still an open wound. John told him it was because he’d lost his one true love, and despite the romantic in Anthony having died along with Steven, he was inclined to believe it.
Anthony’s shop flourished, his mother miraculously started to inch closer to being okay, and John stuck around. It wasn’t great. Times were hard and got harder, but Anthony pushed ever forward, determined to stick it out in Steven’s memory.
The tree on the cliff went down into the ocean in a bad storm, taking “S + A” with it. Anthony stood as close to where the tree had once been as he could, right on the edge. John was somewhere behind him, probably watching Anthony like a hawk to make sure he didn’t slip or jump off. The radio was playing from Anthony’s car, something piano-laden that made the hole in Anthony’s chest ache a little more, but it felt right.
The wound Steven had left was still open, but as the wind carried with it the smell of salt and ocean and pure exhilaration, the sound of music, Anthony felt a little bit like he could make new wings out of old feathers.