The Art of Breathing

by T. J. Klune

  “We have a very odd friendship,” he tells me.

  “We’re very odd people,” I remind him.

  “I love you, Tyson.”

  Aw. Warm fuzzies. “I know. I love you too.” I’m not mad anymore.

  “You know I’m right.”

  Warm fuzzies gone. Stupid bitch. I’m so pissed off. “I know nothing of the sort.”

  “Tyson.”

  “I know!”

  “You don’t have to spend the rest of your life wondering.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  “You would.”

  I really would. “I don’t even know how to start.” How does one repair years of idiocy when one still wants to act like an idiot? This is not a question I’ve had to ask myself before. I don’t normally play the role of the idiot. That’s not conceit, just fact.

  Well, maybe a bit of conceit.

  “Knocking on his door would probably be a good way to go.”

  I laugh nervously. “I can’t call him first?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” he asks with an evil gleam in his eye. “And you’d chicken out.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I know you.”

  Well, that’s a super bummer. “Shit.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “This is probably the worst idea you’ve ever had.”

  “Probably.”

  “This is probably going to set me back at least three years, and if you think I’m emotionally stunted now, then just you wait.”

  “Probably.”

  “This is probably going to be my tipping point, and I’ll lose it completely and end up in a psychiatric ward, rocking in the corner of my room, and the only times I’ll be let out are when I have to go to electroshock therapy that will do nothing but further send me down the cavernous black hole that is my decimated psyche.”

  “Probably.”

  “Won’t you just feel so guilty at the sight of me?”

  “Probably.”

  “You’re still going to make me do it, aren’t you?”

  “Definitely.”

  A ball bounces in front of us, kicking up bits of sand. “Hey,” one of the college boys with thirty-seven abdominal muscles calls. “Toss it back?”

  Corey stands and does just that. It’s a good throw, and Corey looks good doing it.

  “You want in?” the non-gay college boy asks with a completely flirtatious smile as he sizes Corey up.

  “In more ways than one,” Corey calls back. The college boys laugh and wave him over. Oh, college boys. You’re so progressive.

  “You okay to stay here?” he asks me.

  I roll my eyes. “I think I’ll survive while you go join the pseudo-hetero parade. Also? I’m insulted that instead of asking me if I wanted to join, you assumed I wanted to stay here.”

  “Do you want to join?”

  “Ew. They’re all sweating. Of course not. How dare you ask me.”

  “Do you think one of them will give me a piggyback ride if I ask?”

  “I’m pretty sure they’d do a lot more if you ask. Straight guys are so gay.”

  “Think about what I said, okay? About Dominic.”

  “Bite me,” I grumble at him. I don’t plan on doing anything of the sort. As soon as Corey goes on the prowl, I’m going to take the car keys and leave him here and cross into Canada to begin my long-standing dream of becoming the French-Canadian Zamboni driver named Pierre. Nothing will stop me. Nothing will keep me from realizing my dream. Nothing at all.

  And then he says something so stupid, something so ridiculous, something so fucking life-altering, that I can’t even begin to process what it means, and my dreams of becoming a Zamboni driver disappear as if they were never there at all. “And besides,” he says, “I’m pretty sure he’s at least bisexual. You were too busy resolutely ignoring him to see, but his eyes never left you the day we got arrested. He watched you like you were the only thing that existed in the world. For him, I’m pretty sure you were. For at least those moments. Who knows what could happen?”

  I gape at him as my synapses misfire. I’m pretty sure I can smell the burning coming from inside my head.

  “Close your mouth, dear,” he says. “It’s unattractive.”

  “You… there’s… motor skills failing….”

  “Don’t read too much into it,” he warns. “It could be nothing.”

  “You… bastard….”

  He sighs. “I knew I should have kept that to myself.”

  All I can do is nod in agreement.

  Corey leaves to go play gayball, and I am left to ponder that just when I think everything is going well, that I have my life in order and things are looking up, all of a sudden I find myself in a position where I am so completely and utterly fucked.

  It’s inevitable, it whispers, sounding just like Dominic.

  13. Where Tyson Decides to Man the Fuck Up

  WELL, SORT of.

  “Are you absolutely sure about this?” I ask Corey, sure I’m close to a complete freak-out. I’m pretty sure my voice is so high-pitched that I sound like a mosquito. “Seriously. Let’s do this later. Like tomorrow. Or never.”

  “Or you could do it now because you told me you wanted to.”

  “How do you even know this is his house? This could be the wrong address and I could end up interrupting some kind of séance where an elderly woman is trying to communicate with her husband who died suddenly and without warning. I would feel so terrible about that.” And I really would too. Unless her husband turned out to be an evil ghost. Then I would feel like I saved the world. It’s a precarious line to walk.

  “It’s good to know that even when you’re on the verge of panicking, you sound so completely sane.”

  “It could happen! How do you even know this is where he lives?” I know where he lives, but Corey shouldn’t. Unless he’s stalking Dom.

  “I have my ways.”

  I scowl at him. “You don’t have ways. I changed my mind. Home, James. Take me far from here.”

  “No,” he says as he puts the Jeep in park. “You’re going up there, you’re knocking on the door, and you’re going to stop being a whiny little bitch. Grow a pair, Tyson.”

  “You know, this tough-love thing you’ve got going on is really annoying,” I tell him as I stare up at the unassuming brick house set back from the roadway. There’s an old Ford Bronco sitting in the driveway. It fits him, somehow. This whole place does. There’s a small yard in the front, the grass green and well maintained. There’s a bird feeder hanging from the eaves of the house near the front door, catching the late afternoon sun. The garage door is open, and I can see a bike hanging from the ceiling, and I remember (whether I want to or not) a time that he told me he never really could ride a bike, that they were always too small. That he looked ridiculous trying to ride one. I spent the next four weeks scouring the Internet until I found an old used bike on eBay. I gave Bear the money I’d saved, and he bought it for me. I was only ten. Dominic was sixteen. The look on his face when I rolled it out to him knocked the breath from my chest. You would have thought it was the grandest gift to have ever been given.

  We rode around that summer. Everywhere. For hours. We didn’t have a single care in the world. Sure, my mom had abandoned me. Sure, his dad had murdered his mother. Sure, we’d just lost Mrs. P. Sure, we were still recovering from loss and death and sacrifice, but those hours spent riding along the boardwalk, birds crying out overhead, the crash of the surf off somewhere to our right, those hours when it was just me and him were spent without a care. All the worries would still be there when we got back. All the hurt. All the sadness. That would all still be there.

  He was my therapy then. He was the reason I understood the art of breathing.

  “Ty?” I hear Corey ask.

  “Yeah.” My voice is rough. I clear my throat, but I can’t take my eyes off the bike hanging in the garage. It’s not the same one (of course it’s not—that old bike had eventu
ally thrown its chain and the spokes had cracked and splintered, and years later, I don’t remember where it eventually ended up), but it doesn’t matter. There’s a smaller bike hanging next to it. It’s blue. It’s tiny. Training wheels attached to the sides. A kid’s bike. For Ben.

  His son.

  “Ty,” Corey says again.

  “What?” I tear my eyes away and stare down the road.

  “You don’t have to do this,” he tells me gently. He puts his hand on my arm and plays his fingers along the back of my hand. It’s only then that I realize both of my hands are curled into fists. “I can be pushy. But if you’re not ready for this, then we drive away now and you’ll never hear about it from me again. I only want what’s best for you, but no matter what I want, what keeps you safe is always better. This isn’t worth it if it hurts you. Nothing is.”

  Somehow, I’m able to crack a smile. “That doesn’t sound like you at all,” I tell him. I turn my hand over and start tugging on his fingers. It won’t be until much later that I’ll realize I used to do the same thing to Bear when I was a kid. I don’t know when I started doing it to Corey. I know why, though. Somehow, it grounds me, keeps my mind focused. I don’t know why. I don’t know that it matters.

  “I’m fickle,” he says with a small laugh.

  “It’s got to happen sooner or later,” I say and look back up at the garage.

  Corey says nothing. Just waits.

  “I think….” I stop. Think hard. So many things are running through my head, like I’m being assaulted by memories, and he’s always there. Even when I know he wasn’t, I can still remember him. That hulking presence. That broken voice. That laugh that sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before, all rocks and rust. “Did I ever tell you how we met?”

  “No.”

  “I was following ants. I was fascinated by them for some reason. I don’t know. Just how my mind worked. One day I was following the ants and he was just there, watching me, on the other side of the road. I don’t know where he came from. I don’t know why. I thought he was weird at first. Maybe a little scary. But then I saw he’d drawn little stars on his shoes, and I thought that was so cool. I thought that was just so adult.”

  “It is pretty cool,” Corey agrees quietly.

  “It’s strange. I can’t remember a time when he wasn’t there. It’s all jumbled in my head. You know me, Corey. You probably know me better than almost anyone. But I don’t think you understand how my thoughts go. How they work. There’s a million of them. All at once. There are times I can barely focus on any one, much less all of them. It hurts sometimes. My head. Sometimes I get headaches. Sometimes there are earthquakes and I can’t breathe. It’s like my brain shuts down and my lungs collapse and my throat constricts, and even though I want to breathe, even though I want that more than anything in the world, I can’t. I can’t focus. I can’t focus on the one thing that I know will work. The one thing I know will take it all away. If I could just breathe, then all the rest would be fine.”

  He tightens his hand in mine to let me know he hears me.

  So touching, it mocks. So sweet and touching and blah, blah, blah. The reason you can’t breathe is because you’re broken, Kid. You’re broken and you won’t ever be fixed.

  It’s probably right, that voice.

  “I know he wasn’t there. All the time. Before. But I sometimes pretend he was because it makes things easier. It makes the hard things go away. Dominic was there and I knew how to breathe. I don’t know how. I don’t know why. But he kept most of the earthquakes away. He kept most of the bad thoughts away. That little voice that tells me I’m not good enough. That I’m too smart for my own good, and that I will never be healed. I will never be rid of this.”

  I look down at our joined hands. “I didn’t just love him,” I say. “I think part of me needed him. For a while. And I hate that, now. I resent that now, I think. I don’t want to need anyone. I want to be able to stand on my own two feet without feeling the ground shaking underneath me, without having to worry if today is going to be the day another panic attack hits. I’m not right. Up here.” I tap the side of my head. “I don’t know if I ever will be. Not completely. I just want to be okay. I just want to one day be okay.”

  “And it’ll happen,” Corey says, squeezing my hand. “And even if it doesn’t, I promise I’ll be there right by your side, and we can be fucking crazy and stupid together. If you forget how to breathe, I’ll help remind you.”

  “This is getting really saccharine,” I mutter.

  “Ah, there’s the Tyson I know and love,” he says with a laugh. “Opens up just a little bit and then takes a giant step back.”

  “Can’t have it being too easy.”

  “No. Can’t have that.”

  “I want to leave,” I tell him.

  He waits. He knows me better than that.

  “But if I do, I’m going to kick my own ass for it later, aren’t I?”

  “If not you, then I will,” he reassures me. “Enough is enough. It’s time to put on your big-boy pants and get this done and over with.”

  I look back up at the house. “Yeah.”

  “You want me to wait out here?”

  I really do. Chances are I’m going to chicken out and will need a getaway vehicle waiting for me. Or Dominic will open the door, see it’s me, and slam it in my face. Or I’ll have misunderstood everything and Stacey will answer the door and call for her husband and smile at me and say, “Welcome to our loving home, where we love each other and live in loving matrimony filled with large amounts of love.” Or (and this one is by far the worst) Dominic will open the door, invite me in, and I will have to go inside with him, and it’ll just be me and him, and he’ll sit across from me, staring at me and waiting until I speak, and I won’t be able to think of a single goddamn thing to say. I won’t be able to think of anything at all, because what do you say to someone like him? What do you say to the person who hurt you like no other (even if he didn’t know it was happening)? What do you say to the person who, aside from your brother, has had the most influence on your life?

  Without Bear, I would not be alive. This, I know.

  But without Dominic, I have not been whole. This I’ve known for a very long time, whether I’ve wanted to realize it or not.

  “No,” I say to Corey. “It’ll be fine.”

  “I almost believed you there.”

  “It will.”

  “I’m convinced.” He doesn’t sound convinced.

  “I promise.”

  “I could go talk to him before you,” he says. “Take him down a few pegs.”

  “I’m pretty sure he could squash you. With one hand.”

  “Yeah, can we talk about that for a minute? I didn’t know you were into the muscles. That brings a whole new dimension to you. We’ve all got our kinks, I suppose.”

  “What? I’m not!”

  He stares at me.

  “A little,” I admit. “So he’s a big guy. Big deal.”

  Corey rolls his eyes. “That’s an understatement. He’s a fucking giant. God, what I would give to just bite into one of his biceps.”

  “Corey!”

  “What!”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Then why are we yelling!”

  “That’s not what this is about,” I say, wiping the sweat from my forehead. Goddamn stress sweat. This makes me think of that deodorant commercial and I laugh quietly, but it comes out high-pitched, like I’m trying to sing an aria while gargling mayonnaise. Sweat drips down into my eye and it burns like crazy, and oh my fucking God, why did I think I could do this? Why on earth did I think this was a good idea? Drive! I want to scream at Corey. Drive, you motherfucker! Get me the fuck out of here!

  “Then what is this about?” he asks me, ignoring my operatic-condiment laugh and the gallons of sweat leaking from my body.

  I have no fucking clue what this is about. “Just… not that.”

  “Well, it’s good to know you’
ve totally got this planned out. This is going to go well, I’m sure.”

  “Not helping.”

  “I’ll kill him,” Corey says suddenly, his eyes flashing. “If he does anything to hurt you, I swear to God I’ll kill him. They won’t find enough of him left to bury.”

  “That was intimidating,” I say, unable to keep the awe out of my voice. “Seriously.” These men in my life who threaten someone four times their size are fucking nuts. Awesome, but nuts.

  He cracks a grim smile. “Good. Because I will.”

  “I can do this?” I ask/tell him and myself.

  He knows. “You can. You remember to breathe, Ty. You know how to breathe.”

  I do. I do. I know how to breathe because I’ve been taught how to breathe. Even if my mind sometimes forgets, my body knows how, and I can do this. I can push through anything. Earthquakes are nothing. The ocean is nothing. I don’t need a fucking bathtub. I’m nineteen years old. I’m a certified genius. I’m not some Kid anymore. I am more than it wants me to be. It will not break me.