You and I
are a complicated series
of ifs
	ands
and
		buts 

It wasn’t until I had shared that with him, my thoughts on what happens to you after you die, that I realized I loved him more than I had ever loved anyone else. I had been able to, with the utmost confidence, share the things I kept closest to my heart. These were thoughts I never vocalized, ideas I only thought about as I was falling asleep at night. Things that were so private, the idea of telling them to someone was ridiculous, borderline obscene.

But it had felt so necessary to say them to him, to let him in to that last, most secret part of my being. It was like I wouldn’t’ve been able to live with myself if I hadn’t. Almost as if I couldn’t stand to be two separate beings anymore. I wanted him to know everything about me. How my sister died, how often I regretted starting that fight, why I don’t like the way charcoal creeps up on my arms and fingers and how it’s very different from the way paint feels when it does the same thing. I wanted him to know what it was like for me when I would start seizing. I wanted him to see the things I see, to hear and feel how I do.

And I wanted his secrets. I wanted to know why he had moved to New York. When he had first started cutting and why. I wanted to know what name he was confirmed under, if he had loved his first girlfriend, if he had wanted to have sex with Alex and if he had thought about it the same way I think about making love to him. I wanted to know when he first discovered Led Zepplin and why he only listens to vinyl. I wanted to know if he believed in aliens or bigfoot or the Mayan calendar. The power of positive thinking. God? (Do you still believe in God, Ransom? Even after all he’s done to you. After everything he’s made you think about yourself and hate about yourself and your body and who you love and the things you do in the dark with me?) I wanted to know why he said Neon Bible and Thom Yorke saved his life

But most of all, I wanted to know if he knew how much I loved him.

“Who was the first boy you ever kissed?”

Cody looked up from staring at the alleyway underneath them in surprise. Ransom hardly ever asked about his past experiences, and even less often about the people he had loved before him.

“Eremy…?” Cody replied hesitantly, not entirely sure of what Ransom was looking for.

“He doesn’t count.”

“Why?”

“Because,” Ransom took a drag from his cigarette, the tiny ember at the tip flaring up and for a brief moment adding another light to the city. “Eremy’s an asshole and you probably kissed him in preschool, which isn’t what I’m talking about.”

He let the smoke slowly drifted out of his mouth towards the sky as he cast Cody a sideways glance. “I mean your first kiss. After you realized you…. liked boys, or whatever.”

Cody was silent. He rolled his own cigarette between his fingers for a second, staring at it before bringing it to his lips.

“His name was Charlie,” he said quietly, pulling smoke in to his mouth and holding it there while he pulled the memory out of the place where it had been locked away in that dark and half forgotten part of himself.

“It was just before high school,” he continued, resting his chin and arms on the cool middle bar of the fire escape, looking absentmindedly through the window of the apartment across the ally and in to the lives of their neighbors. “I’d had a crush on him for a while. He was a sweet kid. Really flamboyant, the kind that gets you beaten up when you’re thirteen years old…”

Ransom nodded knowingly, swinging his legs a little.

They were fighting again, the neighbors across the way. It seemed like that was all they did anymore. Fight and make up only to go back to fighting again days later. It was a wonder they were still together.

“It was at a party. Suzie Summerfield’s, I think.” Cody said finally. “And Charlie was standing there in the corner, holding his soda and watching everyone in his stupid jacket. But he had this massive black eye… And I just… I felt really bad for him, you know?” He turned his head back towards Ransom, wondering if that statement was true. If his lover really did know what he meant.

“So it was a pity kiss?”

“No. Not exactly, no.”

“So what was it?”

“It was… It was a kiss? It wasn’t really anything too special. I mean, it was my first time kissing with tongue. So it was sloppy and a little weird. But it was so…” he paused, looking for the right words to describe it.

“Hot?” Ransom proposed, shooting him a glance and a wry smile.

“No,” he smiled back, nudging Ransom’s foot playfully with his own. “The only thing I can think of is freeing. Like suddenly this whole hidden part of me had been given permission to exist, and I could finally start… I don’t know…. Becoming myself?”

Ransom nodded as he flicked what was left of his cigarette in to the alley. It’s tiny red end becoming smaller and smaller as it fell to the ground. Suddenly he was shutting down. Cody could see it. His smile had dropped and his eyes were becoming distant, like he was losing himself someplace in that space of guilt and longing and hate that he spent so much of his time in.

“What about you?” Cody asked hesitantly, hoping to pull him back out.

“I… His name was Lucas… I don’t…” Ransom paused, running an anxious hand through his hair before tugging at his sleeve. “I don’t want to talk about it…. Not right now…”

Cody nodded, leaning over to kiss Ransom’s freckled cheek as tenderly as he could manage, hoping that maybe one day they could talk about these things without the fear and shame that so often crippled the other boy.