Talker's Graduation

Talker’s Graduation / Amy Lane
    2

    Looking to the Past

    THE small bedroom in the back of the tiny house was built with
    wrap-around windows. In the winter, they put fiberglass insulation in
    the windows and tacked the drapes to the wall to hold it in place
    because it was frickin’ cold in the winter, but in the summer, the
    light bounced off the sea even before it hit the front of the house
    and showered the bedroom in gold. Sometimes, they’d cover the
    windows with the drapes anyway, because who wanted to wake up
    at five-thirty every day? But most days, they let the little room with
    its
    hardwood
    floors
    and
    bright
    area
    rug
    fill
    with
    rose/gold/purple/silver/orange light, and they woke up to that.
    In Talker’s memory, those moments lying next to Brian as that
    gorgeous, calorie-rich rainbow of light filtered into their room were
    the first moments he could ever remember quiet in his own head.
    His days were a cacophony of music, heard or remembered. His
    speech was rapid-fire, staccato, syncopated rubber, rebounding off
    crazy-angled walls. And then fate (Brian) had brought them here,
    and they’d packed everything they owned into Brian’s failing car
    and a borrowed bruiser of a pre-nineties truck and, accompanied by
    friends, driven ninety miles away from Sacramento to the sea.
    They’d managed to get their bedroom together before they’d fallen
    into bed, and when they woke up….
    Peace.
    After Brian had come home from the hospital three years ago,
    Talker had thought peace would be the last thing they’d ever have.
    Talker’s Graduation | Amy Lane
    3

    THE weight set they‟d bought for Brian to use for at-home physical
    therapy was the hand-me-down set from a grandmother of twelve
    that Brian‟s Aunt Lyndie had picked up at a yard sale. The lead
    weights were covered in pastel-colored vinyl that made it hard for
    Brian to keep a grip on them as he worked his damaged-beyond-
    damaged right shoulder.
    “Ouch! Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”
    Talker winced. He‟d been doing his homework in the living
    room when he‟d heard the weights thump to the floor, and he‟d
    been braced for it. Brian needed help—he did. He needed
    someone to spot him, someone to help him grab the weight,
    someone to keep his fingers closed as he lifted it. But Brian didn‟t
    ask for help. Brian had never asked for help. He hadn‟t asked for
    help when his shoulder was going out, he hadn‟t asked for help
    when he‟d been floundering in his classes; he had simply soldiered
    on, made do, and found some way to survive on what he had
    instead of what he needed.
    Most days, Talker admired the hell out of him for that.
    Days like this, and he wanted to smack his lover upside the
    fucking thick goddamned head.
    There was another thump, and Tate couldn‟t take it anymore.
    He stood up and turned down the music on his laptop, then
    ventured quietly into the bedroom of their crappy upstairs
    apartment. Brian was grasping the pink weight—the second
    smallest one—with so much concentration that sweat was running
    down his face, even in the early, early spring, in an apartment that
    was never warm enough until it was sweltering. He was lifting that
    thing assiduously behind him, then replacing it to his hips, and then
    Talker’s Graduation | Amy Lane
    4

    behind him, then back, counting to himself as he kept his body bent
    forward, resting his other elbow on his knee.
    It hurt. There was no doubt about the fact that it hurt. His
    Kansas-sky-blue-eyes were narrowed, his jaw was clenched, and
    water was leaking from the corners of his eyes. Sweat slicked back
    his wheat-blond hair and the just-healed scars at Brian‟s temple,
    over his eye, on his cheek, pulled with the strain of his grimace. All
    of this pain, all of this concentration, and all of it in silence. Brian
    didn‟t want Tate to see him do this—Brian had that kind of pride.
    Talker swallowed hard and watched him do it some more, and
    then walked away to very quietly Google “Occupational Therapy +
    Shoulder Injuries” on his computer and search for an hour.
    The next day, he stopped by one of the little art galleries that
    lined R Street, one of the ones with the pottery on display and a kiln
    in the back.
    When he came home, he took the small plastic-wrapped
    package he‟d bought for eight dollars of hard-earned tip money and
    some guest labor and set it down quietly in front of Brian as he
    worked hard to clean the kitchen with