personal feelings, sir

It's the face of a man looking at someone (Christeson) who used to let him get away with murder, and by murder, I mean both of them, at a warehouse party in downtown San Jose (Q-Tip's waitress coworker got them the hookup), equally fucked up off a mix of blue Powerade and vodka and maybe a bump or two from a girl who wanted to go home with Q-Tip, so he danced with her and looked at Christeson over her head. And they both knew they were they were going to fiend another hit before giving her the slip, back to the shitty little abandoned loft they were squatting in, just the two of them. If Christeson was lucky, Q-Tip might push him down on his back and put his mouth on his dick, so long they didn't get too fucked up and so long as Q-Tip didn't end up yakking in the gutter, the two of them staggering home and clinging to each other and Q-Tip occasionally belting out a verse of whatever Mos Def song he had stuck in his head.

And Q-Tip, twenty years later, is looking at him, and Christeson knows he's thinking about it, just like Christeson's thinking about it, and back then, it didn't matter that letting a boy act like that, even if he was your best friend, was straight up embarrassing, because Christeson always let Q-Tip get away with everything, up to and including rapping off-key at 4 a.m. in the streets on their way home, at the top of his lungs but always in-rhythm, no matter how drunk he got. Yeah, sure, Christeson bitched about it, sometimes tried to drown him out by shouting Hank Williams or something, until they woke someone up, stumbling under suburban windows on foot because it was too late for the buses' last routes, and inevitably someone would open up their window and shout at them to shut the fuck up, do you know what time it is? and Q-Tip would just cackle and cuss 'em out, which was the kind of behavior Christeson would've gotten belted by his daddy for, but they weren't in Illinois anymore.

He met Q-Tip when he was freighthopping in middle America, and somewhere between Kansas and Colorado they looked at each other and Q-Tip said, California's warm, and Christeson said, You like the heat? and Q-Tip said he came from Florida in an off-hand way that wasn't all that nonchalant, really. So Christeson never asked why he'd left, why he'd dropped out and took odd jobs as a line cook and hitchhiked when he got sick of staying in one place, because it wasn't the sort of shit you asked a boy, not even the boy who took Christeson's virginity in a pile of their shared blankets and jackets in a freezing train depot and said things like Hey, hey, hey, breathe, and You're good, Johnny, you're good, and Q-Tip didn't kiss him then, but he was so sweet that first time, wanting it to be good for Christeson, that it made Christeson sometimes wonder if Q-Tip's first time had been...well. If Q-Tip had wanted his own first time to be sweet. If he hadn't gotten what he wanted.

But it didn't matter that when Christeson was in high school, he always figured he'd kiss the girl he lost his virginity too, because Q-Tip always gave Christeson the bigger portion of whatever they were splitting, tried to be slick about it (he never was smooth), even when they were running low on cash and couldn't find work that week, or had just rolled into a new town. And Q-Tip taught him things like how to pick a lock and how to swim in the Pacific, and Christeson taught him how to hop trains and cast a line, and whenever girls asked Q-Tip out—always up for a good time and in possession of a killer smile—he would either tell 'em that Christeson was coming too. Just that naturally assured of Christeson as his other half. Or he'd say nah, thanks, but he had to go home to take care of Johnny, and Christeson would roll his eyes and complain about who, exactly, got the groceries this week, bitch?

And it was a sometimes thing, what they did, until it became a regular thing, and it didn't matter how cold or dirty or exhausted they were, not really, because they were kids, and nothing really mattered after the first time Q-Tip kissed him, head ducked, eyes darting from side-to-side, chin damn near tucked into the collar of his shirt, like he'd looked someone Christeson didn't really want to know in the eye and said fuck it, gimme your worst, I got my boy. After that, it got easier, and Christeson knew he was gonna get kissed, drunk, sober, and every state in between, whenever Q-Tip pressed his nose into Christeson's temple. And it was just second nature to turn his head and call Q-Tip a soft bitch and lean in until Q-Tip took mock-offense at being called that and twisted his ear and called him PFC Fucknuts, the name an urgent care doctor in Redding gave Christeson the night he came in because he broke a bowl in the sink and his hand wouldn't stop bleeding even through their dental-floss stitches, and Q-Tip thought that name was the funniest shit in the world, and maybe it was, or maybe that was just the way his face cracked open, slow and brilliant, when he laughed, and Christeson figured a guy could probably die happy like this, and he figured he probably would, too, up until the night Q-Tip broke his heart.

And Q-Tip didn't mean to, Christeson knows. He knew then, too. He knew that, even on the morning he put on his shoes and grabbed his winter coat and looked at the cold yellow sunlight scraping along the slope of Q-Tip's nose and cheekbone and the stupid, terribly young way his mouth opened when he slept, at Q-Tip naked on the mattress in the loft in Newport, golden and warm and unshaven and sticky between the legs. Because Q-Tip was a a dirtbag boy. A little quick-fingered. The world's easiest and sweetest liar. Sure. But he was always good to John. In the early days, they stumbled across a guy on the rails who looked at them and helped them onto the right train, and when he looked at the way Q-Tip slung an arm around Christeson's shoulders and bared his teeth to anyone who looked at them sideways, he said he got the sense, when you were looking at Q-Tip, that that was a boy who didn't have all that much to love, for better or for worse, but what he did have, he'd rather cut his own heart out than hurt. "Good guy to have at your side," he said. And it was true. Christeson was Q-Tip's best friend. So of course he loved John.

That was never the problem.

And it's twenty years later, and Christeson's boss tells him to go talk logistics and hands him "Stafford's temp address," which is this big, open loft, nicer than the shitty places they used to break into, but a loft all the same. Q-Tip must've known he was coming, because the door's unlocked. And there are lines on his face and veins in his arms that didn't used to be there, a scar on his chin that tells a story Christeson doesn't know, and suddenly, violently, wishes he did know. And he expected some sort of cruelty, because apart from a pit stop in Texas, where Mike Wynn pried half the story out of him, he's never said Q-Tip's name since, but he learned other things instead. He got his degree, he got his job, got the house that he's still fixing up, and in those years, he learned that when you live with someone and leave them, but your paths still cross, there's never any sort of warmth left over.

But the light's hitting Q-Tip the same way it used to, and a flash of longstanding hurt vanishes behind this old, sore fondness in his eyes, and this small, tired smile (Q-Tip never hid his anticipation well) spreads across his face with the kind of visible effort that, out of nowhere, rips Christeson up worse than any ex-girlfriend's coldness ever did. But it's too late to leave, because here Q-Tip is, after all these years, asking the same question he used to ask Christeson after they stumbled out of a fight; or hopped on a train to some unknown town in California; or came together on a bare mattress on the concrete floor, shuddering, Christeson's teeth in his collarbone and Q-Tip's hand clumsily petting the bone behind Christeson's ear—Hey. Would that make you happy? Tell me what you want. We'll make it happen, I'll do it with you—