#adamnoah

adam hates it and also he thinks noah is deeply lovely so he just gives him a rose every time. it’s the longest conversation they ever have and adam looks forward to it every morning when he wakes up. adam sometimes thinks maybe he refuses to write noah’s name just so noah will have a reason to scribble his stupid name on the stupid board instead and come inside and talk to him

next door noah saves all the roses. he dries them in bunches hanging over the register at his shop or he presses them in his stacks of old saved issues of kerrang and punk planet magazine so when you open them and rifle through there’s a rose stuck in every other page. that’s how many he has, how long he’s been trying to bring himself to say anything else at all

one day noah doesn’t come in on his way to work and adam watches him walk by and not make eye contact and open his shop and go inside. all day adam wonders what happened until 5pm when the lights go dark in the skate shop and adam hears someone scratching on the board outside. he sees noah writing adam’s name and then noah toes open the door of the flower shop, walks in with a rose already in his hand and he’s like “i thought it was probably time your name came up” and hands adam the flower for once instead of the other way around

they find abandoned train tracks and hop over highways to get to them, climb under and through dirty fences just to rip their jeans on the metal and kick rocks down into broken boards and rusted old rails

they take cold showers together after days of not bathing, dirty fingers dragging soap through layers of sweat and smell on each other’s chests legs backs until the water runs clear and they’ve swallowed enough suds between kisses they’re sparkling clean inside too

they garden together when they can, noah learns whatever adam wants to give him, but all it means is that noah knows exactly what he’s doing when he rips adam’s carrots out of the ground too soon just to wipe them off on his grimy shirt, grin at adam as he takes a bite of the tiny, not fully formed, still-a-little-victory of growth, and run like hell when adam comes tumbling directly toward him

they both say they’ll quit smoking but hang around the local bars midday with dollar bills asking if anyone will lend them a light and a cigarette in exchange for the cash, make jokes about borrowing them and giving them back, take drags off one out by some stranger’s barn and pass it back and forth and laugh at how they both hold it like a joint

they end up half naked in fields every night, scrapes on their knuckles and knees from jumping off tree limbs and landing too hard, ripping sleeves off their shirts for bandages, letting things scar instead of trying for healed perfection

they break into the back gates of henrietta mansions and fuck loud and lazy by crystal clear pools until a light near the top of the house clicks on and they have to bail, find another place to spread each other out again under roaming hands and in the weird quiet hum of idle hot tubs and self-cleaning chlorine tanks

what i’m saying is this mess of tangled boys finds its height in the heat of july, throwing cherry pits at each other and shucking corn until its silk is shoved up under their nails, kissing under early fireworks on adam’s birthday, falling off private docks in little man-made lakes, thinking about stealing boats because they can 

adam’s customers are few and far between but curious, always asking questions, always coming back once they’ve bought one thing just so they can talk to him and get his advice and watch his hands move all over the place when he talks. noah has a steady stream of girls with bloody knees and grease stains on their shirts, this one kid that always has a boom box on his shoulder playing shitty pop punk music like it means something, young parents with toddlers buying kid-sized boards from the blue-haired owner with the worn out movielife tshirt who never seems to go home

there’s an empty pool in noah’s back yard and when adam’s out there working in his little herb garden, he can see kids flying up up up crouched on their boards just over the top of the fence that divides the two properties. his favorite one to watch for is the tall lanky one with the smudgy cheek and backwards 5-panel hat that’s permanently glued to his head, the one that gets the most air and skates like he isn’t afraid to crash hard

noah starts trying bigger and bigger tricks because they take him highest in the sky and if he’s lucky, the cute grass-stained boy next door will be out in the sun squinting up at him from the corner of his garden, making noah feel like he could float there forever