Page 12 of Love Is…

Beneath the paper is a scrapbook bound in soft brown leather, with sturdy metal edging at the corners to protect it from wear. On the front, a small window into which Luke slipped a label that readsH+L. Hal smooths a palm across it, the leather whispering against his skin.

He opens the cover, and it’s photos. Not the originals – Luke asked their mothers to scan them and email them to him, and he had them printed at a camera place on thick, durable photo paper. Page after page of photos: from babyhood to graduation, football games to the front porch of the Maddox townhouse, arms around one another.

A life full of companionship, and shared secrets, and love, all gathered in pictures. A record of their relationship, from the very beginning to the present.

Luke issonervous.

“I know they’re our same old pictures,” he starts.

Hal lifts his head, expression nothing short of reverent. “Come here,” he says, voice scraped-raw.

Their knees touch, but Luke knows what he means, what he wants. Closer. There’s no such thing as too close for them.

Luke moves around so they’re side-by-side, and Hal’s arm goes around his waist, pulls him in tight. With his free hand he continues to page through the scrapbook.

“Look at us,” Hal breathes. And then, aghast: “Look at my hair! Ugh. Why didn’t someone tell me how stupid that looked?”

“If you’ll remember correctly, I told youseveraltimes. But I kinda liked your frosted tips.”

“Ugh,” Hal repeats, and turns the page.

It’s Halloween of their sophomore year of high school, their last year trick-or-treating. Luke remembers the parents in the neighborhood giving them sideways, disapproving glances for being as tall as the adults they were asking candy from. Also because they hadn’t put much effort into their costumes: they’d gone as each other, Luke swallowed up in Hal’s football uniform, helmet tucked under his arm, and Hal in a too-small cardigan, bow tie, and black-framed glasses.

“What dorks,” Luke says with a snort.

“I dunno,” Hal says in that voice that he thinks is coy, but it totally transparent. “The football player’s hot. I’d ask him out.”

Luke withholds his automatic answer about Hal having low standards; Hal loves him, Halloves him. It hurts his feelings when Luke rags on himself. Jesus. He can’t believe it, it feels so good.

“Oh,” Hal says, quiet, when he turns the page and finds a picture with Sadie in it. They’re just kids, elementary-age, lined up on the concrete bench in the backyard of the duplex.

Luke breathes carefully through his mouth.

Hal lays his head down on top of Luke’s, a silent comfort.

They look over each and every page, walk through all the old memories.

The last page has a small, recent picture at the top: the two of them amid crumpled, scattered wrapping paper on Christmas morning, a shot Hal’s dad took. They look happy in a way that stirs up an ache in Luke’s chest. And below it, a handwritten letter, the things Luke wants Hal to know…but which he can’t say aloud without falling to pieces.

Hal takes a breath and asks, “Can I read this now?”

“Sure.” Luke tries to wriggle away, but Hal holds him tight. His lips move a little as he reads.

Luke knows it by heart:

Dear Hal,

I’m a coward. (Pause to allow you to give me a dirty look for that.) But it’s true. I knew I couldn’t say this to you, so I decided to write it instead. And then, when I sat down to write it, I realized that, despite all my big talk about poetry, I didn’t have anything poetic to write in that moment. You leave me stupid. So here goes anyway, my sad attempt…to tell you how much you mean to me.

Get ready, Southern boy, because this is a thank you note.

Hal smiles, softly.

Thank you for being my best friend. I don’t mean a friend, as in one of several. I meanthefriend. My oldest, and most well-loved friend. The only one that every really mattered. Thank you for sharing your lunches, and your bus seat, and for picking me first even when I always sucked at gym-class HORSE. Thank you for trusting me with your secrets, and letting me borrow a bathing suit that time…and not laughing when it came off the second I hit the water after that regrettable cannon ball. A little boy never had a best friend better than you.

Thank you for the chance to watch you grow up. The chance to watch you become the kind of man that other men want to be. Unfailingly kind, and compassionate, and fair. You treat everyone you meet like they matter. You have the kind of grace that I don’t…but you don’t hold it against me.

Thank you for going to war to fight for the values you’ve always held dear, even when others around you took them for granted. And thank you, my sweet Hal, for coming home again. And trusting me with your scars.

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