Page 29 of Diamond Ring
“You okay?” Alex doesn’t whisper exactly, but he asks it softly, barely audible above the noise of tires on the highway and the thwap of the windshield wipers, his hand resting on the seat between them.
Jake’s own palm feels empty in its sling. “I’m good,” he says belatedly.
Alex smiles, another of those smiles he usually dispenses every few weeks but now has done twice in thirty minutes. Creases radiate around his eyes. He took his hat off. His black hair is shorn short, more in a punk way than a military way, and he looks soAlexthat Jake doesn’t know how he’s going to survive the next few days.
At the house, Jake unfolds himself out of the car, trying to bring awareness to the muscles of his arm and shoulder without making his mom fuss. She doesn’t. Alex does, after unloading his suitcase, hovering and pretending he’s not.
“Not moving it hurts”—Jake hisses as he stretches—“moving it also hurts. Pretty much everything hurts.”
Alex’s face pinches slightly with concern.
“I’ll be okay,” Jake says. “Just, you know, bear with me.”
Alex’s shoulder brushes against his as they go into the hallway leading from the garage to the kitchen. Jake tries to imagine what his parents’ house looks like to someone who grew up the way Alex did. In pictures, his aunts’ house has an impressive sort of clutter, everything purposefully selected and haphazardly arranged. Jake’s parents’ house is bright and neat and ordinary, and Jake gets the strange urge to apologize for it.
“You can put your stuff up in my room,” he says instead. “Or if you want to shower...”
Alex makes a show of smelling himself. “You trying to say something?”
“I don’t have any strawberry body wash, if that’s an issue.”
Alex pauses when he gets through the doorway to Jake’s room. Jake probably should have taken some of the posters down, if only so he didn’t have to hear exactly how bad his taste in music was when he was seventeen. He’s twenty-two now. He’sevolved.
Jake motions to the walls. “You can say whatever you want.”
Alex shakes his head. “It’s just very you.”
“I don’t know if I should be insulted.”
Alex’s laugh fills the room.
He does, in fact, shower. Jake sits on his bed, telling himself he’s waiting in case Alex can’t work the faucet or needs another towel. His elbow hurts, distantly, achingly. He straightened the room up that morning, but a few things on the shelf somehow got crooked again. He shifts them around, trying to achieve symmetry, not thinking about Alex a door away, under a gush of water.
It’s harder to ignore Alex when he emerges, waist wrapped in a towel. His chest is still wet and Jake stares at the cut of his muscles, now built up with offseason weight, at the fur of his chest hair.
Alex catches him, glancing down. “Body wash was easier to pack than soap.” Which would also explain the shine to his skin.
Jake’s throat is dry. Desert. Moon rock. Some other very dry thing he would think of if every thought didn’t flee to just beyond his mind’s reach. He swallows. “Shower okay?”
“Shower’s good.” Alex digs around in his suitcase for his shorts, and Jake has seen him naked enough times that he shouldn’t react.
Alex dresses. Jake studies the dip of his own palm.
The rustle of fabric stops. When he looks up, Alex is holding a package wrapped in nondenominational paper. Some people shift foot to foot when they’re nervous; Alex is the opposite—he plants his feet, stiff, like he’s doing now. “I know it’s not Chanukah anymore, but here.”
Jake takes the package, shaking it. It rattles faintly. As with brushing his teeth and getting dressed, unwrapping presents is easier with two hands. “Maybe you should take the wrapping paper off.” He gestures with his slinged elbow.
“I can hold it.”
Jake sits on the bed, Alex beside him. “You really smell like strawberries,” Jake says.
Alex rubs against his good arm. “Now you do too. That glitter doesn’t come off, so enjoy.” He holds the package, letting Jake ease a finger under the tape. It looks professionally wrapped. Alex has strange talents—guitar, big-league catcher, driving Jake slowly out of his mind. Maybe wrapping gifts is one of them.
Before Jake can even peel away a piece of tape, Alex says, “I’m sorry.”
“For getting me a present?”
“For not knowing something was going on with your arm.”
