Diverging Roads
Impossibly good news can be surprisingly bad news.
A quickwrite I spat out yesterday. No sexings in this one. Also tagged for the story contest, since this is exactly the time of the year when something like this would happen. I meant this to be a mostly unedited piece, but since I might have some incentive for it, I might go back and edit it at some point...
-
When he'd received the e-mail, Zach had been ecstatic, but seeing Garet sitting alone on the old red loveseat they only kept around because they'd made love for the first time on its faded cushions, a bittersweet taint crept in, tugging at his heartstrings enough to tug the corners of his lips into a deep frown.
Garet, engrossed in a console video game, hadn't heard him enter. The coyote had a cup of hot cocoa sitting in front of him, no doubt spiked with cinnamon and vanilla, a habit he'd picked up from Zach in their first week of living together.
All the rehearsing the lion had done for this conversation melted away into one feeble word:
"Hey."
Still, Garet's ears perked, and he turned around, a warm smile on his muzzle. He always smiled when he saw Zach. Not the wide, short-lived grin like you got when you saw a friend you hadn't seen in a month, either--it was a subtle-but-radiant arc of the lips that lit up the eyes, the kind that spelled perfect contentment. "Hey." He paused the game and patted the seat beside him. Zach could hear the sound of his tail thumping the couch. Just then, he looked so happy. Zach sat down, but didn't reach over to embrace Garet. The lion took a deep breath, shame stinging at his ears where elation had once lifted them. "I was accepted."
For the last month, the reality of those words had been a tantalizing but absurd prospect. Sending off the applications had been like sending off his application for an undergrad degree at Princeton back at his shitty rural high school: he'd paid the seventy-five dollar application fee knowing full and well that all he'd get out of it was a nice, fat rejection letter. Turns out all he'd gotten was a short, automated e-mail infused with comforting words whose feigned sincerity he would have found detestable in his own essays.
It was under these terms that they'd considered the grad school applications: something amusing to sink hours into constructing together; a fun way to get to know Zach a little better by letting Garet follow the composition of his personal statement.
Garet's paw, grasping his mug, paused halfway through its journey to the coyote's mouth. It finished a bit more slowly, ending with the coyote taking a rather deep draught. Garet didn't meet his eyes and only spoke once he'd set the mug back down. "That's..." He let out a puff of air. "That's great." Now he did meet Zach's eyes, but the motion seemed more than a little forced. "I'm proud of you."
The words were too flat, not quite the "I'm so, so proud of you!" he'd gotten when he'd pulled out an A in his junior lab. Zach looked away. He'd been so excited to send the application off, and just reading the title of the e-mail had sent his stomach into a nervous flutter, but now...
He looked over to see Garet biting his lip and staring off into the distance. The smile that had earlier graced his visage had vanished, swallowed up by the same unplaceable mixture of emotions that assailed Zach. Pride and excitement, definitely, but tainted with a bittersweet kind of sadness, the selfish kind that made you feel miserable for even feeling it in the first place. Sitting there now, Garet looked so small and vulnerable.
Zach scooted over. His paw pressed against the coyote's shoulder and drew him into an embrace. The coyote's muzzle found its resting place at the base of the lion's neck, and this close to Zach's ear, he couldn't quite mask the sound of a sniffle.
"I have to accept it."
The coyote's nose sucked in a deep breath. Maybe it was to comfort himself. Maybe it was because he was already afraid of losing the lion, and wanted to suck in as much as he could while Zach was still there. When he spoke, the words were muffled into Zach's mane. "I'd be upset with you if you didn't."
Zach's paw stroked the lush fur of the coyote's neck. The warmth of the male's body against his had always lightened his mood, but now, he clung to Garet with a reverence rivaling that of their first night curled up on the loveseat, a year and some months ago.
"Two thousand miles away," the coyote muttered.
"I'm sorry."
"No. Don't apologize." The coyote drew back. Zach had grown used to seeing the coyote's eyes bright and happy; now, the green orbs tinged with sadness, Garet looked almost foreign. "I can manage without you."
He squeezed the coyote tight. Thirty-seven minutes ago, when Zach's phone buzzed in his pocket halfway through the drive home, he could have never imagined the coyote's mouth capable of forming those words. He'd imagined the coyote sitting beside him, sticking out his tongue and laughing, asking Zach when he was going to change that annoying chime that went off whenever he got an e-mail. It had been a glorious one year and some months since they'd leased the apartment together and forged a relationship built on the foundation of a year and more months of close friendship, but that single chime shattered it all.
"I don't want you to," Zach said. "I don't want to lose this."
"But you can't turn this down. It's the--"
"I know, I know. The program, the stipend, the..." He didn't have to list all the reasons, which culminated in the undeniable truth that sticking around at the local university for graduate school would be a decision-making failure powerful enough to disqualify him from feeling worthy of grad school in the first place. "I don't want to, but I think I might have to."
Garet's head pressed into Zach's chest. "I understand."
In the years he'd known Garet, Zach had only seen him cry exactly once, in the aftermath of a devastating call concerning his mother's health. Now, just as then, it started with Garet's tears leaving salty stains on the front of Zach's tee and ended with each male embracing the other. The lion pressed soft kisses into the coyote's neck and comforting pats onto his back. "It's okay," he said, then as now. "We'll get through this." But this time there was something extra, and his voice cracked as he said it: "Whether we end up together or not, we'll get through this."
He felt more than heard the coyote's sniffle. "Okay." Garet's arms tightened around him in an embrace so firm it almost hurt, but not as much as when it loosened.