Release(47)

“Yeah, Enzo,” Adam said, thinking, I love you, I love you– Then a mutinous thought: was he only thinking that because Enzo expected him to?

Where had that come from?

“You look well,” Enzo said. “Feels like I haven’t seen you all summer.”

“You haven’t.”

Enzo looked surprised. “Really?”

“We keep missing each other.”

Enzo made a face. “I just kind of thought you were hanging out with Linus.”

“Doesn’t mean you and I couldn’t have hung out, too.”

Enzo gave him a look, trying to guess what Adam meant. Adam couldn’t have told him; he didn’t know either. But here was Enzo. Here was the face he had been so close to. Here was the body he knew so well. The touch and the smell and the taste of it. Here was the mouth that had hinted at so many wonderful things while saying so few wonderful things straight out. Here was the mouth that broke his heart.

And maybe, Adam thought, maybe hearts don’t ever stop breaking once broken. Maybe they just keep on beating, until they’re broken again, and then they keep on beating still. His heart was broken just at the sight of Enzo, it longed to touch him again, even after all that Enzo had done.

But it still beat. And a part of it was wondering where Linus had got to, because that broken heart had leapt a little when he saw Linus standing there.

“Anyway,” Enzo said, breaking a silence that had become uncomfortable.

“I’m going to miss you, Enzo,” Adam said, meaning it. “Angela’s going away, too, for all of senior year.”

“Really?” Enzo said, sounding genuinely concerned.

“It’s okay. We’ll keep in touch.”

“We will, too.”

“Sure, Enzo.”

Adam paused, trying to put his finger on what seemed odd here. Then he realized there was something troubling about the physical fact of Enzo– He was somehow smaller than Adam remembered. Still bigger than Linus, but smaller, too. Out of nowhere, Adam thought of the night he and Enzo had first argued. Whenever he told the story to anyone else, he would always say he couldn’t remember what it was over, but that was a lie: it was because Enzo had been jealous. Enzo. He’d seen Adam laughing with a guy from the cross-country team and on the basis of nothing at all, accused Adam of sleeping around.

The argument had been fairly quickly settled – there was neither evidence nor intention and Enzo had apologized – but what Adam remembered, what he always remembered, was how big Enzo had seemed. Not physically, no one was ever really going to tower over Adam, but that first Enzo’s anger, then the astonishment that Adam felt that Enzo felt jealous over him, had filled up the room, filled up everything.

That anger had seemed so large that, for a moment, all of Adam’s future depended on the outcome. Until it was settled, even though he wasn’t in the wrong, Adam felt his life teetering. What if he lost him? What if he lost Enzo? It would be the end of the world. It would be the end of all hope. And that Enzo seemed, implicit behind all the jealousy, to feel the same, well, that just made him bigger and bigger until he took up every corner of Adam’s potential oxygen.

But then that world did end, didn’t it?

And now, here was Enzo. Just another of the many humans shorter than Adam.

When did that happen?

“Anyway,” Enzo said again.

Adam looked at him, but Enzo wouldn’t meet his eye any more, clearly wanting this to be over. “You know what?” Adam started– But never finished because two things happened and it all changed. The first was larger on the surface, but the second was the one that actually did it.

The first was that a big, strawberry-blonde girl came over from the tables where Angela and Linus and other people including JD McLaren from the garden centre and Renee and Karen from Adam’s work were digging into the pizzas. Adam didn’t recognize the girl, but she put her arm around Enzo’s shoulders, he turned his face to her and they kissed. They kissed right there in front of Adam.

“Hey,” the girl said, really friendly. “I’m Natasha. Nat.”

Adam shook her hand. “Adam.”

“You’re Adam?” Nat said, smiling wide. “Enzo talks about you all the time.”

Adam looked at Enzo, but Enzo looked away. “We were good friends in school is all,” Enzo said.

Still stunned, Adam asked, “Where did you two–”

“Summer job in his mom’s office,” Nat said. “Though I don’t think his parents approve because I’m not very Latina.”

“You’re not at all Latina,” Enzo said.

“Hey, my family came over on the Mayflower. I could be anything by now.” She smiled again at Adam, comfortable with the silence. Her face brightened. “You brought all those pizzas, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Adam said.

“That was really cool of you.”

“Thanks.”

“That reminds me,” Enzo said, and he took out his wallet. And this was the second thing. So much smaller than Enzo suddenly having a girlfriend, so much smaller than the walking, talking evidence that Enzo had moved on (certainly smaller than the ground-heaving possibility that Adam might have moved on a little bit as well), but this was the moment where it all changed. This strange small moment. Adam would even be able to put his finger on it in all the years to come. The power of one action.