Person A and Person B (a short story)

Person A says: "I don't know if we can move in together, and if we do you'd have to find a place that you can afford on your own. I still have to pay rent on Person C's home."
Person B hears: "You should expect to pick up most of the bills. Be secure, and I'll help how I can, when I can."
Person A means: "I'm scared to trust completely in someone else, and I'm also scared Person C will feel abandoned."

Person B says: "I don't know why you took the new job there. It's only part-time, and is not enough to pay your bills, let alone help us start saving to living together. Besides, you should look into a different kind of job where you might be able to make more money."
Person A hears: "It's more important that you make lots of money, rather than putting effort into a career that you feel passionate about and spiritually connected to."
Person B means: "I'm scared, because I want us to connect forever, but I need to know you're on my team too and that you'll be there for me in both emotional and financially stable ways."

Person B says: "If I stay home one more night and watch one more stupid movie, I'll blow my goddamn brains out. I'm so bored. So totally unstimulated in my life right now."
Person B means: "I feel like shaking things up in my routine, doing some more spontaneous stuff. You and I need to shake up our routine, but I also need to do some soul-searching in terms of my job, what's important to me, my family issues with Person D and Person E."
Person A hears: "You're boring and unstimulating. If you made more money, we'd be able to go out and do more stuff and dine out more often and treat ourselves more often. You made the wrong decision taking that job."


The boy misses the other boy once in a while. He misses the closeness and the sex and the quiet moments. He misses laughing and taking drives and warm bodies under flannel sheets and giving treats to his cat. The boy misses the other boy sometimes and rolled up with the missing is the anger and the relief and the sadness and the knowledge of the right decision. The boy wonders about the tree hole at the exit right before Canada, and if their secret is still there. He hopes the other boy forgives himself someday, and learns to ask himself hard but important questions. The boy daydreams that he'll return to that tree hole someday and find, like a perfect mess of cotton candy at a carnival, that the other boy has left him a message.