BLACK VELVET (2) (Patreon)

I'm nineteen now, and Nic has begun his first year of college.  Not much has changed.

I still don't know what had broken the Tobias from my childhood, the boy from behind the rose bushes that I'd held in such high regard.  I suppose he could have been that way from the start.  No one seems to notice it, the anger that storms behind the slate eyes.  

No one wants to take hold of his roots and check his petals for bruising.

The rest of the town is still confident that the Amadeus man is built from marble and gold,  the Godly son who reminds them of the hymns you sing in a choir.  

He attends the late sermon at church, plays Sunday baseball, has a job as a waiter down at the pancake house — and helps Ms. Hartgrove's elderly mother carry home her purchased groceries.  

He’s the small town dream-boat, the poster-boy for a happy-ever-after, and it’s not hard to see what has them so charmed — so blinded.

Tobias’ laugh sounds like a church-bell, low and rolling — and he has that dark-eyed allure, that blue-collar build. He's sturdy, strikingly handsome, with constellations of beauty marks that litter his olive skin. His jaw-line is sharp — and his smile is sharper. 

He's graceful and eloquent, a knack for words, and getting what he wants.  

He’s someone to envy —

Only I don’t.

I know better because I work the early shift at the local bakery, and often I leave my house at three a.m. — just in time to catch sight of the liquored-up man with his head in his hands, rocking quietly on his porch swing.

How could you envy someone who hurts like that?

I pretend I don't notice him for the sake of his privacy, but — I'm not so sure that he doesn’t notice me. But I pretend. I pretend that I don’t see him crumbling, falling into his bottle, swimming in it — drowning in it.

Because that’s what a good Jameson-town neighbor does when someone wants to be left alone, he leaves well-enough alone.

Guilt doesn’t keep me from thinking of the past. Instead, it reminds me of when I was just as convinced of his wonder as the rest of the town.

Not for any fated reason. It was just — all because Tobias was the one who helped me glue back together my Andromeda model, as silly as that is.

It was for my eighth-grade science fair, and there was nothing more important at the time.

I'd fallen directly onto its binary star, Alpha Andromadae, subsequently crushing it, but he'd reattached the pieces together carefully — sparking some sort of admiration towards him in me — and that admiration unfortunately lingered. And suddenly, he became second to that — to science, and that’s high up on my figurative list.

Even though, now, I’ve seen him so many times — the same way, the same stench of alcohol, and the same empty, glazed eyes. I still feel that care for him.

I’m sure that’s just what happens at three am.

Defenses fall.

Or maybe. Parts of us change as we get older — become unidentifiable. We're not strangers, after all, but sometimes I have a hard time recognizing him. We'd grown up side by side, and I'd watched him at his games just as I'd watched Nic's.   He'd engage me in polite small talk, the same as the rest of my family — the occasional tight-lipped joke.

However, when the odd chance happened that we'd end up alone, he'd return to his severe and reserved self. It’s like — it’s like he couldn’t maintain his mask as he aged, and I was along for the ride.

It was too heavy for him.

And I, Oliver Abernathy — the unseen, the wallflower, the kid with the tub of ice cream while my brother and his friends hooted and hollered over the Sunday football games — became the room in which it fell.

But when his mask fell, he wasn’t all broken — and surely, wasn’t all tragedy. Something about that was beautiful. Something — made me want to be the wallpaper in that room, again and again, until he found it in himself to heal. Just so, he wasn’t alone.

And maybe that’s what it still sums up to be.

I found myself questioning, just what is this enigma of Tobias Amadeus. How can someone thought to be so wonderful — be so sad?

I wanted to know the answer.

I want to know the answer.

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