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One of Billy’s earliest memories was of his mom reading aloud to him before bed—cuddled up against her side, half listening to the thrum of her heartbeat beneath his ear, half to the words murmured above his head. He liked when she did the Grover voice during The Monster at the End of this Book—always giggled even when he knew it word for word.
Dr. Seuss was mesmerizing with its sing-song rhythms; One Fish, Two Fish and Green Eggs and Ham were mainstays, though he wasn’t fond of Hop on Pop. A couple books were too upsetting to read more than once—The Giving Tree made him cry, though he wasn’t sure why, and Are You My Mother? had filled him with such anxiety that his mom had to stay with him, stroking his back, until he fell asleep.
His favorite was A Kiss for Little Bear, mostly because every time one of the animals passed the kiss from one to another, all the way back to Little Bear, his mom would lay a smacking peck on his cheek, his brow, his nose, the crown of his head.
In kindergarten, he began piecing together which letters made which sounds, and by first grade he was puzzling his way through picture books on his own. Then their nighttime routine involved Billy stuttering out simple sentences, his mom patient, never too quick to correct, content to let him figure it out. By second grade, he was tackling beginner chapter books—slim little volumes with big print and illustrations, but chapter books nonetheless, like what big kids could read. His dad never seemed interested in Billy’s progress—even that young, Billy knew to attract his attention as little as possible—but his mom would smile so wide whenever he announced he’d finished another story, ask what it’d been about, and he would tell her.
So yeah, Billy used to be a big reader as a kid—had bawled his eyes out at the end of Bridge to Terabithia, ditto for Tuck Everlasting, stayed up late finishing both and woken with lids still swollen, feeling spacey and loose. Tears released something in him, he’d known even then—something he wanted to let go of.
He dug Roald Dahl the most, though. There was this… darkness stitched through every story, which made them feel true even when they veered fantastical, and at the same time his stuff was just so—funny, so sharp. He wished he were quick and clever like the voice in those books; started practicing, making silent asides in the privacy of own head whenever people around him were being dumb—which was often.
Anyone would have guessed that the thing that finally knocked him off the reading rainbow was his mom leaving—but that hadn’t been it. By that point, he read for himself, because he liked it, needed it. Books were an escape—his first escape, before television, before surfing. Before sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll. Before booze. Before wheels.
And after she left, he’d needed the escape more than ever—to shut the door on the rest of Neil’s house and then shut the door on his reality entirely for however long he could manage until he had to come crashing back to earth. Because with no wife for Neil to smack around, Billy had been promoted to whipping boy, kept the title even when Susan and Max joined the ranks. He’d read half of Wrinkle in Time with one eye, the other purple and puffy under an ice pack, and when he’d wept over Where the Red Fern Grows—what the fuck, he didn’t even like dogs—the salt had stung the cut on his lip.
No, it hadn’t been ‘cause of his mom that his library card got less and less action around middle school, until finally it just sat there collecting dust. It had been something else.
~~~
For Steve, Billy Hargrove was this… barbed ball of contradictions. But he was unwinding them, one by one.
Like this, for instance: His words were rough—blunt yet cutting—but his touch was soft. Or—it could be. Well, when he was touching Steve, anyway. For others—uh, not so much.
Or this! He strutted around, oozing tough guy energy, but the dude cried at the drop of a hat—sometimes just an angry flash of shine, blink and you’ll miss it kinda thing, but Steve had also witnessed him break down in a way he’d never seen before outside of like, Hollywood. He didn’t know grown people actually did that unscripted, and with anyone else he would’ve—well, who knows what he would’ve done, but it definitely wouldn’t have been helpful. Laughed, maybe, given his track record. But when Billy cried—sometimes because his dad had said or done something shitty, or because Steve had blundered into some emotional landmine, or just ‘cause the movie they were watching got a little too sad—this strange thing happened where Steve became his second nanny, Gloria, and swept into action: wrapped Billy in his arms, now and then brushing quiet murmured comfort by his ear, rocked him gently. And get this—Billy let him.
Anyway, the contradiction that had been stumping him lately was more related to school; specifically, how the hell Billy managed to coast by with absolutely zero effort and pull consistent B’s and C’s when Steve had to bust his ass just to get C’s and D’s. Like, the guy literally did not own a backpack—by choice. He brought no supplies with him to school, from what Steve could tell, and only turned in homework when he’d been bored in the class before and sort of doodled it to completion with a stolen pencil.
Not that Steve had witnessed this himself—he only knew because one day, he’d asked. Because the whole too cool for school vibe? That was totally in keeping with the reputation Billy strove to maintain. Fine. Made sense. But then how come, mid-conversation—hell, mid-fuck—Billy could casually spit out these SAT words, like he’d swallowed a dictionary? And if he really didn’t care about school, why did he get genuinely jazzed about whatever weird thing they were reading in English class? He always had at least one character pegged as gay and then insisted on talking Steve’s ear off about it—well, for Billy, “talking someone’s ear off” meant saying more than two sentences at a stretch, but still.
Was he just a secret nerd? Was that all it was? He was just one big… bookworm?
But then why did it so often happen that, when Steve was slogging through an assignment and Billy was quietly reading his English book—the only kinda schoolwork he ever did outside of class—he’d start huffing and puffing in frustration and then throw the book at Steve, flop onto his back and ask him to read it aloud to him for a while?
“Rest my eyes,” was all the explanation Steve had gotten, the first time.
It was only one day when Steve caught Billy frowning at the page held above his head, sprawled in his usual spot across Steve’s bed—squinting a bit too much for it to just be disdain at a character’s choices—that he stopped to wonder whether Billy just needed glasses. And then he’d lost a full ten minutes daydreaming about how that would look—because. Yeah. It would look good.
He'd had half a mind to march Billy to the eye doctor, get him the sexiest pair of specs money could buy—Steve would happily foot the bill just to feast upon that sight—but when he finally brought it up—asked him about it, about the reading but poo-pooing school plus the vision stuff, the truth stopped him in his tracks, punched him in the gut. Wind out of his sails. You know, all those… sayings.
“I used to read a lot,” Billy said. “But then in seventh grade I had an accident surfing—broke my board, got a concussion. Wasn’t too bad, but I don’t think I was all the way better when Neil whaled on me for—I dunno, doesn’t matter. Just his usual smack attacks. And then I started getting headaches whenever I stared too long at itty bitty print, so—” He shrugged, hadn’t glanced once at Steve the whole time—otherwise he would’ve caught the downright murderous expression on his face. “Yeah, I just kinda stopped.”
Steve breathed in, mentally added yet another motive to his elaborate plan to murder Neil Hargrove, breathed out. “So how do you—at school?” he managed to ask, mostly evenly.
Another shrug. “I listen. Got a good enough memory, still, so I can get by just paying attention in class and reading shit minimally. It’s just longer stuff that starts to hurt. Novels are hard.”
Steve had nodded, like that made sense, because he’d learned Billy didn’t respond well to impassioned outrage about his family situation. But he ruminated on it—there, that was a word he’d got from Billy—ruminated on it for days, and since he couldn’t actually murder Neil (yet), he hatched a less violent idea: if Billy liked reading but couldn’t handle the long stuff, why not try the short stuff? That existed, right? Like that fucked up lottery story from freshman year.
A tinkling bell rang above his head as he entered Bloom’s Books on Main Street, and it was only then that he realized he had no clue what Billy’s literary preferences even were. But it was too late—Ms. Bloom herself, this wizened women with bug-eyed spectacles, was already making a beeline for him, her smile kindly and solicitous. There, another Billy word.
So Steve just went for it, lay it all out for her—how he had this… friend… who used to be a big time reader but was having trouble, uh, focusing, and so—did she have… short stuff? Could you buy that? He’d only ever seen short stories as little Xeroxed packets at school. Oh—what did his friend like? Uh, to read?
Well—he was funny. He had this like—super dark sense of humor, but he was really smart, you know? Like, witty. And… and he sort of came off all tough and whatnot, or like he didn’t care about stuff, but he really did, and it was just that he could see through people’s bullshit—oh, sorry, I meant—uh, stupidity. He pretended to only like heavy metal, but really he’d listen to anything with good lyrics and an entrancing voice. He loved his car the most, but that was only because he had to give up his surfboard when he moved here… Oh! And he sometimes made these references to sci fi stuff, or maybe it was fantasy stuff—?
Ms. Bloom, bless her heart, just let him ramble, sketching Billy in what was, looking back, a frankly embarrassing amount of detail, until finally he ran out of steam, and he looked up to find her staring at him with a knowing quirk to her lips.
She gestured at him to follow, led him to an entire section of short story collections—if this worked, he could just bring Billy back and have him pick something out himself!
“Have him try this,” she said, pulling a nondescript volume from the shelf—not slim, but not thick—with a black cover and bright blocky text declaring its title and author: Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. “It’s got the wit and the edge he might like. With some science fiction flare.”
Steve took the book, scanned it reverently, so excited for Billy to try it.
“Would you like me to wrap it?” she asked.
“No!” Steve exclaimed, a bit too strident, and awkwardly clarified. “Uh, no—thank you. Just—a bag.”
Even without being wrapped, Billy clocked it as a present right off, accepted it with a mulish grunt—always so squirrely about people buying him shit—and Steve tripped over himself to explain, to smooth his ruffled feathers.
“I just thought—” he blurted, as Billy reached into the bag, pulled out the book. “That maybe short stories would be a way for you to—read without—uh…” He gestured vaguely at his own head, watched as Billy examined the cover, flipped it to skim the blurb on the back, silent.
Seized by irrational panic, sudden misgivings, Steve barreled on: “I can return it if you don’t want it—or if you’ve already read it? I never even asked you what you like, so—”
“Babe,” Billy said, meeting his eyes—and Steve froze, arrested by shining blue. “Thanks.”
“Sure,” Steve said, hushed—so relieved he was about to drop.
Billy bit his lip, then nodded to the couch. “Wanna… would you mind—wanna read to me, anyway?”
And just—there was no way in the world Steve was saying no to that.
So they settled on the couch, Billy’s head in Steve’s lap, and Steve opened the book to the first story. He could feel Billy’s gaze—felt too that the moment was somehow loaded, though he didn’t know why, or with what. He cleared his throat.
“Where I Live,” he read.
Billy shifted, resettled so his head was turned toward Steve’s hip.
“You good?” Steve checked. With his free hand, he stroked a furrowed brow—the curls smoothed flat, then bounced back.
Billy sighed, went limp, and closed his eyes. When he nodded, Steve began again.
”Where I Live.”