Chapter Text
Mid-August is dry and sunburnt everywhere, as Chris drives in a rented U-Haul, almost literally the entire diagonal span of the continental United States. Santa Barbara to New Haven; south-west to north-east; ocean to ocean. Riding the I-80 until he runs out of road. If he drove any further, he’d drive right off the face of the country and into the sea. He passes through nine states. It takes him a full week of seven-hour days on the highway, sometimes fighting to stay awake long enough to pull into a roadside motel just to crash for the night and begin it all again the next morning. He gets really, really sick of podcasts and mini-vans that drive way too slow and McDonald’s. Dodger gets equally sick of his new home in the passenger’s seat – temporary, but there’s no way to explain that to a dog – and by the time they arrive in the college town that Chris will call home for the foreseeable future, neither can wait to climb out of the truck and hopefully never have to be in one for that long again. Chris has a feeling Dodger might run away the next time he catches glimpse of the orange and white logo.
He arrives in New Haven just as the sun is setting on a Thursday. The air is thick and humid, proximity to the ocean leaving a muggy dampness hanging in the air. Santa Barbara was on the ocean as well, but Chris doesn’t ever remember it feeling like this. Even on humid days, the breeze always felt fresh and clean. Summer air that leaves you sticky after only a few minutes outside reminds him of his childhood. Everything about this town reminds him of his childhood. Streets lined with towering oak trees, people walking down sidewalks in flip-flops and cargo shorts and other unstylish apparel, dogs on leashes everywhere but dogs like Dodger; not the manicured purebreds or lapdogs with pink bows on their heads that were common where he used to live. He drives past his new school – or, at least, past some of it. The campus is absolutely enormous, Chris knows from studying a map on the website. He’s going to get lost approximately twice a day for probably the rest of the year, if not into the next as well. Massive, intimidating buildings covered in vines and austere, Gothic architecture gives the place a paranoid, judgement feeling, even though they’re only buildings. For all Chris had disliked about California, Westmont College had an open, inviting aura around it. This place feels like the very walls are turning up their noses at him, reminding him silently that he doesn’t really belong here. It’s a trade-off. A more relaxed, welcoming college atmosphere in a city that didn’t mesh with his lifestyle, for East Coast, colonial, familiar surroundings at a school he definitely isn’t really qualified to teach at, no matter what the President had said when they spoke on the phone. He’s too young, and too unaccomplished, and has no pedigree to speak of, coming from a working-class family on the poorer side of Boston. He’d been informed last week of a formal back-to-school gala for the staff he’ll have to attend; black tie not optional, and Chris doesn’t even own a tuxedo. He’s never in his life had any use for one. A regular suit and tie had been more than sufficient at both his sisters’ weddings. He’s going to stick out like a sore thumb.
His house is small, only three rooms on the main floor and a second floor with slanted walls and two bedrooms, on a quiet street near the ocean. It’s on a corner so the backyard is large and sprawling. Chris had never stepped foot in the place before buying it – he’d sent his brother house-hunting for him since he was on the other side of the country, and Scott promised he’d like this place. Scott knows him better than anyone, so Chris had trusted his word and a few texted pictures. As he retrieves the keys from a lockbox fastened to the metal fence and crosses the threshold of his new home, his trust is rewarded. The wooden floors are scuffed nicely like the place was well-loved by it’s previous owners. It’s an older house so the ceilings are high and the windows are large, giving it a spacious, airy feel. The house faces East, so morning sunlight will fill the front rooms. The walls are pale yellow, and it’s a soft, neutral color that Chris can definitely work with. Just glancing at the living room, he can picture where his couch could go, and the corner by the window is perfect for the sofa chair that has become Dodger’s favorite nap spot. The kitchen is spacious as well, with an island in the middle and four stools surrounding it. Chris can see having his family here, gathered around the island while he cooks and then crowded into the dining room. He can almost hear the laughter, and the happy shrieks of his nieces and nephews. Appliances were all included, which is nice because Chris had been a renter in California and he would not have enjoyed arriving and having to immediately go shopping for a stove and refrigerator and dishwasher. The only other thing left behind is a tall glass vase in the middle of the island, filled with daisies and some purple flowers that Chris couldn’t name without Googling. The card tucked into the bouquet says, in pleasantly loopy handwriting, “We loved our home, and we hope you will too! Make happy memories. Love Sheila, Dan, Rachel, and Hank.” The name Rachel is scrawled in a child’s print, complete with a backwards R, and a small doodle of a dog is identified as Hank. Chris melts a little. He puts the card back on the counter, intending very much to keep it forever.
“C’mere, bud,” he calls to Dodger, waiting while the mutt trots over. He leans down, taking Dodger’s face in his hands and rubbing it, and kissing his soft forehead. “We’re home, buddy. I think you’re gonna like it, here. Just wait until winter. You’ve never seen snow but you’ll love it.”
The sun has already set, so Chris orders a pizza and then plugs his phone in to charge. If he had the energy, he’d go grocery shopping just so he could eat a vegetable instead of yet more fast food. Tomorrow. He can stomach grease and cheese for one more night, although he’ll need to live on nothing but salad and daily marathons to avoid starting his new job looking like he’s spent a week in a truck living on burgers and fries. Tomorrow, his parents and brother will be here, to help him move in all the furniture currently stacked to the roof in the truck outside. For tonight, Chris just needs the bag he’d purposely left easily accessible. A change of clothes, a toothbrush and other things he needs to shower, an air mattress, a hand-pump, a pillow, and a sleeping bag. And food for Dodger. It won’t be glamorous, but really it isn’t that much worse than some of the motels he’d stayed at on the trip here. And again, it’s just one night. He shares pepperoni pizza with his dog and watches a movie on his phone, and then the two of them crash early on the blown-up mattress in the middle of the living room floor. It reminds him of the camping trips he’d gone on as a kid. He hasn’t been camping in what feels like forever. Maybe next summer he could, now that he’s more likely to be around people who’ll want to go with him. He’s so, so happy to be back on the East Coast.
The market for academic jobs in the humanities is scarce so a take-what-you-can-get mentality is really the only option, but Chris had truly hated California. He’d made the best of it; eternally an optimist and of the belief that being grateful for what he has is always a better mindset than moping about what he doesn’t. And, he’s always been too stubborn to let anything beat him. So he’d made friends, and he’d adopted Dodger from a local shelter, and he’d found a bar not too far from his apartment with a menu that reminded him of home. And he’d visited home, as much as he could. But it wasn’t very much, and he didn’t fit in with his surroundings at all. He’s East Coast through and through, it turns out. He likes football, and grabbing a beer with friends, and curling up with a blanket and a dumb comedy, and eating too much at his mother’s house. Yoga and kale and recreational drugs and desperately seeking fame and afternoons at the beach among people who all seemed to be in constant competition with each other over who could turn up with the biggest muscles or the smallest bikinis. It just wasn’t Chris’s scene. He’s humble but he isn’t stupid – he takes care of himself and he knows he isn’t bad to look at – but everyone he’d met outside of work always seemed more interested in the way he looked than anything else. He’d dated a girl in her mid-twenties for over a month before he realized she’d just been using him as Instagram ammunition to get back at an ex-boyfriend. A third date with a woman closer to his age had ended spectacularly when she’d been disgusted to find out he doesn’t shave his chest. He’d left that evening feeling worse about himself than he could ever remember feeling; at least until two years later, when a 20-month relationship with a man – his first ever with a man – had ended even more traumatically.
The worst part of all of it was how far away he’d been from his family. They’d been so close when Chris was growing up, and he’d missed them so much he ached with it sometimes. When he’d been made aware of an opening at Yale, the fact that it’s one of the most prestigious schools in the world definitely came second to the fact that it’s located just over two hours by car away from his childhood home and the city where his sisters live with their own families. Chris had applied on a whim thinking there was less than an ice cube’s chance in Hell he’d even get an interview. Then, he’d published a book on the societal role of prostitutes in 15th century Venice, that had been dubbed ground-breaking by rave reviews in the American Historical Review, and three weeks later he’d been offered the position after nothing more than a brief phone conversation about when he could start. It was such a long and exhausting journey but he’s here, and he’s nervous about starting at a new school, especially one with such a reputation, but tomorrow he’ll get to hug his little brother for the first time in close to a year. At the moment he falls asleep, with Dodger cuddled close to his chest, that thought overrides everything else.
* * *
“You love it, right?” is the first thing Scott says, beaming, before Chris even fully opens the door. “Tell me you love it.”
“I love it!” Chris confirms, grabbing his brother unceremoniously and dragging him into a vice-tight hug as Dodger barks and bounces excitedly at their feet. He’s personifying everything Chris is feeling inside. If he wasn’t in his thirties and also on the front step of his new home where his new neighbors might see, he’d also be jumping around and yelling.
“I knew you would.” Scott laughs and hugs back. “I missed you so much, never move so far away again, asshole.”
“I won’t,” Chris promises. He looks over Scott’s shoulder into the kind, creased faces of his parents, standing behind with thousand-watt smiles lighting up their own features. Words couldn’t describe how thrilled he is that they’re here. “Hi guys.”
“Move, let me hug my baby!” Lisa demands.
Scott obeys, and Chris wraps his Mom up and squeezes her. The smell of her perfume has always meant home, and it overwhelms him. Makes him feel like when he was small, and her arms felt like the only safe place in the whole world. She put Band-Aids on his knees and soothed his teenage heartbreaks and cheered him on in the front row at every Model U.N. competition. There were a lot of times in the last five years when he could have used her hugs and her advice. He didn’t call her as often as he’d wanted to, always worried hearing her voice in moments of vulnerability would break him down and have him unexpectedly quitting his job and moving back into his childhood bedroom.
“I missed you more than everyone!” she declares.
“I believe it. Hi, Mom. Missed you too.”
She pulls back and holds his face in her hands. “Let me look at you! Are you going to shave before you start? You look like a mountain man!”
“I’ve been on the road for a week,” Chris points out.
“I think he looks handsome with a beard,” Scott chimes in, and Lisa clicks her tongue.
“He always looks handsome, that isn’t what I mean.”
“Maybe tame it a little,” Scott relents. “But don’t shave it off completely, it hides that baby face. Otherwise people might think you’re just a grad student.”
“Thank you all so much for driving two hours down here to critique my face.”
“No, your face is lovely.” Lisa squishes his cheeks between her palms. “I missed it.”
Bob taps Lisa on the shoulder. “Can I get in there at some point? Also, I agree with your brother. Not about the beard, about California being much too far away.”
“Hey, no arguments here.” Chris finally lets go of his mother so he can hug his father as well. “I didn’t like it, anyway.”
“Too much sunshine? Gorgeous Hollywood actresses get a little tiring after a while?” Scott asks sarcastically as he pets Dodger.
“Actually, yes. Although I didn’t live in Hollywood and I never dated an actress.” Chris steps back to let them into his empty house.
“This place is great! Scott, you did good,” Bob says cheerfully, looking around.
“He says, for some reason surprised that the gay child has the best taste,” Scott intones, sarcastic again, and Chris stifles a snicker.
He’s ignored, and their parents wander off toward the kitchen, chatting excitedly about something called crown mouldings that Chris has no knowledge of.
Scott waggles his eyebrows at Chris once they’re alone. “Close enough. To Hollywood and actresses, I mean. I saw the pictures of that last one. A total knock-out. She was miles out of your league.”
Kat hadn’t been the actual last person Chris dated, Scott just doesn’t know about Eric. Chris never told him, or anyone in his family. It’s been nagging at him for two years, because he’s never kept secrets from them before. He could just never find the words, no matter how many times he tried. And he tried a lot. He’d phoned Scott once, late at night and drunk enough to be slurring his words, and came so close to spilling everything. Then at the last minute, he couldn’t, and he’d cried after hanging up the phone. If anyone on earth would understand exactly what Chris was going through it would be Scott, and despite that he still couldn’t find the words. He’d hated himself for it. But this isn’t the time, either.
“She was gorgeous,” Chris concedes, because she was, and it costs him nothing to say it. “I mean it, though. The whole scene got old pretty quick.”
“How does dating hot people get old?”
“When they don’t care about anything other than their looks, and yours. Shallow and meaningless is fun when you’re twenty, I guess. In your thirties, not so much.”
“Starting to look for something serious in your old age?” Scott teases. “White picket fence, two-point-five kids, all that mushy stuff?”
“I mean … kinda, yeah,” Chris answers honestly. “Aren’t you?”
Scott’s eyes roll. “We do not have enough time or alcohol right now to delve into the disaster that is my love life. Later, over many beers, I promise.”
“I’m gonna hold you to that.”
“I will regale you with all the juicy details as soon as we’re actually alone,” Scott says, dramatic and effervescent like he always is.
“The backyard is huge!” Bob calls from the kitchen. “Can I let Dodger out?”
“Yeah, go ahead!” Chris calls back. Then he turns back to Scott, and says seriously, “hey, for real, this place is fantastic. Thank you. I owe you, I guess … a house. Although, please don’t ask me to buy you a house.”
Scott laughs, and hugs him again. “I expect a serious increase in the quality of Christmas presents, now that you’ll be rich off that fancy Ivy League salary.”
“It’s not as much as you’re imagining.”
“Still more than I make. But alright, fine, you can make it up to me by never ditching me again. You’re my ally in our crazy family, I need you here.”
“That’s not even a problem. I’m honestly so stoked to be back.”
“Are you two going to get off each other long enough to help me move in all your stuff?” Bob asks, leaning on the doorframe and watching them with his arms crossed. “Because Dodger won’t be able to carry very much.”
“Probably more than me.” Scott finally lets go, and Chris wouldn’t have minded if the hug had lasted an hour. He has four years of being away from his best friend to make up for.
“Baby, you know we’re so proud of you,” Lisa says to Chris, clasping her hands in front of her face and blinking back the tears that never quite went away from their arrival. “You’ve accomplished so much. And it’s so good to have you close by again.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Chris feels the approval down to his toes. “I’m happy to be – well, not quite home, but pretty close.”
“This place will feel like home soon enough. And we’ll visit so often you’ll be sick of us.”
“Not possible.” Chris smiles. “And, good. I can’t wait.”
It takes a couple of hours to unload everything Chris had brought from his apartment in Santa Barbara. He carries in the heavy stuff with his dad while Scott and Lisa unpack dishes in the kitchen, and then they put together his bed and his dining room table, that Chris had managed to disassemble so they would fit into the truck. Lisa goes to a nearby grocery store and comes back with nearly a dozen bags, filled with paper towels and spices and ketchup and flour and dish-soap; all the staples he’ll need to have a functional kitchen, as well as enough food to last him weeks. She refuses to let him pay her back for it, but does reluctantly allow him to take them all out for dinner when the work is finally done. At a seafood restaurant on the pier, Bob makes a toast about how proud they are to tell everyone they know that their son is a professor at one of the most famous universities in the world. It leaves Chris dabbing at his eyes with a cloth napkin and the rest of them teasing him over how easily he cries. He hugs them each for much longer than he should before they go, and they pile back into their car amid promises of weekly phone calls and driving up to Boston on Sundays for family dinners and maybe them coming back to Chris’s house in January for the Super Bowl.
Chris wanders slowly from room to room after they’re gone, moving things around until they’re just so and taking in his new surroundings, and then unpacking his clothes in the bedroom and finding a good spot in the hall closet for his boxes of keepsakes. He finds the card that had come with the flowers from the house’s previous owners and sticks it to the fridge with a magnet. He locates a picture of his family from last Christmas in one of his boxes and puts that on the fridge too. When he’s finished tinkering, he sits in the middle of the couch, surveying his new living room. Dodger jumps up and climbs into his lap, and Chris hugs him.
“Things are going to be better, here,” he tells Dodger. He’s thinking out loud more than anything, but saying it to Dodger makes him feel less like he’s talking to himself. “I’m going to make them better.”
Dodger just looks at him, his eyes warm and kind and seeming to understand like he always does, even if he doesn’t know the meaning of the words. He licks Chris’s cheek.
“A new start, for both of us,” Chris continues. He scratches Dodger’s ears. “You don’t need one so much, but I do.”
He’d become someone he didn’t recognize, by the time he left California. Chris has always struggled with feelings of perpetual inadequacy, but it’s worsened significantly in the last few years, to the point that he walked around thinking every stranger was judging him harshly, and had caught himself acting in ways he wouldn’t have previously, to impress someone else. He didn’t like what he saw in the mirror anymore, because he didn’t see himself. He saw someone with his face and his voice who had twisted into a stranger while trying to become the person other people thought he should be. And all that twisting, all that bending over backward to try to fit someone else’s mould, hadn’t accomplished anything worthwhile anyway. He tried so hard to live up to what others expected of him and still got his heart broken and his self-esteem shattered and his life turned upside down. Chris is determined to remedy the situation, to learn how to be unapologetically himself and never again compromise in the hopes that it will make someone stick around. A new home is a good start.
* * *