Chapter 26

For their April Zoom "not-date,"Joel set up his laptop and ring light on the back deck, since it was a warm-ish evening and the spring peepers were croaking in the nearby stream. Besides, if he was sick to death of being in his office, Daniel was probably sick of looking at it.

Was Daniel also sick of waiting for Joel to come around to the idea of another reunion? He probably had his pick of Omaha hotties—Omahotties?—people who had never abandoned him in a hotel room, who hadn't ripped open old wounds by pulling away again.

After Valentine's Day, they'd stopped flirting but stayed connected, stayed friends. At least Joel hadn't ruined that yet.

Could Daniel guess that he wasn't just the first person Joel texted when he had a funny thought, that in fact he was Joel's first thought every morning and final thought every night? Did Daniel know that all this "breathing space" had given Joel much more than oxygen?

It was only eight-twenty p.m. now, ten minutes before their Zoom time, but Joel logged in anyway. Then he opened a new browser tab and went to his favorite bookmark: Daniel's Etsy shop, where he was a "star seller" (Etsy had missed a trick in not calling them "stellar sellers"). Instead of perusing the entire collection, Joel typed eastern Colorado into the search box. Then he scrolled slowly through the photos, mentally inserting a cowboy-hatted Danny barreling over the shortgrass prairie on a buckskin bronco.

"Whoa." He clicked on one picture to enlarge it. Most of Daniel's photos were wide shots of big honking landscapes, but this pic was a closeup study taken at ground level. Clouds loomed in the background, the sky morphing from a menacing slate to a holding-out-hope yellow near the horizon. In the foreground, a dandelion with a full head of seed was centered in focus, its stems rising in defiance against the coming storm.

But this wasn't the same Taraxucum species as the common dandelion that brightened Joel's backyard every year. Instead of the jagged leaves resembling lion's teeth—or dents de lion, hence the name—this plant had skinny, single-lobed leaves.

He and Daniel had been born in the same country only two weeks apart. Yet they'd had such divergent lives, right down to the dandelions.

The Zoom doorbell sounded. Joel straightened his posture and his shirt collar, checking his image in the onscreen box one last time (well, one last time before the call started).

Daniel Evansappeared in the black Zoom box. Then the video clicked on, showing a giant blue head.

Joel shuddered. "The fuck is that?"

"His name is Omar," Daniel said offscreen. "He's the troll under the Bob Bridge. See?" The camera angled up to show the underside of a white suspension pedestrian bridge behind the sculpture. Beyond it was a deep-blue sky the same color as Omar's face.

"Your bridge is named Bob."

"After Bob Kerrey," Daniel said.

"The Senator? I didn't know things were still named after Democrats. Let me see that troll again."

"Hang on, I'll show you all of him." Daniel's smiling face appeared onscreen. The sight flooded Joel with every feel-good hormone his pituitary gland had to offer.

Daniel walked forward and held the camera at arm's length to show both himself and Omar. With blue hair shaped like soft-serve ice cream and a grand total of three white teeth, Omar looked like a test-tube offspring of Jimmy Fallon and Papa Smurf.

Joel offered a round of applause. "As lovely as your apartment is, it's nice to see you in another place."

"It's nice to be in another place." Daniel started walking with the camera facing him, the Missouri River at his back. He was apparently using some sort of magic anti-jostling selfie stick, because the ride didn't make Joel queasy. "I'm going to walk us over the bridge to Iowa so you can see the sunset over Omaha." He tapped the wireless earbud in his left ear. "I've got these, so don't worry about people around me hearing your voice."

"I've never been to Iowa." Joel adjusted his ring light to better illuminate his own face. "So how long after you moved to Omaha did it take to get that Counting Crows song out of your head?"

"Only a few thousand days." Daniel turned around and stepped up. The city appeared behind him, upon a tapestry of glowing blue sky. "I always used to think of you when I listened to that album, because of that song ‘Raining in Baltimore.'"

"So when you moved to Omaha, we formed a mystical musical geographical link." Joel rolled his shoulders, releasing their last gnarl of tension. Why did he keep forgetting how easy it was to talk to this man? "Speaking of music, did you do your Taylor Swift homework?"

"Got my answers right here." Daniel pulled a torn scrap of paper from the pocket of his bear-brown University of Wyoming sweatshirt. "I can't believe I convinced you to listen to her."

"You said the Folklore and Evermore albums were indie-adjacent, and you were right." It staggered Joel how well Daniel understood his pseudo-hipster soul.

"Easy question first," Daniel said. "Favorite song from Folklore. My answer's ‘Exile.'"

"Mine, too! Because it features the Bon Iver guy." Sure, that was it. Not because it depicted his last, worst breakup with near-documentary accuracy. "That's when I knew Taylor Swift had become officially cool."

"I'm sure she'd be happy to hear it. I love the song because I'm a sucker for a duet." Daniel looked at his scrap of paper. "Question two: the song you most see yourself in. A lot of the relationship songs would've worked, so I went out of the box with ‘Seven,' because it took me back to my childhood. And not in a good way."

For a moment Joel was sitting in their meadow again, watching Danny rub his cheek where that monster had left bruises. "Are you the narrator's friend, the one with the abusive dad?"

"Stepdad, in my case."

"I remember," Joel said softly. "Did you have someone's house you could escape to, like in the song?"

Daniel nodded, shifting closer to the railing to let a pair of joggers pass on his left. "Her name was Lindsay. She was what people back then called a tomboy. One time when we went fishing in the creek, I dared her to eat an earthworm, and she didn't even hesitate. Of course, then I had to eat one too."

"What did it taste like?"

"Like dirty bacon. I haven't seen Lindsay since I moved to Omaha. We kept saying we'd meet up on one of her long hauls—she's a truck driver now. But then, you know…"

"Then the world capsized."

"Yeah. So which song do you most see yourself in?"

Joel hesitated. His answer was also a question: Did Daniel have the strength to be with someone who was, more often than not, a walking disaster zone?

"It's ‘Peace,'" Joel said, "because it's about knowing you're a lot to deal with." He blinked away the brief memory flash of Michael's wide, wet eyes. "How you accept you'll never be low maintenance, so you just hope your partner can put up with your bullshit." Another flash: a champagne bottle wasting away in the fridge, its cork unwrapped but never popped. "And you hope you're worth all the drama you bring to the table."

"Interesting." Daniel kept walking, his expression inscrutable. "That's actually one of her autobiographical songs. See, back in 2016…"

Instead of addressing Joel's insecurities, he launched into an annotated elucidation of Taylor Swift's public feuds and loves.

Joel interjected a series of Uh-huhs and Wows, but mostly he took in the sight of Daniel, backlit by the setting sun and frontlit by the ever-deepening sky. How could someone he couldn't touch feel so real?

Daniel stopped, cutting off his own fan-boying. "Look, the border." The camera view swooped down to show the concrete, where the words Iowa and Nebraska appeared on opposite sides of a painted black line. A splash of what looked like blue energy drink nearly obscured the KA.

"If those states ever went to war," Joel said, "that bridge would be a prime target to capture."

"Kinda dark, but okay." Daniel's face appeared again, then receded slightly. "Congratulations, you're in Iowa."

"Do people ever kiss from either side of the line?"

"Oh yeah. I jog over this bridge a lot, and half the time I get stopped and asked to take pics of tourists doing something like that."

Joel leaned to his left, as if that would help him see over Daniel's shoulder. "Show me the skyline again."

Daniel did as he asked. The buildings were now silhouetted against the setting sun, looking like smudged letters on a sheet of peach construction paper.

"Thank you for bringing me out here."

"You like it?" Daniel asked, appearing in the corner of the shot, his eyes as eager as Florey's after learning a new trick. "It was either this or the world's largest ball of stamps out in Boys Town."

"First of all, I would kill to see that, too. Second of all, Boys Town sounds like a porn studio."

Daniel laughed out loud as he waved an apology to someone he'd nearly bumped into.

"Okay, last question." Joel rubbed his hands, which were cold not just because of the breeze sweeping over his backyard. He could totally humiliate himself here. "Which song off folklore makes us think of each other?"

"You go first."

Joel bit his lip. It was only fair, since Daniel had answered the other two questions first. "Don't laugh, but it's ‘The One.'"

"Really?" Daniel beamed at the camera as he started walking again.

"Is that surprising? It's a song about lost, um, you know, opportunities."

"Lost love."

"Sure." Joel tugged at his shirt collar. Was there a warm front coming through all of a sudden? "That bridge is the best."

Daniel looked back over his shoulder. "Pretty, isn't it?"

"I mean the bridge in that song." Naturally, his brain chose this moment to blank on the lyrics. "Where it's like, changing one thing could have changed everything."

Daniel hesitated, then shook his head with great force. "Joel, weren't you the one who said, ‘Regrets are trash'?"

"Did I?"

"You did, and you were right. We can't go back in time and make different choices to go down different paths. We are where we are—we are who we are—and nothing can change that." The bridge was on a steeper descent now, so nothing but a purple-pink sky showed behind him. "But as long as we're alive, we still have a chance. A damn good chance."

Joel's pulse sped up. Maybe he hadn't made an irrevocable mess of them after all. "Just say which song you picked for me before I die of old age."

"I picked ‘Invisible String.'"

"Oh!" Joel coughed out. "Hey, uh, did you know that's based on a Chinese folk tale, the red thread of fate that links two people destined to—uh, it's like their version of-of—" He cleared his throat. "Of a soulmate."

"Of course I know that," Daniel said as the towers of the Bob Bridge appeared behind him. "I've dissected every Taylor Swift song going back to Tim McGraw."

"Did she play with his band?"

"What? No, it—never mind." He looked back over his shoulder toward the city. "This is a good spot."

The camera spun around slowly, revealing Omaha stretched out beneath a blazing, Fanta-hued sky, a neon contrast to the darkness surrounding Joel's own body here in Maryland. For a few blinks, his imagination soared to space-station heights, watching his and Daniel's slices of Earth turn into shadow.

"Can you see okay?" asked Daniel offscreen.

"It's perfect." Joel pulled his sleeves down over his fingers—a poor substitute for holding Daniel's hand, but at least it warmed him a little. "Our first sunset together. We couldn't see it that night in Columbia." He shut his mouth, but it was too late to swallow that last word and the memories it exhumed. "Because we were at the lake, facing east. Plus all the trees there…"

Daniel made an ambiguous grunt and said nothing. A fleeting flock of birds swept across Joel's laptop screen, darting above Bob's suspension cables at the last moment.

Did Daniel think they were soulmates? The whole concept was so depressing—what if that predestined love of your life got hit by a bus or eaten by a crocodile before you could ever meet? Would you be doomed to a life of misery or at least vague dissatisfaction?

Maybe Joel was looking at it the wrong way. "We are where we are," Daniel had just said. "We are who we are." But if he believed in that ‘Invisible String' song—if he saw hope and possibility where Joel saw nothing but regret—he was saying something bigger. Daniel was saying that who they were now was who they were meant to be, that their journeys had brought them to this place at this time and made them ready for each other.

Which meant the actual existence of soulmates wasn't the fucking point.

"Hey." Joel softened his voice. "I have good news." News that could start a cascade of events leading him back to Daniel's arms—the scariest, loveliest place in the world. "The vaccine worked."

"What?!" The view whirled around to show Daniel's face again. "You're immune?"

"Nobody's a hundred percent immune. That's not what vaccines are for." Joel shook off the dizziness from the camera's wild spin. "But before my two doses, I had no antibodies to Covid. They had to check that first for me to be eligible for the study. And afterward…" He rubbed his sternum, right over the lymph nodes that had betrayed him before but not this time. "Dude, I have antibodies. My immune system, it rocks."

"Wooooo! Yes!" The camera shook and bounced, tilting the view on Joel's screen. "Oh my God, this is amazing." Daniel let out a delirious laugh. "You're not gonna die."

"I probably will die someday." Joel's cheeks hurt from smiling at this reaction. "Did you get a vaccination appointment yet?"

"No, and now that Nebraska's opened it to all adults, it's a complete free-for-all. I preregistered with the health department weeks ago." Daniel settled his phone back into place, showing the sunset again. "I wake up at three every morning to surf pharmacy websites for an opening."

"Try harder."

Daniel scoffed. "Okay, Bossy Boy. Tomorrow I'll wake up at two-thirty."

"I mean it. Get your first shot by Friday. That way you'll be protected in five weeks, in time for my birthday."

Joel held his breath. The words were out. He'd flung the door open so hard, it was hanging by a single hinge.

This time, Daniel stayed offscreen. "Are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Joel hugged himself and rapped his heels against the wooden deck. "I've been thinking about it, like, all the time. I really want to see you. In person."

There came a soft exhalation through what sounded like pursed lips. "Joel, are you sure?"

"If you're asking if I'm I going to freak out about it at some point, then the answer is yeah, probably. If you're asking if I'm going to freak out about it and withdraw the invitation, then the answer is no. This is for real, Daniel. I want you here." His pulse pounded in his ears, almost drowning out his own words. "Or I could come there."

"No. It would have to be Maryland."

"Why?"

"Because of the cicadas," Daniel said in a well-duh voice.

Of course. The cicadas. "They'll be in top form then." Why wasn't Daniel looking at him? "No pressure, by the way. Take all the time you need to think about it."

"I want to come see you, but..." Daniel took another audible breath in and out. "I need to know what changed your mind."

A good question. Joel finally had an answer.

"Being in this vaccine study gave me all kinds of lymphoma flashbacks: feeling different, feeling out of control, feeling like my life was in the hands of people in white coats and green scrubs. Then there was the waiting for results." Joel swiped the back of his hand over his rapidly heating forehead. "The waiting was always the hardest part, just like Tom Petty says. I swear oncologists get paid by the delay."

Daniel made a hmm noise that sounded like agreement or at least understanding. It was enough to keep Joel talking.

"Anyway, with all that shit bubbling up from my memories, I got pulled back into cancer mode. Nothing was certain, not even you, and I wish so much that I could've explained it to you on Valentine's Day, but I hadn't figured it out yet myself." He paused as the point of this story—why he changed his mind about seeing Daniel—finally caught up to him. "Then yesterday, getting the results on my antibodies gave me good flashbacks, and that's when I understood. That's when I remembered how the cancer changed me."

"What do you mean?"

"I got braver." Joel looked directly into the camera. "And I swore I'd never live in fear again."

There it was, his whole truth and nothing but. Now it was up to Daniel to accept it or not.

The setting sun slipped into the space between two tall buildings, shooting a red-gold spike straight at the camera. Joel kept watching even as the sun's glare created strobing blue-green spots in his vision.

Finally Daniel cleared his throat. "I'll have to expand my radius."

Joel blinked, making the spots dance. "Radius for…"

"My search radius for pharmacies. I'll go to Lincoln if I have to, to get this damn shot. I'll go to Grand Fucking Island. I'll go anywhere."

"Okay, then." Joel pressed both palms to his chest and pulled in a deep breath. "We're doing this."

"We're doing this," Daniel said. "We're really doing this."

"For the record, Grand Fucking Island sounds like a primo vacation spot. An entire island dedicated to grand fucking."

Daniel's low laugh rumbled forth, warming the back of Joel's neck. "I hear it's where Boys Town Studio shoots their best porn."

Joel snorted so hard it hurt his sinuses. The pain was all that kept him from blurting, I love you so much, dude.

A beep sounded on Daniel's end. "Damn, my phone's at ten percent."

"Turn it off now."

"But the sun hasn't set yet."

"I don't want you walking home with a dead battery, in case something happens and you need your phone. Besides, we'll have other sunsets."

Daniel swung the camera to show his face, ruddy now in the setting sun. "You sure?"

"I promise. Text me when you're home safe." Joel lingered a moment to take a mental snapshot. "I'll see you soon."

He clicked the red Leave Meeting button, and Daniel disappeared.

For now.