Listening to Dust by Brandon Shire Read Free Book Online

that unexplainable, unprintable connection once again, like the strike on a chord buried deep in his core?  
    They finally settled into one shared breath as the sun came up. He reached for Dustin’s hands, kneading his coarse fingertips and tender palms with a gentle touch.  
    “What are you doing?” Dustin asked as he watched him.  
    Stephen smiled and brought Dustin’s palm to his lips and kissed it gently. “Looking inside you, feeling that beauty you try so hard to hide,” he answered as he cupped his cheek inside of Dustin’s hand and caressed his own face with it.  
    Dustin grew still and stared as Stephen kissed his palm again.  
    Looking back at Dustin, at his stillness, it was easy for Stephen to forget how hard Dustin appeared on the outside; how solid his emotional armor looked when you stood off at a distance; and how easy it was to get lost inside his hidden tragedy and not see what was beyond it.  
    It was right then, in that orange morning sun, that he had asked himself if Dustin would ever be able to look beyond what was curled inside of him; if he would ever be able to feel his own truth. Stephen knew the answer to that question instinctively, but deceived himself into believing that somehow he would be able to resurrect Dustin from his own ashes.  
    Only later, after Dustin had gone back to the States and left him completely desolate, did Stephen truly realize how foolish a notion that was, how ridiculous the sharp myth of love.  

Chapter 8
    The Diner  

    Robbie looked at Stephen and chuckled. “Yup, you two are of the same mind.”  
    “Excuse me?” Stephen asked, pulling himself back to the present.  
    “You and Dusty, you both get that far off look when y’all thinking ‘bout each other. He had it bad as you.”  
    Stephen looked up at this overblown version of Dustin and felt a tear slip out before he could stop it. He wondered for a moment if Robbie realized how much Dustin had sacrificed for him. How much his own human dignity had been forfeited to protect little Robbie, and how much of the rest of his life had been spent in devotion to the one moment Dustin perceived himself to have failed at that task.  
    Dustin had once told Stephen that the official story circulated after Robbie’s accident had been that Robbie was out playing when the rainstorm struck and, not wanting to get his parents angry over sopping wet clothes, he had stripped himself naked under a tree, folded his clothes up, and was about to dash for home when he was struck by lightning. The ridiculousness of that fiction hit Stephen’s sensibilities instantly. No ten-year-old boy would consider such a thing; maybe the innocent logic of a five-year-ld streaking across a field would make that a laugh for future social occasions, but not at ten. However, with the damage done to Robbie’s mental capabilities after the strike, the story was simply accepted, and Stephen had no doubt that this had only added to Dustin’s self-inflicted guilt over the situation.  
    Robbie was still watching him. “You never said,” he advised Stephen.  
    “Said what?” Stephen asked.  
    “How y’all met. Dusty never spoke of that. ”  
    Stephen smiled internally, the only real smile that had come to him since he had started this journey, and it seemed odd to him that Dustin had spoken to Robbie about his letters, but not about how they met.  
    But then, their meeting was such a small memory; small, and yet so very large. Maybe Dustin still had some shame over it. Stephen had no shame; he thought Dustin was bloody beautiful the first time he laid eyes on him. He was utterly drunk, but still strangely innocent and lovely all at the same time. And in that state, seemingly carefree and completely opposite his sober self, Dustin did rather remind him of the younger brother who sat before him now.  
    “You really want to hear this?” he asked Robbie.  
    “Yup.”  
    So simple. But it wasn’t.  

Chapter 9
    London