Heart

Heart
by Kate
moonwhip@yahoo.com
January 2002

Justin thumped on Chris's door a little while after rehearsal, standing in the dim hall with his head bent, the glossy red heart-shaped box tucked under one tense arm. "Chris, man," he said when Chris opened the door. His eyes were wide. "It happened again."

He pushed past Chris, sat down on the bed. Chris shoved the door shut and locked it. "In the lobby?"

"Yeah. You want a piece? Lou inspected it already." Justin picked at the scalloped edge of the box. He always took a long time to open them.

"Guy just gave it to you?"

"He said some stuff too."

Chris crossed the room and bumped Justin with his hip as he sat on the crumpled sheets, trying for a smile. It didn't work. He took the box from Justin's twitching hands. Inside stood rows of dark German truffles, one piece missing in the middle; a heart with a hole in it. "I bet if 'N Sync fails, Lou'll make us his personal food tasters," he said, peering at the box. Justin laughed weakly.

"What did the guy say?"

"I don't know."

Chris poked at the chocolates. "Okay."

Justin fell silent, but his hands slipped up and down his thighs, smoothing the crisp fabric. Chris watched the rhythmic movement of his fingers. The bony knuckles, the shifting valleys of tendon and skin on his thumbs. After a moment, Justin said, "He said he wanted me to have it because I deserved it."

"Oh, Justin, that's so terrible," Chris said. "I wish people always thought I deserved food."

Justin ducked his head. In the yellow light from the cheap bedside lamp, his hair shone like real gold. He looked inappropriate, too pretty against the ugly bedspread. "I know! I know. I'm stupid. But it's so weird, that's the same thing the last guy said."

"Really?"

"Yes," Justin said glumly.

This, Chris thought, was the fun part. Except for how it wasn't, at all. "You have a mysterious power over older men, kid. I don't profess to understand what the hell they see in you, personally, but I think this huge chocolate heart thingy here speaks for itself."

"I just - I don't want... don't they need... I don't see why they keep picking me."

Chris smiled to himself, a salty little ironic smile that he knew Justin wouldn't see. Justin was still talking.

"-I don't ask for it or anything. I just perform, and somehow... they always want to offer me the same thing-"

Justin's shoulders were trembling. Chris slid an arm around his waist, pressed his face into the soft clean curls, whispering, "Hey, hey." Justin sucked in a shaky breath, ribcage expanding beneath Chris's fingers. Then another. He began to smile; Chris couldn't see it but he could feel it. He could always feel it. And so could the rest of the world.

"You could just tell them I'm your boyfriend," he growled, poking at Justin's side. Justin squirmed away with a sideways look, laughed his real laugh, high-pitched and kind of nasal. Chris let go.

He looked down at the box balanced on his knees, lighter than a heart should be. "High-quality stuff," he said.

"It usually is." The voice was edging toward gloom again.

Chris laughed and Justin looked up, startled. "You know why they choose you?" Justin blinked. "You're a pop star, baby. You don't have anything to protect you from them. They think they can get inside you, see what you're like. And on the outside you look perfect, of course, and you talk to them like you're not afraid of them."

"I'm not, really," Justin said slowly. "I mean, Lonnie would-"

"I know. But that's pretty rare for those guys, I'm guessing." Chris took the piece of chocolate from the bottom point of the heart, rolled it in his fingers. Its surface warmed as he touched it.

Justin went quiet for a minute. "I'm not a pop star," he said finally.

"Wait a year," Chris said, and put the chocolate in his mouth. He liked milk chocolate more than dark, but the candy was thick and firm and tasted expensive, the way Justin smelled, and consuming expensive things made him feel guilty and exhilarated at the same time. He closed his eyes and pressed the melting chocolate to the roof of his mouth.

"Chris?"

"Hmmm?" he mumbled, mouth full of richness, eyes still closed.

"I think it's you - the reason I'm not afraid of them, when they try to give me..." He paused. "It's you."

Chris opened his eyes carefully. Swallowed. "What?" he said.

"Well, you're older than me, and we're together all the time, and you don't try that stuff or look at me like that. So I know it's not me. It's them."

"Right," Chris said, "right. Old men and twelve-year-old girls like you. Oh my god, Justin, I envy you so much!"

"Shut up," Justin said, but he was trying not to laugh. They were both quiet for a second; companionable quiet, because if it was funny it certainly wasn't true.Then Justin said, "You have chocolate on your face."

Heart on my face, Chris thought. But he smiled, easy and feral as ever. "You have ugly on your face," he said.

"Oh!" Justin crowed, leaping up, face brilliant in the light. "That's it, we're fighting right now."

Chris pointed down at the heart-shaped box. "Aren't you gonna eat some of this before I kill you?"

"I don't want any." Justin's smile didn't falter.

"Then why did you take it, ass?"

Justin stepped back, let his hands drop. "They're always so serious," he said, looking at his sneakers, which gleamed white on the dingy carpet. "I can't just turn them down. I guess I don't have-"

"The heart," Chris said.

"Yeah."

Chris lifted the box off his lap, put it carefully in the center of the bed and grinned with teeth. Lunging at Justin - who danced away from him, gleeful and beautiful, sticking out his innocent heart-colored tongue - he thought: Guess what, baby? You never will.