Two (Commission) - Chapter 7 - James

An alternate two candle ending for Two, this time involving James with the candles.

Greyson dreamt of James. He was an adult again, sharing a drink with James in the bar as they chatted and laughed together, but there was no sound, just the image of his friend and himself enjoying each other’s company. They had known each other for so long, and more than anything else about his current situation, Greyson regretted never expressing his feelings to his old friend back when they had been the same age.

Out of the silence of the dream came the sound of something falling over, waking Greyson up. His eyes peeked open to see his childhood bedroom and searched for the source of the sound. Ethan, dressed in his pajamas, was standing there frozen at the foot of Greyson’s bed. His brother’s eyes were focused on the floor in front of him.

“Ethan?” Greyson asked. “What are you doing?” He nearly smiled hearing his own voice sounding much deeper now. It was still a ways off from puberty, but it was far more substantial than the chirpy baby voice he had been stuck with for most of the week. In fact, he was so happy about it, that he barely even cared that Ethan was sneaking around his bedroom.

“Uh… Hey,” Ethan said, giving him a nervous wave as if they were school friends encountering each other at a store. Greyson noticed that their voices were nearly identical now. “Sorry,” Ethan added without explanation.

“For what?” Greyson asked as he sat up on his bed. He took a moment to admire his skinny arms and his comparatively larger hands. His body felt stretched out, his proportions all uneven, as if someone were trying to take a little boy and reshape him into an adult one clumsy spurt at a time. “Did you break anything?”

“It was just a baseball bat,” his brother explained. “I must have bumped it with my toe.”

“Yeah,” Greyson said. “I bet your feet are bigger today than they were yesterday. I know the feeling.”

“Listen,” Ethan said. “I didn’t want to wake you up. I just needed to borrow a pair of your socks. I know you don’t like it when I do that, but I figured, if you didn’t know, then…”

“It’s fine,” Greyson said, chuckling. “That’s fine. Borrow my socks. Wear my underwear. Whatever the hell you want.”

“Really?” Ethan said, sounding genuinely surprised.

Greyson swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. The additional feet in height he had gained overnight gave him a momentary wave of vertigo, causing him to wobble his stilt-like legs. After taking a moment to steady himself and remember how to operate a 12-year-old body, Greyson walked over to Ethan and stood before him.

Ethan seemed doubtful about Greyson’s intentions. The boy was poised to defend himself against an attack while also prepared to accept a hug. Fortunately for Ethan, it was the second option that happened. Greyson pulled his twin brother in tight for a hug, appreciating their nearly identical size and weight.

“You all right?” Ethan asked as he returned a weak hug in response.

“Thank you!” Greyson said, fighting back tears. “Thank you for sharing your birthday with me. Thanks for being my brother. I love you.”

“Hey,” Ethan said, relaxing into the hug more. “I love you too, man.” The hug continued a bit longer than it probably should have. “Seriously though, are you all right?”

“I’m great,” Greyson said, releasing his embrace. “I’m fantastic.” He looked down at himself, smiling. “I’m 12, and it feels great. Don’t you think so, too?”

“Uh, yeah,” Ethan said. “I suppose it is pretty great.”

“Yeah,” Greyson said, feeling giddy with excitement. “Now, let’s go do some awesome kid stuff. Huh? Yeah?”

“Sure,” Ethan said. After a pause, he asked, “What the hell does that even mean?”

“I don’t know,” Greyson said, bursting out in laughter. “It’s whatever the hell we want it to be. It’s adulthood doesn’t matter yet. It’s years of time to figure things out again. It’s starting fresh.”

“Okay,” Ethan said. “How about we go eat breakfast first?”

“Hell yeah!” Greyson said. “Let’s do it.”

They went to leave the room, but Greyson paused a moment to look back at his bed, recalling the fuzzy shape of the dream from which he had awoken. He frowned, realizing that a beer with James would still only be a dream for him now.

“You alright?” Ethan asked him.

“I think so,” Greyson said, but he was unsure. “Let’s just get our breakfast.”

***

Breakfast was good. Their mom, sensing Greyson’s enthusiasm, went ahead and made them pancakes and bacon, which Greyson soaked in a sea of syrup. He was nearly done with his plate when the doorbell rang.

“I wonder who that is,” his mother wondered as she walked to the front door. “It’s pretty early still.”

The doorbell kept ringing repeatedly until she checked through the window and opened the door, saying, “Good morning, James. What brings you by at this hour?”

Hearing that name, Greyson’s eyes shot to the door. Sure enough it was James standing on the stoop, but not the grown up James from Greyson’s dream. Instead, there stood a 12-year-old James looking into the house with worry in his eyes.

“James!” Greyson cried, running over to his friend.

“Greyson?” James squeaked with a confused look on his face. “Wait, you’re 12 now, too?”

Realizing that James was aware that some magic had happened to them both, Greyson said, “Come up to my room. We can talk about things up there, alone.”

***

With the door to his bedroom locked, Greyson took a seat on his bed, while James paced back and forth the length of the room. Greyson stared at him in amazement, seeing his best friend as a boy again for the first time in years. It was a fascinating thing for Greyson, remembering the man James would become, while also recalling the boy he had returned to being. James, like Greyson, had been a late bloomer, meaning that they both still showed only faint traces of approaching puberty on them. It would be hard to imagine James as a man now aside from the look of mature distress on his otherwise youthful face.

“What the hell happened to us?” James asked. “Why did I wake up as a kid? Why is Stephen my twin brother now? And, how did I not notice you getting younger and younger everyday this week? I mean, I suddenly remembered that we both used to be adults when I woke up this morning. What’s going on?”

“It’s a long story,” Greyson said. James took a seat on the chair at Greyson’s desk and settled in to listen. Then, Greyson told James everything that had happened that week, covering it all in a general outline. He explained how he had figured out it was the candles that had transformed him. Finally, he described how he had used Ethan’s birthday cake to make himself 12 years old. Throughout the whole story, James listened silently, waiting until Greyson had finished.

Then, James sighed. “I know what happened to me,” he said, covering his face in his hands and leaning back. “I did it to myself.”

“What do you mean?” Greyson asked.

James let his hands fall to his sides and explained. “I blew out the candles myself later on in the party after you two did it.”

“What? Why?”

“I don’t know,” James said with a shrug. “I put the candles on my slice of cake and asked someone to take a picture of me in front of it, like, for a joke. I thought it’d be funny to pretend to be a kid for a minute. Someone lit the candles, and after the picture, I blew them out.”

“Oh...” Greyson said. “Oh, man. I’m sorry.” He felt bad, but not as bad as he thought he should feel.

“What the hell kind of candles are they?”

“I don’t know, really. I just know that they’re magical when they’re on a birthday cake.”

“Can they turn us back to normal?”

“They didn’t work when we tried them earlier this week,” Greyson said. “Do you remember that?”

“That’s right!” James said, as if he had just recalled it. “We made you a cake when you were a little kid. You explained everything to us then, but I just waved it all off as some made-up story.”

“I think the candles only work on an actual birthday. At least, I think that’s probably true.”

“Is there any cake still left over from yesterday?”

“Yeah,” Greyson said. “Several slices, I think.”

“What if we put the candles on a piece of your brother’s leftover cake and blew them out again, but with them set for 21 instead? It’s a real birthday cake, after all. Right?”

“I don’t know,” Greyson said, not wanting to give James false hope. “Maybe?”

“Can we try it, please?” James asked.

“Sure,” Greyson said. “Come downstairs with me.” He led his friend to the kitchen where they found Ethan scraping up the last bits of bacon on his plate.

“Hey, boys,” Greyson’s mother said. “So, what’s going on? You plotting something?”

“Would it be alright if James slept over tonight?” Greyson asked. “Please?”

“What about Stephen?” his mother replied.

Greyson exchanged a look with James, who appeared to be willing to let Greyson continue setting things up on his own.

“Him too,” Greyson said. “Just the four of us,” he added, glancing at a confused looking Ethan.

His mother replied, “If their mother is okay with it, then I don’t have any problem with them sleeping over.”

“Thank you!” Greyson said. Then, he nudged James and walked his friend to the front door and led him outside.

“I guess it would be weird if I didn’t bring Stephen along,” James said. “I hope I can get my mom to agree to it. I think she was a little worried about me when I was freaking out earlier.”

“You’d better go home now and smooth things over,” Greyson suggested. “Then, you can ask her and get her to call my mom. After that… we’ll figure out the next steps when you guys come over.”

“Okay,” James said, standing up his bike and taking a seat on it. “I’ll let you know somehow if there’s any problems.”

“Okay. I’m sorry that you got caught up in this, too,” Greyson said, but he realized as soon as he said it that he did not fully mean it.

They said their goodbyes and James rode off on his bike. Greyson watched his friend pedal away until the boy was out of sight.

***

It was Greyson and James’s first sleepover in years. Neither of them could remember exactly what they were expected to be doing, and they were both burdened by the serious plans they had that night for their final attempt at returning to adulthood. Thankfully, they each had a twin brother now that could lead the way. The two former adults were more than willing to just go with the flow when the boys decided it was time for videogames and scary movies. Almost in spite of themselves, they started to have fun.

Greyson and James were playing and growing more and more carefree as the night went on. It had become clear to them now that there was no job to worry about waking up for nor any bills that needed paying nor any expectations at all aside from enjoying themselves and each other. There was a new lightness they sensed, an absence of the weight of the world. The two of them put together did not weigh as much as either of them had weighed as adults before, but even without a scale, they could tell that they had been unburdened of more than the mass their adult bodies had carried. They wanted to move, so full of unconstrained energy as they were. It made them giddy and wild. They wrestled. They danced. They giggled. They were kids.

As the night wore on, their seemingly endless reserve of energy began to run low, and the boys settled down to watching TV while laying on couches and sleeping bags on the floor. Soon, most of them were asleep as the movie they were watching played on. A sudden noise in the movie woke up Greyson. He looked around the room and found Ethan and Stephen fast asleep on the couches. The sleeping bag next to Greyson was empty.

He stood up and began searching for James. He did not need to go far, the downstairs bathroom door was shut with the light inside shining out from beneath it. Greyson waited a moment, unsure if he wanted to disturb James or not. After some thought, Greyson realized that this would be the perfect time to try lighting the candles again. He knocked on the door.

There was a sound like a mixture of a gasp and a yelp. Then, James’s young voice said, “You scared me. Who is it?”

“Greyson,” he replied. “You okay in there?”

The door was unlocked and James swung it open. He was standing in front of the sink. It seemed that he had already flushed and washed his hands before Greyson arrived. For some reason, he had removed his T-shirt, baring his chest.

“What’s up?” Greyson asked.

James gazed into the mirror and said, “I’m struggling a little to get used to this.” He put his hands on his cheeks and rubbed the peach fuzz there. “I mean, I used to have to shave twice a day if I wanted to go out at night. Now… I think I have a couple of years to go before I’ll have to shave at all.”

Greyson stared at James, seeing him looking as he did when they had first met in middle school. A memory returned to him then. Gym class, in the changing room, Greyson spotted James removing his shirt to put on his uniform. It was the first time he had noticed James, the first time they had been in a class together. He remembered standing there, feeling something awaken inside of him as he stared at James a long time. He had thought James looked very cool and surprisingly muscular for his age. He found himself wanting to look that way, to have a body like that. He had thought that he wanted what James had. It was years later that he realized that what he had really wanted was just James.

Now, standing before Greyson in the bathroom, gazing at himself in the mirror was that same boy. Only now, Greyson understood what he felt about James.

“James,” Greyson said, but he hesitated to say more.

His friend turned to look at him, and Greyson blushed. “Yeah?” James asked.

“Maybe…” Greyson said. “I was thinking…”

“Oh,” James said. “The cake! Of course, let’s get the candles. We can try to use the magic again. Our brothers should be out cold now. This is the perfect time.” He pulled his T-shirt back on.

“Right,” Greyson said, hiding his disappointment. “The candles. Yeah, let’s do it.”

***

James set up the candles on a slice of leftover cake as Greyson searched for matches.

“I hope this works,” James said.

“Me too,” Greyson said, opening another cabinet. “Here they are.” He grabbed a box of matches and stepped down from the chair on which he had been standing to reach the top cabinets.

“We’re ready, then,” James said and turned the plate with the cake slice to face them with the numbers 2 and 1 set up to return them to their proper age.

Greyson struck a match and lit the two candles.

“Should we sing?” James asked.

“Might as well.”

They sang “Happy Birthday” to each other and lingered a long while on the final note as they gazed at one another.

“Let’s do it,” James said. They turned to face the cake, and James counted them down. “On three,” he said. “One… two… three…”

They blew out the candles together, and then high-fived.

“Alright, then,” James said as he picked the candles off of the frosting. “Might as well eat it.”

Greyson grabbed them forks and they dug into the slice together.

“This is good cake,” James muttered with his mouth full.

“Yup,” Greyson replied and swallowed.

Their forks connected once as they went for more cake, and Greyson thought about the slight traces of saliva they must have shared just then, like a second-hand kiss. Again, he felt the urge to confess his feelings to James.

“Something on your mind?” James asked before taking another bite.

Greyson returned a nervous smile. “Yeah,” he admitted. “I wanted to tell you something.”

“What is it?” James replied. “That you’re in love with me?”

Greyson blushed. “What?” he said. “Y-you knew?”

James chuckled. “You flat out told me earlier this week. Remember, you brought it up while we were making that cake together.”

“Right,” Greyson said, putting a hand on his forehead. “I forgot that you started remembering everything that happened this week.”

“And, I remember that, since it was a four-year-old saying it, I kind of brushed it off.”

Greyson set his fork down on the empty plate and added, “You also said that I should tell you again when we were the same age again.”

“I did. Didn’t I?” James asked, setting down his fork next to Greyson’s. He crossed his arms and waited.

“I… love you,” Greyson said. “I think I’ve loved you since before I understood what I really felt about you... or guys in general.”

James uncrossed his arms and smiled and said, “I think I’ve probably known for a long while as well. I mean, you’re my best friend. There’s some love there, even if there’s never been any… romance… yet.”

“‘Yet?’” Greyson found hope in the word.

“Maybe,” James said. “I’m having kind of a weird day. You understand, right?”

“Better than anyone. Yeah, I understand.”

“I’ll think about it,” James said. “I promise I will. Right now, I’m too preoccupied with thinking about what might... or might not... happen to us tomorrow morning.”

“I get it,” Greyson said. “Maybe tomorrow, then?”

“Maybe,” James said.

There was a long moment of silence, as the two boys stared at each other.

James turned away first. “Let’s get to sleep,” he suggested and walked out of the kitchen.

Greyson cleaned up the kitchen and joined James and their brothers back in the family room. Seeing James already lying on the floor with his eyes shut, Greyson lay down next to him in his own sleeping bag. Almost as soon as his eyes shut, he fell asleep.

***

When Greyson woke up the next morning to find himself laying on the floor in a sleeping bag, he knew that the candles had not worked as they had hoped. A quick examination of his body confirmed that he was still 12 years old.

Greyson glanced to his side to see James’s eyes blink open and turn to look at him. After a moment of consideration, he heard James let out a sigh. Then, the boy nodded, apparently accepting the results of their failed attempt to return to normal.

They said nothing about the candles that morning, as there was nothing much to be said. The game was over. Feeling certain that they had tried their best, both of them were willing to accept their loss in silence. At least, now they knew for sure. There was no tricking the candles. They would do their magic only at the right moment. No point in messing with them anymore. Best to just leave them alone.

When James packed up to leave, Greyson waited for a sign that his friend would speak to him again about their relationship. However, the most Greyson got out of James was a promise that they would discuss it later when he felt ready.

So, Greyson was left to wait and wonder what the future held for the two of them.

***

Weeks later, Greyson was on the grass stretching in preparation for the opening game of the youth football season. It was a long way still from college, but football was football. College could wait. Today, he was out there to have a good time.

He looked to his side to see Ethan stretching next to him. The distant look in his brother’s eyes was familiar to Greyson. He could tell the boy had butterflies in his stomach.

“Hey, Ethan,” Greyson said to his brother. “You nervous?”

“Uh,” Ethan said, as if he had been startled back from some distant place. “A little. Yeah.”

“It’s okay to be nervous,” Greyson said. “But, really, this is no big deal. This is going to be fun. You know?”

“What if I mess up and drop a pass?”

“Then, you drop a pass. You’ll catch the next one.”

“I’m not ready for this.”

“You are,” Greyson said, standing up. Then, he offered his hand to help Ethan stand up. Ethan took Greyson’s hand and let his brother pull him to his feet. “And, even if you’re not. There’s no better way to get ready than to just dive in and do it.”

“Yeah,” Ethan said, half-smiling. “Damn, Greyson.”

“What?”

“When’d you get to be so grown up?”

Greyson put an arm over Ethan’s padded shoulders and walked with his brother towards the rest of the team standing on the sidelines of the field. “I guess I had to turn twelve to figure out some things. There’s a lot of stuff in life that seems important but really doesn’t matter all that much. Then, there’s some stuff that matters a lot that we can forget about if we’re not careful.”

“Yeah? Like, what kinds of stuff?”

“The stuff that matters?”

“Yeah.”

Greyson was about to reply, when Stephen interrupted their conversation. “Hey,” he said. “Has anyone seen my brother around?”

Greyson scanned their teammates, but James was nowhere in sight.

Ethan said, “I think he was still in the locker room when we came out. He was trying to fix something wrong with his pads, maybe.”

Seeing an opportunity, Greyson said, “I’ll go check on him.”

He ran back to the locker room and stepped inside. “Is anyone in here?” he called out. “James?”

“I’m here,” James said. “This damn shoulder strap keeps coming apart.”

Greyson found his friend, sitting on a bench, trying to fasten his shoulder pads together while wearing them. He looked amusingly scrawny beneath the width of them.

“Are we alone?” Greyson asked as he approached James.

“I think so,” James said, watching Greyson take a seat on the bench next to him.

Greyson leaned in and planted a tender kiss on James’s lips.

“Come on,” James said. “Now’s not the time. I need a hand from you, not a kiss.”

“I could get my hands involved,” Greyson offered, smirking.

“Stop,” James gently chided Greyson. “Remember, we talked about this. We can be boyfriends, but no R-rated stuff, not for a while.”

Greyson held James’s hand tenderly and said, “I could keep it PG-13.”

“We’re not even old enough for that, yet,” James said. “A PG kiss, that’s it. And, if you can’t handle that, then we can go back to being G-rated friends.”

Greyson sighed. “All right,” he said and gave James another quick kiss.

“Okay, lover boy,” James said. “Now, help me with my pads.”

Greyson stood up and worked on the loose strap.

“I’ve got to admit,” James said. “I’m kind of nervous about this. It’s been a while since my last football game.”

“You’ve got years more experience at it than anyone else on the field… besides me.”

“Yeah,” James said. “Still, it all feels new again. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” Greyson said as he finally got the strap to stay put. “There. Fixed.”

James slipped on his jersey and walked to the door. Greyson followed him out. Their brothers were waiting for them outside.

“Is everything okay?” Stephen asked.

“I think so,” James said. “I’ll be alright. Don’t worry.” He glanced at Greyson and smiled.

“Hey,” Ethan said to Greyson. “You were going to say something about stuff that matters. It sounded... interesting.”

“Right,” Greyson said. “I was saying that, while we’re growing up and dealing with stuff that feels important, we can’t forget about the stuff that matters most.”

“Which is?” James asked.

“Having good friends,” Greyson replied, “having fun, and making time for both of them.”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “Sounds good to me. Anyways, I suppose all of that other stuff won’t be important until we’re adults. We’ve still got a lot of time before that.”

“We sure do,” Greyson said and shared a knowing little smile with James. “Years and years and years.” Greyson patted his brother on the back, and then they all went off to play.

The End