They didn’t speak at first. Wallace had so many things he wanted to say, but he didn’t know how to start.
Hugo did. He always did. “Hello.”
Wallace said, “Hello, Hugo.”
Hugo raised his hand toward Wallace, fingers outstretched. Wallace did the same, their hands inches apart. They couldn’t touch. Wallace was dead, after all. But it was good. It was still good. Wallace imagined he could feel the heat from Hugo’s skin.
Hugo said, “I think I know why you were brought to me.”
“Why?” Wallace asked.
Voices low, soft. Secret.
Hugo lowered his hand back to the bed, and the grief Wallace felt over it was enormous. “You make me question things. Why it has to be this way. My place in this world. You make me want things I can’t have.”
“Hugo.” He cracked right down the middle.
“I wish things were different,” Hugo whispered. “I wish you were alive and found your way here. It could be a day like any other. Maybe the sun is shining. Maybe it’s raining. I’m behind the counter. The door opens. I look up. You walk in. You’re frowning, because you don’t know what the hell you’re doing in a tea shop in the middle of nowhere.”
Wallace snorted. “That sounds about right.”
“Maybe you’re passing through,” Hugo continued. “You’re lost, and you need help finding your way. Or maybe you’re here to stay. You come up to the counter. I say hello, and welcome you to Charon’s Crossing.”
“I tell you I’ve never had tea before. You look outraged.”
Hugo grinned ruefully. “Maybe not outraged.”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep telling yourself that. You would be so irritated. But you’d also be patient.”
“I’d ask you what flavors you like.”
“Peppermint. I like peppermint.”
“Then I have just the tea for you. Trust me, it’s good. What brings you here?”
“I don’t know,” Wallace said, caught in a fantasy where everything was beautiful and nothing hurt. He’d been here before in secret. But now it was out in the open, and he never wanted it to end. “I saw the sign near the road and took a chance.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for taking a chance.”
Wallace struggled against closing his eyes. He didn’t want to lose this moment. He forced himself to memorize every inch of Hugo’s face, the curl of his lips, the stubble he’d missed on his jaw when shaving earlier. “You’d make the tea. Put it into a little pot and set it on a tray. I’d be sitting at the table near the window.”
“I’d bring the tray out to you,” Hugo said. “There’d be a second cup, because I want you to ask me to sit down with you.”
“I do.”
“You do,” Hugo agreed. “Sit a spell, you say. Have a cup of tea with me.”
“Will you?”
“Yes. I sit in the chair opposite you. Everything else fades away until it’s only you and me.”
“I’m Wallace.”
“I’m Hugo. It’s nice to meet you, Wallace.”
“You pour the tea.”
“I hand you the cup.”
“I wait for you to pour your own.”
“We drink at the same time,” Hugo said. “And I see the moment the flavor hits your tongue, the way your eyes widen. You didn’t expect it to taste like it does.”
“It reminds me of when I was younger. When things made sense.”
“It’s good, right?”
Wallace nodded, eyes burning. “It’s very good. Hugo, I—”
Hugo said, “And maybe we just sit there, wasting away the afternoon. We talk. You tell me about the city, the people who hurry everywhere they go. I tell you about the way the trees look in the winter, snow piling on the branches until they hang low to the ground. You tell me about all the things you’ve seen, all the places you’ve visited. I listen, because I want to see them too.”
“You can.”
“I can?”
“Yes,” Wallace said. “I can show you.”
“Will you?”
“Maybe I decide to stay,” Wallace said, and he’d never meant it more. “In this town. In this place.”
“You’d come in every day, trying different kinds of tea.”
“I don’t like a lot of them.”
Hugo laughed. “No, because you’re very particular. But I find the ones you do like, and make sure I always have them on hand.”
“The first cup I’m a stranger.”
“The second you’re an honored guest.”
And Wallace said, “And then I have one more. And then another. And then another. What does that make me?”
“Family,” Hugo said. “It makes you family.”
“Hugo?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t forget me. Please don’t forget me.”
“How can I?” Hugo said.
“Even when I’m gone?”
“Even when you’re gone. Don’t think about it now. We still have time.”
They did.
They didn’t.
Hugo’s eyes grew heavy. He fought it, eyes blinking slowly, but he’d already lost. “I think it’d be nice,” he said, words slurring slightly. “If you came here. If you stayed. We’d drink tea and talk and one day, I’d tell you that I loved you. That I couldn’t imagine my life without you. You made me want more than I ever thought I could have. Such a funny little dream.”
His eyes closed and didn’t reopen. He breathed in and out, lips parting.
After a time, Wallace said, “And I would tell you that you made me happier than I’d ever been. You and Mei and Nelson and Apollo. That if I could, I’d stay with you forever. That I love you too. Of course I do. How could I not? Look at you. Just look at you. Such a funny little dream.”
For the rest of the night, he floated above Hugo, watching, waiting.
CHAPTER
22
The next morning—the seventh, the final, the last—Cameron said, “Will you go with me to the door?”
Wallace blinked in surprise as he looked down at Cameron. “You want me there?”
He nodded.
“I’m not … I can’t go—not yet. I’m not going through yet.”
“I know,” Cameron said. “But I think it’ll help, having you there.”
“Why?” Wallace asked helplessly.
“Because you saved me. And I’m scared. I don’t know how I’m going to climb the stairs. What if my legs don’t work? What if I can’t do it?”
Wallace thought of all he’d learned since walking through the doors of Charon’s Crossing for the first time. What Hugo had taught him. And Mei. And Nelson and Apollo. He said, “Every step forward is a step closer to home.”
“Then why is it so hard?”
“Because that’s life,” Wallace said.
Cameron gnawed on his bottom lip. “He’ll be there.”
Zach. “He will.”
“He’ll yell at me.”
“Will he?”