“I'll be gone soon,” Boy said matter-of-factly. “And then she'll be all you have left. And her children. They're all you've got. And me.” It wasn't much, and Gray knew it. He didn't have much to show for fifty years on the planet. As crazy as they were, his parents had more. Three kids they'd adopted and made a mess of, but they tried at least, to the best of their limited abilities. They had each other. And all the people they touched as they roamed the world. Even Gray's paintings, and the agony that had inspired them, were somehow an outcropping of the two people who had adopted him and Boy. They had done a lot. More than Gray had ever thought or admitted. He saw that now. His parents had been crazy and limited, but at least they tried, even as messed up as they were. And Boy had tried too. Enough to come and see him. In comparison, Gray felt he had done far less with his emotional life, until Sylvia, and now he was limiting that too, and hurting her because he was scared. Terrified in fact.
“I love you, Boy,” Gray whispered as they sat holding hands across the table. He didn't care who saw them or what they thought. Suddenly he was no longer afraid of everything that had frightened him for so long. Boy was the final living symbol of the family Gray had run from for years.
“I love you too,” Boy said. He looked exhausted when they finally got up, and cold. He was shivering, and Gray gave him his coat. It was his best one. He had grabbed it on the way out, but it seemed a fitting gesture for the dying brother he had never known. He wished he had gone to see him before that, but he hadn't. It had never occurred to him, or in fact it had, and he had run from the idea. He realized now that he had run from so much, and all of it to avoid life, and getting hurt again. His family had become the symbol of all he feared. Boy was slowly lifting the fear from him.
“Why don't you stay with me tonight?” Gray offered. “I'll sleep on the couch.”
“I can stay at the hotel,” Boy said, but Gray didn't want him to. They went to pick up his things and went back to Gray's place. He said he had to leave by nine in the morning to catch his plane.
“I'll wake you up,” Gray promised as he tucked him gently into bed and kissed him on the forehead. He felt almost as though Boy were his son. Boy thanked him and was asleep before Gray closed the door.
Gray painted all night. He did sketches of him, dozens of them, so he wouldn't forget every detail of his face, and laid down the foundation for a painting. He felt as though it were a race against death. He never went to bed all night, and he woke Boy at eight and made him scrambled eggs. Boy ate about half, and drank some juice, and then said he had to leave. He was taking a cab to the airport, but Gray said he'd go with him. Boy just smiled, and then they left. He had to be there at ten for an eleven o'clock flight.
They stood close together after Boy checked in, and then they called the flight. Boy looked panicked for a moment, and then Gray reached out and pulled him into his powerful arms, and held him there while they both cried. They were tears not only for the present but for their lost past, and all the opportunities they'd missed, that they had tried to recapture in a single night. They had done well, both of them.
“It's going to be all right,” Gray said, but they both knew it wouldn't, unless Boy's theories about Heaven were right. “I love you, Boy. Call me.”
“I will.” But he might not, Gray knew. This could be the last moment, the last time, the last touch. And now that Gray had opened his heart to him, it would all hurt so much. So much too much. But it was a clean hurt this time. The clean sharp sword of loss. It was like severing a limb surgically, instead of having it torn off.
“I love you!” Gray called after him as he boarded the plane. He said it again and again so Boy would hear it, and when he reached the door to the plane, Boy turned and smiled. He waved, and then he was gone. The Little Prince had vanished, as Gray stood watching the place where he had been, and cried.
Gray walked around the airport for a long time. He needed to think, and to catch his breath. All he could think of now was Boy and the things he had said. What if he had never existed, if Gray had never seen him again? If he hadn't come all this way to see him. He seemed like a messenger from God.
It was noon when Gray finally called Sylvia on his cell phone. He hadn't talked to her in two days. And he hadn't slept all night.
“I'm at the airport,” he said, sounding gruff.
