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Eddie is sitting on his parents' porch. He could've sworn he had a key, but none of the ones he has are working. He’s thinking about when they could've changed the lock, before or after Chris moved in with them, when he sees his dad’s truck pull up.
“Hey, I thought I was supposed to come over for dinner at six?”
“Yes, sorry, church took a little longer than we thought,” Helena explains like he should’ve already known.
Eddie shook his head. “But it's Wed-”
“Ash Wednesday, yes.” Ramon cuts Eddie off.
Then Eddie sees it. He sees the blob of ash on his mother's forehead, with a clean line through it, like she already forgot it was there and scratched it. His father and Chris have similar grey crosses on their foreheads. Something bubbles up inside of him, he's not quite sure what feeling exactly, but what comes out is, “You went without me?”
Which is, frankly, the last thing he had expected to say. He hasn't gone to mass in years, except with Bobby or Abuela. He’s held onto his Saint Christopher medal for dear life and crossed himself after a close call or two, so he’s prayed… in his own way. But he never imagined himself on his knees, hands clutched together, eyes closed tight, ever again. Yet here he is, disappointed that they didn't even ask, even though he would've said no.
“Edmundo, please, we didn’t think you would want to go.” Helena pleads as she opens the front door, and Chris follows her inside.
He looks back at his father once before following them.
“That's not the point. I'm here, I should have been invited. Why didn't you tell me your plans? Does Chris go every week?”
Right behind him, Eddie's father says, “Christopher knows what is expected of him. He goes every Sunday with little complaint. Unlike you at that age.”
Eddie rolls his eyes at that. He was an altar boy, for Christ's sake. And he was always exhausted from baseball.
Helena sighs as she starts preheating the oven to warm up the lasagna that was already prepared in the fridge. “We’re still getting used to you being around Eddie, We had a routine with Christopher before you got here. But you can come with us to Mass on Easter, how's that? We’re going to the vigil service, of course.”
“Uh, sure.” Eddie feels so out of place. He's standing in the entrance to the kitchen, like a guest who hadn't been properly invited and welcomed in. Chris had bounded up to his (Eddie’s) room, and Ramon was in his chair in the living room, TV on. And now he somehow was tricked into asking to go to a three-hour mass. He told himself that it wasn’t going to be like this. So he walks into the kitchen.
“Do you need any help, mom?”
Helena waves him away, “No, no, go watch the game with your father.”
“Are you sure?” This is why he used to burn water.
“Oh, actually, there is something you can do for me. What are you giving up for Lent?”
“Oh, um.” God, why didn't Eddie let this go? Oh right, apparently they've been bringing Chris to church every week and no one had thought to tell him.
“It has to be something you enjoy, remember. That's the point. Jesus died for your sins,” Helena reiterates as she starts making a salad.
Something he enjoys? Really?
He’s already given up everything! L.A., his job, his own house, his friends, Buck… he doesn't have anything more to give. This is him, giving everything up, not for Jesus, but for Christopher. Eddie thinks back to what the priest told him, a living, breathing messenger of God told him to do things that bring him joy, not the opposite.
He thinks of the white wine in his fridge in the apartment, 10 minutes away from his parents' place. He thinks about how he never really drank wine, only beer, until he started hanging out with his dispatch friends, Linda, Maddie, and he can’t forget Karen. Hen’s wife poured him a glass of Pinot Grigio one night while introducing him to the bachelor and said, “Sorry, not sorry we’re out of beer.” He still likes beer, of course. But this is about him letting himself enjoy things. He is done punishing himself, always choosing water instead of juice.
So Eddie pictures himself, later that night, in an empty apartment, sitting on his couch watching trashy reality TV, texting the groupchat and drinking chilled white wine, and he says, “I guess I could give up beer.”
His mother pats his cheek, “Good one, Eddie. Setting an example for your father. He’s giving up cigars again, as if he’s had one since his health scare.” She smiles at him, pats his cheek one more time, and then promptly shoos him out of the kitchen.
***
The thought of sitting in awkward silence with his father while watching NASCAR or golf, or god forbid, the news, makes Eddie want to die. So he chooses instead the awkward silence of his fourteen-year-old son.
The strangest feeling passes through Eddie as he gently knocks on his childhood bedroom door, a mixture of deja vu, nostalgia, guilt, and maybe a little hope.
“You can come in, Dad!” Chris calls out.
Eddie opens the door and tries to keep Pandora's box of emotions locked in his gut, instead of pooling into tears in his eyes as he looks around, seeing Chris’s things blend in with his, and how big Christopher seems on the old twin bed. “How’d you know it was me?”
Christopher hums, “Abuelo and Grandma don’t really knock.”
Eddie pulls out the chair at the desk and sits down facing Chris on the bed against the wall, and chuckles, “No, I guess they don’t.”
“Church was boring, you didn't miss anything.” Chris doesn't look up from his switch.
Eddie sighs, “That’s not really the point. You're my son, going to church should be up to me and you, not them.”
Chris shrugs, “I dont really mind going... It's just… It’s the comments from them, the priests, everyone that I don’t like.”
“El Paso is nothing like L.A., huh?”
Christopher looks up then, meeting Eddie’s eye for the first time all day. “Nope.”
Bittersweet smiles pass over both Eddie and Christopher’s faces.
“Oh!” Chris smiles for real this time, “I found some of your old things.”
Eddie looks at his baseball trophies on the shelf, his old pictures still tacked to the wall, mildly confused, entertained, and happy. Just like it used to be. Except, of course, Buck isn't here; he’d probably love to see Eddie's old room, but Eddie shoves that thought down, down, down as he tries to focus on his son, who is here in person, smiling and talking to him for the first time in months.
“What, did you dig up the time capsule Sophia put in the backyard?”
Chris gives him a weird look as he drags out an old shoe box from the closet. Oh no, Eddie thinks, that could literally be anything, it could be baseball cards or beer caps or por-
“I found your CD collection. Your old CD radio alarm clock thing still works.” Chris explains as he pulls out a few CDs.
Analog 1, new technology 0. Suck on that, Hildy. “Oh yeah? That's cool. What did you find? Anything you like?” Eddie says, like a normal person. See, he has a filter.
“I didn’t know you were a Taylor Swift fan.” Christopher holds out two CDs to Eddie.
Eddie takes them on instinct, his son his reaching out for him. Chris is reaching out to him. Of course, he's going to accept whatever is handed to him. He squints a little, looking at the old, worn CD cases in his hands. One has a picture of a young blonde girl on the cover, and the other is missing the booklet, showing the CD inside with an image of two hands making a heart on it.
Eddie looks both of them over, “These aren’t mine. Maybe they’re Adrianna’s?”
Chris rolled his eyes, “Dad, boys can like Taylor Swift, Buck does. And, I already asked her, she said they’re yours. That Mom bought them for you, and pretended to forget them in your car.”
“Oh.” Suddenly, Eddie is squinting for a completely different reason. He had completely forgotten about it. About how he’d turn up the radio every time Teardrops on my guitar would play. Shannon would give him a knowing smirk. He loved that smirk. He hated that smirk. He would say, “What? You love this song.” She would laugh and say something like, “apparently not as much as you.” Ramon had made some comments about “music these days,” and the girls were only allowed to listen to Fearless after Helena had listened and approved. It was assumed that Eddie wouldn’t be into it. “Thanks.”
Eddie spends the next half hour catching up with his son before dinner. After, his parents all but kicked him out for the night. But not before Eddie and Chris were able to talk about him staying at the new place, and maybe moving in soon.
***
Eddie is sitting in his car, idling at the stop sign at the end of his parents' road. He pulls the CDs out of his pocket and shoves one of them into the slot at random. The opening notes of Tim McGraw begin, and he turns left. His new place is just ten minutes to the right, but he has the urge to drive around town, see what's the same, what's different. Eddie hums along to song after song, surprised at himself for how much he remembers. He hadn't heard these songs since he was probably eighteen. Sure, he's heard the popular ones on the radio, and Buck has some of her songs on almost every one of his playlists, so he can recognize Love Story and Cruel Summer. But this is bringing him back in a way he’s never felt before. He's run from his past, he's confronted it, but he's never sat in it, listened to it, gone out searching for it.
Tied together with a smile starts to play as he turns his brights on, dusk fading into night. He’s been driving down all the back roads, flying past farm after farm. It's not one he immediately recognizes, but the chorus hits him like a brick.
“no one knows
That you cry, but you don't tell anyone
That you might not be the golden one
And you're tied together with a smile
But you're coming undone,”
By the second verse, the tears he's been holding in for hours finally make their escape.
I guess it's true, that love was all you wanted
'Cause you're givin' it away like it's extra change
Hoping it will end up in his pocket
But he leaves you out like a penny in the rain
cause it's not his price to pay
By the end, he’s pulled over at the field where kids used to go to watch the sunset and move out. Silently looking out at the vast night sky he never gets to see in L.A., tears streaming down his face.
Eddie wipes at his eyes, then grips the steering wheel tight. Ten and two. He’s done. He’s not that guy anymore. For so long, he was holding himself together with duct tape and a prayer. He’s been going to therapy, hes getting Chris back, he’s figuring his shit out. He’s doing things for himself. He is driving in circles around his hometown, looking at old childhood friends' homes who are long gone, and he is listening to Taylor fucking Swift. And he’s happy. Sure, he’s bone tired, and he’s pissed at his parents about the church thing, and he misses christopher just as much now as he did when he was hundreds of miles away, and he keeps looking at his passenger seat expecting Buck to be there even though he should know that he is back in L.A. but right in this moment, this singular album length moment, he’s content.
And when he parks in his new space, in front of his new place, all alone, he realizes he’s not only not punishing himself for every little thing in his life ever, but maybe he’s starting to forgive himself too.
***
Eddie’s stuck.
Just yesterday, he was ready to call Frank and Buck and tell them all about his breakthrough. He's been punishing himself since he can remember, not just recently. And he’s started to be okay with that. He genuinely thought he was moving on.
But he can't call Buck now. He can’t. He should. He really should. He’d get a kick out of everything Christopher has been telling him. Buck would know what to say to help with his parents and church. But he can’t. Because he can’t breathe.
Eddie is sitting at his kitchen table. Track seven of Fearless is playing on his phone, on repeat.
The song starts again.
“I see your face in my mind as I drive away,
'Cause none of us thought it was gonna end that way”
Eddie thinks of standing outside in the rain with Buck. The itch to hug him, take him into his arms, and never let go was insistent, urgent, concerning. At the time, Eddie was trying to shove down those feelings, ignore those urges, just get in the car and lock himself in, go at least fifty miles an hour and never slow down enough to look behind him. He thinks of Buck baking him those protein cookies, of him not reaching out to hug Eddie, even though he had to be dying to. And finally, finally when they did hug…
And we know it's never simple, never easy
Never a clean break, no one here to save me
You're the only thing I know like the back of my hand,
And I can't Breathe Without you,
But I have to.
Eddie had another good day with Christopher, and another not good one with his parents. They dont know that, of course, because he keeps things civil. Once Chris moves in with him, things will be different, and he’ll start having the hard conversations with his parents. And with Chris too. He just didn't think he’d be having any more hard conversations with himself.
Being back in Texas, it's bringing back a lot of memories. He’s working on remembering with purpose, with patience. But right now, he wants to punch the wall, kidnap Chris, and drive back to L.A. immediately and curse out his parents. And he wants to call Buck.
“It's two am Feelin' like I just lost a friend
Hope you know it's not easy, Easy for me
(I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry)
Because here's the thing. When you realize you might like someone, you tell your best friend. When things are complicated and you need to talk things out to understand what you're feeling and thinking, you go to your best friend. When you have a new favorite song, you show your best friend. But Eddie can’t.
So he sits. And he listens. And he silently screams into his hands as he covers his face.
And then, Eddie's phone rings. Buck is calling him. He answers. Of course he does. He can't tell if it's a punishment or a good thing, but he answers, and he can breathe a little easier. Oh.
“Hey, you never told me you stopped hanging out with Tommy.” Buck begins the conversation without so much as a hello.
Eddie loves that about Buck. he loves that it's like they're having one continuous conversation that never ends. It just changes from text messages to phone calls to in-person to over-the-headsets in the engine and back. And suddenly, he’s a little less stuck.
“Why would I hang out with Tommy without you?” sound normal, sound normal, sound normal.
“Aren’t you guys friends?”
Eddie doesn’t have the mental energy right now to try to explain the Tommy Issue with Buck. That's what he’s been calling it in his head since Chimney’s bachelor party. It's when he first had said Tommy issue. And okay, on further reflection, maybe that makes more sense than he originally thought. He reflects now, apparently.
“Aren't you my best friend?”
“Oh, yeah,” Buck says it in a way that Eddie can just tell that he’s smiling. Maybe even blushing. So now Eddie is smiling and blushing too, like an idiot. normal. totally normal.
“Actually, I have to go, but I’ll call you later, Buck.” Eddie hangs up the phone before he starts reciting Taylor Swift songs to him, or something.
Eddie realizes that this is normal. Maybe it's always been this way, and he never noticed because he was too busy avoiding everything, burying the feelings in his stomach, not letting himself feel things, enjoy things. Always looking for what he's missing, what he's doing wrong, what his parents would think.
He is forgiving himself. He is enjoying things. He is done caring about what his parents think. He cares what Chris thinks and he cares what Buck thinks and that's all Eddie ever needs. If Jesus died for his sins, if he’s giving up beer to repent for his sins, it's not going to be the same old guilt eating away at him about any and everything. He's going to live, really live. He’s going to live his life for Christopher, for Shannon, for Buck, and for himself.
The white wine is half empty on the coffee table when Eddie picks up the phone to call Karen. Hen would just laugh at him and then win some bet. They need to talk, seeing as he needs advice that only a lesbian can give, because how the hell did Buck find out that Eddie has been slowly ghosting Tommy since they first got together?