“Of what?”
His eyes went wide again. “Oh crap.”
“What?”
“Uh. Presents!”
I frowned. “Presents?”
“Well, a present.”
“For what?”
“You?” He squinted at me. “You.” He blushed fiercely. It was splotchy and went up to his hairline. He looked at the ground. “For your birthday,” he mumbled.
The guys had gotten me presents. My mom had. No one else ever really did. It was something friends did. Or family. “Oh,” I said. “Wow.”
“Yeah. Wow.”
“Is that what you’re hiding?”
He blushed harder and wouldn’t look at me. He nodded once.
I could hear birds above us. They called out long and loud.
I gave him the time he needed. It didn’t take long. I could see the resolve flood into him, steeling his shoulders. Holding his head high. Marching forward. I didn’t know what he’d be a leader of one day, but he would be good. I hoped he would remember to be kind.
He held out his hand. He had a black box with a little blue ribbon wrapped around it.
I was nervous for some reason. “I don’t have anything for you,” I said quietly.
He shrugged. “It’s not my birthday.”
“When is it?”
“August. What are you even—geez. Take the box!”
I did. It was heavier than I thought it would be. I put my work shirt over my shoulder and he stood close. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
I untied the ribbon and remembered a dress my mother had worn once on a picnic in the summer when I turned nine. It’d had little ribbons tied in bows along the edges and she had laughed as she handed me a sandwich and some potato salad. After, we lay on our backs and I pointed out shapes in clouds and she said, “Days like this are my favorite,” and I said, “Me too.” She never wore the dress again. I asked her about it one day. She said it’d accidentally gotten ripped. “He didn’t mean it,” she said. I’d felt a great and terrible rage then that I didn’t know what to do with. Eventually, it went away.
And now this ribbon. I held it in my hand. It was warm.
“Sometimes people are sad,” Joe said, leaning his forehead against my arm. A whine sounded like it came from the back of his throat. “And I don’t know how to make it go away. It’s all I ever wanted. To make it go away.”
I opened the box. There was a black felt cloth carefully tucked and folded. It felt like a great secret lay hidden underneath and I wanted to know it more than anything else in my life.
I unfolded the cloth and inside was a wolf made of stone.
The detail felt miraculous on such a small and heavy thing. The bushy tail curled around the wolf as it sat on its haunches. The triangle ears that I thought should be twitching. The individual paws, sharp toenails and black pads. The tilt of the head, exposing the neck. Eyes closed, snout pointed up as the wolf howled a song I could hear in my head. The stone was dark and I briefly wondered what color it would be in real life. If it’d have white spots on its legs. If its ears would be black.
The birds had stopped singing overhead and I wondered if it were possible for the world to hold its breath. I wondered at the weight of expectations.
I wondered many things.
I picked up the wolf. It fit perfectly in my hand.
“Joe.” I sounded gruff.