Page 429 - Some Dance to Remember

Some Dance to Remember 399

made him choose between the drugs and you.”
“I’m stronger than drugs,” Ryan had said.
“No one,” Solly had said, “wins against drugs.”
“Ah,” Ryan said to himself, checking the oven, “No one, especially
Teddy, wins against lasagna.” He wondered how Kick and he had survived
on only omelets and tuna fish for so long. No wonder the cheeses and
sauce smelled so good.
Teddy arrived. Ryan hugged him at the door. “I think I smell lasa-
gna,” Teddy said.
“How about some wine?” Ryan poured two glasses.
His tape deck was playing tunes recorded when they had been a cou-
ple. Teddy turned nervous when Liza sang “Come Saturday Morning”
from her movie The Sterile Cuckoo. It had been their song. Both pretended
not to notice the lyrics.
“So...” Ryan said.
“So...” Teddy said.
They sat at opposite ends of the living room. Ryan was careful not to
press his game plan. He intended to start the summit somewhere in the
middle of the lasagna.
“You surprised me,” he said to Teddy.
“Why?
“I didn’t think you’d really come. But I wanted to see you.”
“I wanted to see you too,” Teddy said. “That’s why I came.”
Ryan’s bruised heart rose up. Teddy maybe felt the same way. Maybe
absence had made their hearts grow fonder. A lot of blood had flowed
beneath their bridge. Ryan, who could never let go of anyone or anything,
knew there were some bridges that never burn.
“I’m sort of horny,” Teddy said.
Ryan smiled. Twist Teddy’s tits and he’d follow anyone anywhere.
This was going to be easier than he thought. He felt a surge of certainty
that Teddy, if asked and wooed the right way, might come home to the
place he had never wanted to leave, even after Ryan had thrown him out.
“To us.” Ryan lifted his wine glass.
“To what once was us,” Teddy said. He sipped the wine. “Actually,
the reason I came...”
Teddy’s faced glowed with the happiness Ryan remembered in his face
during the best of their times. Ryan felt certainty bloom in the room. Teddy
had grown up. He had become independent. He had become, instead of
a shadow of Ryan, his own person. That transformation had, before all,
been the main reason Ryan had thought Teddy needed a separate peace

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