35. Chapter 35

Max, as promised, picks out a black-and-white checkered tile for the apartment, which reminds Billy a little bit of a diner, but whatever. He’ll find some rugs to throw down to break it up.

Billy picks cherry red for the living room walls, with a black accent wall, just because he can, and then spends three days with Jonathan, Steve, and Nancy steaming off the wallpaper, which is, in a word, disgusting, and in two words, oddly satisfying.

Jonathan alternates between taking pictures and filming the whole thing, which makes him a little less useful than Billy was hoping, but at the same time, he’s glad somebody managed to capture on video the exact moment that an entire chunk of slightly rotten, wet paper collapsed on Steve, burying him in a mound of mold and sixties nostalgia.

Nancy started to complain about fungal infections or some shit at that point, but still. Worth it.

Only Steve shows up to actually paint the walls, having dropped the Party off at the arcade, but Hopper stops by to help him put up new drywall in the kitchen when it becomes a clear necessity and Joyce stops by on the way home from work with pizza and a critical eye that same evening.

“The kitchen will have to be light,” she says after a few minutes of watching her maybe-boyfriend and Billy gorge themselves on a meatlovers’. “The window’s too small to let in a lot of natural light.”

Billy tells Max to pick out a few colors— it’s only fair, since he picked the living room— and she chooses a bright, sunny yellow for the cabinets and a dove gray for the walls. The countertops are white vinyl, but they’ll do for now, provided Billy cleans them up a little bit.

He finds himself lusting after the concept of granite countertops. Jesus Christ, he’s turning into a suburban mother.

Nancy shows up to help him disinfect the kitchen and bathroom, meaning she handles the bathroom and joins him in scrubbing the fridge once she finishes, but by the end of it all, the countertops gleam and the rounded chrome edges of the refrigerator shine, so who cares if she’s sort of treating him like glass about a bathroom?

He takes her to the little restaurant around the corner afterwards. She tells him about what classes she’s going to be taking over mushroom ravioli and fettucini alfredo. He tells her about the black leather couch that Max has been eyeing up in one of the home decor magazines he brought home, along with a full-length mirror that Billy thinks might do well for her room, once they get the leak fixed.

Steve comes to help hold shit while Billy puts three years of technical school to good use and fixes the broken sockets in the bedrooms. Jonathan shows up to help carry in the leather couch that Billy ends up buying and sticks around to talk about coffee tables, legs stretched out in front of him as he sits in a fold-out chair and shares a cigarette or ten with Billy on the balcony. The Party bursts into the apartment on the day Billy plans to paint Max’s room (she picked a soft green, one that matches her eyes in the right light), and practically ruins the carpet that Billy had been planning on ripping out anyway in their efforts to help. Jonathan drove them, and takes pictures of that, too. He also buys dinner, because Billy might be able to hold a grudge but he sure as hell can’t say no to pizza, and maybe Jonathan knows him a little bit too well, nowadays.

By July, the house is ready to move into, save for most of the furniture, but Billy is proud to say they have a kitchen table now, and that their beds are in their respective rooms, complete with new sheets. Also, a television, for the couch to have something to pointed at. An old as fuck television, one that’s held up by milk crates and plywood until Billy can find a proper stand that he and Max can agree on, but it’s a television, and Billy is very excited.

They have a place, him and Max, a place that’s unequivocally theirs. A place where the air doesn’t taste like Susan’s blood and sounds like Billy’s head hitting the edge of the sink to the theme song of Carol Burnett Show reruns blaring in the background. A place where Billy can set up a shelf full of records and cassette tapes in the living room to go with the new sound system he’s purchased and Max can pin some of Billy’s old bikini girl posters on her walls to go with her new poster of a musician Billy’s never heard of but apparently Max finds attractive despite his whole face situation. Apparently he’s all the rage in Australian punk rock circles, or some shit.

(Billy doesn’t actually mind this Nick Cave guy too much, but it’s fun to tease Max, especially now that she doesn’t get that angry wrinkle in between her eyebrows whenever he does it.)

There’s a lot going on, most of it good, and Billy?

Billy thinks it’s a nice change.

*.*

Max can’t move in right away, of course, and even thought Billy’s technically moved most of his crap there, he still spends most of his nights in Joyce’s house, curled up beside Max on the couch or in their bed, now with a bonus puppy that seems to enjoy fitting itself in what little space is left between them. She has nightmares, Joyce has told him in the early mornings when Billy can’t sleep and Joyce has made coffee. Max has nightmares when he’s not around.

Joyce is another person that’s quickly become a fixture in this strange new world that’s Billy’s life. When she asks about the money, about how he’s been able to pay for all those repairs in that little apartment with only two months’ pay under his belt, he tells her the truth. He tells her the truth, and he doesn’t posture, doesn’t sneer, doesn’t do anything but look her in the eye and say it, because he’s not ashamed, he’s not— he’s just not particularly proud of it, either.

She doesn’t… Joyce is very good at people, Billy has noticed. Or, she’s good with him. He doesn’t think he could have taken pity on her face, doesn’t think he could have handled demands to stop (not that he hasn’t already) or questions as to how and why. So it’s good she doesn’t do any of those things.

Instead, she just takes a long drag from her cigarette and crosses her arms, and it’s only worry Billy reads in her eyes when he meets her gaze.

“You need to go to the clinic,” she says frankly. “Get yourself tested.”

And then she gives him a hug, because that’s what she does. She hugs him, and she lets him cry, and she makes him sit through episodes of Dukes of Hazzard and The A-Team with her, because Jonathan just won’t anymore.

“Yeah, okay,” Billy mutters into her shoulder. “I’ll make an appointment.”