Beaches in Your Soul (Sketch One)

“Tommy!” I remember shouting his name with the same enthusiasm as I had the day after I watched him begin his process to join my fraternity. The name echoed, as I’m sure it always will, in my psyche – a meditation, a temple bell ringing eternally in constant reverie of our friendship. No, of our brotherhood. What we had was more than friends, was as close as family. It was strange, but I couldn’t even picture life without him there anymore. Whenever I tried to recall my high school graduation, I saw him standing on the other side of the stage – impossibly, unbelievably, but there – cheering my accomplishment and laughing in the open-mouth, head-flinging way he does.

“Hey,” he replied, smiling softly and tossing his bangs out of his eyes. His lip piercing found a way to glint in the overcast light. He’d wanted it for as long as he could remember, but he didn’t have the money. I did, so I’d paid for it – he repaid me in FrogBucks. Whenever we went to McDonalds he made sure his ID card instead of my debit card slid through the machine. He was a subdued kind of guy; a long series of betrayals in his childhood had led him to introversion and a lack of trust. I, along with my fraternity brothers, were the first people he’d really opened his heart up to in a long time.

He wasn’t hesitant about asking for help, either. A few weeks earlier he’d found out his parents were taking out a mortgage on their house to pay for what was left of his tuition dues that semester. He asked me over to his dorm room so he could vent; I watched him fold and sort laundry like it was a timed Olympic event.

He hated doing it to them. But familial pride runs strong in his parents’ blood – if he told them he’d wanted to transfer, it would have been a slap in their faces. He shook as he told me that he would get no Christmas that year, and instead whatever money his dad could scrounge up would go to his little brother. Tommy didn’t mind – he’d never minded as long as he’d lived – but I could tell he was hoping for some semblance of life that didn’t seem steeped in financial difficulty. Which is where I’d come in.

I knew a lot about him, but I still had to be sneaky. “You know I’d get you something, but I’m broke.” Or a text message on a random Wednesday: “Hey, my mom and I were talking about you, and your favorite bands came into play – I’m not sure, is it A or B?” Or checking his shirt size on the fraternity sign-up sheet – positioning myself deliberately so that he’d sign before me.

He called me his brother, and I call him mine, so I figured it couldn’t hurt to add “Surprise Secret Santa” to my list of titles.

We chatted for a bit, shooting the breeze over our upcoming finals, how it felt to think about next semester in Phi Mu Alpha, how his family was, how mine was.

“Hey, um.” I trailed off, trying to word it as delicately as possible. “I think you left something in my dorm room, I’ll go get it.” We were standing directly between his main place on campus (Foster) and my dorm (Carter), so it was a simple 10-yard walk to my room. He followed me, confidently but obediently, with no clue.

“Wait here one sec.” I told him to stop in the hallway, jaunted quickly into my dorm room, and did a once-over of the gift bag I’d arranged minutes before. It was crude – crumpled-up editions of The Skiff instead of gift tissue – but it was sentimental. A lone card sat atop the heap of disjointed headlines: a single white envelope, with the special nickname I’d given him scrawled as best I could across the face.

I grabbed the string handles and ran out the door, announcing, “Found it,” before the latch clicked shut. He turned to see me holding out the gift bag and a smile broke over his face like the dawn.

“Naw, man, you didn’t have to do that,” he started to say, his face flushing.

I interrupted as politely as I could, holding up an open palm. “Everyone deserves a Christmas, Tommy. No exceptions. And if your biological family has financial troubles, that doesn’t make me any less your brother. Don’t worry about it.”

He mumbled a “Thank you.” I knew that was the best I’d get from him, and that was enough. He was subdued in his gratitudes, under-spoken in his conversation, but I knew that he was floored. We opened one of the glass doors, about to head into the Commons, and I saw him fiddling with the bag.

“You can open it now, y’know.” He looked at me, at once both puzzled and expectant of something. I shrugged. “I don’t particularly give a shit.” Instantly his fingers were fumbling with the envelope. He read the card, and I saw him smile at the caption. I knew it would hold a special significance to him, in appreciation of the Hell he had just put himself through to call himself a brother.

“It’s so significant!” he beamed, rocking back and forth on his heels. I chuckled a bit and waited for him to open the gift. Within seconds the floor was strewn with ink and paper, and he was staring at two new t-shirts of his favorite two bands, both in his size.

For a second, Tommy’s face was unreadable. All he could do was hold the shirts up to himself; it looked like he was trying to memorize every line. I watched, unsure if I’d made a misstep. I’d gotten him something he’d already had, or the size was somehow wrong, or he hated the shirts, or they weren’t his favorite bands anymore…

He turned and looked at me, and his face was content. He seemed like he was both on the verge of tears and entirely serene. He took a breath that evoked a mental picture of a sniper about to take his shot.

“Alright, c’mere.” I’d never heard a sentence uttered with more love. He opened his arms and hugged me so tight I thought I’d pop. I heard a muffled “Thank you” in my ear and I responded with a “Merry Christmas, little.” He sniffled, only once, and then he pulled away.

The sky was overcast that day, and I was wearing my heaviest jacket, but for some reason when I walked back outside all I could feel was the sun. Tommy walked by me, the shirts slung over his shoulder like a hunter’s prize. I didn’t say anything, and he didn’t either. Neither of us really felt we had to.

I’m not sure if I’ll think of anything particularly mind-boggling for anyone that will be in my life in the future. But as significance holds, and as memory serves me, that December day two weeks before Christmas will stand in my mind as the best gift I’ve ever given anyone, the first instance where in my mind it truly was better to give than receive. And though I was broke, though I would have to spend the next weeks eating nothing but cardboard-esque hamburgers and tasteless potatoes, the smile on Tommy’s face convinced me I’d made the right decision.