Summer Sons

His face twisted through several contradictory emotions and he said, "For fuck's sake Andrew. Is there anything in this scenario that feels heterosexual or well-adjusted to you?

It's a choice I made, getting in this thing with you, whatever it is. But don't mistake me, I'm not interested in filling in for a ghost.

He scrounged for something to say, and found a meagre offering: “I did love you.” But I loved him more. He couldn’t bring that to life, not aloud, not with his own mouth.

One of mine – that had a ring to it, and so did the promise of safety, of being taken in hand. If Riley had tried to slap a label on the thing budding between them, he'd have rejected it out of hand, because nothing encompassed the particular set of feelings he might sum up as owned.

Having been loved wasn't the same as being loved.

Come on. I love you, but this is no life.

The appeal was obvious. Eddie might have been fond of Riley, talked gothic bullshit with him and got drunk on cheap beer, but now Andrew understood where the hook had sunk in because it pierced straight through the meat of his cheek, too. He wanted to race Halse again, and that was a strange sensation: want. He also wanted to break his knuckles on Halse’s jaw.

I’m sorry he died before you figured it out. For what it’s worth, I think you might’ve eventually, without me there to displace your bullshit onto. He was head over heels for you, and everyone knew but you, and maybe him. No, I think he knew.

the dew-sprangled lawn and the silk of Andrew's hair knotted in his fist, the gross patch of drool spreading on his chest, watching the sun come up and thinking fierce as devotion 'this is mine forever' until sleep sucked him under again

Neither of you really gave a shit about me except as a conduit for the feelings you weren’t going to talk about.

Scrolling on his phone passed the time as he fought to tamp down the swelling tide of memories and miseries.

Five months of separation that had stretched into eight in the summer, and now would never end.

The stillness of Eddie’s paused life decomposed with each passing week, eaten away as the reality settled in. No one was coming home. The basket of clothes would remain unwashed, the guitar silent, the beer cans moldering. That immensity was the force that drove dogs to waste to death on their masters’ grave.

Every moment of his life that followed would take him further from Eddie, no matter his efforts to scrounge for the remains, but what else was there for him to do except draw what was left as close as he could?

I've got so much of your spit in my mouth.

Curses weren’t as simple to put aside as a ghost willing to be laid to rest;

Andrew held the clutch and eased onto the gas, pushing revs while the digital readout reminded him to hold it, wait for the right moment to explode. Sam’s fingers touched the rim of the moon hanging in the sky. A shudder ripped across the bones of Andrew’s forearms, terror and delight and the promise of risk bringing him to life.

Elastic tension lashed their cars together across space, alone on the road, nothing in his head but grief and freedom.

Sorry,” he muttered, cramming the messy tendrils of the curse-gift back into their metaphorical lockbox. He felt like some kind of idiot, trying to explore his magic.

The imaginary fist he kept clenched around the haunted, haunting presence in his chest loosened bit by bit the longer he stuck around Nashville, and those cracks let out something other than light.

If Eddie had been Riley’s friend, he wasn’t that for Andrew. That friendship was a muted fraction of the real thing, the marrow-thing, that tied them together. Through the cavern and their hauntings since, through a life spent with Eddie keeping him leashed but cared for at the same time, he couldn’t find a label that fit where he needed it to go. Maybe instead, just a hard stop: he was yours.

the one with the WRX,

he was high on Andrew’s shit list.

Come on. I love you but this is no life.