Summer Sons(114)

“Suit yourself,” she said with a frown.

“How’s Sam?”

“I can’t discuss another patient’s status with you,” she said for the seventeenth time.

“When will I get out?”

“We have you another three days for observation, at least.”

He grunted and closed his eyes. At some point later, she left, taking her vibrating human presence with her. Sam was ignoring his messages. He’d spoken to the detectives about his defensive killing of Mark Troth, Andrew knew via Riley, their strained go-between. According to the coroner’s report, Jane Troth had suffered a sudden stoppage of her heart at the height of her frenetic madness. He knew otherwise; Sam knew otherwise. That secret lay between them, in all its ugliness, festering. Sam’s rejection—of him, of what he’d become, of what he’d done, or all of those things—filled him with a sour, slow drip of misery. After Troth had stitched Andrew’s disarticulated portion of the inheritance to Eddie’s haunting remains, carried within him now, he was less sure than he’d ever been of the neatness of his humanity. Maybe Sam was right to pull away.

The hospital rippled on all sides with human struggle, little flames guttering and flickering outside his grasp. He had to keep a constant curious need to seek contact with those burning specks in check—curb the part of him that hungered for life, death. His ghoul petted the interior of his skull, soothing his mind. Sleep, or something like it, swallowed him. He tumbled through a blur of memories doubled at the seams, the dew-spangled 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 watching Eddie snore with a leaf stuck to the side of his neck and the cold damp grass soaking him as he fought to sit still, not shiver, not disturb the perfect moment of being that the pair of them occupied in sleep, in innocence, in dumb happiness beer and foam spilled in an erotic embarrassing stream across the plane of Andrew’s chest into the band of his swim trunks, Eddie’s urge to put his mouth there and taste Eddie stretching on the floating dock, the midday sun turning him into a bronze god of a boy with muscle from neck to ass to calves, untouchable and unbreakable, savage and timeless the night before junior prom both of them dressed in their suits sharing stolen wine coolers alone and pretending, pretending without speaking, that they could be there together “Hey,” Riley said.

Andrew jerked out of his communion with a confused snort, room spinning around him. His arm stung nauseously where he’d tugged at the IV. His roommate sat in the bedside chair, haggard, wearing glasses and sweats, same as the past two visits.

“Sorry,” Andrew said.

Riley gestured to his head and asked, “Has it gotten easier, the sharing?”

Andrew grappled with his desire to hide from that question. He’d known Eddie to the bone, or so he thought. But having Eddie’s memories inside of him was different. The tender awfulness of remembering himself through Eddie’s eyes, beautiful and cherished and wanted with raw confused intensity, with ownership, a sublimated tangled connection that Eddie had never spoken or unpacked, though it loomed so large—that understanding was an answer to the things about himself Del had made him confront, that he’d started figuring out with Halse, but it didn’t help. Having been loved wasn’t the same as being loved.

Eventually, he answered, “No, it hasn’t.”

“I’m sorry, Andrew,” Riley said.

“And Sam?”

Riley’s expression morphed through four versions of chagrin before he settled on an apologetic one and said, “The surgery saved the eye, but he isn’t getting his sight back in it. Too much damage. He’s dealing.”

Andrew nodded without asking for more; he wasn’t sure he wanted to hear the answer.

“He cares, dude, I swear he does care. He asked after you too,” Riley said.

“Let me handle his bills at least.”

“He’ll be pissed,” Riley warned approvingly.

“Let him be,” Andrew replied. “Can’t make things worse, can it?”

“Nah, and it’ll take away his excuse to keep working that second gig, which has been my end goal,” Riley said.

“Help me sort it,” he said, weakening as the conversation dragged on. The pain meds made him drowsy, knotted his stomach. “Give them my card or something.”

“Gotcha,” Riley said. “Glad you’re not fucking dead, okay?”

“You say that every time,” he grumbled, but the comfort mattered.

On the bedside table, his phone began to vibrate. The number on the display was foreign to him but had a local area code. He ignored the call. Police had taken his statement more than once and had informed him in person of the evidence unearthed at the crime scene—the shattered remains of Eddie’s phone in a spare bedroom storage chest, his hair and blood recovered from the barn. Nurses weren’t going to call his phone to get in touch. Nothing else much was worth his energy. His roommate pulled a book from his messenger bag and curled up in the visitor’s chair, despite it clearly being designed to prevent people from doing so. The end result was a contorted sprawl with one leg tucked through the arm gap, the other bent tight against his chest.

The phone rang again. And again. And again. As soon as Riley glanced at the table in consternation, his own phone pinged with texts, three in rapid succession, while Andrew’s lit up with messages. The group chat that remained active from their one celebratory drive had come to life with a text from Ethan: <link>Vanderbilt Professors Implicated in Occult Murder, Slain in Self Defense HEY WHAT THE FUCK