Summer Sons(119)
“Goodbye,” he said.
Then he pulled the ring off his finger and pitched it into the hole. The cuticle-rip of the haunt tearing loose kneecapped him. Spit filled his mouth until he gagged. His forehead rested on the ground. Frantic with loss, he reached for the hole, about to fling himself in to recover the ring and the last vestiges it housed—but before instinct could transmute to action he forced himself to hold fast. He caught a sobbing breath. Knowing it was the right thing to do, to preserve the memory of Eddie as he’d really been, rather than what he’d become, didn’t fix how bad it hurt to be well and truly alone. When the first wave of the dispossession’s ache abated, he rose to his feet and edged back from the cavern, one step at a time, by himself.
Eddie’s remnant had let him go, but the vibration of their bloody inheritance remained in his veins, sensitive to the sucking pressure of the caverns regardless of the resolution of his more personal nightmare. Curses weren’t as simple to put aside as a ghost willing to be laid to rest; that grim weight would nest inside of him until the end of his life. Andrew trudged through howling winds toward the glowing blaze of the fire. Each crunch of forest debris under his shoes put another foot of distance between the person he had been and the person he thought he might become. Eddie had left him this, also: a future to see through.
* * *
In Eddie’s old bedroom, Andrew sat at the edge of the bare mattress. The sheets at his feet were destined for the washing machine. The final clean load of Eddie’s clothes lay spread on the bed. He wasn’t sure whether to keep or donate them, but the small constant pain of cleaning Eddie’s space, putting to rest the mundane remains of his lost companion, kept him grounded. Without the haunt dogging his steps, the process of grieving was mechanical but raw.
He came downstairs and collapsed onto the sofa. Riley pulled on his high-tops, smoke leaking out around the blunt pinched between his lips. Luca and Ethan were horsing around in the kitchen in preparation for a night out; he’d been spending more time with them, since the hospital. Luca’s sense of humor made him smile four times out of five, and he needed that. Tonight they were celebrating. The review committee had accepted Riley’s thesis proposal, revised to adapt Eddie’s unfinished work on folklore studies.
Andrew swilled the remains of his beer and texted Sam three times, dropping more stones into the well:
laid him to rest and burnt the old house down
it’s just me in here
and i’m ready whenever
He didn’t expect a response, but he got one five minutes later as he shut the front door behind their cadre of rolling mischief. See you tonight. He stared at his phone for a beat before meeting Riley’s gaze.
“Don’t fuck it up,” Riley said.
“I won’t,” he said, but he wasn’t sure he knew how to keep the promise.
Riley led his group of four to their cars, as gaudy and unruly as ever, including the Supra, which still sported its hideous reddish mauve wrap. Their pack met at a gas station on the opposite side of the neighborhood this time. Andrew parked next to Ethan, who flicked him finger-guns when he went inside for his requisite candy bar and bottled water. The clerk eyeballed the fresh pink weals tracking up his wrists to his elbows with disdain.
Andrew curled his lip and said, “Got a problem?”
“No way, man,” the clerk said.
He crammed a quarter of the Payday in his mouth on the way out the door. Caramel stuck inside the cracks of his teeth in a stinging rush. Riley called out, “Leading tonight, Blur?”
“Yeah, sure,” he agreed thoughtlessly, then heard a familiar engine.
The WRX rolled over the bump of the entrance curb and coasted past the service station door in front of Andrew. He swigged a mouthful from his water to wash down peanut-grit, covering his burst of conflicted nerve-biting emotion. Sam parked next to his cousin and rolled his window down, languid, unmarked perfection as seen from the left side.
“Good news, I’m not blind,” he said. “I can still drive.”
“Bad joke,” Riley said.
“Who said it was a joke?” he fired right back.
Andrew approached them, breathless for no reason and drinking in the sight of Sam, in his car where he belonged, like a parched man in a desert. A matte black patch covered one half of Sam’s arresting stare, but the visible eye regarded him with the ferocity he had been missing.
“Y’all go on,” Andrew said to Riley as he strode past the Mazda. “We’ll text and catch up, after.”
He didn’t wait to see if his direction was followed, just opened the passenger door of the WRX and flopped inside, the closest he’d been to Sam in far too long. Time and distance hadn’t cooled his interest while he settled into himself as a single man. The passenger seat was as comfortable as he remembered.
Sam scratched his own chin, nails scraping over stubble with a rasp, and said, “You got something to tell me?”
“Yeah, I do.” Andrew chewed the inside of his cheek. Words piled up in his throat. He hadn’t explained himself much to Sam since he’d moved to Nashville, but this was the one time he needed to be direct. He fought the urge to blurt out a grandiose, ill-conceived, revealing offer, do you want to open a garage together, or something like that. Instead he said, “I thought about the whole thing, start to finish. How much you did for me and how much I didn’t do for you, just kept taking. And I know I want to do shit for you, with you. I do.” He sipped a quick shaken breath and finished with crushing simplicity. “You’re worth it to me.”