Summer Sons(41)

“What?”

“Entertained himself off campus,” West finished, with a wince that said he knew it was inadequate.

Andrew nodded. He hadn’t thought there would be much to glean on campus, but it ruled out another avenue of questions. If Eddie was close to his cohort, if he’d been spending his time with them, there might’ve been a point of interest. But West had admitted Eddie was fighting. Riley hadn’t said shit about that, and it wasn’t the sort of detail contained in a research journal.

“I’m sure some of his time with Sowell’s friends outside the city was for research,” West said. Andrew forced his attention back to the conversation. “He spoke more to Dr. Troth than he did to me about where he went and what he learned wandering. I’ve not got much for you there. Speaking of, I do need to offer her some sort of update, so, how did the books she picked work out for you?”

The bag Troth had given him was still in the back seat of the Challenger. He’d wedged it into the footwell and forgotten it as promptly as possible. “To be honest, I haven’t had time for them yet. Sorry.”

“Entertaining himself off campus” pointed straight in the direction Andrew was already leaning. He had to get closer to Halse’s court if he wanted to find out what had happened—what could’ve happened, to set things so wrong. As he imagined confronting Halse, West reached over and plucked a stray hair off the scabbed bridge of Andrew’s knuckles without touching his skin, flicking it off the table. The movement of his large hands remained delicate.

West grinned again, a tinge self-deprecating as he had been with the professor, and said, “Apologies if that was weird, it was bugging me.”

“It’s fine,” Andrew muttered awkwardly, imagined heat prickling his fingers.

“Talk to Troth, once you look at the books. She has a better idea of where Eddie conducted his interviews.”

He nodded, a noncommittal acquiescence, and stood with the watery dregs of his coffee. West followed suit and looped the strap of his bag over his head. Maybe he wasn’t quite as done with campus as he thought—interviews meant strangers, difficult conversations. But compared to the danger of the three-digit speedometer and Halse’s motley crew with its confirmed selection of bigots eager to start shit, that stood secondary.

“Class?” Andrew said.

“Sure,” West replied, hesitating as if he had one more thought, but letting it drop.

Andrew had no intention of reading those books, regardless. His real research subject wouldn’t make it into a dissertation; his subject was Eddie, and whatever Eddie had done to make all these guys so unsure of him, so enthralled by him. Creeping unease lingered in his memories—Riley’s belief that he and Andrew were together-together, after six long months wherein Eddie could’ve corrected him; Halse and the boys tossing around the word faggot; West’s careful insider warnings. How had Eddie made it so long without correcting them, if they talked like that in front of him? Denial rose to the tip of Andrew’s tongue without an audience to hear it, a powerful reflex that Eddie had trained into him. Had the time apart from Andrew changed something fundamental in Eddie? Something that Riley and West had picked up on, and he’d missed by inches? The doubt scoured at him.

Eddie wasn’t going to be answering that question, for him or anyone. His starving ghost was more than intimate, but not one for personal chats. Crossing the green campus with its frantic flush of youth, weaving between students on their bikes and a gaggle of kids attempting to tightrope walk on a strap they’d looped between two trees, death felt impossible. It had no place outside a romantic theoretical. After midnight on a pitch-dark stretch of road, tasting the finer edge of human fragility in the glare of wrong-way headlights, though—there death was a pressure on the sides of the neck, gripping where the pulse beat hardest.

The slump of his roommate’s shoulders was the first thing Andrew saw on entering the classroom. Andrew took the desk next to Riley’s and said, “Stayed at Sam’s last night?”

Riley grunted his agreement and straightened his shoulders with an audible pop. He’d already opened his notebook and written the date at the top corner of the page, texts in a neat stack next to it. Compared to weekend Riley, the academic with his glasses riding low on his nose was a different person. He said, “Figured we could use some space, and I was behind on reading. Sam worked through most of the evening, and then his, y’know, second job after that. House was quiet.”

“There’s a first and second job?”

Riley rolled his eyes and said, “You fucking rich kids, I swear to god.”

Andrew sat back at the frustration in his tone.

“Sam inherited the house, but it costs money to keep, and most of us don’t have an unlimited supply. I guess hanging out with that prick—” he pointed toward West holding court at the front of the room, “makes it hard to remember the rest of us, huh?”

“He got me a coffee, like peer mentors do,” Andrew said.

“Yeah, sure, that’s all it is. Not a hint of trust fund solidarity. And don’t give me shit about how I should be less of an asshole about him, we should be—on the same team, or something. But we’re really not,” Riley hissed.

Andrew, bewildered by his inclusion in an internecine argument he’d missed the important details of and had no desire to dig further into, asked instead, “Sam tell you I texted him?”