Summer Sons(49)
Andrew closed his laptop and stood.
“Don’t—come on, please,” Riley said.
“I can’t,” Andrew said.
Riley pitched forward to grip his own knees and said, forceful, “He told me he thought it was a waste of my potential to spend half my time making ends meet, instead of focusing on school. He said that when he’d known me for, what, a week? Two? I care about this, Andrew, I care about it a fucking lot. I want to help him, and you’re being shitty.”
Eddie hadn’t told him why he’d offered to adopt Riley and create some little household. The thought that he’d made it so fucking tender, such a meaningful offering—
Andrew was speaking before he caught himself, almost spitting in automatic reaction, “He kept me from coming here and he lied to me about the shit he got up to, especially with you and your whole fucking crew, and it seems like it fucking killed him, so tell me again how I owe you something?”
The room dropped still after his last words, Riley’s startled silence cushioned by the continued stream of music. Andrew’s chest heaved as he caught his breath, winded from the sudden shouting. Apparently he wasn’t too exhausted to lose his temper. Riley’s tense mouth had gone slack.
“Shit, I’m sorry I asked,” Riley whispered.
“Have a little respect, all right?” He tucked his laptop into his backpack.
The last thing he needed was to trap himself in this house, cycling through the same conversations he didn’t want to have and accomplishing nothing. He hefted his bag over his shoulder. The sour ache at the small of his back twanged. As he crossed to the front room to find his shoes, the music cut off.
He had the doorknob in hand when Riley said, “He changed my whole life and it was nothing to him, pocket change. I don’t think either of you could understand, but I can’t get out from under that, and I don’t take handouts. He isn’t here for me to repay. I’m not judging whatever you were to each other, man, but at least let me try to make his generosity right by you.”
“There’s nothing to make right.”
“Bullshit,” Riley said. “I don’t leave debts. Sam neither. You’re here, we’re here, Ed’s not. And I really do think you need our help.”
Eddie had left him this. Andrew rested his forehead on the doorframe for the space of a few heartbeats, then slipped out into the world again. It welcomed him with a sticky-hot burst of air and the rich ripe smell of cut grass left to bake in the sun. He hiked his bag higher and set off for the car in his sweatpants and running shoes, just another student in the grip of summer’s end.
13
Stop fighting kids it’s giving me grey hairs
And I’m too hot for that
Come over
Hey fuckass come over
Come here
Asshole
Answer me princess
“Jesus, Halse.” Andrew swiped another text notification off the screen of his phone. The café buzzed with harried students and unhurried retirees. A half-finished drink sat sweating at his elbow, separating into layers of melted ice and cream and overpriced coffee.
He hadn’t been home except to sleep and shower for three straight days. His head was full of music criticism and debates about the future of the academy; he’d begun to dip his toe into a survey of early American novels. He’d missed close to three-quarters of his course meetings without meaning to—time skittered past him so easily—and if he intended to pursue the path Eddie left behind and maintain his access to Troth and West through his patchy scholarship, catching up was a necessity.
And it gave him an excuse to take a breather, sort out his head, which he needed whether he liked it or not. He hadn’t spoken to Riley or responded to the increasingly extravagant string of texts from Sam, though it was flagrantly obvious that progress would remain stalled until he reconnected. Halse and Riley were the ones who’d been with Eddie most when he hadn’t seen fit to share the details of his entire life in Nashville with Andrew, and instead of talking to them, he was sitting in a suburban Starbucks twenty minutes outside of campus, reading articles he’d forget again by the next month. He had to admit that he felt raw, lost, stuck in the memory loop of the revenant’s awful death, though it had remained absent—spent, maybe—since that incident. The schoolwork let him pretend he was making progress.
The morose urge to lie down in Eddie’s bed and drift off to sleep for good washed over him like rain. He picked up his phone and opened his texts to fire off a quick response to Halse: I’m working go away.
Immediately, a response.
No can do
If I have to deal with my cousin sulking around my living room for one more night I’m going to beat your dumb ass
Kiss and make up already
He closed the thread. After a moment spent swirling his drink into something more appetizing, he opened Eddie’s Instagram again to stare at his last photo. The handsome man in the shot might pass for a stranger, a model, painted in sunset colors. Eddie had constructed a narrative of his life for Andrew instead of telling him the truth. Andrew’s ineptitude at searching for information, and his growing awareness of the rift between them that Eddie had kept smooth with affection and encouragement, twined together in a hideous braid. The manipulation left him off-kilter.
His phone pinged that it was time to leave for class—the alarm a recent concession to the schedule Eddie had set for him. He shuffled his books into his bag and left in the Supra, having returned to driving it after the haunt had hijacked the Challenger. Avoiding a repeat performance was his top priority, though the revenant had not returned since its explosive intervention. Eddie’s missing phone lingered at the back of his mind as he drove, and at a red light, he opened the quick-add recommended friends list for his own Snapchat.