Summer Sons(50)
Lo and behold: Ethan Jung, handle jungian, sat smack in the middle. He clicked the plus symbol and tossed his phone on the passenger seat. He had to start somewhere. He knew the pack were his best leads, but the cousins themselves were too difficult to address, too fraught. And based on his own altercation at the get-together, Ethan might have more of an insight to offer him than most if Eddie had got caught up in that mess too—given he actually was one of the men those shitty good ol’ boys had a problem with. When his screen flashed he glanced at it, but the light turned green. He didn’t check his notifications until he’d taken his seat in class.
Ethan had sent him two quick messages:
Sup man, you looking for some SupraxSupra action?
Or am I a one track mind kind of guy
He responded, Yeah I’m down for that. Class kicked off around him and he handed in his response paper with the rest of the students. A frisson of relief washed over him, as if he’d clipped a red light exactly at the cutoff. He and Ethan traded messages, planning and prep, throughout the lecture. Ethan didn’t mention Riley once, or Sam, which was what Andrew had hoped for.
Ethan met him in a gas station parking lot outside campus. When Andrew parked, Ethan boosted himself off of the hood of his car, a cheap iced coffee in each hand. He passed the untouched one through Andrew’s window. Two wide gold rings on his middle fingers matched a chain that hung in a glittering, teasing loop over his upper chest. The magnetic glint of the chain drew attention to the scooped-neck shirt baring the expanse of his collarbones. Andrew caught himself watching the curves of his mouth: a thin upper lip but a plump bottom lip, dimples at the sides of his smile. Ethan looked more high-end model than a law student.
Until he spoke: “Want to commit a series of misdemeanors, new friend?”
Andrew raised his eyebrows over a sip of his bracingly sweetened coffee and cream. Ethan scratched his upper thigh and adjusted his belt with a thumb. Nonchalant but eager, the faintest hint predatory: the same impression Andrew had gotten at the party, before his roommate had climbed the man like a tree. That image loitered in the basement of his brain, color-spattered and confused with yearning and fire and hurt.
“I’m free all evening, so what’s a good time around here?”
Ethan grinned. “And to think Riley was concerned you weren’t going to branch out, get some socializing in. You want to drive, or you want to party, or both? I’m guessing you need a break from the cousins, or you wouldn’t have texted just me.”
“If I were here with Eddie,” he said, rolling each word off his tongue, “what all would we do tonight? Party, or drive?”
“I guess we’d do both,” Ethan said, his voice softening.
“Then let’s do both.”
“Cool. Follow me and we’ll get some fun in on the highway.”
Breathless anticipation sluiced him from head to toe, unsurprising but unwelcome. This was, in a sense, research—about Halse, about the pack, about where Eddie fit into their messy web. Ethan’s Supra turned over with a handsome purr. He’d asked the question he needed to ask: if I were Eddie, where would I be? Even spread across Andrew’s fits and starts, that was more effort than the police had made. He felt weightlessly alien after the nights with the cousins, the brutality of the confrontation at the semester-opening party, and he didn’t know if his current momentum would last. He had to continue to believe that Eddie hadn’t done the deed himself, no matter how strange his life had become while he was alone in Nashville.
Once the pair made it onto the interstate, Andrew changed lanes to pull up alongside Ethan. Cars liberally dotted the four-lane highway. Familiar sport. Andrew revved his engine once and cut across to the far left lane at speed. In his sideview Ethan did the same, gaining velocity and slicing through traffic one smooth maneuver at a time. Adrenaline hummed as he wove through the impeding cars, nosing ahead of Ethan, then falling behind. The speedometer showed triple digits for a heartbeat but banked down to double behind a tangle of cars he couldn’t get past. Ethan dodged in front of him. Andrew blurted an expletive, braking to avoid a high-speed collision. Another, more temperate flash of Ethan’s brake lights prompted him to follow a turn signal to an exit ramp. They made their way through a scattering of stores into a neighborhood of middle-class homes with SUVs in driveways and the occasional concrete lawn ornament. When Ethan turned onto a side street to park, Andrew mirrored him.
“Not bad keeping up,” Ethan said to him, bumping knuckles.
“Same to you.”
The drive had only ratcheted his energy higher. Ethan, too, seemed to be vibrating in his shoes. “How do you feel about recreational drug use, my good man?”
“Neutral to positive,” Andrew replied.
“Okay, great, cool. I’m in a seminar with this chick, Leah, and she has a bunch of molly. Her boyfriend is a mediocre DJ, the scene’s very posh and suburban. So, that’s what we’re doing tonight.” He snapped his fingers at his side twice, glancing at the house. “Eat some party drugs and dance in someone’s basement.”
“Law school, huh,” Andrew murmured.
“Fuck off,” he said pleasantly.
Inside, the house was muggy despite the air-conditioning. Bodies crowded the living room and kitchen, bare skin and summer dresses and high heels—more women than he’d seen in one place for months. Compared to Halse’s gathering, the vibe was downright cosmopolitan. Andrew kept close to Ethan as he led the way to the back deck, where a handful of people splashed around in an aboveground pool. The thump of a bass beat from the basement rattled the wooden boards.