Summer Sons(51)

“Leah, my dear, my darling,” Ethan crowed.

A young tanned woman in a bikini top and board shorts clambered out of the pool without using the ladder, also grinning, her hair streaming with water. “Ethan, hi there! You doing business with me tonight? Your pretty, pretty partners come too?”

“Nah, I brought another friend.” He made finger-guns at Andrew.

“Like a friend, or a friend,” Leah said, raking her gaze over Andrew from his eyes to approximately dick-level. He had to admire the lack of dissembling. “And where from?”

“Riley knows him, and just a friend.” He planted a comedic smack of a kiss on her cheek. “Let’s make his night nicer, yeah?”

“It’s ten per, and each capsule is about point-one. Stuff the cash in my purse and help yourselves,” she said.

Ethan grabbed his wallet and crossed the deck to the table with her bag on it. She leaned on the railing next to Andrew, the blue fairy lights strung around the porch emphasizing her water-beaded skin, and said, “You like girls, handsome?”

“That’s direct,” he replied.

“Never let it be said I’m not honest,” she said.

“Leah, leave him be,” Ethan called over.

She flipped her hair over her shoulder, still smiling, and took two sprinting steps before cannonballing messily into her pool. The other partygoers splashed at her when she resurfaced, cackling. The tousling pile of bodies in the pool struck him as remarkably wholesome, though he figured most of them were also high as hell. Andrew approached Ethan, and the other boy placed two capsules in his palm. He had two of his own.

“My treat, I’m the oldest,” Ethan said.

Inside, the conversation and laughter were almost deafening. The music throbbing up from the basement made it worse. Andrew took a beer from a cooler in the kitchen and washed down his capsules. Ethan did the same. He had a half hour, he thought, before it hit him. Eddie hadn’t been a big fan of MDMA, so they hadn’t done it often, but this was for a purpose. At his elbow, Ethan shifted from foot to foot, scanning the crowd with a casual interest.

“I’m about to be just as direct as Leah, but tell me if I’m supposed to be wing-manning or something here. Glad to be of assistance if so,” he said.

Andrew glanced at him, startled. Had Ethan helped Eddie get laid, was that what he would’ve gotten up to? Andrew had a hard time picturing the scenario that would lead the Eddie he knew to choose Ethan as his party companion.

But apparently he’d missed a lot in the six months Eddie spent trawling Nashville.

“No thanks,” Andrew said.

Ethan grunted his understanding, fidgeted another minute or five, and then said, “Downstairs, music, yes?”

The steps descended into a close space lit by a star projector and nothing else, full of humans pressed flush against each other, moving in sync with the eardrum-splitting throb of EDM pouring from a set of cabinet speakers. Ethan grinned across at him, face streaked with neon color, before disappearing into the crowd. Andrew breathed in and out, stuck along the edges with his beer held above his head to keep from being jostled. The cold concrete wall braced him. He allowed himself the briefest thought of Eddie in the fray, filthy broad smile and a woman in his arms, moving with the music and the lights.

It occurred to him an indeterminate period of time later, bones liquid and fingers lax around his warm beer, dizzy sparklers of sensation pinging constantly, that Ethan had drastically miscalculated his dosage. He wheezed through his nose and rolled his skull against the wall, one quick sigh-and-gasp for air as the yank of concrete on his hair buzzed through his scalp. He felt fucking good. He’d forgotten how to feel good, and here it was, plowing him under.

A palm landed on his ribs and a mouth pressed damp against his cheek, speaking directly into his skin: “How is it?”

He pried his eyes open, unsure when he had shut them again. Ethan’s blown pupils and cherry-liquor-smelling breath were the whole world for a disorienting second. His tongue lay unwieldy in his mouth. The strong fingers curving around his side burned with tender sensation, heavily present and approaching sensual. He managed, “Rolling my ass off.”

Ethan’s laugh was more a giggle. He notched their bodies closer together with a sinuous wriggle and shouted over the music, his thigh between Andrew’s, “Christ, yeah, that cannot have been point-two. I’m gone.”

The music pulsed. Ethan made a breathless but shattering sound into his ear and his hand slid to grip the firm divot of muscle at the middle of his back, leanly built torso shifting along Andrew’s without an inch of free space. He swayed, an attempt at dancing, and unasked-for pleasure lashed up Andrew’s melting spinal cord. Ethan’s smooth, well-shaved cheek pressed to his own—same height, same build, same—and he tugged at Andrew’s arm as if to encourage him to hold on. Instead, he fisted his hands in Ethan’s shirt and pulled backward to separate their bodies, shivering head to toe and close to panting. Without Ethan’s warmth blanketing him, the molly turned cold. The seam of his jeans pinned his responding dick to his thigh. He hated that he was aware of it, startled and undone and too high.

“Upstairs,” he slurred.

Ethan blinked, comical realization and red flush crawling across his face at once, then let him go. They staggered from the corner to the stairs, the stairs to the kitchen, and the kitchen to the living room in a blur. Andrew kept his hand anchored in the hem of Ethan’s shirt. The physical delight was blinding, swamping his brain’s capacity to hold on to a thought for longer than three seconds before dissolving into pure starving sensation. Falling onto the blessedly abandoned couch together allowed Andrew an excuse to remain as close as his skin craved without making contact. He lolled his head onto the armrest, one leg hanging stretched out in a greedy sprawl. Ethan kicked his shoes off and put his feet up. A Solo cup hung precariously from his fingertips.