Summer Sons(52)

“Eddie come to these parties often?” Andrew asked, staring at the ceiling.

“Not as much as I’d have expected,” Ethan said. “He kept his distance from most of us, to be honest. Sometimes he was cool, sometimes I thought it was like, too much for him, how we all were together. He didn’t seem comfortable.”

“Thought he was in the pack,” Andrew said.

“Sure he was. But he was one of those guys, I doubt I’ve got to tell you this, who was more his own protagonist than a normal person.” An eloquent shrug, a dazzled moment spent flexing his fingers and watching his rings flash. “When he was around he was king of the castle, and it made me forget to ask where the fuck he was the rest of the time. He paid enough attention to make you feel close without ever telling you shit.”

Andrew said, “You didn’t like him.”

He heard the revelation in his own voice before it hit him. Ethan sighed noisily. “He was good to Riley and Halse, he had some kind of soft spot for them. The rest of us, man, I’m not sure he really saw us. And he had a fucking wild temper, so I didn’t like that, no. Reminded me of too many DL frat boys, the staring and the weirdness and shit. I know I’m pretty, but I’m not that pretty, you know?”

Andrew had no idea what those words meant in that order, except he disliked the idea of Eddie staring enough to get noticed. The insistent buzz of molly kept him from accessing his roiling emotions, reflexive anger smothered under euphoric distraction.

He sorted through his words carefully before he asked, “Then how was he spending his time, it if wasn’t with y’all and it wasn’t with school? I don’t know what he was even fucking doing here. I should know that.”

He hadn’t meant to say the last bit out loud. Ethan tipped himself closer on the couch, gripping the frame to settle in the middle with his toes jammed under Andrew’s thigh. Andrew lifted his head. “He did spend time with us. Just not, like, separately and of his own volition. Wouldn’t have caught him snapping me for a night out. He had his own shit to do. He and the cousins got along good enough. I mean, he made runs with Sam sometimes, and none of us ever got in that deep.”

“Made runs?” he asked.

“Yeah, Sam’s second job,” he said. For clarity’s sake, he mimed smoking a joint. “Sam’s too protective of Riley to let him fuck up, so he’s not allowed in on that shit, and I’m in law school, and Luca tolerates Sam at best. The extended company he keeps is kind of gross and scary, you know? And the rest of the kids are too casual of friends to be trapping with our boy on a Tuesday night. You get me?”

“But Eddie wasn’t too casual,” he said slowly.

“Nah.” Ethan’s mouth pursed as he considered his response. “Those two hit it off fast, nothing casual about it. It was sort of like watching some big dogs decide they didn’t want to bite each other’s faces off. There were a couple of times I wasn’t sure if they’d decide otherwise.”

“How do you mean?”

The toes still digging and flexing against his leg distracted him briefly. The room around them pulsed with life, the crowd fading in and out of his conscious awareness as he focused on them and then on Ethan and back again. He missed half of a sentence, tuned in again to hear, “—can’t have two leaders, but Ed didn’t want to lead, he just wanted to have his space I guess. He was more excited about his fucking social research or whatever than he was about selling drugs anyway.”

Andrew grunted, confused. His high coasted to a peak. The music, even muffled from the basement, had a physical presence, a pressure on his ears and throat. Ethan’s voice made a steady constant over the bass, narrating, tongue loosened with the chemicals in their blood and the paradoxical closeness of total strangers in the same place at the same time. Same, his blood beat. His rebellious fingers itched to wrap around Ethan’s foot.

“He was collecting all those oral histories and ghost stories and nonsense,” Ethan said. “Sam was after his ass to quit asking his customers about their haunted houses, like, all the time. He hates that shit. Their grandma was a real weirdo about it, if you didn’t know, some kind of reformed hill witch who found Jesus and gave up her wickedness, et cetera et cetera.”

“Well, shit,” Andrew said. “I didn’t.”

“Yeah, he spent way more time haring around on his own harassing people for stories than he did hanging with us, Sam or no Sam,” he said. “But to reiterate, he and Sam were a goddamn bonfire. We were all kind of hoping they’d blow each other and get it over with.” Ethan cackled and slapped Andrew’s upper thigh before collapsing onto the couch again. The stinging burn shocked straight through his belly as if Ethan had grabbed him by the crotch. Andrew’s mouth hung open, the picture of those bodies in contact flashing behind his eyes in full, glorious, terrible detail before Ethan interrupted with, “Fuck, sorry, that was bad. Ignore that. I’m fucking high as shit.”

It hit him, with the approximate force of a train, that they’d been talking about Eddie for minutes or hours as if catching up, as if they’d see him later. His heart crawled up into his throat. He didn’t need to be here. None of these people had been with Eddie—not Ethan or his nameless, faceless law school friends. None of them had a reason to do whatever had been done to him.