Summer Sons(6)

The whole place smelled like home, but with a discomfiting undertone of old home, home before Columbus. Even AC couldn’t fight the thick green smell. Andrew’s parents had moved the family north four months after Eddie’s adoption had gone through—ostensibly for work, but since their surprise additional kid had gotten them rich, Andrew figured their move had more to do with running from what had happened to him and Eddie the summer before; the summer his life went wrong. He strangled the bare thought of before as soon as it wriggled loose.

Riley broke the silence to say, “No offense, but I don’t think either of us wants me here for this part.”

And he squeezed past Andrew to disappear down the steps in a cascade of thumps. All three doors were closed. Andrew laid his hand on the knob to Eddie’s door and dropped his forehead onto the wood. He’d seen the room plenty of times, in picture and on video, from hundreds of miles away: a bed against one wall with Eddie’s desk and gaming setup at the foot; an end table with a mirror propped on it crooked; curtains over the far wall that was almost all window. The streetlights outside would lend it a dim glow. There would be half-finished drinks on the shelves, a guitar and a battered amp in the closet that used to be Andrew’s and were once again.

Instead, he turned to open the door to his own room—putting off the inevitable. The hinges squealed. Moonlight cast shadows across the warm mismatched spread of furniture Eddie had selected for him: a monstrous desk, so deep brown it might as well have been black, pushed into the far corner; a shelf stained bright gold with chips knocked out of its corners and a handful of books piled on the shelves; a luxurious king-sized bed that dominated the room, up against the wall so Andrew could tuck into the corner the way he preferred.

The framed picture on the bedside table, a twin to the one he knew waited in Eddie’s room, nailed the final stabbing touch. Del had taken the original on her phone of Andrew’s and Eddie’s cars parked side by side, while she waited on the road ahead of them to serve as flagger. The photo immortalized the moment when Andrew had sprawled over his center console to reach out his passenger window and flip off a smirking Eddie, who had his shades pushed up into the unkempt mess of his hair. Their expressions were savage with joy.

Andrew hooked the door shut behind him with his ankle. He sank into a crouch and buried his face against his knees. When that proved insufficient, he tipped forward onto the floorboards and dug his fingernails into the seams. His mouth filled with spit, sick-fast. Eddie had put together a perfect room, a room that held all of him without the slightest effort. He’d done it without question, knowing Andrew’s needs inside and out. The shelf yawned for his own books to be added to it, the closet gaped for clothes, the space waited to become home. No part of Andrew could conceive of the room as a goodbye offering. It was too much a welcome to the life in Nashville that Eddie had talked up on his calls, the impending reunion after their brief, uncomfortable separation.

Downstairs the TV cut on, the quiet murmur of a sportscaster piping up through the vent. After the vertiginous swoop finished twisting through him, Andrew pushed himself to his feet using the corner of the bed. The stairwell echoed noisily with the thump of his sneakers jogging down them. The television was on, but the living room was abandoned. He sank onto one couch—there were two, catty-corner—dropping his hands between his knees. How long had that room been ready? How early had Eddie prepared a place for him? If he’d been allowed to come down two or four or six weeks earlier, instead of being stalled by a series of petty reasons, Eddie might still have been with him to see it. A moment later footsteps approached and a cold bottle was pressed to his wrist, proffered wordlessly.

“I’m sorry,” Riley said.

“No problem,” he muttered in response.

“He talked about you all the fucking time,” Riley continued. His naked foot and the coffee table formed the centerpiece of Andrew’s vision. “Feels like I already know you, honestly.”

It would’ve been proper to give as given: yeah, he talked about you too. Andrew tipped his bottle back and swallowed bracingly cold beer in long mouthfuls. When the bottle was half-finished, he eased off for a breather and glanced over to see Riley fiddling with the label on his own.

“Sorry,” Andrew said into the awkwardness.

“Don’t worry about it. I don’t think anyone would be all right, the situation being…” he trailed off and gestured to the rooms above them.

Andrew caught sight of his tattooed forearm and asked, “What’s that?”

Riley turned his arm obligingly to show inked, elegant, almost impenetrable script reading, it’s not about forcing happiness. Andrew recognized the lyrics from a band Eddie had been a fan of. The straggling conversation laid itself to rest. Both boys drank. Andrew felt like a stranger in this city, this house, his own body. He’d made Riley into a stranger too, just by arriving on the doorstep. He had questions, but no sense of where to begin asking them.

Why didn’t he let me come sooner?

“You want another?” Riley asked with a tip of his empty bottle.

“I’ll get it,” Andrew said.

Might as well begin to learn the house, alien as that sensation was. He stepped into the kitchen, surveyed the cupboards, opened the unfamiliar fridge. The bottom shelf held six different kinds of beer. He snagged two mismatched bottles and brought them back; Riley popped the caps with the carabiner clipped to his jeans. Wisely, he said nothing about his houseguest-cum-landlord exploring the other room.