Summer Sons(64)
Andrew opened his mouth and said, “None of them ever shut up.”
Sam snorted. “Let me guess. My cousin and that rich dude he’s always getting irritable at sniped at each other about bullshit they technically agree on while Luca tried to smother their dumbass feud, and you hated every minute of it. Am I right, Blur?”
Andrew gulped another throat-challenging mouthful of OE in response. The grade of the road descended by degrees as they circled the other side of the hill. If Eddie were driving, he might’ve reached across the console to grab Andrew’s knee. He’d have dug his thumb into the notch on the outside for a moment of grounding discomfort. Sam just drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, left arm flung briefly out the window to grab the breeze.
“Call me Andrew,” he offered.
Without looking at him, Sam drawled, “All right, Andrew.”
His name lay full on Sam’s tongue, the two syllables spilling out rounder, less clipped than the one. The disembodiment of the department gathering, his pretense at scholar-gentleman, dropped away at Sam’s slur on the -drew.
Switchback pavement led them to the base of the hill. In a creek-split holler between the rolling heights of the forest, draped with night and interrupted only by the porch light of one farmhouse set a far distance from the road, Sam coasted to a casual stop. Humid air danced through the windows. Sam wiped his forehead with his wrist, dislodging his hat. The pair of them finished their sixer, elbows out their windows and silent as old friends—the night had spackled over his cracking fa?ade with watchful silence and purposeful adrenaline, offering the right comfort without making him ask for it.
After Sam tossed his last can in the back, he asked, “Ready to head home?”
17
Sam drove them up the hill again, climbing toward the moon resting in place overhead. A fierce urge to piss battled with his head-fogging buzz. Something in his pocket jabbed the crease of his groin as he shifted; he adjusted it, rediscovered the paper packet, thumb finding the metal indent of the ring. Through the whole drive home he left his thumb there, and only when Sam parked them safe in the garage did he rouse from his distracted reverie. Even as he tromped up the steps to the house, Andrew found he wasn’t ready to leave the night behind them. Sam gestured over his shoulder, a crook of his index finger, without a word or a glance. Building nerves dispersed as Andrew followed after him through the kitchen, accepting a handful of mismatched blankets tossed at him from the hall closet. He dumped them on the couch and sat to unlace his high-tops, soaking in the intense release of pressure around his sweaty ankles.
Across the room Sam braced his arm above his head at the entrance to the hall, worming his scuffed sneakers off without bending over. His right sock caught on the shoe and slid to mid-foot; instead of fixing it, he kicked it free. His tattoo’s bold edges hinted from underneath the hem of his shirt as it rose above his waistline. As he straightened he caught Andrew staring and flashed a smirk before striding down the hall, one sock on and one sock off. A door shut in the depths of the house, and Andrew released the breath lodged in his chest from the abrupt eye contact.
Andrew availed himself of the bathroom and considered his reflection in the unlit mirror: mouth slack with exhaustion and drink, a hectic flush from cheeks to chest, hair a wind-snared mess. The bruises on his face were healing through a spectrum of mottled flat colors, unlike the nasty green of the fresh one Sam had left on his thigh. On the couch he wrapped himself up in blankets to check his phone. From Riley, a series of questions, then silence once it became clear he wouldn’t respond to them. Either that, or Sam had told him he’d collected their wayward charge. More surprising, three messages from Del:
I’ve given you some space to sort through a few things. I’m checking in now because I’m worried, and I’d appreciate you letting me know you’re okay.
I know you don’t want to talk about it, or about how you feel, but we were friends. I want to think we’re still friends. It shouldn’t be my job alone to make that happen.
Love you Andrew
He responded with a brief, Give me some more time. Love you too. He didn’t think he meant it, but it would give them both longer to sort out their relationship. For good measure he sent a quick message to his mother as well before shutting his phone off. Head turned into the couch cushions, he wondered if Eddie had slept where he was sleeping, if he’d driven those same roads and drank that same cheap liquor and passed out here with Halse. He hadn’t told Andrew if he had—but it made sense, more sense than dinner parties, than washing professors’ dishes. He pressed his thumbnail into his wrist bone over the tattoo, and felt the earth calling to his bones. There were answers somewhere out in these woods.
He slept easier than he’d expected.
The velvet twilight of the dream resounded with Eddie’s voice: further, come further, this way. Andrew stumbled toward the sound of his call over roots and rocks, the shadows treacherously misleading. Just as he glimpsed Eddie’s silhouette through the trees, the ground collapsed under his unsteady heels. Pain sliced from hip to scapula as he fell, the breath punched out of him in a cracked shout. He scrabbled for a grip on the dirt walls as he tumbled with the rotten leaves, tearing a fingernail loose with a pop. His full weight landed on his left ankle, crunching it to the wrong side. Overhead the light waned as his vision swam.
That was how it had happened, and also not how it had happened.