Summer Sons(7)
Instead he asked, “You’re starting our program, right? Orientation is tomorrow.”
“Right, I am,” Andrew said.
He hadn’t thought about his academic calendar. Based on Eddie’s prior reportage, the orientation had been a bore, a glorified social hour without the buffer of alcohol. Eddie had handled his first-semester registration for him already, as he’d done since freshman year at OSU. The screenshot-filled email with his login, password, and schedule languished in his abysmal Gmail inbox. Eddie had made those decisions for Andrew as a matter of course, keeping them paired together as much as he could—until his surprise early semester at Vanderbilt. Five months of separation that had stretched into eight over the summer, and now would never end. Eddie and his goddamn secrets. Andrew heard the teasing in his head: I’ll tell you what I’m up to when it’s time for you to know, just sit pretty and be patient. And he’d accepted that, dumb as a dog. No reason to torture himself sitting through an orientation he didn’t care about.
Riley arched his back in a stretch. Joints popped with audible force. He stood and said, “I’m going to sleep. Obviously I’m complete shit at whatever it is I’m supposed to be doing to help with this situation, but you’re welcome to the fridge or whatever else. Let me know if there’s something you need?”
Andrew cast a long glance over him as he waited in the shadow of the stairwell for confirmation. While he’d been straining at his seams waiting for permission to toss his shit in the back seat and come home, Riley had slept across the hall from Eddie, maybe even spoken to him that final afternoon. Riley was connected. He wasn’t a stranger.
“Don’t worry about it, I’m good,” he said eventually.
Andrew swung his feet up to lie down as Riley mounted the creaking stairs. He checked his phone. Past one in the morning; three missed calls and a handful of unread texts. Knowing the cozily arranged bedroom waited overhead sent a dull throb of pain through his temples. Those sheets could stay crisp and untouched for another night. Eddie wasn’t going to care.
* * *
In the morning, he passed Riley opening his bedroom door as he exited the bathroom, wearing the same clothes he’d slept in. The shower kicked on as he stood in the center of the kitchen. His stomach grumbled and he ducked into the pantry, perusing canned soups, mysterious unlabeled containers, half-finished snacks. An open box of Apple Jacks seemed like the most expedient option. He pulled it off the shelf, uncrimped the rolled but not clipped bag, and ate three handfuls of stale, dry cereal. The shush of running water cut off, leaving him alone with the crunch. Sugar-grease coated his tongue.
“Hey,” Riley said from behind him. He startled and spun on his heel. “Sorry, didn’t mean to surprise you. I’m heading over to campus, do you need a ride to orientation?”
The expression on his thin lips and slightly furrowed brows hovered between earnest and awkward. His weight shifted to one foot as he cocked a hip, keys in his fist and messenger bag slung across his chest. Andrew swallowed against the crumbs tickling his throat, sat the cereal on the counter, and said, “No, I’m good. Thanks.”
“Okay, cool.” He had the door open and one foot out when he continued, tossing offhanded over his shoulder: “I’ll be home late, so I’ll catch you in the morning probably.”
Andrew sagged as soon as the door shut. Out the window, he watched as Riley unselfconsciously bent himself into a stretch with his wrists braced on the roof of his Mazda, feet spread wide, head hanging and spine long. Andrew’s neck and shoulders ached from the long drive plus a night spent on the couch. The other man slid into his car, and the coughing roar of an aftermarket engine rebounded off the house. Andrew tore his attention free and made a beeline for the fridge. The milk in the door was three days past its date, but it smelled fine, so he stole a swig direct from the carton.
The haunt that had visited him the night before, as brutally familiar as his own skin, was unimaginable in broad daylight. The absence stung somehow. Dust on the stairs stuck to his sweating feet as he ascended again. The door to Eddie’s room was nothing remarkable, but that didn’t stop his hand from stalling on the brass knob. He took the first two steps into the room with his eyes clamped shut, dragging his toes across the floorboards to avoid tripping. He nudged the door closed. Once it latched, he forced a breath out through his nose and opened his eyes again.
Rumpled sheets spilled onto the floor at the end of the mattress on its plain metal frame. Two pillows were crammed into a pile against the wall, and a third lay sideways in the center of the bed. Clothes lay in a scattershot circle around a full laundry hamper at the corner of the desk. A hideously neon-orange pair of boxer briefs and one sock with a giant hole in the heel dangled haphazardly from the edge of the pile. The chair was rolled back from the messy desk, covered in a scattered mountain of papers, pens, books, High Life cans, and a monitor with a headset hooked over it. A half-smoked blunt rested on the edge of a glass ashtray. A still life painting: One Boy’s Room, Summer.
On autopilot, he staggered across the room to collapse into the chair, the same chair from their shared apartment in Columbus. He gripped the armrests and laid his head against the divot they’d worn into the upholstery through the years. The room felt so freshly interrupted he was surprised the chair wasn’t warm to the touch. A snowdrift of loose-leaf paper drew his attention first—plain printer stock and ruled alike, covered with Eddie’s cramped sprawling handwriting in multiple colors of ink—but the broken-backed composition book splayed open on top of the unkempt pile was obviously the last piece touched.