Summer Sons(71)
19
Andrew rested his forehead on the edge of the refrigerator. In the other room, Del waited. The pit of guilty loathing in his gut was enough to swallow him whole. He hadn’t missed her, either, but he wanted to argue all the same. He grabbed them each a beer from the case Riley had mercifully picked up. One tab cracked and then the next; he carried his can at his side and passed hers over with a sense of communion. He’d expected tears, recriminations, but her eyes were dry and she was calm.
She took a swallow before continuing, “Tell me the truth, for once: did you really never love me, or did you only love him more?”
“Fucking Jesus, it wasn’t like that and you know it,” he said—except everyone in Nashville had been speaking the same language to him since he arrived. This time, he let the dart strike a bullseye even if he denied it.
He was yours.
“Andrew, yes it was like that,” she said.
He scrounged for something to say, and found a meager offering: “I did love you.”
But I loved him more.
He couldn’t bring that to life, not aloud, not with his own mouth.
“You know, I came to the dorm one night and let myself in, back when we were together, and he was in bed with you. You were asleep. He was running his hand through your hair and he had his mouth on your neck. He made some pretty serious eye contact. It wasn’t friendly. I left. I don’t know why I never brought it up until now.”
“We never—” Andrew started, heart pounding in his chest. The phantom image of Eddie kissing him in his sleep was doing something to his insides he didn’t appreciate.
“Nah, you never touched his dick, I know.” Her laugh was harsh. She smacked the can onto the coffee table hard enough to foam it and put her face in her hands. “Instead you fucked me, and then he fucked me, and then both of you fucked me together, and it was great until I realized you were using me like a goddamn sex doll. You two used me because he wouldn’t admit what you were, and neither would you. He used me to be with you. I deserve better than that. I deserved better then, and I deserve better now. I’m a person, Andrew.”
Did we do that? he thought. Out loud he asked, “How long have you been saving this up?”
“Years, probably. You fucked me up good.”
He tipped the beer into his mouth, throat working as he chugged it. The words she’d slapped him with stung. The world was tilted off its axis, crooked from what he’d known before. He wanted to argue, but hard as he tried, he found nothing to say in defense of himself, and less in defense of Eddie.
“I’m not a bottomless well for you to throw your stress and your misery and your repression into,” she said when he didn’t respond.
“I thought it was good, with us,” he said. “For a little while.”
“If it was good, I would’ve stayed with you and made it work, Eddie or no Eddie. But ‘no Eddie’ never even crossed your mind. You’re a selfish, entitled disaster of a person. And I’m sorry…” For the briefest second, her voice wavered. She lifted her beer for another sip and took a breath, staring up at the ceiling. He waited. “I’m sorry he died before you figured it out. For what it’s worth, I think you might’ve eventually, without me there to displace your bullshit onto. He was head over heels for you, and everyone knew but you, and maybe him. No, I think he knew. I think he hated seeing you with me, so he got himself involved.”
That wasn’t how Andrew remembered it, the first time in the dorm: Eddie’s arm around both of their shoulders as they sat against the wall. Eddie’s mouth on Del’s cheek. Her smiling and saying yeah, okay. He remembered their hands glancing on her hips and her ribs, one of them latched onto each nipple, the thrill of that, of touching her together while she yanked on their hair. Read through her lens, though, through the shock of her obvious hurt and his compounding horror of himself, that old scene was less of a beautiful coming-together and more an opportunity they’d taken advantage of. Andrew let himself study the narrow cut of her chest and hips, her rock-solid calves, her pale pink sandals and calloused heels, and at the present moment, he felt nothing.
He hadn’t realized, and that was her whole point.
“So, yeah,” she said. “I guess that was a lot. I’ve been in therapy, just as an FYI. It’s helping. She thought it would be good for me to say all this in person. I thought it wouldn’t be fair, as fucked up as you are right now, but she said it hadn’t been fair before. So it wasn’t my job to make it fair now.”
“And I deserve that,” he said finally.
“You do.”
“I’m sorry.”
He meant that.
Del shook her head, dusted her hands on her shorts and offered one to him. He took it and stood. The drowning sensation continued unabated. He walked her to the door with endless things to say, but none of them enough to fix what he’d broken. At the threshold she said, “Goodbye, Andrew. Get some help. He was a piece of work, and so are you, but I don’t hate you. I just can’t help you anymore.”
The sandals slapped softly as she descended the stairs and set off across the sidewalk toward campus. Andrew sat on the porch until she was long gone. Eddie had whispered into his hair once, half-asleep, fuck you for being so good. He’d laughed and let it tie him into a giddy knot for days. That same week he’d watched Eddie punch a frat kid at a kegger, heard him snarling who are you calling a faggot, saw him leave with a girl whose name he didn’t know. Andrew had found his own companion for the night, pomegranate lip gloss his sole memory of the experience.