11. EDDIE

Chapter eleven

EDDIE

O nly once was I ever truly at risk of revealing my attraction to Max. It was when he was living with us when we were about to turn eighteen. I was still a virgin, had barely even kissed someone else, and had never taken a girl on a proper date.

Max was my world, in fact, and even though he had started dating and had had sex with a girl, I suppose you could say I was his. But we were just friends, nothing else. I was always careful to talk about us as best buds, bros, all that straight-guy talk I was never really very good at. Later, I moved to New York and never uttered such words again.

Having him in the house changed things between us. His being physically in the same space as me took things from vaguely erotic moments in the school locker room to an electric awareness of another body – a body I desired.

Suddenly, all of his private things were in my space. We had separate rooms – my mom moved him into Megan's bedroom, which she eventually moved back into when she had Jared and the boy's father pushed off. But now, every day, I saw things that belonged to him that I had hardly noticed before.

When my mom did our washing, she pinned up his underwear and his socks, or maybe just a T-shirt he wore a lot on a line in the yard. Watching his things flutter in the hot breeze became impossibly erotic to me.

Now, things that I had never seen before were there to be stared at from the kitchen window, even touched, perhaps. It became overwhelmingly distracting to me, despite the fact, or maybe even because of the fact, that he and I were never remotely sexual with each other.

One afternoon, I thought I was alone in the house, and I just idly walked past his bedroom door to see that my mom had left his dried laundry folded on his bed. And there on top of the folded jeans were several pairs of briefs that belonged to him.

Seeing them there, I felt almost drunk with desire. For the first time, it occurred to me that I could go and touch his private things. No one would see, unlike in the yard.

I walked into his room and stared at the briefs on the bed. The slight, worn bulges in their fronts were almost too much to bear. I picked up one pair – they were dark blue with white edging – and I stared at its bulge, shaped by his body – by the most intimate parts of his body.

Standing there, I was already erect in my sweatpants. I took the briefs and turned them inside out. The inside fabric was slightly worn where his balls and cocks sat. I thought of them touching the material. I thought of him wearing these things all day, naked underneath.

I lifted them to my mouth and nose. They had been washed. They smelled of nothing, and yet it was impossibly close to having his body close to my mouth.

I hardly knew anything about blowjobs back then, except lies boys in high school made up or flashes of pornography we had seen waiting for the old dial-up connection to load up.

I hadn't vaguely given or received one. It was the first time I had felt so close to another male body, in a sexual sense, and that male body would have been Max's. I wondered what it would be like to have his cock, his balls, close to my mouth, as close as these briefs. I parted my lips as if his cock might, in fact, enter it.

" Hey, man !"

It was him, his voice, behind me. I froze in terror. It was all I could do to throw the briefs back down onto the pile of laundry. When I turned to face him, he was smiling hazily. I could not tell if he suspected or saw anything.

"My mom asked me to bring your stuff up," I said hurriedly. "I was putting them on your bed."

His eyes fell down to the pile of clothes, and then, briefly, I think – I think – he looked at my hard-on in my sweatpants. Or maybe I imagined it. Maybe he saw nothing at all.

"Um… Do you want to go to the mall?" he asked, a little awkwardly.

Had he seen? He must have seen. But he didn't say anything. Never did afterward, either. Maybe he didn't see anything. I burned with shame. I just wanted to get away.

"Sure," I said unhappily. I wanted to hide away, not spend the next few hours with him.

He grinned at me.

"Cool."

For such a long time afterward, I could have cringed just to think of that moment. I cringed even then, returning home, to be honest. In fact, when only a few months later I got accepted to do law at NYU, I was glad to get away from the humiliation of that moment.

Maybe, in fact, that was precisely why I left and never really contacted him again.

***

The morning sun streamed through the kitchen window, over the countertops. I was preparing breakfast for Jared and myself. It was a few days since the funeral, and things were, if not quite back to normal, moving into a different phase.

The aroma of sizzling bacon filled the air. I cracked eggs into a skillet, and the whites bubbled at once in the hot fat. The toast popped up out of the toaster. I hummed softly to myself as I worked, while above me, I could hear Jared moving around and the shower running.

Eventually, I called up the stairs.

"Hey, buddy, breakfast is almost ready."

Jared bounded downstairs and raced to the kitchen.

"Bacon and eggs?" he said gleefully. "What brought this on, Eddie?"

I shrugged.

"Just felt like it."

"Do you eat bacon and eggs all the time in New York, like, in those mafia movies?"

I laughed, and he did, too.

"Yeah, every single day," I drawled.

"Can we eat in the living room again?" he asked.

"Sure… why not?"

As I brought in his plate, his attention was already fixed on the television screen in front of him. He had found SpongeBob SquarePants again.

"We don't have to watch this every day," he said.

"I don't mind."

He paused a moment, then tore his eyes from the TV to look at me.

"You know, Mom would go crazy if she knew you were letting me do this, eating fried eggs in front of cartoons."

I smiled at him.

"I think she would be okay, given the circumstances." His eyes grew pink a moment, and then he rubbed each one with the flat of his thumb. "You okay?" I asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he replied, his voice soft and sad.

He picked up one strip of bacon with his fingers and put it to his mouth and tore at it with his teeth. Together, we ate our breakfast in companionable silence, just our laughter at the episode of SpongeBob SquarePants breaking it up.

As the last of the food was finished, I got up and collected his plate, then took it and mine out to the kitchen. Coming back, I asked, "Do you wanna watch another episode?"

"Yeah, sure," he replied.

And so, we spent the next twenty minutes in the world of Bikini Bottom, laughing and laughing. When that was over, I thought it was time for us to get on.

"Hey, Max texted me about you last night," I said.

"Really?" Jared looked around at me.

"He was talking about you coming over to look at his motorbikes."

Jared seemed thrilled.

"Oh, cool!" he cried.

"Do you wanna go over today?"

He said yes, very enthusiastically.

"How do you know Max?" he asked eventually.

"We were friends at school," I explained. "He lived with me and your grandma when he was seventeen, eighteen. We were best friends back then."

Jared's eyes widened in surprise.

"But he's so cool!"

I chuckled softly.

"I'm cool, too," I teased.

"Why did he live with you and Grandma?"

I realized that what I was about to say might be difficult.

"His mom died when he was young, like you."

Jared looked at me without revealing anything.

"Really?"

"Yeah, but he didn't really have anyone to look after him, so that was different."

He thought about this.

"And Grandma took over responsibility for him?"

"Only temporarily," I said. "He did have some relatives, but he was pushed between them, and sometimes he had no one who wanted to take him in."

Jared seemed to grow very tense. I asked him what was wrong.

"Is that gonna happen to me?"

"No way!" I cried. "I am your guardian now. You and I are together forever now."

I meant this as a joke, but he remained very thoughtful.

"Are you going to take me to live in New York?"

I paused.

"Do you want to go there?" I asked.

Jared hesitated.

"I don't know. I'm afraid. I don't want to leave my friends, but…"

"But?"

"But living in New York could be exciting."

I smiled at him.

"It's certainly that." I waited for him to say something else, but he didn't. "We don't have to decide right this second. Once the dust settles, we could go and spend the summer there, see how you feel."

Jared's eyes brightened, but again, he said nothing more.

"Can I go over to Max's now?" he asked eagerly, his enthusiasm having shifted to that subject.

"Sure," I replied.

I watched Jared get up and disappear upstairs. I reached for my phone and unlocked the screen. Scrolling through my messages, I found Max's name and tapped on it.

Hey Max, wanted to let you know that Jared is coming over

Awesome! Looking forward to it

I'll make sure the place is presentable

Haha, thanks

No problem

I pocketed my phone and returned to clearing up breakfast. As I moved about the kitchen, I heard a soft tap at the door. I walked through the house. Through the front door's window, I could see it was Julianne, my cousin. I opened the door to her.

"Hey there, Eddie," she greeted, and she immediately breezed into the house without waiting to be invited. "I thought I'd pop in and see if you needed anything."

She strode off through the house.

"Thanks, Julianne," I said.

"Mmm!" she cried. "What have you been cooking?" She chuckled and continued walking into the kitchen and glancing around, me following her. "Are you the chef around here?"

I laughed, shaking my head.

"Not quite," I said. "Just bacon and eggs for Jared and me."

"Let me know when I can come over to join you," she said.

I knew she was only joking, but I really didn't want her to!

"Anytime," I replied.

Julianne grinned.

"I'll hold you to that," she teased, settling into a chair at the kitchen table. "So, how are you holding up, Eddie?"

How many times had I been asked it in the last days? To be fair, though, Julianne's lightness brought a welcome respite.

"I'm doing alright," I replied, my tone attempting to convey some normalcy. "Been catching up with friends, you know."

Her eyebrows lifted in surprise.

"Friends? Who do you even know anymore?"

"Just Max."

A knowing smirk played at the corners of her lips.

"The original man mountain himself. Or should I say the original man tease?"

I raised an eyebrow.

"What do you mean?"

Julianne leaned in conspiratorially, her eyes bright with her innate mischief.

"Oh, you know how he is," she said. "Hot with the girls one minute but loves to leave them hanging the next."

I thought of the way he had revealed himself to me, his vulnerability, his desire for something deeper, more meaningful.

"I don't think he is like that."

But truly, how should I know? A wry chuckle escaped her lips as she told of a friend's failed attempt at romance with Max.

"He's got this whole ‘don't fall in love with me' routine down to a T," she said.

"‘Don't fall in love with me?'"

"Yeah, that's the rumor I heard, anyways, that when he is chasing you, he says, ‘Don't fall in love with me,' then after he's, you know, had you , he says it again, but now he means it a different way." She lifted her right hand and cocked her thumb as a direction to leave. "The old heave-ho. Emphasis on the ho."

She burst into laughter.

"Maybe those were the wrong girls for him," I said, trying not to sound like I cared either way.

"There are no wrong girls for Max, at least not until he's paid a visit to you know where."

She pointed at my crotch, but meaning women's crotches, of course. She shrieked again.

Just at that moment, Jared appeared.

"Hey, Julianne. What's all the laughter?"

Julianne greeted him with a friendly smile.

"Oh, hey, Jared," she said, her tone very light again. "Nothing, just me and Eddie kidding around."

Jared was carrying some Nikes in his hand.

"You are always crazy for your sneakers," Julianne said.

He grinned.

"Are you?" I asked.

He gave me a funny, ironic look.

"Can't you tell?"

In fact, he was dressed pretty cool. Julianne's curiosity got the better of her.

"Where are you off to, a concert?"

Jared's face lit up.

"I'm heading over to Eddie's friend Max's place to work on a motorbike."

Julianne's eyebrows shot up in surprise, and she looked around at me.

"Max's place, huh?"

Jared nodded enthusiastically.

"Yeah, it's gonna be awesome. Max knows a ton about bikes and cars."

"Well, be careful, okay? And don't ride no motorbikes at your age, you hear?"

Jared waved off her concern with a grin. "Don't worry, I'll be fine. See you later, Julianne!" he called over his shoulder as he headed back into the living room.

Julianne got to her feet, making it clear she was about to go.

"Kids," she muttered under her breath, shaking her head as she made her way out the door. "Who would have kids?" Then, near the front door, she turned around and giggled. "Oh, wait, you have one now!"

And then she went to leave, pushing the screen door, laughing to herself.