19. EDDIE

Chapter nineteen

EDDIE

M ax and I followed the water upriver for a bit. We quickly passed from the parched grasses and flat, hard soil down of the campsite and arrived at the fringe of the forest that swept across the mountain slopes up there.

The sun danced through the canopy of the trees that fringed over the route, dappling inside the forest floor with lines and diamonds of golden light. The branches were alive with the sounds of birds and insects, and a low breeze passed through the leaves.

The river flowed beside us. Along its banks, vibrant wildflowers swayed in that breeze, splashes of red, yellow, and white. Bees buzzed from blossom to blossom. The scent of damp earth and floral pollen filled my senses, along with the smell of the mountain-clean river.

The path clung to the edge of the river, which became narrower and rockier than down by the camp, barely ten minutes' walk away. The slimmer breadth of the river made the water run faster, more in a torrent, so that it felt less safe than down where we had camped.

As we walked, I couldn't help but feel a sense of peace. Occasionally, we spotted a flash of movement among the foliage, a glimpse of squirrels darting between trees. Now and then, overhead, birds of prey reeled gracefully on the air thermals, scanning the ground below. Were they checking us out as possible snacks?

As the river narrowed, the sound of water rushing grew louder, more urgent. I spotted a series of stepping stones, weathered smooth.

"Oh, do you remember?" I asked. "There is a big meadow over there." I started to laugh. "Do you remember you got some dope off Richie Gelberg, but we didn't know how to roll a spliff properly, so we never ended up smoking it." Then, another part of the memory returned. "You got so frustrated you threw it into the long grass, and then we tried to find it again and couldn't."

Max started laughing, too.

"Oh, man, I had totally forgotten. Throwing good dope away! We would've been able to work it out, surely."

I smiled.

"Just two dumb kids." Then I realized I was casually talking about drugs when they had been a problem in his life in the past. "Oh, man," I began, quite urgently. "I hope that's not the wrong thing to say."

He raised his hand as if to stop me right there.

"No, Eddie, not at all." He sighed easily and started smiling. "This is nice," he said.

"What?" I asked.

He pointed at his chest and then at mine, flicking his finger back and forth in a quick motion.

"To have this again. You don't get this connection and history so much in life."

I looked out over the river and the stones that formed the crossing. "Do you want to go over to the other side?" he asked.

Stepping stones always make me nervous. I hate anything that makes me feel like I could fall. As we reached the stones, I couldn't help but feel anxious.

Max, always more naturally confident than me, physically at least, stepped onto the first stone with ease, balancing as gracefully as a dancer. Sensing my hesitation, he turned back to me, his hand extended toward mine.

I looked into his eyes, seeing his silent encouragement, and reached out to grasp his hand tightly. His touch was firm, his skin warm, as his fingers closed around mine.

"Take it one step at a time," he said, and as I looked into his dark eyes, I felt like I could trust him.

The water was still not deep up there; it wasn't like either of us would be swept away, but even so, I didn't want to fall in. The stones were wet with the speed of the water. I could feel the soles of my shoes wanting to slip.

I took a deep breath and stepped down onto the first stone, feeling its smooth surface beneath my feet, as Max moved back to the next one along. The river rushed around them.

But as we made our way across, Max's presence beside me filled me with a sense of calm. With each step, I felt his hand holding mine, and I felt the weight and power of his body next to mine.

And then, with a final leap, we jumped in a quick two-step over the last couple of stones up onto the other side of the river. I laughed nervously, felt a bit silly. He held my hand just for a second, then let it go.

As we walked along the other side of the riverbank, the golden rays of the late-morning sun cast a warm glow on our skin. A path meandered up through the lush greenery on that side, with fewer trees and more open grassland.

Finally, we rounded a bend in the trail, and the meadow opened up before us, bathed in brilliant sunlight. The grassy expanse stretched out before us, a sea of emerald green patterned with clusters of delicate white and pink flowers scattered densely.

Max and I walked through the meadow, chatting about times we had been there before. The grass swayed softly around us. The sun made the air smell like its pollen.

We paused for a moment and turned around to take in the beauty surrounding us, the warm sunlight on us quite directly there.

Max then asked me, "Do you want to sit down for a while?"

"Sure," I said.

As we sat in the peaceful meadow, surrounded by the beauty of nature, Max and I found ourselves talking about Jared's mood.

"I can relate to what he's going through," Max said, his voice full of empathy. "I remember feeling so alone, like nobody understood me. I see how much I would have appreciated having someone like you in my life back then. Someone who understood, who cared."

"I was in your life back then," I said. "I did care."

"I know," he replied, more urgently than I had intended. "I mean, an adult like you. Someone who was really prepared to look after me… for good. To create a sense of stability."

"I never saw myself as the fatherhood type," I said. "I have never dated much, so I didn't have girlfriends much, and so never had those conversations, you know, ‘We're thirty now, are we gonna have a baby?' And now, suddenly, I have a kid." I laughed. "A fifteen-year-old kid."

Max turned to me, his gaze softening as he reached to rub my shoulder reassuringly. The weight of his touch sent a shiver down my spine. It surprised me.

"You never wanted kids, though?"

I shook my head.

"No, not especially. You?"

His hand fell from my body.

"I guess I could have, yeah. I mean, I'm like you. I never met the right person."

"You got married."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, man, that would have been a bad idea."

"You're still young. You could meet someone and have a child, raise a child," I said.

I pointed at me.

"So could you."

I laughed.

"Sure, me and my fifteen-year-old. They'll be lining up."

The two of us lay there in that meadow, the sunlight falling on our bodies, I felt the most enormous sense of contentment. I lay completely backward, prone, staring up into the sky.

It was so blue and so bright you could hardly keep your eyes open. Blinking, I was aware of him lying next to me, but on his side, with his head propped up on his hand, his arm bent at the elbow.

When my eyes could no longer stand the sunlight, I turned my head to one side and looked at him. The distortion of the brightness rendered him a shadow for a moment, and then his shape clarified, and I could see him clearly.

His body lay with such masculine, muscular grace, twisting at his narrow hips, one leg flat on the earth, one slid upward into a triangular arch. I had not noticed he had slipped off his shoes. His toes wriggled in his white socks as he watched me.

My eyes were finally clear enough to look straight into his, dark and deep. We held each other's gaze for a moment.

It was then that I knew it: I was still in love with him. Maybe I had always been in love with him, or rather, he had existed as a shadow in my mind all these years, and now that we were back together, it all came tumbling out of me.

I had run away, not just from my home city but from him. I had also run away from a teenage life in which I could never admit my love for my best friend. And yet, in going to New York, in search of freedom from both of these things, I had instead found a kind of stasis in which my life existed without love or connection.

It was the most shattering realization: I had freed myself from him and kept myself bound to him, too.

And I would have loved to be able to say that this was a wonderful feeling, a moment of clarity, but it was not. I sat up. He was alerted to my change of mood and sat up, too.

"Ed, what is it?"

"Nothing," I muttered.

But I knew what "it" was. Fate had brought me back here, and after years of not seeing him, I had realized that the fact I had drifted through my twenties without committing either to a relationship – with a man or a woman – or even to just experimenting sexually.

I was stuck in some ancient love and some old shame, right back to that moment in the bedroom. That day, all those years before, he had caught me. I was somehow trapped in that moment, and my life had been on hold ever since.

I felt awful, foolish, realizing all this, up here on this stupid camping trip with the object of my teenage desires, playing out the same foolish games that had so impacted my life.

"We should go back," I said, getting back to my feet.

"Jared is okay," he replied. I could not even look at him.

So I repeated myself: "We should go back."

He got to his feet too, his big hands wiping the grass from his backside.

"Turn around," he said.

I looked up at him now.

"What?"

He was grinning so beautifully.

"Turn around."

He didn't wait for me to do so but slipped his arm around my shoulder and pulled me toward his body, so close I could feel its heat.

"What are you doing?" I gasped.

Quickly, he brushed his hands, large and hard, down my back and briefly over the top of my buttocks. I felt my heart in my mouth. Then, he stepped away from me and laughed.

"You had grass all over you."

"Oh," I said. I paused. "Shall we go, then?"

He nodded.

"Cool."

***

The intensity of the sun grew stronger; I could feel it on my pale skin, unused to the strength of its rays here. I felt the top ridge of my forehead tingling as if it wanted to burn and go pink.

As we neared the familiar sight of the stepping stones, I found myself grappling with my sudden realization of my situation. Was it possible to ever lose the innocence and intensity of your first love?

Or, more importantly, was it possible to become lost in it so that when it met you again, face-to-face, years later, it was like nothing had changed?

At the riverbank, he offered his hand to mine again, standing on the stones, for all the world looking like some damned Hollywood romantic hero. Is there anything worse than that, the perfection of the man you can't have?

"I'm alright," I said. His brow twitched. "I can do it."

But as I stepped down onto the wet, smooth stones, a terror gripped me that I was going to slip and fall in.

I felt my knees buckle and my heart rate quicken. He had remained only a stone ahead of me and reached out his hand to mine.

"Come on," he said. "Don't try to be brave."

I looked at up him. He was neither smiling nor frowning, only gazing at me, smiling. I put my hand in his and let him close his fingers around it, warm and safe and strong.

In a few quick steps, we made it over the water and onto the bank on the other side. He pulled me up onto the path back to the campsite before letting go of my hand. But I could feel his skin against my skin for several minutes after, the warmth, the weight, the impression of him on me.

As we made our way back along the forest trail, the question lingered in my head: could Max possibly reciprocate my feelings? But I became mad at myself for even thinking it. Of course not: he was famously – almost infamously – straight.

With each step, I found myself grappling with the inevitability of such unrequited affection, of what it would be like to know that the person you had loved would never love you.

Yet of course, as the sunlight filtered through the canopy of the trees, Max's laughter, his charm and easy camaraderie, didn't abate. He made jokes, pointed out funny sights. I responded as best I could, although my head was this torrent of thoughts and worries.

As we neared the campsite, Jared was sitting outside the tent. His nose was buried deep in a book.

Getting closer to him, I called out, "I didn't know boys your age read books." I hoped he might have changed his mood a little.

Jared looked up from his book, and then he flashed the cover at me.

" Catcher in the Rye ," he murmured.

I sensed that the mood may not have changed, so I feigned mock horror.

" God, are you gonna go crazy and shoot us all?"

Jared seemed unfazed by my jest.

"Do you even know the book?" he asked coolly.

"Yeah, I am pretty good with books," I replied, playing with him a bit.

He snorted.

"Who are your favorite authors? Like J.K. Rowling or someone like that ?"

I paused for a moment, considering his question, before listing off a few names: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Virginia Woolf, Jane Austen, James Baldwin.

Jared's eyes widened in surprise.

"Wow, you have good taste," he exclaimed.

***

The next couple of hours passed quietly, the three of us absorbed in our own private tasks: Jared kept reading, then went off and seemed to be searching for stones among the long grass, Max said he would take a nap in the tent, and I decided to wash out some things at the river and collect up some kindling for the fire and light it so we could eat something.

The sun began its slow descent beyond the horizon, casting a warm golden glow across the campsite. Eventually, Jared, Max, and I reunited around the just-crackling fire.

Jared remained in a quiet mood, and I was aware of how little I really knew him. But he joined in a little.

"What's on the menu tonight?" he asked.

I opened the cooler box and found the catch from earlier in the day.

"Looks like fish tonight, guys," I joked.

I pulled the fish out, wrapped them in aluminum foil and laid them on the fire. As the aroma of crisping skin filled the air, we moved into lighthearted banter. Max was explaining about the stepping stones and the meadow.

"I had forgotten all about it right until we got here, but me and your uncle used to go up there a lot."

The last rays of sunlight faded as we ate the fish. Stars began to emerge one by one, like little lamps being switched on, one after another after another. As we sat there, basking in the warmth of the fire, the realization slowly dawned on us that our time in the wilderness was drawing to a close. It was Jared who mentioned it first.

"Aw, we have to leave soon," he lamented, a hangdog expression on his features.

Max nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, it's a shame. I've had such a great time out here. Next time, we should stay longer."

I looked at him. I didn't know there would be a next time. I wanted so much then to go back to New York, not feel all these things, and just be back in my old life. I wanted Jared with me, too, but I wanted to go back to before I had realized how much, how long, I had been harboring these feelings for Max.

Jared let out a wistful sigh.

"Well, I guess all good things must come to an end," he said with all the wisdom of a great philosopher. I almost had to smile.

Max clapped him on the shoulder.

"Don't worry, Jared. We'll have plenty more adventures together," he reassured him. Then, he got to his feet. "Hey, how about a swim in the river before we go?"

Jared groaned. He was not happy.

"I don't like the sound of that," he said. "The fish are at the surface now. They might bite us!"

Max laughed.

"They won't. Come on, let's get changed."

He marched toward the tent line from which his swimming shorts hung, stiffly dry now.

"No, thanks," Jared ruled.

Max turned to me, a glimmer of excitement dancing in his eyes, caught by the firelight.

"What about you?" he asked me. "One last swim before we go home?"

There was such hope in him then that I didn't like to say no.

"Are you gonna be okay here?" I asked Jared, who looked at me appalled.

"I'm not a kid!"

I smiled.

"I know…" I said to placate him. "We'll only be ten minutes."

He shrugged and got out his phone.

"I'll just play some games," he said, settling into the screen's glow.

Max and I changed into our swimming costumes, him inside the tent, me behind it, and then we hopped barefoot across the campsite. It seemed so much perilous at night.

As we waded into the water, the sensation of the cold water enveloping us was both exhilarating and unnerving. The last hues of orange and pink were reflected in the rippling current, its trickling accompanied by the melodic chirping of cicadas and the spare songs of a few nocturnal birds. Otherwise, the world was silent, apart from us, when we spoke or splashed.

The water felt good against my skin, though, and the night air was still sultry enough for it to offer some relief. Max splashed around and ducked his head under the surface, in what seemed like sheer joy at being alive in that moment.

His enthusiasm was contagious, his laughter echoing off the still-dark surface of the river, and eventually, I began to swim around with him. I let my earlier anxiousness go. I wanted to enjoy the rest of our short trip.

We started to swim downriver a little, further from the camp, from Jared. "Hey, Eddie," he said, "right here was where we used to go skinny-dipping, remember?"

"Yeah," I replied.

Max shot me a mischievous grin. I could see it in the evening half-light.

"Want to do it again?" he asked.

I felt a twitch right down the center of my forehead, and I gulped.

"What?"

He swam right up to me, and then I felt the most extraordinary thing: his fingertip inside the elastic waist of my swim trunks against my skin.

"Come on!" he cried. "Don't be a prude!"

We stopped swimming, and I stood up in the river, my feet on the bottom.

"What about Jared?"

Max nodded his head toward the bank.

"He's over there. We aren't streaking in front of him."

I hesitated for a moment. I didn't know what to do. But my initial panic began to turn toward excitement.

"Jared?" I called from the water. No answer. "Jared?" He was too far away to hear. I looked into Max's eyes. His finger reached for my shorts again, entering the elastic's lip.

"Take them off like the last time we were up here," he said, and there was something so hungry in how he said it.

He pulled his hand from me, and then in one swift motion, he stepped out of his trunks, then shot his arm into the air, with them hanging from his hand, pouring water.

The fact that he was naked now seemed to change everything. I could feel my penis getting hard.

"Come on!" he cried. "Your turn!"

I was looking at him standing in the water, the surface of which was above his crotch so that I could just about see his pubic hair, which ran in a line to his navel.

I blinked slowly, and then I took my shorts off, too. I was shorter than him, so he could not see beneath the surface of the water that my penis was fully erect.

"Come on," he whispered. "Let's swim."