Chapter 19

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.

He’d always been with girls; he’d always fucked girls, and so had Eddie. Eddie was his best friend and then some, and maybe they’d been closer than the norm, but no one else could have understood what it meant to live with the ghosts and the haunt-dreams, the danger that lurked in cellars and attics of friends’ homes, the endless throat-closing, loitering horrors that held off sleep for whole weeks during the most uncontrolled period of it. No one else had been there with him in the cavern for hours spread across days, freezing, terrified of encroaching death. No one else was Eddie, and no one else held him the same as Eddie had.

He gnawed on the sore patch of skin over his wrist bone and tried to pack it all into the box where he kept the things they didn’t talk about, didn’t even fucking think about, but it wouldn’t go back neat.

He swiped the text alerts waiting for him away without looking and messaged Del, I didn’t mean to.

She didn’t respond. He didn’t expect her to.

---

hey dude can I come home yet

she’s gone

cool thanks

you okay?

Andrew rolled off of the couch. The two texts he’d received while Del was in the house weren’t from Sam, who hadn’t responded at all, but from West attempting to follow up on the meeting with Troth. He ignored them and texted Sam one more time, I have a list to run down. He wasn’t going to ask for help more directly than that. After a moment’s hesitation he picked the phone up one more time for another message: going out tonight?

The front door opened. He arranged his expression into the closest approximation of blandness he was able to manage. Riley still winced, a performative grimace. “That bad, huh?”

“Troth didn’t have the field journal either,” he said.

“Nah, I meant—” Riley started. Andrew glowered, a bitter flashback to his first nights in the house, and Riley smoothly shifted course. “Moving right along, then. What did Troth have on hand?”

“Her own mentor notes and some basic shit he had written about his family history. She said he’d gotten on that track, which makes sense, since he was really looking for…”

“Stuff about himself,” Riley finished helpfully.

“I told her the interviews were missing and she implied the carrels weren’t exactly secure. She was irritated, I figure from losing access herself,” he said.

Riley considered that, then echoed his sentiment: “Doesn’t seem coincidental, his phone and his interview notes both going missing.”

“Looks like someone’s hiding something, doesn’t it?” Andrew tossed him the Challenger’s key fob. Riley smacked it out of the air in his attempted catch, launching it clattering into the foyer. “A while ago, like when we first met, she gave me a bunch of books she’d gotten for Eddie. She’s been waiting for me to come to her, I guess. I told her I’d re-create the shit we were missing, and she said she’d help.”

“Why’s she been after you so much?” Riley asked as he chased down the lost fob.

“Wants her name on a published version of Eddie’s work, sounds like,” Andrew said.

Riley snorted. “Fuckin’ faculty. You’d think she’d have her hands full with West right now, and it’s not like she’s hurting for acclaim. She’s got tenure already.”

“What do you mean about West?” Andrew asked, perking up.

“You hadn’t heard?” Riley asked. He spun the fob around his index finger. “His revised draft got rejected, for the fourth time. He can’t get his dissertation off the ground, and he’s running out of time before the seven-year cap.”

“He hadn’t said—” Andrew’s phone buzzed, one-two-three, Halse’s number on the screen. Andrew answered. “Hey.”

“I was at work, calm your thirst.” Andrew removed his phone from his ear and stared at it. Sam’s voice kept going, words indistinguishable but tone jocular. Riley raised his eyebrows. Andrew put the receiver to his ear again in time to hear, “I’ll be there in fifteen.”

“The fuck?” he asked.

“Get that list ready,” he said and hung up.

Riley said, “So I guess Sam’s lending a hand.”

Andrew passed his phone from hand to hand, swallowed his pride, and said, “Guess so. Are you interested in putting some work in, too? Split things up, or something.”

“Duh,” Riley said with a feigned nonchalance.

“Found some names in Troth’s file, going to compare them to Sam’s business. In the meantime, I dunno, would you—read through his fucking notes, check out those books she foisted on me?”

His roommate glanced at the keys in his hand, visibly put the pieces together, confirmed that Andrew was genuinely offering him an in to help, and nodded his assent. Andrew would rather be struck dead than read those journals again, even if it meant exposing stories about himself to Riley. Raw vulnerability stung at his nerves, but he had to delegate.

“The books are in the car, stuck them in the back seat,” he clarified.

Riley gently joked, “Put the nerd on the boring part of the case, I see how it is.”

Anticipatory silence curtained the room. Andrew’s head felt full of fiberglass, biting and insulating at once. The two unanswered texts from West waited in his messages folder, one reading How was your meeting with Troth? and the other Would you like to unpack it with me later. He opened the thread and wrote having trouble with your research? then deleted it, what was your dissertation on again and deleted that as well. He settled on get coffee withme and we’ll talk about the meeting. Riley returned with the book-stuffed tote before he got a response. He dropped it next to the end table and picked up Troth’s folder.

Andrew said, almost to himself, “There’s got to be something to find if we look hard enough.”

Riley crossed his arms over his stomach and shook his head. “None of this makes sense, man. Feels like it can’t be real.”

“What do you mean?”

Riley ran a hand through his dye-crisped hair. It stuck straight up and he smoothed it flat habitually a second later. He shoved the tote with his sneaker-tip. “What the fuck in any of this could possibly have been worth killing him for?”

The door slamming open a fraction of an inch from Riley’s elbow startled them both. Sam paused on the threshold, looking them over. His buzz cut was growing in. Riley handed Andrew the Post-It note list, scooped up the research, and headed for the stairs without a word to either of them, but it felt natural; a granted pardon, rather than a dismissal.

Sam said, “Gimme that list. We’re going driving.”

Andrew handed it over. Sam scanned the Post-It while Andrew checked his phone; West had responded, Tonight? He typed a quick maybe tomorrow. Andrew followed Sam out of the house. Sam glanced back once, grinned to see him there, and started to whistle as he crossed the street to his car. The sound was tuneless, flat, carrying an aggressively jaunty rhythm. In sync, doors shut on either side, sealing them in the already-hot interior of the WRX.

“Half of those are people I’ve got on string, but the other half I don’t recognize, so those are on you to figure out,” Sam said. The engine turned over with a comforting growl. “You eaten today?”

“No,” Andrew said.

He’d had a bagel from the campus coffee shop the previous afternoon, and before that a carton of fried rice he ate standing outside a restaurant. Food hadn’t been much of a consideration since Columbus. His jawline was sharp enough to cut glass. The first thing Sam did was pull up to a Panera and say, “Stay put.”

“Nothing sweet,” he requested and Sam flapped an acknowledging hand behind him as he got out of the car.

He left it running for Andrew, air-conditioning valiantly fighting the heat, and returned a few minutes later with two sandwiches and two iced Americanos. Andrew unwrapped his sandwich. By the time Andrew took his second bite, Sam had crammed his down in six disturbingly fast bites, effortless and neat, then sucked down a third of his coffee in two long pulls. The sandwich, as with most things Andrew had tried to eat since the funeral, tasted like air and dust. But it was food.

“So, Riley texted me in a fucking panic when he couldn’t get in touch with you,” Sam said. “Something about your girlfriend or ex-girlfriend or whatever showing up at the house?”

“Yeah, that did happen.” Andrew popped his knuckles against the door panel in an irritated snap. Of course he’d told Sam about it. Andrew wasn’t sure why he hadn’t expected to be confronted with the situation immediately.

“Okay, so it didn’t go well,” Sam prompted.

“Ex-girlfriend, and no, it did not.”

The interstate opened up around them as he continued eating the sandwich Sam had gotten for him. It was easier to swallow when someone else provided for him.

“It’s sorted out now?” Sam asked.

“Sorted,” he confirmed. “It was old business about us and Eddie, and it’s done for good, now.”

Sam gave a quiet, satisfied hum of understanding. Andrew wondered if West had texted him again already, mind bouncing from one uncomfortable topic to the next. The ring of ink on his wrist kept catching his eye almost as if it were fresh, a scribbled signature that crossed time and space to remind him of his place, one half of a whole. He saw it how Del saw it, for a moment: a claim, not a bond. While Andrew sat deep in thought, Sam braced the wheel with his knee and snagged his snapback from behind the seats. He pulled it on and thumbed the brim up to the perfect spot, framing his face with afternoon-sun shadow.

“We’re going to go out to the Masterson place,” Sam said over the crumpling of Andrew’s empty sandwich wrapper. “Beck is a decent dude, I’m sure he’s got nothing to do with whatever happened, but he said he’d chat.”

Andrew had six names, and Beck Masterson was one of them. Sam wasn’t going to make him beg for help. Andrew threw the wrapper out the window and drank the first bracing, bitter mouthful of coffee while they drove in silence.

---

Beck Masterson was a nice enough man a bare few years older than Eddie himself, willing to express his condolences and share a bowl from the weed he bought off of Sam. He had precisely one spooky story to tell while reminiscing about the questions “Sam’s friend” had asked, but the story he shared was run-of-the-mill, a great-grandfather’s ghost out back making moonshine from beyond the grave. He even said it like that, from beyond the grave. Andrew hadn’t sensed more death from the property than usual, though—no great-grandpa lurking as far as he could tell.

Sam dropped him off at the house no more informed than he’d been when they started, but far more exhausted. He’d learned nothing useful about Eddie, though he supposed expecting answers on the first attempt was a reach. Sam left him with a promise to call the other two names he knew to set up meetings; in the meantime, he needed to tackle his own share. Without Eddie’s phone or his records, though, that was a challenge in and of itself.

On the back porch steps, the plastic bag with his ruined jeans sat sweltering and stinking. He held his breath long enough to gingerly remove the paper packet from the pocket, then kicked the bag into the corner to throw in the garbage later. He collapsed into the desk chair with an overstimulated groan and dumped the ring out of the packet.

Platinum refracted moonlight as it rolled across the desktop. Andrew caught the cold metal under his thumb, sitting sprawled and barefoot. For a moment, he rolled it to and fro, considering: one more piece of Eddie returned to him, to try to fit into his life. Nowhere near sufficient. He let the ring clink onto its side and unbuckled his belt, thumbed open the button and zipper of his jeans. He hesitated with a hand splayed over his hip bone, fingertips dipping under the waistband of his briefs. The heel of his hand pressed a bruise over his stomach, speckled in the shape of Sam’s knuckles.

With a groan, he stripped to his underwear and sprawled on the bed. The stale mess of sheets stuck grimy to his summer-salted skin. He kicked them to the end of the mattress, flopped onto his front. The air conditioner hummed. Eddie’s clock read 1:19 A.M. Exhaustion fogged his head, but the constant conflict of the past week left him wired: the vision at the tree, and connecting with Troth, and Del’s axis-wrecking goodbye speech all together, stacked against a whole afternoon spent with Sam—Sam feeding him, and refusing to let him fade out of conversations, and constantly touching him. Light from his phone caught his eye, a soundless notification. He snagged it from the bedside table and held it at an angle above his head at the strained end of the charging cable. Sam had texted him:

Sorry that was a bust

What’s your theory

The reason someone would commit murder over any of this

He responded that’s what I’m trying to figure out and turned the phone off. After another defeated, miserable span of minutes, he lifted his ass enough to fit his hand down his briefs, pinned between his weight and the mattress. The tacky heat of his soft dick filled his palm, skin silky and loose, faintly damp from a long day’s confinement. He pressed his thumb at the base and kneaded his fingers against his balls, holding the whole package more for comfort than pleasure. No response from his traitorous, anxious body; he stayed limp. The pillow smelled as much like old spit as Eddie’s lingering hair product. He let go of himself and rolled onto his side, facing the far wall.

At 3:05 A.M. he threw the pillow on the floor and padded in his underwear to the kitchen table with notebook in hand. The air-conditioning prickled goose bumps over his thighs. Beer at his elbow, he wrote:

The car was with him so someone drove it there. Notes are missing—so’s his phone. Bet someone’s name is in both. How’d he find

He stopped. His notes were sparse and his text blocky, uneven, ugly compared to Eddie’s wild meandering journals with their colorful ink, doodles, erratic trains of thought. Utilitarian at best. He closed the notebook with the pen still uncapped inside and took his beer outside to sit in the pitch-dark lee side of the porch. He wasn’t cut out for the life he’d inherited. It should’ve been him, not Eddie, in the ground.