Chapter 26

26

Andrew sat on the end of Eddie’s bed, working his fingers against one another, thumbs digging into the meat of his palms. His phone stuck out from the folds of the comforter. Curtains billowed in the breeze from the open window. The faint crispness of oncoming fall lingered in the gust of cool air. Summer’s end. Nights that felt open with possibility, weather for a hoodie with the sleeves rolled up, cigarettes and bourbon to fight off the hint of winter rolling in from the north. It came earlier in Columbus. For his twenty-second birthday he and Eddie had gotten kicked out of four bars in succession and ended up unconscious in a stranger’s yard, three-quarters of the way home. Freezing dew and predawn light had woken him, dappling his eyelashes. He found his phone, wallet, and keys in his snapback turned upside down like a bowl at his elbow. Eddie’s leg, thrown over his shins, had cut off the circulation to his tingling feet. One of Eddie’s hands had rested on top of his head, gripping his hair loosely; surrounded from all angles. He’d lain there, listening to Eddie breathe in his ear wheezy and slow, for an extra thirty minutes. He’d only woken Eddie when he started to shiver in his jacket.

A text alert lit up his phone.

Sup?

home

Good, stay there

Andrew stopped in the bathroom to piss without closing the door—Riley wasn’t home. He brushed his teeth without inspecting himself in the mirror. Worming, suggestive tension knotted his muscles. Was Sam going to take him out, like Eddie had? He hadn’t gone to a bar in Nashville since he’d moved. He spat in the sink and grimaced at the streaks of pink from his gums. He needed less coffee, more food, less liquor. The house murmured creakily as he descended the stairs.

“Don’t, thanks,” he said out loud. The sounds settled.

He wasn’t sure if he’d rather that be a product of his imagination or not.

Scrolling on his phone passed the time as he fought to tamp down the swelling tide of memories and miseries. The kitchen door opened and shut. More than one set of footsteps came in.

“Happy birthday,” Sam yelled.

The fridge opened. Glass clinked on glass. Sam rounded the corner with the tall woman from his party at his elbow. She grinned and waved before flopping next to him on the couch. Andrew glanced from her face to Sam’s as he sat on her opposite side and passed them each a beer.

“Hi there, name’s Irene.” She took his hand in an awkward shake. Her skinny jeans hugged her thighs and a side-slashed cutoff revealed a neon green sports bra. “Nice work at Halse’s little get-together, by the way, we all appreciated the show.”

“Sure,” he said, confused.

Sam tipped his beer in salute. “Irene and I were chatting about it being your birthday.”

Her arm looped around Andrew’s shoulder with a casual masculine grace, sneaker nudging against his. Sam wormed his arm between her back and the couch to rest his fingertips on the patch of bare skin between Andrew’s belt and shirt. The small proprietary touch connected the three of them on one plane of contact.

Irene swigged from her beer and said, “Don’t get the wrong idea, I’m very much not Sam’s birthday present to his buddy.”

“Then what’s going on?” Andrew asked while Sam’s questing fingertips wedged into the gap at the waistband of his jeans.

Irene laughed a husky laugh as she placed her bottle on the coffee table, then angled herself to press one cute, firm tit to his arm and her mouth to his ear. “Sam kept mentioning his hot new bestie to me, and maybe he also mentioned how bad you needed some attention. I’m a fan of threeways, plus it just so happens to be your birthday. We’re all consenting adults.”

Andrew dropped his arm out of the way as Irene swung a knee over his lap to fit her narrow, muscular frame neatly on top of him. No longer trapped behind her, Sam’s hand ventured beneath Andrew’s shirt, sliding over his rib cage until his middle finger brushed the edge of an areola. Andrew’s lungs seized in his chest, forcing out a breathless grunt; Sam dug that fingernail into his nipple while Irene caught his chin in hand to kiss him. Weight pinned his thighs and steady hands forced his shoulders into the couch, her tongue in his mouth searing hot. His eyes shut without his permission.

The sofa springs creaked under the first testing grind of her hips, pressure sliding over the bulge of his trapped dick. Sam cupped the base of his skull and crossed one foot over his to pull his legs open with one hard jerk, startling a moan out of him into Irene’s mouth.

“Oh, he likes that,” Irene growled.

His hands floundered for a place to rest. The cushion skidded with a leather squeak under his palm; the other hand twisted in the hem of Sam’s shirt for a lifeline. He’d held on like this before, but he’d never been so aware of the reason. Now he was starting to understand where the instinct to grab for Sam came from, and the resulting vertiginous swoop in his belly. Del’s calm accusation played through the base of his skull, I’m a person, Andrew, not a stand in for something else—and then Sam tugged on his hair.

“I heard this was maybe your thing,” Sam murmured against the side of his neck, closely eager. The thumb he dug into Andrew’s pulse point said control. “I owe Riley a beer for guessing you right.”

“Me too,” Irene laughed breathily.

“Wait,” Andrew grunted. She paused when he pushed at her legs.

“You okay?” she asked as she lifted her body off of him—furrowed brow, kiss-wet mouth glistening.

“No, let me up,” he managed, pitch cracking with panic.

“Hey,” Sam said. Irene scooted onto the couch arm. Andrew stumbled to his feet, banging his shin on the coffee table and tripping over Sam’s legs. The memory of Sam’s grip tingled across his scalp as he grabbed the banister and mounted the stairs in a frantic bid to get away.

From the living room, Sam said, “I gotta handle this—sorry, dude.”

With no small measure of irritation, Irene replied, “No worries, but maybe ask him beforehand next time. Call me, or whatever.”

Two bounding footsteps thumped the hardwood behind him and a hand caught his wrist, lurching them to a stop in the stairwell. Andrew snapped his arm to the side to yank loose from the grip. Momentum and desperation collided, along with their knees. Sam crowded him into the corner of the landing, his concerned, breathless expression half in shadow, lit by the small window onto the side alley. The kitchen door slammed. Cinders of need burned savage at the base of Andrew’s throat, where Sam had spoken to his skin, glanced against him with his lips. The hand on his wrist slid up his forearm, past the tattoo, to settle around his bicep.

“What’s wrong,” Sam demanded, hoarse. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

Andrew lay his forehead on Sam’s collarbone. Sam went still, his breath stirring the hair over Andrew’s ear. The solid, undeniable strength caging Andrew against the wall provoked a stunning hunger, and his shirt smelled good, smelled right. Andrew arced against the wall to shove his whole body onto Sam’s, sinking his teeth with moderate force and immense desire into the join of his neck and shoulder. The reaction was instant: a thigh forced between his legs, Sam’s startled grunt in his ear. Firm muscle filled his mouth as he clamped his jaw and moaned at the taste, salt and skin. Sam grabbed the longer hair at the crown of his head and pulled; the burn raced across his scalp. Andrew ran his tongue-tip over the divots his teeth had left, the other man shifting restlessly against him from head to toe. Nothing from the past, here, no steps to retread—the fresh lightness of that almost made him laugh, but instead he gripped Sam’s outside leg and slotted their bodies together. The unmistakable swell of dick pressed at the vulnerable notch of his hip and, before he had the chance to second-guess the fire burning at the pit of his spine, he reached between them to grab hold through rough denim. One careful stroking squeeze mapped the width at the base, partway to hard, filling his palm full.

Andrew smothered a reflexive groan in Sam’s T-shirt. That, too, felt good.

“Holy shit,” Sam whispered against the side of his head. His sneakers chirped on the wood as he moved into a better angle. “Fuck, Andrew.”

Sam bent his knees and hitched Andrew’s leg to the side to grind against him. The maneuver compressed Andrew’s hand, wrist bent at an angle and knuckles bruising his own hip bone. Sam’s shoulder clipped his chin. He tasted blood from his own pinched tongue. They struggled together, rough-edged, with the explosive purpose of a race or a fistfight. Sam worked his hand past Andrew’s belt and underwear. His calloused palm and sticky, dry grip were more than enough after so long untouched, and for the first time, like this. Andrew lost himself, frantic gasping in the stairwell, fucking without finesse into the tight hole Sam made with his fingers. As he came he caught Sam’s bottom lip between his teeth, moaning. The small cruelty melded into a sloppy kiss. Stubble scraped his philtrum. Sam made a voluptuous, aching sound into his mouth. The inside of his head rang clean and clear with shocked delight. Sam dragged his hand out of Andrew’s jeans, smeared with his come, and the sight of that glistening mess made his dick twitch again in his tacky briefs.

“More, get to the bed,” Andrew demanded, high on the rush.

Sam steered them to Riley’s door with a ghost of a laugh. A cramp of guilt twisted inside Andrew then disappeared quick as it came. He wasn’t going to do this in Eddie’s bed, and even his own bedroom was a gift from Eddie. The release that cracked his sternum was a consummation of a long-held urge, but not a replacement for anything. He hadn’t known how bad he’d wanted this, before, but—he guessed he had. Sam was alight with matched, devastating need under the moonlight streaming through the windows. He stripped the comforter from the bed and pulled his shirt off behind his head, one-handed. The developed muscles of his chest and stomach, cushioned by a layer of inviting softness, drew Andrew closer, desperate to touch without restraint. He planted a damp palm over the dusting of hair on Sam’s belly, breath shallow.

“Made you come in your pants like a teenager,” Sam said.

Andrew grabbed his ass, digging his thumbs into the swell of muscle at the top of Sam’s glutes, then said, “Shut up, Halse.”

The second time he kissed a man, he meant to do it, reeling Sam in with the grip on his ass and catching his thin lips. The arm that went around his waist forced him onto his toes, a bear hug that made him feel scared and turned the fuck on—something about the rarity of being smaller, though not by much. The pair toppled onto the bed, Sam rolling him onto the bottom of their clinch like he had in the woods and manhandling him out of his shirt, undoing his belt.

Sam knelt above him, looming. No mistaking how hard he was at this angle, the fat swell of his cock bulging at the thigh-seam of his jeans. Andrew palmed the length, groped at the heat of his balls through the denim.

“You’re fucking thirsty for it, huh,” Sam said with a laugh and grabbed his hand, holding it in place to grind into the grip suggestively. “Done any of this before, Andrew?”

“No,” he said, shifting to skim his own pants off while Sam did the same, racing against his clamoring fear of the immensity of the moment. His briefs were soaked and slimy; he tossed them off the bed and adjusted his cock, stuck at the uncomfortable period between soft and hard. “Have you?”

“A few times,” Sam said with a wicked smile, batting his hand free and closing a big, hot fist around Andrew’s package.

He flexed his fingers in a rippling squeeze. Andrew yelped, hips jumping with streaks of painful pleasure, overstimulated. Sam had his underwear on, and Andrew fumbled for it, tugging the band down without finesse. His dick bounced free. He hesitated, ankle knocking against Sam’s shin, unsure of where to move.

“How do you want it, then?” Sam asked.

“Fuck, I don’t know,” he said, staring. He swallowed, hyperaware of his tongue, his spit, all the porn he’d ever watched in his life. “Put it in my mouth?”

Sam lay on his back and pulled him, gripping hair and shoulder, down between his legs. “Do what comes natural, then, princess. Unless you want me to fuck your pretty face?”

“Jesus, god,” Andrew muttered, shaking, so hot it hurt to breathe.

His hands mapped out the velvety-slick length, base to tip and carefully down again, tracing a path for his mouth to follow. Sam was uncut, extra skin he didn’t entirely understand how to maneuver. The hand around the side of his jaw offered a helpful guide, and he went down, thinking for the briefest, sharpest moment about first times and lost chances.

---

Birdsong and skewed covers greeted him in the morning, like a movie scene, alone in his roommate’s bed. The fitted sheet was strangling him. He sat up and considered the mess of his scattered clothes, the washcloth dried out on the hardwood floor, his nakedness. He snorted a slightly hysterical laugh and rose from the bed. His calves cramped at the press of his feet on the floor; he stretched through the pain. Noise from the kitchen filtered through the vents, a running sink and music. In the shower he catalogued the bruises that bloomed across his ribs, the odd passion of a bite mark imprinted over his knee, the raw soreness on the inside of his lips. His cock, chafed tender. He expected to feel ashamed, or frightened, or like he didn’t know himself. Instead he floundered in a curious free-falling simplicity, almost pleasant.

The fact that his clothes mostly lived in trash bags in the foyer remained an issue. He came downstairs with a towel wrapped around his waist. At the base of the steps he stopped. Sam stood shirtless in last night’s boxer briefs, washing dishes, suds to the middle of his forearms. His tan highlighted the massive, tooth-bruised hickey on his neck. Though he glanced over, he let Andrew take a quiet minute to catalogue him without interruption, from shorn buzz cut to the dense swell of his biceps to the faint roll of flesh at the band of his underwear. He had unexpectedly bony, large feet.

“You good?” Sam asked.

“I think I am, yeah,” Andrew said.

He knotted the towel secure. Sam’s posture held an uncertain wariness, which he supposed was natural, given the circumstances. Andrew fortified himself with a held breath and cupped his hand around the other man’s waist, nakedly intimate. He closed the remaining distance to lean deliberately against Sam’s broad, inked back. The catch of his left nipple against skin hurt, but a sweet sort of hurt, sore from thorough abuse.

Sam said, “I’m waiting for you to flip out, but I’d rather you didn’t.”

“Haven’t yet, think we’re in the clear,” Andrew mumbled, partially joking.

“Good,” he said, packing the word with expectation and vulnerability, far from on-brand for his provocative kingship.

Andrew inhaled again. He was twenty-three, Eddie was dead but lingering, and he’d fucked his friend Sam. What next, he thought once more.

The door croaked open; a comedic stillness swept through the room. Sam dropped the glass he was washing into the water with a plop.

“Oh Jesus, Mary, and goddamn Joseph,” Riley said.

“You’re not even Catholic,” Sam replied.

Riley passed them with his hands over his face and stumbled up the steps.

The quiver in Sam’s shoulders evolved into sniggering laughter. He leaned into Andrew and whispered, “Five seconds til—”

“Get the fuck out of my house, Sam!” Riley shrieked from his room.

Sam cackled with childish glee. Andrew ignored the reflexive burn of dampness that sprang to his eyes at the domesticity of the morning in favor of the fresh wonder of smooth skin under his cheek, magnetic and allowed. Life coursed through him with each thud of his pulse. He had no idea what he was doing, except that it fit. Sam pulled him apart one notch at a time to release the horror he held under his skin.

“What’s your next move?” Sam asked.

Ghosts lingered in the gaps of the house on Capitol, and in Andrew too. Maybe Sam could exorcise some of them without judgment.

“We figure out who else Eddie told about the Fultons.”

---

After Sam left with a smarmy reminder that he actually had a job and a brash, smacking kiss to the corner of Andrew’s mouth, he’d gotten dressed in the front room. The brief, semi-public nudity in the pool of sun shining through the front windows made his touch-sensitized skin tingle. Listening to Riley thump around upstairs kept the tips of his ears burning. With purpose, he searched the living room for his car keys. A swoosh-thud sound startled him as he dug the Supra’s fob from between the couch cushions. When he lifted his head, a blush scorched to his collarbones at the sight of Riley’s bundled bedsheets and his underwear waiting at the foot of the staircase.

“If you don’t put those in the wash before you leave, I am going to smother you in your sleep,” Riley shouted to him.

No response needed. With shaking hands, he carried the bundle to the basement, tossed it in the machine, and escaped to the privacy of his car. Andrew was left alone in his head, Sam gone and Riley occupied. Partial thoughts and images chased themselves across his mind’s eye—fighting with West, the list of interviewees to run through, the presence of Troth at the corners of all the spooky shit, the knowledge that Eddie was gone for good, the sour taste in his mouth from failing to brush his teeth after swallowing another man’s come. The fact that he was continuing on—that he was changing, as the night before proved, growing past the static moment in time the revenant would always be trapped inside. The phase shifts were all overwhelming, impossible to encompass.

For a moment Andrew considered letting Riley chase down the academic angles on his own while he took a breather to let last night and everything else settle. But shame pricked him the instant he had the thought; if the act itself hadn’t been a betrayal of Eddie, putting his purpose aside to wallow in it, selfish and indulgent, might be. Without direction, he set off for a drive. First stop, a Starbucks drive-through; second stop, lunch. His car was one of two in the Chinese restaurant’s parking lot at 11:13 A.M. on a weekday. The “open” sign lit above the door read N W S RVING. Dead vowels lay dormant. He stabbed his plastic fork into the carton of take-out lo mein braced between his knees and hung his free arm out the window. Checking his phone revealed that Sam had texted him one time: Called Irene and she said no harm no foul but not to hit her up again for awhile lol as if that supremely awkward lol had the ability to defuse the real tension.

Fair enough,Andrew thought, stuffing a last bite of noodles in his mouth before tossing the container out in the parking lot. Oily sweetness lodged in his throat. He snagged his iced coffee for a bracing gulp. He had no one to tell about what he’d done—aside from the remainder of Eddie, which seemed like the worst idea. Aching to talk to a person, he sent a text to his mother with a brief message: All his estate stuff is finished, I have the old house now andam settling in. You need anything? She answered him as he drove; he snuck a read with the phone held in front of the steering wheel.

No thanks, hon, be safe.

Before the cavern, he’d been close with his parents. After, he’d been close with Eddie. The patterns set between them during Andrew’s adolescence—distance, dismissal, without even the conflict of rebellion—held strong. He felt right at home with the cousins and their estranged families; his barely knew him. As he shifted in the seat, his belt dug into the blade of his hip, recalling with a burst of sensation the restraining heel of Sam’s hand. Decisions he had made and would make again given the opportunity looped under the surface. Putting aside what it meant, desire had come as natural as breathing once he’d gotten Sam’s body on his—as if the last decade of his life had been secretly leading to that moment, and when the time came to choose, he had no trouble letting go.

Riley’s car was gone when he returned to Capitol. Andrew bounded up the stairs without a pause at the landing, promising himself he’d move the bedding to the dryer later. Eddie’s room, stale sheets and old laundry funk, stood unchanged as he stepped inside. Dust coated the secondary monitor and gaming headphones hanging from their stand. The stillness of Eddie’s paused life decomposed with each passing week, eaten away as the reality settled in. No one was coming home. The basket of clothes would remain unwashed, the guitar silent, the beer cans moldering. That immensity was the force that drove dogs to waste to death on their masters’ graves. Whether he believed it was smart or not, he eased his pressure on the thing within himself, allowing the eldritch inheritance to bleed into the dead air.

If he was careful, then he’d be fine. But he needed to see something of Eddie.

He sat, and the mattress dipped behind him with phantom weight as the bell-toll of his power filled out the form of his ghost. The revenant settled spine to spine with him, stiff against the subtle movement of his breath while the sun loomed high outside. He could feel it inviting him to give more, the weeping edges of its outline chewing at the little taste of being he was feeding it clumsily, his barriers trembling against the urge to let go. Only one set of ribs lifted and fell; there was no bridging the gap across time, unless he let loose the way he had in the forest or standing over the trunk of the Challenger. An impression of indefinite fingers sieved through his onto the rucked sheets. Ghastly cold settled brittle in his joints. Breath misted in front of his face. As he considered confessing his indiscretion to the remnant, the haunt vanished with an abrupt pop, reminiscent of adjusting eardrums on an airplane.

The fingers of his left hand had gone white with a tinge of blue. He tucked them under his leg to warm and wiped his damp face on his shirt. Once he regained the feeling in his hand, he picked up the ring from the desk, playing it along his palm. Eddie might fade from the world, but he had a handful of things left to hold close. Platinum meant forever; he wasn’t sure if he intended his gesture as an apology to the friend he’d loved or a reminder of his responsibility to him. The band slid snug onto his left ring finger, as if made to match the hand Eddie had held on the dorm balcony years before, when he’d been marked a second time.

The moment the platinum met the base of his finger it throbbed a spike of brutal, eldritch strength straight through the bones of his hand; his tenuous control shattered in an instant. The oceanic drag of that power rolled him under from the inside out. He fumbled at the ring but couldn’t remove it as blackness ate at the corners of his vision. He staggered to his feet, concentration fractured as his blood throbbed with an answering grave-hungry desire.

Floorboards smacked his knees, the mattress soft under his cheek. Eddie’s remnant scraped inside his skull, at once inescapable and immaterial, not as gone as he’d thought. He’d called it out of loneliness, and he was paying the price under the crush of its starvation, its jealousy, its anger. Andrew toppled to the side, a rag doll, confused to see his arm lift without his consent. His fingers hung limp, but his wrist straightened. Ring and tattoo both seethed with the absence of color, as if the specter had wrapped itself around them. His heartbeat skipped and stuttered with painful jolts—then hung at a standstill.

He clenched his fist, or tried to. His fingers remained motionless, arm hanging sore at an inhuman angle. His chest cavity seized, spasming. Looped, distorted sound chewing inside his ears cleared into a toneless repetition of comehomeI’llbewaiting. Consciousness fluttered in tatters. With an effort born of fervent terror, he fought loose of the revenant’s grip long enough to slam the back of his head against the floor. Color burst in a halo across his vision, pushing at the dark; his arm dropped to his chest. Free for a moment, he heaved a gasp. His pulse kicked sluggishly for three uneven squeezes, then double-timed into a frantic sprint. Blood burned in his veins, coursing with unleashed potential at full tilt. He shoved the gush of energetic power into the ground beneath the house and the land past that, ripples like sonar pinging him with impressions of all the bodies of dead things, human and otherwise, scattered for miles around.

That explosive push redirected the river-rushing flow, and he visualized clenching a fist tight inside him, tighter, boxing shut what remained of the seething mass. The buzz faded, haunt dissolving with a shredded hiss into the afternoon sun once again. He rolled over and crawled to the bathroom to run the tap for the tub as hot as he thought safe, wrestling out of his jeans to climb in, still wearing briefs, T-shirt and socks. He spat a filthy litany of curses as he waited for his muscles to unlock in the broiling water. When the shivering stopped, he said to the dead space, “Are you trying to kill me?”

Nothing answered.