8. Byrd

8

Byrd

L osing someone you thought you loved is hell, but I wonder sometimes if it isn't somehow a kinder tragedy. There's something perversely liberating about being the victim in your own disaster—just shift the blame onto the person who did the leaving.

At least, that was always Reggie's preferred tactic.

"I refuse to watch you waste any more time crying over someone who never deserved you. Get up off your ass, Coen, and take the fucking showcase. Screw Gabriel and his guilt trips and his passive-aggressive jealousy. Coach Fleming chose you."

"Your family fucked you up, Coen, just like the rest of us. Your parents gave so much of their attention to Elke, you taught yourself to survive on scraps. I love your sister, but she is a drama vortex, and you know it. You need to learn to be selfish every once in a while."

And a decade later:

"If you keep paying for love with pieces of yourself, Coen, you'll eventually go broke, and there'll be nothing left to spend on yourself. Get the fuck out while she's giving you the chance, and go find someone less expensive. "

It was Gabriel's fault, and Lara's, and a half-dozen others in between. I was a perfect boyfriend, a perfect husband—making the sacrifices, putting their needs above my own, doing everything right. Being good . And Reggie never let me look too closely at why I chose lovers who excelled at taking, or what it fed me to be the one to give.

So I came to the wild NorCal coast, ready to power through my latest hell and gather back the pieces I'd lost along the way.

Even though what I probably need is a good therapist who isn't my best friend.

But living with Echo Wash is a new kind of purgatory. Selfish doesn't even begin to cover the way he makes me feel.

For the first time in my life, I want to be bad. To forsake every cautious warning, every moral binding, and immolate myself on everything he offers up.

From the beginning, the nights are the worst. Finally, blessedly, horribly alone, I lie awake and imagine I can feel him breathing through the walls and empty house between us. Behind my eyelids, he's fresh out of the shower— my shower— wearing nothing but a towel and his wicked smirk, daring me to watch, to covet. His runaway mouth plays on repeat in my ears, teasing as I make our dinner, and a brazen, savage creature stirs and coils low in my gut. I taste the cigarettes we share on the deck in the evenings, where he marvels at the Milky Way as I watch the smoke curl over his lips and tongue with hopeless envy.

I haven't touched myself this much since I was a teenager, and it does nothing to quell the relentless tension.

In the mornings, he pads barefoot through my kitchen, shirtless and tousled from sleep. He eats cereal standing at the counter, heavy eyed and elfin, while I drink in his tattoos with my coffee and wonder if he's real .

j-flip 8/09/14

unlocked dive 4/18/15

single-coil wheel up 12/06/17

pirouette 2/20/18

double pirouette 6/25/23

Star drops and bombs and saltos and so many more.

A litany of tricks and their dates of mastery scrawled along his ribs and over his biceps to the crook of his elbow. A private record, triumphs carved in pain, and I can measure in heartbeats exactly how close I need to be to read the words.

Only his forearms are different, wrapped in angel wings of black and blue. On the left, whole and perfect; on the right, crumpled and broken, with one word in flawless calligraphy carved starkly into the pink flesh of a new scar.

" Fallen ."

If Echo off the rope is one kind of torture, Echo on the rope is another.

He walks into my living room the first morning like temptation wrapped in thin, pale jersey, all fine skin and black ink—his lean muscles born of talent, rather than hours pumping iron in front of a mirror at the gym. Once I've recovered from the sight of him, I run him through the basics, letting him get a feel for the rope and the space.

He's good, of course—more than competent—but the genius Reggie gushed about is as absent as the cocksure attitude that flees every time his fingers touch the rope. I could look past some loss of strength or lack of stamina. There's plenty of time to build those back. What I don't know how to kindle is the missing spark.

Eventually, I download his audition video to see what Reggie saw and try to make sense of what I'm missing. And then I scroll through every single one of his Instagram videos, and I start to get pissed. Something happened to this gorgeous dynamo with the reckless mouth to crush more than his wrist.

For weeks, I watch and nudge and, with gentle patience, suffer a loss he has to mourn. Here is heartbreak in the bones, and every day, I ache with him, caught between what was and what should be in a helpless now.

"Try it again from the hipkey."

We're working on his unlocked dive. It's a half-release move that shouldn't put more pressure on his hand than he's ready for, although, since it's basically a falling front flip, it does require a certain leap of faith.

Instead of the static hipkey this time, he goes for a dynamic entrance—a quick back beat for momentum and then a smooth threading of the outside leg through his staggered grip on the rope. A little slack to slide into position, and he's poised for the dive, one hand gripping the tail at his abdomen and the other hooked above his head.

"Nice," I say with a smile. Split-grip beats put a lot more pressure on the top hand, and his confident execution is a good sign. He grunts without looking my way and releases the pole. Like every time before, he makes the grab and pikes perfectly through the drop, but the second he catches his full weight, he lets go, landing on his feet and breathing in tight gasps.

"Does it hurt?" I've asked him this a hundred times, and the answer is always a reluctant "no." I don't think he's lying, but his continued refusal to tell me what's going on is seriously starting to grate.

Maybe he can hear the frustration in my voice because, this time, he finally snaps.

"It doesn't fucking hurt, Byrd. It just doesn't work ."

Bullshit .

"It works fine for beats," I throw back at him, fighting my own temper. "It works fine for windmills and lassos and candy-cane toe climbs." All things that put pressure on the dominant hand.

But none of those require letting go.

"It works fine for jacking off too. Wanna see?"

"Cut it out. I'm not letting you distract me this time." His favorite way to end a session is to flirt until I flee.

"Mmm. You like me distracting." The words are playful, but his tone is acerbic, and his eyes spit fire. "Better than watching me fake it on the rope."

"So stop faking it." I jab my finger into one of the tattoos at his hip, and for once, I don't tremble at the contact. "‘Unlocked dive.' You've been doing this trick since you were twelve. You could probably slow it down and land it with your left alone. What the hell is stopping you right now? Because I don't believe it's only your hand." There. I finally said it. Please let me in.

"Maybe I'm just done?" He shrugs like it's that easy. Like I won't know better.

" Fuck that ." I want to shake him. "It doesn't just go away, this thing you have. It nearly killed me to walk away, and I never had a fraction of your talent." I've never admitted that to anyone before. When he doesn't react, I yank my phone from my pocket and stab angrily until I'm back on his IG feed. I've studied it so many times, it only takes a second to find the right video.

"See this?" I ask, shoving the phone in his face. "This is a flawless unlocked dive." I swipe once. "This? An unlocked double-back salto. That shit is terrifying, and you're laughing ." Another swipe. "What about this? Four pirouette switches. Practically impossible." I shake the phone at him, all the fury and frustration of the last three weeks vibrating in my skin. "Where the fuck is this Echo? He's the Echo I want to see."

He's gone ashen, his eyes wide and panicked, and I reel back from the slap of his pain.

"That Echo?" He laughs, edging toward hysteria. "The Echo in that video? He ruined my fucking life ."

Before I can force my staggering lungs to draw breath, he's gone, storming through the glass doors and taking the deck stairs two at a time. Guilt and anger war at my insides, hot in my chest and cold in my gut. I realize, too late, that I can still feel the burn of his skin on my finger, and that I might have inadvertently shattered the last lifeline of a beautiful, broken boy.

Or maybe I'm giving myself too much credit.

Typical Byrd, thinking you're enough to heal the missing pieces for everyone in your life.

I want to chase after him, but I pace the room, uncertain. Is it the selfish Byrd's desire? Or the Byrd who needs to fix everyone around him, regardless of the cost in flesh? What the fuck do I want from him ? Why do I care if he throws himself away? He's not mine. I can't have him in the ways I refuse to admit I want, so what the hell am I doing here?

I've been dodging Reggie's calls for weeks, scared and unwilling to answer the questions I know she'll ask, but maybe it's time to suck it up. Confess my sins and let her handle the fallout. That would be the responsible move.

Instead, I go after Echo.

I catch him at the bottom of the driveway. No longer running, he leans against the crossbeam gate with his chin on his chest and his hands in his hair. My heart cracks wide at the sight, and I'm out of the truck almost before I can throw it in park.

"Echo." I reach for his wrists to tug his hands down and make him look at me, but I catch myself and let my hands fall after a bare brush against his skin. For a brief, brutal second, his fingers clutch tighter in his hair, and then he drops his arms in defeat. The face he lifts to meet mine is ghostly, lost behind the bruised blue of his eyes.

"I'm sorry," I say, uselessly, reaching again—inevitably—to touch his tragic beauty. This time, he's the one who jerks back.

"Don't bother." He spits the words like bitter poison. "I'm not the Echo you want."

My heart is a void, collapsing under his weight.

All the warring pieces of myself dissolve and scatter, and there's no thought, no decision made, just my hands in his hair and his mouth under mine like there was never meant to be space between us.

He gasps against me, his hands coming up to rest against my ribs. Maybe he means to push me away, but now his lips are parted, and I let myself inside. He's nothing but silk and craving—his hair between my fingers, the curve of his neck when I drop a hand to tug him closer, the lethal heat of his fierce, eager mouth. He sucks at my tongue, his own bold and teasing, every cocky promise made real in wet flesh.

His fingers curl at my waist, hooking my jeans to pull me into him. My cock is painfully hard, and if I don't stop now, I'll be taking him against the gate post, five feet from the damn road .

I lurch back with a groan, dragging myself free until my fingers on his throat are all that's left of the kiss. He lets me go, trailing his hand down over the bulge in my jeans before palming his own erection, unashamed. With his other hand, he rubs a thumb across his swollen lips, and his eyes are a cobalt sea of raw desire.

"Echo," I try again. Those eyes flash.

" Don't say you're sorry. Don't try to explain."

I can only shake my head. "Will you get in the car?"

"That depends." He tilts his head, and I'm struck again by that aura of unreality, like he's drawn from pixels and dark fantasy. "Are you taking me to bed or back to the rope?"

"Neither," I say. "We're going for a ride."