Just Like That (Albin Academy)

by Cole McCade

  Summer tucked closer to Fox, watching his half-asleep face, his half-open eyes. “Hey,” he murmured, and pressed his palm to Fox’s brow. He felt cooler than usual, but at least not feverish. “Are you okay? Do you feel sick?”

  “Tired,” Fox murmured drowsily, then turned his face into the pillows, leaving nothing but a tangle of hair flowing everywhere in dark rivers of silver-streaked black. “Not sick...just sleepy.”

  Summer frowned. Fox, despite being so quiet, was such a high-energy man, always alert and ready to do what was necessary, but ever since last night...

  He’d just seemed drained.

  Like something vital had been sucked out of him, and Summer couldn’t help that flush of guilt that he’d...he’d just told Fox he loved him when those words were probably so damned hard to hear.

  He hadn’t known what he’d expected, when Fox had already said he was so afraid to have to stay here. That Summer wasn’t reason enough to want to stay, but instead a trap when Summer’s decisions might hold him here.

  That fucking hurt.

  He understood. He understood in a lot of ways it wasn’t about him, but about Fox needing to run from a place that had become as much of a prison as his own self-isolation.

  That didn’t change that it had hit Summer hard enough to make him reckless, make him say something he shouldn’t have, as if somehow those three words would change Fox’s mind and give him a reason to stay.

  Things like that only worked in fairy tales and romcoms.

  Not in real life.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  Not when Fox was motionless and silent, burrowed into the bed.

  So Summer only bent to kiss his shoulder blade, stroking the veil of his hair away to find pale amber-ivory skin.

  “I can handle class prep this morning on my own,” he said, murmuring against Fox’s skin. “If you’re tired, stay in bed a while longer and I’ll see you in class, okay?”

  Fox only made a low sound of affirmative, muted against the pillow, before he lifted his head enough to look at Summer with dull gray eyes.

  “Breakfast,” he said listlessly. “Don’t forget to eat. Sometimes I think you wouldn’t if I didn’t feed you.”

  It was a shallow attempt at his usual barbed tone, but an attempt nonetheless. Summer smiled, though he felt like crumbling inside. Something was wrong.

  Something was deeply wrong, and he didn’t want to leave Fox like this, but...

  Maybe space was what they both needed.

  Yesterday had been strange and painful, even if they’d fallen into bed together and Fox had kissed him, loved him with such intensity, held him tight deep into the night...

  They’d stabbed each other rather deep, before that.

  So maybe if Summer just...took care of work this morning, let Fox have space to settle himself, then they could talk things through tonight once they’d gotten through classes and didn’t have anything else to worry about.

  So he only smiled, and leaned down to press his lips to Fox’s brow. “I won’t forget,” he said, before pulling away to roll out of bed. “And this time, it’s my turn to leave something in the oven for you. Get some rest, Fox. I’ll check in on you during lunch.”

  Fox’s only answer was another muted sound.

  Summer lingered, watching him, but Fox only turned his face away, closing his eyes, pulling the covers up around his shoulders.

  Fuck.

  Eyes stinging, nostrils flaring, Summer made himself turn away and made himself walk out of the bedroom.

  Even if it was the last thing he wanted to do.

  * * *

  Fox lay in bed for nearly an hour after Summer left, wishing he...wishing he...

  Wishing he had had the courage to at least kiss him goodbye.

  He wasn’t sure when he’d decided, concretely. When he’d realized what he meant to do. Some time in the middle of a long, sleepless night, listening to the rain fall.

  She’d died on a night like this day, rain-washed and dreary, as if the world was already dead.

  Perhaps it was fitting that he should leave on a day like this, too.

  He needed to start over.

  And he couldn’t do it here.

  Couldn’t do it where all he would do was drag Summer down.

  The school didn’t need him. They’d find someone else, or abolish the psychology elective. He’d been lying to himself that he was needed at all, as if that could somehow give him an excuse to stay and enjoy this short stolen season of summer in his heart before winter came, gray and terrible, once more.

  Excuses.

  Always the excuses.

  Excuses to stay. Excuses to leave.

  No—it was best that he go.

  Maybe one day, one year, he might come back as someone better, someone brighter, someone who still knew how to live, someone who knew how to be with a man as lovely as Summer. And maybe Summer would still be here, holding that vulnerable heart, and if he hadn’t given it to someone else...

  Yes.

  Maybe then.

  But for now... Fox was no good for anyone.

  And, his body feeling heavy as stone...

  He dragged himself up to pack, flinging the walk-in closet doors open and stepping inside.

  * * *

  Summer couldn’t concentrate.

  He tried. Words on the page blurred together into marching ants; he couldn’t even keep half a thought focused in his mind, forgetting whose paper he was reading halfway down the page and having to start over at the name, let alone processing the content.

  He sat in Fox’s office, surrounded by the sound of rain on the windows and the dripping of honeysuckle scent, and just...

  Wished he was back in that room.

  Back in that bed with Fox, kissing him and touching him and begging him to talk to Summer until they sorted everything out and made this better.

  Fuck.

  He couldn’t think, like this.

  And he couldn’t leave things open-ended this way with Fox, everything festering in silence until class was over. He shouldn’t have walked away this morning at all.

  Summer marked off a few more things, then stood, locked up Fox’s office, and headed back to their floor.

  But he stopped the moment he crested the stairs.

  Fox’s door was just down from the stairwell, the first thing Summer saw every time he came up or down the steps and spilled into the hallway.

  And his door stood open, right now.

  Just by a marginal inch, but still unlatched.

  Summer hadn’t left it that way.

  Sick fear lodged in his throat. A million nightmare scenarios ran through his mind. Fox more sick than he let on, struggling to get to the door and almost collapsing. Someone breaking into the room to hurt him for some obscure reason. Fox getting an emergency call and dashing out carelessly. A million other thoughts about why that door could be open, none of them good.

  Summer didn’t want to look.

  But he had to, when...when...

  What if Fox was inside, hurt?

  What if Fox needed him?

  He forced himself across the hallway, his heartbeat timing his steps in thunderous roars, his head spinning as his anxiety tried to steal his breath and weave terrible things from it out of whole cloth. Tentatively, he pushed the door open with just his fingertips, sending it swinging easily inward.

  No sign of Fox.

  But many of the books were missing from the shelves.

  The box of herbs, the mortar and pestle, gone.

  Summer rushed inside, into the bedroom, where the closet stood open. Empty. No clothing, no shoes. He stumbled backward, fumbling back into the living room. No—no, he didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t believe it, but as his gaze fell on the cabinet mounted agai
nst the wall, that shrine...

  He had no choice.

  The Buddha, the photo, the scrap of framed kanji inside...

  Gone.

  Summer’s vision blurred, his knees weakening as he sank down on the sofa and buried his face in his hands.

  Fox had left him.

  Fox was gone.

  * * *

  And Summer only let himself cry about it for five minutes.

  No.

  No, goddammit, he was not going to let Fox Iseya do this.

  Just...just...leave like this, without even giving Summer the chance to talk to him about it, to ask, to say please, please let me try. Let us try.

  He tried his phone first, tried calling, tried...but there was nothing. One ring, voicemail, and Summer closed his eyes and pressed his forehead to his screen, blinking back the wetness in his eyes, sniffling, breathing deep.

  “Goddammit, Fox,” he whispered. “You never charge your fucking phone.”

  He sent a text anyway—Please don’t leave like this, please—before he was out the door, pelting down the stairs again, one more quick text fired to Walden—cancel psych classes, personal emergency—and he only stopped on the last step to let disappointment crush him that the terse, buzzing response wasn’t Iseya before Summer was spilling out into the rain, into the parking lot, staring through the drizzle.

  Fox’s Camry was gone, too.

  Like the final nail in the coffin.

  That didn’t stop Summer from sliding behind the wheel of his car and sending it down the hill, into town. He didn’t know what he was looking for. As if he hoped he would catch Fox parked somewhere, just casually waiting right where Summer needed him to be, but there was nothing. Nothing as he scanned the streets through the windshield wipers, nothing as he struggled to breathe when every fear inside him was trying to crush him, choke off his air, cloud his head into a foggy mess.

  Maybe that fog was how he somehow ended up at his mother’s without even realizing he’d driven there.

  He stared over the steering wheel at her bright little house, turned gray and drab by the rain.

  If he went inside she would comfort him, hug him, tell him to move on, it was okay to let go, because he’d never really had Fox in the first place.

  That was what hurt so much, wasn’t it?

  That he had never really had Fox in the first place, but somehow he’d still lost him and Fox had kept him at such careful arm’s length that Summer didn’t even know the first place to look.

  He didn’t know how long he sat there, clutching the steering wheel with his mouth twisted up in this crumpled thing that was struggling not to become a sob...but he stiffened as his mother’s voice floated distantly across the lawn, filtered through the pattering rain and the exterior of the car.

  “Summer...?” she called. “Are you coming in...?”

  He lifted his head, watching her miserably. She stood under the porch overhang, her arms wrapped around herself against the spray-drizzled breeze, her expression dark with concern.

  She would stay like that, getting herself soaked when she was too old and frail for this sort of thing, until Summer came in.

  Swallowing back the taste of tears, he shut the engine off, pulled his shirt up in a useless shield over his head, and ducked out into the rain to trot to her door.

  She stepped back, making room to let him in, fussing and fluttering her hands at him. “Look at you, you’re soaked, you’ll catch your death!” She clucked her tongue, pulling at him, but he stayed on the mat, biting his lip.

  “I’ll get everything wet,” he said faintly, and she scowled.

  “As if I care about that. Come in, sit down, get warm.”

  That was how he found himself bundled up, settled on the sofa, wrapped up in a blanket and his shirt and undershirt replaced by one of his old T-shirts from his childhood bedroom, while his mother pressed a hot mug of tea on him and dropped a towel on top of his head.

  “Now get yourself dry,” she said briskly, “and tell me what happened.”

  Summer half-heartedly scrubbed at his hair, managed a sip of his tea—but at that question the horrid feeling inside him nearly broke, threatening to rip past his numb, dazed quiet, his mouth doing that quivering thing that he hated again while he tried to clamp his lips together and make it stop.

  But he couldn’t stop how choked, how wretched he both sounded and felt as he fumbled out, “...Fox left me. Without...without even saying anything, he just...went behind my back and left...”

  Lily Hemlock regarded him gravely, settling on the couch next to him and patting his knee. “What makes you so sure he’s gone for good?”

  “He packed. He took...he took that shrine to his wife. After everything, he couldn’t even say goodbye, I tried so hard and I just... I just wasn’t enough, and now he’s gone...”

  “Summer...” His mother squeezed his knee. “What makes you think you have to be enough to convince someone to stay? That’s not love. That’s trying to buy someone’s love.”

  “I wasn’t,” Summer protested. “I just... I hoped he’d just...”

  “Open his eyes, if you did everything right?” She sighed. “Darling, someone who doesn’t want to change won’t change until they’re ready to. Fox will open his eyes when he’s ready, but you can’t make him do that. Just as he couldn’t make you open yours, either.”

  Summer flinched. “What...do you mean, I’m not...”

  Sometimes, his mother saw too much. And she seemed to see right through Summer as she studied him with a sad yet gentle smile, then reached up to tuck his hair back.

  “Did you really love Fox Iseya?” she asked. “Or did you just need his approval to feel like you’d finally found yourself?”

  Fuck.

  That hit like a sledgehammer, smashing the breath out of Summer’s lungs. He stared at her, fingers clutching tight at his tea mug.

  “I...oh, fuck.”

  “Language,” she said mildly, and he groaned.

  “Now is not the time, Mom.” Closing his eyes, he set the mug aside on the end table, then pulled the blankets closer around him. “I... I love him. I do. I just...”

  “You just...?” she prompted gently.

  “I... I think... I made myself believe I needed his approval to be confident...and then I got addicted to it, when... I should be able to find that confidence myself. I need to find that confidence myself, because...because...” He swallowed. “I do love him. I do. And I know why he’s scared...and if he’s scared, I need to be brave enough for both of us. Because I don’t want to let him go unless he really, truly wants to go.”

  His mother’s eyes creased thoughtfully, smile softening as she cocked her head. “You think he would leave even though he didn’t really want to?”

  Summer let out a brittle laugh. “The sad thing about loving him is knowing...he’s made an art out of running away while staying in place. I guess this time he just didn’t stay...but God knows the more he wants something, the faster he’ll run because he’s afraid of wanting anything at all.”

  “It sounds like you do know him.” She brushed her knuckles to his cheek. “And it sounds like you do love him. Which explains why he was here not an hour ago, telling me goodbye and being entirely evasive about it.” She arched a brow. “He was headed north toward the interstate, when he left. I would be careful driving in this rain, though.”

  Summer was going to die of a heart attack if his heart kept stopping like this every few minutes, slamming so hard it just shuddered itself to a halt.

  He stared at his mother. “He...was here?” he croaked. “He was here and you didn’t tell me?”

  “Well he didn’t come here to see you, now did he?” she tutted, then flapped her hands at him. “Go. Shoo. Go pull that stubborn old fox out of his hole.”

  Summer didn’t need to be told tw
ice.

  He was already on his feet, darting toward the door, shedding the blanket in his wake.

  “Stay dry!” his mother called after him, and he waved a hand back before flinging the door open and bolting out into the rain.

  He might just catch his fox after all.

  And all he needed was just...

  One minute with him, to plead for one last chance.

  * * *

  Fox could hardly see the road ahead of him.

  The storm came down in heavy sheets, wind billowing until it made curtain-like patterns in the silver droplets striking down and splashing in waves against his windshield. He was moving at a crawl, keeping a far distance from the dim red spots of the tail lights yards in front of him, barely covering any ground as he took the highway toward the interstate, following the winding roads between the trees.

  If it got any worse, he’d have to pull over and wait it out.

  When all he wanted was to put Omen behind him and be somewhere, anywhere else.

  He squinted through the windshield, though, as the car ahead of him—a silver SUV—slowed, then stopped...then plowed forward, sheets of water pluming up to either side. Fox couldn’t quite make out what they were doing until he drew closer, though.

  And stopped at the foot of one of the highway bridges spanning the Mystic river.

  A bridge that was currently barely visible under the rising floodswell of the river in spate, the water moving slow and lazy but pouring over the rails.

  The SUV had managed to power through, making it to the other side with water sheeting in its wake like some kind of strange boat.

  If the SUV had made it, Fox could too.

  Don’t, a small inner voice of reason whispered to him. Wait. Turn back. Go back to Omen, go back to Summer, look at why you’re so desperate to run away that you have to leave now and you’re about to do something...to do something...

  Dangerous.

  Beyond dangerous.

  Just because she died in this river doesn’t mean you have to, as well.

  But even if that voice spoke so clearly, it was still so quiet. So much more quiet than the roar of his beating heart, the blood in his veins, the sense of desperation that said to get out. To run. To put as much distance between himself and the thing that frightened him as he could, because if he didn’t...