by Lee Mandelo
The morose urge to lie down in Eddie’s bed and drift off to sleep for good washed over him like rain. He picked up his phone and opened his texts to fire off a quick response to Halse: I’m working go away.
Immediately, a response.
No can do
If I have to deal with my cousin sulking around my living room for one more night I’m going to beat your dumb ass
Kiss and make up already
He closed the thread. After a moment spent swirling his drink into something more appetizing, he opened Eddie’s Instagram again to stare at his last photo. The handsome man in the shot might pass for a stranger, a model, painted in sunset colors. Eddie had constructed a narrative of his life for Andrew instead of telling him the truth. Andrew’s ineptitude at searching for information, and his growing awareness of the rift between them that Eddie had kept smooth with affection and encouragement, twined together in a hideous braid. The manipulation left him off-kilter.
His phone pinged that it was time to leave for class—the alarm a recent concession to the schedule Eddie had set for him. He shuffled his books into his bag and left in the Supra, having returned to driving it after the haunt had hijacked the Challenger. Avoiding a repeat performance was his top priority, though the revenant had not returned since its explosive intervention. Eddie’s missing phone lingered at the back of his mind as he drove, and at a red light, he opened the quick-add recommended friends list for his own Snapchat.
Lo and behold: Ethan Jung, handle jungian, sat smack in the middle. He clicked the plus symbol and tossed his phone on the passenger seat. He had to start somewhere. He knew the pack were his best leads, but the cousins themselves were too difficult to address, too fraught. And based on his own altercation at the get-together, Ethan might have more of an insight to offer him than most if Eddie had got caught up in that mess too—given he actually was one of the men those shitty good ol’ boys had a problem with. When his screen flashed he glanced at it, but the light turned green. He didn’t check his notifications until he’d taken his seat in class.
Ethan had sent him two quick messages:
Sup man, you looking for some SupraxSupra action?
Or am I a one track mind kind of guy
He responded, Yeah I’m down for that. Class kicked off around him and he handed in his response paper with the rest of the students. A frisson of relief washed over him, as if he’d clipped a red light exactly at the cutoff. He and Ethan traded messages, planning and prep, throughout the lecture. Ethan didn’t mention Riley once, or Sam, which was what Andrew had hoped for.
Ethan met him in a gas station parking lot outside campus. When Andrew parked, Ethan boosted himself off of the hood of his car, a cheap iced coffee in each hand. He passed the untouched one through Andrew’s window. Two wide gold rings on his middle fingers matched a chain that hung in a glittering, teasing loop over his upper chest. The magnetic glint of the chain drew attention to the scooped-neck shirt baring the expanse of his collarbones. Andrew caught himself watching the curves of his mouth: a thin upper lip but a plump bottom lip, dimples at the sides of his smile. Ethan looked more high-end model than a law student.
Until he spoke: “Want to commit a series of misdemeanors, new friend?”
Andrew raised his eyebrows over a sip of his bracingly sweetened coffee and cream. Ethan scratched his upper thigh and adjusted his belt with a thumb. Nonchalant but eager, the faintest hint predatory: the same impression Andrew had gotten at the party, before his roommate had climbed the man like a tree. That image loitered in the basement of his brain, color-spattered and confused with yearning and fire and hurt.
“I’m free all evening, so what’s a good time around here?”
Ethan grinned. “And to think Riley was concerned you weren’t going to branch out, get some socializing in. You want to drive, or you want to party, or both? I’m guessing you need a break from the cousins, or you wouldn’t have texted just me.”
“If I were here with Eddie,” he said, rolling each word off his tongue, “what all would we do tonight? Party, or drive?”
“I guess we’d do both,” Ethan said, his voice softening.
“Then let’s do both.”
“Cool. Follow me and we’ll get some fun in on the highway.”
Breathless anticipation sluiced him from head to toe, unsurprising but unwelcome. This was, in a sense, research—about Halse, about the pack, about where Eddie fit into their messy web. Ethan’s Supra turned over with a handsome purr. He’d asked the question he needed to ask: if I were Eddie, where would I be? Even spread across Andrew’s fits and starts, that was more effort than the police had made. He felt weightlessly alien after the nights with the cousins, the brutality of the confrontation at the semester-opening party, and he didn’t know if his current momentum would last. He had to continue to believe that Eddie hadn’t done the deed himself, no matter how strange his life had become while he was alone in Nashville.
Once the pair made it onto the interstate, Andrew changed lanes to pull up alongside Ethan. Cars liberally dotted the four-lane highway. Familiar sport. Andrew revved his engine once and cut across to the far left lane at speed. In his sideview Ethan did the same, gaining velocity and slicing through traffic one smooth maneuver at a time. Adrenaline hummed as he wove through the impeding cars, nosing ahead of Ethan, then falling behind. The speedometer showed triple digits for a heartbeat but banked down to double behind a tangle of cars he couldn’t get past. Ethan dodged in front of him. Andrew blurted an expletive, braking to avoid a high-speed collision. Another, more temperate flash of Ethan’s brake lights prompted him to follow a turn signal to an exit ramp. They made their way through a scattering of stores into a neighborhood of middle-class homes with SUVs in driveways and the occasional concrete lawn ornament. When Ethan turned onto a side street to park, Andrew mirrored him.
“Not bad keeping up,” Ethan said to him, bumping knuckles.
“Same to you.”
The drive had only ratcheted his energy higher. Ethan, too, seemed to be vibrating in his shoes. “How do you feel about recreational drug use, my good man?”
“Neutral to positive,” Andrew replied.
“Okay, great, cool. I’m in a seminar with this chick, Leah, and she has a bunch of molly. Her boyfriend is a mediocre DJ, the scene’s very posh and suburban. So, that’s what we’re doing tonight.” He snapped his fingers at his side twice, glancing at the house. “Eat some party drugs and dance in someone’s basement.”
“Law school, huh,” Andrew murmured.
“Fuck off,” he said pleasantly.
Inside, the house was muggy despite the air-conditioning. Bodies crowded the living room and kitchen, bare skin and summer dresses and high heels—more women than he’d seen in one place for months. Compared to Halse’s gathering, the vibe was downright cosmopolitan. Andrew kept close to Ethan as he led the way to the back deck, where a handful of people splashed around in an aboveground pool. The thump of a bass beat from the basement rattled the wooden boards.
“Leah, my dear, my darling,” Ethan crowed.
A young tanned woman in a bikini top and board shorts clambered out of the pool without using the ladder, also grinning, her hair streaming with water. “Ethan, hi there! You doing business with me tonight? Your pretty, pretty partners come too?”
“Nah, I brought another friend.” He made finger-guns at Andrew.
“Like a friend, or a friend,” Leah said, raking her gaze over Andrew from his eyes to approximately dick-level. He had to admire the lack of dissembling. “And where from?”
“Riley knows him, and just a friend.” He planted a comedic smack of a kiss on her cheek. “Let’s make his night nicer, yeah?”
“It’s ten per, and each capsule is about point-one. Stuff the cash in my purse and help yourselves,” she said.
Ethan grabbed his wallet and crossed the deck to the table with her bag on it. She leaned on the railing next to Andrew, the blue fairy lights strung arou
nd the porch emphasizing her water-beaded skin, and said, “You like girls, handsome?”
“That’s direct,” he replied.
“Never let it be said I’m not honest,” she said.
“Leah, leave him be,” Ethan called over.
She flipped her hair over her shoulder, still smiling, and took two sprinting steps before cannonballing messily into her pool. The other partygoers splashed at her when she resurfaced, cackling. The tousling pile of bodies in the pool struck him as remarkably wholesome, though he figured most of them were also high as hell. Andrew approached Ethan, and the other boy placed two capsules in his palm. He had two of his own.
“My treat, I’m the oldest,” Ethan said.
Inside, the conversation and laughter were almost deafening. The music throbbing up from the basement made it worse. Andrew took a beer from a cooler in the kitchen and washed down his capsules. Ethan did the same. He had a half hour, he thought, before it hit him. Eddie hadn’t been a big fan of MDMA, so they hadn’t done it often, but this was for a purpose. At his elbow, Ethan shifted from foot to foot, scanning the crowd with a casual interest.
“I’m about to be just as direct as Leah, but tell me if I’m supposed to be wing-manning or something here. Glad to be of assistance if so,” he said.
Andrew glanced at him, startled. Had Ethan helped Eddie get laid, was that what he would’ve gotten up to? Andrew had a hard time picturing the scenario that would lead the Eddie he knew to choose Ethan as his party companion.
But apparently he’d missed a lot in the six months Eddie spent trawling Nashville.
“No thanks,” Andrew said.
Ethan grunted his understanding, fidgeted another minute or five, and then said, “Downstairs, music, yes?”
The steps descended into a close space lit by a star projector and nothing else, full of humans pressed flush against each other, moving in sync with the eardrum-splitting throb of EDM pouring from a set of cabinet speakers. Ethan grinned across at him, face streaked with neon color, before disappearing into the crowd. Andrew breathed in and out, stuck along the edges with his beer held above his head to keep from being jostled. The cold concrete wall braced him. He allowed himself the briefest thought of Eddie in the fray, filthy broad smile and a woman in his arms, moving with the music and the lights.
It occurred to him an indeterminate period of time later, bones liquid and fingers lax around his warm beer, dizzy sparklers of sensation pinging constantly, that Ethan had drastically miscalculated his dosage. He wheezed through his nose and rolled his skull against the wall, one quick sigh-and-gasp for air as the yank of concrete on his hair buzzed through his scalp. He felt fucking good. He’d forgotten how to feel good, and here it was, plowing him under.
A palm landed on his ribs and a mouth pressed damp against his cheek, speaking directly into his skin: “How is it?”
He pried his eyes open, unsure when he had shut them again. Ethan’s blown pupils and cherry-liquor-smelling breath were the whole world for a disorienting second. His tongue lay unwieldy in his mouth. The strong fingers curving around his side burned with tender sensation, heavily present and approaching sensual. He managed, “Rolling my ass off.”
Ethan’s laugh was more a giggle. He notched their bodies closer together with a sinuous wriggle and shouted over the music, his thigh between Andrew’s, “Christ, yeah, that cannot have been point-two. I’m gone.”
The music pulsed. Ethan made a breathless but shattering sound into his ear and his hand slid to grip the firm divot of muscle at the middle of his back, leanly built torso shifting along Andrew’s without an inch of free space. He swayed, an attempt at dancing, and unasked-for pleasure lashed up Andrew’s melting spinal cord. Ethan’s smooth, well-shaved cheek pressed to his own—same height, same build, same—and he tugged at Andrew’s arm as if to encourage him to hold on. Instead, he fisted his hands in Ethan’s shirt and pulled backward to separate their bodies, shivering head to toe and close to panting. Without Ethan’s warmth blanketing him, the molly turned cold. The seam of his jeans pinned his responding dick to his thigh. He hated that he was aware of it, startled and undone and too high.
“Upstairs,” he slurred.
Ethan blinked, comical realization and red flush crawling across his face at once, then let him go. They staggered from the corner to the stairs, the stairs to the kitchen, and the kitchen to the living room in a blur. Andrew kept his hand anchored in the hem of Ethan’s shirt. The physical delight was blinding, swamping his brain’s capacity to hold on to a thought for longer than three seconds before dissolving into pure starving sensation. Falling onto the blessedly abandoned couch together allowed Andrew an excuse to remain as close as his skin craved without making contact. He lolled his head onto the armrest, one leg hanging stretched out in a greedy sprawl. Ethan kicked his shoes off and put his feet up. A Solo cup hung precariously from his fingertips.
“Eddie come to these parties often?” Andrew asked, staring at the ceiling.
“Not as much as I’d have expected,” Ethan said. “He kept his distance from most of us, to be honest. Sometimes he was cool, sometimes I thought it was like, too much for him, how we all were together. He didn’t seem comfortable.”
“Thought he was in the pack,” Andrew said.
“Sure he was. But he was one of those guys, I doubt I’ve got to tell you this, who was more his own protagonist than a normal person.” An eloquent shrug, a dazzled moment spent flexing his fingers and watching his rings flash. “When he was around he was king of the castle, and it made me forget to ask where the fuck he was the rest of the time. He paid enough attention to make you feel close without ever telling you shit.”
Andrew said, “You didn’t like him.”
He heard the revelation in his own voice before it hit him. Ethan sighed noisily. “He was good to Riley and Halse, he had some kind of soft spot for them. The rest of us, man, I’m not sure he really saw us. And he had a fucking wild temper, so I didn’t like that, no. Reminded me of too many DL frat boys, the staring and the weirdness and shit. I know I’m pretty, but I’m not that pretty, you know?”
Andrew had no idea what those words meant in that order, except he disliked the idea of Eddie staring enough to get noticed. The insistent buzz of molly kept him from accessing his roiling emotions, reflexive anger smothered under euphoric distraction.
He sorted through his words carefully before he asked, “Then how was he spending his time, it if wasn’t with y’all and it wasn’t with school? I don’t know what he was even fucking doing here. I should know that.”
He hadn’t meant to say the last bit out loud. Ethan tipped himself closer on the couch, gripping the frame to settle in the middle with his toes jammed under Andrew’s thigh. Andrew lifted his head. “He did spend time with us. Just not, like, separately and of his own volition. Wouldn’t have caught him snapping me for a night out. He had his own shit to do. He and the cousins got along good enough. I mean, he made runs with Sam sometimes, and none of us ever got in that deep.”
“Made runs?” he asked.
“Yeah, Sam’s second job,” he said. For clarity’s sake, he mimed smoking a joint. “Sam’s too protective of Riley to let him fuck up, so he’s not allowed in on that shit, and I’m in law school, and Luca tolerates Sam at best. The extended company he keeps is kind of gross and scary, you know? And the rest of the kids are too casual of friends to be trapping with our boy on a Tuesday night. You get me?”
“But Eddie wasn’t too casual,” he said slowly.
“Nah.” Ethan’s mouth pursed as he considered his response. “Those two hit it off fast, nothing casual about it. It was sort of like watching some big dogs decide they didn’t want to bite each other’s faces off. There were a couple of times I wasn’t sure if they’d decide otherwise.”
“How do you mean?”
The toes still digging and flexing against his leg distracted him briefly. The room around them pulsed with life, the crowd fading in and out
of his conscious awareness as he focused on them and then on Ethan and back again. He missed half of a sentence, tuned in again to hear, “—can’t have two leaders, but Ed didn’t want to lead, he just wanted to have his space I guess. He was more excited about his fucking social research or whatever than he was about selling drugs anyway.”
Andrew grunted, confused. His high coasted to a peak. The music, even muffled from the basement, had a physical presence, a pressure on his ears and throat. Ethan’s voice made a steady constant over the bass, narrating, tongue loosened with the chemicals in their blood and the paradoxical closeness of total strangers in the same place at the same time. Same, his blood beat. His rebellious fingers itched to wrap around Ethan’s foot.
“He was collecting all those oral histories and ghost stories and nonsense,” Ethan said. “Sam was after his ass to quit asking his customers about their haunted houses, like, all the time. He hates that shit. Their grandma was a real weirdo about it, if you didn’t know, some kind of reformed hill witch who found Jesus and gave up her wickedness, et cetera et cetera.”
“Well, shit,” Andrew said. “I didn’t.”
“Yeah, he spent way more time haring around on his own harassing people for stories than he did hanging with us, Sam or no Sam,” he said. “But to reiterate, he and Sam were a goddamn bonfire. We were all kind of hoping they’d blow each other and get it over with.” Ethan cackled and slapped Andrew’s upper thigh before collapsing onto the couch again. The stinging burn shocked straight through his belly as if Ethan had grabbed him by the crotch. Andrew’s mouth hung open, the picture of those bodies in contact flashing behind his eyes in full, glorious, terrible detail before Ethan interrupted with, “Fuck, sorry, that was bad. Ignore that. I’m fucking high as shit.”
