It's All Relative

by J. M. Snyder

  He takes a step closer—I don’t hear it so much as feel it, a sudden nearness, an intimacy I put behind me long ago. He always liked me more than I did him. That first kiss was his doing, the first time his hand cupped my dick beneath the waters of the creek, the first time he ever licked my navel and then drifted lower, his lips closing over me…his suggestions, all of them. To me, it was feeling good, fooling around. It was two friends exploring, growing up, learning together. It never meant anything more.

  At least, not to me.

  Another step and he touches me. His fingers slip between my arm and chest, his thumb rubs my wrist in a slow, soothing gesture. This was how he touched me the summer we started…a few days after that first kiss, which neither of us mentioned again. We were goofing off down by the creek, wasting away the summer afternoon in the cool water, me and Stephen and a handful of others—Ray and Kenny and Stephen’s cousin Brent, a few boys whose names I don’t remember anymore. The smell of charcoal permeated the air, hot dogs and burgers on the grill, one of Aunt Evie’s cookouts. Easiest way to feed a crowd, she always said, and no one was ever turned away. I swear half of Sugar Creek came over when she fired up the grill. One by one the boys drifted away from the creek, lured back to the house at the prospect of food, until it was just me and Stephen in the water. I didn’t even realize we were alone at first—I climbed up on the log that spanned the creek and leaped in, splashing water everywhere, and when I came up for air, Stephen was right there, so close that I had to back into the wooden bridge. “Stephen,” I sighed, wiping water from my face. I glanced around and that’s when I noticed that everyone else was gone.

  Without his glasses on, Stephen’s eyes were huge and slightly out of focus—he stared at me with a smoldering look that I had never seen in him before, a lust that stirred my groin and made me think of that unmentionable kiss. He drifted closer, his leg brushing mine beneath the water, his hand tentative on my stomach before floating away. “Stephen? What…” I wiped at my face again just to break his steady gaze. “Where are the others?”

  “Left,” he breathed. Suddenly I was cold, all too aware of my own near nakedness. Goose bumps pimpled my skin. Trying to look unperturbed, I crossed my arms in front of my chest and pressed back against the log as far as I could go—I was young, I didn’t know what that look in his eyes meant, I couldn’t begin to imagine what he might want from me. I had just recently discovered the pleasures of my own hand—I couldn’t think of anyone else touching me the same way.

  But his hand curved over my wrist, his fingers rubbing over one nipple as they eased beneath my arm. One knee parted my legs, eased up into my crotch, where I was already aching from a tension I didn’t quite understand. “Kiss me again,” he sighed, leaning against me. His body was warm in the cool water, his skin slippery on mine, and I let him open my arms, I let him in closer, I couldn’t help it. I was drowning in those eyes and I couldn’t breathe, he stood too close…this time when our lips met, one hand drifted from my arm, down my belly, down further. I almost came from just his fingers fumbling into my shorts, his kiss, it was that intense. I’m afraid to look in his face now, I’m afraid to look at him after all these years and still see that same lust, that same need, looking back.

  I’m not twelve anymore, I remind myself. I’m twenty-five, I’m not some boy willing to settle for any touch at all. I have a lover. I can’t just slip back into who I was before—I’ve changed, even if nothing else in this tiny little town has.

  “I hoped maybe…” Stephen starts, but he doesn’t finish the thought. I keep my eyes down, stare at the hair on the back of his hand, and tell myself I don’t feel anything at his skin against mine. I have Dan…where is he?

  But I don’t like the sentence hanging between us, a loaded gun waiting to discharge. I shrug, hoping to shake his hand loose, but it doesn’t work. “Maybe what?” I ask.

  When I dare to look at him, his eyes are just as large as I remembered this close. “Maybe you’d…” He sighs, and his breath is soft on my face, slightly minty like a promise. “This is going to sound bad.”

  “What is?” I ask, hoping I sound as if I don’t know exactly what he’s trying to say, what he’s feeling and thinking and wanting right now.

  His hand drifts up my chest, is he still touching me? His fingers play across the hollow of my throat, remembering the feel of forgotten flesh. “I was sort of hoping you’d want me,” he whispers. “Like last time? I thought you’d want me to hold you again, Michael. I came here hoping you needed that.” When I don’t answer immediately, his thumb hovers above my lips and he gives me a sad smile. “See? Told you it’d sound bad.”

  He came here to comfort me. Like last time, after Matthew, when I needed someone to hold me and kiss me and tell me the guy was a fool to let me go. Only now…I have Dan, I think, turning before Stephen’s thumb touches me. “I’m sorry,” I tell him. What else can I possibly say?

  And where the hell is Dan? Didn’t Caitlin say she’d get him? I need him. Stephen’s touch is too familiar, it’s too easy to slip back into the past, I want my lover here with me.

  Somehow I find the strength to take a step away from my friend. “I’m sorry,” I say again. I am, God so damn sorry. “I can’t. I mean, I’m with—”

  “I know,” Stephen concedes. He lets me move another step back without following, thank the Lord. But when he sighs, it’s such a lonely, desolate sound that I almost stumble. “It’s stupid, I know, but remember when you used to say you wanted to move up here? You wanted to live in Sugar Creek forever—do you remember that?”

  I do. Childish words from a child. I’m grown now, I have a life in DC, I have a lover and a job and a home, I can’t just pull up roots and relocate to the summer home of my youth. “I was just talking smack,” I say, trying to keep my tone light. Smack, a word we used as kids, when we were too young to say shit. “I was playing, Steve.”

  His eyes are serious, his mouth a sad line drawn on his face. “I wasn’t,” he murmurs. “I never played around with you, Mike. It was always something more than that to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say again. I can’t stop apologizing.

  He shrugs as if it’s too late now. “I used to dream up these convoluted scenarios, you just don’t know. Even when I was just a little kid, I wanted you here all the time. From the moment you left in August until the day your mom’s car pulled into town the next year, I played out these fantasies in my mind. Something would happen and you’d have to come live here with Evie. Or you’d sign up for an exchange program at my school and stay in my room with me. Or hell, I’d go to college in Virginia, I don’t know, anything to be near you.”

  I had no idea these thoughts lived in his head. I thought we were friends, nothing more. The times we spent finding pleasure in each other’s bodies had been nice, true, but I never thought of him as more than a friend. A close friend, yes, but not a boyfriend, sure as hell not a lover. “Stephen—”

  He continues as if I didn’t interrupt. “I was so sure it would just be a matter of time, Michael, before you looked at me the same way I look at you. Every guy I ever dated at State had eyes like yours, hair the same shade, the same style. But there was never anything there, nothing like what we had, all those summers spent together, all those adventures we shared.”

  I blink back tears that blur my vision and think of the years I’ve known him. I see them fanned out like a deck of cards, each one as vivid and as bright as if they happened yesterday. The day he fell off his bike and cut his knee, and he rode on my handlebars while I hurried him home. The time I stepped in a snake hole in the woods, twisted my ankle, and he half-dragged, half-carried me to Aunt Evie’s. The first time we ever met, me in the back yard digging up the grapes and him a lanky eight year old watching me from the shadows by the shed. I saw him, the sun winking off his glasses, thick even back then, and I picked up one of my shovels, held it out to him like an invitation. When he didn’t move, I set the shovel down, handle turned towards
him, just in case he wanted to play, and went back to my dirt. A few minutes later, I looked up as he sank to his knees beside me, shovel already in hand. “Here,” I told him, pointing at the hole I was working so diligently on. “I’m trying to get to the other side.”

  “You can’t,” he told me, but that didn’t stop us. We dug until water bubbled into our hands, and our laughter made my dad come over to see what we were up to. He saw the hole, the piles of dirt, the exposed roots of Aunt Evie’s grapes, and his face turned the same purple shade as the ripening fruit. He made us fill the hole back in, which was messy work, the water turning the soft soil to mud, and by the time we were finished, it was dark and we were both so filthy that my mom wouldn’t let us into the house until after we rinsed off in the creek. From that moment on, we were inseparable.

  And now this.

  “I used to come home from college every summer just to see you,” Stephen tells me—doesn’t he know when to stop? Can’t he see my tears, the way his words are hurting me? “Even after you stopped coming, I kept hoping…I’d walk over here the first night, sit on the porch with your mom and Ray, ask them all about how you were and what you were doing. Any little part of you I could have, Michael. I clung to that. I thrived on it.”

  A tear courses down my cheek and I wipe at it brusquely. “Stephen, please,” I sigh. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  He touches the hand on my face, his fingers folding over mine to rest against my cheek. So soft, that touch. So tender. I remember those same fingers on other parts of my body, stroking me, grasping me, bringing me to release. He’s close again, so near to me that I imagine I feel his aura press against mine, sadness and blatant desire and unashamed need. I hate this—we were such good friends once…his words fan my face. “Do you love him?” he wants to know.

  I nod. Completely and utterly, I love Dan. I’m about to apologize when Stephen’s fingers trace the curve of my jaw. “Remember when I told you I didn’t think I could love one person forever?” he whispers.

  I nod again—we were lying on his bed, the scene stands out so vivid in my mind. I can almost smell the musky scent of sex hanging over us, I can still recall the taste of him on my lips. “Stephen,” I whisper. “Don’t—”

  “I lied,” he tells me. I squeeze my eyes shut, I don’t want to hear this. His fingers brush over my brow, and before I can pull away, his lips touch the corner of my mouth in a tiny kiss, barely there. “I’ve always loved you, Michael. I know it’s too late to tell you now, but I think I always will.”

  God. I choke back more tears, sob his name. “I should go,” he says. I press my hand to my mouth and nod, yes, he should. “I hope he makes you happy.”

  I keep my eyes closed. I don’t want to see him leave. His face is already etched into my memory, that sadness in his eyes writing over the memories I have of him, until all I see is the lonely boy who just said he’ll always love me. Though I have Dan, though I wouldn’t give what I have with him up for the world, right this second I wish fervently that there was some way I could make Stephen happy. Something I could say, or do, for the sake of the friendship we once shared, and I would say it without hesitation, I would do it without a second thought, anything to take away the hurt I’ve caused him, the pain. Anything at all…

  But nothing comes to mind, and I hear his footsteps quiet on the carpet, in the hall, I hear the front door open. I can almost see him in my mind looking back at me one last time, and then the door shuts, and he’s gone.

  I tear blindly from the living room, down the hall into the kitchen, pushing past relatives in my stumbling haste to get out, get away, put him behind me and move on. If I never loved him the way he loves me, why does it feel as if my heart is tearing in two? Why am I crying if he never meant anything to me?

  Dan’s at the sink rinsing his hands, Caitlin leaning on the counter beside him. “Nothing to worry about,” she’s saying as I pass by. “I mean it, Dan. He’s got nothing on you, trust me on this.”

  My lover sees my tears and his smile disappears from his face. “Michael?” he asks, concerned. “What happened? Where’s your friend?”

  “Gone,” I mumble. I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to think about it, about Stephen or anything we ever did together, but I can’t get his words out of my head. Over and over again I hear him. I’ve always loved you…like a wave crashing down around me, threatening to sweep me under. I think I always will.

  Dan reaches for me but I dodge his grasp, stagger through the kitchen into the back room. I hear my name again but I slam the door shut and lock it for good measure. On the other side my lover knocks, calls out to me, rattles the knob. “Go away,” I sob. “Please.”

  When I shut my eyes Stephen’s are behind mine, lonely and so damn sad. I throw myself down on the bed and bury my head in the pillow, which turns hot and damp. Even though I haven’t seen him in years, haven’t talked to him, don’t really know the person he’s become, I can’t help but feel like I’ve just lost my best friend.

  Chapter 24: Alone Again

  All the times we laughed together, gone. All the fun, all the tears, all the adventures and camp outs, all the forts we built, everything is gone. I never had a friend like Stephen back home—he was my summer buddy, a forever friend, someone I thought would always be there for me, up here in Sugar Creek, away from the madness and uncertainty of my “real” life. All year long I used to look forward to the trip to Aunt Evie’s—freedom, excitement, Stephen there every single day, knocking on the door first thing in the morning, not heading home until well after dusk. A summer of friendship, a lifetime of summers. And now it’s gone.

  Any other time and it wouldn’t be hard to patch this rift between us. It’s not like we haven’t had arguments before—boys fight, and Stephen and I were no exception growing up. Stupid shit, though, like who got the last Mr. Goodbar at Grosso’s and who called dibs on the prize in the Cracker Jacks box. We fought over who ran the fastest and whose dad was the strongest and where we wanted to live when we were older—I’d say New York and Stephen would say no, he was living there, not me, and that would start a shouting match that made my mom yell at us to keep it down. And our angry words would dissolve into giggles, he’d hide his face in my shoulder and whisper, “You can live there with me, Mike. I was just teasing.”

  Then came the kiss, which led to more kisses, and touching, and soft lips, grasping hands, probing tongues on smooth flesh…why couldn’t I see how he felt for me? Why couldn’t I feel it in his hands, his lips? And why the hell couldn’t I have felt the same?

  We were friends, nothing more. I should’ve put a stop to anything that might have misled him but to be honest, I loved the attention, I loved the feel of another’s body against mine. I didn’t know many other boys, one or two in high school but those encounters were brief and skittish, both of us too nervous to do more than make out in an unlit parking lot. Hot hands on an aching dick, hot breath against my face, mutual masturbation and it didn’t matter to me if I ever saw the guy again. There was nothing special about the boys I knew in back home, nothing out of this world, nothing phenomenal.

  True, I didn’t find that until Dan, but with Stephen there was at least a little bit of understanding between us, an affection so deep from the time we shared that, while not love, filled that need easily enough. I liked his kisses, his hands, his lips and tongue and the way he always touched me, tentative and almost unsure, as if I were a fragile dream that he didn’t want to shatter. Why couldn’t I feel that same trepidation, that same awe?

  If only you told me last time, I think. I lie on my back on the bed, stare at the ceiling and pretend these aren’t tears that trickle down the sides of my face. Dan’s still on the other side of the door—every now and then he jiggles the knob but he doesn’t say my name, he knows I’m not going to answer. “Go away,” I’ve told him, but he doesn’t listen. I really don’t expect him to.

  Five years ago, the last time I was here, after Matthew? I wo
uld have killed to hear Stephen, anyone, say he loved me, and if he told me then, I might have listened. I know I don’t feel the way he does for me, I don’t feel for him the way I do for Dan, but at that time, if he told me? I might have given him a chance. If he had only said something then…we’ve shared too much together over the years. There is some feeling there. I could have made it love.

  So now it’s his fault.

  It’s easier to think that, to blame him. If he had only said something a few years ago, given me some indication of what went through his mind when we were together…then what? I ask myself. You would’ve left that summer and promised to keep in touch, the way you always did, but you were in school, Michael, you wouldn’t have stayed here. This town is too small for you, it always has been and for all the daydreams you’ve had of moving up here one day, you know you could never stay in a place like this. You’d stifle. You’d die. You need the large city to lose yourself in. Sure, if Stephen said he loved you then, you might have tried your hand at a long distance relationship. But you need a man strong enough to hold onto you, you need physical reassurance, you need tangible love. You need Dan—“Michael?”

  My lover’s voice is muffled through the closed door. I can’t help it if Stephen didn’t tell me how he felt sooner—I can’t keep apologizing simply because I don’t feel the same.

  I need Dan.

  When he calls my name again, I push myself out of the bed and unlock the door. The next time he jiggles the knob, it turns easily in his hand and as he steps inside, I have to look away from the concern and love I see in his wounded eyes. “Do you want to tell me what’s going on?” he asks, closing the door behind him on the rest of the world.

  To be honest, I don’t want to talk about it. “Nothing,” I mumble. I sit on the edge of the bed, my head in my hands, and tell myself I have a headache. Only it’s not my heart that hurts this bad. I don’t want to believe that I just lost my oldest friend.