Vince

Whatever possessed Vince to stop in the alley behind Eric’s house tonight?

Eric asks, “You have another one of those?” Vince tries to scowl as he plucks the second cigarette from behind his ear but doesn’t quite make it. “Thanks, man,” Eric sighs. Their fingers touch when he takes the offered smoke. Vince watches him stick it between lips that are too red for a boy, they always were. “You have a light?” Vince’s hand curls around the lighter in his pocket and he wonders what his fingers would feel like in those blonde curls. Here in the shadows they’re still golden, as if the light that tints them isn’t a reflection of the moon or the stars but something that glows from within, a nimbus like the halos of light that surround the heads of saints in Catholic paintings. Maybe if he lifts the hair from Eric’s brow, fists his hands in those curls and tugs as hard as he can, maybe he can find the source of that light. He wants to know where it comes from, why it fills this boy, why it makes him perfect and always has. Before he can hand over the lighter Eric bends close to him, like he wants a quick kiss. “Hold still a minute,” he mumbles, his breath cinnamony on Vince’s cheek. Carefully he presses the tip of his cigarette to the lit end of Vince’s, one hand cupped around the smokes to keep out the breeze. Vince stares at the blonde eyelashes just inches from his face. He imagines how soft they would be, feathering on his skin. He wants to pluck them, one by one, just to see those eyes fill with tears. Then Eric laughs, a magical sound. This close Vince thinks it’s deafening. “This is like when we were little,” he says, straightening up. “You know, “back when we were kids?” He hopes his voice is emotionless when he replies, “We aren’t kids anymore, Eric.” He doesn’t have to add that they aren’t friends, either.

VINCE by J. M. Snyder

Lulu Press Morrisville

VINCE All Rights Reserved © 2003 by Jeanette M. Snyder Cover art © 2003 by R. Yang No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author and publisher. Lulu Press affiliated with Lulu Enterprises For information address: Lulu Enterprises 3131 RDU Center Drive Suite 210 Morrisville, NC 27560 www.lulu.com This is a work of fiction. All events, locations, institutions, themes, persons, characters, and plot are completely fictional inventions of the author. Any resemblance to people living or deceased, actual places, or events is purely coincidental and entirely unintentional. Printed in the United States of America

Acknowledgements

I’LL BE HONEST — I didn’t think this book would get into print. It’s not even listed on my website as an upcoming title because it started out as one little story that I wrapped up in the fall of 2002. That’s part one. But my beta readers wanted to know what happened next and although I’m not big on sequels, I have to admit that I couldn’t quite get Vince and Eric out of my mind as easily as I would’ve liked. So then came part two, which brings a closure to the story that part one lacks. There is an inkling of an idea for part three, but it hasn’t yet become more than that. I’m not sure when or where I’ll ever get it out. That said, I’d like to thank Billy and Summer for pestering me to flesh out a story that may shock some of my readers. Also two members of my writers’ group, for their criticism: my brother, Patrick Snyder (who read most of part one even though gay fiction isn’t his thing) and Hilary Walker. And of course an awestruck thanks goes out to mon petit prince for a kick-ass sketch of my characters which became the cover art on this first edition. I’d also like to express my undying gratitude to Lulu Press for being too damn cool and being there for me when my previous publisher’s costs escalated out of my price range. If you’re looking for a print-on-demand publisher and want complete creative control over your project, be it writing or music or art, I highly recommend them. And one final word of thanks — to my mysterious benefactor who believes in my words enough to cover publication costs incurred in printing this book you now hold in your hands.

Part One

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IS DAD IS a bigot, Vince thinks, and an ignorant one, at that. The four of them sit at the dinner table, his parents on either end and his brother across the way, but only his father speaks. “Damn Arabs,” he’s saying as he slices into the pork on his plate. The noise from the TV carries from the living room into where they sit because his dad turned the volume up to hear the news while they ate. A clip about rising gas prices prompted this little tirade. “There’s enough oil in Texas, Sylvia, I’m telling you now.” He waves his fork and looks around the table — Sylvia nods, yes dear, and Corey starts up. “In school?” he asks. He’s thirteen and talks in questions. “My history teacher? He said there’s a pipeline running right across the country, right under us, so we don’t really need that oil over there, you know?” Only Vince stares at the food on his plate and says nothing. He doesn’t care about rising gas prices or a damn pipeline underground. He just prays that the weather comes on soon because that’s the only time his dad shuts up. No more news stories, please. His dad has to have views on everything. Take Vince himself, for example. The only time his dad talks to him is to complain about something. His clothes — black jeans and punk t-shirts, heavy black boots that clomp when he walks through the house, a long gray-green trench coat he wears year-round — his dad hates his clothes. “You look like a freak,” is one of the nicer things he’s said. Then there’s his music, hard metal bands like Korn and Rage Against the Machine that his dad doesn’t understand at all. “Those aren’t songs,” he tells Vince. “It’s nothing but garbage. Turn that shit down.” No matter how low he has his stereo already, it’s always turn it down. And of course, his hair, a major source of contention. Naturally darker than Corey’s, Vince’s looks almost black, so much so that even his own mother ac-

Part One

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cused him once of dyeing it. His dad hates the color, hates the cut: in the front long bangs hang down around Vince’s eyes and in the back it’s clipped short, the bottom almost shaved. “If you’re going to cut it,” his dad says, “then cut the whole damn thing.” Before this look, Vince had let his hair grow out, almost chin-length, and his dad hated that, too. “You look like a hippie,” he muttered one night. For once, Vince listened. He’s called a lot of things in school — punk, Goth, loser, freak — and pretty, perky, popular people cringe from him in the halls, but he sure as hell ain’t a hippie. Hippies wear flowers and bright paisleys and sing about peace and love. Vince likes black, as dark as it gets, and the closest he’ll come to listening to popular music is Garbage, just because he likes that song about the rain. So out came the razor, and he sat on the closed toilet seat in the upstairs bathroom and cut his hair, everything but the two long strands just in front of his ears. They frame his face and give him an almost elfin appearance. He’s not sure what he thinks of the style yet, but his dad hates it so it’s staying for now. Everything about Vince bothers his father. Some days he wonders if he were to leave, run away or just move out, would anyone even notice? His mom, definitely, because he helps her out around the house. But they don’t talk the way they used to, when he was younger and more sensitive to the taunts of the kids at school, and he’d come home in the afternoons only to throw himself down on his bed and struggle against tears that wanted to fall. Then she would step softly into his room, sit on the edge of the bed, rub his back and let him talk. She’s a great listener, his mom — she’d have to be to live with someone like his dad. But Vince is seventeen now, the names don’t hurt him anymore, and when he comes home from school he’s careful to lock the door to his room so no one will bust in while he jerks off. At the head of the table, his father chases his meal with a glass of scotch — because he has a high-paying job and they live in one of the better subdivisions, he gets drunk on expensive alcohol, nothing cheap like wine or beer. Vince knows what’s coming when his dad sets the glass back down and turns towards him, his bleary gaze already hardening. “I bet you have something brilliant to say about this,” he declares, and then he waits to see just what light Vince will shed on the subject. “No,” Vince replies, speaking to the food on his plate. His father can’t stand that. “Look at me when you answer.” Slowly, well aware of his mother’s and Corey’s stares, Vince raises his head an inch or two, no more. He turns slightly and gives his dad ten full seconds in the spotlight of his dark eyes. In his mind he counts them, one, two, three, all the way up to ten, before he repeats himself, enunciating clearly. “I said no.” “No what?” his dad prompts. Fuck him for being a stickler for form. Vince

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Another five seconds, the time stretched like a rubber band between them, threatening to snap. Finally Vince believes he sees something in his dad’s face that might be discomfort or defeat, he’s not sure which, but it’s enough to make him say, “No, sir.” His dad clears his throat. For a moment no one speaks. Vince thinks he’s just about had enough of this — dinner and his father, the complacent way his mom just lets the pompous dick go on and on about whatever comes to mind, Corey’s adoration and quick agreement with everything he says, as if he’s ten feet tall in the kid’s eyes. Time to head on up to his room, the only sanctuary in this house. Even if he does nothing more than lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling with the lights out, it would be better than this. From the living room, a reporter’s voice drifts into the silence that hangs like a funeral pall over the dinner table. Something about a local Catholic church, Vince only half-listens because he’s not into religion. He used to do that scene, CCD after mass every week, Bible school in the summer, retreats and lock-ins, when his parents made him. He doesn’t go anymore because he doesn’t quite believe. He doesn’t quite not believe, either — there’s a cynical part of him that thinks if God exists, then someone somewhere is looking down at life in this back-ass town and having a great big cosmic laugh, but he can’t ignore another, deeper voice that whispers maybe, just maybe, he should believe a little bit, just in case. In case God isn’t a bigot like his father. In case God just sort of forgot about him and will apologize for putting him through all this shit when he finally dies. Suddenly his dad sputters, “Damn homos.” The vehemence in the word is surprising enough to make Vince look up again, his brow furrowed. He doesn’t know what prompted this latest outburst, but before he can ask, his dad goes on to explain. His voice drowns out the TV, and with something like indignant anger he looks down the table at his wife. “You know, Sylvia, these perverts are everywhere anymore. Every time you turn around, it’s another priest molesting a child. A priest …” He pauses, but Vince knows that’s not the end of it. He’ll eat another two or three bites, mull it over in his head, stew about homosexuality in general and gay priests in particular, and then start up again. “In CCD?” Corey asks, eyes bright. They shine like polished pennies when he’s excited. “We talked about —” “Goddamn faggots,” his father interrupts. Vince glances at his mom, whose nervous gaze darts around like a butterfly, unable to land on one thing for very long before flitting away to something new. For a brief second, she even dares to look at him, at his mouth, his nose, his eyes, and her lips twist in disapproval but she doesn’t say anything. She looks away as his father continues. “Shouldn’t put men like that on the altar. Going after the children, that’s just sad. Sack all the ones with homosexual tendencies —” he seesaws his hand, a piece of pork roast Part One

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dangling precariously from his fork, in what Vince thinks is a pathetic attempt at imitating effeminacy. His dad doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but that’s never stopped him before. “Can’t trust a gay man around kids and you know it. Look at your Uncle Harry.” “He wasn’t gay,” Vince says. It’s not his uncle, it’s his mother’s, and he wasn’t gay, he was just a lecherous old man with the shakes. Just because he had that silly shit-eating grin on his face whenever someone sat in his lap didn’t mean he was getting off on it. With some difficulty, his father gives Vince his full attention. “And you would know?” he asks. The scotch is well diffused in his system by now, and there’s an edge to his voice that Vince has heard before. “I know gay men don’t prey on kids,” Vince sighs. This is an old battle, one he’s weary of fighting. So they have differing views on the subject, can’t they just accept that and move on? But no — his dad is the type who demands only one opinion under his roof, one mind, and that’s his own. Look at Corey, he’s still young enough to buy into that whole father knows best routine. Not Vince. He’s simply biding his time until he graduates, then he’s out of here. Picking at the food on his plate, which he already knows he isn’t going to eat, he tries, “A man doesn’t mess with boys because he’s queer, Dad. He does it because he’s sick. It’s like saying all straight men just want to tear into little girls.” He looks around the table for support and doesn’t find it — his mother is fiddling with the napkin in her lap so she doesn’t have to look at either husband or son, so she won’t have to choose sides, and Corey eyes Vince with suspicion, as if the person across from him can’t possibly be his own brother. “Gay men aren’t pedophiles,” Vince explains. “They love other men, not —” “Did I give you permission to speak?” his dad asks abruptly. Permission. The word tears through Vince, ricochets inside him like the little silver marble in a pinball machine once it’s put into play. Permission … “Screw you,” Vince announces. His dad’s face reddens. “What the hell did you just say?” Vince’s chair scrapes across the hardwood floor as he stands. “I’m not sitting here listening to your bullshit any longer,” he says. He’s had enough. As he picks up his plate, his mother finds her voice. “Honey, sit down and finish your dinner —” “I’m done.” Vince doesn’t bother to push his chair back in, just turns and storms into the kitchen. His plate gets dropped unceremoniously into the sink to clatter against the stainless steel. His drink he finishes first, then tosses the cup in after the rest. His dad’s voice carries in from the other room, loud because he wants Vince to hear him. “I don’t know why I put up with him, Sylvia. I honestly don’t. Such disrespect —” Vince

4

“Cliff, please,” his mother starts. It’s the most she’s said to her husband all night. “My father never stood for that crap.” In the kitchen, Vince looks at his reflection in the window above the sink and mimics his dad, MY father never stood for that. Yeah, and his father made him walk to school barefoot when he complained about how his new shoes gave him blisters. Uphill, five miles, in snow, to hear Cliff Sanford tell it. His dad is full of shit. His mom tries again. “Cliff, he can hear you.” “So?” Vince closes his eyes and can see the self-righteous bastard puffing up like a damn blowfish. “This is my house, Sylvia. I’ll say what I want, when I want, and if someone here doesn’t like it, he can leave. As long as he’s living under my roof, he’s going to have to live by my rules.” That my roof, my rules bit again, Vince is sick of it. “You don’t give a shit about anyone else but yourself,” he calls out. He can feel his dad bristle from here, and he grips the edge of the sink in frustration. “This is my house, too —” “Do you pay the mortgage?” his dad yells out. “Or any of the bills? Because if you do, son, I haven’t seen any of the money. Until you start lending out a hand around here —” “Cliff, stop it,” his mom admonishes. Vince hears her chair push back, much softer than his had been, and he knows she’s coming in here. He should go upstairs just to get away from all this. “You couldn’t pay me to live here,” he mutters as she comes up behind him. She nudges him aside to get to the sink. “Don’t let him get to you,” she murmurs, quiet so his dad won’t overhear. “I do plenty around here.” The hell with him. “I know you do.” She scrapes the remaining food from her plate down the drain, then flicks the switch for the garbage disposal. A deafening whirr fills the kitchen, drowning out anything his dad might be going on about in the dining room. Flicking the switch off, his mom pokes a fork into the drain to make sure everything’s down and says, “You two used to get along so well when you were younger. What happened to that?” I grew up, Vince thinks. He realized somewhere along the way that his dad didn’t have all the answers, didn’t even know half the damn questions, but he still had something to say about all of them anyway. He can’t admit ignorance, he hates difference, he won’t tolerate any deviation from his way of life, his mindset, what he believes is the only way, the right way. Anything that doesn’t fit into his predetermined mold of the way it should be is filed away as immoral, unAmerican, wrong. Vince fits into that category. Does his mother actually think he likes these arguments? “I’m going upstairs,” Vince answers. It’s the best he can do — he doesn’t like Part One

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to fight with his mom. It’s not her fault his dad is such an ass. Maybe he can sneak out later, just get away, sometime after midnight when everyone else is asleep and he should be, too. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Planting a quick kiss on his mother’s powdery cheek, he mumbles, “Thanks for dinner. The food was good. Too bad I can’t say the same about the company.” Tears glisten in her eyes because she hates this fighting. Wait until Corey grows up, Vince wants to say, but he has a feeling his brother won’t go through the same phase. He already hangs out with the in crowd, well-to-do kids with designer clothes and preppy haircuts, the kind Vince never fit in with at school despite the fact that he lives in the same neighborhood. They’re plastic, all of them, with their perfect smiles and perfect hair. When he was younger, Vince tried desperately to be one of them. His family has the money, he can afford the clothes. Once he wanted to be popular. Now he just wants to set them all aflame, watch the plastic melt and run together. Watch them burn. How can he explain this to his mother, who was top of her class in high school and went to college on a softball scholarship? She was the cheerleader, the straight-A student, the homecoming queen. And he’s her oldest son — how can he possibly hope she’d understand that he isn’t one of the sheep herded down the halls of his school? That he has a mind like the universe, expanding beyond this little town, this small family, this world? “If you just try to fit in,” she’s told him, but he did that. He tried to laugh when they laugh, to get upset over the same stupid shit that bothers them, to go out for sports. It didn’t work. He felt like the Tasmanian Devil inside, whirling around maniacally, trying to get out, trying to escape, and no one heard his cries for help. No one cared. Another couple of months, he thinks. It’s November now, he’s almost done with this half of the school year. A few more months and he’ll graduate, he’ll leave this place behind. His whole life has been seventeen years of winding up and he’s so ready for release. He can’t wait until he’s out on his own because then he’ll finally put all this behind him and come alive. When he starts for the hall, his mom catches his elbow and asks, “Take the trash out, dear? Tomorrow’s pick-up.” Vince sighs. “Mom —” Her face closes as she turns away. “Fine,” she says, picking up a rumpled carton of cigarettes from the counter. She taps the pack against her palm to extract a smoke, then fumbles with a lighter as she tries to get it lit. Her hands shake so bad that the small flame flickers unsteadily. “I don’t ask for much around here, Vincent.” She only calls him that when she’s angry. Vince doesn’t know why she’s mad at him — he didn’t do anything, damn. “We all have things we don’t like to do. I have the dishes and laundry and meals, which is more than the rest of you guys. Corey has the cat box. You have the trash.” Two white trash bags sit in front of the stove, tied up and overstuffed beVince

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cause his mother always packs them full until he can barely lift them. Vince looks at them in disgust. “What’s Dad have?” he asks, bitter. His father doesn’t do shit around the house. “Vincent,” his mother warns. Her cigarette is lit now and she drags in a deep breath. The tremble in her hands is almost gone. He doesn’t expect more of a response, and she doesn’t disappoint him. Disgusted he heads down the hall, his boots clomping on the hardwood floor with a hollow sound that echoes inside him. Thump thump, like his heart. “Vincent —” “I’m getting my coat,” he replies. “Jesus. I said I’d take it out.” Actually no, he didn’t, but he will. She’s right, it is his job. At least someone here helps out around the house, he thinks, snagging his trench coat from where it hangs in the hall closet. The coat is unlined and rustles when he walks. The first time he wore it, he thought everyone could hear the swish of his sleeves against the sides of the coat. Now he doesn’t care. He likes to think the noise bothers people. It bothers his mom. She doesn’t like the coat. “Makes you look like a hood,” she’s told him. When he enters the kitchen, the look she gives him is disdainful and haughty. “Must you wear that?” “It’s chilly out,” he explains, not that the coat will keep him warm. He wears it mostly out of spite. When he bends over to pick up the trash bags, his mother breezes by, ruffling the tails of his duster. “Just take it out,” she says. He isn’t sure if she means the trash or his coat. Maybe both. In the dining room, she begins to clear the table — he hears the chink of silverware but looks over his shoulder anyway to make sure she’s gone. Then he straightens up and reaches for her cigarettes. Menthol lights, the toilet water of smokes, but he’ll take what he can get. He shakes out two, stacks them one above the other behind his ear, and pockets the lighter before she can come back and catch him in the act. Just two cigarettes. With the way she’s been going lately, she’ll think she smoked them herself. The bags seem lighter this time and when he reaches the front door, he even swings one over his shoulder like a backpack. It’s the thought of getting out of this stuffy home for a few minutes — that alone lightens the load. It’s the promise of a smoke outside, in the dark, alone. It’s away from his dad — even if he has to hang out in the trash alley behind the house, it’s out, and sometimes that’s all that matters.

OUTSIDE IT’S COLDER than he thought it would be. Not really windy, but sharp.

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As the screen door slams shut behind him, Vince hurries down the steps and off the porch. Out of the glare of the overhead light, into the cool darkness that kisses his skin and eases beneath his coat to tickle around his waist. The night feels intimate, soothing like relief. He waits until he’s halfway around the house before he transfers both trash bags to one hand. Plucking a cigarette from behind his ear, he sticks it between his lips and grimaces at the minty taste. He doesn’t know why the fuck anyone wants to smoke menthol. His dad goes for the manly cigarettes, Marlboro and Winston, but his pack was in the living room and in full view of the dining room table — there’s no way Vince could’ve swiped those. He just started smoking not too long ago, and these past few months he’s taken to snitching a cancer stick whenever he can. He keeps them in an old stationary tin beneath his bed and takes one with him when everyone else is asleep and he needs to get out. Usually it’s just to the backyard, or the trash alley, or maybe the hill over by the junior high, somewhere quiet, someplace alone, where he can think whatever comes to mind and he doesn’t have to talk to anyone. Sometimes he gets off on it, the solitude, the chill night. He’ll unzip his jeans and push his briefs down below his balls, sit with his legs up, arms resting on his knees, dick as hard as rock jutting from his crotch. The damp grass is delicious on his bare skin, and he thinks of pretty boys while he traces his cock with long, soft strokes. Boys like … admit it, he tells himself, boys like Eric, alright? Eric, star of his school’s football team, who lives on the street behind his, a few houses down. They had been friends since birth, best buds, up until the summer before the ninth grade. And who is he kidding? Vince still thinks of him when he slips outside to jack off beneath the stars. But that’s usually a lot later on, after midnight. After he knows he won’t be seen. For now he’ll settle for the cigarettes, or one of them at least. His own stash is getting low — maybe he’ll hold onto the other for tonight. He tries to light the cigarette in his mouth and can’t seem to hold steady enough while he walks to get it going. Thinking of Eric has made his hands tremble the way his mom’s did after dinner, but he doesn’t dare stop. If she looks out the kitchen window and sees him standing in the driveway, bags on the ground while he fiddles with the lighter, she’ll come out after him. “Vince, honey, is everything alright?” What will he say to that? Sure Mom, just can’t get your damn wimpy-ass smoke to light, is all. Why don’t you switch to a real brand? That would go over big. She doesn’t know he steals her cigarettes. He slips the lighter back into his pocket and juggles the bags until he carries one in each hand again. Time enough to light up in the alley. Vince walks faster — the bags are getting heavy — and his boots ring off the concrete drive into the night. Past the house, the driveway peters out into coarse gravel that crunches beneath his feet. As he nears the garage, a motion-sensitive light clicks Vince

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on, flooding the backyard. Each blade of grass stands out stark in the white spotlight, and long shadows splash against the house. He has to be careful of that light when he comes out here after hours — it shines right into his parents’ bedroom, right on the damn pillow where his dad sleeps. Vince feels like a thief sometimes, stepping through his mother’s flowers to keep close to the house, just so that light won’t find him and pin him to the wall. At the moment, though, he’s grateful for the light because it is dark. Behind the garage, a wooden privacy fence skirts their property, the gate kept padlocked, and without the light, he’d never find the key. They keep it up high in the eaves of the garage, where Vince has to stretch to reach it. This is why his job is the trash and not the cat box. Corey can’t reach the key. Vince can’t either, not really. He stands on his toes and brushes his hand across the beam, his fingers stumbling through cobwebs and over cocoons, all kinds of shit he doesn’t want to think about. For a brief instant he touches cool metal and then the key falls to the ground, into a pile of rotting leaves that someone forgot to rake. That someone would be him. He did a half-assed job on the yard this past weekend, raking while Corey bagged and his lazy father sat on the porch to watch. Supervising, he called it. Bullshit. When he bends over, blood rushes to his head and his stomach churns — he doesn’t want to be doing this crap. But he finds the key and gets the padlock open, leaving the key in the lock like he always does and the lock hanging from the bolt. The gate swings out into the alley with a thin squeal. Pulling both bags out along behind him, Vince kicks the gate shut. The trash cans are against the back of the garage. Vince hauls one bag into a half-empty can, then the next. Finally, he thinks, rooting for the lighter again. The cigarette has begun to get soggy in his mouth — the filter feels glued to his lip. Cupping his hands against a scant breeze, he lights the cigarette and takes a deep breath. Hot, sweet smoke fills his lungs. He holds it in, counting down from ten. Nine. Eight. Seven six five. Four three twoone exhale. His anger leaves him with the smoke. Alone. Vince looks down the alley, sees nothing but a narrow gravel path carved in the darkness, and decides maybe he should take a walk, just to cool off. His dad is a fuckhead. If Vince is lucky, the bastard will be passed out or in bed by the time he comes back. Turning his collar up against the wind, he shoves his hands deep into the pockets of his trench coat and huddles into himself. The junior high is just a few blocks away. There’s a hill behind the school, above the girls’ soccer field, where he can sit and dream of somewhere else he’d rather be. A place where the shops don’t close at nine, where the streets come alive at night. Where he’s one of the pretty people, because Lord knows he isn’t one here. He starts down the alley, heading for the school. There was a time when he Part One

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could’ve fit in, he knows. He grew up with the popular kids, went to the same after-school daycare, went to all the birthday parties at skating rinks and pony farms, played baseball with the other boys whose dads signed them up for Little League. Back when he still palled around with Eric. Then he had been part of the in crowd too, though Corey doesn’t believe it. Did his fair share of dances, dressed in khakis and brand name clothes, yes sir. Ask him what he wanted to do when he grew up and what did he say? A 9 to 5 job like his dad’s, marriage, 2.5 kids, the American dream. Only that wasn’t him, none of it. In the summer before he started high school he came to a realization that he didn’t want to live the rest of his life the way everyone wanted him to — he didn’t want the business degree, the wife and kids, none of it. He likes movies, wants to study film, dreams in storyboards and screen wipes and camera fades. And he’s not into girls, he likes pretty boys with wild hair, bright eyes, wide mouths. Boys like Eric, he thinks, remembering, and when he got up the courage to admit it that summer before ninth grade, what happened? The jerk laughed. Laughed. The cruel sound still echoes inside of him. The tip of his cigarette winks red in the night. He puts one foot in front of the other and tries not to think of the houses around him or the fact that Eric’s is at the end of the block. From the alley, the lots all look the same, those big blue trash cans from the city no indication of who lives on the other side of the fences. Except Vince does know — he’s lived here his whole damn life, he knows this street and its people as intimately as he knows his own family. The Krauses beside his house, the Browns next to them, the widow Maker next, who is never referred to by any other name. The first time Vince heard the term in history class, he thought of the old woman down the street and the cats that wind around her legs whenever she answers the door. Across the alley there’s the Cahills, the only black family on this block. Here they are, in the new millennium, and his mother still lowers her voice when she speaks of them. “Katherine, the pretty black girl behind us, you know who I mean? It’s okay, they’re nice people.” Next to them is Coach Thomas, pushing ninety and still called Coach even though no one remembers which team he headed. And on the end of the block, the Somers. Just the thought of passing their place makes Vince want to turn around and forget about going the junior high. Eric Somers. The same age as Vince, in the same grade, Eric plays on football team. And the basketball, and baseball, and tennis. Between classes, his infectious laugh is a bright splash in the halls. Vince hates that laugh. He keeps his head down so he won’t accidentally see that smile. He dreads going to his locker — his own last name, Sanford, is too close to Eric’s for comfort. He dropped a class just to switch lunches so he wouldn’t have to stare at the boy from across the cafeteria. Vince

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But he’s not in school, he’s in the alley that run behind his house. It’s dark out here now and he’s alone. No one will know if his steps falter as he approaches the end of the block. No one will see him stop in the middle of the alley and look up, over the fence and through the leaves clinging stubbornly to the trees, up to the one lit window on the second floor that he knows is Eric’s bedroom. It’s been four years since he was last up there but in his mind it still belongs to the boy who used to be his best friend. He remembers the bunk beds against one wall, himself sprawled out on the bottom bunk with one foot propped up on the ladder, the other flat against the bottom of the mattress above him. In his thoughts someone’s up there. He imagines he can hear steady breathing, the creak of springs, a rustling of bed sheets — He’s so caught up in the thought, half memory, half fantasy, that he almost doesn’t notice when the gate behind the Somers’ house swings open. With two steps, he dissolves into the shadows on the far side of the alley. Jesus, his parents still schmooze with Eric’s. What if someone caught him out here? What would be said the next time they got together? “Funny thing, Cliff, the way that Vincent of yours hangs out in the alley at night. About scared the stuffing out of Maggie, wouldn’t you know? She took out the trash and there he was, just standing there, staring at our place like he was casing the joint.” God, no. A trash bag is tossed out into the alley, one of those black twenty gallon ones used for lawn work. Someone raked their yard today, Mr. Somers then. Another bag appears, and a third, and Vince is just thinking he might be able to slink away into the darkness without being seen when the gate opens wider and Eric himself steps out. Somewhere inside of him, Vince hears the echo of childlike laughter bubbling up from the past, ghostlike and haunting, breaking easily through his defenses. In his pockets, his hands begin to sweat and he balls them into helpless fists, his nails digging into his skin. He’ll have crescent moon-shaped indentions in his palms later, he squeezes them so tight. Eric, with blonde wavy hair cut short in the back and left to curl on top. Eric, with his damn letterman’s jacket across broad shoulders, snapped at his narrow waist against the cold night air. Eric, with startling blue eyes that remind Vince of gel icing used to write names on birthday cakes. Those curls now fall in front of those eyes, and those shoulders clench as he stoops to pick up two of the bags. He glances around, his gaze flickering over the shadows where Vince stands, then turns his attention back to the trash. He lifts two bags, tosses them into the nearest can one at a time, and bends down for the last one. “Hey, Vince.” How …? He’s not sure. The glow of his cigarette, maybe, or some premonition, or maybe he can see in the dark like a cat, who the hell knows? Eric sees him, him. He remembers his name. Without taking his hands from his pockets or the cigarette from his mouth, Vince mutters, “Eric, hey.” Part One

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The final bag sails effortlessly into the trash can. By all rights, Eric should head inside now, but he doesn’t. Instead, he closes the gate gently, careful not to let it latch shut. Then, turning towards Vince, he jams his hands into his pockets and looks across the alley. At him. “Hey,” he says again. This could go on all night. I was just leaving, Vince thinks, but when he opens his mouth to say the words, Eric glances down the alley both ways like it’s a busy intersection in the middle of town before trotting over to the shadows where he stands. Vince catches a faint whiff of Obsession cologne that’s gone when the wind picks up. Even under cover of darkness, he doesn’t look at Eric directly. He can’t. Instead he looks at some spot on the Eric’s chest where shiny pins glint in the starlight. He should step away but a fence is behind him, there’s a mulberry bush to his right, Eric to his left standing so close — there’s no place else to go. The alley, but that would look like defeat. He’s supposed to be nonchalant, isn’t he? Apathetic, unimpressed. That’s the picture he tries to paint of himself, aloof in his classes, in school. It keeps the taunts from stinging too much. It takes away the pain. Eric nods at him and asks, “You have another one of those?” Vince tries to scowl as he plucks the second cigarette from behind his ear. He doesn’t quite make it. “Thanks, man,” Eric sighs. Their fingers touch when he takes the offered smoke. Vince watches him stick it between lips that are too red for a boy, they always were. “You have a light?” Vince’s hand curls around the lighter in his pocket. He wonders what his fingers would feel like in that hair. If he pulls them from his pocket he doesn’t know whether or not he’ll be able to control himself, he’ll want to touch those blonde curls. Here in the shadows they’re still golden, as if the light that tints them isn’t a reflection of the moon or the stars but something glowing from within, a nimbus like the halos of light that surround the heads of saints in Catholic paintings. Maybe if he lifts the hair from Eric’s brow, fists his hands in those curls and tugs as hard as he can, maybe he can find the source of that light. He wants to know where it comes from, why it fills this boy, why it makes him perfect and always has. Before he can hand over the lighter, though, Eric bends close to him, like he wants a quick kiss. “Hold still a minute,” he mumbles, his breath cinnamony on Vince’s cheek. Carefully he presses the tip of his cigarette to the lit end of Vince’s, one hand cupped around the smokes to keep out the breeze. Vince stares at the blonde eyelashes just inches from his face. He imagines how soft they would be, feathering on his skin. When Eric draws in a deep breath to light his cigarette, Vince hopes that he doesn’t smell bad. Musty perhaps, because his coat’s been hanging in the closet, and smoky from the cigarette, but please don’t let him smell it on me, he prays. Lust and fear and a childish anticipation, a hope that Vince

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bloomed the moment Eric said his name. He wants to pluck those damn eyelashes, one by one, just to see those eyes fill with tears. Eric laughs, a magical sound. This close Vince thinks it’s deafening. “This is like when we were little,” he says, straightening up. His cigarette is lit now and above the ember tip, his eyes sparkle like water in the night. Incredibly, he’s still looking at Vince. “Remember? When Mom used to say I couldn’t go past the hitching post and you’d meet me halfway.” He nods at a decorative post that marks the edge of Coach Thomas’ yard. It’s a wooden pole about waist high with a cast-iron horse’s head on top of it, a ring of iron through its teeth like a bridle. Years ago they considered that post the halfway mark between their houses. Mrs. Somers used it as a boundary — when she was angry or upset, Eric was confined to his side. He would call Vince and hiss into the phone, “Showdown at high noon, pardner,” like they were cowboys and rode horses they could tie in the alley. “You know,” Eric says, nudging him with an elbow before Vince can move away, “back when we were kids?” He hopes his voice is emotionless when he replies, “We aren’t kids anymore, Eric.” He doesn’t have to add that they aren’t friends, either. Eric nods. “I know.” For a long moment they just stand there, hands in their pockets, each lost in his own thoughts. Vince tries to think up some excuse to get away from this pretty boy who makes him feel clumsy and awkward, but nothing comes to mind. Damn him for taking out the trash at the same time Vince was in the alley. Damn me, Vince adds wryly, for stopping to stare in the first place. Silence wafts around them like Eric’s lingering cologne, thick and warm and heady, enveloping them both until Vince is quite sure he couldn’t leave if he wanted to. He begins to suspect he might not want to, and that scares him. What could possibly keep him here? There’s nothing to say, nothing between them, no common ground. Once the cigarettes are smoked and the filters crushed into the ground, Eric will head back inside and Vince will be free to go on his way. Eric probably has friends waiting for him, things to do. He won’t think of this moment again. And Vince … well, he won’t think of anything else. As if searching for something to talk about, Eric remarks, “It’s been a few years.” Vince isn’t sure what he means by that. Since they last spoke? Since you laughed at me when I told you how I felt? Three years, two months, and five days, but who’s counting? Taking a deep drag on his cig, Eric asks, “So what are you up to now?” Vince shrugs. “Not much.” A puff on his smoke, exhale through his nose, that shit burns but he likes the pain, it makes this moment real and not just some figment of his sordid imagination. “Standing here,” he adds. He can feel the indifference settle into him like dew. “Talking to you.” Part One

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That gets him a laugh. Eric says, “No, I mean …” He motions with one hand — he means before now. What Vince is up to without him. But he doesn’t want to say it that way, so he changes the subject. “How’s school going this year? I don’t really see you around much.” “It’s okay.” Truth of the matter is, Vince has damn near a 4.0 in all his classes. He’s already been accepted at an arts school somewhere far away from here. His parents don’t know it yet — they think he’s too anti-everything to apply for college, but he’s on scholarship, thank you very much. He gets home before they do and catches the mail before they can see it, so he’s managed to keep it from them so far. He’s not sure when he’ll break the news. Next May, after graduation? August, when he has to pack up his things to go? He doesn’t know yet. Glancing at Eric, Vince murmurs, “How about you? Things okay?” Eric grunts in response. “Sure,” he says, but Vince suspects it’s an automatic reply. “Just fine. Homecoming’s next week, big game, there’s even talk of scouts coming out, you know?” “I’m not really up on all that,” Vince tells him. He knows nothing about the sport of football but he does know that Eric’s number 23, receiver for the team because he’s fast on his feet, and Vince has seen him play. From the hill behind the junior high, in the dark, watching the score board across the street and chainsmoking stolen cigarettes until his head spins. Sometimes Vince will sneak in and watch the end of the last quarter from beneath the bleachers. He can close his eyes and picture the way Eric shakes his curls when he pulls off his helmet as he comes in from the field. He hates football, Vince reminds himself. He hates blonde hair that whorls above too-blue eyes. Gotta get out of here, he thinks without moving. He’s rooted in place by that unforgettable laugh. “No, I guess not.” Eric looks at him openly — Vince can’t meet that frank gaze for long. The most he can manage are little darting peeks, nothing overt, nothing that can come back and haunt him later. When Eric nudges him with his elbow Vince almost staggers into the alley, he’s that uptight. “So what are you up to now?” Vince starts, “I told you —” “I mean now,” Eric clarifies. “Right now, out here in the alley, tonight.” At Vince’s scowl, he adds softly, “I’m just curious, that’s all.” Oh. “Taking out the trash,” Vince says, “same as you.” Only it sounds like an excuse, doesn’t it? Because his house is in the middle of the block and here he is, hanging out behind Eric’s on the corner. Two houses separate theirs. He has no real reason to be over here. “I was sort of going for a walk, I don’t know. It’s not really what you think.” With a cryptic look, Eric says, “You’d be surprised what I think.” Vince isn’t so sure. They all think the same around here, that’s the main reason he tries to make himself so different. If he dressed like them, he’d have to Vince

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think like them, it’s the herd mentality and he’s not buying into that. He knows high school isn’t going to be the best time of his life — he has the rest of eternity stretching out in front of him, he won’t let this be as good as it gets. What will this all matter ten years from now? The proms and the games and Eric’s letterman jacket, they won’t mean shit down the road. Quietly, Vince suggests, “You’re thinking what the hell am I doing freaking around the back of your house in the dark. You’ll finish up the smoke and head inside and whoever’s in there waiting for you will ask what took you so long, and you’ll go you know that weird kid Vincent Sanford? He’s out in the alley wanking off.” Eric gives him a sharp look. “You weren’t —” “No, I wasn’t,” Vince says, a little angry that he let that slip. He’s said too much, he should go on home. “I’m just saying you think I’m crazy for being out here, and you and your friends will laugh about it when you go back in.” Vince glances at Eric but can’t read the expression on his face. Anger? Sadness? Shadows darken his eyes like bruises. “I don’t laugh at you,” he says softly, his words quite clear in the night. With the toe of his boot, Vince scuffs the dirt at his feet, unsure of how to respond. “Yeah, well,” he begins, but there’s nothing after that thought and he lets the sentence hang between them unfinished. He nods at the gate that leads to Eric’s backyard and the rest of his life. “Not anymore, huh? Your friends do.” Because Eric doesn’t answer, Vince knows he’s right. Another toke on his cigarette and he exhales slowly, smoke circling through his lungs and throat and nose to mist around them. Another sideways glance at the perfect boy beside him and he mumbles, “I should maybe go.” “Why?” Eric asks. Another question Vince can’t quite answer. Because this is torture, he thinks, and it is, standing next to someone like Eric. He imagines hitting that smooth skin until it bruises, until it splits open and bleeds, until that smile disappears and those eyes cloud over in pain. Until you feel what I feel. He doesn’t want to think about what it is he might feel. Dropping his cigarette to the ground, Vince lets the last of the smoke out through parted lips. As he grinds the butt into the dirt, he mutters something about leaving, he’s not sure what he says. “Going for a walk” or “Time to head home,” or maybe even “Gotta get out of here, gotta go,” he doesn’t know for sure. Whatever it is, it sets him into motion and he steps out into the alley, heading for the end of the block and the cool darkness beyond. If he can just get away without saying anything else … Eric stops him with a hand on his arm. The touch sears through Vince’s coat to burn his skin. “Vince, wait.” He counts to ten. Okay, eight, but it’s close enough. Then he turns and glares at Eric, pouring everything he feels into that one look, all the anger, the desire, the pain. With a twist of his shoulder, he shakes Eric off and his arm grows cold Part One

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where he had been. “What?” he growls. Is that indecision flickering across that pretty face? “Don’t go just yet,” Eric says, his voice low between them. Frowning, he smoothes a hand down Vince’s sleeve, ironing the wrinkles out of the material with the constant stroke of his fingers. “What happened to us, huh? Don’t you ever think about that? About all the times you spent the night over my house or we camped out in your backyard, or all the birthday parties we went to, or the things we used to do.” A faint smile, those too-blue eyes suddenly shy, and Eric ducks his head, watches the patterns his own fingers make on Vince’s arm. Stop touching me, Vince thinks. Don’t ever stop touching me. “Remember the ghost house?” Eric asks. “Whatever happened to that, you know? Or the fort we built back behind the park? We used to ride our bikes out there every damn day when we were kids, Vince.” “We aren’t kids anymore,” Vince whispers, but there’s no conviction in his voice. Eric has him mesmerized, his mind flooded with the past and their easy friendship, the way it used to be before a stupid confession changed them both. His fault, Vince tries to remind himself, he was the one who laughed, but who was it that opened his big mouth in the first place? Me. More gently than he intends, he says, “I should go.” Eric’s mouth twitches in a half-hearted smile. “Home?” he asks. Where his father is. Where his mom will ask why it took him so long to take out the trash. Where the noise and the smoke will burn this moment from his mind, this hand on his arm, this boy with beseeching eyes. “I said I was going for a walk,” Vince replies. “Just down to the junior high.” “I’ll come with you.” Eric doesn’t ask, doesn’t wait to be asked. He just takes one last, long drag on his smoke before tossing it down, snubbing it out. Vince knows he should protest, or hurry on without him, or say he’s changed his mind, he really is going home, but he doesn’t. His dick throbs in his pants, his palms sweat, his heart races. When Eric looks at him, expectant, something he sees in Vince’s face makes him ask, “If that’s okay?” No, Vince thinks. But because he knows that’s not what he’ll say, he keeps his mouth shut.

THEY’VE LIVED AROUND the block from each other all their lives and Vince hates to admit it but Eric used to be more of a brother to him than Corey is now. They knew too much about each other, shared too much — their lives were too intertwined to separate them. As children they were together every day after school and all summer long. It was never a question of is Eric spending the night or is Vince eating over for lunch? They lived in two houses, shared two

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sets of parents, laughed and played and loved with a carefree innocence that shattered three years ago, two months, and five days. But who’s counting? Vince doesn’t recall the exact moment when he realized he was falling in love with Eric but it was sometime right after he turned fourteen, and he fought the feeling as long as he could. Thinking of his friend made his body flush hot then cold then hot again, like he was running a fever and couldn’t seem to regulate his temperature. He woke up in the morning with Eric on his mind and could barely finish breakfast before he was rushing out into the backyard, cutting through the alley to see him. But once there he’d change his mind, he couldn’t stand to see his friend, he’d linger in the shadows by Eric’s garage and pray he died in the night so Vince wouldn’t have to play with him that day. He heard Eric’s voice in his dreams, felt his laughter in his mind, dwelled on every single accidental touch of hand, press of leg or arm, that it drove him crazy trying not to brush against his friend. He became mean, petty, picking on Eric for no reason whatsoever — he loved to make him cry. One of his favorite things to do that summer, he remembers quite well, was to sneak up behind Eric and grab the bottom of his shirt, pull it up over his head, and before he could react, drop the kid’s pants to his knees, especially if they were outside. Eric would cry out, “Hey!” and struggle with his clothes while Vince collapsed to the ground in a fit of giggles, his gaze glued to bright, tight briefs that dazzled white above tanned skin. Does Eric remember that? Vince wonders. He would have to go to the bathroom afterwards and with the lights out, the door locked, he would drop his own shorts and masturbate to that image. Eric’s pants to his knees, his back exposed. In these thoughts Vince was bold enough to pull the briefs off, as well, and the mental picture of the tip of his dick pressed to the cleft of those pale buttocks was enough to get him off right there. Into the toilet usually, or in the tub, or once in the sink as he stood on the closed toilet seat and watched himself in the mirror in Mrs. Somers’ downstairs bathroom with Eric on the other side of the door, yelling that he was going to get Vince back for it this time. He masked his grunt of pleasure in more laughter and splattered the bar of soap by the faucet when he came. He loved Eric; he hated him. There was no in-between — passionate lust or all-consuming hate, one extreme or the other, he couldn’t decide. Couldn’t stand to be in the same room as his friend but couldn’t bear to let him out of his sight. Some days he wanted to hurt Eric, just beat the boy senseless and leave him on the ground, bloodied and bruised, for the way he made him feel. And some days Vince wanted to wrap his arms around him, crush him in a smothering embrace, hug him close and hide him away deep inside his own heart, protect him from the rest of the world. What was wrong with him? What was it about his friend that made Vince act the way he did, made him want to act that way, crazy and wild and the whole gamut of emotions that churned through him, things he Part One

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didn’t have names for, feelings he never knew existed until Eric smiled? And, more importantly, how the hell could he possibly get all of it — his mind, his body, his soul — back under his control? Finally he’d had enough. He was going to burst, or spontaneously combust, or do something so violent that it would leave them both reeling and scarred for life. He couldn’t take it anymore, he had to tell Eric what he was going through. What was he going through? He didn’t know, but sometimes when he looked at his friend, he’d catch Eric staring back, eyes glossed over with thoughts Vince believed mirrored his own. They had to — Eric had to feel these same things, they were too powerful to belong to just him alone. He would tell him, yes. He would pour his heart out to Eric and … what? Eric would understand. Because that’s the way the story went, he would understand, it happened in the movies and on TV and in those crappy songs on the radio. People fell in love with their best friends all the time, Vince was no different. He’d tell Eric and he’d hold his breath, waiting for a response. In his naïve, adolescent dreams, his friend would look at him for a long, silent moment, and just as Vince was about to laugh, tell him it was all a joke, he was kidding for Christ’s sake, just at that moment Eric would whisper, “I thought it was just me.” Or maybe, “You too?” Or something along those lines, Vince couldn’t quite work out the details completely. All he knew was that Eric needed to know because he probably felt the same, and even if he didn’t, at least then it would be out in the open. It wouldn’t be a secret anymore. He couldn’t live like this, not with something so intense festering between them. Eric was his friend, his best friend, his soul mate. He would understand. He would have to. But he didn’t.

THEY DON’T SPEAK as they walk. Vince’s boots click on the pavement but beside him Eric moves quietly, his sneakers so silent that every so often Vince has to look over to make sure he’s still there. The first time he looks up, he finds Eric staring back and that unreadable gaze makes him hunch down further into his coat. He should just lead the way around the block. When they reach his house he can tell Eric thanks, see you around, we should do it again sometime, though they won’t. Vince isn’t quite sure why they’re doing it now, or what exactly it is they are doing. Walking. Side by side on the narrow sidewalk, so close that every other step bumps their elbows together. He tries to shrink from the touch but Eric just walks closer, like he doesn’t realize Vince meant to move away. Every now and again Eric clears his throat or rubs his nose. Vince thinks it’s

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to get his attention so he ignores it. If he turns, Eric will take that as an open invite to start a conversation because he’s been raised to think that small talk is preferable to silence. He’ll ask again if Vince remembers a time before this and Vince doesn’t want to think about that. Sure they used to have fun, but that’s over now, in the past. They haven’t talked in years. Tonight is a fluke, that’s all. If anything, it’ll just confirm that they aren’t friends, and Eric can stop wondering what it’d be like if they still were. They follow the street where it curves up a slight rise. To their left are more homes, expensive houses like the ones Eric and Vince live in, with wide front lawns and screened-in patios, two car garages, gravel or paved driveways lined with privacy shrubs to separate one from the next. In the dark they all look the same, copies of one another, dollhouses with pretty, hollow dolls inside. Plastic homes, full of plastic people, all thinking the same thoughts, watching the same TV shows, reveling in their sameness. Vince is different, though, a dark blight on this subdivision, the one imperfect person. When he thinks about the future, he dreams of other places, crowded and busy, not these quiet suburban streets, these wide, open lawns. He wants apartment buildings crumbling on top of one another, streets clogged with taxis and buses, fat women in housecoats and slippers shouting from windows overhead, curlers in their hair. He wants tiny delis and corner cafés, and he wants others like himself. He doesn’t want to be alone forever. He isn’t eighteen yet and he’s already tired of it. Below them to the right sits the junior high. It’s a huge, ugly building where Vince spent three years that culminated in the worst summer of his life. In the darkness it’s lit up like a penitentiary, complete with barred windows on the second floor. Vince suspects that if it weren’t for those bars, half the students would never make it through alive. They’d throw themselves out of the nearest window at exam time, or have some bully do it for them, enough of them are willing. When he was there he wasn’t a full outcast yet — he didn’t do the black clothes, the freaky hair, the nose and eyebrow piercings. He fell under Eric’s protection because they were friends and even then, Eric was well-liked. It was his smile, his attitude, the way he made everything seem so effortless and magical. Vince always felt like a blemish beside this golden boy. Does Eric honestly want Vince to explain what happened between them? Doesn’t he remember that? Vince doesn’t ask. Instead, he steps off the sidewalk and crosses the street, Eric following. How easily they fall back into this dynamic, Vince thinks. Like picking up their friendship right where they left off. That unnerves him, makes him surge ahead, trying to distance himself from Eric, but he can’t. Even without looking back, he knows he can’t. Above the school, a hill falls away from the street in gentle slopes that look treacherous at night. Vince picks a path down through the tall grass carefully, his hands slipping from his pockets as he holds his arms out at his sides for balance. Part One

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He hears Eric stumbling along behind him and once he feels a hand on his back, the briefest touch that’s gone in an instant. What the hell are they doing out here? He needs another cigarette, or two, or three. He needs something to get through this. Halfway down the hill he finds a spot he likes. The grass here is trampled into a slick, damp mat. When Vince sits down, his legs slip out from under him and he lands heavily on his ass. “Watch it,” he calls out, not quite sure where Eric is — The boy slides down beside him like he’s coming into home plate at the bottom of the ninth. “I said watch it,” Vince mutters, catching a handful of Eric’s letterman jacket before he toboggans down the hill. Then a warm, wet hand leans on his leg, branding him through his jeans as Eric pulls himself up to where he sits. He’s laughing, too, damn him. He finds this funny. “Keep it down. Christ, you want to wake up the whole neighborhood or something?” Eric’s hand eases up his thigh, leans down heavily as he shifts into a more comfortable position. Does he have to sit so close? Practically on top of Vince, when there’s more than enough room for them both. A knee presses against Vince’s leg and he pulls away. “Eric —” “Sorry.” He laughs again, sounding anything but. When Vince frowns at him, Eric scoots over and covers his own mouth with one hand to stifle his laughter. His hip rests against Vince’s, doesn’t he know what that does to him? In a quieter voice, Eric whispers, “Sorry. I didn’t mean …” Taking a deep breath, he composes himself and leans back, his legs stretched out in front of him. He throws an arm out to either side, one hand planted directly behind Vince, the other somewhere in the grass off to his right. “So,” he sighs. The way he keeps doing that makes Vince think he expects to be entertained. I’ve got news for you, Eric — “You come out here a lot?” Vince shrugs. “Sometimes.” He doesn’t say that it’s become something of a nightly ritual for him. Sneaking out through the sliding glass door in the kitchen because it isn’t loud enough to wake his parents. Skirting the backyard to avoid the light by the garage. Feeling himself come alive in the darkness, almost tripping in anticipation as he hurries down here. He doesn’t mention how excited it makes him, being out in the night. He doesn’t mention how he sits with his dick and balls out in the grass, throbbing for release. Or how he thinks of doing wicked things to pretty boys as he gets off. Boys like Eric … who doesn’t need to know that, either. For a few minutes they sit quietly, the only sound around them the rustling of grass in the late autumn breeze and, far away, traffic on the interstate. Fast cars zooming away from here, Vince imagines. He could really use another cigarette. Beside him Eric shifts, his hand brushing at the ground behind Vince. He imagines that hand on his body, stroking, tender. He sees his hands clenched Vince

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tight in those curls, sees himself forcing his hard, thick length into that too-red mouth, those hands gripping his ass as he thrusts into this boy. Deeper, harder, further in than he should go, his anger and need possessing him until he’s sure he can find the place he used to hold inside Eric’s heart if he could just get all the way inside — “Hey.” With a guilty start, Vince pulls his legs to his chest to squash the ache blooming between them. “What?” he asks, his voice gruff. He stares off at the school below them, the trees beyond that, and refuses to look at Eric as he pushes the decadent thoughts from his mind. Eric doesn’t seem to notice. He looks out at the horizon with a faint smile on his face, which Vince can see from the corner of his eye. “What do you do out here?” Eric wants to know. “Nothing really,” he mutters, upset. But because he knows Eric won’t be satisfied with that answer and will pester him until he says more, he adds, “I just come here to get away sometimes, you know? Grab a smoke, think about where I’ll be a year from now, shit like that.” “Where will you be?” Vince looks at him sharply, sure he’s being facetious. It’d make a good joke, wouldn’t it? Someone like him thinking of the future. It would be worth a few good laughs with the rest of the team. But the expression on Eric’s face is so sincere that Vince finds himself falling back into his role as sidekick all over again. It’s easy to forget the years dividing them, easier still to trust Eric. Vince knows it’s the night doing this to him, making him careless. It’s the silence around them, as if they were the only two left in the world. It’s his stupid, fragile heart that has always harbored some fleeting hope that it could be like this, he could be who he is and still be accepted by someone like Eric. As if hearing his name in Vince’s thoughts, Eric prompts, “Vince? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. I was just wondering — ” “Gone.” Vince watches Eric’s mouth close over the rest of his words, and he says it again. “Out of here, far away, I don’t know. Someplace that isn’t this little hick town. Somewhere real.” He laughs, surprising himself, and before he knows it, he admits, “New York most likely. I’ve already been accepted to a film school up there.” He waits for the rebuke. He knows it’s coming, his parents did the same thing when he suggested one night over dinner that he might want to be a film major. “What the hell for?” his dad bellowed, the ignorant fuck. “Get a real degree, son, economics or computer science or accounting, something that can get you a job. You can go to the movies on the weekend. You don’t need to be wasting your time watching them at school.” This is why he hasn’t told them about the letter yet. They wouldn’t care that he was accepted early because of his Part One

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grades or the short film he did instead of the essay. A waste of time, that’s all his dreams are to them, all he is. “Go on,” he tells Eric. “You can laugh. I’m used to it by now.” A slow smile spreads across Eric’s face. “Do I look like I’m laughing to you?” he asks, grinning broadly. “Dammit, Vince, that’s awesome! A film school? Shit man, you always talked about it when we were kids but I didn’t know you were serious.” Vince feels his face flush and he ducks his head, unused to such attention. He could learn to like it. “You’re in already?” Eric asks. When Vince nods, he whistles, impressed. “That fucking rocks.” On scholarship, too, Vince thinks, but he keeps that bit to himself. No need to rub it in — Eric’s reaction is satisfying enough. Why can’t he have more of this in his life? More acceptance, more encouragement? More Eric, his mind whispers, but he stifles that voice real quick. “It gets me out of here, at least,” Vince says. “My parents don’t really know yet, so if you could maybe keep it to yourself? It’s not exactly something my dad’s going to be proud of.” “No, he won’t,” Eric agrees. He looks at Vince with something akin to awe and laughs. Then Eric claps him on the back, an unconscious gesture that’s gone before he can savor it. “Film school,” Eric murmurs. “You better remember me when you get your first Academy Award.” Vince wonders how Eric thinks he could possibly forget someone like him. “It’s just college —” he starts. “It’s film school,” Eric says. “Next thing you know, Steven Spielberg will call to run script changes by you. George Lucas will want you to do the next Star Wars. Martin Scorsese —” “Eric,” Vince warns. He forces a laugh — he wasn’t even this excited himself when he got the acceptance letter. “It’s not all that, trust me.” Eric leans over and pokes Vince’s chest with one finger. The touch barrels through his clothing and into his skin. “Not yet,” Eric whispers. He’s close again, too close, and Vince has to stare at his lashes to keep from tumbling into those eyes. “I know you, Vince. You’ll get there. You’ll see.” The words are just shapes his mouth makes, meaningless. He could be reading the nutritional content on a box of cereal, Vince wouldn’t know, wouldn’t care, because Eric has placed the flat of his hand against his chest as if to feel his heartbeat. His fingers slip negligently into the front of Vince’s coat and he’s staring at him again, almost willing him to speak. Vince doesn’t dare. Lower, he thinks, and if he says anything, it’ll be that and he’ll hate himself for it. Just a little lower, Eric, if you want to feel my heart. It throbs in his crotch and his mind is flooded with images — bruises like flowers on this tanned skin, these lips flecked with blood, this low voice begging to be fucked again and harder and again. By him. He could be gentle, yes, but only after all his rage and lust have been beaten out into this boy. Vince

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Eric watches him, almost smiling, almost, like he’s waiting for Vince to do something first. Here’s the part where they kiss, right? In the movies, and in books. Here’s where Eric leans a little closer and Vince meets him halfway, and he finally gets to plunge his hands into those curls. If this were a perfect world, and he a perfect boy … Then he wouldn’t have this hurt in him. He wouldn’t look at Eric and still see a gawkish kid laughing back. He wouldn’t hear that laughter, it wouldn’t exist, Eric would have nothing to laugh at if Vince were perfect. Which he’s not. He only has to look at this golden boy beside him to remember that. With great difficulty he gets a hand under Eric’s. His skin burns where they touch. He wants to squeeze these cold fingers until they redden, he wants to see that mouth open in surprise and pain. This skin is soft on his, softer than a boy has a right to be, and he hates that. It disgusts him, how his body responds on its own. Even as he wants to pull Eric to him and crush those red, red lips in a demanding kiss, he pushes him away. Gently — he can be gentle. Now it’s his turn to stammer uncomfortably, to search for something to say. “So,” he sighs, and he’s the one to shift back a little, just enough to put some much needed space between them. He can’t think of anything else but his mouth kicks in where his mind fails. “What about you?” he asks. Good question. “Where do you see yourself this time next year?” Vince almost believes that Eric’s fingers curl around his before they pull back. Then Eric’s staring at the horizon again, legs stretched out in front of him, hands lost in the grass, and Vince must have imagined it. “Come on,” he says. Talk to me. Make something up, don’t just sit there and brood. When they were younger, Vince would do anything to erase his friend’s pout. Old habits die hard. “You must have your pick of schools, Eric. Football scholarships — I’ve seen you play.” Eric shrugs. “A year is so far away,” he murmurs. “What —” Vince shakes his head. “I’ve seen your name on the honor roll. So far away? You’ve got to be shitting me.” With another shrug Eric frowns down the length of his legs, unable to look at him. “Can I tell you something?” he asks. His voice is so quiet, Vince leans forward to hear it. “Something you can’t tell anyone else?” That makes Vince laugh. “Who the fuck would I tell?” he wants to know. His parents? That’s a joke. His friends? What friends? He’s talked more tonight than he has all week and he thinks maybe his throat will be hoarse tomorrow, he’s not used to being social. “Who’d listen to me? All you would have to do is say I’m talking trash and half the school will come after me.” Eric’s frown deepens, his eyes shine — don’t do this, Vince thinks. Please Eric, don’t pull this shit on me. “I’m kidding,” he says, though he really isn’t. “Tell me. I’m not going to say a word.” “You can’t,” Eric murmurs. He throws his head back and shakes his hair out Part One

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of his face, the moonlight sparkling in his curls like diamond dust. His eyes, drawn in wet ink, shimmer in the night. “We promised, remember?”

OF COURSE VINCE remembers, though he’s surprised Eric does. It was years ago, back when they were kids — only eight or nine years old, he doesn’t remember exactly, but they were still friends. On Fridays that summer they’d walk down a few blocks to the 7-11 at the end of the street to spend their allowances — five dollars each, wasted on Slurpees and candy, and whatever was left over they’d pool for a comic. Vince filled the drinks, that was his job. Eric would pick out the candy, and together they’d browse through the comics to see which was better that week, XMen or one of the DC titles, Batman or Superman or even Wonder Woman, who was a girl but still kicked ass. Only that day Eric was already at the comics when Vince found him, and he had two in hand like he was going to get them both. “Where’s the candy?” Vince asked. “Already paid for it,” Eric told him. Then he held out the comics for Vince to see. “We’ve got enough left over for two, believe it or not.” Two comics, cool. Vince carried the drinks to the register, Eric right behind him, and when his friend pulled out a five dollar bill, he didn’t think to ask why there was no change if he already paid for the candy. On the way home, Eric pulled two Mr. Goodbars from his pocket — Vince’s favorite. Chocolate and Coke Slurpees and a comic book each, it didn’t get better than that. But later that night, after the lights were out, Eric rolled over in the upper bunk above Vince and whispered, “I have to tell you something.” Before Vince could reply, Eric swung down into the bottom bunk, folding his legs beneath him as he sank onto the mattress. In the glow of the nightlight his eyes shone like polished stones. He stared at Vince, wide eyed with fright. Here it comes, Vince thought. A scary tale, something to frighten him into a sleepless night. Sometimes he didn’t like staying over Eric’s. The noises in his friend’s house were so much different from the ones in his home, and they were enough to make him start at the slightest sound. Eric held out his pinky finger towards Vince. “Swear to me you’ll never tell another living soul what I’m about to say,” he whispered. When Vince started to answer, Eric said, “Pinky swear it, Vince. On your life. You’ll never tell anyone else anything I tell you, ever.” Because they’d been friends practically since birth — and because Vince knew he wouldn’t get to sleep if he didn’t make the stupid promise — he hooked his pinky around Eric’s and squeezed as tight as he dared. “Same goes for me,” Eric told him. “I can never tell anyone anything you say to

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me, on penalty of death.” And then he admitted to stealing the candy bars, which he didn’t like much anyway because they made him sick. Ate them too close to dinner, his mother said, but Vince knew it was guilt that churned the chocolate in his stomach. At the time he was impressed — Eric was one of the popular kids, he had money enough to spend, Vince didn’t think he knew how to steal. In the wet grass behind the junior high almost ten years later, Vince is surprised that Eric remembers — not so much the theft but the promise in the dark of his bedroom, after all this time. “Promise me,” he whispers, his voice so much like a little boy’s that it overlaps the memory playing out in Vince’s mind. “I never told anyone anything you told me, Vince, ever, and you know it. The least you can do is promise me this.” Vince thinks that whatever it is Eric wants to tell him probably isn’t as dire as he makes it out to be. He always was one for drama. But he knows Eric never mentioned why their friendship dissolved and they went their separate ways; he never told anyone what Vince once said that made him laugh, the sound chasing him from Eric’s room for the last time, following him down the stairs and out the door and into the alley, all the way home. If he had said something, even in passing, Vince’s high school career would have been much worse. It’s bad enough that he dresses like Marilyn Manson. He doesn’t want to think about what everyone would have to say about him being queer, too. Trying to lighten Eric’s intense mood, Vince grins and asks, “Do I have to pinky swear on this, too? Jesus, what’d you do, kill a man? Knock up one of the cheerleaders, what?” Though Eric isn’t dating anyone, never has as far as Vince knows. Much as he hates to admit it, he keeps tabs on his old friend even though he promised himself he wouldn’t. Because he’s weak like that, and Eric is so damn strong. When Eric doesn’t respond to the lame joke, Vince nudges his leg and says, “Tell me, Eric.” For a long moment Eric doesn’t reply, and Vince thinks he’s going to blow the whole thing off, no never mind, it’s nothing, really … but then he whispers, “I’m not going to college.” Vince stares at him, amazed. Stunned, more like it. “Not going?” he echoes. Eric nods, his face as white as a piece of paper with the word FEAR stamped across it in big, bold letters. “You can’t be serious,” Vince says with a laugh. “This is a joke, right? You’re going somewhere like Harvard or UCLA and you don’t want to rub it in so you’re just saying you aren’t …” He trails off when Eric’s expression doesn’t change — he’s not kidding. “Why the hell not?” “I don’t know,” Eric admits. “I’m just … it doesn’t interest me. Four more years of classes and teachers and homework? Four more years of studying and exams?” With a bitter laugh, he shakes his head. “That’s bullshit, man.” “And sports,” Vince points out. How can Eric not go to college? How can he Part One

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not want to go? “Damn, if nothing else, it gets you out of here, you know? What are you going to do, live at home and mooch off your parents until you’re old and gray? Work at the mall for the rest of your life?” Eric shrugs, and Vince bites back the anger that threatens to choke him. “Fuck that. You’re smart, and you’re great on the field, Eric, you know that. I’ve seen you play and I’m not even into sports. You can’t just throw that all away.” “You sound like my guidance counselor,” Eric mutters. He pulls his legs up to his chest and folds his arms on top of his knees. Resting his head on his wrists, he looks at Vince like he never wants to forget this moment, the two of them together. Almost friends again, or friendly, at any rate. Anyone passing by wouldn’t know the difference. “I’m not saying I’ll never go to college. I’m just saying I don’t want to go right yet. All I’ve known my whole damn life has been school and sports, school and sports. I’m sick of it. It gets harder and harder for me to get up in the mornings, Vince. It’s a struggle to get dressed. Sometimes? I sit in the driveway and can’t turn on the car, I just can’t. I swear I don’t know how I make it through each day.” Vince shifts uncomfortably. He shouldn’t be hearing this, he thinks. He isn’t a goddamn shrink. He’s the freak here, the punk, the outcast — if anyone should be talking about death and drudgery and depression, it should be him. It comes with the clothes, doesn’t it? With the music and the hair. People like Eric don’t get down, they have no reason to, not when the whole world is going their way. “You think I’m crazy,” Eric whispers. Vince shakes his head, no, crazy isn’t the word that comes to mind. Spoiled, perhaps. Stupid, yes, definitely. Blind to everything he has but not crazy. “Tell me what you’re thinking then. I can’t read your mind.” “I think you need to talk to someone,” Vince tells him. Someone who isn’t me, he adds silently. He has no investment in this boy anymore, and he hates that there’s a part of him that still cares. Somehow, despite all that’s happened between them, he still cares. So who’s the stupid one here? “A friend, or your parents, or someone, you know? Tell them what you’re telling me now. Maybe you just need a little time to think out what you want to do with your life —” “I know I don’t want to waste it in school,” Eric says, leaning back again. His hands stretch out in the grass, one too close to Vince. With a laugh, he asks, “My parents? That’s classic. You know them, probably better than I do. My mom’s strung out on those nerve pills she’s been taking since before I was born, and my dad doesn’t give two shits about me, he never has.” Vince frowns at the dark blades of grass poking up between Eric’s fingers. He’s always wondered which would be worse, parents like Eric’s who don’t care or parents like his own, who want to be in the middle of every little thing he does. “Let’s not even talk about friends.” They don’t. Vince doesn’t want to hear about whatever friendships Eric has Vince

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forged since theirs dissolved, so he doesn’t ask. He stares at the grass and Eric’s pale hand, almost luminescent in the moonlight. Where does that glow come from? That aura that surrounds him, that halo that makes him invincible? If Vince scrapes the unmarked skin, if he claws into the tender flesh, could he find the source? Is it inside of Eric? Could Vince possibly dig into him and claim it for his own? An image flashes in his mind, this same hand draped over the edge of a bed, limp, one single line of blood tracing its way down the arm, over the wrist, along the thumb to drip, drip, drip onto the floor. He trembles at the violence Eric evokes in him. He wants to crush this boy, to hurt him, to overpower and conquer him like an empire, capturing his very essence and towering over him in triumph. He sees himself naked, his dick hard and thick as a spear, and Eric lying beneath him, crumpled and beaten. He imagines thrusting into that complacent body, that willing mouth, fucking him from behind, hands pulling those curls back until Eric cries out for him. I need to get out of here, Vince thinks. Away from Eric and all the horrible emotions he brings to the surface, all the terrifying thoughts that Vince tries to keep buried. He needs more than just another cigarette now — he needs to go home and take care of the steady ache in his pants before he comes from just sitting here. And Eric has no clue what is going on in his head, his body. How did he put it? I can’t read your mind. He never could. That was one thing Vince kept from him until the end and when he finally opened up, what did it get him? Laughter that he still hears. It’s that one moment Eric will never live down, Vince will see to it. It’s that moment that makes him want to break this angel beside him, tear his wings off so he can’t fly away and imprison him like a captured butterfly. It’s that moment that Vince will never, ever forget. That laughter, sudden and childish and so damn painful that he clenches his hands into unconscious fists at the memory of it. “Why are you bothering to tell me this?” he asks, bitter. “You haven’t said shit to me in three fucking years and suddenly today you’re like hey, let me saddle Vince with my problems. In case you forgot, Eric, I’m not part of your world anymore. I’m not one of your inner circle of friends.” He wants to pinch that hand, crush it into the grass, push Eric back to the ground and climb onto him and strangle him for what he’s making him feel. This confusion, this lust, this nostalgic could’ve been that throbs in time with his heart, his cock. “Call up one of your little cheerleaders, or your football buddies, or —” Eric shakes his head. “I don’t have anyone to call. None of them are really friends —” “Bullshit,” Vince spits. He could strangle him here and get off on the surprise in Eric’s eyes alone, but he won’t. He doesn’t trust himself to touch the boy. He doesn’t trust his heart. “You have people crawling out your ass so don’t give me that crap. Everyone’s falling over themselves to get next to you and you know it.” Part One

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“They aren’t friends,” Eric says again. Vince thinks he knows what’s coming next and he doesn’t want to hear it. He doesn’t want to hear any of it, he’s had enough, he has to go. In his mind he sees himself standing, brushing the grass from his pants, saying his goodbyes and hurrying home … But Eric pins him in place with that stare, those eyes, damn him. Vince can’t move even though he wants to leave, he has to get out of here. Away from the black mood that swirls through him when he looks at Eric, away from the darkness rising inside of him, away from the laughter that echoes in everything Eric says, everything he does, every motion, every word. Don’t say it, he prays. Don’t think it and don’t say it out loud, don’t do this to me, don’t make me hope — “Not the way you were,” Eric whispers, fuck him. Can’t he see what he’s doing? Are those actual tears in his eyes, mirroring the starlight? Jesus, no. “I’m sorry, Vince. I know it’s too damn late but God, I’m so sorry, you just don’t know —” And he doesn’t want to know, either. “I have to go,” Vince says, his voice gruff. Eric reaches for him as he stands. “Vince, wait —” “Don’t,” Vince warns. He turns away, stumbles over his own feet and almost slips in the dew-damp grass. Don’t do this, he prays. Just let me leave and don’t say another word, Eric. Don’t tell me you’re sorry. Let me go on hating you, it’s easier that way. Let me have this pain, please. It’s the last thing he ever gave him, the ringing laughter echoing inside, tearing open wounds that will never heal, and there’s a stubborn part of him that doesn’t want to give that up so readily. He scrambles up the slope, heading for the street. “Vince, listen to me,” Eric is saying, but Vince doesn’t stop, he doesn’t want to hear whatever it is this boy might have to say after all this time. Three goddamn years and he’s just now ready to apologize? Fuck that shit. “Listen!” “Fuck you,” he mutters, giving into his anger. He hears movement in the grass behind him, feels a hand on his ankle, and twists away. He goes down on one knee, pain jarring up his leg and into his groin. Whatever possessed him to stop in the alley behind Eric’s house tonight? Why didn’t he run then? When Eric said his name he should’ve just fled into the night and let the shadows claim this sunshine boy, let them have his tears and his apology. “You’re right, it’s way too late to say you’re sorry,” he gasps. Beneath his feet, grass gives way to gravel, and then solid tarmac, still warm from the day. “You think you can just apologize and everything will go back to the way it was before? You’re wrong, Eric, dead wrong. Leave me alone.” “Vince,” Eric sighs, right behind him. He’s an athlete, in better shape, and when Vince stands upright, Eric catches his arm before he can take off down the street. “You’re not listening to me.” “Let me go.” The fingers pinch into Vince’s elbow like razors, severing his nerve. In his fantasies he’s stronger than Eric, he can whip the boy down and Vince

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fuck him until he bleeds but who is he kidding? He can’t stand up to him, never could. A harsh word from Eric and he’d crawl on his knees to beg forgiveness. A mean look and Vince would steal the moon and stars to make amends. A precious pout and he’d do anything, anything at all, to see that smile shine again. Let me go, he wants to sob. He stares up into those eyes, that face, and imagines what he would do if he had the strength to break free. His fist connecting with that perfect nose, splitting those red lips … and I’d kiss away the pain. Fuck you, Eric. For doing this to me, for making me want you so damn bad. Fuck you. “Get off me. I said —” Eric squeezes Vince’s arm and his knees go weak with the pain. “Just hear me out,” he pleads. “I’m sorry, Vince, you just don’t know.” “Let go,” Vince growls. He turns his back to Eric and rams his hip into him, knocking him away. Surprised, Eric releases his grip, pinwheels his arms to keep from falling down the side of the hill. Fall, Vince prays, but he doesn’t. It’s never that simple. Vince lunges at him, both hands flat on Eric’s chest to push him down, but Eric is quick, he’ll give him that. He grabs Vince’s wrists and holds on as Vince tries to shake free. Twisting his wrists, flexing his arms, anything to get these burning hands off of him. Eric’s flesh is eating into his, they’re melding together, he needs to get away — Another shove and Eric lets go, thank God. The world blurs when Vince blinks. He tells himself he’s not crying, he won’t. He wasted too much time crying over this boy. “Vince, please.” Eric’s voice is like his hands, smoothing down his arms, over his body, is he touching him again? Vince staggers back, trying to get away. “Don’t shut me out forever. I said I’m sorry. Remember —” “Remember?” Vince asks. His feet find their own way down the street, away from Eric. At the far side of the road he stops on the sidewalk, a full two lanes of darkness between them. “I’ll give you something to remember, Eric. How about the summer before going into high school, remember that?” In the bright moonlight, Vince sees Eric wince — yes, he remembers. “Remember laughing at me? Do you fucking remember that?” “Vince.” Eric crosses the road, closing the distance between them. Vince starts to back away, down the pavement, trying to keep as far from him as he can. “You have to understand. I was fourteen, what else could I do? You surprised me and I was scared, you know? Terrified when you told me. I … it was the only way I could react and —” Vince finishes the sentence for him. “You’re sorry.” When Eric nods, he turns and jogs away, towards the safety of their alley and his backyard and his lonely bedroom, he’s sorry. What the hell good does it do me now? he wants to know.

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THAT FATEFUL DAY when Vince finally got up the nerve to tell Eric how he felt, he almost couldn’t go through with it. His heart pounded in his chest, his temples, his dick, and each step he took down the alley between their houses drummed fear and doubt and dread into him until his hands were slick with sweat that he couldn’t seem to wipe away. His eyes hurt with every blink. His arms were covered in pimply bumps, his ribs trembled, his mouth was dry, his tongue thick, his lips sore and chapped. The sounds of his feet in the graveled alley were loud to his own ears, grating his nerves. He felt like a spring, wound tighter and tighter, and he wanted to scream to release the tension building within him. He wanted to die. That was sometime in the middle of August three years ago and even now, in the cold November night, Vince still recalls the heat of the sun on his hair, the stillness in the air that seemed to be the world holding its breath in anticipation. He walked through the alley that hot summer day like a condemned man. Relax, he told himself, even though he couldn’t. It’s only Eric. Jeeze Louise, you’re acting like it’s Brad fucking Pitt or someone and it’s not. It’s Eric, Jon Eric Somers, fourteen years old, one week younger than you. He still sleeps with a night light, even though he’s made you swear not to tell another living soul. He won’t eat green M&M’s because he thinks the color comes from mold, you told him that years ago and he believed you, still does. He’s your best friend and you’re not going to tell him you love him, idiot. You’re going to say you know, I get hard looking at guys and he’ll say me too, and you’ll go from there. This isn’t a damn marriage proposal, Vince. It’s you telling him you like him and he already knows that, so what’s the big deal here? The big deal was that Vince liked Eric more than his friend suspected, and that scared him. The big deal was what Eric might say once Vince admitted his own feelings — that terrified him. Outside Eric’s gate he stopped, suddenly unsure. What the hell did he think he was doing? Just forget it, a voice inside of him whispered, the voice of reason, of sanity. Forget these thoughts, these feelings, his smile and his eyes and what he does to you. Don’t tell him, don’t you dare breathe a word about how he makes you feel. At least they were friends — he knew more about Eric than anybody, had more of him than anyone else could claim. What would happen to their easy camaraderie if Eric knew what went through Vince’s mind every time they were together? What would his friend have to say if he knew that Vince dreamed of touching him, kissing him, licking and stroking and loving him — that he came just thinking of him anymore? At least now they were friends. If Vince opened up his heart they might become more, yes, but there was also a very real chance that they would lose what they already had. And he didn’t want that. God knew he didn’t want that. He turned to leave and would’ve never said a word then, simply gone on home and forgotten the whole thing, if the gate hadn’t opened at that moment Vince

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to let Eric’s mother out into the alley. “Vincent, dear,” Mrs. Somers said, spotting him. He was such a part of Eric’s world that it didn’t surprise her in the least that he was there. He belonged there. Smiling, she asked, “Help me with these, will you?” She held two heavy trash bags, one in each hand. He couldn’t say no. He was caught. Together they tossed the bags into the trash cans and, when Vince tried to get away, Mrs. Somers draped an arm around his shoulder to lead him back to the house. Her house, to Eric. “He’s been waiting for you,” she told him. Her words ate into Vince like acid on his skin. “I told him it was too early to call but I guess you’re already up. You boys are two of a kind, you know that? Two of a kind.” Vince wasn’t so sure. With leaden feet he followed her up the steps to the back porch, through the sliding glass door into the kitchen, around the breakfast bar to the hall. Her arm was a weight pinning him down. The air in the house tasted stale. He wanted to claw at his throat, he couldn’t breathe. He had to get out of there, he couldn’t stay. For the first time in his entire life, he felt like a stranger in the Somers’ home. “He’s upstairs,” she said, and ruffled his dark hair when he looked at her. “Eric wants some pancakes so they’ll be ready in a few minutes. Go on.” He waited until she returned to the kitchen before he took the first step. Then the next, and the next, his feet moving on their own accord. By the time he reached the top step he had decided again that he wouldn’t tell Eric. Tell him what, I like you? No way. He already knew that. Better to say nothing at all. And maybe he wouldn’t have said a word if Eric hadn’t been tucked into the lower bunk like he was, the covers pulled to his chin, his blonde curls as rumpled as the sheets. His eyes were closed, his lips slightly parted and so damn red, so red — Vince had to squeeze his hands into tight fists to keep from rushing over to touch them. On the TV above the dresser, Wily E. Coyote chased the Roadrunner, beep beep. The remote rested on the blanket in the hollow between Eric’s legs. He was asleep. Before he could think about what he was doing, Vince closed the door behind him and crossed the room. At the side of the bed he knelt on the floor, hands cold, heart numb. Those lips looked too perfect, those eyelashes too real. The room around him stood out in vibrant colors like grass after a spring rain and the TV sounded tinny, far away. Beep beep. He grabbed twin handfuls of the sheet and thought maybe he would pull it off his friend, just whip it away, and laugh as Eric sputtered awake. Or maybe he would shout something silly, something to startle Eric and he’d look around with wild eyes, “What? What?” The last thing he expected to do was lean forward and press his mouth to Eric’s slightly parted, lightly damp lips. Vince kept his eyes open for the kiss. Eric tasted like lemonade and cherry Part One

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flavored Blow Pops. His breath feathered along Vince’s cheek, his eyelashes fluttered. The hand by the remote control clenched once then relaxed, the fingers opening to brush along the inside of Vince’s wrist. So pretty. Boys shouldn’t be this pretty up close. And soft, worlds softer than Vince had believed possible. The downy cheek beneath his nose felt like a kitten’s newborn fur, that delicate, that amazing. They have it all wrong, he thought, easing the tip of his tongue between Eric’s tender lips. Earlier that summer the two of them had found a hard-core porn magazine someone threw away — it fluttered around the alley for a few days, the pages torn and soggy, full of pictures of women bending over as men rammed into them from behind. Vince found a few photos of just men, though, naked and hard, their dicks standing out from their crotches like handles. These men had chiseled chests, rippled muscles, sculpted legs and uncompromising erections. He kept a few of those pictures, folded carefully inside his pillow so his mother wouldn’t find them, and when he was hard and throbbing, he would take them out and compare himself to those overly-masculine images, compare Eric to them. Only they’re wrong because his friend wasn’t hard and unyielding. His lips, his skin, his very breath was fragile, like porcelain or fine china, and Vince didn’t dare blink for fear of shattering this moment, this kiss. Gently, oh so gently, he licked further into Eric, watching those closed lids for some sign of pleasure, some inkling of acceptance — His friend’s eyes flew open. Vince fell back, already apologizing. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. What was he doing? What the hell did he think he was doing? “Vince?” Eric frowned at him, confused. Shaky fingers touched his lips in surprise. “What —” “I’m sorry,” Vince said again. Eric sat up in the bed and Vince sank away. The look in Eric’s eyes was difficult to interpret. Fear? Hate? Had he liked the kiss? Vince had no clue. For once he couldn’t read the expression on his best friend’s face. “You kissed me.” He said the first thing that came to his mind. “I didn’t mean to.” One hand hovered in front of Eric’s mouth as if he had a toothache or bloody nose. “Why?” he asked. Vince didn’t know the answer to that. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Eric, I — you were asleep, or I thought you were, or something, and you …” You looked angelic, he thought, but his tongue refused to form the words. You looked kissable. You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to kiss you. With a resigned sigh, he looked up at his friend, afraid. Terrified. Alone. He felt so alone there by himself on the floor. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “Okay? I don’t know why I did it. You looked … I mean, I guess I thought —” “Thought what?” Eric demanded. There was a tremor in his voice that starVince

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tled Vince, a brash anger that made him shrink back. “Did you think I’d like it?” “I don’t know,” Vince mumbled. Please, he prayed, get us past this. Let us be friends again. Make him forget about the kiss and my lips and my tongue, even if I never can. Please God, on all that is holy, let us get over this. Eric’s words stung. “I’m not gay, Vince,” he said, and Vince nodded, okay. He stared at a spot on the floor in front of the bed and couldn’t seem to meet Eric’s gaze. As if contradicted, Eric shouted, “I’m not. And you’re not, do you hear me? You can’t be.” “But I am,” Vince whispered. Looking up into Eric’s impossibly blue eyes, past the shock, the revulsion, he continued, “I am, Eric, okay? I like guys. I like looking at them and, and … and kissing them, and thinking about them kissing me. I like you —” “No.” Eric shook his head in denial. “Shut up, Vince.” Vince couldn’t. “I do. I like you, Eric, a lot. I think …” His heart began to beat again, pounding in his ears, his throat, behind his eyes. Why not tell him? What more harm could it do? He’d gone this far — “I think maybe I’m in love with you.” Nothing. Eric stared at him, unable to comprehend what he just said, so Vince said it again. “I love you, Eric. Maybe that’s why I kissed you, because I —” Suddenly his friend laughed. High, nervous, bright laughter like red paint splashed on white walls. Laughed, Eric was laughing at him, at him. For liking him, for loving him. For being who he was. Don’t tell me you didn’t know, he thought, but he couldn’t speak — his tongue was glued to the roof of his mouth, his lips were dry. That laughter rolled over him like the tide, swallowing him whole, eroding his heart until it threatened to drown him completely. He expected harsh words or a fistfight, was ready for them, because even though Eric was Mr. All-Sport, Vince could still kick his ass in a wrestling match. He could always pin his friend to the floor, bend his arms back far enough, sit on him until he cried uncle. Anger they could work through, fight out, but this … how could he react to this? This mockery, this laughter, as if what he felt was just a joke to Eric, nothing more. Fun and games, that kiss, Vince’s emotions, his love. A cruel, sad, funny joke. Tears burned his eyes, clouded his vision. With jerky, awkward movements, he surged to his feet. “Shut up,” he muttered, glaring at Eric. His friend laughed again, amused, and Vince kicked out at him, his foot connecting with the side of the bed. “Shut up.” “Vince,” Eric sighed between giggles. “Oh shit, you didn’t just say you were … you didn’t …” He couldn’t finish the thought. His laughter got in the way. Vince raced for the door and for a frightening moment couldn’t seem to turn the knob. His fingers glided over the stainless steel effortlessly, he couldn’t find Part One

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purchase, he’d be stuck in this room forever with Eric’s incessant laughter growing louder and louder in his ears, he had to get out had to get away had to break free — Miraculously the knob turned, the door opened, and Vince staggered out into the hall. Eric’s laughter followed him like a vicious Rottweiler snapping at his hands and feet, filling his head, filling his mind. He felt hollow, as brittle as glass, and the laughter swirled inside him, smoking up his lungs, stealing his breath. He stumbled down the stairs, blind, deaf, numb. With each step he took something rattled in his chest, something broken. He thought that it might be his heart. At the bottom of the steps he heard Eric call out, “Vince, wait.” But it was too late. He ran from the house, across the back yard, through the gate and into the alley, and never looked back.

“VINCE, WAIT.” His steps falter as then mingles with now, Eric sounding so much like he used to that Vince can’t escape him, or his laughter, or his hands. They reach out again, touch his back, his arms, like phantoms in the night. “Eric, don’t,” he sighs, pushing through the bushes and thin, leafless trees that line the side street and lead the way into the alley. “Don’t touch me.” Eric doesn’t seem to get the point. “Vince, stop, please.” Is that a sob? Or did the sound come from Vince’s own tortured throat? He isn’t sure. It used to be like this, didn’t it? They were one soul in two bodies, he couldn’t tell where he stopped and Eric began. Until that day, he thinks bitterly, and your laughter shattered us. Do you still hear it, Eric? The way I do — does it keep you up at night? Do you wish you could take it back? But it’s too late for that. Too damn late. He turns into the alley and hopes maybe he can race ahead, put some distance between them — it’s the home stretch. Halfway down this graveled path and he can slip into the gate he left unlocked. He’ll be free. He won’t have to look at those eyes, those lips, those curls. He won’t have to remember how one stolen kiss ruined everything he held dear in life. He won’t have to think of Eric again, he can pretend the boy doesn’t exist, he can get by the same way he’s managed to these past few years. “Vince!” Eric cries, his feet digging into the gravel for purchase. “Just stand still and listen to me for a minute, would you, please? We need to talk.” Vince whirls around, hands fisted in anger. Eric is right behind him, right there, and before he knows it he’s lashing out, punching that strong chest, those muscled arms. The pins on Eric’s letterman jacket scrape into Vince’s skin, cold

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and sharp. “Fuck you!” he shouts. He doesn’t care who hears now. It’s too late. “Three years later and you think we need to talk? There’s nothing you have to say that I want to hear, Eric. You can’t do this to me. You can’t just reel me back into your life again. I won’t let you.” “Listen to me.” Eric catches Vince’s wrists and holds them to his chest, the hands still balled in hate. His voice is soft between them, his eyes wide like the moon above. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. Vince tries to struggle out of his grip but Eric holds him tighter and won’t let go. “Listen to me, Vince. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t mean to laugh at you then, I promise — listen.” He doesn’t want to listen. “Fuck you,” he mutters, but he can’t seem to get his hands out of Eric’s grip and with the boy so close, the fight in him is deflating like an punctured balloon. “Three years,” he sobs. It’s the only thing he seems to be able to hold onto. “I live around the fucking block, Eric! You couldn’t walk your lazy ass over to my house in three years to say you’re sorry? Do you know how much I’ve hurt for you?” Tears waver in Eric’s dark eyes. Vince isn’t sure if they’re real or a mirror of his own, and right now he doesn’t much care. He wants to get away, first and foremost, away from this boy and the emotions set loose inside him, the hate, the anger, the lust and desire and pain. “I had to think things through,” Eric’s saying, damn him. How can he still sound so reasonable, so right? “Vince, listen, you sprung it on me and I wasn’t ready. I’m sorry. I didn’t … I was fourteen years old. You can’t hold that against me.” “I can if I want to,” Vince grumbles. He gets one hand free and punches Eric as hard as he can, right on the shelf of his collarbone. The vibration shakes through him, eliciting fresh tears. “Let me go, Eric. Just let me go.” “I had to work things out,” he whispers. Vince shakes his head, he doesn’t care. He tells himself he doesn’t, he’s not listening, but that’s a lie. He’s hanging on every word and he hates that. He hates Eric, he does, he does. “Vince — listen, I’m not saying I was right. I’m sorry I laughed, okay? Can’t we just accept that and move on?” To where? Vince doesn’t want to know. “Just …” His voice dissolves and his skin burns in the cool air. When he rubs his face on the sleeve of his coat, he’s surprised the material doesn’t burst into flames, his cheeks are that hot. “Leave me alone,” he whispers. “Please Eric —” “You’re not listening to me,” Eric replies. Vince nods, he’s heard every word. “Don’t do this, Vince. Don’t push me away.” Don’t — Vince stares at Eric, uncomprehending. Maybe he hasn’t been listening. Don’t push me away … “Eric, what —” He shakes his head, pulls back. He doesn’t dare hope. “No. Let me go, Eric. No.” Vince hits him again, his shoulders, his chest, but he can’t seem to loosen the arms that keep him close. With something akin to defeat, he covers his face with his free hand and sighs, a shaky Part One

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sound that terrifies him. In his mind he sees himself as the strong one, the conqueror, the victor. Standing above Eric in triumph, in glory, reveling in the kill. But who’s the one in control here? Not me. “Please,” he sighs. He feels like he’s begging. “Please.” Gentle fingers stroke his cheek. So soft, so amazingly soft. “Vince.” His name in that voice, after all this time — he almost can’t stand it. “Vince, look at me.” He can’t. He shakes his head, no, he can’t. “Vince —” He squeezes his eyes shut so he won’t obey. “Let me go,” he whispers. “It’s been too long, Eric. We have nothing in common anymore.” “You don’t know that,” Eric counters. “I was only fourteen — I thought the way you made me feel was bad or wrong. I thought it would be better if we weren’t friends anymore, are you listening to me? I thought these feelings would go away but they haven’t, Vince. You’re still the best thing that ever happened to me. You’re what I’m missing in my life right now, you —” “Shut up.” Vince shakes his head, tugs his arms in a fruitless effort to get away. “Just shut up, Eric. I’m not … you can’t just talk your way out of this. I hate you.” Eric doesn’t believe him. “You don’t.” “I do. I hate you, I hate you.” Vince hits him again, this time in the neck, and Eric takes the blow. He knows he deserves it. But it doesn’t make Vince feel any better so he hits him a second time, and a third. Nothing. No redemption, no absolution. “Let me go.” “Vince.” His name, barely whispered in breath that licks around his ear. “Don’t do this to me, don’t do it to yourself. Don’t you deserve to be happy? I said I was sorry — after all we were to each other, Vince, don’t we both deserve more than this?” “You don’t know me now,” Vince mutters, but it’s a weak argument. He knows he hasn’t changed all that much— despite the clothes, the music, the attitude, he’s still the same boy underneath it all. Still scared, still lonely. Still desperately in love with you, he thinks. Right at this moment he doesn’t know who he hates more, himself or Eric. His voice sounds strangled when he says, “We aren’t friends anymore.” Eric’s breath warms his neck. “We could be.” Vince shakes his head. “Eric, no. I can’t … no.” “Listen to me,” Eric says again. His hand has become soldered to Vince’s wrist. It feels like it belongs there, like it has always been there. His words are spelled out on Vince’s skin, listen. He’s listening. You satisfied? he wonders. I’m listening. What the fuck do you want to say? Nothing. Not a damn thing. Then he hears it, the meaning beneath Eric’s words, what he’s trying to get Vince

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at, what he can’t manage to put into words even after all this time. Don’t we both deserve more? Didn’t he say that? Don’t you deserve to be happy? Don’t do this to me — “No.” “Vince.” He opens his eyes, horrified. Eric stares at him, his eyes shiny and bright, too bright. He isn’t … he doesn’t mean — “No.” Eric nods, the hint of a smile toying around the edges of that too red mouth. “Vince. Yes.” He bites his lower lip, his eyes eager, his hand straying to touch Vince’s face again. “I’m sorry, okay? Let me make it up to you, please. Let me make it right again.” His eyes slip shut and he leans down, his lips slightly parted, lightly damp. Vince clenches his hands uselessly and can’t seem to look away from these lips, these eyes, the curls above them. This isn’t happening, he tells himself, even as Eric leans closer, even as those soft, tender lips touch his. This isn’t real. When Eric sighs into him, Vince shoves him away, hard. The move startles him and he lets go — finally, he lets go. Vince staggers back, his lips tingling, his body aflame. As he wipes the kiss from his mouth with the sleeve of his coat, he stares at Eric, incredulous. “I said no,” he mumbles. “Not after all the shit you put me through, Eric. Not after the hell I lived in, no.” “Vince.” Eric reaches for him but Vince moves out of reach. “I said —” “You’re sorry,” Vince spits. When Eric nods, he laughs. Laughs. So this is how it felt, this liberating, this free. No wonder Eric laughed at him. He could laugh forever, Vince thinks, but he stifles the sound because it borders on insanity. “No.” “Please,” Eric sobs. “Vince —” “No.” Before he can change his mind, Vince turns and runs stumbling through the alley, his boots heavy over the graveled ground. He tears past the gates, the trees, the yards, trying to outrun the whirl of thoughts eating him up inside, trying to outrun the feel of lips on his, so soft, so goddamn soft even after all this time. Trying to outrun the ghost of laughter that still haunts him and probably always will. At his yard he bursts through the gate, slamming it shut behind him. With trembling fingers he gets the lock back into the bolt and crams the bar down into place. The key falls from the lock to the ground, landing in the leaves, the grass, he doesn’t know where, doesn’t care. He rubs the back of his wrist across his mouth and smells Obsession on his skin, Eric’s cologne. Fuck him, he thinks, gulping in deep breaths to steady himself. If he thinks I can be bought so easily then he’s wrong. Dead wrong. As he hurries up to the house, he replays the scene in his mind — only this time he’s the strong one. This time when Eric says he deserves to be happy, Vince tells him yes he does, more than anyone else in the world. With lightning Part One

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quick moves, he grabs at Eric’s curls and shoves the boy to his knees, pulls his head back until he’s staring wide-eyed into Vince’s face, begging for mercy. “Please,” he whispers. In Vince’s mind, Eric is the one who cries out no. It’s Eric who hurts, Eric whose skin burns like plastic, melting red beneath Vince’s blows. Inside the house, he ignores his parents in the living room and pushes past Corey on his way upstairs, his head filled with Eric’s eyes and lips and the sounds of the boy’s cries as Vince rips into him. In these thoughts, he’s the strong one. He’s not weak and pathetic, he’s not alone. You hear that? he thinks, shaking the Eric in his mind. I’m not the weak one. I’m stronger than you are, Eric. I’m the one who said no. I’m the one — The one who feels like shit. He pushes that thought away. The one who said no. The one who deserves more, didn’t Eric say that? The one who deserves to be happy. Then why does Eric’s voice echo all around him, like music in the air? Why do the words he didn’t say tonight, the words Vince thought he didn’t want to hear, ring out so loudly in the silence of his mind? He doesn’t know. Alone inside his bedroom, he locks the door and can still see those too-blue eyes behind his, still feel that red, warm, wet mouth on his own.

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HE BUS IS late. Seven minutes late, according to the clock on the wall above the ticket counter, but Vince thinks that’s not quite right. There are bars around the clock, like the one back in his high school gym, which makes him wonder if anyone’s ever fiddled with it or replaced the batteries. Clocks lose time. They need to be adjusted one minute ahead or two back, Vince knows how that goes. His mom got him a noisy wind-up alarm clock for his dorm room and it’s always off, always. Every morning it gains a minute or two. One of these days he’s going to sleep right through an early class because of it. “You have to wind it every night,” his mom says, like he isn’t a freshman in college, on scholarship, much less. He knows how to wind a fucking clock. The damn thing loses time just to spite him. If he were a more punctual person, Vince would wear a watch. Then he could look down at his wrist and see exactly how many minutes he’s been here at the Greyhound station in the seediest part of town. What a way to pass a Friday afternoon. His roommate’s gone for the weekend, a boy on the floor above his wants to go to a club tonight, it’s fall break and he doesn’t have class again until Wednesday morning and he’s here. Sitting in the terminal. Waiting for a bus that is now eight minutes late. This is all Eric’s fault. It started with an email from him on Monday. Vince doesn’t quite understand out how easily Eric’s managed to infiltrate his life all over again. It’s hardly been a year since they ran into each other in the trash alley behind their houses — despite whatever was said that night, nothing much changed between them at first. A mere brush of the lips, nothing more, and Eric went back to his sports and his friends while Vince did … well, whatever it was he did to get through

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those days. Jerked off a lot, to be honest, and he’s not ashamed to admit that yeah, he thinks of Eric when he masturbates. In his daydreams Vince tightens his fingers in his former friend’s blonde curls and yanks his head back until those warm lips are nothing but a damp memory imprinted on his skin. He takes control, pulling Eric away, his body bent at an awkward angle as Vince pins him to the ground. Legs folded beneath him, head held down to his feet, his stomach and groin arching away like a cocked bow, his dick an arrow aimed at Vince’s heart. Those perfect lips baring perfect teeth, those muscled arms crossed behind his back, those wide eyes terrified. That gets Vince hard, that image of submission. Even now, here in the crowded bus station, he has to shift into a more comfortable position in the narrow plastic chair to keep his sudden erection from biting into his jeans. This was not a good idea. It’s all Eric’s fault. Well, and his mom’s, Eric’s too. The three of them were in it together from the beginning. Vince got an e-mail Monday afternoon as he sat at a computer in the lab, checking his messages before his Film Appreciation class. The sight of Eric’s name on the screen sent a jolt through him like electricity in his blood. Four hundred miles away and the boy still has that effect on him. Vince wants to know how he manages to do it after all this time. Vince, hey, the message read — in his head he heard Eric’s voice reading out loud, he saw those pretty lips form the words. Were you serious about me coming out there this weekend? Because my mom talked to your mom and they think it’s a great idea. Only thing is I’d have to take the bus ‘cause my old man’s being an numb fuck about me driving that far — whoa. Vince shook his head to clear it and read that again. Coming out here this weekend? Did he honestly say that? His last e-mail to Eric had included the exact phrase, you should see this place. Not toss caution to the wind and take a road trip out to see me, not get your ass down here now. It’s a phrase millions of people use every year, scribbling it out on the back of a Hawaiian postcard, wish you were here. He didn’t seriously mean … But Eric read between the lines, he’s been doing that a lot lately. Everything Vince says or does is analyzed to death, until what he meant is lost in whatever it is Eric wants to hear. And he already talked to his mom about it, who in turn talked to Vince’s mom, which basically meant he had no control over it now. Eric was coming to visit, like it or not. Never mind that just looking at him gives Vince heart palpitations or that his touch burns like a live flame on Vince’s skin. Disregard the fact that he chose a school so far away from home just to get away from Eric and the memories and what they do to him. Eric gets what he wants, he always has. Vince learned that long ago. And he wants to visit this weekend, so that means Vince has to spend his Friday waiting for the bus to arrive. He tried explaining to his mom why Eric couldn’t come up. He called her Tuesday night, all worked up at the thought of Eric sleeping in his dorm room, 42

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curled beneath his roommate’s blankets, that was an image he didn’t need seared into his head. The phone rang twice before his brother answered. Vince didn’t even bother to say hello. “Where’s Mom?” At fourteen, Corey is better at asking questions than answering them. “Why does Eric get to visit you and not me?” he wanted to know. “I asked you last month —” “He’s not coming,” Vince told him. At that time, he believed it. “Where’s Mom?” The phone dropped to the table with a loud bonk!, and then he heard his brother shout, “Mom! Vince!” Heels clicked on the hardwood floor, muting briefly over the carpet that ran the length of the foyer. Vince closed his eyes against a sudden wave of homesickness that washed over him without warning. As his mother picked up the phone, he heard Corey in the background. “If Eric’s not going, can I? Vince said —” “Tell him I said to shut the fuck up,” Vince muttered. No one was coming to visit him, end of story. He didn’t realize his mom already had the phone to her ear. “Vincent,” she admonished. In his dorm room, hundreds of miles away from home, he ducked his head, chastised. “What’s this about Eric not coming up to see you this weekend? I thought it was all set.” Vince wanted to cry. Before he called, he had thought he would tell her that his roommate was staying on campus for fall break after all, or he’d been invited somewhere this weekend, anything to keep Eric from showing up. But this was his mother — he couldn’t lie to her. The best he could manage was, “I didn’t invite him.” “Oh honey,” she sighed. Here it comes, Vince thought. The guilt trip. And his mom was good at laying it on thick; she’d had a lot of practice. “He’s so excited. It’ll do him some good to get away for a bit, you know that. Maybe when he sees your school, he’ll get some ideas of where he wants to go himself.” Yeah, as if Eric’s decision not to go to college right after high school was something Vince could change. “It’s only one weekend,” his mom argued. “A few days, you can at least give him that. I’m so glad you boys are friends again.” That’s been a common phrase of hers since graduation. “We aren’t —” “Honestly,” she said, cutting him off, “I don’t know why you two ever drifted apart. You’re all he talks about, did you know that?” No, he didn’t. “He’s over here twice a week to help out and I told your father just the other day, Cliff, he misses Vince as much as we do. This weekend will be good for you both. Get to know each other again.” She paused to take a drag on her after-dinner smoke and Vince felt his mouth go dry at the sound. What he wouldn’t have given for a cigarette right about then. Or a joint — a kid down the hall usually had a little bit of pot that he’d Part Two

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share from time to time. If he didn’t have class the next morning, Vince would’ve considered paying the guy a visit after he got off the phone. He could suffer through angry white-boy rap music if it meant he’d forget about Eric and his mother and the rest of the world for a little while. But his mom wasn’t about to let him forget just yet. “He’ll be up there Friday,” she told Vince, like it was a done deal. “His bus gets in at 2:27. You’re going to meet him at the station, right?” He had no choice. The tickets were bought and paid for, no refunds. The rest of the week passed in a blur that Vince barely remembers, tests and a paper and half the students in his dorm packing up to head home for the break. And himself on the subway this morning, glaring at anyone who dared to look his way. The station is far enough from campus that he feels put out to be here, and 2:27 has come and gone. It’s now edging onto twenty ‘til according to the clock on the wall and still no bus. No Eric. His stomach is a knot of nerves and he doesn’t know if he should be worried or thrilled. Is the bus just caught in traffic? Or did it careen wildly off the road to crash in a ditch somewhere? Right this second, Vince doesn’t think that would be such a bad thing. It’d put an end to this tension at any rate, this suspension between them. Are they friends? No, Vince wouldn’t go that far. But they aren’t not friends, either. He knows too much about Eric and vice versa — after all they’ve been through, it seems sinful not to acknowledge that they are something to each other. But just what that might be, Vince has no idea. So kill him, he prays. A car crash or a brain aneurism, something quick to snuff him out. Kill him now before I get the chance to do it myself. Vince plays the scene out in his mind. A horrible ball of flame engulfing the front of the bus as it barrels across all four lanes of the interstate. Everyone onboard dead. Eric killed instantly, the last thought on his mind the way he laughed when Vince told him he loved him the summer they were fourteen. Or no, maybe he’d think about how Vince pushed him away last year, when he finally got around to apologizing for that. Or their last kiss … He shakes that memory away. He won’t think of that kiss, or warm summer nights, or what Eric told him when they sat together in Vince’s backyard the night before he left for college. Let the boy die, is that asking too much? Maybe then Vince can move on with his life. Maybe then the past wouldn’t hurt like it does now, and when he thought of Eric, it would be in sepia-toned reminiscences as poignant as faded perfume, as nostalgic as half-remembered dreams.

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AT TEN TO three, Vince is still sitting in the station, trying to talk himself into leaving. Eric isn’t coming — this is obvious. He changed his mind and tried to call Vince but couldn’t reach him. Why not? Because he’s here, waiting for the boy’s sorry ass to show the fuck up. Which isn’t going to happen. Did Vince honestly believe things could work out between them? Did he think one lousy summer night changed anything? No, he didn’t. And he hates the part of himself that has the audacity to be upset by this. It just goes to show him that it’s over. Whatever relationship they had before is through. He stretches as he stands, his t-shirt pulling free from his jeans when he reaches his arms above his head. The safety pins that he’s collected on the zippers of his denim jacket jingle when he moves. Black denim, to match the jeans. The t-shirt underneath is white, but it’s dingy because he’s doing his own laundry now for the first time in his life and the concept of separating whites and darks is lost on him. Everything in his closet that isn’t black is now the same shade of gray. Vince doesn’t care. He tells himself he likes it. Lazily he smoothes his shirt down and glances at the clock. Almost three. Damn, there went his day. Maybe he can still catch up with James before he hits the clubs. The kid likes Vince, it’s obvious the way he’s calling him up all the time. “What are you doing?” and “Hey, have you eaten yet?” A night out wouldn’t be so bad. Fuck Eric. He pushes through the door just as a bus pulls up to the gate. Not just any bus, the bus. Eric’s, Vince knows it in his bones. His mouth draws down in a bitter scowl. Should’ve left five minutes ago, he thinks, angry again for no real reason. Then you’d miss him. Hell, two minutes, you know? So much for the club. With a loud whoosh the driver sets the airbrake, and the engine idles steadily as the door opens. Vince steps back against the side of the building, wishing he had a cigarette. Maybe this is the wrong bus. Maybe — It’s not. Eric’s the first one off, of course, right behind the driver. He steps down from the darkness of the bus’s interior like a young king descending from his throne. Vince glares at him, at his golden aura, at the light that seems to surround him. For a moment Eric doesn’t see him and Vince watches unnoticed as he blows the blonde curls out of eyes so blue, like fresh paint. Vince imagines pressing his thumbs into those eyes, digging in deep, until his hands are smeared with that color. His hands itch at his sides and he has to shove them into his pockets to keep from rushing forward to gouge out those marble-like eyes for himself. Then Eric notices him, and he smiles like the sun breaking through the clouds. “Vince!” he calls, as if they’re not just a few feet apart. While the driver opens the luggage compartments, Eric jumps off the last step and crosses the lot to where Vince stands. He wears jeans that might be sewn on and his letterman Part Two

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jacket. Probably has his school ring on, too. Vince looks but Eric thrusts his fingers into the pockets of his jeans and that’s too close to his crotch for comfort. Vince sees a hint of silver zipper, feels that cool metal between his teeth, tastes the cottony bulge beneath it, and has to look away. For the record, he thinks as Eric approaches, this was NOT my idea. At all. A sudden awkwardness yawns between them. Eric stops so close that the tip of his sneaker touches the toe of Vince’s boot. With wide eyes that absorb his surroundings, he looks around at the bus station, the crowded street, the buildings that hem in the city and block out the sky. “So this is New York,” he sighs, impressed. Vince shrugs, secretly pleased at Eric’s reaction. “I didn’t realize it was so tall.” “You get used to it,” Vince tells him. You get used to anything, he thinks, his sour mood returning. Look at him, he got used to a life without Eric, a life alone … but we aren’t mentioning that. It’s one of the conditions of their new relationship, something they laid down over the summer — no dredging up the past. In his mind, he can still hear Eric’s voice, full of tears. “How many times do I have to say I’m sorry, Vince? How many times do you have to hear it?” A million, maybe, but Vince suspects that even then, it might not be enough. “Do you like it here?” Eric asks. Vince feels him staring and turns away without answering. When tender fingers brush his cheek, he jerks back. “Don’t,” he mutters. His skin stings from Eric’s touch. Frowning, Eric starts, “Vince —” “Did you bring cigarettes?” Change the subject, he thinks. Keep the topics neutral. Is this what it’s going to be like all weekend long? He feels as if he’s holding his breath, waiting, waiting. He hates waiting. Eric’s smile is back. “Your mom hooked us up.” Vince raises an eyebrow, skeptical, and Eric nods. “A box of Marlboros. None of that menthol shit she puffs.” “She never buys me smokes,” Vince mutters. Proof that this is a conspiracy. His own mother is bound and determined to bring Eric back into his life. Buying him cigarettes? Jesus. “They were sort of like payment for helping out around the house,” Eric admits. Vince rolls his eyes — he can’t win. “Do you stay in my room too when you spend the night?” he asks, just to see the wounded look that creeps into those pretty eyes. “It’s not like that,” Eric tells him. Sure it’s not, Vince thinks. He doesn’t know why the thought of Eric in his house, doing his chores, chatting with his parents and palling around with his brother makes him so upset, but it does. He goes away for a few months and in comes Eric, instant son. Vince wonders if anyone 46

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back home even thinks of him anymore. Why bother? They have this boy. Eric nudges his foot to get his attention. “I brought something else, too,” he says, with a smirk that suggests whatever is hidden away in his suitcase is something he thinks Vince will like. A porn video? Whips and chains? Something jagged to cut into that soft, soft flesh? You do this to me — can Eric read his thoughts in his eyes? Does he even suspect what goes through Vince’s head every time he looks at those curls, those eyes? “A bottle from my dad’s stash,” he whispers, as if afraid of being overheard. “Unopened.” Eric’s dad is what they call a social drinker, like Vince’s own father. The fact that they drink alone doesn’t matter. It’s not beer so they aren’t alcoholics, and because they only pour a little at a time into their glasses, they aren’t drunks, either. Mr. Somers’ poison of choice is whiskey, straight up Jack Daniels that burns like hellfire going down. Vince sipped it once at a party his parents had, years ago, back when he and Eric were still close. The two of them were in the kitchen, dressed in pajamas and eating bowls of cereal, while grown-up laughter and soft music drifted in from the dining room. At one point Eric’s father came in and set his glass down by Vince’s bowl while he dug around in the refrigerator for more hors d’œurves. Watching Mr. Somers from the corner of his eye, Vince reached for the glass, just to make Eric giggle. He took one sip of the tepid liquid and almost gagged, but he had to admit he sort of liked the taste. It reminded him of cabins in the woods and fireplaces and snow-encrusted mountains. He took another sip and probably would’ve gone for a third if Eric hadn’t elbowed him just as his father turned around. “You’ve got whiskey?” he asks. At Eric’s laugh, he grins. So maybe this weekend won’t be a total wash. Nodding at the bus, he asks, “Which bag is yours?”

ERIC HAS ONE suitcase, big enough for a week’s worth of clothing. “You’re only staying a few days,” Vince growls as he hefts the damn thing off the luggage rack. He can barely lift it. “What all did you bring?” “Most of it’s for you,” Eric says. He takes the bag, his fingers closing over Vince’s for a brief instant. “Me?” Vince asks. His mind fills with gifts, shiny wrapping paper and colorful bows like presents beneath a Christmas tree. He hates the anticipation that blooms in his heart, as fragile as a crocus budding in snow. Angrily he pulls his hand out from under Eric’s and turns on his heel as if crushing his hope beneath his boot. He rams his hands into his pockets so no one will see the way they tremble. “What the fuck did you bring me stuff for?” “It’s just some things your mom sent up.” When Eric swings the bag over

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one shoulder, his jacket rides up to expose the shirt beneath it, white, dazzling. Radiant, like the rest of him. Looking at it makes Vince hunch his shoulders to hide his own gray shirt. Of course his mom would load Eric down with things to bring him. He kicks at the leg of the luggage rack, pissed that he let himself think it might be anything more. “Are we done here?” he asks, his voice hard. Eric frowns at him but Vince stalks away, heading for the door. Outside the city hits him like a slap in the face, refreshing in the noise and clutter, the press of people, the sounds of traffic. He doesn’t look around to make sure Eric follows — he knows he does, he can feel the boy’s gaze on his backside and wishes that his jacket was long enough to cover his ass. From the corner of his eye he catches a glimpse of his friend, a childlike look of wonder on his smooth face, and Vince has to ball his hands inside his pockets to keep from lashing out. He wants to claw those eyes, scratch those cheeks, tear into those lips and bite that tongue until it bleeds. He wants Eric to feel what he feels inside, this pain, this hurt, because it hasn’t gone away yet, it won’t go away until they talk it out. But Eric doesn’t want to talk about it. “Can’t we just move on?” he asked over the summer. And what, pretend Vince’s feelings don’t exist? His confession of love, Eric’s laughter — just pretend nothing ever happened? How can they move on when that moment is frozen between them forever? Vince thinks this was a bad move. He wishes it were Monday already, just so the weekend would be over. As he leads the way down the crowded sidewalk to the subway, Eric jostles for a position beside him while he keeps up a steady stream of conversation that’s deliberately one-sided. Vince has nothing to say. “My dad wouldn’t let me drive,” he says. I know this, Vince thinks, glaring at his feet moving over the sidewalk. You told me in your e-mail. Eric laughs, a sound that still haunts Vince’s dreams. “I had to take the fucking bus! Can you believe it? You’d think at my age they’d trust me a little more. Your mom said she would’ve let me drive but it wasn’t up to her.” His mom again. Vince hates the ache that opens in his chest when Eric mentions his mother. Abruptly he stops, and someone behind him curses before pushing around them. “Give me a cigarette,” he demands, holding a hand out. He studies one of the snaps on Eric’s jacket and can’t seem to bring himself to look his friend in the eye. “Now?” Eric asks. Vince wiggles his fingers. “Now.” When Eric doesn’t move, he dares to glance up but there’s too much raw emotion swirling around inside of him, he doesn’t trust it not to shine through in his gaze, so he looks away. “Come on, Eric. You brought them to smoke, didn’t you?” With a sigh, Eric sets his suitcase on the ground between them and kneels to unzip one of the side pouches. It’s a large suitcase, dark green vinyl edged in gold 48

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trim, with a florid monogram embroidered on the front. When he bends over, Vince stares openly at his shoulders, the top of his head. He can see darker roots peeking through the blonde curls, their summer shade fading now that Eric isn’t out in the sun as much. He imagines reaching out with one hand and brushing over those curls. They would be crisp with gel but if he dug in, he could find the cottony softness close to Eric’s scalp. He could fist his hand in that softness, tug it out for himself — how many dreams has he had like this? With Eric on his knees in front of him, his shirt stripped away and his pants tight across an erection bulging from his crotch? Arms tied behind his back, one of Vince’s hands tight in those curls, those eyes like live brands blazing up at him, begging. Please don’t hurt me again. Blood flecked across those pretty lips and defeat slumped in those sturdy shoulders … He shifts from foot to foot, uncomfortable. In his pants, his dick has gone ramrod stiff — if Eric looks up now, he’s at eye-level, he’ll see just what the hell it is he does to him. Would that amuse him? Make him laugh? He laughed before, Vince reminds himself. He really needs that cigarette now. Finally Eric pulls the carton out of his bag. “Here,” he says, shaking a pack free. He hands it up to Vince, who tears into the clear cellophane with his teeth. While Eric stows the rest of the cigarettes, Vince taps out two smokes and stares at them dumbly. How the hell is he supposed to light them? Should’ve thought of that before you asked for one, he thinks, glancing around. People stream by, a few with cigarettes dangling from their lips, but none of them meet his gaze long enough for him to ask for a light. See what you do to me, Eric? he scolds silently. He puts one cigarette in his mouth and feels stupid, like a little kid pretending to be cool by smoking a lollipop stick. Get me all fucked up inside and I can’t even think straight. My mom didn’t happen to buy you a pack of matches to go with these free cigs, did she? “You got a light?” Eric stands, already reaching into his pocket for a lighter. “Hold still,” he tells Vince, cupping his hands around a flickering flame. Vince eyes him warily — the last thing he wants is those fingertips touching his face again, even accidentally. But Eric doesn’t seem to notice. He brings the lighter mere inches from Vince’s face, holds it steady while he presses the tip of his cigarette to the flame. This close he can see the whorls of fingerprints on Eric’s skin, a dizzying maze he could lose himself in if he stares too long. He takes a puff on the cigarette to get it to catch, draws in breath for a second … And Eric’s hand strays to his face, gently curving over his cheek to tuck a long strand of hair behind his ear. Vince jolts, raising a hand in defense to knock Eric’s away. “Don’t,” he warns. He runs the hand through his bangs, short and blunt, then picks the longer strand out of place and smoothes it back down in front of his ear. The look he give Eric says fuck you, loud and clear. Part Two

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“You’re wearing it different,” Eric says, nodding at Vince’s hair. Over the summer he let it grow in a bit, until the back was as shaggy as the front, but once he got to college, he cut it all down in short, thick chops that give him a bedraggled appearance. The two long locks he used to wear on either side of his face are now cropped to his jaw and pointed. His ears peek out from behind these longer strands like a pixie’s. Vince likes to think they make him look otherworldly and fey. The first time he went to a club earlier this semester, a huge brute of a man came up to him and traced the shape that the hair made on the side of his face with a grunt of approval. Vince didn’t respond to the touch but secretly he was pleased that someone other than himself liked the look. The guy was big and bearish and not the least bit Vince’s type. Nothing like Eric, at any rate. But Eric’s fingers leave fire in their wake, and Vince combs through his hair over and over again, trying to erase the sensation his friend left behind. “Don’t touch me, okay?” His voice is sharper than he intends and Eric winches at the sound, which makes Vince feel like shit for snapping at him. “I thought we talked about this. I thought we agreed —” “We did,” Eric admits. Vince nods. “Then don’t touch me. Keep your hands to yourself.” Holding out the unlit cigarette, he says, “This is yours.” Eric takes the offered smoke, careful that their fingers don’t touch. “Vince,” he sighs. “I’m —” “Don’t say it,” Vince mutters. If he hears I’m sorry one more time, he’s going to scream. He shoves through the crowds, trying to put some space between them. “Just don’t. Come on.” Don’t look at me, he adds. He wishes he had the courage to say the words out loud but he doesn’t, so he pushes ahead and hopes that somehow Eric can hear what he won’t say. Don’t talk to me while you’re at it and please God in highest heaven above, don’t think about me. Is that asking too much? Maybe then it would be easier for Vince not to think of Eric either, or dream of him, or ache for his touch. And maybe then he wouldn’t hate the boy so badly, if he didn’t want for him the way he does.

VINCE BROKE DOWN and told his parents about the acceptance letter shortly before graduation, and he still can’t get over their reaction to the news. He was so sure his dad would call him lazy, shirking a “real” degree and wasting money on film school, but suddenly his father was his biggest fan. “Next Steven Spielberg,” he told everyone, clapping Vince on the back. “Right here. A few more

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years and we’ll have Oscars falling off the walls. Early acceptance, did you hear? And full scholarship, too. Buckle down, Corey. You have some big shoes to fill.” His mother wasn’t as happy. “New York’s so far away,” she said between puffs of her cigarette — she started smoking more heavily as the end of the school year approached. “Honey, do you think this is such a good idea? What if something happens to you? What if you want to come home for a weekend here or there? Can’t you choose someplace closer?” As if every college offers a film major. The only person who seemed to understand his decision, incredibly, was Eric, who wasn’t even going to college yet. “I need to find what I want out of life first,” he told Vince. He started calling around spring break, just to talk, even though Vince was so sure they had nothing to say to each other. He didn’t, not after the way Eric had laughed three years earlier when Vince confessed he loved him. “I was just a kid,” Eric argued whenever Vince brought it up. “I didn’t know how else to react.” Bullshit. Then why did it take him so long to finally talk to Vince again? Three long years — of hating Eric, of hating himself, of hating the way he felt that tore them apart, the way he still feels. Sometimes Vince wonders what would’ve happened if he hadn’t stopped in the alley that night he ran into Eric their senior year of high school. If he hadn’t decided to go for a walk, or if Eric hadn’t taken out the trash at that exact moment, would they be talking now? Would Eric have come so close to admitting … what? Vince still isn’t sure what the boy hopes to gain from their renewed relationship. They’ll never be able to get back what they had, never. Vince will see to that. But he could only hang up on Eric so many times before his mom started answering the phone, and she wanted to know why he didn’t want to talk with his old friend. It was too exhausting to explain. And it became almost impossible to hide from Eric in the halls of their small school — Vince could hunker down into his coat as low as possible, could duck into the bathroom when he saw him in the hall, could avoid his locker because Eric’s was nearby and could hurry to the bus after school, but it didn’t work. Eric lived around the block. He would call Vince in the morning to ask if he needed a ride into school and when Vince said no, he’d slow down as he drove by, roll down the passenger side window, call out, “Come on, man. Let me take you in.” Once he even parked the car on a side street and climbed onto the school bus with Vince, just to talk. “You’re avoiding me,” he said then, sliding into the seat beside Vince. Where their legs pressed together, Vince’s jeans threatened to burst into flame. “No, you think?” he asked, pulling into himself to avoid that touch. “What the hell do you want?” “Just to talk.” That was Eric’s usual response, but he sat so close to Vince and his hands had an unnerving tendency to stray to his wrist or his fingers or his cheek, and the more Eric chased him, the more Vince began to wonder if Part Two

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talk was all he had in mind. “Vince,” Eric whispered. He leaned in so no one else on the bus would overhear him. “Listen, please. I. Am. Sorry. I know we’re not going to pick things up right where we left off —” “Damn straight,” Vince muttered. “But at least give me a chance,” Eric continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Please. That’s all I’m really asking for here, okay? I miss what we had together. I miss you. I know it’s been a little while —” Vince laughed, a humorless sound. “Three years, Eric. You call that a little while? I don’t hear from you in three years and suddenly you want to be bosom buddies.” Those gentle fingers touched his arm. “I’d like to maybe see if I can’t be something more,” Eric said softly. Anger flooded through Vince, stealing his breath and drowning his thoughts in a red haze. Through clenched teeth he managed, “Fuck you. You don’t deserve more.” He twisted his arm, shaking Eric’s hand away. “Where the hell do you get off asking me for another chance? Is this a game to you, Eric? Is this fun?” “No,” Eric cried. “God no. Vince, I know you’re upset. I understand that. But let me make it up to you. Let me in, you’ll see.” Only it wasn’t that simple. “So you can laugh at me again?” he wanted to know. When Eric started to protest, Vince said, “I’m not listening anymore, do you understand that? It would be better if we never met —” Eric groaned. “Don’t say that.” Those blue eyes slipped shut, the tanned brow wrinkled in frustration. “At all,” Vince added. “Yeah, I know you’re a little down now. It’s called senioritis, Eric, we all have it. But don’t blame me for it.” “I’m not —” “Don’t think that I’m the reason you aren’t happy.” At the front of the bus, the driver looked at them in the mirror above her seat and Vince lowered his voice. “Don’t pin that one on me, Eric. Don’t you dare try to turn this around.” “I’m not,” Eric said. “I just want to talk again, okay? We can go from there. I know you’re still mad.” Vince laughed. “I’m more than mad. Get the fuck away from me.” When Eric didn’t move, Vince pushed him out of the seat. “I said go.” But Eric is tenacious — when they were little, he used to frustrate the hell out of Vince with his damned perseverance. It’s how he wins at sports, how he excels in school, how he makes friends. He puts his mind to something and worries it the way a dog will gnaw a bone. Anything he wants, he gets, and it seems that now, impossibly, after all this time, he wants Vince. As friends, definitely. As something more? Oh sweet Jesus.. Vince doesn’t think he can handle that.

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ON THE SUBWAY neither of them speak. Vince sits on the bench by the door and Eric takes one of the chairs alongside. When the train jerks forward, his knee knocks into Vince’s. He stares ahead at the door connecting this car to the next, pretending not to notice, while Vince studies the subway map across the aisle. They have a straight shot from here to the campus, no connections to make, no long waits between trains. It’ll take a little more than twenty minutes to get back to school. Vince doesn’t know if he can stand it that long, Eric’s knee hitting his at every stop. If the car was less crowded, he would move further away. So much for stop touching me. That was one of the conditions of their renewed relationship, along with no talking of the past. Vince remembers clearly when they set these rules down — the night before he left for college. After graduation, Eric started to show up at his house for no reason, usually early in the morning before Vince was even out of bed. Of course his mom let the boy in. They used to be friends and she couldn’t seem to grasp the concept that they weren’t anymore. He would come downstairs to find Eric at the dining room table with a bowl of cereal already in front of him, or camped out on the sofa, watching cartoons with Corey. The first few times it happened, he stormed back upstairs and slammed the door to his room, locking it to make sure no one else followed. He threw himself on his bed and stared at the ceiling, struggling against frustrated tears. He wouldn’t give in, he couldn’t. The boxers he slept in would tent beneath a reluctant erection and Vince clutched at the sweaty material, tugged his shirt down to cover his throbbing crotch. In his mind, he leaned over Eric’s prone body and drove into him, impaling him over and over again, his cock painful and slathered with blood and cum. His knees forced Eric’s apart, his hands held the boy down, his mouth bit at taut flesh and nipples as hard as ice between his teeth. Each thrust brought a cry that Eric couldn’t hold back, and each cry, each whimper spurred Vince on. Mine, he thought, moaning in the quiet of his room. You want to be mine? You want this? This? Hate is the only love he can give someone like Eric. Pain is all he has left. When he would finally make his way downstairs again, the remnants of angry fucking and muffled sobs rang behind his eyes like a nagging headache. From the safety of the sofa Eric would smile at him, oblivious. Can’t you see the way I’m hurting inside? Vince wanted to know. What will it take to make you feel it too? This hurt, this pain, this hate? By the end of the first week, he grew numb to Eric’s constant presence, his emotions deadened, his thoughts curbed. The violence he felt he kept hidden in

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dreams that clogged his senses like a drug, leaving him strung out, hung over and weak. Eric mistook his passivity for encouragement — he wouldn’t allow himself to notice that Vince’s part in their conversations was nothing more than one word responses. He talked enough for both of them, as long as Vince seemed willing to listen. What could he do, tell the boy to shut up? He hated that voice, it crept into his sleep, and he hated the shape those lips made, he could feel them on his body, kissing the words into his flesh. He hated Eric, a fact that he would announce every now and then just so neither of them would forget. “You know I hate you, right?” he’d mutter. And Eric would laugh, damn him. “I think I’m wearing you down,” he replied, leaning against Vince’s arm or over his shoulder — Eric likes to touch him. This thing with his knee on the subway, Vince thinks that’s mostly staged. The more he shifts to get away, the more it seems as if Eric presses against him. “What happens when I break through completely?” Eric once asked him with a grin. “Do I win?” Vince doesn’t want to give him that pleasure.

IN THE SUBWAY, on the streets, it’s easy not to let him get too close. There’s a buffer of strangers all around them, keeping their talk light, their thoughts clean. Or, in Vince’s case, as clean as it gets, though he still can’t seem to shake the image of his fist in Eric’s gut every time his friend laughs. He can picture all too well the boy falling forward, clutching his stomach, as Vince unstraps his belt. The sound that strip of leather would make across Eric’s bare buttocks makes him throb with desire. In his mind he sees the pale flesh redden into welts, he sees bruises left behind from the buckle — he hears the endless chatter taper off into muffled sobs. He’d whip every last ounce of emotion out of his body and into Eric’s, breaking him, see how he likes that. And that. And that. But when he was done, he’d smooth healing hands over the bruises. He’d kiss away the angry flesh, dry the tears, murmur nonsensical words in a comforting voice. He can be kind. If he could just somehow manage to get through all this hatred inside of him, he knows he could be as tender as Eric is. He could hold the boy in gentle arms and speak words of love. If Eric would only let him get everything out first, he’s fairly certain that he could be kind. Once they get on campus, things change. Most of the students have already left for the long weekend and the sidewalks are empty, the buildings deserted — in the midst of the overcrowded city, Vince feels like no one else exists but the two of them. And is it just his imagination or does Eric walk closer to him now that they’re alone? He thinks he feels a light touch on his back and he spins

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around, pissed, only to find his friend looking at him curiously. “What?” Vince laughs bitterly. “What,” he echoes. As if Eric doesn’t know. The campus is in the heart of The City — Vince thinks of it like that, capitalized, because it’s the way everyone here refers to Manhattan. “Is this your first time in The City?” and “Did you want to go into The City tomorrow?” The film school is just one more little specialty college in the heart of it all, a handful of buildings clustered around a few city blocks. Campus runs from the old vaudeville theater on 140th Street down to a little Italian bakery on the corner where the subway stops. The administrative offices are on Broad Street, Financial Aid and Career Planning is in an old brownstone over on 143rd, and the advanced camera and directing classes are taught on Market in a converted warehouse that was once used as the set for a short-lived TV show on Fox. Vince mostly sticks to the Bates Building, on 141st, where his classes are held — general ed, lower level intro courses, shit like that. His days are spent running across the quad, a tiny park in the midst of the school like a small sun in a backwater galaxy. The rest of the buildings orbit around the grassy spot, Bates and the warehouse, the dorms, the cafe. It’s pronounced caff, not café. Vince hates it however it’s said, because the food is as disgusting as it was in high school. Over the break they’re only serving two meals each day, breakfast and dinner, and Vince doesn’t plan to eat either of them. One good thing about Eric’s coming — the only thing, he tells himself — is that his friend should have money with him. That means eating out. Chinese, or pizza, or hoagies, he doesn’t care. Anything that isn’t bought with his meal plan or dispensed from a vending machine at this point is welcome. As they cross the empty quad on the way to the dorms, Eric sighs. “Damn,” he murmurs, then he laughs. There’s something sad in the sound that makes Vince glance up sharply, but Eric’s gawking at the buildings around them and doesn’t notice the look. “Remember when we were little?” he asks. His voice is distant, as if he’s lost in memories Vince would rather forget. “We were going to room together, same college, same classes, party every weekend …” Vince remembers. An apartment near the clubs so they wouldn’t have far to go to have fun. This was after they decided not to become rock stars, mostly because Eric couldn’t sing and Vince didn’t have a guitar. He closes his eyes and remembers a time when he was a kid — in Eric’s bedroom, lying on his back on the upper bunk bed with his feet propped against the wall and his head hanging over the side of the mattress. The room around him was upside down, including Eric, who stood at the dresser flipping channels on the television. “We could be actors,” he had suggested then. Vince frowned at the loose pajama pants his friend wore — they clung to his narrow hips, the backs of his thighs, and spread across his buttocks when he bent down to pick up the remote. They must’ve been fourteen then, because that was the year Vince started noticing Eric’s body beneath his clothes. No matter what he wore, Vince was well aware of the bare Part Two

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flesh underneath the fabric, begging to be touched. The meanness in him started then, too. When Eric finally settled on a channel and vaulted onto the top bunk beside him, Vince pinched his leg hard. “Hey!” Eric cried. “What’s that for?” “We’re not going to be actors,” Vince grumbled. “I’m going to film school.” With a wicked grin, he pinched Eric again. His friend slapped his hand away. “You can be in my movies, if you want. I can make you a star.” Remember that? he wonders. The pinches, the promise. Before one little kiss changed everything between them. The same mean streak still runs through him where Eric’s concerned, making him say, “Only I went to school and you didn’t.” “I will,” Eric says, defensive. The dorms are just ahead, and the building’s shadow falls across his face like a veil, clouding his eyes. “You don’t … I mean, you’re cool with that, right? Me not going yet?” Vince shrugs. “What the fuck is it to me? It’s your life.” “I just thought …” He trails off, unsure or unable to continue. When he speaks again, his voice is low and Vince has to move closer to hear him. That’s deliberate, he’s sure. “I don’t know. I just thought maybe you’d think I was stupid or something for not rushing off to school like everyone else.” “To hell with everyone else,” Vince spits. They’ve reached the outside stairwell to the dorms and he leaps up onto the steps, taking them two at a time in his haste to get away from his friend. He keeps his head down and from between his legs he sees Eric bound after him like an eager puppy. “You want to take time out,” he mutters, half talking to himself, “go for it. You want to stay in school forever, more power to you. It’s your life, Eric. Do whatever the fuck you want with it, you know?” He reaches the first landing, turns and starts up the next flight of stairs. “You don’t need me to tell you that.” Behind him, Eric laughs. “It’s still nice to hear the words out loud,” he says. Vince reaches the second floor, two more flights to go. Whoever over in housing thought that putting him in a room on the third floor would be a cute joke needs their ass kicked, and bad. Next year, he’s getting a first level room if he has to kill for it. “One more,” he tells Eric. He hates how winded he sounds. After a month of this shit he should be used to it and he’s not. Hell, four years since he and Eric stopped being friendly and he should be used to that but he’s still working on it. He hates that he’s not as strong in body and spirit as he is in his mind. If he were, he would’ve been able to say no to this whole weekend. No to Eric, no to his mother. He hears the word in his head and can’t seem to get his mouth to work around it. Beneath his breath, he tries, “No.” “Vince?” Eric asks. He comes up beside him on the stairs, then spurs ahead, up to the next landing and onto the final flight. “You say something?” Yeah, a whispered denial you didn’t even hear. Eric clomps up the last few steps and calls down, “This it?” 56

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Vince hurries to catch up, digging into his pocket for his keys. “Keep it down, will you? The whole damn campus can hear you.” As he unlocks the door, Eric laughs. “There’s no one else here, Vince. Just you and me.” Don’t remind me. Vince holds the door open as Eric enters the hall, trying to look everywhere at once. To the right is the only single room on the floor, which belongs to the resident advisor, an overly cheerful senior who gets paid to be here for the incoming freshmen, and this is his first hall assignment. It’s obvious in the way he tries to buddy up to everyone, everyone. The first day Vince moved in, the guy popped into his room with a perky grin. “Just to say welcome aboard and tally ho, all that jazz.” Vince gave him the snarl he reserves for people like him, pretty boys who ache to be bent over and fucked hard, boys he yearns to tear into and hurt just for looking the way they do. The guy actually said tally ho. Vince had never heard that one before. He stared at the RA until that bright smile slipped a notch, first one side, then the other, before disappearing completely. “Right,” he muttered. “If you need me, I’m down the hall in the single. By the door?” When he pointed at his chest, his hand wavered slightly. Vince’s silence unnerved him. “Just ask for KC. That’s me. Initials, K, C, not one word. And you are?” No answer. “Right,” he said again. Then he backed out of the room, glancing at the names taped to the outside of the door. “Vince? Or Brian?” His gaze flickered when Vince didn’t respond. “Okay, Vince or Brian. See you. I’m down the hall.” Since then, Vince would swear the guy’s avoiding him. No matter — he’s not here to chum up to the RA, or go to hall meetings, or fall in with the whole crowd he avoided in high school. When Eric glances at the closed door, KC written on construction paper and taped just below the eye hole, Vince explains, “The RA. Here to make the transition from home to dorm life easier. I got that from the handbook.” Eric laughs. The more he does that, the better it sounds, and Vince finds himself trying to think of something else witty or cynical enough to make him laugh again. “And no, I don’t know what the initials are for. I didn’t ask.” “You don’t like him much, huh?” Eric asks. Vince leads the way down the hall. “I don’t like anyone much,” he says, cramming his hands into his pockets. Eric is right up on him — when did this corridor get so narrow? He’s practically breathing down Vince’s neck. Hunching his shoulders to duck into his coat, he adds, “In case you didn’t notice.” “You like me.” He looks over his shoulder to see if Eric’s being serious. “I hate you,” he declares. Hasn’t he said it enough? Why can’t he seem to get the point across? But there’s that damn laugh again, fuck him. “No you don’t,” Eric says, so Part Two

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self-assured. Like he thinks Vince is only kidding. As they pass the door to the restroom, Vince kicks it open. From inside he hears the sound of water dripping in the showers, one of the urinals running, someone washing his hands. “If you did, I wouldn’t be here.” Vince growls at that faulty logic. “I didn’t invite you,” he reminds him. When he turns the corner, he lunges ahead to get away. His room is two down, the closed door like a sanctuary. Inside, he can retreat to the safety of his bed and crawl beneath his covers, use them as a shield to keep Eric at bay. He already has the key in hand. But here in the hall, Eric’s hand keeps brushing his hip and once again he’s shoulder to shoulder with Vince, smiling that dazzling grin that hurts his head like bright sunlight on a clear summer day. “You didn’t have to,” he points out. “You let me come up anyway.” “Yeah, well,” Vince sighs. What else is there to say? He fumbles through the keys on his keyring, past his parents’ car keys, his house key, the one to the gate that he finally took off the eave of the shed and then forgot to put back when he moved onto campus. His room key, thank God. He shakes it out amid a tinny clatter of metal and grumbles as he unlocks the door. “I was about to leave your ass at the damn bus station. You took too long.” It’s the close he can come to saying that he was worried about this big idiot beside him, because he knows himself well enough to know that for all his hard talk, he’s a pushover inside. If he had come back to the dorm alone, he would’ve been pissed to all hell at being stood up, and even more pissed that he let it bother him. Opening the door, he steps aside and lets Eric enter the room. “I was thinking the bus broke down, or wrecked, or something.” “Just a lot of traffic,” Eric says. He brushes past Vince into the room, and one hand trails across Vince’s belly in a ticklish, nonchalant gesture that flutters his stomach. Before he can bitch, the hand is gone and Eric’s swinging his suitcase down onto Brian’s empty bed. “This place is tiny.” Vince thinks it’ll get smaller as the weekend drags on. “It’s not the Ritz,” he mutters, closing the door. He leans back against his roommate’s desk and crosses his arms in front of his chest defiantly. The room is small, and there are two of everything, which makes it seem even smaller. Two beds — Brian’s against one wall and Vince’s by the window, because he arrived first on move-in day and claimed that one for his own. Two wardrobes, which they placed side by side as a sort of dividing wall in the middle of the room. It gives them some semblance of privacy, at least. Two desks along the wall, two chairs, two hutches overflowing with text books, two computers plugged into the ethernet and on all the time. Except that Brian’s is off now, because he left yesterday morning after his philosophy class and won’t be back until Wednesday. Vince doesn’t know if Eric expects to stay here that long but he sure as hell hopes not. He wants a few days 58

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to himself after this visit is over with, if only to recuperate. “You like it here?” Eric asks. He unzips his suitcase, throws the top back, and starts to root through his clothes, tossing things onto the bed like it’s his. A pillow he squeezed in there, towels Mrs. Somers probably made him bring, a bundle of mail that Vince knows his own mother packed. “What’s your roommate like? Is he cool?” “He’s okay.” Vince doesn’t know much about Brian because he doesn’t ask. He knows the guy has a girlfriend back home only because she calls every other night. The first few times, Vince laid on his bed and listened to his roommate’s unintelligible grunts. He heard his name once — she must’ve asked about him, just being nosy — and he heard the word “queer” coughed into the phone. Now when she calls, he takes his books down the hall to the study lounge and waits until Brian comes to get him. “No offense, man,” he told Vince. “She just asked if you had a girl and I told her no. She’s the jealous type, you know? Thought I was lying, like I was sizing up your chick or whatever. So I just told her you’re into guys. Don’t worry, she thinks it’s cute.” Cute. His own mom doesn’t even know and this girl he’s never met thinks it’s cute that guys get him hard. Guys like Eric. Whose pants are too damn tight. He takes off his letterman jacket and drapes it across the bed, his arms flexing beneath the sleeves of his shirt, and Vince imagines biting those muscles, his teeth sinking into that flesh. Below narrow hips, Eric’s buttocks are too round, too perfect. Vince wants to rip into them, squeeze the skin red and lick his name across the marks his fingers leave behind. There’s nothing cute about that thought, not at all. Eric digs into his suitcase again. If Vince’s short responses bother him, he doesn’t show it. “Your mom sent up some stuff,” he says. When Vince stays quiet, he looks over his shoulder with raised brows. “Some mail you got, a little bit of cash, a shirt she says you wanted?” He holds up the shirt in question, a long-sleeved black t-shirt that Vince forgot to pack when he left home because it was the end of summer then and still hot outside. Now it’s begun to get a little chilly and he needs it. Only the shirt’s been folded in Eric’s suitcase with the rest of his friend’s clothes for the whole length of the bus ride here, and Vince is quite sure it probably smells of Eric. He suspects that he won’t wash it right away. He’ll wait until his friend is gone and then he’ll lock the door to his room, strip down to his briefs, pull the shirt on over his head and breathe deep Eric’s scent. Clean like soap and drenched in Obsession cologne. He won’t tug the shirt down completely but leave it over his face so the smell will surround him, Eric. Everything he breathes, everywhere he turns, Eric. His hands will ease into his briefs, pinching his balls, pulling his dick, working himself hard and he’ll breathe in Eric with each gasp, each thrust, he’ll moan his name and smother in his scent. Maybe he’ll do it in Brian’s bed, just Part Two

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because Eric will sleep there and the sheets will smell of him, too. “Vince?” Eric asks. Without waiting for a response, he tosses the shirt across the room. “Catch.” It’s pure reflex that makes Vince reach out for the shirt. In his mind, he’s asphyxiated by the hungry sex-scent of the boy in front of him. He grips the shirt in one fist and fights the urge to cram it into the trash can between the desks just to be rid of it. If only he could throw his memories away as easily, his emotions, his needs. Then he could shuck off this part of him that wants Eric so bad. Just toss it in the can, take it down the hall to the trash room, let the maids dispose of it with the rest of the garbage. If only it were so simple. “Remember when we were little?” Eric asks. Vince looks up with a slight frown — why does he keep bringing up the past? Wasn’t he the one who said it was better left unspoken? Like a predator Eric advances on him, his eyes holding Vince prisoner, he couldn’t move if he wanted to. Touching the shirt between them, Eric smiles and says, “We practically shared the same closet. I think I might even still have one or two of your things lying around the house. It hasn’t been that long.” It’s been long enough, Vince thinks, but he can’t speak. He’s lost in that blue gaze, those eyes like the sky before a storm. He barely notices when Eric leans closer, places a hand on either side of the desk behind him, trapping him. His face is inches from Vince’s own, his lips mesmerizing when he speaks. “What happened to that?” he wants to know, like it isn’t his fault. “Why can’t we get that back?” “You’re bigger than me,” Vince murmurs. Right here, now? Eric looms larger than life. He eclipses the world. Vince stares at those too red lips, the tongue darting behind them, and wonders what it would taste like in his mouth instead. His breath is shallow, hardly enough to sustain the rapid pounding of his heart. In his mind he sees two boys in a child’s bedroom, laughing after a day at the pool. They grab up clothes that scatter the floor, not caring who wears which shirt, what shorts are pulled up over whose thin legs. One of those boys might have been him but he’s grown now. They both are. “You wouldn’t fit in my clothes.” Eric leans in, nuzzling his face against Vince’s neck. “Hmm,” he moans, his breath warming Vince’s blood. His voice is muffled, tickling as his lips press to cool skin. “I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything I can do to get you out of them.” Arms encircle his waist and Vince considers giving in. I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything I can do … “Bullshit,” he mutters. The hot mouth on his neck scalds him. His name sighed behind his ear, it’s too much. Remembering his arms folded between them, he pushes against Eric’s chest. When his friend doesn’t move Vince tries again, harder. “Get the fuck off 60

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me,” he growls. Reluctantly, Eric detaches himself and steps back. His eyes are glassy like beads, wounded doll eyes, and his lips are damp and red. Vince wants to claw at those eyes, scratch those lips, bloody that mouth and graze furrows down those flushed cheeks. “Vince,” Eric laughs, breathless. He wipes the back of his hand across his chin like he’s been gorging on ambrosia and is only taking a breather before plunging in for more. “Jeeze, why —” “You know why.” When Eric reaches for him, Vince shoves his hand away. “Don’t, okay? We’ve gone over this. Just don’t.” “Can’t we get past it?” Eric wants to know. He tries again, taking a step towards Vince, who’s already up against the desk and has nowhere left to go. His whole body is shaking like the last leaf clinging to a branch at autumn’s end — he knows if Eric touches him again, he’ll fall. Lord Jesus Christ, he doesn’t want to give in just yet. He doesn’t want this to end so easily, not without a fight. So he pushes past Eric, shoving his friend into the desk as he retreats to the far side of the room. Into the corner where the foot of Brian’s bed rests against the back of his wardrobe. Trapped again. His voice trembles with anger when he speaks. “If you’re going to be pulling this shit all weekend long, you can leave now.” Just go, he adds silently. It’d be best for both of us. For a long moment, Eric stares at him. That lustful sheen in his eyes makes Vince ache below the belt and he wonders how long he’d have to whip the boy until that gloss broke into tears. How can they hope to get past that? They can’t, that’s all there is to it. Finally Eric sighs, exasperated. “Fine,” he whispers. His hand rakes across his face, leaving hollows in his cheeks, and there’s a hurt in his eyes that thrills Vince to know he put it there, him. “The bathroom?” Eric asks. Vince just stares at him, unsure what he means. Pointing at the door, his friend prompts, “Which way is it?” “Down,” he tries, but his voice fails and he has to clear his throat to try again. “Down the hall. Back the way we came. On your right.” Eric nods without moving towards the door. Instead he curls his hands into the pockets of his jeans. The denim is so tight across his crotch that Vince wonders how he can fit anything more into it. “Look,” Eric says — he is, he’s all eyes, only it’s not his friend’s face he’s staring at. The shapes those fingers make in his pockets, the outline of something else. “Vince, I’m —” Vince holds a hand up to stop the apology. “Don’t,” he says, turning away. He can’t hear it again, I’m sorry, God dammit all to hell. It changes nothing. “I told you stop fucking apologizing all the damn time.” “I know, I’m —” “Eric,” Vince warns. He thinks his friend will say something more. He’ll take another step closer, he’ll reach out again, he’ll touch him and Vince’s bravado Part Two

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will crumble. So much for being strong. But Eric simply shrugs. “I know,” he says. He looks around like he’s trying to find something to keep him here, something else to say, and his gaze rests on his suitcase, open on the bed. “There’s an envelope from your mom,” he tells Vince, nodding his chin in that direction. “Some money in there, I guess. I don’t know. Take a look, if you want.” Now he turns, opens the door, mumbles beneath his breath that he’ll be back. Vince wipes at his neck where he still feels Eric’s lips on his flesh and stares at the closed door after his friend with such vehemence, it wouldn’t surprise him if the wood burst into flames. Like his skin. Like his heart. From the hall, he hears the bathroom door squeal open and thud against the tiled wall — it’s heavy and the hinge is broken. He’ll hear it again when Eric comes back out. Even though his friend gave him permission, he still feels as if he’s doing something bad as he steps up to the suitcase, open like an invitation on his roommate’s bed. There are a few college catalogues, mail he’s received at home that his mom sent up, an envelope on top of the pile with his name on it in her sprawling scrawl. Eric’s return ticket has fallen off to one side, and Vince toys with the idea of taking it. To hide, maybe, just as a joke, though that would mean Eric would stay longer and Vince tells himself he doesn’t want that. Maybe take it for himself, run down the hall and out the door and across the quad, to the subway, back to the bus stop. Take the next Greyhound home. Damned if that isn’t a tempting thought. Leave Eric here. Go home, or somewhere else, anywhere his friend can’t follow. He reaches for his mother’s envelope and his fingers brush over the ticket instead. Then, without thinking, he plunges into the soft folds of fabric, deeper into the suitcase. He feels the cool glass neck of the whiskey bottle, and when he moves a few shirts aside he sees the amber liquid wink up at him like seduction. He could get drunk now and forget about Eric in the bathroom … don’t go there, his mind cautions, and he pushes the thought away. The envelope, and whatever cash his mom sent, and — His hand catches on something. A jock strap, Eric’s, the elastic stretched just enough to suggest that he’s worn it before. Vince’s fingers start trembling again, his whole body shivers, as if there’s an earthquake starting to build inside of him and it’s threatening to shake him apart. With the tips of his forefinger and thumb, he extracts the jock strap from the rest of the clothing and holds it up, studies it, so white, so clean, so pure and suddenly his thoughts are not. Oh sweet Jesus, his head is filled with hateful images, this jock strap tied around Eric’s mouth and nose like a surgeon’s mask. The pouch full with his cock and balls, the straps pulled until they dug into his skin, cuffed around his wrists right above his tailbone. The strap along that secret flesh below his balls and Vince biting at it, catching the elastic in his teeth, nipping at the tender skin. 62

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Without realizing what he’s doing, he raises the clean material to his face and buries his nose in it, drinking deep the fresh scent of fabric softener. Eric’s worn this, this. Vince presses it to his cheeks with both hands, pulls it taut across his mouth. This. Out in the hall, the bathroom door bangs open. He drops the jock strap like a guilty child caught rooting through his parents’ drawers. Snatches the envelope with his mother’s writing on it, buries the underwear back beneath the catalogues and whiskey. Holy fuck, if Eric saw that? If Eric knew? There’d be no doubt in his mind that Vince lies when he says no. But when the door opens again, the suitcase is shut and Vince sits on the edge of his own bed, counting through the dollar bills his mom sent. Fifty in ones and fives, for laundry and snacks and whatever. He doesn’t look at Eric as his friend begins to unpack. And he takes shallow breaths so he doesn’t lose the faint odor of Obsession that lingers on his skin.

BY THE END of July Eric was back in his life whether Vince liked it or not. His mother couldn’t have been happier — and she never missed the chance to tell him, either. “I’m so glad you two are friends again,” she said once, standing at the kitchen sink while Vince helped bring in the dinner dishes. Never mind the fact that Eric sat in the dining room and probably heard her every word. She talked loud over the water filling up the sink. When Vince tried to quiet her, she told him, “Don’t shush me. You need some friends, Vincent. I swear, I don’t know what ever made you kids fight but I’m just happy to see that it’s over and done with now. He’s such a nice boy.” Who laughed at me, Vince thought bitterly, when I told him I loved him. How fucking nice is that? But he kept silent — what was the use? She didn’t understand and he wasn’t about to tell her the whole story. It was easier to just nod in all the right places, he’d be gone soon enough. In New York, he could bury himself in the newness of college and forget about Eric. At least, that was the plan. The night before he left for school, he was too nervous to sleep. He told himself it was the heat — by the middle of August the days were long and hot, the nights just as bad. Before Vince even woke up in the mornings, the sun already beat down with a vengeance and by noon, the air outside felt stiff and sticky the way the bathroom did when his mom was getting ready in the mornings and hairspray hung like a cloud above the sink. It was too hot to go outside, the sky was too bright. Each day took longer and longer to end, as if the sun itself was stuck and when night came, it melted below the horizon like congealed eggs. And then it was still hot, despite the darkness. Air conditioners grumbled

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from constant exertion. If his mother didn’t insist on turning the window units off at night, they would probably break down and die before the sun rose again. So Vince kept his door locked and slept naked on his bed. No sheets, no covers. On his back with his arms out at his sides, his legs spread apart, no part of his body touching any other part if he could help it. He kept the window closed as long as possible to keep the coolness in, but eventually he’d have to crack it open for whatever breeze he could get. Once or twice he even dared to turn on the a/c in his room and he’d stand in front of it, savoring the cold blast of arctic air on his bare skin. School would be different, he thought. Because it’s further north, for one thing. Because his parents aren’t down the hall, for another, and if he wanted the damn air on all night long, it’d stay on. God, there was nothing worse than waking up sheathed in sweat. That last night home he laid awake, nude, hot, and listened to the house around him settle down. The pop-rock dance music coming from his brother’s room diminished the closer it got to ten o’clock, until finally it was nothing but a whispered beat that Vince felt only because Corey’s stereo was right on the other side of the wall beside his bed. Shortly after the news at eleven, his dad headed upstairs. And a little while after that, Vince heard his mother in the bathroom, taking a bath before she turned in, as well. By midnight, the house was his. He waited another half hour just to make sure everyone else was asleep. Then he crawled from his bed, careful not to bump into the suitcases stacked in the middle of the room. In less than six hours his dad would help him load these same suitcases into the minivan and they’d head out on the road. Six hours and he’d be on his own. Free. The thought somehow excited and nauseated him at the same time. Free. Vince almost couldn’t believe it. Everything he owned was packed away except his pillows and the change of clothes he had set out for the morning. And a pair of worn swim trunks that he kept on the floor by his bed in case he needed to get up in the night. Couldn’t walk through the house naked, he didn’t dare do that, even with everyone in bed. Jesus, if Corey woke up and stumbled out into the hall just as Vince was coming out of the bathroom? He’d have to seriously hurt the kid, and even that might not be enough to keep him quiet. At his age he found nudity funny, and the last thing Vince needed in the middle of the night was his little brother laughing at his dick. Without turning on the light, he found the shorts and pulled them on, the sailcloth sliding easily over his bare skin. In his mind this was it, the end. Tomorrow night he’d sleep in a different bed, the next morning he’d wake to something new, and he would never be able to get this exact moment back. He felt as if he stood on the shore of his life, watching his future roll towards him like the incoming tide. Ahead all he could see was fog-draped and unclear, uncertain, vague ghost shapes of what to expect. Looking into it made him want to crawl beneath 64

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his covers like a little boy, deny it, let it pass him by. And yet at the same time there was a part of him that yearned for the dawn and what it would reveal once the fog burned away and the ghosts took form. His skin tingled in anticipation — how could anyone sleep through this night? It was his last as a child, and his first as an adult. He didn’t want to miss it for the world. He didn’t need a shirt, too hot. Or shoes, since he wasn’t planning on going very far. Moving quietly, he hurried down the stairs, mindful of the third one up — it had a tendency to creak, so he stepped over it and almost slipped. He reached out for the railing and snagged it just before his ass hit the floor. Sure, wake the whole damn house up, he thought, shaking with adrenaline. It’d be just his luck, too, sneak out for years only to get caught by his parents on his last night at home. The living room was lit by one lamp that his mother never turned off. It was turned down low and in the dim light Vince found his dad’s smokes, a crumpled pack of Marlboros tossed negligently on the table by his recliner. He shook out a cigarette, looked inside and saw almost a full pack, and took two more. When he palmed his dad’s lighter, it felt almost empty, and he turned the lamp up see if there was much fluid left in it. Some. Enough for three smokes at least, if he didn’t play around and flick it like he sometimes did when he was bored or nervous. For all their comfortable living, his dad was a cheapskate, letting his lighter get this low. Vince flicked it once to see if it would light. It did. Satisfied, he turned the lamp back down and headed through the dining room to the kitchen. The sliding door that led out onto their porch opened without a sound. The lock was noiseless, the screen well oiled. Vince left the screen open and pulled the door mostly shut —curtains covered the gap and there was no wind to speak of, so even if someone else woke up and trailed downstairs for a drink or a bite to eat, they would never notice he’d left. More importantly, the lock couldn’t catch and he wouldn’t be locked outside. If he had to get his parents up just to let him in again … he didn’t think he could ever explain his way out of that. Outside, the night was almost cool on his skin — Vince didn’t know if it was because from a drop in the temperature or his own sweat. The worn wood of the porch was smooth beneath his bare feet and he moved silently, just another shadow in the darkness. Across the porch, down the steps, into the dew-damp grass, keeping to the side of the house so the motion-sensitive light by the garage didn’t pick him out like a criminal in a police line-up. Through his mother’s garden — the freshly turned soil was soft and cold where it curled between his toes. The marigold greens scraped his legs and when he reached the tomatoes, a pungent odor rose up from the plants, acrid, bitter. He held his breath and pushed through, holding the leaves as he passed so they didn’t slap the side of the house and wake up his parents. Their bedroom was right above him and his mom was a light sleeper. If the window was open even a teeny bit, she’d hear him, and Part Two

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then she’d wake his father up, complaining that someone was in the yard, would he go look? Vince was an old pro at sneaking out of the house. He didn’t intend on ruining his track record now. The garden was small — flowers by the porch, a few tomato plants and peppers just under the kitchen window, a huge forsythia bush on the other side of the small vegetable plot, its branches reaching out wildly in every direction like a shock of unkempt hair. The forsythia sat in a corner formed by the pantry as it jutted away from the house. The yellow flowers were a burst of sunny color in the grey light of the moon, absorbing the starshine, throwing it back in little glints and winks that teased the shadows. Beyond the bush the rest of the yard was dark, the fence a black barrier of nothingness. Above it, the sky stretched away like old velveteen, worn through in spots, the stars a dusting of glitter spilled in the folds of fabric. Vince loved the night. He felt alive in the dark. He felt invincible. Without the clutter of the day he could close his eyes and feel his mind expand out beyond the boundaries of this small town — he could reach the stars, the moon, farther. The soughing sound of his feet as he crossed the lawn strengthened him. When he sank to the ground, the dewy grass felt amazingly wonderful on his bare legs, his hands, his back. In the cool dampness he stretched out in the grass and stared up at the stars, picking out Orion because it was the only constellation he knew by sight. His whirling thoughts slowed like a mechanical toy winding down. Alone, he thought. Thank God, finally, alone. The stars made him feel inconsequential. All his fears seemed stupid, unreal. College, the future, this time next year? He couldn’t comprehend it. It didn’t exist. The only thing he was sure of was here, now, himself. His dreams were just so much noise inside his head. His heartbeat drowned out the rest of the world. In the dark he could let himself think of Eric. Those blonde curls were like the forsythia, a blaze of color in the black of his soul. That laugh echoed in his ears. Those eyes flashed behind his own. He struggled to hold onto his anger, poked at all the old wounds, reopened the pain that yawned in his chest like a damn canyon of hurt. So now Eric wanted to be friends. Now he wanted a chance. To do what? Vince didn’t know, wouldn’t go there. Fuck Eric and his sudden interest. Fuck his ephemeral whims. Would he pursue Vince so doggedly in another month or so, after he moved away? Would he still want his blessed chance then? Thinking of Eric stirred his blood, as it always did. He closed his eyes and gave into the emotion, the desires, that crashed through him. Images of pain, of sex, of raw hard fucking filled his mind. He saw himself as large as the moon above, as endless as the sky, as sharp and brittle as each star that twinkled in the distance. Eric lay at his feet like the earth, immobile, his arms the sky shielding the top of his head from whatever wrath Vince would rain down. His vision 66

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trembled at the exposed back, the curve of bare buttocks, the strong legs curled beneath that prone body in submission. To him. Him. Blood like tears ran in these thoughts, dark and thick and hot. Sometimes the sight of it made Vince feel faint way down in the pit of his stomach and he knew he could never go through with such violence, he wouldn’t dare. If Eric had given him a chance back when he first managed to admit his newfound love then Vince wouldn’t have this evil in him. He wouldn’t want to see the blood, he’d kiss away the tears and smooth loving hands over the bruises. He wouldn’t want to dominate the boy. But that laughter still tolls through him like a death bell. He needs the screams and the hurt to bury that sound. He’s lived with this pain for too long — Eric needs to hear it, feel it, too. With dreamlike slowness, he stuck one of the cigarettes into his mouth. The others went behind his ears, one on each side, angled forward so they wouldn’t touch the wet ground beneath him. He had to flick the lighter twice to get it to catch, the damn thing, and the flame threatened to go out before he could get the cigarette going, but in the end he managed to light up. The first intake of breath filled his lungs and he held the smoke in for as long as he could, letting it infuse his body. When he exhaled, a thin grey line coiled away from him to smudge against the dark sky. Without thinking about it, one hand drifted to rub over his stomach, lower, slipped into his shorts. His fingers pressed against his cock and then lower. His palm cupped his balls, squeezing lightly. In the quiet of the night, he moaned at the pleasure that spiked through him. His next toke on the cigarette brought another squeeze down there. His body shivered in delight. He would’ve eventually pulled the shorts down and felt the wet ground on his bare ass as he jerked off into the stars, the sky, if he hadn’t heard a footstep in the gravel driveway that ran alongside the house. His hand froze on his cock and before he could extract it from his shorts, he heard a low voice he knew too well call out his name. “Vince?” Eric. Frustrated anger stabbed through him. “What the fuck do you want?” he whispered as loud as he dared. Squinting into the darkness, he could just barely see the outline of his friend’s body framed against his mother’s minivan — well, he could see legs, clad in dark pajama bottoms, because the moonlight shone off the polished vehicle and where Eric stood, there was no shimmer of light. With a startled jolt, Vince realized that Eric could probably see him quite well, out here with his damn hand down his pants, feeling himself up … how long had he been standing there? Was he planning to watch? More anger raged through him, stunted lust, and despite the audience, Vince grew as hard as stone thinking of Eric watching him. Would that get him off, as well? Oh sweet Jesus, the thought did terrible things to his already torn up nerves. As he stood, he tried to will away the erection now straining the front of his shorts and couldn’t, not with Eric so close by, so he chose to ignore it instead. Part Two

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When his friend started to speak, he hissed for silence. “Don’t move,” he muttered, keeping his voice low. “The light’ll come on if you do. Walk back towards the house.” The sound of sandals over gravel suggested that Eric did as told. Vince jogged to the forsythia bush, a faint sweat breaking out over his bare shoulders that had nothing to do with the summer heat. It welled up from inside of him, and he felt like a phoenix about to burst into flame. He tried to ignore that, too. “Sort of keep to the wall,” he told Eric. His friend was a dark shape in the night pressed against the side of the house. “Through the garden or else it’ll turn on.” Damn his father and that stupid security light. Eric laughed softly. “You know —” “My parents’,” Vince warned. He pointed up, though this close to the house he couldn’t see the window to the room his parents shared. He knew it had to be open, though. The night was too hot to sleep with it shut. “Keep it down.” From the far end of the yard he heard Eric cross the porch quickly, and then his friend crashed through the marigolds. “Fuck,” he mumbled as small stalks snapped beneath his feet. “Your mom’s going to kill me.” “My dad will kill you if he hears us out here,” Vince replied. Of the two, he preferred his mother’s anger — she would get upset over the mashed flowers, yes, but he could buy her new ones and she wouldn’t hold it against him. His father, on the other hand … wake him up in the middle of the night and he’d never, ever forget. As Eric drew closer, Vince could smell his cologne. Obsession, how appropriate. It stirred his loins and revived his wilting erection, which Vince pushed down flat against his groin in an effort to keep hidden. Go away, he pleaded, dragging deep on the cigarette. The smoke spun his head and stung his eyes. Vaguely he wondered if his parents could smell it in their sleep. The cigarette, Eric’s cologne, Vince’s own rancid lust. Suddenly Eric was beside him, his arms and chest bare, his pj bottoms hanging low on narrow hips. Vince glared at him for how the naked flesh made him feel. When Eric leaned towards him, their shoulders touched and Vince was surprised that the electricity between them didn’t produce sparks in the night. “What are you doing out here?” he growled. Eric laughed again. “I could ask you the same thing.” “It’s my yard,” Vince reminded him. He took a step back and for one precious moment, the contact between them broke. Then Eric pressed forward again, his arm against Vince’s, and the fire in him flared to life. “I come out here a lot.” This close there was no mistaking the gleam in Eric’s eyes. “You still use your left hand?” he teased. Before he could answer Eric’s hands encircled his, the fingers easing between his own, rubbing at his palm, his wrist, the inside of his arm. 68

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That hand, the one that not two minutes ago was thrust down his shorts, he took that hand in his and stroked it, knowing full well what Vince had been up to. He’d seen him, it was in the way his eyes flashed as Vince struggled to find some reply. With a slight smile, Eric knew he had him. Nodding at his cigarette, he asked, “You have another one of those?” “I dropped the lighter out there.” Vince shook free from Eric’s grasp and reached behind his ear for one of the extra cigarettes, intending to light it from his own before handing it over, when Eric surprised him by plucking the cigarette from between his lips. “Hey —” Eric stuck the butt of the cigarette in his mouth, his lips closing over the damp imprints of Vince’s own. “You have more,” he sighed, taking a quick toke. Then he had the audacity to hold it back out to him. The twinkle in his eyes rivaled the stars above. “Or we can share.” Vince pushed his way out of the forsythia with angry, chopping motions. “Fuck you,” he growled, though Eric hadn’t really done anything wrong. You’re playing with me, Vince thought as his feet swished through the grass. When he stubbed his toe on the lighter, he crossed his ankles and fell to the ground, landing hard on his ass. There he hunched over in a sulk, flicked the lighter half a dozen times until it lit, and jammed the tip of his cigarette into the flame. Taking the other one out of his mouth. Offering it back. Why? To see the way Vince’s tongue licked the end of the butt to taste whatever saliva remained from Eric’s mouth? To watch his lips curl around the filter where his lips has just been? Fuck that. To hell and back, fuck that. He heard footsteps through the grass and didn’t look up when Eric plopped down beside him. His friend’s knee rested on top of his thigh — thank God he had on pajamas. Vince didn’t think he could handle more skin on skin, more Eric on him. Still, he scooted over a bit, trying to get away. Damned if Eric didn’t move over, too, just to lean against him. The boy saw right through Vince’s charade. “So,” he said, smoking the cigarette that Vince had first. “You excited?” His blood had begun to boil in his veins when he first heard Eric call his name in the darkness and he honestly wanted to know if Vince was excited? His voice shook when he answered, “You just don’t know.” More laughter. It made Vince’s cheeks flush and in his mind, he crushed his cigarette into one of Eric’s dusky nipples. The scent of seared flesh would erase the Obsession that enveloped them. “I mean about tomorrow,” Eric said. Vince rubbed a worn spot in the grass with his heel and scowled at nothing in particular. He knew that. “It’s just another day,” he muttered. “You’re going off to college,” Eric reminded him. He tucked the long strand of hair behind Vince’s ear, his fingers leaving a trail of flame in their wake. What did he need a lighter for? Eric’s touch set the world on fire. Brushing Eric’s hand away, Vince tugged the lock of hair back into place and Part Two

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twirled it between his fingers to keep his friend from playing with it again. “So?” he asked. If he kept telling himself it wasn’t much, maybe it wouldn’t be. Eric studied him for a long while, silent. Vince kept his face averted so he wouldn’t have to meet that dark gaze, but he kept glancing at his friend from the corner of his eye like a moth drawn to a light, he couldn’t look away for long. Finally Eric murmured, “I just thought it’d be a big deal. You know —” “Well, it’s not.” Vince took a lengthy drag on the cigarette, sucking in until his head grew fuzzy and his lungs threatened to burst. Then he let his breath out in a rush so fast, it sounded loud to his own ears. “I’m sick of everyone thinking this should be something grand and terrifying to me. It’s just school. It’s not like I’m going away forever, you know? Four years. Hell, eight semesters, I’ll be home every summer, over Christmas, too. I’m not dying here.” “I know that,” Eric said softly. “I’m only moving on campus,” Vince continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. “It’s not like it’s the end of the world. I’ll be back.” “I know.” They fell silent, listening to each other breathe in the night. Vince stared into the dark shadows gathered by the fence and tried not to think of the leg touching his. Beside him, Eric watched him openly, without shame. Don’t look at me like that, Vince thought, but he couldn’t say it out loud. Then Erik would ask, “Like what?” and to be honest, Vince didn’t know. Like you want me, maybe, but that could lead to more laughter, more pain. And he’d already had quite enough of that. Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. Stubbing out his cigarette in the damp grass, Vince asked, “So why are you here?” Eric leaned into him, stretching an arm around Vince to rest his hand on the ground by his hip. That knee slid a little further up his leg, dangerously close to his crotch. He knew what was coming. “Just to say goodbye,” Eric started. “To tell you one more time that I’m —” “Sorry.” Vince could’ve laughed, if it didn’t hurt so much. “Fuck you, Eric. I told you before, sorry doesn’t cut it. You could say it forever —” “I will.” Vince shook his head. “And I’ll never buy it.” Eric clenched his hand into a useless fist that he set down gingerly on Vince’s knee. “I know that,” he admitted. Did his voice just break, or was Vince imagining that? Was the boy actually going to cry over this? Over him? “Vince, listen to me, I know. Look at me …” Like a stubborn child, Vince turned away as fingers slick with dew caressed his cheek, his chin. “Look at me, please.” A voice inside his head screamed in protest even as his body obeyed. He let that gentle hand turn his face towards his friend’s. Sadness crossed those dark eyes like the wisps of grey clouds racing over the sky above. A thin sheen glossed those red lips. “I know you don’t believe me,” Eric breathed. Say it again, Vince 70

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thought, staring into the dark void of those eyes. I’ll believe you now. “I can tell you a million times and you won’t hear what I’m trying to say. I was stupid, okay? I was fourteen years old, you can’t hold that against me for the rest of my life. I didn’t know what to say, what to do.” He laughed, breathless between them. “Can you tell I still don’t?” “Eric —” The hand holding his chin tightened and his argument dissolved beneath the slight pressure. “I don’t know how else to tell you,” Eric whispered, “what else to say. I feel like I’m ramming against a wall here, Vince, because I know how you feel for me, you told me yourself —” “That was years ago,” Vince murmured, but his voice held no conviction. He can lie all he wants but Eric’s right, he still feels the same. Eric insisted, “I can see it, plain as day. But you won’t let me in. You won’t let me make it up to you. You won’t give me a chance —” “You laughed,” Vince reminded him. “Laughed, Eric. Do you know how deep that cut? Do you have any clue what that did to me?” “And I said I was sorry.” Eric shook his head, exasperated. “I keep telling you over and over again and you just won’t forgive me. I don’t even want to talk about it anymore because I already know you won’t believe me.” He looked at Vince, his eyes beseeching, unshed tears sparkling like the dew in their depths. “But maybe? Maybe you can believe this.” He leaned forward, his fingers grasping Vince’s chin in a strong grip so he couldn’t pull away. With slow-dawning horror he watched Eric’s eyes slip shut, his tongue dart out to lick his upper lip. He leaned in, the hand on Vince’s hip holding him still. Those eyelids fluttered once. Then faint breath fanned his cheek and impossibly soft lips brushed his. Vince didn’t move. He didn’t dare. Eric’s mouth closed over his lower lip, his tongue flicked inside, behind his teeth, he’s in me, Vince thought wildly. His hands skimmed over Eric’s chest, searching for something to grasp, something to fist in, and found nothing but skin. Bare, glorious skin. Please Jesus he’s IN me and I never ever want to get him out. His palm glanced over one hard nipple and that broke the spell. Roughly he shoved Eric away. His lips were damp with Vince now, his tongue licked his taste from that red mouth. Eric opened dulled eyes and sighed his name. “Vince.” Maybe you can believe this — “No,” Vince whispered. He didn’t want to believe, none of it, nothing Eric said or did, ever. When his friend reached for him, he scuttled backwards and said it again. “No.” His voice was only a ghost of sound. Eric’s pretty features twisted in frustration. “Vince! I don’t know how else to tell you that I —” “Then don’t.” Eric’s hand grazed his leg, his touch stinging like a cat’s scratch, but before his fingers could close around his ankle, Vince sprang to his Part Two

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feet. “I don’t want to hear it,” he spat. The lie came easy enough after all this time. “What, suddenly it’s alright? Don’t touch me.” Eric looked up at him with eyes full of stars. “Don’t …” His voice faltered. His body ached for Eric, his heart trembled. Those eyes, that mouth, that face, those moonlit curls, no. Before he could give in, he turned and ran across the yard for the safety of the porch. The motion-sensitive light by the garage clicked on, throwing his shadow against the house in stark relief. Vince stomped up onto the porch as he heard a window thrown wide above him. “Vincent!” his father bellowed and behind him, Eric called out, “Vince, wait!” His vision blurred through tears he didn’t want to cry. His fingers fumbled with the sliding door. Let me in, he prayed. The door jumped the track, rattled loudly in the night. Somewhere inside the house, he heard his father’s heavy footsteps. Let me in, please God, let me in, let me — The door skidded out of the way and he fell into the kitchen. He thought he heard Eric call his name again but he slammed the door shut, locked it tight. Locked the screen as well. For one bright instant he saw everything, the yard bathed in white light, the grass dark like the sea and Eric in the middle of it, reaching out to him, wanting him. Even from here he could see that want, that hunger, that need he had always dreamed of seeing. Then he pulled the curtains. The room around him fell into darkness so deep, he thought he had gone blind. But when he blinked, he could still see Eric in front of him like an afterimage, his eyes black pits of shadow in his face.

WHILE ERIC EMPTIES his suitcase, Vince lies on his own bed and stares at the blank screen of the television set. It’s on a dresser between the desks and in its dark surface he can see his friend’s reflection as he stacks his clothes on the dresser beside Brian’s bed. “You’re quiet,” Eric says, trying to make conversation, but Vince doesn’t reply. He watches those flawless features frown in consternation and imagines ripping through those painted-on jeans to bully his way into that tight ass. Hard, hot thrusts, while he pulls Eric’s arms up like a bow between his shoulder blades. He sees that in the mirror of the TV, Eric bent over the side of the bed while Vince barrels into him, his legs kicked apart, his face buried in the covers to stifle his cries. This is going to be one God-awful long weekend. When he thinks Eric should be finished messing with his clothes, Vince stands and stretches as he slips off his bed in one fluid motion. He wants to get out. Off campus, away from this room. He needs other people around them to

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keep his thoughts inside his head. Tugging his jacket down, he settles it into place and then snatches up the keys from his desk. “Let’s go,” he says, crossing the room. He throws the door open wide and catches it with the back of his foot when it starts to swing shut. Hands in his pockets, keys biting into one palm, he sighs at the confused look his friend gives him. “Dinner?” he prompts. “Come on, Eric. I want to get out of here already.” Eric drops the shirt he’s folding back into the suitcase and reaches for his coat. “Where are we going?” he asks, already following. “I’m not sure yet,” Vince admits. Somewhere we’re not alone, he adds silently. Where I’m not tempted to give in, or give up. It’s colder now outside, and Vince has to hunker down into his jacket to ward off the chill. He walks fast as if he’s running late but Eric keeps up with him easily enough. Around campus, the street lamps lining the sidewalks buzz to life in the thickening dusk. Eric’s hands are in the pockets of his jeans and his jacket is unzipped — as they walk, the wind alternately billows his shirt and smoothes it down over his chest like an insistent lover. Vince hates the friendly way the fabric presses against his friend’s body and gaps around the buttons to hint at pale skin. When he looks at Eric, his eyes are drawn to the shadows pooled in the hollow of his throat, above his open collar. The tease of that soft flesh makes Vince hurt deep in his bones and he spurs on ahead to outrace the emotions gathering like storm clouds inside of him. He doesn’t think he’ll enjoy being out, but he’s wrong. They were friends before, and even though they lost a few years, they find that rhythm they once shared all over again. Eric has always had a heady laugh and for some reason, he finds Vince deliciously funny. He’s not even trying, too, that’s the thing — he’s just being his usual sour self, like when an old lady pushes past him for the last empty seat on the subway. “Ladies first,” the woman crows, triumphant as she starts to sit. Vince catches her arm. “No, wait,” he tells her. Then he looks around the busy train. “You said there was a lady on here? I’m thinking maybe we should give the seat to her.” Eric giggles madly, and shards of light burst through the darkened tunnel at the sound. That laughter makes Vince grin, even after the woman clubs him with her heavy-ass purse. He gets the seat, though, which he gives up to his friend. Eric isn’t seated yet before his hands are on Vince’s hips, pulling him down to perch on his lap. Vince scoots to the edge of his friend’s knees and slaps his hands away. “Jesus, Eric,” he grumbles, in a loud voice that makes half the people on the subway notice them. “They’re going to think we’re fags or something.” More laughter, he loves it. At the Chinese restaurant where they stop to eat, Eric studies the menu above the register and Vince dares to lean against him Part Two

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long enough to breathe into his ear, “Try the cat. I hear it’s good.” Those giggles again, as glorious as an angel’s voice because they aren’t directed at him. He forgot how Eric’s laugh could fill him up. And this close, his friend’s scent is intoxicating. For the first time since he’s come to The City, Vince doesn’t feel so alone. He doesn’t see stark streets filled with unfriendly faces. He’s the local now, he belongs here, and Eric is a familiar face among strangers, a part of his past melding with his future to create the here and now. They duck into a video store and Vince finds himself looking around for his friend to make sure they don’t drift too far apart. Every movie he picks up he wants Eric’s opinion on, and when Eric wonders out loud where the porn is kept, Vince wants to ask just to show off. Hell, he’s done similar things back home just to embarrass his little brother, like asking the lady at the dollar store how good their condoms were if they sold them for a buck a fuck. “I’m kidding,” Eric protests. He grabs Vince by the shoulder and pulls him away from the counter before he can cause a scene. “Vince, it’s okay.” “You wanted a porno,” Vince says, trying to shrug him off, but Eric won’t let him go. Instead, his arm snakes around Vince’s shoulders as he heads for the exit. Vince tries to twist away and can’t. Eric is too strong. “Get off me.” Eric steers him out onto the sidewalk. The arm across his back is hot and heavy, dragging him down. “I said —” When he shrugs his shoulders, the weight disappears. “What were you going to do if they asked for ID?” Eric wants to know. He takes Vince’s arm and starts in the direction of the subway. Vince tries to pull away again and Eric’s fingers slip, but his friend pinches the sleeve of the jacket and holds on, stubborn. Vince isn’t really into porn but he likes the thought of watching a movie like that with Eric, the two of them camped out on his bed, hips touching, legs together, people on the TV getting it on and both of them horny as all get out. What would that lead to? How easy would it be then? A hand on Eric’s thigh, a lowered voice, a coy suggestion … and then pain, he thinks, and the image of his friend sprawled out on the bed flashes through his mind, white skin against sheets red with blood, eyes as dark as bruises, that porcelain face cracked and broken. Tufts of those golden curls scattered like dandelion fluff. The thought makes his palms sweat, and the next time Eric’s hand slides beneath Vince’s elbow, he isn’t so quick to brush off the touch.

IT’S NICE TO have someone to hang out with, someone he already knows, some-

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one who knows him. The guys on his floor — yeah, they’re fun to be around, and whenever Brian heads out, Vince trails along just for something to do, but that’s not friendship. Remove the common veil of school and there’s nothing there between them. He has to hide behind a role he’s sort of painted for himself here at college, the character of the gloomy roomie. The other guys get a kick out of it and Vince feels comfortable enough in the position but with Eric, there’s no pretension. There’s no censor on his words — or his thoughts, God knows. There’s never an anxious moment where he says something and waits two beats to see how Eric will react, because he already knows. The past between them, it shines through Vince’s clenched fingers, no matter how hard he tries to hide it in his hands. Their previous friendship is in every word, every touch, the easy way their bodies bump together when they walk. In the middle of The City, surrounded by faceless strangers and foreign sounds, Vince finds himself loosening his grip. Letting Eric in, past his defenses, where he’s still a little boy wildly in love with another. Like the delicate petals of a bruised rose, the hands closed so tightly around his heart slowly begin to relax. By the time they get back on campus, it’s close to midnight. The quad is silent, the bustle of traffic muted, as if it doesn’t quite reach through the trees. Eric’s laugher stabs the night, quick and bright like a knife in the darkness. It cuts Vince to the bone. They shuffle through fallen leaves that stick to the sidewalk in a carpet of yellow and rust and orange. Where the leaves are kicked aside, their outlines stain the concrete. The world is wet and the air crisp, new. Vince thinks it must’ve rained while they were in the subway. Of course, he gets a few days off from his classes, has a friend come up to visit, and it has to pour. Eric is breathless and full of himself. “Third floor,” he giggles as they trek up the dormitory stairs, like it’s some kind of joke. “Who the hell did you piss off to get stuck up here?” “Could be worse,” Vince says. He hates to admit it, but he likes the way Eric’s hands touch his lower back, helping him up the steps. “I could’ve gotten the fourth. Or hell, over in Drew? Twelve stories. Count ‘em, twelve. And you know those elevators hardly ever work.” He unlocks the door to his floor and holds it open as Eric stumbles into the hall. “You have friends over there?” he wants to know. His voice echoes in the quiet corridor. “Shh,” Vince admonishes. “Keep it down.” He’s not sure if anyone else is staying in the dorms this weekend but if they are, Eric’s already woken them up. Leading the way to his room, Vince keeps his voice low. “Are you kidding? I ain’t hiking it up twelve flights of stairs for nobody.” Suddenly Eric leans against him, his arms easing around Vince’s waist to clasp at the buckle of his belt. A thickness rubs against his buttocks but he won’t Part Two

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let himself think of what it might be. “Not even for me?” his friend murmurs. His breath tickles the nape of Vince’s neck. He shrugs Eric off like an oversized coat. “I thought we had a deal,” he mutters. The evening crashes down around them and here in the eternal light of the corridor nothing’s changed. His heart is still wounded, his chest still aches. When Eric runs a finger just below the hair on his neck, Vince scrunches up his shoulders and ducks away. “You don’t want to talk about what happened, right?” he asks, angry all over again. “And I don’t want you touching me. Remember?” “Do you?” Eric asks. At his door, Vince whirls to face him — how could he forget? Eric shoves his hands into his pockets to keep them to himself and meets his hard gaze. “Come on, Vince. A few minutes ago, outside, what was that? You didn’t seem so against it then.” One corner of his mouth twists into a half-smile. “Do you want to talk about it?” He means the kiss, the one that drove them apart. Vince looks at him a moment longer, then turns and fumbles his key into the lock. “No.” It’s too late for talk. What would it change? Not a damn thing. He pushes his way into the dark room, flicking the light switch to throw the shadows back, and says it again. “No, I don’t, okay? I don’t.” At his desk, he clicks on his lamp and hates the sound of his own voice when he tells Eric, “Turn off the overhead, will you?” Shadows spring across the room like released hounds, but the lamp on the desk keeps them away from Vince’s side. Eric closes the door, the sound of the latch soft between them, and before Vince can ask, he locks it, too. Vince studies a pencil that he left resting above the function keys of his keyboard and doesn’t look around as he shrugs off his jacket. He doesn’t want to see Eric in this intimate light. He doesn’t want to think of the boy sleeping in the bed next to his. When is he leaving? Monday seems so far away. From the other side of the room, Vince hears Eric riffle through his suitcase and he wonders if he’ll undress here or in the bathroom. That thought almost shorts out the circuits in his brain. The wardrobes separate the room but how could he possibly stay on his side knowing Eric was naked on the other? When he can see his friend’s bare ass reflected in the blank TV screen? To prove to himself how simple it would be, he looks over at the TV and watches Eric slip out of his letterman jacket. And out of his shirt, Vince thinks, his mind racing. He closes his eyes in an effort to block out the images. And his pants. And his — “I’ve got something for us,” Eric says, interrupting Vince’s sordid thoughts. “What’s that?” Vince asks. His voice sounds thick, unused. “Good old JD.” He glances over his shoulder as Eric approaches, holding the bottle of whiskey in one hand. His lips curve in a teasing smirk. “Want some?” he asks. His eyes sparkle like the amber liquid in the low lamplight. “I know you do.” 76

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Vince laughs. He’s never gotten drunk before and the prospect is tempting. In the clubs downtown he used to get someone to buy him a beer but he put an end to that when the last guy he asked didn’t want the cash he held out for payment — he wanted a blowjob beneath the table instead. “I ain’t that thirsty,” he muttered in disgust. He knows there are a few keg parties around campus but he isn’t the type to get invited to them. In Eric’s hand, the whiskey winks golden, inviting. Kicking off his shoes, Vince takes the bottle. “Get the smokes.” He crawls onto his bed and sits back against his pillow. With his long legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed, he picks at the cap on the whiskey bottle while Eric retrieves the box of Marlboros from his suitcase. When he comes around to Vince’s side of the room, he smiles wickedly and Vince concentrates on opening the bottle to keep from falling into that grin. Climbing over Vince’s legs, Eric slips off his shoes and shakes the bed with each move he makes. The whiskey splashes in the bottle, threatening to spill. “Careful,” Vince warns as he unscrews the cap. “If this shit gets on my bed, I’m not sleeping in it tonight.” Eric falls on his side in the space between Vince and the wall. “You can sleep with me,” he says coyly. His cheek leans against Vince’s shoulder, his chest pressed to Vince’s arm — if he moves, his elbow will catch Eric in the ribs. It’s a tight fit, the two of them in this narrow bed. The foil around the whiskey cap cuts into Vince’s fingers as he tries to unwrap the bottle. “If you’d move over,” he mutters, though there isn’t any room. “Do you have to sit right up on me, Eric?” “I’m not sitting on you,” Eric points out. He reaches for the bottle but Vince slaps his hand away. “I’m laying next to you. Are we going to be able to drink that tonight or what?” “Shut up,” Vince growls. His friend’s closeness bothers him more than he likes to admit. Finally he gets the foil peeled away to where he wants it and a heavy scent like bitter perfume wafts up from the whiskey. For a moment it obscures Eric’s own cologne. “Cups.” Eric sighs, a dramatic sound that trickles off into a giggle. “We don’t need them. Give it here.” Before Vince can argue, he grabs the bottle and throws his head back, taking a deep swig of the whiskey. Vince watches his throat work around the alcohol. He has to curl his hands in his shirt to keep from trailing a finger down that glorious stretch of skin. He wants to pinch that bobbing Adam’s apple until the boy chokes. His groin stirs at the thought. When Eric hands the bottle back, Vince is tempted to wipe the spit from it but doesn’t. Instead he squeezes his eyes shut and tells himself the warmth of the glass on his lips isn’t Eric’s mouth on his own. He puts his head back and glittering flames race down his throat to pool like gold coins in his belly. He swallows Part Two

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without thinking, until his cheeks burn and a fine sweat beads across his forehead. As Eric reaches for another taste, Vince licks the rim of the bottle to catch every last drop. Of the whiskey, he assures himself. Not whatever hint of his friend remains behind.

VINCE DOESN’T FEEL it at first. That’s the beauty of alcohol, he thinks; it doesn’t hit until you stop. It makes perfect sense, then, that he should just keep drinking to avoid getting drunk. Like two winos in an alley they pass the bottle between them, stretched out on Vince’s bed. Vince is quite sure the temperature in the room has risen several degrees though the heater hasn’t kicked on yet. Eric even opened the window a crack, and every so often a blast of ice cold air dances over them. It stirs the smoke that hangs in the room like a storm cloud. Vince can feel the chill through his jeans. Their faces are sheathed in sweat. From the drink, and from the damn heat. When did it get so hot in here? Vince doesn’t know, but having Eric beside him doesn’t help. The boy’s body melds along his side and if his hand moves any further up Vince’s thigh, it’ll be grasping his dick. Is that supposed to be unintentional? Because Vince isn’t that drunk. At least, he doesn’t think he is. When he gets the bottle again, he holds it up and frowns at the small amount of amber liquid inside. Only a third left, if that. Did they already drink the rest? His head hums like a radio between stations and there’s too much current running through his blood, it’s burning him up. Eric reaches for the bottle, accidentally brushing his crotch, and Vince’s cock stiffens as if electrocuted. He tries to move away but Eric crawls over him, intent on the whiskey. “My turn,” he says. He sounds like a petulant child. Vince brings his leg up between them. The last thing he needs is Eric copping a feel of his hard-ass dick and getting the wrong idea. “There’s not much left,” he mutters. His voice sounds slow and foreign to his own ears. After half a bottle of Jack Daniels, he thinks, surprisingly lucid, what do you expect? He hands over the bottle and now it’s Eric’s turn to frown at the remaining whiskey. “Well shit.” When he shakes the bottle, the alcohol bubbles and froths. “Who drank it all?” “You did.” Vince shoves him back and Eric falls to the bed, holding the bottle up so he can stare at it as though that alone might fill it again. Unsteadily Vince tries to stand — he gets up on one leg before his knee gives out and he plops down on the mattress again. So much for going to the bathroom. He tells himself he doesn’t have to take a piss anyway.

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His friend sits up and tries to set the bottle on Vince’s desk. With amused detachment, Vince watches Eric struggle to reach that far, bending at the waist and holding the bottle out by its neck at the full length of his arm. The bottle bumps the edge of desk, wobbles, and threatens to tip over as Eric pushes it with his fingertips … “A little help here?” he asks in a huff. “You’ve almost got it,” Vince laughs. His gaze is drawn to the small of Eric’s back where his shirt has pulled free from his jeans and a thin line of skin is exposed, peachy in the light of the lamp and covered in very fine fuzz. Tiny hairs catch the light and flare to life like copper wire with each move Eric makes. The further he stretches, the more his shirt pulls up, and the mean streak in Vince wants to push the desk out of the way just to see more of that pale skin, that downy hair. Even the alcohol doesn’t dull the ache that blossoms in his chest at the thought of pressing his face to that soft skin and feeling the barely-there fluff tickle his upper lip. Who am I kidding? he thinks, closing his eyes against the drunken thoughts that rage through him. Hurtful things, pain and sex and a love so keen, it has almost honed itself into hate. Far away he hears the bottle tap against the wooden desk, he feels the bed move beneath him as Eric stretches to set the whiskey down. How many cigarettes did they burn through? How much drink? Smoke churns within him like nausea and alcohol flows through his veins. His hands are heavy, his chin droops to his chest, he can’t seem to keep his eyes open any longer. With a sigh of relief, he lets go. He falls back against the mattress, still warm from Eric’s heat. It’s hot in here, despite the faint breeze that stirs the curtains. Vince turns his face blindly into the scant chill and sighs again. Right here, he thinks, though he isn’t quite sure what he means by that. Everything inside his body feels as if it’s still falling, like he hasn’t hit the bed yet. “Got it!” Eric cries out. “Ha. Without even getting up …” His voice trails off as he turns around and Vince can imagine the look of consternation on his friend’s face — the slight frown, his brows drawn together, a thin wrinkle creasing the top of his nose. His classic what now? expression, the one he perfected long ago. Vince expects to feel a hand on his shoulder and hear that pouting voice whine his name. Any minute now Eric will shake him awake to move him over so he can have his side of the bed back. But when the touch comes, it’s gentle and loving, not the rough manhandling that Vince expects. The back of a hand across his cheek, a finger tracing the straight edge of his nose to rest in the dimple above his mouth, a thumb brushed across his lips. Kiss me, he thinks suddenly, hating the part of himself that responds to this tenderness. Don’t you fucking kiss me. I’ll hurt you, Eric. I’m just waiting for my chance. “Vince.” His name in breath like kerosene, it sets his blood on fire. No kisses, Part Two

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damn. He tells himself he isn’t disappointed. That hand pets his cheek in long, smooth strokes. “Do you remember what you told me?” When? He knows when. He clears his throat and keeps his eyes closed so he doesn’t have to acknowledge that hand on his skin. “We aren’t talking about that,” he mutters. “We can,” Eric says. How can he sound so reasonable? So sober? He drank just as much as Vince did. How can he want to talk right now? Just keep touching me, Vince prays. Shut the hell up and don’t you dare take your hand away. Keep rubbing right there until morning. When he doesn’t answer, Eric adds, “I’m ready to talk about it now —” Vince laughs. “Too late.” Too damn late. Eric strokes the underside of his chin. If Vince were a dog, he’d be wagging his tail by now, no wonder animals lap this shit up. “Can I ask you something?” “No.” Eric sighs and Vince shakes his head to shoo him away, but the second he stops moving his friend is back touching his face. “You’re drunk.” “One question,” Eric persists. “About something you said then. You remember, right?” I think maybe I’m in love with you. The words are carved into his heart, he picks at the scabs from time to time to make sure the wounds never heal. I love you, Eric, that’s what I said. I was a fucking FOOL and I’m not saying it now, I’m not giving you the pleasure of hearing it. Not again. If his friend laughed a second time? Sweet Jesus in highest heaven, he’d die. Forget hurting Eric, he’d have to kill himself. He couldn’t bear to hold his heart out again like he did four years ago only to have this stupid, perfect boy beside him knock it out of his hands the way little kids do when they’re messing around. Like it’s some kind of joke, the way he feels. Like he’s something to laugh at. Fuck that. So he keeps quiet. “You remember,” Eric breathes. He leans closer, and flames race across Vince’s cheeks, down his neck. His friend’s mouth hovers mere inches from his own — if he licked his lips, Vince would taste Eric’s too. He tries to pull back and can’t, the bed is behind him, he can’t move away. “Tell me,” Eric murmurs. Vince doesn’t hear the words. He breathes them, eats them instead. “Do you still feel that way? Do you still love me?” Vince opens his eyes and Eric is right there, right there. The room has grown unbearably hot, like a furnace — heat rolls off of them in waves that suffocate what little air circulates through the window. When Vince opens his mouth to speak, nothing comes out. He has to swallow and almost chokes on Eric’s cologne. Obsession. Tell me about it, he thinks. Do you still love me? His reply is a whisper between them. “No.” Eric laughs and Vince drinks in the sound. This close his friend’s breath is as intoxicating as the whiskey. It spins his head, quickens his pulse. How can he find this funny? “You’re lying,” he says. 80

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“You’re drunk,” Vince tells him. Eric’s lips spread into an indulgent smile. “Not as drunk as you’d like me to be.” What’s that supposed to mean? Vince doesn’t know. “Get up,” he growls. Eric doesn’t move, so he says it again. Maybe he isn’t speaking clearly. “Get the hell off me. Get up.” That perfectly red mouth draws into a bow. “Vince —” He shoves against the hard chest, pushes with everything he has, which at this point isn’t much. At first Eric doesn’t budge and Vince almost gives up. How easy would it be? To finally give in? How wonderful would it feel? To let Eric have his way … “No.” He strikes out with half-formed fists that catch Eric in the neck, on the ear, and his friend finally pulls away. “What the hell do you think I am?” Vince wants to know, sitting up. He wobbles precariously on the edge of the bed the same way the bottle of whiskey had teetered on the desk, but his anger gives him purchase. “Vince —” Eric tries again. He places a tentative hand on his shoulder that Vince shrugs away. He isn’t listening. Rage floods through him, tingling his fingers, his toes. The alcohol fuels the fire and Eric is the spark that lights the flame. “Do you get some sort of sick pleasure from digging into me, is that it?” Vince asks. Over his shoulder he sees Eric through the haze of smoke that clouds the room. Eyes wide, lips parted, shocked at this outburst. Vince sees himself shoving his steelhard dick into that soft mouth until the lips are red with blood and he sways beneath that image, it’s overpowering. “Does this turn you on?” he wants to know. He thinks he’s going to be sick. “You just want to get me talking so you’ll hear the words all over again. Is that your plan? You want to hear me say —” Eric interrupts him. “I love you.” His eyes widen, if that’s possible. Vince has suddenly forgotten how to speak. “I love you,” Eric says again. Are those tears that make his eyes shimmer like that? Or just a product of the smoke, the drink? His friend hurries on before Vince can think of words to say to fill the air between them. “At least, I think … I know I do, I knew it before you told me yourself.” Vince almost sobs. “You think?” he croaks. He’s not hearing this. “I know,” Eric insists. You’re drunk, Vince thinks, but now he’s not so sure. “I just didn’t … I wasn’t old enough to —” His face crumples like tissue paper. “Oh hell, I don’t know what I’m trying to say.” “Then shut up.” Vince tries to stand. Eric hooks a finger through the belt loop of his jeans and pulls him back down. “Listen to me,” he says. Part Two

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So demanding! What would’ve happened if Vince had done the same thing all those years ago? “Listen to me, Eric, stop laughing and just listen for a minute, will you? I love you, you idiot, though I surely don’t know why.” That would’ve gone over real well, and Vince won’t let it work now. “Get off me,” he cries, arms flailing around him like chains. “Let me go.” Eric obeys and he vaults forward, knocks into his wardrobe with a hollow thud, almost falls to the bed again but catches himself in time. Straightening his shirt, he stares at the floor and has to blink several times to clear his blurry vision. The whiskey, he thinks, not tears. He won’t give Eric that satisfaction. In a thick voice, he mutters, “You’re a fucking asshole, Eric, you know that?” Behind him the bed creaks and he moves away, skittish, afraid that his friend will touch him again. And then I’ll give in. Not in this life. I can’t. Backing into the corner, he shakes his head to clear it. “Don’t —” “I’m sorry,” Eric says, staggering to his feet. Of course he’s sorry, he’s always apologizing anymore. He stretches out an arm to steady himself and Vince knocks it away, it’s too close. “Vince, listen, please? I love you. I just wasn’t ready to admit it then, okay? I’m —” “You’re drunk.” Vince gauges the distance between himself and his friend. Even in this inebriated state, he knows two more steps and Eric will be on him, and there’s no space left between the bed and wardrobe to make his escape. The door never looked so far away. Eric reaches for him again and Vince punches his wrist. “Go sleep it off and you’ll see. In the morning you’ll be all I’m sorry I said that crap, I was just talking shit.” Eric shakes his head. “You’re wrong, Vince. I’m not as drunk as you are. Don’t you understand? That bottle was my last chance. I know you still feel it. You have to.” He takes a step closer. Vince climbs up onto the bed. The mattress rocks beneath his feet like a boat on the sea and he almost pitches headlong out the window, but he moves quickly, skirting Eric to get behind him. “I don’t feel shit,” he mutters. “I’m dead inside, Eric, and you know it. You killed me. Took my heart and twisted it —” As if to prove his point, the bed shifts under him and twists his feet together. He falls to the floor in a broken, tumbled heap. Bright pain flares in his knees, his elbows, his hands, but when Eric starts for him, he crawls away. Toward his roommate’s side of the room, toward the door, and then what? Into the hall maybe, someone else’s room, outside, he doesn’t know, doesn’t care. Just leave me alone, he prays. A hand closes around his ankle and he kicks free. Leave me the hell alone, can’t you please? “Vince,” Eric sobs. He falls to his knees and grabs Vince around the waist, stopping him. “Where are you going? We have to get this out. We have to —” One socked foot catches him in the chest, cutting off his words. Vince turns, kicking, his legs much stronger than his arms and every hit finds its target. Eric. 82

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He pedals both feet, kicking away the hands that hold him, driving his heels into his friend’s knees, stepping into that hard, flat stomach. Eric tries to block each blow and can’t. “You cut me,” Vince snarls. He pushes away from his friend but he can’t contain his fury, it’s been eating at him for too long and he claws out, scratching, punching, hurting. “You think a few apologies are going to be enough? You think you can just kiss away the pain?” Eric stares at him with eyes full of tears. So blue. Vince wants to see that color run down those sad cheeks, he wants to taste it, this sorrow. He’s been waiting for it for years. He deserves it. He strikes out again and again. His fists hit shoulders, hands, legs. Eric’s chest, his neck, his face. God knows, his face, and his mouth, his eyes, his curls. Vince gouges into complacent skin, he punches willing muscles, he meets no resistance because Eric knows he deserves this, and this, and this. There’s no end to the hatred inside of him, now that it’s finally found a way out. Eyes as blue as rain watch him rage. Lips as red as blood wait out the storm.

VINCE WAKES TO a steady drizzle outside his window. There’s a slight chill that wafts over him in bursts — he feels it through the thin comforter that traps the warmth of his body against the bed. Last night … “I hate you,” he cries, but he no longer believes that lie. His fists connect with solid flesh over and over again, he punches and bites and scratches. Eric takes it, all of it, all of his anger and pain. He lets Vince pour it out into him. Last night was a mistake. He should’ve never agreed to this visit or the whiskey. Why can’t he be stronger? In his mind he sees — Broken skin, bruised flesh, his own battered hands. Suddenly Vince stops fighting … it’s gone. His rage has burned itself out and his chest is hollow now, his heart reduced to ashes. “I can’t,” he sobs, half words formed from tears. “I just … I —” When he strikes out again, Eric catches his wrists in hands stronger than they should be. “Don’t,” he sighs as Eric pulls him close. “Don’t.” He shifts uncomfortably, trying to get away from the memory, and finds himself trapped between the cold wall and a warm, pliant body. No. Now he feels the heavy arm draped around his shoulders, he smells a musk that isn’t his own scent. With trembling hands, he feels his way around sculpted muscles that have begun to soften from disuse, and when his thumb brushes over one hard nipple, his eyes fly open to find Eric asleep beside him. Asleep … or dead. A livid bruise has begun to bloom beneath one closed eye. Above the other, beads of blood have dried into a trio of scratches that follow the curve of his

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eyebrow. His curls fall disheveled across his forehead, and there are teeth marks on his jaw. Mine, Vince thinks, amazed and repulsed at the same time. He did this, him — how could he? How could Eric let him? The boy is bigger, God knows he could’ve crushed Vince into pulp and kicked him aside but he didn’t. He didn’t. Carefully, Vince trails a hand up between them and touches the bruise on Eric’s cheek. He could press now and flood this body with pain. He’d take it, too, Eric would. What did he say last night? “I love you.” Vince murmurs the words. They sound the same as they did all those years ago, only there’s no laughter this time. No hurt, no ache. Nothing but an echo deep within him, a sudden fear that maybe it’s too late. “Eric?” he whispers. No, he prays. Dear God, don’t let it be too late. His friend doesn’t move. For a second Vince’s thumb hovers over the bruise, ready to dig in to see if the sensation will send Eric clawing awake, but he doesn’t push the tender flesh. Instead he leans close, closer, until his mouth is just above Eric’s red, red lips. He holds his breath but can’t tell if Eric is breathing. He closes his eyes and gently, gently, kisses his friend’s upper lip. Still no laughter. See? he thinks, pulling back to study Eric’s pretty face. I can be kind. I’m more than hurt, more than pain, you’ll see. I promise, I can be more. “Eric?” The arm around his shoulders slips to his waist — that’s all the response he gets. Frustrated, he grasps the tip of Eric’s nose and pinches his nostrils together. Silently he starts to count, one-Mississippi, two-Mississippi, three-Mississip — Eric’s lips part as he breathes in deep. Without letting go of his nose, Vince places his little finger beneath Eric’s chin and snaps his mouth shut. ThreeMississippi, he starts again, almost triumphant. Four — Eric sputters awake. “Damn,” he sighs, slapping Vince’s hand away. His eyes waver with remnants of the alcohol and it takes him a minute to focus. Then he realizes he’s in Vince’s bed and his head falls back to the pillow. He burrows down into the blankets, snuggling closer. His body is softer than Vince thought possible and it molds to his own completely, as if they are two halves of the same whole. “Jesus,” he mutters, his breath hot where it curls along Vince’s neck. “What time is it?” Vince marvels at the boy folded into him. His hand traces the faint bluish veins that have begun to bleed through Eric’s fading tan. He watches his fingers smooth down pale blond brows. His thumb ruffles lashes that flicker beneath his touch. “Vince?” Eric asks sleepily, his voice muffled, as Vince’s hands delve into the thick waves that frame his face. Without warning, his fingers tighten in Eric’s hair as he yanks his friend’s head back. Eric stares at him with eyes pulled wide, his teeth clenched in pain. “If this is a game to you,” Vince warns, “if you’re just playing me —” “I’m not,” Eric assures him. “Let go, Vince, I’m not playing you. I meant it, 84

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every word I said last night. I meant it when I told you —” “You don’t have to say it.” Vince lets go of the curls and rubs the tender scalp. Slowly Eric draws into him again. “And you’re right, I still do, too.” Eric’s arms tighten around his waist and he laughs, throaty, sexy, tickling Vince in places he didn’t know a sound could touch. Eric says it anyway, the words filling the emptiness that yawns inside of him until he thinks he’ll overflow. This is larger than the hatred, the pain, larger than himself and he can’t contain it. When his friend starts to say it a second time, Vince kisses him just to keep from hearing the words again. If he does, he thinks he might explode. Outside, the sound of water trickles into the early pre-dawn world and a cool breeze whistles through the slightly open window. But here beneath the blanket Vince has found a warmth he didn’t know could exist. He pulls the sheets over Eric’s shoulders and huddles against his friend to keep it between them.

THE END

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About the Author

J. M. SNYDER is a self-published author of gay erotic fiction who lives in Virginia with three cats and an extensive collection of ‘N Sync memorabilia. Always working on the next book, Snyder hopes to publish another novel (much longer than this one) in early 2004. Visit http://www.jmsnyder.net for excerpts from Snyder’s other published works as well as short online fiction, upcoming titles, and purchasing information. Positive feedback, as well as infrequent hate mail, can be forwarded to the author at [email protected].