Summer Sons

by Lee Mandelo

He’d buried home two weeks past.

Friends meant nothing in comparison to what he and Eddie were to each other.

It was the third time in fifteen days that the haunt had visited him.

He’d left Eddie to these people’s care, and they hadn’t kept him well. Whatever

I’ll tell you what I’m up to when it’s time for you to know, just sit pretty and be patient. And

These men are not straight

He’d cared about music, once, though he no longer had access to the emotion, which felt like it had happened inside a different person a long time ago.

“Well, West thought Ed was a nice rich boy who fell in with some nasty trailer trash,” he said.

“Weren’t you both originally from over on the route to Townsend?”

???? TOWNSEND????

the summer after the cavern.

It hurt, but he missed that touch so much, even this noxious remnant.

For once there was no firm hand holding his leash, ready to snap the lead choke-taut if he got too stupid on anger.

In the course of hours he’d learned that Sam Halse had cocaine and a fast car and apparently a goddamn death wish—inviting scabs on his knuckles, plus a mouth that could peel paint off a wall. The appeal was obvious. Eddie might have been fond of Riley, talked gothic bullshit with him and got drunk on cheap beer, but now Andrew understood where the hook had sunk in because it pierced straight through the meat of his cheek, too. He wanted to race Halse again, and that was a strange sensation: want. He also wanted to break his knuckles on Halse’s jaw.

Good-natured, that was the phrase that kept popping into his head about Riley.

The long, angry red scars under his pectorals were unexpected.

Is riley trans?

Through the cavern and their hauntings since, through a life spent with Eddie keeping him leashed but cared for at the

same time, he couldn’t find a label that fit where he needed it to go. Maybe instead, just a hard stop: he was yours.

The haunt-thing that wasn’t Eddie had taken blood from him. That had no chance of being good, and he doubted the revenant coming after his first lonesome fire-night, one where he’d ended up with other men’s hands on him, could be a coincidence.

path of bruises climbed the side of his neck, patches in the shape of tooth marks, but otherwise he seemed as fresh as a summertime boy could be: sweat on his temples, a sleeveless shirt hanging loose across the bumps of his ribs and the plane of his chest.

Andy baby you are not heterosexul

He doubted there was a use for them other than jealous consumption.

Of course Eddie, monstrous as he’d been, had left behind a revenant that broke all the rules to cling to him, demolishing him one haunting at a time.

Mouthing the same places on her that Eddie had, seconds after, still wet from his lips.

This is not a heterosexul thing to do my friend

Before he could respond to the unexpected gentleness in Sam’s voice, the doorbell rang.

A soft roll of stomach peeked from underneath the high hem of his T-shirt.

Sam said, slapping his stomach hard enough to crumple him. He thumped a loose fist on Sam’s arm in response. The wolf-grin made a reappearance as Sam, knees spread in his kingly position on the couch, dragged his eyes up the length of Andrew, as hot and stinging as the four faint lines his fingers had left behind. “Keep up, princess.”

Eddie had visited him at the end of the spring term and spent the whole five days manhandling him: scratching his scalp, digging thumbs into the knots of his trapezius muscles, rolling on top of him during naps, once gnawing absently on the knob of his wrist for a full five seconds during a movie. Eddie’s touch was a careless claim that meant home, home, home. These knockoffs hadn’t earned the right to handle him.

Eddie kept on breaking the rules in death, his shade manifesting without regard for witnesses, as unpredictable as he’d ever been—and growing stronger the more blood and desire and attention Andrew paid him.

strangled on the haunt’s leash

Stop fighting kids it’s giving me grey hairs And I’m too hot for that Come over Hey fuckass come over Come here Asshole Answer me princess

I really love sam

Andrew caught himself watching the curves of his mouth: a thin upper lip but a plump bottom lip, dimples at the sides of his smile. Ethan looked more high-end model than a law student.

That image loitered in the basement of his brain, color-spattered and confused with yearning and fire and hurt.

Eddie hadn’t been a big fan of MDMA,

You guys are so wrong for chosinf coke over mly. Has Lee ever eveb done Molly

Ethan had drastically miscalculated his dosage.

Dude you took like two points what do you mean wildly miscalculated

He paid enough attention to make you feel close without ever telling you shit.”

except he disliked the idea of Eddie staring enough to get noticed.

nothing casual about it. It

was sort of like watching some big dogs decide they didn’t want to bite each other’s faces off. There were a couple of times I wasn’t sure if they’d decide otherwise.” “How do you mean?”

We were all kind of hoping they’d blow each other and get it over with.”

His skin buzzed, needy, with the ghost of confident, masculine hands grabbing him at leisure, mind spinning with the assumptions people kept making about him.

“Hour and a half?”

Theyre heading towaeds knoxville

He was starting to feel like every one of Eddie’s lies and evasions had something to do with Halse.

someone else was there. Another set of hands arranging the stiff corpse.

The soil had so little spilled blood to give as offering to Andrew when he came for his inheritance.

“Remember that thing I told you, about not fucking with things you shouldn’t fuck with,” Sam said. There was a subdued fury in his voice. “This is one of those things. What even were you doing?” “I needed to be sure.” He planted his

Maybe days after he had died, Sam had stood here with his pocketknife and carved a spot to remember Eddie by.

Andrew considered the weight that had lifted from his shoulders, thinking: I guess I believe him.

“You could’ve asked me. First time you met me, you could’ve just asked.” “Not if you did something,” Andrew said. “Glad you’ve got such a high opinion of me, Blur,” he said. “I didn’t know you.”

Sam Halse talked thick and dripping when he got into it, fat vowels and stretched consonants. He had come from here and he’d die here, that was clear. Halse had taken Eddie on his business runs, out to the hills, where Eddie met strangers and asked after their family secrets. He bet Eddie had sat on a dozen couches and two dozen porches, beer and a joint in hand, prodding grown men for ghost stories, digging up mischief and murders and feuds.

Blindness lent plausible deniability to the fingers that swept across the line of Andrew’s shoulder, the broad hand squeezing the nape of his neck. The thumb pressed under his ear had two owners in his mind, welcome and alien at

Throughout, he was aware of them inside the house, close and ready if he were to call out. For a moment, he hadn’t felt alone.

Special occasions, that was—something to review. He filed it away for the time being.