Summer Sons

by Lee Mandelo

Home was where Eddie was; home was nowhere, now.

He wanted to race Halse again, and that was a strange sensation: want. He also wanted to break his knuckles on Halse’s jaw.

“For fuck’s sake, Andrew. Is there anything in this scenario that feels heterosexual or well-adjusted to you?”

“If you don’t put those in the wash before you leave, I am going to smother you in your sleep,” Riley shouted to him.

Only one set of ribs lifted and fell; there was no bridging the gap across time,

The band around his ring finger radiated a bitter cold he hadn’t noticed until it contrasted with the fever Sam stoked in him.

“I know that. He’s not gone, though. Look at us right this minute. Half the conversations we have, he’s in them. I was going to fuck you wearing his ring on your wedding finger.”

The tender awfulness of remembering himself through Eddie’s eyes, beautiful and cherished and wanted with raw confused intensity, with ownership, a sublimated tangled connection that Eddie had never spoken or unpacked,

Having been loved wasn’t the same as being loved.

Maybe one night, Eddie would’ve seen him right at sunset all doused in gold and grabbed him with both hands, and put their mouths together.

Andrew had to accept that he was going to take that maybe to his grave.

Eddie had made him powerful—powerful enough to control a haunt, though he hated the idea of forcing him out. Come on. I love you, but this is no life. And, for once, it cooperated. His acquired memories slithered free with a mournful pang.

Knowing it was the right thing to do, to preserve the memory of Eddie as he’d really been, rather than what he’d become, didn’t fix how bad it hurt to be well and truly alone.

Each crunch of forest debris under his shoes put another foot of distance between the person he had been and the person he thought he might become. Eddie had left him this, also: a future to see through.