“What?”
He barks out a laugh and swims around me. “Dude! Be so serious right now.” He stops swimming and gets a good look at my face. Whatever he sees has him laughing more. “Well, one, Bowen told me. Duh. Two, you’re like, really obvious. I’m pretty sure my muscles each blushed individually when you saw me get out of the truck the other day from how you checked out each one.”
My laugh is pure horror. “Oh my God, I did not check you out.”
He pouts dramatically. “Blonds aren’t your type? I bet you like ‘em big, dark, and broody.” He waggles his eyes, and just like that, I know my face is bright red.
“Shut up.”
“I mean, I always kinda figured. You were never very stealthy about it.”
I splash him again and swim backwards. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I like my men…small. Definitely not muscled and with no hair.”
“You like little bald dudes?”
“Yep. Small and bald.”
He rolls his blue eyes to the sky. The sun glistens in each water droplet on his skin. He’s tanned and classically handsome. Sharp jaw, a mouth that's quick to smile and apparently ready to tell you whatever comes to his head. He’s easy and charismatic. He does absolutely nothing for me.
No one has.
Not a single person.
“For what it's worth,” Ian says, a slightly more serious look on his face, “if you ever want to talk to someone, man, I’m a good listener.”
Do I want to talk to someone?
It was always easier not to. To push it all away, pretend. Deny. Drown in it all because where do you even begin when there is so much? It’s been so long since I’ve shared anything with anyone other than the ghost of the boy who left me behind.
“Is he okay?” is what finally comes out. Ian scans my face, and for a blink, I let him see everything I don’t know how to say out loud. The memories of who I have always been are soaked in the water holding us. Years of childhood, years of love so soft and pure. It surrounded me when I ached with want then and embraces me still as a broken man who is full of a desperate hope for a different future.
Ian finally settles on, “He will be.”
It’s a short and sure response. The kind that Brett would have given, so sure of something he couldn’t actually know for certain. It makes me smile. It tightens my chest around that constant ache.
By the time I pull myself out of the water, my fingers and toes are pruned, and my face hurts from smiling. I haven’t laughed like that in years. Not since life was easy and I had no idea what kind of pain the body could withstand without a single visible wound.
The part of me that still holds tightly to my grief feels a hollow guilt as I make my way back to the cabin. The part of me that I have fought for every day since I left feels relief.
When you go so long without laughing, you start to wonder if you even remember how.
There is still a ghost of a smile on my face when I get to the van. I put my empty water bottle in a small garbage bag and gather whatever bits I left around. I leave my towel and grab a shirt, tossing it on before taking the garbage bag over to the cans on the side of the cabin. I lift the lid, toss the bag in, and pause with the lid just about to close.
I lift it back up.
Inside, at the bottom of the bin, are four bottles.
The same four bottles from last night.
All empty and closed inside the trash.
Kit
It’s times like these when I wish I had a friend. I can write a million letters to Brett, but a dead man can’t give me advice. No matter how much I wish he could. Would it be pathetic to go running back to the lake to see if Ian is still there?
“Hey! What does it mean that Bowen threw out all the liquor in his house? Do you think it's because he doesn’t trust me, or do you think he realizes I’m having a really hard time right now and is taking away the temptation in a…nice way? Please, help me understand!”
I rub the back of my neck and stare at the door. It's not a redwood door, but a faded green instead. There isn’t the sound of traffic in the street, or the movement of other people around. Nothing but the trees and wind behind me, and a cabin full of questions and the man who has the answers in front of me. I close my eyes, lift my fist, and knock.
