“I SEE EVERYTHING NOW.I see everything so clearly. The tangled knots of my past have been undone, and while it is difficult, seeing without lies settles the heart. My history makes sense for the first time. With the truth laid out, I cannot hide. I can only run to it, embrace it even. Because now no demons are chasing me. There’s nothing else to run from.” This is all I say to Sam when he dies.
The pills are the most peaceful way for him to die and the easiest for me to watch, so I’m glad he chose that again. My hope is that when I’m calm and not anxious about his dying, that I can focus and send him into a productive trip.
Costa waits for me on the patio, and together, we sit without talking for the few hours it takes Sam to surface. The crash from inside makes both of us jump, and when we get to the kitchen, Sam is holding his head and fighting his surge.
“Hit my skull on the fridge,” Sam says with irritation.
We all agreed that we’ve got to find a way to control the surging. If we find Toby, we can’t all surface in states that are sonotconducive to being around a child. I’ll probably have the least control, but the guys might be able to restrain themselves if necessary. Maybe.
Sam, however, has surfaced hard right now, and he’s hungry in more ways than one. Costa offers him a deli platter, but trying to thwart Sam’s surge proves useless, and Costa nearly gets yet another black eye when Sam swings at him. Costa tosses up his hands and goes down to the water, leaving Sam and me alone for a while.
I really can’t complain because, even though I’m not surging, holding him while he’s died so many times has built up a charge in me that needs a release, and I’m more than happy to work out his surge in the bedroom—or in this case, on the kitchen island.
My legs are wrapped around Sam’s waist, and he’s fully dressed with only his pants undone and lowered enough. The counter is hard underneath my back, but I like this because the solidity lets me feel everything about Sam moving inside me. I let myself get lost in him and his rhythm, and I focus solely on my physical pleasure, blocking out everything else. There’s too much to face right now, and my past and future are colliding in a way that’s verging on unmanageable. I don’t want to be here, so I let myself disappear until there is only the fluid motion of sex and my love for Sam. I need a break from being too present, so I allow myself to vanish into him. I will come back to reality though. It’s not like before.
It’s only when he stops moving and says something that I jar from my own world.
“What? Don’t stop…” I murmur. When I open my eyes, I see that he’s resting his hands on the counter and staring out the picture window.
“A rainy day at the lake is better than a sunny day anywhere else,” he says, smiling.
“Huh?”
“Swim during daylight hours only. No lifeguard on duty after six p.m.” He squints a bit. “The Joy of Cooking…The Firm…TheCatcher in the Rye. Oh.A Different BlueandTen Tiny Breaths. You read those last two, didn’t you? This summer?”
I’m pretty sure that Sam is having some kind of a horrible seizure that’s causing him to rattle off nonsense. I tap his arm. “Look at me. Are you okay? Bishop?”
“Sorry.” He grins through his surge haze. “The sex is outstanding. But I couldn’t help noticing that I can read the signs at the public beach across the lake and that I can see inside someone’s house. They have a lot of books.”
I’m flooded with disbelief. “You got it? You got vision?”
Sam looks down at me and begins moving his hips again. “I got it.” He leans over and nuzzles into my neck. “I got it.” His breath is hot on my neck, his lips and tongue wet as he starts kissing and sucking on my skin.
I lift up into him, my arousal now soaring even more. The strength of us together scares me and exhilarates me, and my body reacts to our intensity by needing more and more from him. My fingers dig into his shoulders as I work myself against him until I can barely breathe, and then my body tightens and climaxes. The groan that I release is nearly a howl, and I’m still shuddering when Sam thrusts into me harder and harder, soon working toward his own. Surge sex is raw and so animalistic in the base needs and sounds it creates in us. Death tripping might be addictive, but surge sex might be even more so.
After, when Sam has finished polishing off most of the deli platter, we go down to the lakeshore. Costa is a few feet from the water. It must have been torture for him to wait out Sam’s surge to find out if this worked.
Before I can tell him the news, Sam stops us twenty feet away. “Hold up your phone.”
“What?” Costa looks nervous.
“Open a web page, and hold up your phone to me.”
Costa bites his lip and controls a smile. The look he gives Sam melts my heart. He does what he’s asked to and lifts the phone. I can’t begin to see what is on the screen.
Sam, very casually and without straining at all, reads to us, “Bret Michaels was born on March fifteenth in nineteen sixty-three—Costa, seriously?” He laughs but keeps reading, “As the lead singer of the band Poison, Bret enjoyed international success in the eighties, and to date, the band has sold over forty-five million records worldwide. Bret relaunched his career with his reality dating show,Rock of Love.” Sam tosses up his hands. “Okay, I can’t take anymore!”
Costa makes a beeline for Sam and jumps into his arms, latching on to him like a koala baby, and Sam stumbles back.
“You can see, Sammy! You can see!”
Sam rolls his eyes, but he hugs his friend close.
The boys are both laughing and crying.
While I’m as happy as they are, I’m also cautious about preemptively celebrating too much. There are too many unknowns. “Sam, let’s find out if you can see in the dark.”
He sets Costa down and points to the sky. “You might not have noticed in all the excitement, but it’s still light out.”
