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“Yeah, very stupid.” She stepped back and opened the door wider. “You wanna come in for a minute? Place is a mess, but…whatever.”
I stepped around her to go inside the dark trailer. She wasn’t kidding about the mess. First, the place reeked of stale smoke. Every surface was covered with cast-off clothing that looked as though it wouldn’t even pass muster as a Goodwill donation. The surfaces of the end tables and coffee tables in the living room were hidden under grease-stained pizza boxes, dirty paper plates, beer cans, and overflowing ashtrays.
I almost missed Jeb’s dad on the couch, turned toward the back and snoring.
When I turned to Mandy, she was watching me. “Jealous of our happy home?”
“Oh Mandy, I’m so sorry.”
She nodded and her eyes were shiny with tears. Had no one come to offer comfort? Cookies? Support?
This seemed like hell, a place where joy and hope went to die.
Their trailer had always been a mess, but before it was organized chaos. There was always music, usually heavy-metal that set my teeth on edge, but I could always count on chatter and laughter to compete with the soundtrack.
“You don’t have to stay.” She put a head to her forehead, as though an icepick were stabbing her behind her eyes. “I really wish you wouldn’t, actually. I don’t know what I was thinking.” The last sentence she murmured to herself, not looking at me.
I got it. I wasn’t offended. I held out a hand to touch her shoulder, and she stumbled back and out of reach.
“Please go.”
“Merry Christmas.” I turned to the door, regretting the words immediately.
But the only answer I got was silence.
As I opened the door, she said, “I know.”
I turned. “Know what?”
“What you were to Jeb. And what he was to you. You must miss him.” Tears stood out on her cheeks as she hunted around for a pack of cigarettes on the counter.
There was so much I wanted to say, but once she found her smokes and lit one, she looked at me like I was one more cockroach in the place. “Are you still here?” she wondered through a cloud of blue-gray smoke.
I hurried out, heartbroken.
The school year concluded and the humid days of another summer approached. I despaired because one day I realized I was having trouble remembering Jeb’s face or the sound of his voice.
Life’s cruel lesson became clear to me as I celebrated my fourteenth birthday. Nothing—and no one—lasts forever.
Or so I thought.
Chapter 3
Now—Sam
I
I stood across from him near the front door.
This is a dream.
This is not a dream.
We were simultaneously two grown men at the tail-end of our forties and two teenage boys discovering our sexuality for the first time and realizing how love and lust intertwine and can be all-consuming.
I didn’t know what to say. I wrung my hands, noticing how damp they were. I wasn’t certain where to rest my gaze.Could this really be Jeb?After all these years, it was hard, maybe even impossible, to say. This man had the same green eyes, the same lanky build and dark straight hair—even all grown up. And the pendant! A flash of memory revealed a vision of me affixing it to his damp neck in the river. I could even recall the kiss I planted on the nape of his neck.
A summer thunderstorm had born down on us. We’d worried about making the passage from Harker’s Island to the shore without getting struck or pulled under by the powerful currents we’d been warned against.
