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“Hi Ethan,” Avery continued to hold his hand, his piercing eyes not breaking contact. There was something disarming about this guy. His face honest and unguarded. Innocent, almost. An expression Ethan didn’t often see in the grown-ups back home. A look which seemed to be mostly reserved for small kids like his cousins or younger siblings. Open. Unfiltered. Curious.
Avery let go of his hand and for a moment, Ethan’s hand continued to linger in the empty space between them before he dropped it to his side.
“Nice to meet you, Ethan,” Avery breathed as he bent down and grabbed his backpack from the white tiled floor beside his dirty hiking boots. With a casual movement, he tossed the backpack over his right shoulder before he headed for the exit. As he moved past Ethan, his right lower arm lightly brushed against Ethan’s right, jean clad thigh. The touch was featherlight, almost non-existent, but Ethan had to fight a sudden urge to rub at the spot.
Just before he left through the double doors of the changing area, Avery turned around, the remnants of a smile lingering in his blue eyes. Lifting his right hand in a small salute, he bit his plump lower lip. For just a moment, the color of his eyes seemed to shift, and an indecipherable frown appeared between his dark-blond brows. Wistful, perhaps. Then it was gone again, making Ethan think he’d imagined it.
“See you around, Ethan,” Avery spoke, the words drifting towards him, before settling around him like a comforting embrace. Then he was gone.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Matty – Then
“THE OR… THEorp… orph…” The letters were crawling across the page like fire ants or maybe more like acrobat ants. Why couldn’t Mr. Pierce just ask him about ants instead? Matty could tell him that the harvester ant was the largest ant species in West Texas, but that the three most common types of ants in all of Texas were the carpenter ant, the fire ant, and the leaf cutter ant. He could also tell him that even though most ant species were considered pests, a lot of them did really good stuff like improving the soil or acting as cleanup crews in nature. Ants were fucking cool. Way cooler than most humans, that’s for sure.
Why couldn’t he just get it right? Just for once. He’d practiced, goddamnit. All day yesterday with Ethan in the tree house. Matty looked at his best friend sitting two tables away to his right next to Gena Kincaid who’d grown a pair of mid-size boobs over the summer break. Everyone had noticed, including himself. Ethan nodded at him and mouthed something, but he couldn’t make it out.
“Matthew, just… just leave it.” Mr. Pierce, their sixth-grade history teacher, shook his head while sighing deeply as if Matty was doing it on purpose just to ruin his day. “Julia, will you take over, please?” Mr. Pierce continued while the life seemed to drain from his sour face with every extra minute spent in the dull, humid classroom.
Matty felt like shrinking into his seat.Great.Another day at Eden City Middle School meant just another day of public humiliation to him. Another day where Matty did everything he could to be as invisible as possible. Most days he failed. He didn’t know why the teachers always picked him. They knew that he was no good. That he couldn’t do it. If they would just leave him alone already.
It didn’t matter that Ethan told him that he was smart in other ways. That it didn’t matter to him that he wasn’t book smart.You know real things, man. Things that matter. If there was an Apocalypse, Matty, you’d be the lone survivor.Matty could always find their way home whenever they got lost somewhere just by looking at the sun. He could always tell if a waterhole was okay to swim in or if it would leave you with an itch in your private parts for days. But the teachers didn’t care about stuff like that.
He met Ethan in front of his locker in the hallway. Their next class was PE. It was better than history but still a load of horseshit. The worst part was when their PE teacher, Mr. Clarkson, would divide them into pairs and they were to wrestle. That was like playing a more violent version of spin-the-bottle. You never knew who you’d end up with. If you ended up with Jeremy Larsson, you were fucked. He’d repeated the sixth grade twice already and he towered over the rest of the boys by several inches. Yeah, if you were up against Jeremy, you were truly fucked.
“Don’t worry about it, man,” Ethan pushed at his shoulder, winking at him. “History sucks anyway.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one who’s fucking shit at reading.” Matty knew that it was unfair of him to take it out on Ethan, but there was no one else he could take it out on. Ethan was the only one who always had his back no matter what Matty threw at him. Which was a lot and sometimes Matty was an asshole.
Ethan pulled him into an awkward hug and ruffled his hair affectionately.
“C’mon man, let’s blow this shithole,” he mumbled into Matty’s damp neck. It was a recurring thing between them. They both knew they couldn’t. Matty would get the beating of a lifetime if his old man found out that he was skipping school. Ethan would get a disappointed frown from Mrs. Bishop and that would be the end of it.
No, when Ethan saidlet’s blow this hole,he never meant right this second. Not today and not tomorrow. Not next year or the year after that. No, it was a silent promise between them. A secret oath just like in the movies.Brothers. That’s what Ethan would call them. They were brothers and they would always be together, and they would always have each other’s backs. Matty couldn’t recall when exactly Ethan had begun calling himbrother.In a way it was weird because Ethan already had three brothers, but Matty never corrected his best friend because he liked the warm fuzzy feeling that spread in his chest whenever Ethan would say it. It made Matty feel good. Warm and safe. Wanted.
As they headed off to PE with Ethan’s left arm slung casually across Matty’s shoulders, he reminded himself that he could do this. That this wasn’t forever. As long as he had Ethan by his side, he could handle anything thrown at him. All the headshakes and theuseless cry-babies.All the gum thrown at him on the school bus, or a locker stuffed with wet toilet paper. All the giggles and the punches. He could take it all. Because Matty knew that just like the sun rose in the East and set in the West that one day when Ethan would wink at him and saylet’s blow this shitholethat it would be true.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ethan – Now
“HEY MAN, HOW’REyou doing?” Ethan sensed the presence of the other guy dropping down next to him before the softness of his breathy voice skated across Ethan’s left cheek.
“Hey,” Ethan replied as he stared at the water stretching out in front of him. He was sitting in the shade of several large trees, sheltering him from the brutal noon sun. He didn’t know which kind of trees because he’d given up on the so-calledBeginner’s Field Guide to North American Trees.Beginner’s my ass, he’d thought to himself as he’d thrown the paperback against the trunk of an unidentifiable tree. All the illustrations had looked pretty much the same to him. Matty would’ve known, though.
Ethan turned towards the guy he’d met yesterday in the changing rooms.Avery.He tasted the name on the tip of his tongue.Avery.He’d never met anyone before by the name Avery. No one back home was called that. Ethan had always thought that it was a girl’s name, anyway. Maybe it was unisex. Just like those perfumes that were unisex, too.
He observed Avery rummaging around in his backpack for a few seconds before he released a loudahaand turned to Ethan, a triumphant smile on his tanned face. Holding out both of his hands, a shiny red apple in each of them, he nodded eagerly at Ethan, blue eyes beaming with excitement.
“Pick one,” he grinned. “I know for a fact that they are gloriously addictive because I ate five yesterday and two this morning. I saved you one, though.”
I saved you one.The sentence drifted toward him as Ethan tried to catch the meaning. Avery seemed to almost speak in a foreign language.I. Saved. You. One.Who said things like that to a stranger? No one in West Texas, that’s who. Ethan’s chest tightened at the image of Matty, lost somewhere, and he quickly forced it away into the back of his mind, saving the worry about his best friend for later when he was back in his tent.
Ethan reached out and grabbed the red apple from Avery’s outstretched right hand, briefly brushing his fingers against the smooth skin of the other man.
“Thanks,” he whispered before wiping the already meticulously clean apple against his worn jeans.
“Excellent choice,” Avery blurted, his entire body lighting up with the same excitement that was already painted all over his beautiful face.
