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The first time Michael saw him after it happened was on the boardwalk. Three months, two days. It was a blazing day, the sun beating down on them with relentless purpose. Star loved the light, she couldn’t get enough of what she hadn’t had for years. She’d held on for a long time. Longer than Michael could have. She looked almost like any other girl out there, sunglasses perched on the bridge of her nose, her fingers loosely tangled with Michael’s.
David’s hair gleamed white and unmistakable. He was standing under the awning of a souvenir shop, smoking a cigarette. He looked bored.
The next time was when he was in his grandfather’s house, alone, surrounded by dead animals. He thought David was one of them at first, a glint of fangs and red eyes in the shadows. He tilted his head and smiled at Michael and then he was gone.
Star had an apartment just off campus. She hung beaded curtains in the doorways and never closed the drapes and had three locks on her door. Michael woke up in her bed after dreaming of that night under the bridge and found her sitting on the end of it, her knees drawn up to her chest. For a moment they looked at each other in silence.
“He’s still with you, isn’t he?” she asked.
“Star,” he said. “I love you.” He held out his hand.
She let him hold her but in the morning she was gone. The trunk that had been holding her clothes was empty and she’d left him a note. I’m sorry, it said. I can’t help you. He folded it up and put it in his pocket. She’d left the keys and the rent for the month in an envelope on the kitchen table for the landlord and he did smile a little at that, Star and her sense of responsibility. He slipped it under the man’s door. It was the last thing he could do for her.
The next time was in class, the back of David’s head, his boots up on the desk. He vanished in the space between blinks.
“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” Sam asked. Michael found him lying down under a tree trying to finish his algebra homework. A pen had exploded on his shirt but he seemed unconcerned about it. The Frog brothers were nowhere to be seen, thank god.
Michael shrugged. “It’s college,” he said, “they don’t take attendance.”
Sam’s face brightened. “Really?” he asked. “Then I have something to look forward to.”
Michael sat down next to him. “Star left.”
Sam pushed himself up on his elbows. “Jeez,” he said. “Sorry to hear that, Michael. I know you really liked her.”
“I think maybe we were just clinging to each other,” said Michael. “Two drowning people trying to stay afloat.” He looked down into Sam’s concerned face and sighed, looping an arm around him to haul him upright and then mess up his hair. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sure when you get a girlfriend it’ll be way less complicated. When you’re about thirty or so.”
Sam punched him in the shoulder and Michael pretended it hurt. Sam lowered his voice. “I guess at least vampires won’t be involved. I hope.”
Michael braced himself. “Speaking of,” he said, watching his brother’s face go rigid and knowing that reaction was his fault, that he’d brought this mess into all their lives, “do you believe in ghosts?”
“I dunno. I haven’t seen one yet. Have you? Wait, have you?”
“I’ve...been seeing David. Sometimes. Not all the time!” he said, when Sam’s eyes bugged with panic.
“He’s back?”
“No,” said Michael, “not like you think. He’s not alive again. Or undead, or whatever. He’s just...there. I get these little glimpses of him and then he’s gone. I...fuck.” Michael pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes until he saw stars explode behind his eyelids. “Jesus, Sammy. Maybe I’m just going crazy. Maybe it would be better if I was.”
He opened his eyes to find Sam determinedly packing up his books. “I’m cutting class,” he said. “This is too important. Mom will just have to deal.”
“No Frogs,” Michael said, quickly. “I appreciate what they did for us, but I don’t need your friends trying to shove garlic down my throat or impale me on something. And let’s not tell Mom about this. Not until we know what’s going on.”
Sam led him to a phone booth and picked up the yellow pages. He flipped through until he found the section for churches.
“Really?” Michael asked.
“No offense, but if we’d consulted the proper authorities at the beginning of this experience then maybe we wouldn’t have to talk to a priest now.”
Michael took the receiver from him and hung it up. “Fine,” he said. “But don’t mention vampires. I don’t want to seem even crazier than I already am.”
“You’re not crazy, Michael,” Sam said. “Not unless I am too.”
There was a Catholic church on the corner of Bay Street, just in view of the ocean beyond. It wasn’t some big cathedral. Just a small white church with stained glass windows and smooth wooden pews that were empty when they walked in. It was quiet. Peaceful.
A priest who was sweeping the floor looked up from his work as they entered. “Hello boys,” he said, putting the broom aside and dusting off his hands. “What can I help you with?”
Sam grabbed Michael by the sleeve, pulling him forward. “My brother needs an exorcism,” he said.
The priest blinked. “What?”
“He’s being haunted.”
“Okay,” said the priest. “I think maybe you boys have watched too many scary movies.”
“Mister, we’re living in a scary movie.”
The priest’s mouth twitched and Michael could tell he was trying not to laugh. “Are you Catholics? I think that might be in the rules somewhere.”
“Our Mom was Lutheran when she was a kid,” Sam said. “But she doesn’t really believe in organized religion anymore.”
“Have you talked to your mother about this?”
“Would you?” Sam asked. “If you kept seeing a—your dead friend everywhere?”
Michael flinched. He couldn’t help it. He pulled his arm from his brother’s grasp. “Sam,” he said. “Forget it. Let’s go home.”
“Wait,” the priest said. “Maybe I can help. Sam, let me have a minute with your brother alone. And, uh—” he gestured at Michael to fill in the blank.
“Michael.”
“Michael. Come sit down.”
“My name is Father Hernandez,” said the priest, once they did. “And no, I will not be giving you an exorcism. To be honest I wouldn’t know an exorcism if it sat on me.”
“That was my brother’s idea,” said Michael. He looked down at his hands. “I don’t even know why I’m here.”
“Why don’t you tell me about your friend? What was he like?’
“He was a terrible person,” Michael said, honestly.
Father Hernandez laughed. “You must have liked him for a reason.”
“He was—” Michael said. “He knew who he was. That’s the only way I can describe it. No hesitations, no regrets. He was free. He made me feel like a coward. He did things I would never do, but—” Michael paused. “He was my friend. And now he’s gone.”
“Except that you’re seeing him.”
“Except that I’m seeing him. I know how stupid that sounds.”
“It doesn’t seem stupid.” Father Hernandez had turned towards him, his arm draped over the back of the pew. There was something knowing in his eyes, which didn’t make sense, unless everyone in Santa Carla really did know about the vampires. “Can I ask how you lost him?”
Priests had to report confessions of murder, right? Michael thought he remembered seeing that on TV once. He set his jaw against the words that wanted to come tumbling out. “Suddenly.”
Father Henandez nodded, like he knew what Michael was talking about. “And you feel like it’s your fault.”
Michael looked sharply at him. He could only see sympathy in the priest’s face. “What do you mean by that?”
“Only that I’ve spent a lot of time at a lot of hospitals lately,” Father Hernandez said. “And I’ve met a lot of men about your age who think it’s their fault that their friends are ill or dying or dead. And it never is. We live in a very unfair world, Michael. I want you to remember that before you blame yourself for anything.”
Michael smiled, a queasy thing that he couldn’t maintain. “You sure about that exorcism?”
“Unfortunately, yes. But if you still think you need one I can call the Vatican for you. If not, I have a phone number that may be of some help.”
It was on a neatly printed business card. Counselling at some free clinic. “Thanks,” said Michael, and put it in his pocket because he couldn’t throw it out in front of Father Hernandez.
“One more thing,” the priest said as they got up. Some other people were starting to trickle into the church, a family with small fluffy haired kids. They looked like an ad in a catalogue, milk-fed and innocent.
“Yeah?” Michael was looking at the family, trying to remember being that young, the last time he’d seen his parents hold hands and look at each other that way.
“Would you like me to pray for you?”
Sam was waiting for him outside on a bench in a little garden. There was a pond with goldfish in it, darting back and forth and pecking at the surface of the water. “How’d it go?”
“He thinks it’s guilt,” said Michael. “And he’s going to pray for me.”
Sam pressed his lips together. He tossed a leaf from one of the bushes into the water. “Maybe he’s right?”
“Five minutes ago you were sure I was seeing ghosts.”
“I just mean I’d understand if you felt bad about it. The way everything went down. I think about it all the time. And I didn’t…” Sam looked up at him and trailed off.
“Didn’t what?” Michael asked, though he thought he could probably guess what Sam was about to say. Didn’t kill any of them with his bare hands.
“I didn’t know any of them, Michael.”
Michael didn’t see David at all the next day. He went to class. He had a beer with his roommate and watched the game. He felt miserable and half-asleep.
Soon after, Michael woke up to find David in his bedroom. The sun was rising outside and it cast a reddish light across the floor. David was standing by the window, his unmistakable silhouette outlined in fire.
“Hello, Michael,” he said.
Michael bolted upright and turned on the bedside lamp. To his surprise David was still there, looking solid and real. And pissed off.
“Hi,” Michael said, stupidly. He didn’t run out of the room. He didn’t scream for help. He didn’t do anything he should have. He just watched as David stalked around the room, his hands behind his back, looking dismissively at Michael’s little room and his plebeian little everyday possessions.
“So this is what you chose over me,” he said, in a way that made Michael think he was primarily talking to himself. He sounded disappointed.
Without meaning to, Michael reached up and touched the empty piercing in his ear. He dropped his hand immediately. David hadn’t noticed. He was reading the title of one of Michael’s textbooks.
“What are you doing here?” Michael asked.
“Where’s Star? I thought she’d be with you.”
“I’m not going to tell you that.”
David didn’t have to turn around for Michael to be able to tell that he was smiling. “You don’t know, do you?”
“How can you be here?” Michael asked. “I thought vampires didn’t have souls.”
“That would make it so much easier for you, wouldn’t it?”
Michael eased up on his knees, inching forward slightly on the bedspread. He didn’t have the courage to actually get out of bed and walk over. Some urge left over from childhood to pull the blanket over his head and wait until the monster was gone. He asked the question that had been on the tip of his tongue since he saw David standing impossibly on the boardwalk.
“Are you okay?”
David’s head turned towards him, his expression one of bottomless fury. “Am I okay? I’m fucking dead,” he said, right before blinking out of existence and leaving Michael all alone again.
It was David who had pierced his ear for him, down in their magnificent hole in the ground. The others were passed out or somewhere else and Star had taken Laddie off to put him to bed. It was just him and David and whatever music that had been playing, Michael couldn’t remember, because all he could remember was the feeling of David’s fingers on his skin.
David had sterilized the needle in a candle flame and gestured for Michael to come closer when it had cooled. Michael had pulled a face at the pain of the needle pushing through the skin and David had clicked his tongue at him. “You big baby,” he said, too warm to be truly mocking, his thumb rubbing over the wound. It left a spot of blood on his finger that he’d sucked off almost absently.
Michael shivered all over when he put the earring in. He hadn’t been able to stop touching it for days.
He wondered if it would help if he told David that he was sorry, that he felt guilty about it. Probably not.
“So why’d you do it?”
Michael startled. He was sitting on his bed with his textbooks spread out in front of him, trying to concentrate. It was like the words kept trying to get up and walk off the page. He checked behind him to see if his roommate had heard anything; it was three in the morning and he wasn’t sure how he could explain—any of this, but especially a man being in his room at this hour.
Jesus. As if that was the problem.
David was sitting on the top of his dresser, his boot heels braced against the wood of the drawers and his coat spreading out behind him like an ink stain.
Michael fixed his eyes on his book. “Why did I do what?”
“Don’t play dumb. You’re insulting us both.”
Michael threw down his highlighter. “Fine,” he said. He looked up into David’s face. Like last time, he didn’t dare get any closer. He didn’t know what he thought would happen, but maintaining that last boundary felt important. “I was protecting my family, okay?”
“Protecting your family from what?” David spat out. His fingers tightened on the edge of the dresser, his knuckles going white. It was unsettling how alive he looked. But Michael had never known him when he was alive. “I didn’t have any interest in your fucking family. I had my own. But you took them from me, didn’t you, Michael?”
Michael didn’t bother trying to justify it. It was done. There was nothing he could do about it now. “That’s not what Max said.”
“Max said a lot of things.” David’s voice was colored with contempt. He was looking at Michael like he was very stupid, which made him feel worse than ever. “I didn’t let him make my decisions for me.”
“You don’t sound like you liked him all that much.”
“I didn’t have to like him. I owed him.”
“Owed him what?” Michael asked. “He made you a monster.”
David stared at him for a moment and then he sat back against the wall and laughed. The sound of it made the hair on the back of Michael’s stand up. It made him want to come closer. “Max didn’t make me a monster. The world already did that before he ever got to me.” He shook his head, his jaw tense. “You wouldn’t understand. It was all too easy for you. You had to be pushed out of the nest. That’s all I was trying to do. So you wouldn’t be so scared all the time. It was more than anyone did for me. Too bad you turned out to be a coward after all.”
“I was brave enough to kill you,” said Michael, and instantly regretted it. He might even have apologized, if not for the way that David responded.
He was leaning forward, his eyes bright and clear, smiling a little. “There’s my boy,” he said, softly, before dissolving into thin air.
When Michael wrapped his hand around his cock that morning in the shower, he couldn’t keep his mind blank like he wanted. It was David’s voice that made him come, his cheek pressed against the cool tile of the wall and his hand moving frantically on himself, the hot water pounding on his back. David calling Michael his boy.
He slammed the side of his fist against the wall after. It made his skin sore but it didn’t change anything.
Michael drove his bike along the coast, the hot blacktop passing underneath his wheels in the blink of an eye and the wind in his hair. He didn’t know where he was going. Just somewhere. He passed families in station wagons and girls in convertibles and eighteen-wheelers hauling milk or stereo parts or refrigerators. He didn’t think about anything but the road and the horizon. Not school, not his family, not the surreal experience of living in a town infected with vampires. Not the way he looked into people’s faces at night, studying them, trying to guess if he would be able to tell this time. Not the way he’d been looking for David on some subconscious level that whole time.
Maybe this is what he should have done to begin with. Packed a bag, taken his bike and gone. He could have driven until the gas ran out and made a home wherever he landed. It was a nice fantasy but it wouldn’t have helped. He was different from other people now. He couldn’t imagine participating in the kind of life he once thought would be his: a wife, kids, moving to the suburbs. Vacations in Hawaii and a promotion at the office. There was something in him, something animal sharp and hungry. He could still feel it. It just wasn’t hungry for blood, not anymore. And there was nothing that said ghosts couldn’t travel.
Michael pulled over, off the side of the road. There was a tree and a great spot to look out over the blue crashing waves of the ocean. He thought about Arizona, the dust and the cacti and the pueblos he’d seen on a school trip when he was a kid. He’d never been around this much water in his life. It was beautiful and completely intimidating. He’d never even learned to swim.
He sat under the shade of the tree and closed his eyes.
“When I was a kid,” David said, “we lived near a beach like this. There was no highway then. We’d watch the ships pass because there was nothing better to do.”
Michael didn’t open his eyes. “Sounds peaceful.”
“It was boring as hell.”
“How old are you, David?” Michael asked, but when he looked there was nothing but empty space beside him.
He stood on the edge of the cliff and watched the ocean for an intermediate length of time. It looked infinite, and it made him think about time and history and how much of it he would never see. And then he got on his bike and he went back.
“Are you okay?” Sam asked, under his breath, at Sunday dinner. It was a new thing Mom was trying in an effort to make sure they didn’t lose track of each other after Michael moved out. They’d ordered takeout, but still.
“I think so,” Michael said, and if it was a lie then at least it was a kind one.
It became apparent that David would appear when he pleased; in the middle of class, during a day at the beach, and once when Michael was in the shower. It was also apparent that nobody else could see him. Ted, Michael’s roommate, once walked right through him in the kitchen and never noticed anything was strange at all. It was eerie, watching it happen; two objects occupying the same space, their faces blending together for one single awful second. Michael hadn’t tried to touch David once since he came back. Maybe he’d been afraid of losing the last boundary he had. Or maybe he’d been afraid of what he’d already known: that he wasn’t going to be able to, that David was no more substantial than an echo.
“I don’t understand why Sam can’t see you,” Michael said. Ted had gone to bed and they were alone, sitting on the couch. There was an old cowboy movie on the television, horses and wagons, men in black hats and white ones. “He was there too.”
“I’m haunting you, not him.”
“You can decide that?”
“You ask more questions than you used to.”
If he’d asked more questions when they met they might not be in this position. He hadn’t wanted to because then he might have had to acknowledge that what he had been doing was insane. He would have had to stop going back for more.
Michael turned towards David. “Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about how all this works? You’re dead, but you’re here. You’re the only one who came back. Where do you go when you leave? Is there an afterlife?”
“No.”
“No—bullshit, David. There has to be. How can you exist if there isn’t?”
“Then I’ve never seen it,” David said. “I died, I was gone, and then I was back. I don’t remember anything else. I don’t go anywhere when I leave. Just back to that darkness.” He looked over at Michael. “Where do you go when you sleep, if you don’t dream? It’s like that. Just a whole lot of black.”
Michael felt like there were wheels turning rapidly in his head. “What if you didn’t die all the way? Not like a zombie, but like you’re stuck, between dimensions. Between worlds or something. Maybe that’s all a ghost is.”
“Maybe a ghost is a memory,” David said. “And I’m only here because you want me to be.” He smiled slyly. “Do you miss me, Michael?”
Michael could feel himself flush. He was glad it was dark. “Kind of hard to miss you when you won’t shut the hell up.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. I think you miss some things.”
Michael thought, against his will, of the night under the bridge. The feeling of weightlessness and the fog and the certainty that he couldn’t walk away from any of it if he tried. He’d never felt so good.
“So if you’re a memory,” Michael said, “what then? Am I going to forget you?”
“You tell me,” David said. In the darkness his teeth gleamed. “Are you going to run away from me again? Find a nice girl and settle down? Two kids and a dog and a picket fence? You wouldn’t need me then. If you could be normal just like you always wanted.”
“No,” said Michael, his heart in his throat. “I’m not running anymore.”
David’s eyes glittered. “Good.”
It was probably fucked up that it made Michael want to crawl into David’s lap and offer him his throat.
“Why Star?” Michael asked another time, when they were out walking around campus. At night, so no one could see Michael talking to himself. “She was the only girl.”
“I always wanted a sister.”
“And Laddie? He was just a kid.”
“Laddie was Star’s, Michael.” Michael must have looked shocked, because David laughed at him. “There’s only so long she could deny herself before she snapped. And she didn’t want him to die, so,” David shrugged. “What were we supposed to do? We took care of him.”
“I wonder what he’ll remember when he grows up.” Laddie was back with his parents. Going to school, playing with his friends. A boy on a milk carton that actually got returned. A miracle.
“He’ll remember it as a dream,” David said. He was looking up at the sky and Michael wanted to know what he was thinking about. “Just one long dream he can’t forget.”
Ted slipped into the apartment trailed by giggles. Craning his neck from his position on the couch, Michael could see two girls standing in the hallway, trying to see over Ted’s shoulder. “Just a minute, ladies,” Ted said, and closed the door. “So,” he said to Michael, clapping his hands together. “I need a favor.”
“Okay,” said Michael, cautiously. “What?” He was in his boxers and a t-shirt, eating a bowl of cereal for dinner. He’d spent all day fixing some rich asshole’s Trans Am that he drove into a fire hydrant and his feet were killing him.
“Well, it’s like this,” Ted said, glazing back at the door. “My new friend out there, Tammy, her friend Ashley doesn’t have a date for tonight. And Tammy and Ashley wanted to go to a party, but Ashley doesn’t want to go alone—”
“Why can’t they both go with you?”
“Ha, well that’s the fantasy, right? But, uh, I guess Ashley just really wants her own guy for the evening, so—you wouldn’t mind, right? I mean you don’t look like you have plans.”
Michael put his bowl down. “That was kind of the point.”
Ted made a pleading gesture. It looked like he was praying. “Please?” he said. “They are both so hot. I promise I would never lead you astray.”
Michael gave in. Ted was an engineering student. He got to talk to a woman maybe once a week. “Fuck,” he said. “Fine, give me a minute to shower.” There were still smears of engine grease on his hands.
He took longer in the shower than he needed to. It was almost depressing. He was about to go out on a date with a beautiful woman, one he didn’t even have to put in any effort to get, and all he wanted to do was make an excuse to avoid it.
“Jesus,” he said to himself as he pulled his shirt back over his head. “I must really be going crazy.”
He met Ted and the girls out in the hallway. One was a tall willowy blonde and one a curvy redhead; the redhead brightened up as soon as she saw him. “Ashley?” he asked.
She raised her hand in a little wave, smiling. “Hi,” she said, and she was really cute, with dimples and a little spray of freckles across her nose. “I think you’re my escort for the evening. Did you bring a corsage?”
And funny, too. Michael offered her his arm like they were about to head into the ballroom, which seemed to charm her. She gave him that dimpled smile again and slipped her arm through his. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.
The party was at a frat house on campus. Tammy knew someone who lived there, apparently, since Ted definitely didn’t. He looked a little nervous as they went through the door, possibly because he was remembering guys like this giving him swirlies. Someone pressed a beer into his hand and he looked more at ease. He glanced sideways at Michael, then down at Ashley.
Oh. “Can I get you something to drink?” Michael asked.
“Something with vodka in it would be nice,” she said, and he went to look for it.
He was digging around in a cooler when someone with major beer breath and too much Drakkar Noir on leaned way into his space. “Hey,” the guy said. “I know you.”
Michael looked up at him. He didn’t recognize anything about his flushed, slightly sweaty face. He could have been any drunk frat boy. “Don’t think you do,” he said, and went back to looking for the drink.
“Sure I do,” the guy said. “I used to see you out on the boardwalk over the summer with your friends. Those faggots with the earrings.”
Michael’s fingers went tight around the cold glass of the bottle. His pulse was pounding in his ears. “What the fuck did you just say?”
The guy laughed the way people did when they had no idea a car was about to hit them. “Was that some kind of gay thing?” He said, seconds before someone grabbed him by the collar of his polo shirt and yanked him backwards.
“Sorry,” his friend said. “He gets mouthy when he’s wasted. I guess I’m the babysitter tonight.” He dragged him backwards and out of sight, disappearing into the crowd.
“Want to know how we used to deal with pricks like that?” David asked.
Michael pressed the heel of his hand against his forehead, where it was starting to hurt. “Jesus.”
“We used to take them up to the bluff and drop them off. They weren’t even worth feeding from. Rotten meat.”
“David,” Michael said, his words thankfully swallowed up by the noise around them. “You can’t be here right now.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” David sneered. “Are you having fun? Am I interrupting something?” His head turned slowly like a hawk spotting a mouse in the grass and Michael realized he was looking at Ashley, at the back of her brightly-colored head in a way that made his stomach turn over. “I think your girl’s getting impatient.”
“She’s not—” Michael said, and then stopped as annoyance rolled over him. “You know what? Fuck off,” he said, and got back on his feet. He made his way back to Ashley, who was sitting on a couch with her legs crossed and her hands clasped together on her knee. She didn’t look very relaxed. Ted was nowhere to be found. He saw Tammy tucked into a corner with some guy. It looked like they were having an argument.
“Thanks,” Ashley said, taking the bottle. “I was wondering if you were coming back.” She unscrewed the cap but hesitated before taking a drink. “Are you okay? You look kind of red in the face.”
“I’m a little warm,” he said, and cracked open his own beer.
“It is crowded in here,” Ashley said. “These things always are.”
“Go to a lot of them?”
“Enough,” Ashley said. “Tammy used to date one of the brothers. I’m kind of surprised she wanted to come tonight, honestly. Her ex is probably here.”
“I see,” Michael said, and started to look around for Ted in earnest. He was over by the snack table, and he was—drinking. Drinking a lot, and being encouraged by a bunch of surfer-looking dickheads he’d almost certainly just met. Tammy was nowhere to be found.
“Yeah,” Ashley said. “I think she just can’t let go.”
“I can understand that,” Michael said. “Unfortunately.”
“Very funny,” David said.
A muscle in Michael’s cheek twitched, possibly from how hard he was grinding his teeth. He wasn’t going to look at him. He wasn’t.
“This isn’t really my scene,” Ashley said, drinking deeply from the bottle and then making a face. Her lipstick left a pink ring on the glass. “It doesn’t seem like it’s yours either.”
“Gangs of loudmouthed, out of control assholes?” Michael asked. “Nah, that’s not my thing.”
David made a sound. It might have been a growl. Michael managed to keep a grin off his face, but only barely.
“What is your scene, Ashley?” he asked, turning his warmest smile on her. It wasn’t fair, what he was doing. Not in general and not to this sweet girl who just wanted to have a nice night. He also couldn’t help himself. Pissing David off at least made him feel alive. He thought about frat boys in polo shirts with slurs behind their teeth, and he thought about dropping them off a cliff. He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t even pick a satisfying fight. So he did this instead.
Maybe part of him would always be back there with them, tearing through the night on his bike, every atom in his body lighting up like wildfire. Maybe nothing was ever going to feel that way again.
“I’m an artist,” she said.
“A painter?”
“No, I make large-scale metal sculptures,” she said, and smiled when he looked surprised. “Some of them are about twelve feet tall. Yeah, I spend a lot of time in a welding helmet.”
“How the hell do you get that out of the studio?”
“With a forklift,” she said, and then laughed. “I know how to drive that, too.”
“You make me seem really uncool,” Michael said. “I hope you know that.”
She shrugged and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, suddenly bashful. “I could show you if you want. I have the keys to the studio.”
“Ashley,” he said. There was no mistaking what this was, what opportunity she was giving him. He looked down into her shy, brave face and he couldn’t do it. He also didn’t know how to tell her no without telling her the truth, or as close to it as he could get. What was he supposed to say? It’s complicated? I have a ghost?
He moved a little closer to her. “Okay,” he said. “There’s something you need to know about me. I have—I’m not—”
That was as far as he got, because the lightbulb in the lamp next to the couch exploded. And then the one in the light fixture in the kitchen. And then the one in the hall. There was darkness and smoke and a smell like the air before lightning hit. Ozone. It made the hair on Michael’s arms stand up. So much for the scent of a long lost loved one’s perfume lingering in the air. An angry ghost smelled like a brewing storm.
Someone lit a candle in the kitchen and then in the living room. When Michael could see again Ashley was pressed against his side with her shoulders hunched and David was gone.
“What was that?” she asked. A brief tremble went through her and that was when Michael realized he hadn’t flinched at all. It was like he’d been waiting for it.
Michael looked back at the snack table. Ted was still there but he’d been abandoned by his new friends. He was clutching a red plastic cup with a lost expression on his face. He was so out of it that he didn’t notice Tammy coming down the stairs into the living room, buttoning up her blouse as she went.
“Our cue to get out of here,” Michael said.
At least Ted waited until they were back home to throw up, Michael told himself. It could have been worse.
They’d dropped Tammy and Ashley off back at their dorms. Ashley had searched his face for something after he’d walked her to the door and whatever she found there made her smile wistfully and shake his hand goodbye. “I had a pretty decent time tonight,” she said. “It’s the first time I’ve gone to one of those things without some amateur drunk trying to grab my tits.”
“I can see why you wanted a date.”
“You know how territorial men are,” she said. “I really would like to show you my sculptures, though. You should stop by the studio sometime.”
“I will,” he promised. Ted was passed out in the front seat when got back. Michael pushed his glasses back up his nose before they fell off and turned the car towards home.
He woke up while Michael was parking, hauling himself upright and wiping the back of his hand across his face. “Shit,” he said, his hand fumbling for the door. He managed to fall halfway out of the car before emptying his stomach all over the gravel. “Shit,” he said again, regarding the mess he made with horror.
“Better out than in,” Michael said.
“I can’t believe I did that.”
“We’ve all been there,” Michael said, sliding his key into the lock. The stairs up to the apartment seemed longer with Ted staggering in front of him and tripping over his own feet every few steps. Still, he got him inside and into his own bedroom without further incident.
Ted fell across the bed with his shoes still on. He hugged his pillow like it was a life raft. “Thanks, Mike,” he said. “You’re a good friend.”
Michael paused in the doorway, something like grief going through him. He didn’t know how to respond but it didn’t matter; Ted was dead to the world again. He closed the door behind him and left him to it.
Back in his bedroom, Michael sat heavily on the edge of his bed. He felt tired, the way he almost always did these days. Like he was only treading water, waiting to drown. He shut his eyes.
“I could tell him some stories,” David said.
“Give it a shot,” Michael said. “I could use some time to myself.”
“You want to be alone? I’ll find some way to leave. I’ve already died twice. What else is there to be afraid of?”
Michael laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Are we breaking up? This isn’t even a relationship. It’s a punishment. We’re stuck together and I can’t even—” Touch you, he thought. The memory of how casually David used to touch him was so strong it was almost a physical sensation; a hand on the back of his neck or between his shoulder blades; the feeling of the needle pushing through his skin slow and careful. All there and then lost before he knew how important it was.
David was starting to pace back and forth. “None of this had to happen. Not if you’d been able to accept the gift I was trying to give you.”
That got Michael off the bed. “Give me?” he snapped, following David around the room. “You tried to trick me into it!”
“Star told you the truth,” David said. “It didn’t stop you. Because you didn’t want it to. And now it’s just you and me, baby. Just us for the rest of forever.” He took a step closer. “I’ll even be generous. You can go fuck that girl if you want. Hell, fuck as many girls as you want. I’ll even come with you, so you can actually get it up.”
For once, Michael moved faster than David did. He grabbed him by the front of his coat and slammed him back against the wall. “You fucking prick,” he said, seconds before he realized what he had done. He felt like he’d grabbed a live wire.
David looked as shocked as he was but Michael had no time to enjoy it before David slammed his elbow into Michael’s face.
Michael’s head snapped back. He let go of David immediately, his hands flying up to cover his face. When he pulled them away there was blood on his fingertips; a trickle coming down from his nose. He tasted tin and salt. “What the fuck?” he asked, more out of bewilderment than pain.
“Here,” David said, “I’ll make it better.” He pulled Michael towards him, the collar of his shirt balled up in his fist, and then he kissed him. He kissed him until Michael’s blood was in both their mouths. Michael started to shake like he had a fever. He was hot and cold all over and he was already getting hard.
David slid his hand between Michael’s thighs and squeezed. “Oh,” he said, trying his best to sound innocent, “is that for me?”
“Jackass,” said Michael, against David’s mouth. He started yanking at David’s jacket, trying to get it off his shoulders.
David let go of him to accomplish the task himself. He manhandled Michael back towards the bed the second it hit the floor. “I can’t believe you made me wait this long for this.”
“You need to learn some patience,” Michael said, and then laughed out loud when David hooked a foot around the back of his calf and tripped him onto the bed.
“I have a few things I could teach you,” David said, climbing on top of him and pressing their hips together.
He pinned Michael’s wrists to the bed and Michael let him. He looked up into David’s hungry face and kissed him hard and mean. “You can do anything you want to me,” he said.
David gave him the kind of look that should have made him want to run—but it never had, and it didn’t now either. “I’ll hold you to that.”
Michael wondered if David could sense the way his blood was racing through his veins, his pulse like a drum. It was his blood too, after all. “I mean it.”
What David wanted was to get him undressed as fast as possible. He ripped the collar of Michael’s sweatshirt while getting it over his head and went to work on his jeans, sliding them down his hips with the underwear included. Once he was naked David pushed him backwards with a hand flat on his chest. When Michael tried to sit up, he did it again.
“Don’t move,” he said, his eyes roaming unapologetically over Michael’s body. “I want to look at you for a minute.”
“Jesus,” Michael breathed out. His head lolled back against the sheets and he fixed his eyes on the ceiling and the interminable seconds ticked by. He wanted to watch David watching him and he couldn’t bear to; he’d never wanted to touch himself more. When he did dare sneak a glance, David was rubbing himself idly through his pants, his fingers tracing the seam of his fly. And just like that Michael knew exactly what he wanted to do.
“Here,” he said, and sat up, pulling David towards him by the hips. His fingers fumbled over the zipper as he pulled it down.
There was a brief moment of strangeness, the almost surreal feeling of having someone else’s dick in his hand for the first time. It faded quickly as he got used to the weight of David in his hand and as he started to like it a whole lot. It felt right to work his hand up and down his length, to squeeze the shaft lightly and listen to David groan softly above him. He rubbed the pad of his thumb across the head of David’s cock until there was a trace of wetness between them. His mouth watered.
“Here goes nothing,” he said, and leaned forward to press the flat of his tongue against the place his thumb had been.
His first impression was of salt and soft skin. He sucked the head into his mouth, trying to be careful of his teeth, and found it was so much easier than he had imagined. It was easy to let David sink a hand into his hair and guide him down as far as he could go. It was easy to open his mouth wide and take it. Messy, but easy.
The feeling of David rocking into his mouth made his toes curl and his cock twitch, some species of pleasure that bypassed the usual avenues to settle directly in the brain stem. He closed his eyes, almost dizzy, and concentrated on sucking, on learning what noises he could push David into making. He pulled off to take a breath and went back down until David hissed, his fingernails digging into Michael’s scalp. He set a sloppy rhythm that made his jaw ache. It was worth it.
He palmed between his legs for a little relief. David’s hand tightened in Michael’s hair and he pulled until his cock slipped out of Michael’s mouth. He didn’t let go after and Michael didn’t ask him to. They just looked at each other. David touched Michael’s swollen, panting mouth.
“Lie down,” he said. “On your back.”
“Fuck,” Michael said, and practically scrambled to do as he was told. He fucked up into his own fist as he watched David undress and was grabbing at him as soon as he got on the bed. He looped his arm around the back of David’s neck and pulled him in for a brief, rough kiss.
David yanked the drawer of Michael’s shitty, salvaged-from-the-garbage nightstand open and almost completely off the slides. “Tell me you have something we can use for lube.”
Standing at the edge of the bridge that night and looking down into the fog below, Michael had wanted to jump and he’d wanted to run away. Tonight he just wanted to jump. “I think there’s some vaseline in there,” he said.
It all happened fast after that, David’s fingers inside him, David’s cock slick and sliding between his cheeks until Michael begged for more, David’s cock pushing into him, an impossible raw stretch that knocked the breath out of his lungs. Michael whined and jolted at the first short, mean thrust, his mouth falling open. His thighs shook with the strain of David pushing his legs back.
“It’s okay,” David said.
“It’s fucking fantastic,” Michael told him, his voice slurred. He laughed when David did it again, harder this time.
David kissed him, slow this time. “What’s funny?”
“Nothing,” Michael said. “I’m just happy.”
David bit him when he came, unforgiving teeth sinking into the skin at the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and it made Michael follow him right over the edge. Bruised and aching and getting everything he needed.
They lay together afterwards, talking aimlessly. They’d shared a cigarette — David holding it to Michael’s lips once he had settled in between David’s legs with his back against his chest. The sky was beginning to lighten outside to a deep navy blue and Michael was still like a little kid, too excited to sleep.
“That medal on your jacket,” he asked, mostly to have something to say. He had to fight off a yawn to continue. “Where did you get it?”
David’s hand stopped moving in his hair. “Where do you think I got it?”
“I don’t know. That you stole it, I guess.”
David brushed Michael’s hair back from his forehead again and Michael’s eyes closed of their own accord. “Nope, all mine. Flanders, 1918. 91st division.”
“Like the poem.”
Michael felt more than heard the laugh, deep in David’s chest. “Yes, like the stupid fucking poem. We were shock troops. Cannon fodder. I was a good little soldier so they gave me a shiny medal and sent what was left of me home. And when I got here everyone wanted to pretend none of it ever happened. I was a reminder of everything they wanted to forget. By the time I met Max I was begging and stealing on the streets. Remember the wheelchair from the night I turned you?”
Marko had pushed David around in it. Michael hadn’t seen it as anything significant, just more of their random junk. He turned his head so he could see David’s face. “That was yours?”
David smiled. “I used to wish I’d died in Belgium. Max was the one who showed me life could go on. In a manner of speaking. He’d been a family man once upon a time. He wanted to be again. He was good at making children. Not so good at keeping them.”
“You had other brothers?”
“Failed experiments. That’s what Max called them.”
“Jesus,” Michael said. He tried to picture his mother calling him that and his mind went entirely blank. Even Dad wouldn’t have done it.
David wrapped his arms around Michael’s waist and rested his chin on the top of his head. “I was always going to get fed into the mouth of some monster. At least the second time I got something out of it.” He gave one of Michael’s curls a tug. “Now do you understand?”
Michael’s scalp prickled. He leaned back into David’s touch. “Yes,” he said.
David was gone when Michael woke up, but the bite mark he’d left behind was still there. Michael pressed down on the bruise and felt a little thrill at the pain. When he sat up, a book fell to the floor.
He picked it up. It was a paperback pulp he’d picked up at a used bookstore, some Stephen King ripoff. One of the pages was dogeared, which Michael hadn’t done. David must have been reading it.
If he could pick things up now—
Michael put the book back and tried not to wonder what it meant, if he was going to wake up one day with David beside him breathing and human and pissed off that he had to get a job.
It was past noon according to the bedside clock. Michael got dressed and left the room to find Ted sitting on the living room couch, looking half-dead. He was staring at the television screen. It wasn’t on.
“Morning,” Michael said.
“Is it?” Ted said. “I don’t even know what day it is.”
“Saturday,” Michael told him. He went into the kitchen and opened his fridge, trying to remember his Grandpa’s hangover cure. If it didn’t kill you with the taste it would fix you right up. “Is this your first hangover?”
“Well, I’ve had a few coolers before…”
Michael was cracking a couple of eggs into a glass when Ted called out again. “Hey,” he said, “was somebody in your room last night? I thought I heard a thump but then I passed out again before I could ask. Someone didn’t try to break in, did they?”
Michael stopped what he was doing and thought—really thought—about how he wanted to answer. “Uh,” he said, “that was my boyfriend. He dropped something, sorry.”
The living room went awfully silent, right before it got real loud. “Holy shit,” Ted said. “And here I was shoving Ashley at you. No wonder you didn’t want to go. I’m such a world class asshole. I’m sorry, man.”
Michael delivered the hangover cure to Ted, who took it dubiously, peering into the murky contents. He didn’t try to move away when Michael sat next to him on the couch. “It’s fine,” he said, and then, “so you don’t have a problem with this?”
“Honestly?” Ted asked. “My favorite uncle was gay. He was the only one who didn’t think I was a dweeb for being into computers.” His face turned wistful. “I really miss him.”
And it was fine. It really was. Even if Ted did have tendency to introduce Michael around as “the coolest gay guy I know.”
“Just get a new one,” David said, watching Michael dig around in boxes he’d never unpacked.
“No,” Michael said stubbornly. “I want the one you gave me.”
“You sentimental bastard,” David said, but he couldn’t quite hide how pleased he was.
Michael opened a shoebox and dumped the contents onto the floor. Pictures of him and Sam when they were kids, a couple of movie ticket stubs that he’d saved for some reason, a ribbon he’d gotten from a school track and field day. And the earring. He held it up to show David. “Told you I didn’t throw it out.”
The piercing had mostly closed up and Michael’s efforts to force the earring through failed. David reached out and held his earlobe between his thumb and forefinger, examining the situation. “Go get a needle,” he said. “I’ll fix it for you.”