Chapter Text
We swim in the early afternoon hours, when the sun is just ripe enough, heaving its intolerable heat upon creation. Scorched grass, it crunches under our feet, and the river is a welcome relief. I can only enjoy myself for so long before I begin to worry. I worry over the reading I have left to do and the trigonometry exercises that I have not completed. They grow large in my mind like a vine until I crawl upon the bank and take refuge in the shade of the tree.
Finny is the first to notice I have gotten out. He calls to me, but I lay back and gaze through the tree branches of broken sunshine and intrusive shade. From this angle, laying flat on my back, I can see how high the branch is now. The branch I nearly fell from until Finny grabbed me, saving me from a fall that could have killed me. At the very least, I would have broken my arm or my leg. I stare up at the limb. I hear my name again - Forrester? - and I contemplate that moment. I contemplate Finny’s quick thinking, reflexes, and strength. And why, I wonder, did he not let me fall?
There is a sound near me, and I look to see Finny sitting down beside me. He smells of river water, damp and earthy, it drips down his arms, rivulets running down his chest, out of his hair and down his neck, and the thought strikes me, enters my brain, invades and overcomes, so quickly it takes my breath away.
I imagine him laying over me. River water dripping from his body onto mine, staring down at me with those emerald eyes, the scent of sweat and earth, and he touches me. He touches my skin, my face, my hair. He touches me, and I touch him back. I run my fingers through his hair and my hands upon his golden skin and it is so real and it is so sudden and it is so jarring I feel my ears flush and my cheeks grow warm. My heart begins a frantic rhythm and I realize he is speaking to me now but I cannot focus on his words and I cannot push away this sudden vision. Of him and me, laying here as if we were lovers, laying here as if we might -
“Taking a break already?” Finny says.
I sit up.
“It’s only been like fifteen minutes,” he continues.
I look around for my clothes, hiding my face, I do not want to look directly at him. “I need to go read. I need to finish the Iliad.”
“What?” He laughs. “Right now? You have all evening to read.”
“If I get my reading done now, then I’ll have all evening for trigonometry.” I get dressed and make my way towards the dorms. I expect him to call after me, I want him to call after me, but all I know for certain is that he’s watching me.
With emerald eyes and wet skin.
I cannot sleep.
Finny was soundly asleep by eleven, his soft hair sinking into his pillow, and his breathing, rhythmic and gentle, keeping me awake. Keeping me here. Keeping himself in my thoughts, and I think it must be some conspiracy. I look over at him. Who is he to make me think of him when I do not want to? Who is he to lay there when there is such a mess in my head? Who is he to sit beside me, to save me from falling, to look at me, to speak to me, and I can’t get any of it out of my mind?
I get out of bed. I sit down at the desk and open the Iliad. It’s nearly two in the morning, and I decide to light a candle or two rather than wake Finny with the lamplight. After only two paragraphs, I realize it’s no use. I retain nothing, and it’s so late. How did it get so late? I check the time again and see a whole hour has gone by. I close the book in frustration, blow out the candles, and sit there. I watch the candle smoke curl up into the air, and I hear Finny stir in his bed.
I quickly open the book again and flick on the lamp.
Finny turns over, the sheets rustle. “Gene?” His voice is thick with sleep.
I flip a page I have not read at all. “Yes?”
I hear him sit up. “What time is it?”
“Late,” I reply.
He is quiet for a moment or two and then he’s standing behind me, peering over my shoulder.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” I say. I turn to him.
He looks at me, puzzled. “You’re reading? At three in the morning?”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“I see.” Although he doesn’t see. I can tell. I want him to see. I want - for just a second - to be transparent. I want for just a second the door to open. Then I can always close it back. I nod imperceptibly at my own thoughts. I can always close it back.
He lays a hand on my shoulder. My throat swells.
“Try and get some sleep,” he says. He squeezes. Just a little. Just in a friendly way. Just in a way my father would do. Just in a way a friend, a fellow classmate, a roommate would do.
I give him a nod.
He gets back into bed, and I do not move at all. Everything is still. Everything is different.
“We should take a trip. You and me,” he says lazily, tucking his hands under his pillow. One of his eyes catches me, catches the lamplight, and I’m caught. “What do you think?”
I scratch an itch. “Okay.”
The beach is serene.
I wonder if I drank too much beer. I wonder if that’s why I can’t take my eyes off him as he talks. I wonder what he thinks of that. I wonder what he thinks of today.
The sand is warm and the waves are loud. I lay back and tuck my hands under my head, listening to Finny and stargazing as if I am in a dream. He tells me this is what you do with your best pal and then he tells me that is what I am to him. I look at him, expectant, as if there will be more. He looks at me in the same manner. And then I remember I would not have almost fallen from the tree if Finny hadn’t convinced me to climb it in the first place. I remember that we have skipped school, gone hours out of our way, and I still have a test to study for. I realize that he is oblivious, and I am losing myself. I am losing myself in him.
And just like that, the dream is over, and I feel like a fool. Finny’s words hang between us, spinning like planets, and I let them stay there. I let them spin, and spin, and spin, and I watch the disappointment, the slight confusion, fall over his features like a curtain. I turn away from him, and he turns away from me. I grasp at his words one last time, one final immersion, slipping and sliding through my thoughts, before I let them crash into the ocean.
I wake with the sun.
I lay still for a time, watching it come over the waves in golden yellows and baby blues. My head is clear, I am content, and then I recall last night. I am torn in the first few minutes of a new day, incomplete.
I feel as if his words are still spinning between us, and I could take them. I could take them into my hands and hold them there, like something fragile, and nurture them, keep them safe.
Then there’s a shadow, the sun is blocked out, and Finny is on top of me, leaning over, each arm on either side of me. His eyes shine and he grins like one who has never known any pain.
It was my first instinct, one I felt compelled to have, to act on. Otherwise, what if I am being fooled? What if this is a grand joke he has come up with and I fall for it, fall into humiliation? I was not ready. I was not expecting it. That was the instinct, the thought, that made me push him off me.
I push. I push him down, and I scramble to my feet, standing over him. “What are you doing?” I shout.
His smile fades, and he looks up at me. He looks almost afraid. He looks almost like he might cry. “I just - I just wanted to see if you were awake.”
I stand there, and I don’t know what I was ready for. I don’t know what I was accusing him of. Blood and adrenaline shoot through my veins. I cannot take his expression. I feebly, awkwardly tell him that he scared me, that I had just opened my eyes, and he scared me.
He stands to his feet and brushes sand from his legs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you.” His voice is gentle and full of concern. Concern and gentleness for me. I feel a surge inside me, a longing. Why did I shove him like that? And I look at him, he recovers so quickly, back to being Finny, back to seeing me as a best pal, a confidante, trustworthy, and unblemished.
I feel ashamed.
“I’m sorry I pushed you,” I say.
His face brightens again. “You want to go for a swim? Before we head back?”
I shake my head. He grins at me, shrugs. He strips all the way down to his underpants, and runs into the tide. I sit on the sand and watch him sinking into the heavy waves like a baptism at sea. Before long he is whooping and hollering, jumping waves and swimming across them as if he might tame them. As if the ocean might know the name of Phineas and will do his bidding.
Phineas, commander of ocean waves.
I stand and see a slight sunburn on my arms and legs.
Phineas, pulling islands up from the bottom of the sea with a simple movement of his hand.
I press the reddening skin with the pad of my thumb. It turns white.
Phineas, he tames the sharks and they close their mouths, they are obedient, as if he is Daniel in the lion’s den.
The sun is merely a young, yellow ball of light hovering over the water, but my skin feels as if it’s burning. Burning with a longing, burning with a knowledge, burning with something I cannot put into words.
I peel off my clothes and run into the water. Finny shouts at me, laughing. I dive under a wave and break the surface. The water is cold, but it soothes my burning skin. I push wet hair from my eyes as Finny swims over to me. “Forrester!” He laughs and laughs, he splashes me with water. I splash him back, and for a time that’s all there is - Finny and I splashing and laughing in the tide. I have never seen anyone with so much joy. Why must I be suspicious of him?
He comes so close to me, I catch the scent of salt water in his hair. Emerald eyes that somehow match the water and the sky all at once. His knee brushes against mine under the surface, and something inside me breaks, shatters.
“Finny,” I say.
He circles me. “Gene.”
“Finny. You’re my best friend, too.”
He circles around me then stops. His face is solemn and serious. He lays a hand on my shoulder, squeezing, and my legs weaken in the water.
Phineas, making the ground disappear underneath unsuspecting feet.
He withdraws his hand and swims around me, and I think is that all there is? Is that all there will be? He’s all around me, and this is all it will be. And I don’t know what else can exist, I don’t know how else to feel, but isn’t this enough? I ask myself that time and time again. Isn’t this enough?
I float on my back, and Finny swims beside me chattering away about war, and games, and trees, and life, and how he is so happy I accompanied him. I sink under the water, slip beneath a wave that carries me to the beach, and I emerge, new.
Baptized.
Unblemished.
It’s late. Again.
The hours creep by and I feel that it should at least be close to dawn. I peek at the clock, squinting in the moonlight and see it is only after one in the morning. I sigh with irritation. Today was so exhausting and yet I am wide awake. I stare at the ceiling until I begin to see shapes in the darkness.
After a time, I begin to feel like I am not alone in my wakefulness. I turn my head to Finny’s bed and he’s looking over at me. I blink. He rolls over on his side. One of his fingers brushes over his lips. I swallow. Hard.
“Are you thinking about your test?” He asks me softly.
“No,” I reply.
He looks past me and out of the window. “Oh.”
I yawn and try to quieten my mind. I try not to think about how Finny is awake and how he’s only a few feet away from me. About his eyes on the beach and certainly not about him wearing nothing but underpants. And what if I thought about what was under them? What if I started thinking -
“Hey, Gene.”
I bunch the covers around my middle. I try to be subtle, knowing it isn’t possible. “Hm?”
“Want to go swimming?”
I turn to see Finny grinning widely, beginning to sit up.
“Swimming? Now?”
“Sure.” He reaches for his shoes. “Why not?”
“It’s dangerous,” I say. “Swimming in the river at night.”
“We’ll decide what’s dangerous or not.” He smiles down at me. “Come on. We’ll just go for a little while. An hour. We’ll be back before anyone misses us.”
I sit up awkwardly, trying to cover myself with blankets and my arms. “Okay. Can you give me, um…can you give a minute?”
If he knew what was going on, the sparkle in his eyes and the smile he wears does not show it. “I’ll meet you out in the hall.” He opens the door and quietly shuts it behind him.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get caught with my hand down my pants and I cannot go out there like this. So, I close my eyes and I try to think about something awful. Something disturbing. Finny hurt. Finny drowning. Finny falling out of a tree. Finny in pain.
My eyes fly open, and I feel a strange sense of Déjà vu or something similar and I am overwhelmed with guilt and with remorse and for what I do not know. I sit with this feeling for a long time. For too long as I hear Finny’s gentle knock on the door, “Gene?”
“I’m coming,” I whisper sharply.
I put on my shoes and open the door. Finny is standing there all smiles, all ready for our middle-of-the-night swim in the river. He turns to go down the hall, but I grab his arm, stopping him.
He looks at me with surprise.
“I feel like I need to tell you…,” I begin and don’t know where I’ll end.
His brows furrow with concern.
“I feel like I need to tell you that I’m sorry.”
He tilts his head. “For what?”
“I don’t know.”
He studies me for a second then flashes me a sincere grin. “You dream too much.”
I follow him out to the river, and think that he’s right.
I do.
The river is colder at night.
I wade in slowly and tread water just below the tall tree with the long branches. Finny floats on his back and talks to me about all the stars he sees. My eyes adjust to the nearly full moonlight, and I hear the sound of frogs and crickets nearby. Finny chatters and I listen and I wonder if he ever tires of himself. If he ever tires of his endless monologues and observations. I believe that if my mind went at the same speed as his I would never sleep again. It would drive me crazy.
And then Finny is challenging me to swim with him from one rock to another, one tree to another, and I join him. Because what else will I do? Who else would I want to be out here with besides him? And as I move through the water, moonlight on my back, a cool summer breeze through my hair, I am fascinated with this boy beside me. And I wonder, and I hope, he is fascinated with me, too. I think I can ask him. I think I can actually ask him this, in this private moment, in the middle of the night, because we’re alone. No one knows we are here.
But I want to catch my breath first.
I lay there under the tree, my lungs filling and emptying, gazing up through the branches and it all seems smaller at night. Somehow. The starlight plays tricks. I am thinking about this when I feel drips of water upon my chest and Finny is over top of me, one arm on either side of me, his chest rising and falling. Inhaling and exhaling and this time I do not push him away. This time, I lay very still. This time, I let him.
It’s just as he says: I dream too much.
He looks down at me sprawled underneath him, studying, emerald eyes roaming. He places a hand on my chest, and I cannot move. I am still out of breath, and I am caught in his gaze.
“I can feel your heart,” he whispers. River water drips down his nose and onto my chin. “It feels like this.” He taps out the rhythm with two fingers - a ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-tap.
His eyes are filled with something. I have never seen him look that way before. More solemn than he was on the beach, more curious, more…hungry.
He takes one of my hands places it on his chest. “Can you feel mine?”
Indeed, a thud, thud, thud hammers from his breastbone and his skin, slick with water and sweat, warm under my hand, distracts me. My fingers tap out the beats of his heart just like he did to me. “It feels the same.” I didn’t mean to say it out loud.
“The same?” He repeats softly.
I nod.
His hand runs along my neck and up to my face, his thumb upon my cheek. Something inside me stirs. I clumsily run my hand up and down his arm, to his shoulder where I pause. Where I squeeze.
He inhales sharply and leans over me and I close my eyes. I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what I want to happen. He leans his head against mine, his breath warm in my hair. I run my hands along his back, and I don’t want to stop touching him. My hands feel like magnets. Stuck.
Then I see, at the base of his neck, a pulse. A tiny throb. Like the heartbeat of a baby bird, it throbs so delicately, so open there under his skin. That’s where I rest my lips, where I breath him in, all salty water, damp earth, nighttime, and sweat. I feel him shudder in my arms, I feel him tense and relax, and his lips find mine. At first, it feels like a feather, the wing of a butterfly. I feel him hesitate and then my hands are around his neck, pulling him down, and his lips crash into mine and it feels as if an electric jolt runs down my spine.
I don’t know what I’m doing. I follow his lead. I am allowing. I am receiving. I receive his tongue into my mouth, his breath, and I am holding him tighter. Something is happening. Inside me, outside of me. I don’t know what I’m doing.
His kisses me softly, deeply, exploring, and I do the same and hope I don’t do it wrong. Before he breaks the kiss completely, he nips at my bottom lip and I shiver, involuntary. He looks down at me, he blinks, his gaze intense, penetrating mine. He kisses my neck, my chest, and I know I am aroused. He would have to know, too. He would have to feel it. Because I can feel him. He rubs his erection up against my thigh and gasps. I catch the skin underneath his ear in my teeth. He gasps again, kisses me again, and our tongues collide in my mouth, in his, somewhere in the middle. I am dizzy, and he is hard against me and I’m hard against him. He rolls his hips against mine and I make a sound, a moan, it just comes out of me.
His hand moves down my body and I begin to shake like I’m cold but I’m not. I’m warm, I’m feeling all my blood vessels dilate, I am feeling his hand, his fingers slip under the waistband…under…down…
I dig my fingers into his back. My eyes fling open and I suddenly remember where we are. I suddenly remember where we are, who we are, and what we are doing.
“Don’t!” I reach down and grab his hand, alarm in my voice. I surprise him. I surprise myself.
He looks at me, his eyes wide. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t - I don’t know if I want that. I don’t know if I want you to do that.”
He slowly removes his hand from the waistband and I see his cheeks redden. “I’m sorry.”
I prop myself up on my elbows. I am still shaking. I feel as if I am coming out of a trance. “You don’t need to be sorry. I just -” I search for something to give him, something to soothe him, and soothe myself, but my mind has gone blank. I am thoughtless.
Finny lays on his side, his legs tangled up with mine and my heart skips a beat. “I’m sorry, Gene.”
I look at him and my heart swells. Like this, in the moonlight just like this, I have never seen him look so handsome. So beautiful. And I don’t want him to look at me with such a pained expression. I don’t want him to feel guilty or sorry. But I don’t know. I tell him that, I don’t know what to do, what I am doing, what any of this means. And the bubble we were in as we kissed and touched each other suddenly pops and we’re outside, out in the open, by the river, where anyone can see, anyone can walk by.
I reach for my clothes. “We should go back.”
He watches me for a moment, then touches my arm, turning me to him. He searches my eyes. “I don’t want this to be the only time.”
I search his eyes in return, emeralds with specks of aquamarine, and I lean over to kiss him once more. Small, sweet, his lashes flutter on my skin. I pull away. “It won’t be.”
He’s pleased at this. He smiles.
We get dressed and walk back to the dorm, to our room, and he is beside me all the way. He is beside me, where I always want him to stay.