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Not long after I arrived and got used to the fact that the mystifying splendor of the coastal village was real and even better than I’d imagined, I got down to the serious business of being a slouch.
I had forgotten the smoky aroma of good food, the bite of good homemade lemonade; I had never imagined the simple weightless inertia of retiring from the grey walls I'd called home could be so much mine. I already had a favorite wooden deck chair I reclined in to watch the waves do their work, first thing after waking and the last thing before I turned in.
Andy was not to be so spoiled. On this one afternoon he was chopping wood. I should have figured he would know about trees. My knowledge on lumber ended one foot outside the shop, but Andy knew which kind was the best, easiest, or even the kindest to cut down. Shirt unbuttoned, as was becoming his habit, he sweated happily through the task and squinted in a smile at my bewildered look every time he paused to wipe at his forehead.
“What should I suppose we need that for?” I finally asked.
“The bonfire,” he informed me.
“We already had a bonfire,” I teased lazily.
“We’re having another one.”
“And more after that, I'd wager. But you go on chopping like you think you're gonna build that little hotel of yours all by yourself.”
His smile crookedly met the landscape in the distance and he let out a heavy satisfied breath, before he turned back. After a bit, when I was still looking at him, he commented, “You like to watch.”
Even that he made graceful, so that I didn’t fester there in the heat second guessing myself, so that I took it as fact. And it was.
Nothing really troubled me, but if anything bothered me in that time it was his restlessness. Everything licked serenely in the warm breeze a couple hours before the sun went down, the light dappling in flashes over the waves, the stillness of the days and nights crazed with limitless energy because all you had to do was lounge around and wait for the beauty to come to you. Only Andy didn’t sit still for much of it. I was tired just looking at him. I was realizing that I wanted not just to hold my own freedom, but to feel his.
Dusk bled out with perfectly lazy finality. When Andy finally took a seat in the sand down closer to the beach I found he had a point about the bonfires; nothing on the inside had been so primitive and crucial as sitting close to a friend just near enough to the fire. I got out of my chair to sit in the sand with him.
“Tell me again, that thing you’ve been carving...”
“It’s called an ocarina. Only I messed it up.” Andy said cheerfully, “I’ll have to start all over again. It won’t be the first time.”
I chuckled. “You were so good with that soapstone.”
“Yeah,” he said with a sigh. “I couldn’t take the rocks for granted. Especially when they were gifts.”
The firelight threw an orange glaze between all the obstacles, illuminating the two of us slightly, and there was a glow to our sidelong contented smiles.
The thin remainder of the gloaming was quickly turning into full dark, inviting a stretch of silence between us. Andy started rubbing the back of his neck, the motion appearing to set off a deeper sting that made him groan briefly.
“What’s hurting?” I muttered.
“All around my left shoulder a bit.”
Everything from the earth under my feet to the air in my lungs was different; this, the massive thought of reaching out to touch a friend, was different. On the inside it wasn’t just the guards who kept you from contemplating more than the most fleeting contact. It was the eyes from across the yard, it was that very friend, it was yourself. I would give more credit to the inevitable — Andy would have been the one who taught me to do that — but I’m never so sure of what it is until it comes to me. I decided for the moment it was a simple enough thing, as I moved closer and I reached to squeeze at his shoulder, work his back a little.
I’d never in my life done this. In my youth I’d been unbelievably frightened to pursue any intimacy beyond casual leanings, and later on, for a time, I was even more afraid I wouldn’t have any choice either way. To retire from resignation itself is a hefty mental task.
But I felt, finally, that deep sigh of Andy loosening. I was a little bold but frowning in caution as my touches broke from pretense, rubbing carefully all over his back, then over an aching closer to his hips, and without delineation I found he was leaning into me between my legs. I found I was holding him. I found that when my hands came around and down his chest and then carefully tried the front of his shorts, he allowed it and then began to dissolve against me.
His history of labors and violations clung tight within the marrow of his bones; I wanted to say, Leave it. Let that pain roll over like a coward. I thought I could say as much if I kept on, making him breathe so deep to that rhythm of pleasure that released him. As I kept on he let me and his body seemed to plead and plead, until the ocean was crashing across our ankles and he didn’t let me stop.
.