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When the shock of seeing James in the middle of the night on the porch with a duffel bag at his feet—completely unexpected but far from unwelcome—had slightly worn off as I led him inside, through the living room, up the stairs, to my room, I realised how utterly insane this situation was. James was here, with me, in my family’s house. James, of all people. A thousand questions swam in my mind as I took his bag from his hands and closed the door of my room behind him.
“I like your room,” James told me with the slightest hint of a polite smile playing on his lips. I watched him take in his surroundings. He barely hid his clear interest in my bookshelf, the few pictures standing on my desk, the posters that hung on the wall. Suddenly I felt self-conscious of the fact that I had not properly made my bed, and while I was aware that my bed was the least of his worries right now, especially considering the past few weeks, I could not help but shyly glance at it. He did not seem to notice.
“It looks lived-in.”
I shrugged. “It’s not much.” I noted with embarrassment a fleeting feeling that this was wrong, that James was not supposed to know about this side of myself, that I would have highly preferred my family to stay a mystery to him. But then again, he was my closest friend. I didn’t have to hide from him, not really. I wanted to, though.
“It’s perfect,” he said simply.
“Well,” I gestured vaguely at him and at the bedroom around us, “you’re welcome to it.” I hesitated and stumbled over my next sentence. “But, James—and please don’t take this the wrong way, you really have no idea how glad I am to see you—why on earth are you here?”
He leaned on the edge of my desk. “I needed to get away from home,” he said. “Rattling around that house by myself during the day, tiptoeing around my parents at night—I just couldn’t take it. I couldn’t go back to Dellecher so I flew to Chicago, but the busyness was just as bad. I thought about getting a bus to Broadwater, but there wasn’t one so I came here.” He shook his head, his eyes meeting mine. “I’m sorry, I should’ve called.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I stammered.
“ Thy friendship makes us fresh .”
“No offence, but you don’t look it,” I told him. It was simply the truth: he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, as if he had just travelled for over six hours. “You look battered, actually.”
He smiled almost apologetically. “It’s been a long night.”
“Let’s get you to bed, then. We can talk more in the morning.”
He nodded, slowly, his gaze filled with gratitude. I stared at him, momentarily brain-dead except for the nonsensical question whether he had ever looked at me that way. Whether I deserved him looking at me that way. Whether I was supposed to feel so warm inside all of a sudden.
“Where do you want me?” he asked.
“What?” I blinked, sorting my thoughts. James. James needed somewhere to sleep. “Oh. Right. Uhm. Why don’t you sleep here, and I’ll, uh, I’ll crash on the couch downstairs.”
He looked at me as if I were a madman. “I’m not going to… kick you out of your own bed, Oliver.”
I raised my hands in defence, a nonsensical movement, though his tone implied that I needed to defend myself. I decided to ignore the amusement on his face. “You need the sleep more than I do,” I explained, suddenly bashful.
“No, why don’t we just—” He sighed. “We can share, can’t we?”
I stared at him sheepishly. His expression was one part amused, one part expectant, and so utterly childlike that I realised with a surge of a strong emotion which I could not properly name that he, though clearly exhausted, looked somewhat like himself. His gaze flicked towards the window before landing on me again. He raised his eyebrows. I finally caught on: it wasn’t a rhetorical question.
“Yeah, I… I don’t see why not,” I answered.
He grinned shyly at me, and I wondered whether my own exhaustion was making me imagine the light shade of red on his cheeks. “We’re not such strange bedfellows,” he said.
“No.”
I watched as he bent down to unlace his shoes, then pulled my own socks off and quickly climbed out of my sweatpants. This did not have to be awkward, I told myself. James was right, we definitely weren’t ‘strange bedfellows’. We had shared so much throughout our four years at Dellecher and were so close, this was nothing compared to some other experiences we had shared.
And yet, it was different. Ever since Richard, everything was different. James and I were closer, inseparable, though he had changed. I supposed we had all changed over the course of the past few weeks. Grief changes people, was the conclusion I came to, before James pulled me out of my thoughts.
“Which side do you want?” he asked while unfastening his belt.
“What?” I looked at him while trying to show that I wasn’t looking at him, still processing what he meant.
“The bed.” He pointed in the general direction behind me, where I knew my bed stood next to the wall.
“Oh.” I shrugged. “Whichever.”
“Okay.” He nodded, seemingly to himself, and folded his jeans over the back of my desk chair before pulling his sweater off over his head. This time I did really look at him. My eyes were drawn to vague blue-greenish bruises on his wrists and forearms. I blinked multiple times and averted my gaze.
I carefully sat down on the edge of my bed. My mind, out of nowhere, drifted back to the summer we had spent in California together—taking turns behind the wheel of the old BMW that had once belonged to James’s father, driving all the way up the coast to some grey, fog-blurred beach where we got incredibly drunk on white wine, swam naked, and fell asleep in the sand. I smiled to myself, really smiled, for the first time since… a while. That summer felt so far away, while it simultaneously felt like yesterday.
“Do you remember that night in Del Norte,” I spoke up, “when we passed out on the beach—”
“And when we woke up in the morning all our clothes were gone?” He said it so readily that he must have been thinking of it, too. I chuckled quietly and turned around to face him. He was getting under the comforter, a genuine smile brightening his features.
“I still wonder what happened.” I grinned. “Do you think it could have been the tide?”
“More likely someone with a sense of humour and a very light step liked the idea of us having to hike back to the car in the nude.”
A small silence fell between us. James looked as if he was holding back laughter, and that vision alone made a laugh bubble up in my chest. Before we knew it, we were both laughing. Loud, genuine laughter, a release of emotions pent up way too long. It wasn’t just the memory of California, I supposed, it was everything. It was a way to let go, even if just for a moment. I felt tears pricking at the corners of my eyes and tried wiping them away, but that only made it worse.
James seemed to sense the change in atmosphere, his brows furrowing slightly. I sighed, and gave him an apologetic look. As if to say, Sorry, I also have no idea why I’m crying, please don't let this ruin the night . I chuckled at my own unstable state and, to not make the air too heavy with unwanted emotional baggage, resumed our conversation about Del Norte, “It’s a miracle we didn’t get arrested.”
The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile again, whether at the memory or at my obvious attempt to change the subject, I wasn’t entirely sure. “In California?” He shook his head lightly. “It would take more than that.”
Both our smiles faded. The story—the water, the grey morning, James’s comment—was suddenly painfully familiar, too close to comfort to more recent memories. It would take more than that , he had said. I glanced at him as he turned away from me, laying down in the bed and shifting to find a comfortable position. I knew we were still thinking about the same thing. This time it was less cheerful.
I slowly breathed out as I, too, attempted to find a comfortable position while constantly aware of James's back turned to me. The silence between us was deafening and incredibly uneasy. I closed my eyes and, in an attempt to distract myself from it , from the lake, the body, everything following that night, I focused on James’s erratic breathing. His presence, though initially somewhat uncomfortable, was strangely comforting to me. Still, the five or six inches between us felt like a hundred miles.
“Can I turn out the light?” James eventually asked.
“’Course,” I answered flatly. He reached for the lamp, and darkness filled the room. A sudden, senseless panic came with it. I could no longer see James. I actively fought the impulse to reach across the bed to find his arm and pull him close to me. Instead, I spoke out loud, just to hear him reply, to be sure of his presence.
“James?”
“Hm?”
I didn’t know what else to say, so I acted on the impulse. I felt him stiffen when my hand bumped into his shoulder. “Sorry,” I mumbled, “it’s just… dark, and I wanted to—”
He silenced me by laying his hand on mine. “I know,” he simply said. He rolled over in the bed, and before I could properly register what he was doing, I felt him cuddle up to me. “We’re not such strange bedfellows,” he whispered, echoing his own words of earlier.
I was unsure what to do. It felt unnatural, James’s body against my own, and yet it also felt so right. I was slightly bigger than he was, he fit perfectly against me. I wondered for a split second whether it was appropriate to have such thoughts in such a situation but quickly concluded I didn’t want to think about it. I tentatively put an arm around him, and he relaxed into the touch, sighing softly. His breath felt warm against my neck.
“James?” I asked again, more cautiously this time. “Is this… okay?”
As a means of answer I received a soft hum of approval. I caught myself smiling at the sheer innocence of the sound.
“Okay.” I tried to resist the urge to stroke his back, pondered for a moment on why I was overthinking everything since James arrived on my doorstep, decided he would make it known if he found anything I did uncomfortable and slowly let my hand travel down his back.
“Oliver,” he whispered, and my hand immediately froze. “No,” he protested, “don’t—”
“Sorry.”
He lightly shook his head, exhaustion evident in his voice. “I mean, don’t stop. I uhm…” He seemed to hesitate for a moment and I was sure we were both intently aware of our physical closeness. He swallowed and continued, “I actually find it quite, err, comforting.”
“Oh.”
“Sorry,” he said, and I pulled away slightly to face him despite the darkness in the room. I was able to make out a very faint outline of his face. My head was spinning with questions, thoughts, exhaustion. Something seemed to have changed about him, about us, but perhaps it was just that it was now well past two in the morning and neither of us had had a proper night's sleep in a long time.
“Don’t apologise,” I told him, surprised by the softness in my voice. “You really don’t have to.” After a lingering, somewhat tense silence, I pulled James close to my chest again. “I find this comforting too,” I said, feeling my cheeks flush at the confession, “so really, don’t apologise.”
“Okay,” he said in a small voice, and I could feel him trembling against me. I didn’t comment on it, just slowly stroked his back as I had done moments before. He let out a shuddered breath and cuddled impossibly closer to me, his limbs now almost fully intertwined with mine.
It took me several obvious hints to realise he was crying. His shoulders shook, his breathing seemed even more erratic than earlier, a wet spot was slowly growing on my shirt.
I froze again, momentarily, but the small, pained sound he let out told me he probably wanted me to keep holding him. So I did. I made a conscious effort to breathe calmly, to be strong for him; I had seen him cry before, but this was, like so many things lately, different. He was silently sobbing. Not like my own tears earlier, but real, ugly sobs.
“Sorry,” he hiccuped, hiding his face in the crook between my neck and my shoulder. I felt tears wetting my skin.
“Shh.”
“But—”
“It’s okay.” Those two words had to get across to him what I was feeling at that moment, since I had no clue how else to say it without risking more emotions that night from my side. I boldly moved my other hand which has been laying lightly on James's shoulder to run my fingers through his hair.
My stomach fluttered nervously at the small, contented, tired sound that elicited from him. He nuzzled his head closer to my neck, his nose brushing against my skin, and I smiled. I felt his tremors lessen as we stayed like this for what felt like hours, close, intertwined, together. When I asked him at one point whether he was still awake, receiving no answer, I decided to allow myself to close my eyes as well.
I drifted in and out of consciousness, repeatedly becoming aware of the fact that I had slept only when I actively sensed James laying close to me. He seemed to be soundly asleep, turning in my embrace, sometimes whispering about nonsensical matters. This was nice, I realised as I traced the features of his face with my eyes some time in the early morning, when the early sunlight didn't have enough brightness to peek through the curtains just yet. This was, in fact, very nice. It was home.