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He felt half-full as soon as that door shut, leaving him alone in the house with Amanda Willis and Aaron’s roommates. He could only stare at that front door, unable to shake off the amazing feeling that he had inside of him. He had dreamed for nine long years for this to happen, dreamed of it as if he had waited for it; knowing perhaps somewhere, deep down inside, that if he just dreamed long enough, if he just allowed some part of himself to believe—the part of himself that had held on to the boy that he had been before everything died—then they would find their way back to each other.
Aaron had been his horizon for so long, his sun-up and sunset that blazed ahead of everything else, and he had turned his world on its head. Chase was aware of his heart beating because Aaron made it beat, and when it did it sang his name.
Being with him—being inside of him, his cock deep and feeling Aaron give in to him and submit to him—had been like drowning. He fell into Aaron more and more each and every single time, and over the past week all he could think about was getting to plummet into his ocean and swallow that water and submit to it again and again.
With Aaron gone, Chase could feel the hollowed place in his heart that felt cold, like an echo of those past nine years, an echo from that first day of freshman year when he realized Aaron wouldn’t be matriculating at Stadium High School, and that they would never cross paths again.
“Well, that got really awkward...” Sandra suddenly said, cutting through the silence that had settled on the room.
“Awkward and weird,” Tammy added.
Chase turned and looked at Tammy and shrugged, his face shadowed by a half-smile. He didn’t want to think about it. He didn’t want think about the reasons behind her possessiveness and disdain. He had seen both of these things before when it came to Aaron; he had seen what it did, how it twisted and brought out the worst in the person behind it.
Bailey crept on him again. He remembered the look on his face when he would catch Chase staring at Aaron from across the room, or his sudden need to interject and draw Aaron’s attention away from Chase, and he usually always did this by saying something vicious to Aaron or throwing a basketball at him or knocking his books out of his hand.
Whatever had happened in that bathroom, Chase knew that it had all culminated because of this possessiveness and disdain, and the last thing that he wanted to do was imagine that Andy could be just as bad.
No, Bailey had been fucked up before eighth grade and Aaron Christopher. He had always been empty in the eyes; Chase just hadn’t thought too much of it back then. Andy didn’t look like that. Her eyes weren’t empty; there wasn’t a slight glimmer of evil deep in that void as there had been with Bailey.
Aaron didn’t need protecting from Andy Stone. Not everyone who got jealous or possessive or was acrimonious was a psychopath. These were all normal feelings people could go through. He had just been disconnected for so long from meaningful relationships that he had prescribed all of those things to Bailey and Bailey alone had defined them.
“Well,” Amanda said, folding her bare arms across her chest. “She seems nice....”
Everyone looked at her and broke out into a chorus of laughter. It felt good to laugh after all of that, and the broken tension warmed the women to Amanda.
“Don’t worry about her; she can be a cunt, but she’s harmless,” Sandra said.
“Yeah, welcome to the house,” Trish said to her, standing firm with folded arms. “I can show you to your room, or I can just tell you it’s the only vacant room on the second floor.” She smiled, and Christy giggled and slapped her girlfriend’s arm.
Amanda smirked. “I’m pretty sure I can manage. But thank you. Really.”
The girls all nodded and began to leave the front room when Sandra stopped and looked Amanda up and down and smirked.
“Thank Aaron. It was his call.”
Chase could tell that Amanda was uncertain of how to take this, but he figured it was just Aaron’s friends establishing that they had his back, and Chase could appreciate that. He was glad that Aaron had found people who cared about him as much as they did.
Aside from lunchtime with Carolyn Carter, Aaron had had none of that when they were kids, and he presumed, he hadn’t had it until moving into the house.
“So,” Chase began, making his way over to Amanda, still trying to deal with the shock in seeing her after eight years of complete invisibility. He hadn’t been able to find her on Myspace or Facebook, and he had never even thought she would have had a LiveJournal. She had just vanished and now, as if brought here by him and Aaron’s reunion and Bailey’s ghost, Amanda Willis was no longer memory and regret; she was real and she was smiling at him.
“You ready to get your stuff?”
Amanda nodded and smiled. It was the same wide smile that she had had when she was fourteen, and it had been the first thing he saw on the last day that they ever saw each other.
“Yeah, I’m parked right out front; I really don’t have a lot....” She ran her fingers through her hair, twirling a strand around her fingers. “It’s mainly clothes.”
He nodded, feeling slightly out of place, like he had somehow discovered time travel and he and Amanda had made a journey into the future, catching a glimpse of a world that they would eventually join as soon as they got older.
“Well, then, giddy up!” He clapped his hands together and she seemed to blush, but he wasn’t certain, and he really didn’t want to know.
They made their way to the front door, Chase twisting the knob and pulling it open, the light of the afternoon sun pouring in through the crack of the opened door, painting the floorboards in golden hue.
“Wait!” Tammy yelled out behind them, causing him and Amanda to turn and look at her.
“Yeah?” His brows rose, causing his lids to lift, making his eyes seem much larger than they actually were.
“It’s tradition in our house that the night of a new move-in we throw a house dinner to welcome them to the family.”
Amanda smiled, “Really? That’s awesome.”
Tammy nodded. “So dinner’s at eight; don’t be tardy.”
They both nodded and Chase shuffled nervously in place. He was still adjusting to this sudden inclusion into their circle. They were Aaron’s roommates, not his, and he had never really thought about the fact that he would be inheriting these others when he got involved with Aaron Christopher. It had been so long that he had cared to be included in anything that Chase was uncertain of how to process it.
His nature was to retreat. To retract and walk away before anyone could get too close. He went to parties, he drank, he participated in conversations that only really required that he listened, even though he rarely ever did, and he left without ever saying goodbye. He never committed to anything and he never gave hope to anyone, but for the first time in a long time—since before Bailey’s death—he actually cared.
It mattered to him that he was included in the things that went on in Aaron’s life. He wanted his roommates to like him, and he cared if they did, which was unnerving, and Chase wanted to step back from all of it for a moment, so he could figure out how much of himself he was willing to give to these people that he had just met.
It was fucked up and he knew it, and in his own way he had always been fucked up. He knew it was because he had been the olive-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed all American boy, the Nineties idea of the teen dream and he had never been short of admirers or fans. But when Aaron Christopher had come into his orbit and those sad forest eyes had looked at him and worshiped him, it had been like nothing he had ever felt from any of the girls in his class or the boys who thought he was cool and wanted to be his friend.
Aaron hadn’t wanted to be his friend; he had wanted something else. He had wanted to crawl inside of Chase and see everything that he kept hidden, and he had wanted to be at his feet and praise him for all that he was and for everything that Aaron was not.
He had wanted that worship and that adolescent lust just as much as Bailey had wanted to crush it out of him. He had been at the other end of Aaron, pulling him and luring him and fighting to hold his attention just as Bailey had. Chase had wanted to impress him and keep him tethered and chained, and it had been all of those things that had made him love Aaron right back.
To Aaron he had been a hero; he had known that if the rest of the world had suddenly turned its back on him, Aaron never would, and he had never felt that before. He had never been so aware of how fragile his popularity and his friendships had been until he felt Aaron’s devotion to him, and he had never stopped giving Chase a chance to make up for the times he had been a dick to him.
There had always been a push and pull between himself and Aaron back then, and sometimes he had taken joy in hurting Aaron—in making him cry or run to the bathroom or up the street—because back then he would need to punish Aaron in those moments that he became so keenly aware of how Aaron had really made him feel, that it had made him fear that everyone else could see it too. Bailey had brought out the beast in him in those moments—the wolf with a killer instinct, a skillful hunter who exploited his prey’s weakness.
It’s why he had iced Aaron out altogether after that fateful kiss. He knew that if he had talked to him again he would have kissed him again, because that had been all that he had wanted to do, and he just couldn’t allow himself to even ponder if he was queer or even how queer he was. So he had dealt the fatal blow that he knew would crush Aaron’s hope and keep him from looking at Chase ever again.
Not wanting or really caring to get close to other people—the disconnection and disassociation in social settings—was just another byproduct of how fucked up he could be. But Aaron’s housemates were making an effort and he would be a fool to turn that away, especially because they all meant so much to Aaron and their second chance meant more to him than anything else. It meant that he needed to make an effort too, that he needed to step outside of himself and accept that he had to do things differently—that he needed to be different. He needed to be the person that Aaron had always made him feel like he could be.
“You good?” Amanda asked him as she reached for the door and pulled it open the rest of the way.
Chase smirked and cocked his head. “Yeah, I’m good.”
––––––––
They walked outside, Amanda leading the way down the front steps, her hips swinging slightly—seductively—like their night together that summer after freshman year. The last thing that he wanted to do was think about that night. That evening when alcohol took over and a night of memoriam turned into something else, something empty and desperate and sad; something that ruined a friendship in a single night.
“Well, this is it!” Amanda stood in front of the light blue Thunderbird, its chrome and paint sparkled in the sunlight. He could see right away that it was a ‘58 or ‘59, given that it had a backseat, and Chase had had a childhood interest in classic cars so he was able to recognize these things. It was a nice car, and it looked good, like most old cars do, and he was excited to take a ride in this piece of Americana.
“It’s sick!” They smiled at one another, and despite himself he liked the familiarity that Amanda had brought into his life. He remembered times before Proctor, memories of their years together in elementary school and birthday parties on the weekends, and freeze tag during recess.
They had a deep history together, and had even dated in fourth grade, though that was childish and superficial and hadn’t really meant anything, and their break up had been equally lackluster. There had always been tension between them—a shared desire just beneath the surface.
But that would never lead into anything else. He loved Aaron, loved him in ways that he could never truly comprehend. Aaron Christopher had taken over his world, slowly creeping in on him in September of ’97, and as soon as he had, everything between himself and Amanda Willis had changed; it had shifted into something else, and they had both felt it but had pretended not to notice.
Chase was sure that Amanda had kept a diary back then, and he felt confident in the fact that a lot of things she had written had been about him. If he had kept one, he would have done the same. He had agonized in private over their shift. He had been aware of how she had felt about him and how he had been certain he had felt the same way about her.
His parents had always told him growing up that they were ‘just sure he would marry that Willis girl.’ And like all ‘destinies’ he had believed it, until he met Aaron and began to dream of something else entirely.
“Get in!” Amanda shouted to him over the hood of the car, fiddling with her key in the lock. “Don’t worry; I’m a safe driver.”
He laughed at this. It was funny, but he didn’t like her smile. He didn’t like the way she looked at him. It seemed to be in expectation, but in expectation of what? He wasn’t going to fuck her; that would not happen, and he had no desire for it to happen.
He opened the passenger door and slid in, the blue leather seat reached from one end of the car to the other, room enough for three people, possibly four if you squeezed, but so was the style of vehicles in post-World War II America, and the seat burned just a little from the sun, and the belt was hot, too hot to try to fasten.
He never wore seatbelts anyways, so why start now?
“Great day, isn’t it?” he commented.
She smiled and nodded, slipping her key into the ignition and turning it, starting the engine and placing her hands on the leather-sheathed steering wheel.
“So, you and Aaron, huh?” He hadn’t expected that one, but since it was here, he had no choice but to answer.
“Yeah, me and Aaron....” He felt a slight pain inside, wishing that Aaron was with them now. It felt as if he were never going to see him again, which was stupid to feel that way since he would see him in just a couple of hours.
“I would have never figured....”
Her voice was sullen, and he realized that she had been hoping for something, something that she had just realized she was never going to get. Her eyes were covered by her black sunglasses, and the light danced on the lenses as she gave a slow nod, the kind of nod that told you that someone was processing what you were saying to them and the gravity of what all of that meant weighed in as well.
“What, me liking guys?”
She looked at him and nodded, then reached into her glove box and removed a pack of Camel Lights. She pulled one out and placed it between her lips, lighting it up and rolling down the window and the smoke billowed out of her nostrils in one great plume.
“It’s just... well, we had sex! I mean, if you’re gay, what does that say about me?”
Of course she would think of it in those terms; how could she not? He just hated that he was the reason for this sense of selfdoubt that Amanda was experiencing.
“Look, I can’t say I’m gay. I do know that I love Aaron; I’m sexually aroused by Aaron, and I have been since Proctor....” He had a flash of a body under a blood-stained sheet and red on innocent hands come across his mind, and he knew that she must have been thinking of the same thing.
Chase sighed and folded his strong arms across his chest, the sun highlighting the colors of his tattoos as he did.
“I know that I have been in love with him for the past nine years, and I have been attracted to other guys... well, guys that look like Aaron—and I’ve messed around with a couple of guys, but again, those guys looked like him, so.... I guess I have a type, and Aaron is that type.”
She seemed not to hear this, or if she did she was giving no indication. She took another drag from her cigarette and Chase shrugged and reached for one. Amanda nodded to him with approval as he lit it up and rolled down the window. The rushing sea air began to whip through his hair and lash at his eyes.
“Well, that’s commitment....” She finished her cigarette and rolled up her window, smiling at him slightly, causing Chase to laugh and nod in agreement; it was true.
“But it had nothing to do with you. You were perfect and beautiful and everything I was supposed to want. I just got pulled in another direction, but you didn’t drive me there—”
“No, I just finalized it,” Amanda said with a sigh.
“Look, I’m sorry,”
Amanda shook her head.
“Don’t be. You need to be happy, Chase. I need to be happy and Aaron needs to be happy. Hell! Anyone who left that fuckedup school with us needs to be happy; I mean, it’s either happiness or insanity.”
Chase nodded. “Thanks.”
“For what?” Amanda asked him with a smile and a raised brow.
Chase returned the smile and reached out for her shoulder and gave it a squeeze.
“For still being a friend after all of these years. For not telling me to go fuck myself when you have every right. I don’t really know much of anything half the time; I mean, I’m not really aware of others.
“I haven’t really cared to be, and so I was really excited to see you when I came down those stairs.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve let anyone really see me, and I’ve forgotten how. You know what that year did to all of us, and why getting close seems near-impossible. What Bailey could do and the way he was—with the both of us—he found the worst parts of ourselves and he—”
“Pulled it out of us and in those moments we were as bad as he was?” Amanda finished.
“Yeah.”
They smiled at each other and Amanda reached out and gave his thigh a reassuring squeeze.
“It was eight years ago, Chase. I may love you, but I don’t feel the way you feel about Aaron. It was just something familiar and something that was unfinished.
“It’s finished now. I finally got my answer. It may take me a hot minute to fully adjust, but I’ll get there.”