Chapter One
Eric was cool with hanging alone. He could entertain himself. After all, he used to do it all the time before he moved here and became the third wheel in the Josh and Brianne tricycle. He didn’t really miss Josh, but was so used to his friend’s chatter, it was like somebody had suddenly turned off the TV. His ears rang with the silence.
Not to mention the fact that, without Josh to connect them, he no longer had any excuse to hang out with Brianne. Summer wasn’t the same without the view of her curvy, tanned body in a swimsuit, even though he’d never do more than admire that body from a distance. He missed seeing her. He even missed her sharp, judgmental voice telling him to stop being such a pushover and stand up for himself once in a while against Josh’s constant demands.
So, yeah, he was capable of entertaining himself, but it was shaping up to be a long, boring summer. Josh was clear across country in Boston at a Young Leaders convention for a month. When he returned, he’d only be home for a few more weeks before leaving for NYU. Meanwhile, Eric laid carpet with his brother, Carl, during the day and spent his evenings alone, walking the beach aimlessly like some abandoned lover. The unlikely friendship the two had forged in high school was basically over. Josh was headed toward a bright future, Eric toward a dead end job.
He sighed and clicked off the TV he’d been staring through for the past hour, ever since getting home from work. In the absence of its blare the wheeze and rattle of the window air conditioner was louder than ever, yet it didn’t touch the stifling heat in the small apartment. Eric glanced down at his naked chest, watching a bead of sweat pool between his pecs and slip down the center of his torso. Would it roll right or left when it reached his navel? He sipped his beer and waited. The shiny bead was captured in the line of hair on his stomach and stayed there, glistening. Trapped, just like he was in this stupid town where he’d never really belonged, sharing an apartment with his stoner brother because his mom had ditched him there and he didn’t have anywhere better to go.
Brianne would be leaving for college, too, of course. Berkeley. Only a couple of hours away, but it might as well have been the moon. He’d surely never see her again. Even if she came home on school vacations it would be to see Josh, not him, and there certainly wouldn’t be any point in hanging with them anymore. They would talk about college courses, parties, professors, semesters abroad, while all he’d have to share would be stimulating facts about carpet installation and the truly fine weed Carl had scored the other night.
“Fuck it!” He tipped the bottle to his lips to drain the warm dregs, then tossed it in the general direction of the end table. After hitting the arm of the couch, it rolled off onto the floor. Eric stood, peeling his sweaty back from the rough, nappy fabric of the couch. His boxers clung to his damp skin, outlining the shape of the hard-on he’d gotten from just thinking about Brianne. He stared morosely down at his boner.
“Gotta get out of here.”
Tonight he was actually bored enough to go to a party at Chad Nicholson’s beach house. He despised Nicholson and his crowd, but there would be a couple of kegs and a lot of hot girls, so what the hell.
First he took a long, cool shower, washing away the stink of a hard day’s work lifting and carrying heavy rolls of carpet from the store to the van and into people’s houses. Ripping out nasty, ratty old stuff was the worst, but there was some small satisfaction in seeing the smooth, unblemished surface of new carpet covering an empty floor, wall to wall. It had a kind of hopeful look to it.
Washing his hair, he could feel it was getting too long, almost shoulder length. Maybe he’d take a razor and shave right down to the scalp. It’d be more comfortable and at least it would be something different. If he
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