Wild Summer (5 page)

It seemed a million years ago now, but back when they’d first met, Romeo had been a wary kid, in hospital recovering from pneumonia and a badly burned hand. He hadn’t wanted Crash’s friendship, but Crash had persevered, captivated by Romeo’s defiance, his determination to do what his heart told him he had to, whatever the cost might be. Determination that Crash had imagined echoed his own. But maybe he wasn’t that strong after all. Maybe his desire to do the right thing was just a cover for how much he’d fucked up in the past.

During those first few days they’d spent together all those years ago, Crash had discovered Romeo was some sort of expert in hope—especially the kind that involved finding the one person you needed to find. He never gave up. He’d found Julian when he’d been so lost, after all.

Glancing away at the gently swaying treetops, Crash imagined he could feel the push and pull of the restless ocean beyond them. The day was overcast, the sky white, the air cool.

Last time I saw him, he was so angry. He never wanted to see me again,
he signed listlessly.

Though he knew that argument wouldn’t cut it—even if the pain Crash felt was as raw as it had ever been, he knew Summer had been hurting and that was why he’d blown apart emotionally.

At fifteen Crash had been so enamored by the idea of being responsible for Summer’s life after he’d saved it, that when Summer had told him in no uncertain terms he wanted nothing to do with him, Crash felt worthless, his tender heart broken. Now he was ashamed he hadn’t tried harder for something that had been so beautiful and true (something unparalleled), ashamed he’d never contacted Summer again, tried to work through what had gone wrong.

Doing nothing had made what they had seem worthless too.

A lot has happened since then, though. You’re both grown up now,
Romeo signed, giving Crash a wry smile.
And technically you already saw him at the tube station.
Romeo sat back and plucked a few long tips of grass to deftly thread together while he waited for Crash to respond.

Crash sighed. Seeing someone by chance was completely different than actively seeking them out, and although his confidence had grown exponentially in dealing with all sorts of situations in life, in this single scarred corner of his heart, it had not. He shrugged and got up.

The strange thing was, he thought he’d come here to Romeo and Julian’s isolated haven to escape, but now he was beginning to see it was more than that—he’d come here to let himself be convinced of what he needed to do, and Romeo was the one person he knew would do that.

They spent the rest of the day in the cold gray sea, surfing on the choppy waves, occasionally swimming in the murky water. At lunch Romeo sat and sketched Crash’s face while they ate the sandwiches they’d brought with them from the cottage. Sketches were coursework for Romeo, but they sold well too at local galleries, and Crash was flattered.

It’s not going to get any easier. It’s eating away at you. You need to find him
, Romeo signed with his pencil in his hand.

From his expression, Crash realized it wasn’t an instruction, just an observation of the thoughts Crash knew played out across his features. He was too obvious, too easy to read.

He looked away. After surfing all day, the salt burned Crash’s skin as he stared out at the unsettled sea. Too much was welling up inside him to look back at Romeo.

All along he’d known what it was he had to do, but he’d needed the words to come from someone else. Of course he had to see Summer and make sure he was okay
—
it was inevitable, inescapable. Not because he thought there was any real chance at restarting the friendship, or whatever it had been between them, but because it was the right thing to do, and perhaps the only thing that could stop his repressed consciousness dreaming about a past too long gone and too painful for him to think about during sunlit hours.

I would come with you, if you like?
Romeo signed hesitantly when Crash finally turned around.
I have a few things I need to take into college anyway.

Romeo did most of his college coursework distantly, here, but he stayed with Kay and Peter for a couple of weeks every so often. He had a room in their house, and they were still classed as his foster parents. Estella, his social worker, didn’t really have a clue to the extent of the time Romeo spent here, but he was nearly eighteen now, and anyway, Julian missed him like hell when he went back to London. Crash had witnessed the skype conversations they’d had. So he knew Romeo would have fought Estella desperately against any change to their routine.

Crash shook his head. He was grateful for Romeo’s offer, but he needed to do this on his own.

Before….

“D
O
YOU
want to come back to mine?” Summer rolled onto his front and propped himself up on his elbows so Christopher could see him speak.

Still naked, they lay side by side on the sand. To Christopher, the knowledge that he could reach out and touch Summer’s skin was like a drug, one he wanted desperately to take more of.

His erection had swelled to half-mast against his thigh. He wasn’t so embarrassed or self-conscious about it now they had been so close, messing around in the water. And besides, Summer didn’t seem to mind.

Holding Summer’s gaze, he nodded. Of course he wanted to go back to Summer’s house. He had nowhere else to go, and at the same time, nowhere else he’d rather be.

When Summer smiled, everything seemed easy as sunshine, and Christopher wanted to remember lying naked on this beach with him forever.

“You should have wings,” he said in what he hoped was a whisper, feeling his voice catch over the words.

“Wings?” Summer mouthed, curious.

But Christopher could not articulate further what he meant. Instead, holding his breath, he touched Summer’s upper back, his shoulder blades, the delicate ridges of his spine, his fingers ghosting featherlight over the warm skin.

As though they had been transported to an alternate universe, the air became heavy and charged as a thunderstorm. Christopher watched Summer react, his pupils grow large and dark. He noticed the subtle shift of Summer’s hips, and imagined Summer was as turned-on as he was.

But Christopher was unsure how to take things further. He’d never instigated anything like this, especially not with someone he knew was older and probably far more experienced, so he stopped, and for a while they lay together unmoving on the sand. A few white clouds appeared in the achingly blue sky above the cliff, slowly drifting out to sea.

After a minute or two, Summer touched Christopher’s arm and got up. “Come on,” he said.

Reluctantly, Christopher dressed.

Summer’s confidence in his own skin and his enjoyment of being naked gave Christopher the confidence to be naked around him. Bodies were beautiful, they were to be enjoyed, so what if your body showed how much you liked someone? Dressing again seemed like putting on a mask.

They retraced their steps away from the cove, wading through the deepening water and across the rocks.

Halfway up their climb of the cliff face, Summer took Christopher’s hand and squeezed. Christopher’s heart pounded, and he wondered, not for the first time, how loud that sound must be.

S
UMMER
LIVED
on the edge of the estate near the dual carriageway, less than ten minutes from the sea.

“Mum’s home. Wait here,” he instructed, leaving Christopher standing on a narrow strip of grass behind a row of whitewashed maisonettes as he disappeared around the side of the buildings, presumably to the front door.

A few minutes later, he appeared at a window level with Christopher’s head.

“Don’t want Mum to know you’re here. She’ll only ask awkward questions,” he said, opening the window wide and beckoning Christopher to climb inside, which he did with the utmost catlike grace.

“You move like a dancer,” Summer said, watching appraisingly as Christopher looked around the surprisingly tidy bedroom.

No posters marred the walls; no dirty clothes lay strewn across the floor. A single pile of heavy-looking textbooks served as a bedside table.

“Yeah, I’m a neat freak,” Summer said, rolling his eyes. “Not many people get to see the conventional side of me, you know.”

Christopher smiled, unsure what to do with himself. Being so tall, he felt like he was taking up a lot of space, and there wasn’t a lot of space to take up in this room. He wondered if he should sit on the bed.

“Are you hungry?” Summer asked, something in his expression telling Christopher he understood his discomfort and wanted to put him at ease.

“A bit.” Christopher shrugged.

“Make yourself at home, and I’ll go and steal some food from the fridge.”

Christopher sat down on Summer’s bed and glanced around, taking in more of the plain-seeming room and realizing, as he looked closer, there were little touches of Summer’s personality after all: a bottle of blue hair dye, a tub of glitter, and a black kohl pencil stood alone on the empty shelf above his bed. A pair of glittery pajama bottoms with surreal faces all over them stuck out from under his pillow. The textbooks making up his bedside table were all serious-looking volumes on child psychology and child welfare—certainly not light reading or books you’d find lying about the house. These were more like texts you’d study at college or university. A child’s hand-drawn bookmark poked out of the top one.

Summer had perhaps been gone ten minutes when the door to his room opened and a girl peeked in. A girl who looked very much like Summer, only she was smaller and younger, with slightly darker skin, chestnut hair pinned back in two buns, but the same arresting, light-colored eyes. She was very pretty. She stared at Christopher curiously, her mouth opened, but Christopher couldn’t make out the words she was saying. Summer appeared behind her and pushed her gently into the room with his hip, two plates of food in his hands.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to be so long. I just had to check on my neighbor. She’s not well.”

He placed the food down on the bed next to Christopher and turned around.

“This cheeky imp is my sister, Sky. And Sky, this is….” He held Christopher’s gaze, an apologetic look on his face, though his eyes were dark with another emotion.

“Christopher,” Christopher said, bizarrely feeling that something momentous should happen now Summer had asked for his name.

“Sky is too nosy for her own good sometimes.” Summer narrowed his eyes at her, but he wasn’t serious. His deep affection for her was evident from the warmth in his expression.

Sky continued to stare at Christopher, and as though she was unaware of social boundaries, she stretched out her hand to touch his face. But before she could reach it, Summer gently pulled her hand away, shaking his head and speaking to her. He gestured for her to sit down on the floor, which she did in front of Christopher, her legs crossed, looking for all the world as if she was waiting for him to tell her a story. And perhaps she was, for she could only be eight years old at the most.

“She’s usually really shy, but she likes you,” Summer told him. He paused a moment to look at Sky before he turned back to Christopher. “She doesn’t go outside much, and we don’t have many visitors. Hopefully she’ll get a place at a special school in September, but we don’t know yet.”

Smiling at her, Christopher picked up the plate of food Summer had prepared for him. It was only as he looked at the sandwich and the neat pile of biscuits that Christopher realized how hungry he was. Trying to eat the sandwich slowly, he held out his plate, offering Sky the biscuits she was eyeing. With a cursory glance to Summer, she took them.

The look on Summer’s face was grateful and a little lost as he shared out what remained of his own food. Casually he brushed his hand against Christopher’s, smiling when Christopher glanced at him.

“S
KY
HAS
learning difficulties,” Summer said after he had taken her back to her room. “They think she might be autistic. The social workers did some tests, but….” He sighed. “Getting Mum to sort it out is nearly fucking impossible, and they won’t talk to me.”

Christopher could understand Summer’s frustration. Most of the time he felt pretty helpless at the hands of social workers. He only had a vague idea what autism was, and he didn’t want to pry.

Going through the foster system, he’d met a few kids with learning difficulties, and they seemed to have a rougher ride than most. But then none of kids had an easy time of it. Continually being placed in foster care was pretty shit whichever way you looked at it, and if the families didn’t have the specialist experience some kids needed, the placements rarely lasted long. Everyone he knew longed for adoption, to have something permanent—it just didn’t happen all that often.

He wondered if Sky had been in foster care with Summer, because siblings were rarely able to stay together. It struck Christopher then that if Sky wasn’t in care, perhaps she was the reason Summer had agreed to come home even though he wasn’t happy there—to take care of her.

They were sitting side by side on Summer’s bed, the last of the light shining through the window behind them turning everything in the room to gold.

“I’m sorry I didn’t ask you your name. I didn’t think it was a good idea for us to get too attached at first.”

“Why not?” Christopher’s heart hurt, and he didn’t really understand. He only knew that he longed for some sort of attachment to Summer, however tenuous.

“Wouldn’t do us any good…. But it’s a bit too late for that now, wouldn’t you say?”

Christopher didn’t say anything. Summer’s hand was on his shoulder, his touch light and yet galvanizing, like that elemental pull of the waves that had washed over them as they lay on the sun-warmed sand.

Without moving his hand, Summer turned and let his head fall forward, bringing his forehead to rest against Christopher’s, his breath hot against Christopher’s cheek, his mouth, his lips, his tongue….