Chapter 11
SAM
Well, Mom got one thing right. Savannah is beautiful.
When we roll in early in the evening we try our luck at several hotels on the riverfront—seems pointless not to, to stay here and not be on the Savannah River. Ash doesn’t even seem to mind the cost, even though it’s his money we’re burning through, and when I offer to go budget he just shrugs.
“Might as well,” he says. “Right? You were super hyped to see this place.”
“I mean, only if you don’t care.”
And he reassures me that he doesn’t.
Yet another thing I’ve yet to figure out or ask is where, exactly, he got all this cash, or why he carries it in such large bills.
Still so many mysteries to unravel, his brief moment of vulnerability aside.
Going to Miami specifically because of his friend and what he was told, I know that now, but the rest? What he’s running from? And why?
Maybe it doesn’t matter so much. All of that is back there, after all.
Presently, though, it’s friggin’ move-in week here too, and that’s an issue.
I didn’t realize how many colleges this city houses, but from what I gather, it’s several.
Our requests for a room are met with many a knit brow and bless your hearts and I suggest, once again, that maybe some budget motel closer to the freeway might be better until fortune finally smiles on us—at last—at some historic boutique called the Ivy House.
“We’ve got only the one king room left,” a dimpled concierge informs us apologetically. “It’s one of our busiest times of the year, you understand.”
“We’ll take it,” I say quickly.
“That’s one king bed,” she clarifies, her gaze flicking between us. “If that’s alright.”
“Yeah, that’s fine.” There’s a beat, and I glance to my right. “Ash?”
He sort of starts, looking from the concierge to me and then back again. “Yeah,” he says. He seems a bit distant. “Yeah, that’s fine. King beds are big. Right?”
Bigger than the double is what I want to say but I manage to hold my tongue, at least until we’ve finished checking in.
When we’re safely ensconced in the elevator, though—a creaky old thing, our faces reflected and warped in its brass trimmings—I let the impulse win: “At least you won’t find me up your ass tomorrow morning. ”
Ash rolls his eyes, slapping the button for the third floor. The elevator heaves us upwards. “I was less annoyed by that than the fact you stole the blanket all night.”
I grin. “We can ask for an extra.”
“We just took their last room. You think they have extras?”
“They gotta have more than just the exact amount of blankets. What if someone shits their bed?”
“It’s not like I mind sharing.” He folds his arms. “It’s just that you don’t share very well.”
The car shudders to a halt and the doors slide open. “Fine,” I say. “I’ll just sleep on the floor. With some towels.”
He snorts, stopping in front of our door. “Oh my god, Sam.”
“Anything for the princess.” I tweak, gently, a lock of his hair as he inserts the card key into its slot—an incongruously modern affectation for an otherwise prehistoric hotel. “You okay, by the way? You seem out of it.”
“Tired.” He pushes the door open. “Thinking.”
“About?”
“Stuff. Things.”
And I’m thinking about how, if I could have one wish right now, it would be to get inside his head for a minute or two. Really dig around in there and know him the way that I want to, get right to the core of him.
But he likes me. Maybe that’s good enough. Maybe that means he’ll tell me more things in time. If I’m patient and gentle enough with him. He doesn’t need me to beat him over the head anymore today.
And I wonder if I should tell him about Gabriel. I feel like I could? I feel like I should. I feel like…he’d get it, more than anyone else.
The room itself is actually gorgeous. It’s not big or grand or anything; the bed dominates the room on a heavy, dark wooden frame, mattress overhanging the edges slightly, tucked tight between nightstands that look like they haven’t moved in a century.
The bedspread itself is a damask pattern that matches the heavy drapes framing the window, and there’s a pair of floral-stitched armchairs in the corners.
The furniture doesn’t match so much as it seems to agree with itself, but I kind of like the vibe anyway.
I take a deep breath. “Smell that?” I say to Ash. He gives me a questioning look as he drops his backpack on a chair. “Lead paint.”
He tries not to laugh and fails. “Shut up.”
“Seriously.” I point to the crown molding, softened by layers of creamy paint. “No way this ain’t all lead.”
He goes to the window to throw wide the drapes, revealing what is a spectacular view of the Savannah River. “But check this,” he says. “This makes up for the night of brain damage, yeah?”
I grab his hand and drag him towards the door. “Let’s go see it ourselves.”
Down to the riverfront we go, walking along centuries-old cobblestone streets that are a stark contrast to the modern cars rushing along them.
Ducking beneath giant live oaks whose branches stretch across the squares, dripping in Spanish moss.
Old-fashioned riverboats paddle up the Savannah River, and we squint our eyes against the late summer sun as we stop to marvel.
I nudge Ash. “I wanna go on one. What d’ya say?”
An older Black gentleman with a graying beard overhears. “You’re too late,” he informs me. “The last cruises have already shipped out for the day.”
I thank him for his trouble. “Maybe tomorrow?” Ash suggests as the man moves along, his cane clacking against stone.
“Don’t you wanna ship out right away?” I say. “It’s probably seven, eight hours from here. If we leave early enough we could get there by early afternoon. Plenty of time to…well, do whatever it is you need to do.”
He shrugs. “What’s the rush?”
There’s none to me. I’m almost dreading the moment we get there. Which is a far cry from a few days ago, yeah, but now the last thing I want to do is get home. We’re in this bubble and I like it here with him. I don’t want it to pop.
I don’t want him to go away.
And that’s something I should ask him: what he’s going to do, if I will see him again.
If this thing we have will survive the end of our journey.
But nothing’s actually happened yet between us and so it seems all too soon for that conversation.
What would I even say? Hey, so I think you’re really cute, and I wanna kiss you and maybe put my dick in you, but the jury’s kinda out on the whole sexuality thing.
Hypothetically, though, could that be a long term arrangement?
As if.
We stop in a clothing store where Ash grabs a few things, and then we buy some much needed sunblock. Ash is so fair I’m worried he’s gonna burn to a crisp.
I bend down and grasp his face gently in my hands, thumbs working his flushed, freckled cheeks. He starts with a jerk and I explain, “You missed a bunch. Unless you want to walk around with white shit all over your face.”
A smile tugs at his mouth. “No.”
Man, I really do want to kiss him.
But this is Georgia, and we’re in public, and I haven’t quite lost all of my sanity, at least not yet. So I don’t.
We find a spot right down by the river to sit and smoke.
It’s cooling off a little now, a breeze buffeting us as we light up.
No excuse now to do what I did to Ash last night, take his face in my hands and touch the end of my cigarette to his, but there’s people around and it didn’t go over so well the first time, anyway.
We sit close enough together on the bench that our sides just touch as we watch the ferries putter across the water.
“Was he your lover?” I ask after a moment. “Ben, I mean.”
Ash shifts beside me. “No. He was my best friend. We were close in a lot of ways, intimate sometimes—a long time ago—but we weren’t really like that.” His thumb flicks the butt of his cigarette, scattering embers to the breeze. “I loved him, though.”
I nod. “I, um…” Don’t know how to say what I’m about to say.
I grope for the words. “I know this guy. Um, he’s my friend, I guess.
Or was?” Ash turns to me, his blonde hair blown across his face, and before I can even be tempted to touch it he brushes it away.
“He—okay, I need to give you some backstory. If you care.”
“Of course I care.”
“Okay.” I take a deep breath. “So, Gabriel. I met him after I graduated high school. He’s a marielito, like my tía Vivi—they came over together during the boatlift, back in 1980,” I add.
“Together. He was fifteen, no parents. My tía pretty much raised him. So…he was sort of like a cousin to me. A weird, distant one.”
Ash’s expression doesn’t change, doesn’t even flicker. Or if it does, I don’t detect it. He’s real good at controlling his face. He doesn’t say anything, just continues to watch me with those gorgeous eyes of his, and I can’t glean a single thing.
I keep talking. “But we never really paid much attention to each other until I was like, twenty, and we got talking at a block party one night. And—I don’t know, I realized I thought he was hot.
And things went from there. It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of guys that way, but it was the first time I actually did something about it. ”
“Oh,” he says softly.
“I guess that sounds weird, since he was like, kind of family,” I say “But I liked it. I liked him. A lot.” I turn my gaze out over the river again because I don’t want to look at his face while I tell this story.
“Look, I won’t get graphic with it. But he taught me a lot of stuff. That I guess I do…um—”
“Like men?” Ash suggests. Gently. Because I can’t say it myself just yet and I guess he can sense that. He’s taking mercy on me.
I swallow audibly and it’s deafening in my ears. “I do, I guess. When the right one comes along and trips the wire, yeah. But I like girls, too. I enjoy being with them. So I can’t be gay gay, right?”
He smiles a little. “That’s normal.”
“Is it? You’re not like that.”