CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
“I HATE LAUNDRY,” JAMES MUTTERED, counting the quarters for the machine with Elliott. He hired someone once a week to keep the apartment tidy for himself. Winterthur Hall had mammoth, over-sized, industrious washing machines and indecipherably complex dryers.
He couldn’t stand tedious laundry.
“I’ll pay you back for the coin costs,” Elliott commented, but James did not respond, simply slotting in the coins into the campus washer. James had paid for Elliott to join him on a surprise trip to the Montana Rampage hockey fans off-season event. Elliott canceled at the last minute.
James invited Elliott to dive off the coast of Msikaba Island, South Africa for the summer, and Elliott declined without explanation.
James purchased a private viewing of the rare meteor shower at the Landsear Planetarium’s observatory. Anything to get out of the state of Connecticut. Elliott mentioned he couldn’t make it, he wanted to be at AEscwulf College despite the peril of it.
Elliott clearly had a date with a woman.
He’d written her dozens of letters. There were details of his afternoons, his fears, what comic books he was reading.
He confided in her for all of it. It was different from the previous letters–heartfelt.
Their special date was for the thirteenth of July.
His pomade ensured his hair wasn’t even an inch out of place.
His tuxedo was steam-pressed. His breath was pristine.
He hung his bow tie in preparation a month early. Elliott never hung his spring jackets or winter coats, no matter how rained or snowed they were, let alone his bow ties.
James didn’t even know her name and he couldn’t bring himself to ask.
Hazel Scott used to read comic books in her bed with him.
Was he with her all over again? Harmony Henderson used to write him cute little notes.
Was he with her? James worked up the courage to ask, but the confirmation would’ve felt like an execution, therefore he silenced himself.
James was confused and irritated at his own inner turmoil. He couldn’t admit conflicted feelings. James analyzed Elliott’s past relationships. How affectionate Halle had been. How instantly Elliott had fallen for her. He couldn’t tame his love for her.
James’s mind often filled in the spaces on his own to torture himself. Elliott is moonstruck for women, I understand. At last, Elliott sensed, “Is this about Halle?”
“What about her?” James asked innocently, and he was so good at it, Elliott almost believed he didn’t care at all. Until he noticed James refused to meet his eyes. Instead, James reached for the bow ties on the hanger. “Are you seeing her next month?”
“No, not her.”
“But there’s a woman, isn’t there?”
“It’s not like that, really. I don’t think of it that way–” Elliott started, but the loud, clangoring machines overtook his words. The dryer started working.
James shook his head anyway and swung an arm over his shoulder. “Even if you were seeing Halle, it would be fine. You two are like attracted magnets. You always find each other. I love that endlessly for you. I’m glad to see you happy, Elliott.”
“It’s not Halle.” Elliott felt a roseate flush spread across his cheeks. “Really, I promise. It’s not what you think at all.”
“You have a hot date next month. There’s nothing to hide.” James teased him. He smiled with a twinge of pride. A twinge of something else darkened his expression briefly. “I want to know who it is. Why are you hiding it from me?”
Am I not your best friend anymore?
“No one that you know personally. It’s not a date.” Elliott studied his dirty sneakers and his gray hoodie in greater detail than he’d had in his entire life. Warner Hammett wasn’t returning his phone calls. Warner left him a single cassette with one sentence—the expense wasn’t worth the risk.
For a minute, not even Halle was on his mind.
Elliott had dated Halle for three years, and he’d lived two years without even trying to date anyone else afterward. When he finally tried dating again, it was abysmal. He couldn’t keep a girlfriend for longer than a month since Halle. His attachment issues were all he knew.
At the moment, Halle didn’t know Elliott had been the honorarium, he didn’t want to worry her. It was better she never knew.
He’d met Halle Mercer on the night of the truck incident.
After the police released him with his statement, and a breathalyzer test, he’d wandered the streets for hours, unable to process the horrors he witnessed.
Heading home from ballet rehearsal on Cannon Road, Halle had followed him in the earthy, damp, electrical storm, even if it ruined her soles; she’d recognized him from their Honors English II course.
Halle asked if he wanted to stay the night, and he spent the rest of his high school years sleeping in her pillowed, airy, lilac-scented bedroom.
He experienced his first time with her. He befriended her kind parents.
One summer, she was accepted into Spelman College Department of Dance.
He was proud of her, even as the heartache destroyed him. He hadn’t gotten into Morehouse College. Spelman was a private, historically Black, all-women’s college. The institution did not admit applicants that were men.
Their contingency plan was to attend Howard University together.
Halle almost abandoned her childhood ballet dream since she was three for him, all of her grandmothers and her mother attended Spelman, and their new ballet major had already reached international recognition.
It terrified him that she would leave him.
Yet he encouraged her to leave. She took his heart with him to Georgia.
He hoped to earn a prestigious degree from one of the top colleges in Connecticut when AEscwulf admitted him, he could provide for her if he finished.
He spent years on his own, until last August. That summer, he met a girl with Halle’s gapped smile, soft dark brown skin, abundant hair curls, balletic grace, and infectiously adorable laughter.
Afterward, he dated a string of girls that reminded him of his Halle.
He couldn’t resist. He couldn’t make any of it last before he ruined it.
In the end, he always returned to her. He always took the train to Georgia for her.
After Halle left, James promised to look after Elliott. Now, it was time for Elliott to look after James, pinning everything on himself, but Warner Hammett vanished completely.
Elliott returned to folding his clothes. “I think I hate laundry as much as you do, James. How do people manage to do this every week?”
“You would tell me if you regret anything, wouldn’t you?” James asked instead. His mind was still thinking about last week in the dormitory. The intense breathing. The dusky air. The sounds of pleasure.
“I don’t regret it. If anything, I’m glad it happened.”
James couldn’t trust the words. Fragmented, James whispered underneath his breath, “Is it…because I have killed, then?”
His eyes were afflicted with pain. Elliott wouldn’t want to be with a murderer.
He’d seen James kill Lucien. What had James thought would happen?
That Elliott would desire a man with blood on his hands?
That Elliott, miraculously, would want someone more troubled than himself?
That was the fatal flaw of James, he knew inside, he wanted too much.
He had asked too much of him. “Never mind.”
Elliott hadn’t even heard him, his mind had returned to the disappearance of Warner Hammett. “Never mind…what?”
James lied, “I said, are you going to rekindle everything with Halle?”
“I don’t have plans for that yet.”
“You’ll let me know if that changes?”
Elliott nodded. In the humid, ardent silence, James stared out of the window as though he couldn’t bring himself to look at Elliott.
Then Elliott asked a question of his own.
Elliott didn’t know how to start it and he tripped over his words for a few incomprehensible moments, before he finally took a breath and he asked, “You would tell me if you had certain feelings about me…wouldn’t you? ”
“No, Elliott. I wouldn’t tell you.” James was honest. He didn’t think Elliott could handle it if their friendship changed.
Elliott sat in front of the dryer. His clothes tumbled over as frenetically as his mind tumbled his thoughts around. His eyes misted as he went quiet after awhile.
“For you, I would.” Elliott only murmured six words, but James comprehended every syllable. For you, I would love you that way. “I want you to know that.”
James roughened Elliott’s soft hair. “I know.”
I would do anything you asked; I would be anything you asked.
Warmly, Elliott smiled at him. “In a different lifetime we would’ve been great together. Right?”
“We would’ve been the best.” James smiled back. However, they both lived in a world that had no air for that, not with the weighted murders between them, therefore it was better to never breathe at all.
James read in the dictionary once that limerence was the state of involuntary obsession with another person.
His altered state of mind was an inner battle he wouldn’t wish on anyone. His intense infatuation with Elliott left him without control. All he could do was suffer in his fixation with Elliott.
Elliott and James returned to talking about the star pattern for James’s new ceiling.
They were concentrated on constellations, asterisms, stars in orbit of each other.
However, Elliott leaned over himself in his seat as the dry wind strayed through the dense, laundered air from the windows. He grasped his hair.
“I want to go back to how our lives were before, is that fucked up?” He choked. “To forget Lucien was ever killed?”
James sat beside him. “No, I’ve wanted to go back to how our lives were since last fall.”
They couldn’t go back to how they were on Samhain or Yule, or even after the hibernal ceremony, but James didn’t want to.
He’d rather tear his own heart out and devour it raw in his hand instead, but he kept the fleshy, needy organ inside of him for Elliott.
Elliott loved their friendship. All he wanted was for Elliott to say he was his.
That he belonged to him.
“I think about you all the time,” James finally whispered in the darkening afternoon.
I never stop thinking about you, James ached to tell him the strained tribulation inside of him. I hate being without you. I can’t stand it for longer than a few hours. All I do when I’m alone is think about the next time we will see each other.
I count by days and minutes, James wanted Elliott to respond that he felt as impassionedly as James did.
He desired Elliott, desperately, and the vulnerability nearly killed him.
James felt more naked professing his feelings in his mind to Elliott than he had been in Elliott’s dormitory the week before with his shirt and trousers bundled on the floor.
James wanted to confess all of it. I stole a few of your clothes to bring to Montana so I can hold onto your scent at night.
I picked up the habit from the New Year when you were away from me in Arkansas.
I don’t want you to be away from me again.
I don’t want someone else to have you.
James couldn’t break the habit of hoarding Elliott’s scent and his clothes as hard as he’d tried. He’d even attempted to pick up disastrous habits to try and replace that one; he’d tried hallucinogens and nicotine, but he was fixated on the scent of Elliott.
His natural scent drove him out of his mind.
At night, James’s hand roamed beneath his briefs, and even imagining the scent of him could make him intensely aroused. He climaxed every eventide at the memory of Elliott’s meadow-scented hair beneath him that summer afternoon.
His entire life centered around that moment in June. The centrifugal force of his lifetime was demarcated in the before and after of twenty heated minutes on a full-sized mattress in a crowded dormitory.
He yearned to be with Elliott.
He was attached to him.
By trauma or by emotional bond, it didn’t matter, he was the same as him.
His existence blurred within his mind to the extent where he only existed when Elliott gazed at him, thought of him, spoke to him, and he ceased to exist when he didn’t.
Underneath his breath, he prayed Elliott would reject his feelings and he could cure himself.
If Elliott rejected him, he could cage the warmth intensifying in his heart.
All at once, James realized why the words were ‘falling in love.’ He was plunging, plummeting, spiraling towards feelings he couldn’t stop. He spun out in need. Emotions consumed him beyond his control.
This, he realized, was madness. This was divinity given by the gods of myth.
To be driven out of one’s mind by carnal urges, ardent love, incurable lust. The heavenly gift of God to be loved unconditionally and love someone so thoroughly, it felt like divinity.
It was sorcery in his blood. He was alchemized. Possessed by desire. Transfixed by love.
“If we can’t go back to the autumn…we might as well move forward.” Elliott said the twenty-four most dangerous words he could’ve told him. “It could be a new adventure for us, you never know.”
James grinned, and it felt like they were young again. “Adventures with you are the best parts of my life.”
Elliott grinned back at him, and though James fought his hardest against the rising amorous tides, he was smitten.
I belong to you, James decided in that single breath between them.
Every part of me is possessed by you. He pressed his forehead against Elliott’s forehead.
Even if Elliott wasn’t his entirely, he would take him.
He would capture him from anyone else that held his affection.
Be mine completely. “My world is achromatic without you.”
“I see a kaleidoscope of colors with you as well.” Elliott smiled amiably, he always gave himself freely.
James smiled in genuine warmth for what felt like the first time in years. In that moment, if he had to choose between madness and sanity, then he would’ve happily fallen into madness for Elliott.
Madness was preferable to sanity, he decided, as the lessons extolled. For what was love other than a taste of divine madness[14]?
I am sinking headfirst.
I am descending into divine madness.
I am falling irretrievably in love with you.
Against all reason, you have made me the happiest man on earth, Elliott Archway.