CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
PERHAPS IF JAMES HAD PURSUED a powerful political career as the speaker of the house, secretary of commerce, or senate majority leader like everyone else, without interest in radicalizing the system, then the election season might not have ended in tragedy.
However, he didn’t know then how greatly the autumn would endanger him.
James cared both for Elliott and about him, Callum had been wrong. There would be a hundred more honorariums if James didn’t end the rites and rituals. Even if it cost his mortal soul, he would exchange his purity, his life, his fate, so that Elliott could be safe at last.
When James was elected senator, he would put forth a statewide ban on the rituals. He would forge alliances to enact a federal prohibition of the rituals entirely, even if it countermanded the constitutional right to freedom of religion.
By September, the summer air was torrid, balmily irriguous that month. The window in Elliott’s dormitory was airless, refusing a breeze, which left them sticky, hot from each other. Elliott murmured how deeply he’d missed him.
James had been gone for the week in a speech-writing conference in California. He had stripped to the waist, panting and licked with sweat from exertion, his sun-drenched skin tanned from the western coast. His white hair was bleached by the sweltry summer.
Elliott was exhausted, half-asleep from their swim.
“I will not rest until I’m faster than you again.
” Elliott smiled competitively, fresh from the shower after a race in the millpond.
He’d missed the sermon to swim with James.
“Even if you’re my best friend, I need to win.
” He climbed into bed. James didn’t care to wash himself, he toweled his damp, sweaty skin.
He sat at the edge of the mattress.
“Is that what you want for us?” James held the Winterthur Residence Hall towel against his ear. Since he returned that week, Elliott had only referred to him as his best friend. It was as though they’d never exchanged breath and body heat with each other.
As though they’d never extracted their sinewy, yearning, longing, hearts out of their chests and given it to each other.
As though the past year never happened.
His voice faltered and though they’d spent the better part of a decade speaking endlessly to each other, he suddenly couldn’t find enough words to express himself. As though they were fifteen and sixteen again, they could only exchange glances from across the bedroom.
“Is that what you want for us?” James broke their silence first, repeating himself in earnest, his voice raw. “I shouldn’t have left you.”
The five words made James’s eyes drift up to Elliott’s soft, full lips.
Lips he’d dreamt of at night, wishing he could exchange anything with fate to return to the first week of June with him again.
He would’ve given anything. The stir of his blood.
The breath of his soul. The sands of his future. Anything.
James didn’t deserve anything more than friendship, he wasn’t entitled to a romantic relationship with him, therefore he didn’t have any right to dictate and demand anything of Elliott.
Except, he couldn’t bear the thought that none of it ever existed.
To behave as though they had never experienced each other.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted,” Elliott responded. Ever since his days in rugby, Elliott liked being the fastest, the nimblest, the sportiest. He tossed an old rugby ball in the air and he caught it with ease.
Elliott was a healthy, competitive young man, he didn’t like fist fights or aggression, but he loved sports. He felt alive outdoors. He appreciated it more than ever.
“Then that’s what we are, Elliott.”
It took a moment for Elliott to realize that they were having two different conversations, and when it dawned on him that his words bothered James, his voice lowered. “Is everything alright between us?”
“Are you seeing someone else?” James asked, unable to meet his eyes, as though the response might kill him, and he didn’t have the nerve in him for direct eye contact.
He knew Callum had taken his passport and he’d made Elliott promise to keep it where no one else could find it.
Elliott had listened to him. “You don’t need to hide anything from me, Elliott. ”
“What happened?” Elliott asked, puzzled as to what James meant.
Elliott felt a warmth against his shirt as James pressed his forehead against Elliott’s inner shoulder. He rested his head there. “I would walk through fire for you, Elliott. I would set the world ablaze. Just tell me what happened when I was gone.” Was there someone else?
“I don’t get what you mean.”
“Tell me.”
I left for a handful of nights. Was that all you needed to replace me?
“Do you want more with me?” Elliott rearranged his words. He didn’t want to air his fears, in case they materialized. “I’m just glad to have my best friend back, that’s all. I hadn’t thought of anything else. I didn’t want to jinx it.”
“I want whatever you want.” James rested his head against Elliott’s inner shoulder for a minute longer in want.
A yearning that felt akin to dying. It feels like I’m dying, atom by atom, neuron by neuron, without you.
However, every time James took more, he lost everything.
Every time he took less, he felt the ache of desiring more.
He would accept whatever Elliott gave him without complaint.
“I want whatever you want as well, James.” Elliott smiled warmly at him, still slightly perspired across his freckles, as he sat forward to put on his sneakers.
James reached for Elliott’s face and he guided their mouths together.
He examined Elliott’s expression as their lips touched, searching for response. For reciprocity. For mutuality.
To know if his feelings were requited.
In response, Elliott laid his lips against James’s cheek. It was chaste.
Afterward, James pretended to be interested in the fox sparrows congregating on Elliott’s windowsill. A florid hue crept across his cheeks.
Most fox sparrows mated for life, staying together as they returned to the same nest, year after year. Fox sparrows were Elliott’s favorite bird. Fox sparrows were good omens.
Earlier in his life, James Wilde believed very little in spirituality, but he would’ve taken any offering of hope that he could’ve then.
“Did I ruin everything with you?” James heard himself ask him.
“Nothing is ruined between us.”
Then let me be with you. Did he leave the state too frequently? Was his grief for his childhood friend too great a burden?
A desperate bid for Elliott arose within him.
“‘When love speaks, the voice of all the gods make heaven drowsy with harmony.[23]’ Romantic thoughts of you keep me awake at night, Elliott, leaving me dizzyingly enchanted with desire for you.” James felt a stirring in his chest that refused reason, defied sense.
He felt his heart begin to beat thickly.
“I want you more than I’ve wanted anything in life.
I want to be with you. I experience divinity when I am with you. ”
He was about to say it out loud at last. He was prepared to confess everything within him.
Please do not forsake me. Please do not let there be another that has taken my place. Please do not reject me.
“I love you, Elliott Archway.” He was in love with him. He couldn’t deny himself of it from the first second he’d felt it that first week of June.
The madness welcomed him irresistibly, and James was lost with rapture.
He didn’t want his better judgment to retrieve him. He wanted to remain in the wilderness of lust, euphoria, and ecstasy. Taken with Elliott.
When he was apart from him, all he thought of was him.
His moments with Elliott that dreamy early summer had been the best of his life, better than all the years in the past that he cherished with him before.
Those moments in June were his halcyon days, even though in the moments themselves James hadn’t realized it.
He hadn’t realized that he should’ve captured it in his memory.
He should’ve treasured it close to his chest in photographs, written letters, and keepsakes.
He should’ve realized there were loves that span lifetimes and his fate wasn’t one of them.
He learned through Finch how fleeting life was.
Though, in truth, even if he knew his fate was shortened, he would’ve dared still.
He gazed at Elliott passionately. “I love you fiercely, Elliott. I am completely undone whenever I am with you. I love you helplessly.” The words spilled out of him, inhibited for too long, flooding and drowning Elliott in words.
Yet his words were not even the full weight of his internal self.
I love you enchantedly. All I want is for you to want me.
All I want is for you to love me as you always have.
I am sorry for all the tragedy I’ve brought unto you. I will be sorry for as long as I live.
Please do not forsake me.
Anxiously, James waited in the silence for Elliott to respond to his confession. What if Elliott hadn’t deciphered that part of himself with men yet? What if he wanted someone else? What if in the week he was gone he’d let someone usurp him?
He was lost with ardency when Elliott kissed him.
Elliott kissed him impassionately.
“I love you past the stars, James,” Elliott whispered. “I will love you for all of time.”
Through his star charts, Elliott knew the furthest star in modern discovery was Earendel, which was billions of light-years in the distance, and he loved James past that distance still.
James felt an infatuated intensity for Elliott that couldn’t be appeased or reasoned with. It was all he knew. His mismatched eyes that smiled at him left him senselessly intoxicated as it always hads.
James Wilde didn’t care to restrain himself anymore.
Slowly, James slid his hand into Elliott’s shirt, nipping his ear. He grazed over the soft skin, lifting the short-sleeve carefully, caressing his palm over his abdomen.