by Anyta Sunday
“It helps release it.” We make our way up the boulevard toward the café where Annie works. “Sometimes the information learned is painful but the garnet ensures that those truths are what the seeker needs to know.” Jace stops walking and I turn back to him. The curious frown etched between his brows is the same single line that Annie has when she’s unsure and a touch uncomfortable. “You all right?”
Jace folds his arms over his cassette-tape T-shirt, and I wait for him to speak. He stares at my hand encasing the garnet. “If you don’t learn a truth, does that mean you don’t really need it?”
I throw him the stone and he’s quick to catch it. “I don’t know.” He catches up to my side and we continue to the café. Garnet also increases sexual intimacy.
With a sneaky smile, Annie serves us extra mini-muffins with Jace’s coffee and my tea.
“How’s quality time with Jace going?” she asks when Jace goes to the bathroom. “He’s really turned out to be more than a brother hasn’t he?”
I freeze and set down my tea before I spill it. “Wh—what?”
“I mean, you guys are like best friends. I’m sorry you’re breaking up.” She winks. What does that mean? “But it’s only for a year, right? Then you can study down there with him.”
Across the café, Jace is rounding tables, heading back to us. He winks, and everyone including my sister disappears.
I’m already planning to move to Dunedin. Just so I can be with you.
“So I was thinking,” Jace says, sitting back down and watching Annie leave to serve another table, “after this, maybe we could shop for some music? I’d love to get my hands on a few more compositions.”
I sip my tea with a shaky hand. “Yes. Of course.”
* * *
After the music store, I take us out to dinner at a restaurant on the boat where we ate for his seventeenth birthday. I secretly hope it will rekindle Jace’s memories of the cave that day, when I gave him the hook.
I’ll never take it off.
We sit by the window overlooking the ocean. Jace touches the hook as if he knows what I’m thinking about, a fond smile playing at his lips.
Still wearing it.
A waiter lights the tea candles between us. Jace and I blush, shift uncomfortably, and stare out the window, which partially reflects our faces.
I wait a beat before I glance at his image. My heart jumps when I find he’s looking at mine, and we’re thirteen and fourteen again, standing at the bus stop, peeking at each other over our books . . .
Are we nearing the end of our duel?
My mood crashes and I spend the rest of the dinner paying too much attention to my seafood ravioli.
When we arrive home, I yawn even though I’m not tired. “I’m going to crash.”
Jace frowns and stops me on the stairs. “It’s only ten.” He places one hand next to mine on the banister, and he tugs my fingers with his other hand. “Something’s up.”
“No. I’m fine.” Sad. So fucking sad.
“Let me play you a new piece before you go to bed?”
I swallow. Nod.
In the gaming room, he perches himself on the piano stool. A single lamp offers just enough light for him to read his music.
I lean against the wall. Music beats against my skin and speeds up my pulse. Jace is completely focused on the music, an endearing frown etched between his eyebrows. When he finishes, he stares at the keys and smiles.
“Not bad,” I say.
“Not bad?” He shakes his head. “I’ve never played that before. It was bloody perfect.”
A trace of the grin I’d lost reappears. “Play something else. Sing.”
“Sing?”
“I like it when you sing. You’ve got a good voice.”
“What do you want me to play? I can do a couple of U2 covers.”
“U2?”
“Mum’s favorite. I learned a few when she was sick.”
I move to the stool and sit next to him facing away from the piano, giving him just enough space to play. “Okay,” I say. “Play one for me.”
His Adam’s apple juts out in a hard swallow, and his gaze sweeps over my face. “For you,” he says slowly. A slight tremor passes through me.
He focuses on the keys, running his fingertips over them.
Then he starts.
I want to cry, want to laugh, want to curse him for making every hope swell to a breaking point. I know this song—Lila and my mum love it.
Now I love it.
When he sings the word diamonds, he smiles at me.
All I Want Is You.
I can’t look at him, but I can’t pull away. I silently beg for him to stop, but I wish he’d go on forever.
He remembers what you said to him that night. He never forgot.
I try to keep my tears back but they seep through my eyelashes.
Jace says diamonds again and his voice breaks. He stops playing. “Cooper?”
My voice is hoarse. “Yeah?”
He looks up, touches my cheeks. “Cooper—”
He kisses me.
His lips scrape over mine like a whisper. I freeze for three quick beats of my heart, and then we’re frenzied. Fast, urgent, needy. He brings one hand to my neck while his other hand caresses my arm. His tongue meets mine like a drowning man fighting for oxygen. He tastes like the caramelized sugar on the crème brûlée we ate at dinner. His kisses leave my mouth and find my jaw, my neck, and—
My hands have found their way under Jace’s T-shirt. His skin is hot, the planes of his back smooth and hard.
I want to explore more but the damn stool is making it difficult. As if reading my mind, Jace stands, pulling me up too. He steers me around it, leans on the piano so the higher notes clunk, and draws me fully against him. No inch between us. No question of where this is going.
He kisses me again, and breathes me in. My lips tingle as the air moves. His blue gaze is heavy as if he’s probing me deeply. We are kissing again, his hands pulling at my T-shirt. I move back an inch to take it off and remove his.
I run my tongue down his neck and nibble at his collarbone before sinking to tease his nipple. He arches and a satisfying moan slips from him, stirring me to taste every inch of him.
I’m harder than I’ve ever been, and each time our groins mesh, he pumps me with desire. Need.
More.
Now!
I fumble to undo the buttons at his fly. Jace’s breath hitches as I cup him through his boxers, and he nips my ear and works my jeans. Our pants shimmy to our knees, followed by our boxers. Jace kisses me again and I take hold of his cock like in my fantasies. His groan vibrates over my lip. The piano keys tinkle as he pulls me closer and takes my cock.
Look at me!
This time he does, and he pumps slowly, like he wants this to last forever. He licks his lips, then releases me and gently removes my hand off him. Our cocks touch and I press closer to rut against him as our fingers entwine.
The piano keys produce a cacophonous sound that mingles with our moans and heavy breaths. We ride the wave drawing us closer and closer—
“Cooper,” he moans in my ear.
I cry out, orgasm shuddering through me, and a few seconds later Jace releases too.
“I . . . I . . .” Jace throws his head back as he catches his breath, and when he look at me again, his expression unnerves me. “Jace?”
He hesitates, then kisses me once more. It’s slow, languid—a goodbye kiss? I grip him harder, kiss him harder. I don’t want him to leave me. Ever.
He draws back and touches my lips. “I’m sorry.”
The ache and shock of his apology startles me. I jump back, and Jace slips from my grasp.
He comes back, pants buttoned, holding a warm cloth for me, but something’s different. When I’m cleaned and dressed again, I face him.
I stride over to him. “Why are you apologizing?” That was the most touching moment of my life.
“Because . . . because . . .”
“Because what?”
He turns away but I don’t let him go that easily. I follow him into his bedroom. “Talk to me, Jace. Please, for God’s sake, talk to me.”
“I’m sorry because I shouldn’t have done that. Not with you.”
“With me?” I laugh but I’m far from amused. “Because I’m gay and you’re not?”
He swears under his breath, then yanks out the brown envelope from his desk drawer. “No.”
The envelope looks darker now. More ominous.
Jace slaps it on the desk between us. “Because you might be my brother.”
rudstone
“Might be?” My mind refuses to piece together what he’s saying. “We’re stepbrothers,” I say. “We’re not really related. We aren’t even stepbrothers! We’re just guys who met as teenagers and spent every second week together.”
Jace slides the envelope toward me. “I want to convince myself.” I stare at the envelope. Jace says, “I did a discrete DNA test of me and Dad.”
My breath whistles in sharply. I shiver. “But you haven’t opened it. You don’t know for sure we’re”—my stomach flips—“brothers.”
Jace swipes away the tears in his eyes.
I lean against his desk, the corner of the envelope nudging my forearm.
“Why . . . how . . . what . . .”
He knows what I’m trying to ask. “Do you remember that night I was playing the piano and you burst in here, full of energy, and danced like you didn’t have a care in the world?”
When he came over and began tickling me on the couch. I breathe in sharply; it’s not a moment I can easily forget.
“I remember,” I say. “Annie came in and told you your mum was crying.”
“I went downstairs,” Jace says, staring at the envelope. “Mum and Dad were having a fight.”
“You said you didn’t know why she was upset.”
“I lied.” He leaps up from his seat and paces the length of his bed. “They were arguing about getting married. Mum wanted to. Dad didn’t. Mum tried to convince him. Said they were together after Dad broke up with your mum, before he learned about the pregnancy.”
Jace slumps on his bed, clasps his hands together, and jiggles his leg. “Mum said ‘I knew then you were the one. Thought you felt it too. Thought you would marry me.’ And Dad said, ‘For thinking I was the one, you sure moved on quickly!”’
I fold my arms against a shiver.
Jace continues, “I knew what Dad was digging at, that Mum quickly got pregnant with me. Dad pushed her again. ‘What was his name, Roger? George?’ And Mum said nothing. Nothing.” Jace shakes his head. “I didn’t know what to do but it made me miserable. You told me to do something about it so I had his toothbrush tested.”
“The day you gave me that peach stone with the white wave.” I recall him throwing the stone to me in the hall, the toothbrush in his other hand.
I close my eyes.
The air stirs, and Jace’s shadow falls over me.
“Why didn’t you open it?” I ask. I count his breaths. One, two, three. “Don’t you want to know if he’s your real dad too?”
One, two—“Not as much as I want to know he’s not.”
I open my eyes. Jace is staring at our feet, but he’s standing close like he’s torn between two emotions.
Like he’s always been, hasn’t he?
It’s complicated.
Brothers.
I feel sick. “Open it.”
Jace picks up the envelope. “I can’t.”
“I’ll do it, then.” His expression crumbles and I think he might cry, but he schools his emotion and passes me the envelope.
I thumb the edges. A small flap at one corner scrapes my skin—this is how far Jace has come to opening it. How many times has he stared at it and wondered? How many times has he tried to rip it open but shoved it back into the dark drawer?
How many times has his stomach flipped like mine is now?
What if it isn’t a match? We could continue exploring our feelings for each other and be everything we want.
I could take him in my arms and kiss him so damn hard. I could push him onto his bed and love him all over again.
What if it is a match?
I stop thumbing the envelope.
Shake my head.
I can’t either.
It’s too risky.
I’d rather be in the purgatory of love than the hell of loss.
I drop it back in the drawer Jace pulled it from and slam it shut.
“Are you mad?” Jace asks after a long time. “For our moment? I know I shouldn’t have, but . . . it’s true. The song. I don’t know what it makes me, but it’s true. I’m disgusted with myself. I knew better. I shouldn’t have. God, I’m so sorry.”
Don’t be. It was special. “For all we know, we’re not related.”
And if you are related? Do you really care? My stomach twists at the voice.
It’d be icky. It’d be proper incestuous. No more reassuring myself that my feelings are okay because we’re not real siblings.
I bow my head.
Do you really care?
onyx
I don’t see Jace the next time I’m at Dad’s. He took an earlier flight to his new life, so it’s just me and Annie and Jace’s ghost at the dinner table with Dad and Lila.
I want onyx. Not to release the sorrow or grief.
But to become invisible.
To be a ghost alongside his.
part three: metamorphic
metamorphic: altered form.
amphibolite
Harder than limestone, heavier than granite. I feel like amphibolite.
The school year starts slowly, every day dragging longer than the last. Only the teachers are happy—my work is getting more elaborate and difficult. After my geology teacher submitted my essay to a lecturer he knows at Vic, Professor Donaldson wrote me a personal message informing me that she wants me to study in her department and, if I need it, she’ll write me a letter of recommendation to the dean of admissions. Not that she thinks I’ll need the help.
I won’t. Not only is schoolwork the only distraction I have and what I pour everything into—I won’t need the help because I don’t want to stay in Wellington.
I shuffle alongside Ernie and Bert and hide in the protection of their laughs and jokes.
“Dude,” Ernie says, punching my arm. We’re at our spot in the courtyard, the brick wall. “Can you drive us to Annie’s after class?”
I raise a brow. I know what he wants but I can’t find the energy to care. “Her flatmates aren’t interested.” At least, I don’t think they’re interested. I haven’t exactly been paying attention.
He and Bert exchange confused looks and shake their heads at each other. Ernie mouths, “What’s up with him?”
“He seriously needs to get laid,” Bert says, then clicks his fingers. “Got it. My cousin totally digs dudes too. He’ll be down for my birthday in a couple weeks.”
Ernie rubs his hands together. “Sold. Then maybe we’ll have the real Cooper back. Yeah,” he laughs. “Your cousin can pump some life into him.”
I’m drawn into the moment long enough to say, “Who says I wouldn’t be the one doing the pumping?”
“That’s our boy, though slightly more crass. I like it.”
I stare at the bench in the middle of the courtyard.
The bell rings, signaling our trek to class. The air feels different, thicker and stodgier.
After school, I find a large dark stone near the hatchback Jace left behind for me. When I pick it up, I don’t feel the weight of a thousand memories. I feel hollowness. Sympathetic hollowness, perhaps?
Bert and Ernie catch up. Arms sling around my waist and neck as they plead.
“We’ll be on our best behavior.” Ernie flutters his lashes. I’m about to say no, not today, when my pocket vibrates to life.
A gentle breeze carries the sharp taste of exhaust fumes mixed with
Indian spices. Bert and Ernie’s sudden laughter rings in my ears.
The phone vibrates again, sending shivers racing up my arm as I take the call. “Jace!” A smile pulls my lips wide, and I laugh, twisting away from Ernie and Bert. The sun shines on my face and I breathe in the brightness. “How are you?”
His voice is croaky and he coughs. “Sorry. Autumn cold.”
“That sucks. You’re calling early this week.”
“Yeah, I’m going hiking this weekend so I wanted to say hey now.”
“Where are you going?” And with who?
“A couple of mates and I are doing the difficult trail at Kepler Track.”
“Mates?”
Jace knows me too well. “Cooper,” he says quietly. It’s a warning. It’s a plea. Please don’t go there. Let’s not talk about the bloody elephant in the room. Let’s pretend it doesn’t exist. Let’s pretend All I Want Is You never happened.
Pretending is the unspoken rule of our weekly chats. Pretending is a different version of the duel we began on opposite sides of the street waiting for the bus. This time he’s on the South Island, I’m on the North, and we are masters at pretending.
He pretends not to care about my love life, and I pretend not to care about his.
“What are you doing this weekend?” His play is shrewder.
Walking barefoot across the beach collecting paua shells for you and stones for me. “Nothing.”
“Hey, I’m eighteen now. Want me to send you my driver’s license? I can claim I lost it and get a new one.”
“You want me to sneak into gay bars in hopes of getting lucky?”
Jace coughs again. “No.” His voice cracks. “I just want you to have fun.”
“I’d never get away with your ID. We look nothing alike.”
“It’s not healthy.” Long pause. “Doing nothing.”
So some rules are okay to break but not others?
He changes the subject, “How’s the hatchback doing?”
“The only thing around here running smoothly.”
“Fuck.”
I curse myself for my lack of subtlety. “How’s your music coming along?”