Fragile Ground

by Louisa Keller

  Stop it, he tells himself sternly. This compulsive bullshit has to stop.

  So instead of donning rubber gloves and reaching for the all purpose cleaner, he heads to the bathroom that he is now sharing with Hattie. She's probably still at the library, he thinks idly as he turns on the shower. He usually likes the water hot, but tonight he goes straight for scalding.

  It feels good on his naked shoulders. He doesn't even remember the transition from being fully dressed to being in the shower, completely bare. And God, that hasn't happened in a while. He's not usually moving on autopilot these days.

  Cleaning himself feels perfunctory. He lathers up, rubbing the suds into his skin, spreading shampoo through his hair. It takes a while, but eventually he feels clean. It's a relief, because so much of his life feels so messy these days.

  As his muscles relax beneath the heavy spray, he allows himself to pretend that everything is back to normal, just for a few minutes. He imagines that Olivier is going to join him at any moment. That wasn't unusual, for them to shower together. They both assumed, at first, that Olivier wouldn't like sharing the shower, the bed, with another person. They thought he would want more space than that. And then, as their affection began to blossom into love, Auriel found himself accompanied to the shower on a regular basis. Olivier liked to tease him, make lascivious comments about Auriel's fit body, and run his hands over the lean muscles.

  Auriel lets out a soft sound as he remembers the feeling of Olivier's fingers tracing his biceps, triceps, deltoids. Those nimble hands sliding down Auriel's back to rest upon the globes of his ass, squeezing slightly.

  "Good?” he would ask, his smirk vivid under the hot water.

  And it was always good. It was good when Olivier kissed Auriel, laughing delightedly as water got in their mouths. It was good when they thrust against each other lazily, not in any hurry. Because, after all, they had all the time in the world. It was spectacular when Olivier reached down to wrap his fingers around Auriel's cock, jacking him slowly.

  Auriel tries to stay quiet as he recalls those showers. But now he has himself firmly in hand, and is stroking. It feels so good, and he thinks hazily that he hasn't been touched this way—even by himself—since Olivier crashed the car.

  Auriel rubs his thumb around the crown of his cock, and he knows that there would be precum gathering there if the shower wasn't washing it away. He tries to mimic Olivier’s touch, the way it used to light him up from the inside. His own hand is woefully lacking in comparison, but it does the job. He begins to thrust forward slightly with each pass of his hand. The water cascades down his body, and for a moment he’s overwhelmed by the heat combined with the sensations that accompany his arousal. It takes a few minutes before he really gets into it, and by then his thoughts are solidly on Olivier’s body. He doesn’t think about the man two rooms away, probably sleeping fitfully or staring at the ceiling. Instead he thinks about Olivier: his lover.

  He remembers the way that Olivier used to bite at Auriel’s neck, laughing when Auriel complained about visible hickies. He thinks about Olivier’s slender fingers snaking behind his own balls, rubbing his hole and whispering hoarsely, “fill me up.” He’s lost in the memory of Olivier kissing his way up Auriel’s calves, then his thighs, taking his sweet time and completely ignoring Auriel’s pleas for him to hurry up. God, that night had been the best kind of torture. It had taken ages for Olivier to relent, finally taking Auriel into his mouth and sucking the orgasm right out of him.

  Alone in the shower, Auriel realizes that he’s about to come. He closes his eyes, jerking himself faster, his breath hitching. With a last desperate groan, he comes all over his own fingers. Olivier’s face is branded into his mind, and Auriel experiences a heavy head rush, bright colors encroaching on his vision when he finally opens his eyes. He feels slightly dizzy, and sinks to the floor of the shower.

  His thoughts return to the present, and he feels a wave of abject misery and loneliness wash over him. It is followed quickly by a profound sense of guilt. He wishes that Olivier was still his to think about, but when it comes down to it, Olivier is no longer his boyfriend. It’s the first time that Auriel has actually thought about things in those terms, but as soon as it passes through his mind, he realizes how true it is.

  Auriel sits beneath the spray of water for a long time. He doesn’t get out until it begins to cool down, and then he drags himself up and resigns himself to an unbearable night. Heartbroken and shivering, his wraps a towel around himself and heads back to the guest room, utterly alone.

  4

  Olivier

  When Olivier wakes up the next morning, it takes him a moment to remember where he is. There’s a moment, on the knife’s edge of wakefulness, when he imagines that he’s in his parents’ house, lying in his childhood bed waiting for his mom to poke her head through the door and say, “Rise and shine, sweetheart!”

  The reality, when he opens his eyes, is jarring. The sage green walls and heavy wood furniture take him by surprise and his vision blurs for just a moment as his brain struggles to conflate the dueling realities in his mind. The sun is shining through the crack in the curtains and Olivier wonders how long he’s slept. He takes a mental inventory of his body and finds that his limbs are heavy with residual sleep, but he feels well-rested. It takes a concerted effort to push himself up into a sitting position, but once there he feels instantly better.

  He pads into the en suite bathroom and turns on the shower. It has good water pressure, and as he washes he finds himself settling into a state of determination. There’s not much a hot shower can’t fix, Hattie has always told him. And she’s right. He wonders if she’s home, and determines to knock on her door as soon as he’s done with his shower.

  Hattie, it turns out, hasn’t changed a bit since college. She answers his knock with a shouted, “come in!” He finds her sitting at her desk in a huge fluffy pink bathrobe, a pale green substance smeared across her face. He has no doubt the mask is responsible for the way her dark skin is always positively glowing, healthy and smooth. Her fro is pushed up away from her face with a thick black headband, and she is meticulously applying electric blue polish to her fingernails. She glances up at him, smiles, and then goes back to her manicure. “Hey stranger,” she says.

  “Hi,” Olivier says, and clears his throat. He is suddenly immensely glad that he and Hattie live together. He imagines waking up a world away from everything he knows and not having the comfort of his very best friend just a few feet from his new bedroom.

  “How are you feeling?” Hattie asks.

  Olivier shrugs, even though she’s not looking at him. He thinks about it. “I’ve been worse,” he decides, which earns a snort from Hattie.

  “Stoic as always,” Hattie observes.

  “I’m nothing if not consistent,” Olivier agrees. He hesitates for a moment, wondering if he and Hattie still have the same ease with each other that he remembers them always having. “Is it ok if I sit?” he asks.

  Hattie looks up at him again and carefully caps her nail polish. “Obviously,” she says. “The bed’s all yours.”

  Olivier feels a surge of gratitude and makes his way over to sit on the bed in question. When Hattie smiles at him, he flops back dramatically, his back against her pastel quilt and his legs dangling off the edge.

  “What’s on your mind, kid?” Hattie asks, moving to join him, her body falling into the same position as his. She’s careful not to smudge her nails as she looks at him.

  It’s a big question, and Olivier knows that there are dozens, maybe even hundreds, of things that would fall into the category of on his mind. But he’s not quite sure how to put the most pressing issue into words. There has been a gnawing sense of secrecy cloaking the past couple of days, and he’s itching to know what he’s not being told. He decides to answer Hattie’s question with one of his own.

  “Are we still close?”

  Hattie’s eyebrows knit together and she locks her gaze onto Olivier’s
. “Not to be an asshole, but fuck you,” she says.

  Olivier barks out a laugh. “I’ll take that as a yes?”

  “You’re damn straight it’s a yes. You really think we have the kind of friendship that’s going to fall apart?”

  “No,” says Olivier. “Obviously not. But I’m just…look, I’m still getting my feet under me. I woke up in a completely different place and everything feels strange. I don’t know who I am anymore, so I guess I just wanted to make sure that you’re still you and I’m still me.”

  Hattie’s expression smooths out. “I get it,” she says. “I can one hundred percent guarantee you that we are still the same people we were in college. We’re just…those people plus two years. You know?”

  Olivier nods. “I guess that makes sense.”

  Hattie nudges his shoulder with her own. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

  “I guess I owe you,” Olivier says, “for taking care of my amnesiac ass.”

  “That’s what best friends are for,” Hattie says.

  Before he even realizes it’s on his mind, the words are spilling out of his mouth. “I don’t know why that Auriel guy is bothering to look after me though.”

  Hattie is silent, and when Olivier looks at her he sees that she’s looking away from him.

  “Hattie,” Olivier says, more sharply than he had intended.

  “Yeah?” she asks quietly, still gazing at the ceiling.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Olivier asks. For some reason, fear is curling hot and stinging in the pit of his stomach.

  Hattie heaves a deep sigh. Then she sits up and looks down at Olivier, and when she speaks her tone is serious. “Don’t worry about it, Olivier.”

  “Don’t worry about what?” he asks, starting to get frustrated.

  “Don’t worry about anything. Okay? You’re alive and awake and on the road to really truly being fine. So don’t stress yourself out over nothing.”

  He wants to protest, to push this further and figure out what the hell is going on. But there’s something in Hattie’s expression that tells him to let it go. And because she’s his very best friend, because he loves and trusts her, he decides to drop the subject. Instead, he asks if she has time to watch a movie. He ribs her about her DVD collection and asks about her school work and curls up next to her on the godawful settee to watch something mindless.

  There is a part of Olivier, over the next few days, that wants to tear the house apart looking for clues about his recent past. But somehow he feels an even greater pull to be gentle with himself and his new life. Maybe it’s Hattie’s insistence that he doesn’t need to worry, or his doctor’s admonition to take it easy, or some sense of self preservation that he’s picked up over the past couple of years. Regardless of the reason, Olivier finds himself exploring carefully.

  He paws through the hundreds of books that have taken up residence in the house, intrigued to find his own paperbacks snugly interspersed with Auriel’s eclectic collection. There seems to be some semblance of organization in places, but there’s also a whole lot of chaotic jumbling without any apparent rhyme or reason. Lewis Carroll is tucked in next to JM Barrie, Tolkien, and the illustrated Harry Potter collection, which makes sense. But Olivier’s battered copy of The Monadology sits between Hattie’s favorite Philip Pullman series and a leather bound Metamorphosis which must belong to Auriel.

  “Who the hell buys expensive copies of Kafka books?” Olivier wonders aloud.

  He moves out into the backyard to explore the garden. There are a variety of plants tangled together, none of which Olivier can name. As Hattie and Stella had promised, Auriel is able to coax anything into growing tall and strong, and blooming prolifically.

  In the kitchen Olivier digs through cupboards and drawers, carefully removing each item he discovers, before putting it back in the exact same position he found it. There is an abundance of organic, Animal Welfare Approved, free range, raw, and grass-fed products. In the freezer Olivier finds neatly organized bags of food, carefully labeled and dated, which appear to be the base for future meals. In the large pantry he discovers an absurd number of kitchen appliances, ranging from a top-of-the-line blender to a bread making machine. There is equipment for making homemade pasta, several tools that seem to be meant for removing pits and cores from fruit, and a wide variety of whisks in bizarre shapes.

  The shared bathroom between Hattie’s and Auriel’s rooms is perhaps the most enlightening. Olivier surveys the shampoos and soaps lined up around the lip of the tub, recognizing the expensive products Hattie has always used and examining the unfamiliar bottles that must belong to Auriel. The medicine cabinet reveals more information about both Hattie and Auriel. Hattie’s stuff takes up the majority of it: various beauty products, a circular case containing contraceptive pills, a box of condoms that claim to be ribbed for her pleasure, a retainer, Midol. The top shelf, however, holds an electric razor and a couple of bottles of pills. Olivier sticks his head out the bathroom door, looking up and down the hall to make sure that he’s alone. Then he shuts the door and grabs the pill bottles. The first one is for an SSRI, and the dose looks relatively high. Auriel Floros, the label reads. And below the prescription, take one capsule by mouth once daily for anxiety. The other bottle instructs Auriel to take up to 50 mg by mouth as needed for acute anxiety and insomnia.

  Olivier feels a current of shame wash through him as he puts the bottle back, careful to make sure that his intrusion isn’t apparent. He leaves the bathroom, upset with himself for snooping. Auriel’s mental health is none of Olivier’s business, and he wishes he hadn’t gone through the man’s medicine cabinet. That ill-advised venture hasn’t even given Olivier any more information about why Auriel is bothering to go out of his way to care for Olivier. Since the night with the chili, Auriel has continued to cook for Olivier, serving him shepherd’s pie and Belgian waffles and even a damn chocolate peanut butter tart. It’s utterly bizarre.

  It makes Olivier want to shake the man, to demand an explanation. And so Olivier snoops, and when that gets him nothing but a guilty conscience, he goes out to the back yard and stares at his phone. He’s aware that he can probably find out a whole lot more about his life just by looking through the pictures and texts and social media accounts on the sleek black device than he can by poking through his roommates’ stuff. Maybe, Olivier thinks idly, I don’t actually want to know. It seems like the only explanation for why he hasn’t taken that easy route. Doused in contradiction, Olivier vehemently wants to know what he’s not being told, and he is utterly unprepared to deal with the consequences that will accompany that knowledge. He is standing on a knife’s edge, perfectly balanced but only a light breeze away from tumbling over the edge.

  Just as he’s making up his mind to set the whole thing aside and curl up for a nap, his phone begins to ring. The vibration against his palm makes him jump slightly, his heart speeding up a notch, but then he sees that it’s his mom and he feels an instinctual sense of comfort just knowing that she’s reaching out to him. He sits down heavily on the ground beneath a large maple tree and answers the call.

  “Mom?”

  “Olivier!” She sounds relieved, and Olivier finds himself regretting the fact that he hasn’t called her before now.

  “Jesus, Mom, it’s good to hear your voice.”

  “I could say the same to you. How are you doing, hon?” Her voice brings on a wave of nostalgia, cresting and then crashing over Olivier, momentarily drowning out the guilt that he has been wrestling with.

  “I’m okay,” he says, and it’s an honest answer.

  She scoffs and says, “care to elaborate?”

  They’re instantly back to the dynamic Olivier remembers, and he is relieved. Auriel had said that Olivier came out to his parents, and there’s a small part of him wondering if his mom thinks of him differently—loves him differently, even—now that she knows. But as far as he can tell, she sounds exactly the same.

  “Ah, well, I’m out o
f the hospital. I’ve mostly just been sleeping and hanging out around the house. Hattie and I have been watching a lot of movies together. And we have this roommate, Auriel, who’s been cooking for me.” Olivier doesn’t know why, but it feels awkward to bring up Auriel this way to his mom. He knows that she’s been speaking with Auriel about Olivier’s health, but it’s still not natural to just drop his name into the conversation without an identifier.

  His mom is quiet for a moment. Then she says, “Auriel and Hattie have been really fantastic about keeping your dad and I updated. About everything. You know I wish I could be there, could have been there through the whole thing.” She sounds close to tears.

  “I know,” Olivier says, wanting to reassure her. He wishes he could wrap her in his arms and tell her that everything is going to be okay from here on out. Even with the thousands of miles between them, he feels close to her in that moment. “I wish you were here too, but I’m in good hands. They’ve been great.”

  “How is your head? Are you having any new symptoms since you left the hospital?”

  That’s the moment when Olivier realizes that Auriel hasn’t been telling his parents everything. And whether it’s to protect Olivier’s privacy, or to keep his parents from worrying, Olivier appreciates it immensely.

  The lie doesn’t feel wrong coming out of his mouth, because Olivier loves his mom and wants her to be at ease. And, he tells himself, it’s not like she can do anything about his hand’s unpredictable propensity for going completely numb. “Nope, I’m doing really well.”