Shifting Tides

by Caitlin Ricci

  “She knew there’d be liquor and still let you come?” Adam sounded amazed, and Blaine wasn’t sure by which—the fact that his gran had known about the booze, or that she’d let him come anyway.

  “Gran and I are working on trusting each other.” Blaine settled on one of the huge logs that encircled the fire. “She asked me not to drink. I’m going to honor that request. Drinking is interesting, but it cost me my parents. I don’t want to cost me Gran too. And I really don’t want it to impact me and you.”

  “I won’t impact the way I feel about you,” Adam said quickly.

  Blaine shook his head. “You don’t know that. We learned at the camp out that you don’t like the taste of beer. You might never develop a taste for it. I also know that I can be a bit of a jerk when I drink. If I don’t drink, I keep Gran happy and don’t expose you to my darker side.” He hadn’t meant to get into a deep conversation with Adam at the party. He’d wanted to just come and have fun.

  Near the water, a girl let out a playful scream. It drew Blaine’s attention down to where others were frolicking in the surf. The waves were tall enough to swamp over some of the shorter people, the tide high.

  “You want to go swimming?” Blaine had the sudden urge to take his shirt off and dive in.

  Adam didn’t look so sure. “In what?”

  “How about your clothes? You’re a good enough swimmer to go with wet clothes and not worry about it.” Blaine couldn’t resist anymore. He stood up and pulled his T-shirt over his head. “Let’s go.” He caught Adam’s hand as soon as he dropped his shirt onto the ground next to the makeshift bench.

  On their way to the surf, Seth and Heidi joined them. The first wave caught the four of them, splashing up over them and making them all laugh. Blaine felt free and happy. The summer had been a series of ups and downs, like the waves he dove into, but he’d come out of it with a great boyfriend, a much-improved best friend and a great understanding with his gran. He didn’t think life could get any better, but he was hoping it would and the school would accept Adam for who he was, and not have any problems with their relationship. He’d known for a while he always wanted Adam with him, and he didn’t want anything to ruin that feeling.

  Adam turned in the surf and hugged Blaine. “Thank you.”

  Blaine brushed wet hair off Adam’s forehead. “For what?”

  “For being here with me. For standing by me this summer. For being my boyfriend.”

  “Always.” Blaine kissed him. “I love you.”

  “I love you too.”

  Around them, people applauded as the waves continued to wash over them.

  Chapter Twenty

  On the first day of school, Blaine came over to Adam’s aunt and uncle’s house and had breakfast with Adam and Seth, like he’d been doing most mornings during the summer. They were just having cereal, and the most sugary kind imaginable, but Adam thought that it was still great to have Blaine sitting there next to him with his dark jean-covered leg pressing against his as they all sat together at the kitchen table.

  Once they were done with the cereal, they gathered up their stuff, and Adam put his messenger bag’s strap over his shoulder and across his body. The strap went between his boobs but with the sports bra on there was hardly an indent between them at all. Like they weren’t even there to begin with. Adam looked at himself in the mirror over the fireplace and smiled back at his reflection. His hair was perfectly spiked and, though he might have been wearing a lot of black, he was starting to look completely like a guy.

  There wasn’t a trace of Angela left anywhere. Maybe his lips were a little too full and his cheekbones might have been too high, but Heidi and the other cheerleaders kept telling him how hot he was and Blaine didn’t seem to care so he tried to ignore those parts and instead focused on his perfectly short hair and his nearly flat chest. And, thanks to a lot of help from both Blaine and Seth, he was starting to sound like a guy too. He still wasn’t able to get on board with randomly spitting on the sidewalk, though. That was just gross and didn’t really seem to serve a purpose.

  “Picture time!” Aunt Amy called out to them before they could get more than two feet out the front door.

  Seth groaned, Blaine threw his arm around Adam’s shoulders and pulled him in close, and Adam smiled back at his aunt. The first picture on the first day of their new school year. And the three of them stood there smiling together with the neighborhood in the background.

  “Another!” Aunt Amy nearly shouted at them as she kept taking pictures with her phone.

  Blaine moved him in his arms and Adam was still laughing. But he wasn’t laughing for long because, for the next picture, Blaine quickly grabbed Adam’s face between his hands and kissed him squarely on the mouth. Adam was too shocked to breathe. Too amazed to do much more than simply stand there with his arms hanging limply at his sides. They’d kissed, plenty of times, but they’d always been careful about not being too affectionate in front of adults. They were still new. Everything was still so new. And even though they hadn’t made it some official rule or anything, that was how Adam thought things were going to be. And Blaine had just broken that wide open with one massive kiss.

  “Damn, you’re not even going to kiss me back?” Blaine asked him after a few more seconds. Blaine pulled away and, when he looked down at Adam, he thought Blaine might have been a bit disappointed.

  Adam frowned and wished he had something cool to say to him. Something that would have made him stop feeling like an idiot after his very first kiss in front of family. “I’ve got no clue how to do that in front of everyone,” Adam finally admitted. He didn’t feel any less like a moron by saying that to Blaine. If anything, he actually felt a bit worse.

  He laughed and kissed Adam again, slower this time, as if he was giving Adam time to catch up to the idea of being kissed by him with family watching them, like there would other people at school. Maybe that’s why Blaine had sprung this on him without warning, so that he’d be better when it came to being at school when they kissed in front of other students and their teachers. At least Aunt Amy didn’t applaud like the girls had at the beach on Saturday. Adam still got nervous when he remembered that. He’d buried his head in Blaine’s chest and just wished the surf would carry them both away.

  And Adam desperately needed that time too, apparently, because a few seconds into the kiss he had managed to bring his hands up and lay them over Blaine’s forearms. He was warm, and his rough hairs tickled Adam’s palms as he ran his fingers over Blaine’s skin. Adam was still shaking when Blaine stopped the kiss, but he was freaking out a lot less at that point. It was nice, scary and thrilling. The kiss left Adam trembling as he clung to Blaine’s arms to keep himself standing upright as he felt like everyone was staring at him.

  “Ready to go then?” Seth asked them as if the two of them kissing in front of him wasn’t a big deal. His blasé attitude about it made Adam relax that much more quickly. It didn’t have to be something huge. Just two guys kissing.

  Adam had completely forgotten that Seth had been there. Apparently Aunt Amy had hung around as well. She shoved her phone into Adam’s face and he got to see pictures of Blaine kissing him. And, not that he was trying to be vain at all, but he thought they were really cute together. Blaine was taller than Adam, by probably a good four inches, and a lot bigger too. Adam looked a little small compared to him. But, with his clothes and his hair perfectly gelled and spiked in the front, Adam thought he definitely looked like a guy. And together they looked just like two guys kissing. Adam really liked that. Just two guys making out. On the first day of school. Nothing for people to freak out about, only a sophomore and his junior boyfriend.

  That’s what Adam was thinking about when he headed out of the house with Blaine holding his hand and with Seth walking along beside them. Aunt Amy and Uncle John waved to them and Blaine never let go of his hand once. Not at all, not even once, in the whole mile they walked to the high school.

  Thinking about the
first day of school, and how he and his mom would have normally had waffles together to make it special, made Adam miss her a lot. He thought about both of his parents a lot, even though he doubted that they ever gave him a second thought anymore. He’d been tossed aside and abandoned by them, but things were getting easier because he had his own family now. And they were great.

  Aunt Amy, Uncle John and Seth had become closer to him than he had ever thought possible. Before the camping trip this year they hadn’t really ever been overly close. They’d been people he saw at holidays and who never forgot to send him a card on his birthday, but they hadn’t been the Sunday brunch and getting together every week kind like he saw in the movies. But now Adam couldn’t imagine them not being right down the hall from him whenever he had needed them.

  Adam did miss his parents, though, most of the time, as much as he was trying not to. It was hard to completely cut his mom out of his heart and pretend she’d never hurt him, or never existed at all. He missed having his mom there for all the little things she used to do for him, even the things that drove him nuts like how she’d forget the name of his favorite bands. Sometimes over the summer he had thought that going on without her was going to be some monumental, impossible task.

  But then his new family was there for him. Aunt Amy and Uncle John had promised to never, ever abandon him like his parents had. Even Seth, as obnoxious as he could be sometimes, was more like a brother than a cousin to him now. It had only been a few months, but Aunt Amy called them her boys, like it had always been the two of them. She and Uncle John treated him like he’d never been anyone but Adam and that meant the world to him.

  They all stopped beside Adam’s locker and he put in the stuff he wouldn’t be needing until next period. His shoulder felt so much better without the extra textbooks in his messenger bag to drag him down. High schools really needed to get on board with e-readers, in his opinion. Textbooks just sucked all the way around.

  “See you guys later,” Adam said to them both.

  Seth nodded. “Later. Come find me at lunch.” Then he was off.

  Blaine hung around a little longer. “You’ll be okay, right?”

  Sure, he would. Some people were already looking at him strangely, like he was weird. Or maybe like he didn’t belong in their school with them. Maybe they were trying to figure out if he was really a boy or a girl. That was only a few of them, though. Most of the people around them seemed to have better things to do than wonder about the new guy.

  Blaine looked like he hadn’t even noticed there was anyone else in the hallway besides Adam. He was smiling at him like he looked great, like Adam suddenly knew how to kiss really well, and like nothing would ever go wrong between them. He wanted to hang on to that moment with Blaine for forever and never let it go. It was too precious and it made him feel too good about himself to do anything else but that.

  “I’ll be fine. See you at lunch?” Somehow the three of them had all lucked out with the same lunch period. He put it down to Mr. Lills looking out for him. It was easier to believe that than for him to give into the idea of fate or a fairy godmother looking out for him.

  Blaine pulled him in close for a hug and Adam automatically hugged him back. Someone said hi to Blaine, but he didn’t even look over at them. It sounded like the person speaking was a girl and Adam figured at some point he would see some girl Blaine had dated at this school. And he knew that he could handle that, because Adam knew that he was Blaine’s boyfriend and Blaine was his, and whoever had been in their pasts really didn’t matter. Adam was going to do his best not to let the people that had come before him in Blaine’s life get to him. That they didn’t matter to him anymore was something Adam was trying to remind himself of as Blaine pulled away from him and Adam saw a really pretty girl watching them both curiously.

  “If you need anything, if someone is a jerk to you, if you get worried about anything, if you get lost—”

  Adam raised his eyebrows at him. “If I get abducted by aliens? Kidnapped by werelions intent on making me their newest kitchen slave? Run over by a runaway train?”

  Blaine shook his head as he smiled at him. “Yeah, any of those things too. I want you to call me. Okay? Even if you’re just lonely between classes. Text me or call me or something.”

  “Sure. I will. I promise. And I’ll text you too. As often as I can until a teacher takes it away from me.” Adam smiled up at Blaine and closed his locker behind him. It made a quiet little click that was barely audible over the sounds of the conversations around them.

  Apparently satisfied by his answer, Blaine nodded and stepped back from him. But his frown said that he really didn’t want to go. “Well, I’m this way.” He pointed left down the hallway.

  Adam tilted his chin in the opposite direction. “And I’m down there. I’ll see you at lunch. Or, you know, if I see you in the hallways.” The high school really wasn’t that big. It was entirely possible that they’d run into each other a few times throughout the day. That was what Adam was hoping for, anyway.

  “See you soon.”

  Adam smiled up at him. “Yep.” He left and Adam started heading toward his first class. It was math, of course. And Adam felt like he was already screwed and doomed to a year of not knowing anything. Only, he really wasn’t. Not this year. Not when he had Blaine two minutes away to help him the second he had a problem with his homework this time around. The only downside was that Blaine couldn’t actually take his tests for him.

  Adam sat down toward the back of the room with only one row of desks behind him, which was his normal spot, and he got out his notebook and a pen. Taking a deep breath, he looked around the small classroom and saw a few people watching him. He knew that he was a curiosity—the new kid always was—but no one looked upset that he was there. Adam figured that was probably so far so good. He relaxed a little and settled in for his first day of sophomore year at Pharrell High. It was a brand new school to go with his brand new life. He was Adam now, officially. It even said so on his transfer papers. And when the teacher did roll call and his name came up, he proudly raised his hand. He was present and accounted for.

  He was Adam and he wasn’t going anywhere.

  Also available from Finch Books:

  The Edge of Brilliance

  Susan Traugh

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Her wail reverberated off the tiled walls in a satisfying shriek. Drenched, enraged and prostrate, Amy reached her arms over her head as she lay fully clothed, sprawling half in, half out of the shower while steam roiled and the water splashed out of the open door and onto the floor.

  “Manic,” her dad had said. As if it was his word. As if he had any right to it. Any right to use it. It was hers. Her word. Her nightmare. Her disease.

  Everyone tried to make this mess more manageable with cheery advice and condescending platitudes. But it was a curse. A plague. A full-blown disaster. She didn’t deserve it and she’d wail at the wall if she wanted to.

  Her therapist had once congratulated her on choosing the shower. He’d suggested cold water to cool her down and ease her manic episodes, so Amy purposely chose hot. Besides, the hot water mirrored her mood.

  And yet, as the heat poured over her body, that rage seemed to seep out of her pores and flow down the drain with her tears. It was ending. She could feel the signs. But it was never raw rage into sublime peace. This trip to hell included a side trip through mortification and shame with a final destination of nothingness. And here it came again. After the volcano came the pit. Amy tried to hold on to her rage. As acidic as that fire burned, it was better than falling into the hole of despair that awaited her. For this was not the first time she’d locked herself away in fury. She just wanted it to be the last.

  The rattle of the bathroom doorknob jolted Amy’s thoughts as her mother successfully forced the locked door with the back of a spoon…again.

  “Get out!” Amy shrieked, mustering all the anger she could pull from her waterl
ogged body before her mother opened the bathroom door. But she knew her mother had heard the change in her cries. They’d danced this dance so often that Amy knew her mother could anticipate each step, and the truth was, part of her was glad for her mom to come and pull her back from the volcano’s pit.

  “No,” said her mother in a tone that allowed no response. Mom slowly closed the door behind her and surveyed the damage. She sucked in a quick breath, stopped, then slowly blew it out as if she were blowing through a straw. In her fury, Amy had slammed the shower door against the towel rack on the wall, shattering the tempered glass within the frame. The pebbles of glass hung in a weblike pattern on the door, glistening with the spray of the shower and looking like a thousand diamonds.

  “He called me crazy!” Amy yelled from the shower floor, a new wave of rage enveloping her.

  “I don’t recall hearing him use that word,” replied her mom.

  “Manic, manic, manic!”

  “Well, Amy, I’d say the shower door and living room furniture would attest to a manic episode…”

  “But he can’t say it!”

  “What can he say, honey? What can any of us say when you’re like this?”

  Amy threw the soap at the shower wall. “But don’t you get it? I don’t want to be like this!”

  “I understand that. But you will be until you start taking your meds regularly.”

  “I’m not crazy! I’m not taking meds for crazy people!”

  “No one said you were crazy. Your father never used that word and never will. But you do have bipolar disorder. So your choice is to control your condition, or let the condition control you. We both know the choice you’re making now. How’s that working for you?”

  While Amy wept, her mother stood staring at the wall. The steady pounding of the shower’s water was the only other sound in the room. As she cried, Amy wondered if her mother would ever speak again.