Page 27 of Catcher's Lock

The first bite goes down in an explosion of nostalgia, the flavor of harbor in the storm of my manic youth. I catch his eyes on my throat as I swallow and can’t resist dragging my tongue over my bottom lip. “Mmm. Delicious.”

“I’m going to eat in front of the TV.” He stands abruptly,grabbing his own bowl and another sleeve of Saltines. It’s not exactly an invitation, but he doesn’t stop me when I follow him into the living room and steal glances at his profile while I fill my stomach with warm memory and hope.

Halfway through the second episode of the newDaredevil, Diana returns and retreats into one of the bedrooms with a faint “Goodnight, boys.”

“She hasn’t changed much,” I observe. Josha grunts and doesn’t look away from the man on the screen—who is way too old for him and not nearly as hot as he was in the original Netflix version. I finish the show in silence, thinking about superheroes and second chances and what it means that I thought Charlie Cox was hot when I was in eleventh grade.

Later, I clean the kitchen while he makes up the couch with pillows and blankets from a hall closet.

“It’s not a pullout.” He shapes the words like an apology, but his face is a little too smug to be sorry.

“Are you really gonna make me sleep on that lumpy thing with a busted rib when I need my beauty sleep to secure our future fortune?”

“Bruisedrib,” he corrects. “You’ll survive.”

“I think what you mean is, I don’t need sleep to be beautiful.” This time, I’m not imagining his hidden smile.

“Goodnight, Farrel.”

After pulling on a pair of threadbare sweats, warm from the dryer, I fold the rest of my laundry—which takes about three minutes. I could really use some more clothes—and slip between the blankets on the couch. I was right about the lumps. I also haven’t gone to bed before 2 a.m. since high school, and it’s barely eleven o’clock. Even with the dregs of the Vicodin coasting through my system, sleep is a long way off.

I should be drifting on a nice little opiate high, but instead,my brain is fixated on the closed door at the end of the hall. Or rather, the man behind that door. Does he still sleep in those drawstring pants? Pale green like his infernal Tic Tacs and worn to almost transparency by constant use. I always teased him for wearing the same pair, though he swore up and down he had more than one. The image that haunts me now is the way the fabric hung from his narrow hips and the play of his glutes through the cotton.

My memories are a minefield—a million surface ripples teasing at the slumbering monster beneath.

But the leviathan is wide awake now, and he’s fuckinghungry.

Fuck this.

Heart hammering in my throat, I tiptoe down the hallway and crack open the door. Cool light from the halogen streetlamp sifts anemone shadows across his dreaming form—one knee hitched up and his back hugging the wall like a changeling from the eldritch past. In sleep, his features are softened, all the angles of his righteous anger blunted and blurred.

I pad across the carpet and slip between the covers, braced to weather the fury of his waking, but he barely stirs.

One hour, and I’ll go back to the couch. Trade this risky comfort for another pill.

Heat seeps from his skin to fill the space between us, and the familiar rhythm of his breathing lulls my lawless mind to rest.

10

Summer

Josha

Age 16 (Then)

“You didn’t have to punch him, Gem.”

We’ve escaped to the back of Hals’s truck, leaving Ethan and his fists back at the party, which—despite the recent drama—is still going strong.

“He was being a dick,” he says.

“You slept with his girlfriend.”

“And he was trying to get you to suck his dick.”

“So what? I’m gay. That’s what gay guys do.”Theoretically. Someday.

“He’s not gay. He has agirlfriend.”