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SEVEN

J ust look at those beautiful boys, Eddie and Francis, chest deep in the sea, splashing in the cool, rhythmic waves. The afternoon has stretched on slowly, lazily, perfectly. He doesn’t want it to end, doesn’t want this spell to break. He knows that when it does, it will happen suddenly, without warning, and he will ache with loneliness again, just like he did out on the street after the speakeasy.

What is it about a crush that feels so fragile? How can the investment be so deep, so soon? You see somebody a handful of times, and then you meet them, and you talk and walk and dance, and then suddenly you realize that even though he is right here treading water a million miles from anywhere else, just you and him, both of you moving closer to each other with every shallow wave, hands grazing underwater, eyes locked, then averted, then locked again, everything just as you’d dream it, if you’d dreamed it, but all you can think of is how it will end, when it will end, and how you’ll possibly survive.

Crush? What a small word. It sounds cute, inconsequential, sweet. That is not this, Eddie thinks. This is a fire.

“What are you thinking?” Francis asks, reading Eddie’s mind. The sun sparkles off the waves around him.

“Nothing,” Eddie lies, sensing a trap, certain that if he told the truth, this would all disappear and he’d be back in his sneakers and jeans. He takes a stroke away from Francis to escape the question. He dives and resurfaces, dives and resurfaces, shaking water from his hair. A distant, delighted scream from the Atom Smasher rises from the crowded boardwalk, a thousand miles away. Relax, he tells himself, feeling the undertow at his feet. You’re in the water. Far away. Everything is different out here. You can be, too.

“You swim like a dolphin,” Francis says.

“I love the ocean,” Eddie says.

“It doesn’t scare you?” Francis teases. “Man-eating sea monsters and stinging jellyfish?”

“I got stung by a jellyfish once,” Eddie says. “On Padre Island in Texas.”

“When was that?”

“I think I was eight or nine,” Eddie says. “So about ten years ago.” Or ninety years in the future, he thinks, depending on how you look at things.

“Did you pee on it?”

“What?”

“That’s what you’re supposed to do,” Francis says. “Pee on a jellyfish bite to take the sting out.”

“You’re making that up.”

“I’m not! I’m an old sea dog, I know all about it.”

“Shut up,” Eddie says, splashing him.

Francis floats on his back. “This is the only ocean I’ve ever seen,” he says. “This and Coney Island. I’m a city boy.”

“Aren’t city boys afraid of the ocean?”

Francis rolls like a kayak, spouting a mouthful of water into the air. “No way,” he says. “We’re not afraid of anything.”

Eddie widens his eyes and points out to sea, behind Francis’s head. “Shark!”

Francis spins, startled, and Eddie laughs, proud of himself for being playful.

“Got me,” Francis says, splashing Eddie. “Square state boy.”

“How do you know where I’m from?”

“Lucky guess, I guess.”

“Pretty obvious I don’t belong here,” Eddie says.

Francis spins up and faces Eddie. “Hey. You do belong here. Where you’re from doesn’t make any difference. You’re here now, so that must mean you’re supposed to be. Right?”

Eddie doesn’t know the answer. Where is here anyway? He looks back toward the beach, where the boys are attempting to form themselves into a pyramid. “Are they all from New York?”

“Dunno,” Francis says.

“You never asked?”

Francis takes in a mouthful of seawater and spits a spout into the air. “Everyone’s from somewhere.”

“But aren’t they your friends? How long have you known them?”

“Look,” Francis says. “We don’t ask a lot of questions around here, these days, because everyone’s got a past, you know? Especially us. Like, those boys up on the beach. George and Vincent and Buzzy and the rest. They’re good people, of course. I only associate with good people. But they are also runaways, maybe also thieves, hustlers. Not because they want to be, but because they had to be, to make their way. That’s what the world is for fairies. You can’t survive in this world without bending a rule every now and then. Maybe that’s why they call us bent.”

Buzzy, the smallest of the boys, is clambering his way to the top of the pyramid. The others shout just as he reaches the apex, then squeal as he starts to lose his balance, then all tumble together into a heap of laughter and whoops.

“They don’t seem like criminals—”

“Maybe they are, or maybe they aren’t. I don’t ask. I know all I need to know. They have good hearts, and we are friends. Mates. Family. We take care of one another, we do the best we can. And besides, you can’t have a future without a past.”

Francis dives under. He disappears into the darker depths, so deep that Eddie can’t see him. The sea grows still around him, and quiet. A moment passes, and then another, and then, just when Eddie starts to wonder if he’ll ever surface, Francis shoots up, his black hair slicked back off his face. Tiny drops of water fall from his eyelashes, to his collarbone, and down his chest. Eddie watches each drop, wondering what it would feel like to slip down Francis’s skin like that. He wants to run a finger across his neck. Down his back. Across his—

Eddie takes a sharp breath, holds it, and exhales.

“What about you?” he asks.

Francis cocks his head quizzically. “What about me?”

“Do you have a past?”

Francis opens his mouth, as if to speak, then abruptly dives under again. A moment later, suddenly, he surfaces just behind Eddie. He wraps his arms around Eddie’s shoulders and presses his chest against Eddie’s back, his hips against Eddie’s hips. Breath grazing Eddie’s earlobe, he whispers, “Don’t we all?”

And then Eddie feels Francis’s lips at the nape of his neck. Soft, careful, the tiniest kiss, hardly any pressure at all, but he holds it there, right there. And then, just as suddenly, he dives back under and away, swimming back to shore, taking Eddie’s waterborne boldness with him.