Guardian

The day after Trick’s hookup with Drew, he and AJ grabbed some fast food after school and biked to the outskirts of town, following the train tracks to the river. Dumping their bikes in the grass, they walked out to the middle of the railway bridge, where they sat with their legs dangling over the gray-green water.

Trick shed his jacket and opened the paper bag he carried, producing bacon cheeseburgers and onion rings. As he unwrapped his burger, he noticed AJ staring at him, one eyebrow quirked. “What?” he asked.

AJ answered with a chuckle. “Lemme guess, you burned yourself with your hair straightener?”

Trick’s eyes widened momentarily, his hand springing to his neck. Shit. He’d forgotten Drew gave him a hickey. At a loss for how to explain it to AJ, he took a big bite of his burger and affected nonchalance while he chewed. “So?” AJ prodded. “Who’d you get it from?”

Trick thought about it. Why shouldn’t he tell AJ what had happened with Drew? Was he ashamed of it? Well, yeah, a little; he wasn’t going to go around telling the whole junior class about it. But AJ was different. He had been there when Trick pissed his pants at school in third grade; Trick had been there when AJ popped a boner at his older sister’s fifteenth birthday party. They knew all of each other’s worst impulses and weirdest fantasies. There was no shame between them.

So why not tell him, then? To protect him? Bullshit. AJ was the one who had turned Trick down. What was wrong with him knowing that his trash was Drew’s...not treasure, exactly, but a reasonably amusing toy? Suddenly, Trick felt defensive. He dared AJ to not want to hear about Drew. He dared AJ to not want him to move on.

He swallowed his mouthful of burger. “Drew.”

AJ froze with an onion ring halfway to his mouth. “What?” Trick shrugged and took another bite of his burger. “I thought you said he was a dickweed.”

“I did.”

“Well, is he still?”

“Yep.”

AJ was staring at him again, this time with a groove between his eyes. “So help me out here,” he said, with an uneasy huff that might’ve been a laugh in a former life. “What changed?”

“Nothing.” Trick rolled his eyes. “I’m not marrying the guy, AJ. I just figured, hey, when life gives you lemons...”

“Uh-huh.” AJ’s eyes were narrowing, and his onion ring had never reached its destination. If anything, his misgivings made Trick more cavalier about the whole thing. He dared AJ to try and tell him what he should and shouldn’t do. “You know he’s your cousin, right?”

“Step-cousin. We’re not blood.”

“And you’ve thought about this, I mean, you’re sure it’s...smart?”

“Who am I, Einstein?” Trick popped an onion ring into his mouth. “Fucking doesn’t have to be smart. It just has to be fun.”

After that, they ate without speaking for awhile, only their crunching sounds and the whisper of the river standing between them and silence. Looking down at his reflection in the water, Trick felt a brief squeeze of sadness. Fucking his dick step-cousin and arguing with AJ about it was so far from the future he had pictured standing in Mackenzie Quinn’s front yard, fingering the Whistling Moon. It wasn’t what he wanted. AJ knew that.

But it was what he had, and they’d both have to deal with it. “So,” AJ said finally, “was it...good? Was Drew good?”

“I guess, but how good do you have to be at ramming your crotch into somebody else’s?”

“Oh, okay, so you didn’t fuck your cousin.” AJ’s voice was lighter now, ribbing, although that groove between his eyes was taking its time going away. “You dry-humped your cousin, and said you fucked him.”

“Fucked him, fucked around with him, same difference. And would you quit saying ‘your cousin’?” Trick cracked a smile. “You make me sound like some kinda inbreeding mountain hick.”

They finished their food and a couple of cigarettes sitting on the railway bridge, talking and joking like always. It would be okay, Trick thought. Of course it would be okay. His and AJ’s friendship had survived the time Trick kissed a girl AJ liked; it had survived the time AJ borrowed Trick’s brand-new DS and lost it; it was in the process of surviving what happened on the Fourth of July. Trick dared the world to come up with anything that could destroy it.