SUMMER RAIN

“But, like, listen. Imagine. You, but gay. Can you imagine? ‘Cause I can’t.” Red drawls, tracing the bones of a star right on Elian’s pulse point with his finger, drunk off of the hot midnight air and the unwavering stare directed right at him. “Would you be nicer? I think you’d be nicer to me. You’d get me.”

“Would I?”

“You’d be whipped for my ass. Tell me to shut up nicely rather than just bruise my ribs with your jabs.”

“Maybe,” Elian laughs out empty air, buzzing and animated. All warmth under his skin, especially where the other boy’s wandering fingers linger. The pause stretches, his eyes falling onto Red’s curled lips, slightly parted and waiting. The mumbled words are out before he can filter them. “Maybe I’d be kissing you senseless to shut you up.”

“Would you?”

“I can.”

“But you won’t,” Red stares at him, bright amidst the erring darkness of the shoreline, voice quiet and vibrating through the atmosphere. “Because you’re not into guys.” His hand drops from Elian’s neck, eyes shining with something burning. Hopeless, helpless — desperate. The words taste bland on his tongue.

“Right. I’m not into guys,” Elian leans in, close enough to feel the warmth radiating off of Red’s skin, lips ghosting over the metal hoops lining his blushing ear. A whisper. A confession. “Just into you.”

Salt yellow street lights, cigarette burns and boxy all teeth grins — this is home, they say.

Summer Rain

2017

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