Page 272 of Worthy

“I swear, if you don’t make a move on him soon, I’ll fucking weep.” He said this nonchalantly while crouching down to gather some dry twigs.

My face was burning, and I turned away from Damien to collect more dry branches scattered by the falling trees. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I huffed, my throat knotting up.

Damien snorted. “Give me a break, Elliot. It’s clear as day that you like him,” he said. “Seriously, I remember thinking you two had something going on already a few years back. The only reason I didn’t actually believe it was that neither of you ever said anything.”

I dared to glance at him and found a genuine smile on his face. The thing about Damien was that we had always been so close that he fully expected to be the first to know. And rightfully so. We’d always been each other’s safe harbors in whatever storm we weathered.

“Well, we don’t,” I said matter-of-factly and continued gathering bits and pieces of wood. Like Tanner would ever look at a guy like me twice and consider it seriously.

“You want to,” Damien said, just as casually as if we were talking about watching a game together. “Don’t lie to me.”

I bit my lower lip and exhaled quietly. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I couldn’t tell him the truth either. I was either emotionally stunted that I was incapable of imagining one person could fill that void in me alone, or I was a sex-crazed lunatic who wouldn’t settle for one but needed two. Either way, I had learned to live with my heart torn right open in the gentle tug of war between my two best friends. It was all I could have done, seeing how neither of them ever thought that they were who I craved.

“We’re friends,” I said, finding something truthful to say. “It would be weird.”

Damien was silent for a little while.

And I would still miss you, I thought sourly and decided I’d picked enough firewood for one trip back. Perhaps Tanner was still stalking around the forest wearing nothing but a dimpled grin.

“Marco and Stefan made it work,” Damien said of our friends. They’d also been inseparable since high school. It surprised no one that they’d ended up together.

“Yeah, but Marco and Stefan had been fucking for years before that,” I said and almost choked on the words when I realized what I was suggesting. Just because I’d never been intimate with Tanner, it didn’t mean I couldn’t be. Besides, that wasn’t the reason I hesitated to outright admit anything. It was the pure and simple fact that I was unnoticeable. I was like a shadow to my best friends. Always there; never making a difference; tied to them desperately and never a person in my own right.

Damien snorted at my answer. “You’re twenty-four, Elliot. You shouldn’t sound like you missed out on life when it’s only just beginning.”

The weight of firewood was pulling me down, so I dropped them on a heap and busied myself looking around for more. Once they were all in a pile, I would make a few trips and bring them up to the camp. “Do you ever feel like we wasted time?” I asked.

Damien thought about it, instinctively joining me in piling up all the firewood in one spot by adding his. “Sometimes. A bit.”

“Right,” I said softly.

“But we had fun, too,” he said with a shrug. “College is the time for fucking around, right?” He shared a big, shiny grin that made my heart murmur. “And now we’re all grown up. Responsible, reliable adults.”

Even as he was saying those words, they were rendered meaningless by Tanner’s appearance and a shadow of irony fell over Damien’s face. “What are you hens clucking about?” Tanner asked with his boyish wonder, except that he was wearing a pair of tight briefs that barely concealed anything and a crown of twigs and oak leaves around his partially dry black hair.

I gaped at him. For once, the big bulge in his underwear wasn’t the sole focus on my attention. I stared at the entire apparition that a twig-crowned, nearly naked, flaming sun-bathed figure of Tanner was. “About being responsible, reliable adults,” I said.

“Case in point,” Damien said with a playful eye-roll in Tanner’s direction. “What are you up to?”

“We left my guitar in the truck,” he said casually.

“And you’re stripping your clothes along the way so you know the way back?” Damien asked.

Tanner pondered it with seriousness. “Not a bad idea,” he said, pouting in thought. “I should have had more layers, though.”

Damien snorted. “Do I need to beg you to put something on?”

“You can beg alright,” Tanner said. A soft, almost blessed expression came over his smooth face. “But save your breath. It’s beautiful out here and we’re all alone. Be one with nature, brother. Feel the soil between your toes and wind on your chest.”

Damien laughed out loud. “Sure, but maybe not in my ass crack.”

“Ass crack, too,” Tanner said wisely and wandered down the hill. It would be at least twenty minutes before he reached the truck and another thirty before he made the climb back.

“Has he always been this weird?” Damien asked me with another effortless smile.

I laughed at the benign question just as Tanner singsonged back: “I can still hear you. The wind carries your cluck-cluck-clucking.”

My laughter grew louder until Tanner was long gone and the pile Damien and I had made was more than we would need for the first night. “You know,” I pointed out softly, diplomatically. “You two could be a couple just as easily.”

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