Page 86 of Just Business
Eli brushed his thumb against Justin’s jaw. “I’d like to. May I?”
There was the search for consent. Always that question—always giving Justin a choice. Stay or go. Listen... or not. Maybe if he heard this—the heart of who Eli was—he’d understand. Nothing about Eli made sense. Justin nodded.
“I guess we first noticed each other about the time I was preparing for my bar mitzvah. My Hebrew was crap despite years of schooling—his was good, so he started tutoring me. I’m not sure why, but he put up with me. He wasn’t afraid. Shot back at all my quips.” He laughed. “Apparently, I was a scary little shit, even at twelve.”
So much self-awareness. Justin shivered.
“Wait. Give me a second.” Eli tugged at the blanket, pulling it out from between them.
It was natural—so natural to slide up against Eli, fully into his arms and soak up that warmth.
Eli drew the blanket around them. “You have to understand, both Noah and I, we were raised Orthodox Jewish. Well, I’m Sephardi, but... for all intents, Orthodox. You’ve seen the kids in the suits and hats with the tassels in the neighborhood?”
“Yeah.” More synagogues than churches in Squirrel Hill.
“That was me, more or less. And Noah. He was two years older than me, almost exactly. Our birthdays were five days apart in January. The year after I turned fourteen, we both realized that we weren’t just interested in each other as friends. We’d both heard the wordgay, knew what it meant. Understood that we were supposed to get married, likely to one of the girls in the neighborhood, and have kids. But we wanted each other. Desperately.” His laugh was soft. “Hormones. Boys.”
Justin couldn’t help his own chuckle. “Yeah. Made high school interesting.” He shifted. “I always thought of homosexuality as more of a Christian sin—but Leviticus—”
“—Is in the Tanakh—the Torah—yes. Short form for most modern Orthodox is that same-sex attraction isn’t a choice, but gay men and women are supposed to get married to the opposite sex and have kids.” Eli shrugged. “Reform Judaism doesn’t give a shit.”
“We’d been fooling around for a while. For our birthdays when we turned sixteen and eighteen, we decided to try anal. His birthday came first, but he thought it would be unfair for him to top me since he was older, so...”
“You topped him.” Justin looked up. Color touched Eli’s cheeks. That was unexpected.
Eli coughed and smiled. “Let’s just say that I learned a lot about myself that night.” The amusement faded. “Two days later, we went out with friends. Noah drove.”
Eli shuddered once beneath Justin.
“Wasn’t supposed to snow. Or maybe just a dusting. Something like that. It was Noah and me and Rachel and Milka. We’d gone out to celebrate our birthdays—someplace nice and not in Squirrel Hill. They had a vegetarian menu, so we didn’t have to worry about kashrut. I was in the back, with Rachel.”
Another tremble ran through Eli and his voice dropped. “Up in the North Hills, some of the roads are pretty twisty.”
“It’s okay.”
“No. It wasn’t. Noah was so careful. Driving slowly. Blinkers on and everything. But the truck in the other lane—it came straight at us. I—don’t remember exactly what happened. Just the lights and the sound and the heat and...”
Eli stopped. Exhaled. “They say Noah turned and that’s pretty much the only reason I survived. The truck—it was one of those boxy delivery types—hit us, spun us, hit us again. And the car behind us hit us. There was an SUV behind the truck, too. Pushed the truck forward. We were crushed between them all.”
Oh God.He’d seen the aftermath of a few bad accidents, the twisted remains of the cars, had nightmares about what it might be like... and Eli had lived it.
“I heard them die. All of them.” The trembling started again.
The only thing Justin could do was hold Eli. “I’m sorry.” Insufficient words. So meaningless.
“I couldn’t move. Couldn’t help them. There was blood and metal and people yelling.” Another deep breath. “They had to cut me out.”
More drops on Justin’s face.
“I never lost consciousness. Not until the hospital. One moment, they were all alive. The next, all dead, but me. I had a couple of cracked ribs, abrasions, and a mangled leg. Lost some bone and muscle. A bunch of crap in my ankle will never be right, but I survived. I have no idea why I did and they didn’t.”
There was nothing Justin could say.
“I turned sixteen in a hospital bed. Noah was dead. Rachel. Milka. They were buried on my birthday. I couldn’t go to the funeral, couldn’t visit shiva. My friends—mylover—they were all gone, and I had no way to mourn them.” He laughed, but there was no joy in it. “Then I made the mistake of telling my rabbi I loved Noah. That we’d had sex on his birthday.”
“Like... a confession?”
“No, nothing like that. I—just needed someone to talk to. He was supposed to be trained in psychology or something. So I told him. Figured he’d keep it to himself.” Another hollow laugh. “He told my parents.”
