Clear

  “I went off to college, and I suppose I’d mostly given up on him by then. As much as my family and I had tried to undo what his own family did, I figured that it hadn’t been enough to change his life. I got caught up in school and friends, and I assumed he had whatever he had going on. It happens, right? People lose each other. So, I didn’t see him when I was home on breaks or anything. I didn’t even know where he’d gone.

  “Then, one summer, right after college got out for the year, I was rock climbing, alone, on Mount James. It wasn’t the smartest idea because it had rained. The rocks were slick, and the terrain was muddy. I thought I was kind of a badass, and it didn’t really occur to me that I could get into trouble. I was doing a hard uphill climb when I slipped and fell way off route. I think I broke my ankle on the way down, but I managed to catch hold with both hands and stop myself from going into the ravine below.

  “But I was hanging off the side of a cliff and in horrible pain. I…I’ve never been so scared in my life. I couldn’t get a leg up over the edge, and I didn’t have enough strength to pull myself to safety. All I could do was hang there with jagged rocks and…and certain death if I let go. It was my own damn fault, too. I’d been incredibly fucking stupid, and I deserved to die. I wasn’t harnessed in, and I went out without a partner. There’s no excuse. Anyway, I was panicking enough that I wouldn’t have been able to hold on much longer.”

  I’m grateful that Sam pauses here for a bit because I already feel sick. There’s no denying that this story is not going anywhere good, and the details will likely be excruciating.

  He blows out a long breath. “That was when Costa showed up. Out of nowhere, it seemed. He’s always been stronger than he looks, so when his hands clapped around my wrist, I knew he’d be able to pull me up. And he did. He hugged me. I hugged him. And it was as though we’d never fallen away from each other, as though we were still brothers, and he’d somehow magically known that I was in trouble. It felt so amazing for all of three minutes. While he was holding on to me, he asked if I trusted him. And of course I did.” Sam slows his storytelling now, his voice getting quieter, his tone growing darker. “Then, he said, very clearly and calmly, ‘It’s a good day to die, my friend.’ It was very Costa of him. Then, he threw us both over the edge and onto the rocks below.

  “I remember falling, and I remember feeling terrified, but Costa didn’t let go of me, even when we hit the rocks. That sound, the sound of bones breaking…yeah, that first time still echoes in my head. Sorry. You don’t need to hear that…”

  “It’s okay,” I say although my head is spinning and I feel sick to my stomach.

  “It’s not. None of it is okay.” He tightens his arms around me. “The thing is, I wasn’t in pain from the fall—at all. The opposite, in fact. It felt good. I realize how that sounds, but the process of dying was like a drug. It didn’t take long, probably only a few minutes, but they were an indescribably awesome few minutes.

  “First, I watched Costa. His face was a mess, blood and…but it wasn’t frightening. I just closed my eyes and drowned in pleasure. It was like I was floating, flying, or…I don’t know. You just want to be absorbed into that, if that makes any sense. Then, I died, and everything went dark and murky, like I was swimming through a dense gel of some sort. I couldn’t see much. I don’t know how long that part took.

  “Understanding where I was, what happened, was impossible. I just sensed that I was dead, like dead for real but in some kind of in-between space. A fake death. Or on my way to heaven or hell, if I even believe in those. I don’t know. There was an urge to escape, to land somewhere, but I couldn’t get a handle on where to go or even how to move.

  “Then, I saw Costa, and he wrapped an arm around me and pulled me up. Like surfacing from deep water into breathable air, it’s lighter near the surface. I wouldn’t have been able to get there without Costa. I can do it now on my own, but that first time, I never would have without him.

  “When we surfaced, there was this rush, this relief, and this fucking euphoria that nothing could ever compete with. Ironically, it was like I was so full of life. We had no injuries, no scars. There was no blood. We were whole and perfect. Everything looked gorgeous and bright. I was full of energy…and aggression. And I was starving. I mean, crazy hungry. So, first, I beat the absolute shit out of Costa.” Sam stops for a second and actually laughs.

  “Then, I made him take me out for pizza. I ate two larges by myself while he iced his eye and plugged his bloody nose with tissues.” He strokes my fingers with his. “Costa tripped me because he was so lonely. In it all by himself, I guess. I understand that, but…”

  I sit up and face Sam now, crossing my legs over his. “But he did this to you.”

  “Yeah. He needed me. Desperately. Dying and surfacing…we’ve found out that they’re so much better with someone. Being under is nothing too interesting really, but sometimes, the longer we stay under, the more intense the surfacing is. We call that a surge, the rush you get when you surface. You come back really wired, and you’re totally id-driven. Freud would probably love the whole idea of death tripping because it’s all about food, sex, and aggression when you trip hard. You’re driven by primitive instincts.”

  “How is Costa a…death tripper? Was he…born this way? I mean, is it genetic at all?”

  “The short answer is that someone tripped him. He found another death tripper, a stranger he caught in the act of tripping, and Costa somehow convinced this guy to trip him. Costa’s never seen him since. The only information that my adrenaline-junkie friend walked away with is that we can trip anyone, turn anyone into a death tripper. Essentially though, we’ve had to learn everything on our own, and we still don’t know much.”

  “What…what happened after…Costa tripped you?” This language of Sam’s sounds crazy coming from me. “You must have hated him.”

  “You’re right. I should have hated him. But I couldn’t because death tripping felt so goddamn good. We loved it. It felt like he’d given me a gift, not a curse. He stayed in town, and we spent the summer death tripping. We started out just dabbling—you know, like recreational drug use. We fucked around with dying slowly, trying to stay under for as long as we could, trying to control where we surfaced.

  “I showed up in an IHOP twenty miles from here once, seated with two parents and their three kids. It was…you know, rather embarrassing. Surfacing is a pretty loud, intrusive process. Floors smashing apart and reassembling themselves…it’s nuts. The family was a little freaked, needless to say, so I paid for their breakfast and left.”

  I can’t help but smile.

  “It was the least I could do, right? It’s hard to control where you surface sometimes although I can always find my way home. We got totally out of hand. It was disgusting and wrong—killing ourselves over and over. Guns, knives…Costa was big into knives…

  “It’s sick. I know.” He looks away before continuing, “Death tripping is an addiction, just like any other. You can get run-down and you need more and it’s never enough. Never. As suicidal as it sounds, it isn’t really dying, and it isn’t about trying to die. There’s no death wish. Ironically, it’s the opposite. We’re after an enhanced sense of life. We trip over death, but don’t take it. The process, the ritual of this, is all for the thrill and the power from the pleasure that seeps into every part of you during dying and surfacing. The intoxication is nearly impossible to fight.”

  Thank God my mind is so used to being fucked with. My ability to cope is the only thing keeping me from screaming that this is all impossible. “All of this…this is why you left college?”

  Sam doesn’t say anything.

  “Because you were…death-tripping…so much?” I offer.

  It takes a long time for him to answer. “I dropped out after Toby died. The summer before, Costa and I had both been out of control, tripping way too much, but I’d quit abruptly. I’d known it was a problem. My family had started to notice something was wrong. I had not
iced something was wrong. I had to go back to school, and I couldn’t be all tripped out, so I’d stopped. But Costa hadn’t. Couldn’t. He’d wanted to know everything about death tripping. He was addicted.

  “When I had come home that winter, I had gone to the cabin with Costa and Toby. They were family, you know? I’d just wanted to help Costa, to be there and get him to slow down.” Sam strokes my hair for a few minutes. “Of course, the opposite had happened, and being around Costa had reminded me of how good it was. I’d wanted the surge, that intensity.

  “I was supposed to be watching Toby…the details don’t matter. You know what happened. I’d fucked up. After Toby had gone through the ice, we’d tripped over and over, trying to find him, so we could, in turn, trip him, but the kid was gone. Stella, he was just gone. He wasn’t anywhere under, and we’d looked. It was why we’d kept tripping and surfacing—thinking that if we died again, maybe we’d somehow enter into the right location and be able to get to him. Toby was nowhere. I swear to God, we had done everything we could.” He sniffs and wipes his eyes.

  “I don’t think kids can be tripped. Toby is dead, truly dead. Costa was devastated. Obviously. Absolutely wrecked. But even then, even in his grief, he loved me. I don’t know why, but after what happened, he didn’t hate me. He could have.”

  “And you had to tell a story that the rest of the world would believe, one that could be real. So, you left out the death tripping.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I understand.”

  “You can’t possibly understand. I don’t understand. I’ve been in this long enough now that it should make more sense, but as I’m telling you this, I realize how insane it sounds.”

  “The addiction piece. My sister, Amy, has been hooked on…well, I don’t know exactly what, but she’s been using for ages. Coke, I’m sure. Pills. Definitely too much booze. I know what it can do and how it can control you.”

  “Toby died. Amy almost died. Death isn’t a joke. But here, Costa and I were acting like death meant nothing. Because it didn’t to us. Until it did.”

  “How were you supposed to know how to handle this? It was an impossible thing to deal with.”

  “Toby is dead. That’s all that matters. Tragedy. That’s the only outcome from death tripping, and it’s why I haven’t willingly tripped since. And I wasn’t planning on doing it again. But then Costa showed up yesterday.”

  “Bishop, why is he back? Why did he do this to you? Why did he bring you back into this…this addiction? Especially after Toby…”

  Sam rubs his eyes again. “I have no fucking idea. He must have been watching us though because he knew who you were.”

  The times when I felt as if someone was nearby but out of my eyesight—now, it makes sense. I push back Sam’s hair to examine him. “You are really here. I believe that now.” I kiss him, keeping my hands knotted in his hair and pulling him closer, until I am dizzy with his taste. “Why didn’t you come back right away? When you surfaced?”

  “God, I’m so sorry. I was under for a long time because I hadn’t tripped in a while, and it got me pretty drugged. I wanted to surface back here, but it’s just…I told you how I’m all kinds of id-driven when I surface? It’s primal needs, urges.” He looks intently at me. “I made myself surface eight or nine miles from here, so I could walk it off. There was no way that I could come back to you in the state I was in. I don’t know what I would have been like with you, and letting you think I was dead for real was better than what I might have done.”

  I force a smile. “Eaten all the food in my apartment?”

  He shakes his head.

  I bite my lip. “I didn’t think so. And I don’t think you would have surfaced and wanted to fight me.”

  “Exactly. I would have been…” He clears his throat. “Very sexually aggressive. I wouldn’t have hurt you, you know. Or…or God, I’d never force myself on you, even when I’m like that. But I wouldn’t have been myself. With your history and with us just getting together and…Stella, I would never do that to you or ask you to give up part of yourself to be with me, to give me what I want just because I’m in a surge state. I wouldn’t have been able to explain.”

  He probably did the right thing by waiting. If Sam had returned as anything but the calm, even person he’s been today, he might not have been able to break through my own disorientated state.

  But I ask, “Are you still in that place? With those…urges?”

  “No. I’m okay now.”

  My hips slide, and I crawl up his chest until I am straddling him. Sam is the most gorgeous, desirable creature I could fathom. My connection to him is stronger than ever. Losing him and getting him back have solidified how much he means to me.

  “Are you sure? No residual needs hanging around?”

  Sam puts his hands on my waist. “I could get there. Easily.”

  “Good.” I move against him. “Because you scared the absolute fucking hell out of me, Bishop. The only things I care about right now are that I am not delusional and that you are alive and here with me. That’s enough for today.” I can only process so much right now. The rest will have to wait.

  “I’ll get it if you want to run from me. This is messy and scary and massively dysfunctional. Anyone would want to escape the shit you just saw. You’ve gone through too much.”

  “Death tripping is not for the meek, is it?” I lean into his body to soak up his warmth and his heartbeat.

  “No, it’s not.”

  “I don’t understand how you and Costa can hurt yourself like that.”

  “There is no hurt, no pain,” he reminds me. “That’s the nature of death tripping. Not until we can’t fix the aftermath, then there is pain.”

  “I can be strong enough, Sam. I can do this with you. I can be here for you, and we’ll figure out what Costa is doing.”

  “You’re very strong, Stell, stronger than you know. But Costa’s strong, too.” He pushes gently against my shoulders so that I’m sitting up, looking into his eyes. “I made you doubt yourself and question the reality that you fought so hard for. That’s unforgivable.”

  “You were protecting me. That’s everything.”

  Sam slips his hands under the back of my shirt and presses his fingers into me—running them up and down my skin, undoing my bra—and then he moves his touch to the front. Through the thin fabric of my pants, I can feel that he wants me as much as I want him. He sits up, too, and embraces me.

  “I missed you, Stella,” he whispers, his breath and words dancing against my ear.

  “And I missed you, Sam.”

  SAM DRAINED MY FRIDGE AND PANTRY OF FOOD, so we moved downstairs to his place. We haven’t spoken much since he finished laying out his story. It’s hard to know what to say.

  Instead, we’re eating pancakes.

  He is frying up a batch with fresh blueberries, and I am sitting on the counter. This seems to be my spot whether we’re at my place or his, and I like it because he often reaches out to brush my leg with his hand or sneak a kiss.

  Sam flips a pancake over his head, and I catch it, tossing it between my hands until it cools some. It’s strange, I think, that what has happened over the last twenty-four hours plus—all that I’ve seen and learned—has not broken me. I can make peace with this somehow.

  I will.

  It’s beyond my imagination, beyond what should be reality, but I refuse to let it undo my sanity or destroy what I have with Sam. The simple truth is that because I’ve been living with such a mangled sense of reality for most of my life, I can probably integrate this more easily than I otherwise might.

  My mother is a bigger bitch than this death-tripping thing, and I survived her.

  Besides, now, he’s hand-whipping heavy cream for the pancakes. Not everyone can do that, so that’s reason enough to stay.

  “You must be starving,” he says. “I bet you haven’t eaten since our risotto night, have you?”

  I shrug. “I guess not.”

 
“Whipped cream?” he asks.

  “Sure.” I crinkle my nose at him. “If you do anything weird with that whipped cream, I’ll have to dump you.”

  “Hmm…like this?” Sam wipes a finger full across my lips and then licks it off.

  I giggle. “See? That’s precisely what I’m talking about. Whipped cream has gotten such a terrible name when it comes to romance, being all corny and whatnot. We need to class it up.”

  Sam lifts his eyebrows. “You mean, like, with jimmies or something?”

  I laugh. “No! And they’re called sprinkles!”

  “Jimmies!”

  Sam wipes more whipped cream across my lips and then sinks his tongue into my mouth until I’ve forgotten that I don’t believe in mixing food and sex.

  He eases back a bit, and I taste his words when his lips tickle mine as he says, “They’re jimmies. Always.”

  “Fine. Jimmies. You win.” I lean back on the counter, but I wrap my legs around his waist, holding him to me. “Do you always get your way?”

  Sam looks serious now. “Nope. I don’t.”

  “Shit, Bishop. I’m sorry. That was dumb.”

  “It wasn’t dumb.” He picks up a pancake and dunks it into the whipped cream.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He squeezes my hand. “Of course. You probably want to ask me plenty.”

  He’s right. I have a million questions swimming through my head, and it’s hard to know where to start. But I do. “How do you feel about Costa now?”

  “You think I should be afraid of him? Hate him?”

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  “I’m not afraid of him, and I don’t hate him. I was afraid of how you would react if you found out about me, what I am. But…I love him, even now. I don’t know if I can explain it in a way that would make sense, but he and I have a friendship that survives even death.” He smiles a bit. “A lot of death. I don’t always like Costa, but I’ll always love him. He feels the same way about me. We’re unbreakable.”