Chapter 7

Gus didn’t tell Marshall about his feelings right away. He waited, watching for the right time, the right place. He waited until the last days of September, when he and Marshall were stretched out on the Great Hill in the park with the sunlight beaming down on them. While they stared up at the too-blue sky, he spoke, and his words came out painfully slow.

“I love you,” he said. “I’m not asking for anything. And you don’t have to say it back. I know it’s not your thing. But I wanted you to know. Because I do. Love you. I’ll do anything for you. Anything you want.”

Marshall didn’t respond at first. He didn’t flinch, didn’t blink, and Gus wondered if he was just going to ignore the confession, pretend it had never happened. He already knew Marshall could be that way sometimes. He’d hoped—he’d believed—this would be different. Marshall would understand how important this was to him.

But Marshall was just going to ignore him.

Gus was mad, but more than that, he was embarrassed. How much stupider could he get? First abandoning his education and home to start a band; now throwing away his last shred of dignity over the jerk he’d fallen in love with.

Marshall shifted. Gus started to turn away, disgusted with himself, but Marshall caught his shoulder and tugged him back. He pushed Gus back down on the grass, and he kissed him. Gus lay frozen in shock. Marshall, who hated physical contact in public, who despised affection, was kissing him in front of fifty sunbathers and passing joggers.

Marshall made the kiss last an eternity, then rolled away and said, “Me, too.”

It was Gus’s best memory of Marshall.

Tonight, as he lingered between dreams and waking with his head filled with thoughts of Marshall, Marshall’s blood on his hands, Marshall’s body sinking below the water, he replayed the memory.

But this time, as dreams crept nearer, the memory changed. Marshall didn’t stop kissing him, didn’t roll away and say, “Me, too.” He kept kissing Gus, hard and deep, and suddenly his hands were wrapped around Gus’s neck. Gus’s eyes popped open, and the first thing he saw was Marshall’s face, twisted with rage and haunted, his eyes entirely black.

“You killed me,” the ghost-Marshall mumbled, spit drooling over his lower lip. “You little slut. You little bitch. You killed me so you could have it all.”

It was an accident, Gus tried to say, but found he had no voice. His body ignored his commands to rise; it lay like a leaden block.

“You killed me, but you won’t get what you want. You’ll always be miserable you dumb fucking blond bonehead. You will be in hell for the rest of your life.”

Gus woke up, his cry still strangled in his throat, his heart thundering in his chest. He knew instantly he’d been dreaming, but knowing didn’t slow his heart. He closed his eyes and breathed in, out.

A frosty breeze swept across his face, rustling his hair. He opened his eyes slowly, confused, and focused on the living room.

The window beside the television was open. Gus thought instantly of the fire escape, clinging below the window like a rusty skeleton. He’d heard of burglars climbing up that way and breaking in through the window. He’d asked the landlord to put bars on the window, but the task kept being put off. Next week, then next month…

He slipped out of bed, and the cold slapped him. His feet shivered against the icy floor, and the breeze became a gust of wind cutting across his body. He shivered in his briefs.

Halfway across the living room, he saw the figure standing beside the window, and he froze.

The curtain almost hid the man. In the shadow, he seemed a part of it, a shifting angle of darkness. One moment he would be there; the next he would slip away like the night wind.

“Marshall—” Gus’s throat closed up and he couldn’t speak, couldn’t even repeat the name. His heart felt like it had stopped beating altogether.

Marshall’s skin was white with a blue cast over it, damp where his hair was plastered to his forehead. His lips were pinched with cold, but when he breathed, billows of steam rolled through the cold night air.

Gus’s knees buckled, and he staggered back until he hit the edge of the futon and sat hard on it. His throat opened enough to let out a long groan. Marshall was dead. Gus had seen the crack in the back of his skull. He’d cleaned up the blood with his own hands. He’d watched the body sink into the Hudson River.

“Augustus,” Marshall said without moving, his voice as deep as Gus had ever heard it.

“You’re dead,” Gus ground out. He closed his eyes and opened them again. Marshall was still there. “I saw you die.”

Marshall tilted his head to one side, and his eyes glowed in a sliver of light, golden-green and reflective.

“Jesus.” A chill ran down Gus’s spine. He sat very still. “Marshall.”

Marshall stepped out of the shadows, into the dim yellow light spilling in from outside. A spot of blood stained his shirt collar, reminding Gus of the bloody red pool that had gathered on the cement outside. His stomach turned, and he gagged.

Marshall was there in an instant, kneeling in front of the futon, reaching up. For a minute, his hands looked like white skeleton hands, and Gus gasped. Then the hands clamped down on his shoulders, and he choked on his own gasp. Marshall was pale and shaking with cold, but when he touched Gus’s skin, his hands burned like brands.

“Gus,” Marshall said in the same deep voice. He stared up, his blue lips parted in an expression of abject wonder. “Show me your eyes.”

“What? You—?” Gus struggled against the grip, but Marshall’s fingers dug into his shoulders like the talons of a bird of prey. He started to breathe faster, and his heart hurt.

“Please.” Marshall whispered, lifting his face. His eyes glittered wetly. He smelled rank like the river, and his clothes were waterlogged, frozen in some places and dripping in others. He shook like a skeleton in the wind. “Please.”

Every instinct Gus had told him to break away and run. Get away as fast as he could, because something was very wrong with Marshall. Marshall was dead; Marshall couldn’t come back. But the other part of Gus—the part that had urged him to tell Marshall his feelings on a sunny hill in the park, the part that still loved Marshall no matter what had passed between them—took over.

He leaned down and touched Marshall’s upturned face, brushed his knuckles across Marshall’s cheek. Marshall’s face was even warmer than his hands, so hot it made Gus’s hands ache to touch him. But his skin was pale and bloodless there, too.

“Marshall,” he whispered, clasping the long face.

Marshall stared into his eyes, his lips parted. “You’re beautiful,” he said. “You’re so beautiful.” He closed his eyes and turned his cheek, nuzzling against the palm of Gus’s hand.

Gus squeezed his own eyes shut and leaned over. His breath froze in his lungs as he pushed his hands into Marshall’s damp hair. He pressed his fingers against Marshall’s skull, skimmed them along the back of Marshall’s head.

The crack was gone. The awkward jut of bone where the back of Marshall’s skull had split open was smooth and solid under Gus’s fingers. He searched frantically, half-sobbing as his fingers raced over bone and scalp and hair.

“Gus,” Marshall breathed in a hot rush of air.

Gus fisted in hands in Marshall’s hair and dragged him closer, clung to him violently, shaking now almost as badly as Marshall was. He told himself to let go, told himself he was dreaming, but he held onto Marshall and cried, hiding his tears in Marshall’s hair. “Marshall,” he said when he could speak. “Oh God, Marshall.”

Marshall tried to wrap his arms around Gus, but he was trembling too badly. Gus pulled at his shirt, popping buttons and ripping sodden fabric. Marshall couldn’t seem to coordinate his limbs well enough to help\. Gus tugged his shoes off and pulled his jeans off. When Marshall was naked, still shaking, Gus shoved him onto the futon. “Get under the blankets,” he said, and went to close the window.

“Gus,” Marshall said, and Gus turned back to see him curled beneath the blankets, all of him covered but his face and one white arm as he held out a hand toward Gus.

Dizziness rushed up and blackened Gus’s vision. He closed his eyes and stood still. He wasn’t dreaming. Marshall had come back. He didn’t know how and maybe it didn’t matter. It was a second chance.

When he opened his eyes, the dizziness was gone. He crossed the room and slid under the covers beside Marshall, grasping his hand. “It’s okay,” he said, rubbing his other hand up and down Marshall’s back, feeling Marshall’s strange heat radiating against him. “It’s all okay now, I promise. You’re safe. I love you.”

Marshall’s breath deepened almost at once. In minutes, he was asleep with his head on Gus’s chest and Gus’s arms around him. And despite Gus’s determination to stay awake, he was soon asleep as well.