The River Leith (11 page)

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I do really weird things now. It’s like my body just does what it wants sometimes. I don’t know why.”

“It’s okay.” Zach swallowed thickly. “Don’t worry about it. The movie’s starting.”

Leith chanced a glance at Zach, and found his greenish eyes warm and tired, but not at all offended. He smiled, and Zach turned slightly on his side, curling his hands up under his chin. Leith had to tear his eyes away in order not to miss the opening of the film.

The beginning of the movie was a little confusing and chaotic to Leith, made all the more so by the thick British accents. He was embarrassed that he had a hard time deciphering them, and was tempted to turn on the closed captioning to make sure he wasn’t missing any important plot points. It seemed strange he would own this movie. It was apparently about relationships, and he was a bigger fan of action
—
or, embarrassingly, musicals, though occasionally he enjoyed an art-house flick so long as it was absurd and beautifully filmed.

It was only a few scenes in that Zach’s body went slack. Leith held very still, listening to Zach breathing, slow and steady. With their heads so close, Leith could smell his shampoo and cologne, and a quick glance at Zach’s face proved he was fast asleep.

When Zach shifted, moving so that his head rested on Leith’s shoulder and his body went even more relaxed, any guilt Leith felt that he’d selfishly kept his exhausted friend from going home was instantly overridden by a rushing current of desire, and a thrill of peaceful rightness.

Leith nearly turned the movie off several times, but the idea of waking Zach with his movement always stopped him. Although it wasn’t only for Zach’s benefit. Every glance at Zach’s sweet, sleeping face threatened to overwhelm him, and his fattening cock and tingling nipples put to rest any doubts he’d tried to feed himself over the last few days about the reality of his attraction.

He wanted Zach, and he wanted him
badly
.

By forcing his eyes on the screen, Leith faced the growing realization that whoever he’d been before, he’d definitely been aware of his attraction to men. Watching the two boys on screen kiss while the man next to him snuggled closer until his head rested on Leith’s chest was exciting in a way he’d never in his memory known with a woman
—
even in the midst of sex itself.

Leith’s cock grew achingly hard, and he yearned to touch Zach’s hair, to feel it feather between his fingers. He could feel his heartbeat pounding restlessly through him, beating in his cock, his nipples, and batting its wings against his throat.

Eventually he couldn’t watch the movie anymore. Blind with desire, he wanted more than anything else in the world to roll Zach onto his back and rut against him until he came in his sweats. Reluctantly he disengaged himself from Zach and unplugged the DVD player before slipping into the bathroom.

In the darkness, Leith took hold of himself. Fantasy images flowed through him, strange and intimate: soft skin, and Zach’s mouth on his cock
—
wet, wet, wet, and strong. God, so strong, sucking him and kissing him, and taking him into his throat…

Leith groaned and his dick swelled eagerly in his hand, the rush of blood and clenching need in his gut wrenching free a gasp. Moving his hand over his cock quickly now, he imagined Zach’s tongue twisting over the head, sucking and taking him deep. He imagined Zach’s hot green-blue eyes staring up at him as his mouth
—
his beautiful, rich mouth
—
distended around the shaft
—

Leith grunted, humping the air as an orgasm ripped through him. He bit down on his lip, pleasure and relief releasing in his body with each spasm. When he could breathe again, he flipped on the light. The flood of brightness brought some semblance of sanity to him, and even though he was wrung out and shaky, the reality of come on his hand, the floor, and the underside of the sink captured his attention away from the compelling images of his fantasies.

After quickly cleaning up his mess, he bent to splash cold water on his face. Then he lifted his head to gaze into the eyes of a man who was absolutely, positively at least a little bit queer.

Zach was still asleep in Leith’s bed, his clothes rumpled and his hair mussed. It was breathtaking. Leith swallowed hard, and as though of its own volition his hand reached out to touch. Zach stirred and opened his eyes, and Leith snatched his hand away.

“Hey,” Zach mumbled.

“Sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You okay?” He was clearly still mostly asleep and not aware of what he was saying.

“Yeah. Just tired.”

Zach said, “Okay,” and then turned onto his side and fell immediately back to sleep. Leith waited until he was sure that Zach would stay put before curling up in the fold-out soft chair. It wasn’t bad, like Arthur had said. He watched Zach reach for the remaining pillow and clutch it tightly.

Leith pondered Zach’s sleep-slack face. What if Zach knew how Leith had felt about him? What if he’d pitied him? Because surely if Zach cared about him, too, they would have been together? Wouldn’t they have been more than just good friends?

Later Leith finally fell asleep counting Zach’s beautiful, slow, and tender breaths.

THE NEXT MORNING

VLOG ENTRY #5

INT. BAR – BOOTH – DAY

Zach brushes a hand over his wet hair and smiles softly.

ZACH

Hello, darlings. Well, it was quite a night. No, not like that. I stayed to watch a movie with Leith, and ended up crashing for the whole night. Leith was a perfect gentleman and took the chair. Yes, I inadvertently kicked a head trauma patient out of his bed. Now I’m at work, and I’m the only one here so far except for Tony in the kitchen. I’ve got a ton of stuff to do, but all I want is to be with Leith.

He smiles more broadly and waves a hand at the camera.

So instead I’m talking about him with all of you. He’s doing better, which is good.

Zach’s smile fades.

He still doesn’t remember me, for the record. It’s like…I want to be with him every minute, but it hurts at the same time. Still, it doesn’t matter how I feel. He needs me. I see it when I’m with him
—
the look in his eyes that tells me that some part of him recognizes that we click together.

There have been moments, small flashes, where…am I kidding myself? I don’t think I am, I really don’t, though I suppose you’ll all tell me I am. But there’s something there.

Sometimes he touches me, or we brush against each other, and there’s this look on his face…and believe me, it’s a look I know quite well. He
likes
touching me. A lot. And it surprises him, but he doesn’t pull away. He was asking me questions about this gay movie, and I just couldn’t answer. I’m afraid that if I let myself hope…

Zach sighs and shakes his head.

I can’t help it. I have to have some hope. I love him, and I want whatever I can have of him. If I’m fooling myself, so be it. I’ll take his friendship, and I’ll give him everything I can for as long as he’ll let me.

Don’t get me wrong; it hurts to be around him, loving him and knowing he doesn’t remember anything about who we were. But I can take it. I can do anything if it’s for him.

Zach bites his lip. He runs his hands through his damp hair and takes a long, deep breath before continuing.

What I can’t risk is losing him. Not right now. I’ll keep what we were to myself for the time being. His doctor agrees with me, actually. Arthur and our friends understand that the doctor wants it this way for Leith at the moment, but I don’t think they know all of this is also for me.

He lapses into silence for a few seconds.

If it has to come out
—
when
it has to come out, and I know it will, then I’ll deal with the fallout then. I know when he leaves the hospital he’ll have to know. Of course he has to know from me before he finds out from anyone else. But right now I can’t handle it if he rejects me.

His face twists.

I remember how it was when he first felt attracted to me; how he was cruel at first in his refusal to accept his new understanding of himself. I can’t handle him being cruel right now. I’m willing to risk putting it off another day or another year
—
whatever it takes to stay in his life. That’s what I want to do.

Zach claps his hands lightly together, and leans forward.

I’d better get to work. I feel finally able to breathe a little again. Until next time, my loves.

Have you ever been to India during monsoon season?” Dr. Thakur asked.

Leith peeled a petal off the rose he held and dropped it to the ground, shaking his head. “No. I’ve never been to India at all.” Then he rolled his eyes at Dr. Thakur. “That I know of. Unless I’ve been in the last three years and no one has told me.”

Dr. Thakur smiled. “No, as far as I know you weren’t in India during any of your lost years. It wasn’t a trick question.”

Leith pulled a few more petals from the rose. He held them on his fingertips, examining the bright orange color at the middle of the petals, and the fuchsia on the ends.

“A few years back my wife, Bhavanha, wanted to return to India for her grandmother’s funeral. It was the first time she’d been back since she was a small girl, and I attended the funeral with her.”

Nodding, Leith brought the petals to his lips and blew, watching as they floated on the breeze and landed a few feet away in the gravel of the path.

“It was monsoon season, and so my introduction to India was, well, it was very wet.”

Leith listened, but not very intently. He didn’t know why Dr. Thakur was suddenly getting personal with him, but he supposed it was better than rehashing his own feelings again. It was getting very boring to say, over and over:
It’s frustrating not to understand. It’s confusing when I feel things that don’t match my experience. It scares me when I’m in a situation and I can’t be who I know the other person wants me to be.

He hadn’t told Dr. Thakur about the hard-ons he consistently got around Zach, or the intense emotions Zach brought up in him. Both the thought of being with Zach and being without him made him tremble and ache. He still didn’t know how to even begin to express those feelings.

“In the village where my wife’s grandmother had died, there was a river, and it was wildly flooded by the monsoon waters. Every day this group of boys would trudge out in the mud and stand by the side of the river, pushing and shoving, and daring each other to go first.”

Go first, Leith thought. Sometimes he felt torn into different people. One who wanted to hold back and wait
—
to not to push anything because the answers were surely coming. Another who wanted to tell the world to go fuck itself because he was starting a new life without any of the old hang-ups to deal with. And another who wanted to curl up on a bed with Zach and never leave. They all seemed to be playing a game of chicken with each other.

“Have you ever swum across a river?” Dr. Thakur asked.

“Sure,” Leith answered. “Lots of times out camping.”

“These boys, though, they weren’t just swimming across a river. They were swimming across a
monsoon-flooded
river, with floating tree limbs, and debris rushing downstream. To make it across required daring, strong muscles, powerful lungs, a lot of endurance, and most importantly a ton of will-power and determination. And yet these young boys would jump in and risk it just for fun.”

Leith could imagine it. It must be universal for young boys to egg each other on into doing something stupid.

“I was thinking about them this morning while reviewing your file. You have several options. You can leap back into whatever life you had before
—
go with the current, and wash out to wherever it is you end up. Or you can do something more than that. You can push yourself to find out who you are, no matter what memories you have or don’t have. You can swim against the current until you reach the other side of the river.”

Leith pondered it as he plucked another rose petal. Time was like a river, and memory was a current. Time flowed on without ceasing, no matter what or who tried to get in its way. But memory was changeable, and even losable. Like a current it could carry a person far away from their starting point, leaving them somewhere they might never have intended to be.

Like remembering how Zach’s lips looked as soft as the rose petals Leith held on his fingertips, and that his eyes were sometimes as green as the leaves on the rosemary shrub filling the garden corner. Leith sighed deeply and dropped the petals. He didn’t understand all this mooning over a guy, and yet he couldn’t seem to make himself stop thinking about Zach, or to feel anything less than thrilled whenever Zach walked through the door.

“Leith? Are you still with me?”

He nodded.

“What I’m saying is that if a flood comes your way
—
a flood of anger, or of fear
—
don’t let it carry you away. Fight that current and cross that river. Anyone can go with the flow. Be more than that. Challenge yourself.”

“Okay,” Leith said. “I’ll try.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear that.” Dr. Thakur stood up and reached for Leith’s hand. He allowed Dr. Thakur to pull him up to stand as well. “It’s been a pleasure, Leith.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I’ll be referring your case to an outpatient counselor. Tomorrow you go home.”