Charles and Richard Chapter 17

Richard was sitting calmly in the same spot he’d always sat at age fourteen, waiting for Charles. In front of him was a plate of spaghetti piled high with meatballs. The reddish sunset light streaming through the window, the smell of spaghetti and meatballs filling the whole house, Cherry wagging her tail at his feet, the spaghetti plates on the table, the well-used glass cups—everything was exactly as it had always been. Except for Richard, sitting there before it all.

The slightly thin, pretty fourteen-year-old kid had vanished without a trace, and in his place sat a handsome stranger—an eighteen-year-old boy with gorgeous blond hair, grinning broadly. Charles couldn’t bring himself to sit across from Richard and eat. He looked at the dinner table, then at his parents’ faces, then Richard’s, then Cherry’s, and without a word, went upstairs. He crawled up into the attic and locked the door.

In the attic, Charles left the window open and looked outside. After some time, the front door opened and Richard came out. He must have heard something from Charles’s parents, because the moment he stepped out, he looked up at the roof. There was no time to avoid it—their eyes met. Richard waved. Charles’s cheeks and earlobes flushed bright red in an instant. Even though he knew it was too dark for Richard to see, he closed the window and ducked back into the attic as if fleeing. His heart was pounding violently.

When had he come back, why had he come back, where was he living now, what had happened with school, why was he working as a mechanic—the truth was, Charles had a mountain of things he wanted to ask Richard. And the one thing he wanted to ask most of all was: why did you leave?

Charles spent a long time thinking alone about what had happened that day—the day they’d both sobbed at the front door as children. Even then, he hadn’t thought Richard had taken anything from him. It was true that there were times he’d resented him, but he hadn’t always hated him. Sometimes he’d even liked him. He’d just never admitted it. Anyway, that day, Charles had simply been angry. He’d rarely ever gotten angry at Richard. He’d been upset and hurt by Richard plenty of times, but it had always just ended with him acting petty (and even when he acted petty, Richard never seemed affected). He’d only truly lost his temper three times in his life.

The first time, when his father had called both Charles and Richard his two sons. That had hurt. The second time, the day of the pool party. That had hurt too. The third time, when he’d asked Richard why he liked everyone except him. That had hurt enormously. Charles hadn’t told Richard to leave—he’d just been angry. Angry that Richard didn’t like him back. And upon hearing that, Richard—instead of liking Charles back—left him instead.

As time passed, Charles came to understand. Richard was a pitiful kid. He saw his parents maybe once a month, or perhaps once every two months. Every morning, he ate alone. When he went home, there was no one there to greet him. There were always nannies and bodyguards by his side, but they weren’t his family.

That kid must have learned to bathe himself from a very young age. How to wash his hair, clean behind his ears, scrub between his toes. He probably never had a mother to read him bedtime stories until he fell asleep, nor a father who would stay by his side all day nursing him when he was sick. Charles gradually understood why Richard had loved his parents and sisters so much, why he’d come to Charles’s house every single day. And he began to think that maybe, just maybe, Richard had liked him too. Charles had just been too young to realize it.

Charles wanted to apologize to Richard when he came back. He wanted to say he was sorry, that he’d been too young back then to understand him. The only thing he hadn’t come to understand, even with the passage of time, was why Richard had left him. Why, of all things? When Charles found out Richard had left, he’d cried for an entire month. He hadn’t even cried that much when his sisters had moved away. He just couldn’t understand it. Why, why on earth had Richard left… and so much time had passed.

Children tend to forget past memories quickly. Charles had been hurt and sad for a long time, but one morning he woke up and suddenly felt a little better. The next day, he felt a little better still. And so, little by little, he got better, until eventually, even thinking about Richard no longer brought tears to his eyes. After all that time, all that remained for Charles was a fading question—why had he left—and no more emotion beyond that.

Or so he’d thought.

That was about six months after Richard had left. Charles hadn’t fully recovered his spirits yet, but he was feeling much better than before. He’d hang out with friends, roaming around various parts of town, sneaking into half-built houses on the outskirts to smoke cigarettes in secret or bring game consoles and play all night. He always stuck with his group of friends, but he was never particularly active. He smoked often enough, but he never played games. He’d just half-lie on a pile of bricks, watch his friends, and doze off.

On one such ordinary day, one of his friends secretly brought a Playboy magazine—the very one that had caused quite a stir among them before. Charles squeezed in with the others to sneak a peek at it. Up until then, there’d been no problem. They passed the magazine around secretly, and some idiot kids ran off to the bathroom. The magazine was quietly returned to the friend’s bag. By the time Charles parted ways with his friends and went home, the thought of Playboy was half-erased from his mind.

Charles fell asleep just like any other night, but that night he had a wet dream. In the dream, Charles was transported back several months. He was back on that day when he’d first seen Playboy at someone’s party. The day Richard had been there, too. Charles remembered that he’d briefly made eye contact with Richard that day. In the dream, it was the same. The only difference was that in the dream, when he made eye contact with Richard, everyone else disappeared.

At some point, they were sitting incredibly close. Close enough that their knees touched. Richard placed his hand on the bulge in Charles’s pants. Charles sat still and looked at Richard. Richard’s hand was lukewarm. He leaned in close to Charles and slipped his hand inside his pants. Charles was so close to Richard that their lips were almost touching, staring at his face.

The wet dreams featuring Richard continued for nearly three months after that. He couldn’t completely forget Richard. In fact, he’d forgotten many things about him. Just when he thought he’d finally forgotten him completely, Charles would find himself, on some night, back at that day of the party, the day he’d seen Playboy. He and Richard would press their foreheads together and fondle each other’s genitals.

Richard had quite literally changed Charles’s life. Charles realized he was bisexual.

Richard, whom he’d met again in his senior year of high school, was vastly different from that fourteen-year-old kid. But that night, Charles went back once more to that fourteen-year-old party where he’d first seen Playboy.

In the dream, Charles inevitably made eye contact with Richard. Richard wasn’t a fourteen-year-old kid anymore. He was an eighteen-year-old young man, sitting with the sun at his back, grinning as he held the earbuds. Richard came closer to Charles on his knees. Charles looked at Richard, holding his breath. They sat so close their knees overlapped. Richard’s hand—firm and roughened from work—spread Charles’s knees and pushed between his legs. That hand, unlike before, was astonishingly hot. Startled by the body heat, Charles’s eyes flew wide open.

He quite literally woke up. He stared blankly at the ceiling, blinking. He lifted the blanket slightly and found himself still erect. Charles pulled the blanket tighter and turned over, but it was no use. In the end, he curled up tightly and masturbated. He thought of Richard’s hand, the one that had touched him in the dream.