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Stanley Uris had become a distant memory.
The Stanley from those hot summer days where the Losers would lay down on the grass. Stan would stretch his long limbs across the flowers, letting the bumblebees buzz around him, still as a rock for fear of getting stung. He had his eyes closed and a slight frown on his face, like he was concentrated on some painful pattern inside his eyelids. Mike thought that it looked like he was willing time to stop, like if he focused enough the Earth would cease spinning and he’d finally have some room to think.
Mike thought that in those moments he looked like one of those nymphs he read about in old books; if nymphs were blasé, brave Jewish boys.
And he always had half a mind in those moments to run his fingers across his skin, across the fine hair on his legs, across the places where the Sun had warmed him. Run his hands over Stan’s arms and face, twisting his head this way and that, so he could see the way the muscles on his neck moved.
When Stan left, Mike felt like he took Summer with him; like Stan brought the season with little puffs of his breath, like every sentence from his mouth was a new note coming from a songbird. The days felt quiet and dull, and Mike would run his fingers across white petals of flowers, imagining them pink with a summer flush.
He even dreamt of him. He’d see Stan laying on the grass, eyes closed, breathing deep open-mouthed breaths that blew out the summer wind. He’d see the movement of the curls on his head, and they’d move the currents on rivers. And then, Mike would gently touch his legs, feel all the mosquito bites and old scars that lived on that part of Stan’s body. Other times he’d see Stan floating on his back in the waters at the Quarry, his skin gleaming a wet glow under the hot Sun, and Stan would whisper small winds that rustled the leaves of trees, and Mike would float on his back in the sky, looking at him from above.
He tried his hardest to keep those images close to him, remember the exact way his hair curled, the way he squinted his brown eyes in the sunlight, the way his lips moved around the syllables of his name. Mike.
But inevitably, he forgot. The exact timbre of Stan’s voice was lost to the sounds of flapping bird wings, just like the color of his eyes melted and mixed with the browns of earth and honey. His face and smell and height blown away like smoke.
Stanley Uris became a ghost, leaving the creaks of his footsteps echoing in Mike’s head.
That night, he saw Stan, floating on his back on the grass, synching his heartbeat to the thrum of thunder from a distant summer storm. And Mike was floating beside him, staring at his close-eyed profile, until Stan took a deep breath that sent a gust of wind their way and turned to Mike, wood-brown eyes open and looking at him. His face held that serious, almost bored expression he always wore, until he lifted his arm, moving the course of the storm, and touched his warm fingertips to the corner of Mike’s lips. Mike didn’t move from fear of getting stung.
The soft raindrops fell, kissing Mike’s skin, and Stan finally directed a small, buzzing smile at him, turning all the fruit ripe and all the caterpillars into butterflies.
When Mike woke up, it was to the brown ceiling of his room, and a small bird chirping outside his window.