Page 27 of Best Friends, Tennessee

That one was a real stretch.

Ori could be quiet when he decided to be, but he sure as shit wasn’tshy. I was pretty sure I’d never known anyone more confident, really.

A couple of guys at school had bullied him real bad. He had rotten fish shoved in his backpack, got followed home after school, and had Gatorade poured down his back in the halls. Whatever shitty thing the guys could cook up that day, Ori got the brunt of it. Once, they’d nabbed one of his sketchbooks from his hand and ran off with it. Later, Ori found them burning it with a Zippo lighter, standing on a side street near the school. One of the guys’ dads had come out of the house nearby, and when Ori expected him to intervene, all he’d done was laugh and call his son a “wild one.” Even the adults were awful to Ori, sometimes.

Ori didn’t tell me most of that until later, of course.

He never liked feeling like he had to be protected or defended. But it pissed me off to this day.

I could have done something.

I could have done so much more, if Ori’s pride hadn’t always gotten in the way.

I turned out the light in the living room. My chest was tense as I walked down the narrow hallway toward my bedroom door, just across from the guest room. Closer than Ori had been in years, and yet it felt more dead between us than it ever had before.

I threw on my sleep shorts, turned out the light in my room, and went to bed.

5

ORI

You think you know a guy… until you’ve pictured him face-fucking another dude’s mouth about fifty times this week.

I woke up with a start, with only faint moonlight coming in from the window.

I’d heard something. Maybe I’d just dreamed it?

I turned over in bed, seeing that the clock by the table read 2:00 a.m. I closed my eyes, about to sink back into sleep again when I heard the sound again, unmistakable.

“No,” Finn was saying, his voice loud and deep. He said it again, clear from his bedroom across the hall. “Fuck,” he said a moment later.

Shit. Maybe there was a wolf spider in his room. Finn hated spiders, and I’d always been a little less freaked out by them.

I tossed off the sheets, getting up out of bed and heading across the hallway. The hardwood was cool under my feet. The air in the house still faintly smelled like caramel.

“Finn?” I asked as I gently pushed open his door.

I was surprised to see the light in his room wasn’t on. He wasn’t even awake, actually, I saw as I took a couple of steps into the bedroom.

“Fuck,” I heard him say again, his voice full of fear.

I realized he was deep in a nightmare. I padded across the room, going to his side. I could see the faint outline of him in the dim room—moonlight came through the window, and he always slept with the curtains open.

“Hey,” I said softly, putting my hand on his shoulder. He didn’t wake right away, and his breathing was a little heavy. I shook his body, giving his shoulder a squeeze as I sat down on the edge of the bed beside him. “You’re okay. Wake up, Finn.”

He exhaled as his eyes finally opened, and he reached out to grab my arm on instinct. “Oh my God,” he said, blinking a few times and taking deep breaths. “Holy hell.”

“It’s okay,” I said, rubbing his upper arm. “Just a nightmare. Seems like a bad one.”

He pulled in a long breath, sitting up a little in bed and propping up his pillow behind him.

He looked down for a moment, staring at the bedsheets.

“It was so bad. The, uh… the horses were agitated about something, and they all started running out onto the highway, and I was so worried they were going to get hit—and then I saw Kira there, too, and she ran too far, and I started bawling in the dream. I felt like I had no control, Ori. Fuck.”

Kira was Finn’s beloved childhood cat that had died a little while before he came to stay with our family. He’d always missed her, and had carried around a little picture of her in his wallet forever.

I leaned in and put my arms around him in a hug.

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