“Or Joan of Arc, or Mary Magdalene.” I stretch my legs out again. I never did like to sit on my legs. Ben laughs. “Well, think about it, Ben. Do you think a soul would be just male or female?”
He gets serious and leans back with his hands stretched out on the floor behind him. “I guess not.”
“I think we’re drawn to the soul of another person, not whether they’re male or female.”
“So maybe we were a famous couple.” He laughs a little nervously, so I turn it into a game. “George and Martha Washington.”
“Anthony and Cleopatra,” he throws back.
“Romeo and Juliet.”
He stretches out a leg and kicks me. “They’re not real.”
“Adam and Eve.”
He wiggles around, moving his leg this way and that, trying to get comfortable. “Only you would think we could be the first couple ever.”
“Well, it does seem like we’ve always known each other.” I hold my arms out for him to come back and sit in front of me again, then gather him in. “But you’re definitely Eve.”
He twists in my arms and it turns into a wrestling match. “You’re Eve, not me.”
Wrestling turns into kissing, then into a little more. And all thoughts of spirits and reincarnation vanish.
“HEY!”
Ben runs to me and we hug fiercely. I haven’t seen him for two weeks, and even for an eighteen-year-old, it feels like forever. He went with his family to visit his grandparents in Massachusetts. “I’ve missed you so much,” he says.
I purr into his ear. “Me too. Let’s go to the tree house.”
We practically run there and climb the stairs so fast I’m afraid one of us is going to fall. “Ben.” I gather him into my arms and practically tackle him to the floor. I kiss his neck as I rip open his shirt as fast as I can.
He laughs. “Take it easy. I’m running out of excuses to give Ma for why I lose my buttons so easily.”
I laugh too, but barely slow down. I need to have him shirtless. He’s every bit as hungry, though, because one of my buttons gives way and hits the wooden floor. We don’t even get out of our pants this time. We simply rub against each other, lying there on the floor, first me on top, then him, rubbing our hands down each other’s chest and back and arms, gripping each other’s butts through our trousers.
I’m lying on my back, spent, and hold Ben close to my chest as he rests half on, half off of me. We’re getting too tall to lie like this up here. It’s cramped, but there’s no way I’m moving. “You know, it’s starting to get colder and our mas aren’t going to believe the excuse of us swimming in the lake for why our underwear is soaked.”
I squirm, uncomfortably reminded of the wet cream in my shorts. “Yeah, well, I’m not going to stop washing it out, that’s for sure. I’d rather hear the ‘you’ll catch your death of cold’ lecture for swimming in our underwear when it’s too cold to go in the river than hear whatever she might say about having sex outside of marriage—let alone with another man.”
“You can tell her you used your hand.” But he shivers, no doubt imagining having that discussion with his own mother.
“That’s not much better.” I deepen my voice to sound like our pastor. “The sin of self-satisfaction is worthy of hellfire….”
Ben turns serious and raises up on his elbow. “He says it’s a sin for us to be together too… two men, I mean. He doesn’t know about us specifically.”
“I know, Ben.” I look up at him and stroke his sweat-slick hair. “That’s why we’re so careful. They all think we’re wrong. Or would if they knew. Closer than brothers they can live with. So that’s what we’ll say.”
“Yeah.” He flops over on his back beside me, quiet for a moment. “Do you think it’s a sin, Patrick?”
I prop myself on my elbow, so our positions are reversed from just a moment ago. I look into his big, doe-like eyes. “What I feel when I’m with you, Ben? That can’t be wrong. We’re two halves of the same whole. I thoroughly believe that. Why would God do that if He’s going to make it wrong to be together?” I see his eyes twinkle and know he feels the same way, but he’s not as sure as I am. “And besides, if reincarnation exists—”
“Which the pastor says it doesn’t.”
I go on as if he hasn’t said anything. “Then it’s the spirit that matters, not the body. And we’ve already decided we’re Adam and Eve, right?”
He laughs. “Yeah, you’re Eve.”
“Am not.” I tickle him until every trace of doubt or sadness is gone from those beautiful eyes.
We’re spooned up together some time later, still in the tree house, when Ben seems to remember something. “Oh hey, I heard a story you’d be interested in.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He twists in my arms to look at me. “My aunt Berta was telling us of a friend of hers, Sara. She swears she reincarnated. Says she remembers her past life.”
“Remembers it?” I’m not sure I believe you’d remember it. I’m not even completely sure I believe in it. It’s just something Ben and I talk about. I’d like it to be true because it makes sense, like it should be true. But I’m not sure.
“Yep. She says she was killed in the Revolutionary War.”
“So she was a man in her last life?”
He shakes his head and gives me a disapproving look. He hates when I jump to conclusions. “Not necessarily. I can think of ways women might have been killed. But yes, she says she was a man, a British soldier.”
“
British
soldier?” I seize on that fact as I rub my hand up his arm where it lays across my waist. As I round his shoulder, I pull him toward me, and we mold together as if that should be our natural state.
“Yeah, well, I doubt souls care which side of a war you’re on either.”
I nod into Ben’s hair, breathing in the scent of sweat and sex and Ben. “Agreed.”
“So she can remember lots of details of her life. Says she was in love with a woman named Kora, and now Kora is her neighbor James. The problem is that James is married.”
“Sounds made up.” I let my lips roam across his neck. The taste of him is as satisfying as his smell. “She just wants to convince James to leave his wife or something.”
“That’s what I thought at first too.” Ben lolls his head onto my shoulder, exposing even more of that delicious skin. “But Aunt Berta says Sara hasn’t said a word to James and doesn’t plan to as long as he’s unavailable.”
“She’s just going to watch her soul mate live with someone else?” The pain that would come with that was unfathomable. I try to imagine watching Ben with someone else. I wouldn’t be able to bear it.
“I guess that happens sometimes, don’t you think?” Ben’s body melts under my ministrations, and I let my hand roam a little farther south. “I mean, if one person remembers and the other doesn’t, or something like that.”
“I don’t know.” I stop short of touching anything that would take our minds off the subject. “I would think they’d still be drawn to each other. If they’re really soul mates.”
“Maybe Sara and James aren’t soul mates.” Ben’s voice is getting husky. He reaches back and strokes as much of my leg as he can reach. “Or maybe Sara is merely nuts like Aunt Mary said when Aunt Berta told us about it.”
I chuckle into his ear, then linger to nibble on the lobe. “How did Sara remember? I mean, did she always know? Was she this little kid who knew what it was like to die in a war?”
Ben means to shake his head, I’m sure of it, but he’s practically boneless by now, so it only rolls around a little, half on my shoulder, half on the floor. “No. Aunt Berta says Sara started remembering lately, when James moved in beside her.”
“So it is only imagination. She just wants James.”
“But why remember her being a man and him being a woman? That’s strange even for her, and Aunt Berta says she
is
strange.” Ben is oozing more and more onto the floor and I push just a little, letting him lie on his back to continue. “She said she thought they were dreams at first, then maybe she had a ghost or she was possessed. But she finally decided she was reincarnated.”
“How do you make that leap?” I lean up on one elbow and peer down at him, intending to cover his body soon with mine, whether or not he’s finished his tale, and kissing that full, kiss-roughened mouth.
“When you don’t have any other explanation, I guess. Sounds like she tried every logical, even illogical, explanation she could think of first.”
I nod as I prop myself on my hands, one on either side of his body. “It does sound that way. But real reincarnation? Really knowing someone who was reincarnated?”
He strokes my arms with his soft hands, long fingers playing over my bare skin. “Well, in your case it would be knowing someone who knows someone who knows someone who says she’s reincarnated.”
He laughs at his own joke, and I can see why he’d think that was funny.
“Yes, not all that reliable, I don’t guess.” I’m losing interest in talking at all, even about something I usually find fascinating. Ben’s lying under me, just waiting to be ravished… whether he knows that yet or not.
He cups his hands to my cheeks. “We tease about it, Patrick, but do you think it could be true? I mean, if one of us should die, do you think we’d be reunited?”
I rifle my fingers through his hair. “I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again. There is no way we’re going to be separated for long. We’re soul mates. If such a thing as reincarnation exists, then I’ll come back for you, or you for me. If it doesn’t, we’ll find another way, or we’ll be together in heaven. Some way we’ll always be together. Don’t you worry about that.”
I can’t resist him a moment longer and bring our mouths together. He cups the back of my head in one hand and runs his other down my side. Then, grabbing my butt, he pulls me closer still. He’s no longer thinking of talking—about anything—any more than I am.
ELLIOT WOKE
in the morning to find Daniel sitting beside his bed, head down, reading a book.
“Where’s Cher?” Elliot mumbled before he was completely coherent.
“Well, good morning, Elliot.” Daniel put his book on his lap. “What a fine morning it is too.” He chuckled and sank back into his chair. “Anyway, Sheri is having breakfast with Malcolm in the cafeteria.”
“Malcolm came up?” Elliot fumbled through the coarse sheets, looking for the bed controls.
“Ye
p
.” Daniel popped the last sound and crossed one leg over the other to make a weird figure four. It was his trademark way to sit. “He’s finished with his trip, so he came to be with Sheri. She’s getting a little stressed out.”
“She doesn’t need to stay here the whole time.” Elliot found the remote and stabbed the button that would lift the head of his bed.
“Tell her that.” Daniel tapped his book on his elevated knee.
“I have.” Elliot had tried several times to get Sheri to at least go back to her hotel room, or stay at Ben’s house, if not go back to SC. She wouldn’t hear of it. She was right there almost constantly. Elliot loved her for it, but he also felt guilty. He didn’t want to run her health down too.
Daniel nodded and continued the tapping. “I imagine you have. Numerous times. Probably constantly, in fact.” He suddenly sat up, took Elliot’s hand, adopted a serious expression, and said gravely. “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you have friends who care about you and want to be with you when you’re sick.” He patted Elliot’s hand. “It’s just your cross to bear.”
“Oh shut up.” Elliot slapped at Daniel’s hand and Daniel pushed his chair back in an exaggerated dodge. He overbalanced, and there was a short time there when Elliot thought Daniel was going to go ass-end up. He recovered, though, and didn’t fall. It was funny to watch him settle back into his four position with exaggerated care.
“So.” Daniel looked around on the floor, probably for his book since it was no longer in his lap. When he couldn’t find it easily, he started tapping his fingers on his knee. “Did you find out that you’re Patrick’s long-lost cousin twice removed on his mother’s side or something?”
Elliot reached back and repositioned his pillow “As far as I can tell, I’m not related at all.”
“I sense a but.” Daniel stopped the tapping. “You have another theory.”
“I don’t know if I do or not. I’ve had interesting dreams the last couple of times I’ve been asleep.”
“And these are more interesting than the other ones because…?” He waved his hand in a bring-it-on gesture.
Elliot shrugged and looked Daniel in the eye, unsure of the reaction he was going to receive. Unsure even of his own feelings about it. “Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“Wow, that took a turn.” Daniel uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. “Until just this second I would have said no, but I have a feeling you’re going to give me a compelling reason to reassess.”
Elliot gave up on simply readjusting the pillow. He pulled it from behind his head and gave it a wicked punch. “I don’t know if it’s a
compelling
argument or not. But the more I consider it, the more it fits, and looking back, I think Ben was hinting at it. Sort of.”
Daniel didn’t say anything but leaned forward even more, resting his elbows on his knees and his head on his hands.
Elliot threw the pillow behind his head and wiggled his head around on it, trying to get comfortable. “These weren’t the only dreams I’ve had where young Patrick and Ben talked about reincarnation. In fact, I think it’s the topic that’s come up most now. Well, that and the whole soul mate thing, but they tie in together.” When Daniel simply nodded and showed no sign of offering his opinion, Elliot continued. “Patrick promised Ben he’d come back for him. I thought that meant to the plantation house. But what if he meant, come back in another life? What if….”
Daniel, damn him, seemed determined not to interrupt or provide an easy end to that sentence. He sat there with his head in his hands, letting Elliot work it all out in his own mind.
“Daniel, could I be Patrick?”
“What do you think?” He cocked his head a little.
“I think you’re acting like a shrink or something and avoiding my question.” Elliot punched the stupid pillow again. It absolutely refused to conform to a position he found comfortable.
“What besides dreams of them talking about reincarnation is causing you to make this leap?” Daniel wasn’t being skeptical. He seemed to simply want Elliot to think it out more. This was one of the reasons Elliot wanted to talk to Daniel and not Sheri. Malcolm might have been open-minded enough too, but he doubted he’d get him alone to talk to him, so Daniel it was.