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.After a while we part, but our foreheads are still touching.“So are you bi?” I ask.“I’m a Bootsmosexual,” he laughs.“Yeah, I must be a little bi.”“But you never experimented with a guy before?”“Never wanted to.Until you.Never a lot of things, McHenry, until I met you.I don’t know what it is, but it is.”He pulls me to his mouth by the back of my head and the kiss is deeper and fuller and more erotic than before.“Did everything I could to be patient till this thing played out.Hid up in the crow’s nest as much as I could.Distracted myself with Mariana.But man I want you so fucking bad, McHenry.”He leans back into the dewy moss and pulls me along with him so that I’m lying on top of him.Through our swimsuits our erections grind together and I know it’s going to feel like a miracle when we’re not wearing them anymore.Without taking my mouth away from his I slide a hand between our bellies and try to push my suit down.I expose enough of my cock so that I can feel his treasure trail tickling against the head.“You’re packing some heat down there,” he laughs.“This time it knows you want it.”Just as I’m pressing Clemente’s hand against my cock, a flashlight beam lashes my eyes.“Guys, I was starting to think— Oh.Oh.” It’s Colby, quickly dropping the beam, lighting up the foliage around his sneakers as though he’s standing in green fire.I roll off Clemente, hitch up my swimsuit, rock up on one elbow.“Colby, what are you doing?”“You were gone for so long and you don’t have your phone, Clemente, and—” He stops.The flashlight beam is on us again.Behind its light he’s a dark silhouette.“Boots, you’re—” His voice is quivering with some mixture of surprise and anger.“You’re seeing my brother in the morning.In the morning.You’re doing this now, when he’s right over there? What are you doing?”“Colby, dude,” Clemente says.“We can explain,” I add.My face is hot.In the darkness I can’t be sure where Colby is looking but it feels like he’s looking at me.“I’m not the one you owe an explanation to,” he says.“In fact I don’t want to talk to you at all.”Then the light swings a wide arc across the lava flow and Colby becomes a dark shadow as he follows it away into the forest.I rub a hand down my face as though to pull away the shock.I’m lying on my side, and after a minute Clemente puts a hand under my arm and traces circles on my back.“We should’ve waited,” I tell him.“We should’ve done this right.”“That’s what I wanted.See? Sometimes you need to just chill in the trees, let things play out.”I sigh and drop my head back on the moss.“Look on the bright side,” he adds, head resting on his bicep, “at least he didn’t break our femurs, right?”“Yet.We should probably give him some space tonight, though.”“Agreed.Better safe than sorry.After all that hiking we did today, I can sleep right here.” He turns onto his back and laces his fingers against his sternum, looking up at the dark sky beyond the trees.“Know something, Clemente? If it had been you who got simu-killed, I wouldn’t have needed a friend to push me to find you.And I wouldn’t have gone back and forth about Piper in the meantime, or dallied with Natan, no matter how cute he is.If it had been you I would’ve been swimming to exile island, and nothing—not sharks, not pirates—nothing could’ve kept me from you.And I’m so glad you want to know it.”He doesn’t say anything but I can see his sweet smile.“Come here.”He reaches out and pulls me firmly against him by the back of my shoulder, and rolls onto his side in the same motion, giving me his back to spoon.He squeezes my fist against his belly and yawns once, twice, his back expanding against my chest.I focus on the feel of his skin against mine.It’s the last thing I’m aware of before I fall asleep.CHAPTER 29Amid sunbeams we wake up looking like lizards or sea monsters or something, for all the scaly imprints the night on the moss has pressed into our skin.“You’re a mutant,” I whisper, tracing the squiggles on his ribs.He laughs and bats my hand away.Even as I brush moss off my skin, and even though my toenails are black with soil, I don’t feel dirty.Lifting my arm, I find I don’t even smell.My hair is wet with dew and my fingers are almost as pruney as they were after our stint in the ocean.I feel clean and fresh and awake.And ready to finish the mission.Clemente is too; I can see it in his eyes.We walk back to the camp.On the ledge Piper is rolling up his space blanket and Colby is sitting beside a packed backpack, looking out at the inlet and at his brother’s island on the other side.He turns, throws a PowerBar at me hard enough to show me things aren’t cool.But I catch it and thank him and tear open the wrapper.“I don’t know why you liked the humidity over this nice breeze,” Piper says.“Did you actually sleep?”His tone makes it clear he thinks something’s up between Clemente and me, but he doesn’t appear to know what.I try to make eye contact with Colby, to pass a signal of thanks for keeping quiet about what he saw last night, but he’s already putting on his backpack and walking away.As we make our way slowly down to the water I rehearse my speech to Ryan in my head.It sounds dumb and trite, but it’s honest.Honesty will give us the clean end Clemente wants.While I’m resting on a rock outcropping thirty feet above the waves, Piper climbs over beside me and says, in a whisper, “You don’t have to do this, you know, B.”“Do what?”He gestures toward the island.“Go over there.Stir things up
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