First Flight by Connor Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

didn’t think so.” Chris nodded and settled down in his seat. Jesse had given him food. Good food: eggs and shrimp and ice cream.
    Silence reigned as they made their way out of the parking lot. Jesse’s curiosity bubbled over again as he stopped for a red light. “Chris?”
    “Yes?”
    “I, uh, I’ve been wondering. You said I was important. Did you mean, you know, important to you?”
    “Yes,” Chris said.
    “Okay. And, uh, you said…. You said you chose me. What’s that mean?”
    “I picked you out,” Chris said, and then he frowned as the strange dream came back to him. You gave it up for something you could not find in the sky. And if I gave it up, that means I have not lost anything.... An idea formed, small and bright and almost as intriguing as the idea of Jesse and boyfriends. So he closed his eyes and tried to remember if he’d known Jesse before . He could remember a tree, heat, and the sounds from a car. “You came to the tree.”
    Jesse frowned at that. “You picked me out because I came to a tree? I’ve been by millions of trees.”
    “No,” Chris said, curling up, his head in his hands and his elbows on his knees. “Singing. You, and the tree, and music, and I knew you, before.”
    “I think I would remember meeting you,” Jesse said as he changed lanes, “especially if it involved a tree and some music.”
    “Summer,” Chris said, running through the few images and sensations once more. “Hot. The tree and singing, and I know it was you . Sometimes, sometimes you and someone else.”
    Jesse made an abrupt turn into a church parking lot and put his car into park. “Wait, Chris, just wait a second, here.” He suddenly remembered, remembered how all of last summer and part of this summer, too, he’d gone down Collins Road to where the giant old oak spread its branches over the road. He remembered parking there, letting music and solitude wash away the thousand irritations of his day.
    He also remembered taking Kevin out there when privacy couldn’t be had anywhere else. He hadn’t been out there in months, though. Not with Kevin, and not to just lie under the tree and listen to music. He’d driven Collins Road but he hadn’t stayed, not since he’d met Christopher.
    “What, do you live out by that big tree on Collins Road? I know some people do,” he said, turning in his seat and looking at Chris.
    “Maybe?” Chris rubbed his face. “I can’t remember.”
    “I never saw anyone,” Jesse said, shaking his head. “There were birds and rabbits and once some deer, but—” He stared at Chris. It was crazy, utterly and completely insane. “You were in my car. After I— That dead— Birds. Eggs and wings and flying. Chris, were you a, were you a bird? Were you— Were you that raven I picked up?” Yeah, it sounded even crazier when he said it out loud.
    “He told me I didn’t lose anything,” Chris said, looking at his knees. “He said I gave it up for something I could not find in the sky.”
    “Okay,” Jesse said, because it was the only thing he could think of. Just as he inhaled to ask who ? Chris spoke up again.
    “I didn’t know what he meant, because when he told me it was the day you brought me the quail eggs, and I could only think that I had only found unhappiness. But now I think….”
    The quiet stretched out until Jesse said, “Now you think what?”
    “I think… I think it was you .” Chris sat up and looked at him. “Because I would not find you in the sky, would I?”
    He no longer cared about who Chris had been talking to. “Well, not unless I was in an airplane.” Jesse swallowed as he discovered that he still wanted to kiss Chris, former bird or current crazy man or whatever he was.
    “I suppose not.” Chris looked at him for a few seconds more. “The ice cream is melting.”
    Jesse laughed, glad that there hadn’t really been much of a mood to spoil. “And the shrimp are getting warm. Home we go, then.”
     
     
    J ESSE ’ S phone