Chapter 26: Chapter 26
Gb
The streetlights stretched their shadows long and thin ahead of them, guiding them toward the dark, roaring water. The city sounds faded, replaced by the growing whisper, then a muscular rush, of the Willamette. They stumbled down a narrow, gravel-strewn path, away from the bike trail and the safety of streetlamps. The world became layers of sound and charcoal shapes.
"Watch the mud," Leo slurred, his own foot sinking into something soft and cold at the river's edge.
"Too late," Emily giggled, her shoe making a wet, sucking sound.
They stood on a small, hidden beach of packed silt and river-smoothed stones. The water was a vast, moving darkness, fracturing the few reflected lights from the distant bridges into shimmering blades. The air was cooler here, damp, smelling of algae and wet earth. It sobered them just enough to feel the scale of the silence.
Alex walked right to where the water licked the shore. He picked up a flat stone and skipped it. It vanished into the gloom with a blunt plunk. "Pathetic," he muttered.
"We are all pathetic," Leroy said, sitting heavily on a log. "But we're here."
Reed stood with her arms crossed, looking at the water, then back at the city. Her posture was a question. Leo felt the tequila and whiskey sloshing in him, a warm, reckless ballast. The memory of the vomit, the frantic, ugly sex, felt like pages from a book he’d read in another life. This black water promised an erase.
"Would it be cold?" Emily asked, her voice small.
"Freezing," Reed said. "It’s always freezing."
"Good," Alex said. He didn’t turn around. "I want to feel something else. Anything else." He pulled his shirt over his head in one abrupt motion, his back pale in the faint light. The scars from his old climbing fall laddered his shoulder blade.
They watched him. This was a different kind of undressing. There was no audience, no performance. It was a simple, stark statement. He kicked off his shoes, peeled his socks, then unbuttoned his jeans. He let them fall, stepped out, and walked into the water in just his briefs. A sharp, hissed intake of breath echoed back to them as the water reached his knees.
"Christ, Alex," Leo murmured.
Leroy stood up. "Well, if he’s doing it." He made a show of it, bowing to an imaginary audience before shucking his clothes into a pile on the log. He ran in, whooping, the sound swallowed by the river’s noise.
The water was a shock so complete it was a kind of violence. It stole the breath from Alex’s lungs, scalded his skin with cold, and for three glorious seconds, every thought was blasted clean. He was just a body, screaming internally at the temperature. Then he plunged forward, submerging his head, and the world became a silent, numb roar.
He surfaced, gasping, hair plastered to his forehead. "It’s brilliant!" he shouted, the words torn away by the current. "It’s like being born wrong!"
Leo looked at Emily, then at Reed. Emily was already untying her boots. "I hate being left out," she said, her fingers clumsy on the laces.
Reed didn’t move. Leo started on his own buttons, his fingers thick and stupid. The cool air on his chest was a relief. He felt exposed, ridiculous. He dropped his jeans, stepped out of them, and stood there in his boxers. He looked at Reed. "You don't have to."
"I know," she said. But she pulled her sweater off, then her tank top. Her movements were efficient, devoid of ceremony. Soon they were all just pale shapes on the dark shore, clothes in discarded heaps.
They waded in together, a slow, painful procession. The cold was an entity, wrapping around ankles, knees, thighs, stealing groans and curses. Leo’s heart hammered, a frantic bird in a cage of ribs. Then he dove.
The shock was absolute and clarifying. It was a physical and mental scream. Every pore, every memory of the last night—the sour taste, the sticky heat, the desperate sounds—was scoured away by the relentless, icy pressure. He came up sputtering, lungs burning, skin on fire with cold. He felt alive. Terribly, painfully alive.
Alex was laughing, a raw, unhinged sound that mixed with the river’s drone. He floated on his back, looking up at the sliver of moon. "I can't feel my legs! I think I've lost them!"
"Good riddance!" Leroy yelled, swimming in an erratic dog-paddle further out.
Emily gasped, treading water, her teeth chattering. "This is the stupidest thing we've ever done."
"Second stupidest," Reed corrected, her voice tight but calm. She was just standing where the water reached her collarbones, letting the current push against her.
Leo swam towards Alex. The water was a black, resistant force. He reached him, their feet brushing underneath in the cold, unseen deep. Alex’s laughing face, moonlit and wet, looked like a stranger’s for a moment. Then he grinned, that crinkle-eyed, broken grin, and he was just Alex again.
"Okay?" Leo asked, the word short, a cloud in the cold air.
Alex’s grin softened. He didn’t answer with words. He just reached out a trembling, icy hand and put it on Leo’s shoulder. The contact was electric, a current of pure, simple feeling cutting through the numbness. It wasn’t an invitation. It was an anchor.
Near the shore, Emily splashed Leroy, and a short, breathless water fight erupted, all slapping hands and shrieks that held no memory of the morning’s sickness. Reed watched them, then slowly sank until only her head was above the surface, her hair fanning out like ink.
They didn't stay in long. The cold began to bite deeper, turning muscles clumsy. They stumbled out one by one, clutching themselves, skin goosefleshed and gleaming under the night. They used their discarded clothes as rough towels, the fabric harsh against sensitive skin. Dressing was a fumbling, comic struggle with wet limbs and clinging cotton.
No one spoke. They just sat on the log and the stones, shivering in their damp clothes, steam faintly rising from their bodies in the cool air. The river rushed on, indifferent. The city glowed behind them. The shared, shocking baptism had left them quiet, hollowed out but somehow cleaner.
Leo lit a cigarette, the flame of his lighter a tiny, profound warmth. He passed it to Alex, who took it with blue-tinged fingers. Their hands touched. Alex held onto the cigarette, but he also held onto Leo’s wrist for a second longer than necessary. His thumb pressed once, firmly, into the pulse point.
Then he let go, took a drag, and passed the cigarette to Emily. Leo watched the ember travel between them in the dark, a tiny, shared star. His skin where Alex had touched him hummed, a feeling distinct from the cold, distinct from the whiskey, new and entirely present. The river had washed them raw. Now they sat in the damp aftermath, waiting to see what would grow back first.
The streetlights stretched their shadows long and thin ahead of them, guiding them toward the dark, roaring water. The city sounds faded, replaced by the growing rumble of the Willamette. The air grew colder, damper, carrying the scent of wet stone and diesel from a distant barge. They stumbled down the grassy bank toward the concrete embankment, their laughter swallowed by the river’s noise.
“It’s louder than I remember,” Emily shouted, her words ripped away by the wind coming off the water.
“That’s the point!” Alex yelled back. He spread his arms, tilting his face up to the cloud-choked sky. The river was a wide, black muscle flexing in the night, dotted with reflected city light that shivered and broke apart on its surface. The sheer force of it silenced them for a moment, the alcohol humming against the primal noise.
Leo stood at the edge, the concrete rough under his palms. He felt microscopic. The mess in his apartment, the sick intimacy of the morning, felt like something that had happened to another person in a dollhouse. This was real, vast, and indifferent. It was perfect.
Leroy picked up a flat stone and tried to skip it. It plunked once and vanished. “I’m a land mammal,” he declared. “This is as far as I go.”
“Coward,” Reed said. She kicked off her boots, then peeled her socks away with deliberate care. She stood barefoot on the cold concrete, wiggling her toes. “It’s just water.”
“It’s freezing, disease-ridden water with a strong current,” Leroy corrected.
Alex was already pulling his shirt over his head. The movement was clumsy, the fabric catching on his ears. He wrestled free, his torso pale in the gloom. He didn’t hesitate. His hands went to his belt buckle. “Land mammals die in fires. Be an otter.” His jeans pooled at his feet. He stepped out, a pale, naked figure at the river’s edge, and turned to face them. His smile was a wild, challenging slash. “Cleansing fire didn’t work. Try cleansing water.”
Emily watched him, then looked at Leo.
The streetlights stretched their shadows long and thin ahead of them, guiding them toward the dark, roaring water. The concrete underfoot gave way to a gravel path, then to spongy grass that smelled of damp earth and night. Suddenly, the trees opened up, and the Willamette River lay before them, a wide, black ribbon stitched with silver threads of reflected city light.
It was colder here, the air moving with a watery weight. The sound was immense, a low, steady rush that swallowed the city’s hum. They stood in a line at the bank, four silhouettes against the glittering water, their drunken buzz tempered by the sheer physical presence of the river.
“It’s louder than I remembered,” Emily shouted over the noise.
“It’s perfect,” Alex said, his voice raw. He kicked off his shoes, one after the other
The momentum of the plunge still held them, keeping them afloat in the icy, forgiving dark. Then, all at once, it didn’t. The cold switched from burning to bone-deep, a stealing ache that locked their joints. Leo’s teeth chattered so violently he thought they might shatter. “O-out,” he managed to stammer, the word a frozen chip of sound. “Now.”
They hauled themselves onto the gravel bank, limbs leaden and uncooperative. The air was a worse shock than the water had been, a sharp, abrasive cold that sandpapered their wet skin. They stumbled to their piled clothes, dressing with frantic, graceless haste. Fingers fumbled with buttons; denim was forced onto damp legs, shirts clung to wet backs with a sickening chill.
“I’ve never been this cold in my life,” Emily whispered, her voice a thin reed. She wrestled her sweater on inside-out.
Alex just stood shaking, his hands pressed deep into his armpits, staring at nothing. Leo, himself trembling in a violent, constant tremor, walked over and began mechanically helping him, pulling Alex’s damp shirt down, guiding his arms into the sleeves of the hoodie. Alex let himself be moved, his eyes finally focusing on Leo’s face.
“Th-thanks,” Alex chattered.
Leo nodded, his own jaw too tight to speak. The action felt parental, medicinal. It was about covering up, about restoring order, layer by layer. The raw exposure of the water, and of everything before it, was over. They were putting the world back on.
Leroy, now fully dressed, stamped his feet on the gravel. “We need to move. We need heat. Internal heat.” He looked at the path leading back up to the streetlights, to the hum of the city. “The Otter’s last call is in, like, forty minutes. We could make it.”
“More whiskey,” Reed stated, not asked. She was wringing river water from her hair, her expression grimly determined. “It’s the only logical next step. We’re already poisoned. We might as well fight the cold with it.”
A silent consensus formed in the shivering between them. Stopping now, going their separate ways to cold, quiet apartments, felt impossible. The night had a trajectory, and it pointed toward warmth and noise and the avoidance of stillness. The river had been a parenthesis, but the sentence of the evening wasn’t finished.
“I can’t feel my face,” Alex said, experimentally slapping his own cheek. “I need to feel my face again. A bar will have feeling.”
“And lights,” Emily added, her voice gaining strength. “Lots of lights. Nothing dark.” Her eyes darted to the inky water and away.
They climbed the path single-file, away from the roaring blackness, leaving the chill of the river clinging to them like a second skin. The city sounds rushed back in—distant sirens, the low thrum of a bassline from a passing car, the mundane soundtrack of a Saturday night. It felt jarringly normal. Leo’s wet socks squelched in his shoes with every step, a clammy reminder.
They reached the sidewalk, under the stark yellow glow of a sodium-vapor lamp. They looked like survivors of a small, strange disaster. Hair was plastered, clothes were misbuttoned, and their collective shivering was a visible vibration in the light.
Leroy flagged down a cruising taxi, its rooftop light a beacon. They piled in, the vinyl seats crackling under their damp jeans, filling the cab with the mineral scent of river water and cold. “The Tipsy Otter,” Leroy told the driver, his voice returning to its usual commanding timbre. “And step on it, man. We’re freezing our asses off back here.”
The cab lurched into motion, carrying them away from the river’s edge, back into the city’s warm, electric belly. Heat blasted from the vents, a dry, artificial warmth that began the slow thaw. Leo watched the streetlights blur past, the neon signs of bars and late-night pizza joints smearing color across the window. The silence in the cab was thick, loaded with the things the river hadn’t washed away.
Alex sat pressed against the door, forehead resting on the cool glass. He watched the city slide by, his breath fogging a small circle on the window. Leo watched the tense line of his shoulders, the way his hands were still clenched into fists on his thighs. The clean shock was wearing off. The memory of the afternoon was seeping back in, its edges no longer blurred by adrenaline or cold, just laid bare and waiting.
Emily reached over and put a hand on Alex’s clenched fist. He didn’t pull away. He turned his hand over and gripped hers, hard. No one spoke.
The taxi pulled up to the familiar, glowing sign of The Tipsy Otter. The bass from inside was a palpable thump through the brick. They paid and spilled out onto the pavement, the noise and light a sensory assault after the river’s primal roar. It was a different kind of immersion.
Leroy pushed the door open, and the wall of sound—music, laughter, shouted conversations—hit them along with a wave of warm, beer-scented air. It was almost overwhelming. They moved inside as a unit, a damp, shivering pod navigating the Friday night crowd. Eyes flicked to them, taking in their disheveled, water-darkened hair, their pallid faces.
Leo didn’t care. He pushed towards the long, polished wood of the bar, a fixed point in the swirling room. He needed a glass in his hand, something to give his trembling fingers a purpose. He needed the noise to fill the hollow, echoing space the river’s roar had left behind. The night wasn’t over. It was just changing shape again, turning from something wild and elemental back into something forged by people, by whiskey, by the desperate, shared need to outrun the quiet. He caught the bartender’s eye and held up four fingers.
The momentum of the plunge still held them, keeping them afloat in the icy, forgiving dark. But reality, in the form of a deep, cellular cold, was asserting itself. Leo’s shivering turned violent, his teeth clacking together like mismatched stones. “We need to get out,” he gasped, the words choppy. “Now.”
They hauled themselves onto the gravel bank, limbs leaden and uncooperative. Dressing was a clumsy, silent ordeal of forcing damp skin into damp clothes. The fabric clung, cold and abrasive, but the simple act of covering up felt like a return from some raw, alien state. They climbed the path, their bodies steaming slightly in the night air, a wordless understanding binding them.
“I can’t feel my feet,” Emily said, her voice thin. “I think I left them in the river.”
“Good,” Reed replied, lighting another cigarette with trembling hands. “They were holding you back.” She offered the pack around. Everyone took one, even Alex, who usually didn’t. The shared flare of matches was a tiny, warm ceremony.
They walked without a destination, just a collective need to keep moving. The shock was receding, leaving a hollowed-out buzz. Leo’s fingers were numb, but his mind was eerily, painfully clear. Every streetlight was a stark halo, every sound crystalline. He felt scraped out.
Leroy broke the quiet. “The Otter’s probably still open.” He checked his waterlogged phone, wiping the screen on his shirt. “Yeah. Billy texted. He’s locking the doors but keeping the lights off for ‘special customers.’” He made air quotes, his shoulders shaking from more than cold.
“More whiskey?” Alex asked. He was walking close to Leo, their arms brushing occasionally.
“Whiskey is a heat source,” Leroy stated, as if citing scientific fact. “We need internal combustion. It’s basic survival.”
No one argued. The Tipsy Otter was a beacon, a known warmth. They turned their soggy procession toward it, drawn by the promise of familiar shadows and the eradication of this awful, sobering clarity. The buzz was gone. Leo wanted it back.
Billy, the bartender, merely raised a thick eyebrow as they filed into the silent, dim bar. The chairs were up on tables, the floor mopped. It smelled of bleach and stale citrus. “You look like drowned rats,” he grunted, reaching for a bottle of well whiskey and four glasses without being asked. “A boiler exploded or something?”
“Or something,” Leo said, sliding onto a stool. The vinyl was cool through his damp jeans.
Billy poured four generous doubles, pushing them forward. “On the house. You’re scaring away the ghosts.” He retreated to the end of the bar with his newspaper, a taciturn guardian.
The first swallow was fire, tracing a molten path down Leo’s throat and blooming in his gut. He shuddered, this time from warmth. He closed his eyes, chasing the burn. When he opened them, Alex was watching him, his own glass already half-empty.
“Better?” Alex asked quietly.
“Getting there,” Leo said. The second drink followed the first in quick succession. The world began to soften at the edges almost immediately. The sharp, post-river clarity fogged over into something much more manageable.
Leroy slammed his empty glass down. “Okay.New rule. No talking about the… water. Or anything before the water. We are creatures of this bar, now. Born here five minutes ago.”
“Deal,” Emily said, signaling Billy for a refill. Her cheeks were already flushed. “What do newborn bar creatures talk about?”
“Reality TV,” Reed said decisively. “And the profound existential dread of smartphone algorithms. Light stuff.”
The drinks kept coming. Billy switched from glasses to a bottle, leaving it with them. The pace accelerated. The careful silence dissolved into a loud, overlapping chatter about nothing—a meme they’d seen, a terrible movie, the merits of different pizza toppings. The laughter returned, louder now, unhinged and relieved. It was a wall of sound they were building against the quiet of the night.
Leo felt the drunk descending, not as a slow tide but as a sudden, thick curtain. One moment he was following a debate about extraterrestrial life, the next he was just watching Alex’s hands as he gestured, tracing the familiar lines of his knuckles. The memory of those hands gripping his shirt, pushing him away on the rug, flashed then dissolved in the whiskey haze. It was a distant event, something that had happened to other people.
“You’re staring,” Alex said, his words slightly slurred. He wasn’t looking at Leo.
“Am I?”
“Yeah. You’ve got the deep thoughts face. It’s worrying.”
“No thoughts,” Leo lied, pouring another inch of amber liquid into his glass. “Brain is smooth. Polished stone.”
Alex finally turned to look at him. His eyes were glazed, but intent. The bar’s single safety light caught the gold in them. “Liar.” He said it without malice. A simple statement of fact.
The word hung there. Leroy and Emily were in a heated, giggling argument about the best fictional spacecraft. Reed was texting someone, a small smile on her face. They were in their own worlds.
“Why’d you do it?” Leo asked. The question left him before the sober part of his brain could intercept it. The whiskey had wrestled control. “Tonight. With me. Why… that?”
Alex’s expression didn’t change. He swirled the whiskey in his glass, watching the vortex. “I don’t know,” he said, after a long time. His voice was low, just for them. “I felt like I was cracking open. And you were there. You’re always there.” He took a drink. “It wasn’t about you. It was about… needing a ledge. And you were the ledge.”
It wasn’t an apology. It was worse. It was the truth, raw and ugly and undeniable. Leo felt it land in his stomach, colder than the river. He drank to warm it.
“I’m not a ledge,” Leo said, his own voice thick.
“I know.” Alex reached out, his fingers brushing the back of Leo’s hand on the bar. The touch was electric, a stark contrast to the earlier violence. It was a question. “You’re the whole fucking cliff.”
Billy announced last call, even though they were the only customers. The bottle was nearly empty. The world had narrowed to this sticky bar top, the faint hum of the cooler, the point of contact where Alex’s skin met his. The drunk was a warm, heavy blanket, smothering every sharp corner.
Leroy stood, wobbling spectacularly. “I am declaring this a… a success. We are not sober. Mission accomplished.” He gestured grandly and nearly took out a stack of glasses.
They stumbled into the neon-lit street. The air was no longer cold. It was a pleasant coolness. Everything was pleasantly blurred. Leo’s apartment was blocks away, an impossible journey. A taxi was a puzzle he couldn’t solve.
“My place is closer,” Alex said, his shoulder leaning into Leo’s. It was an offer, or a statement, or both.
Leo looked at him. The streetlight haloed his messy, still-damp hair. The sharp angles of his face were smoothed by shadows and alcohol. He looked young, and tired, and heartbreakingly familiar. The cliff.
“Okay,” Leo said.