ABERNATHY, Colton G.

[colton abernathy]

TWENTY YEARS OLD, CT NATIVE EAST HAMPTON LIVING, HANDYMAN ___________________________________________ I basically grew up with three moms. My own, then her two best friends from college, Heidi and Mel. My parents divorced when I was a kid and the custody deal was that I would live at my dad's in New Haven, spending school holidays with my mom either in Westchester where she lives with my step dad and half sisters, or East Hampton, where we summer. My mom is a package deal with Heidi and Mel. You know what's weird? Me, Ruby and Mirren all look so much like them, it's like our dads' genes knew not to bother to try and compete. That's their daughters, who are kinda like cousins to me. Heavy on the 'kinda'. ___________________________________________ last text to mom:  Yep, they're all checked in. last text from mom: Thank you. I'll transfer the cash now. last text from dad: It's customary to reply to texts, especially from your father, especially after three days. last text to dad: Sorry, was napping, didn't see this. last text from seb: Dad said I can visit you this weekend if you say yes last text to seb: No. last text from addie: Can I borrow $50?? I ran out of Drunk Elephant serum and mom and dad won't give it to me!!! My skin will be soooo bad C 🥺😭 PLEASE last text to addie: Fuck off Adelaide, you're ten. last text to mirren: Don't know, ask her. last text to ruby: Don't get drunk and tell Mira. last text from ruby: again, i'm not going to tell the precious mira. ___________________________________________ THEN As kids, Ruby was the chatty one. Mirren was always the most thoughtful, whilst Colton was sharp - of tongue and mind. Mira, ever polite, was most popular with the local population, whilst Ruby enthralled the other kids on summer vacation. Colton was just happy to be around them both. Colton's special talent was telling ghost stories so vivid that the girls would crawl into each others beds in the middle of the night, cuddling up and reassuring each other that it wasn't real, all while he slept like a baby, blissfully unaware. Ruby concocted the best midnight feasts, stealthily slipping into the kitchen to squirrel away supplies, as if the snacks were ever off-limits. Mira was a font of random knowledge, entertaining her friends with random trivia about their favorite animals, about the Hamptons, about their mothers. They had been happy, then. NOW Ruby remains the most popular within their peer group, whilst Mira's ability to charm adults remains unrivalled. Colt has become one of the locals, a familiar face even in the off seasons, fixing up houses whilst it's quiet and popping up around town. Always alone, always with a book to encourage it to stay that way. The group chat between the three is the quietest it's been since its inception, the schism of his being here and them being there the ever present elephant in the room. There's a licentiousness lacing his thoughts when he thinks of Ruby, and an unmistakable but still hard to place sense of guilt when he thinks of Mira. So he flirts with cougars and he strings along their former neighbour, hoping it at least seems like everything he's doing is intentional. ___________________________________________ NYU, NO THANK YOU FROM: Colton Abernathy <[e-mail]> TO: Admissions <[e-mail]> SUBJECT: I'm good actually Hi, I'd like to retract my application and forfeit my place in this year's intake. Thanks, Colt FROM: Helena  Bell <[e-mail]> TO: Colton Abernathy <[e-mail]> SUBJECT: RE:FWD:I'm good actually Oh Colton. My prodigal son. What goes on in that head of yours? Never has such a brief string of words left me so devastated, not even when your aunt sent me a text to say that our father had died. You mystify me and you have since you were a little boy. Still, I know you well enough to know that when your mind is made up there's no changing it, so I won't try. You're very like your father in that way. I don't know if you'll read this. I don't know how to get through to you, Colt. This is me telling you now that I acknowledge that I've failed you. I'm trying to place when the shift first happened, when I noticed my grip on you had loosened to the point of nonexistence. Was it when we tried to make up your room in the new house to look just like the old one? I still remember you scoffing when you saw it, you said it was like something from The Sims. I remember because I had to look up what you meant and I immediately understood when I did, though the moment had passed and you were back with your father, so I didn't tell you as much. I should have. There are a lot of things I would do differently if I had another chance at it, but I don't and this is the consequence of that, I suppose. There are things I don't regret. You needed to be pushed into academic brilliance, you are far too clever to have squandered that. I don't regret the custody agreement, though I know you think it was negligent on my part; those summers with you were golden, they were worth any number of months of limited contact. You have no idea how hard that was for me, Colton, but I agreed to it because I know you needed Dunmere. You needed Ruby and Mira, the escape, the sea. There's a reason you're drawn back there now and I suspect you don't feel ready to leave, not even for NYU. Anyway. This has been self indulgent and I hope you will forgive me. I don't get many chances to talk to you, but I love you more than you'll ever comprehend and I am always, always here for you. You also need a haircut. Love forever and always, Mom ___________________________________________ The smell of bonfire smoke lingered in her hair when she kissed me.  That's what I remember most. That smell, followed by the shock of it. Ruby's soft lips pushed up against mine like it was no big deal, like it was casual, like we usually kissed on that familiar road back to the house. I've never dealt with surprises very well. I was pissed, my confusion bubbling up in frustration. Honestly, I thought she was making fun of me. She had become such a painfully obviously beautiful girl, the all American dream with bouncy golden hair and the most intense blue eyes... Ruby might be one of my oldest friends, but I'm still a man. I still have eyes. Worse than that, I was a sexually frustrated teenager and I was tipsy-- you'll laugh, but I felt like she was taking advantage of what a simpleton I was. But once I had a taste I wanted more. Something inside me flipped the second she crossed that invisible line, and now I find myself jerking off to her Instagram, it's fucking pathetic. Actually, it pisses me off. Ruby's my friend, sure, but she's the kinda girl who gets everything she wants, whose life is just a sequence of fulfilled desires without her even having to try. So of course she wanted me, not because of anything to do with me, but because she was testing the limits of her luck, seeing if there would be any consequences for that most forbidden of indiscretions. And of course I proved that no, that too was in the remit of her luck, I'm another thing that she can have when she wants. Though as far as I can tell, she doesn't want me now that she knows that.  I should have had more self control. If there was anyone who could have been the one to burst her bubble, it should have been me. Now it's all fucked up and I can only blame myself. ___________________________________________ We used to talk about how fun it would be for the three of us to share a dorm. Really living together, away from the watchful eyes of our mothers, free to stay up and talk and moon gaze and make fun of each other all through the night, like how we did in summer but all year through. It's stupid really, we're all a year out from each other, I'd basically be graduating by the time Mira got there. But most of our conversations weren't really grounded in reality.  We inherited friendship from our moms. There was no way they weren't going to make us into the next generation of themselves, down to the choice of NYU as a college. They spoke about it so reverently to us from such a young age, who can blame us for thinking it was the be all and end all? That is, until I decided it wasn't. The spell broke. It was Mira I told first, and when confusion etched itself into her fine features, I immediately regretted it and dropped the subject. That was the first and last time I spoke of it ever, actually, since I did it by email and haven't talked about it since. Our moms think that was the start of the schism between us, and I think the girls do too. But if you ask me it was Mirren. Not when she didn't reply, but before that, when she first introduced us to her boyfriend. Something changed in the dynamic and I don't know, I've not been able to see it the same way since. So yeah, I'm putting it on Mira. Not that I've ever said that out loud.

lex     brady johnson    visitor