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On Aaron's couch, Miles burned.
When he was 9, there was a rolling blackout that affected most of the city in the height of the summer. His mom and dad were both called into work, so he stayed with Aaron.
It was hot and the city stunk. Inside the air was too still, even with the windows open, but outside there was a slight breeze that cooled the sweat beading along his brow.
Uncle Aaron was the coolest person Miles had ever known. Even in the midst of the blackout, with no power and no air conditioning, he didn’t seem to sweat. They sat on the steps in front of his apartment building as Aaron smoked a cigarette.
Miles liked watching him smoke. The way he’d strike a match, carefully bring it to the tip of his cigarette, then inhale deeply—Aaron’s eyes would drift close on that first inhale and he’d hold the smoke in for one beat, two, then exhale, smoke billowing from between his lips and curling around his nose.
Miles didn’t like the way the smoke smelled, but he liked the way Aaron’s lips pursed around the filter, the way his cheeks hollowed when he took a drag. There was something Miles knew about himself then, something dark and insidious that settled into the core of his being as he watched his uncle smoke, that he told himself he would never acknowledge.
Neighbors sat on their steps one building over and blasted something bass-heavy from a battery-powered boombox. Sirens screamed a few streets away but Miles tried to ignore them as he tapped his scuffed sneakers in time with the music, Aaron murmuring along with lyrics that Miles couldn’t catch.
Miles leaned against Aaron’s knee as the temperature grew.
Aaron rubbed one of his shoulders. Miles never wanted him to stop. “Alright, Miles?”
“Yeah.” He wondered if any of the sirens were his dad. If Aaron was the coolest person ever, his dad was the strongest… but there was something about his dad that he couldn’t quite remember, something that scared him.
He was so hot.
“Miles?”
Miles couldn’t respond. He was sweating so profusely that it ran down his cheeks and filled his mouth, salt and copper coating his tongue and choking him—
“Miles!”
Miles boiled and drowned. Aaron’s fingers dug into Miles’ shoulder like claws. Something in his chest felt like it had collapsed, a black hole consuming his life force as he suffocated.
“Don’t give up on me now.” The Aaron from his childhood memories was never scared, but the Aaron whose lips brushed against his ear as he spoke through the flames licking over Miles’ skin sounded terrified.
I’m not, he tried to say as the bass grew louder, a steady thump-thump that fell in time with Miles’ heartbeat, but the words came out as a wheeze.
A frisson of fear pierced Miles' core but it wasn't because he couldn't breathe.
He was afraid of the way Aaron's mouth against his skin made him feel.
“That’s it,” Aaron murmured, the approval like a balm against Miles’ feverish existence despite the way he resisted his own tormented thoughts. “Breathe.”
Miles was suddenly aware he was on Aaron’s leather couch, very much a teenager in a skintight suit with an unknown injury, not a kid living through the hottest summer of his life and the first stirrings of puberty.
He drew in one raspy breath after another, unable to speak, unable to see. The leather stuck to his bare skin. His fingers spasmed. A few seconds later a larger hand engulfed his, squeezing gently.
“I’m here, Miles,” Aaron said.
Miles released his flimsy grip on reality and passed out.
***