“Fuck.” Liam smiled, and Frank threw his head back and laughed.
“That is a word for it, I suppose.”
When Liam put his finger to the s****l secretions deposited onto the bark, Frank leapt back to add a safer buffer of distance. He licked his lips as Liam collected a drop, like he’d watched Frank do with the juice of the orange. When Liam took it from his fingertip, “Good, Fank,” he said.
“Yes,” Frank replied. Or was it?
They cleaned up with their shirts. Wearing them again that day had always been unlikely anyway. Back beneath the towering shade they had marked with their essence, still naked, they held hands. It had been Liam’s idea. “Wood,” he had said, taking one end of a short stick, offering the other to Frank. But Frank had picked up a longer one.
“Better safe,” he had said, and
