Petit Morts (1-5)

Hue, Tint and Shade by Jordan Castillo Price

Slings and Arrows by Josh Lanyon

Moolah and Moonshine by Jordan Castillo Price

Other People's Weddings by Josh Lanyon

Spanish Fly Guy by Jordan Castillo Price

Hue, Tint and Shade Petit Morts #1 Jordan Castillo Price

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ONE Sweets to the Sweet was empty. Once the Michigan Avenue lunch crowd left with their lattes and their fussy little truffles, it always turned into a ghost town for at least an hour. Tommy Roth opened the front door only far enough to slip through, brushing his back against the doorjamb, and entered the store so stealthily that the tiny bell on the closer didn’t even jingle. The guy at the counter glanced up. Tommy tried to recall one of the many dull pleasantries he had stored up for use in an emergency meeting situation, some phrase that wouldn’t sound too forced, but the clerk went back to cleaning his espresso machine rather than trying to ply him with hellos, and can-I-help-yous, and cold-enough-out-therefor-yous. Thank God. Tommy’s watch read twenty past two. Early. He was chronically prompt, if not early— and how excruciating it was to be early, to be the only one there, alone, sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb because he was painfully, absurdly early. Yet as horrific as being early was, Tommy imagined if he was ever late, he’d die of mortification, the ground would swallow him up, and it would be as if he’d never existed. And so it was preferable to be early. Awkward as that was. “If you need help with…anything,” the guy behind the counter said, “don’t hesitate to ask.” Tommy checked a flinch. The clerk had a velvety, soft voice, but he seemed young. Maybe even Tommy’s age. Tommy risked a look. Hard to tell if the clerk was aiming for a certain style or not since he was currently wearing black and red chef’s gear—complete with a name tag that read “Chance”—but he might have had a goth-thing going. Or he might have been naturally pale and dark-haired. With the world’s prettiest cheekbones. When Chance looked up again, Tommy turned away, but not quickly enough to help but notice the faint smile creeping over his expression. “And take your time,” he said. “I’m in no hurry.” “I don’t need any…I’m meeting a…I’ll just sit over here.” Belatedly, Tommy realized he could have just said “thanks,” but now it was too late, probably, and he’d sound even dumber if he did. He slid into a chair beside a filigreed café table that was hardly big enough to hold the napkin dispenser and the sugar bowl. He glanced behind the counter again. Chance was on a stepstool, pulling a box off a high shelf. He had a cute butt, and the way his apron strings were wrapped around his waist couldn’t have emphasized it better. Damn. The whole stammery bashfulness thing was ten times as bad when Tommy was in the vicinity of a hot guy.

Tommy mouthed the word “thanks” and reminded himself it would sound completely appropriate as a reply. Or even “no, thanks” if the situation should warrant it. Two words. He should be able to remember that much. Right? Luckily Chance kept himself busy cleaning up after the lunch rush and re-stocking things, which left Tommy blessedly alone with the sigh of the espresso machine and the waves of dark chocolate aroma that lulled him into a heady fugue state where he could forget for a moment about how early he was, and simply be. Until the door jingled—ten minutes later, by Tommy’s watch—and a woman with a graying bob bustled into the store. She was expansive, with broad movements, and she wore a fringed purple coat that might have been a shawl or might have been a sofa throw. “What a delightful place,” she said to Chance, who smiled and inclined his head in return. “I can’t believe I never noticed it before. It smells so rich I could gain ten pounds just by breathing the air.” “If you enjoy the smell, you should try the hot chocolate. It’s not from a mix—I make it myself with single-origin cocoa from Bolivia. Very aromatic.” “That sounds wonderful.” The espresso machine let out an explosive gasp as Chance steamed the milk. Tommy tried to imagine himself having a similar exchange with the hot guy in the chef’s gear, and failed. Utterly. His vocabulary of multisyllabic words was limited to terms such as “mortifying” and “excruciating.” It did not include “delightful” and “wonderful.” “That smells simply divine.” “Enjoy.” The woman hoisted the mug and made her way through the delicate cafe tables carefully, as if she was worried her fringe might catch on some filigree, pick up one of the tiny chairs and bring it along for the ride. “And you must be Thomas Roth.” “T-Tommy.” So, this was Sister Norma. They’d exchanged a few e-mails, but the online interaction hadn’t managed to prepare Thomas for her physical presence. The act of sitting down took on the air of a ritual as she smoothed and positioned the great wrap just so, sat on it, then tucked the ends of it around herself so that only her hands and her round, smiling face were exposed. She took up the cocoa and sipped it with a great, satisfied, “Ah.” Tommy pulled a napkin from the dispenser and started twisting it. The paper grew moist from the sweat on his palms and soon sent a small flurry of paper pills to be lost in the folds of his jeans. He grabbed another napkin to clean up the remains of the first napkin, and saw his own face reflected back in the chrome, pale and distorted, framed by pale

hair, stretched out long like an Edvard Munch painting. He turned the dispenser so it wasn’t staring back at him, but it was mirrored chrome all around. At least on the second side Tommy merely looked startled. Sister Norma didn’t seem to notice. She swallowed her cocoa and said, “The good news is that I don’t think you’re cursed. Your aura is clean. I could see that right away.” “Um. Good?” “But it’s very blue, with hints of violet, but mostly blue. And grayish. Very introverted. Now, if you want to do better at work…” “That’s not really the prob—” “…then you’d want to swing around the color wheel to either red, or yellow.” She nodded toward the counter with her chin. “That young man’s got a lot of yellow, very bright. It’s not an aggressive color, you see. It’s happy and vibrant. Like sunshine.” Tommy stole a look behind the counter to see if perhaps, now that he knew what to look for, he could perceive the yellow rays of happiness emanating from the clerk. Instead he got an eyeful of Chance staring back at them with a total “WTF?” expression on his face. Tommy looked away, fast. “Now, you say you’re a used car salesman?” “No, uh. New. Mostly new. Sales associate. And that’s fine, at the dealership it doesn’t really bother…I mean, if someone’s there to find a car, it’s no problem to tell them how many miles per gallon it gets and whether or not a satellite radio comes standard.” “People distrust used car salesmen. It’s part of our culture.” “Th-they do?” “Salesmen in general, but used car salesmen in particular.” “But I sell—” “They’re up there with lawyers in our collective consciousness. Just imagine it, the mind power of three hundred million people, each of them thinking—whether they realize it or not—that because you’re a used car salesman, you have an ulterior motive. All that suspicious energy flowing toward you. And here you are, a sensitive, quiet, artistic type. No wonder your blue is so muddy.” In fact, Tommy had never been artistic. He couldn’t draw so much as a circle without it coming out like more of an egg, nor could he imagine what blue might look if it were muddy. But he didn’t care for the sound of it. Not one bit.

“Do you meditate?” Sister Norma asked. “No.” “I didn’t think so. I’ll e-mail you a book list—you can get them either at the library or through Amazon—and my ‘beginner’ schedule. Five minutes a day, working up to fifteen.” Her hand seemed to disappear for a moment as she dug around inside her purple wrap, and came up with a bundle of paint sample strips. She thumbed through them and came up with a strip of four yellows: Butterscotch – Finch – Sun Kissed – Lemonade. “This will work just fine until you get your books. I could e-mail you a picture, but it would look different on your monitor than it does on mine. Start with Lemonade, and if you feel the vibration in, oh, let’s say ten days, then you can work up to Sun Kissed.” “O…kay.” “I don’t think yellow will be too difficult. Blonds like you seem to figure out yellow pretty easily. Once you’ve got that down, we can look into adding some red, maybe in your accessories. Red’s a good, assertive color, and it’s important to be assertive when you’re selling used cars. Not aggressive. Assertive. People can sense it when you’re too malleable.” “Right.” Tommy took an instant dislike to the word malleable. It had an unsavory feel to it. “That’s my recommendation. Do you have any questions?” Undoubtedly he did. He was simply too overwhelmed to think of any at the moment. “No.” “You’ve got my e-mail if you do. So, let’s see. Half hour minimum, plus trip charge. That’s thirty dollars.” Tommy pulled out a pair of crumpled twenties. “Do you have change?” Sister Norma glanced at the register. Chance was bent forward over the counter, watching them with both elbows on the plexiglass and his chin resting in his upturned palms. “Be a dear and pick up the check,” Norma suggested, “that way you’ll get change—and I’ll throw in a copy of my e-book.” Tommy made his way to the counter and put a twenty beside the clerk’s elbow. Chance continued to stare as if something were simply hilarious, if only Tommy understood the joke. He stared and stared, until Tommy nearly had the nerve worked up to ask what was so damn funny…but before he could, Chance straightened up, took the bill from the counter and rang up the sale.

Once Sister Norma secreted the thirty dollars somewhere inside the sofa throw, she took both of Tommy’s hands in both of hers, looked deeply into his eyes, and said, “Don’t worry. You’re not alone in this…I’ll be sending plenty of yellow energy your way.” “Okay. Well, uh…thanks.” Tommy began to pull on his coat once she swept out the door, and suddenly Chance was right there in front of him, bussing the table. That secret smile of his was back, a smile that made him look cryptic and exotic, and completely infuriating. “Leaving so soon? Maybe you should stay awhile and bask in the sunshine of my aura.” “Shut up.” Chance picked up Sister Norma’s mug, swirled the chocolate dregs, and stared down into them as if he was reading tea leaves. “You got off easy, you know. She actually believed everything she told you. Thirty dollars is nothing—and while I can’t imagine meditating on a paint chip is going to change your life for the better…I suppose it can’t hurt.” Tommy moved to step around Chance, who sidestepped too—and suddenly they were chest to chest and chin to chin. Chance’s eyes fluttered to half-mast—incredibly long, black eyelashes—and he looked as if he might tilt his head for a kiss. “What is it you’re looking for that’s got you searching for answers in faith healers? You don’t seem to be hurting for money, and with those big, sad eyes of yours I can’t imagine you have any trouble with the ladies.” “I don’t date ‘ladies.’” Chance’s smile broadened, or maybe he was just baring his startlingly white teeth. “Even better.” Tommy took another sidestep, and again Chance matched it exactly. “Mind your own busi—” “Once you’ve decided that the color yellow’s not the answer, where will you look for happiness next? Horoscopes? Phrenology? How about trepanation? I hear that’s a real kick…it takes needing something like you need a hole in your head to an entirely new level.” Tommy steeled himself for whatever was going to happen next, whether it be an openmouthed kiss or a laugh in his face, and Chance wet his lips, cocked his head, and stared so deeply into Tommy’s eyes it felt like his aura must have started blushing. And then Chance dropped back and spilled himself into the tiny café chair that Tommy had just vacated. “Do me a favor,” Chance said as he pulled a napkin from the dispenser and a pen from the pocket of his black apron. A chill shot down Tommy’s spine when Chance’s fingers brushed the chrome where Tommy’s reflection had been staring back at him. “Before you hook up with someone who’ll do you any permanent damage, try talking to a

professional. Dr. Bauer won’t charge for the first session if either of you decide you’re a bad fit for each other, so you’ve got nothing to lose.” He scrawled a number on the napkin and tucked it into Tommy’s jeans pocket. Even through the fabric, his hands felt like ice as his fingertip skimmed the crease of Tommy’s thigh.

TWO Chance wielded his long, blunt, round-tipped spatula and spread a sheet of walnut nougat onto an icy marble slab. The mindlessness of the work, the precision and the finesse, appealed to him while he let his mind wander—and it kept wandering back to the very same scene. Tommy was the double boiler that melted the ganache of Chance’s jaded heart. The timid ones always were. He hacked the rounded edges from the nougat and sent them into the garbage with a careless flick of the big blade, then produced a very sharp knife and scored the rubbery candy into perfect, tiny cubes. Why Dr. Bauer? He’d never been anything more than the man at the second table near the window with the Monday morning espresso, the man with a single piece of pecan brittle and the New York Times. And yet his contact information flowed through Chance so strongly it was as if it had written itself. Chance was not in the habit of recommending psychiatric help. It was his opinion that looking into the corners of one’s own soul was an endeavor that should never be undertaken lightly. Bauer was harmless, true, but so was Sister Norma, in all of her rainbowcolored sincerity. Poor Tommy. Chance cut his gaze to the napkin dispenser, which he’d brought into the workroom for safekeeping. All big eyes and trust. Of course he had no trouble selling cars; he didn’t look like he had a duplicitous bone in his body. He couldn’t have had— Chance looked harder at the tiny reflection. Honest as the day is long. A rare breed nowadays. The bell on the front door chimed, and Chance covered the nougat, then removed his insulated work gloves to wait on his customers. Regular people, regular lives. A middleaged couple on a shopping tour of the overpriced Magnificent Mile. An art student attempting to choose the best purchase for the single dollar she clutched. A businessman who looked as if he’d expected a Starbucks instead, and was wondering whether a large coffee was actually large, or if he’d need to learn yet another new nomenclature with which to order his drink. Chance served each of them, impassively. Few customers elicited the type of interest that Tommy Roth had. Chance could count them on one hand, the people who he interacted with on any but the most superficial level. And there was no rhyme or reason to it. Almost like falling in love. On cue, the most vibrant personality Chance had met since he’d opened his doors in his current location rapped on the front window three times, hard. Every customer in the

store flinched and turned. Nathan stood outside in his coveralls and artfully messy hair, looking more like a character from a music video—an effeminate laborer who would eventually throw down his acetylene torch and fling himself into a choreographed dance number—than an actual worker. He ignored the customers and pretended to be checking his hair in the plate glass, though it was more of a performance for Chance’s benefit. He unbuttoned the top button of his coveralls, tipped his head back and ran his fingers over his bare throat. Chance almost smiled. He wasn’t playing hard-to-get; he had no intention of leading Nathan on. But even Chance had to admit it was a very nice show…though given Nathan’s persistence, if Sweets to the Sweet lingered in Chicago for any length of time, things could get awkward. Or maybe Chance would allow himself to give in to a moment of weakness. Through the glass, Nathan caught Chance’s eye and gave him a slow, knowing smile. Chance felt a smile tug at the corner of his mouth in return, which Nathan took as an invitation. He slung his bagful of gear over his shoulder and sashayed into the store. Chance tore his attention from Nathan and turned toward the businessman. “Coffee?” he suggested, and held up the largest to-go cup for inspection to speed things along. “Today’s roast is Sumatra.” He pointed at the chalkboard, since Mr. Literal seemed to want everything in writing. “Very distinctive.” “Yes…uh…that size. You take debit cards?” “Of course.” Nathan made a show of browsing the lollipop tree while Chance poured coffee and rang up the sale, then took the art student’s order and placed a single truffle in a glossy black box and fastened it with a blood red ribbon. The tourists sat at a table without ordering anything and unfolded a Transit Authority map. Nathan took a red lollipop from the display, waited until Chance looked up, unwrapped the candy as if he was doing a strip tease, and gave it a long, slow lick. Very persistent. When the counter was empty, he strutted up, painting his lips red with the lollipop as he approached. “I scored a couple of tickets to the Fall Indie Film Fest. Wanna come watch a bunch of confusing, nihilistic movies? I’m sure there’ll be plenty of artistic nudity.” “I don’t think so.” Nathan sighed, then gave the lollipop another lick. His tongue was bright red down the center, and the scent of cherries welled around him. “Then how about we just skip the date and get right to the sex?”

Chance rebutted with his best “nice try” look. He hoped the “yes” look was buried deeply enough—though Nathan seemed particularly adept at spotting those small yeses. “So what is it?” Nathan asked, twirling the red, red lollipop over his tongue as he considered some options. “I’m not your type? Maybe you like black guys? Or daddy types? Is that it?” “Remember when we used to talk about something other than the fact that I’m not in the market for a man? I miss those days.” “Maybe you’re one of those workaholics I’ve heard so much about, but never taken the time to chase down. I’ve never seen anyone else working the counter here. Are you pulling doubles all the time, or what?” “Something like that.” “The patented Chance non-answer.” Nathan flicked his tongue tip over the rounded top of the sucker. “Those vagaries reveal more than you realize.” That couldn’t be helped, could it? Chance turned away and poured a cup of coffee. “Here, finish this. I need to make a new pot.” He slid the cup across the counter, and Nathan stirred the coffee a few times with his lollipop, then threw it back in a tongue-scalding gulp. “Since you’re so married to your job,” Nathan suggested, “maybe you can talk me out of telling my foreman what he can do with those dirty looks he’s always giving me.” Chance turned to get a coffee filter and caught sight of the napkin holder. Darks and lights shifted over the chrome as his own movement reflected back, but among that abstraction, he could pick out the impression of a pair of huge, haunted-looking eyes. Funny how someone like Tommy Roth would rather die than tell anybody off, while Nathan Adams could barely rein himself in. Nathan dipped the lollipop, stirred, pulled it from the hot coffee to see if it was any smaller, then dipped it again. “I could always work at that climbing gym on Halsted. I’m overqualified, but it’s got to be more fun than—” “Is that eyeliner you’re wearing?” Nathan blinked. “Of course not. I don’t get all dolled up to come to work.” He unbuttoned another button on his coveralls in a way that made them look more like a wardrobe prop on a beefcake calendar. On the next page they’d be down around his waist, and after that, bunched around his work boots. “There was this party last night…it must be left over from that. Or was it a couple of nights ago?” He shot Chance a wicked grin. “I forget.”

“Talk back to your foreman now and get ten minutes of satisfaction, or stay on the job and enjoy getting under his skin every time he looks at you.” Nathan sucked hard on the lollipop and considered. Chance watched, and wondered what had possessed him to encourage Nathan to stay. Certainly it didn’t matter to Chance one way or the other if Nathan wished to experience a career stint at a gym, which might even turn out to be a more satisfying, if less lucrative, career choice. The advice was based on an urge, pure and simple…the type of urge he knew better than to second-guess.

THREE The elevator rose to the thirty-second floor. Tommy’s stomach lurched. The doors glided open, the button with the number 32 on it went dark, and the down-arrow lit. It would be so easy, Tommy realized, to push the lobby button and go right back out. But he had an appointment, so he should honor it. Still, it was tempting to bolt. So much so that actually getting out of that elevator and walking down the hall to suite 3220 felt like wading through quicksand. He found the correct door, entered, and was immediately spotted by a receptionist who looked like she was nineteen if she was a day…and then there really was no turning back, not without faking appendicitis, or maybe amnesia, because the girl with the glasses and the bright smile was already saying, “Mr. Roth? I have a few forms for you to fill out, and then Dr. Bauer can see you.” Tommy listed his allergy meds, checked the box that said he’d never been institutionalized, and hoped the Prize Patrol might burst through the door with some balloons, TV cameras and a big check, causing Dr. Bauer to retire on the spot. But the room was quiet save for the subtle tick of the clock above the magazine rack. The inner door opened, and a man with bifocals and an alarming amount of salt-andpepper hair said, “Thomas? Please, come in.” “Tommy.” “Fred.” They shook hands. Tommy’s mind balked at the idea of calling a mental health professional by his first name, and he wondered if that discomfort comprised adequate grounds for leaving. “Please, sit down. On your paperwork, you indicated that social situations make you uncomfortable. Is that correct?” “Yes.” “Why don’t you tell me a little bit about that?” “Well, it’s uh…it’s kind of like…uh….” Tommy wished he was dead. Not that wishing for anything ever got him anywhere. “I dunno.” “Are there any people in your life you can talk with where you don’t feel uncomfortable?” “Maybe.” “Let’s elaborate on that. Who is it that does allow you feel comfortable?”

It suddenly seemed to Tommy that he hadn’t been comfortable at any point in his adult life. Or if he had, it was ages ago, and the memories of those instances would be less like memories and more like anecdotes he was telling himself that might or might not be based in fact. He’d been staring at his knees for quite a long time when Dr. Bauer prompted, “Your family?” Tommy shrugged. “Yeah, I guess,” he sighed. His family strategy involved keeping his head down and showing up promptly for mandatory holidays. “Friends?” There were no friends. Tommy wasn’t sure when, exactly, that had happened. Some moved away, some simply moved on, and Chuck made off with the rest of them when they broke up—even the ones who’d been Tommy’s to begin with. “A significant other?” Tommy shook his head. “Being solitary by nature isn’t, by itself, a negative thing. But if you’re avoiding relationships due to anxiety, then I think that’s something we can work on. Let’s try a simple exercise. I’d like you to sit back and close your eyes…” Tommy pressed himself into the couch and was just about to comply with the second part of the directive when, in the tall window that framed Dr. Bauer, a pair of feet appeared, dangling just above his head. “…let your mind wander…” Another pair of legs dropped to the other side of him, and then the rest of the bodies that the legs belonged to—two window washers, one on either side of the therapist. “…hold that thought, but don’t judge it…” Weren’t they supposed to be on a scaffolding of some sort? These guys were just dangling there in climbing rigs. On the thirty-second floor! Tommy felt his adrenaline spike, and it wasn’t even him dangling on the end of those nylon ropes. The guy on the right squirted the window with a hose. How long was that hose? And how heavy was it once they were done working and they rolled it up for the night? There must have been a cleaning agent in the water, because the window went blurry, reducing the window washer to a navy and red outline of a man. The blurry outline tossed the hose to the other window washer, who caught it and began hosing down the second window.

And then, through a dry section of the window, he and Tommy locked gazes, and everything else fell away. Window washer? He had smoky eyes and perfectly wind-tousled black hair. He looked like a teen idol playing a window washer in a movie. “…and pay attention to where your resistance is coming from…” The window washer smiled. Tommy’s pulse picked up even more and his mouth went dry. Did the guy at the end of the rope know what Tommy was there for? Did he know which office it was, that it was a therapist’s office, or did they all look the same? He couldn’t hear what Dr. Bauer was saying through the glass…could he? The first window washer squeegeed the window with a rubber blade that looked at least a yard long. He moved in a confident sweep that looked like it had come from years of practice. Then he turned to the hunky window washer and said something. Tommy saw his lips move, but heard nothing. The cute window washer said something back, winked at Tommy, then spritzed soapy water over the dry portion of glass they’d been staring through. The first window washer wiped his blade, hooked it to his belt, then fiddled with his descender and dropped out of sight. “…remember a time when you felt that way? Good…” Tommy stared at the world’s hottest window washer through a film of grimy soap. The blurry figure moved, and pressed something into the glass. Not the squeegee—his fingertip. A number appeared as the window washer wrote through the film. Awkward numbers. Backward, for him. A phone number. Abruptly, Tommy was seized by the fear that Dr. Bauer would turn and see what had been happening, and flip out. That he’d realize Tommy hadn’t heard a thing he’d said, and that the guy on the other side of the glass would get in trouble for interrupting the session. Tommy steeled his expression and looked hard at Dr. Bauer—blah blah blah— and then glanced over quickly and tried to sear the first three digits of the phone number into his memory. “…surround yourself with people you feel confident around, rather than timid.” “That makes sense,” Tommy said. It seemed like it did, anyway, even though he’d missed about five minutes of the setup because he’d been so busy checking out the window washer—who was just finishing up the last digit. Or whatever it was. It looked like an S. He rubbed it out with the side of his hand and drew a 2 beside the rubbed-out spot. He squeegeed the soap off the glass directly in front of his face to resume eye contact, then held up his thumb and forefinger to the side of his head in a “call me” gesture, swept away all the evidence in one of those hypnotic, serpentine squeegee moves, and dropped out of sight.

Whether or not the session would have been helpful had Tommy actually been paying attention, he couldn’t say. He suspected psychotherapy wouldn’t alleviate his problems by giving him a magical new way of looking at things any more than Sister Norma could send him yellow energy through the Internet. Not in a single session. Tommy slipped into the hallway of the thirty-second floor, found a pen in his jacket and jotted down the window washer’s phone number on the back of a reading list Dr. Bauer had given him. It was the right number, he was sure of it. He’d always had a good head for numbers. If the window washer had written it correctly—backwards—then Tommy had it. But would he call it? That was the question. The invitation had been as clear as a freshly squeegeed windowpane—and it wasn’t as if Tommy could wait around and see if the other guy called him. (And then let it go to voice mail, which, if he were being honest with himself, he’d have to admit was his typical M.O.) Tommy sagged against the wall as his tentative confidence deflated. Or maybe it had never been confidence at all, merely the possibility of confidence. The suggestion of it. Whatever it was, the fleeting sense of self-assurance he’d acquired by half-listening to Dr. Bauer talk at him for the past fifty minutes had slipped away as if it had never even been there to begin with. Public bathrooms weren’t Tommy’s favorite places, but rush hour loomed, and there was a good possibility he’d be stuck waiting half an hour or more to even merge onto Lake Shore Drive, so he supposed he should make a pit stop before he hit the road. It was a hell of a bathroom, with creamy marble countertops, abstract prints on the walls, and subdued lighting. There was even a small lounge just inside the door—a no-smoking lounge, nowadays—that separated the hall from the bathroom itself. The restrooms at the dealership, which were glaringly lit and smelled like fake orange disinfectant, could take a few lessons from this bathroom. Urinating was difficult, even in such a luxurious restroom, even inside a stall with no one else watching or listening, but eventually Tommy managed to circumvent his shy bladder by running through a string of seven numbers in his mind and pretending to dial it. And yet even in his imagination, the point at which his thumb hit the “dial” button and he held it up to his ear and said something—anything—never materialized. Because what would he say that wouldn’t sound completely stupid? Pretty soon he couldn’t get through the entire number, and finally he began to mentally rehearse throwing away the number before he’d even keyed in a single digit. He flushed the toilet. As he attempted to button his fly he bumped his elbows against the sides of the stall, so he opened the door and stepped out to finish the job. The window washer was leaning against the doorway to the no-smoking lounge. A dazzling smile spread across his face when he locked eyes with Tommy…who found that suddenly the button on his fly was entirely too large for the buttonhole.

“So it was the thirty-second floor,” the window washer said. “You’d be surprised at how they all start to look the same when you’re hanging there in your rig.” “Uh huh.” Brilliant. Tommy felt pleased he’d at least forced out that much of an answer. He suspected he’d only managed because he’d been so focused on trying to button his fly that the speech part of his brain was on autopilot. “Got a name? Mine’s Nathan.” “T-Tommy.” “How’d that job interview go?” “What?” “That wasn’t what was going down in that office? Let’s see….” Nathan took a few steps toward Tommy. He swung his hips in a move that could have been stolen from a chorus line, and the way his tool belt hung on them, low and heavy, only accentuated the grinding sway. “You weren’t being sued, were you?” “Huh? No.” “Too bad. I was fully prepared to offer you comfort in the face of a disastrous job interview, or maybe an expensive pow-wow with an attorney.” A laugh crept up on Tommy, and rang out through the marble bathroom before he could squelch it. Nathan joined in. His dark eyes sparkled when he laughed. Or maybe it was the…was he really wearing eyeliner? Nathan took a few more Broadway steps. He didn’t stop approaching until he was close enough that an overenthusiastic flourish of his arm would have smacked Tommy in the face. Once the horrific idea of being spied upon in the bathroom dawned on him, Tommy wondered which side of the building the bathroom was on, but he glanced at the far wall and saw that not only were there no other window washers peeking in on them, there were no windows at all. “How’d you know I’d be in here?” “Educated guess. No one actually lives around here, and the day you’ve gotta go is always the day the El’s running express, right past your stop.” “I drove.” “Suburbanite?” Nathan suggested. Tommy shook his head no. “Then you’re either independently wealthy or completely eccentric. Both of which I wouldn’t mind getting to know better.”

Tommy felt a hot rush of blood tint his face. It wasn’t so much embarrassment—that was far too simple a word—but the discomfort of being held up and scrutinized for something as minor as his choice of car versus train. “Neither one. It’s…I’m…” he sighed. “There’s nothing special about—” Nathan took another step forward and the toes of his work boots butted up against Tommy’s oxfords. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?” No reply occurred to Tommy. He suspected it might not have even if he’d been a good conversationalist. “So. You’re single?” Tommy nodded. “Good. You like movies? Of course you do. Everyone likes movies—although not necessarily these movies, but we’ll gloss over that part. More importantly, you’re free tonight?” Tommy’s head was still nodding from the “single” question. He let it nod a few more times. “Then it seems to me I’ve got a ticket to the indie film fest with your name on it. Just…one more eensy little detail….” Nathan leaned in close and pressed his lips to Tommy’s ear to share a secret with him—even though they were the only ones in the bathroom. His coveralls were cold and wet, and he smelled like solvents. Tommy had no idea the scent of industrial chemicals would be such a turn-on. “You’re out, right?” The voice that had been so confident, so cocky even, held a subtle sadness when he whispered. “‘Cos I’m not putting myself through the heartbreak of chasing around after someone who isn’t.” Tommy let the question register, then added a few more nods to his growing collection of wordless assents. Nathan sighed. Relief? Or maybe it was a stunted laugh. Or a breath. Whatever it was, it played over the side of Tommy’s neck like a forbidden caress. And that was all Nathan had intended, to whisper—Tommy was sure of it—but a shiver rocked through Tommy that made his breath catch in return, and the sound of it, the feel of it, the mingling of their breath, their primal essence, turned a relatively benign whisper into something much, much more. The kiss was upon them before Tommy even realized what was happening. For all he knew, he’d even initiated it.

Tommy tilted his head one way, Nathan the other, and their lips brushed with an easy certainty. No clashing teeth, no bumped noses. It was as if whoever’d choreographed Nathan’s showgirl walk had turned his talents toward coordinating the world’s most perfect first kiss. Nathan might have smelled of window washing chemicals, but his mouth, his warm, generous mouth, tasted like cherry candy. And while his personality might have been preposterously bold, his kisses were soft, even gentle. In Tommy’s experience, first kisses usually occurred somewhere dark and alcohol-lubricated. Somewhere awkward, where goodbyes had turned into a fumbling assessment of how far one should take his leavetaking—or not. But this…this was something entirely different. Unhurried. Deliberate. Sober—and very well-lit. Though it wasn’t clear who’d started the kiss, it was Nathan who ended it, with a lingering reluctance that left Tommy fantasizing about grabbing him and pulling him close, damp coveralls and all, and convincing him to keep on kissing. The notion remained in the realm of fantasy, though, and Tommy’s eyes fluttered open when Nathan finally pulled away, leaving Tommy’s mouth damp and tingly, and scented like cherry candy. With a showman-like flick of his wrist, Nathan produced a ticket from his breast pocket. He held it up between his first two fingers as if he might ask Tommy if that was the card he’d picked. “All right, then. I’ll meet you at the theater.” He pressed the ticket into Tommy’s hand. It was only slightly damp. “Be there for the 8 o’ clock showing. My friend Tricia—she’s the one who scored the tickets—is an extra in that film. But don’t worry. It won’t turn into a group date or anything. Trish’ll have enough of a harem that she won’t miss us if we decide to diverge from the flock after the initial meet-n’-greet is done.” Long after Nathan had strode out onto the thirty-second floor hallway, Tommy held the ticket, feeling uncannily like Charlie Bucket—especially with his insides swirling as if he was soaring over the city in a great, glass elevator. He then imagined Nathan dropping down outside the elevator, naughty smile firmly in place and squeegee in hand. Because even Wonka had discovered that a chocolate fantasyland was ultimately empty without someone else to share it.

FOUR Another meeting, another donut. Tommy always scored the custard-filled Bismarck, which he supposed was one positive result of his chronic promptness. The purpose of Burr Hale Chevrolet’s semi-monthly meetings was to “strategize,” though Tommy had stopped trying to apply any sort of sales strategy to his own performance long ago. Instead he ate his donut, nodded at his supervisor at all the right moments, and proceeded to sell more unprofitable economy cars than any other sales associate at the dealership. If he could perform like that with even mid-level vehicles, his boss had assured him, he’d make associate of the month more often than not. And did he realize what that would mean, other than his awkward headshot appearing in the associate of the month plaque by the thermostat? A gift certificate for a medium pan pizza from Uno’s. And two liters of soda. Did Nathan get bonuses at work? Tommy couldn’t imagine two liters of soda would be much of an incentive to someone dangling thirty stories off the ground in a wet nylon harness. A harness that framed his package. There wouldn’t be any harness at the film festival—at least, Tommy didn’t think so. No navy coveralls, either. What would Nathan wear, then—something flashy? Something leather? Something sequined? Tommy could picture all that and more, even a sparkly feather boa to top the ensemble off. Whatever Nathan wore, it would undoubtedly be colorful. And Tommy was fairly sure there wasn’t a single thing in his closet that could hold a candle to his mental image of Nathan in anything at all. Even the navy coveralls. While Tommy was more focused on what he should wear to the film festival than he was on selling cars—after all, he didn't want to be overdressed, but he didn't want to look like a dork, either—no one noticed his preoccupation. He was the least aggressive sales associate at the dealership, and flying under the radar was hardly unusual for him. And yet, when he noticed the guy with the Carhartt boots in the showroom, the guy with the massive tape measure clipped to his belt, the memory of the smell of solvent on stiff navy coveralls hit Tommy fast and hard. He found himself approaching the customer—a builder, or maybe an electrician—with an assertiveness channeled straight from his memory of Nathan with his showgirl-walk. “The LS is a popular model,” Tommy said. He should know. He sold lots of LS sedans. Economy cars. The customer looked up and gave Tommy the once-over. Tommy usually sensed a vague relief at that point, a sort of loosening of the shoulders that conveyed, Oh, you’re so

young, so non-threatening. You’re not forcing yourself on me with a handshake and a big, fake smile. You’re not even standing inside my comfort zone. At that point, he usually told the customer to let him know if they had any questions, and moved away a polite distance to let them bask in the new-car smell. But his newfound stride—assertive, not aggressive—had brought him closer to the customer than he usually got, and something in the workman's eye contact inspired him to add, “It gets good city mileage—about the same as the LTZ. But you get a lot more car with the LTZ. That’s what I drive.” He looked at the mid-level LTZ fondly, and the guy with the tape measure followed his gaze. “After financing, it comes out to maybe another thirty dollars a month, depending on the term of your lease and your credit score. But it’s so worth it.” Tommy inspected the subtly tinted window. The showroom lights cast their paintjob-enhancing beams over the freshly buffed chrome and flawless red currant finish. The window reflected the customer like a mirror. He looked intent. Thoughtful. But right beside it, where Tommy’s reflection should have been, a trick of the lighting cast a distorted, zig-zag glare. A chill crept over the back of Tommy’s neck, very slight, not an actual sensation so much as the memory of the unease that had come over him when he saw himself in the napkin dispenser at the chocolate shop, and he shifted his stance to get a better look at the window, to see if the face looking back would be strange and distorted. Whether he’d recognize it in his gut, or he’d have a disconcerting “Is that really me?” moment. But the customer shifted too, frowned, and Tommy wondered if it had been a very good idea to change his normal tactic. After all, not caring if someone bought a car at all, let alone if they could be persuaded to upgrade and spend a bit more, had served him well for so many years. Hadn’t it? “Does it come with heated seats?” the customer asked. “Not standard, no. But you can upgrade to them for $299.” Despite the fact that the customer frowned harder, Tommy added, probably more wistfully than he’d meant to, “I wish I had.” The man with the tape measure scowled at the window—or through the window, maybe, because he might have been standing at an angle where he could actually see into the LTZ—and finally, when Tommy was certain he’d walk out and hit the Volkswagen dealership down the block, he nodded. One nod. Completely decisive. “I’ll take this one for a test drive.” ••• Though there would be no custard-filled Bismarck waiting for him at the historic Illinois Theatre, Tommy was, of course, early. He’d parked in a municipal lot that probably cost

more than the ticket itself, but it was a primo spot in a lot that was usually full, only two blocks from the old movie house. The sun had just set, and the perpetual Chicago Loop skyscraper-alley chill had settled into a cool harbinger of winter that made Tommy glad he’d worn the black wool suitcoat—even though his primary reason for choosing it had been to cover up the new yellow-patterned shirt that had looked great at the store, but entirely too trendy and clubby in the safe familiarity of his apartment. The marquee of the grand old theater glowed in the twilight, yellow-white bulbs against yellow letters on a red field, but here and there a gap showed where a bulb was burnt out, or missing. As Tommy approached, the closer he got, the more apparent the theater’s age became. He stood before it, front and center, stared up at the marquee, and saw the Fall Indie Film Fest lettering on the Now Playing sign had been slapped up hastily, so the words hung low and off-center. And while he’d expected people to jostle him out of the way as he attempted to stand and collect himself in the entryway at a big event, the crowd was sparse enough to simply stream around him. He was just about to convince himself that the film fest had been a bad idea, when a familiar voice, low, playful and entirely sexy, said just behind his ear, “Gorgeous old building, isn’t she? I’m so glad no one’s homogenized her into a Mega Cineplex.” Tommy turned, and there he was, Nathan, decked out in a black leather jacket, stovepipe jeans and a bright red bandanna-like scarf. Taller than Tommy remembered. He glanced down. Beatle boots, burgundy snakeskin, with a heel. Maybe Sister Norma had been right. Maybe there really was something to be said for accessorizing with a bit of red. Nathan kissed Tommy’s cheek, right out there on the sidewalk, then said, “We might as well head in. Tricia’s always late—drives me crazy—so it wouldn’t exactly shock me if she missed half of her own premiere.” Nathan looped his arm through the crook of Tommy’s elbow to head into the theater, and Tommy surreptitiously checked his watch. They were fifteen minutes early. The lobby was a study in red and gold, with garishly tinted vintage posters from the forties and fifties adorning the walls. The fleur-de-lis patterned carpet camouflaged many of the cigarette burns and chewing gum stains, and though the foil wallpaper was worn at the corners, it still sparkled. A young man in a film fest badge tore their tickets in half, stamped their hands, and encouraged them to pick up a T-shirt or a keepsake program at the merchandise kiosk. A set of double doors wide enough for them to walk through side-by-side opened into the theater itself, so there was no reason for Tommy to pull away from Nathan. Not that he’d wanted to. His courtship with Chuck had been very low-key, chain restaurants and antique shows. Maybe, he thought, he was ready to experience something exciting, even if it did make him feel light-headed and giddy. At least the giddiness crowded out his anxiety.

“How many seats should we save?” Tommy asked. “I have no idea whatsoever. There could be half a dozen or half a hundred in her entourage, so I doubt we could stake a big enough claim. Unless….” Nathan looked up, and Tommy followed his gaze to the private balconies. They looked dark and shadowy, and structurally unsound. “I think they’re probably roped off,” Tommy said. “We won’t be allowed to—“ “What’s the worst thing that can happen? As far as I know, the film fest crew hasn’t broken anyone’s kneecaps yet; they’ll just tell us to go back downstairs.” Possibly, Tommy would have lingered, and maybe pointed out a nice looking pair of seats on the main floor, but Nathan still had him by the arm and was already swinging him back toward the double doors. “I love that shirt on you,” Nathan said conversationally, as if he wasn’t dragging Tommy along like a cat on a leash. “I’m so bored with neutrals. The world needs more color.” They passed the merchandise kiosk and Nathan gave the black “Go Indie” T-shirt a disappointed headshake, and kept right on walking. They found the stairs to the second floor, a majestic curved staircase with rounded corners and great, carved banisters, but it was more than just roped off. A pair of steel doors had been retrofit into the old architecture—a number of years ago, by the look of them. The “No Entry” signs were faded with age and there was a patina of wear on and around the doorhandles. Nathan tried the doors anyway, but they were locked. “Well, that’s it,” Tommy said, “we’d better go grab a good seat.” “Were you always such a quitter? Come on, a place this size, there’s gonna be at least five ways up.” And Nathan should know, Tommy thought. He knew how to dangle outside buildings’ windows and peer into all their secret places. They continued on past a refreshment counter that looked like it hadn’t popped popcorn in over a decade, and then a pair of restroom doors with a water fountain covered by a fine layer of dust between them. Beyond that, a fire exit. Before Tommy could open his mouth to ask if they were at risk of setting off an alarm, Nathan was in the stairwell and halfway up the stairs. Tommy told himself that queasy feeling roiling around his gut was excitement rather than fear, and he followed. He found Nathan at the door on the second story, feet planted wide, tugging. The tight jeans over the really, really nice butt distracted Tommy so thoroughly, he didn’t register—at least until Nathan said it aloud—“This one’s locked. Let’s try the next one.” Though he tried to summon some panic at the thought of being locked in a stairwell that smelled like damp concrete and the vestige of cheap cigars, he kept his mind on the sight

of Nathan’s hind view heading up the stairs, and he found the whole panic thing really wasn’t really amounting to much. Another flight of stairs, and Nathan faced a different door, an older door, again with the wide-planted Elvis stance that made Tommy think he’d have a microphone in his hand when he turned around. And so it was confusing to see he had a video club membership card out instead. The door stood open a few inches. Tommy did a double-take at the plastic card. “Did you just unlock it with—?” “Come on, are you gonna tell me when you were a teenager you didn’t…oh, never mind.” He pocketed the card and held out his hand. A stack of silver bangle bracelets slid forward from the sleeve of his leather jacket. “Let’s go.” If Tommy had ever rehearsed such a situation in his mind—and he couldn’t imagine a reason why he would, but for sake of argument, if he had—he would have imagined himself thinking, “That guy just picked a lock,” rather than, “OMG, he’s holding my hand!” Just goes to show, he thought, that imagination can never adequately prepare for each and every contingency. The hall smelled stale and unused. The only light was the dim yellow glow cast by the exit sign above the door they’d just entered, though once Tommy’s eyes adjusted, it was enough to reveal a long hall with only a few widely spaced doors. The ceiling was low, the carpeting was thin, and the paneling was dark and plain. “I think we’re not anywhere near the balcony,” Nathan observed. “I think you’re right.” When neither of them moved to go back the way they’d come, Nathan turned to Tommy and smiled. The yellowed exit sign cast a warm amber glow over his skin. He was definitely wearing eyeliner tonight—and he looked stunning. Simply stunning. He said, “How crushed would you be if we missed a few minutes of Trish’s big film debut because we’re poking around up here?” You’ve got to be kidding, Tommy thought. But what came out was, “She’s your friend.” “True.” Nathan eased another step closer to Tommy and pretended to consider it for a moment. “But I don’t think her line comes ‘til halfway through. And even if I miss it, I’m sure she’ll forgive me…eventually.” He took Tommy’s lapels, one in each hand, and ran the wool between his thumbs and forefingers. “When it comes out on DVD, I’ll buy an extra copy to make it up to her.” “That’s big of you.”

The dim light from the exit sign glinted off Nathan’s teeth when he smiled. “I hear a lot of that,” he teased, dragging Tommy forward by the lapels. Tommy rode up his leg and they bumped one another, groin to hipbone, and both of them laughed, though it was more of a breath, a breath like a sigh…a sigh like making love. This time when they kissed, Tommy knew he’d been the one to start it. He cupped Nathan’s face with both hands and held it as if to reassure himself that this bizarre, whirlwind thing was actually happening to him—the most unassuming guy at Burr Hale Chevrolet. Nathan’s lips were slick with shimmery gloss that tasted like a plastic butterscotch wrapper, and it occurred to Tommy that his lips would shimmer now, too—and that all of Nathan’s friends would know exactly why they weren’t on time for the movie. How startlingly hot. Tommy slid one hand around the back of Nathan’s neck and felt his blazer drag at his shoulders as Nathan gripped his lapels. Tommy parted Nathan’s lips with his, and before he could spin out some self-fulfilling prophecy about how anything that could possibly go wrong would, he skimmed the edge of Nathan’s teeth with his tongue tip. He felt, rather than heard, the slip of a moan it elicited. That tiny noise was the video club card in the door latch—the key to unlocking the floodgate of Tommy’s desire. He backed Nathan into the wall and deepened the kiss—and he had to tilt his head up with those heels Nathan had on, and that was hot, too. So was the hint of CK One that escaped when Nathan’s leather jacket fell open. So was the jacket itself, for that matter. Tommy slid his hands inside, where Nathan’s body heat was trapped against his ribs. Nathan was taut all over, and rippling with those tiny muscles you only see in Sports Illustrated or Men’s Fitness. And he was starting to pant into Tommy’s mouth. When Nathan draped his arms over Tommy’s shoulders like he was settling in for a nice, long stretch of kisses, Tommy’s sense of urgency prompted him to kick things up another notch. He stopped pushing against Nathan and started, instead, to pull. In a tango that was only slightly awkward, he dragged Nathan into one of the squat, low-ceilinged rooms. Massive metal desks and chairs that predated the Second World War hulked against the walls, and bizarre equipment, check embossers and ancient adding machines the size of toasters, waited silently in the near-dark. Nathan turned on the overhead light, which flickered for several seconds, then gave up, spluttered, and died. “We’ve got plenty of light.” Tommy maneuvered Nathan against the edge of a desk and nuzzled the skin on his neck between scarf and jaw. He’d never realized a bandanna could be such a turn on. Or maybe the color had something to do with it. Red. Assertive. Passionate. Or maybe it was because it was wrapped around Nathan’s pretty throat.

Tommy sucked gently, and Nathan’s breath caught. “Yeah. Do it hard.” “It’ll show.” “Good. Let it. I want it to show.” Nathan eased his butt up onto the desk, wrapped his legs around Tommy’s, and locked their bodies together tight. Tommy nuzzled the spot he’d just sucked, then ran his tongue over the hot, sweet skin. Nathan shivered, then reached between them to adjust the front of his jeans—and Tommy felt a hot, heavy rush make his balls squirm in response. He fixed on Nathan’s neck and sucked even harder, and Nathan dug his fingernails into Tommy’s shoulders and made a noise, a loud noise, that could’ve been pain. Except it obviously wasn’t. Tommy was surprised the scarf’s tight knot yielded to him—then again, he was even more stunned that he was there in a forbidden part of the building with someone like Nathan to begin with. He unfastened the knot, yanked off the scarf, stuffed it in his pocket, and took a long, sensual sniff of Nathan’s throat. CK One and a silky male undertone. Nathan gasped and rubbed himself through his jeans. Tommy slid his fingers through Nathan’s dark hair, over his cheek and jaw, and pressed his head back so his neck formed a perfect, pale arch. Nathan’s breathing went shallow and ragged. Then Tommy fixed on his throat again, and sucked, hard. Nathan cried out and started butting his crotch against Tommy’s thigh. “That’s the hottest thing in the world,” he whispered. “Do it. Do me.” Tommy clapped a hand over Nathan’s and felt his cock straining, perfectly stiff and trapped down the leg of his tight jeans. And that “big” remark he’d made earlier hadn’t been mere bragging, either. Tommy slipped his hand under Nathan’s and explored the whole hard length of it. Not just big. Huge. Nathan’s scent changed noticeably as Tommy stroked his shaft through the denim. If he’d been a strip of yellow paint samples, he would have deepened from the bright but typical Lemonade down to the more complex Sun Kissed. Or maybe even Finch. While Tommy hadn’t even managed to button his own fly the first time they’d met, his fingers had Nathan’s jeans open even faster than he’d made the red bandanna disappear. “I had no idea you’d be such a wildcat,” Nathan said. In the dim yellow light, Tommy searched his eyes for evidence of mockery, but there was none. Only lust. Nathan’s erection was so massive that the skimpy briefs he wore couldn’t have hoped to contain it. Tommy squeezed his hand beneath the waistband and down the left leg to coax the hard-on free. Nathan tangled arms with him and set to work on his belt, but Tommy nudged his hands away. “Nope. I’m doing you.”

“Mrow. You’re the boss…Tiger.” Nathan lay back on the desktop, propped up on both elbows, and peered down at Tommy—who wondered if he might develop stage fright standing there between Nathan’s knees, a sudden fellatory amnesia, a wiping of the synapses that would make him feel as if he’d never given head before. But he stood Nathan’s heavy cock in the ring of his thumb and forefinger, felt a pulse throbbing through the great, serpentine vein, and ran his tongue all along the curve of the velvety crown…and there was no need to remember anything at all. Nathan’s cock was beautiful. It inspired him, and that was all he needed. Below them in the theater, the film played. The vibration of the soundtrack carried through the floor and up through the soles of Tommy’s shoes. It hummed through the steel desk like a single pure note through a tuning fork. Too late now, Tommy figured. Even if they buttoned themselves up and made a mad dash downstairs, they’d already missed the opening credits. It would be dark. Chances were they wouldn’t even find Nathan’s friends. Tommy felt vaguely guilty, but only vaguely. He teased a drop of precome from Nathan’s perfect cock while he reveled in the sound of breathing rising and falling over the muffled swell of the film’s score. Then he wet the cockhead nestled in the circle of his fist and took it down deep. Nathan moaned. Though Tommy couldn’t force all of Nathan’s cock into his mouth, it wasn’t for lack of trying. No matter how he dropped his jaw and relaxed his throat, it didn’t seem humanly possible. Nathan flexed his hips gently as Tommy’s head bobbed, more to acknowledge the rhythm and participate in the festivities than to try to force himself in deeper. After many long minutes of squelching sounds that threatened to turn dangerous, he ran his knuckles down Tommy’s cheek and said, “Take it easy, baby. I don’t expect you to be a sword swallower.” Tommy laughed around his mouthful of cock, maybe more of a choke, and Nathan told him, “I’m clenching up all over doing my best not to shoot right now, ‘cos you’re cute, and you’re quiet, and you’re intense. You’ve got me wrapped around your little finger, and I never want it to end.” Neither did Tommy—and it didn’t even matter that he wasn’t on the road to the “Big O” himself. There’d be time for that later. At home. Or maybe in the car (which, shockingly, he’d never had the courage to initiate, despite his love of cars). What mattered was the feel of hard thighs straining under his hands, and the delicate gasps that punctuated Nathan’s breathing, the smell of him, the taste of him, everything coming together in a single unbelievable experience that Tommy never once would have imagined for himself. When Nathan arched up, he went rigid and held his breath. Music welled from the floor, and then Tommy felt it, the surge of come anointing the back of his throat. He pulled off and opened his mouth wide to capture the semen on his tongue where he could actually taste it, and felt a shot go wide, hit his cheek, and then his mouth. Salty sweet. And just as perfect as he knew it would be.

Nathan was splayed on his back, staring up at the ceiling, with his chest rising and falling as he caught his breath. “That was….” He didn’t seem to be able to find the word. It didn’t matter. His sated languor was more than enough reaction for Tommy, who did his best to burn every detail into his memory so he could savor the moment forever. A loud blare jolted him out of his contemplation of Nathan’s perfection, an alarm of some sort—damn it, he knew they’d get caught—and he scrambled to get his clothes on…then discovered, to his surprise, that he’d never taken them off. Nathan zipped up and rolled off the desk. “Some goof must’ve pulled the fire alarm,” he shouted over the deafening, urgent bleating. He grabbed Tommy by the hand and hauled him towards the door. “Let’s see what’s going on.” They burst back onto the cement stairwell from which they’d come and ran down the stairs, hand in hand. Tommy couldn’t help but laugh, not because anything was particularly funny, but from the sheer exuberance of being so fully, profoundly alive. He glanced at Nathan—who was laughing, too. On the final turn, Tommy headed toward the main floor hallway, but Nathan pulled him in the opposite direction. “That’s locked,” he shouted over the harsh acoustics of the stairwell. Tommy gave the interior door a yank. It was indeed locked. How had Nathan intended to…? Nathan dragged him around a corner and down another half-flight, where a door on the exterior wall led them to an alleyway. The night air had a cold, fresh snap to it, and steam rose from a grate in the blacktop, lit by reflected neon like pink and blue cotton candy. On the street beyond the multicolored steam, a crown milled. Nathan spun Tommy against the side of the building and crushed a kiss to his mouth. He still tasted like lip gloss. At the end of the alleyway sirens whooped, rising and falling over the constant, rhythmic blat of the theater’s alarm system. “Some date,” Tommy said, when Nathan let him come up for air. Nathan didn’t seem to hear the sarcasm. “Isn’t it?” He pressed his pelvis into Tommy’s, and now that Tommy knew what was under those tight jeans, his whole body clenched in delirious anticipation of having that massive cock to do whatever he wanted with. He was just about to suggest going back to his car, when yet another noise, a crackly voice on a loudspeaker, joined the cacophony. “…not a false alarm…disperse immediately…” At least Nathan had the decency to look shocked, albeit delightedly so. He was clearly not the type of person to be daunted by a mere disaster. He caught Tommy’s hand, this hand-holding thing feeling as natural as if they’d been doing it for ages, and they sprinted together toward the end of the alley to see what could possibly happen next.

Though the theater hadn’t seemed very full, once the film fest attendees had shifted to the street along with the parked cars, the curious onlookers, and no less than four fire trucks, they’d turned into a formidable mob. An artsy and sexually ambiguous mob dressed mainly in black, but a mob nonetheless. Nathan paused to take in the scene, and Tommy took that opportunity to orient himself to the streets. “I’m parked over here.” He pulled. But someone else pulled harder. “Why, Nathan Adams, as I live and breathe.” A towering, rotund man plucked Nathan away from Tommy like the proverbial candy from a baby and enfolded him in a hearty embrace. Someone seized Tommy by the shoulders and barked in his ear. “There’s a gas leak. Evacuate the area!” The fireman was huge and his gear made him seem twice as wide, and even if Tommy could have found a way around him, a stream of people pushed between him and Nathan. It felt like the riptide drawing Tommy farther out to sea, and even though the man who’d been hugging Nathan was nearly a head taller than everyone around him, pretty soon Tommy lost sight of even him in the crush of the crowd.

FIVE The press of bodies carried Tommy all the way out to Michigan Avenue, and it had carried Nathan, as far as he knew, in the opposite direction—toward Dearborn. But at that point, what then? North? South? Logically, Tommy figured, he should loop around and attempt to find Nathan. But what if he went the wrong way? He patted his jacket pocket, just over his heart, and felt Dr. Bauer’s book list crinkle. He could call. At least now when Nathan answered, Tommy would have something more to say than, “Hi, you don’t actually know me, but I was the guy in the psychiatrist’s office.” With the din of the fire trucks and the loudspeakers in the background, Tommy tucked into the recessed entryway of an office building that was deserted for the night, and he keyed the number on the back of the list into his phone. Typically, he would have needed to rehearse what he was going to say, however, any number of things, “It’s Tommy,” or maybe even, with no preamble at all, “Where are you?” would be perfect. But just as he was ready to launch into a conversation with absolutely no preparation at all, a woman answered. “Hello?” “Uh…” a woman? Maybe it was Nathan’s friend, Trish. “I-I’m looking for Nathan.” “Wrong number.” “But is this…?” Tommy fumbled for the number, and saw his phone’s readout was dark. The woman had already disconnected. He recalled the last number dialed and checked it against the paper. It was the same. No sense in calling it again. All right, Tommy told himself. Think. The man in the crowd, Nathan’s friend…he’d said Nathan’s full name. Tommy called directory assistance. A computer voice answered. “Welcome to directory service.” It sounded insincere, even over the noise of the traffic and the distant sirens. “State the city, please.” “Chicago.” There was a pause where he wondered if he’d need to find somewhere quiet so the computer would be able to understand him, but then the computer said, so low Tommy could hardly hear it, “State the name, last name first.” “Adams, Nathan.” “One moment, please.” Another harrowing pause. Tommy jammed his finger in his opposite ear and listened for all he was worth. “We have…five…listings for Nathan Adams. Please choose from the following menu.”

Tommy hit the “off” button and stuffed the phone into his pocket. He wasn’t going to have any luck, not out there on the street where he could hardly hear himself think. He peered out of the entryway and looked around. To the north, department stores were still open, casting bright light onto Michigan Avenue’s six lanes. South, it seemed quieter, mostly fast food and newsstands that were busy during the day, but deserted once the office crowd headed home. Sweets to the Sweet was only another block away. At the very least, Tommy figured, it would be quiet inside…if it was still open. He shouldered his way into the crowd. A number of them had escaped the film fest, he suspected, and were busy elbowing each other out of the way in hopes of landing a cab. He scanned for Nathan, but no luck. Then he looked over and saw the Art Institute across the street, and realized he’d gone too far. Puzzled, he turned around and headed back. He crossed a side street, walked a block, and crossed another. The chocolate shop wasn’t there. It was closed, Tommy decided, that was all. It must look different without its lights on. Normally he might have left it at that, but his hands were cold, and he slipped them into his pockets where one of them brushed against the reading list with the wrong number on it. Since he wasn’t in the habit of calling numbers and visiting shops that didn’t exist, he wondered how it could be possible to get so many things wrong in so short a span of time. One by one, he looked into the dark windows of the shops. There was the newsstand with the outrageous collection of particularly tawdry X-rated magazines. The travel agency with the sun-faded posters. The cell phone dealership that recycled batteries. And there, next to it…empty. Tommy backed up to the curb and looked at the building. That was it—the spot where he’d met Sister Norma—except the lettering on the window was gone, and the striped awning over the doorway was gone, too. The display boxes in the window—also gone. And inside…well, it was too dark to see beyond the edge of the front window. Tommy approached the storefront. A few dead flies, feet up, littered the display shelf at the base of the glass. He cupped his eyes to the pane to block out the strobing reflection of the passing headlights and still saw nothing, but it was a profound nothing…a nothing that made it seem like whatever Tommy had thought was there had never even existed. He backed into the recessed doorway and pulled Nathan’s number from his pocket. He checked it once more against the number he’d dialed—yes, it was the same—but just in case he’d swapped a couple of numbers and simply couldn’t see his mistake, he carefully dialed it again. It picked up on the second ring. “I said this was the wrong number, dumbass,” the woman snapped. “Stop calling me.” She hung up.

The panic that had been at bay all night long washed over Tommy in a deep, dreadful, utterly familiar wave. There was no chocolate shop. There was no phone number. He turned the sheet of paper over, fully expecting the side with the reading list to be blank— but no, there it was, a simple letterhead and a bibliography. But what did that prove, really? If Tommy had experienced a break with reality, if he was as completely delusional as he currently felt, he could have fished the piece of paper out of a recycling bin, right after he dreamt up a candy store, a psychiatrist, and one hell of a window washer. Unless he camped out at Dr. Bauer’s office building until Monday morning, accosted the therapist and demanded to know if they’d ever actually met, how would Tommy ever know for sure? Maybe there actually was a Sister Norma. And maybe she’d hypnotized him. Or maybe he’d been hit by a runaway cab on his way to meet her, and all of this was a bizarre fabrication of his comatose brain. It wasn’t so much the idea of himself bristling with I.V.s and tubes with a bleeping heart monitor in the background that made him get all blearyeyed, as the thought that the most fabulous night in his short life had never actually happened. Tommy’s eyes stung. Great, I’m gonna cry. I’m such a dork. He scrubbed at the corner of his eye with his palm, and something on his cheek brushed the side of his hand. He flaked a bit off with his fingernail and crumbled it between his thumb and forefinger. If he’d concocted his encounter with Nathan that night, his imagination was certainly providing some surprisingly earthy details. He chafed the dried semen away and reached into his pocket to find a tissue. He came up with Nathan’s red bandanna instead. Tommy figured he’d look like a total stalker, and he didn’t care—he brought the scarf to his face and inhaled. CK One and Nathan. Yes. Nathan was real. Tommy turned toward the street, more determined than ever to find Nathan…who was suddenly, inexplicably there. Right there at the other end of the block, where he stopped a pedestrian, spoke to her for a moment, then moved on to the next person. “Nathan?” Nathan broke into a smile and sprinted up the block. “There you are! No wonder nobody noticed a painfully cute blond boy in a yellow shirt if you’ve been hiding in there the whole time. You’re not going one more step until I get your phone number, your shoe size and your mother’s maiden name.” Nathan grabbed the bandanna, then wrapped it around Tommy’s neck and knotted it at the base of his throat. “You must’ve left me a doozy of a love bite. Everyone I’ve talked to has had trouble looking me in the face. Their eyes keep wandering down toward my collar.” Tommy’s eyes obediently did the same thing. It was a hell of a hickey. Very red. “I’m sor—”

“I can’t wait to watch my supervisor freak.” Nathan pulled Tommy against him and ended that portion of the conversation with a wet, eager kiss, but Tommy felt like he was still hovering somewhere between reality and the place where men with butterfly nets would come to take him away. He extricated Dr. Bauer’s reading list from his pocket, held it up, and said, “Is this your phone number?” Nathan took the flyer and frowned. “No, that’s not it. There should be a five at the end, not a two.” He pulled a pen from his jacket and smoothed the sheet of paper over the window to write the correction on it, then looked over the paper’s edge, bewildered, into the storefront that was no longer there. “That cold-hearted bitch.” “What?” Nathan handed the paper back to Tommy, then cupped his eyes to the glass as Tommy had done. “He didn’t tell me they were closing.” “Sweets to the Sweet,” Tommy said, because it sounded marginally better than, “So the candy store really did exist.” “I’ll bet that’s why he was always so cagey. He knew they weren’t going to last. The rents are exorbitant; it’s nearly impossible for a small business to make it here.” “But wasn’t it just…I mean, a couple of days ago I…it looks like it’s been abandoned for months.” “You’d be surprised at how fast they can strip a place down. I’m sure it’ll be tarted up as a Starbucks or a Chili’s within a week.” Though Nathan’s blasé attitude was somewhat reassuring, Tommy couldn’t get the image of the dead flies with their feet in the air out of his mind. “The windows are so dirty you can’t even see in,” he pointed out. Nathan ran a fingertip through the grime. “This is nothing. All it takes is for a street sweeper to drive by and you end up with spatter like this. Most businesses have their first-floor windows done every other day.” He spun Tommy against the shallowly recessed door and pinned him there, chest to chest. “Funny…I had a little crush on the cashier, but now I’m glad nothing ever came of it.” He plied Tommy with more faintly butterscotch-flavored kisses until the film on the windows seemed much less important, and finally when it became clear that any more kisses would lead them to an arrest for lewd behavior in public, Nathan added, “Otherwise I wouldn’t have met you.”

JCPBooks e-books are priced by the word count of the story only. Any end matter or sample chapters are a bonus!

About the Author While Jordan usually draws on odd jobs she’s held when she creates her characters and stories, she guarantees that she’s never sold anyone a car, nor has she ever dangled over the side of a skyscraper with a squeegee in her hand. In fact, she has never even washed her own windows.

About this Story The genesis of these characters was pretty roundabout. I was visiting family members who were having their windows cleaned, and it was startling to keep seeing these workmen. We’d be sitting there at the kitchen table, look up, and…Yikes, there’s a guy at the French doors! Or come down the front stairs, and, Eep, there’s someone’s face in the front door. I loved the idea that a shy guy like Tommy could be sitting there in a seemingly private spot like a skyscraper, and suddenly this hottie would just drop down out of nowhere. When I researched window washing, I found it was a very dangerous and skilled job—an extremely macho job. So I really liked the idea of putting someone who was both queeny and macho at the same time in this role. It seemed like you needed to be really confident to dangle off the side of a building like that—and so Nathan took shape in my mind as someone with glam-rock type sensibilities, but in a very traditionally masculine job— someone with such brass balls it wouldn’t even occur to him to act like anything other than what he was. Originally I was going to give Tommy a loner-type job, but then I challenged my own notion of having a shy guy doing a solitary job and wondered instead how he would be doing something that would intimidate the heck out of me—selling cars. And the more I turned it around in my head, the more I liked the idea of him being comfortable with the specs of the cars, the facts and figures, with actually loving cars in a way a chick like me really can’t understand—because to me, if it runs, it’s all good.

Slings and Arrows Petit Morts #2 Josh Lanyon ISBN: 978-1-935540-05-2 All rights reserved. © 2010 Josh Lanyon Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. JCP Books e-books are for sale to adults only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by underaged readers.

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ONE It was a cold winter’s night in Hartsburg. A moon as dry and white as cork shone over the shadowed hills and dales of the Napa Valley, shone like a distorted clockface in the wine dark water of the Napa River. In the small town, shops were closing—window displays of red and pink hearts, overweight cupids—winking out. Down wide and shady streets, curtains and blinds were drawn across remodeled Victorian windows to keep out the chill rustling in the eucalyptus trees. Over at the college, students walked in pairs or singly across the well-lit campus. The blazing buildings in Dorm Row pulsed with a variety of musical beats: The Flaming Lips vying with Lady Gaga for air space. Carey Gardner, twenty-three, blond, cute, and brighter than he looked, pushed open the door to his dorm room on the third floor in Pio Pico House to find it, as usual, crowded with his roommate Sty’s buddies watching TV. “Yo, Bones!” Sty waved a beer in greeting. “Yo,” Carey responded, swallowing his irritation. The “Bones” joke was getting old. It was all getting old. For some reason Sty had taken Carey’s change of major to anthropology personally. Sty was still clinging to his major in management and entrepreneurship, which, granted, was better than the physical education major of a lot of the other guys on the swim team. “Where’ve you been?” “Library.” “Dude.” There was pity in Sty’s voice. Whatever. They’d started out friends—technically they were still friends—and they were rooming together by choice. Or maybe it was more habit. Either way, Carey was not being held prisoner in Suite E (commonly known as Cell Block 8). The problem was, Sty was the same easygoing, fun-loving goofball he’d been as a freshman. And Carey…was not. In order to graduate on time, Carey had to make up a couple of classes he’d blown off the first time around. His courseload was heavy and his sense of humor was not what it had once been.

“Make way for Dr. Leakey,” Sty ordered, and the interchangeable frat boy sprawling on Carey’s bed, shifted to the foot of it and gave Carey a glinting look from beneath his shaggy bangs. Yeah. Like that was going to happen. Like Carey was going to lie down, sheep to the slaughter, in the midst of these assholes. “You’re blocking the TV, dude,” someone else said irritably. Carey dropped his backpack under his desk, well out of the way of temptation—although it was unlikely any of Sty’s pals would be tempted by anthropology books. Or any books that didn’t have plenty of pictures of naked girls. “Have a beer.” Sty used the remote to turn down the sound on the TV to the vocal disappointment of an audience that didn’t want to miss one single second of Olympic ski jumping. “Thanks, but I’m—” Carey hooked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate he was on his way out again—although it was nine-thirty now and he had to get up for swim practice at five. They both did. “Wait, wait.” Sty actually bothered to push upright. “Something came for you.” He jumped up and grabbed a large flat box wrapped in distinctive red paper with a black ribbon. “What is it?” “It’s from that shop in the town square.” “What shop?” Carey asked slowly. Sty lifted the box and checked the gold label beneath. “Sweets to the Sweet.” “Candy? I didn’t order that.” Five pairs of gleaming eyes zeroed on Carey. In fact, he thought he saw a pair of yellow eyes shining beneath the bed. The promise of free chocolate was not to be taken lightly in this jungle. “Well, if you didn’t order it, maybe it’s a gift. Maybe your parents sent it.” “Or your girlfriend,” another of the jerk-offs put in. Carey ignored him. He reached for the box; Sty handed it over reluctantly.

“You’re not going to eat that whole thing yourself?” he protested, as Carey turned to the doorway. “You’re in training.” “So are you, dude. I’m saving you from yourself.” “He’s headed for Little Castro,” someone cooed as Carey closed the door behind him. On the other side of the sound barrier Carey took a couple of steadying breaths. Not worth it. He knocked on the door to the left. “Venido adentro!” The voice behind the door was muffled. Carey opened the door to Heath and Ben’s room. Heath Rydell was lying on his bed in paisley boxer shorts reading the CliffsNotes to The Mill on the Floss. He was a tall, languid-looking young man with red hair and wide brown eyes. Ben Scully sat at his desk jotting down notes from a book titled 501 Spanish Verbs. “Hola.” He was smiling. Ben was blond, broad-shouldered and blunt-featured. He wore jeans and a Hartsburg College tee shirt. “Don’t those douchebags ever shut up?” Heath inquired. It was a rhetorical question. Carey held up the wrapped box. “I come bearing gifts.” At the promise of food, Heath, who looked like a consumptive and ate like a horse, sat up. “What is it?” “Candy, I think.” “Where did it come from?” Ben asked, setting aside his book. “I don’t know.” Carey flopped comfortably down on the foot of Ben’s bed and slid the black ribbon off the box. “I guess someone sent it.” He ripped open the blood red paper and his eyebrows shot up. He lifted out the heartshaped box. “Candy for sure.” “Wow,” said Heath, scrambling over to the foot of his own bed. “Look at that thing.” “That thing” was an old-fashioned confection of red velvet, pink silk roses, and a black satin ribbon.

“That must be two or three pounds of chocolate,” Ben said, impressed. “There’s a card.” Heath got up and knelt beside the bed at Carey’s feet, reaching beneath the blue comforter. “It fell when you lifted the box out.” He handed the small white envelope to Carey. Carey slid his thumb under the flap, slid the card out. He read aloud, “From your secret admirer.” Heath chortled as Ben inquired, “Who’s your secret admirer?” Carey shook his head. The three of them considered the bizarre notion of Carey having a secret admirer. “No offense, darling, but you’re not the type.” Ben shot Heath an impatient look. “It’s true,” Heath insisted. “Look at him.” They both studied Carey, who stared uneasily back at them. “If he was any more vanilla he’d come in a bottle.” “Thanks!” The other two snickered. At last Heath said, “Are you going to open that or just fondle the ribbon all night?” Carey snapped out of his preoccupation and slid the ornamental lid carefully off the heart-shaped box. The smell of chocolate—good chocolate—wafted through the overwarm room. He closed his eyes and inhaled. It was unreal, that scent. Like pheromones or something. Weight was not a problem for him, but he was in training, and this was…Jesus, that smelled good… He resisted the temptation to bury his face in the box and graze; instead he bravely settled for a single dark chocolate and almond cluster, handing the rest of the candy around. “Whoever he is, he has good taste,” Ben said, his mouth full of marzipan. “He? It’s probably a chick,” Heath objected. “You know who it is? It’s probably that Nona chick from your anthropology class. She’s got the hots for you, dude.”

Carey shook his head. A three-pound box of fine chocolates—and these were very fine indeed—probably cost as much as a ten meal card at the cafeteria. Nona was always broke. “Or what’s her name. Pronzini.” “Kayla?” Carey said. “No way. She hates me.” “That’s what you think. I think she’s one of those chicks who acts out her attraction in misdirected aggression.” “One semester of psychology and he thinks he’s an expert.” Ben reached for the box of chocolates again. “By the way, Skeletor was looking for you earlier.” Carey nearly choked on his chocolate. “Walt was here? In this suite? What did he want?” “Walt!” hooted Heath. “I want to see you call Walter Sterne Walt to his face.” Carey and Ben both ignored that, Ben answering, “He didn’t say.” “Did he leave a number?” “No.” “He didn’t say I should call him at Professor Bing’s office or anything?” “No. Nothing. He was on his way out when I arrived,” Ben explained patiently. “I happened to catch him on the stairs. He said he was looking for you but you weren’t in. That was it. That was our entire conversation.” “What time was this?” Ben looked at Heath. Heath considered while he munched. “Eight? Eight-thirty?” Carey scowled thoughtfully. “Are you in trouble or something?” “Me? No. I…” “Hey.” Heath sat bolt upright. “Maybe Skeletor left the chocolates for you!” “Don’t call him that,” Carey said, pained. “Why not. That’s who he looks like. That’s who he acts like.” Heath quoted in a nasal Skeletor-like voice, “I must possess all, or I possess nothing!”

“He’s been totally cool with me,” Carey said. “I never would’ve gotten into Advanced Ethnographic Field Methods if he hadn’t talked to Professor Bing for me.” “Gee, that would have ruined your life.” “It would have kept me from graduating. It’s not offered next semester and it’s a required class.” “He likes you,” Ben said with feeling. “Everyone likes Carey.” There was a tinge of acid in Heath’s tone. “Holy crap.” Ben stopped, staring down at the box of chocolates as though he’d tasted arsenic. “What?” Carey asked uneasily. Ben’s bright blue eyes met his. “Nothing. I mean…I was thinking…” “No wonder he scared himself,” Heath put in, predictably. “You were thinking…?” “About the Valentine’s Day Killer.” In the sudden silence he could hear the muffled sounds of TV and voices from the room next door. “Huh?” Carey said at last. “You’ve heard that story. Everyone has.” Heath sounded bored, but his gaze was riveted to Ben’s. “Not me.” “It’s an urban legend.” “What’s the story?” Heath was looking pointedly at Ben. “This is way back in the seventies,” Ben reluctantly took over. “It was like over a period of five years or something, right?” Heath nodded.

“Every year, right before Valentine’s Day, a girl on campus would get a big fancy box of chocolates from a secret admirer.” He stopped. Carey prodded, “And?” “The girl would be found stabbed to death on Valentine’s Day.” “What?” Carey burst out laughing. “Hand to God, dude.” “Sure it is.” He waited for Heath or Ben to break the straight faces. Both continued to look solemn. “That is such total bullshit. You totally made that up.” “Swear to God, dude.” Heath put his hand over his heart. “Swear. To. God.” “No. Fuck. Ing. Way.” Heath spread his hands and looked at Ben for confirmation. “It’s true,” Ben said. Unlike Heath, Ben knew enough not to milk a joke to the last laugh, but he still wasn’t smiling. “Let me guess the rest. He was an escaped maniac from the local mental institution—and he had a hook for hand.” Ben and Heath spluttered into guffaws. “No. Seriously,” Ben protested. “They never caught the guy.” “Or gal,” Heath interjected. “What, he just stopped?” Ben said seriously, “He probably graduated.” “To what? Mass murder?” They all snickered uneasily. Another blast of laughter and voices from next door filled the suddenly awkward pause. “So…you two sent this box of candy, right?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Heath said, and Ben looked blank and uncomfortable. “That’s too pricey a joke for my budget. Although these are probably the best chocolates I’ve ever had.” Heath considered the tray of nuts, creams, and caramels before him and reached for another. They chomped in silence. From the other side of the suite they could hear music, the thudding of a bass. Sometimes Carey thought that was the toughest part of dorm life. The lack of silence. Although the silence in this room was plenty loud. He said abruptly, “Right. Whatever. I think I’ll go the library.” Heath said, “Weren’t you just at the library?” At the same time Ben said, “Now? It’s ten o’clock.” He was frowning, looking worried. “The library stays open till three.” “Yeah, but you’re the guy who can’t stay awake past eleven.” “So I’ll sleep in the library. I’m sure as hell not going to be able to sleep with those loudmouths in my room.” “Throw ’em out,” Heath advised nonchalantly. “Like that’s going to happen.” “Tell Sty—” “Look, I’ll leave the chocolates with you.” “Oh.” Heath subsided, shoving a pecan cluster in his mouth and reaching for The Mill on the Floss CliffsNotes once more. He said thickly, “In that case—”

TWO The buildings and trees cast geometric shadows across the brick drive. The tall overhead lights threw down triangles of yellow illumination. Carey’s footsteps echoed as he walked. There were not a lot of people hiking back and forth from the main campus to the dorms at this time of night. He was not the nervous type. He was not even particularly imaginative. But you didn’t have to be nervous or imaginative to notice what a long, deserted walk fifteen minutes could be at this hour. Especially after receiving an expensive gift from a possible stalker. Lights shone brightly in dorm windows as he strode along. The occasional sonant floated through the night air. Now and then a pair of slow-moving headlights swept along the road above him, picking out trees and the cars parked along Orchard Drive. He passed the outlying science buildings and the theater, went down the two short flights of stairs to the main quad. Water from the fountain in the center shot up white and sparkling like liquid starlight in the night. A couple of shadowy figures sat on the cement bench that formed the basin of the fountain. They watched Carey walk past without speaking. “Hey,” he said. “Hey,” one of the figures muttered back. Carey walked on. He felt more at ease now that he was in the center of campus. Not that he had been spooked before, really, but he wished Heath and Ben had kept their mouths shut. No way, not for one minute, did he believe that story about a Valentine’s Day Killer. But he wasn’t crazy about the idea of a secret admirer either, and apparently that was for real. The glass doors slid open before him. The library was brightly, almost garishly lit, after the weird shadows and artificial light of the night. Carey prowled the aisles and corners. With no finals pending, the library was relatively quiet. A weary-looking librarian filed oversized books. A few students studied or whispered at tables. A blue chair concealed behind a potted silk was occupied by a bearded kid in a green hoodie and sandals. He was snoring softly, a bag of illicit Cheetos spilling onto the carpet.

Carey went upstairs to where the study rooms were—mostly deserted at this time of night. He glanced in the small oblong windows of each closed door. Only one room was lit. Walter Sterne sat reading at the long table. Most of the time the rooms were reserved by groups, but Walter was on his own, surrounded by a forbidding stack of books. For an instant Carey studied him, wondering if he should interrupt, if he was about to make a total fool of himself. Probably. But when had that ever stopped him? Walter was Dr. Bing’s teaching assistant. A grad student with a brilliant future, according to everything Carey had heard. Okay, not everything Carey had heard, because most of what Carey had heard was not so flattering. For all his brilliance, Walter didn’t have a lot of friends or admirers. He was withdrawn and a little arrogant—and he looked it: tall and thin with a bleak, aquiline profile. He had black hair and he wore gold-rimmed spectacles that made him look older than he was. He was about twenty-six. Carey tapped on the door, peering through the window. Walter turned to the door. He did not smile. He rarely smiled. After a moment he nodded curtly, and Carey opened the door. “Hey.” “Hi.” “I heard you were looking for me earlier.” Walter’s expression didn’t change, but his pale, bony face reddened. It seemed like he wasn’t going to answer, but then he said, “It wasn’t…no. It doesn’t matter.” “Oh. Okay.” But Carey couldn’t quite let it go. After all, it wasn’t like Pio Pico house was on Walter’s way. Walter lived in town. He had zero reason to be visiting the undergrad dorms, let alone Carey’s suite unless… Heart beating as fast as it did in those final seconds of waiting for the crack of the starter pistol, he said, “You must have had a reason.” To his amazement, Walter seemed to go a shade or two darker still. Carey stared into Walter’s eyes, which were a very light brown and unexpectedly long-lashed. Walter stared back.

“It was merely an impulse,” Walter said reluctantly. Carey knew Walter well enough to know he didn’t act on impulse very often. Unlike Carey. “What was?” “I…” Walter seemed to struggle internally, “thought you might want to go to dinner.” Despite the accompanying shrug, Walter sounded formal. Most guys would have said thought you might want to grab something to eat. Walter probably wanted to sound casual, but…he didn’t. He never did. Now he eyed Carey with a mixture of irritation and embarrassment. Carey beamed at him. “I’d like to go to dinner, yeah. I didn’t have time earlier.” “You mean now?” Walter sounded startled. Carey’s turn to flush, but he barreled on. He’d been waiting and hoping for this opportunity for a while. “Didn’t you mean this evening?” Walter considered. “I did. Yes.” “Well? Did you already eat?” He doubted it. From what he’d observed, Walter was one of those brainiacs who often forgot to eat because they were too busy working out the solution to world hunger. “Er…no.” “Good. I’m starving.” It seemed to take Walter a few seconds to translate. Then, unhurriedly, he began gathering his books and papers. “There won’t be anything open on campus.” “I don’t care if you don’t.” “I don’t care.” Walter sounded terse. Carey was unsure if that was because Walter really didn’t care or because he was so pissed off at having been roped into taking Carey to dinner that the added annoyance of off-campus barely registered. Having unexpectedly gotten his way, Carey found himself unable to think of anything to say as they made their way downstairs and started out through the library doors. He was trying to remember if he’d ever had to coerce someone into taking him out before. He didn’t think so, and he wasn’t entirely comfortable with it. Not given to chitchat, Walter made no effort to dispel the silence between them. Maybe he didn’t even notice it. He seemed—when Carey risked a quick glance—preoccupied.

“Sterne!” They turned as Kayla Pronzini hurried out the sliding doors after them. Kayla was short and stocky. She wore her glossy brown hair very short and favored knitted sweaters with cuddly animal motifs. “I did turn in my paper on Evans-Pritchard, so I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice echoed loudly in the cement walkway. Walter answered as calmly as if they’d previously been discussing this. “I didn’t receive it. Professor Bing says he has no record of it.” “Professor Bing is wrong. His office was closed, and I shoved it under the door.” “Maybe you didn’t shove it far enough.” Walter sounded polite, but indifferent. “I shoved it all the way under. There’s no way it blew out again or anyone pulled it out.” The overhead lights turned the lenses of Walter’s spectacles opaque. He said in that same even, automatic voice, “I suggest you print another copy and resubmit.” “And have it marked late?” Walter shrugged. “That’s up to Professor Bing.” “It wasn’t late.” “You’ll have to talk to Professor Bing.” “If you tell Professor Bing—” “You have to take this up with Professor Bing.” “This is bullshit!” Kayla’s angry tones bounced off the cement overhang. Her gaze fell on Carey and twisted with open dislike. “Is that so? Because you don’t have any trouble interceding on behalf of your friends.” Carey opened his mouth, but Walter said calmly, coldly, “Good night, Pronzini.” He turned and continued unhurriedly toward the quad. “Asshole,” Kayla said clearly. Carey ignored her, following Walter’s unhurried, loose-jointed stride down the stairs to the quad, past the fountain. He was thinking of Heath and Ben joking about the possibility of Kayla having sent those chocolates. No way was Kayla’s antagonism for him a

mask for deeper feeling. She couldn’t stand him—and the feeling was pretty mutual. She was abrasive and confrontational, and frequently made dismissive comments about jocks. No, Kayla wasn’t his secret admirer. So who was? He studied Walter’s uncompromising profile. As much as he’d like to think Walter was maybe as interested in him as he was in Walter, he couldn’t see Walter shelling out a big wad of cash on a romantic gesture. He could always ask, of course, but if by chance Walter had left the chocolates, that might put him on defense. Carey didn’t want him on defense. “Is this liable to be a problem?” “What?” “You and me. Going to dinner.” Walter said crisply, “Not for me. I don’t determine grades. Professor Bing does. So if that’s what you’re hoping for—” It took Carey took a second or two to process this. His heart seemed to slip in his chest as he realized what Walter was saying. He said at last, “That’s not what I’m hoping for.” Walter’s thin mouth curved in a derisive smile. Carey gazed at him with disbelief, but Walter didn’t say anything else, didn’t look his way as they went up the steps to the faculty parking lot. “I’m parked on Orchard Drive,” Walter informed him. “Okay.” As they made their way across the mostly empty lot, Walter continued silent and lost in thought. He could have been on his own for the attention he paid Carey, and Carey’s former pleasure and excitement drained away. By the time they reached the long flight of steps to Orchard Drive it had occurred to him that he had probably made a mistake in pushing Walter into taking him out. He halted at the foot of the stairs. “Look…” Walter, two steps up, stopped. Waited. Carey said with difficulty, “I totally browbeat you into this. Anyway, it’s late and I’ve got swim practice first thing tomorrow. Why don’t we do it another time?”

It was too dark to read Walter’s expression, but the outline of his body remained straight and stiff. “Of course.” He didn’t sound surprised. He didn’t sound let down. He didn’t sound anything at all. “Okay.” Clearly he’d made the right call or Walter would say something now. Say that it wasn’t late, that he hadn’t been forced to ask Carey, that he wanted to have dinner with him, get to know him better. He waited. Walter said nothing. Carey squared up to the disappointment. “Thanks anyway,” he said lightly and turned away. “Good night,” Walter replied in that cool, colorless voice. He could hear the quick light scrape of Walter’s feet fading on the stairway behind him as he walked back across the deserted parking lot. Disappointment gave way to irritation and embarrassment. Jesus. It’s not like he had to beg people to go out with him. Plenty of people would be more than happy to go out with him if he wanted that. And the fact that he didn’t want that, that he wanted someone who so obviously didn’t want him said a lot more about Carey than it did Walter. By now Walter probably totally regretted the impulse that had made him seek Carey out in the first place. And it was worse because Carey had probably put Walter in a weird position. As Professor Bing’s GTA, Walter had to keep a certain distance from the students he worked with. He’d already done Carey a big favor by getting him into Ethnographic Field Methods when the class was badly overcrowded. His face heated as he considered facing Walter in class tomorrow. Walter was going to think Carey was a total headcase dragging him out of his study room—basically forcing him to ask Carey out—only to have Carey ditch him in the parking lot. Shit. But maybe Walter would take it as a kind of weird compliment. It’s not like the idea had come to Carey out of nowhere. He’d picked up the invitation that Walter had already… Withdrawn. Yeah.

Okay, so now Walter probably did think Carey was flaky. Still. Not like Carey had asked him to dinner on Valentine’s Day or done something dramatic like anonymously send a giant box of chocolates. It really wasn’t a big deal. Except he’d probably blown it. And he liked Walter. A lot. He started down the steps to the main campus. There was a footfall behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and to his shock there was someone right behind him. He had a fleeting impression of a tall figure at the top of the stairs. His foot skidded on a rock or an acorn. Carey was already startled and off balance, and turning his foot was all it took. He pitched forward. With astonishment, he felt himself falling. The cement was shining in the moonlight as he crashed down the accordion of steps. Instinctively, he put a hand out to protect himself. Everything went black.

THREE “Carey? Carey?” The frantic voice at last got through. Carey opened his eyes. He was on the ground. The very cold, very hard ground. Someone had laid their jacket over him. Bits of gravel were biting into his cheek. His head throbbed and he knew from the nauseating, twisting pressure radiating up and down his forearm that he’d broken his left arm. Either his wrist or his arm…but something was definitely broken. “Can you hear me? Are you okay?” The voice was familiar. Even so, it took him a few more seconds to place it. Ben. Ben sounding scared out of his wits. “I’m okay,” he gasped, and made the effort to sit up. It didn’t go so well. “Did I throw up on you?” he asked a short while later. Ben didn’t hear, busy on his cell phone summoning help from the sound of things. He disconnected and crawled next to Carey again. “How did you fall?” Was that what had happened? He’d fallen? It was sort of fuzzy. He remembered…saying goodnight to Walter…oh. Really not a good evening “I don’t know,” he got out. “Slipped, I guess.” “Man, you’re lucky you didn’t break your neck.” Ben sat down beside him and put a cautious arm around his shoulders. Carey leaned against him gratefully. The combination of pounding head and pounding arm was making him tired and sick. “What are you doing here?” it finally occurred to him to ask. “I left something in my car. I’m parked on Orchard Drive, so I was going to cut through the faculty lot. I’m glad I did.” “Me too.”

“Relax,” Ben said, sounding surprisingly authoritative. “Help is on the way.” ••• “What’s the last thing you remember?” Heath asked. “Walking across the parking lot.” It was the morning after Carey’s spill down the parking lot stairs. He was in the dining hall having breakfast with Heath and Ben. Mostly he was watching Ben and Heath eat. His stomach was still rocky. Late night visits to emergency rooms are never a whole lot of fun. Last night’s had been no different. The intern on duty—who looked about his own age—had pronounced mild concussion and a fractured scaphoid, which turned out to be a tiny bone in his wrist. The good news was fractures of the scaphoid near the thumb supposedly healed in a matter of weeks. The bad news was, Carey wouldn’t be swimming until the bone healed. The worst news was, he needed a cast. The cast stretched from right below his thumb to right below the elbow. It seemed like a lot of cast for such a little bone. He had a sling to take the weight off. It was mostly annoying at this point, although flashes of pain seared through the nerves and muscles of his arm. Coach Ash had had a few things to say about swimmers who managed to injure themselves when they were supposed to be under curfew. Actually, if Carey was honest, the last thing he could recall for sure was walking away from Walter. He wasn’t about to bring that up. The memory of the way he’d had to maneuver Walter into asking him to dinner—and the alacrity with which Walter had gotten himself off the hook—was more painful than his wrist. “I told you he was an aquatic animal,” Heath told Ben. “I think he tripped over his webbed toes.” “So funny I forgot to laugh,” Carey said. He could feel the curious gaze of his friends. It was Ben who broached the obvious. “Yeah, but what were you doing all the way over in the parking lot? I thought you went to the library.” “I did. I was…” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Hey, we’re going to be late for class.” You? Shit.” Heath scooped up his books. “I’m across campus at the art building.” He departed, a long-legged vision in purple jeans and tie-dye shirt.

“You ought to be in bed,” Ben said, as Carey pushed to his feet. “How hard is it to sit there and listen for an hour?” “To Professor Bing? Very.” Ben was grinning. “Want me to carry your books?” “People will talk.” “Fuck ‘em.” Carey laughed, but he carried his own books. Truth be told, he didn’t feel too hot. He would’ve liked nothing better than to spend a day or two licking his wounds, but he couldn’t afford to fall behind again. He listened absently to Ben as they walked across the quad. Ben was still talking as they reached the social science building. Carey couldn’t have repeated a word he said. He was braced for seeing Walter, but when they entered the room, Walter was busy talking to Professor Bing, not looking for Carey at all. Carey relaxed. Knowing Walter, he probably didn’t even realize last night had been a big deal for Carey. Knowing Walter, he probably didn’t even remember last night. “What happened to you?” Nona asked. She was a tall and frail-looking girl with sad dark eyes and long, long hair. Gold heart-shaped barrettes held the front of her hair back from her pale face. Carey remembered Heath suggesting Nona was his secret admirer. Nona was attracted to him; he could tell. She was a quiet, intense sort of person—and sending anonymous chocolates did seem like the kind of thing that a girl would do. But…Nona? “He fell up the down staircase,” Ben joked. Nona looked bewildered. She was Iranian, and her grasp of English hit an occasional pothole. Not that some of Ben’s jokes didn’t need translating even for native speakers. Carey glanced down to where Professor Bing and Walter still stood conversing in front of the chalkboards. Walter casually glanced up to where Carey was standing. Their eyes locked. Walter looked away, then looked back, plainly startled at the sight of the cast. His mouth opened. Closed. Carey turned back to Nona. “It’s fine. A tiny fracture.” “Better get our seats,” Ben said, and Carey nodded and preceded him up the wooden tiers to the row of seats in the back of the lecture room.

Maybe it was his aching wrist, or lack of sleep, but Carey found it hard to concentrate that morning. It wasn’t only him. Ben was shifting in his seat and fiddling with his pen. “For example, our own Valentine’s Day,” Professor Bing said, and there were a few snickers through the rows of seats. Whatever the joke was, Carey had missed it. He glanced at Ben, who was frowning as he took notes, so maybe this was important after all. “Our best guess is that the modern rituals of this day date to the ancient Christian and Roman traditions, with antecedents stretching all the way back to the fertility festival of Lupercalia, also known as Lupercalis. The rise of Christianity was responsible for a number of pagan holidays being renamed for and dedicated to the early Christian martyrs. In 496 AD, Pope Gelasius turned Lupercalia into a Christian feast day to honor Saint Valentine, a third century Roman martyr.” Carey risked a look at Walter. He had felt Walter’s gaze throughout the lecture. The few times he let himself look, Walter was jotting down notes, his expression grave and absorbed. It was no different this time, and he suppressed a sigh. Nona, on his other side, smiled at him. At the end of the lecture, Carey closed his notebook and slowly pushed his things in his backpack. “I’ve got it,” he assured Ben who was standing by to lend a hand. “Sure?” “Yeah.” He spared another look and saw Walter standing and talking to Professor Bing. Ben was saying patiently, “Dude, you’re going to take another header down these stairs if you don’t—” “Got it,” Carey repeated with a quick smile—and one eye on Walter who was taking the tall stack of papers Bing was handing over. Ben followed Carey’s glance. He mimicked softly, “Now I, Skeletor, am master of the universe…” Carey shot him an irritable look, shrugging his backpack over his good shoulder. Ben gave him a lopsided grin. “Later.” “Later,” Carey made his way without haste down the wooden tiers. The cast made him feel ungainly and off balance, and falling in a heap at Walter’s feet would not do much for his image.

As he reached the bottom he found Walter had been watching his descent. “What happened to you?” he asked quietly, seeming to tear his gaze from the cast with an effort. “I fell walking back to my dorm last night.” “Fell?” Walter sounded about as astonished as Carey had ever heard. “Fell how?” “The usual way. Head over heels.” If things had gone differently the evening before he might have teased Walter a little. He liked flirting with Walter, even if Walter’s response veered between bemused and dismissing. But things hadn’t gone differently. In fact, they had—and were—going nowhere at all, and teasing Walter was likely just another bad idea. “You broke your arm?” In a minute Walter was going to say That does not compute! like the robot in Lost in Space. “My wrist. The doctor thought I probably put my hand out to soften my landing.” “You don’t remember?” “I hit my head.” Walter scowled. “Other than the wrist, are you all right?” “Other than the wrist, great,” Carey responded tersely. Walter was still scowling, black brows knitted as he mulled over whatever deep thoughts he was thinking, and Carey lost all patience—with himself first and foremost. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got class.” Walter appeared to struggle over what he wished to say. Usually Carey found Walter’s utterances worth the wait. Today, he didn’t have the strength. “See you around.” If Walter had an answer, he missed it. ••• By noon he was thinking he should have taken the doctor’s advice and allowed himself a day to rest and recuperate. He felt like crap. His head was pounding, his arm was aching, and he felt weirdly, unreasonably depressed.

The worst thing was to give in to feeling like that. What he should do was get his ass in gear and go to the swim meet to cheer his teammates on, but even as he was thinking this he was walking back to the dorms—and realizing what a very long walk it was. When he finally made it home, he climbed the stairs, and let himself into his room —Styfree for once, as Sty would be on the bus headed for the meet—and stretched out on the bed. He had a class in applied anthropology that evening, and he needed sleep or he’d be useless. Carey closed his eyes. When he opened them again the room was in blue winter shadow. A bird was hopping along the windowsill. Its cheep-cheep was surprisingly loud, but that wasn’t what had woken him. There was a small creaking sound. He glanced across at the door. The doorknob was turning back and forth. Sty had forgotten his keys again. In that relaxed post-dream state, still mildly opiated, Carey watched calmly as the knob grated left. Then right. He sat up. Called groggily, “Coming.” The handle stilled. Sty didn’t reply. Carey stared at the door, an uneasy feeling prickling down his spine. Sty would thump on the door or get the RA to come and unlock it. He wouldn’t swivel the knob in that furtive way. Besides, Sty was at a swim meet on the other side of the Napa Valley. Carey rolled off the bed, crossed to the door in a couple of steps and yanked it open. The hallway and suite living room were empty. The door to Heath and Ben’s room stood open, but there was no one inside. His candy box was sitting on the top of their mini fridge. Across the hall, he could hear the shower running in the suite bathroom. He poked his head in the steamy bathroom. Heath was singing “Love Game” loudly and off-key. “Got my ass squeeeezed by seh-eh-exy Cuuuupid…” There was no one else in the bathroom.

Carey ducked back out again. Jerome, who lived in the room across from his own, appeared, bundled for the cold and carrying a load of books. Carey said, “Did you see—?” “Did I see?” “Was anyone on the stairs?” Jerome looked at him like he was nuts. Maybe he was. “Sure. Lots of people.” Okay, so he never pretended to be Sherlock Holmes. Or even Watson. And, really, what was the big deal because someone had turned his door handle? It could have been the student maintenance service. Except, in that case, where was the student or his maintenance equipment? Carey’s cell phone was ringing. He went back in his room, hunted around for it. Finding it, he flipped it open. He didn’t recognize the number on the screen. “Gardner.” “Hi. It’s Walter.” He managed not to drop the phone. “Hi.” Walter had never asked for his phone number, but he probably had access to Professor Bing’s records. “I wanted to ask whether you had plans for tomorrow night,” Walter inquired in that formal way, “and if not, would you like to have dinner?” “Tomorrow night?” Carey asked, astonished and pleased. “Yes.” “It’s Valentine’s Day.” “You have plans, naturally. I realized that you probably would—” “No,” Carey interrupted. “I don’t. And I’d like to have dinner.” The pause sounded nonplussed. Walter said, “Good. I’ll pick you up at seven.”

Pick him up? As in come to Pio Pico house? That could be tricky. Carey said awkwardly, “You don’t have to do that. I can just meet you—” The silence on the other end of the line shut him up. Walter asked politely, “Where would you like to meet?” Carey wasn’t particularly insightful about other people’s feelings, but he remembered Walter’s skeptical smile at the idea Carey was with him for anything but ulterior motives. Maybe Walter was more insecure than he appeared. Maybe he thought Carey didn’t want to be seen with him, whereas the truth was Carey had enough problems with the assholes he shared living space with without giving them this kind of ammunition. But if it was a matter of his feelings or Walter’s? “Actually, here is fine.” Another of those hesitations that felt like waiting for Walter to decipher critical code. Walter said, “I’ll see you then.”

FOUR After dinner, Carey and Ben parted from Heath and went to the library to study as they did most evenings. “Remind me why we thought anthropology would be a good major?” Ben inquired when they stopped for a brief coffee break several hours later. “I figured it would be drier than coaching swimming.” Ben’s smile faded. He nodded at Carey’s cast. “Are you really disappointed about missing so much of the season?” Carey shrugged. “I guess I should be grateful I didn’t break my neck.” “Yeah.” Ben tossed his paper cup in the trash, and they went back inside. “Are you about ready to head back?” Carey lifted his head out of Mycenae’s dusty history and stared at Ben. Over Ben’s shoulder he spotted Walter on his way toward the stairs to the second floor study rooms. Five seconds earlier he’d been barely able to keep his eyes open, feeling every ache and pain of his tumble down the stairs the night before. Now he felt newly energized. “You go ahead,” he told Ben. “I just got my second wind.” “You’re kidding.” Carey shook his head. Ben glanced around instinctively and spotted Walter climbing the staircase. “Skeletor?” he said in disbelief. Carey snapped, “Oh, shove it.” Ben couldn’t have looked more surprised if one of the framed paintings of the previous college presidents had snarled at him. “Chill out, amigo. I didn’t know, okay? I didn’t realize you two had a thing going on. I thought you were being nice to the guy.” “We don’t have a thing.”

At least…well, they were going to dinner, so they had some kind of thing going on. Carey had no clear idea what. He wasn’t sure Walter did. “Right.” Ben was shoving papers in folders, stacking books. “I hope you know what you’re doing.” His face was tight with anger and hurt feelings. Whether he was pissed because he thought Carey was lying to him or because he thought Carey was lying to himself, was unclear. As he shrugged into his jacket, his gaze rested on Carey. “You don’t look too hot. If you were smart you’d come back to the dorm with me rather than walking back on your own.” Carey remembered the disquieting loneliness of his walk the night before—not to mention his tumble down the stairs. Ben was probably right, but he said, “I’m going to give it another hour. I’ve got that human sexuality exam on Thursday.” “I don’t think you’ll have problems with that one.” Ben sounded dry. “I want to make sure I’m ready.” Unimpressed, Ben zipped his jacket. “Night.” “Night.” He waited ’til Ben disappeared through the automatic doors. He shoved his books in his backpack, pushed back his chair, and headed upstairs to the study room. Walter was not in the study rooms—all of which were currently in use. He sat at a table facing the picture windows that looked out onto the wind-tossed night and appeared deeply engrossed in Cultural Anthropology: A Global Perspective. Carey sat down across from him. Walter looked up, briefly, unencouragingly. His expression changed. It was more like micro expression than an actual altering of facial appearance, but his eyes warmed and his mouth softened. Or maybe that’s what Carey wanted to see. “Hi.” “Hi.” It was fine for a start. After that Carey was abruptly out of words. It was weird. He was not normally shy or backward, was not typically lacking in confidence, but something about Walter… And it had been like this from the first time he laid eyes on him two years ago when he’d first flunked out of Professor Bing’s Ethnographic Field Methods. When he got around

Walter, Carey seemed to fluctuate between vampy and tongue-tied. It was a wonder Walter hadn’t written him off as bipolar a long time ago. As the pause began to strain, Walter said matter-of-factly, “Given your injuries, I thought you’d be making an early night of it.” “I planned on it.” “Cramming?” “No. I saw you come up here.” Now Walter too was out of words. He licked his lips, an unexpectedly nervous mannerism that seemed endearing to Carey. “What did you—?” At the same instant Carey said, “Could we—?” They both stopped. Carey laughed nervously. Walter looked self-conscious. Carey readied himself for another plunge into frigid waters and said with calm desperation, “Could we go somewhere and maybe get a cup of coffee?” Walter nodded. He looked down and started gathering his books and papers. There was nothing to read from his expression, and Carey’s heart sank. He hoped to hell this wasn’t going to be a repeat of the night before. Was he pushing too hard again? Probably. But he was so sure—or he had been— Walter glanced up. “You look white,” he observed with utterly unexpected gentleness. The gentleness seemed to suck the air right out of Carey’s lungs. “Walt, am I…totally making a fool out of myself?” Walter shook his head. “Because when I’m not with you, I feel sure it’s not just me. But when I am with you— and it should be the opposite, right? Like maybe I have stalker tendencies?” Walter laughed. It was the first time Carey had ever seen him laugh—genuinely laugh— and he was afraid his astonishment showed. Walter’s teeth were very white and very straight even if his laugh had a squished, flattened sound—like he was used to smothering it. Walter said, “No. Not at all. Let’s go somewhere we can talk.”

••• They had coffee at a café in Hartsburg. It was the kind of place couples went for first-date dessert and cappuccinos. Cute and non-threatening. Ruffled gingham curtains and tablecloths, wooden toys on shelves, old-fashioned advertisements in frames on the walls. They talked over cheesecake and coffee—primarily about anthropology—and then Walter asked abruptly, “Why did you change your mind last night?” “I didn’t think you really wanted to go to dinner.” Walter appeared to think this over. “I went to your dorm to ask you,” he pointed out eventually. “You did say it was an impulse.” “True.” Further consideration. “I didn’t regret it. I was glad you hunted me down.” “That’s what it felt like,” Carey admitted. “Like I hunted you down and tried to force you to take me out.” Walter shook his head. “No. It wasn’t like that.” “Then I wish I’d shut up and gone with you. I wouldn’t have broken my arm.” It was a hassle being one-handed; he’d ended up having Walter cut his cheesecake into bite-sized bits. Walter’s expression grew serious. “How did that happen exactly? You were vague earlier.” “That’s because I can’t really remember. I remember walking away from you and crossing the faculty parking lot. I guess I slipped and fell down the stairs.” “Were you feeling dizzy, perhaps?” Carey shook his head. “No. Nothing like that.” “But you’re not sure?” “I’m pretty sure of that,” Carey said slowly. “I have this weird impression…like someone came up behind me.” “You mean you think someone pushed you?” “No. I’m sure I’d remember that.”

“Not necessarily. Not with concussion. Even with a mild concussion you might forget.” “I don’t think so.” Carey squinted, trying to remember. “I have this mental image of someone behind me, but if someone had been there, they would’ve called for help or stayed with me.” “Maybe.” Walter looked so bleak, Carey felt uneasy. Clearly Walter did not have his own faith in his fellow man. “There was probably no one there. The truth is I’ve been kind of jumpy lately.” Walter said, “Trouble with your classes?” Carey smiled faintly. “Not this year. No, I don’t know what it is exactly.” He did know, but he didn’t want to bring it up. He had the uneasy feeling that if he seemed like too much trouble, Walter would back away, decide it wasn’t worth it. Whatever it was liable to turn out to be. “Did you want more coffee or cheesecake?” Walter asked courteously. As much as Carey wanted to prolong the evening, he had eaten all he could manage. “I’m ready to explode now.” Walter smiled faintly. The seconds passed and he didn’t say anything. Carey bit his lip nervously. What the hell went on behind that mask of Walter’s? When they were talking about class work or anthropology or politics, they had plenty to discuss—it was both stimulating and relaxing— but these abrupt, full stops were freaking Carey out. He was not usually insecure; he didn’t like the feeling. At all. He stared out the window with its painted pink curlicues and red hearts. Walter said slowly and carefully, “Would you like to come back to my place?” Carey turned to him. “Yes.” Walter’s eyes looked dark and unsure behind the specs. “Yes,” Carey repeated firmly. Outside on the sidewalk a breeze was kicking a tin can along the sidewalk like a ghost child. You could almost hear the silent laughter.

Walter said, “It’s going to be a full moon tomorrow night.” Carey, occupied in clumsily draping his varsity jacket over his shoulders, looked up. The moon did appear enormous over the roof and treetops. It turned the shingles and leaves to silver and shadow. Across the square the shops were all closed but one. The sign in the window caught Carey’s eye. “Look.” Walter obediently followed the direction of Carey’s gaze. Carey said, “They’re still open.” “Did you want candy now?” Walter sounded puzzled, but patient. “What kind of candy shop stays open ’til almost midnight?” “I don’t know.” A twenty-four-hour candy store? For all your junk food emergencies? That was weird, wasn’t it? “Can we check it out?” “If you want to.” Walter sounded reluctant. Did he think Carey was liable to change his mind about going home with him? Carey smiled at him and Walter smiled doubtfully back. They crossed the green, pushed tentatively on the door. The heady scent of chocolate wafted into the crisp night air. A little bell rang with silvery cheer, and the young man behind the counter looked up. Whatever Carey had been expecting—plump middle-aged ladies in hairnets or bored teenagers—it was a far cry from this sleek, slim man with long black hair and harlequin eyes. For an instant, as those wicked eyes met his, Carey felt disquieted. “Are you still open?” Carey asked. It was a silly question. Although there were no other customers, the shop was still lit, the door was still unlocked. The man’s mouth quirked. He said gravely, “What do you need?”

Not…what do you want? What do you need? It seemed like a small but crucial difference. Deliberate. Portentous. (Assuming that word met what Carey thought it did.) Nothing about this young man seemed careless or haphazard, which was ironic because the name embroidered on his black chef’s coat was “Chance.” But from the cuff of Chance’s herringbone pants to the red bandanna knotted around his throat, he seemed… Carey glanced at Walter, but Walter had moved away and was studying a display of red and lemon yellow Valentine’s Day candy boxes with the same dispassionate interest he’d view artifacts from an ancient civilization. “I received a box of chocolates yesterday and I was wondering whether you could tell me who sent them?” The slanted brows arched. “Was something wrong with the chocolates?” “No. The chocolates were great.” For all that the clerk kept a straight face, Carey was certain he was laughing at him. “It’s…the card said it was from a secret admirer, and I…” “Don’t like secrets?” Carey thought it over. “No.” He didn’t. Chance said softly, “Perhaps you shouldn’t keep them.” “W-what?” “We all have secrets.” Chance smiled as Walter rejoined them. “Try this.” He offered a small red paper cup with a piece of candy. “Thank you, but I don’t care for candy,” Walter said. Chance’s arched eyebrows rose still higher. “You see?” he said to Carey. “Not really.” “Secrets are the foundation of human interaction.” Walter made a sound. Not exactly a laugh, but he sounded amused. “You’re talking to the wrong people. We’re anthropologists.” This was getting weirder by the minute. The light gleaming off the polished red and black squares of the floor, the alchemy of fragrance—almost orgasmic in its intense complexity: vanilla and cocoa and…coffee and aged tobacco and woodchips and cinnamon…

For an instant Carey felt dizzy, as though he’d peered into the future. He blinked at Chance who seemed inexplicably taller and darker. “Can you tell me who sent the candy?” “I’m afraid that’s confidential.” Carey had been prepared to hear that Chance had no memory of this customer, but how could the sale of a box of chocolates be confidential? “It’s chocolate not…not confession.” “Sometimes it’s the same thing.” Yes, this guy was definitely putting them on. “Three pounds of chocolate.” “Someone must admire you very much.” Carey looked helplessly from Walt to Chance. “Let’s go,” said Walter. “Don’t forget your chocolate.” Walter opened his mouth and Chance nodded at Carey. “No, but he does.”

FIVE Walter lived in a block of 1950s apartments near the old railroad station. From the outside, the building did not look like much. But when Walter closed the apartment door and switched on the light, Carey was surprised to see that the open-plan rooms were done in airy, retro décor: Armstrong floors, chrome and Formica tables, straightline, square chairs and sofas upholstered in primary colors. There was a Swedish fireplace in one corner and an entire wall was given over to a series of metal and wood compartmentalized shelving. “Wow. Back to the Future.” It was nice. Much nicer than he’d expected. What had he expected? Not the work of an interior designer, anyway. “Are you cold? Would you like a fire?” Carey glanced back. “Whatever you like.” Walter handed him the small paper cup of candy and went over to adjust the thermostat. Carey set the paper cup down on a kidney shaped table. The idea of candy made him feel slightly queasy. “What was that all about?” Walter asked. “At the candy store.” Carey had sort of hoped Walter wouldn’t ask. He was afraid it made him sound like the kind of guy who attracted nuts—or was maybe a nut himself. “Someone sent me a box of chocolates yesterday.” “I gathered. And?” Walter’s voice and face were neutral. He looked back at Carey and the lenses of his glasses formed two blank squares in the lamplight. “I wondered who it was,” Carey said lamely. “A secret admirer.” “I guess so.” Carey had been unsure whether Walter was listening to that conversation or not. He still wasn’t clear, really. Maybe Walter was guessing. Maybe Walter… No. No. That would be too freaky. Carey didn’t want his secret admirer to be Walter. All the same he tried to remember if anything in the way Chance had looked at Walter had indicated prior acquaintance. Maybe that was why Chance had been so mysterious. His customer was standing four feet away.

He walked over to Walter’s bookshelves and studied the rows of titles. In addition to the books there were a number of artifacts: a whale bone, obsidian arrow points, a carved wooden funerary boat. He nodded at a small stone bust. “Polynesian, right? Is it real?” Walter threw the bust a dismissing look. “Yes.” “Sweet. How much does the GTA gig pay?” Carey wasn’t seriously asking, but Walter was silent. Clearly Carey had once more wandered right past the No Trespassing sign. It was…startling. Walter—or someone close to Walter—had a lot of disposable income. “Sorry. I only meant—” Walter said flatly, “My father is very wealthy. He gives me lots of things to make up for the fact that he has no feelings for me.” Carey had no idea what to say to that. “Sorry, Walt,” was the best he could manage. “It doesn’t matter.” Carey was the youngest of a big, loving family. Pennies had counted in the Gardner clan, but love and loyalty had never been in short supply. He said, “It must.” Walter stared at him and the harsh planes of his face softened for an instant. “I suppose what I mean is, I’m used to it. I’ve adjusted. My father and I have learned to make the best of the situation. He gives me lots of things I don’t need and I accept them because it makes him feel better.” “Why—?” It occurred to Carey that might not be a tactful question. Walter said, “My parents are beautiful people. Were. My mother is dead now. They were both beautiful, charming, and successful. And they had me for a son. You can’t really blame them.” “What are you talking about?” Walter smiled. It wasn’t the engaging smile Carey had seen a couple of times that evening. Carey said, “I don’t know what you mean, Walt. You’re brilliant. I mean, it’s common knowledge.”

Walter laughed—and he sounded genuinely amused. “You’re very sweet. Do you know that?” “No,” Carey said, uncomfortable at such an idea. “They—my parents—wanted…different things for me. They wanted a different son. Someone like them. What they got was someone who just wanted to read books and go dig up old bones in foreign places.” “But—” Carey had no idea what to say to this. This was pain way beyond his scope of experience. Clearly Walter carried invisible scars, scars that must cut deep. “I wish I hadn’t told you that,” Walter said abruptly. He took his glasses off, folded them up and set them on a copy of Consuming Grief: Compassionate Cannibalism in an Amazonian Society. “Now you’re sorry for me. I don’t want you to be sorry for me.” He took Carey into his arms and kissed him with an easy cool expertise that left Carey breathless and shaken. Carey had been assuming he would be the expert in this, that he’d have to take the lead. That appeared to be a gross miscalculation on his part. He studied Walter’s face, memorizing every feature—how long his eyelashes were, how unusual that shade of brown eyes. His nose was really sort of elegant. Walter bent his head and kissed Carey again, kissed him with such shattering and tender thoroughness that Carey couldn’t remember what to do—except hang on and kiss back. Walter’s tongue slipped inside his mouth, sweeter than any chocolate. He could feel Walter’s hands on his shoulders, and the slick heat of his tongue probing gently. At the end of that kiss, Carey was surprised he even remembered his own name. Walter whispered, “I don’t know why you’re here, but I’m glad.” “Me too.” “Want to go to bed?” Go to bed. Carey smiled inwardly, nodded. They went into the bedroom. It was probably as nice as the other rooms, but Carey was no longer paying attention to furnishings. He had a general impression of restful comfort. The sheets were blue and gray plaid flannel, soft on their skin. There was a leatherpadded headboard. He wondered if Walter was into kinky. Carey was pretty much every bit as vanilla as Heath had joked. He watched Walter undress with swift efficiency. He did not seem self-conscious— merely businesslike—before he turned his attention to helping Carey. Here he was pains-

takingly careful; Carey was the one in a rush. At last he sprawled, naked and relaxed, on the brushed flannel, silently admiring Walter’s strong, rangy frame. Maybe Walter was not his parents’ idea of masculine beauty, but Carey liked what he saw: wide shoulders, narrow hips, long legs. Walter’s skin was white and smooth—barring the blackness of his five o’clock shadow and the dark silk of his body hair. His nipples were rose brown and his cock, already stiff and erect, was heavy and flushed. A man’s cock—nothing boyish or unsure there. Walter knelt beside Carey on the bed. “What would be easier for you?” His hand ran lightly over Carey’s collarbones. Carey shivered as a bolt of arousal shot through him. He stretched lazily, enjoying the brush of Walter’s fingers on his sensitized skin. What would have been easiest was if they didn’t discuss it and just let it happen, but Walter was too meticulous, it seemed. That was okay. First times were always awkward. He reached out and returned the caress, stroking hot, smooth skin and Walter gave a twitch, like a nervous horse. Carey whispered, “I think you’re beautiful, Walt.” Walter gazed down at him with dark, unfathomable eyes. He said, “No one has ever called me Walt. I’ve never had a nickname before.” “Do you mind?” “I don’t think I mind anything you do.” Carey smiled up, reached up to pull him down. That was probably his last moment of control although things grew vague, Carey’s wits scattered beneath Walter’s sensual onslaught. He moaned his pleasure as Walter’s hands caressed with greedy, worshipful thoroughness, his mouth kissing and licking and nibbling every inch of Carey. It seemed to Carey, slightly dazed beneath this ravishment, that there wasn’t any part of his body that hadn’t received due attention from Walter. They moved against each other, tentatively, and then faster, feverishly, trying to get closer still, rubbing…grinding… Carey would have been willing to take it as far as Walter liked; he’d never felt anything like this. His lungs labored for air beneath those breath-robbing kisses, his heart hammering away as though he were swimming too far beneath the surface to make it back in time, drowning in Walter’s arms as Walter pressed him into the mattress, but in fact, this alone was enough. He could hear his own incoherent voice asking Walter for more—and Walter thrusting harder against him. In all too short a time Carey arched and cried out, clenching his eyes tight as warm seed pulsed and shot in shockwave after shockwave of astonished delight.

Lost in the intensity of that release he was only vaguely aware when Walter tensed and gasped, his own tight control releasing blood hot and wet. He pulled Carey to him and hugged him so tightly, Carey gasped. Instantly the steel-like bands eased. “Did I hurt your arm?” Carey shook his head. “It’s okay.” He hugged Walter back as best he could, one-handed, and kissed him beneath his jaw. It felt a long time later when Carey said, “That was…I’ve never come like that. Never. I thought I’d detonate.” Walter snorted, amused. His face looked softer in the muted lamplight. He lifted a bare shoulder. “It’s merely another form of athletics.” He wasn’t being unkind, just matter-of-fact, but Carey had to work to absorb the notion that apparently what had been a mind-altering experience for him was how it always was for Walter. At last he became aware that Walter was watching him. Their eyes met. Walter looked serious, almost concerned. “I don’t mean that it wasn’t significant.” “No? What do you mean?” Carey propped his head on his good hand. “That good sex is an acquired skill like any other. I know how to give you intense pleasure.” No doubt about it. Carey had been sobbing by the end, begging Walter—literally racked with something closer to religious rapture than sexual gratification. He said unemotionally, “You do, yeah. The clinical approach is sorta chilling, though.” Walter’s brows drew together. “I don’t mean…” “It’s kind of hard to know what you do mean, Walt.” Walter’s lips parted. Without the glasses he looked younger, uncharacteristically defenseless. “I want to give you pleasure. I want sex with me to be so pleasurable you won’t want anyone else.” “You do.” Carey smiled wryly. “I don’t want anyone else.” “You don’t even know me.” “You don’t know me either.”

A peculiar smile touched Walter’s thin mouth. “I’ve been reading your essays and papers and tests all semester long. I know more about you than you know about me.” Carey smiled again. He was wondering if that was flattering or creepy? He was interested in Walter so it felt flattering, but it was a fine line, wasn’t it? “Guys like me don’t end up with guys like you.” Startled, Carey studied his face. Walter appeared serious. “Why not?” Walter smiled faintly, brushed his knuckles against Carey’s cheek. “It doesn’t happen.” ••• Carey’s stomach was growling when he woke up. He was starving. His arm ached from his fingers to his elbow, and he remembered he didn’t have swim practice because he’d broken it. And his belly and groin were flaky with the sugar glaze of semen. Memory came flooding back and he opened his eyes. Walter was awake and smiling at him from the opposite pillow. He was wearing his glasses, so he’d been out of bed at some point. “Hi.” Carey was self-consciously aware that he needed to pee and brush his teeth—and probably not in that order. “Hello.” Walter leaned over and covered Carey’s mouth with his own. “I don’t know if I have anything to feed you.” “You’ll do for starters,” Carey said when he could breathe again. Walter was still smiling. “Do you dream you’re swimming?” “Sometimes. Why?” “I thought you might.” Walter managed to suppress his smile, but it confused Carey. Nobody feels more defenseless than when they’re sleeping, and he didn’t like the idea he was being laughed at—even affectionately. He threw back the bedclothes. Walter asked, “When’s your first class?” “What’s today?” “Wednesday.”

“Ten.” “We should get moving.” Carey nodded. “I need a shower. Do you have a trash bag or something I can wrap my arm in?” “I’ll find something.” Walter left the bed and vanished into the next room. When they both returned to the bedroom, Walter had a white trash bag and twine. He sat next to Carey on the bed, carefully and methodically waterproofing his cast. Carey scrutinized his downbent face. What long eyelashes Walter had. The glasses successfully masked the eggshell delicacy of his eyelids and the nearsighted softness of his eyes. Walter’s eyelashes flicked up. He asked, “Do you need help in the shower?” Carey smiled, shook his head. Actually, he needed a little distance. He liked Walter a lot. Maybe too much because Walter remained an enigma. He clearly had a few hang ups— well, who didn’t?—and he didn’t seem to think this relationship was going anywhere. Guys like me don’t end up with guys like you. Which—okay—Carey wasn’t naïve enough to think sex equaled love, but he’d like to think that they could at least keep an open mind about it. Given how much he did like Walter—even if Walter was laughing at him while he was sleeping, and even if Walter considered sex nothing more than exercise, and getting Carey to want him a kind of challenge. Not that he thought Walter was manipulating him or anything, and after all, Carey had gone hunting Walter… When he was done in the shower, Walter took his turn. Carey drank the orange juice and ate the toasted English muffin that Walter had left for him on the turquoise Melmac Mallo Ware. ••• On the drive back to the campus Carey asked, “Did you ever hear a story about someone murdering girls on campus?” “On this campus?” Walter glanced at him. Carey nodded. “No.”

“Someone was telling me about this Valentine’s Day Killer. Every year he would send a box of chocolates to a girl and then she would be murdered on Valentine’s Day.” Walter’s expression was disbelieving—and disgusted. “That’s ridiculous.” “I don’t know. It’s supposed to be true.” “According to who?” Good point. Walter said, “You believe that whoever sent you the candy is stalking you? Planning to harm you?” It sounded ridiculous when put like that. “Er, no.” “It’s probably someone who doesn’t know how to approach you.” “Yes.” Carey wished he’d never brought it up. Walter looked withdrawn again. Hopefully it was because he didn’t like the idea of other people sending Carey Valentines. When they got to the college, there was the awkwardness of not knowing how to say goodbye. Carey knew it was for him to take the initiative on this kind of thing, but it wasn’t easy. Walter had his forcefield up again, and somehow even picturing him naked and transfixed by orgasm didn’t give Carey the confidence to broach that barrier. Whether intended or not, Walter could be intimidating as hell—and Carey wasn’t confident Walter didn’t want it that way. Maybe he preferred to keep a distance on campus. That made sense, but they hadn’t discussed it, so how much of a distance would he want? Carey didn’t want to make a move and get smacked down—and he was only too aware that Walter wouldn’t hesitate if Carey crossed whatever the invisible line was. He wavered, undecided, and Walter looked away from him and stared out the windshield. That seemed clear enough. It wouldn’t be so irritating if he felt he knew Walter as well as Walter seemed to think—based on a few essays and test scores—he knew Carey, or if Carey could convince himself that Walter was feeling anything remotely as emotionally vulnerable as he was. He climbed out of the car and said lamely, “Bye. Thanks for breakfast and everything.” “I’ll see you this evening.”

Walter sounded cool and businesslike. They could have been planning a study group meeting. Carey nodded and shut the car door. ••• Sty was in their room, sorting dirty laundry to take home for the weekend, when Carey got back to Pio Pico House. Carey shoveled Sty’s dirty socks off his bed and asked, “How’d the meet go?” “Swept all sixteen events, Bones. One eighty to one oh eight. I guess somehow we’re going to survive without you.” “No, no. Don’t bother cheering me up.” Sty laughed. “You’re out for the rest of the season?” Carey nodded. He was trying not to think about it too much. “Bummer. Did you eat all that chocolate?” “I left the box next door.” He eyed Sty speculatively. “Hey, did you ever hear this urban legend about Valentine’s Day murders here on campus?” Sty brightened up. “Ooh, yeah. Everybody’s heard that story.” “I never heard it.” Sty shrugged. “So what’s the story?” “This was like back in the Stone Age, dude. Every year the prettiest cave girl would get a big box of chocolates from an anonymous friend and on VD Day she’d be found slaughtered.” It just seemed so…unlikely. “And they never caught the guy?” “Nope.” “You’re shitting me.” Sty was scooping up all the piles of his clothes and shoving them in a big duffle bag, so God only knew what the sorting had been about. He glanced up. “True story, dude. It’s on the Internet.” He tossed the duffle bag by the door and turned on his CD player. Led Zeppelin blasted out.

SIX Carey hooked up with Heath for lunch in the dining hall. They found an empty table on the raised section. Heath carefully lowered his tray with its mountain of precariously balanced plates and food. “So Ben says you were out with Skeletor last night.” “Don’t call him that.” Carey awkwardly carved off a slab of vegetarian lasagna. “Carey, the guy is a fer-reak. What are you doing with him?” “I like him.” Heath jeered, “You like him? What, are you in high school?” “I’m going out with him,” Carey said. “I’m dating him.” “You’re nuts.” Heath was no longer smiling. “If I were you, I’d talk to Ben. He doesn’t want to say anything to you because he thinks you have a thing for Skeletor, but Ben has information you need.” “I’m not talking to Ben about Walter.” Heath glared at him. He said quietly but distinctly over the surrounding clatter of voices and plates and flatware, “Wake up, Gardner. The dude is a stalker.” “Bullshit.” But Carey’s heart was thumping with a mixture of dread and premonition. Heath sat back in his chair. “Hey, fine. Suit yourself, Marine Boy. But don’t say nobody warned you.” Carey nodded curtly and changed the subject. Unfortunately it wasn’t so easy to squash the doubts Heath had raised. Walter was a little odd. So what? The most interesting people often were, right? But so were the most dangerous people. Even if Walter had sent those chocolates, it didn’t mean he was dangerous. He sure as hell couldn’t be the Valentine’s Day Killer. He’d have to be in his fifties. Just because he—someone—sent chocolates signed “your secret admirer” didn’t mean he was copycatting that old story. He hadn’t even heard of the Valentine’s Day Killer.

Unless he was lying. Carey glanced at Heath and Heath was studying him with an unsettling sympathy in his eyes. On the way out of the dining hall, he elbowed Carey. “Hey.” Carey looked at him. “Just…you, me, Ben. We’ve been the three amigos, right? Friends since we were sophomores. Don’t let this thing with Ske—Sterne ruin it for us.” Carey cleared his throat. “We’re cool.” Heath nodded, and sprinted off on those long legs. Carey went to the library and signed onto the computers. It took him no time at all to find what he was looking for. There was more than enough information on Hartsburg’s legendary Valentine’s Day Killer. In fact, looking at all these pages made Carey wonder how he’d never heard anything about it before. He scanned photos and interviews with witnesses and police reports, and before long, he found the page that explained that the whole thing was a hoax. In fact, the perpetrators of the hoax—former Hartsburg alumni—were so proud of their work they openly took credit for it these days. There they were, now bearded and respectable professors, grinning sheepishly over their gruesome urban legend and explaining how they’d come up with their more twisted ideas. Carey read with a sense of relief—and embarrassment. As preposterous as the story of the Valentine’s Day Killer had seemed, maybe he had been buying into it, and after his fall he had been a little spooked. Now he felt like a fool. A relieved fool. Carey grimaced, signing off the computer. Did Heath and Ben know the truth? Had they too fallen for the urban legend or had they been deliberately yanking his chain? He was lost in his thoughts as he walked back to dorm row. A florist’s van was parked outside Pio Pico House. Carey passed it and went inside the building that always seemed quiet, almost deserted this time of day. In his room, he turned on music—Coldplay—and flung himself down on his bed, staring moodily at the ceiling. Nobody said it was easy…

Someone tapped on his door. Carey sat up. “Come in.” Ben opened the door. He held up Carey’s box of chocolates. “You better take these before Heath eats them all.” “Thanks.” Ben nodded. “Everything okay?” “Why wouldn’t it be?” Ben shook his head. He said tentatively, “Do you have plans for tonight?” “Yeah.” Ben didn’t say anything. Carey said shortly, “Yes. Dinner with Walter.” Ben’s eyes widened—maybe at Carey’s tone. “Hey, it’s not my business.” “No, it’s not.” Ben put his hands up in a “chill, dude” gesture and went out. Carey rubbed his forehead. He really didn’t function well without his full eight hours, but even lack of sleep didn’t explain his nervous restlessness. If he could talk to Walter instead of hearing everyone else’s theories— He rolled off the bed, went to his desk and punched the numbers he’d memorized into his cell phone. He was prepared for the call to go to message, but Walter answered. “Sterne.” “Hi. It’s me. Carey.” “Hi.” Walter sounded…careful. “I just…” He just what? Walter had not said Carey could call him. Walter had not indicated any desire to chat. Walter had not shown any interest in hearing from Carey before their date that evening. His voice faded.

Nothing from the other side. As usual Walter was giving him nothing. Into the silence that had already stretched too far, Walter said politely, calmly, “It’s all right if you changed your mind about tonight. I actually have a lot to do.” “Oh.” Did that mean what it sounded like? That Walter wanted off the hook? Numbly, Carey said, “That works out then.” “Yes.” Carey was afraid Walter must have heard the sound of his swallow. All at once he was sick of it. Sick of feeling insecure and off-balance all the time. He didn’t need this. He didn’t have to beg someone to take him out. He said shortly, “Okay. Great. Thanks again for last night.” Walter sounded like a polite robot. “It was my pleasure.” Carey clicked off before Walter could. For a few seconds he stood there feeling hollow. It was over, then? Before it had really even started? Maybe that was for the best. Anything you had to work this hard at couldn’t be right. Right? He went next door. Ben had the music on unusually loud. Carey rapped on the door and after long seconds, Ben opened it. He looked like he’d been crying. “What’s wrong?” Carey demanded, shocked. Ben shook his head. “Did something happen?” Ben shook his head again. “Can I come in?” Ben moved aside, wiping his eyes. He sat down at his desk and stared at Carey. “What did you want?” “If you want to talk about it—” “I don’t.” What was it about Valentine’s Day? It seemed like they were all on edge today.

“Heath said I should ask you about Walter.” Ben wiped his eyes again, impatiently. “You don’t want to know.” “No, I don’t. But maybe I should.” Ben stared at him. It made Carey uncomfortable. “Walter left the candy for you,” Ben said abruptly. “How do you know?” “I saw him. He asked me not to say anything. It was supposed to be a surprise.” “Walter?” It didn’t seem like a Walter thing. Not the leaving candy—the asking someone to not tell. He couldn’t imagine Walter confiding in anyone that much. Ben nodded. “I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but there’s something not right with him, Carey. It’s like he’s obsessed with you. I mean, a few hours later he came back to see if you wanted to go to dinner.” “I don’t think there’s anything that weird about asking me to dinner.” Ben persisted, “I’ve heard stories about him, though. Like he’s done this before.” “Done what? Asked people to dinner? Given them candy?” Carey was getting irritated. Why the hell had he asked if he didn’t want to know? Ben was also getting irritated. He seemed to struggle inwardly, before saying, “There’s more.” “Well, what the fuck is it?” Carey asked angrily. “Stop hinting around and say it.” “I think Walter pushed you down the stairs the other night.” “What?” “I saw him in the parking lot.” “I saw him go up the stairs.” “He must have come back down. I saw him.” “You’re lying.” Ben shook his head.

“Yes you are.” Carey stood up. “I saw his face in class the next day. There’s no way he pushed me. There’s no way he’d hurt me. He didn’t have any idea—” He stopped, considering Ben’s face, that mix of mortification and bitterness. “You’re lying,” he repeated, realizing it was the absolute truth. Not mistaken, not misreading the evidence. Lying. “And if you’re lying about that…” Ben said nothing, just sat there watching him, looking dull and stricken. “Why?” Carey asked. Still nothing from Ben. “You’re lying about the candy. And that whole story about the Valentine’s Day Killer is a hoax. Did you know about that? Were you deliberately trying to spook me?” Ben started to speak, then seemed to catch himself. “Why were you in the parking lot that night?” Carey asked. At the time Ben had said he’d left something in his car, but he’d never said what, and Carey had been wondering about that, off and on, though it hadn’t seemed important until now. “Heath thought he left his notes in his car.” Carey shook his head. “Is Heath going to confirm that? I don’t believe you.” Ben began to cry. “I love you. I would do anything for you, and you don’t even see me.” Carey opened his mouth, but he didn’t know what to say. Ben’s wet eyes seemed to blaze with anger. “And then suddenly, out of the blue, it’s Walter Sterne. That fucking freak. What’s the matter with you?” “Did you push me down the stairs?” Carey asked. The whole conversation felt unreal. “No.” Ben jumped up too. “How can you think that? You fell. I never touched you. Maybe you heard me coming up behind you. I only wanted to talk to you.” “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ben gazed at him, mouth working. Carey sort of understood the feeling. •••

When Carey left Ben’s room, he went back to his own, locked the door, and sat on the edge of his bed. He rested his forehead against his good hand. After a time he became aware someone was tapping quietly on his door. He jumped to his feet, went to the door, braced for the next lunacy, and yanked it open. Walter stood there, hand raised. He lowered it, looking self-conscious. Carey’s angry confusion drained away. Hope flared. “I—” Walter cleared his throat. “Earlier this afternoon. Did you really call to cancel?” “No.” Honesty compelled Carey to amend, “I don’t know. I sort of…needed to talk to you.” “I was afraid you were calling to cancel.” Carey shook his head. “I thought you wanted me to cancel. It sort of sounded that way.” “No. Of course not. I—” Walter stopped himself. Carey tried to read his expression, but it was going to take a long time before he was adept at reading Walter. The good news was, it looked like he was going to have a chance to work on it. He drew a breath. “I’m really not insecure. Probably the opposite. Maybe that’s why I act like such a dumbass around you. I’m not used to not knowing where I stand.” “You come before anyone and everyone.” The stark simplicity of that left Carey wordless. Walter’s smile was painful to see. “I’m not usually like this, either. It’s simply that I…feel so much for you. I know it probably seems strange to you, but even two years ago when I used to read your papers—before you flunked out of Dr. Bing’s class—I thought you were…special. That we would get along.” He looked hopeful and miserable at the same time. “When you seemed to feel the same thing…it felt too good to be true. I don’t know how to be with someone like you. I never have. So I keep doing these stupid things.” “What a pair,” Carey said, but he was smiling. Walter’s smile grew hopeful—and then confident as Carey hooked his good arm around his neck and pulled him close.

••• The full moon shone down on the small town of Hartsburg. A snow moon the long ago Indians called it, though it rarely snowed here. Beneath tidy roofs sated lovers slept sweetly in each other’s arms. The tree-lined square was dark now. The tall old-fashioned street lamps were haloed in fuzzy radiance, like candles lighting the empty streets and frosted lawns. A band of light showed beneath the blinds of Sweets to the Sweet like the gleam of eyes beneath heavy lids. Behind the closed blinds, Chance studied the symmetrical patterns made by the frost crystals on the black glass. Delicate feathers, frozen flowers, even crooked hearts among the snowflakes… Condensation on energy-defficient windows or augurs of things to come? He tilted his head, considered…a slow smile touched his mouth.

JCPBooks e-books are priced by the word count of the story only. Any end matter or sample chapters are a bonus!

About the Author Josh Lanyon’s ideal Valentine’s Day consists of a nice dinner and a good bottle of wine in front of the fire with his long-suffering Significant Other. His dream menu would consist of steak, lobster tails, and asparagus hollandaise. Needless to say, you won’t find these items on the dining hall menu for Hartsburg College. Well, maybe the asparagus.

About this Story My college years are way behind me now, but they remain some of my best—and worst—memories. The weird thing about college is you’re trying to make long-ranging decisions that will affect the rest of your life—before you’re really experienced enough to know what you’ll ultimately need or want. I wanted to capture that sense of an insular but temporary world, and how it feels when you begin to make choices that separate you from your friends. No surprise that who we end up falling in love with often changes the dynamics of our entire social circle—even the course of our lives. That’s the case here with Carey Gardner who finds himself falling for Walter Sterne, a man that most of the other students neither like nor understand.

Moolah and Moonshine Petit Morts #3 Jordan Castillo Price ISBN: 978-1-935540-03-8 All rights reserved. © 2010 Jordan Castillo Price Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. JCP Books e-books are for sale to adults only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by underaged readers.

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ONE Here’s to your new life in France. Be sure to try the toast. And even the fries. But watch out for those ticklers. With any luck, Emmett would not be called upon to make a toast. Lately, though, he knew better than to trust his luck. Because Rosemary was traipsing off to her new job in Paris? Because he was stuck in a far-flung suburb of Topeka with a rickety old house that was falling down around his ears? Because he’d always assumed he’d visit Paris by the time he was thirty—and Milan, and Prague, and London too—but thirty had come and gone, and he’d never even applied for a passport? What could you call that, other than the most rotten luck in the world? He loved Rosemary so dearly, and she was leaving him in Kansas to deal with the horrible house…alone. If he really wanted to get out of proposing a toast, Emmett supposed he could try the tactic of distraction instead. Who wasn’t stopped in their tracks by the presentation of a gift? He knew he was. But what to get her for her big bon voyage. A bottle of wine was the obvious choice, but Rosemary had been a teetotaler since the Toyota-in-the-ditch incident, which luckily had only injured her wallet. Maybe a scarf, then. She loved scarves, but she never seemed to wear them. And besides, she’d spent the past few weeks giving away everything that didn’t fit inside her hot pink Samsonite luggage set. Emmett scowled at the pompously overdecorated row of storefronts in search of inspiration. Handmade jewelry. Hand-dipped candles. Handcrafted everything, and all of it perfectly hideous. The human touch was clearly overrated. Purchasing a dry cabernet, presenting it to Rosemary and proceeding to drink it all himself was beginning to look like the most logical course of action when the sound of a tiny bell registered on the threshold of Emmett’s hearing. He turned to look, and saw a shop he’d missed on his initial sweep of the street. A candy store. The name Sweets to the Sweet was painted on the window in nearly illegible artistic scrawl. The building wasn’t quite as tarted-up as stores on either side. It was small enough to be “cute,” tucked as it was into the shadows of the hulking gingerbreadcovered specialty boutiques. Rosemary always said candy went right to her ass. Chocolate, then. Perfect.

Emmett stepped in out of the wind, and the bell tinkled as he pulled the door shut behind him. The smell was the first thing to hit him, a wall of dark, rich scent so powerful it seemed too thick to breathe. It was so tangible Emmett pulled off his glasses and buffed them on the edge of his sweatshirt, as if the aroma might leave a film on his lenses. It smelled of chocolate, yes, but beneath that, hints of other things lingered, strange things Emmett had no name for. In a way it reminded him of his house, the dilapidated thing that was supposed to be such a wonderful investment, but had turned out to have secret pockets of mysterious smells, odors released by various materials in various stages of decay, all of them contributing to the imminent demise of the structure that was supposedly completely sound when the inspector picked through. The inspector whose phone was then disconnected, whose office was now housing an after-school job program. A violent hiss startled Emmett and he flinched. The espresso machine. He put his glasses back on. A young, dark-haired man behind the counter smiled to himself as he filled an espresso cup, then he turned toward Emmett and said, “You look like you could use a drink.” Emmett never treated himself to expensive coffee anymore. Not since the house had taken a nosedive, anyway, and taken his entire savings with it. But the brown foam on the top of the espresso clung to the porcelain, the tiny bubbles glinting rainbow-colored with dark coffee oils, and he figured a few more bucks wouldn’t matter one way or the other. He leaned across the counter, feeling suddenly middle-aged in the face of the shop clerk’s flawless youth, took the small cup he was handed, and said, “Thanks.” The clerk was dressed in a chef’s uniform, with herringbone pants, a red bandanna knotted around his throat, a black apron dusted with cocoa, and a black chef’s coat with the name Chance embroidered in red over his heart. Emmett wondered who would name a newborn baby “Chance,” but maybe it fit him. Chance’s smile turned slightly wicked, and Emmett realized he’d been caught staring. He looked down through the glass counter with sudden and profound intensity. “I need a gift.” “You can’t go wrong with chocolate. Of course, I could be biased.” “Got anything that’ll go right to someone’s ass?” Chance laughed—a small breath, an exhalation—but it comforted Emmett to know that at least he was still amusing. “All of it.” “Great. Give me something that would make a girl ‘ooh’ and ‘ah.’ And, uh, I’ve only got twenty bucks.”

Chance set a small black box on the countertop and placed a square of blood red paper inside to line it. “I sense a mixed message. Color me intrigued.” “Oh, right, I see what that sounds like. It’s for…she’s my best friend.” Emmett stared harder at the countertop. The recessed can lights above threw perfect yellow circles onto the reflective glass, and before he considered that he was telling a perfect stranger something quite personal, he said, “She’s leaving.” Beneath the reflected orbs of light, Chance’s hand moved between the chocolates, flitting from one to another and back again, as if it was of utmost importance he select the perfect piece. “You make it sound pretty final.” “She’s going to Paris. The tacky little shoe store she manages got bought out by some French setup and they’re sending her to Paris, all expenses paid. Paris. The Paris. What are the chances she’ll ever be back?” “If you’re so hungry for Paris, then why not go with her? Your friend won’t mind. Will she? I’m sure she’d love the company.” Chance’s hand hovered over a chocolate with a perfect whorl on top. Emmett whispered, “That one,” and it was plucked from the display and placed in the red-lined box. Emmett stared hard at the spot where the chocolate had been. It was now a gap, a space, a place where something had once been, but now there was nothing. “That’s what she said,” he admitted after a long and very heavy pause. Chance shifted the chocolates in the box, and when it became painfully obvious that Emmett didn’t plan to elaborate, said, “And?” “And I can’t.” “Allergic to airplanes? Go the old-fashioned way. On a ship.” “No, that’s not it.” Of course the clerk thought he was afraid. Everyone else figured Emmett for a coward, so why not a total stranger? “It’s just…it’s complicated.” “I see,” Chance said, in a tone that made it clear he didn’t, not at all. Emmett could have given him a dozen grisly details about the house—a horrible place that grew more horrible with each new discovery: dry rot, termite damage, and of course, the smells….but he knew the more he explained, the more it sounded like he was making excuses. “My money’s all tied up in a house I can’t sell.” Chance selected another chocolate, tucked it into the box, then looked at Emmett expectantly. “It needs too much work,” Emmett added. “I think you should talk to Sam.”

“No, that’s okay, I…” the lie that Emmett was about to tell to deflect Chance’s concern died on his tongue—the lie he used so often that some part of him clung to as if it was true. That he was working on it. That he had a contractor. Yes, once upon a time there had been a contractor. And he’d done a great job on the rotting porch roof. But the estimate for shoring up the basement posts where the wood had gone so soft you could drive nails into it without a hammer—that five-figured number had been the start of Emmett’s stages of house-grief. Denial. Anger. Acceptance. “I can’t afford to fix it.” Emmett said it so quietly, the words were lost in the hiss of the espresso machine. Chance closed the box and slipped a red band around it. “He’ll be here any minute. What could it hurt?” “He works here?” “I don’t think he’s got the temperament to work for me.” Chance smiled to himself. “He comes here to sit, right around five thirty. And nurse a single coffee until close.” Emmett glanced at the clock. Twenty-nine minutes after five, and his espresso was still hot enough to scald his tongue. He supposed it wouldn’t hurt to talk to this Sam person— a retired builder, maybe? Or a tradesman? Plumber? Electrician? He wasn’t afraid. If this Sam had a lot of time on his hands, maybe he’d at least have some bit of advice, some words of wisdom as to where Emmett could start patching up the awful house. That way, if the market ever turned up again, and he’d repaired the worst of the damage, he might actually be free of the place within his lifetime. The bell over the door jingled, and Emmett turned with his espresso raised to his lips expecting to see “Sam” right on cue—white hair covered by a tall, stiff baseball cap, maybe in overalls, with a wrench in his hand—but instead, Mr. Tall, Dark and TwentySomething ducked in out of the wind. Emmett went still. The other customer might have been a bit plain by some people’s standards, but Emmett had never been impressed by showy guys with tanning bed skin tones and teeth bleached to the point of glowing in the dark. He liked a manly man, preferably taller than him—like this guy. Their eyes met briefly, then the other customer nodded and hung back a few steps, waiting his turn. “Right on time,” Chance said. He poured a cup of coffee. Emmett was caught mid-sip. He spluttered, cleared his throat, and hoped he hadn’t just drawn espresso into his lungs. Chance set the cup on the counter. “We were just talking about home repair.”

Sam held out his hand, a bit shyly, though obviously he was too polite to completely brush Emmett off. “Sam Kowalski.” “Emmett Russo.” Sam’s hand was cold from the biting wind. And big. And strong. And Emmett wondered what possessed him to think he had any chance with someone like Sam. Even if Sam happened to be gay, and single, it wasn’t as if anyone would want to sleep with Emmett…not in that house. “I don’t know how much help I’d be,” Sam said. “I mean, I’m not really a carpenter or anything.” “Sam is good with his hands,” Chance said. Emmett snapped a look in Chance’s direction to see if he was being mocked, but the clerk was busy unloading a rack of coffee mugs into a neat pyramid. The ceramic gave off tiny clinks as he stacked them. “I’m pretty handy around the house,” Sam clarified. Emmett glanced back at him. Sam was blushing. And painfully cute. Chance said, “I thought you might do Emmett a favor and have a look at the worst of the problems. Unless you’re too…busy.” “No, I…yeah. I don’t have anything to—” “I’m a little strapped for cash,” Emmett cut in. “As a favor,” Chance said smoothly. Sam shrugged. “Oh, yeah, it’s not a problem. Like I said, it’s not like I’m a professional or anything.” Sam took his coffee to the sidebar and emptied three packets of sugar into it, stirred it, and took a sip so hot it had to have taken out a few taste buds. Chance told Emmett, “I’ll put Sam’s coffee on your check.” Emmett knew he was being railroaded—though the reason why was a mystery—but he supposed that if he was being coerced, he might as well be coerced into getting to know Sam a little better. Even if no one in their right mind would get involved with him once they saw the house. He drank his espresso down to the sludge in two gulps while Chance rang him up on a monstrosity of an antique register. The coins he dropped into Emmett’s outstretched palm

were chilly, but no doubt it only felt that way to Emmett since his hands were overly warm from cradling the small porcelain cup. Both Emmett and Sam climbed into their own cars: Emmett’s a Jetta that would need a new transmission soon, and Sam’s a pickup truck with a large dent in the hood and a few patches of repaired rust where the paint was more matte than the area surrounding it. Emmett was comforted by the state of Sam’s truck, but a bit scared, too. Because it gave him hope that maybe Sam wouldn’t judge him by the horrible house. And hope could be a very scary thing.

TWO “It’s a really old house.” “I hadn’t noticed.” Emmett tried, at the last moment, to ensure his commentary was less barbed than usual. Sam glanced at him and smiled. Emmett assumed he’d been successful. “Ranches and split levels all around it. But this one’s…what is it? An old farm house, I think. See that hill? I’ll bet a barn was built into the side of the hill. If you dug, you’d probably find the stones from the old foundation.” And that foundation would probably be in better shape than the one Emmett was currently trusting to hold up his house. He did his best to pretend he wasn’t on the verge of mortified panic as he unlocked the front door. Sam had come out of his truck with a massive old tool box in one hand and a mason jar full of nails, bolts and screws in the other. Good with his hands? Hopefully. And it appeared he might know how to fix things, too. The lock stuck. Emmett bit back a nervous laugh and wiggled the key. The mechanism resisted him longer than it usually did. Probably on principle, since there was a strapping young lad with a jar full of nails standing behind him. And when the door finally did open, the smell seemed more pronounced than usual. “Sorry about that. Would you believe the realtor was burning scented candles all over the house and it never occurred to me they were there for any reason other than ambience?” The odor of slightly soured milk hung in the doorway, though there hadn’t been so much as a teaspoon of milk in the house since Emmett had signed the deed, since he wasn’t much for breakfast and he drank his coffee black. “Moisture must’ve seeped in somewhere.” Sam glanced up at the lintel where the porch roof had failed. “A dehumidifier will help with that. Plus, if you can’t do a teardown anytime soon, there’s paint on the market that can seal it up and mask the smell.” Sam set his jar of nails on the telephone desk and crossed the entryway to the dining room. “This place has seen a lot of neglect, but look at it this way. All the light fixtures, all the floors and molding—original. And they don’t make ‘em like they used to.” “Thank God.” Sam crossed to the mantle of the fireplace where Emmett had never once had the courage to build a fire, and paused. A dozen framed photos gathered dust on the mantle: Emmett’s grandparents, now playing Pinochle somewhere in the great beyond. His parents and sis-

ter Lynn, her with a sleek bob and a sleeker waistline, before she got married and gained eighty pounds. Family. Friends. His cousin’s kids. And front and center in full, lurid color—Emmett and Rosemary, on their birthday, which they shared, though she was three years younger and she never let him forget it. Emmett hadn’t yet shaved off his goatee by that birthday, Rosemary’s thirtieth, therefore Emmett’s thirty-third. They wore matching tiaras, and sashes that read “Queen for a Day,” though “Queen” was the only word showing on Emmett’s. They both looked fairly drunk. But happy. Definitely happy. Emmett watched Sam stare hard at the snapshot. He supposed there were worse ways to be outed. Sam noticed Emmett noticing him; he blinked and cleared his throat. “Your…uh, sister?” “In spirit only.” Emmett took the snapshot off the mantle, blew the dust off the frame, and put it back fondly. “She’s leaving next week, for good. I can just see it now. Tweets and emails every half hour or so at first. Then once a day. And eventually, nothing but chain letters, and bad jokes with ten pages of forwarded headers on top. I might as well let a rotten timber fall on me now and put me out of my misery.” “It’s easy enough to make sure that never happens.” Sam grinned at a picture of Biscuits, the family dog, in a sweater. “Toss your computer.” “Blasphemy.” “I sold my laptop after…when I came home from school. I don’t even miss it anymore.” “It’s not like that. I need it for work. I might watch as many funny cat videos on YouTube as the next guy, but I pay the mortgage by trading futures.” “I don’t know the first thing about investing.” “Good. It’s mind-numbingly dull.” And Emmett wasn’t particularly great at it anymore, either. The horrible house had made him jumpy, and prone to sell things off before they’d peaked. Sam angled the photo of Emmett and Rosemary away from the glare of the overhead light fixture. “Still, you could write her letters, by hand. I think hand-written letters have more personality than emails.” “True. My cursive has sent a nun or two into heart failure.” “People wrap up letters with ribbons. They stuff shoeboxes full of them, with their other mementoes. They hang onto them for years. Not like email.” “You haven’t seen my inbox.”

Sam smiled. He shifted a photo of Emmett’s sister in her Madonna phase so he could see it better. “No significant other?” “Lynn? She’s married. The wedding photos go all the way up the staircase.” “Not her.” Emmett saw that Sam said that with studied casualness, focusing on Lynn’s bangles and crucifixes as if they were actually interesting. Emmett might have strung anyone else along for the sake of enjoying the heavy, stilted silence…but Sam didn’t bring that pettiness out in him, so he showed mercy, and said, “The only man in my life is Bob Vila. And he never calls me back.” Sam laughed, and used Emmett’s remark to segue out of the potential minefield of the photos. “So what’s your biggest problem…in the house?” “All of the above?” “How about your top three?” While Emmett was tempted to keep indulging in his own smartassedness, Sam practically oozed sincerity. Emmett figured he might have been stupid enough to try to buy into the American dream and end up with a 150-year-old albatross around his neck, but it didn’t mean he needed to be a prick to the first person who was willing to look at it without signing a liability waiver. “You mean small stuff, or structural stuff?” “I dunno. Anything.” “The radiators bang. Really bang, hard, like someone’s hammering on sheet metal all night long.” “I’m sure that’s fixable. We might need to rent some tools, flush some buildup out of the system. What else?” “Mysterious drafts.” “There’s all kinds of weatherproofing on the market. What else?” Emmett sighed. “The foundation.” Sam looked solemn. “That might be way over my head.” No, it was under his feet. But Emmett was growing to like the idea that he didn’t need to come up with a snappy comeback to each and every thing Sam said. He didn’t need to be entertaining. And it hadn’t really registered how exhausting the whole “I’ve got a wise-

crack for every occasion” façade had grown until he was able to relax it for the span of a single conversation. “I don’t usually invite people I’ve just met into the basement,” Emmett said. Sam hefted his toolbox from the floor. “I might as well see it. I’m probably imagining it worse than it is.” Emmett took up the jar of nails and led the way. The door in the back of the pantry was something right out of a slasher film. Emmett opened it and flicked on the overhead light. At least that worked. For now. He winced at the lingering, cabbagey smell that rose out of the dankness. “Sorry. The Ghost of St. Patrick’s Day haunts the stairwell.” For all its faults, at least the basement had a high ceiling. Even Sam, who must’ve been well over six feet tall, didn’t need to stoop to keep the cobwebs out of hair. He’d produced a flashlight. He clicked it, got nothing, rapped it against the heel of his opposite hand, and then a light flickered on. He began beaming it into all the nooks and crannies that Emmett always tried very hard to ignore. “Hold the flashlight a sec.” Emmett obliged. Sam had paused at an old pipe so covered in crud it was hardly identifiable as a part of the plumbing. “See this?” He pointed at a hole Emmett had never even noticed. “There’s supposed to be a cap over it.” He crouched and sifted through the crusty remains at the base of the pipe. “It must have rusted out. It’s letting out sewer gas—not dangerous or anything. Just annoying.” Emmett considered adding the epitaph “Not Dangerous, Just Annoying” into his will, if he ever wrote one. Sam pulled a tape measure out of the toolbox and measured the hole. “I think this is still a standard size.” He flashed a smile over his shoulder, and Emmett wondered that the sincerity in it didn’t turn him to ash…or a pillar of salt. Or perhaps a pile of the crud that mysteriously appeared no matter how often he swept the basement. “Maybe if we get a few of the easy things fixed, you won’t feel so overwhelmed by the place. Build up some momentum to get going on the bigger projects.” “Look, back there in the store, I meant what I said. I really am broke. I could maybe pay you minimum wage, but even that’d be stretching it.” “Hey, I said I’d do you a favor, right? Don’t even talk about money with me. I’ve got collection agents hounding me to the point that I tossed my cell phone. I had to give up my apartment and move in with my mother, who can’t talk about anything else day and night. I’m so sick of money I could scream.” Emmett tried to imagine what Sam might have done to incur those kind of debts. Gambling? Credit cards? Maybe a brand new convertible that he wrapped around a tree? None of those seemed like him, what little Emmett knew of him, anyway. “How did you—?”

“I screwed up.” Very direct. How refreshing. “Look,” Sam said, “sorry, it’s not your problem.” “I shouldn’t have pried.” “You weren’t prying. I just don’t like to talk about it.” “Not another word. We can find some more bad smells if that’ll make you feel better. I think the old saw ‘misery loves company’ is one of life’s greatest truisms.” He pointed at the south wall, which looked particularly untrustworthy. “Or how about some termite damage to cheer you up?” Sam shook his head and smiled despite himself. “I hate to disappoint you, but everything you’ve shown me so far is fixable. There’s some sagging, but everything’s mostly square and plumb. We jack up the beams a couple of inches, pour a new post….” He stopped mid-sentence and stared at the far wall. “And what?” Sam took the flashlight back from Emmett and crossed to the east wall, where decades of rusty farm tools hung. Emmett had never disposed of them, since he figured all the sharp and pointed edges would shred the inside of his garbage bin. It was easier to just leave them hanging there until time and oxidation completed their transformation to the ubiquitous basement crud. “You’re not gonna suggest a little steel wool and elbow grease will clean those up, are you?” Sam dropped the flashlight beam to the floor. There was a gap there, half-hidden by a rake that looked like a prop from The Grapes of Wrath. “That’s not good,” Sam said. Emmett looked away. He’d thought he would be relieved once Sam’s relentless optimism hit a roadblock…but he’d been wrong. Sam set the toolbox down and knelt to get a better look at the gap. Emmett glanced at a flaking scythe that hung right above his head. “You’ve had your tetanus booster, right?” Sam’s earnest young brow furrowed deeply. Emmett resisted the urge to scream “What?” at the top of his lungs. Sam licked his fingertip, then held his hand in front of the crack and scowled. “How can you have a draft coming in from down here?”

THREE “The whole place is drafty,” Emmet said. “I never really thought about it.” “This is the basement.” “So?” “So the drafts would come in by the ceiling. Not the floor.” Just when Emmett thought he couldn’t possibly feel more stupid, a new and spectacularly ridiculous thing surfaced that made him feel even lower. He got down on one knee beside Sam—his jeans had been snagged by a stray nail earlier that day, so they’d be trashed within a few more washings—and he put his hand to the gap where floor met wall. There was definitely a draft. “Does it have something to do with where the house sits in relation to the hill?” Sam glanced at the ceiling, puzzled, to get his bearings. “No—that’s impossible. You’re at the bottom of a hill. Not the top.” Emmett figured he’d better stop asking questions before Sam needed to explain concepts like gravity to him. Or to define what air was. “I’d thought maybe the foundation had shifted over here,” Sam said, “but now I don’t even know—“ Emmett stuck his hand through the tangle of horror flick farm equipment and knocked on the wall. He and Sam looked at one another sharply. It didn’t sound like concrete. Or stone. Or moldering skulls…or whatever the rest of the basement had been constructed from. “It’s probably a root cellar,” Sam said. “My aunt Jean had one in her place—before she sold it and bought a condo.” “Great. A root cellar. The fun never ends.” Sam rapped on the wall in a few more places between the gaps in the tools. “Someone probably walled it off, and then figured it was easier to set the tool hooks into wood than stone.”

“So long as it doesn’t stink.” Emmett got down on hands and knees and gave it a sniff. “If there are any corpses walled up in there, they’re at the leathery stage.” He stood and stretched his back. “That’s it?” Sam said. “You’re not going to check it out?” “What do you think we should do—tear that thing down? What if it’s a load-bearing false wall? We could end up with the hall closet crashing through the floor.” Sam attempted to give Emmett a hard look, but succeeded only in flashing adorable dimples instead—dimples that ate away at Emmett’s resolve as surely as rust corroded his pipes. “Seriously,” Emmett said. “Would could possibly be good in there?” “Who knows? Maybe someone tucked away a stash for a rainy day and then died without cashing out. And if it’s old,” Sam flaked the paint on the wooden wall with his thumbnail, “the dimes and silver dollars would be real silver, and the bills would be antiques.” How silly, Emmett thought. Nothing good had come from the horrible house in the two long years in which he’d owned it. Why would it start now? And yet…dimples, and those big, brown, guileless eyes. Emmett was at the mercy of Sam’s whims. He pulled a threepronged hand tool that was either a cultivator or a baby-disemboweler from the wall. The ancient clamp that held it to the wall gave off a tiny metallic wail as it released. “I should’ve had you sign a waiver,” he muttered. “What?” “Nothing.” Emmett fetched a tarp that had once covered a shipment of new drywall, back when he still had money…and hope. They piled the tools onto the plastic and Sam dragged them aside, while Emmett admired Sam’s physique. Sam seemed very good at anything that involved movement. Or standing there. Or doing anything at all. Emmett cut his eyes away just as Sam looked up. “Well?” Sam said. “Want to lay a bet on how many silver dollars we find in there?” Could he bet zero? Emmett didn’t know. It seemed more important to humor the kid. “What does the winner get?” Something flickered over Sam’s pure-as-the-driven-snow expression. He wet his lips. Subconsciously…probably. “Loser cooks dinner,” he said, and it was his turn to look away fast.

Because it sounded suspiciously like a date. Emmett eased forward —the lighting threw shadows like crazy—to see if Sam was blushing. He was. “You’re on.” Sam pulled a small prybar from his tool box and handed it to Emmett. “See if you can pull these nails without breaking off the heads.” “Ten silver dollars,” Emmett guessed. He slid the prybar under an old nail, pushed, and the nailhead popped off. He supposed Sam couldn’t help but have seen, but Sam didn’t mention it. “Only ten? What about hundreds? Thousands?” Emmett popped off another nailhead, but couldn’t think of any appropriate swear words. If there’d been any doubt at all that he was besotted by Sam, the lack of colorful curses springing to mind was all it took to convince him. “You didn’t let me finish. What I meant to say, before I was so rudely interrupted, was ten thousand.” “Oh, I see. All right. I’ll guess two hundred and fifty thousand. A quarter of a million.” Sam pulled a nail. It screeched, but came out whole. “Only a quarter? Pessimist.” Emmett struggled with a nail and rocked it free. It was a shortish nail. “You gonna go higher?” Emmett put on his best Dr. Evil voice and placed his pinky to the corner of his mouth. “One million silver dollars.” Sam burst out laughing. “I’d split it with you.” It seemed impulsive, even as Emmett said it. But he didn’t care. “No, that’s crazy. It’s your house.” “I would totally split it.” Sam worked at the board he was prying free and didn’t meet Emmett’s eye. Impulsive? Maybe. But wildly romantic, too. Emmett added, “And I’m holding you to making me dinner when I win. So don’t even think about backing out.” “I do nuke a pretty mean hot dog. You’d better like relish.” Emmett paused to debate whether it was too ridiculous for him to try to be flirty with a remark about holding the onions in case he wanted to kiss somebody when Sam wedged

his prybar under the wood, tugged, and pulled the board well away from the wall. A chorus of screeching rusty nails sang out. The board swung down, a broad board, at eye level, and darkness gaped beyond. Sam and Emmett both stared into the dark that seemed too profound to disturb by calling into it and waiting for an echo. Then Sam picked up the flashlight. He aimed it into the hole. “It’s not a root cellar,” he whispered. “It’s a tunnel.” Emmett was so baffled that he didn’t realize he’d slung an arm around Sam to get a look at the supposed tunnel until he’d already done it—and registered a few things. Solid. Firm. Warm. Totally embarrassing. He waffled so hard about taking his hand back he didn’t even see, not at first. Not until Sam bounced the beam off the ceiling. “This leads into the hillside.” “It’s probably just a tornado shelter,” Emmett said in an attempt to be reasonable. “A turn of the century tornado shelter. Think about it—Wizard of Oz, Kansas…It’s a twister, Auntie Em. I’m sure there’s nothing in there but scratchy blankets, sensible shoes, and a few jars of dust that used to be preserves.” Now that the first board was off they had something to grab, and the others came easily. Emmett loosened boards with the prybar, and Sam tore with his hands. Neither of them spoke, not until there was a gap big enough to fit through. “Do you have another flashlight?” Sam tried to sound casual, but his voice was trembling with anticipation. Which fanned the flames of Emmett’s imagination. “Batteries are dead. I have tea lights.” “Go get them—and don’t worry. I won’t go in without you. You should be the first one to see. It’s your house.” “I get it. You can stop reminding me.” Emmett hurried upstairs and pawed through the kitchen junk drawer where an unopened pack of tea lights was buried among the kitchen gadgets he never used and about a thousand twist ties. He found a saucer from his mismatched collection of dinnerware to carry it on, and a box of wooden matches for lighting the pilot that was always blowing out. By the time Emmett got back to the basement, Sam had pried off all but the lowest board. “So…” Emmett said. “What are the chances I light a match down here and we both explode?” “Natural gas is the flammable one—heating gas. Not sewer gas, at least not at this concentration. Sewer gas mostly just stinks.”

Natural gas stunk too—or at least the utility company added something to it to ensure it stunk, so that people didn’t blithely go about their business in the midst of a gas leak. Still, Emmett could think of worse ways to die than being blown to pieces beside a handsome young man just as the first blossoms of hope germinated in his hardened heart. He put the small candle on the saucer and lit it. They didn’t explode. It was hard to gauge the depth of the tunnel; the candlelight and flashlight beams bounced back from a veil of cobwebs that obscured the path a few yards in. It was about six feet high with stone walls and crumbling mortar, and the concrete floor, Emmett noted, was lighter than the flooring of the rest of the basement. “Come on,” Sam whispered, though hopefully there was no reason to whisper. What could they disturb? Rats? The tunnel didn’t smell like rodent urine. It smelled like dust. Sam nudged Emmett with his elbow in encouragement. Emmett noted Sam had picked up the jar of nails and was clutching it to his chest like the Holy Grail. The two men fit in the tunnel side by side—barely. They approached the first veil of cobweb and Sam cleared it with the end of his flashlight. The light danced wildly off the unknown ahead, and tendrils of cobweb drifted down to crackle and singe in the flame of Emmett’s candle. The pop of the flame and the sound of his own breathing was loud in Emmett’s ears. For a moment, a single shining moment, he actually did believe there was something grand awaiting him—if not a pile of money, maybe antiques, or even jewelry. And within that moment, there was a nanosecond where he was willing to imagine himself free at last. Free of the horrible house. Free to run off to Paris. Although Sam would still be in Kansas. Emmett wondered if Sam would come along for the ride. He hoped so. “Up ahead.” Sam was still whispering. “I think it’s…a room.” They shuffled in. Difficult to tell exactly by the light of a flashlight beam and the leaping flame of a single candle, but it looked to be a good-sized space. An old furnace took up the center of the room. Sandy grit rained from the groaning ceiling as they crept closer for a better look. Emmett said, also in a whisper, “And here I thought the percussion boiler was original to the house. Looks like something even scarier pre-dated it.” “This is no boiler.” It looked like a boiler—the fittings at the bottom where a gas line hooked in, at least. Maybe it was a boiler that had mated with a big Weber grill and a margarita fountain. “If it’s not a boiler, then what are all these pipes sticking out of it for?”

Sam bent to look at a second piece of equipment, connected to the first by a long, downward-angling pipe. Emmett had taken the second chamber for some sort of storage or overflow reservoir. Sam pointed to a spigot at the base. “It’s a still.” “As in moonshine?” “Bathtub gin. White lightning. Hootch.” “Well, I’ll be,” Emmett mused. “Someone had quite the operation here, once upon a time.” “Kansas was the first dry state. This isn’t original to the house, but it’s old.” Sam sized up the apparatus. “I’d say they must’ve been selling, not just brewing. Not with this big boy.” “Bootleggers. In my horrible house.” Emmett put his hand over his heart and sighed theatrically. “Finally—something to not hate about this place.” He and Sam stood shoulder to shoulder, gazing at huge metal drum. Neither of them moved to ease away from the other. “You really hate this house?” “Passionately.” “I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. I’d give anything for a place of my own. No matter how much work it needed.” Then stay here, Emmett wanted to say. Help me fix it. Because with you here, it doesn’t seem even half as horrible. But since he’d just met Sam, he figured he’d come off as desperate if he said as much—even if he tried to blame his lack of judgment on the sewer gas. He didn’t say it, of course, but the pause where he couldn’t think of anything else to say was loaded enough to keep him speechless. Still, neither of them had moved apart—and if Emmett wasn’t imagining it, Sam had pressed even closer, and he leaned down to speak directly in Emmett’s ear. “So, who wins the bet? Neither of us?” “How about…both?” Emmett was so busy priding himself on being so smooth about doubling their potential dates that he was taken completely and utterly by surprise when Sam leaned in farther still, and pressed a tentative kiss to his lips. Emmett was almost too shocked to respond—almost—but just as Sam was about to pull back, Emmett leaned into the kiss and returned it. Sam smelled like male things—toolboxes and pickup trucks and his old denim jacket— and Emmett needed to tilt his head up for the kiss. Tall, guyish and endearingly shy…a

killer combo. Emmett knew Rosemary was going to be envious of his sudden spark of luck. Even as she settled in to her new Parisian flat. When Sam finally did pull away, candlelight danced over his features. The dark that had seemed so sinister when they first uncovered the secret passage now felt lacksidaisically romantic. Emmett wondered if the tea light would stay put if he balanced it on top of the old still, or if it would manage to catch onto something that was still flammable despite its eighty-plus years on the planet. At least now if he blew up, he reasoned, he’d do it with a smile on his face. It might have been awkward to kiss someone while holding a candle on a plate and attempting to keep from setting himself on fire, but Emmett was up for the challenge. He slid his free hand around Sam’s neck to see if he could coax another kiss. Sam surrendered easily. Very encouraging. And then Emmett felt the brush of Sam’s tongue against his lower lip—very encouraging, indeed. Emmett chanced some tongue and felt Sam’s breathing catch. He pulled Sam closer. Something heavy clattered to the floor. Emmett opened his eyes, startled. It was much darker than it had been when the kiss began. “Shoot…” Sam ducked away, still clutching his jar of nails, and made a grab for the flashlight he’d just dropped. It rolled out of his grasp on the uneven concrete, wobbled, then picked up speed. Sam followed in a crouch, scuttling after it, but the flashlight stayed just out of reach. Grit sifted from the ceiling and rained down, mostly on Sam, with a sound like frying bacon. Emmett cupped his hand around the candle flame. “I think that’s our cue to move to the sofa,” he said. Unless you want to skip that and head straight to my bedroom, he longed to add, but he decided he’d better not overburden his newfound luck. Sam almost had the flashlight, but a shower of old ceiling caught him in the eye, and he stopped to rub at it. “Don’t, you’ll make it worse. I have saline solution upstairs.” Sam rubbed his eye with the back of his hand. “I think I got it.” Emmett tried to shield the candle with his body while he crossed the room to retrieve the flashlight. Getting plunged into total darkness with Sam would normally have been a good thing. But not in that particular location. The flashlight rolled away from Emmett, and then Sam, swerving eerily on the uneven floor as if a spirit guide were steering it. Sam laughed—nervously, Emmett thought, and made another grab. The flashlight paused, teetered, and rolled away faster still. “This is ridiculous,” Emmett said. He lunged for the flashlight, and cracked his hand against something large and distinctly wall-like. “F…udge.”

Sam laughed. “You don’t need to be polite. Feel free to swear.” “You’re the one who said, and I quote, ‘Shoot.’ I’ll save the F-bomb for later.” The full implications of what he’d just said sank in, along with visions of himself using the “Fbomb” in its most literal sense of the world—asking to perform the act, or maybe begging to have it done to him—and Emmett was thankful for the darkness. Even though it had just caused him to split a knuckle on an unsuspecting wall, it kept him from seeing Sam’s reaction to the latest doozy. “What did you hit? Is that a wall?” “It came out of nowhere. Sideswiped me.” Sam pressed a hand to the wall and a fresh onslaught of grit rained down, accompanied by a long, ominous creak. “I’m a little leery of this ceiling.” “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” “So where’s the flashlight? Did it fall somewhere—is there a grate in the floor?” Emmett could have groped for it in the near-dark, but he was none too fond of getting ubiquitous basement crud under his nails. He set the candle plate on the floor, figuring they’d spot the flashlight casting a shadow a foot to either side of the place they were currently searching. The flame guttered wildly. Emmett cupped his hands around the candle. His heart pounded. “I hope that flashlight didn’t have sentimental value. I think we’re gonna have to make our great escape and chalk it up to collateral damage.” Sam stared at the candle flame. “Is that a breeze?” “Weren’t you the one who just explained to me that we were underground?” “What if there’s more? What if there’s another tunnel? Or a cave?” “Closest cave’s in Flint Hills.” The flame guttered again, and yes, now that he was aware of the possibility—though in the midst of trying to discount it—Emmett realized he did feel a slight breeze against his hand. Sam, who was evidently less intimidated by the crud, felt for the flashlight. “There’s a gap, right here, a three-inch gap. It doesn’t even feel like a wall. I think it’s…a door.”

“Of course it’s a door. Because anyone who’d put up two false walls is either a moron…or a genius.” Sam ran his hands up the wall, door, whatever it was, and knocked on it. Emmett was tempted to tell him that would only work when there was someone on the other side to answer it, but he figured voicing that opinion wouldn’t get him any closer to the couch…or the bed. “Hear that?” Sam whispered. They were back to whispering again. “It’s hollow.” “Mostly I hear ceiling crumbs bouncing off your jean jacket. Seriously, Sam, let’s get out of here.” Sam’s whispering grew urgent. “I found a latch.” He grabbed one of Emmett’s hands and jammed his fingers into a slot in the wall. “Right here. Feel it?” “If we had enough light, we’d see this wasn’t some kind of secret subterranean passage. I’m sure it’s just a storage closet.” “C’mon…open it.” Emmett did his best to ignore the spongy feel of egg sacs, the leavings of some long-dead spider, pressing against the pads of his fingers. If he were with Rosemary, he could have jerked his hand back and done the “icky” dance. But Rosemary didn’t smell like machine shop. She didn’t kiss him with tongue. Emmett squeezed. At first he thought nothing would happen—that the latch was too old, too disused to function. But then he felt a slight give, and then a click. Ceiling rained down so hard it was as if there were someone in a secret compartment up above dumping a bag of kitty litter on them. Emmett dove to shield the candle with his body. “Fuck!” He batted out the smoldering patch of fabric on his sweatshirt, and told himself to be happy he wasn’t wearing something really flammable, like flannel. Once it was clear Emmett wasn’t going to burst into flames, Sam grabbed him by the arm. “You’re wrong. It is a secret passage.”

FOUR This hallway was narrower than the first, with packed-earth walls and a ceiling low enough to force Sam to duck. “Let’s go to the hardware store,” Emmett suggested, “grab a couple of flashlights, and then have a look at this.” “The flashlight’s got to be here somewhere.” Sam did a cursory search, but the flashlight was nowhere, as if it had simply ceased to exist. “Don’t you want to just see how far it goes? We already found a still. What else is stashed down here?” Emmett’s big secret was that beneath his protective shell, he’d always been a pushover— something Rosemary knew full well, but only chose to exploit on select occasions. It had taken her a couple of years to figure it out, though, while Sam seemed to zero right in on the tendency and embrace it like an old friend. The hand he’d been holding the long-lost flashlight with rested on Emmett’s shoulder now. And so Emmett allowed himself to be talked into delving down into the cramped earthen tunnel with nothing but a single sputtering candle to guide him. The tunnel stretched far enough that Emmett wondered if it would open out on the other side of the hill. “At this rate,” Emmett said, “we’re gonna end up in Sunflower Heights. And they have a rent-a-cop who gives a pretty stern warning to anyone who doesn’t have a sticker on their windshield.” Sam squeezed his shoulder. “I’ve always wondered why it’s called Sunflower Heights but it’s built in a valley.” “It’s one of those things you need to live in a gated community to comprehend.” Emmett stopped walking, pulled a second tea light from his pocket, and lit it from the first. The two flames, side by side, made a big difference in the amount of light being cast. Emmett added a third candle, and saw Sam watching him by that candlelight. Handsome. Young. Eager. Practically a stranger, and yet, Sam was right there with him—fully present, in the heart of the hill, creating new memories…a new history. When Sam leaned in for another kiss, Emmett held the candles off to one side. He felt like he’d never been so aware of himself and his body before: the weight of the saucer and the sense that it might be tilted; the flicker and dance of candlelight throwing subtle patterns against his closed eyelids; the cool caress that played over his teeth when Sam drew breath in response to a daring sweep of his tongue.

The kiss ended and they both paused, close, silent, until finally Emmett couldn’t resist saying, “I really, really want to go back.” He slid his free hand around Sam’s waist and let his fingertips graze the waistband of Sam’s jeans. Sam placed a small, fleeting kiss on Emmett’s lips, like a promise. “We’ll see what’s here…then we’ll go back upstairs.” Emmett no longer cared where the flashlight had rolled off to. He practically charged down the passage—which, seriously, was much longer than he’d imagined, maybe a quarter of a mile, maybe more—or maybe it just felt that way. The floor sloped down, and the slightly gritty texture turned slimy. “Groundwater?” Emmett wondered out loud. “The air doesn’t seem so dry here.” Emmett strained to make out a jumble of dark-on-dark at the edge of the candles’ light. “Maybe it has something to do with that cave-in up ahead. Probably cracked the pipe to some banker’s Jacuzzi. Now can we go…?” He almost said “to bed” but he caught himself just in time. Sam slipped by Emmett and inched up ahead. “I don’t think it’s a cave-in. It looks like it wasn’t finished, is all. And there on the wall, right before it. Is that…a door?” Emmett was about to reply, but a flash of white caught his eye, Sam’s white shirt, striking in the candlelight against the darkness, and a dark vest. He’d been wearing a vest under his jean jacket? It wasn’t the sort of fashion statement Emmett would have expected from him. And it seemed like an odd time to ditch his jacket, given the obvious lack of coat hooks in the tunnel. “What happened to your…?” Sam clutched the Mason jar to his chest and pressed his ear to the door. “I don’t think I hear anything.” “Sam—” Sam turned the latch. The door swung outward. “There’s a room,” he whispered. “It’s full of stuff.” And without even waiting for Emmett, he went in. Emmett rolled his eyes, but he followed. He supposed, in all fairness, that they were so far down the tunnel he was no longer technically the property owner, and Sam had as much right to plow ahead as he did. “Full of stuff” was an understatement. The room was a small storage chamber about eight feet square, and every wall was floor to ceiling kegs and crates. Everything was wood— —no plastic, no Styrofoam, no corrugated cardboard or packing peanuts. Emmett raised the saucer to get a better look at the merchandise…and found it wasn’t a saucer at all.

It was a lantern. “What are you wearing?” Sam said. Emmett’s groin dropped. Literally. It was as if his boxer briefs were there one moment, gone the next. He barely resisted the urge to cup his free-falling testicles in his hand. “Me? What are you wearing?” Sam looked down at himself like he’d never seen a vest before and clung to his Mason jar for dear life. “How’d you do that?” “I didn’t do anything.” In hopes of being more subtle about settling himself, Emmett grabbed for the waistband of his jeans—and found it halfway up his ribcage. And he was wearing suspenders. “Okay, I’m hallucinating. There was a gas leak, and we’re both sprawled out on the basement floor with spiders in our hair thinking we’re a couple of treasure hunters in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Maybe Rosemary’ll find us before it’s too late.” Sam patted the front of his vest. “Wool.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out some change. “This is real. Why would I hallucinate having thirty-eight cents in my pocket?” Emmett reached into his own pocket. His yielded up a handkerchief and a pocket watch. “I’ll bet I even hallucinated that I kissed you.” “I think I was the one who kissed you.” “Now I know I’m dreaming.” The sound of a door slamming cut short any additional argument as to who kissed whom. A rectangle of light appeared on the far wall—a door—and the illumination shone in from beneath it like a pale liquid had just spilled on the floor. Sam and Emmett looked at one another. And then the sound of heavy footsteps carried through the closed door. Emmett whispered, “Oh my God, we’re in someone’s house.” “No we’re not. It’s a store or a business. No one keeps this much stuff,” Sam gestured with his Mason jar toward the ceiling-high stack of crates, “in their…house.” He stared at the jar, puzzled. The nails, screws and bolts were gone. It held water instead. While Sam and Emmett looked at the jar in bewilderment, the door banged open. Emmett squinted against the light that was a dozen times brighter than the glow of the lantern he held.

A man stood in the doorway, so backlit that he was little more than a silhouette. “All clear,” he said, no-nonsense and authoritarian. “C’mon out and show us what you got.” And he said it so matter-of-factly, too. As if they’d been…expected. Emmett and Sam stepped out of the storeroom, blinking against the light. The man in high-waisted wool pants and suspenders had a mustache that belonged in a barbershop quartet. He led them into a wood-paneled hallway with a bright bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. The smells of pipe tobacco and sweat were thick in the air. Emmett noticed Sam straining to catch his eye. He stopped gawking at the hallway long enough for Sam to mouth, “What is this?” to him, but all he could do was shrug and try to keep up with the man with the mustache. The man led them to another room lit by a glaring, bare bulb. Wallpaper covered the plaster from wainscoting to ceiling, and a stark wooden table with a single chair took up most of the space. The man sat. Emmett took that to mean he should remain standing. Among the odds and ends on the table—some books and ledgers, an inkwell, an ash tray—were a pair of shotglasses. The man pulled them to the edge of the table and said, “Well, go ahead and pour.” Sam looked down at the Mason jar like he’d just gotten a shock from it, then he obediently twisted off the top and filled the glasses. Emmett suspected it wasn’t water at all, and his stomach clenched at the thought of being told to drink it—but he needn’t have worried. The man with the mustache struck a wooden match and lit one of the shots, then pulled a long chain to turn off the light. A tiny flame shone bright against the darkness. “Burns blue,” the man said. “Pure enough.” Emmett gave Sam’s arm a covert squeeze. What if it hadn’t? Then it would’ve come to fisticuffs. Or tarring and feathering. Or whatever happened when someone was displeased, wherever they were. Whenever they were. “You got the terms?” the man said. Emmett and Sam looked at each other. Sam patted down his pockets. Emmett did the same. Pocket watch. Handkerchief. But in the other pocket…a folded sheet of paper. He unfolded it to try to determine whether it actually contained “terms,” or whether it was a shopping list for Moxie, Blackjack gum and cod liver oil. Mustache Man snatched it out of his hand. “The less you know about it, the better.” He glanced at it himself, holding the paper at arm’s length like he was in sore need of bifocals. “You can take a room upstairs while we sort this out and give your boss an answer. Go catch the end of Amos and Andy…and don’t think about wandering around. Folks’ll remember this one here for sure.” He nodded towards Sam. “That beats all. Kid like you running gin. You could probably score a basketball scholarship from the Jayhawks.”

“Bum knee,” Sam said. It was the first thing either of them said, and it appeared to have been the right thing. Mustache Man grunted sympathetically, then led them up a narrow back staircase and into a drab room with a pair of narrow beds, a pair of narrow chairs, a single narrow window, and a radio that was the size of a major appliance. “Make yourselves comfortable,” Mustache Man said, with a distinct undertone of “don’t go anywhere.” He closed the door. The deadbolt clicked. Emmett and Sam stared at each other. Emmett was tempted to continue along the lines of, “where are we” and “when are we” and “what the heck happened to my underwear,” but Sam looked just as spooked as he felt. “Any ideas?” he ventured. Sam crossed the room to the window, hooked a finger behind the windowshade, then lifted it away enough to get a look outside. He went pale and let the shade drop. “It’s the same out there.” Emmett hadn’t planned on sitting on any of the furniture, since utilizing the objects around him would seem to indicate his corroboration that something real was happening to him, but his knees felt too rubbery to support him. He sat on the edge of one of the beds. Springs creaked. A distinctly uncomfortable lump pressed into his right buttock. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a newsboy cap, and fought the urge to put it on for the sake of being ironic. He tried to settle down, but something in the opposite pocket jabbed him on the other side. He pulled it out. It was cash. Not just any cash, but a huge, fat roll of it. He showed it to Sam and set it on the nightstand. “Just in case there was any doubt we’ve reincarnated as a couple of thugs.” “This can’t be reincarnation. That would put us in the future.” “Retrocarnation, then. Reincarnation’s redheaded stepchild.” Sam paced, though the room didn’t really allow for much pacing from someone with as long a stride as he possessed. “Kansas started Prohibition in the 1880’s, but it was legal to go buy liquor in Nebraska until 1919.” “You just happen to know that.” “History major. So given that we’re probably sometime before the Twenty-First Amendment, and the fact that there’s not war propaganda everywhere, I’d guess we’re sometime in the twenties.” “I thought the Roaring Twenties were supposed to be fun.”

“Maybe not so much in Kansas.” Sam peeled off his glasses so he could knuckle his eyes. The earpieces were wrapped painfully around his ears. He supposed he should be grateful he hadn’t been wearing his contacts when they dropped down the laundry chute of time. “Why doesn’t he want us going outside?” Sam said. “I think we’re doing something especially illegal.” Emmett looked pointedly at the roll of cash, and tried to recall if he’d ever broken any laws quite so flagrantly before. Occasional scores of pot in college, piggybacking onto his neighbor’s unprotected wireless network back when he’d lived in a duplex. As outlaws went, Emmett made a pretty poor showing. “I wish we could go out and just walk around. Maybe grab a newspaper. See what there is to see.” Emmett gestured toward the radio. “You want to immerse yourself in the hallucination? Be my guest.” Sam turned on the hulking behemoth. It actually needed to warm up before it would play. Emmett supposed there were tubes involved. And maybe a bit of sorcery. They joined the station in the middle of a radio play—which was hokey and over-emoted and impossible to follow. Emmett’s fingers itched for a remote control so he could pull up a menu and read the date, time and program guide. Sam joined Emmett on the bed. The springs protested even more loudly. “One thing I can say for whatever’s happening…you look pretty slick in that outfit.” Emmett tried to look down at himself. White shirt, plaid trousers and gray suspenders that attached to his waistband with buttons. “Yeah. Real dapper.” Sam leaned in, cupped the back of Emmett’s head, and drew him into a kiss. Their lips met. Sam’s tongue brushed Emmett’s lower lip and tried to elicit a response. “I think,” Emmett whispered, “that this is at least as illegal as bootlegging. And ten times as taboo.” “I know.” Sam kissed him again, deeply this time, sliding his tongue into Emmett’s mouth and sinking his fingers into Emmett’s hair. They kissed, long and hard, until Emmett’s cock, totally unconstrained by whatever his trusty boxer briefs had turned into, rose tall and proud inside his roomy plaid trousers. “I never realized plaid was so hot.” “But the Mustache Man—” Sam got up, wedged one of the chairs under the doorknob, then turned to face Emmett with a look in his eyes that made it clear he knew exactly how devastating he could be, if he put his mind to it. He’d just been going easy on Emmett…so far. “Don’t you like me?”

Emmett did his best not to glance down at the peak in his trousers. “I like you more than cosmopolitans and free HBO and scratch-off lottery tickets put together. But this place…” this time, he thought, “is freaking me out.” “We can’t go out and look around—not unless we want someone to catch us climbing down the side of the building on tied-together sheets.” Sam sat down and the bedsprings squalled again. He slipped an arm around Emmett. “So why not? Why not have our first time be memorable?” Emmett did have to admit—he liked the sound of “first time.” Not only was there something intrinsically sweet and even innocent about the phrase itself, but it implied that Sam was looking forward to additional times as well. Sam rose from the bed and knelt between Emmett’s knees. He took both of Emmett’s hands in his. “I’ll bet your house is awesome now.” “If it even is my house. We’re working for The Boss now, remember?” Sam turned one of Emmett’s hands palm up and kissed the inside of his wrist. A thrill shot up Emmett’s arm and down his spine. “I’ll bet it takes them a while to draft their terms.” The words were cool against the trace of moisture Sam’s kiss had left on Emmett’s wrist. “They don’t have computers to type ’em up on. Or calculators to check the figures, for that matter.” “If we get caught, I think they’re gonna lynch us. Whether our moonshine’s good or not.” Sam opened Emmett’s fly. Emmett might have had reservations, but his cock didn’t. He supposed the plaid even made it look bigger. Sam wrapped his fingers around the base and admired it for a moment. “So you were uncut before…right?’ Emmett rolled his eyes. “Just checking.” Sam ran his tongue along the foreskin, then eased it back. If tweedwearing thugs did burst in, Emmett decided, they’d know. Even if he pulled his pants up and Sam and he jumped apart, they’d know he’d been getting a BJ from the tall kid with the big, brown eyes. But while he assumed that such a realization would have made his interest flag, exactly the opposite happened. The danger—the excitement—made everything intensify. Sam’s perfect, wet tongue slid over Emmett’s vulnerable cockhead with such breathtaking exquisiteness it sent Emmett spiraling into the place where libido crushed ego and all thought centered on his dick. “But I want you to get off too,” he managed, somehow. He was surprised he even remembered what words were.

Sam fumbled one-handed with the waistband of his woolen trousers. “Seeing you like this…I’m halfway there already.” Emmett’s glasses were beside him on the bed, and he didn’t want to risk losing an ear by attempting to put them back on at that very moment, but he could see well enough to tell that Sam was hung. And that if he’d been uncircumcised before the secret door, it was no longer the case. Given that Sam handled himself like his equipment was entirely familiar, Emmett figured everyone’s body parts had escaped whatever mojo transformed their clothing. Sam turned his attentions back to Emmett. This time, once he wet Emmett’s cockhead he took the whole thing into his hot, wet mouth. Emmett groaned, and when his eyes wanted to close, he forced himself to watch—because it was a turn-on, seeing Sam kneeling between his legs in that vest, surrounded by the drab grays and browns of the rest of the room with the inane radio show playing in the background. Sam tongued and then sucked, tongued and then sucked, all the while jacking the base of Emmett’s cock to bring him off fast and dirty, and eventually Emmett couldn’t watch anymore. He sank his fingers into Sam’s hair, threw his head back and closed his eyes. Release was intense and sudden. Emmett clamped down on whatever sound he’d almost made, and it came out as more of a strangled gasp. Sam made a noise of approval around Emmett’s cock while it shot. He’s swallowing, Emmett thought, and like everything else about the encounter, it was primal and intense…and hot. Sam pulled away, sat back on his heels, and stroked himself fast and hard for both of them to see. If they’d had male pinups in the thirties (and for all Emmett knew, maybe they had…but he’d never seen any) they would have looked like Sam—lean and handsome, cheeks flushed, lips swollen from giving head, and that big, thick cock shinytipped and ready to shoot any second. “Gonna come,” he breathed, and his spine arched and stiffened. A glistening, milky strand painted the rag rug at his knees, and another. A third, with less force behind it, rolled down his knuckles. Emmett took in Sam’s expression, eyes closed, lips parted, pure bliss. Sam opened his eyes. He looked a bit dazed. Emmett dug in his pocket, came up with the handkerchief, and passed it over. Sam wiped his hand. He stared at the handkerchief for a moment, then gave it back.

FIVE Amos ’n’ Andy segued to a jingle—you’ll wonder where the yellow went when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent—and still the Mustache Man hadn’t come to retrieve them. Emmett and Sam lay in each others’ arms on one of the narrow beds, both keeping still so as to prevent any telltale creaking. “When we first met, I wasn’t exactly sure you were out,” Emmett said. What he actually meant was that he hadn’t even known Sam was gay—but he didn’t know how well that observation would be received. “I am.” “Before…when you said you screwed up…I hope it didn’t mean there was some big melodrama about getting disinherited because someone figured out you’re into men.” Sam smiled—a melancholy smile—and his gaze turned inward. “Uh…no. Although my mother tried to make it about that, because I think she’s always been so disappointed that she tries to blame every problem I’ve ever had on the way I’m wired. Like I have any choice. Like if I just tried hard enough, I could….” He traced the contour of Emmett’s cheekbone with his fingertip while he gathered his thoughts. “Well, anyway. My live-in boyfriend ‘borrowed’ a term paper from my hard drive and Topeka State expelled us both. But I was there on a full ride scholarship, and not only did they revoke it, but they charged me for the three years I’d been there.” “They can do that?” “That’s what the collection agency tells me.” Emmett didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry.” “I’m at peace with it now, mostly. Jeff figured he wouldn’t get caught since we had different professors, but I guess they run everything through some kind of plagiarismdetection software nowadays. I think he was more devastated than I was. And I’ve been chipping away at the debt for the past two years. I think I can pay it down in another three, or maybe less, if I can pick up another part-time job.” He grinned, a bit forced. “And then I can move out. If we ever get back.” If? “When we get back,” Emmett said, “you don’t have to go sit in that candy store after work just for the sake of having somewhere to go. Unless you’re one of those weirdoes who prefers the scent of chocolate to the refined aroma of sour milk and cabbage.”

Sam ran his cool fingertips down Emmett’s cheek. “The chocolate smell does get a little cloying after the first half hour or so.” On the radio a gunfight ended, and a smooth-talking ad man came on extolling the virtues of Irium in fighting tooth decay for fifteen cents. “I’m really relieved I didn’t bring my toothbrush,” Emmett said. Sam looked baffled—and not by the prospect of getting something called “Irium” in his mouth. “Fifteen cents? Emmett, how much money is in that roll you have?” Emmett pulled out The Wad. There was a twenty on the outside, probably for show. He’d be lucky if it was wrapped around something other than plain newsprint. He unrolled it and saw another. And another. “Let’s see…twenty, forty, sixty….” The next bill was a hundred. They counted it out, slowly, together. Two-thousand, three hundred sixty dollars in all. A respectable wad even by normal standards. But in whatever year it was? “I think you can buy a house for that kind of cash,” Sam whispered. “No. No way.” “Yeah. If it’s after 1929, we’re talking Great Depression. You can get breakfast for a nickel and a pair of shoes for a buck.” Emmett considered his shoes. They were heavy and a bit scuffed, though they were broken-in enough that at least they didn’t pinch. “We should go spend it,” Sam said. Emmett raised an eyebrow. “Why not? It’s your money, right? It was in your pocket. Why not have some fun while we’re here?” He glanced at the rumpled bedspread. “Uh…more fun, I mean.” Emmett hoped Sam wouldn’t ask him when the last time was he had fun. Present circumstances not included. “It is a lot of money, but unless they’ve got their mega-radios turned up to eleven, I think they’ll hear us breaking down the door.” “What if we don’t go back, not right away. What if we just pretend? We stay in that tunnel and sneak back out a while later. We’ll need to be careful; I think if we get too close to your house, our clothes will change back—and the money will probably go with them.” “Whatever happened, it didn’t happen all at once. I saw that vest on you in the tunnel.” Emmett relived the feeling of his balls dropping. “My clothes finished changing in the storeroom.”

“Okay. I have a plan.” Emmett stared at Sam’s earnest young face and tried to imagine himself saying no, let’s go back to our awful little lives without even seeing what it’s like to pull out a big wad of cash—with a flourish, of course—and living the high life. And he had to admit that even he wasn’t that much of a wet blanket. So they hashed out their plan, and they waited for the Mustache Man. They were staring at the radio in dismay over the political incorrectness of Amos ’n’ Andy when he tromped up the hall and unlocked the deadbolt. “I’d tell you that hootch is no good to try and talk you down, but you and me both know I’d be lying. Fact is, times are tough. Don’t even know where your boss found enough good corn for a batch like this, and I don’t care. But I can’t give him what I don’t have. I scraped together a counter-offer. You tell him it’s the best I can do—and the best he’ll get anywhere around these parts.” “Yes, sir,” Sam mumbled. Emmett didn’t trust himself to say anything, for fear he’d accidentally mention Neil Armstrong, the Internet, or Dippin’ Dots. He kept his eyes peeled as they were hustled back toward the basement. The runner had telltale threadbare tracks on it. He could guess which way was out just by looking at the carpet. “I’ll leave the door to the storeroom open for you so you can bring me his answer, but don’t get any funny ideas about cleaning me out. Nothing but salt pork and firewood in there. And besides. I know where he’s staying.” “Yes, sir,” Sam repeated. Emmett lit his lantern from a box of wooden matches not unlike the ones he kept near his stove, and he and Sam dutifully ducked into the tunnel. Sam crept to the bend, checking and double-checking his vest with each step. Emmett cupped his genitals to his body—surreptitiously, he hoped—in anticipation of his boxer briefs’ return. It didn’t come. Emmett relinquished his family jewels so he could turn up the lantern and look down the tunnel as far as he could see. There was no finish line, no ribbon strung across it that read “Welcome Back to the Present.” “Floor’s dry,” Sam said. “If we’re really gonna do this, I think we shouldn’t go any farther.” He sat down on the packed earth floor, rested his back against the wall, and settled in to wait. “Do you think there’s really a ‘Boss’?” “I guess so. Someone must’ve put the moonshine in my hand.”

“What if there’s some big, scary farmer on the original side of the tunnel and he blows us away with a double-barrelled shotgun ’cos he doesn’t know who the heck we are?” Sam considered that idea. “I don’t think so. I’ve got a feeling this tunnel goes back to the basement. Your basement. In our time.” He leaned in for a kiss—and it was easier now, now that they’d done so much more than that. There was a rightness to Sam that Emmett hadn’t felt in ages with someone new. He turned and put an arm around Sam, and the scratchy wool of the vest even felt right. They kissed with the laziness of two new lovers with time to kill, and when they finished the kiss, Sam whispered, “If we don’t go back, if we turn around and sneak back out the thirties end of the tunnel, nothing says we have to stay in Kansas.” That hadn’t been the plan. The plan had been to wait until Mustache Man was probably asleep, slip past him, spend some money, and sneak back in when the coast was clear. Emmett expected himself to be shocked. He wasn’t. “We could ride a riverboat down to New Orleans and gorge ourselves on chicory coffee and beignets before Hurricane Katrina. We can sail down to Havana, lounge around in Bermuda shorts and smoke cigars before the Bay of Pigs. We can see the Twin Towers.” “Those were built in the seventies.” Emmett’s heart did that funny little leap it had when Sam had first kissed him—yes, it was Sam who’d instigated the whole thing. Emmett had always wanted to be adventurous. He just needed a little help. “Okay. I figure I’ll be…what? In my seventies, myself. If I go easy on the Cuban cigars and beignets, I could visit the World Trade Center.” “Or Europe. Think of everything that got bombed in World War II. We could go see it before it’s gone.” Sam rested his head on Emmett’s shoulder. “We could see the Eiffel Tower.” Paris. Emmett gazed down the tunnel into the blackness that led back to the horrible house. It seemed like the choice should be obvious. Sam. Paris. A world where he’d be safe from emailed jokes with three-page headers, at least for another sixty years or so. It was an obvious choice, actually. It was just more painful than he’d ever imagined. His family, he hoped, would eventually get over the shock and the grief. And Rosemary would have Paris to help her forget. Emmett would have worried about the news ruining her trip—but, come on. It was Paris. She’d have plenty of distractions to keep her occupied. “Do you really want to do this?” he asked Sam. Sam looked up, cupped Emmett’s jaw, and pulled him into a slow, sweet kiss.

“I think,” Emmett said, “if we want to stay, we’ve got to prove ourselves. Make sure there’s no turning back.” If he’d been expecting Sam to back down from the challenge, he would have been disappointed. “Okay. Let’s do it.” The thought of closing the door to one possibility to keep the other open felt so right to Emmett that he didn’t even bother shielding himself from the reemergence of his modern underwear. He and Sam strode back toward the basement of the horrible house, not quite side by side (since they wouldn’t have fit in the narrow tunnel that way) but as close to it as they could—with Emmett in the lead. Emmett had hoped they would find something, an old pipe, a scrap of wood, but the tunnel was totally empty. It didn’t matter. When they reached the door to the still’s hidden room, the ceiling began to rain gravel from the mere vibration of their footsteps. Emmett reached up and touched it. A cascade of dirt sifted down and covered his shoes. Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “Look.” Emmett looked down. Sam’s flashlight lay flush against the tunnel wall, nestled tightly, nearly invisible. Emmett checked his lantern. It felt strange. Like maybe it wasn’t a lantern. Maybe it was a plate with three guttering tea lights on it. No. It couldn’t be. Emmett told himself he was not holding a plate. You didn’t hold a plate dangling under your hand, after all. He closed his eyes and recalled the pendulous feel of the lantern, its heft, its weight—and yes, it was still there. The lantern. The door to the past hadn’t closed—but that didn’t mean it would remain open. Emmett gave Sam a shove toward the Mustache Man’s storeroom. “Go.” Sam hesitated. “I’ll be right behind you.” Sam’s shoes scraped against the gritty floor as he took one step, then another, and finally, he began to run. Emmett made a fist and punched into the ceiling. A hole opened as if a thin crust had been all that was holding it together, and gallons of dirt, wheelbarrows full, poured in through the hole. He coughed and staggered back. The lantern—definitely a lantern— swayed in his grasp. He punched into the ceiling again, and clawed out a handful of dirt. Rocks began to rain down, and sharp-edged shards of concrete. Emmett backed up, twisted his foot on a hunk of debris and nearly went down. But he caught his balance and knocked a few more holes in the ceiling.

“Emmett, come on! It’s gonna give!” Emmett strained to hear among the clatter of the rocks and dirt. Maybe there was something, he decided. A groan. A shift. The tunnel floor was uneven with dirt, now, and Emmett had to crouch to keep from opening even bigger holes in the ceiling with his head. The grit in the air was thick like smoke. Emmett climbed a few yards toward Sam and opened up a few more holes, then looked back over his shoulder. He searched for the flashlight, but saw the spot where it had been was now covered in scree. Even as rocks pinged off his shoulders, something inside Emmett lifted, and he knew he was ready to embrace the past. His future. The ceiling rumbled. “Emmett!” Emmett turned toward Sam, and ran.

SIX Emmett struggled for breath. His back was pressed against the wall, Sam was sprawled on his chest, and the air was stale. A stroll on deck to get the blood flowing and work out the kinks in his back was probably long overdue. However, a stroll on deck would entail prying himself from the bunk, putting on clothes and leaving their cabin—and he’d grown incredibly fond of the cabin. He settled his chin on Sam’s head instead, and told himself he’d take that walk…later. “Okay,” Sam said. “Try this one: Have you seen my cousin? He is tall.” Emmett wracked his brain. “Avez-vous vu, uh…mon coussin?” “That’s great…if you’re looking for your pillow.” Emmett sighed. “You know, even if by some miracle I managed to ask the right question, chances are I’ll never be able to follow the answer. I should have signed up for Smile and Nod 101.” “And there’s that legendary Emmett Russo optimism. Who hooked up with an optometrist that got his prescription right?” “After five sets of glasses I couldn’t see through….” “At, what, ten bucks apiece? And who found some great underwear?” “Which I have to wear inside-out so the elastic doesn’t pinch.” “So I’m sure you’ll pick up enough words to get by. Millions of people speak French every day. Why not you?” Why not Emmett? Certainly far stranger things than the acquisition of a new language had happened to him. In the months since The Moonshine, as the two of them had come to call it—because being any more specific about the impulsive journey they’d taken together made their heads spin, and they’d decided it was healthier not to examine it too closely—Sam had proven himself shrewd in the art of forcing Emmett to let go of his preconceptions.

Time moves forward. There was one preconception they couldn’t help but slough off. And Emmett did his best to cling; he woke every morning figuring he’d be alone in his horrible house with nothing but the smell of cabbage for company. But one day as they were walking by a soup kitchen in Poughkeepsie, he caught an actual whiff of boiled cabbage, and it turned out it smelled very little like his basement stairs. Go figure. “I think I have a mental block about this whole ‘cousin’ thing,” Emmett said. “Just until we see what’s safe.” “Come on, we’re two Americans traveling abroad. Of course we’d stick together like glue. No one would expect anything else.” “I know, I know. But we’ve got to be careful.” “That’s a remark about the last conversation I killed, isn’t it? How was I to know Velcro hasn’t been invented yet? Here’s the really cool thing about this trip—if I slip up again, we can blame it on me saying something stupid because I’m an American, have a good laugh, and no one will know the difference.” Sam brushed a kiss against Emmett’s chest, absently, in the way of a lover who’d been with him so long that the small gestures had become unconscious, like breathing. “I guess we can get away with calling one another mon ami.” Emmett hooked his heel around Sam’s calf and drew Sam’s leg between his. Their bodies entwined. “I’m sure we’ll figure out the safe neighborhoods soon enough. It’s Gay Paree, right?” “Please tell me you didn’t dream up this whole trip based on a scene from Victor/Victoria.” “No…but you have to admit, there’d be a certain je ne sais quoi to taking a cue from Julie Andrews about reinventing ourselves.” “If worse comes to worse, I suppose you could always shrug and speak in French clichés.” Sam raised his head and Emmett captured his lips. Their tongues twined in a languorous exploration. As their arousal began to burgeon, Sam turned his face away and brushed the tickle of Emmett’s mustache from his upper lip. Emmett had offered repeatedly to shave, but Sam pointed out it had taken him over two months to grow an authentic looking ’stache, and insisted it helped him blend in. More importantly, Emmett suspected the fashions of the day might have been a guilty pleasure for his beloved history major, though he never called Sam on it.

When Emmett caught his own refection in a mirror, he felt like a vacationer getting his photo taken in a tourist trap of an old-timey portrait studio—but since the locals never looked at him funny, at least not until he opened his mouth and made a remark about Velcro or called something “cool,” he figured it was in his best interest to let the barber do whatever he thought was best. If Sam happened to get off on the feel of a big mustache brushing the base of his cock, all the better. “How about this?” Sam murmured against Emmett’s jaw. “Have you seen my friend? He is tall.” “Avez-vous vu mon ami? Il est grand et beau. Now here’s one for you.” Emmett trailed his fingers over the bare curve of Sam’s hip, thought for a moment, and said, “Waiter, I’d like to order the fries.”

JCPBooks e-books are priced by the word count of the story only. Any end matter or sample chapters are a bonus!

About the Author Jordan Castillo Price wouldn’t mind vacationing in the past, but she wouldn’t want to live there. She’s sure she would languish without her iPod and her Post-Its.

About this Story I have several friends whom I pester for story ideas. My friend with the very old farmhouse was my brainstormer for this story, and our conversation went something like this: “I need to figure out where a bad smell would come from in an old farmhouse.” “A dead animal.” “Okay, but I don’t want a dead animal in the scene. Is there anything else you can think of? Some other weird smell?” “…A dead animal.” “Right. Something other than a dead animal.” “Gosh, I’m sorry. That’s all I can think of. Dead animal.” Luckily, after I grilled her for several more hours she remembered the rotten cap on the pipe. I found out in another torture session that this particular friend has also been struck by a weird phenomenon called ball lightning. I’ve yet to find a story to insert that into—but never fear, there’s plenty more stories in these fingertips just itching to get out!

Other People's Weddings Petit Morts #4 Josh Lanyon ISBN: 978-1-935540-05-2 All rights reserved. © 2010 Josh Lanyon Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. JCP Books e-books are for sale to adults only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by underaged readers.

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ONE “I’d rather be dead than wear this!” Griff dropped the latest issue of Elegant Bride as Madeline Dalrymple burst from the dressing room cubicle, shot across the showroom floor, and slammed out the front glass door of Venetian Bridal Gowns. Her exit bore an unfortunate resemblance to a big purple balloon flying wild after being jabbed by a pin. Mallory, Madeline’s sister, appeared at the mouth of the hall to the dressing rooms, looking exasperated. Sometimes Griff suspected that brides deliberately picked the worst possible dresses for their bridesmaids and maids of honor. Or maybe it wasn’t deliberate. Maybe it was subconscious, a paying back of old scores, a testing of true devotion. The Watters & Watters strapless sheath of lilac layered over hot pink chiffon would have flattered Mallory’s tall, slim, brunette beauty, but it just made short, plump Madeline look like a Purple PeopleEater after a good meal. “Well?” Mallory said to Griff. “Well?” Griff returned blankly, with an uneasy look at Sasha, co-owner of Venetian Bridal Gowns. Sasha raised her shoulders infinitesimally. After twenty years of dealing with brides and bridesmaids, she didn’t bother trying to understand, she rode the whirlwind the best she could—and cashed in at the end of the ride. “Go after her,” Mallory ordered. “Are you my wedding planner or not?” Mallory’s idea of Griff’s job description was a cross between a personal assistant and confidante. By the second week of accepting the job of coordinating Mallory and Joe Palmer’s nuptials, Griff knew he’d made a deal with the devil. Possibly literally. But the Dalrymples were Binbell’s wealthiest family, and Dalrymple-Palmer wedding was going to be the social event of the season—plus he needed the money. In these days of economic hardship, prospective brides might not be willing to cut costs on dresses or cakes or hair stylists, but hapless wedding planners all too often fell under the heading Optional. This, however, was different. Griff was experienced enough to know Lord help the mister who comes between a bride and her sister. “I don’t think it’s my place—” “Of course it’s your place,” Mallory snapped. “Whose place would it be? You need to get her in line before she wrecks my wedding.”

“She’s still wearing her three hundred and forty-five dollar bridesmaid dress,” Sasha pointed out mildly. Now and again co-ownership seemed like more trouble than it was worth. Griff choked back words he would regret once he started juggling utility bills on the space next door, and pushed out through the glass door. The jaunty notes of the Wedding March followed before the door closed and cut them off. The L-shaped strip mall, locally known as Wedding Aisle, consisted of Venetian Bridal Gowns, Skerry Weddings, and Guy’s Tuxedos. On the hook of the “L” was Betty Ann’s Crafts and Supplies. It was, as they said, a match made in heaven. Maddy’s blue Sebring convertible was still parked between Griff’s classic red VW Beetle and Mallory’s BMW Z4, but there was no sign of the runaway bridesmaid. He ducked his head inside Skerry Weddings, but Mallory was not hiding out there. He walked around the buildings to the end of the strip mall. Maddy was walking up and down the asphalt drive behind Guy’s, smoking a cigarette. She looked up with raccoon eyes at Griff’s approach and snorted. She had stopped crying, which was a huge relief. “Fuck, Skerry. Don’t you have any pride?” “Look.” Griff spoke awkwardly. “Mallory’s sorry if she didn’t seem sympathetic, but it’s too late to change the dresses. This is the final fitting.” “She’s not sorry,” Maddy spat out. “She wants me to look like a fucking circus freak. She deliberately picked the dress that would make me look worst. You were there. You saw. She could have picked the dress I liked, but oh no! It had to be something only her and her anorexic friends could wear.” Griff managed not to sigh. It had seemed that way to him too, but experience had taught him the sister dynamic was a weird one. A decade of organizing other people’s weddings had made him very glad he’d been born an only child. He said patiently, “Mallory’s wedding is the most important day of a woman’s life, so naturally she wants everything to be perfect. The way she always imagined it. You’ll see when your turn comes.” Maddy’s tear streaked face screwed into an expression of disgust. “First bullet point: I am never getting married. And if I did get married, it wouldn’t be in one of these big fat geek weddings. Second bullet point: her wedding day is not the most important day of a woman’s life. Do you honestly believe that shit?” Er…no. Not really. Not exactly. He believed in marriage, obviously. Believed in commitment. A wedding was an important symbol of commitment, a significant milestone,

but the single most important one? No. How could it be when most women married men, and most men didn’t consider their wedding the most important day of their lives? Then again, he arranged weddings for a living so…. He was still trying to think of a compromise answer when Maddy said scornfully, “Don’t you find it ironic that all these people who despised you and made fun of you in high school hire you to do their weddings?” Griff flushed. He said defensively, “High school was…a long time ago. Everybody does things they regret.” “They don’t regret anything they did,” Maddy retorted. “They thought you were a joke then and they think you’re a joke now. The gay wedding planner. They’re laughing at you.” This attack caught him off balance—not least because he and Maddy were not close. There had been three years between them in school, and whether Maddy believed it or not, her family and her money ensured she had never truly been the social outcast she imagined. For a moment he was right back there. Right back in Mrs. Dodge’s tenth grade biology class, struggling not to cry because no one wanted him for a lab partner. No, because Hammer Sorensen had humiliated him once again with a cruel but accurate imitation of Griff’s light voice and slightly affected speaking manner. The horror of breaking down in front of the goggling, giggling class. Like falling in the snow in front of a pack of wolves. He could practically smell the formaldehyde. Hear the whispers…. But he wasn’t fifteen years old anymore, and he hadn’t cried since that day. Griff said shortly, “I don’t think anyone would trust a day as important or an event as expensive as a wedding to someone they considered a joke. Are you coming back inside?” Maddy raised her brows as though this sudden display of spine was unexpected. She flicked her cigarette to the asphalt and crushed it beneath her kitten heel. “I don’t have a choice. Mommy Dearest will disinherit me again if I spoil Mal’s big day.” True. Dilys Dalrymple’s tight clutch on the Dalrymple purse strings was the ace up Griff’s sleeve. He was leery of playing it, though, not least because it would require him having to deal with Dilys. She was more alarming than both of her daughters put together. As she walked past him Maddy said, “You’re good at what you do, Skerry. That’s true. But my sister can afford the best in the entire country. Maybe you should ask yourself why she wanted you?” •••

Actually, Griff had given quite a lot of thought to that particular question. Especially because Joe had made it very clear he did not want Griff to take the job. Sometimes Griff wondered if Mallory knew about him and Joe. But he was pretty sure if that was the case, Mallory and Joe would not be getting married. He was still thinking about it as he pulled up in front of Sweets to the Sweet to see about the new wedding favors. Naturally, good old Jordan almond flower favors had never been an option. Mallory had requested chocolate favors and then promptly shot down personalized chocolate bars, personalized chocolate wedding coins, heart-shaped dress and tux cookies, chocolate shell and starfish with personalized tags, wedding chocolate puzzle boxes, and dark chocolate flowers in lavender and pink foil. She had finally settled on handcrafted ivory calla lily favor boxes with four squares of Belgian chocolate. At $4.30 a pop times four hundred guests…. But one week ago, Mallory had abruptly changed her mind about the favor boxes. No explanation. Not even the threat of having to pay a sizable restocking fee had swayed her. She said only that she’d decided she wanted to “patronize local artisans,” and had ordered Griff to work with the owner of Sweets to the Sweet. Chance always made Griff uneasy. It wasn’t anything he said or did exactly. In fact, Chance was always, unexpectedly, nice to him. Unexpectedly, because the first day he’d walked into Sweets to the Sweet, Griff had heard Chance offering his frank and unvarnished opinion of Horace Plaice—to Horace’s face. Not that Horace wasn’t every bit as detestable as Chance observed, but he was also rich and influential—and one reason he was as grotesque as he was, was his passionate love of fine chocolate. But apparently Chance wasn’t worried about pissing off potential clientele. It must be a lovely feeling. Griff parked out front of the shop wedged discreetly between Nina’s Café and Buckner’s Books. He went inside, the bell on the door ringing cheerfully. The scent of chocolate, rich, complex and seductive, greeted him. Chance looked up and smiled. “Hello, Griffin.” “Hi, Chance.” Griff was uncomfortably conscious of that flutter of awareness in his chest—that tingle in his groin. What the hell was the matter with him? Even if Chance did happen to be gay, he wouldn’t be interested in someone like Griff. He’d want someone like himself. Not that Griff could think of anyone like Chance. Not in Nowhere North Dakota, population nine thousand seventy-three. Awkwardly, he said, “I only dropped by to check we’re on schedule with the DalrymplePalmer wedding favors.” “You didn’t have to come yourself.” Chance’s voice was velvety smooth as buttercream. That voice made the most prosaic of comments sound…beguiling.

“I—” Griff broke off as the silvery bell behind him chimed again. He glanced around and froze. Hammer Sorensen stepped inside the shop. Big, blond, buff Hamar. The bane of Griff’s school days. Yeah, Hamar—Hammer as he’d preferred to be called once they reached high school—had certainly had it all. The cool chicks, the cool car. You really had to give him credit: honor roll, varsity sports—and yet somehow he’d still found time to harass a nobody loser like Griffin and make his life a living hell. It had been how long? Years since Griffin had last seen him at anything but a distance. Hammer was older, heavier now—but still handsome, still fit. No sign of the leg injury that had put an end to his career in professional football before it had ever really begun. Griff faced front again. The muscles in the back of his neck clenched so tight he was afraid his head was going to start shaking like one of those bobble headed dogs. “Howdy, Sheriff,” Chance drawled with a hint of mockery. “Come to verify the chocolate percentage in my bonbons?” Hammer chuckled. The hair rose on the back of Griff’s neck. He remembered that easy laugh. Such an attractive laugh for such a mean bastard. Hammer’s deep voice said, “We’re celebrating my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday tonight. I thought I’d get her a box of your finest.” He was now standing next to Griff. Griff could smell his aftershave and the mix of cold air and leather jacket. He continued to stare straight ahead at Chance who had propped one elbow on the case and was smiling lazily at his second customer. “My finest what? Creams? Nuts? Truffles? Divinity? Fudge….” “No hurry. I’ll wait my turn,” Hammer said. Griff felt his glance, felt Hammer looking his way with light, curious eyes. He ignored him, continuing to stare forward. As he slowly focused on Chance once more, he recognized the wicked amusement in Chance’s eyes. Of course there was no way Chance could know the history between Griff and the nowSheriff Sorensen—Sweets to the Sweet was new. Or at least…Griff couldn’t exactly remember when the shop had opened for business. Anyway, for an instant he had the notion that Chance was at least aware of and entertained by the undercurrents. Undercurrent. Singular. Because any current was all on Griff’s side. Hammer was unlikely to recognize him after all this time. Griff was no longer the gawky, acne-scarred adolescent he’d once been. The braces were gone and laser surgery had taken care of the glasses.

“Hold that thought.” Chance was smiling as though he had indeed read Griff’s mind. He ducked into the back room. Griff could still feel Hammer looking at him—the prolonged look that people gave you when they wanted to initiate conversation. He didn’t recall Hammer ever being the chatty type. Maybe the bastard was up for reelection. He turned his back and strolled over to the glass case as though inspecting the trays of dark and milk chocolate. He continued to feel the weight of that gaze between his shoulder blades. Why didn’t fucking Hammer turn his X-ray vision on the display before him and figure out what he was going to buy Mormor Sorensen for her birthday? Chance returned with a tiny white box on a pink plate. Griff moved to the counter to examine it, temporarily forgetting Hammer’s presence. “It’s perfect,” he breathed. The two-inch white boxes were to be filled with dark chocolate hearts then wrapped in lavender or silver ribbon garnished with tiny sprays of autumn berries. “I’ve never seen anything so lovely.” “So long as you’re happy.” “Truly happy.” He heard the echo of his own voice and remembered Hammer’s cruelly accurate mimicry. He cold-shouldered the recollection. “And they’ll be ready—?” “Tomorrow afternoon. You can pick them up after the wedding rehearsal.” “Wonderful.” Griff meant it. The wedding favors had been the latest in a long series of crises. He would be abjectly grateful when the Dalrymple-Palmers were safely wed and buried. “And the Jordan almond white Rachetti branches for the Stewart-Simpsons?” “You can pick those up at the same time.” “Thank you so much.” Chance bestowed one of those dazzling smiles. “You’re welcome, Griffin.” Griff turned to leave. His eyes met Hammer Sorenson’s bright blue ones. Hammer appeared to be studying him intently. Griff gave him a direct, cold look and walked out of the shop.

TWO Joe Palmer was medium height, slim, dark and handsome as a courtier in a Renaissance painting. He looked exceptionally good in the black Jean Yves Mirage tuxedo. The satin mandarin collar and single breasted perfectly suited his rather sensitive and romantic looks. He and Griff had been lovers, off and on, ever since Joe returned from Walden University. Not openly, of course. Joe was still in the closet. His parents were staunch Republicans and social conservatives—so was Joe. He just happened to like guys. As he had often reminded Griff, that didn’t automatically make him a bleeding heart liberal. Joe turned to the left, looking over his shoulder at the bank of mirrors and his elegant reflection. He turned to the right. “What do you think?” he asked Griff. “I think you’re making a mistake.” Griff hadn’t meant to say it aloud, as much as he believed the truth of his words. He knew Joe didn’t want to hear it. Knew, whatever happened on Saturday, it was over between them. Joe had made that clear. Joe expelled an irritable breath and ignored him, still examining his reflection. Griff said wearily, “I think you look great.” Joe grinned at Griff in the mirror. “Not too shabby, eh?” Griff smiled politely. He could see his reflection behind Joe’s. He too was dark, though taller and lankier than Joe. He was not naturally graceful like Joe, but he’d learned the value of good posture. He knew how to sit and stand. He watched himself critically in the mirror background while Joe posed and preened like a peacock. The unpleasant conversation with Madeline Dalrymple, followed by running into Hammer Sorensen, had stirred up a lot of unhappy memories. Griff was relieved to see there was no visible sign of the ugly, awkward boy he had been in the young man sitting still and straight in the fakeleather club chair. “Mallory called to tell me Maddy had another meltdown,” Joe said. Griff shrugged noncommittally. “She’s going to ruin our wedding if she can.” “I think it’s just nerves. The dress is really ugly on her.”

“Hey, that’s her fault. She was supposed to lose weight before the wedding. She had six months.” Six months. Right. Griff had six months’ warning too. Six months ago Joe had come over for dinner and told him he was engaged to Mallory Dalrymple. Griff hadn’t even known Joe was dating Mallory. In fact—as embarrassing as it was to admit now—he had thought things were going really well between himself and Joe. So well that he’d even imagined the day was coming when Joe might feel brave enough to come out of the closet. “Want to grab a beer?” Joe asked as they left After Eight Formalwear—no good old Guy’s Tuxedos for Joe. Griff looked at him in surprise. Joe smiled his get-away-withmurder smile. “What?” He shrugged. “Last splash, bro.” “I can’t,” Griff said. He was surprised at how calmly the words came out. He was surprised they came out at all. Joe’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not still holding a grudge over the bachelor’s party thing, are you? I told you, I had nothing to do with that. If Rick had realized we were friends, he would’ve invited you.” “No. I’m not holding a grudge. I have another wedding rehearsal to get to tonight. In fact….” He checked his wristwatch. “I’m late now.” “Well, maybe later?” Griff stared at Joe. Joe stared calmly back. “I don’t think so,” Griff said. Joe’s face hardened. “Your loss.” ••• Jennie Stewart and Bryan Simpson were being married at the Little Brown Chapel on Big Bear Highway. The church was small and quaint and cute. A Valentine and wedding card sort of church. They did a lively business in baptisms and weddings and funerals. Griff hadn’t known either Jennie or Bryan in school; they were quite a bit younger than him. Before Mallory and Joe’s wedding, Griff had considered weddings like the StewartSimpson upscale affairs. But nineteen hundred plus dollars on chocolates had clarified that point. Still, despite Jen and Bryan’s relatively restricted budget, it was going to be a lovely, lovely wedding—and he was earning a lovely fee to match.

It was the kind of wedding he was proud of helping to put together. Jennie and Bryan were crazy about each other, and their happiness showed. They were pleasant to work with even when Griff had to talk Jennie out of her plan to release hundreds of butterflies outside the church. Butterflies in November in North Dakota? No way. “They won’t fly in temperatures less than seventy-two degrees,” he’d explained. “Can’t we warm them up somehow?” Visions of microwaved butterflies danced before Griff’s eyes. He shook his head. “No.” “Well, what can we release?” Mallory was having doves released outside the church by special handlers. Griffin forbore to mention this. He was supposed to guard the details of the Dalrymple-Palmer wedding with his life. He considered Jennie’s question—and her parents’ budget, which they had already exceeded. “Bubbles are fun. We can get little cake design bottles and everyone can blow bubbles outside the church. It’s very pretty.” Jennie looked unconvinced. “Bubbles are fun,” Bryan had echoed with a hopeful eye on Jennie’s face. It was refreshing to see how much Bryan adored Jennie, how much it mattered to him that her day be perfect. “Paula and Chris did bubbles.” Jennie was trying to be brave, but clearly she was suffering. “Or balloons,” Griff suggested. Yes, Jennie and Bryan were over budget, but Jennie was an only child and the Stewarts had already assured him they wanted their little girl to be happy on her day. “Balloons in the colors of your wedding palette. After you leave the church everyone releases a balloon into the sky. It’s very dramatic. Makes for wonderful photos.” Jennie brightened immediately. Well, sure. Wedding photographs were a vital part of any successful wedding. The photographs provided a visual history, which was useful since few people ever seemed to remember the details of their wedding days. Personally, Griff thought too many weddings suffered for the demands of self-important photographers. But…there was no arguing with it. He usually recommended Bob Tyrone, one of his oldest friends and a real professional, but Bryan’s brother was a freelance photographer and he and Jennie had roped him into doing their wedding portraits. And, of course, Mallory had chosen her own hotshot photographer without any advice from Griff. Larry Lee was “documenting” every event leading up to the wedding, from Mallory’s wedding shower to the reception.

The Stewart-Simpson photographer was present at the rehearsal, but that was because he was a member of the wedding party. He snapped a few photos, then he put his camera away and the rehearsal went off without a hitch. Jennie and Bryan invited Griff to the rehearsal dinner, which was sweet, but not necessary. He was attending Joe and Mallory’s dinner, too, but that invite had been in the nature of a royal summons. In fact, Mallory’s insistence that Griff—like her personal photographer—attend every single event leading up to the wedding was driving him crazy. She acted like a ring of saboteurs was waiting for a chance to blow up her wedding—and that it was Griff’s duty to prevent them. He’d blown off her three wedding showers, but there was no way of getting out of the rehearsal dinner. Generally when Griff was invited to these things, he merely put in a quick appearance, but it had been a stressful day. Maddy’s lashing out at him had sliced deeper than he wanted to admit, and the weird coincidence of seeing Hamar again had underscored his dissatisfaction. No, it was worse than dissatisfaction. It was loneliness, and it was more about Joe than anyone or anything else. Needing to postpone his eventual return to an empty, silent house, Griff had a couple of beers and stayed longer at the dinner than he ordinarily would. In fact, he had an unexpectedly good time, and was feeling pleasantly relaxed until he reached home and found Joe waiting for him in his living room. Joe was stretched out on the couch, shoes off, watching TV. When Griff stopped in the doorway, he snapped off the remote and sat up smiling. “What are you doing here?” Griff was uncomfortably aware that his heart was thumping in a mixture that was too many parts excitement to parts indignant. Joe was smiling his naughty little boy smile. The smile that never failed to get under Griff’s guard. “I still have my key.” “Joe.” He stopped. This was so much harder than it should be. But he’d loved Joe for a long time. He couldn’t just turn that off, couldn’t just flip a switch. No one could. Still, this was wrong. Wrong on every level. “You should go.” He firmed his voice. “And you should leave the key.” Joe rose. He stood there gazing at Griff, giving him plenty of time to change his mind. Griff hung onto his resolution as best he could. Joe’s eyes were dark and mournful as they met his own. “I know you still love me, Griff,” Joe said simply. “I love you too. So all you’re doing is hurting us both by denying us one last night.” Griff turned away but when Joe took two steps and put his arms around him, turning him, Griff didn’t fight. Joe leaned his face against Griff’s, and Griff could smell the mingled

scent of breath mints and bourbon as Joe murmured, “Come on, Griff, we deserve a chance to say goodbye the right way.” It was strange and bittersweet to make love knowing it was for the last time. Joe was the most passionate he’d been since the very beginning, kissing Griff all over with his hot, hungry mouth while whispering his unique mix of crudities and compliments. Griff closed his eyes against the sting and kissed Joe back. Afterwards, Joe rose and pulled on his clothes, not looking at Griff. He tucked his shirt in, zipped his trousers, buckled his belt. Still unspeaking he sat on the edge of the mattress and pulled his socks on, rose and stepped into his shoes. He walked to the door and paused. Without looking around, he said, “I know you don’t understand, Griff, but I can’t be like you. I care about what people think about me.” “I care what people think.” Joe shook his head. “No you don’t. Not really. You never have. Oh, you want them to hire you. You want them to think you do a good job planning their damned weddings. But you don’t care if they like you or if they’re laughing behind your back. You know who you are, and I guess you’re happy with that.” Griff opened his mouth. He shut it again. If Joe really believed that—well, maybe it was better if Joe did believe that. If they all believed that.

THREE Friday was frantically busy. Griff was on the go from the instant he rolled out of bed, checking the weekend weather report while he drank his coffee and ate his pre-packaged cheese blintzes. Temperatures…sunny, dry, and cold. Highs of 40F and lows of 17F. Normal for November, in other words. He showered, shaved, dressed in Lucky Brand straight-legged jeans and a Thomas Dean woven sports shirt in a gray print. Clothes were important to Griff. Having fallen squarely in the geek category growing up, it was a matter of pride to him that he was always perfectly groomed and in style—Updated Traditional, to be exact. It was funny that Joe, who knew him probably better than anyone, honestly thought he didn’t care what people thought of him. Oh, he knew folks in Binbell didn’t understand him, and never would, but he wanted them to see that he was successful and he wanted always to appear…sophisticated and elegant. Well, as sophisticated and elegant as a boy who’d never made it out of North Dakota could be. Griff always tried to live as he imagined he would have if his dreams had come true, if he’d won that scholarship to the Fashion Institute of Technology and moved to New York City as he’d planned growing up. He was on his cell phone before he left the house. The Dalrymple-Palmer dove handlers had concerns about the possibility of high winds, and the florist for the Stewart-Simpsons reported an emergency shortage of the orange Star 2000 roses that formed the focal point of the bride and maid of honor bouquets. Griff talked the birders down and suggested Desert Spice roses as a substitute. “Or what about those ‘Oranges and Lemons’?” “We’ll do our best. Sometimes I miss the old days and plain white roses and ivy. Oh, speaking of which,” Shireen of Aristo’s Flowers said, “your idea for dried leaves in Mallory Palmer’s bouquet was inspired. They’re gorgeous.” Nice to know someone noticed. Maybe Griff wasn’t smiling when he arrived at Skerry Weddings, but he was feeling much more cheerful than when he’d opened his eyes that morning to see the indentation of Joe’s head in the pillow next to his. Maybe Joe had been right. Maybe they had both needed the opportunity to say goodbye one last time, knowing that it really was goodbye. Sort of like a funeral. Rituals served a purpose. Funerals and weddings and birthdays and lots of other milestone events. So maybe he had needed that goodbye fuck. If so, why did he feel so…empty this morning?

Probably low caffeine levels. And no time to top up before his eleven o’clock meeting with prospective clients at his office. He opened the blinds, turned on the music— Pachelbel’s Canon—and squirted lavender mint air freshener around the office. He was turning on his computer when the clients arrived. He’d been recommended to Dani Mulder and her mother by Mallory. Dani was budgeting for a 30K wedding, which was good news considering the fact that the average price of weddings was down about six thousand dollars. However, he didn’t get a good vibe from Dani—she was asking for a lot of discounts and bargains while at the same time dropping brand names as though Crate&Barrel was going out of business. She made it clear she was going to consult other planners before she decided on anything, but Griff’s percentage would be a smidge over three thousand, so it was worth smiling pleasantly while Dani continued to rattle on about artisan cakes and engraved wedding invitations. Dani’s mom, Lesli, watched him all the time with her pale green eyes. Something about her narrow stare reminded Griff of Maddy’s scathing comments the day before. It was a long time since he’d fretted over what people might think about him—a long time since there had been anyone in his life besides Joe whose opinion really mattered to him. He disliked this feeling of being on defense. He was glad when the meeting was over and Dani and her mom sauntered off in their mother-daughter Rock and Republic skinny jeans. Griff jotted a question mark beside Dani’s name in his day planner, jumped back in his VW and proceeded to Marguerite’s Bakery, which was handling both of his wedding cakes. Mercifully, at Marguerite’s, everything was running smoothly on schedule. The StewartSimpsons were serving an assortment of mini wedding cakes, which made for lovely, cost-saving table décor as well as delicious desserts in a variety of flavors. The individually iced and decorated cakes were pricey, but since the Stewart-Simpson reception had a relatively contained guest list, it worked with their budget. The Dalrymple-Palmers were naturally going in a completely different direction. The four layer white cake was frosted in Wedgwood blue fondant and dusted with tiny white gum paste flowers and pearls. “It works out to about nine-fifty a slice,” Marguerite remarked as they studied the masterpiece. “Money is no object.” “Must be nice.” They exchanged smiles. Marguerite had been happily married for twenty-nine years. After verifying that the wedding cakes were on track for delivery, Griff jumped back in the car to see how the reception venues were coming along.

The Stewart-Simpson wedding was being held at eleven in the morning with reception immediately following at Binbell’s largest hotel. The Dalrymple-Palmers were saying their vows at five-thirty in the afternoon with a formal reception following two hours later at the country club in the neighboring town. It was going to be an incredibly challenging—and stressful—day for Griff trying to stage manage two large weddings. He’d done it once before, but both weddings had been relatively small events. Still, he felt calm, even confident. This was what he did and he was good at it. And the busier he was, the less time he had to think about the fact that Joe was marrying Mallory. For better or for worse. At the Binbell Majestic the banquet room was still in use for a business seminar. The event staff was in a holding pattern, waiting for the signal to move. “The client is supplying special pale yellow tablecloths,” Griff reminded Krysta, the Majestic’s special event coordinator. “So don’t use the ivory ones, and definitely not the white.” “Check.” “The florist will make the drop at eleven—right after they finish at the church.” “Check.” “But the main centerpiece for each table will be the mini wedding cakes.” Krysta made a note on her clipboard. “Got it.” “Those will be delivered between ten and eleven.” “Check.” Griff had been working with Krysta for five years now. The Majestic was a very popular choice for wedding receptions. He suddenly wondered what she thought of him. She was always friendly and professional, but maybe she thought he was a pain in the ass. Maybe she groaned every time he called. Maybe she thought he was a joke too. He realized that she was waiting for him. “I guess that’s it,” he said. Krysta smiled. “It’s going to be a beautiful reception. All your weddings are lovely, Griff.” After finishing at the Majestic, Griff grabbed lunch while he looked over his day planner and checked his messages. There were three calls from Mallory. He listened to them

while he ate his gyro and stared out the window of Santa Lucia’s at the wind-scoured dun hills. It really was a very long way from New York. He felt almost light-headed when he remembered the things he and Joe had done the night before. Ironically, it had been the best it had ever been, maybe because they both accepted it was goodbye. And Joe had, for once, been affectionate. Even loving. After he’d left, after the sound of his car driving away had faded into silence, Griff had lain there dry-eyed and still. It had hurt too much to cry. At that instant he had realized that he was never going to have what most people had. He was never going to marry. No wedding for him. And all those silly, secret fantasies of what he’d like someday…. No one to come home to, no one to share the good times and the bad, no one to care for him in sickness and in health, no one to love, cherish, honor, no one to worship with his body…. Better to accept it right now. He’d felt quite calm when he finally drifted to sleep. Stoic. He felt less stoic listening to Mallory’s raspy voice on his voicemail saying, “Griff, can you please double—no, triple check that all the guys pick their tuxedos up tonight?” He sighed. He’d have done that without being asked. He knew firsthand Joe’s pals weren’t the most reliable guys on the planet. Next message. “Griff, I’m starting to have serious doubts about the crabmeat stuffed prawns. I really think we should have gone with the filet of salmon.” “You gotta be kidding me,” he muttered, checking the next message. “Griff, you have to get Maddy under control. She is going to ruin our wedding!” Our wedding. Right. And how the hell was he supposed to control Maddy if her nearest and dearest couldn’t? Appetite gone, he finished his lunch, got back in his car and started the long drive to the next town and the Indian Hills Country Club. The folks at Indian Hills had everything under control. The banquet room was already set up with pristine linens, shining flatware, and gleaming china. Hurricane lanterns of various sizes were positioned on the tables. All that was missing was the garden of flowers that were due to be delivered tomorrow afternoon. Griff signed off on the arrangements and reaffirmed the final details for the open bar, the butler service hors d’oeuvres during the cocktail hour, the red and white wine for the ta-

bles, the champagne for the toast, the valet parking—and taxi service for those too drunk to drive home. ••• “Now the minister is very insistent that we always….” Griff nodded politely to Mrs. Culpepper, the church’s own “wedding planner.” She was a plump, middle-aged woman who smiled too much and clearly felt hiring an outsider was a slur on her abilities. She made her wishes known in the form of the-minister-alwaysinsists. When he’d let Mrs. Culpepper set him straight on the way it was all done back in the day, he excused himself and went outside to see if any of the wedding party had arrived yet. A tall lean man with weary, weathered good looks was fiddling with a camera. Griff guessed that this was the big city photographer, Larry Lee. “We haven’t met. I’m Griffin Skerry. The wedding planner.” “Larry Lee. I’m the photographer.” They shook hands. “We haven’t worked together before. Are you based locally?” Larry smiled at the idea. “No.” He added, “I’m an old friend of the family.” Griff was curious as to what Larry Lee was charging his old friends, but he couldn’t think of how to ask. “Do you do a lot of weddings?” Larry Lee shrugged. “A few. Not my favorite thing. It’s a lot of work for the money. Especially nowadays.” “Love in the time of recession.” Larry Lee laughed. “That’s about the size of it. I mostly do landscapes and freelance work. Calendars, greeting cards, that kind of thing. I’ve made a name for myself, but it’s not a big name.” “I guess it’s like any art. You do it mostly for the love of it.” Larry Lee smiled, but whatever reply he might have made was lost to Griff because Joe and Mallory pulled into the parking lot in Mallory’s BMW Z4. Griff put on his game face and went to meet them—narrowly avoided being run over by Madeline, who screeched into the lot, stereo blasting.

Madeline parked next to Mallory’s car and the two sisters got out and promptly began a low-voiced argument. It was cut short by the arrival, one car after another, of the rest of the wedding party. Mallory smiled graciously for the procession of cars. Madeline lit a cigarette and stalked into the church. ••• The rehearsal went smoothly enough—documented by Larry Lee’s high-powered 35mm Nikon. It was not the light-hearted event the rehearsal for the Stewart-Simpsons had been, but there were no problems. Griff anticipated that the wedding would run as smoothly as a military operation, but that was as much due to Dilys field marshal skills as his own abilities. When the rehearsal was over, they all headed over to the Majestic for dinner. Joe’s parents were paying for the meal, and Joe had handled the arrangement without consulting Griff. That had been during the phase when he had been adamantly against Griff taking the job of wedding planner. Griff hadn’t been over the moon about it either, but as he’d tried to explain, what possible reason could he give for refusing? Besides, a wedding like this was a professional coup. And last, but hardly least, he needed the money. The meal was traditional fare—steak and potatoes—uninspired but sure to please the majority of guests. Griff found himself seated with a couple of ushers, college friends of Joe’s, who ignored him after the first few polite comments. That was fine by Griff, he planned on getting away as soon as possible. The last thing he needed was to sit there watching from across the room while Joe fawned over Mallory, smiling and nuzzling the back of her neck. He ordered a cosmopolitan, to the barely concealed amusement of his table companions, and tuned out the discussions of football and hunting deer and swans. His gaze wandered with his attention. He could see Larry Lee and Dilys, Mallory’s mother, in deep conversation. Dilys had that ferocious smile that always reminded Griff of a friendly mink; he didn’t envy Joe having Dilys Dalrymple as a mother-in-law. Actually, he didn’t envy Joe anything. He thought again about Joe’s comment that he didn’t care what people thought. Joe meant it as a criticism, but wasn’t it the opposite? Wasn’t it a sign of maturity to stop caring so much about what other people thought? Not that Griff didn’t care about his professional reputation, but he counted it a victory that he’d stopped letting the opinions of people he despised influence his choices and actions. He thought of Hammer Sorensen again—and a nearly forgotten memory returned to him. It was years past now. He’d pulled open the glass door to the bank for a guy on crutches, and the guy had looked up—and it was Hammer Sorensen. Hammer’s bright blue eyes in a face that looked older and lined with pain. It was after he’d broken his leg in college— putting an end to his dreams of a career in professional football.

How strange that Griff had all but forgotten that. He remembered the shock of that moment, and he remembered the chaotic mix of his own emotions: pity but also a bitter satisfaction that Hamar’s arrogance and ambition had come to nothing—and sickness with himself that he should be glad of such a thing. He had been unable to find words, staring as he held the door. And Hammer had stared back with those hard blue eyes and nodded curtly as he hobbled past. “You’re being summoned,” the guy on his left said, snapping Griff out of his disturbing reflections. Griff looked up and Mallory was now sitting next to her mother in the chair Larry Lee had vacated. She was beckoning impatiently to Griff. He rose and went to join them. Dilys said quite coolly, as though she was simply making conversation, “I’m having serious doubts as to whether you are entitled to your entire fee, Mr. Skerry. Or any fee at all, frankly.” “I’m sorry?” She didn’t appear to be kidding. He looked bewilderedly at Mallory. “Do you know what she did?” Mallory demanded in answer to that look. “Who?” He looked back at Dilys. She had resumed eating her shrimp cocktail, still eying him with that unwavering dark stare. Her neat white teeth sank into the plump gray flesh of the prawn and tore it in half. She looked like something from the X-Files. Actually, she looked a lot like Mallory. He swallowed down rising nausea. “My pathological lunatic sister,” Mallory said impatiently. “Do you know what she’s done now?” Griff shook his head. He scanned the tables and spotted Maddy, already well on her way to being shit-faced. It seemed pretty much business as usual. “She got a tattoo,” Mallory informed him. “Right here.” She gestured to the top of her own slender shoulder. “A butterfly. A big, fat blue and yellow butterfly.” “Oh.” Dilys swallowed a lump of shellfish and said, “Not easy to disguise.”

“No.” He was already mentally reviewing the options: body makeup, some kind of stole or mini shawl…lace wouldn’t work with the dress but some kind of chiffon…not too sheer…. “I told you she was going to pull something like this. I told you you’d need to deal with her.” Griff stared at Mallory in disbelief. He heard himself say the words he had sworn he would never say to any client no matter how challenging. “That’s not my job. Controlling your sister is not my job.” “Your job was whatever I needed done, and I needed you to keep Maddy in line. I warned you how many times—” She broke off as her mother suddenly rose. “Excuse…” Dilys abruptly turned away—lurched away, really. Griff wondered how much she’d had to drink. He and Maddy watched her fumbling her way through the closely positioned tables as she headed for the restrooms. Frowning, Mallory pushed her chair from the table and rose. “Don’t bother showing up tomorrow,” she told Griff. “We’ll take it from here.” “You’ll take it from—” He knew his jaw was hanging open; he couldn’t help it. He’d met a few prize-winning clients in his time, but the Dalrymples deserved their own special award. “I’ve literally put in four times the man hours on this wedding that I normally do. I damn well plan on getting paid for it.” “Prepare to be disappointed.” “Prepare to have your ass sued.” Mallory smiled, unimpressed. “I’m not Joe. Don’t fuck with me, Griffin. You’ll never know what hit you.”

FOUR “Everything is ready to go,” Chance said. “Are you sure you have room in that little car of yours?” “Sure.” Griff absently sized up the stack of cardboard boxes. “I’ve done this a million times.” Would he still be doing it once Mallory and Dilys Dalrymple finished badmouthing him to all their ritzy friends? Griff knew only too well how this kind of thing worked. The truth was pretty much irrelevant once the gossip mill built up steam and the blacklisting began. He remembered very clearly how it had worked in high school. And what had been the deal with Dilys? If she was sick, sure as hell they were going to claim food poisoning, and even though Griff had absolutely nothing to do with the rehearsal dinner, somehow the rumor would be that he had organized the entire thing. In fact, he’d be lucky if in the final version of the story he wasn’t actually cooking the meal. “Something wrong?” Chance asked. Griff realized he’d been standing there staring at the boxes. “No,” he said. Chance smiled. Was he really that bad a liar? “Client trouble.” Chance raised his expressive eyebrows. Something about that sparkling, knowledgeable gaze led Griff to say, “The Dalrymples aren’t happy with me.” He heard it with disbelief. He had very strong feelings about criticizing clients with other vendors. “Do you think they’re ever happy with anything?” Griff considered this. “I don’t know.” He wondered how the hell Joe would survive with those piranhas. But Joe had climbed into the fish tank voluntarily. He had to remember that. “I doubt it,” Chance replied. “Anyway, I wouldn’t worry about it.” Easy for Chance to say. No one would dare criticize him or his wonderful chocolates. His wonderful chocolates. An idea occurred to Griff. A possible bargaining chip. He picked up the tower of boxes. “You’re probably right. Good night.” “Good night.”

••• When Griffin pulled up in front of his house the porch light was shining in welcome, and there was a police car parked out front, blue and red lights flashing in the crisp, cold night. As he parked in the driveway, the cops—two uniformed sheriff deputies—got out of their SUV and walked across to meet him, boots crunching on the dead leaves. “Griffin Skerry?” Griffin froze. “Yes?” “Please come with us.” “Why?” His heart pounded in alarm. Cops waiting on your doorstep. Never a good thing. “Sheriff Sorensen wants to speak to you.” “About what?” “Sheriff will explain.” Griff stared at their wooden expressions. To his immense relief, they did not put him in handcuffs, but his legs were shaking as he followed them to the police car, climbed in the back. At least he did not appear to be under arrest, and that was one for the plus column. He sat stricken and wordless as the car cruised along the silent streets, the streetlamps throwing crossbars across the road, the chatter on the police radio filling the silence. His heart was racing like a locomotive. What could this be about? It had to be bad, very bad, for the sheriff’s department to roust him out of bed—well, he should have been in bed—this time of night. He remembered the terrible night, not long after he’d graduated from high school, when the then-Sheriff had come to inform him his mother had died in a car crash. He was almost relieved he had no one to lose now. “Is it something to do with the shop?” he asked the back of their heads. A break-in? A fire? Vandalism? But surely they would tell him if that was the case? Neither man looked around. “Sheriff will explain,” one of them said. The Sheriff. That meant Hammer Sorensen. Griff’s heart thumped harder in alarm. Hamar. His oldest enemy. His oldest friend, for that matter. Former friend. This was bound to be a horrendous meeting, What had Mallory done? Accused him of something? Like what? He couldn’t think of anything that would warrant calling out the sheriffs. What if Dilys had been suffering

from food poisoning? What if they were blaming him? It was crazy, but something was certainly going on. But Joe would speak up in that case. No way would Joe let Griff be arrested for…well, whatever this was. Had they figured out what he planned to do with the wedding favors? Round and round Griff’s thoughts chased. Then they were at the sheriff station and Griff was being escorted through the harshly lit hall and bustling main office to a smaller office with glass walls, the blinds closed tight. Hammer Sorenson was sitting behind a desk. He was on the phone when Griff was escorted into his office. He nodded at the deputy, nodded for Griff to take a chair, and listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone. Griffin looked at Hammer and looked away. Somehow looking at Hammer hurt his eyes. It was like staring into the sun. Uneasily, he glanced about the office. It looked like pretty much any office. Bookshelves, filing cabinets, bulletin board full of information that would only make sense to the owner of the bulletin board. On the wall were a couple of framed photographs of running football players—Hammer during his brief college career, Griff guessed. Maybe that dream hadn’t panned out, but Hammer was still doing well for himself. He was the youngest Sheriff the town had ever had, and he seemed fairly popular in what was an unpopular job. “Call me when you know for sure.” Hammer put the phone down and gazed across at Griff. He was not smiling, but that was no surprise. “Hello, Griffin. It’s been a while.” “Why am I here?” Griffin burst out. “I want to ask you a few questions.” “About what?” Hammer said calmly, “This is the way it works. I ask questions and you answer them. And when I’m finished, if you have questions, maybe I’ll answer them in return. Get it?” “Got it.” “Good. I understand you had a run-in with Mallory Dalrymple this evening.” Griff drew a sharp breath. It was exactly as he’d guessed. Mallory was making good on her threat by means of a preemptive strike against him. “It wasn’t much of a run-in. She’s threatening not to pay my fee for planning her wedding.” “And that upset you, I guess?”

“Of course it upset me. It’s my livelihood!” “Lower your voice.” Hammer didn’t say it in a threatening way, but Griff could imagine how quickly that even tone could turn harsh, berating. He folded his arms. It seemed cold in the office, but maybe that was his incipient nervous collapse. “So you were angry with Mallory. And you decided to get back at her.” Oh God. It was the wedding favors. They were accusing him of theft. In fact, nineteen hundred dollars was probably grand theft or something with serious jail time attached. “It wasn’t like that,” he pleaded. “I was only taking out some insurance. They were trying to stiff me. My fee is worth a lot more than nineteen hundred dollars.” Hammer’s eyes flickered with somber emotion. Disappointment? Disillusion? He asked flatly, “What insurance?” “The wedding favors.” Didn’t he know? He had to know. “I do have them. They were in my car.” In the pause that followed his words he could hear the hum of voices in the main office. It seemed very late for a small town sheriff department to be so busy, but it was Friday night. Perhaps there were a lot of drunk driving arrests. Hammer said finally, politely, “I’m sorry?” “I was going to hold them until Dilys forked over what she owes me—my contracted fee. I’m within my rights. I have a contract. I was going to call Dilys in the morning and tell her that I needed my check in order to deliver the favors to Indian Hills. If it wasn’t for the fact that the Dalrymples are the richest people in town, you wouldn’t be hassling me about this. You’d be going after them.” Well, maybe not. Hammer was looking at him like he thought Griff was out of his mind. At last he asked with what sounded like unwilling curiosity, “Why were they threatening not to pay your fee?” “They blame me because Maddy went out and got a tattoo.” “Maddy….” “On her shoulder. I didn’t see it. I just heard about it, but it will show. The bodice of the dress comes to here.” Griff drew a line across his chest.

Hammer covered his mouth with his hand. His blond eyebrows rose politely. “I would’ve found a way to conceal it, but they fired me this evening, so it’s their problem now. I only want to be paid for all the work I did.” Hammer nodded thoughtfully. He removed his hand from his mouth. “Tell me about the dinner tonight.” “It’s exactly what I told you.” An unpleasant inkling popped into Griffin’s mind. “I didn’t have anything to do with the dinner. That was outside the scope of my responsibilities. The groom’s family ho—” “That’s not what I asked.” It was food poisoning. Why else would he keep hammering on the dinner? Griff swallowed hard. He said, hoping his voice sounded steadier than it felt, “Has something happened?” “Like what?” “Like did someone get…food poisoning?” Hammer’s face hardened into forbidding lines. “Why do you ask?” Now Griff knew not to trust the evenness of his tone. Hammer was angry. “Because when I was sitting talking to Mallory and Dilys, Dilys had to excuse herself from the table. I thought maybe she was ill.” Instead of picking up from there, Hammer asked bluntly, “What’s your relationship to Joe Palmer?” Heat rose slowly, remorselessly, through Griffin’s body. He felt his face turning red hot, felt his body shaking with a mixture of humiliation and rage. It was Mrs. Dodge’s biology class all over again. He ground out, “Why?” “Are you having a sexual relationship with Joe Palmer?” “How would that be any of your business?” “Are you?” He said with a defiance he didn’t feel, “You’d have to ask Joe Palmer.” “Joe Palmer says you are. Or, rather, you were.”

“Wh-wh-what?” stammered Griff. “Joe said that?” “That’s right. What do you say?” “I don’t know why he’d say that. Why won’t you tell me what’s going on? What’s happened?” “Dilys Dalrymple is dead.” “Dead?” He knew Hammer was watching him for his reaction, but he didn’t have to fake the shock and horror. “From food poisoning?” “We don’t think it was food poisoning,” Hammer said pleasantly. “We think it was good old-fashioned poison poisoning.” ••• Distantly, Griff was aware that Hammer had set a cup of coffee in front of him. He did not remember Hammer leaving his desk, but he must have because he was sitting down in the big chair again, the leather creaking beneath his lean weight. He picked his cup of coffee up and sipped noisily. “You want to rethink your statement?” he inquired. Griff shook his head. He reached for his own coffee, grateful for the warmth of the liquid. It wasn’t a caramel macchiato, but it wasn’t instant either. “I told you the truth. I told you everything. Are you sure Dilys didn’t die of food poisoning? People do die of it sometimes.” “They usually don’t instantly die of it.” “Oh.” Probably not. With a sort of harassed impatience, Hammer said, “We think the poison was introduced via her shrimp cocktail. But that’s a guess at this stage. It’s what she was eating when she was stricken.” “But why would everyone think I had anything to do with it?” Griff was both angry and indignant. “Well, let’s see,” Hammer said with irony. “You were arguing with the victim a few minutes prior to her collapse, and you’re the only person in the room who didn’t eat his shrimp cocktail.” “I’m allergic to shellfish.”

“Since when?” Their gazes tangled and tore away. “I don’t know,” Griff said. “Since high school, I guess.” “Either way, you’re everyone’s favorite suspect.” “Me?” Griff repeated slowly. He remembered Hammer saying Joe had admitted he and Griff were lovers. Joe had accused him of murder. He couldn’t seem to think beyond it. When he thought he had his face under control, he looked at Hammer again. Hammer was sipping his coffee and staring out the window at the starry night. He looked calm and thoughtful. Griff cleared his throat. “I guess I better call a lawyer?” “Why’s that?” “If I’m under arrest for murder—” “Have I arrested you?” “Well….” Hammer sighed. “Unless you’ve changed a lot over the years, I don’t think you murdered anyone.” “I have changed a lot.” “Haven’t we all. But I don’t think you’ve changed that much.” “Then why am I here?” “Because three people have accused you of murder—and I find that very interesting.” “Who?” “Mallory Dalrymple, Madeline Dalrymple, and Joe Palmer.” Griff’s hand was shaking. He put his coffee cup down. “Joe accused me of murder?” Hammer nodded. He glanced at Griff and looked out the window again, for which Griff was grateful. He heard himself ask, “How was Mormor Sorenson’s birthday party?”

Hammer’s gaze returned to his, softened. “It was great. You should have stopped by. She would have loved to see you. They ask about you now and then, momma and Mormor, when they start reminiscing about the old days.” “What do you tell them?” “That you hold a grudge.” Griff snapped to attention, spilling his coffee. “How fucking dare you.” His voice wavered and broke. Hammer’s blue eyes met his. “Come on, Griffin. I recognized you yesterday, and I know you recognized me. Is there some reason we can’t act like grownups? High school was a long time ago.” Griff stood up. “If I’m not under arrest and you don’t suspect me of murder, can I go?” Hammer said wearily, “Yeah, you can go. I’ll drive you. I have to get back to the crime scene. You still living in the old neighborhood?” The last thing Griff wanted was to get into a car with Hammer and spend the next eleven minutes trying to make conversation—or worse, avoid making conversation—but what choice did he have? “Yes.” He waited in silence as Hammer rose, shrugged on his jacket, and led the way out of the office. Griff paid no attention to the officers Hammer spoke to or the instructions he gave. He felt numb. Detached. At last Hammer nodded to him and they went out the brightly lit entrance into the cold November night.

FIVE “I don’t see why anyone would kill Dilys.” Griff finally broke the silence. What did it mean when murder was the most neutral subject you could find to talk about? “Loved by everyone, was she?” “No, but the idea of killing her is…crazy.” “So who in that bunch is crazy?” Griffin was shaking his head. “Okay, tell me about Palmer.” “Joe?” he asked warily, “Why?” “How long has Mallory known about you and Joe?” “I didn’t think she did know. I’m sure Joe didn’t think she knew. But before I left the Majestic, Mallory said something to make me think—” Griff swallowed hard, “that she did.” “When was the last time you and Joe were together?” Griff’s voice was almost inaudible. “Last night.” Hammer said nothing—had no right to say or think anything—but Griffin sensed disapproval. Or maybe he was projecting. He wasn’t proud of what he’d done with Joe. He’d told himself he needed the closure, but he wasn’t happy about sleeping with Joe on the eve of his wedding. It had provided closure in an unforeseen way—he had lost all respect for Joe as well as himself. It had been the end. “According to Mallory, she’s suspected for some time that you were trying to seduce Joe.” Griffin couldn’t help it. He started to laugh. He knew it was the reaction of overstrained nerves, and that he sounded like he was losing it, but he couldn’t help it. “All right, all right,” Hammer said gruffly. “I know. Pull yourself together.” Griff stared at his profile. “You know. You don’t know. You probably think the same thing. That it’s possible to turn someone gay by association or by harassing them long enough.”

“Don’t be an ass,” Hammer muttered. “What does Joe say?” “Palmer says you’ve been seeing each other off and on—mostly off—for the past five years. He said he experienced confusion over his sexual identity in college, and that’s why he allowed the friendship with you to progress even though he knew you took it too seriously.” “That’s bullshit. I tried to break it off with him a couple of times and he always….” His voice shook. He stopped. Tried again with a pretense at calm, “Joe is a coward. He’s always been a coward. He’s afraid Mallory will dump him now. Or maybe he’s afraid he’ll come under suspicion.” He added bitterly, “And what the hell does any of this have to do with Dilys’s death?” “Nothing.” Hammer looked briefly from the road to meet Griff’s eyes. “I thought you ought to know. I guess you already do.” Astonished, Griff held his silence. He was surprised to find his face warm, his pulse tingling. “Maybe the poison wasn’t intended for Dilys,” he said at random. “Did you ever think of that?” “Well, if it had been Mallory who died, you would have been the number one suspect.” Griff shook his head. “No. Mallory dying wouldn’t have changed anything. Not now.” Neither of them spoke again as the SUV turned down quiet streets and sleeping neighborhoods until they reached Griff’s block. Hammer parked in the driveway behind Griff’s VW. “Is that where the hostage chocolate is?” Griff nodded. Hammer made a sound that might have been a laugh—or a snort. He turned off the car engine, staring out the windshield. “Hasn’t changed a bit, has it?” He was looking at the house next door to Griff’s. The house where he had lived growing up. The Sorensens had moved about the time Griff and Hamar started high school. Griff lifted a shoulder. “Thanks for the ride.”

“Can I come in?” “What? Why?” Griff’s heart, which had been feeling lifeless as lead as he contemplated the full extent of Joe’s betrayal, jumped into action. Fight or flight response. “I’d like to…talk to you. Off the record.” “All right.” Griff could hear the reluctance in his voice. Knew that Hammer could hear it too. But what did he expect? He got out of the SUV, not waiting for Hammer, but knowing he was right behind him anyway. He unlocked his front door, stepped inside and turned on the lights. Hammer stared around the living room. “Jesus. Well, this has sure changed.” The small living room with all its fussy details and moldings had been painted white— even the hardwood floor. Griff had tossed out the old furniture he’d grown up with and replaced it, carefully chosen piece by piece, with wonderful objects: austere wrought iron lamps, fat comfortable chairs the color of sunshine, a gilt wheat-sheaf coffee table. He felt a flicker of pride as he saw the room through Hammer’s eyes. Yes, this had changed. Over the years he had renovated and redecorated every room in this house and it looked—even though he was biased—every bit as lovely as anything in Elegant Homes or Better Homes and Gardens. In the summer he planned to start redesigning the garden. This old house was more than his home, it was his haven. He rarely got a chance to show it off. And no one was in better position to appreciate how much he’d achieved than Hamar. “Did you want coffee or something?” He watched Hammer still gazing about himself. Hammer’s eyes refocused on him. “No, thanks. I want to talk to you.” “More questions?” Hammer shook his head. All at once he looked grim. “About what?” “About…us. About how we used to be friends and then we weren’t.” Griff folded his arms defensively across his chest. “What is it you think you could tell me that I don’t know?” “Why I was such a shit when we had been best friends for so long.”

“I know why.” Knowing didn’t change anything. Didn’t change the facts, didn’t change the hurt. He and Hamar had lived next door to each other from the time they were small kids. Hamar was part of his earliest memories. Their mothers were best friends and shared their first and only pregnancies. Their offspring had shared playpens and sandboxes. They had slept next to each other in kindergarten and shared lunchboxes in elementary school. In junior high, which had been hard on geeky little Griffin Skerry, Hamar had been his selfappointed protector. And in high school Hamar had become “Hammer”—and Griffin’s worst nightmare. “It wasn’t all the things you must have thought.” “You mean like I was a nerd and you were a jock?” “I mean, because you told me that summer you were gay.” The laughter died out of Griff. “I know. I know it didn’t have anything to do with that. I finally figured it out a few years later, but if you think I’m going to sit here patiently while you come out to me, sorry. Save it for someone who gives a damn.” Hammer stared for what seemed like a long time. He shrugged. “Okay. I thought I owed you that.” Now that was funny. Griffin spluttered a tired laugh and led the way to the front door.

SIX The phone startled Griff out of a confused dream in which Joe and Hammer were arguing about where the water feature in Griff’s backyard should go. He sat up, took the princess phone off its hook and croaked, “Hello?” Hammer Sorensen said, “The poison used to kill Dilys Dalrymple was cadmium.” “The color?” He thought in alarm of the bright cadmium yellow walls of this very bedroom. Surely Hammer wasn’t going to try and make some weird connection— “The chemical compound. It’s very toxic. It can be ingested or inhaled. It’s not water soluble, but it does dissolve in acid foods such as fruit juice and vinegar—or tomato juice.” “So it was the shrimp cocktail?” “Yep. The shrimp cocktail was loaded with it. More than an ounce was dumped into Dilys’ goblet. And she was a very slender woman and a heavy smoker, which aggravates the effects of the poison.” “It’s not anything that could fall in her goblet accidentally?” “No way. However it was introduced, it wasn’t by mistake.” Griffin cast his mind back to the yesterday evening. To the seating arrangements at the dinner. Maddy had been sitting next to her mother, but had changed her seat almost immediately. Anyway, Maddy might have issues, but she wasn’t psychotic. Besides, she’d surely have a better opportunity than a crowded dinner. Ditto for Mallory. She’d been sitting next to Dilys when Griff had sat down to speak to them, but she was merely lighting as she made her rounds of the room and the tables. Her own seat had been next to Joe and her maid of honor. Hammer had told him he was off the hook, but had he now changed his mind? Griff asked worriedly, “How fast does this poison work?” “If ingested? Very fast. It causes almost immediate nausea among other things. It’s actually hard to kill someone through ingestion because the victim’s body rejects it so fast, but like I said, it was a massive dose and her smoking complicated things.” “What is cadmium? Where does it come from?”

“It’s a chemical compound used in dental cement, glazes, paints, insecticides, and photography.” “Photography.” “You got it.” The memory snapped into Griff’s brain. Larry Lee sitting next to Dilys while they spoke quietly, intensely—all but oblivious of those around them. “Oh, my God,” he gulped. “It’s Larry Lee. The photographer. It has to be.” Oh thank God, thank God the Dalrymples had hired their own photographer. Hammer replied cheerfully, “Yep. It sure is.” “He confessed?” Maybe it was as easy as TV. It all certainly felt as unreal as TV. Hammer chuckled. “No. No, we’ve got a ways to go to prove our case, but we’ve got our man. And we think we’ve got our motive.” Griff peered at the brass alarm clock on his night table. Four-thirty in the morning. Hammer and his small town police force must have worked all night. “But why? Why would he do such a thing?” “Turns out when Dilys Dalrymple was Madeline’s age, she ran off to Mexico and got married to one Lawrence Lee. And she never got divorced. Or changed her original will.” “Yes, but….” “Yeah. But all criminals are not geniuses. In our conversations with Larry Lee last night he asked a bunch of questions about probate and codicils. He figured he was being pretty slick talking to a bunch of hick cops, but those questions started me thinking. It didn’t take much digging to find what I was looking for.” “Wait a minute. He killed Dilys to inherit the money she inherited from her second husband—before she got around to changing her will?” “That’s what I think happened.” “But if Dilys was still married when she married Hank Dalrymple, her marriage wasn’t valid.” “Right.” He could hear the amusement in Hammer’s voice.

“So she probably didn’t legally inherit. The money probably should have gone straight to her kids or something?” “You got it.” Hammer was openly laughing, a deep sound that sent a shiver down Griff’s back. “That’s why it’s going to take a little work to corner him. He thinks he had a motive, even though we know he didn’t.” Griff reclined back against the bank of pillows. He wondered why Hammer was calling him with this news. He said cautiously, “So it’s over? I’m totally…off the hook?” “You’re off the hook.” He considered this quietly. “Thank you for telling me.” “Yeah. Well….” That about summed it up. Griff waited to see if there was more. Did he want there to be more? It occurred to him that Joe would not be getting married in a few hours after all. Dilys’s death was bound to mean a postponement. Maybe a long one. Maybe so long Joe and Mallory would never get married. Once that would have meant something to him. “Griff?” He made an inquiring sound. “See you around,” Hammer said finally. After a beat, Griff said, “See you.” ••• February was not a good month for weddings. Flower prices were always at a premium and most brides were smart enough to know that if they arranged to have an anniversary in February they were bound to be stinted on Valentine’s Day. But there was always at least one happy couple in Binbell who simply couldn’t wait for spring. The Martinez-Robinsons were that year’s couple, and Griff was checking up on the wedding reception favors. The Martinez-Robinsons were opting for white chocolate lollipops tied with yellow silk ribbons. Connie’s Confections was doing a nice job, but it wasn’t anything like what Chance would have done at Sweets to the Sweet. Griff could almost taste the cool satiny creaminess of Chance’s white chocolate as he stood there gazing at the dark windows and the FOR RENT sign of the empty shop between Nina’s Café and Buckner’s Books.

“When did he close the place?” a familiar voice asked. Griff turned and was surprised at the flash of pleasure he felt at the sight of Hammer Sorenson standing on the salt-crusted pavement behind him. The lights from the other shop windows turned the sidewalk amber, and Hammer’s skin and hair gold. Griff shook his head. “I don’t know. Chance never mentioned he was closing. One day he was…gone. No one seems to know anything about it.” “That’s too bad. That chocolate was addictive. And I don’t even like chocolate.” “I do,” Griff said wistfully. He glanced at Hammer again, racked his brain for a neutral topic of conversation. “I heard you finally arrested Larry Lee for Dilys Dalrymple’s murder.” Hammer assented. “That was good work.” “I think so.” Hammer spoke with a hint of his old arrogance. He asked after a pause, “Did you ever get paid for the wedding?” Griff shook his head. “No. Mallory felt that since she and Joe ended up getting married by a justice of the peace, she didn’t owe me anything.” Hammer grunted. “What did you end up doing with all those wedding favors?” “Ate them. Froze them. Gave them to people for Christmas.” Hammer laughed. Griff laughed too. They both turned back to the empty rental space. Any second now Hammer was going to say goodnight and head back to his office—or home to dinner. Griff was unsettled to realize how much he didn’t want that to happen. He tried to think of something to talk about. Almost as though he read Griff’s thoughts, Hammer said abruptly, “I know it’s late for asking, but did you have plans for tonight?” Griff stared, mildly affronted. “Do you know what today is?” “Sure. Valentine’s Day.” “What makes you think I don’t have plans?”

Hammer’s smile was wry. “I figured you probably did have plans, which is why I didn’t ask sooner.” “Oh, I see. So if I hadn’t happened to be standing here—” “Well, now that’s a funny thing,” Hammer interrupted. “As it happens, I was looking for you. I have something of yours. I just had a feeling you’d be here.” “What do you have of mine?” If Griff had left something in the sheriff station, he hadn’t missed it in all these months. Hammer reached into his pocket and pulled out a small piece of paper. “Mormor was going through her things a few days ago and found this.” He handed it to Griff. Griff stared down at the small faded heart-shaped paper. Glitter floated gently down. A little boy Viking was shyly proffering a heart with the words “Will You B Mine?” He turned it over. A childish hand had scrawled XOXOXO Griffin. “I looked but I didn’t see an expiration date on this,” Hammer said. Griffin continued to stare down at the dog-eared paper. He felt his mouth tugging into a smile. You just didn’t expect to see a Viking wearing that much glitter; probably all the other little Vikings gave him a hard time. He looked up at Hammer—was surprised at how serious he looked as he waited for Griff’s answer. Casually, Griff said, “Let’s talk about it over dinner.”

JCPBooks e-books are priced by the word count of the story only. Any end matter or sample chapters are a bonus!

About the Author Never mind cops, DSS Agents, or spies, Josh Lanyon can think of few jobs more terrifying than wedding planner. And what could be worse than having to plan your ex’s nuptials? Josh did find researching OPW fascinating—the price of the wedding magazines alone was an eye opener!

About this Story What I wanted to do in Other People’s Weddings was tell the story of a man whose day job was helping other people achieve their romantic fantasies—while his own hopes and dreams went without nurturing. At the same time I wanted Griffin Skerry to be a positive, optimistic person. Someone who had made the best out of the hand he was dealt. Technically he’s lived all his life in a tiny town in North Dakota, but he’s created a world for himself that mirrors in many ways the life he would have chosen if he’d left for New York and a career in fashion as he originally planned. Griffin is very proud of what he’s achieved, at least professionally. I didn’t want this to be a sad story—it’s not. But I think it does sort of have a melancholy vibe to it. I know I was very touched by Griffin. His world felt vivid to me.

Spanish Fly Guy Petit Morts #5 Jordan Castillo Price ISBN: 978-1-935540-04-5 All rights reserved. © 2010 Jordan Castillo Price Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000. This e-book file contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language which some may find offensive and which is not appropriate for a young audience. JCP Books e-books are for sale to adults only, as defined by the laws of the country in which you made your purchase. Please store your files wisely, where they cannot be accessed by underaged readers.

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ONE JP McMahon was sick and tired of being Googled. It was getting harder and harder to find a place where people weren't always on the Internet. Especially now with smartphones, it seemed like no sooner did you meet somebody then they were trying to look you up on Facebook. And so JP was pleased as punch to kick back along the boardwalk of a scenic little town, a safe hamlet with an oceanfront view. A town not far from Wilmington where the salt air continually corroded any attempts by the local cable company to provide Internet for its inhabitants, and the 3G network was down more than it was up. Thus, in a world where the economy was normally based on bandwidth and pixels, tourism and fishing kept the darling little seaside town named Brightside afloat. The most intriguing thing about the village was that this lack of Internet, this dearth of cell phones, meant that the local newspaper industry was positively thriving. Most local, small-town rags featured stories about who was celebrating a silver anniversary, which church was hosting a spaghetti dinner, who had died, of course, and a police blotter filled with break-ins, speeding violations, and the occasional tavern brawl. Not so with the Brightside Chronicle. That little gem featured actual stories that went beyond news about the girls’ high school volleyball team making the finals at State. And the classified section was a work of art. Without Craigslist to provide an outlet for everyone's steamiest and most lurid anonymous desires, the folks of Brightside had resurrected—or perhaps had never actually lost—the art of advertisement writing. JP folded his paper into quarters so he could settle into the boardwalk bench and cradle it in his lap like a beloved paperback. Men seeking women. Women seeking men. Alternative lifestyles—that section was sorely underpopulated; undoubtedly there were plenty of “alternative” people in Brightside—but airing their laundry with wood pulp and ink was probably a lot more daunting than sneaking a quick text to Craigslist. Too bad. JP was an alternative kind of guy, and he would've been interested to see what sort of pitch an alternative pleasure seeker might come up with in Brightside. He scanned the various ads. The writing quality was pretty good. A bit stilted, but definitely better then the typical drivel he usually saw on the dating sites. Life without Internet access might have made it harder to find free porn, but it certainly had preserved the literary ability of Brightside's population. He unfolded the paper and turned the page. Another full page of ads? He turned back to see if it might be a duplicate. It wasn't. He turned the paper over. Another page. How was that possible? The sign on Main Street said that Brightside had a population just over twelve hundred. JP counted the number of ads in a column, then multiplied that by the number of rows on the page. Then he multiplied that by the number of pages. Was it possible that almost twenty percent of the popu-

lation of Brightside was looking for love? One in five? That had to be some kind of record. And...that had to be something that JP could work to his advantage. If JP had been a kindly older lady, he would have hung out a shingle and advertised his services as a reputable and discreet matchmaker. But, since JP was young and sleek and predatory, he somehow doubted that the fine folks of Brightside would take him into their confidence, not until he lived there for another twenty years or so. And by then, no doubt even Brightside would have the Internet. Since JP would meet with little success in any business venture that required his new customers to place their immediate and unquestioning trust in him, he decided instead to do what came naturally to him. Brightside, with its lack of cell phones and nonexistent Internet, struck JP as an oldfashioned kind of town. And so he indulged himself in an old-fashioned kind of idea. All he needed were a few simple supplies. He shielded his eyes from the sun and scanned the boardwalk. The bathhouse? Closed. The canoe rental stands? Closed. The souvenir stands full of postcards, tanning oil and cheap sunglasses? Closed. Even the ice cream shop. Closed. JP wondered what the deal was. Maybe Brightside had some kind of ordinance that said all the shops had to shut down at six for a siesta. He was debating whether or not to tilt back the passenger seat in his Miata and take one himself when a tiny bell jingled. He whirled around. On the whole boardwalk, a single shop was still open. A candy store. Ideas arranged and rearranged themselves within the well-oiled machine of JP's mind. A candy store? He could work with that. He schooled his features into the most innocent look of profound sincerity he could muster, opened the door and scanned the shop. No doubt a gray-haired, ample-bosomed spinster covered in flour would be working the...JP stopped short. The young man behind the counter in black and red would have no need at all for an ad in the classified section of the Brightside Chronicle. Though if he did, with his porcelain skin and his wickedly arched eyebrows, JP suspected it would go in the alternative section. The day was definitely looking up. JP strode toward the counter, all swagger. Not only might he find the pieces here for his latest puzzle, but if he played his cards right, a bed to fall into at the end of the day. And someone to fall into it with. He was midstride when his confidence simply evaporated. It drained right out of him as if it were a liquid running through the hollows of his bones, down the circular tunnels of his vertebrae and ribs, through the marrow of his femurs and tibia, and out the bottoms of his feet where the earth drank it up. By the time he actually reached the cash register, he could barely put one foot in front of the other—he could

barely even move. It was a strain to even lift his head. He planted one hand on the display case and forced himself to meet the candymaker’s eyes. The candy man arched one raven black eyebrow. “Yes?” “I....” JP strained for breath. It felt like his heart was being squeezed by a giant fist. He was barely thirty, and he kept himself in fabulous shape—but he supposed there could be some congenital defect in play. He took a careful breath. Oh well. No time for regrets. “Let's get one thing straight, honey.” The candymaker tossed his perfectly black hair out of his eyes. “You couldn’t handle me.” JP realized he was gawking. “No,” he said, dazed. “I would never presume....” “Of course you would. So, aside from that…what else is it you want?” Beneath the glass, the candies swam in and out of focus. Perfect little rows. Like skulls. JP blinked. Why on earth would he think that? “I can see you’re busy.” “There's no one here but you and me.” JP glanced behind him as if a crowd might have obligingly appeared. It hadn't. “It's...I...” “Come on then, spit it out.” If he wasn't looking at the candymaker, JP realized, that squeezing sensation inside his ribcage abated somewhat—enough to permit him to speak, at least. “Vanilla.” The candymaker said nothing. Of course not. How could anyone glean meaning from that single word? JP turned, humbled now, struggling to stand upright and speak as normally as possible, and explained. “Those small bottles. I need some. Not many, two dozen? Three? I just figured...being a business and all, you might have some empties lying around. If not, maybe you could open some up, pour them out into a different container so I can use the bottles. I know, I know, it’s a strange request, but you'd really be helping me out.” “I buy my flour in fifty pound bags. The flour at the store? Five pound bags. I buy my sugar in hundred pound bags. The sugar at the store? Tiny cubes. So what makes you think my vanilla comes in those precious little bottles?” JP felt his cheeks burning. “How stupid of me. I never thought....” “Oh, you think plenty.” The candymaker reached across the countertop, placed two fingers under JP's chin, and tilted his face up, as if for a kiss. His fingertips were icy. He was smiling—not an entirely friendly smile, either. “I’m teasing,” he said. “I save everything. I have just the thing. And if you promise to be nice, I just might give it to you.”

••• In the end, Chance would not accept any money for the bottles. And that made JP uneasy. A simple financial transaction, he could understand. Not that he had any money at the moment, but he could have jotted down an IOU. The candymaker wouldn't hear of it. He suggested—no, actually, he insisted—that he do it for free. Free—was that the word? No, even worse. He said it was a favor. It was just as well he hadn't been interested in exchanging any other “favors.” JP could tell from their five-minute conversation that any entanglement they might have had would've ended messily. And JP didn't do messy.

TWO “Make sure you don’t put it too high.” Ryan pointed at the dog-eared chart. The customer couldn’t see it, not from where she was standing, across the counter and upside-down. But he hoped he was assuring her that he was following tried and true procedures, and not just winging it. “Small design—that’s this, anything under five inches, and especially horizontal—top edge goes three inches from the neckband.” He smoothed the petal pink T-shirt in the press again, in case a wrinkle had popped up while he was trying to reassure the customer that he knew what he was doing. He did. He’d been printing T-shirts for the past three summers. But he couldn’t say he’d ever mastered the art of coming off as reassuring. “Because I’m full-figured. It’s got to fall in the right place.” Ryan stole a glance, avoiding her eyes, then avoiding her ample chest, and eventually settling on her jaw. One long hair grew from her cheek, just at the jawline. He looked up at the clock instead and answered her. “I get it. But three inches really is the best….” What he wanted to say was, “You really don’t want a garland of pansies directly on top of your boobs.” Since he figured that wouldn’t go over very well, he simply trailed off and turned back to the press to smooth out some more imaginary wrinkles. Most of the customers at “Copy That” were easy. They were on vacation. They’d just been to the beach. They were enjoying the quaint little town without Internet. And they were probably itching to check their email—but unless they were full-blown Type-A personalities, they didn’t usually take their frustrations out on Ryan. That’s because, Ryan’s dad would have said, he was too easy of a target. No challenge. The woman shopping for the pink T-shirt with pansies on it had frustrations that went a lot deeper than falling behind on her RSS feeds. She was fifty pounds, and probably ten years, over what she wanted to be. And the crease between her eyebrows hadn’t etched itself there from an overabundance of smiling. Plus, there was that creepy stray hair…. People like that, miserable people, didn’t seem to mind the fact that Ryan was an easy target. They reveled in it. Ryan pulled out the ruler and measured, even though he technically didn’t need to use it since the distance between the first and third knuckles on his forefinger was exactly three

inches, and he could find the proper placement of a heat transfer just by putting his hand on the garment. “You’re sure that’s not too high?” Ryan knew the transaction wasn’t going to end well, but he figured he should at least try. “I could put it at three and a half, if you want, but I wouldn’t go any lo….” “Four. How about four? I hate it when designs are all up around my neck. It looks ridiculous.” “I really think three and a half….” “Or we could forget about it, and I could go to the souvenir shop off Main Street.” Where she would see that they didn’t have the pansy design, and probably come back in an even bigger huff looking for a pink T-shirt that would make her look ten years younger and fifty pounds thinner. And what if Ryan’s boss was working then? No doubt the customer and Mrs. Marsh would share a serious bonding moment over Ryan’s incompetence. Ryan sighed, set the ruler on the shirt and measured. Four was far too low. He placed the transfer on the jersey knit, aligned it to the center of the neck ribbing, re-measured the four inches, then snuck the transfer up another half inch while he pretended to smooth it out. “Hello?” the woman said. Ryan looked up. He thought she was talking to him, that he’d been busted moving the transfer up, but she was just trying to use her cell phone. “Hello? Stan? Can you hear me?” Cell phone service was so patchy in Brightside that most people never bothered trying. The signal was nonexistent to spotty all the way up to the suburbs of Wilmington. The press dinged, and Ryan opened it. It released the smell of cooked plastic. He let the backing cool slightly, peeled it off, then folded the T-shirt as flawlessly as a 3x could be folded. “Okay. That’ll be $15.28 with tax.” “Wait a minute.” The lady stuffed her phone into her purse, snatched the shirt off the counter and shook out the careful fold. “This isn’t right.” Ryan’s stomach sank. The woman held the huge shirt up to her bosoms. “I can’t wear this. Look at where the eyes of the pansies fall.”

Ryan was never one to say “I told you so,” but some days it was all he could do to resist. “If you wash it in hot water, it’ll shrink enough to move them up another quarter of an inch….” “I don’t want this. I can’t wear it.” She wadded the shirt into a ball, shoved it towards Ryan, then turned and left the store in a huff, punching numbers into her cell phone with her thumb. Ryan stared down at the shirt. A 3X was pricey, six dollars wholesale. The transfer cost a dollar. That was seven dollars Mrs. Marsh would take out of his wages, leaving him with a little over a buck to show for his last hour. He shook it out, smoothed it, and as he folded it carefully so the flowers showed across the chest, the front door opened. He kept his eyes on the shirt. He was in no mood to go head-to-head with the pansy woman for another round. “Oh. You print T-shirts.” Ryan looked up, startled, because he’d been expecting a woman’s voice, but it was a guy. A hot guy. Ryan swallowed and looked away, but he’d seen enough to get his mind racing. Young. Slim. Casually hip, like a socialite who’d been out clubbing and was on his way home the next morning. Dark hair, finger-combed back. Eyes—well, Ryan hadn’t looked long enough to see what color his eyes were. Intense. Lively. Smart. He’d seen that much. Ryan found his voice, somewhat belatedly. “Yeah. We do.” “I just thought with the name Copy That you might be a print shop.” “Oh. Right. We make copies. That equipment’s in the back room. The T-shirts and mousepads are for the tourists.” The customer smiled. Ryan glanced at it and looked away. He couldn’t look at that smile and think at the same time. Not without sitting down—and there was nowhere to sit behind the counter. Mrs. Marsh didn’t want him to look lazy. The man put a USB drive on the counter and slid it toward Ryan. It was a common enough gesture, but the way he did it, with only his forefinger on the memory stick, seemed somehow…sensual. “Can you print from this?” “Sure…unless you have missing fonts. But I might be able to fix—” “In color?” Ryan nodded, keeping his eyes on the flash drive. “What about labels? I don’t want it to look like it came off an inkjet printer.”

Ryan slipped out from behind the counter, locked the front door, and turned the “Open” sign to “Closed.” It wasn’t as busy as it would’ve been during Spring Break, but teenagers seemed to get a big kick out of shoplifting T-shirts, and Ryan didn’t want to finish his workday owing money…which had actually happened a time or two. He gestured for the customer to follow and ducked into the copy room. A pair of computers and a color laser printer hugged one wall. A massive black and white copier that had printed almost every flier in Brightside spanned another. The half of the room that doubled as a breakroom held a secondhand couch, mauve; a shaky card table; and a microwave that smelled like nachos. Ryan sat down at the fastest computer, plugged in the flash drive and opened the file. A kitschy logo with a cartoonish insect and the words “Spanish Fly” arched over the top opened up. “Is this the font you wanna use? ’Cos I think we have one that would look cooler with this logo, a little bit retro.” “Retro? Sure, that’d work.” The customer leaned into the back of the chair, clutching the armrests. Ryan wondered if he should have invited him to sit. Or to pull up the other chair. But the other chair was nasty and sweat-stained, and Ryan couldn’t think of any way to switch them that wasn’t obvious. “I mean…if that’s what this is supposed to…what is this, anyway? A band?” He fiddled with the font instead, feeling every inch of the other guy’s forearms pressed along his biceps, and keeping his head completely and utterly still so it didn’t brush back against the guy’s chest. “No, not a band. A drink.” The guy straightened up and Ryan allowed himself to breathe. “Seriously? Like a party shot?” “Not exactly.” Ryan dropped his voice. “Is it like X?” “That’s a pill. And no. Not a designer drug. More like a…a gag. A novelty. A good luck charm.” “But you drink it.” “That’s right.” “O…kay. That’s different.” Ryan filled the letters with a white to aqua gradient and gave them a fat black outline. The lettering popped. “If you need a rectangular cut, I could do

that for you on the paper cutter. But if you need anything in a special shape, you’d probably have to go to Wilmington and have a die made.” “I can work with that. How much’ll it run me to print the rectangles here?” The customer was attempting eye contact, heavy eye contact. Ryan could feel it burning through his peripheral vision. He also stood a lot closer than Ryan was accustomed to. He didn’t talk like a local. Ryan figured he came from a city where everyone stood close and looked you in the eye. He swiveled in the chair, turned toward the price list and pointed. “Labels. Three fifty a sheet.” “Three fifty.” “Right. That’s pretty standard.” Ryan chanced a small glimpse at the customer. He was scowling in thought—at least Ryan hoped it was thought, and not anger. Technically, Ryan was also supposed to charge for the cuts, but it wasn’t as if Mrs. Marsh could monitor how many times he’d touched the paper cutter—at least, not that he knew of—so what else could he do to keep the customer from getting annoyed with him? He added, “I mean, if you want to drive to Wilmington and pick up your own label paper, I can run these for the cost of a regular print. But since label paper’s pretty pricey, and color laser prints are a dollar apiece, you won’t be saving all that much money.” The customer gave a small nod, as if to himself, then leaned over the front of Ryan’s chair and placed a hand on each armrest, pinning him to his seat. “Listen…what’s your name?” “R-Ryan.” “Listen, Ryan. Every business has its operating expenses. I know. I’m an entrepreneur myself.” “Oh. I kinda thought you looked like you might….” “But here’s the thing. I’m having a little cash flow issue.” He leaned in harder and the chair wheeled back a couple of inches until the computer table stopped it. The edge of the customer’s sportcoat was brushing against the zipper of Ryan’s hoodie. Ryan shrank back into his seat and wondered where on earth people got this close to each other when they talked. A place with a much higher population density than Brightside, he figured. The customer leaned forward, as if he was doing a push-up—and he had a secret to tell. Their cheeks brushed. He whispered. “I love what you did with the lettering. And I was hoping you might be willing to cut me a good deal on the printing.” A slick guy like that wanting anything to do with a small-town nobody like Ryan? Impossible. Ryan never, ever got lucky over summer break, not in Brightside. And yet, as the guy straddled Ryan’s thighs, eased a knee onto the seat of the office chair, and a hand

along his jaw, nudging him toward the kiss…. Ryan turned his head to the side and swallowed his gum. “I don’t even know your name.” Ryan felt lips brush against his ear, and then the whisper, “JP.” “What’s that stand for?” Even lower, so softly Ryan almost didn’t hear it, JP replied, “Don’t ask.” Although Ryan hardly knew the person whose breath was playing over his cheek any better than he had mere seconds before, the simple exchange of names—or initials—had raised the bar for the encounter from anonymously seedy to merely impulsive. He’d always admired impulsiveness, though he’d never successfully cultivated the tendency in himself. Impulsive people seemed to get what they wanted. And if not, they looked like they had a lot of fun trying. JP trailed kisses from Ryan’s cheek to his mouth. Warm kisses. Wet. Deliberate. Like he’d committed himself to the act and he wouldn’t dream of being ashamed of his choice. Like he did that sort of thing every day—and the thought that he did might be a turnoff, if you were to look at it the wrong way. The way Ryan saw it, JP was bold enough to have anyone…but had chosen him. JP’s lips parted and the shock of tongue made Ryan catch his breath. He gripped the armrests now, so rigid he trembled. JP broke the kiss only long enough to say, “This is okay, right? You seemed like you might be into guys.” “Yeah, it’s….” Ryan didn’t know what it was. It didn’t seem to matter. JP was already taking up where he’d left off, coaxing Ryan’s tongue out of his mouth, sliding his own in. Wet. Soft. Hot. JP ran his hands up Ryan’s arms and shoulders, settling them on either side of Ryan’s face. Ryan had never been touched quite like that before. It felt surreal. And while he had no delusions that a complete stranger actually cherished him as much as his technique might imply, the mutual agreement—that they could pretend he did—felt nearly as satisfying. Ryan was almost sad when JP let go of his face…even though he’d only done so to start undoing the front of Ryan’s jeans. “Just so you know…” Ryan tried to catch his breath. He sounded like he’d just run a fifty-yard dash. “I can’t really give you any freebies. Mrs. Marsh checks the copy counts. I think she even counts all the expensive paper.” “Not every night, I’ll bet.” JP pushed up Ryan’s shirt and grazed his stomach with warm, eager fingertips. “I’d only need you to spot me for a couple of days.” Probably not every night.

JP eased off Ryan’s lap and dragged a slow, wet kiss along the path his fingers had just traced, and Ryan’s mind quietly short-circuited. Suddenly everything was hyper-real: the buzz of the old electric clock that was five minutes fast; the cries of the gulls circling 99 Flavors in hopes of a stray piece of waffle cone; the decadent warm wetness of JP’s tongue tracing his navel. It almost tickled. Almost. But it also sent a zing straight down to the bottom of his nuts that gave him an instant boner. A big one. JP crouched in front of Ryan and nuzzled the bulge in his jeans. Ryan stammered, “You don’t have to…I’ll make you the copies.” He was so accustomed to looking down that it didn’t occur to him that all JP needed to do to lock gazes was turn his head. Blue. His eyes were blue. Like the bay after a storm. “It’s not about the copies.” JP straightened up and cupped Ryan’s face in his hands again, and as long as he kept on doing that, Ryan decided, he could make copies until the toner ran out. Ryan had a few bucks on him, he’d pay for the copies himself. It was a much better transaction than the one he’d just had with the pansy lady. Instead of kissing him again, though, JP made Ryan look at him, and he said, “Copies can wait. How about living for the moment? Just you. Just me. Doing this.” He kissed Ryan again, less forcefully this time, but with exquisite slowness, letting his tongue glide over the edges of Ryan’s teeth, along the slickness of his lips. And only when Ryan was too transfixed by the unhurried insistence of JP’s mouth to move, did JP release him and drop a hand down to work its way beneath the waistband of his jeans. “I love how hard you are, just from kissing.” That’s what Ryan thought JP said, at least. The sentence, “Oh my God, he’s touching my dick,” had hijacked most of his conscious thought. And not just touching it. Caressing it. Learning the shape of it. Sweeping a thumb over the…. “Oh my God.” JP let his other hand drop, and used both hands to lay Ryan’s jeans open. There was a moment of blind panic while Ryan wondered which underwear he was wearing, and whether it was too late to lunge for the light switch, but JP didn’t even look. The motion of stripping off Ryan’s jeans brought his lips in range for another kiss, and he seized the opportunity to taste Ryan’s mouth again. Kisses slid askew as Ryan wadded the jeans and underwear past the edge of the seat and down around his knees just in case he had on a particularly ratty pair. JP took it as a sign of enthusiasm, and let his own jeans drop. “Take yours all the way off,” he panted against

Ryan’s lips, which were tingly now from all the kissing. “I want to feel the hair on your legs tickling my thighs.” Ryan stepped on the hems of his baggy jeans and worked them the rest of the way down with his feet, hoping his underwear went along for the ride. The kisses had grown abstract now, wetness trailing over their chins and jaws. They both sucked air, desperate, needy. As soon as Ryan stopped squirming out of his Levi’s, JP disentangled one foot from his own jeans and straddled Ryan’s lap. His inner thighs were incredibly hot. Something warm and firm poked Ryan and left a tiny trail of sticky dampness on his hipbone. As those sensations registered, JP wrapped a sure hand around Ryan’s hard dick again, and the stroking began. “Put your arms around me,” JP murmured, low and sweet, so the words buzzed against Ryan’s ear. “Let me do us. You just hang on and I’ll listen to you enjoying the ride.” Ryan slung his arms over JP’s shoulders, and JP pressed their foreheads together. Too much looking, Ryan thought, and he ducked away from the stare with a kiss, then pressed his forehead into the crook of JP’s neck so he no longer had to struggle with where to avoid looking. Ryan could never imagine himself moaning and groaning like those guys on the Internet—the ones in the clips he downloaded at school and hid away in a file called “Early American Pottery,” just in case his father had a hankering to play a little solitaire while he was on shore and got to snooping around Ryan’s laptop. But despite the lack of moaning and grunting and entreaties to do things harder and faster and yeah, yeah, yeah…there were noises. The chair creaking and smacking the table edge. Breathy sounds. Hisses every time the stakes were raised, and the perfect stroke brought both of them one notch closer. Tiny gasps, when their cockheads bumped, or when JP did another one of those thumb swipes. Contented hums, when they slid into another lazy, wet kiss. JP shifted his grasp and Ryan’s body lurched closer to the brink. No. Not so soon. Not yet. He did his best not to let on how good it felt so the encounter didn’t need to end, but JP seemed to be able to read the sudden stilling of his breath and the tremble in his thighs. JP didn’t go back to that stroke he’d been using before. He did the new thing, the awkwardly angled stroke that would drag an orgasm out of Ryan any moment. And then he did it harder. Ryan understood, suddenly, why people tended to blurt out “I love you” when they were having sex with someone. Because in a way, it was true. For one perfect, shining moment when everything coalesced and his whole mind and body soared, when his hips leapt despite his attempt at holding still, when his world imploded with the poignancy of release, he loved everybody. Even the 3x pansy woman. JP swung a leg off Ryan and angled his body away. A breathy laugh rode in on his kisses.

“Ohmigod.” Ryan pulled back, mortified. “Did I just, uh….” He couldn’t say “come on you.” Despite the fact that he probably just had. “No worries. Indoor/outdoor carpeting hides a multitude of sins.” “Did you…?” JP gave him a wolfish smile and turned his hand palm-up. His fingers were webbed with jiz. “I hope you’re not planning to enforce that ‘Employees Only’ sign on the john. I could stand to freshen up.”

THREE Luckily for JP, Brightside was not a wealthy town. If it were, it's true, there would have been more vacant homes. But those homes would've been equipped with security. Brightside, thoroughly working-class as it was, was still home to a few vacant vacation properties. Trailers. Someday, JP told himself, he'd never set foot in a trailer again. But for now, his upbringing in a sprawling trailer park south of the Twin Cities would serve him well enough. After sundown he coasted in with his headlights off and parked the convertible, top up, beneath the shielding leaves of an ancient weeping willow. He then began the task of checking the units with no obvious residents to see which of them had a cheap, plastic-cornered window screen that could be torqued and popped out with the aid of a simple bottle opener. The third trailer was the charm. He climbed in the window, scanned for blinking red electronics, reminded himself that there was no Internet access in Brightside—so of course a teddy bear babysitter cam was not watching him—and he opened the back door to load in his gear. Because the residents were gone for the season, the water had been shut off and the pipes drained. But JP was prepared. He worked by the light of a tiny flashlight with a precise bluish white beam. First he set out the bottles, thirty-three in all, and he uncapped them. Briefly, he considered rinsing them with his gallon of distilled water, but then he decided, why waste it? The bottles had held a food-grade extract, so it wasn't as if it was dangerous to include the residue. Besides, it might help cover up the disturbing tang of the herbal liqueur that would form the basis of his concoction. For uniformity’s sake, and also for ease of decanting, JP decided to make his magical philter in one large batch. He passed over a bucket in the cupboard that smelled vaguely of old french fries, and found instead an aluminum bowl attached to the base of a vintage stand mixer. He poured in the fifth of aloe leaf spirits, distilled in Mexico by day labor that was undoubtedly descended from Quetzalcoatl himself, only slightly sampled. Two airline bottles of gin for that juniper essence. One thawed freezer pop for color—red, of course—and a good measure of plain old H2O to keep his customer base from keeling over. Carefully, JP brought his nose above the bowl and fanned the fumes in its direction. Medicinal. He supposed that was a good thing. JP never considered himself to be a particularly good singer, but in this particular case, he couldn't help himself. “I held my nose I closed my eyes...I took a drink.”

He wished he hadn't. The taste would probably live with him until he had enough money to leave Brightside. Still, he decided it was probably for the best. If his love potion tasted too good, people might be leery of it. He dug through all the drawers until he found a funnel. It was a well-equipped kitchen, for a snowbird home. Probably owned by a retiree on a pension who’d been moving from the Snow Belt to the Carolinas every November for years. He’d be sure to put the window back together just so. If the screen snapped when they aired the place out, well, what do you expect from a thirty-year-old trailer, anyway? They weren’t exactly bastions of craftsmanship. “When I kissed a cop on Forty-Third and Vine….” JP topped off the final bottle. He considered pouring the leftover brew down the sink, but he wasn’t sure the old trailer’s plumbing could take it. Instead, he opened the back door and dumped the dregs over the side of the peeling deck. He caught a whiff of herbs, juniper and fake cherries, but then the briny smell of the ocean whisked it away. ••• Ryan had noticed that Mrs. Marsh’s “pop-ins” never occurred between two and three in the afternoon. After some debate, he and his friends decided she probably had a standing date with her TV to watch People’s Court. Mirya had suggested she might actually be watching Oprah, but Chance said—in that casually authoritative way in which he said everything—that she was too spiteful to enjoy watching Oprah give things to her audience, and undoubtedly she’d rather be watching people squirm under the gaze of Judge Milian. And so, at two on the dot, he scrawled “Back in 10” on a sheet of looseleaf paper (which he would later put through the shredder), taped it over the Open sign, and went down to the pink picnic table for his afternoon break. Chance was always the first one there. He stuck out like a sore thumb in black and red among the tourists in their oceanside blues, pastels and whites. Today Andy from the canoe rental stand was with him. Mirya’s clogs clip-clopped down the boardwalk toward Ryan, and he stopped and waited for her to catch up. Since she was a seasoned pro, she carried four ice cream cones with ease. At the start of the summer they’d experimented with different flavors, but now they’d all settled into their routines. Mint chocolate chip for Andy, cookie dough for Mirya, marshmallow fudge for Ryan and plain vanilla for Chance, who said it helped him clear his palate of chocolate and coffee. Mirya handed Ryan the marshmallow fudge and the vanilla to carry. As he slid the plastic bag he’d brought along onto his forearm so he could take the cones, he noted that of the two cones she kept, neither one was green flecked with sharp-edged bits of chocolate. “What’s that? “Tutti-frutti.”

“But….” “Don’t make a federal case out of it.” She clip-clopped away from him before he could mention that maybe he would have liked to try tutti-frutti himself. And that he didn’t want to give Chance his ice cream cone, because…. Well, he didn’t want to think about why, exactly. Just because. It was with immense relief that he realized he could position himself on the other side of Andy and pass the vanilla cone to him instead. Andy passed it to Chance, who continued to stare off into the bay. Mirya sat across from all three of them with her back to the water and gave Andy the beige ice cream striped with pink, yellow and acid green ribbons of syrup and mysterious chunks of candy. “Sorry. We’re out of mint.” “Whoa. Muchos gracias,” he said, with no attempt to make the accent sound like anything other than pure North Carolina. “My taste buds are up for the challenge.” “So, uh, Mirya,” Ryan said. “How’s your grandmother?” Still alive? No, he couldn’t say that. “Still at Oceanview?” “Where else would she be? You should come visit. A lot of ‘em still ask about you.” “Yeah, I dunno. It’s little weird to visit the nursing home when you don’t have any relatives there anymore.” He slid the plastic bag across the table. “Here’s a T-shirt for her.” The pansy transfer might be low, but the shirt would look fine on Grammie. Gravity had long ago pulled her physiology out of the range of the pansies. “Pink? She’ll love you forever. You know she thinks you’re my boyfriend.” “I never told her I was.” True, two summers ago—before Ryan lost his grandmother to a sudden, and fatal, bout of pneumonia—he and Mirya had a standing date every Wednesday to go admire the handiwork of the visiting hairdresser. Ryan hadn’t been going out of his way to give anyone the impression he was straight. It just felt too awkward to go through the front door of Oceanview alone. Ryan twirled his ice cream over the flat of his tongue to try to get the melting under control, then found a seam of pale, sweet marshmallow shot through the chocolate. He followed it with his tongue tip, pressing a zigzagged crease into the cool, smooth surface. “I really need to start seeing someone else, or you’re never gonna shake the reputation of being my fake boyfriend.” Chance snorted quietly. “I didn’t know I….” “Maybe it’d get you off the hook if Andy went somewhere with me for a change.”

Andy’s cone was nearly gone; he’d been working the ice cream like a competitive eater. His tongue was bright red from the artificial dye in the red syrupy part and he’d probably have brain freeze in a few minutes, but since he got paid by the job for giving surf lessons, not by the hour like the rest of them, his ten-minute break was the only one that was actually ten minutes long. Or less. “Okay,” he said between big, gouging licks. “Like, the Clambake.” The table fell silent. If your parents took you to the Brightside Friday Night Clambake, it meant dinner. But if you went with someone your own age, it meant you wanted to sneak down to Coral Cove and get to know each other…really, really well. Ryan was so shocked he actually looked at Andy, and found Chance doing the same thing on Andy’s opposite side—only Chance had an odd little smile on his face, while Ryan was scrambling to figure out exactly how mortified he should be feeling at that very moment. Until Andy took his final lick of the top of the ice cream, the one that mashed the remaining tutti-frutti down into the cone and leveled the top off flat, and said, “Okay.” Just like that. He stood up as if it was the most natural thing in the world that Mirya would have just invited him to sleep with her—in front of Ryan and Chance—and for him to say yes— and he resettled his baseball cap on his sunbleached hair. “Later, kids.” Ryan, Chance and Mirya all watched him amble back to the boardwalk with the sand sifting through his sport sandals and disappear into the canoe rental stand. Even though he was long gone, Mirya still whispered. “Oh. My. God.” Ryan said, “I can’t believe you just….” “Omigod, omigod, omigod.” She stood up and did a little tapdance on the beach in her clogs. “It’s not like you to be so risqué,” Chance said around a lick of vanilla. “I’m impressed.” “Okay. I’m gonna tell you guys a secret. But you’ve got to promise me you won’t tell anybody.” Ryan fidgeted. Chance made the motion of zipping up his lips and throwing away the key. Mirya climbed onto the bench between Ryan and Chance, glanced over one shoulder, then the other (as if that didn’t make her look totally suspicious) and then pulled a small brown bottle from the pocket of her 99 Flavors apron. Ryan knew the label right away, but seeing it on a bottle tripped him up for a second and left him too tongue-tied to men-

tion that he’d done the lettering himself. And that it was a gag. A novelty. A joke. Mirya held up the bottle like she was modeling it for a game show and said, “Today’s flavor of the day had a little special kick.” The Spanish Fly label looked a lot more sinister now that it was stuck to a real bottle…a bottle one of Ryan’s friends had actually purchased. Chance bit into the edge of his cone that was starting to go soggy. “Maybe you should’ve waited until after you got lucky to poison him.” His comments rolled off Mirya’s bubble of optimism like they always did. “How long have I been hinting for him to do something with me? All summer, right? And now, just like that, just like it was his own idea, he said yes.” “Because you finally stopped hinting and actually asked him,” Ryan said. “I know that as my fake boyfriend you’re obliged to be jealous, but don’t worry about it. I’m on the pill.” “I really didn’t need to know that.” Mirya gazed lovingly at the Spanish Fly, then tucked the bottle back into her apron. “Maybe you should get some for yourself. Then you wouldn’t have to go around with that sad-sack look on your face.” “What?” “The guy who sold it to me told me to keep it quiet.” She stood, then slung one arm around Ryan and one around Chance to form a huddle. “But since you made a T-shirt for Grammie, I’ll let you in on it. If you see a black convertible with Illinois plates in the municipal lot on Second and Main, that’s him, the Spanish Fly guy. He’ll hook you up. Just don’t tell him I told you.” She kissed each of them on the hair, said, “I’m gonna go call Judy,” tossed her mostlyuntouched cookie dough into a trash can where two seagulls started warring over it, and ran back toward 99 Flavors. “Oh my God,” Ryan said. Because it seemed to encompass everything he was feeling at the moment without being too specific about any of those emotions. He disentangled himself from the picnic table bench, caught his foot, staggered, and said, “Well, I guess I should get back.” Chance caught him unawares with a cutting over-the-shoulder glance and met his eyes. “I see she’s not the only one who’s stepped up her game,” he said. Quietly—because he never raised his voice, and even so, the words carried over the crash of the surf and the gulls buzzed on ice cream. Ryan was so stunned—and so terribly certain that somehow,

Chance knew exactly what had happened in the back office the day before—he held Chance’s gaze for a long, agonizing moment before it occurred to him to turn his head and tear his eyes away. “What do you care?” he said in the general direction of the empty lifeguard chair. Chance didn’t reply, but Ryan was fairly sure he’d heard. “I mean, if you’re so crazy about me, you wouldn’t have blown me off back in June when I asked you to the Clambake.” “I didn’t blow you off…I said no. There’s a difference.” “Yeah, okay. Whatever.” Ryan stomped off toward the boardwalk. As he did, he was forced to admit that sand made stomping nearly impossible.

FOUR “Supplies are limited. Look, you sound like a good guy. Tell you what. I’ll hold one for you ’til six—you can make it by six, can’t you? But after that, I’ll need to make it available for a walk-in customer. You understand.” Cell phones might not work in Brightside, but thankfully, pay phones did. And they only cost one thin dime. JP wondered if he should run some numbers and meet with the folks at the local telecom to explain how charging fifty cents—like the rest of the world, if they even bothered with payphones at all—would enable all the principals to retire wealthy, wealthy people. He strode back to his Miata and popped the trunk with the remote. The phone company might or might not agree to chat with him, but laying out the spreadsheet would give him something to do while he waited to see if any of the latest lonely hearts who’d listed phone numbers on their personal ads were man (or woman) enough to take their loveseeking game to the next level. The vanilla box sat wedged between the laptop and a duffel bag of clothing. JP decided he might as well replenish his stock while he had the trunk open. He pulled out the corrugated cardboard partition fully expecting there to be another layer of small brown bottles, but instead he found the bottom of the box. He stared at the cardboard seam and did a quick calculation. Had he really sold out? He’d been so deep in the zone that he’d lost count. He patted his inner coat pocket. It bulged with cash, and he was sorely tempted to break his own rule and count out before sundown—but was too superstitious to risk it. Of course there was no set price for Spanish Fly. It varied anywhere from twenty to fifty dollars based on the car the buyer pulled up in and the condition of their shoes. He attempted a quick mental tally. Fifty, thirty, twenty-five…. It was no use. He’d been too busy reading people, their gestures, their nervous laughter, the tenor of the pauses between their words, to keep track of a minor detail like how much he’d been charging. Luckily, JP did have a single bottle left. Not one that he would normally have sold, given that the label had landed crooked and off-center, but he figured it was better business to offer up the slightly imperfect “last one”—perhaps at a discount—than to call back the 6o’clock and cancel altogether. Daydreams of setting up shop along the beach kept JP too busy to open up the new spreadsheet he’d been brewing, let alone to notice the passage of time. Of course homebrewed Spanish Fly wasn’t legitimate enough to carry a whole store…but maybe if he outsourced it and hung “for entertainment purposes only” signs prominently enough, he’d

blend in with the other cheap thrills the boardwalk had to offer. And he could think of just the person to help him with that signage. Oh, who was he kidding? Physical properties involved too much hassle: paperwork, taxes, licenses. The overhead would be phenomenal. And while JP was not averse to spending his hard-earned cash on necessities (such as the Miata he pledged he’d own by the time he turned thirty), he wasn’t one to squander money on all the piddling red tape it would take to launch a traditional store. Quarter past six and no customer. JP took it in stride; the lovelorn man hadn’t been the only person to succumb to cold feet, and besides, in the long run it was better to keep damaged merchandise out of circulation. The Miata’s tank now held enough gas to get him to Wilmington. If he spent the night there, he could source a bedmate for the night and a big supermarket to restock his Spanish Fly supplies. He closed up “shop” and headed down to the beach bathhouse, where a mere four dollars would score him a key on a bungee cord for a day. The facilities that key would allow him to access might not be the penthouse suite at the Ritz Carlton, but he did have a pair of flip-flops in his duffel bag, and a shower was a shower. He ran through his shopping list as the cares of the day swirled down the drain set in the concrete floor. Aloe liqueur, vanilla bottles, gin, freezer pop. Labels? Nope. He’d already run enough extra labels for a second batch—too bad. That sentiment surprised JP. Given that he owed Ryan the cost of three pages of labels…four, if you counted the sheet they’d destroyed by loading it upside down because they were giddy with kisses…it was downright shocking, even to JP himself, that he wasn’t already watching Brightside recede in his rearview mirror. JP lingered over his toilette. If he stayed in Brightside, he’d need to ask that smug candymaker for more bottles. The grocery-lotto-bait shop had exactly five vanillas, and no more. He’d checked. There was one consolation, though. Sweets to the Sweet was right next door to Copy That, and if it was closing time, one never knew who one might run into. JP didn’t typically do second dates; the thought of falling hard and fast for someone was scary. But who could be scared of Ryan? That kid was about as threatening as a melted cherry freezer pop. And twice as sweet. ••• Dregs of ground cocoa curdled at the bottom of the mug. They formed the shape of…a stag? A tree? Chance sighed and swirled the cup. The image was obliterated—whatever it might have been. He considered fixing himself another batch. Someone might as well be

enjoying his wares. Beaches and chocolate went together like rollercoasters and martinis. Both were fun, but not necessarily at the same time. He’d been there all summer long, too, wondering how no one noticed that if money actually kept his business in business, he would have soaped his windows and filed for bankruptcy months ago. Maybe all the shops ran that way in Brightside. How strange. Seeing as how Chance was so eager to move on, he should have been relieved to finally meet The One. But he wasn’t. Didn’t like the guy. Simple as that. Chance looked up just before the bell on the door chimed, and JP McMahon strode in smelling of eagerness and foil-wrapped cologne samples. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have a few more of those little brown bottles, would you? They were a really big hit.” Certainly, Chance had thrown in his lot with more despicable souls—and found them to be perfectly fascinating company. So why did JP get under his skin? “I can pay you this time,” he went on. “In fact, here. Here’s a double sawbuck for the last batch, and I won’t take no for an answer.” The back room pulled at Chance as he stared down at the twenty dollar bill and made an effort to keep his lip from curling in disgust. This JP McMahon was The One? Very well. Chance would go through the motions, and when he and McMahon were done, when whatever was about to happen actually happened, then he would leave this sorry little town and its decaying boardwalk far, far behind. “Maybe I have more, maybe not. I’ll check.” Chance slipped into the back room and opened the pantry door on hinges stiff and stubborn with the sandy grit that insinuated itself everywhere. Backlighting formed a perfect wedge on the single cardboard box in the center of the pantry floor, pointing at it like a great, pale arrow. Fine. Chance crouched beside the box and opened it, just in case it was filled with something festive, like a bunch of annoyed ghost crabs. But no. He found a tier of empty brown bottles instead. He stared at them for a moment and considered: a bad batch of Spanish Fly would shake things up, either by launching JP from Brightside for good, or by landing him in the county jail. His fingers hovered over the glass. It would be so very easy.

Through the far wall that the candy store shared with 99 Flavors, Mirya’s laugher rose and fell. Chance rolled his eyes. Easy? Hardly. As much as he’d love to taint the snake oil, he couldn’t do it…not in Brightside. He was simply too attached. Rime bloomed on the bottles as Chance fingered them, one by one, and channeled the sweet sadness of love into each one instead. And while he would have at least enjoyed making JP beg for the damn things, he didn’t even bother to barter. JP was so tickled that Chance had found more bottles, he could hardly get out the door fast enough. The bell chimed behind him as Chance dropped the pair of twenties he’d tendered as payment into the trash. ••• The light was on in the upstairs flat Ryan shared with his father. Ryan might not have noticed if it was still light out, if he hadn’t stopped at the chocolate shop for a drink with Mirya and Chance. It’d been an awkward drink. Some tourists started pawing at the windows like Night of the Living Dead even though most of the lights were out and the “Closed” sign was showing. Mirya couldn’t stop babbling about what she was going to wear to the Clambake. And it had been beyond awkward figuring out where to look to avoid meeting Chance’s eyes. But even if it hadn’t been dark out with the living room light showing through their thin plastic roll-up shades, and even though Ryan had indulged in an extra shot of Jaeger, he would have known his father was home before he even got halfway up the stairs, because you’d have to be dead to not notice the smell. Dad smelled like the ocean. It was a matter of semantics, really. Ryan used to think he smelled like seaweed and dead fish. But in an attempt to put a positive spin on his father’s hiatuses from the trawler, every time he caught that whiff of brine, Ryan had reminded himself that he was smelling the ocean. And then he forced himself to stop thinking about it. His father sat on the couch hunched over a TV tray. Light from the table lamp bounced off the chalk-white ceiling and cast a glare on his deeply bronzed scalp where his hair was wispy-thin. He was looking at bills. What else would he be looking at? It wasn’t as if he ever read because he enjoyed it. Ryan longed to sneak to his room, shut the door, and leave his father to contemplate the bills in peace. But his mom always used to make such a big deal out of it when his dad was on shore. “Being a fisherman is dangerous work,” she’d remind him each and every time his father shipped out again. “You never know which time you say goodbye to him might be the last time.” Ryan never realized he should have been applying the same logic to his mom. The last time he said goodbye to her, she had an encounter with a distracted driver trying to figure

out why her cell phone didn’t work. Obviously, the lady wasn’t a Brightside native or she wouldn’t have bothered trying. Ryan’s father looked up from his bills and squinted—the squint was permanent—and he sighed. Which also seemed permanent. “They cut your hours again at the T-shirt shop?” “Uh…no.” “Your last paycheck seems about twenty dollars short. I thought maybe she let you go early a couple of days.” Ryan thought back through the last pay period. “No, I burned a shirt, melted the decal right through it. You need to use a lower setting for glitter and I forgot to—” “Ryan.” Ryan trailed off. It was a relief to be able to stop re-living the failure even though he didn’t like the way his dad had said his name. Sadly. Like he was being crushed by the weight of the world, and because he had no choice he would endure it…but he hadn’t expected it to be quite so demoralizing. “Sit down a minute.” Ryan sat on the couch and wished he hadn’t done that final shot of Jaeger. “I’d been hoping to hand all the rent you’ve been paying back to you at the end of the summer so you could pay your tuition with it…but now it turns out we owe back taxes, fines….” “We? Who’s we—you and me? Because I checked those taxes and they were right.” “The boat.” Ryan planted his elbows on his knees and dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Ever since you took a partnership with them, they’ve been using it as an excuse to make you work harder and pay you less.” “What do you want me to say?” From anyone else it would have sounded like a challenge, but from Ryan’s father, it came off as more of a plea. “If I knew then what I know now, yeah, I wouldn’t have done it. But I figured I should try to make something of myself—I’ll be fifty in a few years—instead of bringing home an hourly paycheck like a kid your age.” Ryan wasn’t so sure about that. Some of his hourly earnings were negative numbers. “So there is no tuition.”

“I used your rent money for rent. I didn’t want to, but I did it. I’m sorry.” Ryan stared at a cigarette burn in the carpet. It had been there since they moved in. Neither he nor his father smoked. “You know if I had the money….” “Yeah, I know.” From the kitchen, the weather radio droned the barometer and wind speed. Sounds of shuffling paper on a TV tray accompanied the weather announcer’s monotonous voice. Ryan smelled his father’s boots from out on the landing. They reeked of rotting fish guts. Jaegermeister tickled at the back of his throat. “I’m sorry too,” Ryan blurted out. His father sighed. “You know, if it’s cheaper for you to stay in Wilmington year ’round, I’ll take a room at George Starlton’s place and we won’t have to pay to keep this apartment.” “And what about Christmas?” Ryan snapped. He never snapped at anyone. He blamed the alcohol, and the notion that he might need to drop all his fall classes because he had nothing to pay for them with…and then what? “Where am I supposed to stay for Christmas?” The weatherman announced that the offshore visibility was at half a mile, with light fog and a relative humidity of 94%. “Maybe you can go to school half time. Get a part-time job in the city. An internship.” “Oh. Right. Because designers fall out of the sky begging me to come and intern for them.” Ryan could have kicked himself as he said it, because how would his father, with his split knuckles and his tenth-grade education, understand what it was like to be one visual communications major out of hundreds, and all of them battling it out for the same dozen crappy internships. Ryan stood, turned toward his room, and swallowed the herbal sting of Jaeger, chocolate and stomach acid that danced over the back of his tongue.

FIVE JP locked up the old trailer, crept to his car, and cruised down to the beach with a trunk full of Spanish Fly and a stomach full of butterflies. He didn’t get nervous. He wasn’t wired that way. But the thought of seeing Ryan again and figuring out how to coax him away from his post left JP squirming in his seat. JP attempted to tell himself that Ryan was just another one of those big-eyed, soft-voiced southern boys. Not exactly a dime a dozen, but not on par with PT Barnum’s Feejee Mermaid, either. It didn’t work. He knew himself pretty well, and while he might have been mildly interested in knowing he was going somewhere a sweet young anonymous thing might be, or even better, the Feejee Mermaid, JP felt like someone had pumped his veins full of helium at the thought of seeing Ryan again to make good on his debt. He pulled up in front of the store, tucked his USB drive into his pocket, swaggered through the front door…. And stopped short at the sight of the cougar behind the counter. She was stick thin like she’d never once enjoyed a good burger or a piece of saltwater taffy, and her blondestreaked hair was casually tousled in a haircut that JP would price at anywhere from fifty to a hundred and fifty dollars, depending on the local economy. She looked up in annoyance from the register, but her flinty eyes softened as she took in JP. Slowly. From the top of his head to the tips of his toes. “What can I do for you?” she purred. “Well, hello there.” He somehow managed to drop his voice and add a respectable “you’re so sexy” lilt to his greeting without transmitting the depth of his disappointment. “Say, I wonder if you can tell me when your employee will be in next?” The woman’s gaze began to harden. JP course-corrected. “What was his name? Bryan? He gave me the name of a website but I forgot the address.” She’d relaxed noticeably when JP fudged Ryan’s name, but she still had a look in her eye that suggested JP might not have been quite as slick as he’d hoped. “I can’t imagine where you’d check it around here anyway. No Internet connections.” JP let his gaze linger at her cleavage, then lifted them to meet her eyes, casually, so she didn’t see he was kicking himself for being so sloppy. She smiled when he met her eyes. One predator to another. “How about that? Glad I’m staying in Wilmington.” “He’ll be in later.” She glanced at the clock, and didn’t bother to correct Ryan’s name, or to give JP an exact time. “I sent him out so I can do inventory.”

JP wondered if she would well and truly spot the three sheets of missing labels. Or four. And how he could make it up to Ryan…and that particular train of thought made the helium-veined feeling start up again. “I don’t suppose you have his cell number.” “I don’t suppose he has one.” Damn it. JP did his best to act besotted with her cleavage. “Gosh,” he said regretfully, cognizant of the fact that anyone who actually knew him would steel themselves for an outrageous line of bullshit at the mere utterance of the word. “That’s too bad.” He stared and waited for Ryan’s boss to offer his landline. Then he smiled vapidly and looked at the T-shirts on the wall—Life’s a Beach—then let his eyes wander back to her chest. He supposed it was a nice enough chest, if you were into that kind of thing. And evidently Boss Lady liked younger men who were into that kind of thing, enough so that she relented and said, “He probably didn’t walk all the way back home. You might find him in the shops on the boardwalk with one of his little friends.” She managed to make it sound both dirty and humiliating. In the event JP should ever need to charm her again, he forced himself to linger and exchange a few more empty observations about the Seahawks and the traffic on Route 17 before he excused himself. He stepped outside into the briny humidity and looked up and down the boardwalk. Sweets for the Sweet—he’d be sure to look there last. The bathhouse. A sandwich shop. A clothing boutique that specialized in bathing suits, sun hats and wraps. The canoe rental stand. And right next door to Copy That, an ice cream parlor called 99 Flavors. It wasn’t even lunchtime, too early for ice cream, but the popularity of iced coffee—and its undoubtedly low overhead—had the tiny store crowded with beachcombers, both pale tourists and tanned locals. JP spotted Ryan seated at the far end of the counter by the restroom with the overenthusiastic Customers Only sign. He was hunched over a massive banana split, picking at it listlessly. JP would have liked to slide into the stool beside him with a smooth opening line, but that spot was currently taken by a supersized Midwesterner. He ambled over and leaned on the wall instead, and said, “If that’s breakfast, I can’t wait to see lunch.” Ryan flinched, did a double-take, and said, “Oh.” He looked away quickly, in his charming can’t-meet-your-eyes fashion, and said, “I didn’t know you were still around.” The bleached blonde girl behind the counter found an excuse to wipe down the pineapple slushy machine across from Ryan, even though it probably hadn’t seen any use since the night before. “Ryan—remember yesterday’s flavor of the day? This is him. The guy.” She attempted a wink at JP which was overdone, and painfully cute. Obviously, a satisfied customer. “Maybe he can set you up.”

“We already know each other,” Ryan said into his banana split. JP had hoped for a more enthusiastic reception. For all he knew, though, the kid couldn’t wave his Pride flag on the boardwalk, so he did his best to rein in his “I want you naked, five minutes ago” demeanor—which was no longer a put-on to score printing services— and aimed for casual interest instead. He waited for the waitress to be called to the other end of the counter, then said, “Looks like you were right about the whole inventory thing. Hopefully this’ll smooth it over— I’ve got a return on your investment for you.” He slipped a pair of folded twenties under the hand Ryan was holding flat to the countertop. Ryan looked at the money. “It’s fine. I paid for the copies myself. You only owe me fifteen dollars.” He slid back a twenty and pulled out his wallet to hunt for change. JP pushed the twenty toward him. “Don’t be ridiculous. Your aesthetic contribution made all the difference in the world. I insist.” “No, it’s…I couldn’t.” The waitress came back with a tall iced coffee mounded with whipped cream and slid it over to JP. “On the house,” she said. “And if Ryan won’t take your money, maybe you should show your appreciation by treating him to dinner, instead.” “Mirya…” Ryan groaned. JP took a better look at her. If he ever needed a wingman, he could do worse than to find someone like her. “Oh, really?” “The Brightside Clambake is tonight—how about that? It’s a big deal around here.” JP shrugged. “When in Rome.” He turned toward Ryan, who was still focused on his melting scoop of pistachio. “What time should I pick you up?” ••• Normally, Mrs. Marsh made Ryan so nervous he couldn’t think straight. But today he hardly even noticed her. In fact, she’d had to ask him three times where he’d put the new shipment of postcards before he heard her, and eventually she grew tired of browbeating him and went home to watch People’s Court. The thing Ryan was having a hard time wrapping his head around was this: the laws of probability were apparently meaningless in Brightside. His father had been returning the “rent” every September ever since Ryan started college three years before. And now, suddenly, no tuition.

And yet JP, who Ryan had never taken for anything other than a ship that passed in the night, was taking him to the Clambake. The Clambake. Tonight. Mirya was blessedly silent about it during their ten-minute break, which included only her, Ryan and Chance since Andy was giving a lesson—but she did force Ryan to meet her gaze on the way back to the boardwalk so she could lavish a very knowing smile on him. JP was already parked in front of Copy That, leaning on his fancy convertible, when Ryan locked up the store. When JP rounded the car and opened the passenger door, Ryan thought at first there must be something wrong with it, some trick to the latch. Then he realized JP was opening the door for him, and he felt his cheeks grow hot. “Nice…car.” JP climbed into the driver’s seat, started the engine and gave it a couple of affectionate revs. “She’s a beaut.” “So, um, we don’t actually have to…” “Are you keeping the whole gay thing on the downlow?” “What? Not really. No.” JP leaned over and tucked a strand of Ryan’s hair behind his ear. Ryan could feel JP searching to meet his eyes, but it was too raw, too intense. He stared hard at the sleek, James Bondian dashboard, and JP said, “So we’ll go eat some baked clams. That’s what they do around here. Right?” “They’re fried. Actually.” “Clam Fry doesn’t have the same ring to it, I suppose.” Ryan had never ridden in a convertible before. The ocean air was a sharp, tangible thing that stung his cheeks, chilled his teeth and dried out his eyeballs. And it actually smelled like the ocean—not a euphemism for seaweed and dead fish, either. The ocean. He was so lost in the scent of the night air and the feel of the wind on his face that it hadn’t even registered why JP had slowed down until he dropped a hand on Ryan’s knee. “Is this the place?” Ryan looked out at the mass of cars. “Oh my God. Where are...is this...?” Ryan checked the sign. It was the Brightside Friday Night Clambake all right, but the parking lot was full. The driveway leading up to the parking lot was full. And the street leading to the driveway, normally deserted, had a line of cars hugging each curb from the beach to the Senior Center.

JP waved to an older couple as they climbed into their sedan, then pulled into the freshly vacated spot. “You do live in this town, don’t you? Is this, or is this not the most infamous Friday night hotspot from here to Wilmington?” “Well, yeah. But it’s really…crowded.” JP swung out of the car and headed around the shiny black hood as if he was going to open the door for Ryan again, but Ryan slipped out of the car before he got the chance. It wasn’t that he was embarrassed; it produced a squirmy anxiety in him that was too complicated to dissect with the heat from the citronella-fueled tiki lights beating down on him. They walked side by side up the shell-inlaid walkway, Ryan painfully unsure of what to do with his hands the whole way, rounded the stucco wall…. And nearly crashed into the backs of a couple of sunburned tourists in “Beach Bum” Tshirts. There was a line of people waiting to get in that extended from the front door to the edge of the patio. “This is crazy. It’s never like this.” “The clams must be in season.” About a dozen people ahead of them, a thirtyish couple whispered and pointed. Ryan felt his face to see if maybe he’d had something hanging out of his nose all the way there, then glanced over his shoulder to determine if maybe Dancing with the Stars was filming over by the bike rack. The couple waved, and Ryan was well and truly baffled. Until JP gave them a sly salute. “You know them?” “They look pretty familiar. A lot happier now that they’re together…and waiting in line for the event of the year.” “But that’s the thing. It’s really nothing special. The cole slaw is good, but it’s just a bunch of stupid—” A few heads farther down the line, another couple turned, spotted JP, and waved. He gave them a coy nod. Ryan lost his train of thought and seized upon another. “There’s not a band, or even a jukebox. It’s just a boombox with a CD box set called Hits of the 80’s and 90’s that used to belong to the public library.” The next couple in line turned to see what the people behind them were so excited about, saw JP, and joined in on the waving. JP waved demurely back. “So you…know….” The ripple of excitement moved through the line as more people turned, smiled, waved.

“…all of them?” “Satisfied customers, one and all. Just look at those beaming faces.” A commotion started near the front of the line as the group began to motion for JP and Ryan to come up front. “Go on,” said the first couple who’d greeted them. “Go up there.” Ryan had never felt so visible. JP leaned in and said in his ear, “We’d better go. It’ll just get crazier if we don’t.” Ryan nodded vigorously, and JP pressed a hand to the small of his back to guide him forward through the loosely-formed line. JP received pats to the back and even handshakes as he made his way through the admiring throng. Ryan wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had stopped JP for an autograph. The whole experience was so unexpected, so bizarre, that Ryan only noticed in a belated sort of way that everybody knew him, too. As the kid from the copy shop. Out on a big date with the Spanish Fly guy. Within the ring of paper lanterns that surrounded the patio, the boombox did its best to create an atmosphere, but with every table full—and couples encouraged to share the four-seaters on impromptu double-dates—the tinny blare of Phil Collins was lost in the sea of voices and clacking cutlery. A two-seater table opened up, right in the middle of the patio. “Oh God,” Ryan said. Under his breath, he’d thought. But JP gave his arm a squeeze. “C’mon. It’ll be fun.” Ryan was unsure what, exactly, his own definition of “fun” entailed. Probably never this. He felt the weight of the crowd’s gaze on him as the hostess showed them to the most visible table in town and asked if they needed menus, and whether they’d prefer glasses of Coke, or a pitcher. “I’ll go for the clams,” JP said, then looked at Ryan. “And you?” “The same,” he managed. “And a pitcher. Thanks.” JP planted both elbows on the tabletop and leaned forward so he could talk without shouting. “It’s funny, you’d think I would’ve felt something driving into Brightside, that I would’ve known all of this would happen. But I didn’t. It was just like any other day. I could tell you that people go crazy for my stuff all the time—but let’s be honest. I’ve never had an idea hit like this. Ever.” Ryan snuck a peek out from beneath the fringe of his hair. Every person within visual range was looking at them, and talking. “Yeah, because….” Because it’s all bullshit, he wanted to say. Spanish Fly? In a vanilla bottle? And how much did JP charge for that, because it couldn’t have been cheap. You didn’t drive a Miata by giving your stuff away. “Because I had help. Your label. That’s the only explanation I can come up with.”

“No way. All I did was change the font.” “You know what they say: never judge a book by its cover. Know why? Because everybody does, that’s why. People are visual, and they see something with a label that turns them on, and boom. They’re willing to pay for it. They’re willing to believe in it.” “It’s just a font.” When JP reached across the table and took his hand, a small part of Ryan was apprehensive that any of his neighbors who hadn’t yet heard he was gay would now know beyond a shadow of a doubt…and part of him was thrilled. “You know what?” JP said. “I want to tell you you’re brilliant. I think you’ll figure it’s all a big come-on, but I’ve got to say it anyway. You need to hear it more often.” Of course it was all a come-on. Like you could trust a guy like JP any farther than you could throw his latest grift. But hearing it still felt amazing. Jeannie Henner, a cheerleader who’d been in both Ryan’s AP Lit and AP Chemistry classes Senior Year, squeezed her way through the crowded tables with a tray full of french fries and fried clams balanced in one hand and a pitcher of Coke in the other. “Hey, Ryan,” she said, in a flirty, singsongy way, as if they were old pals—as if she was pleased as punch to see him, even though she’d been popular, and he’d been the polar opposite. Maybe she really was glad to see him. It would give her a chance to get a better look at the Spanish Fly guy. “Bernie from the tackle shop says he’s picking up your check, tip and all, so eat up. I can bring you some cheese sticks if you want. Or dessert.” She fluttered her mascara-laden eyelashes and slid her gaze to JP as she said the word dessert, like she wouldn’t have minded a little taste herself, and as she breezed away, she leaned over and whispered in Ryan’s ear, “Lucky.” Now there was a word he’d never, ever, even once used to describe himself. They ate, and the act of chewing clams and fries excused Ryan from having to come up with something to say. After every few bites, he’d wonder if maybe he was supposed to try to be better company, but JP would just meet his eyes and give him a smile, a reassuring smile, as if to say, it’s okay. You don’t need to put on a performance for me. Eventually, the pressure of having every thought in Brightside directed at him, as well as the result of drinking nearly three quarters of the pitcher, prompted Ryan to excuse himself. The line to the men’s room led out into the hall—which was better than the wait for the ladies’ room, which seemed half an hour long. Thankfully, Ryan didn’t know anyone in line, because then he’d probably have to talk, and what could he say, really? That it felt

like he was dreaming? He snuck a glance at JP. An older woman one table over had leaned across the aisle to talk to him, and they were clasping hands as they spoke, and staring into each other eyes. It wasn’t so much that JP was handsome in a soap opera kind of way. But his charisma came through, even from across the room, even when it wasn’t even directed at Ryan. He realized a gap had appeared in the line to the bathroom while he’d been staring. He shuffled forward. The men’s room door swung open, and Andy strolled out into the hall. In a button-up dress shirt. And slacks. Ryan had never seen him in anything besides a surf shop T-shirt and cargo shorts, or maybe a wetsuit. “Hey!” Andy’s teeth were bright white against his tan. “I didn’t know you were here.” “I got a seat out on the patio.” “Serious? It was totally full by the time we got here. You should’ve sat with us.” “Oh….” “Are you, like, on a date?” “Y-yeah….” Andy looked through the patio window as if he thought it would be fun to try to spot the lucky partner. “With a dude?” “Yeah. That’s generally the way it works when you’re gay.” “C’mon, I’ve never been a douche about that. It’s just that I never saw you with anybody at all, the whole summer. Do I know him?” If he didn’t, he was probably the only one in Brightside. Ryan shrugged. “They’re saying that Coral Cove is packed to the gills ’cos so many people are parked tonight. It’s one great big lovefest.” “Oh. That’s too bad. I mean, you and Mirya probably wanted to….” Ryan knew both of them too well to actually verbalize whatever they might have wanted to do—with each other. “You don’t need Coral Cove to get laid after the Clambake.” Andy stuffed his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels as if he just realized he’d said that to Mirya’s fake boyfriend. “What I meant is, the word Clambake itself is the secret handshake, not the

part where you get lucky down by the beach. Just coming here with someone’s practically like going steady.” The line moved forward again, which would finally place Ryan inside the bathroom. Which was good, because the thought of dissecting the significance of the Clambake made his head reel. “Okay, then.” Was it appropriate to wish Andy luck? No, too weird. “Uh…see ya.” Like going steady…maybe in Ryan’s dreams. The reality, he knew, was that a second date with JP was about as likely as a hard frost in August, and he’d be an idiot to think he’d see JP again once their date was over.

SIX It seemed to JP as if adulation should have meant more. Didn’t every young child pose in front of the full-length mirror on the inside of his parents’ closet door, and with a hairbrush microphone, conduct his own infomercials—followed, of course, by his own talk shows? It was a good feeling, the looks, the smiles. Even a great feeling. But not quite as transcendent as he’d always imagined. He glanced back toward the building to see if Ryan had emerged, and did his best to ignore the gnaw of trepidation that maybe the delicious anxiety of notoriety was too much for the kid to handle, and that maybe he’d decided it was easiest to slip out the kitchen door and walk home. The sound of Ryan’s chair legs scraping against patio brick was drowned out by the ambient crowd noise, but the rustle of a plastic tablecloth caught JP’s attention. He turned, relief already blooming in his chest—but it wasn’t Ryan seating himself at the table. It was the candy man. Different clothes now, a trim black suit, a silk blend, maybe, that ate whatever small light was cast by the torchieres and the twinkling white Christmas bulbs. His hair, too, was so black it looked more like a silhouette than a three-dimensional shape, and his eyebrows could have been a couple of arched slits cut through the white plane of his face, a window to the clear, dark sky that hung above the restless waves. “Enjoying yourself?” he said. “It’s a beautiful night.” “You know the problem with trying to be Cinderella? At the end of the evening, the carriage turns back into a turnip, and the riches to rags.” “I think you mean a pumpkin.” The chocolatier shrugged, an elegant shrug that belonged on a catwalk in Milan, not behind the counter of an oceanside town that was the poor second-cousin of Cape Fear. Then he helped himself to a long drink of Ryan’s pop. “You want a cut of the profits,” JP said, “is that it? I already paid you what those bottles were worth, and then some. Remember?”

“Everything. Always. In excruciating detail.” Chance swirled the pop in the glass and watched the melting ice click against the sides. “You hang on to that money of yours. You’re going to need it.” Bail was, of course, the first thing that came to mind. JP glanced over his shoulder, expecting to see some boys in blue sauntering up to the table armed with a charge of fraud, or practicing without a license, or even jaywalking. But no. It was just the folks of Brightside and their beloved Clambake. A newly-seated couple spotted him and waved, and he nodded back. “Frankly, I thought you’d be more insufferable in your success.” JP turned back to the candymaker, who was toying with the accordioned remains of Ryan’s straw wrapper, smoothing it over and over with his disturbingly facile fingertips. “Come to collect on that favor, I’ll bet. Listen, how about I slip you a Benjamin and we’ll call it even….” “Your business success, anyway.” He crumpled the paper into a tiny wad that looked, for a fleeting moment, like an origami insect, but then the light from the twinkling strings of bulbs shifted, and it was nothing but a misshapen blob. “The question is, will the success go to your head, or do you know when your luck has run its course?” “Is that some kind of threat?” “A simple observation. Nothing more. If there’s one thing you can always count on, it’s change.” The candy man stood, and JP watched him for “tells”—but he had none, none of the small motions that people typically make, settling their clothing, patting their hair. “Goodbye, Mr. McMahon. It’s been…interesting.” He left the table and wove through the crowd like smoke, and at the far end of the patio, encountered the girl from the ice cream parlor. She squealed and hugged him, her tall, superbly-tanned date clapped him on the back, and suddenly the candymaker looked less like a CGI version of a person and more like a regular guy. What disturbed JP even more than the candy man’s lack of fidgeting was the fact he’d figured out that a third batch of Spanish Fly had been in the realm of possibility even before JP had fully explored the idea himself. The way Chance talked, it was as if he thought he’d had a hand in the success of the whole venture. JP glanced up to see if he was still watching, but the crowd had shifted and now he was gone. JP straightened the paper napkin beside his plate. He didn’t need some bonbon dipper telling him how to live his life…but his own gut had been prompting him to move along. He’d be on the road already if it weren’t for Ryan…who, on cue, pushed through the crowd to their table and gave JP a shy smile. “Hey,” he said, “I’m really sorry. The bathroom line goes all the way out to the end of the hall.”

JP managed to swallow a few more clams—it seemed their plates had been stacked a lot higher than the other customers’, and there was only so much vegetable oil one could ingest on a given night—but they’d grown cold and rubbery. “So what’s this I’ve been hearing about the after-party?” “The what?” “After. After the Clambake. There’s got to be a reason everyone gets a sly grin on their face when they mention it.” “Oh it’s um…it’s not really a formal party. Or any party. It’s more like….” Ryan broke off and took a few swallows of his pop. “It’s a tradition, really.” “Go on.” “If you’re going to the Clambake as a date, then afterward….” He shrugged. “Afterward you go down to Coral Cove. And you park.” “Park—like in the ’fifties sense of the word?” Ryan nodded, and gulped more soda. “I’ve got to hand it to this town. Other than the cell-phone withdrawal, everything else about it leaves me pleasantly surprised.” “Did you put something….” Ryan peered down into his ice cubes. “Like what? A little taste of our collaborative efforts?” JP leaned back in his chair and studied Ryan’s painfully earnest expression. “Not my style. I prefer to seduce you the old-fashioned way—pampering, flattery, a spin in the Miata, and maybe a mojito, if you want to get a little buzz on while we’re stargazing.” Ryan sniffed his Coke. “Really? I mean, it seems sweeter.” “You’re not trying to talk me into dropping you off early, are you? ’Cos it’d be a shame if we couldn’t indulge in the entire Clambake experience. A real shame.” ••• JP had reasoned that since it was their lucky night, they should coast down to Coral Cove and enjoy the scenery. After all, they found a parking spot at the restaurant, didn’t they? And the hour-long wait to be seated had only been a couple of minutes for them. Which was how they ended up in a string of creeping cars that stretched from one end of Sandy Lane to the other. JP slid his arm around Ryan’s shoulders and said, “Two out of three ain’t bad.”

Actually, Ryan thought, it was good. Being in a traffic jam was something that happened to people in the real world, and he needed that sense of reality to ground him, to keep himself from getting carried away with childish fantasies where everyone went steady and lived happily ever after. JP drew a heart of the back of Ryan’s neck with his forefinger, and said, “We can still see the stars. The mojito will have to wait, but once we’re in the clear, wherever you want me to take you—your wish is my command.” “You’re sure you didn’t put anything in that Coke? ’Cos it had a really sweet aftertaste.” “No tampering. Cross my heart.” The line of traffic began to move, and JP eased his foot off the brakes. “I couldn’t slip you any Spanish Fly even if I wanted to. It’s sold out.” “Oh.” “Is that the turnoff for Coral Cove? It’s bumper to bumper. But if you really want to—” “No. It’s fine. We don’t have to go there.” Ryan suddenly realized it might sound as if he didn’t want a replay of the scene in the copy room, when in fact he’d been thinking about it nonstop ever since JP had left him there behind the counter with a slow, lingering kiss. “I mean…not there, exactly. But if you wanted to, y’know, go to your room or something….” “In a heartbeat—if I had a room. I was hoping if I promised to be very, very, very good, you might invite me back to your place.” Ryan shifted in his seat. “I think my dad’s still there.” “Well, then. Plan…D, is it?” As Ryan suggested the only private spot he could think of—the back parking lot shared by Copy That, Sweets to the Sweet and 99 Flavors—it occurred to him that he’d never actually needed to find somewhere to tryst. Not in Brightside. After quitting time, he and Mirya occasionally kicked around a hacky sack there beneath the flowering dogwoods. Now he hoped there wasn’t anything embarrassing about it he’d never considered, since he’d never actually scoped it out for its dating potential. JP coasted into the lot with his headlights off and cut the engine. “There’s a flashlight in the glove box,” he said softly in Ryan’s ear, which made a shiver of anticipation race down Ryan’s spine. “I’ll get us a blanket.” Ryan opened the glove box and pulled out the flashlight—and then considered the rest of the contents. A pocket-pack of tissues. A bottle of antacids. A protein bar. The leatherbound owner’s manual, which no doubt had title and registration (containing whatever

actual name went with JP’s initials) inside. And among all that other stuff—a small brown bottle. Spanish Fly. Sold out—right. He was dying to page through the manual, but couldn’t figure out a way to do it without getting caught. He pocketed the Spanish Fly instead, then turned on the flashlight, got out of the car and lit the way for JP, who’d pulled a duffel bag and a blanket from the Miata’s trunk. The lot looked different now, at the end of August, than it had last May when white flowers had covered the trees and the petals had fallen around Ryan and Mirya like movie snow. Now the dogwood looked dark, and dried, and the leaves drooped from the branches as if the trees were in mourning. Tiny berries that had begun their lives as the centers of the long-gone white flowers hung in big clusters, and the fallen ones popped under the soles of Ryan’s sneakers as he crept toward the back of the building where he’d spent the last three summers cranking out leaflets and T-shirts. JP snapped open the blanket and passed it over the ground several times, like a magician setting up his next illusion. Dogwood berries scattered. After the third snap, he let the blanket float to the ground, then knelt down, opened his bag, and pulled out a couple of bottled waters. Ryan was still rooted to the spot. JP looked up at him and said, “Is this okay? If you want something else—wine, dessert—I’ll go grab it. Just say the word.” “It’s fine. I’m stuffed.” JP patted the blanket. “Then come sit with me. I won’t bite.” Ryan’s cheeks felt like they were on fire. He trusted it wasn’t obvious in the moonlight, and he aimed the flashlight beam at the ground as he made his way along the berrylittered asphalt, and sat. JP eased up against Ryan and slipped an arm around him. It was just an arm. But it left a diagonal tingle like a lash across Ryan’s back where it touched him. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do. We can just talk.” “No, it’s…I want to.” Maybe talking was more awkward than fucking. Ryan peeled off his T-shirt—a thorny, tribal-looking decal that’d stretched when he pulled away the backing too soon—and sat there feeling exposed in the moonlight. JP picked up the shirt and rolled it into a cylinder, then lay on his side with his head on his arm, leaving the shirt for Ryan to use as a pillow. Ryan settled in, and JP trailed meandering swirls down his bare shoulder. “I’m leaving in the morning.”

Obviously. But Ryan awarded JP some points for coming right out and saying it. He couldn’t think of any reply that wouldn’t be embarrassing, so he moved in closer instead, and fit his mouth to JP’s to dispense with the need for conversation. The fevered rush of kisses they’d had in the back of the store was gone; instead, there was a gentle insistence, and an unexpected knowing, a familiarity that came from picking up a thread for the second time rather than snapping it off. JP’s fingers trailed over Ryan’s cheek, and through his hair, leaving shivery trails behind like the foamy wake of a jet ski. JP rolled onto his back and pulled Ryan on top of him, and the touch of the cool night air woke the skin on Ryan’s back, and made the trails of caresses leap to life. Gooseflesh prickled all over, uncomfortably exquisite, and Ryan’s breath caught on something that could have been either a laugh or a yelp. He tore his mouth from JP’s. “Are you sure you didn’t put something in my drink?” Moonlight glittered off the whites of JP’s eyes as he stared up, searching Ryan’s face in the near dark. “Look, I already told you I didn’t.” He ran the backs of his knuckles down Ryan’s cheek, and Ryan couldn’t suppress the delighted shiver that coursed through him, and made his hard-on shove into the crook of JP’s thigh. JP sighed and nudged his bulging package against Ryan’s crotch in return. “I’ve never lied to you.” “Right.” JP let his hand drop to the blanket, and he sat up, rolling Ryan onto his side. “Name one thing I’ve told you that hasn’t been God’s honest truth.” “The Spanish Fly—” “It’s a prop, that’s all. What did you think it was, some sort of Voo Doo, or maybe herbal Viagra? I never claimed it was. Here’s the thing: it’s not about what is or isn’t inside the bottle. It’s what the bottle represents—the willingness to go ahead and seize the day, instead of just wishing your dreams might come true.” “That’s not exactly what you said. You told me it was just a gag.” “I did, didn’t I?” JP relaxed and pulled Ryan close again, on their sides, face to face, and hooked a leg around him. “Well, that’s true too. If you look at it that way, yeah, it is just a gag. So what’s the problem?” Ryan dug into his jeans pocket and came up with a small brown bottle. “I found this in your car.” “You did? Huh.” JP held it up to his nose and squinted at it. “Wait a minute, now I remember. This one’s from the first batch, before I got the hang of getting the labels straight. Couldn’t sell it—I didn’t want to come off as some two-bit operation.” He

plucked the bottle from Ryan’s hand and twirled it so that the label was a couple of inches from Ryan’s nose. “See? Crooked.” “I could tell how pumped everyone was about the Spanish Fly. I saw how they were all treating you like a rock star—I was there, remember? I think you would’ve been able to sell that last bottle, crooked label or not.” “Look, Ryan, it’s harmless—and I didn’t slip you the Mickey. I swear.” JP pressed his forehead to Ryan’s. “But if you’re so hung up on the idea that I spiked your pop, then I’ll just need to level the playing field.” He rolled onto his back and uncapped the bottle. The cloying scent of vanilla welled out, vanilla tinged with something dark. “No, you don’t—” Too late. JP tipped the Spanish Fly back and drank, several long swallows. Then he tossed the empty bottle onto the asphalt, shuddered, and said, “Whoa, that’s nasty.” Ryan wanted to laugh. He wanted to throw his arms around JP and say, no one else bothers to humor me. No one else ever opened a car door for me, either. No one else even notices me. Ryan wanted to hold him, to kiss him. To make love. But JP would be gone the next day, and Ryan would have to face even more of the same. No humoring. No star treatment. No kisses. And the idea of losing those things he’d hardly even experienced was what had been bugging Ryan all along. If the realization showed on Ryan’s face, it was too dark for JP to see it. “Misery loves company,” he said playfully. “Now you’ve gotta taste it when I kiss you.” JP rolled Ryan onto his back, pinned his hands down to the blanket and kissed him, hard. Cherries. Vanilla. Ricola cough drops. Spanish Fly was a combination that could have been good, in a funky, Bohemian sort of way, but it had totally missed the mark and was instead startlingly weird. The kiss took Ryan’s breath away—or maybe he was trying hard not to taste the Spanish Fly—but the feel of JP’s body sliding along his, and the feel of his arms being held down on either side of his head, suddenly made breathing incredibly tricky. JP ground himself against Ryan’s crotch and managed to rub him just right, even though neither of them were naked yet, and despite the fact that there’d really been no way for him to aim it. JP flexed his hips again, and Ryan felt another stiff dick sliding the length of his, even through their jeans. He canted his own hips up in invitation, and JP groaned into his mouth. “Take off your jeans,” JP said, more breath than voice. He let up on his grasp. Ryan’s wrists stung where they’d been pressing into the ground. His jeans caught on his sneakers, and he shoved everything off in a big, impatient wad. JP was undressing at the same time, only his motions were smooth and unhurried, and somehow he managed to get naked just as fast as Ryan had in a nervous frenzy.

He rolled on a condom with the same cool composure. Ryan was shocked at how much he could see by the moonlight, now that his eyes had adjusted. The tiny lube packet, like you’d find in the restroom vending machine of a pick-up bar. The utterly still, totally serious expression. But it was dark enough, at least, that Ryan didn’t need to see JP’s eyes. The mere thought of eye contact made him shudder harder than the herbal-sweet taste of the Spanish Fly had. JP covered Ryan’s neck with kisses while he eased his fingers in. Ryan squeezed two fistfuls of the blanket and bit back a noise. “Is that okay?” JP whispered against his neck. “Really okay.” Ryan heard JP’s lips part in a smile, even over the drone of cicadas that enveloped the parking lot. JP pressed in with as much finesse as Ryan would have expected, given that he had a few years on the kids Ryan had indulged in flings with at school, and he was sober, too. Unless you counted the Spanish Fly. Whatever that actually was. Instead of pounding him right away, JP plied Ryan with more kisses, and lit up his body with more of those magical touches. Ryan felt himself stiffen, deliriously hard, and began to think he might get off from the gentle brush of JP’s belly on the underside of his dick. Ryan settled his hands on JP’s bare ass, and encouraged him to pick up the pace. JP was the one making small sounds now, breathy moans against Ryan’s neck, and a grunt when he buried himself hard, all the way in. Ryan whispered, “Yeah,” in his ear, and he started plunging in deep, over and over, until finally both of them were moaning, loud, and breathing in long, unsteady gasps. “Come with me.” Ryan had been teetering toward that razor-edged brink, and suddenly his rhythm broke like a chain popping off a ten-speed. It wasn’t “Come with me,” JP had said, which would have made total sense. It was, “Come with me.” “What?” JP pulled Ryan onto his side so they faced each other, legs tangled, and started rocking into him harder, faster, spurring both of them toward release. Ryan saw stars for a moment when a well-placed thrust bumped him in the prostate, and then it took a few more thrusts for him to wrap his head around the thing JP had just said. “What do you mean, come with you?” “You heard me. Get in the car and leave. With me.” JP pressed his mouth to Ryan’s as if he didn’t want to entertain the conversation, not if Ryan’s answer wasn’t an immediate and wildly impulsive, “Yes.”

JP slipped a hand between them, and Ryan tried to knock it away, to say he’d been hoping to get off from getting fucked, something he’d never managed before—and something that had always struck him as somehow romantic. Or at least hot. But JP’s tongue was in his mouth, and he was handling Ryan’s dick like he owned the thing, and suddenly it was fireworks in August, bottle-rockets, Roman candles, the whole shebang. Ryan cried out, and the noise was swallowed by JP’s kisses. His body stiffened as his pulse thrummed hard in his balls, and wave after wave of pleasure beat against the breakwater of his core. JP took a few more thrusts, and spent himself as Ryan floated on the high of his own climax. They fell together then in a tumble, sweat-slick limbs and come-slicked bellies, and held one another while they drank air. As he let the cicada hum wash over him, Ryan realized that JP’s breathing had grown deep and slow. Now that Ryan was no longer in the midst of being fucked, the mild night air chilled him wherever JP’s body didn’t cover his. Dogwood fruits were like big, round pebbles digging into his backside, but Ryan hardly noticed them. Come with me. Ryan would have taken it for the kind of line a guy will feed you when he wants to get off inside you. But the way JP had repeated it made him wonder if maybe it meant more. Ryan turned the idea around in his head for an hour or so, when JP woke himself with a startling snore. He sat up, took in the moonlit parking lot, and cracked his neck, at least five vertebrae. “That’s some nip in the air. I can drop you off, unless you’d rather sleep in the car. The seats tilt almost all the way back.” “Did you mean it?” Ryan asked, without any preamble or explanation. If JP hadn’t, he could pretend not to know what Ryan was talking about and save face, more or less. And then drop him off at the apartment that stank of fish guts and despair. But JP didn’t ask Ryan to clarify. He stared off into the night, quiet for a very long time, and then he said, “If I didn’t mean it, I wouldn’t have asked.” “Okay.” An ocean breeze raised gooseflesh on Ryan’s arms. It stirred the branches of the dogwood, which rained berries on them like hail. JP repeated, “Okay?” “Why’re you so surprised?” JP, it seemed, was having trouble finding words for once. His expression, what Ryan could make out of it in the moonlight, was almost funny—totally shocked. Cute. But funny. “Okay,” he said again, and tossed Ryan’s jeans toward him, which nearly knocked Ryan out, since a sneaker was stuck inside the pant leg. JP started dressing as if he was in some kind of race, and his enthusiasm was catchy. Ryan pulled on his T-shirt inside-out and jammed his sneakers back on without untying them.

JP threw the duffel bag into the cramped back seat and wrapped the blanket around Ryan’s shoulders. “Let’s leave the top down.” Ryan’s heart thrummed against his ribcage harder than it had when he’d been coming. He wrapped the blanket around his shoulders, buckled his seatbelt, and took a long, deep breath of briny air. And he decided if he never smelled the ocean again, that was fine by him. “Where are we going?” JP fiddled with the radio, found a pop station, and gave the engine a few anticipatory revs. “How about we cruise up to Connecticut and get hitched?” “What?” “Okay, okay. We can live in sin for now. But mark my words—one day I’ll make an honest man out of you.” When Ryan’s heart started beating again, it was pounding just as hard as before, and twice as fast. “I don’t even know your real name.” JP cocked his head, as if Ryan had made a good point. “John Paul.” “Like the Pope?” Even in the moonlight, Ryan could see JP roll his eyes. He turned up the radio, popped the clutch, sent a bunch of hard berries pinging against the back door of the T-shirt shop, and peeled out into the alleyway. Ryan was so stunned, the rush of night air stole the breath from his lungs until he remembered to tilt his head so that the windshield could block some of the wind. “I can’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. He had to yell over the radio and the wind. JP hit the four-lane, shifted into fifth, and stretched an arm across the back of Ryan’s headrest. “You had a taste of Spanish Fly. Nothing like a good excuse to do what you really want.” Ryan might have taken a few kisses’ worth of a taste, but it was JP who’d chugged the whole bottle. Ryan smiled, and decided to keep that observation to himself.

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About the Author Jordan Castillo Price and her cousin used to mix mouthwash with whatever medicines they found in the bathroom and dare each other to drink it. She assumes the gaps the concoctions carved out of her mind are the places where her strangest ideas now form.

About this Story I assumed this was JP’s story. He was the flashy one, after all. The main what-if when I set out to write it (what if a grifter’s hairbrained idea actually worked) was the genesis of the whole story. And so of course the story threw me a curve and ended up being about Ryan. I think a lot of times the innocent characters in fiction are way too innocent for my liking. What I really enjoyed about Ryan was that he wasn’t floating through the world in virgin-colored glasses. He has friends he meets for drinks after work, he has no illusions that he’s going to score a bachelor’s degree and suddenly make six figures at a prestigious design firm, and he would never presume that a guy who’s just looking for a trick is going to fall in love with him. Except “that guy” does. Ryan got to me a lot more deeply than most of my protagonists do. Maybe there’s a lot of young-me in him, though I suppose you could argue that there’s a little of me in all of my characters…but not Mrs. Marsh! Eeep!

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