Jilted

by Lilah Suzanne

  “Are we selling this?” Carter whispers while waiting to board the bus.

  “I think so…” Link’s hand in his is warm and soft. The rings on their fingers shift, cool against Carter’s skin; bracelets flutter and drag along the inside of Carter’s wrist. The line to board the bus moves forward, and Carter’s knuckles brush the jut of Link’s hip.

  “Are my hands sweaty?” Despite the February chill, Carter is hot all over.

  Link’s hand shifts, thumb stroking shivery down Carter’s palm. “No, you’re good.”

  On the bus to the next stop, he and Link sit a little closer, as a newly-wed couple might. Carter has to strip to his shirt, roll up the sleeves, and open the window.

  He’s good. Good, good. Good.

  The tour takes them to a haunted pharmacy and a haunted jazz club, a haunted cathedral and a haunted morgue, which seems a little on the nose to Carter. He and Link follow along dutifully, hand in hand and arm in arm, so committed to their happily, newly married ruse that, when Link drapes an arm around Carter’s waist as they enter the last stop—a haunted bar—it feels normal, almost. Very nearly real. Carter slips his arm around Link’s back.

  Everything is lit with dripping wax candles; there is no electricity at all in the old blacksmith-shop-turned-bar. Someone buys drinks for the newlyweds, and everyone toasts the happy couple. The drink is purple and slushy and sickly sweet, making Carter’s teeth ache with every sip. Link is holding court with a circle of people, saying something French, or sort of French, laughing and gesturing emphatically, so full of life, so beautiful.

  Carter can’t look away.

  Link is not Carter’s anything; he shouldn’t be looking at them the way he is, and yet he and Link are caught here together in this temporary in-between space, this real and not-real which is as much a purgatory as the spaces inhabited by nonexistent ghosts on this haunted tour. So, as long as they’re pretending anyway… He slips his arm tighter around Link’s sharp-boned hips, tugging them closer.

  “This drink tastes like the bastard child of Captain Morgan and the Kool-Aid Man,” Link says, and Carter throws his head back in laughter. It really does.

  “You guys seems so happy,” comments a familiar face from the tour; at the cemetery, they’d made rubbings of names and dates with crayon and paper. “How did you meet?”

  Carter opens his mouth and says nothing; he looks at Link, who stutters nonsense. Then Carter answers, “The bank,” just as Link supplies a response of, “An orgy.” Carter’s eyes widen, and he has to look away from Link, who is red-faced and seconds from bursting into laughter.

  Carter considers offering further explanation—an orgy for bankers? An orgy at a bank?—but anything he can come up with will make things worse, and anyway, Link’s shoulders are trembling with barely contained laughter. Carter, pretending to be suddenly distracted, sets down his terrible drink and pulls out his phone. He holds it up in explanation. “Excuse us.”

  A staircase looms in a dark corner of the bar; a heavy hemp rope blocks it off and folding chairs are stacked against it. Here the noise of the bar fades just enough to let them talk in low voices. “Sorry,” Link says, laughing, not looking sorry at all. “That popped into my brain for some reason.”

  Carter has to ask, “Who are you meeting at orgies?”

  “Who are you meeting at banks?” Link replies.

  He met Matthew through a friend of a friend who thought they would be compatible, possibly an even more boring scenario than meeting at a bank. Carter waves off the question. “I think everyone is on to us now.” He glances at the crowd. A few people seem to be looking for them, perhaps even discussing them as obvious fakes.

  “Good thing we never have to see anybody here ever again, then.” Link takes a long sip of the frozen purple drink through the festive twisty straw, then shudders and sets it on a stair. “Unless we’re all now connected in the afterlife! Maybe we’ll be the ghosts of the old blacksmith shop.”

  Even in this creepy, dark corner of a creepy, dark bar there is nothing remotely haunting going on besides the lingering taste of that disgusting drink. “There is no ghost of the blacksmith shop,” Carter says, impatiently.

  “Says you,” Link retorts.

  Carter rolls his eyes. “An entire day spent in haunted places and nothing. I want a refund. There should be a money-back no-hauntings clause if one is claiming to offer a haunted tour.”

  “A skeptic.” Link’s arms cross, and they lean forward into Carter’s space; Carter mimics them, tilting his head so they’re nearly nose to nose. Carter’s eyes slip to Link’s teasing mouth before he can stop himself. He snaps his gaze away as Link begins to speak. “The legend of the old blacksmith shop is that the blacksmith himself haunts the downstairs area. And upstairs…” Link flicks their head toward the pitch blackness at the top of the staircase. “Is where the spirit of a woman scorned roams the halls.”

  “Oh, come on,” Carter says. “They’re not even trying with that one. So obvious.”

  Link dares him to go up and see if he’s so sure, and he is, so Carter hikes one leg over the heavy, fraying rope while Link checks to see if anyone is watching, then scurries up the stairs behind Carter. Each step groans louder than the last, probably on purpose for a faux-spooky effect. Upstairs is dark, impossibly so; no candlelight reaches the space, no windows let in halos of streetlights or the soft glow of the moon. Carter blinks and blinks until his eyes adjust enough to make out three open doorways surrounding a short hallway. They’re like bedrooms, but it’s impossible to see what’s inside.

  Behind him, Link whispers, low and ominous in Carter’s ear, “She would wait for him up here. Night after night after night. He never came back for her. Still, she waits. For eternity.”

  Carter turns his head to tell Link how ridiculous that is, and that the idea of ghosts only exists because people see what they want to see, and further, why would she wait an eternity? The very notion—

  One of the doors slams closed. Carter jumps and yelps and clutches Link in terror.

  “Uh,” Carter says, his face now very, very close to Link’s face, his arms now wrapped very tightly around Link’s body.

  Link lifts one eyebrow, glances at Carter’s lips, and says, “Boo.”

  Seven

  “I hate you.”

  “Oh, pshh.” Link twirls a french fry. “It was hilarious, and you know it.”

  The diner where they’ve ended up, where harsh white lights glint on harshly shining floors, seems to exist in direct contrast to the dim bar. The chrome tables and counter and kitchen gleam bright silver, the walls blush pink, the chairs clash garish red. Over chili fries and a ham and cheese omelet, Carter and Link blame each other for the ghostly encounter.

  “You slammed the door, Link. I know it.”

  “You angered the spirit with your disbelief!”

  Top 40 hits whine from a brightly lit jukebox; a cook dances and sings along. Across from him, Link hums, scarf unwound from their graceful neck, hair now gathered into a messy bun, shoulders moving in time to a Black Eyed Peas song.

  “Do you believe in that stuff? Ghosts?” Carter stabs a square of ham onto his fork.

  Link chews, head tipping side to side. “I guess I believe in the possibility of there being something else—somewhere else, after we’re gone from here. Something that maybe we don’t fully understand.” Carter nods. He can get on board with that, until Link continues, “But I do believe in Sasquatch.”

  Carter rolls his eyes and laughs at the joke. Carter hopes it’s a joke, anyway. The diner, at nearly midnight, has attracted a fascinating mixed crowd of still-drunk college kids, paramedics between shifts, an elderly couple that seem to be as permanent a fixture as the grease stains on the ceiling, a handful of drag queens, and one burly guy in a trucker hat. The jukebox switches from “I Gotta Feeling” to “Bye Bye Bye” to “Bette Davis Ey
es.” Between bites of chili fries, Link stacks coffee creamer cups in a wobbling tower and hums along to every song.

  “You need a solid base,” Carter points out, fork waving over the stack of creamers. “Can’t build something stable from something unstable.”

  Carefully setting one more creamer cup on their leaning tower, Link glances up at Carter with a smirk. “I see you trying to prove your job is real, Carter Jacob.”

  “It is real,” Carter says. “Unlike ghosts or Sasquatch.” He starts on his own tower to prove his point, creating a solid ringed base to build up from. “I’ll show you.”

  “Ooh, it’s on!” Links wiggles in the seat. “You forget I’m an artist who works in a variety of building mediums. Do not underestimate me.”

  “I wouldn’t dare.” Carter looks up, catching Link’s eyes in a brief, charged moment.

  The competition takes off from there, and Carter, in his haste to catch up to Link’s tower, accidentally knocks his over twice and declares that doesn’t count because he hadn’t finished. Link cheats, too, snatching even more creamer cups from the three tables nearby, then sits smugly behind a towering and unstable completed stack. They’ve finished first, but one bump to the table and the whole thing will topple. As Carter finishes his much more careful and much less ostentatious design, Link tells him about a bed frame they created from nothing but old gears and a bench from only washers and tiny bolts.

  It’s impressive, and Carter is envious of Link’s creative freedom, but when Link reaches for their drink, slightly jostling the table in the process, the whole tower tumbles.

  “See? Creativity needs to be grounded in something first,” Carter gloats, even giving the table a shake to prove how solid his creamer cup dome is.

  “Pshh,” Link says, leaning back against the booth, twirling a finger through one loose tendril of hair while smiling and sizing Carter up. “So, Carter Jacob, building master. What is your ideal home, then? Since you spend so much time designing them for other people. A dome?”

  Carter scoffs. “No, of course not. That was just the shape that suited the building materials. I don’t know if I—” He stops short. He does have an ideal home in mind, but it was never one he could get Matthew on board for, so he’d let it go: a pipe dream, impractical. Until this very moment, he’d not considered that he no longer needs Matthew to get on board with anything at all. “I have always thought about fixing up an older home. Something with really good bones that I can put my mark on. Take my time. Not like those shoddy house flippers just looking to make a quick buck. Like a high-quality restoration.”

  “You should do it then,” Link says, as if it’s that easy.

  “I don’t think so,” Carter stabs his straw around the ice in his cup. Just because he can now doesn’t mean he should. “It’s a huge undertaking. With a pretty demanding full-time job and an—” He almost says an upcoming wedding because, for a second, he forgot. “Uh. Not enough time. It’s isn’t practical.”

  “Okay, that makes sense.” Link leans forward and plucks pink packets of Sweet ’N Low from the dispenser on the table, then sets them carefully in a pattern across the top of Carter’s coffee creamer dome. It looks almost like a flower. “Being grounded and practical is important; I’ll give you that. Sometimes, though, you need a little flair.”

  Back in the hotel room in the wee hours of the morning, Carter stacks pillows in a makeshift sea wall between his side and Link’s side of the bed. He’s never had an issue with accidental nocturnal humping, but once is enough to make him cautious. Like the night before, once he’s in bed and trying to sleep with nothing else to occupy his mind, Carter’s thoughts drift to Matthew. He doesn’t know how to untwine his life from someone he was with for seven years. His home, his friends, his meals, his plans, his bed, all shared. Back in Aurora, Carter doesn’t even know who he is without Matthew. Soon his sleepy thoughts of Matthew turn to wisps, to mist, then re-form in the shape of Link.

  Here with Link, somehow, Carter feels parts of himself coming back, notices an ease in his own skin he hasn’t felt in a while. He can talk to Link freely about his interests and himself without worrying that he’s being weird or annoying or rambling on too long. The dreams he’d put away for Matthew now seem possible again: fixing up an old house, living somewhere else, pushing himself out of his comfort zone, trying new things in a new place, the way he always thought he would. Carter needed Matthew to love him, but deep down he knew that Matthew didn’t love all of him. Link seems to like all of him.

  “Carter?” Link’s voice probes across the dark. “You still awake?”

  Carter shifts, gathering his thoughts and tucking them away. A pillow blocks his view. “Yes, I’m awake.”

  “I just wanted to say—” The bed dips, the covers swish. “Is it crazy to say that this feels real sometimes? Like I forget we aren’t—sometimes.”

  Carter stares at the pillow, thinks of moving it away so he can look into Link’s eyes, so he can scoot closer, so he can touch them. “I don’t think it’s crazy. I think…” He thinks he and Link have this connection that is now beyond being castoffs in Jamie and Matthew’s story, and that Carter is obviously drawn to Link. But he also thinks that they’re both still too vulnerable for him to act on it, even if Link feels the same. If. Carter knows that when he thinks about this week ending, a pit grows in his stomach, and it’s not just because Aurora has nothing for him anymore or that he dreads facing the music. It’s because he already can’t imagine his life without Link in it.

  “I think we’re really good at being fake-married,” Carter finishes, because he can’t admit to any of those things, because as much as it may feel real, it isn’t. “Banker orgies aside,” he adds.

  Link snorts and kicks Carter’s shin. “Goodnight, Carter Jacob.”

  “Goodnight, Link.”

  Eight

  In the gray dawn of the next morning, Carter stands at the French doors of the balcony, where rain pelts the glass and turns the cobblestone street into a rushing river. A single car comes creeping through, sending jets of dirty water spraying in all directions.

  “You know,” Carter muses to himself. “In Amsterdam, city architects realized early on that, instead of fighting the fact that they lived on a floodplain, they could work with it, building the city based on canals and bridges.”

  “If you’re suggesting we take to the town on a gondola, I am in.” Link joins him at the balcony doors, sipping a cup of coffee that fogs the cold window in a little circle. Below, someone, hunched over as the wind and rain whip around them, rushes from one store to another.

  “What was on the agenda today?” Carter asks.

  “Walking tour of the Garden District.”

  “Ah,” Carter says.

  Link turns away from the doors, heads back to the bed, and says over their shoulder, “So. Are you any good at card games?”

  The rain continues to pour all morning and into the early afternoon. They play gin rummy and cribbage, then war and go fish. Carter kills at go fish, because Link’s expressive face gives away every match. Carter insists on playing poker after that and he cleans Link’s clock. Then Link deals cards for something called “Egyptian rat screw.”

  “You made that up,” Carter says, gathering his cards into a neatly fanned pile. “This is not a real a game.”

  “It is! I learned it from the keyboard player for Chumbawamba when I was kid.” Link sets the rest of the cards face down on the bed. “Okay, so the rules are—”

  “Wait. Hold on.” Carter crosses his legs beneath him. “You’re going to have to give me more details on that.”

  Link only supplies, “I had a weird childhood. Okay, rules!” Link explains the game is similar to war, but numbers match to numbers until a face card is played. If there isn’t a face card match, the player who laid it down takes the hand—unless a slap rule comes into place.

 
“Like a double, or a joker is played. Also if there’s four in a row, like a king, queen, ace, two. Or a sandwich: a five then a seven then a five for example. A marriage: king and queen, but for all the queers here in the room, I’m amending that to any king-king, queen-queen, king-queen or ace-royal combination, and oh, we’ll make jacks nonbinary! Then there’s top-bottom, which is—Carter.”

  Carter snickers, then apologizes, then snickers again. “Go on.”

  Link laughs behind the ace of spades. “You’re terrible. A top-bottom is—”

  “I think the preferred term is ‘versatile,’” Carter interjects.

  “Oh. My goodness.” Link uses the card like a fan, cheeks darkening. “I remember this saucy side of you from that first night. Here I thought it was the absinthe talking.”

  Carter is feeling a little saucy, perhaps too much time close to Link and Link’s pretty eyes and pretty smile and bright laughter. Carter tucks his legs up against his chest and leans away from Link. “I still remember almost nothing from that night.”

  Something crosses Link’s face at that; their silly grin fading and eyes flicking down. “Well, it was a day I’m sure both of us would rather forget.”

  Carter aches to reach out, to take Link’s hand, to pretend that this little world in this cozy hotel room can be real: the two of them and no one else, no lingering presence of Matthew or Jamie. It wouldn’t last, but does that matter? He wants to pull Link close, press his lips to the sad, soft curve of Link’s lips—

  He’s staring at Link’s mouth. Link notices and blushes again.

  “I have to make a phone call!” Carter jumps up from the bed so quickly he stumbles sideways into the wall. “Be right back.”

  He goes only as far as the stairwell at the end of the carpeted hallway, where he paces on the landing between the fourth and third floors. He calls Paige and has no idea why he would call his sister of all people, only that Paige has this great habit of extinguishing any joy or hope he’s ever had. He needs a detached, judgmental, uncaring voice of reason.