by Josh Lanyon
*****
At eleven o'clock Colin was sketching in the Square Jehan-Rictus. His fierce concentration was disturbed momentarily by the vision of a distant silver jet tracing its way through the slatey sky above the famous I Love You wall.
It was probably not Thomas's plane, although–he glanced at his watch–the time was about right.
The righteous anger that had fueled him all the way back to Montmartre and his apartment–and then out again to work in the tiny park behind the Place des Abbesses, drained away. He was suddenly conscious that he was cold, that it was starting to rain, and that he would never see Thomas Sullivan again.
He lowered his sketch pad and stared at the long rain-streaked rectangle of 612 navy blue tiles of enameled lava bearing the inscription I Love You in over three hundred languages.
Je t'aime. That's how the French said it. Plenty of ways to say it. Plenty of ways not to say it.
Belatedly, it occurred to Colin this had been a really bad choice of a place to work that day. It was not a good day for working outside, in any case. He decided to go buy a bottle of mulled wine, head home and get drunk.
Instead he continued to sit and stare blankly at the glistening wall. His face was wet, but that was surely the rain because he was far too young to sit crying on a park bench like one of the elderly refugees who came here to gaze at the message of hope, to reassure themselves the world really wasn't that bad a place.
At least he had the square to himself. Not many people visited the park in this kind of weather. It was not much of a park in November. Most of the trees had lost their leaves with the night's rainfall.
Winter was right around the corner.
He really needed to pull himself together enough to get home.
The scrape of shoe sole on pavement. Footsteps on sodden leaves behind him. Colin glanced around, instinctively–he never quite lost that uneasy awareness of who was around him–and stiffened.
Thomas, face flushed with cold and possibly something else, was coming down the walkway. His eyes were dark and unreadable. Apparently he hadn't been kidding about being good at finding things.
Colin jumped up. He told himself the excitement surging through him was anger and shock, but there was a portion of disbelieving joy in that riotous clamor of emotions.
Still a few feet away, Thomas bit out, “For someone who paints a lot of shadows, you sure see things in black and white.”
“Are you going to tell me I'm wrong?”
“It's not the way you think.”
“I'm the job.”
“Yes. But–”
Colin turned and started walking.
Thomas caught him up in two steps. “Will you just stop and listen a minute? Yes, you were the job, but the job was just to check up on you, make sure you were okay. I accomplished that before we finished our drinks yesterday afternoon.”
“Bullshit. Your mission was to get close to me and make sure I stayed safe.”
“My mission?” Thomas's eyebrows shot up. “That is some imagination you've got. My mission wasn't to sleep with you. What do you think I am? What do you think your grandfather is, for crying out loud?”
For crying out loud. If he hadn't been so angry, he'd have spared a grin for that. But he was angry. Angry and hurt because Thomas had violated the trust Colin had placed in him from the time he was a kid.
He struggled to get the words out without revealing that embarrassing naïveté. “I think my grandfather…has a God complex. I have no idea what you are, and I don't want to know.” He didn't walk away. He should have been walking away by then. But he wasn't too angry and hurt to notice that Thomas had missed his flight to find him and talk to him.
Instead it was Thomas who half turned, looking skyward in exasperation.
“You cut off all communication, Col. Mason was worried. You're all he has.”
“I didn't cut off all communication. I–I tried to set some parameters. You know how he is.”
“I know he's a frail and elderly man who loves you more than anything on the planet. And I know he's worried sick.”
That took some of the wind out of his already luffing sails. Colin did worry about his grandfather, was conscious that he wasn't getting any younger.
He said, and he could hear the resistance warring with guilt in his tone. “Look, I love my grandfather, but I don't have any illusions about him–maybe you do, but then you don't know him that well. He doesn't ask and he doesn't listen. He uses money to control and manipulate. He always has, he always will.
“I know. I do realize that. I know him better than you think. But it doesn't change the fact that he loves you and is worried about you. I'm not saying you should go back, I'm just saying you shouldn't shut him out entirely.”
That caught him utterly off guard. “You're not saying I should go back?”
Thomas shook his head. “I don't think you should go back until you're ready. But you do need to let him know where you are.”
Colin swallowed hard. “You didn't tell him?”
Thomas gave another of those brisk head shakes. “I told him I found you, I'd seen where you lived and you were all right and that I'd talk to you. See if you were okay with letting him know where you were, but that I wasn't going to reveal that information if you didn't give permission.”
Colin opened his mouth, but Thomas added, “And I'd told him that before I ever agreed to have a look for you. There was no way–assuming you were okay–that I was going to get in the middle of your private war.”
“It's not a war.”
“Sure it is,” Thomas said easily. “It's your war for independence. And, believe it or not, I'm in favor of that.”
“Then why didn't you just tell me yesterday?”
Thomas sighed.
Colin tensed, remembering. Remembering too much. “Everything that happened between us was a lie.”
“No.”
“All those bullshit questions yesterday afternoon. You already knew the answers: that I was here painting, that I'd argued with–”
“That's all I knew. It took me two days to track you down.”
“Fine. So it was a fact-finding mission. That doesn't make it better.” Maybe if he didn't feel like such a fool…
Thomas gave him a long look. “Your feelings are hurt and your pride is injured. I understand. I apologize. Now do you want to hear my side of this or do you just want to tell me the way it is?”
What was the point? Maybe Thomas's motives had been pure. It didn't change the fact that he didn't feel what Colin did. That Colin had made a fool of himself–and that Thomas had encouraged him to do so. He said quietly, bitterly, “No, I don't want to hear your side of this. I already told you that.” He bent, picked up his sketch pad, lunch bag.
Thomas's hand closed on his upper arm. “You're going to hear it anyway. You owe me that much.”
“I owe you?” Colin straightened, glaring. “Well, this ought to be good. Go ahead.”
“You think last night was just about you? You think I didn't have a stake in what happened between us? That I don't have feelings about what happened? Grow up!”
The unexpected heat in Thomas's face and voice startled Colin. He said stiffly, “Okay. Sorry. What did you want to say?”
“What I wanted to say was yes, I came looking for you as a favor to Mason, but I was already in this country finishing up a job. That's the first thing I want you to understand.”
Thomas took a deep, steadying breath and Colin realized that this mattered to him, that the words were not coming easily. “I didn't come hunting you. I was already here, and since I was already here and had a couple of days to kill, I agreed to have a look for you to put your grandfather's mind at ease. And because I cared whether you were alright or not.”
“Yeah, you cared so much you never so much as sent me a postcard.”
“Colin.” Thomas raked a hand through his hair. “There's a considerable age difference between us. It might not mean a
lot now, but it sure as hell meant a lot when you were seventeen. Or even when you were in college. You think I wasn't aware that I had an inside track to your…affections? I could have had you any time from the point you…formed an attachment to me. I kept a distance for your sake as much as my own.”
“Your own?”
Thomas responded to the wariness in Colin's voice with exasperation. “Yes, my own. If you haven't noticed that I've got feelings for you then all I can say is you're the first blind artist I've met.”
Colin didn't know what to answer. Thomas said, “Okay. So mission accomplished by the time we finished our first glass of wine yesterday afternoon.”
Colin thought back to the previous day. “You went inside the café and phoned my grandfather.”
“Yes. And from that point on, I was on my own time.”
Colin didn't know what to say. He was still rattled from his emotional high dive. He'd been so sure of Thomas's betrayal, so convinced that he had made a fool of himself the night before–plunging from the giddy high of falling in love and believing it was even reciprocated to splashing down into ice cold reality of Thomas's real agenda.
Thomas added, “Last night was about you and me, and nobody else.”
Colin protested–and he could hear the childish, aggrieved note in his voice, “Then why didn't you tell me–why'd you go on letting me think your running into me was just chance?”
“I was going to talk to you this morning. And I'd have done that if you hadn't flipped out.”
He ignored that. “Why didn't you tell me last night–before we slept together?”
“You want the truth? We had one night. I didn't want to spend it talking about your grandfather or the past–let alone risk you freaking out. I wanted to…explore the present with you. See if there was…maybe a future.”
Thomas held his gaze steadily until Colin had to look away. He stared moodily out at the gray green shrubs. Was he being unfair to Thomas? Being unfair to both of them maybe?
“I don't know if that was selfish or not,” Thomas said, watching him. “I think that's what you wanted too.”
If he was realistic, yes. He had wanted Thomas to stop viewing him from the perspective of the past, to see him as a desirable adult rather than the traumatized kid he'd been. Last night he had wanted to pretend–wanted Thomas to go along with the pretense–that they were meeting for the first time.
Thomas said almost gently, “It's not a black and white world, Colin.”
He looked back at Thomas who was watching him steadily, gravely. “You missed your flight.”
“This was more important.”
Colin took a deep breath and exhaled, let go of the anger, the hurt, the disappointment, and the fear. He tried for a smile although he felt out of practice.
“So…where do we go from here?” He waited to hear Thomas say they didn't go anywhere, that they would always be friends, but he had to hurry to catch the next flight out of Paris…
Thomas said, “I spent the last two and half hours searching for you. Let's start with breakfast–or whatever they call it over here.”
“Petit déjeuner.”
“Right. Let's start there. Where's a good place to eat? Some place we can talk.”
“Is there still a lot to say?”
“I guess that's up to you.”
Colin thought it over. He said, “Croissants and petit pains with cheese, jam, honey, and nutella, okay? Good coffee?”
“I'm hungry,” Thomas said evenly, “but it's not so much the food as the company I'm interested in.”
“I was thinking I'll fix you breakfast.”
Thomas relaxed a fraction. He smiled, his eyes tilting in the old warm way. “Oh. Okay.”
“We just have to make one stop on the way.”
Thomas raised his brows inquiringly.
Colin admitted, “I think maybe it's time to buy a tube of red paint.”
About the Author
A distinct voice in gay fiction, multi-award-winning author JOSH LANYON has been writing gay mystery, adventure and romance for over a decade. In addition to numerous short stories, novellas, and novels, Josh is the author of the critically acclaimed Adrien English series, including The Hell You Say, winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT Fiction. Josh is an Eppie Award winner and a three-time Lambda Literary Award finalist.
Find other Josh Lanyon titles at Josh Lanyon: The Official Site
Thank you for buying this book. It is only because readers like you continue purchase fiction that writers can still afford to write.
~ Josh Lanyon ~