by Gregory Ashe
“Matty, this is Mr. McKinney. North McKinney. He’s the founder of Borealis Investigations. We’re both going to be working on this case. And he was just being nice—” Shaw actually stuttered through this part, those hazel eyes shooting toward North, and North smiled and gave him a double thumbs-up. “Getting you that coffee, he was just being nice. He’s not a secretary.”
Another thumbs-up. After all, it wasn’t Shaw’s fault this kid was an entitled asshole.
“I thought this was your business.” Matty drew a nail around the saucer’s rim. “Your name is on the website. On the door.”
“That’s . . . complicated. Just trust me: we’re both going to be working your case, and you’re lucky to have North. He’s the best. The best in the whole business.”
Shaw’s eyes were begging North not to eat the kid for breakfast.
North ignored Shaw for a moment. Shaw was like that; always picking up strays. North was trying to reserve judgment on the kid—Oh, I don’t like hazelnut—and he wanted another look. With another quick look at Matty, North crossed to his own desk. The desk had been shunted off into a corner; it might as well have been covered in a drop cloth like some ancient, forgotten Victorian piece. But North wheeled the chair to make the third point of a triangle between Matty and Shaw, and he reassessed Matty Fennmore. The unruly wave of blond hair. The amethyst eyes. The dirt on his jaw, under his eyes, on his hands.
“Mr. Fennmore—” North began.
“Matty, please. I just want you to call me Matty.”
“He was just about to tell me how I can help him,” Shaw said.
North shifted his attention to Shaw, trying to gauge how hard his partner had already fallen. It was bad. Shaw’s refined features—the thin brows, the slender nose, the cheekbones and jaw that, in bad light, bordered on foxish—were already open in sympathy. The hazel eyes already had slightly red rims. The boy hadn’t even said anything yet—Two creams, please—he’d just cried, and Shaw was just about to cry alongside him. That was bad enough.
What was worse was the way yoga had left a smudge of dirt on Shaw’s nose, and North had to wrap his hands around the chair’s seat to keep from wiping it away. For a moment, North could only think about what he’d seen ten minutes before in the kitchen: Shaw with his ass in the air, the yoga shirt sliding down to expose the wiry muscles of his back. North could see, in his mind’s eye, the serpentine white J of the scar on Shaw’s hip glinting in the light. North wasn’t a praying man, but he still said a prayer of thanks that the bastard who had done that was in prison now.
North tried to focus. What was worse, way worse, was the sweaty strand of chestnut hair that that had worked free of the bun and curled along the side of Shaw’s face. Somehow the universe had conspired to make Shaw oblivious to how every ridiculous, soy-boy idea that went through his head only made him more eminently fuckable. North’s gaze flitted to Matty long enough to see the amethyst eyes openly appraising Shaw. The universe might have made Shaw oblivious to his own fuckableness, but the universe had done no such thing to Matty Fennmore. North soothed himself by imagining garbage trucks. There was one bound for their street this morning.
“I need your help,” Matty said, chin dipping, the tears rolling harder. “I can’t—I’m not even supposed to—” He took a choked breath. “Sorry. I just, I’ve never even said it out loud.”
Shaw produced a box of Kleenex and slid it across the desk, but Matty ignored it.
“What?” North said. “What haven’t you said out loud?”
Matty dropped his face into his hands, his shoulders jerked once, twice, and then he managed to spit out, “I’m gay.”
Shaw nodded, those hazel eyes wide and brimming.
“Well, duh,” North said.
Chapter 3
Matty sobbed once into his hands, and then he looked up, red eyed and a little snotty under the nose, wiping at his face, the whole show still managing to be surprisingly pretty. “What do you mean, duh?”
Shaw was fighting to keep from glaring at North. This was typical North, Shaw thought: this distant, bitingly ironic engagement with everyone. But it seemed worse than usual. Sure, the coffee thing had probably stung because North was still processing the fact that he’d lost his license—if I’d taken the shot, Shaw thought in the black tide of memory, and gotten Hanson before he could knock me down the stairs, we wouldn’t be here—but it couldn’t have gotten North this upset. Could it?
“I think my partner meant—”
“I meant you’re obviously gay.” North sat in his chair with his knees wide, his hands flat on his thighs, his shoulders back, those ice-rim eyes fixed on Matty. “Not the mannerisms, if you’re worried about that. You come off as pretty vanilla white suburban boy, if that helps. But you’re here. We’re the only detective agency for LGBTQ people in the city, even if we’re not in the Central West End or Lafayette Square, and you’re obviously in distress, and you’re not a father or a mother who wants us to track down their kid and maybe shake the gay out of him.”
Matty cocked his head. “Maybe I’m a brother. Maybe I want you to shake the gay out of my brother. Or my sister. Or maybe I just want you to find them.”
“You already told us you’re gay.”
“But what if I hadn’t.”
“Then you shouldn’t have stared at my partner like you wanted him to bend you over the desk and make you call him daddy.”
“North,” Shaw felt the heat rush into his cheeks.
North ignored him, gaze fixed on Matty. Matty met the gaze with surprising equilibrium. The tears were drying in shiny tracks on his cheeks, and he ran his arm under his nose again, soaking the sleeve of an expensive-looking poplin shirt that went with neatly pressed chinos and leather loafers. Money. This kid had money.
“I’m sorry,” Matty said, breaking his stare with North. “I’m still new to this. How to look. When to look. I feel like I’m naked sometimes, like everybody can see right through me.” He drew a deep breath and shuffled his feet. “I didn’t know you two were dating, and I’m sorry—”
Shaw burst out laughing a moment before North did, but only barely. Shaking his head, Shaw said, “We’re not dating.”
“Never,” North said, rocking back in his chair, his whole body expansive with amusement. “Not in a million years.”
“Oh man.” Matty hung his head again. “I keep screwing things up.”
“It’s fine,” Shaw said, his laughter shrinking to a grin. “Start over. You’ve never told anyone you’re gay.”
“The first guys I told ended up laughing.”
“All right,” North said, the edge in his voice finally dissolving. “We’re sorry about that. But we laughed because you said we were dating, not because you said you were gay. Go on.”
“You might as well look me up now. It’ll help—the rest of what I’m going to say will make sense if you look me up. Do you have a computer?”
North dragged his phone out of a pocket and waved it. Shaw pulled a MacBook from the bottom drawer and squeezed it in between the mountain of Emily Dickinson criticism on his right and the smaller, more manageable ski slope of loose papers on his left.
“Matthew Fennmore. RiverChurch. That’s all one word.”
Shaw typed in the search; out of the corner of his eye, he saw North pecking at his phone.
“First result.” Shaw clicked. It was a clean, well-designed page with a picture of a church at the top—a church approximately the size of a football stadium. It was an About Our Staff page, and halfway down was a recent picture of Matty Fennmore in a chambray shirt and well-cut slacks. “Youth Director.” Shaw scanned the rest of the page, and then he said, “Oh.”
“Yeah.” Matty dug the heels of his hands into his eyes.
“So your dad is the pastor.”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m guessing,” North was still tapping on his phone, “oh, there it is: ‘RiverChurch believes in the sanctit
y of marriage and the values of the traditional family.’ God, they didn’t even try to bury it; that part is right at the top.”
“Why should they bury it?” Matty asked, his head shooting up. “They’re not ashamed. And they shouldn’t be ashamed. They can believe—”
“Matty,” Shaw said.
Matty glared at North for another minute, then turned his attention to Shaw. His face crumpled. “I tried everything. I prayed. I fasted. I . . . I went into the wilderness just like Jesus did. I couldn’t do forty days, but I went for three, and I begged God to make me normal.”
Sympathy softened the strong lines of North’s face. “Kid, you are normal. You’re just not the same kind of normal as a lot of people.”
Matty shook his head; tears spilled, but he didn’t break his gaze toward Shaw.
“Matty, we can’t make you straight.” Shaw rolled his chair around the desk; Matty tracked him with his eyes. As Shaw’s chair bumped up against Matty’s, Shaw slipped an arm around the boy, pulling him against his shoulder. “We wouldn’t even want to make you straight, not even if we could. You’re too hot to be wasted on a woman.”
Matty gave a wet, sob-chuckle into Shaw’s shirt, and Shaw was suddenly aware of the boy’s wave of blond hair, the heat of his face through the thin yoga shirt, and—inexplicably—the way North’s eyes cut up toward the ceiling and his hands gripped his chair.
“If you’re here to ask us about conversion therapy—”
“No.” Matty peeled himself off Shaw’s chest and scrubbed at his eyes. “No, nothing like that. I know—I know that stuff doesn’t work. I read a lot. I mean, I guess I accepted it. You know?”
His hand ran down Shaw’s arm. His hand wrapped around Shaw’s. Amethyst eyes slid across Shaw’s face and to the floor.
“Yeah,” Shaw said, gently disentangling his hand, letting his own fingers curl around the boy’s arm—a show of support, but he didn’t want Matty getting the wrong idea. “But I still don’t know why you’re here, Matty.”
For the first time since Shaw had led Matty into the office, the boy’s tears dried up, and the delicate features hardened, and his voice lost some of its broken, waifish appeal. “I read about you guys. A gay detective agency.”
“We’re not a gay detective agency,” Shaw said automatically. “We’re a detective agency that specializes in helping the LGBTQ community.”
Matty nodded, but on his face, his confusion showed. He spoke slowly. “I . . . met him in a bar.” Matty squirmed in his seat. “Not a gay bar. But I kind of—I kind of knew a lot of gay guys went there. It’s in the Central West End. Allure. Heard of it?”
“Expensive,” North said. “Not that you care. You weren’t buying your own drinks. Not looking like you just wandered out of Shaw’s schoolboy fantasy.”
Something caught in Shaw’s throat, and he coughed, lurching forward in his seat. “I don’t have a—”
Matty shrugged, but a genuine smile blossomed on his face. “It was fun. I mean, it was scary too, but it was fun. Guys wanted to talk to me. Guys laughed at my jokes. They did buy me drinks,” there was a slightly defensive note as he glanced at North, “but that’s all right, isn’t it? I didn’t ask them to do it.”
“I don’t know about that,” North said. His lips were smooth and innocent, but he had one of those annoying North smiles bright in his eyes. For some reason, he kept looking at Shaw like the best joke in the world was landing. “What were you wearing?”
“Just regular—”
“Don’t answer,” Shaw said, squeezing Matty’s arm. It was hard not to keep squeezing. The boy looked like a boy: the hint of softness in his cheeks that couldn’t hide fine cheekbones, the long, golden lashes, the schoolboy blush. Shaw felt his own face heat. Damn North for putting that word in his head. But when Shaw touched Matty’s arm, he felt the firm musculature of a man, not a boy—that snapshot span of years between adolescence and adulthood that so many gay men fantasized about. “You’re just encouraging him.”
“Anyway, that’s where I met him. I don’t know his name. I know that’s stupid, but he said he thought it was hot that way, and—” He cut off, his eyes wide and searching out Shaw.
“And it was?” Shaw said.
Matty nodded. “Kind of.”
“Shaw knows exactly what you’re talking about,” North said. “Isn’t that right, Shaw? He’s got to keep a photo lineup by his bed in case he brings one of them back a second time.”
“He’s an idiot,” Shaw said. “Ignore him.”
“At least, that’s what he used to do.”
“Really: just ignore him.”
“Shaw, wait a minute. We need to talk about this. You mean all those pictures you kept under your mattress in college—”
“Anyway.” Shaw desperately tried to find a spot in the office to look at where he couldn’t see Matty or North looking at him. “You guys hit it off?”
“Yeah. I hadn’t meant for it to go that far. I kept telling myself I was just going out for a drink, just to see what it was like. I didn’t want anything else. I just wanted to feel normal for one night, do what other guys do.”
“Did you go home with him?”
Matty chewed his lip for a moment. His hand slid up to snag Shaw’s again without him seeming to be aware of it. He blinked slowly and then said, “The way it happened, he started off the night sitting at the other end of the bar. And I knew he was watching me. And he bought me a drink after I’d been there awhile—just sent the bartender down, didn’t make a big deal out of it. But over the course of the night, he kept getting closer. I’d talk to someone, and when I’d glance over, the guy had moved a few stools closer. On and on like that until we were sitting next to each other, and he made some dumb joke, and I laughed.”
“When was this?”
“Saturday.”
Shaw chewed on that for a moment. Today was Thursday. Five days had passed before Matty came to them for help; Shaw filed that away. “What did he look like?”
“Dark hair. Big, sweeping up and to the side. Like he blow dried it.” Matty’s face screwed up with effort.
“Any distinguishing marks? Tattoos? Scars?”
“Not on his face. He had these moles running up his side. Three of them. I thought it was cute.”
Shaw shared a look with North. “Anything else? Was he tall? Short? Lots of muscle? Skinny? Can you guess his race?”
“He was definitely white. And he was about my height, I guess. I don’t know. I know this isn’t helpful, but I don’t really know. I mean, he was just an average guy. He was cute. He was . . . I mean, he wasn’t old, but he was older than me. Like, I could tell he had a nice job, made good money. I don’t know.”
“Where does he live?” North asked.
Matty shrugged.
“You were there, right? You went to his house?”
Yeah, but—I had a few drinks. I mean, maybe more than a few. And I didn’t put his address in my phone or anything, I just followed him.”
“That’s all you can tell me? You followed him? Come on, kid. You can do better than that.”
“It’s in the Central West End, all right? It was close to Allure. We drove for, I don’t know, five minutes. Tops. It was an apartment. Or a condo. A nice building, but not so nice it had a doorman. I don’t know. I parked on the street. I remember—” He bit his lip. “I don’t really remember much.”
“You were wasted.”
Matty gave a defeated shrug and looked at his lap.
“All right,” Shaw said. “Keep thinking about it and let us know if you remember anything else. What happened after he moved down the bar to sit with you?”
“When he wouldn’t tell me his name, that was a big red flag. I figured he was married, and I checked his hand. No ring. That doesn’t mean anything, but I thought maybe he was, you know, afraid to tell people who he really was because his wife might find out, something like that. But when he offered to go
back to his place, I don’t know. I liked him. He was smart and funny and really, really into me, and I figured he was just playing the field, wanted a one-night stand, no name, no strings. I had a condom.” For some reason, Matty squeezed his eyes shut in embarrassment at this, and his fingers tightened around Shaw’s just as Shaw was trying, once again, to free himself. “And I went back to his place.”
Then he started to cry. Not the weeping that he had done earlier; this time, it was quiet, just tears running down his face, and he turned into his shoulder and wiped his cheeks awkwardly.
“Did he hurt you?” North asked. “Tie you up? Do something you didn’t want him to?” North didn’t say the word, but it was there like gasoline fumes.
Matty shook his head.
“If he assaulted you,” Shaw said, “this is a matter for the police. I can drive down there with you.”
“No.” The word came out mangled. “No. No police.”
“If he—”
“He filmed it.” Matty scrubbed at his eyes with his free hand. “I didn’t think we were in love or anything. I didn’t think he was going to marry me. I didn’t even know his name. But it was . . . it was . . .”
Shaw let out a slow, measured breath as realization clicked.
North said it. “Your first time.”
“I’m just so fucking stupid.” Matty was crying freely now, but his words, although thick, were clear. “I thought I was being smart. I thought I knew what I was doing. I had a condom. I had lube. I’d even, you know, gotten ready. Just in case. But I never thought a guy would—would do something like that. When we—when it was over, he went into the bathroom and I heard the water and then he came back out and sat in a chair and told me. He wasn’t even dressed. Just sitting there, his dick hanging between his legs while he told me he had a nice video of me begging for him to—” Matty stopped. Shook his head. “And he said he’d give me the original for five thousand dollars.”
“Go to the police,” North said.
Matty stared at him. Then he turned to Shaw.
“It’s blackmail,” Shaw said. “North is right; you need to talk to the police.”