by T. J. Klune
For above the home of one Mike Frazier swirls a massive cloud of birds.
He’s never seen anything like it. There have to be tens of thousands of them, moving in sync with each other, the great cloud shifting as if it’s made of smoke. The birds form a large ball, which collapses in on itself as soon as it takes shape, spreading outward until the birds stop seemingly in midair and change direction almost at random.
Mike has never felt so small, so insignificant at the sight of something.
He has no words.
He stands in his backyard at 133 Sunlight Way and watches starlings above him dance and dance and dance.
It goes on for three minutes. Then four.
And he’s thinking, he’s thinking there’s more to it than this. He’s thinking that if something like this cloud of birds could exist, there has to be more out there. Something bigger. Something greater.
Outside Amorea.
He needs to tell someone. Sean. He needs to tell Sean. And everyone else. Anyone who will listen. Because he’s not dreaming, and there are starlings above him, thousands and thousands of starlings and he—
AT 6:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning, Mike Frazier’s alarm clock goes off as usual.
He groans and twists in the sheets, reaching over and hitting the top of the clock.
The alarm falls silent.
He opens his eyes. Stretches, back popping and toes cracking.
Martin blinks at him with disdain from his spot on the other pillow.
Mike sighs and rubs his eyes. He’s rested, but not as much as he thought he’d be. He turned in early the night before, knowing he’d be up later the next night for poker with the boys.
He needs to get a move on if he wants to spend any time at the diner this morning with Sean over a cup of coffee.
He’s up and out of bed.
He does five hundred jumping jacks.
Two hundred push-ups.
Jumps rope for fifteen minutes.
Two hundred sit-ups.
He’s sweating by the time he’s done.
He needs a shower. Maybe a glass of juice after. Or maybe Sean will have some orange juice for him with his breakfast, the pulpy kind he loves so much. Sean always makes a face when he drinks it.
So he’s distracted by thoughts of a secret smile just for him and scratching absently at his wrist when he stubs his toe and trips over something lying on the ground near his bedroom door.
He grunts out a curse, something so rarely done that it surprises even him. That’s okay, though. It’s to be expected. That hurt.
He winces and hops on one foot for a moment. The pain fades almost immediately, as these things often do. The initial burst was the worst part of it.
He looks down.
On the floor lies his old wooden Louisville Slugger, its handle wrapped in peeling tape.
He frowns. He doesn’t know how the hell that got out here. It’s been sitting in the back of his closet for years.
“Did you do this?” he asks Martin.
Martin ignores him, as cats often do.
“Losing it,” he mutters as he bends over to pick up the bat. For a moment, he thinks the handle is warm, like it was clutched for hours, but he shakes his head. That’s just crazy talk. There’s no one else here. Martin must have dragged it out from the closet at night. Maybe he lay on it. Yeah, that sounds about right.
“I’ve got my eye on you,” he says to Martin.
Martin flicks his tail and does nothing more.
Mike leaves him to it.
THE MILKMAN’S already come and gone by the time Mike steps out the front door. There’s two bottles of milk and a small dish of sour cream that Mike had asked for special for tonight for a dip for their snacks. He picks up the metal crate and takes it inside. The milk and sour cream go in the refrigerator and he’s ready to start his day.
He shuts the door behind him and thinks, Maybe I should lock it, and then shakes his head. He doesn’t know where that came from. He doesn’t need to lock his door. He never does. This is Amorea, after all.
It’s a quarter till seven. The shop opens at eight. It’ll take him ten minutes to get to the diner. That’s a good hour of time he’ll have with Sean if it’s not too busy. He’s looking forward to it.
There’s a feather on the ground near the end of the walkway to his house. It’s violet and green and brown and very pretty. He’s never seen anything like it before.
No matter, though.
Sean’s waiting for him.
Mike says “Good morning” to his neighbors as they walk toward town.
It looks like it’s going to be a beautiful day.
V
“YOU’RE STILL scratching your wrist,” Sean says as he comes to refill Mike’s coffee mug. He leans against the table as he does it, and Mike’s fingers brush against his hip—whether by accident or design, he doesn’t really know.
“Just itches a bit,” he says. He didn’t even realize he was doing it again.
“You’re going to rub it raw.”
“Nag, nag, nag,” Mike says.
And Sean looks startled, then throws his head back and laughs like he does when Mike surprises him—raucous and loud. Mike feels inordinately pleased with himself, though he tries to keep it off his face. He doesn’t know how well he succeeds. He finds he doesn’t care much about hiding anything.
“You,” Sean says, wiping his eyes, “are the best thing I know.”
And Mike… well. Mike chokes on his coffee, having chosen that moment to take a sip. It sprays out on the table, and he’s trying to sit back at the same time so it doesn’t drip on his shirt. He’s wearing a plain white T-shirt again, not that he really owns much else, and he doesn’t want to have to go home before he goes to his shop.
Sean’s already got a rag out and is wiping down the table with one hand while he uses the other to rub Mike’s back in slow circles.
Mike’s got a napkin from the holder and wipes his mouth. He’s embarrassed, but doesn’t want to be. Because Sean’s hand is heavy and warm and he likes to be touched. Sean’s the only one who touches him these days, for the most part. He’d like to keep it that way, for as long as he possibly can.
“Was it something I said, big guy?” Sean asks, hunched over the table, mouth near Mike’s ear, like he knows what he’s done to Mike, that he’s ruined him for everyone else.
“Yeah,” Mike croaks.
“Yeah,” Sean says, and Mike can hear the smile in his voice.
Which is why Mike cannot be blamed when he blurts, “Saturday.”
Sean leans back a little, hand now on Mike’s shoulder. “Saturday?”
Mike nods. “Saturday,” he says, trying to stop himself from repeating it yet again and making things worse. “We could… do. Something.” And he berates himself internally, because could he sound any more ridiculous?
“Could we?” Sean says. “You only open in the morning.”
“And you don’t work at all,” Mike says.
“You checking up on me, Mike?” Sean asks, squeezing his shoulder.
He hadn’t been, no, but Oscar had given him this information pointedly when Mike first walked in, telling him that something should probably be done about that, given “you’ll both be free and all, don’t be a goddamn pussy about this, Jesus.”
Mike says, “I just….”
Sean gives him a break. “I suppose I haven’t sat in the park in a long while. Watched the clouds go by. I could even pack a picnic, if you’d be so inclined.”
Mike’s already nodding by the time Sean finishes. “That’s… that’s swell. That’s real swell.”
Sean looks over his shoulder and scans the diner. When no one tries to get his attention, he sits down opposite Mike in the booth with a little huff, tossing the wet rag to the side. He’s chewing on his bottom lip and he looks nervous, and Mike has no idea why. The hard part’s over. Mike fumbled his way through an invitation and Sean rescued it and here they are. He shouldn’t have
any reason to be nervous.
Mike waits, because whatever Sean has on his mind will come out eventually.
It does. He says, “You’re my best friend.”
“Yeah,” Mike says. “Yeah, I know. Me too. I mean, you. You’re mine too.”
“Okay. Good.”
Mike waits again. He doesn’t wait for long.
“You’re… more than that,” Sean says. “To me.”
Mike Frazier doesn’t like talking about feelings, but this is Sean, so he swallows past it and puts on a brave face. He says, “Yeah, okay, me too,” because this feels like the beginning of something.
Sean’s cheeks pink a little. He’s smiling that smile when he says, “Do you remember when you first came in here?”
He does and he doesn’t. It’s odd, this disparity. He can’t remember a life when Sean wasn’t some kind of driving force that moved him, but there has to be. Sean’s younger than him. Mike hasn’t been in Amorea that long. He came here from… somewhere else. He’d been at—
His wrist itches.
He’d been in Amorea only a week or so. He had the house. He had the store. He had the basic foundation for a life here. People were kind to him. They waved and smiled and oohed and aahed over his storefront. They asked him when he would open. They said they’d always wanted a bookstore in Amorea. And Bookworm? What a clever, charming name that was! He seemed like such a nice man, they said. Such a sweet man. They told him he’d fit in perfectly here, they had no doubt.
No one asked where he’d come from.
He didn’t know what to tell them if they did. The more the days passed, the more he felt like he hadn’t really been living before he arrived in Amorea. He hadn’t had a life. So of course he didn’t want to think about before. It was just that simple.
It was a Friday. He’d planned on opening the shop the next day for a sort of preview before the official opening the following week.
He’d spent the morning unpacking books and setting up shelves. He was sore, but it was a good soreness, derived from hard work.
He was hungry.
A group of ladies who’d brought him a casserole and a pie and muffins (“It’s the neighborly thing to do,” Mrs. Richardson said with a sniff) told him the diner couldn’t be beat. He noticed the little gleam in their eyes but said nothing of it, not necessarily wanting to know what sort of schemes were forming in their heads.
(Though, later, he would wonder just how they knew he would respond to Sean as he did. He’d only told them the barest of information about himself. But somehow, they knew. He should have been more frightened of his soon-to-be book club than he was.)
He walked down Main Street, the sky so blue above, the birds chirping. People said hi and hello and how do you do? as they passed him on the street. He nodded in return, feeling overwhelmed and peaceful all at the same time. He could breathe here. He could be happy here.
He paused outside the diner. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been in one. Something tugged in his chest, some ache that seemed like a memory, but he couldn’t hold on to it long enough to remember what it was.
It didn’t matter in the long run.
He went in.
The bell jingled overhead.
People turned to look at him, curious at this stranger in their midst. They knew of him, but they didn’t know him. Not yet. They would, and soon, but he was still a curiosity. There were friendly smiles and small waves, and while Mike felt a bit awkward standing there, unsure of where to sit, he did his best to smile back.
The smile froze when a voice said, “I think I know what you’re looking for.”
He turned his head.
Standing next to him was a slight man. A young man. A man with messy dark hair. His eyebrows were slightly bushy and his nose slightly crooked. His ears stuck out just a little bit from the sides of his head, and Mike wondered if he even had to shave yet. Mike wondered how the young man’s shoulders could be so broad while he was so skinny. Mike wondered why his heart was thumping in his chest.
He was staring and he knew it. But he couldn’t make himself stop.
The man wasn’t handsome, not by traditional standards. He was lanky, and maybe his lips were a little thin, his fingers boney, like spindly little spider legs. He looked like he still had some growing into himself to do, but there was just something about him that captivated Mike more than anyone he could ever remember meeting. The people in Amorea were the nicest people he’d ever met. They’d made him feel welcome. They’d never made him feel like this.
Mike, ever the wordsmith, said, “Hi.”
The man smiled wider. “Hi.”
“I’m Mike,” he said, never breaking his gaze from those bright green eyes.
“Mike,” the man said, cocking his head. “I’ve heard about you.”
“You have?”
“Hmm. Here and there.”
“And everywhere?”
“They talk. They always talk. And apparently you’re something to talk about.”
“Yeah?”
He wrinkled his nose a little bit and said, “Yeah. Now, like I said, I think I know what you’re looking for.”
And Mike wanted to say you and yes and I think I’ve been looking for you. Instead he said, rather gruffly, “And what would that be?”
“You look like a meatloaf kinda guy,” the man said, taking a step forward. “Side of mashed potatoes. And peas? No. Corn. You look like you’d have corn.”
Mike said, “That… sounds amazing. Yes, please.”
The man looked pleased with himself. “I’m good at what I do.” And then he was standing in front of Mike, within arm’s reach.
“What’s your name?” Mike asked, because he needed to know.
“Sean,” he said, lips quirking again.
“Sean,” Mike repeated, and even three years later, he would still like the sound of Sean’s name on his tongue. “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Sean said, and Mike thought he was too young, and this wasn’t right, but he also felt like he’d been given a gift of some kind, this great gift thrust into his big callused hands, and he was clumsy, so, so clumsy.
“And you followed me,” Sean says now, eyes bright, “right to this very table.”
Mike shrugs and says, “I’d follow you anywhere,” even though he’d meant to only think it.
Sean blinks at him, slow, like he’s shocked. “You would, wouldn’t you.” It’s not a question.
Mike can’t take it back now. Can’t avoid it, because he’s the one that put it out there. So he says, “Yeah, Sean. Where you go, I go. We’re best friends.”
“And something more,” Sean says, and it’s still not a question. This time, it’s a demand.
“And something more,” Mike says, because he wants it to be. He wants it more than anything else in the world. And he’s tired of holding back.
“Then yes,” Sean says, sliding out of the booth. He moves until he’s next to Mike, and all Mike wants to do is press his face against his stomach and just breathe. “Yes. Saturday. You and me. It’s a date.”
And then the most remarkable thing happens. Sean bends down, hand resting on Mike’s shoulder. Mike doesn’t move, waiting. He feels the kiss on his cheek down to his very bones, Sean’s nose pressing near his ear, Sean’s lips just under his eye. The hand on his shoulder tightens briefly as the kiss goes on and on for what feels like minutes and hours and days.
But then it’s over, and he knows he’s bright red, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about that at all. This is something to him. This is everything to him. This place. His home. This man. So what if he can’t really ever remember a life outside or before Amorea. It must not have been anything special if it’s so easily forgotten. He doesn’t need it. He has everything he needs right here, right now, and it’s enough. Maybe one day it won’t be, but right now it’s enough.
He knows everyone in the diner is watching this latest development, and knows it’ll be spread through the town
even before lunchtime, but that’s okay. He’s still slightly dazed when Sean squeezes his shoulder once more and says he’ll see him later, big guy, and moves toward the kitchen where Oscar’s watching with something that almost resembles a smile.
SURE ENOUGH, it’s not even eleven when the book club enters Bookworm, led by Mrs. Richardson, who is always quick to tell you that she is a missus and never a miss, Mr. Richardson was a great man, a fine man, and he died for his country in the War (though what war, she never says, but it is always the War, the capitalization understood in her inflection), and she will honor him by being Missus Richardson.
The other ladies in the book club are in awe of her, and maybe a little frightened, for every idea she has is the best idea, and every discussion in the book club is led by her, talking points laid out typewritten and neat. She is the book club, or so she told Mike in confidence; those poor dears didn’t know what books even were before she’d led them to the light. Of course, they’d started with the book, the Good Book, but it’s always so morbid, all this death and destruction and smiting and plagues and it’s just not realistic.
Or so Mrs. Richardson said.
So they were delighted when Mike Frazier came to Amorea, delighted when he opened his store to them, delighted when he agreed to host their weekly meetings to discuss literature, because they weren’t common folk, obviously. They were cultured, and by then, Mike had heard enough, and said he was more than willing to let them use Bookworm on Monday afternoons, all the while thinking that there was no possible way he could have said no without having some kind of ladylike wrath brought down upon him. He knew that the ones that acted as the welcoming committee were typically the ones in charge. He didn’t want to start off on their bad sides.
He ate their casseroles and their pies and their muffins without complaint.
But it doesn’t stop him from rolling his eyes just out of sight when he hears them coming into Bookworm on a Thursday, knowing full well what they’re after.
“Yoo-hoo,” Mrs. Richardson calls out. “Mike, front and center, if you please.”