Words

by John Inman

  Milo kept his words cool, his contempt for the woman hidden. But there were things he wanted to say, and he was determined to say them. If the two writers at either side of him got an earful as well, so be it.

  “Ma’am, I don’t believe Grace’s reviews had anything to do with her death. Nor does Grace’s wife believe that. Sometimes the world has a way of sneaking up and bringing even the best of us to our knees. For the most part, it has nothing to do with the way we live our lives. It just happens. To the good and the bad. It could happen to you tomorrow. Or me. Or the lovely person who made this delicious cheese dip.” A startled chuckle rolled around the room. It seemed to come from every attendee but the one he was addressing. That woman didn’t look amused at all. “Writers may write of murder, ma’am, but most of us barely have the wherewithal to set it down properly on paper, let alone pull it off in real life. I think you, and all of us, should let poor Grace Connor’s memory rest in peace. There is little need to speak ill of her now that she’s gone.”

  “Very well,” the woman said with tight lips.

  Milo wasn’t sure, but he suspected the stern stare the woman was getting from the hostess might have had something to do with her capitulation.

  Anyway, she appeared to accept the rebuke by falling silent, and for that Milo was grateful.

  As for the writers at either side of him, Milo had no idea what they thought of his words, because at that point in the evening, he centered his undivided attention on the crab salad, which really was delicious.

  Later, after driving home and walking Spanky around the block, Milo fixed himself a drink to unwind. Logging on to social media to kill some time before bed, Milo quickly realized speculation about the motive for Grace’s murder was far from limited to one old lady from the South Park Reading Club and a couple of mediocre authors who seemed a little too thin-skinned for Milo’s taste. It was rampant, just as the woman had said.

  There were few who did not believe Grace had brought it on herself, and many of the commentators didn’t mince words, stating flatly they thought she deserved it. Some of the remarks were so cruel, and offered Grace Connor such little hope of a respectful passing, that Milo could only pray Lillian would steer clear of social media for a while. She had been through enough.

  Disgusted, Milo shut down the computer and went to bed. Spanky leaped up right behind him and tromped around in a circle, making a mess of the covers until he had them just the way he wanted. Only then did Spanky heave a monumental sigh and collapse like a dead thing smack in the middle of the bed. Yawning and stretching, he used his paws to prod Milo a little more out of his way, managing in the process to hog 90 percent of the bed, which was a nightly ritual.

  Milo, relegated to the very edge of the mattress as usual, grumbled kindly and patted Spanky on the head. He was rewarded with a lick for his patience.

  Just before sleep found him, Milo’s mind slipped to Logan Hunter and how tall and handsome he had looked in his snow-white tennis outfit the day they met. And how sweetly shy Logan had sounded when he asked if he could call sometime. The memory brought a smile that carried Milo into sleep. His dreams were sexier than usual, and when he woke in the morning, he was so horny he was ready to explode.

  Taking himself in hand, he brought himself to climax before the sunrise lit his window. And as he did, it was thoughts of Logan that spurred him on.

  Afterward, breathless, with his heart thumping like a piston engine badly in need of a tune-up, he licked away a smear of semen that had splashed across his lips, wishing it had been deposited there by Logan instead of himself.

  With the night shadows slowly fleeing his room as sunrise lit the canyon outside, Milo threw his trembling legs over the side of the bed. Trying not to disturb Spanky, which wasn’t hard since the mutt could sleep through anything, even an early-morning masturbation party, Milo padded off to the bathroom to wash the come off his chest and chin and start the day.

  As efficient as ever, he set up the coffee maker, and while it perked and filled the house with the delicious scent of fresh-roasted coffee, Milo jumped in the shower to soap himself down.

  The next time I have sex with Logan Hunter, he told himself, squinting into the spray, maybe it won’t be a figment of my imagination. Maybe it’ll be for real. Stranger things have happened, right?

  Smiling, with a wicked leer in his eye, he wondered what his chances were of actually making that happen. It might be a dangerous proposition. Milo really liked the guy, after all, and Logan Hunter couldn’t have been more Milo’s type if Milo had constructed the man himself to his own specifications.

  Considering the fact they had spent a grand total of one hour together over burgers and fries, Milo suspected he liked him a little too much. But did Logan like him? That was really the big question here. And even if he did like Milo, did he like him that way? Plus, how was Milo supposed to know if Logan was even ready to start bedding casual acquaintances? Over hamburgers, he had made it pretty clear he still missed his lover. Poor guy. And here I am wondering if I can coax him into the sack. What, like getting a decent review from the guy isn’t enough, now I want to fuck him too? Jesus, it’s never enough with me.

  Later, as he dried himself off, Milo remembered poor Lillian mourning the death of her wife and chided himself again for being a thoughtless twit. Maybe he should send her flowers. Hell, maybe he should send them both flowers. Logan and Lillian. One to woo, one to console. Or maybe he should do nothing, like he always did. Especially since he didn’t have an address for Logan to send the flowers to anyway.

  Milo stared at his dripping reflection in the bathroom mirror and sighed.

  Why does life have to be so complicated?

  Chapter Three

  WITH A sigh of relief, Logan Hunter stomped the last packing box flat and kicked it toward the front door with all the others. On this crisp California morning, after a nonstop two days of work, his new apartment was fit to live in. His belongings were stashed away in their permanent niches, his furniture arranged the way he liked it, and his clothes closets neat and tidy for the first time in a decade. Of course, they wouldn’t stay that way long because Logan was basically a slob. That inglorious fact had been proven and corroborated time and time again over the years. Jerry, his ex, had said this trait of Logan’s to throw stuff all over the place and never actually pick up a single bloody thing was a toss-up between charmingly eccentric and infuriatingly annoying. Charming because he loved Logan, and through the eyes of love you can overlook a lot of faults. Annoying because when Logan’s closets ended up looking like they had been cluster bombed, then rearranged with a bulldozer, as they inevitably did, Jerry’s stuff was lost in the rubble as well.

  Logan stood in front of his bedroom closet now, staring in at the neatly aligned clothing, most of it still rumpled from sitting in moving boxes all week. At least it was on hangers and off the floor for what was probably the first—and last—time in its life. And wouldn’t Jerry have been surprised to see that.

  As always, thoughts of Jerry turned Logan’s mind inward. A sadness dimmed his eyes that was so familiar he didn’t need a mirror to see it. He knew when it was there. He always knew when it was there.

  He glanced down at his hand, staring for the millionth time at the simple silver band wrapped snugly around the third finger of his left hand. A matching ring still rested on Jerry’s hand, Jerry’s cold and lifeless hand, in a slot six shelves up on the east wall of the Peabody Mortuary in Calumet City, just south of Chicago. Calumet City had been Jerry’s hometown, and Logan had flown his body back there for interment at the request of Jerry’s parents. At the time, Logan had hated the idea of laying Jerry to rest so far from Manhattan, but now he was glad. It had made it that much easier to leave New York.

  Logan mindlessly twisted the ring on his finger, feeling the smooth, familiar perfection of it. For the first time he wondered if the ring felt lonely too. After all, its mate was gone just as Logan’s was. They were both on their own now,
he and the ring, and had been for over a year.

  Maybe, just maybe, it was time to put the past behind them both.

  He gripped the ring between his thumb and index finger and began to slide it off, but at the last second he stopped. No. He couldn’t bear to part with this last remnant of Jerry. Not yet. Maybe one day, if love ever found him again, he would slip it off. Tuck it in a drawer somewhere like a hundred other mementos he had stashed away over the years, eventually to be forgotten or lost. But for the moment, Logan dropped his hands to his sides and left the ring where it was. Just as he left Jerry, still stowed securely in his heart.

  Logan’s greatest fear was that with Jerry still there, a new love, if one ever came along, would be unable to worm its way in and make room for itself. Still, while the ring was on his finger, and while Jerry slept in his heart, alive and well, at least in memory, Logan knew he would never completely move on. And that saddened him.

  Especially now. For Logan knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that somehow, suddenly and inexplicably, things had changed. The tectonic plates on which he rested his life had unexpectedly shifted. Just enough to make him teeter, no longer balanced like he thought he was, no longer steady on his feet. And the reason for it was so surprisingly simple, even he understood it.

  For the first time since Jerry’s death, Logan had met a person who intrigued him. And he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

  He heaved a sigh and closed the closet doors. Stepping into the second bedroom, which was now his office, Logan dropped into his desk chair and booted up his Mac. A moment later he was cruising Facebook. Well, to be a little more precise, he was cruising Milo Cook’s Facebook page. Skimming through the photos, smiling at Milo laughing among a group of Winter Press authors at some convention or other, wearing a silly birthday hat behind a humongous cake with a forest fire of candles burning on it and a host of friends waiting expectantly for him to blow them out. Pictures at the beach standing shirtless in the sand in a baggy pair of swim trunks that barely clung to his slim hips.

  Logan leaned in closer to the screen and studied Milo’s body. It was beautiful. Not overly muscled, but slim and elegant, his legs aglow with blond hair, capturing the sunlight. Another trail of blondish hair wandered down from a trim little belly button to disappear beneath the drooping waistband of his shorts. Other details captured Logan’s attention. The branching veins on his forearms and across the back of his hands. His ginger, sun-streaked hair tumbling around his face, stirred by the wind blowing off the water. The battered surfboard, obviously well-loved and well-ridden, lying in the sand at his feet. His nose whitened with zinc oxide, and his eyes squinting into the sun as he laughed, making a silly, impatient face as if coaxing the cameraman to shoot his stupid picture already.

  Logan found himself smiling at Milo’s happy, carefree expression. To look at him, one would never imagine he had a brain behind that silly grin, or that he was a successful writer with a seemingly endless string of stories in his head just waiting to be jotted down and offered up to a devoted world of readers.

  Sitting back, Logan scrolled through more pictures, then even more. Clearly, Milo tried to keep his Facebook followers updated on his life and career. The photographs seemed endless. Then Logan’s hand jerked away from the mouse as he found himself staring at one particular photograph.

  It was a snapshot of Milo and a young man with dark hair. They were both in khaki shorts and hiking boots, fat backpacks strapped to their backs. Their hands were clasped as they stood, shoulder to shoulder, at the edge of a cliff. Behind them, the ocean, clearly the Pacific, sprawled out to the farthest horizon, its surface as smooth as hammered silver.

  Logan focused on the man at Milo’s side. He was a head taller than Milo, handsome, with brooding eyes and thin lips that were barely smiling. Still, he seemed happy enough as he stood there holding on to Milo with one hand and clutching a leash with a dog on the end of it with the other. Logan smiled. That must be Spanky. Brown and white, tail high, playfully nipping at Milo’s sock.

  Again Logan’s gaze slid back to the man holding Milo’s hand. Was this his lover before they broke up? It must be. Something about the way Milo clutched the man to him, and the merry light in his laughing eyes as he stared into the camera lens, told Logan that this was one of Milo’s happy moments. And why shouldn’t it be? He had love, he had youth, and he had his entire life and career ahead of him.

  Logan wondered what it was that finally tore the two apart. Was it jealousy, perhaps, as Milo had hinted? Jealousy because Milo was successfully published while—what was his name? Oh yes, Bryce—while Bryce couldn’t catch a break? Or was it something else. Infidelity perhaps. Or maybe it really had been as Milo said. That they simply grew apart, as couples sometimes do.

  Logan studied Bryce’s face for a moment longer, the crisp, serious angles of it, the dark, piercing eyes, the tight lips only slightly bent in a smile. Tearing his gaze from the screen, Logan logged off, shutting down the computer. Glancing to the left, he stared for a long moment at a picture of Jerry, waving and smiling at the camera, blithely unaware that he was leaning on the car he would die in less than two months later.

  Turning away, Logan swallowed a familiar surge of sorrow. That sorrow, that emptiness, was almost an old friend now, he knew it so well. It was all that remained of the anger he had initially felt at Jerry’s death. He thought back to those first few weeks after the accident, how the unfairness of it consumed him, how the fury of what had happened ate at him day after day after day. But in the end, the anger was too self-destructive for Logan to hold on to, and he had gradually allowed it to slip into grief. It wasn’t easy letting his anger go, but in the end he had succeeded because he knew he would never survive if he didn’t.

  Now, grabbing his keys and his wallet, he cast one last look around the perfectly arranged apartment. Feeling totally out of place in all the order and neatness, he stepped through the front door and walked away. Out on the street, in cargo shorts and a T-shirt, he took a moment to relish the novelty of warm air flowing across his bare legs in the middle of January, and more than that, the novelty of standing a continent away from where he had spent all the other years of his life. This was a big deal for him. Moving to California meant a fresh start, a new beginning. It did not escape him for a second that he had left Jerry far behind when he did.

  Maybe, just maybe, that was the only reason for moving at all. Logan chose a direction at random and set off on foot to explore his new neighborhood. But exploring wasn’t the only thing on his mind on this bright, sunny January morning. He needed to think too, and the thoughts he contemplated were both troubling and exhilarating. Rising from the jumble of those cogitations stood the young man Logan had eaten with a few days before. Milo Cook appeared in his mind, handsome and smiling, as bright and shiny as a glint of crystal sunlight on a skyscraper window.

  And while the beauty of that one young man filled Logan’s head, he absently fingered the ring on his left hand, ever mindful of how painful—and how comforting—it would be to at long last slip it off.

  ON THE morning of the last day Logan saw Jerry alive, they had made love, as they almost always did—gentle, sleepy sex after lazily pulling themselves awake to greet the new day dawning through their bedroom window. As always, one would be drawn to the welcoming, familiar heat of the other, and scooting across the bed, gather that heat into caring, needful arms. A self-conscious kiss would follow since neither had brushed their teeth yet. Snuggling close, each would breathe in the sleep-warm scent of the other’s body. Moments later, whispered words of love would drift through the darkness, and after that, the temptation of iron cocks tenting the bedclothes would draw hungry mouths downward. Soon, what began as a simple cuddle became a craving neither man felt the slightest inclination to deny.

  On that last morning, as they lay in their cocoon of postorgasmic contentment, still relishing each other’s heat and taste, Logan had peered across Jerry’s silken hip and eyed the h
eavy snow as it peppered the bedroom window with a pattering hush. Jerry taught fourth grade and had classes that morning.

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go,” Logan remembered saying. “Traffic will be horrendous.”

  “Unless they call a snow day, I have to go. You know that. But don’t worry. I’ll drive carefully.”

  “The snow chains are in the trunk. Use them if you need to.”

  “Worrywart!” Jerry giggled. Then he drew Logan into a final bone-crushing embrace before slipping from beneath the covers and padding naked to the bathroom, laughing all the way because the floor was so cold.

  Later, after the highway patrol had called, and days after that, after the funeral, after a cold, seething fury at the unfairness of it all had settled into Logan’s heart, Logan thought back to that last spout of laughter echoing through the frigid morning darkness. How could Logan have known they would be the last moments the two of them would ever spend together? It seemed incomprehensible that a life-altering event such as Jerry’s death could pass without so much as a glimmer of foreboding. And every time Logan thought back to that merry peal of laughter as Jerry raced across the room naked to get ready for work, Logan’s heart would break all over again. How could it happen? How could a morning begin with such happiness and yet end in such an avalanche of pain and sorrow and loss?

  And the loss for Jerry would be even greater. For he was left with an eternity of nothing, his laughter silenced, the beating of his loving, generous heart stilled forever.

  That was what angered Logan most, what he fought so long to overcome. It wasn’t what he had lost. It wasn’t his grief at losing Jerry. It was what Jerry had lost. And how fate had erased such a good man from the face of the earth without so much as a blink of compassion.