Words

by John Inman

  “Nor I you,” Milo whispered back, strangely formal.

  Without another word, Milo twisted around in the bed. Logan smiled, unsurprised as his lover obeyed that great urge downward that steers all gay men. Moments later, starving with desire, they were yet again making love.

  This time their hunger for each other carried them into dawn. As the rays of a new sunrise lightened the room around them, they at long last cried out in unison when their bodies writhed, their juices spilled.

  Afterward, trembling with exhaustion, they clung together. Eventually Logan fell asleep in Milo’s arms, more in love than he had been before. Did Milo feel the same? Logan thought maybe he did.

  And how astonishing was that.

  Chapter Twelve

  LOGAN AND Milo were tooling down Juniper Street, headed for the home of the host of tonight’s South Park Reading Club extravaganza. Milo didn’t really want to see Bryce, or anyone else for that matter, as he had explained to Logan earlier. He mostly hoped the cheese dip would be as good as last time. In spite of all that, he still looked forward to the evening. What he was most excited about, he said with a wicked gleam in his eye, was showing off Logan.

  Logan had dutifully laughed, but the truth was he didn’t care about anything except being with Milo, although he was starting to get a little worried. Especially after last night. He suspected if he fell any deeper in love, he might end up sprouting Cupid wings and burping little red hearts into the air every time he opened his mouth. He was six foot five, after all. Six foot five guys should be butch. Maybe even a little aloof. It was disconcerting when they started acting romantically goofy.

  Riding along at Milo’s side, Logan shook his head and chuckled at himself in the dark. When Milo’s hand came across the console and claimed his, his chuckle died, and he turned to study Milo’s profile in the dashboard lights. Logan’s heart swelled just looking at him. Uh-oh. He was about to start acting goofy again.

  “Does Bryce know you have a new lover?” he asked.

  Milo tickled Logan’s palm. “He knows I’ve been seeing someone.”

  “Good. So who are the writers who will be there?”

  “Adrian Strange, who writes science fiction. Lois Knight, a gay romance author. Bryce, of course, who dabbles in thrillers and excels at pissing me off. And myself. You know what I do.”

  Logan clucked in agreement. “Intimately. So. It’s a motley crew, then.”

  Milo squeezed Logan’s fingers until one of them popped. “Thanks a lot.”

  Logan laughed, yanked his hand away, and flexed his fingers to get the blood moving again. As soon as they were tingling properly, he slid them back into Milo’s grip.

  After a pause, Milo said, “With all these reviewers being killed, I’ve been thinking maybe we should buy a gun.”

  Logan grinned. “How do you know I don’t own a gun?”

  “Well, do you?”

  “No.”

  “Good. If I thought you were armed, I would have never bitten you on the balls last night.”

  “I sort of liked it.”

  “Yeah, well, I couldn’t have known that, could I? Might have been shot, I might’ve.”

  Both men smiled broadly as they sat there holding hands, staring through the windshield, watching the city roll by.

  “Did you really like it?” Milo asked, still smiling.

  “Yeah, I really did.”

  “Then maybe I’ll do it again tonight. But only if you’re good.”

  “I can be good even when I’m bad.”

  “When you’re bad, you’re even better than when you’re good.”

  “Wait. I’m confused….”

  Logan laughed while Milo pointed to a house ahead. The house was all lit up, every light in the place burning. Several people were standing on the sidewalk outside, smoking and shooting the shit, and even more could be seen through the windows milling around inside. As they drove slowly past, Logan realized every parking space was taken for blocks around.

  Milo groaned. “I’ve never seen so many people at one of these meetings before. My God, it’s a full house. I wonder if the murders brought everybody out. This is going to be a nightmare.”

  “Just so they don’t run out of food,” Logan murmured in fake alarm.

  Milo turned to him with a wry expression. “Leave it to you to dig through the chaff and unearth the one kernel of true horror in the situation.”

  “Thank you,” Logan said, smiling shyly. “I do what I can.”

  FROM THE moment they walked into the house, Milo thought the hostess appeared a bit frazzled and glassy-eyed by the sheer number of guests who had showed up on her doorstep. Seeing her cast fretful glances at the food trays, he and Logan quickly filled their plates while they had a chance. By the time the meeting officially started, they had grazed their way through everything edible, and Milo was surreptitiously trying not to belch, even while he continued eating.

  Milo caught more than one intrigued glance coming his way from Bryce, who seemed inordinately interested in who the long, tall drink of water stapled to Milo’s side might be. Consequently, Milo laid claim to Logan even more enthusiastically than he would have ordinarily, offering whispered asides and fawning pats on the arm and leaving a forgotten hand resting on Logan’s thigh now and then, just to piss Bryce off. God, he could be a dick.

  Bryce, on the other hand, and quite possibly in retaliation, made a show of being chummy with Adrian Strange, the science fiction writer. Strange was clearly peacock-proud that such a handsome young man was showing him attention. Both men were almost as tall as Logan. Since Adrian Strange was not the most handsome man on the planet, Milo would never have thought he would be Bryce’s type. But love is blind, they say, so Milo finally came to the conclusion that even though he didn’t like Bryce anymore, which was putting it mildly, he was still happy Bryce had made a connection with someone. He also came to the conclusion he was glad that person was Adrian Strange, because Milo didn’t like him either. In Milo’s eyes, they deserved each other.

  Logan leaned in and whispered, “You’re plotting some sort of mayhem. Stop staring at your ex and his new boyfriend. Have an egg roll. They’re really good.”

  Milo grunted in reply and snatched an egg roll off Logan’s plate.

  “Hey!” Logan cried. “I didn’t mean mine!”

  There must have been fifty or sixty people in attendance when the South Park Reading Club finally came to order. The hostess, looking considerably relieved now that the feeding frenzy was over, officiously clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention.

  The four authors in attendance were introduced, with Bryce, known to the hostess as Thomas Giles, lastly singled out as a welcome newcomer. To his credit, Bryce graciously accepted the acknowledgment and rose rather formally to offer a muted little bow of acceptance of her kind words. When he sat back down alongside Adrian Strange, Adrian beamed proudly and patted Bryce on the back, causing Milo to once again find it fascinating that the two should have become so close.

  Last but not least, and much to Milo’s delight, the hostess offered a final introduction to another new attendee. Logan Hunter, aka BookHunter, who she proudly stated was one of her favorite reviewers.

  Then, simpering and with a mischievous glint in her eye, she stepped up to Logan and Milo and pulled them to their feet. “I would also like to announce,” she said coquettishly, casting her gaze around the room while the blood positively poured into her cheeks, “that Milo Cook and Logan Hunter are now officially an item. Let’s give them a round of applause and wish them all the luck in the world, shall we?”

  Dutifully, her guests did as she asked. A rousing roar of approval rose up, and Milo was pleased to note that most everyone seemed to be truly happy for them. If there were any homophobes in the room, they were smart enough to keep their feelings hidden. Lois Knight, the gay romance writer, positively tittered with delight at the news. Milo had seen her often at the trade shows and knew her to be a San Diego native. S
he was a spinsterish woman with a plain face, tall and razor-thin, who was a health fanatic, known to run marathons and hike the high desert every chance she got. Always somewhat short on fashion sense, tonight she had enlisted a bizarre collection of barrettes to hold her curly hair back. As if that weren’t enough, ten or fifteen additional barrettes, all different shapes and colors, were clamped in here and there with no discernable purpose whatsoever. For tonight’s occasion, she had chosen to wear saddle shoes, a cashmere sweater with buttons on the sleeves, and a poodle skirt straight out of the ’50s. One couldn’t help but wonder if she had confused this get-together with a Halloween party she had promised to attend six months hence.

  “Bravo!” Lois cried, leaping to her feet and leaking copious tears of joy, which Milo thought was a little over-the-top since they had barely spoken five words to each other in all the years he had known her. Still, she was being kind and enthusiastic about something very dear to Milo’s heart, and for that, he loved her like a long-lost sister, even with those fucking barrettes in her hair.

  Bryce and Adrian Strange, on the other hand, looked less than enthralled by the news. Milo wasn’t sure if it was because Milo was Bryce’s ex, or because Logan was a reviewer. And frankly, he didn’t care. After he and Logan succeeded in wiggling out of the arms of their hostess and reclaiming their seats, Milo snatched a second egg roll off Logan’s plate, which garnered him another homicidal look, and sat back waiting for the evening’s festivities to continue. Logan relaxed beside him, no doubt glad at last to no longer be the center of attention, even if he had lost two egg rolls in the process. It wasn’t the first time Milo noticed there was a touch of shyness in Logan. Somehow that teeny crack in Logan’s armor made Milo love him all the more. Especially since Milo had the same crack of shyness in his own armor. He also realized he would have to be careful in the future in regards to snatching food off Logan’s plate without permission. One might very easily lose a hand in such an enterprise.

  After the introductions, Milo was called on first to do a short reading of whatever struck his fancy. He had brought along on his iPad a few pages of his Work in Progress, just in case, so now he dragged it out and, still seated at Logan’s side, read to the crowd around them. During his recitation, Logan’s hand never once left his side, tucked in as it was unobtrusively next to his pant leg, his finger occasionally stroking the fabric as if to let Milo know he was there and rooting for him.

  When Milo finished, the crowd gave him a nice round of applause, praising his words, exclaiming how they couldn’t wait to see the book in print, and swearing by all that was holy they would rush out and buy it the moment it hit the stores.

  Lois Knight was called upon next. She had chosen an excerpt from one of her earlier novels to read. The excerpt was so packed with male-on-male sex (anal and otherwise), with copious amounts of seminal fluid spewing in every direction and some of the largest cocks Milo had ever heard referred to on the written page, that by the time she finished, more than one person in the crowd was cherry red and squirming in embarrassment. The fact that Lois Knight herself looked like someone’s dotty maiden aunt who wouldn’t recognize a dick if it walked up and poked her in the eye, made her reading about such matters all the more unsettling. When she was finished, Lois clapped her tablet closed with a finality that made everybody jump. She gazed around the room, looking pleased as punch by all the shocked expressions gawking back at her.

  No one was more pleased than the hostess that Lois was finished. Flustered, she hurriedly introduced Bryce, or in this instance, Thomas Giles, who popped open his laptop and read a long section from a rough draft of his latest WIP, which he had titled Sunset.

  As he recited in a proud, stentorian voice, leaving long pauses in the narrative as if pompously giving his audience time to appreciate the beauty of his language, the deft handling of his phrasing, Milo felt Logan stiffen beside him. When he glanced at him, Logan was staring into his own lap, his brow furrowed.

  “What is it?” Milo whispered.

  Logan shook his head. Not once did Logan raise his eyes to look at Bryce. Not once did he turn his gaze to Milo either. He merely sat there, as closed to the room around him as if he had locked himself behind a door, refusing even Milo entry.

  Bryce’s reading ended with an appreciative clamor from his audience, no doubt made even more appreciative by the fact that not once during the entire reading had there been a single orgasm described in horrendously minute detail nor one gram of seminal fluid wantonly splashed about the room.

  With Bryce finished, Adrian Strange took the floor. His reading was a snippet from one of his earlier novels as well, probably because, as far as Milo knew, the man was living off past glories. He had written nothing new in several years. Still, he made the rounds at conventions, touting his old books. And in all fairness, he was still a fairly popular science fiction writer. Why he chose to publish no new books, Milo didn’t know, and at the moment, he didn’t care. He was more eager for the evening to end so he could get Logan alone and ask him what it was about Bryce’s reading that had disturbed him so.

  But that would have to wait. Once Adrian Strange ended his reading to an appreciative, if rather reserved, round of applause, the evening instantly took a turn for the macabre, just as Milo had suspected it would.

  With all four writers finished with their readings, an older man in a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, who couldn’t have looked more pompously literary if he were packing a goose quill, parchment, and a bottle of india ink, ostentatiously cleared his throat and took the floor.

  “What about the killings of all these reviewers?” he demanded, his voice booming through the room like a foghorn. “I’d like to hear what our guests have to say about that.” Both Adrian and Bryce looked vaguely annoyed by the question, as if unhappy the conversation had turned to a subject other than themselves. Lois Knight merely scooped a huge glob of bean dip onto a chip and poked it in her mouth, as if she couldn’t be bothered with murder as long as there was still free food lying about. More than one club member, including the hostess, perked up at the mention of murder, as all eyes eagerly turned to the panel of working writers assembled before them, eagerly awaiting a response.

  But the foghorn wasn’t finished quite yet. “First I’d like to hear what BookHunter has to say about it, since it’s his profession that is being most horrendously targeted. Mr. Hunter? What are your thoughts, sir?”

  If Logan was surprised to be singled out, he did a good job of hiding it. He simply stared back at the man, taking time to get his thoughts in order before answering.

  Finally, he cleared his throat and spoke quietly, firmly. “First off, I’d like to address what I consider to be a misapprehension about these killings. Everyone talks about this murderer going after reviewers. But as far as I can see, these are not reviewers being targeted. They are trollers. Troublemakers. Under the guise of being reviewers, these are people who use the internet to seek out the lowest common denominator of humanity for the sole purpose of shaming and ridiculing authors while trying to advance their own brand, their own following, their own websites. These are bloggers whose sole purpose is to increase their readership, and consequently their popularity. They do this by presenting themselves as experts, when in truth they are merely agitators. They do not do what they do to further literature. They do not do what they do to enlighten readers. They do it because they crave attention. And because they enjoy damaging the brand of legitimate writers. They are the modern version of schoolyard bullies, hiding behind the anonymity offered by the internet. In other words, they are cowards.”

  Milo found himself staring at Logan’s profile as he spoke, as proud of him as he had ever been. The room, too, he didn’t fail to notice, was absolutely silent. Other than Logan’s voice, not a sound could be heard. Every pair of eyes in the crowd was riveted to Logan’s face, every ear to Logan’s words. It wasn’t lost on Milo that the words Logan spoke were almost identical to what Milo hi
mself had told the detective from New York. These victims were not reviewers. They were far from it.

  But Logan clearly had more to add, and Milo squelched his own thoughts so he could listen. He was getting a rare glimpse into the public persona of the man he loved, and he didn’t want to miss it.

  Logan looked blandly about the room, a sad smile accompanying his gaze, as if amazed people couldn’t see the truth for themselves. “Two of the people killed trolled the internet without revealing their true identity. Nowhere on their websites could their real names be found. One even claimed to reside in a mansion by a lake a thousand miles from where she actually lived. She also claimed to be beautiful, according to a few pirated photographs on her website. In reality neither assertion was true. An honest reviewer would have no need to hide behind lies such as that. An honest reviewer would have nothing to be ashamed of to begin with. Nor would a true reviewer implement a scorched-earth policy by posting ratings and reviews of numerous books in a single day, each and every review more insulting, more damaging to the author, than the review before it.”

  Milo was grateful to hear a murmur of agreement in the crowd. A few scattered heads bobbed up and down. Glances of approval were exchanged. If Logan noticed, he didn’t let it show. He kept his head down as if studying his hands while he calmly spoke, loud enough to be heard in the farthest corners of the room, but not so loud as to sound like he was preaching. His voice was that of a kindly professor, languidly orating for his students a lesson plan he had memorized years before. Logan had obviously thought these murders through long before he came here on this night and was asked about them point-blank.

  Finally, Logan lifted his head and peered around the room. Without groping for it, he reached over and grasped Milo’s hand, as if he knew it would be exactly where he expected it to be. At the confident and possessive way he captured it in his own, Milo’s heart swelled with pride. “This man is mine” Logan was saying by his actions, and he was proud to let everyone in the room know it. Milo had never loved Logan more than he did at that very moment.