by Willa Okati
“I don’t know. If I figure it out, I’ll tell you.” Robbie exhaled. If he didn’t break this now, he never would, and he had a life to get back to. Family that needed him. He sat upright, breaking the hold Ivan had over him one inch at a time. Ivan didn’t follow, but lay on his side, watching. “Come on. You can walk me back to my side of the hotel.”
* * * *
Hotels were almost never quiet, not even in the wee small hours before dawn. As the sky above faded from streaks of rose and blood-orange to clear, clean blue, the noise of the lodge waking up surrounded Ivan and Robbie. A kid in a vest with the newspaper’s logo and a sack over one shoulder, dropping the daily edition at every door marked with a blue tag on the handle. A few room service trays already cleaned of toast and eggs waited for pickup, and the occasional early bird slouched out with keys in hand and suitcases dragged behind.
Ivan noticed all of it, and promptly pushed every last bit out of mind to give all his attention to Robbie, walking—dawdling—by his side. He knew Robbie could walk faster than this. Maybe he didn’t want it to end yet either. If not, he should have said, but Ivan understood why he hadn’t.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to tell your friends?” Robbie asked, almost idly. His hand bumped and brushed against Ivan’s with every other step. Not an offer, or a request for more. Just comfortably there. “If they’re anything like the types you used to surround yourself with, they’re going to eat you alive.”
Ivan snorted. “I’m resigned to it. Ammunition for years. Why ruin their fun?”
“That’s not exactly what I meant,” Robbie said after a moment. He cut Ivan a sideways glance. “They won’t be stupid. You never did have much patience for people who couldn’t put two and two together. What are you going to tell them about this?”
“Not a clue.” Ivan nudged his knuckles against Robbie’s. “I’ll think of something. They’ll guess the truth, in any case. I don’t have to do much.”
“This doesn’t have to be the end,” Robbie said. He looked straight forward, giving Ivan no clue about what he thought with the straight set of his shoulders and the way he held his head proudly high. “We could meet again. Maybe next Christmas. You’ve missed Cade learning how to deep-fry turkeys. I thought he’d raze the whole neighborhood.”
“Fireballs for all? Good times. I’d hate to miss that.”
“Then come next year,” Robbie offered. “If we pack Cade and Nathaniel in together, we can squeeze out a guest room.”
“I’m not sure I’d want to sleep in Cade’s bed. I can only imagine what he hides under his mattress.”
Robbie grimaced. “Trust me, you don’t want to know. Hold on, wait. Come this way. I think there’s a shortcut down the tree path.”
“Is there?” Ivan raised an eyebrow. He’d be the first to admit he’d flunked out of college freshman geometry before Robbie had taken pity and tutored him through it, but even he could see the spatial differential between a sidewalk stroll and a meander through a beauty garden.
He didn’t call Robbie on it, or draw attention to it. Just fell in at Robbie’s side, and enjoyed what he could.
“I never did ask,” Robbie said. “Are you meant to be at work right now?”
“Nah. Even if I were, Abram would cover for me. He’s good that way.”
“You always did need someone to take care of you,” Robbie remarked.
“You always needed to take care of someone,” Ivan replied.
Silence, broken only when Robbie drew a deep breath. “I won’t say that’s not true,” he murmured.
“No,” Ivan replied, just as softly. Then, louder, almost in his regular tone, “Your brothers are lucky they have you.”
“Tell them that.”
“Maybe I will, if I visit. Even if I don’t want to take my chances on the bedding, everyone has a couch.” Ivan tucked his hands in his pockets. If he didn’t, he’d give in to the urge and lace his fingers with Robbie’s. “Or you could come visit me. I can put in a request for a week or two off. Show you the old part of the city, where you can still see what the shops and banks used to be. Stables, old houses. The kinds of things you love.”
“I’d like that.” A faint smile tugged at the corners of Robbie’s mouth. The smile Ivan liked best—the ones Robbie wasn’t aware of. “How’s your jaw? I should have checked it out earlier. I’m good at patching people up.”
“I remember.”
“I’m guessing it’s not that bad. All things considered.” Robbie paused a half-step in front of Ivan to look back over his shoulder and eyeball Ivan’s cheek. “Barely bruised. Tsk. The kid thinks he’s so tough.”
“He doesn’t need to get any tougher. I’m too young for false teeth.”
Robbie rumbled, a quiet, mirthful sound. He scratched the blunt tips of his nails across his chest. The sweater, left outside the room door sometime after midnight, had smelled of cedar when Ivan had unfolded the plastic lodge packaging. Doubtful he’d ever catch a whiff of the scent again without nostalgia hitting him in the temples.
He didn’t mind.
“He grew up harder than I’d hoped he would,” Robbie said, quieter than the scuff of their footsteps on the new-poured concrete and new-lain stones of the coliseum walkways.
“Cade?”
“Mm-hmm.” Robbie stopped to tighten the rubber band on the end of his braid. Made Ivan itch to help him, but he kept his hands to himself. “Sometimes I wonder if I did something wrong, or if the stars were just aligned that way the day he was born. I don’t remember.”
“He’s not that bad. At least I don’t remember him being awful.”
“He did punch you.”
“I deserved it.”
“Did you? By that logic, I guess I’m due a pop in the nose, myself.” Robbie sighed. “I’ll let it pass this time. He thought he was protecting me.”
“Abram would have done the same. Hot temper on that guy.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, in case I turn around one day and find a six-foot-tall bald man coming at me with a baseball bat.”
“Abram wouldn’t go that far. A golf club, maybe.”
Robbie tipped his head back and laughed.
Hell with it. Ivan took his hand. And, after a startled pause, Robbie’s warm fingers closed around his.
Together, they walked in silence to the end of the causeway, high above the gardens below.
Standing at the end of the causeway, Robbie could just see the top of his truck, with the dent Cade had made trying to jump a skateboard ramp over the top, and the crack in the glass from when Nathaniel had tried to replace the wiper blades without having the first clue which way was up on a screwdriver.
He’d put off fixing the broken window for as long as possible, and he still hadn’t gotten around to repairing the dent. The blemishes were memories he didn’t want to fade. He could have afforded a new truck now, if he saved, but he loved the old beast too much to let it go.
“End of the road,” Robbie heard himself say. He sounded far away. Almost like an echo. Nowhere else to go but back together, or forward alone. “Feels like a hundred years ago that I parked there, not less than one day.”
“It’s been a decade plus change coming,” Ivan said.
“Philosopher.”
“Sometimes.”
“Don’t quit your day job.”
Ivan gave a small, tired laugh. He didn’t let go of Robbie’s hand. Not yet. “Are my initials still carved in the left back tire well?”
“Maybe,” Robbie said, which he knew Ivan understood to mean yes. And that maybe, just maybe, that was what’d started his habit of not repairing minor damages. “Ivan…”
“I’m not okay with this.” Ivan’s hold tightened, almost too firm, then loosened again, gently working his fingers free. “I don’t think it makes me any happier to know you’re not okay with it either.” He bent and brushed a kiss against Robbie’s temple. “It was an honor and a privilege, Robbie. Never forget that.”
Chapter Seven
Left alone, and with cold feet. Robbie scoffed. There was a metaphor for his own life somewhere in there, he was sure, or might be it only meant he should and could have taken the extra sixty seconds to slip his socks on rather than stuff them in his pocket. He’d worn dirty socks and worse before, and probably would again one day. Certainly would when it was Cade’s turn at laundry next week.
At least he hadn’t forgotten his socks back in Ivan’s room. He might not have much, but he had a sturdy pair of knitted-wool black socks to his name. A man could go a long way with socks like those.
And yes, he knew he was talking rubbish. Robbie reached into his pocket, digging for the socks, and didn’t find them. At first. He frowned and prodded at the unfamiliar, almost crisp edges of an unfamiliar bit of fabric. What was that, embroidery?
Robbie unfurled the strange item—must have grabbed it, unthinking, when he fished his socks out from beneath the lodge bed. He cocked his head to puzzle at it. A cuff? Yes, a wrist cuff, the sort someone would use to conceal a soulmark. Familiar, now he looked at it closer. Ivan hadn’t worn it, so who did it belong to?
Ivan might know. Robbie turned the cuff over in his fingers as a magician would flip a coin, and bit thoughtfully at the inside of his cheek. Wouldn’t want to give the wrong impression by calling Ivan back so soon. Better he should leave it at the lost and found, and call that good enough.
Then back home.
In the moment he’d taken to decide, the lodge had carried on waking up by degrees. Housekeeping carts trundled past, surprisingly loud on the sidewalks from laundry rooms to the inner halls with their carpeted floors. Maybe he could give the thing to one of them, Robbie thought, and stepped closer to the rail to see if he could catch one of the housekeepers’ eyes.
Below, perhaps ten feet away and fifteen across, a man paced in a stiff-legged loop back and forth around a sturdy, boxy coupe. One of Ivan’s cadre? Robbie thought he recognized the man. He had hair nearly as long and thick as Robbie’s. Robbie wondered if they might be cousins a few generations removed, with hair like that.
Couldn’t remember the man’s name. He kept one hand in his pocket, though it looked awkward, and had unrolled the cuff of that sleeve to fall down over his wrist. The other hand he used to keep a phone wedged between ear and shoulder without dropping it as he stalked to and fro.
Robbie didn’t mean to listen in, but he couldn’t exactly avoid it.
“…shit, Barrett. I’m sorry. I didn’t lose it on purpose.” The man took his hand out of his pocket and tucked it under his arm.
Robbie frowned at the wrist cuff. His? Sounded like. He opened his mouth to call down to the young man, but stopped. He looked hunted, almost jumpy, and when the nervous energy moved him to roll the dangling sleeve back up and rub at his wrist, even from the distance Robbie could see, his skin was bare of any soulmark.
“I don’t think anyone’s noticed—I kept my sleeve down—but I’m not in the mood to take any chances,” the man said, flexing his fingers. He cradled his wrist in the other hand, bare skin facing up. “I’ll be home as soon as I can. Just tell me you made a spare cover-up, love.” Relief lightened the lines of tension on his face. “God, you’re the best. I owe you.” He laughed. “Oh, if that’s how you want to collect, I think we can work something out.”
From behind Robbie came the discreet, gruff sound of a masculine cough. “I wouldn’t give that back to him now,” a man said. “If he knew you’d heard…”
When Robbie craned to look at him, he almost raised his eyebrows in surprise. He recognized this man, too, as one of Ivan’s compatriots. This would be Abram. If Robbie was a honey bear, this bastard was a born grizzly, as tall and solid as a rock wall. He’d shaved his head bare and wore a neatly trimmed goatee that would have made him look severe, if not for the careworn lines around his eyes.
“What did I hear?” Robbie asked, careful not to take too much on trust. Ivan had good taste in friends, but Robbie didn’t know Abram well. Best to tread lightly.
“More than you should have, I expect.” Abram crossed the narrow bridge of the causeway to lean on the rail. He cocked an eyebrow at Robbie. “Come on, now. If you’re Ivan’s soulmate, you can’t be that dim.”
Well. All right, then. Robbie chafed thoughtfully at his own wrist. “That man—”
“Nick.”
“Nick,” Robbie acknowledged. “And this Barrett. They aren’t actually soulmates, are they?”
“Depends on your definition of the word,” Abram said. “I had come to give you a piece of my mind about Ivan, but then life happened.” He nodded at Nick, still chatting away, a smile like sunshine lightening the younger man’s demeanor. “Thirty years old, and neither he nor Barrett had produced a soulmark yet.”
“It happens,” Robbie said. “Where are you going with this?”
“They’ve loved each other since they were boys. They thought they were safe taking the risk. Presenting themselves as belonging to one another. Ivan doesn’t know. They think I don’t.” Abram crossed his arms, bearing his weight on their pivot point. “I don’t think what they’re doing is wrong, but my God, is it risky. If they’re truly meant to be mated to other people, they’re setting themselves up for the worst sort of heartbreak. I worry about them. I’d ask that you don’t tell anyone what you saw. Even Ivan.”
“It isn’t my story to tell,” Robbie said, uncomfortable, his cheeks hot and itchy beneath his beard. He rubbed absently at his soulmark. “I won’t say anything, but I won’t be seeing Ivan to speak to.”
Abram shot Robbie a narrow, speaking look. “It never ceases to amaze me, you know? The things we do and the mistakes we make, all in the name of love. Funny thing is, it wouldn’t be half so complicated if we didn’t insist on digging our own pit traps.”
Robbie kept quiet. He didn’t know what to say.
Abram either didn’t notice or didn’t bother listening. He tapped the black bead he wore in his earlobe, a banner announcing to the world that he’d been there and done that, thanks, and it hadn’t hardened him too much to stop him caring about those he called friends. “Do you want to know the most important thing I learned in twenty years of marriage to my soulmate?”
Not really, Robbie wanted to say, and yes, please, both at the same time. Abram seemed like a man Robbie would have liked to know. Robbie offered him the respect he would if he’d met Abram any other time. “I’m listening.”
“Good,” Abram said. “I would have told you anyway. The tangles we think we can never unsnarl tend to work themselves out in the end. That’s what the soulmarks are all about, aren’t they? No matter how strange or uncanny, we’ve got proof that there is such a thing as love in this world. Or the potential for it. That’s good enough to be getting on with, or it ought to be.”
Robbie stood still as the words washed over him. He could hear the ring of truth in each and every one.
“There you have it,” Abram said. “So now I have to ask—if you know what you want, then what the hell are you doing here? Really?”
Robbie closed his eyes.
“As I thought.” Abram clapped one meaty hand to Robbie’s shoulder. “There. Now you can consider the lecture delivered.”
Robbie tightened his hands into fists in his pockets as Abram walked away. It wasn’t as easy as all that, he wanted to shout after the man. Hadn’t been, and wouldn’t be. Couldn’t be.
Even if the thought of going home alone made his blood cold.
Even if, when he thought of how easy it had been, some of the time—nearly all of the time— this time, well, he had to wonder…
* * * *
The young man leaning against—and blocking—the door to Ivan’s room had a face that didn’t match itself. Cheeky grin, darkly angry eyes. “If I were a betting man, I’d be rich right now.”
“Cade?” Ivan asked, dr
awing to a halt.
“Who were you expecting, Santa Claus?”
“No offense meant,” Ivan said, holding up his hands in a gesture of truce. “The last time I got a decent look at you, it was from below, and I wasn’t really paying attention.”
Cade’s grin had teeth. “I could match my fist to the bruise pattern on your jaw if you want to double-check.”
The sore spot hadn’t really made itself known while he’d had Robbie to distract him, but Ivan was well aware of it now. “Pass, thanks.” He studied the young man. He could be glad he’d missed most of Cade’s adolescence if he wasn’t already sorry for that instead. He hadn’t thought about Cade or Nathaniel, not as much as he should, back then. Now look at how much he’d missed. “Not that I’m not glad to see you, but what are you doing here?”
“Seeing for myself, mostly.” Cade nudged a small plastic bag out from behind his leg and toed it toward Ivan. “No need to go inside. Housekeeping’s already come and gone. I rescued your things for you. Lotion, by the way?”
Ivan’s face heated. “Okay, so you know what happened.”
“I do,” Cade said. “And I know my brother. You two aren’t getting back together, are you?”
“It’s complicated. You know, Nathaniel’s already come around to give me the ‘don’t hurt him’ speech. That’s what I’m trying not to do.” Ivan let the small folded bag of odds and ends lie where it would. “We hurt each other plenty, back in the day.”
“I was there. I remember.” Cade wrinkled his nose. “What I don’t get is why you think that’s a good enough reason to keep hurting each other now.”
Ivan’s shoulders stiffened. He’d put up with a lot, but come on. There were lines and so help him if he wasn’t in the mood to watch Cade waltz across them. “Excuse me?”
“Don’t think I will,” Cade said. He lazed against the door as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but his eyes were old and his mouth hard. “You know if you pushed just a little harder, he’d give in.”